How to Find Home Buyers on Facebook

Being part of a highly competitive market, property developers need to weigh up the benefits of each platform they can use to advertise their properties.

Keep reading to learn why Facebook is your ideal first touch point when it comes to finding home buyers.

Retargeting with Facebook Custom Audience

Your website is the best place for interested buyers to view your available properties. But honestly, not everyone who looks at your listings will contact you.

Even those who are genuinely interested get distracted and close their browsers without reaching out. If you want to stay on their minds, then retargeting on Facebook is the tool for you. To use this feature, you will need to create a Facebook Custom Audience.

This audience is a collection of people who have visited certain pages on your site. Once you create the audience, Facebook will provide you with an offset code, which needs to be embedded in the code of the page you want to track. If a person visits that page then clicks away, the code will download a cookie onto the visitor’s browser. When that user returns to Facebook, the cookie will deliver ads to the user based on the ad you’ve already created for that audience.

It’s possible to do this for as many pages as you’d like. You should create separate audiences and different ads for each page. Some will feature the display suite for the properties themselves. Others will invite the user to like your Facebook page or download an ebook.

This is a great way to chase after those lost website visitors and give them a second chance to remember your site!

Google Adwords versus Facebook Ads

For most property development marketers, the safe bet has mostly been Google AdWords.

Many rationalise that as most homebuyers turn to Google first when they start their search, then the best place to hit them is exactly where they’re going to start.

Since Google is comparable to most other pay-per-click (PPC) services and has a massive audience potential, it seemed like the best choice.

While that isn’t a bad strategy, the truth is that Facebook costs just about the same (usually less) than Google AdWords, and it offers far better targeting tactics.

With Google AdWords, you’re mostly bound by your keyword search. Unlike Facebook, Google doesn’t allow marketers to target searchers based on personal information. Facebook, where users frequently post updates on their relationships, jobs and other life events, allows marketers to use that information to better target accounts.

How to find real estate buyers online?

For example, let’s say you’re developing family homes near a good school. You probably don’t want to serve your ads to single people. Instead, you might target people who have either just gotten married or had a child recently. Newly married couples might not be ready for children just yet, but they might be ready to start creating that home now. Families who have just welcomed a new baby may feel that now is the time for more space.

For broader targets, Facebook advertising can be very inexpensive. If you’re not sure about your needs, use the Clicks to Website or Website Conversions. This is if you’ve already set up conversion tracking on Facebook.

Have some fun with the settings and create different target groups to get a feel for how much Facebook advertising will cost you.

You can compare your results on Facebook with Google’s Keyword Planner to see which platform will be more conducive to your needs.

Better Optimised Campaigns

The best thing about Facebook advertising for property developers is that it allows for so much more customisation and optimisation.

You don’t have to keep reusing the same ad strategies. You can create new ones every time and experiment until you find one that works really well with your audience.

To get the most out of your ads, follow these optimisation tips so you can better locate and target property buyers:

Keep mobile and desktop ads separate

You can better customise your calls-to-action (CTA) based on one device over the other.

Separate desktop newsfeed ads and right-column ads

The same ad won’t always work in both places, so it’s best to create two ads with catered text and images. However, it’s best to keep in mind that right-column ads do not appear on mobile.

Target by income, interests and behaviours

You don’t have to just target users by one of the three. Try out all three and see how they perform.

Use Lookalike Audiences

You can target customers that look similar to the customers already included on your current custom audiences. Target by either reach or similarity and see how far your ads can go.

Facebook offers more options for property developers to identify and target the most relevant audience. As a first touch point, Facebook gives property developers the opportunity to start nurturing leads and move onto other platforms such as REA Partner Platform.