Marketing Yourself with Facebook Flyers
In my post Marketing Real Estate on Facebook (and Other Social Networks) I shared 5 ways you could passively market yourself (or your listings) on the popular social networking site.
I say passively because, for the most part, they all depend on you waiting for people to come to your profile and finding you. Personally, I’ve never been very good at just sitting around and waiting for anything (just ask my wife).
So, if you’re looking to market a little more aggressively, Facebook recently added the ability for you to create flyers — which is accessible under the advertise link at the bottom of any Facebook page — that you can target very precisely across their network.
For demonstration purposes, I created a sample flyer (or ad) to promote this blog.
First I checked out Flyers Basic and a CPM (cost per impression) buy. As you can see, it’s pretty slick - you can target Gender and Age in any network and even drill down to specific geographic areas to geo-target your ad… sorry, flyer.
Just like a normal CPM buy, your flyer gets served up in the general inventory for each network you have targeted. The more impressions you purchase the more times it will get served up. In this case, I bought 10,000 flyers in four locations over seven days - meaning my ad will be seen in each city 2,500 a day for a week.
This is a very imprecise, but cheap form of advertising - and like any CPM ads, is probably best used to serve up a general branding campaign. You could advertise your brokerage, web site, even your local real estate blog, doing this for example.
Next I tried Flyers Pro which is a CPC (cost per click) buy. In this example I used the same ad, but Flyers Pro lets you be far more sophisticated in who you are reaching out to.
Once again you can target by Sex or Age - but now you can begin to filter your buy by people’s interests, even political views. In my case I wanted to reach people who had identified ‘Real Estate’ as being one of their core interests.
If you wanted to reach students you can filter by Education status, College, and even what Major they are studying (this is great if you’re recruiting college grads). On the other hand, if you’re trying to reach professionals, you can target exactly where they work.
Just like Google Ads, the CPC buy is determined by how much you are willing to spend per click. The more you bid for such precision targeting the higher the likelihood your ad will be shown to these individuals.
Flyers Pro ads could be incredibly valuable because of the absolute precision in which you can define the recipient of the ad. This could be incredibly powerful tool for marketing an individual property or new real estate development, for example. Personally, I’m blown away by the ability to target employees of local companies with messages - how cool is that?
I haven’t had time to test out the results of either of these campaigns so far, but a few others have begun experimenting with this it too. Check out Charlene Li’s Facebook Flyer test results and Rod Boothby’s traffic spike from his ad on Facebook for more.
Finally, if any of you try these approaches with your blog, brokerage or listings, please let me know your results. I’m curious to see what kind of effect Facebook can deliver.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
21 Comment(s)
12 Trackback(s)
- From Property Info Source » Blog Archive » Late breaking news | Oct 10, 2007
- From Your Real Estate Resource » Late breaking news | Oct 10, 2007
- From Marketing Yourself with Facebook Flyers | Future of Real Estate Marketing | Oct 11, 2007
- From blog.mattgoyer.com » links for 2007-10-11 | Oct 11, 2007
- From links for 2007-10-11 : Weblogs | Oct 11, 2007
- From The Week In Real Estate Blogging Reviewed | Future of Real Estate and Loans | Oct 12, 2007
- From HelpMyAgent.com » Blog Archive » 3 Online Communities That Will Give Your Real Estate Business a Boost! | Oct 12, 2007
- From agentgenius.com | Oct 14, 2007
- From Monetizing a Real Estate Social Network | Future of Real Estate Marketing | Oct 19, 2007
- From Facebook Flyers Like Google Adwords - Paid Insider Forum | Oct 23, 2007
- From It’s Not All Bad News These Days… | Future of Real Estate Marketing | Oct 30, 2007
- From Consistent Clients - Real Estate Marketing » Weekend Web 2.0 Wrap-up 5/31/08 | May 31, 2008
jason | Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
Great article - can’t wait to see some of the results.
Facebook could be a good marketing tool for agents because if you’re spending time on the site anyway, and you can add some subtle PR to your profile, etc… at least you can justify some of time there. The abilty to target such specific audiences with flyers is also a compelling feature.
Andrew | Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
I don’t think flyer’s is a new concept on FB. They have been around for a while.
Joel Burslem | Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
@Andrew - You’re right, the facebook flyers have been around for a while however the CPC Flyers (Pro) are new and so are some of the specific targeting functions.
John Schroeder | Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
This seems like a very cool feature. I am going to see how specific of an area that I can target. The more targeted the better. Local Real Estate Blogs like ours could really use this tool.
Drew Meyers | Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
I guess “Zillow.com” is not the same as “Zillow” — I haven’t seen your flyer in facebook yet (I have Zillow.com listed as my employer). Great post though - I had no idea the targeting capabilities.
Mike Parker | Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
I read Charlotte’s enthusiastic charaterization of 67 responses to her 2500 flyers as “a groundswell,” and was happy for the enthusiasm of the student.
Then, the curmudgeon in me did the math and recognized that most familiar of statistics: a generalized 2% response to targeted direct mail, even if it is the Facebook kind.
I just cannot bring myself to believe that Facebook, or any other social networking device, will outperform specified search engine targeted marketing over the long run. I guess that makes me a skeptic. If you build it, will they come? Or, is this just the latest “in thing?” Darned if I can tell, but I would be very interested in hearing from a few realtors who can document that they have sold even one property through Facebook.
