The marketing industry is forever changing. If you are not putting your advertising money in the right mediums to reach your target market, your business will die.
The old techniques of advertising your real estate business through signs, news paper articles, brochures, direct mail, stickers, posters etc.. are becoming obsolete.
Our market is rapidly turning to the internet to find information, especially through the use of mobile devices.
Instead of having your consumer drive by your sign or see your flyer, now they can scroll through there news feed and see your ad (where the average American spends a ton of time)
The consumer is getting smarter and they do not want to be sold or have advertising pushed on them. The new consumer wants to be educated. They want to learn about what they are buying and be able to make a decision for themselves.
Although I am a big proponent of cold calling and door knocking (hustling), digital marketing is very powerful and there are several useful tools on the internet to help your real estate investing business.
Enter.... Paid Facebook Advertising
The Power of Paid Facebook Advertising
It is 2016, I am confident that everyone is aware of the power of social media and they understand that they should probably be using it.
Paid Facebook advertising is the most cost effective way to reach a very targeted market and get your ads in front of consumers who are interested in your service.
So why is paid Facebook advertising so powerful?
Facebook has over 1.6 billion users, meaning you can reach any buyers persona that fits your business.
Facebook know's a lot about us. Facebook has more interest based data than anyone else in the world. This information is very valuable to you as a marketer.
The Facebook platform, like no other platform before, knows very detailed information about us and they also have the ability to track our interests and behaviors off of their platform (pretty scary right)
So basically, Facebook is able to collect an unbelievable amount of detailed information on its users and this information is invaluable to a real estate investor (if you know how to use it)
Facebook Targeting
It is very important to understand all of the features that Facebook targeting can offer to a business owner. I am going to touch on a couple brief topics then discuss which areas are
important to us as real estate investors.
Custom Audiences
These audiences are created by uploading your customer data base of:
Email addresses
phone numbers
Facebook I'ds
They will take this information and connect it to as many Facebook profiles as possible.
*This can be very useful to the real estate investor because instead of buying lists and sending out thousands and thousands of unsolicited, spam mailings. You can now, take this list, create an ad and put this ad in front of the same people at a much much much cheaper cost.
Look alike Audiences
This is a way for you to reach people that may be interested in your business because:
They visited your website
They have hit on one of your conversion pixels
There profiles are similar to lists you have uploaded
Facebook will then create an audience based on the information you give them that would denote some similarity. (The scary part is, how well this works)
Locations
This is option is very important if you run a local real estate investing service. You can target locations by:
region
zip code
county
city
addresses
to show or exclude people in that area. This is a very powerful tool because you will be able to put your ad in front of the specific farm areas you would like to invest in.
Age
Facebook allows you to put your ad in front of a minimum and maximum age of the people who may find your ad relevant.
So even if you do not know exactly what age group you want to target, Facebook will allow you to test this parameter. You can put your ad out to a large age range and see what range finds the most interest in your ad and adjust from there.
We want to let our ad tell us what age and gender is most interested in what were offering and develop ads around that data.
Gender
What is their gender?
All/Men/Women - test this area and see what gender works best for you.
Languages
What languages do they speak?
Detailed Targeting
This is where we get our leads. This is how we can differentiate ourselves from all of the other
investors who are using the old techniques. This is where we can create a backlog of properties for our investing business.
So what does the detail targeting segment of Facebook advertising consist of?
Demographics
Interests
Behaviors
More Categories
Detailed targeting allows the business owner/marketer to narrow down their audience beyond age, location, gender & language
Demographics
You will be able to reach people based on their:
Education
Financial Status
Ethnicity
Generation
Home
Lifestyle
Life Events
Parents
Politics
Relationship Status
Within each of these topics there are several sub topics that can help you narrow your target market down much further.
I want to touch on some of there areas that we as real estate investors can benefit from.
Within the demographics section of our detailed targeting we will be able to target folks based on their:
Income Range
Net Worth
Generation (Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millenniums)
What Type Of Home They Live In (Single Families, Multi Families, Apartments, Condos)
What Their Home is Worth
Square Footage, Age of Home, & Acreage
Household Composition
Life Events ( New Job, Newly Wed, Engaged, Recently Moved)
So in reality just within this section, we can target people that own single family homes, that make 50,000-75,000, who are Baby boomers, that have homes worth 50,000-100,000, with a
square footage between 1,000-1,500, who have a home that was built between 1980-1990.
Now can you begin to see the power of Facebook advertising?
The demographics targeting feature is going to be your most useful asset. It is basically going to allow you to target a detailed criteria and put your ad in front of the people you feel will be most relevant to your ad.
Interests
Reach people based on their specific interests.
This will include:
Posts shared on their timelines
Apps they use
Pages they like
The interests section contains the most targeted options. This portion of your ad will also come more relevant with testing.
You can start typing anything in this box and Facebook will give you options.
There are several categories along with several sub categories for you to explore. Once again this will take some testing on your part to figure out which interests work for your ads.
This is where understanding your buyers persona will help you have the most effective ads on Facebook.
The main interests categories are:
Business & Industry
Entertainment
Family & Relationships
Fitness & Wellness
Food & Drink
Hobbies
Shopping & Fashion
Sports & Outdoors
Technology
Behaviors
The behavior section is also going to be vital to your ads success. As with the interests portion of the targeting, the behaviors section will also take some testing.
There are also several categories and sub categories for you to play around with and find what works best for your ad.
Here are some of the main categories that consist of the behavior section:
Automotive
B2B
Charitable Donations
Consumer Classification
Digital Activities
Expats
Financial
Job Role
Media
Mobile Device
Purchase Behavior
Residential Profiles
Seasonal Events
Travel
Just taking a look at the above categories, which one sticks out to you?
Good, you were right... Residential Profiles.
Just this category can help you put your ad in front of a good amount of people who may be interested in your service.
Under this category, we can narrow our market down to length of residency. So for example, there is an option for people who have lived in their homes of 6+ years. This would be a good option because we are now putting our ad in front of people with a good amount of equity in their homes. So that when we do get this leads, they are much more qualified and gives us much more room to negotiate deals.
Now there is always a sub category for homeowner likely to move. If we are looking for motivated sellers, this may be a good option to test.
Wrapping Up | Facebook Advertising Real Estate Investing
I hope I convinced you that there are several benefits to Facebook advertising and that it is probably an area you should do some further research. I suggest that before you start, you do your research. You make some hypothesis on who you want to target and play around with the ad manager/power editor before you release your first ad (Facebook has no problem taking your money) so make sure you know what your doing before you start. The targeting features are going to be the key to how successful you are on Facebook. So educate yourself on how it works, begin to taking action and test different demographics, behaviors, interests, photos or videos that are working best for you. Make sure your ads are getting in front of the right audience and make you market as specific as possible.
We would love to hear about any success stories that you guys have had advertising on Facebook. In the comment section below tell us your story or ask any questions you may have.
HS Property Funds
Funds to Help, Problems to Solve
(315) 516-8023
www.hspropertyfunds.com