SELLER LEADS & Boost Sales

Transcription

1 Using Facebook Ads to Generate SELLER LEADS & Boost Sales DIGITAL WHITEPAPER

2 If you re not using Facebook ads as part of your inbound digital marketing strategy, you re missing out on a potential tidal wave of low-cost, high-quality seller leads. Facebook ads can help agents get more home seller leads, faster, for less money than almost any other digital marketing resource as long as they are done right. And that s the key knowing how to create ads that capture attention, establish credibility and motivate clicks. Perhaps most important of all is continually testing to optimize your results finding the right mix of headline, copy, and images that brings in the most leads and provides the best return on your investment. Before You Get Started Before you set up your campaign, you will need to have a lead capture website with your Facebook pixel implemented on your site. This will ensure that you can track your campaign performance and optimize accordingly. You ll also want to set up Business Manager within Facebook at Here, you will create a Business Page and an Ad Account. To create a page, click Create a Page and select Company, Organization, or Institution. To create an ad account, go to add New and click Ad Accounts, then select your payment method. How to Setup Your Facebook Ads Campaign Here s a step-by-step guide for getting started Go to Ad Manager in Business Manager and click Create Campaign Select the Send People to Your Website option Define your desired audience Choose your ad placement Set a budget for your campaign Create your ad

3 Reaching Your Target: Defining Your Desired Audience The better you know your desired audience, the better you will be able to target your ads. You can target your ad to your desired audience by selecting a specific geographic area, as well as criteria such as gender, age, language, interests, behaviors, and relationship status. These are important considerations, because, for example, 87 percent of all purchasing decisions are made by women! PRO TIP: When setting up a campaign for seller leads, remember to target homeowners! Don t waste precious clicks on lookiloos and people who are just curious. 87% of all purchasing decisions are made by women! Understanding Ad Placement There are several placements available when setting up a campaign in Facebook Ad Manager: Mobile News Feed Desktop News Feed Instagram Desktop Right Column Audience Network You will have to test your ads in different areas to see which perform best for you. However, you don t want to spread your budget too thin. As a best practice, we recommend starting with just Mobile News Feed and Desktop News Feed as these are the two placements with the best conversion. You can then test in new placements over time. PRO TIP: Close to 90% of active Facebook users use Facebook on their mobile devices, so make sure to start with Desktop and Mobile News Feed. Facebook has largely staked its success in mobile advertising on the continued adoption of native ads by advertisers. Facebook now dominates the mobile display market, with 44% market share globally.

4 Setting a Budget: How Much to Spend? There are many factors that will affect your Facebook ads budget. You will have to look at your total advertising budget and decide how much you want to spend on lead generation, and what type of return you expect. The minimum budget is $5 per day. Start with a modest budget that won t bust your bottom line if you don t get the results you want at first, and then slowly scale up your spending as you start to find the combinations that bring the best returns. Creating Ads That Drive Clicks The goal of every ad you place on Facebook should be to generate qualified seller leads. It s not about name recognition or getting Likes it s about filling your contact database with addresses and phone numbers of potential sellers that you can convert and close. These are the components you need for a winning ad: Compelling Image. You want to have a large, recognizable image that will attract prospects within your area. Some great examples are local landmarks, such as piers, skylines, or neighborhood markers. Relevant, Targeted Copy. You need a headline that captures the prospect s interest and then a description that directly addresses a pain point or value add the prospect has. If your target is second-time homebuyers looking to sell their starter homes and upsize to larger homes, your ad copy and imagery should speak directly to their aspirations and their concerns. For example, Ready to Sell? 10 Tips for Getting Top Dollar, or, Upsizing: How Much Home Can You Afford? Powerful Call to Action. Invite people to click your ad by making an enticing promise of offering something of value in return. But be careful not to come off to gimmicky, or you could get flagged by Facebook and have your campaign paused. Destination URL. This will be your Lead Capture Website. As a best practice, your URL should be based on something that is relevant to you or your market area. If you are targeting an area in Orange County, California, the URL should reflect that for example, OrangeCountyInstantHomeValues. com. Localization elicits trust, which correlates to a greater likelihood of conversion. You will also need to add tracking parameters to your URL. Published Published from the from the agent s Facebook agent s page Facebook page Customized ad image Customized ad image Localized ad copy Localized ad copy Personalized landing page Personalized landing page

