It bears no repeating: While the world has been connecting digitally for years, the current shift has propelled this type of connectivity to new highs. Engaging with your sphere through online tools is more important than ever. We’ve already discussed how to use social media for business in a shifting market to build organic goodwill and stay top of mind with clients. But, your platforms can also be a powerful tool for generating leads at a low cost, and zeroing in on the most motivated buyers.
In particular, paid Facebook ads are a valuable tool for reaching potential leads in a controlled fashion. As of Q1 2020, Facebook still stands as the largest worldwide social network, with more than 2.6 billion monthly users. In addition, the platform yields itself to ad targeting based on individual interests, ensuring that your message gets in front of the right eyes. Whether you are setting one up directly on Facebook or are a Keller Williams agent running ads through Campaigns, accurately pinning down your target audience and creating compelling messaging will ensure you have a successful campaign. More importantly, if you are using the Command platform to run ads, you do not have to be an expert in order to find success, as Facebook and Keller Williams have worked collaboratively to provide a platform that can make informed decisions based on your desired outcome.
“Sometimes we make human assumptions when machine learning is going to point us in surprising directions,” says Facebook client partner Scott Shapiro. “It’s the perfect intersection of what you know about real estate, what we know about our platform, and putting it together to create a product that is holistically best-in-class.”
Related resource: How to create a social ad in Campaigns
No matter your preferred method of running ads, the following considerations and agent success stories will get you producing high-converting Facebook ads in no time. It all begins with selecting the right target audience.
5 steps to successfully targeting your audience:
1. Profile your buyers. For each listing, come from a marketing mindset and draw up a detailed mental profile of the person you could see purchasing the home. Who is going to be living there?
2. Zero in on interests. While you are not able to target demographics such as age and ZIP code, targeting your audience accurately based on interests will ensure that your ad gets in front of the right people. Focus on real estate-related interests and keywords, such as ‘mortgage calculator.’
3. Think about your price point. In choosing the interests you will be targeting, think about the home’s price point. For luxury listings of homes with custom features and remodeling, adding in keywords such as ‘architecture’ and ‘design’ might help. You can also make educated guesses on the other activities a luxury buyer might be interested in, such as country clubs, wineries, or yachts.
4. Set your parameters. Think about your budget and how you will be measuring success. How much money are you willing to spend and how many leads would it take for you to deem a campaign successful?
5. Create engaging copy. For single property homes, don’t give everything away in the copy and don’t put the property address on the ad itself. Instead, lead with a question or encouragement that will make viewers curious to click through and learn more. For example, “Have you seen the light fixture in the living room?” or “Check out the ceilings in the master bedroom!”
Whether you are a Facebook ad novice or simply on the market for something new, consider taking a page out of these four successful agents’ Facebook ad playbooks.
Campaigns: Your Easy ButtonFour Examples of High-Performing Facebook Ads
Haley Roisum of the Anderson Hicks Group
- Average runtime of ads: 7 days (the team duplicates the ads that do well and runs them for an additional 7 days on a $30 budget)
- Total spent since beginning to run ads: $2,347
- Leads received: 1,049
- Appointments secured: 40+
“Our best-performing ads are typically just single property listing ads,” Roisum says, pointing to engaging copy that sparks customers’ curiosity as her recipe for success. “Our best ads on Command perform at a rate that’s less than $1 per lead – we pay about 4 cents per click on our best ones.” For comparison, the industry standard for CRM-based products is $8-15 per lead.
Jessica Starr of Starr Realty Group
- Total ads run through Command (within a 72-day span): 30
- Average runtime: 5-7 days (started experimenting with ads more than 70 days ago)
- Total spent: $1,193
- Leads received: 473
- Amount closed: $24,571.50 GCI
Starr’s team started experimenting with Facebook ads right before shelter-in-place orders began taking effect. “We’ve cut down on expenses everywhere else and dumped money into ads. We wanted to play with it and see what the results were,” Starr says. “We ran an open house ad on Facebook and three of the targeted people made an offer on it. They also had us list their homes.”
Nick Baldwin
- Total single-property ads run through Command (within a 45-day span): 8
- Average runtime: 5-7 days
- Total spent: $220.68
- Leads received: 158
- Appointments secured: 12
- Amount closed: $24,849 GCI
Like Roisum and Starr, Baldwin has found engagement with single-property ads. “Ads advertising a list of homes in a certain town or neighborhood, such as ‘New homes for sale in …’ and ‘Most recently reduced homes in …’ are also popular,” he shares.
Jenn Brinker Real Estate
- Total ads run through Command: 8
- Average runtime: 4-10 days
- Total spent: $215
- Leads received: 167
“The spend on this ‘University City’ carousel ad was $25 and I received 33 leads, for an average cost of 76 cents per lead,” Brinker says of the above ad. “I typically always include a listing, as well as a nod to Keller Mortgage’s ZeroPlus loan product. I have recently added mortgage terms to my interests targeting, as that is one of the most highly searched terms in real estate right now.”
These agents are living proof that taking the time to experiment on social media can yield your perfect formula for high-converting Facebook ads. By zeroing in on your ideal audience’s interests and capturing their attention with aesthetically pleasing photography and intriguing copy, you too can become an ad whiz and generate leads in a natural (and inexpensive) manner.