With all the possible listing options today, whn one considers that 213 million searches are conducted daily, with Hitwise’s estimate that about 15% of them are real estate related (that means about 32 million real estate searches are conducted daily on search engines!), I have to wonder if all this fuss about multiples of 2500 flyers is really relevant to the overall marketplace. Sure, it’s new, it’s different, but is it effective?
We are all searching for “the next big thing.” I continue to believe that this type of marketing is clever, but disporportionately featured in the media. Google, MSN and Yahoo spend more money on search, and will continue to do so, than any of these portal sites, social or otherwise. My money is on the search engines remaining as the entry to real estate search for the forseeable futre, unless those companies have another idea.
In my opinion, the proprietors of Facebook are sreeking to create PERCEIVED value and sell out in MySpace redux fashion. That’s admkirable and impressive, but will it sell houses?
Matt Collinge - 604homesguy | Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
Great article Joel, I’ll be giving this a try.
Bart Wilson | Oct 12, 2007 | Reply
I am trying to understand where people continue to believe this stuff. 74% of all traffic for real estate today comes from Google. Last year, 10,000 brokers were surveyed and out of 6,040 responses, we learned that Google made up for the lion share of clicks, followed by Yahoo, MSN, then Zillow, then Homegain, then Realtor.com. Now facebook plans to topple Web 2.0? Who is buying this stuff? I’m a 45 year old real estate professional, national speaker on the subject of real estate marketing, publisher of two books on real estate marketing and in my humble opinion, Facebook is nothing more than another way to say: Kick me, take my identity. Just because we can do something stupid like marketing ourselves on Facebook doesn’t mean we should.
John Schroeder | Oct 12, 2007 | Reply
Put me in the I like marketing on Facebook Camp. The buy in is inexpensive, the targeting is fairly narrow, and the results could be great. I bought 7500 impressions for $15. If I get even 2% of these to click over to the site than that is 150 unique visitors to the site. Not bad for a $15 investment.
I do think that the more people who buy ads on Facebook that the less effective they may become.
#1 Kansas City Real Estate Guy | Oct 13, 2007 | Reply
I have tried it a few times and have generated 0 business. Has anyone eles tried?
Mike Parker | Oct 13, 2007 | Reply
Bart Wilson and I of am the same mind. I think all ths hype is designed to gain Facebook a higher sale price than You Tube. Rumor is, they are holding out for $2 billion.
Facebook may be a great kind of “super chat room” but I don’t think it is validated as a place to sell homes. That honor would go to the major search engines.
I also write regular columns in various e newsletters and real estate publications. I will be addressing this subject in my next column and will probably be immediately blasted by all the would-be IT gurus who forget that selling real estate is the issue here, not being hip or a techie guru.
882 million searches a day on the major search engines. 233 thousand on the “most popular real estate portal; Realtor.com.” (they claim) Why would anyone chase portals when the search engines are so obviously in possession of all the market share? BECAUS THEY WANT YOU AND THE POTENTIAL AD REVENUE YOU REPRESENT. Facebook has nothing to do with selling houses.
joseph ferrara.sellsius | Oct 13, 2007 | Reply
Great article because it shows another way to use the internet to spread your message. Effective? Here’s where I camp out with Bart Wilson & Mike Parker. Our research (although as deep as a puddle) is in line with theirs. (We have a post on this coming Monday). But having said that, I support slinging everything at the net wall to see if anything sticks– so long as the slinging is free or almost free.
Experimentation is a good thing.
Joe Dahleen | Oct 14, 2007 | Reply
Joel - thanks again. Very good insight into the tool.
I like the simple instructions - well worth the read.
Good Stuff Man.
Andrew | Dec 3, 2007 | Reply
Will check it out and let you know the results. If facebook can deliver specific traffic with more CPC options, we could steer more adwords dollars to facebook flyers.
Dave | Dec 7, 2007 | Reply
Scum.
Glenn Archway | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
I have nothing against online advertising. In fact, it helps me a lot these days. I have benefited from the magic of the Internet, especially these networking sites. It expanded my market, actually. However, I also get a fair share of bogus clients. So, it goes to say that it has no big difference with traditional advertising and listing. Right now, I am trying this new tool and I hope my competitors have not yet discovered like how RE agents flood blogsites. It’s advertising through SMS. Brokers and buyers can actually commuicate anywhere and anytime. Find out more at cellmyhouse.org
Jani | Jan 14, 2008 | Reply
I agree with Mike. We’ve been advertising on Facebook for a while now, and the conversion rates are very low. Nothing compared to search engines.
Erik Hansen | Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
I am on Facebook quite often, and currently spending $$ on Google and Yahoo PPC. Has anyone had success with generating business from facebook’s Flyer Pro CPC?
Overland Park Real Estate | Feb 28, 2008 | Reply
I have not used it but my initial reaction is that there are so many other means to create flyers and advertise listings online that I feel are tried a true to be effective.
Agent Stealth | Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
Great post Joel. Social networking is another facet of marketing that does have merit.
The power of facebook lies in the “News feed”, it is here where social influence plays a role. If somebody you know, or know of, has something that interests you in your News feed, that is where clicks are most likely to take place.
For those really serious about Facebook marketing, check out immediateedge.com - Ed Dale and Dan Raine I would say are the most knowledgeable people around on the matter.
Asia Luxury Property | Aug 23, 2008 | Reply
Great advice here. I’m really keen on social marketing as i feel that its a good way to gain internet exposure. Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Larry