If you’re a real estate agent who uses social media ads in hopes of creating engagement with your brand, you’ve probably wondered what it truly takes to yield significant, growth-inducing conversion rates.
Social media can be a bit of a mess for someone trying to become an authoritative voice — everyone has something to say, at the same time, and that creates an environment where information is shared by everyone but absorbed by no one.
Unlike a blog, where the audience is there to listen to you or discover what you have to offer, it takes a little more effort to get conversions via social media. And if you start listing on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook without garnering anything more than a few likes, it can quickly take the wind out of your sales.
The point is that listing your ads on social media isn’t as easy as it seems. That said, here are five ideas expert marketers use to get the best engagement out of their social media ad listings. Implementing these tips when putting up your listings can greatly improve your conversions.
1. Sensational visuals
Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but we’ve all become super bored of the same old, same old. If your listing pictures are too generic, you may find it hard to captivate your audience.
Take photos that stimulate the senses (i.e. evoke a specific sensation). I know you’ve seen one or two pictures that are so good they make you want to touch your screen. Those kinds of pictures will get you maximum conversions on your ads.
Here are some tips for creating this type of sensational visual:
- Take pictures at special times. For example, the hour before sunrise and the hour before sunset or a still life picture just before dinner.
- Make it real. Stop using unnecessary effects and visuals. People can tell the difference.
- Zoom in to emphasis attractive features.
- Crop pictures based on the site’s specifications. Each social media site has different image specifications. Images display better when they align with the specs.
Photo by Sasha • Stories on Unsplash
2. Target
Stop generalizing your ads. According to the Pareto Principle, only 20 percent of the people currently seeing your ads are likely to engage with them. Those are the people your ad appeals to.
Social media sites today feature tools that help you identify the ideal customer you want to target — the one who’d likely be interested in what you’re saying or selling. So before listing your ad, ask yourself this: Who’s most likely to respond to my offer?
Here are a few features you should be taking advantage of if you want to speak to your target audience directly:
- Facebook Audience Insights: It’s a great tool for targeting via age, location, net worth, interests and demographics. Facebook ads also implement pixels, which is a piece of code that tells Facebook to target prospects who already filled a form on your site or page.
- Lookalike Audience: This feature works after you’ve uploaded an email list. Facebook finds people similar to your leads and targets these high-quality prospects.
- Adwords: This feature also has powerful insights that allow you to create a Lookalike Audience based on people who have previously responded to your ads or email campaigns.
3. Be bold
Make bold statements and push boundaries, but make it personable. It’s OK to want to stay in the safe zone, but to attract people’s attention on social media, you’ll need to stand out.
Anyone selling knows that the most important part of prospecting is the opening statement. Creating intrigue sets you apart from the mass of people posting on social media. However, don’t be shady. Here are some tips on being bold without using deceit:
- Be in the moment — write what comes to mind about the property without editing.
- Focus on the most important benefit, and use words that elicit emotion in your titles and description.
- Show emphasis, but don’t use hyperbole.
4. Stop selling every time
People on social media are not looking to see your ads all the time. They want entertainment primarily, then something that can add value. Are you creating value? If you’re not sharing and creating valuable content, you might lose your following really fast. Here are a few tips for creating compelling social content:
- Use graphics. Everybody loves graphics.
- Taking short compelling videos that offer valuable information can help you grow your audience.
- Post content that is very valuable and highly related to what you’re selling.
- When creating graphics, use a limited palette of two to four complementary colors. Tools like Canva, Colorlovers and Pixabay make it easy to create great graphics in no time.
5. Retarget and recycle
We talked about targeting the right people. Seasoned marketers, however, go a step further — they use retargeting, also called remarketing, to reach out to leads.
Statistics show that only 2 percent of people who visit your website because of some traffic generation method you used will convert after a one-time visit.
Retargeting means you follow up with the remaining 98 percent by following them and getting your ads in front of them. This is usually done with cookies that track their website visits and display your ad to attract them back to you.
For instance, someone enters your website via a listing page and would like to know more about a property, so they fill out a form. Let’s say after a week they forgot about your offer and stopped visiting your website. While browsing Facebook, they see a video of you being promoted. They are compelled to click on it because they already engaged with you before.
Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash
A few things to remember:
- Retargeting is best done with a great ad campaign and smart content plan.
- You should have different content formats to effectively retarget and generate more conversions.
- You can use services like Google’s remarketing tool or ReTargeter to get your remarketing game on.
Recycling means that you consistently but strategically repost your ad or offer using a mix of content formats. This, just like retargeting, works on the familiarity principle. The more people see your ads, the more they are inclined to respond positively to your offer.
If you’ve not had any luck with advertising your listings on social media, it is time to get your feet back in the water. Start implementing these five tips. Start creating social media ads that convert big.
Agnes A. Gaddis is a New Brunswick, New Jersey-based writer and content strategist for Agnesagaddis.com. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
