The world of marketing has changed dramatically over the last few years including the use of Facebook and other social networking sites. One very effective way to reach your target market and channel them to your website is the use of Mortgage Facebook Ads.
Facebook ads are targeted to users based on their location, demographic, and profile information. Whether you want to score new leads or work on referrals, Facebook ads should be a vital part of your strategy. Here is why:
- Facebook has a lot of users – roughly 2 billion people use the platform
- People spend a lot of time on Facebook – the average person spends more than two hours on social media sites every day
- Facebook ads are targeted – you can attract new homebuyers, renters, refinancers, YOU name it
- Facebook ads are a deal – you make the budget, this can be a very inexpensive way to reach tons of people
- Facebook ads work for more than leads – these ads will help get new leads, but also work well for building relationships with your current database
WHERE TO GET STARTED?
Business Page
The first step to getting started with Facebook ads is to create a business page from which you can advertise.
To create a page, just click the + button in the top right corner and select “Page”.
Business Manager
In addition to a Facebook page, you have the option to create a Facebook Business Manager account. While this is not required, there are several reasons why you would want to do so. For example, if you:
- manage multiple Facebook or Instagram assets such as Facebook Pages, ad accounts or apps
- want complete jurisdiction over your assets without giving ownership to people who assist your business operations
- have multiple people who work on your marketing or manage your Facebook or Instagram business presence
- want to request access to other Pages, ad accounts and apps, or share your own with other agencies.
To create a Business Manager:
- Go to business.facebook.com/overview.
- Click Create Account.
- Enter a name for your business, your name and work email address and click Next.
- Enter your business details and click Submit.
Pixel
The next step is to set up your Facebook pixel. Pixel is a few lines of code from Facebook that you copy into the header section of your website. This code allows the pixel to receive information about the actions taken on your site to make your Facebook ads more relevant to your audience.
To create a Pixel:
- Go to Facebook Events Manager > Pixels.
- Select Create a Pixel.
- Enter the name for your pixel and select Create to confirm.
- Choose your installation method
There is a wealth of benefits that come with setting up a Facebook pixel, such as to deliver a campaign to reach people who visited a product page but didn’t complete a purchase to encourage them to go back to the website to do so. You can also create an audience of everyone who’s visited your website in the past 30 days (and even lookalike audiences based on data gathered from your website traffic).
Ad Manager
If you already have a Facebook business page and a pixel installed, you can head straight to the Facebook Ads Manager or Business Manager to create your Facebook ad campaign.
At this stage, you will notice that your Facebook ad needs 3 parts to run: a campaign, ad set and ad. All these parts make up what’s called the campaign structure. Knowing how they work together will help your ads run the way you want, and reach the right people. Let’s break it down!
Campaign: A campaign is the foundation of your ad. Here, you’ll choose an advertising objective, whether it be awareness, consideration or conversion. Before you create your Mortgage Facebook Ads, first consider what your business goals are! For example, if your business goal is to send people to a URL, you’ll likely want to select Traffic as your objective. Conversely, if you want to collect leads for your business, Lead Generation could be your best bet.
Ad set: An ad set tells your ad how to run. At the ad set level, you’ll create an audience for your ad using Facebook’s targeting options. You’ll define your audience by choosing things like location, gender, age and more. You’ll also create a budget and set a schedule for your ad and choose your placements. Keep in mind that a campaign can include multiple ad sets, each with different targeting, scheduling and budgeting options selected.
Ad: Your ad is what your customers or audience will see. At the ad level, you’ll choose your ads creative, which may include things like images, videos, text and a call-to-action button. Learn how to make design ads that work. Keep in mind that you can have multiple ads within a single ad set. This is especially helpful if you are looking to split-test ad copies.
FORMATS OF FACEBOOK ADS
There are five different formats you can choose from. The ad formats you can use depend on your advertising objective. Your objective can also affect the placements (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network) where your ads can appear. Let’s see what they are:
- Image: we recommend using images of your product or brand.
- Video: adding movement to your ads can make them more eye-catching in News Feed.
- Carousel: carousel ads showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link.
- Collection: the collection format features multiple products and opens as an Instant Experience when someone interacts with it. Your customers can discover, browse and purchase products from their phones in a visual and immersive way.
TARGETING YOUR AUDIENCE
Who is the kind of person who might become a lead for your mortgage business? There are a number of ways you can define this using Facebook ads, including:
- Location: You can sort by people who live in a specific location and exclude people who are merely traveling to your location. This is great if you live in an area with a lot of tourists.
