Why you have to “Pay to Play” on Facebook

Any reputable digital marketer will tell you that if you’re serious about your Facebook real estate marketing, you need to pay to play. The days of being able to promote your real estate business successfully for free on Facebook have well and truly passed.

Facebook real estate is in short supply

If you think of spaces in the Facebook News Feed as real estate, it’s easy to see that there is intense competition for a very limited amount of space. 55 million status updates are made every day[i]. Therefore, the more connections you have, the less room you have in your News Feed for everyone’s posts to be visible.

Facebook prioritises posts it thinks you will most likely to want to see. There just isn’t enough space for everyone’s content to be shown, so posts from your friends and family are given priority over content from the brand pages you follow.

Organic reach for page content has dropped dramatically

These days unless you pay for an ad or a boosted post your content is unlikely to be seen by many. In fact, only 1-6 % of the people who like your page will see your organic posts[ii]

Organic posts are a great way to make sure your business page stays fresh, but other than that, it’s a bit like yelling in an empty room.

Why Facebook paid advertising makes sense

Facebook advertising is relatively cheap compared to most other forms of advertising, including advertising on the portals (realestate.com.au; domain.com; trademe.co.nz, etc), and print advertising.

Facebook ads offer some of the most highly effective means of targeting online. Agents can target their ideal buyer or seller using the details we all provide Facebook with as users through our personal profile, which includes demographics, locations, behaviours, interests, life-events and connections. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook’s Custom and Lookalike audience options get so stalker-level detailed it becomes a data landmine.

Facebook advertising allows you to efficiently find the people you want and place your brand right in front of their eyes seamlessly, as they scroll their feeds. It is no surprise therefore that the best real estate agents are using Facebook advertising to reach more clients. It adds a further dimension to the property marketing mix, reaching out to a huge local pool of potential buyer and sellers.

It’s time to start taking advantage of this advanced marketing method that is allowing agents worldwide to thrive.

For more information on how, talk to us at ListingLogic.

[i] Omnicore:  Facebook by the Numbers: Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts Sep 4, 2019

[ii] Mari Smith:  Social Media Marketing World 2019 (SMMW19)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *