Is your marketing puzzle missing that one small yet important piece that can help take your business to the next level? Paid social advertising is one marketing tool that real estate brands of any size can integrate to generate leads, grow your brand, and expand your social media presence. Here's why paid social advertising may be the missing piece to your marketing puzzle, along with some tips to help you get started.
How Paid Social Advertising Works
One of the perks of paid social advertising is that you don't need a ton to get started. A great real estate website is a must, of course, because you'll want a place to send the people who see your ads, and you'll need to set up a business page on any social platform where you plan to advertise. As you plan a campaign, you'll decide on the campaign's objective and determine the target audience, budget, and length of time that your ad will run. Then you'll set up the details of the ad, including the headline, copy, and images. You can easily monitor the results of your campaign over time with data-based insights that allow you to customize your advertising with confidence.
Enjoy the Benefits of Highly Targeted Advertising
One key benefit of paid social advertising is how it allows you to target specific demographics and reach the prospects who will be most interested in what your real estate brand has to offer. You can build profiles to target specific demographics, promote listings to people who have already searched for similar listings, or target prospects who have already indicated some interest in your services online. These are just a few of the many ways that you can customize paid social advertising campaigns to suit your needs.
New to Real Estate Marketing? Paid Social Ads Can Expand Your Reach
When you're a new agent or real estate brand, you don't want to wait for results with your marketing. Growing your online brand organically with tools like SEO and content marketing takes time. Paid social advertising has no such limitation, making it a perfect complement to your organic marketing tactics. Paid advertising allows you to reach your target audience immediately, get your brand in front of the right eyes, and start generating leads from the time that you launch your first campaign.
A Dependable, Versatile Tool for Growing Your Brand on the Biggest Social Platforms
For paid social advertising in real estate, two platforms stand out above the rest. Both Facebook and Instagram are excellent places to promote your brand with paid advertising campaigns. The versatility of paid social advertising on those platforms allows you to reach diverse audiences, whether you're promoting listings, targeting local customers in specific markets, or simply establishing relationships with potential clients that you can nurture over time.
Planning a Campaign? Start with a Goal and Target Audience in Mind
When starting a new campaign, you'll want to consider a few important factors. First, what is the goal of the campaign? Naturally, the content of your ad will be different depending on whether you're promoting a listing, open house, webinar, client testimonials, or services for sellers. If you want your target audience to take a specific action, then your advertising should be tailored to that goal.
Next, you'll want to consider who you aim to reach. This includes broad categories like active buyers or active sellers, along with more specific audiences based on demographic details. Think about who you want to reach, what they want, and how to appeal to their needs as you customize your campaign.
Why Your Website Is Essential to Paid Social Advertising
Since one of the main goals of paid social advertising is to attract traffic to your real estate website, you'll also want to make sure that your website appeals to the needs of your target audience. Integrating resources for buyers and sellers is a great place to start if you plan to market to both groups. You can also create localized content and neighborhood guides to help your audience make informed decisions on where to shop for homes.
Make Your Life Easier with Ad Wizard and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Services
Searching for an easier way to master paid social advertising? Our Ad Wizard tool makes it easy to create, customize, and launch campaigns with as little as a few clicks in DeltaNET®6. With templates, customizable ad layouts, stock art, and a wide variety of ad types, you can launch your next campaign with ease. Or you can rely on our team of PPC advertising pros to help you develop campaigns that maximize ROI. Either way, you don't have to worry about handling all of the details of paid social advertising on your own.
Pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising may seem like one of the most challenging topics around.
But of all the industries that use PPC, real estate agents are among those most likely to gain a true windfall of business value. That's because PPC ads that may cost only a few dollars a week greatly accelerate the process of attracting qualified buyers to properties.
We know: From the outside, PPC seems complicated, technical, and risky.
The truth is, profiting from PPC ads has gotten more and more difficult over the past few years. When more advertisers join a platform, the prices go up. At the same time, each major digital platform is at work on new ways to protect its investment, making the standards for every ad higher.
But there is a simple, powerful way around all that complication.
First, understand the value proposition:
Pay-per-click ads can help you sell houses faster for just a few cents a day.
Once you see the potential, the rest of the details slide into place much more easily. Simply, PPC is a far easier prospect when you have the potential to make $5,000 or more on a transaction. There's room for trial and error compared to companies that may be trying to make sales for only a few dollars each.
So, how can you get the knowledge you need to get started with PPC?
Pay Per Click Is Simpler Than You May Think
In truth, there are only a few factors you need to be aware of in PPC.
