So you’ve set up your Facebook Ad account and want to get cracking but not sure what to do first?
In this post, I’m going to go over the three things Estate Agents should do before they get started building their Facebook ad Campaigns.
1. Install your Facebook pixel
First thing first! Get your Facebook pixel installed on your site. This is literally the most important thing for you to do, it’s so important that you should do it even if you are not thinking of running ads just yet!
What is a Facebook Pixel?
The Facebook pixel is a piece of code that you place on your website which allows you to track what people do on your site, pages they visit buttons they click, pretty much everything. Big Brother doesn’t have a patch on this bad boy ????
It also allows you to create audiences of highly relevant people that you can show ads to (AKA retargeting ads), and build audiences of similar people (lookalikes) amongst other things.
Once you’ve installed the pixel, you can use a Google Chrome extension called PixelHelper to see if it’s working or not, you can also test it using the Facebook Events Manager.
2. Build custom audiences
Now we’ve got the pixel setup it’s time to start building audiences and one of the best, with the lowest hanging fruit for Estate & Letting agents is a custom audience made from and existing customer file.
Another good one and the one many people start with is and audience of the people who have visited your website (website traffic). Hence the importance of getting the Facebook Pixel installed sooner rather than later.
To create a custom audience, head to the ads manager and click on audiences. When there, click on create audience.
On the drop down, select Custom Audience. That will bring this box up:
Customer file custom audience
Uploading your customer file to a Facebook custom audience allows you to import your customers emails, phone numbers and even address (anonymously), and then target those people with Facebook ads.
Facebook will scan information in your file and will try to match it to Facebook accounts with the same information. keep in mind that sometimes people don’t always register with the same information on Facebook as they might have given you so you wont get a 100% return.
Website traffic custom audience
This is where the pixel (as discussed above) starts to really flex it’s muscles. You can (and should) create an audience of all the people who visit your website or even narrow down to those who visit particular pages. You can then retarget these browsers with HYPER relevant content and increase the chances of them coming back. This is also the best way to keep you front of mind if they are in the decision making process!
3. Create custom conversions
This one is slightly more advanced but is a great asset in the long run.
Creating custom conversions allows you to track how much you’re paying to acquire a new leads, booked appointments, viewings or clients whatever you are measuring as a conversion.
For example, if we’re sending people to an automated valuation tool and want to track how much it’s costing us per instant valuation generated.
After creating a few custom conversions for your different lead magnets you will be able to see how how on average they are costing you rather than getting a generic “Cost Per Lead”.
So there they are…
The three main things I recommend all clients and students to do when starting Facebook ads.