Little Known Ways to Hack Advertising For a Realtor

Frankly…most people don’t know how to advertise their real estate properties.

However, the good news is that building an advertisement strategy for a realtor isn’t impossible.

And one nice thing about a really solid advertising strategy for a realtor is that it attracts clients and deals that can help your business.

But it just requires new information and a different approach than before. So in this blog post, we’ll discuss a step-by-step strategy you can use to promote your real estate business in 2024.

It's the greatest asset you will ever own.

So, let’s get down to business.

What is a Real Estate Advertising Strategy and How Do You Use it?

A real estate advertising strategy is a long-term marketing strategy that informs the process of advertising materials for achieving your company’s goals of:

• Generating buyer leads
• Seller leads, or
• Selling a house for the highest value.
  

More often than not, the process of acquiring one involves understanding:

• Your target customer's needs and expectations
• Competition and market opportunities.  
  

The goal of creating an online advertising strategy is to draw inspiration, capture leads, collect information on your competitors, and identify your bigger picture.

This is very important because, at the end of the day, you’re one of the millions of realtors in the market, so to stand out, you need a unique selling or value proposition (USP/UVP).

So then, once you have that information, the next thing is to advertise listings—which is simply paying money to:

• Show your message in a particular way
• At a particular time
• In a particular channel
• For a particular audience, and
• For the purpose of selling your property.
  

This is your general approach to how you are going to communicate with your audience and which marketing activities you will use to achieve your goals.

Which then becomes your personal brand’s voice and image.

Sounds cool, right?

We’re not there yet, creating a real estate advertising strategy is very technical, analytical, and complex.

That’s because putting together an advertising strategy in the real estate video marketing, is not a one-time activity, it requires time, honesty, new information, and experience.

In the next section, we’ll help you think about the people you want to attract, where they spend their time, and how you can most effectively reach them.

6 Steps to Create a Successful Real Estate Advertising Strategy

The process of drawing an advertising strategy has been so compelling that Legiit built a dedicated tool, Legiit GMSD dashboard, to help businesses rise in the development of one…among other marketing objectives.

It just takes a couple of minutes to get the results…here is another guide on how to use the Legiit GMSD dashboard.

For example, here are the results we got from the analysis we performed…

And with that, let’s look at how easily you can come up with your advertising strategy using the business analysis feature on the Legiit GMSD dashboard.

#1. Determine Your Audience

This is the first, and perhaps the most important, part of the process that informs how you will sell your properties or those of your prospective clients.

Your audience is the group of people you want to attract. In this case, they should be people (from any walks of life of interest real value to you) who are interested in purchasing real estate properties.

Examples of people who might be interested in real estate properties include:

• First-time home buyers
• Upsizing families
• Downsizing retirees
• Relocating professionals
  

Just to name a few...

You can start by looking at your past deals and demographics in your target area.

The best way to do this is by narrowing down your search to a specific location(s). For instance, according to an article published in CNBC in JUL 2023, here are 10 states that are America’s strongest housing markets, offering buyers the best value:

• Alabama
• Wisconsin
• Ohio
• New Jersey
• Indiana
• Georgia
• North Carolina
• Maine
• South Carolina
• Florida
  

That’s not to say those are the only states where you can sell real estate properties, but to give you a hint if you need somewhere to start from.

The second approach is figuring out if you want to:  

• Target first-time homebuyers
• Other real estate agents, or
• Homeowners selling their homes
  

Being specific is super important because, when you eventually start to run your advertisement, you can adjust your communication and distribution. That’s because it’s better to target your audience separately than shoot in darkness.

If you’re using the business analysis in the Legiit GMSD dashboard, you get this done pretty quickly.

Check on the Avatar Analysis…

This information should possibly help you answer the following questions:

• Where does this audience spend the most time? (Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, Tiktok etc.)
• Where and what do they search for when they need help?
• What are their pain points?
• What grabs their attention?

For instance, if you have all this information about your potential customers, you can easily put together digital resources like:

• A website with answers to their questions before they even ask them
• Choose the most adequate social media channels or other, more traditional ways of communicating your services.

Awesome…next.

#2. Determine the Goal of Your Real Estate Ad Campaign

This part is particularly important for you to get it right because the wrong goals will always lead to poor results, and that’s not your desire.

In the best real estate ads, your advertisement should ultimately lead to two things:

• Growing your business, and
• Increasing your income.  
  

