Social media advertising may not seem like the best place for the real estate industry to advertise. People usually go to search engines to find real estate agents and properties.
But social media ads for real estate can be just as effective as they are for other industries.
To make it work, though, you’ve got to use social media in a real estate friendly way.
Social media advertising for real estate is unique in a few ways. So we put this post together to help you reach more homebuyers on social media.
Use social media messaging to connect with homebuyers
Customers can instantly connect with your business through social media messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and respond to your ads quickly and conveniently.
Sadly, a 2017 study found that the real estate industry only responds to 11 percent of its incoming messages.
There’s good news though: this means that you can easily differentiate yourself in the real estate industry by being responsive on social media. Since the real estate business involves building a relationship with clients, having a customer contact you through social media messaging should be considered a successful conversion from your advertising.
Any time a customer messages you, it’s an opportunity to create a great customer service experience. It’s also less demanding than a phone call.
If you start to get overwhelmed by messages, you can use chatbots to answer common questions about:
- Listings near certain zip codes.
- Characteristics and details about houses.
- Listings in certain price ranges.
- How to prepare a house for sale.
- The necessary documentation for buying a house.
Much better than an answering machine, right?
Starting conversations with customers on social media can be a huge win, so don’t miss out.
Focus on social media platforms with the most receptive users
One of the great things about social media is that there’s so much user demographic data for each platform. The real estate industry is aimed at a fairly well defined demographic. This makes it easy to choose the best places to show social media ads for real estate.
While the younger demographic may be good real estate customers in the future, many of them aren’t in the market right now.
So it’s best for real estate businesses to focus on the platforms with higher concentrations of users who are at the home buying stage. These are the top three platforms for reaching audiences of 25 years and older:
- YouTube
Advertising on the other social platforms still works. However, if you’re just getting started with social media ads for real estate, it’s a good idea to start on these three networks.
Once you’ve got your social media advertising humming on the big three platforms, then extend into other channels.
Use social media videos to go beyond photographs
Obviously, photos are a big part of real estate advertising, both digital and in print. So keep posting pictures on social media.
However, video is one thing that gives the digital marketing space an edge over print media.
Recorded video tours of houses are great for posting to YouTube. Even after the property has sold, people can still watch video tours of houses you’ve listed to see the sort of properties you handle and get a feel for your style.
But on Facebook and Instagram, there’s another type of video that can work brilliantly for real estate businesses: live video.
Live videos are great for giving viewers a candid look at a new listing and showing your personality at the same time. Keep in mind that live videos make great promotions for new listings. But they’re best as a supplement to good photos and more traditional real estate listing posts.
Social media ads should have a video to supplement the photos. But videos that you use for an ad should be more scripted and designed as a formal tour of the house.
As a general rule, live videos are best for promoting a new listing, but a good professional video ad is best for the listing post itself.
Be sure to include a call to action in your live videos prompting viewers to check out the listing on your site or social media page. This way you’ll get the most out of video in your social media ads.
Be active on social media
Last but not least: use social media as a social outlet.
It’s so important to balance your promotional posts with entertaining and useful content.
Fortunately, people need tons of help with real estate! So it’s easy to be helpful with your social media posts. This will make your social media ads more effective, and get you the ROI that social media advertising is capable of.
So give these things a try! You’ll find that social media ads for real estate are much more effective than you may have heard.
