How to create real estate facebook ads that will convert milliond for you (Part 2)

Last week we went introduced the first part of How to create real estate Facebook ads that will convert millions for you.

Today we will be diving into the second instalment. So grab a cup of coffee and follow us.

2. Decide Which Types of Leads You Want to Generate

Since Facebook lets you target buyers and sellers, you should have a rough idea of what kinds of leads you want to get before starting. Try to come up with numbers, if possible. How many more buyer or seller leads do you need to hit your financial targets?

Buyer leads are often much easier to generate with Facebook ads.

3. Calculate Your Maximum Cost per Lead

Once you’ve figured out how many more leads you want to generate, you need to sit down and figure out how much you’re willing to pay for each lead. An easy way to calculate this is to figure out your gross commission from deals you close from Facebook leads, then divide that by the number of leads you generate on Facebook.

For example, let’s say you typically sell land worth ₦1,000,000 and have a standard commission of 15%. That means you gross around ₦150,000 per deal. Now, let’s say you convert 5% of the leads you talk to into clients and close 40% of them. So out of 100 cold leads, that leaves you with five clients, and you close two of them. That gives you a gross commission from Facebook leads of ₦300,000.

That means if you spend ₦3,000 per lead, you’ll just break even.

4. Set Up a Facebook Business Page

The next thing you’ll need to start running real estate Facebook ads is a Facebook Business Page. Visit Facebook business Setup to launch your facebook business page.

Next, add your profile photo and cover photo, then click “save.”

5. Set Up Your First Campaign

After you have your page set up, the next step is to set up your first campaign on Facebook. In the Facebook advertising world, a campaign is the overall objective you set to generate a certain kind of lead. Within that campaign, you will have ad sets made up of the different ads you run as a part of that campaign.

For example, let’s say you want to set up a buyer lead campaign. Under that campaign, you might have one ad set that offers a free first-time homebuyer’s guide and another that provides a list of off-market properties. Within each of those ad sets, you might have different variations of each ad or retargeting ads to show to people who have already visited your website.

To set up a campaign, click on “Ad Center” in the left column. Click to learn more about the Facebook Ads Manager.

How to Find Facebook’s Ad Center Panel

To create a campaign, click on the “Create Ad” button.

6. Set the Campaign Objective & Ad Settings

Next, you need to set your campaign objective and name your campaign. Click on “lead generation” and name your campaign something like “Buyer Lead Ads.” Then click “Continue.”

Facebook offers several campaign objectives, including Traffic, Engagement, App Installs, Video Views, and Lead Generation. For this guide, we’re going to create a lead generation ad. Click on “Lead Generation” and then give your new campaign a name. Next, click continue.

Now we will add our ad settings. On the next page, click on the campaign you created. Under “special ad categories,” click on “housing.” Due to fair housing laws, Facebook requires agents to use this category and this category only.

On this page, you can also set up A/B testing for your ads and optimize your budget. Optimizing your budget will spread your spend across multiple ad sets. Since we’re only creating one ad today, we’ll cover ad sets in a later article.

7. Set Your Contact Method & Ad Budget

On the next page, you will set up your ad budget and change more settings. First, you need to choose how you want leads to contact you. You have three options here:

Instant Forms: Your leads will fill out a form to contact you.

Automated Chat: Your leads will chat with your business page to contact you.

Calls: Your leads will call you to contact you. For now, choose Instant Forms.

Next, under “Page,” choose your Facebook Business Page and click to accept Facebook’s terms. After you do that, click on “yes” under “Dynamic Creative.” This will let Facebook optimize elements of your ad to get more leads.

Setting Your Budget

Pricing for Facebook advertising is based on a bidding system. That means that advertisers bid on how much they are willing to spend to reach a specific audience. Luckily, all of this bidding happens automatically. All you need to do is set your maximum daily bid, and Facebook will determine when and how much to bid for your placements.

You can set your daily budget differently for each campaign or each ad set within each campaign. You can also change your budget as you go, but never change your budget once you have an ad set that generates leads at a reasonable price per lead!

To get started, choose a daily budget, and then select a start date and end date for your ad.

8. Targeting: Define & Refine Your Audience

Next, you’ll tell Facebook what audience you want your ads to be shown to. Since Facebook has more than 2.4 billion users, this is a crucial step to making effective Facebook real estate ads. Under the “Audience” section, click on “create new audience.”

Location

While Facebook used to let agents pick a ZIP code for location, they now only allow you to drop a pin and advertise to people within a 15-mile radius. To target your farm area effectively, make sure you drop a pin somewhere near the geographic center of your farm area.