5 Optimizing Your Return: Testing the Variables You can t expect to hit a home run on your first time at bat with Facebook ads or by running a few ads here and there. To optimize your return on investment, routinely test different combinations of copy, images and placements and closely monitor how effective each combination is at 1) getting traffic to your site and 2) converting traffic into actual leads. Finding the home run combination for your best-converting ads is an ongoing process. You will have to constantly test different approaches, then analyze the results and use what you learn to try to make your ads perform better. One caveat is that your ability to test different ad executions will be limited by the number of impressions served. The larger your ad spend, the more impressions you will have to work with, which means more opportunities to gather data because you can rotate creative executions more frequently. So, if you are working with a modest budget, it will take a longer time to perform the testing necessary to optimize your results. One way to augment the insight you gain from your own testing is to keep a careful eye on what other agents are doing. When it comes to direct response advertising, there is a simple truth: If you keep seeing the same ad or headline online, it is probably WORKING! No one is going to continue investing money in an ad that isn t performing, so you can reasonably assume that a high-frequency ad has been tested and proven to convert well. So keep track of what s working for others and profit from their learnings. You want to stay on top of creative trends that are performing best in your local market and elsewhere, so be sure to follow local competitors as well as agents in other areas around the country. While localized copy tends to work best, there are often creative trends that work well regardless of geography. So, even if your geographic area is in the northeast, you may find a headline approach that drives better conversion by tracking agents in the Southeast. NOTE: Facebook is constantly evolving how it serves ads in its News Feed, and other ad inventory channels. It is important to stay abreast of Facebook platform updates and to understand how that may affect your campaign. A simple update can dramatically change the performance of a campaign, and that usually happens without notice.

6 The Benefits of Multivariate Testing Running ads on Facebook is like having your own marketing laboratory. You can mix up different creative combinations to get better results, as long as you approach it systematically and track your results. One option is to test only one variable at a time. This is referred to as single variate testing. Simply put, you change only one element of an ad, such as the headline, and leave all other variables the same. Below is an example of a single variate test: Single variate tests can be effective, and for many are the only option due to budget and technology/analytics limitations. However, testing only one variable at a time is a slow process that yields limited statistical learnings and, as a result, limits your opportunities to improve ad performance. Single variant test of the description The alternative is multivariate testing, where you test different elements simultaneously. The possibilities for testing different elements, or variables, of an ad are limitless. You can change the headline, the image, the body copy, or the call to action. But the limitless nature of testing comes with its own pitfalls. For example, if you have just two different ideas for each ad element (headline, image, body copy, call to action), you would have to create 10 different ads to test all the different combinations. If you want to test five images, headlines, body copy versions, and calls to action, you would need to create 500 different ads to test all the combinations! The testing matrix would look like:

7 Multivariate testing is proven to increase conversions exponentially and can potentially cut costs in half. But to successfully undertake multivariate testing, one needs to master the complexity of testing methodology and have the proper tracking and analytics, creative resources, staff and budget. PRO TIP: By introducing multivariate testing, Cost Per Lead has shown to improve by more than 50% in national campaigns and by 65% in local campaigns when compared to running ads through Facebook s native ad manager. Self-serve options are available and can be found at: Nanigans and AdRoll We are generating 2x more leads for the same amount of money...we ve had 3 deals active, closed or pending within the first 60 days. Justin Critchfield Century 21 Everest Summary Facebook is a key source of seller leads for real estate agent Successful campaigns leverage local images, combined with compelling copy Testing is a MUST to find and maintain winning combinations Multivariate testing exponentially improves performance

8 Interested in Maximizing Return on Your Ad Spend? The easiest way to achieve the best return on investment is by using a service that does the testing for you. Geographic Farm, a leading real estate media and marketing firm, has launched GeoFarm Digital, a turnkey Facebook ad optimization service designed specifically for real estate agents. GeoFarmDigital automates the creation, testing and optimization of customized, geo-targeted Facebook ads. This automated customization combines the benefits of authentic, hyper-local messaging, with the efficiency of an optimized national campaign, all running on the platform that was named Facebooks 2015 Innovator of the Year. For more information, visit us at GeographicFarm.com and set up a consultation today! For quicker response, us at sales@geographicfarm. com or call Geographic targeting Creative customized to your target Localized ad copy Conversion tracking and optimization Now available in Canada! I always had a pretty decent response when I ran my own Facebook ads, but I had no idea that it would EXPLODE when I let Geographic Farm take over my ad management! In 2.5 months I have received 85 full leads and 181 address captures. Out of those I have listed 4 homes with several more in the pipeline. By far the easiest and most cost efficient lead funnel I have! Johanna Fatheree Broker/Owner, RE/MAX Advantage Already a Geographic Farm print client? Facebook advertising service is complimentary. Contact your Marketing Coordinator to stake your claim today. About Geographic Farm GeographicFarm is a new concept in turnkey, cost-effective real estate business development. A 360 marketing and media company designed to grow your brand, improve your business and increase your bottom line. We make your farming consistent, automated and effective. What is your time worth? Call us at us at sales@geographicfarm.com Visit us at