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New Facebook Ad Policy Means Big Changes for Real Estate Marketers
As of September 1, a new Facebook ad policy surrounding housing ads is in effect. Will these changes mean an end to real estate marketing on the social platform? Here’s what you need to know.
Facebook is no stranger to the limelight these days. From Cambridge Analytica and other confidence-shaking scandals to major changes to business pages, the only constant is … change. But this month’s new ad policies for special categories — including housing, employment, and credit — is set to have a major impact on real estate marketers.
Facebook settlement
To understand the changes and how they’ll impact marketers, we need to start from the beginning. On March 19, 2019, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), Communications Workers of America (CWA), and several regional fair housing organizations settled civil rights claims against Facebook. The NFHA and other organizations claimed that policies “unlawfully enabled advertisers to target housing, employment, and credit ads to Facebook users based on race, color, gender, age, national origin, family status, and disability.”
Changes from the settlement
The following rules are in place for housing (and employment and credit) ads as of September:
- Facebook will establish a separate advertising portal for creating housing, employment, and credit ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger that will have limited targeting options to prevent discrimination.
- Facebook now has a separate page where users can search and view all housing ads, regardless of whether users have received the housing ads in their News Feeds.
- All advertisers will be required to certify that they are complying with Facebook’s policies prohibiting discrimination.
- Facebook will no longer allow ZIP code targeting. All ads must have a minimum 15-mile radius of a specific location.
- Facebook’s Lookalike Audience tool will no longer consider gender, age, religion, location or Facebook groups.
What the new Facebook ad policy means for real estate marketers
Time to put on our thinking caps! While we believe real estate marketers weren’t intentionally discriminating against anyone, microtargeting has become a major asset in Facebook’s paid digital advertising. Microtargeting allowed real estate marketers to segment potential customers, helping decide who marketers should target and create personalized ads for those leads. Without the ability to microtarget audiences, real estate markets will have to shift their ad strategy.
A flicker of hope
There could actually be some benefits from these new policy changes for real estate marketers. Facebook is creating a new tool that allows users to search all housing ads for rentals or sales (or finance of housing or for real estate-related transactions, such as appraisals and insurance). This tool could help boost brand awareness by making ads more widely available to audiences and increase organic reach for brands.
The jury is still out
Though Facebook is still a powerhouse for digital marketers (don’t forget the platform has over 2 billion active monthly users), time will tell how these Facebook ad policy changes will impact real estate marketing. In an age when customers are demanding more personalized, custom content, off-target ads seem like a step in the wrong direction. Tick, tock.
Related posts:
- 6 Social Media Don’ts for Property Management Companies
- Infographic: 5 Tips for Using Facebook Live for Real Estate Brands
- 3 Ways to Boost Your Real Estate Marketing with Video
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How to Measure Social Media ROI with Google Analytics for Real Estate
Measuring social media ROI can be a daunting task, but Google Analytics can help. Gauge the effectiveness of your social media strategy using these four data points in Google Analytics.
Many real estate businesses struggle with measuring social media ROI. Even for seasoned content marketers, the collection of data is one of the most daunting tasks. But it’s important to get it right, for several reasons:
To understand how your strategy is working.
- To determine where changes need to be made.
- To allocate appropriate resources.
Don’t waste time trying to track down information on your various social accounts to measure social media ROI when you can find the most pertinent information with a single tool. The best part is: You’re probably already using it. (And it’s free!)
You need data to measure social media ROI
Google Analytics is an incredible tool for businesses large and small looking to gain insight into the who, when, and where of their web traffic. And while it may seem intimidating to the novice, it’s very easy to use once you know where to find what you’re looking for.
Here’s how to start gauging the effectiveness of your social media strategy — and measure social media ROI for real estate.
Step 1: Look at where your traffic is coming from.
How much of your traffic is coming from social media? Google Analytics will provide an overview of the overall traffic sources that deliver visitors to your website, including traffic from social media. This high-level view of your traffic includes:
- Search (people clicking through from Google or Bing)
- Social (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
- Direct (people typing your site in their browser or bookmarks)
- Referral (people clicking links from other sites to get to you)
- Paid search
- Other
To access this report in Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels.
Go a step further and review the volume of traffic that comes from specific social media networks, by clicking on Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals.
It’s important to have a diverse mix of traffic sources, which should be reflected in the traffic sources report. If a large portion of your traffic comes exclusively from one source, especially if that source is not social media, it is time to reconsider your social media strategy. Similarly, if one network is driving most of your traffic, you should examine when and what you are posting in the non-performing channels.
Step 2: Determine revenue derived from posts.
Make sure to include links back to your site when you post on social media so that Google Analytics can track and analyze them. You’ll want to add a UTM code (aka UTM parameter), which is text added to the end of a URL (after the “?”) to identify the success of a campaign. As an example, the UTM code is in boldface below:
You can set unique UTMs for all of your social media, per channel, or even per update. By analyzing your different UTM parameters, you can determine which URLs are most effective in driving users to your content.
Set UTM parameters through Google’s URL Builder. Once your parameters are set, you can go to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns to see the revenue from any individual UTM tag, like a post or tweet.
Step 3: Look at how your content is being digested.
Analytics allows you to see how long a visitor stayed on your site, (use the Duration goal to find out). Examine how content and properties resonate with the social media audience by using Set up the Pages/Screens per Session goal or learn how many times visitors from social media play website video with Create an Event goal for specific tracking.
Step 4: What is social media bringing you in conversions?
