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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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Should I Be Using Facebook Carousel Ads?
Facebook carousel ads helped one real estate company achieve a 63% increase in click-through rate and a 24% decrease in cost-per-acquisition.
Facebook carousel ads offer a highly visual and engaging way to promote your properties. Not only that, Kinetic Social recently found that carousel ads are up to 10 times more effective than static sponsored Facebook posts at driving traffic to advertisers’ websites. And if that’s not enough, they boast a 72% higher click-through rate than single-image mobile app ads.
The data makes it clear: Facebook carousel ads are absolutely something you should be using to promote your properties! Here’s a quick refresher on what they are, and some of our favorite tips for making the most of this promotional tool.
What’s a Facebook carousel ad?
This ad format integrates across Facebook and Instagram. It shows 3-5 images, headlines, links, and/or calls-to-action in a single ad unit, which users can click through. The “carousel” refers to the way images scroll horizontally across the screen, creating an engaging way for users to interact with your images. Each image has its own description and link, helping to drive traffic more effectively.
As you might expect, having the ability to showcase multiple images in an ad helps in lowering cost-per-conversion or -click, optimizing your creative output, and driving results across campaign objectives.
If it’s not already obvious, this format is a no-brainer for advertising real estate. Check out this spotlight from Facebook on Lamudi, an online real estate marketplace that used Facebook carousel ads to the tune of a 63% increase in click-through rate and a 24% decrease in cost-per-acquisition.
Using Facebook carousel ads
Creating a carousel ad is a simple process. It allows you to be creative and tell a story with the images you choose. Here are three easy steps for getting started:
1) Decide on your objective.
Having a defined goal is key when it comes to any content marketing, and carousel ad creation is no different. Facebook helps you target an objective, giving you the choice to select either “send people to your website” or “increase conversions.” Depending on your selection, an algorithm optimizes who sees your ad and when.
2) Create your ad.
Start by selecting “multiple images in one ad.” Next, get creative! Be sure to connect your ad to your Facebook page, and write a message that will stay on the screen over the images as users scroll through. Select 3-5 images, with a recommended size of 600 x 600 pixels each. You can write a separate headline and short description for each image.
3) Make the most of your images.
Facebook gives you the option to select “automatically show the best performing images and links first” — do it! This means that, as your campaign progresses, the image that’s getting the most clicks will appear first. However, if the story you’re trying to tell depends on the images appearing in a certain order (a before/after at a property, for example), uncheck this option.
The bottom line is that Facebook carousel ads are an extremely effective way to drive traffic to your properties.
Related posts:
- Facebook Lead Ads: Why Your Property Should Use Them
- 4 Tools for Determining the Best Time to Post on Social Media for Your Property
- Paid Digital Advertising: A Beginner’s Guide for Real Estate Marketers
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Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a strategic advisory firm designed to help companies and private equity firms involved in the global hi-tech supply chain, electronic asset disposal, and integrated logistics industries optimize go-to-market strategies to grow their businesses and drive shareholder value. Fronetics offers a range of business and operational consulting services including Corporate Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions Support, Sales & Marketing Optimization, Organization and Fronetics Search Network, Fronetics Interim Retained Management Service (FIRMS), and Business Development and Social Media Strategies (Fronetics Voice). Fronetics gives executives the methodology they need to make strategic business decisions with greater clarity by being a neutral party and working closely with business leaders to understand the critical issues they face.
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How to Explain Content Marketing ROI to Win (or Keep) Buy-In
Proving content marketing ROI can seem like a daunting task for real estate marketers, but finding and analyzing the right metrics effectively is crucial to measuring ROI, and ensuring buy-in.
Highlights:
- Talking about marketing as if it’s an art rather than a science does a disservice to your department and to your brand as a whole.
- Make sure your executives understand the nature and goals of your marketing strategy.
- The right metrics will help you track ROI, and justify executive buy-in.
Accountability and showing a solid return on investment (ROI) is everything when it comes to ensuring that your business is allocating adequate resources to marketing your brand and properties. And let’s face it, too many executives think that marketing is, at best, about supporting sales or, at worst, a department that exists to paste logos onto coffee mugs.
Writing for Marketo, Content Marketing Specialist Bryson Runser points out that as an “informed marketer, it’s your duty to infuse credibility into your organization by way of meaningful metrics that tie directly to your top and bottom line.” While the C-suite famously cares nothing about internal marketing metrics like Facebook likes or click-through rate, metrics are crucial to the success of marketing real estate. Not only that, effective use of metrics is the best way to establish the function and importance of the marketing department within your organization.
Get your audience on the same page
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of proving content marketing ROI for the C-suite, it’s important to acknowledge that content marketing hasn’t been around all that long. It’s only in the past decade that the real estate industry has been reshaped by digital and content marketing. This means that you can’t necessarily count on the fact that your organization’s higher-ups understand exactly what content marketing is.
Take the time to make sure your executives understand not only the definition of content marketing, but also how it will help your real estate brand grow and your business achieve various specific goals. Content marketing expert Julia McCoy suggests using approachable metaphors, such as “content marketing is a vehicle, and content marketing strategy is the engine. The vehicle takes you to your destination only if the engine is in good shape.”
