A record 4.9 billion people are using social media in 2023. The most active social media network continues to be Facebook, with 2.9 million monthly active users worldwide. It's the primary reason that the National Association of REALTORS® reports that Facebook is the No. 1 social media channel for real estate agents, used by 76 percent of its members.

However, NAR research also notes that fewer than one in five real estate agents (17 percent) use social media, like Facebook, to market homes. The opportunities to stand out from your competition by leveraging social media to market your listings — and your business — are enormous.

Facebook research alone states the case: 79 percent of home buyers use online resources at some point in their home search. One in three millennials (33 percent) spends nearly 14 hours weekly on social media during their housing search. Overall, three-in-four US Facebook users visit a local business page at least once weekly.

Your secret sauce is inside your DeltaNET®: using the social media express lane known as AdWizard to fully automate your social media advertising for property listings.

An Inside Look at Social Media Advertising

Millions of real estate agents have unlocked the key to social media marketing of their properties. But remember, at least five times that number is on the sidelines. As this year comes to a close, and you're looking to finish strong by growing your business and closing as many transactions before year's-end as possible, leveraging social media can be the marketing turbo boost you need.

One of the reasons most agents remain on the sidelines when it comes to using social media to market properties is that the ad process itself can be daunting. Using Facebook, you must learn the definitions of a new vocabulary: conversions, impressions, reach, engagement, carousel, instant experience, stories, and Messenger. 

Then you must decide on the kind of ad you want. Do you want to boost a post or select from nine other ad formats, from an image or video ad to a carousel or Messenger ad?

What kind of results do you want from your Facebook ad? Do you want more messages, leads, website visitors, engagement, or calls? Sorry, but Facebook only lets you pick one per campaign.

You'll also have to determine your total budget, your ad placement (Facebook and Instagram or just Facebook), and its duration. 

Moreover, in real estate, if you use the Facebook ad creation tools and forget to check one simple box (Special Ad Category), every ad you submit will be rejected by Facebook.

Sounds intimidating? It can be, and that's precisely why Delta offers AdWizard as the easiest step-by-step tool to help you swiftly automate your marketing using the right tools.

AdWizard guides you in creating a single ad or an entire advertising campaign. You can use AdWizard to promote your new listing, next open house, website, or the professional services you offer: the step-by-step process is all the same. 

If you're not a graphic designer — fear not. AdWizard provides a wide selection of templates to customize the layout that best fits your branding and allows you to add stock photos (available to you at no cost inside DeltaNET) and your custom images.

Once your ad is ready, sending out your new campaign takes only a few clicks. Moreover, managing your ad budgets with AdWizard is simplified with an easy-to-use interface. 

You can even view reports that include your campaign results inside your DeltaNET. That way, you know what's working and what isn't and make any necessary adjustments quickly and smoothly. AdWizard gives you complete control over your ads, as you can take part in every step of the campaign process.

Monitoring and tracking your ad campaign performance within your DeltaNET is one of the most potent benefits of AdWizard because it fits into your daily workflow.

Using Automated Third-Party Advertising Alternatives

That's one of the challenges of relying on a third-party advertising provider. Many have separate sign-in credentials, passwords, and different tracking and monitoring dashboards. They're not always built into the brokerage's main agent dashboard, requiring independent access and interrupting an agent's workflow. More importantly, the tracking metrics some third-partying vendors provide don't always give the most crucial insight into what is needed to understand how ads are performing to make necessary adjustments and improve their effectiveness.

Moreover, when agents use third-party advertising alternatives, they're often built around display and "retargeting" programs. 

Display ads can include images, videos, or animated gifs that appear on websites or apps. Most display ads use square, landscape, or skyscraper (banner) formats, intending to entice users to click. Display ads are like what you would see in a newspaper or magazine, but they appear online. 

Retargeting ad programs use "cookies" — a tiny data file that a web browser stores to remember who visited a specific ad or webpage —  to "follow" the individual around the web. Retargeting uses this cookie data to serve ads to the same user again, creating more impressions of that ad. 

The problem is that most display and retargeting advertisements are typically more effective at creating impressions instead of clicks to a webpage or property listing page.

For marketing to be effective, research tells us it takes at least a half dozen impressions — and in real estate, often much more —  to get someone to react to your message. Many marketers will set the threshold at a minimum of 21 impressions, and some want to achieve as high as 50 impressions.

