17 Top Tips For Successful Facebook Real Estate Ads
Facebook advertising is a powerful tool for real estate businesses. Why? According to recent research:
✅ The average conversion rate for Facebook ads is 9.21%.
✅ There’s the potential to reach up to 1.98 billion users with your ads.
✅ Ad impressions are continuously increasing, having grown by more than 30% in the last year.
Running Facebook ads for your real estate firm is relatively easy and cost-effective. The platform provides a variety of tools to help you get your ads right, monitor your campaigns, and drive big results.
In this article, we share our top tips for executing real estate Facebook ads.
Why Facebook Real Estate Ads Are Important
Realtors have access to many forms of online advertising to promote their properties. So why choose Facebook?
The biggest reason is its reach. According to Pew Research, almost seven in 10 Americans use the social media platform—that’s almost 230 million people. It’s significantly more than Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
A large audience wouldn’t count for much if generating leads was difficult. However, this is not the case with Facebook.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) found that 52% of realtors generated more leads through Facebook than any other channel. This includes their multiple listings service (MLS). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the NAR reports that 90% of realtors use Facebook in their business.
Running a real estate ad on Facebook is also affordable. Marketing tool Constant Contact found that real estate Facebook ads generate 44 leads per ad, with a cost per lead of just $2.44.
Facebook ads are easy to set up and quick to see results. Even beginners can create a campaign and generate their first leads within the first few days.
How Do Facebook Ads Work?
Facebook ads are run through a platform called Facebook Ads Manager. This allows you to create and run ads across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
Facebook collects a wealth of data from each user, including their personal information, how they interact with social media content, and how they behave online.
They use this data to target your ads to a highly specific audience—which we discuss later in this article.
Why Not Just Use a Free Facebook Business Page?
You don’t have to pay for a real estate ad to promote your services and properties on Facebook. Anyone can create a business profile, invite their network, and post listings.
However, there is a good reason to pay for ads: they significantly increase your business’s reach.
By simply posting to your business page—also known as generating organic content—you won’t get much reach. Less reach means fewer new leads.
By putting a budget behind your content, you can showcase your brand to a broader audience than if you were to simply post on a free business page.
Aside from extended reach, some other benefits of running real estate Facebook ads include:
✔️ Increased brand awareness: You’ll increase your business’s visibility, leading to people recognizing and remembering your brand. This helps you stay top of mind the next time your target audience is looking for a realtor.
✔️ Specific targeting: Posting on your free business page means you have little control over who is seeing your content. Facebook ads allow you to select a highly specific target audience, putting you in charge of who sees your ads.
✔️ Boosted lead generation: It’s hard to drive leads by posting to a business page alone. Facebook ads help you drive traffic to your website and listings to generate more leads.
17 Real Estate Facebook Ad Tips for Real Estate Professionals
Now that you know why you should use Facebook ads to promote your real estate business, let’s look at some top tips to maximize the benefits of your campaigns.
1. Start with a strategy
Good real estate advertising starts with a solid strategy. Taking time to nail down the specifics of your campaign helps you align your marketing efforts with your business goals, determine your target audience, and make important decisions about your ad budget.
Your strategy should aim to answer the following questions:
- Objectives: What is the objective of your Facebook ad campaign? Are you looking to generate more leads, get more traffic to your listings, or grow your Facebook business page audience?
- Target audience: Who is your ideal target audience? What is their age, location, income, and gender? How do they behave online?
- Messaging: What tone are you going to use in your ad copy, and what will your visuals look like? How can you align your creative assets with the overall marketing message of your brand?
- Key performance indicators (KPIs): How are you going to measure the success of your Facebook ad campaigns so that you can make data-driven decisions?
- Budget: How much are you willing to spend on your Facebook ads? How much are you prepared to spend per lead you acquire?
Once your strategy is in place, it’s time to tackle the first few steps of setting up your Facebook ads.
2. Create a personal Facebook account
The first step to advertising on Facebook is building a business page for your firm. If you already have one, move on to tip four. If you don’t, here’s how to create one.
Start by navigating to Facebook and clicking “Create new account.”
Whoever owns the personal account will be the page’s administrator—you can add extra administrators later on.
Some people don’t like mixing their professional and personal social media profiles. If this is the case, consider using your work email address to set up a separate profile dedicated to your work.
3. Create a business profile for your real estate firm
Once you’ve chosen or started your account, click the “Pages” link in the left-hand menu.
Next, click on “+ Create new Page.”