This handful of factors will produce 90% of your results:
Visual Collateral
On Facebook, the photo associated with your ad is its most powerful asset. That's the core reason why Facebook – and its even more visual counterpart, Instagram – are at the center of the conversation for real estate professionals who want to get real digital advertising ROI.
Your ad may lead to a landing page on Facebook or on your website. For example, this approach may be best to collect sign-ups for an open house. Or it may lead directly to your listing, which should be ported from your MLS directly onto your website. If your listing is fully optimized, this can be a good bet.
Whatever the case may be, your visuals are a major determining factor as to whether and when people will click. You should be just as careful in selecting them for quality, composition, and vividness as you would be when you assign pictures to the listing or any other marketing element.
Targeting
Targeting is the other key factor in ensuring that the right people click on your ads at the right time.
Even with the rise of virtual tours, most buyers aren't looking for a home 1,000 miles away. To maximize your chance of selling, your ads must be micro-targeted to prospective buyers. This is another element where Facebook and Instagram shine since their ad targeting is so precise.
Using zip codes and other means, you can micro-target your ads within miles or even just a few streets of a given property's address. You can target neighborhoods, cities, states, or even adjoining states. And each person who clicks can be delivered a customized experience based on their specific needs.
Headline and Other Text
All online ads have some degree of text.
With a Google Ad, success depends entirely on your text and headline. As a result, you'll want to use automated tools to compare different versions of your text and consistently display the versions that are more effective. Over time, this refinement strengthens your results.
Facebook, Instagram, and other social media networks use text as well, of which the headline is the most important. Your headline must be short and compelling. It makes a promise that your listing or landing page must immediately deliver on so you don't lose a user's attention.
Digital Marketing Automation Is the Key to Unlocking Value from PPC Ads
Now that you see where PPC results come from, hopefully it all looks a little bit less mysterious.
Where people in any industry get tripped up is in the need to monitor these factors constantly.
While it takes a few days for any new advertising campaign to capture useful information, all of the best campaigns are monitored on a daily basis. Daily monitoring ensures all outliers — including mistakes and home runs – are caught as soon as possible.
With a real estate CRM, you have the chance to leverage an AI-driven center of excellence for your pay-per-click advertising. Ad Wizard is just the solution. It handles all the detail work so you can keep an eye on your campaigns, fine-tune them, and improve your results in just seconds every day.
Contact us today to learn more or begin.
Many real estate agents around the United States swear by online advertising.
Even if you've never used an online ad, you're probably familiar with the idea: Set it up correctly and you enjoy "overnight" traffic to your website or listings. An optimized ad provides the opportunity to accelerate interest in your most promising properties and meet qualified buyers sooner.
When you think of online ads, you might think of Google first. For real estate agents, though, the picture is a little bit different. People go on platforms like Facebook and Instagram (also owned by Facebook) to browse aspirational properties, and that's where an effective agent should seek out traffic.
Facebook is also helpful for maintaining connections with leads and past customers.
When it comes to advertising for the first time, most agents have these two questions:
The answer to question #1 is a resounding "yes!" In 2020, it cost under $10 on average for a Facebook ad to be seen 1,000 times. Most businesses spend about 5% to 12% of their revenue on ads, but agents can facilitate thousands of dollars in transactions with much less.
Will ads work for you? Again, the answer is yes.
But it won't work in a vacuum — you need to be ready to service the new traffic you get. There are two main ways to use online advertising to grow your real estate practice:
Drive New Leads Directly to Your Website
Your real estate website is the cornerstone of your digital brand. It's where people go to find out who you are and what you can do for them. Ads that go directly to your website can be helpful for people comparing real estate agents or just getting involved in the early stages of market research.
Ads are particularly effective when you've already published helpful, informative content such as blogs or videos. Content helps your visitors get informed about their options, connect with neighborhoods or listings, and ultimately become leads within your business pipeline.
Show Off Your Best and Brightest Properties
What if your website is new and not fully developed yet? You can direct online traffic to live listings on your MLS. In cases like this, it's essential to be sure any contact forms are set up correctly, so you can use them to capture details directly from interested leads.
You can display live listings directly on your website as well. This can be especially useful since it gives you more data. You'll end up with a granular sense of which listings attract attention, how long each visitor spends on each listing, and what features are most captivating to your audience.
Best Practices to Get the Most from Your Ads
Interested in jumping in with social media ads? You have a huge advantage compared to professionals in many other fields – the potential to move transactions forward with a tiny fraction of the revenue you'll stand to make. Still, you need to lay the right groundwork for success:
Contact us at Delta Media Group to learn more about social media ad success.
