Social Media Advertising
I’m working with a firm that is exploring their options for advertising. They’ve been around for awhile and generally have been successful based on reputation and networking. With the current restrictions on in person contact the idea has been floated of putting some money in to social media advertising. Have any of developed any successful strategies for doing this in the commercial real estate sector that you would be willing to share?
[{"id": "fzva5qo", "text": "Following", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fzvc61i", "text": "What type of firm, customers, and goals?\n\nMy tip is to hire an actual marketing firm.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fzvih8k", "text": "I made the transition from a successful residential career to the cre world about 2-3 years ago.  I am mid thirties and the average age of my office is probably 65-70. I knew the power of social media from my residential business and I knew if I did it well it would be easy to set myself apart from the older crowd in my industry. While Bobs over there complaining his client doesn\u2019t have a fax machine I am proving my value to future clients by showing if I can do things to get their attention that others in the industry are not, I can do the same with their properties.  \n\nThere is no secret tool but I would say in my experience video has been key and utilizing all platforms not just one.  I would estimate 50% of my client acquisition has been from these efforts and 75% of my closed properties happened with social media playing a significant role.", "replies": [{"id": "fzvk3g7", "text": "You a big LinkedIn video guy? I imagine LinkedIn and Instagram are the only two that would be relevant for commercial.", "replies": [{"id": "fzvox1u", "text": "Funny enough out of Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn... LinkedIn has produced the smallest number of serious connections that lead to profit.  I honestly thought going into it that was the obvious winner and I should put most of my focus on it but I have had the most amount of results from Instagram, with FB in second with a disclaimer on FB relying heavily on paid targeted marketing.  Just had a closing two weeks ago, $1.2m, been listed the same price for three years prior with three different brokers.  Owner said he averaged about one showing every other month with the other brokers.  The first three months we had a showing a week, probably 90% generated from my social media ads.  We were under contract at $1.15 in three months and closed in 90 days during covid.  Buyer found it from a paid FB video.  LinkedIn unfortunately I have found produces probably 40-50 people soliciting something for every one valuable conversation.", "replies": [{"id": "fzvx4my", "text": "Would you be willing to share any of your targeting methodology?", "replies": [{"id": "fzwbrbx", "text": "\\^\\^ same.. Not in the CRE space myself, but as a digital marketer I'm always curious how people seeing success are targeting others on social.", "replies": [], "depth": 5}], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}, {"id": "fzvwysz", "text": "Thanks, this is the kind of insight that I was looking for. Similar situation here, mostly older brokers but the owner is intrigued with the idea of social media. If he does it he will hire someone to actually do it but is looking for input on what platform(s) to use, what the ROI might be, etc. I think that he doesn\u2019t want to look completely uninformed when hiring a person or agency", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "fzwwf17", "text": "What product type?", "replies": [{"id": "fzy4oua", "text": "Industrial.  This was a warehouse and office.", "replies": [{"id": "fzychb0", "text": "How do you advertise an industrial product on instagram? Maybe I'm missing something but I feel you would need a pretty targeted add campaign to be successful.", "replies": [{"id": "g005v8f", "text": "The reason Instagram has been so powerful is because of the keywording.  I have found a ton of users, investors, and brokers follow a lot of hashtags for their asset types.  So for instance this property I hash tagged every post with a combination of words I thought someone trying to see that type of posts would be looking at and general CRE terms.  In my experience that is where Instagram leads the way by allowing you to target your audience for free.  Also I have found that when you keyword the words with the most follows may not produce the best results, sometimes its the more specific niche words that have a lower follower base but in the end result in the most amount of likes and connections.  FB has only proven to work with their paid targetted marketing and video is key.  Still imagery has produced little to know results while video has been incredible for these paid campaigns.  Again I simply experiment with my targeting on the campaign.  I generally do $25-50 on a campaign and no more so I can see what the result it and then tweak the next campaign.", "replies": [{"id": "g07m47h", "text": "Oh okay so you're not even doing the paid instagram ads you're just posting with specific tags.  Interesting.", "replies": [{"id": "g08dut2", "text": "Doing paid as well as my targeted marketing is coupled with my Facebook ads.  But Instagram has had the biggest result with free marketing.", "replies": [], "depth": 7}], "depth": 6}], "depth": 5}], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fzvimh5", "text": "You may want to better define what your desires are. There are companies who specialize in social media retargeting. Others that specialize in more general on line advertising that includes non-social media retargeting (wsj.com etc).\n\nFood for thought.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fzwqm16", "text": "Is it paid social media you are interested in? Facebook has some different ad types that could work depending on your campaign goals. For instance, the \u201cLeads\u201d ad format incorporates a contact form that auto populates with the user\u2019s info. Custom fields can capture additional info they can submit, such as a checkbox of when they intend to purchase, or if they have approved financing, or need it. Leads captured are emailed to the admin.\n\nhttps://www.facebook.com/business/ads/lead-ads\n\nSome ad platforms charge more for video, but one advantage of Facebook is that video doesn\u2019t cost anymore. Video ads often outperform ads with static images, especially if you format it for mobile (meaning the video is square or vertical and doesn\u2019t require the user to turn their phone to enlarge it).\n\nThe carousel ad format allows you to showcase multiple listings or various images related to a property.\n\nPlacing a retargeting pixel on your website allows you to target those users on Facebook (if they have a FB or Instagram account)\n\nhttps://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-ads-pixel\n\nAnother thing to look at is a \u201clook-alike\u201d or custom audience. This is where you have an ideal audience, such as an email opt-in list. You upload this data to the platform and it identifies users that are similar to this audience. Such as similar interests, careers, age, family status.\n\nhttps://www.facebook.com/business/help/465262276878947\n\nI am a real estate investor, but most of my career has been in marketing. I had a real estate client that ran a Geofencing campaign to get leads from potential home buyers. The way geofencing works is location data is captured from location beacons (like in stores) as well as GPS data from mobile devices. This data can be used alongside additional online behavioral data (apps used, types content read or viewed) to build a targeted audience. The ad platform then uses ad exchanges to try and bid to place your ad in front of these users when they are using a site or app where an ad placement is open for RTB or real time bidding (this all happens in a fraction of a second as the content is loading) My client\u2019s strategy was to geofence apartment complexes in certain areas of town. They also filtered out those users that fit their target demo (young couples with newborns).\n\nBecause these ads are served to mobile users, oftentimes there are certain features you can take advantage of, such as allowing a \u201cclick to call\u201d function that can be tracked on analytics, or showing the users approximate distance to a landmark (like a property for sale).\n\nI think they did ok with leads. Of course, nothing beats real word-of-mouth referrals. \n\nYou won\u2019t be able to do Geofencing on your own. You will have to contact and agency or marketing company that has access to a platform.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "gg8mjfl", "text": "Social media targeting, or social media advertising, are the advertisements that are served to the users on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc, in the form of video ads, image ads, slideshow ads, and many more. In many cases, when the target market aligns with user demographics of any social platform, it can provide a huge increase in sales and conversions with a low cost of acquisition. Thus, to achieve this, you need to follow the specific [Facebook video ad format](https://poweradspy.com/facebook-video-ad-dimensions-guidelines/#utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=reddit&amp;utm_campaign=subhadarshini), image ad format and need to create more appealing content that ultimately reaches your audience's interest.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]