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Facebook is no longer the new frontier of marketing; it’s now an established lead-generation channel. However, many real estate professionals aren’t aware of how to optimize their use of this social media giant.
Why Should You Advertise on Facebook?
There are two primary reasons Facebook dominates social advertising: audience size and targeting. There are currently more people on Facebook than any other social platform, with a total of 1.9 billion users. More importantly, though, Facebook allows you to channel your messages to reach potential customers through a wide variety of demographic information, behavior sets, and third-party data.
Beyond simply boosting an ad, there are three great ways to advertise on Facebook. With these options, you’ll improve your targeting and get the biggest bang for your buck.
Custom Audiences
This method typically requires you to upload a CSV file (from Microsoft Excel) into Facebook. This list can come from a variety of places, such as your website traffic, previous engagement on Facebook, or even activity on your app. You can match the information you have in your database—names, emails, or phone numbers, say—with the Facebook profiles of clients you’ve interacted with in the past.
The more data you can include the better, as it’s being used to match with people on Facebook. For example, if you’re just uploading email addresses, you’ll see a much lower match rate than if you included email addresses, phone numbers, and ZIP codes.
By doing this, you can retarget people on your current list. Uploading custom audience data is one of the most effective ways to reengage your past customers. According to KlientBoost, the average click-through rate is 10 times higher than a typical display ad.
If you’re ready to upload your own custom audience, start here.
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Facebook Pixels
Have you ever searched for anything on Amazon—let’s say a pair of shoes—and then taken a break to scroll through Facebook? There’s a good chance you saw those same shoes you were considering buying advertised on your Facebook wall. Creepy, right? This isn’t by chance. Instead, something called a Facebook pixel “fired,” allowing Amazon to retarget you.
You can do the same thing. A pixel is just a piece of JavaScript code that tracks a specific action—in this case, visitors. Facebook will provide you with this code free of charge.
By placing a Facebook pixel on your website, you can do a couple of things. First, you can retarget people who visit your site, as Amazon does. Clients have shown an intent by engaging with you, so it could make sense to serve them an ad explaining your services.
But you can get even more detailed and optimize your ad dollars for leads. For example, if your goal is get more people to fill out a lead form, you can place a pixel on your form’s thank-you page. This way, the pixel will fire when a person successfully fills out the form.
When someone submits a lead and a pixel fires, Facebook analyzes that person’s profile and starts looking for similar Facebook users, examining their account behaviors, demographics, and more. Facebook then uses its algorithms to find the best possible clients to target with your ad. This is much more effective than simply targeting by interest.
If you’re ready to place a pixel, you can start with this guide. And don’t worry! It’s easier than it sounds.
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Lookalike Audiences
Another option is to upload your current email list and find a lookalike audience. Lookalike targeting refers to finding new clients who are similar to your current and previous clients.
There are two fairly easy ways to create a lookalike audience. The first is by using pixels to get information, as discussed above. If you’ve found an audience that is taking action on your site, whether that’s a visit or a lead, you can create a lookalike audience with this information to find similar users. This can be a great way to expand your reach to new clients.
The other method for creating a lookalike group is making custom audiences. You can upload your CRM file into Facebook and then get access to an audience that has characteristics and behavior that resemble clients you already have on file. In this way, you’re able to find clients who are similar to those who have submitted information to you in the past.
Check out this guide to making a lookalike audience.
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