Best Practices for Real Estate Facebook Campaigns by Sashi Mahavadhi, from Facebook (Meta)

The excerpts of the session can be heard in an insightful video on the ‘Best Practices for Real Estate Facebook Campaigns by Sashi Mahavadhi, from Facebook (Meta)’

7 Levers for Campaign Success:

Campaign Objective:

• It means the goal with which the campaign is being run
• It should be clearly defined according to the type of project that is being marketed
• Luxury campaigns should have niched objectives that focus on showcasing the project

Targeting:

• It means identifying the audience that is to be reached through the campaign
• The algorithm is designed to recognize sizeable target sizes
• Having narrow targets will delay the learning process of the algorithm, and negatively impact the campaign

Creative Format:

• Campaigns should ideally include a combination of vertical, horizontal and video creatives.
• Videos should align with the user trends, and be made mobile-first in a vertical alignment
• The timing of videos should be under 15 seconds to capture attention

Optimization:

• A campaign should optimize its outcomes before venturing into lead generation
• The project, its target audience and the pricing strategy behind it should be carefully understood

Bidding:

• The initial approach should be to opt for the lowest-cost bidding
• It is essential to understand the price that consumers are willing to pay per lead
• Once this happens, a different budget mechanism can be chosen

Measurement:

• Campaign success is driven by an understanding of the behavior of leads online
• Measurement is easier with digital channels in comparison with any others
• The average cycle to close a lead lasts 45-60 days, which must be reconciled with campaign statistics while measuring its success

Placement:

• It is preferrable to opt for the auto-placements, and let the system make the decision for you
• A few weeks into the campaign, placement sets which are not suitable can be negated
• This is not recommended at the starting stage because there are no available insights into how the audience functions

Learning Phase Best Practices

Avoid Frequent Edits:

• The Learning Phase is extended for most campaigns because of frequent changes being made
• These constant changes prevent the algorithm from stabilizing

Edits that Will Cause an Ad to Re-enter the Learning Phase:

• Changes that make a campaign go from active state to learning phase can be quantified in some aspects
• Parameters like budget, bid amount etc. can be changed within a margin of 20%
• If more drastic changes are frequently made, the campaign gets pushed back to the learning phase
• This transition impacts all subsequent metrics

Avoid Having Too Many Ad Sets:

• Having too many ad sets at once will cause each ad set to deliver less often
• Fewer ad sets hence exit the learning phase to enter the desired active state
• This leads to more budget being spent before the delivery system has fully optimized performance

Avoid Low Conversion Volume and Constrained Setups:

• Test new creative and marketing strategies to improve your performance over time

Increase Budget Liquidity:

• Calculate daily budget based on 50 conversion/week threshold and use campaign budget optimization

Bidding Properly:

• Choose the right bid strategy based on your goals and cost requirements.
• When possible, assign a value to your audience and bid according to LTV
• If using a bid cap, make sure your cap is high enough
• It is recommended to set the cap higher than what the goal is

Targeting Best Practices

Classifying the Project:

• The ideal targeting method should be aligned with the type of project
• For affordable projects, there are more takers and hence leads can be generated even with broad targeting
• For premium projects, it is recommended to start with custom-made and look-alike audiences as the target

Custom Audience:

• The target audience can be customized based on prior data and statistics
• While building custom audience, the time and frequency of reaching the audience is crucial
• For accurate targeting, it is a must to have a strong seed audience
• Seed audience refers to the existing set of users of a business, identified from past projects and consumer behavior
• For splitting audience, if broad targeting is opted, it should be left to the Meta algorithm
• If focused targeting is opted, the seed audience is crucial

Special Ad Audiences:

• Size of the audience should no less than 5,000, and no larger than 50,000
• It can be varied within 1-5%

Tips:

• Increase retargeting windows. Ensure retargeting increments align with site traffic volume
• Bucket special ad audiences into larger groups (i.e.,0-1%, 1-2%, 3-5%, 5-10%)
• Group together interest and behavior targets with high overlap
• Minimize audience overlap by using proper audience exclusions
• You have the option to auto refresh your custom audience so it’s not manual work

Creatives - Best Practives

Best Practices for Videos:

• The conventional practice of detailed videos which last 40+ seconds, is not advised
• The ideal video content should be under 15 seconds
• The brand should come forth within the first three seconds of the video
• It should focus on showing only one aspect of the project at a time
• This engages the audience more and differentiates the content from other, cluttered videos
• Videos should be optimized to be understandable even without sound
• They should be in vertical format suitable for mobile

Diversify Formats:

• Creatives should not be one, standard format
• New and advanced technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) can enhance marketing efforts

Single Focal Point:

• Ensure that you’re only asking people to look at one thing
• If you already have assets, consider cropping them so the focus of the image is framed nicely

Highlight Your Service:

• The value proposition should be clearly displayed through the creatives

Inspire Action:

• Use the copy or call-to-action button to motivate the audience that is seeing your campaign to act
• What is needed and expected from the audience should be communicated

Take Up Real Estate:

• When thinking about creatives, take up as much space as possible
• Recommended formats are 1:1, 4:6, and 9:16 for stories

Creatives - Empirical Learnings

Broad Classification of the Types of Creatives for Real Estate:

1. Lifestyle
2. Amenities (such as Pool, Interiors, Lobby etc.)
3. Offers
4. Stages of Construction

Real Estate-Specific Observations:

• 6 second timing works the best, and gives 4X CTR compared to Image Ads
• Banner Ads have 1.5X times the CTR of Carousal Ads
• Balcony View has a 10% higher CTR than Living Room
• Signature sign for every creative is a must, as branding plays a big role in Real Estate buying