With Facebook now closing in on a total of 500 million users worldwide, the topic of Facebook ads is worth looking into. Here, we’ll outline how to create one of these pay-per-click/pay-per-impression ads, along with the arguments for and against using them for real estate.
To begin with, you’ll need to decide what to include in your ad. Facebook ads are based primarily on text, so strong copy is essential. Because your ads are going to be displayed down the right-hand side of the screen, a snappy, attention-grabbing headline is also important. In the body of the ad, you’re limited to 135 characters, so spend some time refining your copy to get as much information in as possible.
An enticing picture of the area you represent is also worth considering before you upload a picture of yourself. Remember: home hunters are primarily focused on where they’re going to live rather than who’s going to help them find their new home.
Now that you have a catchy headline, engaging body text, and a great picture, it’s time to choose who’s going to see your ad. Facebook lets you refine viewers by country, state, city, age, gender, keywords, education level, and even whether it’s the user’s birthday or not when they see the ad.
If those options weren’t enough, you can go on to limit viewers by the name of their workplace, relationship status, whether they’re interested in men or women, their languages, connections (pages, events, groups or applications), and friends of connections.
After all that, Facebook gives you an estimate of how many users are going to see your ad. The final step is to set your daily budget, and choose whether you want to pay for impressions or clicks. Once you’ve entered the amount you’re willing to pay per-click or per-impression, Facebook will give you an estimate of the number of clicks or impressions you can expect to receive.
The question is, do these ads actually work for real estate agents? Making the case for Facebook ads is business2.com.au contributor Charlie Gunningham, who paid just over US$3,500 over 11 months to get his ad seen 22 million times.
For the negative, we have 4realz.net, which argues that Facebook is too quick to take down non-performing ads and says the ads would only be useful if Facebook could allow agents to target people who are likely to move to a particular area.
But just because the jury is still out on whether Facebook ads are a worthwhile investment doesn’t mean you can’t give them a try. If you do decide to use them, remember to track your results, and adjust your ads according. And if you’ve had success – or lack thereof – with Facebook ads, do let us know in our comments.
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Thanks for the mention! By the time I let the ads run for a year, I had had 27 million page views, cost me $4000 and remember the ads were only sent to FB pages of those who lived in Perth and were of a certain age group (35-55 I think).
I’m not sure ANY advertising is as targetted as that. I’ve known of FB ads being targetted to ONE person, and working (that ONE person saw it, and clicked on it!). They work better in Australian capital cities, and less well in regional centres (not everyone puts in their hometown in their FB profile, nor indeed their suburb possibly); but with FB already profiting (literally) from these, quite a few people are already finding them great value.
The new FB ‘like’ concept for pages means you can target people according to what FB pages they like – now that IS targetted! Imagine sending an ad up to those who you already knew liked various real estate pages. Very little leakage there.
Remember you set your daily budget, cost per click and age groups, likes and area; can shut off the ads whenever you want, and you never go above you daily budget anyway. I think I was getting 100,000 pageviews a day and it never cost me more than $15/day.
Got an auction? do a FB ad linking to its property page on your web site for a 3 week campaign. Profile yourself in your area? Your brand?
Yes, I think they are worth trying!