Google Analytics has conversion funnel reports that show how much social media is contributing to conversions. To set up conversion funnels in Google Analytics:
Use the Goals section and connect any type of conversion event.
- Access your funnel report through Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Top Conversion Paths.
These four insights from Google Analytics can help you determine how effective your social media strategy is in terms of traffic, direct revenue, visitor behavior, and conversions. Use this information to continually measure social media ROI and refine your strategy to get the most out of your social media presence for your brand and properties.
Related posts:
- What Metrics Should You Track in Real Estate Marketing?
- Measure Social Media Success in Terms of Potential, not Dollar Amount
- The Metrics You Should Be Measuring in Real Estate Marketing (Hint: Not Vanity Metrics)
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July 6 is One of the Busiest Days of the Year for Real Estate Searches
Real estate searches peak after holidays, and July 6 is one of the biggest peaks of the year. Are you ready to make the most of it?
If you’re a real estate marketing professional who puts your feet up after the holidays — it’s time to reconsider your strategy. Unlike the post-holiday retail lull, real estate searches actually pick up as potential buyers use their downtime to go online to consider real estate investment.
Now is your chance to capture those leads.
Here’s how to take advantage of the post-Fourth of July uptick in real estate searches.
Publish blog posts on a normal schedule
We all know that blogging can help you sell real estate in all kinds of ways — from increasing search visibility to nurturing leads. But did you realize blog posts are the gifts that keep on giving? The majority of traffic will visit your posts months after they’re published. We’ve found that 80% of our page views occur on blog posts published at least six months prior. Bear that in mind when you’re creating your editorial calendar: to capture future searches, the six-month mark can be a great time to write about trends or happenings in the coming year.
Search engines reward consistency and predictability in your publishing schedule. So, keep your normal frequency throughout the year, and it will help your rankings during high-traffic times.
Be strategic about social media to capitalize on real estate searches
Social media management can be an extremely time-consuming task, so dialing back your posting on the days when you know that prospects won’t be spending time online can help you conserve resources for the high-traffic days. July 6 is definitely a day when you should maximize your social media output, both in terms of frequency and quality. This doesn’t mean posting constantly, but it does mean it’s a great time to unveil new content, post interesting statistics, and interact with your followers. Chances are, many of your competitors will be shut down for the holiday, and your posts will be front and center in your prospects’ newsfeeds.
Be strategic about digital advertising
The same goes for digital advertising. Knowing that July 6 is a big day for real estate searches, you should budget your pay-per-click and social advertising dollars to spend more on this day. It’s a good time to focus particularly on your Google AdWords spend, as that will capture prospects using search engines to find information about potential real estate investments — as opposed to sponsored social posts, which display your ads in the newsfeed of a prospect who may or may not be ready to buy.
Post-holiday real estate searches present a big opportunity. Seize it.
Related posts:
- 10 Social Media Statistics for Real Estate Marketers 2018
- How to Measure Brand Awareness: A Guide for Real Estate Marketers
- Top 10 Real Estate Marketing Posts 2017
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4 Real Estate Blogging Tools You Should be Using
If you’re a real estate marketer, you should be blogging. These four free tools can help you get your real estate blog started.
A real estate blog is one of the most effective ways to generate leads, improve brand recognition, and market your properties. At Fronetics Real Estate, we love blogging for tons of reasons. For one, you get plenty of bang for your buck: once you publish an effective post, it can continue generating leads even years into the future.
Are you ready to up your blogging game? Here are 4 of FRE’s favorite free online tools for real estate blogging that you can start using today.
Generate a topic for your real estate blog
Sometimes the ideas just flow, but often, coming up with fresh, engaging topics is like pulling teeth. The good news is, Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator is here to help.
Think Mad Libs: give HubSpot three nouns, and this powerful tool will give you topic ideas. It’s a great way to focus on topics where you want to cultivate your authority and to generate real estate blog post ideas for a topic cluster, in line with existing pillar content.
Is your headline engaging?
Judging a book by its cover may be a bad idea, but when it comes to blogging, the headline of your post is hugely important. So, regardless of how compelling your content is, if you don’t have an effective headline, it’s likely not reaching its audience potential.
ShareThrough has a tool that can help. The SharedCount Headline Analyzer lets you enter your idea for a title, and helps you refine and improve your headline. Run it until you get a good score (at least 75), using their tips as you go to edit and optimize the title of your real estate blog post.
Bump up your image game
We live in a world where, increasingly, the visual is key. A picture is worth a thousand words—but only if it’s a good one! Too often, bloggers forget this crucial aspect of online story-telling and settle for tired stock photos or the first result that comes up on Google Images.
One of the best online graphic editing and creation tools out there is Canva. We love this tool, which lets you save your brand colors and fonts, and create beautiful, original graphics for blog images, Facebook ads, postcards, eBooks, and more.
Boost your SEO
Generating organic traffic with your content is one of the main benefits of blogging. Your content helps inform search engines about your site, improving your rank in relevant search queries. But writing SEO-friendly content isn’t always a walk in the park.
Luckily, there are tools like Yoast SEO to help. This plugin helps you optimize your content, as it analyzes your writing, and gives you suggestions for optimizing it for Google’s algorithm.
We’ve said it before and we’ll probably say it again—when it comes to real estate marketing, a real estate blog is one of your most powerful assets. Give these tools a try—and let us know in the comments how they work for you.
Related posts:
- 5 Ways to Generate Real Estate Blog Ideas
- Infographic: Statistics that Prove Why Your Real Estate Marketing Needs to Include a Blog
- 4 Ways a Blog Can Help You Sell Real Estate
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