As a real estate agent, building long-term client relationships is essential to growth. There are two times when having a deep relationship is especially vital.
First comes the initial decision to choose a real estate agent. By sharing helpful, informative content on your real estate website, you can build credibility as a trusted expert. This is important because it might take weeks or even months before someone actually decides to dive into the market.
If you've built a foundation with a potential client, you are more likely to be chosen in the end.
The second time strong relationships come into play is after the initial transaction. No matter whether you work with buyers or sellers, you can expect that they will take 4-7 years on average before needing your services again. But, all the while, they can be providing you with referral business.
In the first year of any agent's career, it's normal to spend most time "chasing down leads." You need to learn the ropes, decide what works for you, and define your ideal customer. Beyond this point, however, it's crucial to start generating leads in a less effort-intensive way, and referral business is a big piece.
Some of the most successful real estate agents in the United States today get the majority of their work from qualified leads through their website, combined with referral business from satisfied customers.
That starts by focusing your attention on long-term customer relationships. And the process is much easier when you have the right technology in hand.
How Your CRM Can Boost Your Long-Term Client Relationships
To cultivate deep relationships, real estate agents need to make the best use of their time. That means cutting down on repetitive tasks and focusing on what moves you forward. Now, more than ever, that's achieved by implementing customer relationship management software for real estate.
Customer relationship management, or CRM, gives you complete visibility into all your relationships, so you never lose track of the people who matter to your business. You can easily see where your leads, prospects, current customers, and past customers stand in relation to their transactions.
An AI-driven CRM becomes a "center of excellence" that connects the dots between thousands of data points to keep you informed. It will clue you in on exactly when and how to follow up to maximize the positive impact you can make on those in your network.
Plus, it means spending less of your energy on time-intensive marketing tasks — those things you know you should do but that often slip down the priority list. Your CRM is a powerful machine learning multi-tool that helps you prioritize and execute in a fraction of the time.
Let's take a closer look at how technology can enhance your relationship-building efforts:
Contact us to find out more about digital marketing for real estate agents.
Are you missing out on a powerful way to generate leads from social media? Targeted advertising isn't a replacement for all of your other social media activities. It's in its own category, and when done right, it can be a convenient, low-cost tool for generating fresh leads to stock your pipeline. If targeted advertising has been your business blind spot, now is the perfect time to change that.
Even if you've never run a targeted ad campaign yourself, you've definitely experienced these ads during your own time online. You search for something that you're interested in purchasing, check out some content, and suddenly you're seeing ads for that product or something similar during all of your travels online. Targeted ads are designed to reach a specific audience — ideally people who are already interested in what you have to offer.
Before You Advertise, Make Sure Your Branding and Website Are Ready
We'll get into more specific targeted advertising strategies shortly, but there are a few things that you'll want to have prepared before you get started. First, make sure that your branding is consistent. Things like color schemes, logos, missions, values, and even fonts can help your brand stand out from the competition when you advertise.
Next, you'll want to make sure that your real estate website looks appealing, functions well on any device, has great content, and offers all of the features that your audience needs. In many cases, your targeted ads will be leading prospects directly to your website, and you want to give them every reason to stick around once they arrive.
Know Your Audience
Like the name suggests, targeted ads are all about reaching a specific audience. So who are you trying to reach? Running a targeted ad campaign for an audience of luxury real estate buyers will naturally be different than running one for first-time homebuyers who are new to real estate. The same goes for whether you're trying to generate buyer or seller leads.
Due to fair housing laws, it's important to note that ads can't be targeted based on certain factors like race, gender, or class. Think about your target audience, what they like to do, what their interests are, and what might motivate them to buy or sell a home.
Planning Your Targeted Ad Campaign
Once you've got your branding, website, social pages, and audience analysis in order, you'll be ready to start planning your first campaign. Here are some of the key steps you'll take while planning your campaign:
Take Advantage of Targeted Advertising Tools to Make Life Easier
You could take the time to handle every last detail of targeted advertising yourself... or you could use a seamless, easy-to-use platform that allows you to set up campaigns in a few clicks. With Ad Wizard™, you can take the guesswork out of targeted advertising and manage ads with a dependable, consistent process. Ad Wizard™ is one of many tools available in DeltaNET®6 to help you market your business, manage leads, and maintain great relationships with your clients.
Are you tired of getting the same old results from the same old real estate marketing tactics? It's said that Einstein once declared, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results." We could spend all day trying to find out if Einstein really said that, but that would be... a little insane. The point is that whoever said it was 100 percent correct, and the lesson applies directly to the real estate industry.
