Going higher with more tips for effective real estate ads from Aitarget, Facebook, JagaJam and Donstroy.

Fourth floor: short and sweet

Mobile made the world turn faster, so a simple image of a house will no longer engage users. You need a new type of content that demonstrates advantages in a few moments.

Don’t focus on a long text description in your ads, instead highlight one or two advantages that are important for your target audience (e.g. five minutes from public transport, the historic centre, or schools and playgrounds, or favourable mortgage conditions).

Put this core message on a creative optimised for mobile and don’t forget to brand it. Such advertising will stay in users’ memory and increases conversions, including delayed ones.

We recommend that Video for News Feeds and Stories be less than 15 seconds long. The most effective videos are three to five seconds in length. Use the built-in Facebook tool for creating slideshows to make these kinds of videos from any images and short text. Longer videos may be appropriate in other placements, such as In-Stream Video.

A sample of the video ad created with Video Creation Kit

To catch the attention of users who scroll their news feed swiftly and show longer videos to those who are ready to watch them, Daria Vladimirova of Aitarget recommends using the auto placements along with the creatives adaptation.

“Facebook allows you to cover all available platforms in one ad and at the same time add standalone creatives for each,” said Vladimirova. “Selecting ‘auto’ and uploading, for example, a square three-second video for Instagram, vertical 15-second slideshow for Stories, and a 90-second video for In-Stream, you allow Facebook algorithms to choose where and in which form ads will perform, maximising the conversion possibility. This brings greater coverage, makes budget spend more efficient, and provides optimal cost per result.”

Fifth: interior decoration

“Your posts shouldn’t be true to type,” she said. “Take photos of the building from different angles, non-standard perspectives, so the content will not pass unnoticed in the news feed. Imagine what a person sees when they dream about their future flat and show it. Offering an empty apartment is inefficient. Show an apartment in which they may want to live.”

Alexander Sushchenko, Head of SMM at Donstroy, gave examples of the company’s practices which brought good results. He recommends showing on video a wide panorama of the location, then going into details. If the environment is not attractive, it is still necessary to remain relevant and show ads in real time, working on the shooting angle.

For flats to sell undecorated, the “before/after” format is suitable, where empty walls turn into an attractive interior. For ready-made accommodations give a video tour of the rooms.

“It is important to approach video production for social networks as responsibly as possible and combine a helicopter shooting (air) with infrastructure details of the property on the ground and with interiors, public spaces, and details of future apartments design,” said Sushchenko. “The goal of your video is to answer all (or almost all) customer questions and interest them in the property to prompt further interaction.”

Sixth floor: lead the way

Beware auto-filling lead forms. While lead forms that auto-fill based on a user’s Facebook profile is an option that will save users’ time, it can add half-hearted people to your CRM.

“To improve the quality of your leads, add an extra question to the lead form where answers are entered manually, and/or turn on the ‘Higher Intent’ setting – a window to confirm sending the data while filling out the form in mobile Facebook news feed,” said Daria Vladimirova.

You could ask, for example, whether the user is looking for a decorated or undecorated flat, how many rooms and which district they need, or to sign up for a visit to your sales office.

In addition to the button driving users to your website, a lead form can end by allowing the user to download a file (e.g. a layout, special offer, or other content), or the “Call me” button.

Consent given to have a phone conversation will fade quickly even for interested users, so try to respond quickly and contact potential clients within 20 minutes of them filling in a lead form. Integrate lead generation with any CRM and utilise instant callback services.

The penthouse view

In order to optimise, Facebook has to show your ads to a certain number of people. If your ad budget is too low, your ad will not get enough impressions or audience and Facebook algorithms may consider your ad ineffective and remove it from the auction.

To avoid this, your minimum budget for advertising a new building should be about $125. It is even better to budget for $150–310 per day. At the same time, you can get 2–7 times lower cost per lead compared to other platforms, and 4-5 times higher conversions.

So there you have it: a grand tour of Facebook ads for real estate, taking in every level from Facebook Pixel settings and format choice to testing and optimisations.

So did you find a great new place?

Tips for effective real estate ads from Aitarget, Facebook, JagaJam, and Donstroy.

The article was first published on Medium.

