Real Estate Agents Need a Better Facebook Ads Strategy

This was a Facebook Live video done on the Savvy Agent FB page. 

Some background:

So, I was on a call with a couple of agents earlier this week and they’re spending pretty decent money with Facebook doing some lead generation ads, I assume, or I guess I shouldn’t assume because it sounded like they didn’t really know what they were doing. One of the real estate agents said, “Well, how do I know if my ads are working? I’m spending $1500 a month, how do I know if it’s working?”

There are many different answers to that question.

This particular person had a marketing person that was in charge of that. The answer for her was, “You need to go to your marketing person and have them explain what the strategy is and if it’s working.”

Personally, I don’t spend $1500 a month on Facebook ads. Actually, I have three or four ads running right now, just promoting listings. It’s a really simple strategy. In the last seven days, I’ve gotten 97 leads and I’ve spent $58.65. That’s pretty good return for the money spent.

But my strategy on that ad is very simple. The ad is basically exactly what I wrote on the MLS listing and it takes them to my IDX website. So, when the visitor is on my website, if they look at more than one picture, it forces them to register. Forced registration and I have their contact info!

Never spend money for someone to go nowhere.

In order for that ad to be profitable, and for me to say, “Yes, my Facebook ads are working,” then I need to get something for that ad.

Before you start any ad campaign, you need to know what you want in the end.

• Do you want to get people to go to your website?
• What do you want them to do once they’re on your website?
• Do you want them to join a buyers group that you have on Facebook?
• Do you want them to download a guide?
• What is your ultimate goal?

In this example, my goal was super simple: I want leads on my listings for my team to work.

But, the other agent that we were talking to said, “Well, you know, I do videos, I do this, that, blah, blah, blah.” (Blah’s inserted to abbreviate the conversation.)

Also, she wasn’t really sure of what her overall strategy was. I said, “Oh my God, you have got to stop.” And then I drew a terrible picture. And that terrible picture looked, well, frankly, like female anatomy. It looked like Fallopian tubes!

In the video above, I pre-drew the picture so it’s a much better drawing. This is essentially a funnel: 

Not to be confused with a funnel cake, but it’s a SALES funnel.

A sales funnel is essentially the process of you getting strangers into your sales funnel and moving them down the sales pipeline to ultimately buying real estate. This sales funnel is going to be what helps you have a better Facebook ads strategy. It works for all advertising strategies too – not just Facebook ads. 

For example, think of strangers being above the sales funnel. All the people in the world that don’t know you are outside the top of your funnel. So, maybe you upload a real estate video to your Facebook business page.

You want people to watch the video because you want to show them that you’re amazing, naturally. In this example, you would target cold traffic to get people INTO the top of your sales funnel. And, because the people who already know you deserve a different message, right? It’s all in the strategy.

What do you do with someone once they watch a video?

Well, you don’t just forget them. You want them in a video views audience. Then you can serve them another ad after they watch the video. 

And that’s how it goes. You serve another ad to that audience and move them further down the funnel. The whole point is to get strangers into your sales funnel (or what I like to call the circle of trust) and the people interested in doing business with are pushed to the bottom of the sales funnel when they make a purchase. The funnel gets smaller toward the bottom because not every person that gets into your funnel is going to turn into a sale.

And, it’s possible that someone who enters your funnel in 2018 might buy or sell a house with you in 2022. But, you have to have a good strategy to stay at the top of their mind for when they’re ready to do business with you.  

A simple sales funnel example:

Ad 1 – Serve your video as an ad to a cold audience (strangers).

Ad 2 – Then, anyone that watched at least 25% of your video you’re going to serve them a home value ad.

So, if they watch 25% of your initial real estate video, then that might be a sign they’re pretty interested in real estate. Then you want to serve them a very specific ad that has the opportunity for them to take action. In this case we used a home value ad. Once they register with your home value ad – you’ve got their contact info and you’ll work them until they sell! (Or at least put them on a drip campaign.)

This is a pay to play world.