That’s why your advertisement campaign should be able to:

• Boost your brand awareness
• Generate high-ticket leads
• Introduce your already existing services in other markets
• Get you more listing opportunities
  

So then, if you’re new in business, you should choose to go with an advertisement strategy that would make you popular in the industry, after that, you can now aim at closing more leads yourself.

Remember, it is also important to track results, measure them, and make adjustments. That’s why it is important to go with a goal that you can manage when it comes to implementation.

Perhaps this information on the legiit dashboard should be helpful in this section.

You need to use what your customers want to set your goals. I.e if their nightmare is to own a home in 6 months, you can give them offers that are quick to manage for them.

Next.

#3. Develop Your Real Estate Ads Marketing Funnel

Everyone is on a journey—including your ideal customers.

They have a problem that they want to solve, so they may start by doing a Google search, assuming they find you (more on this later), then decide if they want to buy, and so on.

That journey is what we call a “marketing funnel” which is basically a strategic framework used by realtors to guide potential clients through the stages of the buying or selling process.

You need to have good customer relationship management because it is what will help you generate leads, nurture them, and convert potential buyers into customers effectively.

Here is an example of what it should include:

#1. Awareness

At the top of the funnel, the goal is to attract the attention of potential clients who may be interested in buying, selling, or renting properties.

#2. Interest

Once individuals become aware of your real estate services, the next stage is to generate interest and engage them further.

#3. Consideration

In this stage, leads are evaluating their options and considering whether to move forward with your services or not.  

#4. Intent

At this point, leads are showing a clear intent to buy, sell, or rent a property. They may request property viewings, submit inquiries, or engage in negotiations.  

#5. Decision

The final stage of the funnel involves converting leads into clients. This may include signing contracts, completing sales agreements, or finalizing rental agreements.

This whole information is to say that once you get people interested, you should have a plan to follow up with every lead or customer from your ad campaigns.

The best way to do this is to create a lead magnet and place it on your advertisement, then create a funnel with just a landing page and an email sequence, and allow your funnel to work from there.

Awesome. Next.

4. Decide Which Real Estate Advertising Method to Use

There are tons of advertising options to use in the real estate ad examples which makes it difficult and confusing on which one to choose.

However, the strategy you use will depend on the specific problem at hand (discussed in numbers 1 and 2 above).

If you’re targeting home sellers, it will be a different strategy than when targeting home buyers. This is true if you’re targeting middle-class citizens or any other level that you may determine.

At first, it is always a good idea to take some time to research and test a few different methods (like digital media and even print ads)—using A/B testing where you try different segments of your products and so on.

Lastly, if you’re in business and your current strategy is generating some quality leads, you can improve it rather than overhaul the whole process.

Later in this article, we’ll share some of the tips that we’ve seen work that you can tap into.

#5. Create Multiple Versions of Your Ad

The next step after selecting the option above is to create different options or variants, test them against each other at the same time, and run them in the market.

In marketing, we call this strategy A/B Testing.

The goal here is to:

• Understand which variant is performing best
• Continue testing new variants of the best-performing variant
• Gather more data, pause the poorly performing variants, and repeat.

A typical advertisement should contain the following best practices for creating effective ads:

(a). Ad copy

• Use clear and concise language that resonates with your target audience.
• Highlight the benefits of the property and address potential buyer concerns.
• Consider using a storytelling approach to connect emotionally with viewers.

(b). Visuals

• Choose high-quality images or videos that showcase the property's best features.
• Stage the space to create an inviting and aspirational atmosphere.
• Use visuals that are relevant to your target audience's interests.
  

(c). Call to action (CTA)

• Make it clear and easy for viewers to take the next step, whether it's contacting you, scheduling a showing, or downloading a resource like a lead magnet.
• Use strong verbs and action-oriented language in your CTA.
• Place your CTA prominently in your ad.
  

Consumers have one thing in common, they have a love-hate relationship with digital advertising.   On the one hand, they want to learn about new products and services.

On the other, they resent being bombarded and followed by ads that feel irrelevant, intrusive, or downright creepy.

So how can you ensure your ads are welcomed rather than resented by local community? One solution is to:

(i). Understand their pain points

• Lack of knowledge about the home buying process.
• Concerns about affording a down payment and mortgage.
• Fear of making a mistake.

(ii). Address their concerns directly

• Use educational and informative language.
• Offer resources and tools to help them get started.
• Partner with lenders or financial advisors to provide expert advice.

