One of the biggest questions my real estate clients have is the ad budget. The budget is key when it comes to the number of times your ad will be displayed in a 24 hour period.

Facebook displays the way you spend money on ads as a daily budget. You set the budget, and Facebook will spend an average of whatever that number may be. Some days when the algorithm identifies more opportunities to be seen, they will spend no more than 25% over your set budget. To average that out, on days with less opportunity, it will spend less to make sure to stay within your average.

When running conversion or lead form campaigns for realtors, I use $15/day as a rule of thumb. I strongly recommend this number as a minimum because once you dip below that number, you typically won’t have your ads seen by enough people to let the algorithm properly optimize your ad.

Since Facebook runs on auction-style bidding, the higher your budget, the more your ad will be displayed. Just like an actual auction, the more money you bid, the better your chances are of winning that item.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t get away with having a lower budget. Depending on your area and the local competition for ads, you could spend less and still get measurable results.

If you’re in a lesser populated area with fewer agents running ads, you may be able to get leads with a $10/day budget, though I STRONGLY recommend against dropping into the single digits.

If you’re in a big city with lots of competition for ad space, $15 needs to be your minimum and chances are you’ll need to raise it to compete.

It’s natural for everyone to want to spend the least and make the most, but investing in Facebook ad spend is one of the best things you can do as a real estate agent. You never know when a lead you spend less than $5 to acquire can turn into a sale and a sizable commission.

The only way to know is to start with a competitive budget and then test and find out!

​Are you ready to sit back and watch warm leads come your way? Let us know you're ready to get started.

Targeting is a very important aspect of running a successful Facebook Ad campaign. When we “target,” we are talking about our target audience, or who we want our ad to be seen by. If your targeting isn’t set correctly, you could be wasting a lot of your money.

When it comes to targeting on Facebook Ads, the sky is the limit. Facebook has endless amounts of data. Data that we users have voluntarily given them and data collected on our actions, which in the user agreements, we agreed to let them collect whether we read the fine print or not.

As a real estate agent hoping to utilize Facebook Ads, this data is gold.

The three main forms of targeting are by age, gender, and geographic location. You have the option to target anyone from age 18-65+, only men, only women, or both, and in any geographic range you choose, down to one specific address or worldwide.

From here, you can further target in “detailed targeting.” You can narrow it down to people who have certain group affiliations, likes on specific pages, job titles, interests...you name it.

But here’s the secret: As a realtor, you do not want to shrink your audience. Any detailed targeting will reduce your reach. You may think you want to target people who are part of real estate groups or frequent real estate pages, that means they’ll be more likely to opt-in to your ad.

This is not necessarily correct. I’ll play devil's advocate here: Are people with specific real estate interests more likely to have real estate connections or already be set in their real estate needs? I say there’s a good chance of that, therefore they may not care to click on your ad.

When it comes to a real estate ad, your goal needs to be being seen by as many people in the area as possible. So how do you ensure that?

It’s simple. Open Targeting.

All you need to do is target by age, gender, and geographic radius to your area or listing address. For example, target all men and women age 25-64 within a 10-mile radius of the listing. You need as broad a range of people to see your ad as possible and Facebook will best optimize to a wide audience.

Keep your targeting open and watch those WARM leads flood in!


Frustrated with your targeting or don't have time to handle your Facebook Ad campaigns? Find out how we can help relieve this headache and contact us today!

The Boost button. It stares you in the face after every post. The pop-up hits you every time after you hit submit, “Do you want to Boost this post now and reach thousands more people?”

Like many realtors looking to grow your online presence, you’re probably like “Yeah for a few bucks, why not have my post seen by a thousand more people?? That means so many more people will see me and want to call me up to work with them! Yay more clients!”

Here’s the skinny about the almighty Boost button: It probably isn’t doing for you what you think is or want it to do. I’m not here to bash the Boost button. It has its functionality and place in your Facebook marketing strategy, but in order for it to be of benefit to you, you need to optimize its use to fit your end goal.

Realtors and brokers usually have two goals when it comes to advertising on Facebook: Get more buyer/seller leads (that are WARM) and build their brand authority in the area. The key to the above sentence is “advertising.”

Let’s be clear: Boosting is NOT Facebook advertising. Boosting is taking an organic post and showing it to more people based on the amount you want to spend. While this may get you “seen” by a few more people, it does not give you the chance to collect any leads.

Boosting posts without any kind of supporting Facebook Ad campaign is akin to burning your money.

As we discussed in the previous post, Facebook advertising gives you the ability to actually collect information submitted by the user, aka WARM lead via the “conversion” or “lead generation” campaign type. Boosting does not offer this ability because it essentially is the “engagement” campaign type without you really knowing. Sure you might get some people interacting with your post, but no way to convert them into a lead.

This isn’t to say boosting is useless for a realtor. Boosting is a great way to supplement a solid Facebook ad campaign.

For example, let’s say you’re running a great listing ad campaign alongside a buyer leads ad campaign. If your budget allows, running a Boosted post that promotes a recently sold listing is a great way for people to see your recent successes while they’re also being served your current listing ads. It’s a superb way to help build your successful brand.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re Facebook advertising if you’re just Boosting your posts. Put your budget into the real deal; Facebook ads.

So go forth and utilize the Boost correctly!


Are you ready to start Facebook advertising for your agency but don't have the time or patience to do it right? Contact us today and we'll take of it for you!

Building a Facebook ad campaign is a strategic undertaking. In order to maximize your return (in the form of WARM leads) you MUST have the correct campaign objective selected.

There’s many options available. The most commonly used are engagement campaigns, traffic campaigns, lead generation campaigns and conversion campaigns. Choosing the wrong the campaign type can be a very costly mistake.

Engagement campaigns will get you more page views, but no opportunity to gain leads.

Traffic campaigns are designed more for blogging, where they drive traffic to your web page.

Lead generation and conversions will allow for the collection of submitted user information.

Facebook is very intuitive and complex. What Facebook does, unbeknownst to the lay user, is they group everyone into specific buckets based on your typical actions. Here’s the breakdown:

-People who click (on posts, links, ads etc.).
-People who opt in (click and submit information).
-People who never click but “like” everything.

The “likers” are going to mostly be shown Engagement ads.
The “clickers” are going to be mostly shown Traffic ads.
And those who are likely to opt in or download information from posts will go to conversions and lead generation campaigns.

So, as a real estate agent hoping to capture leads, which group of people would you like your ads to be seen by?

Opt-ins. Every. Single. Time.

When I run ads for my clients, I’m using lead generation campaigns and conversion campaigns. The difference being that lead gen campaigns keep the user on Facebook, while conversion campaigns will take them to an opt-in landing page outside of Facebook. The bonus is having two types of campaign objective buckets that we are able to run ads to and get even better results.

This is also how Facebook is able to keep the cost of advertising with them so low. They don’t blindly broadcast your ads to just anyone. They have a selected bucket of people who are tailored to act on your ads.

The name of the game in real estate is leads and building your network. There’s no better way to do that than through lead generation and conversion campaigns on Facebook.

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