Numbers don’t lie
One of the main aspects of the “crisis of accountability” is a problematic view of what marketing is: “if marketing leaders insist that marketing is an art and not a science,” Runser writes,”then the department will remain isolated from other groups.” Establishing that content marketing is not only dependent upon data, but can also be measured, is key to changing that perception.
“Marketing must be able to justify their expenditures as investments in revenue and growth,” writes Runser. Of course, it’s partly a chicken-and-egg issue, since getting to the point of being able to talk about expenditures in this way does require investment from the top of your business.
We know that measuring the impact of content marketing can be tricky. But it’s not impossible. The first step is determining the right metrics to track. For more detailed ideas and analysis, check out this post, which details how to determine and use metrics for real estate marketers to measure the impact of content marketing on brand awareness.
Why are you reporting?
Collecting and reporting on content marketing ROI can feel like you’re spinning your wheels and collecting meaningless data. But it’s crucial to keep metrics focused on the main goal: to enable you and your business to make decisions that improve your marketing efforts. “This is the difference between backward-looking measurement and decision-focused management,” says Runser.
Data for the sake of data doesn’t do any good. Data should be used to shape insights, which in turn informs priorities and actions for your business. We’ve written before about the dangers of vanity metrics, which have no bearing on your bottom line but can give you an inflated sense of success.
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of meaningless data collection, especially when marketers are often struggling to prove their worthiness to the C-suite. But using metrics to improve marketing’s performance will go a long way towards winning over executives. “[B]y aligning data measurements with your company’s strategic objectives,” Runser writes, “it will be easier to allocate resources by revenue impact.”
Related posts:
- What Metrics Should You Track in Real Estate Marketing?
- The Metrics You Should Be Measuring in Real Estate Marketing (Hint: Not Vanity Metrics)
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
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5 Real Estate Marketing Strategies for 2019
Keeping up with the constant changes can be incredibly tough on real estate marketers — these 5 strategies for real estate marketing are what you need to be doing right now.
Highlights:
- Make sure your website is optimized; it’s the center of your digital assets.
- Today’s market is increasingly visual: invest in virtual tours and professional photography to make your properties stand out.
- Content marketing, such as blogging, is the most effective tool at your disposal.
Real estate marketers, we know your job isn’t easy. With today’s fiercely competitive market, not to mention the seemingly constant changes brought about by technology, it’s easy to be left breathless. But to set your business apart from the pack, it’s crucial to stay on top of the changes taking place and hone a robust marketing strategy.
We’ve put together these five failsafe strategies that real estate marketers should be adopting right now.
Five real estate marketing strategies that are bound to work in 2019
1. Build an excellent website
Some things are timeless. While content marketing trends will continue to shift and evolve, the need for a quality, strategically designed website is here to stay. Your website is the nexus of your digital assets and is on the frontlines when it comes to capturing leads. Having a website that’s visually appealing, easily navigable, and content– and information-rich means better SEO, higher quality leads, and overall success.
Writing for Forbes, software engineer R.L. Adams suggests not to “bombard visitors with too many ads all over the place and ensure that it’s a site that people want to continue to check back on with fresh content and properties added regularly.”
2. Create virtual tours
Creating virtual tours for your properties is an investment, but it’s never been more worthwhile than it is now. In our increasingly visual culture (recent research indicates that the millennial demographic overwhelmingly favors visual content online), giving potential buyers and renters a detailed, interactive look at your properties is a no-brainer.
Looking for tips on creating virtual tours? Check out this post.
3. Invest in professional real estate photography
These days, everyone with a smartphone is a would-be photographer. With the ease and convenience of snapping high-quality photos with your phone, hiring a professional photographer can seem like a questionable investment. It isn’t. Again, in this highly visual culture, photos of your properties have never been more important. A professional photographer who specializes in real estate and who is also well-versed in editing will go a long way.
4. Blog
We’ve said it before, and we’ll certainly say it again: A blog helps you sell real estate. Among the many benefits of adding a blog to your site are increased search engine visibility, enhanced customer and industry relationships, better lead nurturing, and a boosted reputation. With a blog, you’re offering value to your customers separate and outside of your properties — in turn, you’ll see your sales boosted.
5. Start digital marketing
Inbound marketing, like digital marketing, is about prioritizing the needs of your audience over a sales pitch. When it comes to real estate, digital marketing has proven time and again to be far more effective than overt sales pitches. A robust digital marketing strategy includes a blog, social media presence, informational guides and case studies, email marketing, and more.
Even as technology and trends shift, your expertise and ideas are at least as valuable as your properties. At the end of the day, people want to hire trustworthy and knowledgeable real estate experts. If you can answer the needs and questions of your potential buyers and renters, you cultivate lasting and fruitful relationships with them.
Related posts:
- Using Online Virtual Tours to Sell and Lease Property
- Infographic: Statistics that Prove Why Your Real Estate Marketing Needs to Include a Blog
- Drive More Traffic and Generate More Leads with Your Real Estate Blog with our Editorial Calendar Template
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