Grow your business with Facebook ads for property

New customers, more market share and a scalable pipeline of fresh revenue for your business – it’s all possible with Facebook ads for property.

You’re here because you want to get the best out of Facebook ads for property. In a crowded sector where small details make a big difference, here are some of the key considerations.

Before we start…

What if you could skip ahead to the bit where your Facebook ads are optimised, effective and generating consistent revenue for your business? As specialists in lead generation for real estate, that’s what we offer – and we can even cover your ad spend. Here’s how we do it. Here’s the results we get. And here’s how to get in touch to arrange a free discovery call. Let’s go.

“Adbetter handled everything from creative strategy to a full funnel media buying plan across Facebook and Google Ads. They were able to design & build a full digital marketing campaign including all ads, copy and landing pages that has been delivering a consistent stream of new customers at a significantly cheaper cost than in previous testing.”

– Aqib Hassan, CCO, CPIC | Gwadar Click

Why Facebook ads for property can get big results

Facebook is ubiquitous. And that’s precisely what makes it such a potent tool for lead generation and business growth.

With more than 56 million users in the UK, you can bet there’s people on Facebook who are interested in your property services. And Facebook gives you sophisticated audience targeting tools to help you reach them.

Whether you’re an estate agent or an interior designer, a freelance architect or the owner of a commercial property development company, Facebook can help you win new leads and drive fresh revenue.

Facebook ads for property: preparing your campaign

Setting an ad objective

The best place to start with Facebook ads for property is to think about what you’re trying to achieve. Then work backwards.

Facebook gives you six ad objectives to choose from.

·   Sales: find people likely to purchase your product or service.

·   Leads: collect leads for your business or brand using native lead gen forms.

·   Engagement: get more video views, page likes or event responses.

·   Traffic: send people to a destination, such as your website, app or Facebook event.

·   Awareness: show your ads to people who are most likely to remember them.

·   App promotion: find new people to install your app and continue using it.You can find out more about Facebook’s ad objectives here. For now, we’d recommend getting your leads off Facebook and onto your website as quickly as possible – and for that you should choose the ‘Traffic’ goal.

Selecting an audience

You can use Facebook’s audience targeting tools to zero in on a cohort of people who are highly likely to be interested in your services. However it’s necessary to note that housing is one of Facebook’s special ad categories. That means the really nuanced targeting tools are restricted.

Specifically, you cannot specify the age or gender of the people your ad is shown to. And location targeting must include all areas within a 15-mile radius of any specified location, with restricted ability to target by postcode. The lookalike audience feature is also a no go.

The fact that geotargeting is restricted for housing-based ads means you’ll have to think carefully about how the creative and copy of your ad works to attract the right audience, while screening out the wrong audience.  Need some tips? As experts in lead generation for property, here’s how we can help.

Setting a budget

With Facebook ads for property, you don’t need to worry about your budget running away from you. There’s lots of functionality to control daily or campaign-specific spending limits. And you can pause your spending at any point within a matter of clicks.

If you are new to Facebook ads for property, it’s best to start with a small budget until you feel more comfortable with the platform. As you begin to spend more, Facebook will be better able to optimise your ad spend by identifying the ads that are performing best and helping you to enhance the reach and clickthrough rate of your ads.

Facebook ads for property: creating your ad

Regardless of how well targeted your ad is, it’s worth remembering that Facebook users don’t tend to enjoy adverts in their feed. Your visuals need to be arresting enough to stop the scroll. Then it’s the job of your messaging to sell your proposition and encourage the right people to click.

Here are some tips for creating your ad.

Choosing an ad format

When it comes to Facebook ads for property, we’d almost always recommend publishing in-feed ads. Broadly speaking that gives you access to three different ad formats.

·   Single image ads: easy and effective, allowing you to share one high quality image and a description – good for focusing on one property.

·   Carousel ads: showcase your suite of properties or a portfolio of your work with up to ten images.  ·   Video ads: good for property walkthroughs, live Q&S and virtual tours..

Writing your primary text: always remember your reader

Your ad isn’t about you. It’s about your reader. It’s about connecting with their ambitions. Resonating with their desires. Allaying their fears. Write in a way that puts your reader first and you’ll be miles ahead of most advertisers.

Just remember that Facebook will truncate your primary text – so the first 125 characters or so have to work hard to inspire the reader to continue with your message.

Great branding is non-negotiable

Whether it’s a new home, a renovation or a redecoration, purchases in the property sector usually involve large chunks of cash. For that reason it’s important that your branding is on point. Your visual and verbal must give the wow factor – or at the very least reassure your reader that you are a credible and reputable proposition.

Test, test, test

With Facebook’s dynamic ads you get the option to submit multiple image and copy variants for each ad you create. Facebook will then test the various visual and verbal combinations to see what gets the best engagement – before preferentially serving the variants that are statistically most likely to drive the outcomes you’re looking for.