While real estate agents spend millions of dollars on retargeting ad campaigns, their biggest benefit is that the ad "appears" on major websites, including CNN, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, ABC, Fox, and Yahoo. 

However, your ad is only seen on those major sites by the person who obtained your "cookie" —  and no one else. Your seller may think their house is being viewed by millions of people on CNN.com and Yahoo.com, but in fact, your seller may be one of the only ones looking at it on the CNN website. 

Display Ads through networks like Google reach more than just those visiting your website. 

According to Google, they are designed to be served "based on features of your ideal audience, such as their personal interests, age or gender." The goal is for your ad to appear on sites related to your business or to users who match the specific criteria you've specified.

However, real estate ads are not permitted to target users like this. Due to Fair Housing regulations, since 2020, Google has had restrictions on real estate-related display ads that pertain to home sales or promoting an agent's real estate business. 

While you can still target a geographic area, you can no longer use zip codes. Google also does not allow the use of demographics (sex, income, age, etc.), marriage or marital status, and parental status for the targeting of real estate display ads. 

Secret to Social Success: You Want Click-Throughs, Not Just Impressions

Advertising impressions are great: they help raise your brand awareness, increase your online visibility, keep you and your brand top-of-mind, and build your online presence.

The challenge with impression-based advertising is that it doesn't consistently deliver the most important metric: the click-through rate. While it is excellent that your listing ad will achieve 3,000 impressions, how many of these individuals only see the headline versus clicking through for the details?

Sellers, as well as agents, would rather have the actual eyeballs of active potential buyers by clicking through to view the listing, right?

That's what makes AdWizard stand out from third-party advertising options. In a side-by-side comparison, our research shows the click-through rate is much lower for most third-party real estate ad providers since most of the budget is allocated toward retargeting.

The industry standard is to achieve 3,000 impressions for a typical listing ad run. Both AdWizard and other third-party options are designed to deliver this. AdWizard generates clicks and drives traffic to your listing detail pages.  

On a three-day run using AdWizard, with an investment that's slightly lower than the leading third-party solution's 7-day run, here are the average performance metrics:

3,000 – impressions (number of times your ad was viewed)

2,200 – reach (total number of unique individuals who viewed your ad)

165 – clicks (total number of times people went to the listing detail page)

5% - CTR (total click-through rate)

Pay particular attention to that last number: a 5 percent click-through rate. The average click-through rate across all industries is .90 percent and .99 percent for real estate. AdWizard is delivering 5x that performance.

Why is Impression-Based Advertising Losing Ground?

Today, display ads served through networks and retargeting ads to "follow a user around the web" are losing effectiveness due to two significant industry changes in 2020: Google's restriction for real estate-related display ads and Apple's rollout of its iOS 14 operating system. As a result, the click-through rate for Google Display Network ads has dropped significantly and the numbers delivered by retargeted advertising also plummeted. 

Apple made the change as it began positioning itself as a privacy leader, wanting to give consumers more control over what they share with advertisers. Today, apps like Facebook need to ask permission to track anyone on their iPhone or iPad.

Privacy concerns remain a significant factor for advertisers. A stunning 94 percent of users in the US say they don't want to be tracked by companies with the "opt-in" rate at 6 percent. Industry research shows that half of US smartphones (52 percent) are iPhones. As a result, while some agents are still using Google Display Network and retargeting providers, they must spend more or receive fewer impressions. Some agents are discovering they are paying more and receiving fewer impressions.

More importantly, this trend continues as impression-based advertising effectiveness declines as privacy technology increases.

The Bottom Line 

Automating your property marketing using social media, like Facebook, can help you boost your business, ending the year strong. As the holiday season approaches, research tells us people will spend more time on social media.

One study by Sprout Social suggests consumers are significantly more likely to connect with brands through social media during the holiday season. 

To maximize this opportunity, AdWizard is available inside your DeltaNET to help you get in front of that audience with your listings and to promote your business services. More importantly, AdWizard can deliver more of these people to your listing detail pages and your website because it can deliver higher click-through rates.

While third-party options may increase your online visibility, they don't deliver high click-through rates and, therefore, are not designed to increase your bottom line. AdWizard can help you improve your visibility and your business.