Blog Real Estate Marketing Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Effective Facebook Ads with Catchy Hooks

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Effective Facebook Ads with Catchy Hooks

There’s no question that Facebook has emerged as a powerhouse platform for real estate agents looking to reach a wider audience, generate leads, and grow their business. 

From just a glance you can easily see why it would be a tool to start incorporating into your marketing tools. 

Facebook has an extensive user base and sophisticated advertising tools to help you determine your audience, which allows you to create effective ads that resonate with potential buyers more easily. 

In this guide, we’ll explore the advantages of using Facebook for advertising, provide tips for creating successful ads, offer ideas for catchy hooks, present a step-by-step guide to creating your ads, and highlight platforms that can assist in your ad creation!

6 Advantages of Using Facebook for Your Ads

• Vast Audience Reach: “Facebook currently has 3.049 billion monthly active users (MAUs)” (source).  There’s huge potential for your ads to reach a broad audience and help give your business more visibility. 
• Options to Target Your Audience: Facebook allows you to create your audience with specifics based on location, interests, behaviors, and even life events, ensuring your ads are seen by the most relevant audience. In fact, “Once your ad starts running, our system will learn who is engaging with it and, over time, narrow your audience so you reach more of the right people.” (source)
• Flexible Budgeting Options: “…you decide how much you want to spend on advertising. Meta then tries to get you as many results as possible for that amount. If you want to spend $5 a week, you can. If you want to spend $50,000 a week, you can do that too.” (source)
• Customizable Ad Templates: You can create ads matching your brand with high-quality images and videos to attract and engage your potential clients. If creating ads isn’t your specialty, I recommend using a platform called Grizzly Leads who specialize in Facebook advertising. You can read more about them here. 
• Data & Analytics: Facebook provides detailed analytics and reporting tools that allow you to track the performance of your ads in real time, measure key metrics such as reach, engagement, and conversions, and optimize your campaigns for maximum effectiveness, which ultimately leads to making more impactful ad campaigns. 
• Trusted Source: Facebook is truly an open book. People can leave comments and likes, give reviews, and subscribe/join groups and pages. There is an element of social proof that helps you build your reputation and credibility with audiences. 

Tips for Creating Successful Ads on Facebook

If you are considering adding Facebook to your marketing strategies there are elements to be aware of while you are developing your strategies for more assurance that your efforts will be rewarded with quality leads. 

For a full comprehensive guide to help you get started take a look at this article to help you fully understand how to create optimal ads for your audience. But first, here are some key takeaways for Facebook marketing:

1. Create Measurable Goals: Develop a clear sense of what you want to accomplish in your advertising so that you have a measure of what’s working and what’s not to be successful in your ad campaigns. 
   1. Questions to ask yourself to help you as you determine your goals and prioritize: Do you need to increase your brand awareness? Is your focus generating leads? If so, how many in a month? Are you wanting to increase the traffic to your website? As you grow your goals will adjust and become more specific.  
2. Know Your Audience: We’ve touched on this a bit already, but it is imperative that you have a full understanding of who you are marketing to in order to create effective ads. Creating personas can help you determine your buyer and what will appeal to them in your advertising. Then, use the tools available through Facebook to market to them.  
3. Compelling Visuals: High-quality images are non-negotiable in your advertising. I encourage hiring companies who are experts in photographing spaces with complimentary lighting, professional video capture and editing, or even setting up virtual touring capabilities. 
4. Engaging Copy: Your copy needs to grab someone just scrolling through and get them to engage with your content. It starts with a personal, catchy hook, factual information that is meaningful/adds value, and a call to action. 
5. Analyze Your Ad Metrics and Test: Get creative! Experiment with different ad formats, messaging, and targeting options to identify what resonates best with your audience. Always check in to make sure that your engagement is gaining traction and adjust your strategies accordingly. 
6. Compliance with Policies:  As agents we are educated and informed in laws relating to housing and discrimination policies. It’s also a great idea to get familiar with Facebook’s advertising policies and guidelines to avoid ad rejection or account suspension.

Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Prepare

Now knowing that you have an audience of about 3 billion on Facebook… you might be getting excited to get started! There is potential for massive business growth and lead generation through Facebook, so let’s do exactly that… get started!

Step 1. Set your goals: Determine your priorities, this will help you create strategies to accomplish them.  

Step 2. Determine your budget: Set a realistic budget based on your advertising goals, and develop an expectation of an ROI that feels achievable and comfortable. Also, decide if you want to set up allocated funds for long-term advertising or adjust daily, weekly, or monthly. To help you get a sense of the affordability:

“Facebook ads allow you to set your budget in advance, so you know exactly how much you are spending. With average prices between $.45 and $.75 per click, they are also relatively low cost. Other types of pay-per-click marketing cost an average of $1.72 per click.” (source) 

Step 3. Choose Your Ad Format: This also requires thought and intention behind your branding. Determine what you think will align with your brand whether it is images, layout, colors, or how you want to direct attention the format you choose can support your brand. If this isn’t one of your strong suits, companies like Broker Spot help provide easy-to-use templates to optimize your ads. 

Step 4. Brand Consistent Content: Determine the tone that best represents you as an agent to craft compelling copy that efficiently communicates the unique features, benefits, and value of your listing that will attract your audience to learn more. 

Step 5. Know Your Audience: This is the third time in this article that I have mentioned your audience… You can not skip this step. Develop your niche audience that your ads will resonate with and best share your expertise.

Step 6. Start Making Your Ads! Log in to your Facebook Ads Manager account, click on the “Create” button to start creating a new ad campaign, and follow the prompts to set up your ad campaign, including selecting your target audience, defining your ad placements, and setting your budget and schedule.

3 Platforms That Can Help You Create Your Ads

• Canva: If you want to test your graphic design abilities Canva is a great platform with user-friendly templates to help you create branded and compelling visuals quickly. They also offer Facebook specific pre-designed templates to help expedite the process. 
• AdEspresso: This site is more of a one-stop shop that will help you design and manage your ads specifically for Facebook, Google, and Instagram. They have advanced features to help you manage your ads in one spot and track their metrics. 
• Facebook Ads Manager: The obvious choice, and most simple if you choose to only use Facebook for advertising. There are countless resources to help guide you along the way to best optimize your ads. 

3 Examples of Great Facebook Ads 

Now that we’ve gone through how to advertise on Facebook effectively. Here are a few examples of some ads I’ve found on Facebook that might help inspire you! 

1. Straightforward advertising in this ad is what grabbed my attention. There is an introduction of how it would feel living in this space, information about the features, a video, and a clear call to action of “tap the link to explore”. Plus, this ad clearly has the goal of selling this home. Simple and informative.
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2. I would venture to guess that this ad’s goal is to grow their audience, for potential leads. They have done a good job of positioning themselves as expert real estate agents with a proven track record. The ad includes a carousel of photos (as opposed to a video) of their properties. Their call to action isn’t quite clear for their goal, BUT they have included a button to “message” about any of the properties seen. Overall a great template for growing your audience and raising awareness for your business.
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3. This ad is in my opinion, perfection. He’s not doing a hard sell, he’s engaging with potential clients by educating them. He put the power of buying and selling in the hands of the client, which builds trust instantly. The goal of this ad is to appeal to people listing their home and generate leads. Plus you get a sense of what it will be like working with him!
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Summary

Facebook advertising is a powerful platform with a global reach to help you engage potential buyers, generate leads, and grow your business. 

With all of the tools Facebook provides to support your ad campaigns like, extensive audience reach, precise targeting options, engaging ad formats, and insightful analytics, you can more easily create effective ads that resonate with your target audience and drive results. 

Remember to continuously monitor the performance of your ads, experiment with different strategies, and optimize your campaigns based on insights and feedback to ensure long-term success!

By following the tips and best practices outlined in this guide, you will be well on your way to accomplishing your advertising goals.