Now, fill out the required information in the respective fields, including your contact details, about section, and address. Add a professional profile picture—which could be your logo or a headshot—and an eye-catching banner image, like in the example below:
Your Facebook profile is useful even if you don’t create ads. Use it to showcase information about your firm as this will make it easy for people to find out about your business on the platform.
It’s important that your business Facebook page is complete, as this makes it easier for people to find you and enhances your visibility on the platform.
This means filling out and completing all the available fields and making your page name the same as your business to be easily recognizable.
4. Choose your offer
Now that you’ve set up your business page, you can log in to it under your personal account or business profile. Ensure you have your business profile selected and navigate to the “manage page” toolbar on the left.
Here, you can see an overview of all your previous and upcoming ads by clicking on “Ad Center,” or you can go straight to posting an ad by selecting “Create Ads.”
Click on the latter, and you’ll be given a range of options for your ad.
You then need to choose what you will promote. Realtors can create two ad types to generate leads and attract real estate clients.
The first option is ads that promote a specific home or property. These typically showcase the benefits and advantages of a particular property. They’ll include images, information about the home, and its price.
The second type of Facebook real estate ad generates leads for the services you provide. These ads showcase why people who want to buy a home should choose your service over others.
5. Select your target audience
Facebook ad-targeting offers endless options to build a target audience for your campaigns. However, some targeting options may be turned off for real estate ads in certain countries to stop discriminatory practices.
As a result of some demographics being turned off, the location option is the most important for realtors. It lets your business show ads to people based in the area where you operate.
Choose a central location and then target ads to people within a certain radius of that location:
6. Choose the housing special ad category
When creating Facebook ads for real estate, you must choose the special ad category for housing.
Facebook created this category to reduce the chances of ads discriminating against users. For example, in the U.S., you can’t target real estate ads by using attributes like gender, age, or specific area codes.
Choosing this option may make your ads less targeted, but it ensures your real estate business adheres to Facebook’s policy.
7. Experiment with your budget
Your ad spend is the maximum daily budget you wish to spend on your ads. The amount will depend on your location.
The good news is that if you are an independent real estate agent, you can generate leads at a relatively low cost. For example, the cost is far lower than that of outdoor real estate ads.
You can budget just $10 or $15 per day in small areas with low competition. Cities or more populous areas require a larger minimum.
The aim is to spend the minimum amount to generate enough leads to sell your properties. There is no benefit to spending more than the amount you need to sell the homes you have listed.
Experiment with your budget until you start to generate the number of leads you are happy with.
Facebook provides an estimate for the number of leads it thinks you will generate based on your ad campaign options, audience size, and budget.
8. Use quality images in your ads
The next part of the process is to create your ad. The image you choose to display is important as this is what grabs people’s attention.
You have several options when it comes to displaying images. You can choose single-image ads or upload several visual assets to showcase a property from multiple angles.
You can see an example of a multiple-image ad below:
You can use the same images for your Facebook ad as you have in your listing. However, it’s important to ensure your images are professional and high quality. Using pixelated images or amateur shots is a surefire way to reduce the number of leads you generate.
9. Nail your ad copy
The words you use are one of the most important parts of an effective real estate ad. The text should aim to encourage people to click on your ad and become a lead.
If you don’t have experience writing real estate ads, you’re probably unsure what to include in your ads.
Here are some tips to get it right:
- Check out the competition: Look at popular realtor social media accounts to see what copy they use. Figuring out what resonates with your audience is the first step to creating ad copy that converts.
- Consider your target audience: Think about what will appeal to someone looking for the property you are promoting.
- Keep it relevant: Ensure the copy relates to the offer and the image you use in your Facebook ad. Every element should work together to create a cohesive brand identity.
- Pay attention to tone: Keep your post conversational, and write as if you are talking directly to a client. Ensure you stick to the marketing messaging you outlined in your strategy.
- Prioritize the significant details: Write the most important information first, as this is what Facebook will show in the ad. Longer copy will be hidden behind a “see more” button, so it’s crucial that the most important details appear first.
- Check for mistakes: Use a spell-checker tool like Grammarly to check the copy of your ad for spelling and grammatical errors. There’s nothing that looks less professional than spelling mistakes.
10. Choose a carousel ad to showcase multiple properties
Another great feature that Facebook offers is the ability to create ads in different formats.
Carousel ads, for example, allow you to display a series of images with a caption under each one, allowing your customers to scroll through multiple properties.
This is a simple and effective way to promote many properties using a single Facebook real estate ad. Additionally, it can improve your chances of driving leads.
