Last Updated on April 1, 2020

Last month we brought you the 3 Facebook Ads That Work Everywhere. We had a bunch of interest and a number of questions about what strategies we use along with these ads to get the most out of them. In a lot of cases, your audience, budget, time frame, and even the technical “type” of ad you run can have a huge impact on how much you’re spending per lead.

This week, we want to answer those questions in depth, and get into the 3 Big Strategies we use with all of the ads we gave as examples to get the most out of your campaigns.

 For every campaign, we look at 3 things:

• Type of Ad
• Audience We’re Targeting
• Budget vs. Timeframe

Objective: Lead Ads

For any of the three ads we covered in depth in the 3 Facebook Ads That Work Everywhere, the best marketing objective is “Lead Generation”. This objective allows you to capture valuable contact details without your prospect having to leave Facebook. Collecting lead information on Facebook is a great way to keep your budget down because Facebook likes its users to continue browsing after submitting information. This practice also eliminates the risk of poor load times or bad web design causing prospects to bounce before leaving you the contact info you want.

Two Types of Audiences

Special Ads
The ads we outlined in our previous article fall into two audience categories. The ads that offer lists of properties will fall into Facebook’s Special Ads Category. This category is used for any ads that offer financial, employment, or housing opportunities, and is meant to keep compliance with Federal regulations, including Fair Housing laws. 

The major difference within the Special Ads Category is the reduced ability to target. For FHA compliance, many targeting parameters have been disabled or removed entirely. When advertising in this category you can still use “targeting lite”. Choose your location and open the target radius to 50 miles. Focus your targeting on the “interest include” option. 
Try targeting using interests like: Home, Homes.com, Trulia, Zillow, realtor.com, House, House Hunting, Mortgage loans, Single-family detached home, or Starter home.

Value Ads
If you’re running report based ads like we outlined last week, it’s not necessary to choose the Special Ads category. When using this type of ad you are not offering a housing opportunity, but rather, offering value to those who might be thinking about listing or buying property. This greatly increases your targeting options.*

For detailed targeting you should set the age range to eliminate students, set location parameters to reflect your ideal farming area, and exclude your competition by eliminating certain job titles, such as “broker”, “agent” or “Realtor”. You wouldn’t want to see the agent down the street knocking off your winning ad set, so make sure to eliminate them from your audience!

* Running any ad within the Real Estate space through Facebook’s Ad Manager is a very delicate process. For an older, established ad account, value ads will run just fine without choosing the Special Ads option, however, Facebook will likely flag any ad with the words home, house, property, mortgage, finance, etc. If you’re looking to avoid any headaches getting your ads approved, it is highly recommended that ads with real estate objectives are run within the special ads category, or by a professional who is familiar with special ads regulations.

Budget & Timeframe

With digital advertising, measure your ad spend using a cost-per-lead formula. <link to that same worksheet> Use this worksheet to determine the number of  leads you need monthly to achieve your yearly sales goals. With that number in mind, begin running your first campaign to find your cost-per-lead, or “CPL” in your area. With a well crafted ad and the right targeting expect to find lead costs between $2 & $9 per lead. If you are seeing costs above $10, turn off that garbage and adjust the copy, image, asset, or audience… or ask us and start working with a professional!

Testing is an advertisers best friend! When you find ads that work, don’t just set it and forget it. Best practices call for “refreshing” your ad set every 10 days or so. A refresh may be as simple as using the one button duplicate feature inside Ads Manager to create a copy of your winning ad, or making edits to an under-performing one. Either way, a refresh will reduce the frequency and keep the cost down.

BONUS: Organize For Success

One of the best things you can do for your business is to get yourself organized so you make the most of your time. When it comes to Facebook Ad Manager, we use a few tricks to help us stay organized like setting a naming convention.

I recommend using the following strategy: <objective>_<quarter>

As an example, a campaign name might be Lead Ads_Quarter1, and would then hold all of you lead generation ads for the quarter. This will keep your ads manager organized, and make your quarterly reporting easier.

At the ad set level consider a similar convention, using: <asset>_<creative> 

So it might look something like this: 7stepstosave_couplekeys

Above all, once you’ve set your naming convention, you need to BE CONSISTENT! It might sound simple, but small things like staying organized can make a huge difference in your business.

Closing

Your friends at The Agent Inner Circle are always here to help! If you have any questions on this or any other article, or need help setting up your ads, reach out to us @https://www.facebook.com/groups/inneragent/, an online resource for real-time discussion of the business strategies we provide each week. If you have any questions or topics you would like us to cover, leave a comment below, or in the group.