No matter how great your service and team are, it's hard to achieve your goals if your marketing isn't reaching the right people. If you want to attain the results that you dream of achieving, then now is the perfect time to take a fresh, honest look at marketing your real estate business differently.
Good morning, and welcome to another edition of Tech Tuesday, presented by Delta Media Group, where we're kind of over the whole turkey thing on Thanksgiving. Turkey is just not cutting it anymore. This year, it's brisket, it's smoked brisket for Thanksgiving.
So with that in mind and your Thanksgiving meal preparations all squared away now, we are going to take a look at Ad Wizard this week. Now we did a video, and when we first released it, where we kind of went over the basics of it, and we've added a few things since then, and I just kind of wanted to revisit it and take everyone through it again, so you can see what it is and what it's about.
Facebook is currently the largest social media website in the world, boasting 2.32 billion monthly users. It's safe to say that practically every social media user is on Facebook. Its popularity makes it an excellent place to advertise your real estate brand and business.
What many real estate firms don't know is merely creating a Facebook business page and placing an occasional Facebook ad is rarely enough.
At Delta Media Group, we understand the social media landscape is in constant evolution and companies, like Facebook, make changes to their policies and procedures regularly. Understanding how these changes impact your marketing strategy--and more importantly, how to adapt to these changes to achieve success--is a top priority for us and our clients.
Delta Media Group is fully aware of Facebook's recent changes, and we've taken necessary steps to ensure we are in compliance with the ads we place for our customers. To help you understand what was changed and how they impact your brokerage, we've created this concise guide with everything you need to know.
Facebook ads can be a powerful part of a real estate agent's marketing repertoire.
Digital ads are attractive for their ability to spur immediate response to your listings or services. Unfortunately, the learning curve for using them is much steeper than it first appears.
Some approaches to Facebook ad management seem like intuitive sabotage and can negatively impact your results at the end of the day. When this happens, your ad budget can become pure overhead: You'll either get no website visits or visits only from people who never follow up.
That turns ads into a waste of time and money. Frustrated by the experience, you could end up walking away from valuable online opportunities.
Beware of these common Facebook ad mistakes in real estate:
In today's digital world, a website is essential for your real estate business: No one will believe you're a "real business" if they can't find you online. But the value of digital marketing goes further: Done right, it energizes your real estate practice with a consistent flow of buyers and sellers ready to do business.
Many real estate agents start out unsure which digital marketing tools suit their needs. They may post on social media or write blog posts for a while, only to discover getting traction is more challenging than they hoped.
Consistency is key, and a marketing mix where several digital techniques work together is more effective than any one approach. To move forward, consider these seven tools that have paved the way to success for real estate agents like you:
Done right, Facebook ads can generate near-immediate traffic and interest in your listings. Still, many real estate agents face some confusion about the best way to use them. Use these ten tips to help grow your real estate business using Facebook advertising.
Are you tired of spending too much time—AND MONEY—on paid advertising services that charge a sizeable set-up fee, allow for little flexibility, and requires you to log in and out of third party websites?
Our team at Delta Media Group® has been hard at work developing a new DeltaNet platform feature: Ad Wizard™--a bit of technological "magic" that takes the hassle out of launching paid advertising campaigns.
Ad Wizard gives our clients (both brokerages and real estate agents) the power to capture the attention of prospects on Facebook (Instagram and Google to follow) with only a few clicks and without ever leaving our platform.
The Wizardry is the DeltaNet
Using listing information already in our platform combined with key demographics, you can run ads to promote your services where your prospective customers spend most of their time online: social media sites and Google.
Here's where Ad Wizard's magic comes in:
At the end of 2018, the National Association of REALTORS® reported over 1.3 million members. That's a heck of a lot of competition jockeying for the attention of home sellers and buyers across America.
As a time-strapped REALTOR® on a tight budget, how do you uncover ways to stand out from the competition in your local area, attract more leads, land more listings, and grow your real estate business?
Consider Facebook Advertising.
Real estate and Facebook are a marriage made in heaven. Real Estate Marketing 101 tells us to go where the people go. With 2.23 billion people logging into Facebook every month, it's safe to say Facebook is THE way to connect with your audience online. However, for REALTORS®, advertising on Facebook is an especially effective way to market to the largest group of first-time homebuyers—Millennials.
These 30-something-and-under buyers dominate today's housing market at a whopping 66 percent. At the same time, there are twice as many Millennials on Facebook as any other generation. Advertising your real estate business on Facebook seems like the ideal place to speak directly to your perfect fit audience.