Four Ways of Making Real Estate Facebook Ads More Profitable

Real Estate Facebook Ads That Work in 2020

People who have attempted to use Facebook ads to procure leads for their real estate business in the past are familiar with the costs of that come with getting users to click ads. The CPC (cost per click) of Facebook ads is increasing for every industry, real estate included.

Many people in the real estate industry, which includes brokers, investors, and agents, had no choice but to increase budgets for their Facebook ads. Most of these people don’t get the results they once did. In fact, most real estate agents have begun to wonder if running ads on Facebook is even a worthwhile endeavor anymore.

Unfortunately, in 2020, such costs will keep going up while the CTR (click-through rate) will go down. This is because the amount of advertisers are increasing. In turn, advertisers have been forced to allocate a lot more money to their Facebook ad budgets.

The following article will explain a quartet of strategies to keep your real estate Facebook ads profitable in 2020.

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, claims that the social network has approximately 7 million users actively running ads. There are 2.4 billion Facebook users in total. Based on that math, a mere 342 users are active per advertiser.

With that said, the CPC for ads on Facebook have increased just as the competition has.

In the second quarter of 2018, the CPC had an average rate of $0.43. In the second quarter of 2019, that rate was increased to $0.63.

Further, the CTR decreases with every year that goes by, which indicates that less people than ever are actually clicking on ads that are run on the popular social network.

In the second quarter of 2018, Facebook’s newsfeed ads had a CTR percentage rate of 2.24%. This percentage decreased in the second quarter of 2019 to 1.20%.

Based on studies performed by a popular landing page developer, conversion rates for ads on Facebook was 9.2% across every industry. The average advertiser spent approximately $64 for about nine conversions.

Although that doesn’t sound so bad when you first look at that figure, the fact of the matter is that this conversion rate won’t equate to an acquisition of clients.

If a user were to click one of your ads on Facebook for a property listing, it would be considered a conversion. But each conversion isn’t considered to be an ROI contributor.

Since we now understand that paid promotions on Facebook are getting more expensive, we can now talk about strategies to get more users to engage with ads without increasing your ad budget:

1. Trust Needs to be Established With Your Brand

Once upon a time, all you had to do was run an ad showcasing your listings for homes, and people would be encouraged to take action.

Nowadays, you must navigate your audience to service or sales pages on a real estate site.

Trust must be established between your brand and your prospects before any services are sold to them.

To achieve this, you must show ads to them first, which will inform these people about the property selling and buying process. After they see that your expertise is trustworthy, you can show ads to them that promote your services as either an investor or realtor. When contacting a prospective client for the first time, endeavor to win their trust.

Guides for property selling and buying (as well as guides of the neighborhood) are examples of educational ads you can use as promotional tools when new leads are being targeted.

In an article I wrote not long ago, I talked about 20 kinds of real estate lead magnets to run on Facebook ads. A number of them fit the educational promotion criteria.

While you must display ads two times to each user, keep in mind that this could lower cost-per-conversion rates over the long haul, as well as increase brand credibility.

2. “Look-alike” Audiences and “Retargeting”

Because Facebook follows strict housing ad policies – limiting targeting choices for realtors – it is more important than ever that you double down specifically on a couple of features for Facebook ads: “look-alike” audiences and “retargeting.”

Customized Audiences

Retargeting can be defined as displaying ads to users who have engaged with your real estate brand in numerous ways. “Look-alike” audiences give you a method of targeting potential leads that have shown an interest in what your offering (since they have the same features as your current customers).

In an article I wrote not too long ago, I talked about which best practices that should be used for Facebook ads with reference to “look-alike” audiences and retargeting. For more information about those features, have a look at this article.

Although it is worthwhile to retarget prospective clients, as well as produce “look-alike” audiences to target new prospects (ever since Facebook debuted these features), your adopted strategy for 2020 should be retargeting using audience segmentation.

For example, let’s say you’re promoting an event or seminar for free, which will educate potential leads about the home selling and buying process. Most people would be directed to your sign up/enrollment page after they click your Facebook ad. These people might not complete the registration form for your event, though. Therefore, these people will need to be retargeted with another kind of ad – preferably one with video – to influence them into registering. This is a very effective retargeting strategy.

Bypass Ad Fatigue

A big reason massive increases in CPC, CTR, and CTC happen can be attributed to ad fatigue. What this means is that if one ad is run longer than necessary, it will begin to get fewer engagements and clicks.

There are a few ways of reducing ad fatigue for Facebook ads in order to increase conversions and clicks without increasing your budget:

Keep modifying the creative content of your Facebook ads. Facebook allows you to run your ads in different formats, including canvases, slideshows, single videos, single images, and carousels. The creative content for your ad should always be changing. Dynamic ads should be used for one ad often (rotate once weekly, at the very least).

3. Creative Content for Facebook Ads

Each element of your ads should always be changing. Various elements of an ad funnel should change regularly. This includes landing pages, videos, images, and copy.

Keep track of your Facebook ads on a regular basis. Refrain from displaying the same ads repeatedly, especially when conversions are all but nonexistent. The frequency of your Facebook ads is based on the average amount of times an individual sees your ad.

4. Videos Should Be Heavily Promoted

Facebook has a bit of a bias towards video. They will continue to emphasize video in 2020.

Research indicates that – because video ads receive more engagement through likes, views, and clicks, it has the potential to reach a lot more people naturally. This can minimize your cost per result.

Consider using feature listing drone videos for Facebook ads. Video testimonials can also be used as promotional content.

In Closing

Now you know which Facebook ad practices are the strongest for realtors, brokers, and investors. These practices should be followed in 2020 in order to retain the profitability of your promotional campaign.

What strategies are you using right now? Tell me about them in the comments below. I am curious if they have helped you achieve a stronger ROI for your ads on Facebook.

To schedule a no-obligation no pressure call on how I can help you increase your sales through digital marketing click on the calendly link below or email mark@westgatecreatives.com

https://calendly.com/westgatecreatives

Cheers..

 -Mark