- Demographics: Choose your audience based on age, gender, education, job title and more. You can keep track of the types of people your ads are reaching, but Facebook will never share personally-identifiable information about them. If you are in the financing or real estate industry, it’s important to know that
- Interests: add interests and hobbies of the people you want your ad to reach—from organic food to action movies—and make your targeted ads more relevant. .
- Behavior: Target your ads based on consumer behaviors such as prior purchases and device usage.
- Connections: Choose to include people who are connected to your Facebook Page or event, or exclude them to find new audiences.
Due to Facebook’s non-discriminatory policies, for ads in special categories (Credit, Employment or Housing), the following audience options are different or unavailable:
Locations: You can target your ads to people by geographic location (such as country, region, state, province, city or congressional district), but not by ZIP code. Specific locations you select will include a 15-mile radius around that targeted city, address or pin-drop. For example, if you want to reach people in the city of Seattle, your audience will also include people within a 15-mile radius of Seattle’s city center.
Age: You can’t edit this option. Audiences must include ages 18 through 65+.
Gender: You can’t edit this option. Audiences must include all genders.
Detailed Targeting: Some demographic, behavior and interest options are unavailable. Excluding any detailed targeting selections is also unavailable.
Audience Expansion: You can’t use targeting expansion or lookalike expansion options if your campaign is part of a Special Ads Category.
As loan officers inevitably fall into this category, drilling down on an audience can sometimes prove incredibly difficult. Along with these restrictions to interests and behavioral targeting, Facebook introduced what it calls a “Special Ad Audience” in the “Ad Set” settings. This means that lookalike audiences are out of question for these types of ads.
The good news is that, apart from the name, these Special Ad Audiences introduced by Facebook are virtually identical to Lookalike Audiences used in the conventional campaign targeting. In fact, they’re created within the same area of Ads Manager with the same menu.
According to Facebook, the Special Ad Audience is filtered to prevent discrimination, although it hasn’t divulged exactly how that happens. As a best practice, we recommend loan officers to upload a list of working leads and create a Special Ad Audience based on it. From there you can play around with some of the detailed targeting features available to narrow the audience down.
REPORTING RESULTS
Facebook measurement unlocks the potential to optimize your ads, understand your audience and grow your business. One of the greatest things about Ads Manager is that you can see all the basic metrics at a glance. Let’s check some of these performance measurements.
Budget: The maximum amount you’re willing to spend on a campaign on average each day or over the lifetime of your scheduled Mortgage Facebook Ads. For example, when you view your campaigns, this column will likely tell you that your campaign uses the ad set’s budget, unless you created a campaign with Campaign Budget Optimization. When you look at ad sets, this column would display the budget you chose when you created your ad set.
Results: The number of times your ad achieved an outcome, based on the objective and settings you selected. For example, if you chose Engagement – Event Response as your campaign objective, your results would display the number of Event Responses attributed to your ad. If you chose Traffic, your results would display the number of link clicks attributed to your Mortgage Facebook Ads.
Reach: An estimate of the number of people who saw your ads at least once. Reach is different from impressions, which may include multiple views of your ads by the same people.
Cost per result: The average cost per result from your ads. If you choose Engagement – Event Response, Cost per Result tells you the cost per event response. If you choose Traffic, Cost per Result tells you the cost per link click.
Amount spent: The estimated total you’ve spent on your campaign, ad set or ad during its schedule. For example, this column may display $0.00 for a campaign that’s in review, or $6.57 for a campaign that was recently approved and started running. This number should always be less than your Budget.
Ends: The date your campaign is scheduled to stop running. For example, if you set an end date when you scheduled your Mortgage Facebook Ads set, this column would display that date. If you did not choose an end date, this column would say Ongoing.
There are several other metrics that Facebook makes available within Ads Manager. You can customize the columns to show these different metrics and breakdowns by clicking the Columns or Breakdown tabs.
Alternatively, you could use Facebook Analytics to gain more insight into your audience. To access Facebook Analytics, you must be the admin of an event source, like a pixel or app. You can also use Facebook Analytics if you have a role on someone else’s event source in their Business Manager. If you don’t already have a role, you must ask an admin to assign you one.
To open Facebook Analytics on the web, go to https://www.facebook.com/analytics in your browser. Closely monitor how your campaigns perform in the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard. If a campaign isn’t performing well, put your money into an ad that is instead.
If you’re just starting out, it might make sense to run several ads with small audiences and budgets. Once you’ve determined what works best, use winning Mortgage Facebook Ads as your primary campaign.