Be strategic with your sales funnel and how you’re going to get them further down the pipeline. Now, of course, not everybody’s going to make it to the bottom of the funnel, so that’s why it gets a little bit smaller, but you can get so much more targeted as you get closer to this buying decision part of the funnel. Once you have this strategy in place, then you can actually say with confidence whether or not you know if you Facebook ads are working.

Today, I have a very simple strategy because I was too lazy to set up a complicated funnel. And well, frankly, maybe it’s not even me being lazy. Maybe it’s just that I’m so darn busy, all I had time for was to throw up those ads.

I want leads on my listings.

Just like you and every other real estate agent out there. And there is nothing wrong with that. It’s effective. I can say that 97 leads for less than $60 in seven days is worth the money.

Before you give Facebook any more money… actually, this rule actually applies for everything.

Before you give Google AdWords money…

Before you give ANY VENDOR any money, make sure you know what you want in return for that money. And then you have something to judge the performance by. You have your baseline expectation and with a little more experience, you’ll have cost per lead, cost per sale, you’ll figure all of those things out. 

The very basic minimum thing that you have to have…

…is a strategy of what you want to happen. Then, you can grade your performance and know ultimately if that money is worth your time or not. You can get a lot more advanced and nerdy about the numbers later, but please: If you don’t know if your ads are working, STOP.

Stop spending that money right now or talk to the marketing person who’s in charge of those ads. Somebody knows. And if that somebody is supposed to be you, shut the ads down and think through it, look at the numbers. You’re a business owner and you deserve to know that your money is being spent wisely so that you know if you should spend more of it or not.

We teach a lot about funnels in Savvy Agent Club. But, if you make sure you have a STRATEGY before spending any advertising dollars, that’s half the battle right there.

Do you run ads on Facebook? How do you judge if they work or not? What about boosts? How do you know if they were effective? One quick way to grade an ad is to check the relevance score that Facebook assigns it.

But first, what is a relevance score?

You can read in detail about it here.

The short explanation is that FB will grade your ad based on consumer response. If your ad gets a lot of interaction with likes, loves, and click throughs, that’s going to be a good relevance score.

However, if your ad is causing people to hit the HIDE button, that’s going to hurt your relevance score.

In my experience with Savvy Agent, the posts that are more fun and social in nature, with no clear call to action, get a higher relevance score. This makes perfect sense since Facebook is a social media platform and people like to have fun so responding to a fun post is natural.

Facebook ranks your relevance score on a scale of 1-10.

On this scale, a 10 is the best and 1 is the worst. Ideally, you want your ads to rank at a 7 or higher. Let’s look at some Savvy Agent examples.

This is one of my favorite Savvy Agent posts and it’s relevance score is a 10.

It’s really fun, most agents can relate (although, how gross to put wine in your coffee, ew!) and it got lots of likes, loves and laugh emojis.

But, the posts advertising Savvy Agent Club, for example – those usually have a mid-range relevance score. Which makes sense because those posts are going to be relevant to a smaller portion of the whole audience. Here’s an example:

The cost per acquisition on this ad was good, but the relevance score was a 4, which is low. But, it was a pitch. And, people just don’t love sales pitches! There are some things I can do to improve the ad – stay tuned for that when we open Savvy Agent Club again.

So, why should you care about this?

Having a high relevance score should be important to you because

• Your cost will be lower
• Your audience is happier
• Your ad will do better

Having a low relevance score is basically the opposite. You’ll pay more to reach your audience. Your audience isn’t going to care much for your ad, and your ad is probably going to be a big fat flop.

How do you find your relevance score?

Go to your Ads Manager or Power Editor.

Click on the Ads tab.

Make sure your columns are set to either Performance (Default) or Performance and Clicks.

And, you’ll want to make sure the time frame is set to a time when your ad was running. Often when I go into ads manager, it’s default setting is Today and none of my ads have a relevance score. If you switch that to Lifetime, or any other time frame, your score will appear.

Search for the Relevance score column:

And start evaluating your ads!