Real Estate Marketing is ever changing. With technology becoming so front and center you can no longer rely on print advertising in the newspaper or Just Listed – Just Sold postcards to get the job done. So…where should you spend your real estate advertising budget in 2015? What is the golden ticket?
Facebook Ads for Real Estate
The big winner in real estate advertising for 2015 is going to be Facebook Ads. Almost every REALTOR has a Facebook Business Page. If you pay attention, you may have noticed that the reach of your posts from Facebook Business Pages have substantially went down over the last year or so. They will continue to go down as EdgeRank continues to update. OK, for the techies out there—its no longer called EdgeRank. The ranking system that Facebook now uses to decide what posts are seen and by whom, no longer has a nifty name. Its now simply considered Facebook’s News Feed Ranking. In the past, Facebook used the number of likes, the amount of interaction and the decay of a post to determine which posts would be seen. Today, it is much more complex and regardless of the relationship—your Facebook Business Page Posts will barely been seen by anyone without some level of advertising. Starting January 1, 2015 the Facebook algorithm for display gets much more aggressive in only showing paid advertising. Facebook has gone as far as starting to Limit Promotional Posts from business pages.
Lets face it…Facebook is a business. In order for them to appease their shareholders Facebook must generate advertising dollars. You may have noticed that now when you post from your Facebook Business Page you are offered to “Boost This Post“. Although we may all long for the glory days of using Facebook for free advertising, the winners in 2015 will quickly adapt to paying for Facebook reach with targeted ads.
Consider the fact that Facebook knows everything about its users. What they like, where they live, their age, what music they listen to, where they eat, what they watch, what their interests are and so forth. It becomes abundantly obvious that this is an incredibly powerful tool for targeted marketing. If I want to advertise to real estate agents in New Orleans, I can simply run an add and have it only displayed (directly in their Newsfeed) to people who are in the National Association of REALTORS Facebook Group and live within 60 miles of New Orleans. I can also pick a specific gender, age, or any other criteria I wish. With the “average” Facebook user spending almost 7 hours a month on the site, that can be money well spent. As a matter of fact, that may be why you are reading this right now!
So How Do I Convert From Facebook Ads?
Creating and targeting on Facebook is only half the battle. Getting clicks on a Facebook ad doesn’t put money in your pocket…but getting a new buyer or seller does! The key to a successful marketing campaign using Facebook Ads is having those ads drive the end user directly to your website. Even more specific, driving them to a custom built landing page on your website. That custom landing page should back up exactly what you said in your 
ad and entice the user to “click” for more information. And by “click” I mean give you their information. Needless to say, YOU MUST reply to any engagement within 5 minutes or everything you have just done is fruitless. In addition, you should have multiple ads resolving to multiple landing pages — and do daily analytics to see which ones are the most successful in getting results. You can adjust your advertising spend on Facebook daily and you should double down on the ads/landing pages that work.
Are Other Forms of Advertisement Dead?
Absolutely not! Any successful marketer will tell you, a successful marketing strategy should be diversified and consistent. In an age with postage increases, you may have noticed substantially less junk mail. That being said, you can still generate results from properly designed and strategized direct mail campaigns. Pay Per Click is still the a force to be reckoned with for internet advertising and isn’t going away any time soon. You still need a business card and you still should be socializing, blogging about real estate and getting the word out about how great you are. I will say that with Facebook Ads for Real Estate Agents being in its infancy, the early adopters will reap huge benefits.
I Don’t Have Time For All That
Here it is…our Shameless Plug. If you don’t have time to design your Facebook ad, build the landing page, analyze the results and make daily changes, DEAN Knows can do that for you. You will still have to reply to your new clients—and don’t take that lightly, if not responded to within five minutes, they are lost.
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