You can start running a Facebook ad with just a few clicks, but setting up an effective advertising campaign takes a lot of planning and organization. Most real estate professionals including agents, brokers and real estate investors skip due diligence when they promote their services on this platform. It results in a massive increase in cost-per-result which means that they end up wasting money by paying more for engagement and leads.
In this guide, I am going to explain some of the best Facebook advertising practices which realtors should follow in order to get better ROI from their paid campaigns and lower their ad cost.
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Don’t violate Facebook’s ‘Housing Ads’ policy
After being criticized for offering advertisers some ‘discriminatory ’targeting options, Facebook now bars real estate professions from targeting people based on their age, gender, zip code and race for certain types of ads such as listing alerts or credit guides. Some targeting options were dropped by Facebook in March 2019 and the housing ads were put in the Special Ads Category.
Many real estate professionals are still not aware of these policies, so they end up violating them. It results in their ads being suspended.
Make sure that you always run your ads under the Special Ads Category. Some of the targeting options will not be available, but you can use other great features of Facebook advertising for real estate professionals to get the most out of your Facebook ad campaigns.
First, know your way around Facebook Ads Manager
Facebook lets you run ads from the page itself. You can promote any video or post.
Many realtors consider this a very convenient option and hit the ‘Boost This Post’ button to start promoting posts, images and videos.
This is a huge, but unfortunately a very common mistake. You should always use Facebooks Ads Manager to create an ad. You have access to a lot of targeting features and ad creatives which give you a better control over your promotional campaign.
Invest time in learning your way around Ads Manager. The interface is very institutive, so it’s quite easy to set up a highly-targeted ad within a few minutes.
Don’t give up too early
Many advertisers run an ad for a couple of hours and then pause the campaign when they don’t see desired results.
When you set targeting options, there is no way Facebook can start display your ads to the right audience immediately. Facebook will take a couple of days to identify your target audience. It means the cost-per-result may be higher in the beginning, but it will hopefully come down if you run the ad long enough.
Don’t wait too long for results
Facebook advertising is all about A/B testing. You need to keep testing different elements of your ad including images, videos, copy, ad creatives and lead funnel to find a winner.
If you find that your ad is not getting desired results even after a week, you should change one element at a time and keep testing.
This will help you not only come up with a high-converting ad, but also avoid ad fatigue.
So these were some of the best Facebook advertising practices for realtors, real estate brokers and investors.
Please let me know in comments if you have any questions or comments.
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