(iii). Offer value propositions

• Free consultations or home valuations.
• Downloadable guides or checklists.
• Educational workshops or webinars.
  

(iii). Create urgency

• Use limited-time offers or deadlines.
• Highlight high-demand properties.
• Offer discounts or rebates.
• Enter visitors into a contest or giveaway.
• Provide personalized recommendations or reports.
  

If you’re planning to do this, I encourage you to find a qualified person to help you.

However, when using the Legiit dashboard, some of the recommendations you get include an expert who can help you at every stage of your campaign (more on this later).

#6. Publish and Manage Your Ad Campaign

Last but not least, is to get things underway. There are various media options that we will explore later in this article, but for now, you have achieved your first step to success.

In this step, you need to measure the cost per desired result like conversions which can be further discussed as:

• Interested leads
• Bookings
• Customers, and so on.

That’s a wrap. If you get success with one approach, the next step is to try a few more options and repeat what works as you scale your business.

Let’s now shift our focus and look at different advertisement options that you can depend on in real estate ads.

Best Digital Real Estate Business Advertising Methods

Let’s take a look at some of the top online real estate advertisement options that you can use today, after reading this effective real estate ads guide.

1. Real Estate Facebook and Instagram Ads

Facebook and Instagram which are also known as Meta are by far some of the best online advertisement options that are almost free.

More and more people are already using Facebook to find and buy from brands and stores—which makes it a no-brainer to create a Facebook Shop or run real estate ads for your products as well.

Here is something even more intriguing:

• On Facebook, 70% of users visit local business pages at least once a week. These local business pages could be your real estate business.
• Facebook Shops have more than 1 million monthly global users
• 19% of US shoppers start their search on Facebook
• Marketers can reach a total potential audience of 2.249 billion users through Facebook ads – as of April 2023.
• Facebook Reels has a potential advertising audience of 697.1 million users

Mind-blowing, right?

Away from that, setting up your Facebook real estate ads requires you to invest time and some finances.

The first step to doing this is you need to have your own real estate ad funnel (that we mentioned above) and a website. This is what is going to allow you to convert traffic from Facebook into a lead and eventually a customer.

Here are the steps involved in running a Facebook real estate ad:

• Choose your audience and target location
• Select your ad placement (Facebook newsfeed, Facebook Marketplace, Messenger, Facebook right column, or Instagram)
• Set your budget
• Choose your ad format (image, video, carousel, instant experience, or, collection, lead form)
  

Just as we mentioned in step 5 above, you need to set up multiple versions of your ad and then study it to establish the one with maximum success.

2. LinkedIn Ads

Now here is the deal…Business-oriented individuals on LinkedIn influence a high number of users—which makes it the right place to run your real estate ads.

Think about them…CEOs, co-founders, marketing managers, and so on…these are people who could easily be interested in real estate properties.

In this platform, the most efficient mode of advertising on LinkedIn is sponsored posts.

Consequently, a Single LinkedIn real estate Ad Reaches 14.6% of the Global Population—meaning ads placed here can do so much in audience reach.

Additionally, most LinkedIn users, specifically 4 out of 5, hold decision-making roles which means running real estate ads on LinkedIn gets your business in front of people who make decisions and are more affluent within the target area.

Here is how to create your LinkedIn real estate ad:

#1. Create Your LinkedIn Page

Having a LinkedIn Page is essential for running Sponsored Content and Sponsored Messaging campaigns.

#2. Objective Selection

This is the initial step in objective-based advertising on LinkedIn. The objectives span from top-of-funnel awareness campaigns to lower-funnel conversion campaigns.

By choosing your target objective, LinkedIn customizes and streamlines your campaign creation process based on your goals.

#3. Ad Format Overview

LinkedIn offers multiple real estate ad formats, including

• Sponsored Content, Sponsored Messaging, and Text Ads. Sponsored Content appears natively in the LinkedIn feed across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. It includes Single-Image Ads, Carousel Ads, and Video Ads.
• Sponsored Messaging delivers personalized messages directly to targeted LinkedIn users, enhancing conversion rates. It offers Message Ads and Conversation Ads.
• Text Ads are pay-per-click or cost-per-impression ads displayed on LinkedIn desktop. They feature a simple headline, description, and small image.
  

#4. Create your Campaign Manager account

Campaign Manager is the all-in-one advertising platform on LinkedIn. It allows you to set up ad accounts, run campaigns, and control your budget as soon as you sign in.

