Over the course of 3 months with a $1500 budget, we were able to generate almost 200 leads through a comprehensive Facebook and Instagram campaign that successfully deployed multiple objectives contingent upon all phases of the social sales funnel, from awareness to consideration to conversion.
Campaign Overview
Industry Background
A luxury apartment community came to us with the goal of generating awareness and attracting new residents.
In the past, they had noticed that posting organically on their Facebook and Instagram feeds had not generated any tangible results, and they were looking for a way to take their social presence to the next level. They were looking for conversions, and our team was up to the challenge.
The Current State of Facebook
Social media marketing for businesses can be divided into two key elements: organic social and paid social. Organic refers to posts published on a page, that are not promoted as native advertisements with a budget put behind them. Paid social refers to Facebook’s extensive advertising capabilities that allow for a hefty budget to be allocated towards multiple campaigns for an appropriate objective that makes the most sense for the goals that the business is trying to accomplish.
Facebook is a pay to play environment, which is why the most effective approach for the goals that we wanted to achieve for this luxury real estate brand was to run paid social advertisements. For a more in-depth look at this game-changing shift in the social landscape, check out our blog that breaks it down!
Once we determined that we were going to be utilizing a paid social ads strategy, we formulated our strategy to be contingent upon the Social Media Advertising Funnel.
Due to the algorithm changes that Facebook has gradually put into place, the power that organic used to play in this brand’s social media conversions has been exponentially depreciated. Based on what we know about Facebook’s changes, as well as the goals of this brand, we determined that the most cost-effective and strategic way to produce conversions through our social media strategy was through a paid social approach. This approach utilized multiple ad campaigns with eye-catching creatives optimized for reaching the greatest amount of people, driving traffic to the website, and generating leads.
Our Strategy
We were tasked with the objective of producing high-quality leads, while also reaching the highest amount of potential residents within the general vicinity of the property. Given Facebook’s algorithm changes, along with the allocated budget, we decided that the best way to achieve their goals on social media would be to run multiple paid ad campaigns optimized for reach, website traffic, and leads.
Utilizing custom video creatives that showcased the best features of the apartments, we ran three Facebook and Instagram campaigns over the course of three months that covered all stages of the social ads funnel. Our methodology behind this sequence was to display the right content to targeted audiences depending on which stage of the funnel that they were in. These ads were optimized in a way that encouraged our audience to take a specific action that would eventually drive them closer to submitting a lead form.
Awareness
The first step in any social media campaign is to generate awareness and interest. A user who has never previously heard of your brand will never convert into a lead right off the bat.
For the awareness phase of the campaign, we focused on the reach objective. When it comes to this phase of the funnel, the audience targeting is at its broadest. We targeted individuals within a 30-40 mile range of the location and the age range of 25-55. Within this audience, we capitalized on users behaviors and interests, by serving the ad to those who were likely to move or had an interest in renting. Here, and throughout the entire customer journey down the funnel, we excluded users who recently moved, since we can easily determine that they most likely will not be looking to move again anytime soon.
The goal of a reach campaign is to reach the maximum amount of people in the target market for the lowest cost per 1,000 people.
Consideration
The purpose of the consideration phase of a full funnel campaign is to retarget to those who have seen the original awareness ad and remind them of the brand by showing them a new ad creative with a new objective. Our goal is to keep our ads in front of the right eyes and pique their interest in the brand even more.
The objective of our consideration ad was to drive traffic to the website. We narrowed our targeting in this phase, by displaying the ad to those who had visited the website from our previous ad creative. Within the campaign, we also took advantage of creating lookalike audiences. Within this phase of the campaign, we created lookalikes of users who had previously visited the website but had not yet converted.
Conversion
The conversion phase is the final step of the ads sequence that closes the deal. In this case, we used the lead generation objective to collect information from potential residents which, in turn, gets passed onto the leasing agents.
To ensure that we were generating the highest quality leads, we optimized our lead form for higher intent, rather than higher volume, and focused on targeting website traffic as well as lookalikes of the email lists from the client. These email lists were from people who were interested in becoming a resident and provided their information, as well as current residents. Our targeting also included only the locations where most residents relocate from or would be likely to move from.
Campaign Results
Reach Campaign
Our top-of-the-funnel reach campaign was a success, reaching 134,812 people, gaining 204,599 impressions and with a CPR (cost per 1,000 people reached) of $2.30.
Website Traffic Campaign
The consideration campaign with the objective of generating website traffic resulted in 1,726 landing page views. We optimize our campaigns for landing page views rather than link clicks because Facebook serves the ads to users who are most likely to not only click on the ad but be interested enough to stay on the website or specific page we want them to land on for longer than just a quick click.
Retargeting to previous website visitors was the most cost-effective result we saw in this campaign, coming in at $0.18 per landing page view. This was a strong indication that our strategy of bringing back those users who were previously considering the apartments was successful. The average CPC (cost per click) in the real estate industry on Facebook is $1.81. Even our highest CPC, which was $0.96, was still 85% lower than the industry standard.
Lead Generation Campaign
The key audiences that drove the most lead form submissions were the email list lookalikes as well as the website visitors who had made it from the top of the funnel to conversion. Of the 188 leads forms that were submitted, the cost per lead was only $2.39.
The conversion rate for this campaign was 20.6% which is significantly higher than the average conversion rate on Facebook for the real estate industry, which is 10.6%.
Key Takeaways
The awareness, consideration, and conversion objectives worked seamlessly together to turn a cold audience who was previously unfamiliar with this luxury apartment community into a lead. By remarketing to website visitors and utilizing custom lookalike audiences, we were able to generate 250,000 impressions, over 1,726 landing page views, and 188 leads.
Social Media Advertising at Today’s Business
Our Social Media Strategy team takes a comprehensive approach to social media marketing with your business goals in mind. Our methods are anything but one size fits all. We formulate a unique and competitive strategy for each brand that we work with. Depending on your goals, we are able to determine appropriate KPIs for each of your campaigns.
We are constantly keeping up to date on emerging trends in the social landscape to ensure that our campaigns are always utilizing best practices and performing adjacent to industry standards. If you are ready to start embracing the full potential of Facebook and Instagram advertising in your brand’s social media campaigns, let’s talk!