Sell Land Using Facebook Advertising: Prepare Your Campaigns Properly

Whether you’re preparing your property for sale or your land has been on the market for months, the missing piece of any land sale is often awareness. If no one knows your land is for sale, how can you hope to sell it in a timely fashion? It’s no wonder property and land listing sites do well to match sellers with qualified buyers. The listing itself is a great start to growing awareness of your property sale. But you’re probably asking yourself once your listing is online, then how can I get people to review it and contact me or my real estate agent? One fantastic way to get the word out for your land sale is through digital advertising channels like Facebook. The volume of daily active Facebook users combined with Facebook’s fantastic ad targeting tools assures your ads will be seen by the right people at the right time. Follow the tactics below to prepare for a successful Facebook advertising campaign for your land sale.

Targeting Your Ads Correctly

The type of property you’re selling should inform which target audiences you’ll want to go after with your Facebook campaigns. For instance, if your land is used for hunting, you’ll want to target hunters. If your property has riverfront, lakefront, or beachfront access, you’ll likely want to target water sport enthusiasts, beach goers, fisherman, boat owners, etc… Be sure to identify these land use cases early to ensure your campaign’s targeting and messaging reflects the real value your land will provide. Other targeting factors to consider are income, net worth, family size/dynamic, whether buyers are likely to move soon, geographic targeting like zip codes, cities, states or the entire country, and even generic interests like the fisherman, water sport or beach goer examples mentioned above. Once you begin creating your campaigns and ads, you’ll see multiple possible targeting options you had never thought of. If you’re interested in the full list of Facebook Ad targeting, be sure to review it here.

Build Your Facebook Page

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t allow users to run ads directly from their personal profiles. This means that you’ll have to create a Facebook Page specifically for your property, business, or person to gain access to advertising capability. Let’s be clear, your personal Facebook Profile IS NOT a Facebook Page. Facebook Pages are the fan or business pages you’ve liked and followed. It’s a small difference, but an important one to know. Don’t worry though, creating a Facebook Page is free and easy. Just follow these instructions, or we’ll set everything up for you!

Prepare Your Ad Details Ahead Of Time

There are multiple Facebook Ad types. From promoted posts, Single Image, Video, Multi-Image, Lead Ads, Display Ads, etc… you’ll have to make some decisions as to what you’ll want to communicate through your campaigns. The easiest option is what’s called a Promoted Post. This ad type is created directly on your Facebook Page and offers the basic targeting options you’ll need to get the word out on your land sale. NOTE: There are many more targeting options if you create a true Facebook Advertising Account, but it’s not necessary if you’d like to run a Promoted Post. To run your first Promoted Post, simply post your LandHub listing from your Facebook Page (NOT your personal Facebook Profile) adding 2-3 sentences of copy to communicate the benefits or features of your property. PRO TIP: Include a call to action within the 2-3 sentences of your post to get people to call, email, or simply click through and review your listing. Be explicit in telling people what you want them to do. To summarize what you’ll need to run your first Promoted Post, have these things ready to streamline the process;

1. Create your Facebook Page
2. Add your credit card info to the settings section of your Facebook Profile
3. Find your property listing or the link you want to send potential buyers to.
4. Write 2-3 sentences of copy to promote your land and deliver a call to action.

Only a few easy steps and you’ll be on your way to run your first ad campaign.

Explore Other Advertising Capability With Your Own Facebook Advertising Account

If you’d like to experiment with other ad types, more targeting options, and a streamlined campaign builder, you’ll want to create your very own Facebook Advertising Account. As mentioned above, you’ll receive access to Facebook’s full list of demographic, geographic, and psychographic targets. On top of that, you’ll even be able to target unique audiences, email lists, and gain access to remarketing capability. These are all quite advance but we’ll be covering more of these options in other posts soon. For now, start with a basic single image advertising campaign. This ad type looks similar to the Promoted Post but gives you more capability than before. NOTE: You’ll need a 1200x628 image of your own to run this ad type.

Prepare A Budget & Timeframe For Your Campaign

There are many different opinions amongst Facebook advertising experts as to how much advertising budget you should start with or expect to spend before seeing results. The only thing that everyone agrees upon is that it is completely dependent on your market, targeting, cost of goods, etc.... The best way is to test your first campaign to ensure your cost per click does not exceed what you’re willing to spend on each click, visitor, or lead. This cost per click could range from $0.10 to upwards of $5.00, so it’s important to keep a close eye on your ad performance during the lifetime of the campaign. We recommend starting with $10/day to get a baseline cost per click and then increasing budget based on how much you’re willing to spend during your campaigns timeline. NOTE: Running Facebooks Ads is no guarantee of selling your land. It is only a means to increase awareness of your property sale. More awareness = more potential leads. If your ads aren’t working try (1) changing ad targeting or (2) adjust your property listing or information page to incentivize visitors.   Facebook Advertising is a fantastic option you have access to when preparing to sell your land, so don’t neglect its capability. If you have trouble and would like assistance in generating more awareness and leads for your property listing, please contact us here and we’ll be happy to help.