Welcome to another episode of Fireside with Facebook!
In this episode Scott Shapiro from Facebook’s Real Estate Group talks about Facebook Creative and how to best utilize it for your business. Scott also discusses how to evolve your social media postings from talking only about listings to sharing more about the services you provide. Scott provides examples how an agent can different types of posts including stories to relay their message to their followers. Last, Scott talks extensively about the usage of advertisement in Facebook and various ways an agent can use it to generate leads and more engagement.
To view the presentation, click here to download.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Right Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show, and today is our regular series called Fireside Chat with Facebook. And we’ve teamed up with the real estate team at Facebook corporate to produce episodes designed to help agents better utilize Facebook and their suite of tools including WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and all their other tools. And we have Scott Shapiro here from Facebook with us as our guests. Let me tell you a little bit about Scott Scott Shapiro is a senior client partner on the real estate team at Facebook, where he focuses on engaging with key clients and their ecosystem partners to develop marketing solutions and strategies to drive their business forward. In addition to the client partner role, Scott also serves as the industry relations liaison between the Facebook real estate team and the real estate industry helping to educate agents, brokers and leaders on Facebook’s platforms and best practices. Prior to joining Facebook, Scott was a sales executive at ABC, where he also participated in a sales advisory role acting as a consultant for the digital and the sports teams. Scott once again, welcome to keeping it real.
Scott Shapiro 2:00
Thanks, DJ happy holidays, everyone. Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving before we started streaming live DJ and I were talking about Thanksgiving 2020. And hope everybody had a safe and happy Thanksgiving and look forward to happy safe Christmas and Hanukkah season for everybody.
D.J. Paris 2:16
And we were also mentioning how fortunate we are that social medias is a thing during the pandemic that we can stay in touch with, with our friends, our families, if we’re not able to be there in person. And a lot of people of course, are struggling right now with to do that, at least we have, you know, tools like like Facebook to do that. So we’re really, really, it’s really we were talking about I was saying how much how much easier it was to stay in touch with people, you know, during during the lockdown. And, you know, into the future, hopefully, we’ll be able to, to keep utilizing those tools. And so we’re so grateful also to have Scott on the show because he represents Facebook and comes on the show and provides advice and tools for agents to know about and to better utilize their suite. So what do we want to talk about today, Scott,
Scott Shapiro 3:01
today is going to be so if you’re on the podcast, I would recommend and DJ and I talked about this, this is gonna be a highly visual presentation, we’re going to talk a little bit about creative. The idea of creative where creative stands today across our platforms, what we’re seeing a lot through real estate. And then I want to also maybe take some topics that we’ve talked about in the past, in particular, the usage of Facebook live while there won’t be slides on it more about how do we go from just talking about our listings, to how do we talk about our services and our expertise for the consumer. So some of this will be a lot of it, I would say is going to be visual. So if you’re listening to the podcast, I’ll do my best to explain what’s on the screen. But I would highly recommend that if you’re catching this on podcast, try to find this episode on deejays Facebook Show page because I think you’re gonna get a lot more out of it with the visual representation of what we’re going to talk to in the next 30 minutes or so.
D.J. Paris 3:54
And you can find us on facebook@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod again facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and you can watch the presentation right there.
Scott Shapiro 4:03
Awesome. So DJ, do you want me to do you
D.J. Paris 4:07
to trust me to drive? Well, yes. Well, we’ll let’s let’s see what happens. Let’s see what Scott Scott is pulling up a presentation right now. So bear with us just for a moment.
Scott Shapiro 4:17
All right, let’s see here.
D.J. Paris 4:19
And again, if you’re listening, we we will do our best to describe what what you’re looking at. And so even if you are listening, maybe while you’re driving, you’re not able to watch, you’re still gonna get a lot of benefit here. But we encourage you to go back and and we’re also going to make the slides available via PDF. Also in the in the notes for if you’re listening on the podcast, on a podcast app, we’re going to make the PDF available in the show notes. So be there and if you can’t find them, email us we’ll get them to you.
Scott Shapiro 4:45
Awesome. So I’m going to start here we’re calling this future listing and a lot of this is focused about listing creative so for those who are listening on the podcast, I’m going to talk you through the current state of creative there’s a wonderful slide here with bright yellow Orange type about it, you’re not missing any vague outside of a very, this is a very, very bright slide. So as an industry, when we look at creative, we have an advantage at Facebook, there’s a team within Facebook called the Facebook creative shop. Facebook’s creative shop is made up of wonderfully creative folks who came from creative agencies across the globe, putting together thoughts on what constitutes really great creative for all of our platforms. And the way to think about this and DJ and I’ve spoken many times about this is Facebook, Instagram messenger, WhatsApp marketplace, all of the experiences that encompass Facebook’s family of apps and services really are mobile first. So anything we’re speaking to today, stop for a moment and think about how do I show up? Either one, as an agent, broker or brand, you are your own brand? What is my expertise? And what do I impart in the marketplace? And what are my listings looking like if I have them on mobile? So I think the big thing here is to just think again, about I was laughing DJ, I think since we talked a I finally convinced my wife to let me get the the world’s largest cell phone. And again, 6.9 inches of screen is there because we want to consume content. So I think the first thing if you’re listening to this, or you’re going to watch this, think about the fact that there’s a consumer on the other end, and you have this tableau, which is always on person always on the go and getting bigger, the screens are getting much larger. So how do we take advantage of this, you’re gonna hear me talk a little bit with a tongue in cheek moment about real estate, actually the real estate that we provide advertisers on our platforms through cell phones. So we’re doing some things right here. And the first thing is, and again, if you’re listening to the podcast, I’ll do my best to talk you through this. This example is that that is shown on screen is a typical newsfeed ads, we’re showing homes, the great majority of ads that we’re showing and that gets shown by realtors and brokers in the for sale side and even on the For Rent side from multifamily and or apartment listings are really the hero product is the actual domicile right the home, the apartment, the townhome, the beach house. I haven’t seen anybody advertise yurts. But if we were going there that you’re so yeah. And here what you find in this example, it’s just a kind of blank canvas here, we do a little bit where we describe the home ready for a new home, three bedroom, two bath, we’ve talked and call out the city. We talked, maybe it’s just listed, and then usually we put a click through button, which is learn more. And that usually leads for the preponderance of agents to using a Facebook lead ad. I think what we want to try to do in the next coming years is how do we take this, which is if you’re looking at the screen, we’re probably filling at this point about 35% of the actual screen space on a mobile phone with an image. So no matter what we’ve done a lot of biometric studies at Facebook, where image always attracts the consumer eye first, second, they go to copy. Third, they usually go to the brand. So we’ve had a lot of folks go, gosh, you know, should my headshot as an agent be there, it’s like the headshot is where the consumer is going to spend their time, they’re really going to look at the visual medium of what you’re putting in the ad, they’re going to look at who the ad is from. And they are going to look for some lightweight copy. Again, a good friend of mine, Mustafa who I worked with a lot, but always look and he would show me examples of ads, we were teammates and be like, Oh, my God, they’re writing a novel, they’ll write the novel, right? The right the kind of the preview to the movie, the movie trailer.
