Being a stellar real estate agent isn’t just about closing a deal. While negotiating the terms of a favorable contract is, of course, important, agents also have to be adept at advertising. But it’s not just about publicizing the properties they hope to sell; agents also have to know how to sell themselves. Indeed, generating qualified leads could be considered the most critical part of an agent’s job since knowing how to make a sale is pointless if you don’t have anyone to sell something to. Take a look at how real estate Facebook ads can help agents boost their exposure and, thus, improve their ROI:

Facebook Offers Billions of Potential Clients

Agents have historically mailed postcards, knocked on doors, and networked to find new clients. That’s a lot of ground (both figuratively and literally) to cover. What if you (as an agent) could get yourself and your properties in front of a lot more people in a lot less time? Nearly three billion people use Facebook, with more than half of those visiting it every day. In the U.S., that’s seven out of ten people with the potential to see real estate Facebook ads each day! There are few other options that can get agents that kind of visibility in that short of time. Using a reach campaign, you can target your ads to reach as many people for the lowest cost possible.

Facebook Offers Multi-layered Exposure 

Real estate Facebook ads are easily managed online using Meta’s versatile advertising platform tool. From here, agents can create ads, choose their audiences, set budgets, analyze their metrics, and more. Agents are able to layer different types of targets (location, age, interests, etc.) along with engagement factors (website visits, previous conversions, social engagement, etc.) to ensure they reach the right person at the right time. In this way, you make it more likely that the ad will resonate with them in some way.

Facebook Encourages Productive Interaction

Facebook is a visual platform. It relies on people perusing, looking, clicking, and responding. In this way, it’s not unlike real estate. In traditional real estate searches, however, people would have to drive around town, shift through newspapers or even go down to an office to look for available inventory. Real estate Facebook ads, however, allow people to notice a property from the comfort of their existing home or office. They allow people to follow a link and get in touch with an agent with less effort than even picking up a phone would entail. Furthermore, real estate Facebook ads often include videos, enabling clients to “walk-through” a property and gauge its potential before actually talking to an agent, possibly saving those agents from needless — fruitless — viewings of properties that don’t actually “fit the bill.” 

There are also unique features for interaction on Facebook ads that real estate agents should be taking advantage of. First are instant experiences. Instead of taking a user directly to another landing page, you can keep them on Facebook and show off a property through an instant experience ad. Within an Instant Experience, people can watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through carousels, tilt to pan, and explore lifestyle images with tagged products—all in a single ad. Next are Facebook lead ads. To keep conversion rates high, you may opt for an on-Facebook form where someone can become a lead right on Facebook. Oftentimes, these forms are pre-filled with any information Facebook knows, allowing a user to confirm and submit. Typically, the fewer clicks someone has to take to convert, the better!

Boost Social Media Marketing with the Right Data

Though targeting is still robust for real estate Facebook ads and other social media marketing tools, it is constantly changing. Due to data restrictions through Facebook, you may find that you can’t quite get to the audience you’re looking for with their targeting alone. For example, if you want to target by income level, you simply get options to target the top 10%, top 25%, and top 50% of incomes by ZIP code. These can be wide ranges that still might not get you to your exact audience.

That’s why there is no replacement for marketing with the right data. Our Criss+Cross database here at Haines, for instance, provides up to 300 searchable data points, which allows our clients to more fully identify qualified leads or potential buyers. These data points include:

• Age
• Income
• Length of Residence
• Credit score
• Vehicle Information
• And so much more!

When paired with Facebook advertising, you can upload your list of emails and phone numbers for marketing purposes. This way, you know more confidently that you have the right audience and you have the tools to reach them where they spend their digital day.

To learn more about using a lead generation tool to better inform your social media marketing, please contact our Haines team today.