This article was first featured on KnockCRM.com.
When developing a Facebook ad campaign, it’s helpful to place your target audience into three stages; those that aren’t yet aware of your property, those that are considering your property along with competitor properties, and those that are ready to make the decision to apply for a lease — or convert. Using Facebook’s Ad Objectives, property management companies can interact with prospective residents at every step of their journey, from awareness to consideration to conversion.
Below, SOCi's property management experts reveal how to use different ad objectives to reach prospective renters, building a database of leads to add to a CRM system.
Awareness Stage
Ads created for the awareness stage can be used to get the word out about your new lease-ups or general awareness. At this stage, renters don’t know about your community, so they need to be made aware of all that you have to offer. Awareness ads can also be used to gain top-of-mind awareness with renters during busy leasing seasons, or when you have exclusive deals running.
Brand Awareness and Reach Objectives
When creating ad content for Brand Awareness and Reach ads, social media best practices dictate that you should tell a simple story about your property. An image of the property, a logo, and a quick pitch about the community is sufficient. Remember, your goal isn’t to convert at this stage; just to get your brand and community name in front of potential renters.
Selecting the Brand Awareness objective tells Facebook to show ads to people who are likely to recall them based on Facebook’s brand recognition studies. The Reach objective tells Facebook to show the ad to as many people as possible within your audience. With both objectives, the ads should be localized with location-based targeting, reaching the people who live near each advertised property.
Consideration Stage
Once a customer is aware of your brand and community, it is critical to differentiate yourself from the competition and drive interest — often resulting in a scheduled tour. Consideration ads require a larger budget than awareness ads, but result in warm leads that can be nurtured to the conversion stage of the sales funnel.
Lead Generation Objective
Lead Generation ads feature pop-up forms that users can fill out without ever leaving Facebook. These forms are pre-populated with the user’s Facebook information, so all they have to do is click submit. Lead Generation ads are perfect for getting potential renters to sign up to learn more about the community, such as floor plan prices and availability. For new properties, these form fills can be used to add prospective renters to an email list so they can be the first to know when the property begins leasing.
Web Traffic Objective
Web Traffic ads send users to a website, and are most effective when you’re sending users to a specific landing page on your property site, as opposed to the home page. If the ad features content related to amenities, send the user to your property’s amenities page. If the ad is for a new property or a property that’s always full, send the users to a landing page where they can sign up to be the first to know when floor plans become available. Regardless of the page, ensure there is a clear call-to-action that prompts the visitor to submit a form. Facebook marketing in the consideration stage is all about getting people to seek out more information, and Web Traffic ads can help you accomplish that.
Video Views Objective
Social media savvy renters don’t always want to click away from Facebook to visit another website. The Video Views objective allows you engage users without asking them to leave Facebook. You can build an audience of people who’ve viewed your video and show them retargeting ads in the future. Ads that use the Video Views objective are much more affordable than ads in the next stage — conversion — and can help move potential renters further along the funnel.
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Conversion Stage
The decision to sign a lease is a high-touch sales interaction. Prospective renters rarely apply for a lease or even schedule a tour after seeing just one Facebook ad. While the ultimate conversion goal is a signed lease, other actions may be considered steps in the conversion stage. Viewing available floorplans, checking out the list of amenities and reading reviews are all typical conversion goals to measure. Only by tracking these actions will you be able to determine the best conversion strategy.
Web Conversions Objective
To track web conversions from Facebook ads, you’ll have to add the Facebook pixel to each property website and choose which actions qualify as a conversion. According to Facebook, marketers should select conversions that happen at least 50 times within a given conversion window (one day or one week after clicking the ad).
Renters don’t usually decide to lease an apartment after seeing one ad or engaging with one piece of content. That’s why marketers may want to consider choosing more common actions for conversions, such as viewing a list of amenities, browsing floor plans or finding the property’s location (a web search for one of your property locations that suggests intent to visit). These types of actions show interest, and are more common than scheduling a tour or applying for a lease.
Using the objectives and related retargeting capabilities, property marketers can move prospective renters from the top of the sales funnel to the conversion stage. In the high-touch sales funnel of property management, these objectives are especially useful, providing marketers with multiple opportunities to collect contact information, engage renters and collect leads.