Here’s an example of a carousel ad being used to showcase multiple properties:
11. Create interactive video ads and 3D tours
Facebook offers multimedia options that go way beyond what images can communicate. You can also experiment with a video ad or even 3D real estate tours.
Mr Sell Team uses videos for its real estate listings, which is a powerful way to grab the attention of potential leads. Each video briefly introduces the property and displays it in far more detail than images ever could.
You can see an example of a video real estate ad below:
12. Remember to sell the lifestyle
You aren’t just selling a property on Facebook—you are selling the lifestyle that property represents.
People buy homes based on an emotional connection, so it’s important to show potential buyers why this particular home offers everything they’ve been looking for.
Create real estate ads that use vivid language with emotive connotations that paint a picture of the kind of life your buyers could lead if they purchase the property you are promoting.
An additional tip is to include images that capture a specific lifestyle—whether it’s living an outdoor life filled with pool parties and BBQs or an indoor life featuring stunning architecture for that perfect dinner party.
13. Highlight the location
Much like the lifestyle, a big part of selling a property is promoting its location. If your property is in a particularly attractive spot, consider highlighting this in your ads.
Take a look at how a photographer for Ridiculous Real Estate has included the incredible mountain backdrop in these photos:
You can also use the location of a property for lead generation. For example, you can create a regularly updated list of homes in a certain location and offer it to customers in exchange for their contact details—which we discuss in more detail later in this article.
14. Choose the best times to advertise
Different times of the year can impact your ads’ effectiveness due to fluctuating housing demand and ad costs. People typically look to buy and sell houses at different times of the year depending on the location and even the weather.
According to Zillow, the real estate market in places with warmer climates, like Miami, is busiest during March. However, in locations with harsh winters like Boston, you’re better off waiting until mid to late April.
Facebook advertising rates also rise and fall depending on the season, impacting your return on investment (ROI).
Ads tend to be cheapest in January, but they peak during the holiday season. Ad costs leading up to Black Friday can also be especially high.
15. Optimize your landing pages
The best real estate ads send potential leads to a landing page that is optimized for the specific offer you are promoting. Avoid sending people directly to your home page when creating real estate ad campaigns.
If your ad is about a particular property, make sure you send people who click on the ad to a page with specific instructions about how to contact you regarding the home. The landing page should also provide more information about the property than what is displayed in your ad.
Ads promoting your real estate services should send leads to a landing page with a contact form that specifically mentions the offer in the ad.
The easiest way to create landing pages for each real estate ad is to use the instant form option within Facebook. It helps you create lead-generation forms for each ad you run:
16. Use a lead magnet
You can set up your Facebook ad to drive users to a lead magnet on your website or a landing page.
A lead magnet is a free service or a special piece of content you provide people with in exchange for their contact information.
Once you’ve captured their contact details, you officially have a new lead in your database.
Some ideas for lead magnets in the real estate industry are a free home valuation, a guide to current market conditions, or an infographic on how potential buyers can stage their homes for open houses.
Here is an example of a lead magnet from Lindsey Wingfield & Co. that real estate professionals could offer to collect contact information:
In order to drive Facebook users to your lead magnet, your ad would include a button that sends them to your website. There, they would need to fill out a form and either be sent the free content or get contacted to set up a home valuation.
Lead magnets also help you establish yourself as an authority in the local market, positioning yourself as an expert in all things real estate.
17. Try testimonial ads
A Facebook ad featuring positive reviews you’ve received from satisfied clients has the potential to perform well. Reviews are regarded as ‘social proof,’ which is how you get potential leads to trust you and hopefully do business with you.
If you’re a new real estate agent and you don’t have many reviews yet, ask the clients you have worked with whether they would mind spending a few minutes writing a testimonial for you.
Rather than using images of properties or lifestyle-related visuals, you can use a review as the visual for your Facebook ad.
It’s a good idea to create a design that features your review and adheres to your brand identity to create a positive connection between your brand and the great feedback you’re getting from clients.
Here’s an example from Chris and Kristen Real Estate of a testimonial Facebook ad:
Generate Leads for Your Real Estate Business with Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are a proven way for real estate agents and teams to generate more leads. It’s also typically easier to get started with this social network than to use print ads and other forms of promotion.
With a little experimentation and following this article’s tips, you will soon be generating a steady stream of leads. Additionally, the low cost of advertising on Facebook means you won’t stretch your budget too much while you learn.
For more ideas about successful real estate marketing, check out our articles on real estate social media tips.
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