In the middle of the March a trio of social media experts held a closed business breakfast in Moscow for digital advertising professionals from real estate firms. Aitarget teamed up with Facebook and JagaJam, as well as real estate developer Donstroy, to share ideas and exchange best practices in social media advertising.

At the business breakfast we discussed formats, creatives, targeting settings, and gave attendees recommendations on how to drive audience attention with developers’ offers on Facebook and Instagram. Our Aitarget team has collected the highlights from the meeting to help you better deliver conversions and purchases through online real estate ads.

We’re moving up in the world, so get in the lift with us. Stand clear, mind the closing doors!

Ground floor: mobile

Yulia Kolesnichenko, Agency Manager for Central and Eastern Europe at Facebook, reminded everyone that the mobile format is a trendsetter for real estate advertising. People do not use aggregators, and ads in newspapers are not as influential as they used to be. Most often people will search for accommodation using a mobile phone. And this trend will keep growing. Within the ten seconds you spent reading this paragraph, about 70 new users around the world started using a smartphone.

Kolesnichenko pointed out that a mobile is the most effective selling tool for developers today, because the mobile and the audience are united. At Aitarget we noticed that about 98% of real estate advertisers’ budget was spent for mobile devices, and that mobile brings to developers up to 99% of leads.

First floor: warehouse

First things first: install a Facebook Pixel on your website to track user actions and optimise.

Choose those Pixel events that fit real estate the most. For example, Search event is suitable for apartment selection and filtering by parameters, while ViewContent shows which exact page was viewed. Lead or Contact are the core events for the “Leave a request” and “Call back” buttons.

If you plan to launch dynamic ads, you need to set several events on one button. Also, there are some must-have events to make your dynamic ads work. For general catalogue use ViewContent, AddToCart, and Purchase, and for special real estate catalogue – Search, ViewContent, InitiateCheckout, and Purchase.

This scheme may suit most developers, but everything depends on your website structure and the options that are available for users

Second floor: targeting

Across its family of platforms, Facebook’s targeting system enables real estate businesses to find suitable customers by family status, income, location in a specific are, and other characteristics that may determine their interest in properties of a certain type (e.g. two-bedroom apartments close to the underground or penthouses with parking).

Yulia Kolesnichenko highlighted the need to take care of people: find those who are interested and suggest to them the type of housing that suits them. If a person looks at a complex that they cannot afford, show them another one with targeted advertising.

The most effective targeting settings for real estate are:

• narrowing a broad audience by interests, locations, demographics, and behaviour;
• using your already available leads, as your clients may become interested in accommodation again (remember that you can look for long-term clients);
• creating Lookalike audiences from your existing customers.

Third floor: first, be dynamic

Aitarget and Facebook both advised that, first and foremost, the breakfast attendees should pay attention to dynamic ads for real estate.With Dynamic Ads, if a user was searching for a single-room apartment on the 20th floor, the algorithm would select an appropriate choice from your catalogue and show it in the ad.

Yulia Kolesnichenko noted that Facebook’s specific dynamic ads for real estate allow businesses to show the layout, location, and type of apartments based on audience needs, so users will be more inclined to leave their contacts.

To set up the dynamic ads, you need a catalogue of your offers in the data feed format supported by Facebook ads. You should include apartments with different layouts, residential projects of different levels, and with various heights and other parameters.

Source: PIK Group, Facebook Success Stories

Daria Vladimirova, Lead Agency Manager at Aitarget, suggested brands adopt two types of dynamic ads: using a specific real estate catalogue, and a general one.

“A special real estate catalogue maximises the relevance of an ad for the users when they are already interested in your offer and are potentially ready to leave their contacts,” said Vladimirova. “With the regular product catalogue, you can increase conversions at earlier stages of the sales funnel. It enables you to use the Collection and Instant Experience formats, providing the audience with more information about your project.”

In Collection, the main creative (photo or video) aligns, for example, with the apartment layouts and brief descriptions that lead to the corresponding page of a website.

A sample of the Collection ad

Instant Experience is a mini landing page within your ad, where you can add images or videos, text blocks and buttons, and layouts pulled up from the catalogue. Finalise it with a lead form.