Language

Next, select the common language your audience speaks. If you’re targeting a bilingual audience, you can choose more than one language.

Demographics & Interests

Here’s where Facebook gets interesting but also a little bit challenging. In the past, Facebook would allow agents to target audiences by income, ZIP code, gender, marital status, and more demographics that indicate someone might buy a property soon. They even had a category called “likely to move,” making targeting dead simple.

Connections

Under connections, you can choose to show ads to people you already have a connection with. That would include people who like your page, responded to an event, or visited your website.

9. Choose Your Placements

Here’s where Facebook allows you to pick where your ads are displayed. You can choose to have your ads shown on Facebook or Instagram, or both. You can also display ads on Facebook’s “Audience Network” of participating apps. For now, choose “automatic placements.”

10. Create Your Lead Forms

Next, you will need to create the lead forms that your leads will fill out to contact you. Scroll down to “Instant Form” and then click on “Create Form” to get started. You can choose which image your lead sees along with your headshot, and also determine which questions you will make them answer to contact you. In general, the fewer questions you ask, the more conversions you will get. You can also choose not to ask any questions and simply set an appointment.

11. Set Optimization & Spending Controls

Now you can set the optimization and spending controls for your ad campaign. First, set a daily budget for your ad spend based on the cost per lead you calculated above. Starting at the high end of your budget will allow Facebook to optimize your ads more quickly. That means you’ll start getting good leads faster. Also, the more ad placements you have, the higher the likelihood that someone will click on your ads.

For a traffic ad, you’ll want to set the optimization to “Landing page views” as your goal is to drive traffic to your website. For a lead generation campaign, your goal will be to get someone to enter their contact information, so Facebook will automatically choose “leads” for optimization.

Now that you have a campaign set up, an objective, targeting, placement, and spending controls, Facebook will tell you your potential for daily reach and link clicks. Make sure your audience is large enough, and you have an opportunity to get the number of leads you decided on in the third step. If everything looks good, move on to the next step. If not, you can tweak your settings to try to widen your audience.

12. Choose an Ad Format

Facebook Ad Format

OK, now you’re ready for the fun part. Here you get to choose the copy and creative for your Facebook ad. Before you get started, you need to choose between the three options Facebook offers for traffic ads:

Carousel Ads

Carousel ads are ads that feature several images or videos that your audience can scroll through. For example, you might have four open houses lined up for sale and include a picture or video walk-through of each in your carousel. That means your audience can view multiple listing photos through one ad.

Single Image or Video Ads

A single image or video is just that. Instead of having multiple photos for your audience to scroll through, you only have one image or video to grab their attention.

Collection Ads

Collections are mostly designed for ecommerce companies. They feature a video and then a selection of products below that video. For example, you might see a collection of boots if you’ve been shopping for boots recently.

When it comes to the actual ad you’re going to run, you need to plan everything before you start writing copy and designing the ad. How are you going to entice someone on Facebook to stop scrolling and click on your ad? To get you started, read on for a few examples of effective Facebook ad strategies and how to build them.

13. Create Your Lead Magnet, Write Copy & Design Your Ad

Now that you know what kind of ad you’d like to create, the next step is to create it. Generally, if you’re offering a piece of content as a lead magnet, it makes sense to write and design that first.

Next, it’s time to get started creating your ad. You need to choose imagery, design your layout, and write the copy for your ad. If you’re using a video ad, then you’re going to have to shoot your video. Here are a few quick rules for creating engaging Facebook ads.

Always Put Yourself in Your Leads’ Shoes & Ask WIIFM?

When it comes to writing copy and getting creative with imagery, design, and video, it can be very easy to lose track of your main goal. In every ad, your main goal is always to convince your audience to take a certain action. To make sure you’re putting them first, once you’ve created your ad, pretend you’re a part of your audience and ask yourself What’s In It for Me? Why should I click on your ad? Pretty graphic design or clever language often won’t cut it.
Try Using Emojis in Your Copy 💓😀👏

Remember, your job is to make people pause, read your ad, then click on it. Emojis can increase the click-through rate of ads because they look more like the text that their friends are posting on Facebook.

Use Images of properties, but Also Consider Using People

While at the end of the day you’re trying to get someone to purchase a property from you, pictures of properties can sometimes cause people’s eyes to glaze over and tune out your ad. Images of people, on the other hand, are harder to resist looking at.

Follow these points and you are bound to make a killer facebook ad