Some love it and some consider it a waste of money. The results of online real estate advertising can be quite different depending on how you implement it into your marketing efforts. But is it really necessary? After all, lead generation is the pivotal aspect of your real estate business and you need to do what it takes to generate more of them. However not every lead is worth the money you spend. Apart from the money you spend, there is time you do not want to waste on bad leads.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way people do business. Real estate is also heavily affected. There are almost no showings and social contact is minimized. Everything is going digital notably open houses shifting to virtual tours. This trend is propelling the real estate market towards being more digital. Therefore, finding leads should also happen online. There is the indirect inbound marketing method which has been proven to work. But it takes time. On the other hand, we have ads, especially on social media. In this article, we will have a look at these questions: Are the ads really worth it? What’s up with the people complaining about wasting their money and getting no results?
Why Online Real Estate Advertising
Lets have a brief look on the benefits online ads can have for real estate:
Brand Awareness
Real estate ads are meant to generate leads. There are many people at the moment out there who need your services. Not any other agent’s services: Your services. How so? There are many factors, including your farming area, your skills, and experience, your unique value proposition, etc. But they do not know you exist. They do not even know you live and work nearby. Leads are the people who somehow show interest in your services. You want them. Many of them.
Faster Results
We believe in this day and age; most businesses can benefit from content marketing: sharing valuable content that your audience is looking for. With content marketing agents can create a loyal and significant audience. Leads form from this audience as a result of you proving your expertise with valuable and informative content. But content marketing is a long-term investment. It is not going to happen overnight, and the results take time to be seen.
Sometimes you need immediate results. This is where ads come in. Remember that ads are not supposed to replace your other marketing efforts. They will not do wonders if used once. Have a look at the big names in different industries. Even big brands like Apple, Coca Cola, etc. use consistent advertising. If you think this is a one-time investment, you had better save the effort.
Cost Management
Many real estate agents shy away from ads because they believe the cost can be huge and the returns are not comparable. Let’s get this straight: you don’t need to spend a lot to reach new clients in your area and see improvement in your real estate business. Big brands may spend a lot of money on their top marketing campaign, but you do not need that much. There are several ways to market yourself online on any budget. On the other hand, the ROI you get from ads heavily depends on how you run the ad. It is a different story we will cover in a separate article.
Real Estate Online Advertising Platforms
In the good old days, real estate agents used to put their ads in local newspapers and hope for the best. The money was gone regardless of how effective the ads turned out to be. Things are a bit different these days. You pay for the results with pay per result ads. With such ads, you pay when you get a click, leads, etc. Here are a few options to run your real estate ads online:
Google Ads
As the most popular search engine on the internet, Google offers its search advertising service under the Google Ads umbrella (previously knows as AdWords). Google Search Ads charges on a pay-per-click basis, which means you are charged only when someone actually clicks on the ad. Google takes care of bringing the leads right into your sales funnel. Whether you keep them in the funnel and make them a client or they leave, is another story. Either way you are paying for the click. Running ads will not guarantee success.
Real Estate Portals Ads
Real estate portals such as Zillow and Realtor.com offer agents different ways to generate leads in their farming area. Premium accounts offer added benefits like direct connections to home buyers and highlighting you in your listings. There are also other offers on other platforms including paying for certain zip codes, etc.
Social Media Ads
Real estate agents benefit from social media by getting brand awareness or getting a direct line to connect to their audience, clients, and prospects. Ads on popular social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram can further expand your reach and generate more qualified leads. Whether you want to use ads on social media or not, being present on them is a must. You should be where your audience is. In this case, your audience is on social media. They spend 118 minutes daily on the internet.
What makes ads on social media more interesting is that you have a wide range of criteria to define your target audience. Ads won’t matter if you are targeting the wrong people. You reach them but they are not interested, and the result is a waste of money. The degree to which you can specify your target audience for your ads makes them a worthwhile marketing avenue. However, it is not as easy as it seems.
Real Estate Online Advertising Tips
Running ads alone will not guarantee success. Ads bring you interested prospects, what you do with them is utterly up to you. Here we have a few tips regarding online ads for real estate.
Design Killer Landing Pages
When people click on your PPC ads, they are taken to a link you have defined in the ad. You can take your audience anywhere on your website, but we believe a landing page with a single and specific purpose is your best bet. Landing pages define the fate of any given visitor to your website. If designed well, they will keep the visitors on the website and ultimately will turn them into leads or even clients. On the other hand, a poor landing page will keep no one on the page.
A landing page needs to look eye-catching without being visually cluttered. It should offer a simple navigation path that leads the visitors towards the ultimate CTA while feeding them with valuable information regarding your service. Everything on the landing page from the visuals, colors, style, copy, CTA are all to be defined and designed carefully. Make sure they show well on mobile devices as well. Do not waste your leads. You have paid for them. We have a fully dedicated article on the perfect real estate landing pages.
Ace Targeting Your Audience
We simply cannot emphasize this key point enough. A lot of money is spent on ads in vain simply due to the fact that the ads were not set to target the right people. You may have received emails and seen ads showing up on your screen promoting a service in another area or city. When you see these ads this means the targeting is not done right. Social media platforms like Facebook offer many different criteria for narrowing down your target audience but using them the proper way and getting the desired result, seems to be a little bit challenging.
Monitor, Measure and Modify
Repeating the same mistake is not going to bring success. In order to make the most of the money you spend on ads, you need to consistently monitor and measure their performance. You might be happy with the fact that the ads end up quite cheap and you get a decent number of leads but at the end of the day, you may not see improvement in your business. If you only pay attention to the cost and number of leads, you are forgetting about the quality of the leads. If your leads do not turn into clients, even if you are not spending a lot of money, you are still wasting that money.
Since ads prove to be useful only when used consistently, consistent monitoring and measuring the performance of the ads is a must, otherwise, you will be repeating the same process regardless of how well you are doing. Running ads can be considered a complicated process. If you are not sure what you are doing you can ask professionals to take care of it for you.
Try Different Formats and be Creative
You might be happy with the performance of your ads and may even think this is their full potential. But you need to try different things and see how they perform. All of the major advertising networks are always trying ad formats and styles, such as videos, images, etc. You need to try different things and see what works best.
One of the most attention-grabbing formats for online real estate advertising is videos. Videos are more likely to be watched since they are easier than reading text ads, they convey lots of information, and also make your services look more valuable since videos are harder to make. If you have no idea how to create real estate videos, no worries. You do not have to do itt yourself. We can create videos for you.
Online Real Estate Advertising: Takeaways
Ads may not sound promising for many agents due to their cost. However, an ad is an investment that can return more than what you have spent provided that you have done your homework. There are many factors you need to take into consideration including the format, style, and platform on which you are going to run the ad. Then, what you do with the visitors brought by ads, also affects the ultimate result. Running ads will turn out to harm you more than help you if done incorrectly. If you are not sure, ask professionals to take care of your advertising marketing efforts.