Why Buy the Cow When You Can Get the Milk for Free? (and Other Facebook Real Estate Ad Tips)

When we are speaking with a prospective client about taking over their Facebook advertising, at one point in the phone conversation, we often hear an objection from the agent like, "I know how to use Facebook Ad Manager and I am running successful campaigns on my own."

But are they? After two brief exercises, we generally find that while the agent may know how to use Facebook Ad Manager, quite often the campaigns are not successful—at least in terms of a marketing campaign. What are these exercises you ask?

1) Question to agent: What kind of response rate are you getting?

Often, the almost immediate answer is, "I don't actually get leads, but I see on the Facebook Ad Manager traffic reports I'm getting tons of exposure with my ads."

OR, we get an answer like, "I am just boosting my posts. There is no way for Facebook users to give me any sort of response, except for liking my page."

A couple of things here—unless you are actually running a campaign with the specific goal of getting more likes on your Facebook page, you HAVE TO be sure your boosted posts and ads point to some sort of landing page where the user can give you their information in return for some item of value. This is your hard earned money we are talking about. If you are not growing your business and the chance of getting more clients, it's not worth doing these campaigns.

Secondly, there is a difference between "reach" and "clicks." Reach is simply the number of people your ad is being served up to. The number could be high, but if people aren't paying attention to your ad and just skipping over it, even a high reach number doesn't help you.

Clicks, on the other hand, are a true measurement of the effectiveness of your ad. A click means a user saw your ad, was interested in it and clicked on it to get to the next stage. This—coupled with Google Analytics to see all click throughs, and how many users converted and filled out a landing page—will give you an exact idea of how your ad is performing.

2) Question to Agent: What items of value are you offering with your Facebook Ads?

This question, in almost every instance is answered the same way. What we generally are told is, "I don't like to make people jump through hoops to get information. I just like to give it all to them in the boosted post or ad, so they can easily access the info.

Again, this is your HARD EARNED money. I am not suggesting that you set an extremely high bar for them to get over before they get the promised information—BUT you have to get something from them so you have a qualified lead on your hands BEFORE you give them that promised item of value.

Asking for information like name, email, and possibly mobile phone is a very low bar.

Some Examples of the "Right Way" to Run Your Facebook Ads

So now that I have addressed the basics of how and why you should run your Facebook boosted posts and ads, let's actually look at a couple real life examples. Below are some ads we have run for our clients.

EXAMPLE 1: HOME VALUE AD

One great thing you can use to get people's attention on your Facebook Ads is offering a FREE, IMMEDIATE home valuation. Here is an example of an ad like that. In this case, when the homeowner clicks on the ad, they are taken the the following landing page:

As you can see, the barrier to entry on this landing page is low, AND it reiterates that it offers the information to the homeowner INSTANTLY if they fill out the form.

EXAMPLE 2: JUST LISTED AD

A fantastic way to get leads is to run targeted ads for new listings, serving them up to the people you think are most likely to want to purchase the home, OR people that live in the area that you think are most likely to sell soon (so they will see how you market others' listings, get interested in you and call you for a listing appointment). With both groups, just listed ads are great. When the homeowner/buyer clicks on the ad, they are taken to an easy to fill out landing page, offering them all the property info once they hit submit:

As you can see, the call to action is clearly stated on the landing page, and the fields to fill out are SUPER easy, giving the greatest chances that users will follow through.

EXAMPLE 3: WEBSITE/MLS LINKED ADS

If you are targeting buyers, one method is to target your marketplace and run ads asking would-be buyers what they might be able to purchase for a certain dollar amount. When they click on the ad, again, they are taken to an easy to fill out landing page:

Here, again, is an easy to fill out form. All the user needs to do is submit the form and they are immediately taken to the agent's website and shown, in this case, all Almaden Valley homes that are for sale and listed at $1.2 million or less.

So as you can see, even though you may know how to use the Facebook Ad Manager, setting up your campaigns to run in a methodical, successful manner requires a little bit of planning. Do that planning up front and you cannot go wrong.

Do you need help getting your Facebook Campaigns back on track? Do you need some fresh ideas? Contact us anytime. We are happy to help.

To view the original article, visit the Leading Agent blog.