Buying real Estate is a purchase decision that is typically made offline. However, purchase decision makers still have a digital footprint and conduct a lot of research online. Integrating events into your digital marketing mix is a great way to pique prospects’ interest and begin to learn more about what they want.

Most real estate offerings hold events at least once a year. For luxury properties, it might be a meet and greet, while for master-planned communities, it could be an open house. With most real estate companies already hosting events, it’s an easy fit to support them through digital advertising. At 90octane, we see strong results by using Facebook ads to promote events for clients. Here are some things that we’ve found useful as we’ve developed our approach to real estate event marketing:

Align Events with Your Goals

It is important to know what type of events fit into a lead generation program. Events geared at current residents will not satisfy the goal of garnering new leads. For example, promoting a community swim meet will likely not draw new prospects in the door. Meanwhile, supporting an open house can help get prospects on the website and touring a community. Consider the type of event before agreeing to support it with digital tactics.

Design Effective Creative

After testing a variety of creative on Facebook advertisements for real estate events, the top performing ads by click-through rate (CTR) tend to utilize the following components:

• Headlines that make it clear the advertisement is for an event.
• Images of the event-focus, like a community street shot, help to draw in the eyes of interested users and communicate the event’s purpose.
• Ad text that mentions awards helps to boost authority and reputation. For example, mentions of a builder award, a destination-related humble brag, or even the local school district’s accolades. Explore which credibility points you can tout, and which ones would resonate most with your audience.

Campaign Learnings

In our campaigns, event-specific ads often drive higher click-through rates than evergreen messaging. In one of our most recent event pushes on Facebook, we saw CTRs that were over 50% higher than other ads being served to the same audience.

When measuring event-specific campaign results against lead generation efforts, tracking additional on-site actions is crucial for proving out the effectiveness of event advertising. For example, by tracking “get directions” button clicks, floor plan views, or RSVPs, you can determine users’ intent to visit an event. These interactions are steps along the buyer journey to a sale, and the more you can measure them, the better.

Lastly, test, test, test! Creative and audience performance will vary across clients, goals and properties, so make sure to A/B test as much as possible.

Creating a Full-Funnel Event Strategy

Social media is a great way to begin event support with its ease of use, reach, and overall lower barrier to entry than some other digital tactics. However, cross-channel event strategies can help to support Facebook advertising efforts and create stronger programs. Event schemas to boost organic search performance, combined with branded PPC ads to capture users searching for the event, and even media opportunities like Zillow’s Grand Opening Package, can help to create a holistic event strategy.

Start with these tips and iterate from there, based on your client, campaign goals and event objectives.

Need help implementing an event marketing plan? Contact us.