Here is a summary of what you need to know.

3. Search Engine Advertising: Pay-Per-Click Ads

Let’s use Google as the search engine example in this case. Google boasts 5.9 million searches per minute which is roughly 8.5 billion searches per day. Or 3.1 trillion searches per year.

Advertising on search engines like Google means that your ads will appear in searches for your target keywords in real estate.

Examples of such keywords for real estate agents include:

• Homes for sale
• Real estate agents
• Rental properties
• Property listings
• Home valuation
  

To make it effective, remember your target audience will most likely perform a location-specific search, so customize your keywords for such.

Statistics reveal that over 63% of people have clicked on Google Ads, making it a powerful tool to increase sales and reach more audiences.

There are two types of search engine ads:  

• Text ads that show up in search results for specific keywords.
• Display ads
  

Search engine advertising operates using an auction-based system, in which advertisers bid on keywords relevant to real estate.

Here is how you can create a Google ad:

• In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon.
• Click the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu.
• Click Campaigns.
• Click the plus button, then select New campaign.
• Select one or more goals for your campaign.
• Select Search as your campaign type.
• Select any results you want to get from the campaign.
  

As a realtor, the benefits here are immense.

4. YouTube Ads

According to Simplilearn, after viewing a brand on YouTube, 84% of viewers made a purchase.

Additionally, Think With Google suggests that Paid YouTube mobile advertising is 84% more likely to receive viewers' attention than TV advertising.

All these statistics make using YouTube ads by realtors to promote their real estate properties a no-brainer.

We found this resource effective when creating YouTube ads.

The list above is by no means conclusive, several other digital and social media platforms allow users to run ads, but in our assessment the options above are effective real estate ads.

Here are others:

• TikTok
• X (formerly Twitter)
• Amazon eCommerce Platform
• Pinterest
  

Let’s move to some traditional options of real estate ads that still work.

Traditional Real Estate Advertising Methods That Still Work

1. Signs and Billboards

Statista records that of the USD 297 billion spent in North America in 2021, a mere $7 billion is due to billboards.

Further surveys indicate that nearly 79% of the consumers polled believe that signage reflects the quality of a business and the product or service offered.

Therefore, paying for outdoor real estate ads signs is still a highly effective method of building brand awareness and generating new leads.

The only limitation with this real estate ad examples like the other traditional ways is that the results can not be easily measured.

This real estate advertising tactic is especially effective if you want to create awareness about your brand or real estate products.  

2. Using Television Ads

Unlike other channels, single TV real estate ads will end up reaching a larger audience. And since consumers usually trust television more than other media, the investment is justified.

Additionally, Television ads lead to higher performance, while also building confidence in your real estate agent advertising and brand recognition through massive awareness.

Advertising on Real Estate Portals Like Realtor.com

Realtor.com is a real estate website or real estate listings website with over 100 million monthly active users and real estate professionals in the United States, making it an incredible place to place your real estate ads.

This gives you opportunities to generate leads, promote listings, and generate buyer leads from a real estate market.

Another best real estate ad is using lead generation companies that are offering rank and rent services.

This is basically where someone ranks a website for real estate keywords, makes sure it has enough traffic for potential buyers of real estate properties, and then rents it out to a realtor to take advantage of the traffic.

That’s a wrap on some of the best real estate ads that work for realtors. In the next section, we’ll share real estate advertisement tips that you can follow to achieve success with Facebook real estate ads.

Advertising Tips For Real Estate Agents

Let’s take a look:

• Trust in your real estate business is often built through references. Therefore, partner up with other real estate professionals to start a referral network where everybody involved wins.
• Include a “client testimonials” section when sending out your ads.
• Before targeting a new area, try to understand the market and learn about your competitors and market opportunities
• Write in a regular column for your local newspaper to establish yourself as an industry leader in real estate and your target location.
• There is no evil in asking for referrals, especially from past customers.
• Start a real estate blog on your website to have a stronger chance of showing up on search engine results pages through SEO.
• Offer free home valuations
• Be a guest on an industry-specific podcast.
  

That’s the end of this guide. We hope that you have gained valuable insights that can shape your career in real estate.

For sure, advertising is a great way to give professional image of your real estate business a boost and a leg up the competition.

To make things even easier for you, consider using the Legiit GMSD dashboard and Legiit marketplace to find talents that can help you run your business on autopilot.

As always, if you’re not sure where to start, message the Legiit support for further guidance to expedite the process.

All the best!