Introduction to Creating Real Estate Facebook Ads

This is Part 1 of a 3-Part series on creating real estate Facebook ads:

• Part 1: [Your Are Here] Introduction to Creating Real Estate Facebook Ads
• Part 2: The Tools & Structure of a Real Estate Facebook Ad Campaign
• Part 3: Creating Your First Real Estate Facebook Ad Campaign [Step-by-Step Guide]

If you have been following along over the past few months you know that I am a big fan of Facebook.

In my opinion if there is one social media platform that every real estate agent should be on, it is Facebook.

I believe that you should be on more than just Facebook, but being on Facebook is non-negotiable. And not only do you need to be on Facebook, you need to have a business page on Facebook.

Click Here to Read My Post About Building a Facebook Real Estate Page

Once you are all set up on Facebook, it is time to begin using the platform to drive traffic and interaction to help you achieve the goals that you have for your real estate business.

One of the best ways to do so is through the use of Facebook ads.

So how do you get started with creating real estate Facebook ads?

You need to come up with a plan, and in every good plan there are three things that you must consider.

First, you need to a good why. Your why is the reason that you are doing this in the first place. If at any point along the path, you have difficulty with your plan, it is your why that will motivate you and pull you through.

Second, you need to decide on your what. This is the outcome of the plan. It is the results. In terms of a goal this is the destination that you are wanting to reach.

Last, you need to come up with the how. This is the part that most times we focus on first. It is the implementation part, and the part where we actually get to work. However, it is the last part. You must first address the why and the what if you want to have success in the how phase.

So today we are going to focus on creating your why, and your what, for your real estate Facebook ad campaign.

I am going to break it down into two steps. At the end of this post you should have a good foundation to build your ad campaign upon.

STEP 1 – DETERMINING YOUR WHY

The first thing that you need to do with an Facebook ad campaign comes long before you ever log into Facebook. You must first ask yourself the question “Why am I running these ads?”

Why do you need to ask yourself that question?

Because if you are unsure as to the exact reason that you are running ads, you will be throwing your money away!

Maybe not completely, but you won’t be getting the full value of the money you are spending.

As I said above, it is extremely important for any plan or goal that you have a destination in mind before you begin. You must have an end point, before you can determine the best path to help you get there.

Author Lewis Carroll gives a good example of this in Alice in Wonderland:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” Alice asked. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

You see, if you are unsure of the result that you want from something, it is hard to ever achieve your end result. If you don’t know where you want to end up, you won’t know which path to take to get there. In terms of using Facebook ads to reach your goals, your why is what will help you determine the path to take.

So … why are you wanting to run ads?

For many real estate agents, their why involves financial or production goals. Some of the most common why’s that I hear are:

• I want to make more money
• I want to double my volume
• I want to grow my business and my team
• I want to make real estate sales my full time job

Do you have a different why?

If so that’s fine. Your why has to be 100% determined by you and it can be anything. The reasons that I listed above tend to be the most common, but they are not all inclusive.

Once you have determined your top level objective – your why – it is time to break it down more.

STEP 2 – DETERMINING YOUR WHAT

When it comes to creating Facebook ads there are a number of different outcomes that you may have, and each correlates with different “objective” that Facebook allows you to choose when setting up your ad campaign.

For most real estate agents, their what – the outcome they want to achieve – tends to be one of the following three things:

• Sell a home that you have listed
• Get more listings
• Get more buyers

You may have a different what, but those tend to be the most common.

Note: Another common what that many real estate agents may have is, “help my buyers find a home.” However this objective is not applicable to Facebook ads, so we won’t be covering that objective in this post.

Lets take a look at some of the ways you can achieve each of the above outcomes:

• Sell a home that you have listed
• Use marketing that features the property
• Hold an open house
• Create a property flyer that gives more information to buyers
• Get more listings
• Use “Just Sold” marketing
• Create a sellers guide
• Feature seller testimonials
• Get more buyers
• Create and advertise saved home searches
• Create a buyers guide
• Feature buyer testimonials

Your outcome – the what – and the way that you achieve that are two different things.

Lets look at an example.

Lets say that your what is to sell a home that you have listed. There is not just one way to achieve that goal. You may want to create a multi-part plan that includes the following:

1. Ads featuring the home with photos and a link to a single property site
2. Ads featuring a fly-through video of the home with a link to the single property site
3. Ads featuring pictures off the home with a CTA to contact you for more information
4. Ads featuring an upcoming open house for this listing
5. Ads featuring a PDF download of the property flyer for this home

In this type of scenario you would to create multiple Facebook campaigns, with multiple ad sets within each, and multiple ads within each ad set.

Why do you need to create multiple Facebook ad campaigns?

Each campaign that you create within Facebook correlates to one objective. At the time of this writing there are currently 13 objectives that Facebook allows you to choose from – we will go over these in more detail next week.

In the above example there are different objectives that we would need to use to get the most out of those five different types of ads. #1 and #2 would need to be created with the objective of clicks to website or website conversions, and #4 would need to be created with the objective of event responses.

Sound complicated?

It’s less complicated than it sounds. Much less complicated.

MOVING FROM WHY & WHAT TO HOW

Beginning next week we will go over the ways to take the why, and the what that you have developed and turn it into a real estate Facebook ad campaign – the how.

We will go over each step in the process of setting up an ad, and talk about how to create ad campaigns that allow you to spilt test the ads that you are running so that you can get the most for your ad dollars.

For the next few week the posts will be much more in-depth, so be prepared to take action upon them as you read them. See you next week!

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