The Top 10 Mistakes We See Realtors Doing With Their Facebook Ads

We hear it so often, Facebook ads don’t work, I’ve tried. But have you ever considered that it is you that is broken? Not the system…….

We work on a lot of real estate Facebook accounts, and the very first thing we do is a complete audit to see where we can make some quick wins and lower their cost per lead. 

Here are the 10 most common things we see realtors, developers, and brokerages doing wrong, in their Facebook Ads accounts.

#1 Boosting…..everything

Did you know that a boosted post is completely different from creating a campaign through the ads manager dashboard?

A boosted post will not give you anywhere near the control you have with the ads manager & campaign creation. A boosted post can give you some degree of targeting, location and objective (what you want Facebook to optimize for), but there’s so much more you can do to ensure your paid ad gets served in front of the right people!

In ads manager, you can optimize for leads, traffic, engagement, video views, and the list goes on. This means you can tell Facebook “I want people who are most likely to….” A boosted post only scratches the surface when it comes to targeting and optimization.

#2 Not Testing Enough Copy & Creative

We see this one so often in all new clients accounts. They build an ad, run it to their audience and they only provide one version of the ad. This is a big mistake. You need to be testing out different versions of your copy and creative, so what your ad says and what they see.

You should try out both short and long form copy. Try videos, images, carousels, and also play with the size of your creative, square, vertical, horizontal, are you getting the idea?

Build your campaign, set the target audience in the ad set level and run multiple versions of your ad in the same ad set. How many ads you run inside the same ad set will depend on your budget. If you are still unsure about this part, give us a ring and we’ll be sure to help!

#3 Budgets Are Too Small

At a minimum, you need to be giving Facebook $10/day/audience that you are testing. This is because Facebook needs to find your ideal customer and match them to the objective you have given them. If the budget is too small, Facebook doesn’t have enough money to season your pixel and learn who is going to take you up on your offer or opt into your lead.

#4 Running Seller Lead Ads

Are you ready to pay $20-40/lead? If you are in a hot market, expect to pay even more, and these are just leads, and with the average 1-2% of leads turning into a client, you can see where this can get crazy expensive.

What you should be doing is consistently checking back in with your buyer leads, why? Because chances are at least 60% of that list are homeowners, and if these homeowners are looking to buy, well then they are probably looking to sell. Keep running buyer lead ads, if you have a campaign that is performing, don’t turn it off!

#5 Running Ads to 18+ As The Targeting

When is the last time you met a 20-year-old who was a homeowner?

Sure they exist in some ultra-motivated universe, but in this universe, the one where you need to stretch every single advertising dollar, use 30+ for age in your targeting. 

If you are advertising bigger homes, luxury or properties above 750k, we suggest using 38+.

#6 Turning Off Ads Too Soon

Did you know that Facebook will publish your ad and then it goes through a learning phase for the first 3 days? That means don’t touch it! You cannot get the full picture as to how this ad is going to perform if you are turning it editing or turning off an ad within the first three days. 

This means for those open house ads you are running and starting on Friday or Saturday and having them end on a Sunday because you want to maximize your budget and get the most views, is actually doing your ad injustice. If you want to bring some awareness to an open house ad, let it run for a full week ahead of time, and then, if after its been running for 3 days and you see it's performing well (high engagement, lots of clicks to your site, shares, etc) go in and increase your budget!

#7 Incorrectly Installed Pixel or No Pixel at All

If you are reading this article and you have yet to install your pixel, please go and do that now. Even if you aren’t ready to run ads yet, Facebook needs to pick up on the data your Facebook pixel is installing. Not sure what a Facebook pixel is? Check out our article here.

The more actions that have taken place on your pixel, the easier it will be for Facebook to serve your ads to the right people.

If you have installed a pixel on your site and set up some custom conversions, you need to make sure this is firing correctly.

To do this, install Facebook’s pixel helper chrome extension and you’ll be able to see in real time what events the pixel is picking up.

#8 Copying Another Realtor's Ads

Just because the top realtor in your city is doing their ads a certain way, doesn’t mean you should too. How do you know if this ad is actually converting into leads or qualified leads for that matter?

#9 Not Using Consistent Naming Conventions in the Setup of Your Campaigns

Noticed the continuing theme throughout this article and that is to test? You’re testing different audiences, creative, copy and objectives. When you finally get onto a winning campaign, you want to be able to quickly pull from that when you build a new campaign. Here’s the naming convention that we use:

Campaign - the promotion/offer we’re running + Objective + Avatar (your avatar is the ideal customer you are marketing to, often times in real estate, you are speaking to the homeowner or the investor).

Example: List of Toronto homes + lead form + Toronto Homeowners

Adsets - here you will want to name the audience you are using to test. If it’s an interest you are targeting, their location & age.

Example: Likes_Skiing-Toronto-35+

Ads - here you should keep an idea of the version of copy & creative and as an added bonus, mention the type of creative used, ie. video

Example: Creative 1 - Video tour of condo

However you name your campaigns is up to you, but try to stick with what you decide so that when you get a winning campaign, you can go back and easily see what worked so that you can apply it in a new campaign.

#10 Not Having a Solid Lead Follow Up Sequence in Place

If you don’t have a super solid lead follow up system in place that is ready to call the lead within 5 minutes of receiving it, then we suggest you wait to run ads on Facebook. Your leads from Facebook are going to sometimes feel like calling a goldfish…”who are you? Where are you calling from? How did you get my number?”

Our system we use for following up leads sees an average increase of 300% in booked appointments to see the prospect in person.

If you are ready to step up your game and bring in some solid leads, give us a ring. Our in house FB ads real estate specialist has brought in thousands of leads for realtors.

Book a Call with Kara at: https://www.mcmasterdigital.com/contact/