Another benefit of testing multiple variants is that your ad will fatigue slower. People get numb to ads they have seen more than once. But ad variants give you the chance to sell your property investment proposition from several angles. That will help to keep your campaign fresh if you are serving your ads to the same audience a number of times.

Facebook ads for property: creating your landing pages

Your Facebook ads are just the start. The goal is to drive traffic to your website or a designated landing page aimed at capturing audience data.

Here are some tips.

Embrace specificity

Okay, so we’ve established that pay per click campaigns can be a ruthlessly effective way to generate leads. But when you’re paying for the click, it’s worth considering the destination you’re sending your audience to.

The best option is to drive your audience to a designated landing page that’s unique to the ad your lead clicked on. Not only does that make the effectiveness of your PPC activities easier to track, but you get far more control over how you interact with your prospects – ensuring their journey is tight and consistent.

If you send your leads to a page that has a totally different message to the ad they clicked on, don’t expect anyone to hang around.

Aim to capture data

The primary goal of your PPC landing page is to capture data on each lead. Once you have a name and an email address or phone number, you can target these leads with additional marketing that nudges them towards conversion.

This is also an opportunity to build questions into a form that helps you understand more about the type of service or property that your lead is looking for. The more data you can gather, the easier it is to create targeted follow up marketing activities that are personalised to each lead and enhance the likelihood of conversion.

Design and copywriting

Optimising your landing pages for mobile is key. It’s likely that a significant portion of your audience will have clicked your ad while using their phone or a tablet.

Make sure all essential messages are summarised above the fold. And break up your copy with subheads that allow your visitor to scan read your landing page.

Create a closed journey

Single mindedness is a strength when it comes to landing pages. Limit options that encourage your prospect to navigate away from your landing page – and stay focused on one clear call to action. Anything else is a potential barrier to conversion.

Utilise social proof and trust signals

Customer testimonials are a great way to build credibility. Ideally your customer reviews will come from a verifiable source such as Trustpilot or Google Reviews. If applicable, include logos from other brands that act as trust signals – such as industry watchdogs that you are governed by, your TrustScore or media publications that your organisation has featured in.

Remember your GDPR obligations

For your forms that means having a tick box that forces people to actively opt in to your comms, the name of the person or business that will be contacting them and the method they will be contacted by. You must also include a link to your full privacy policy. Penalties for non-compliance can be huge. Don’t risk it.

Facebook ads for property: nurturing your leads

Your ads have started gaining traction, driving clicks and winning leads. Now your mission is to educate and nurture your audience towards conversion. And Facebook can help with that too.

Once someone has visited your site, you can create a retargeting campaign. It’s an opportunity to serve your lead a fresh set of ads that are personalised based on where they are in your sales funnel, and what you know about their purchase intent.

The aim is to nurture the relationship – providing further information about your services and breaking down barriers to purchase.

Here are some quick tips.

·   Bring your leads in from the cold. Any new leads in your retargeting funnel should be excluded from your original lead gen campaign. Serving cold lead gen ads to people who have already expressed an interest in your business can frustrate prospects and wastes ad budget.

·   Echo activities on your main retargeting channel. Your fresh leads should go into a customer acquisition funnel that’s carefully designed to nurture each lead towards becoming a customer. Email is a great channel for this. Your Facebook retargeting efforts should echo your email campaign – educating your leads about your business, raising awareness of your services and building your credibility as a brand. Verifiable customer reviews can work really well here.

·   Make it personal. Your retargeting campaign should be as personalised as possible based on the lead acquisition method and any information you gathered from their activity on your landing page. The more you can make your lead feel you are carefully considering their position – and trying to help – the more likely they are to convert.

>> 6 expert tips for real estate retargeting ads

Facebook ads for property: optimising your campaigns  

Your ads dashboard will provide you with lots of data on how your ads are performing. Try to identify any trends in the ads that are performing best. Is there something in your messaging that’s encouraging clicks? Is a certain type of image garnering attention? When you understand what’s driving results, you can double down on those strategies – creating additional variants based on what’s working and ditching the stuff that isn’t.

Of course, it’s not just the performance of your Facebook ads that matters, but the performance of your campaign as a whole. For proper insight you should be tracking all points in your user journey – starting with the clicks and conversions on your landing page and everything thereafter. Only then do you have a clear picture of how your campaign is performing. And only then can you optimise and iterate towards continual improvements in your campaign performance.

Let us cover your ad spend, while growing your revenue

With a little learning you can begin driving positive returns for your property business via Facebook ads. But to get the really big returns requires time, tenacity and expertise. We enable you to skip the learning curve and go straight to the bit where your ads are set up, optimised and driving scalable, repeatable revenue for your business. Find out how we work. Or get in touch, schedule a discovery call and learn how we can use Facebook to help your business thrive – even covering your ad spend in the process.

You may also be interested in:

>> A smarter way to supercharge your property investment leads
>> 13 lead generation tactics for property developers
>> A complete guide to Google ads for property businesses
>> PPC for property: a guide to getting big results
>> The secret to finding commercial property leads that convert