D.J. Paris 8:36
And if you notice to it, for those of you watching, if you look at the way that Facebook has laid out their mobile app with the way that they display this information, it’s simple. It’s clean, it’s minimal. And so that goes to Scott’s point about when you’re making these these sponsored posts, or or these ads, or even just these listings, you want to you know, put the most important information Short and sweet and don’t overload it with with additional content.
Scott Shapiro 9:03
And you’ll see that also through DJ through this as a news feed out example, we’ll talk about stories, we’ll talk a little bit about video, we’ll talk about text overlay ways that you can actually engage the consumer. So here is kind of your standard, you know, you pull it off your SSL, your MLS the images in there, click the Learn More button. And, you know, really what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to drive consumers to be leads. We have seen more and more recently where we’re in, you know, we’re putting the actual agent into the ad. So this is an example of something realtor.com Did, again, they’ve got you know, they they’re certain states that have certain metrics you have to put in I think in the California example, it was the DRE number, sometimes it’s your broker number your agent identification, but here we’re starting to see some agents use their headshot across a static image, right, you know, kind of something that would be pulled off of, maybe even the listing itself and or Just something that’s kind of like, you know, stock photography, that is a little bit of a harder road to get the consumer to understand what you’re trying to do. So as you see, in this ad example, the gentleman is saying that he’s an expert in Norfolk, Virginia. But it’s what is the story we want to tell about his services, about his expertise. So that leads to those who do houses plus agents. So if you’re on the podcast, the way to think about this is, we have a wonderful, beautiful image. And then we have the agent headshot with a text overlay with the broker name on the actual listing photo. And then they have additional information in the text copy. So this is again, coming from a brokerage, not an agent in this example, but it’s, it’s a way of showing, there’s a listing, and the listing photo is obviously the hero image of the home. And then we have the integration of the headshot with the agent with their name and who they represent. Then there are, you know, again, in a copy in here, we, we call out in this one example, number of beds and baths, where the home is located and the DRA number, which I know in particular for California is needed. Again, state to state it varies. So but that’s what we’re we’re kind of at right with newsfeed it’s like we pull a lot from the MLS feed, we ingested, there’s simple SSO tools for a lot of folks who use partner technology with their broker technology. And it’s, you know, a pretty easy 123 step process to put ads into feed. DJ, were you gonna, I think I
D.J. Paris 11:29
heard you, I was just gonna see this particular example, which again, if you’re listening, I’ll try to describe and Scott did a great job is basically this beautiful home, obviously an incredible home, out in Woodland Hills, I guess, in California. And then yeah, and it’s it really is just a gorgeous photo is the sun is setting behind the home. But in the lower left hand corner, you see that the headshot of the agent, you see his name, and it doesn’t interfere with the overall experience, the viewer or the the client or the customer might have as they see the home, it doesn’t interrupt the the image. But it does also give a subtle and subliminal almost, you know, not to the agent who’s got that listing, which is their information at the bottom. So it’s really I think, the best of both worlds there.
Scott Shapiro 12:14
I also think it sets the consumer up, you know, what are the click to action buttons is learn more. And so that leads to that lead form. And we’ve talked a little bit about in the lead for making sure that the consumer is expecting you the agent to reach out to them. A lot of times I think consumers they submit leads and they think there’s a gated experience to get more information on the home. And that’s really not the case. Here. What we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to make a person to person connection. So inclusion of headshot with photo, it does actually lead in a subliminal way to this gentleman’s name is Scott Roberts. You know, Scott’s going to call you if you put in a lead form. Right, I think that’s a really nice way of like setting the customer expectations. But this is where we stand today in newsfeed. This is sort of, you know, newsfeed across Facebook newsfeed across Instagram, we’re also seeing that carousels work really, really well. So if you’re on the podcast, and not watching this, the way a carousel ad would work is almost think of it is you’re in your newsfeed. So you’re swiping vertically, you come across an ad, and then you swipe horizontally similar to a Facebook or an Instagram story, actually, it’s a side swipe. And what you can do in this why I like carousels and why I think they’re so important is it allows you to show more imagery of the home, you can order the carousel and if you feel as though boy, I really don’t want to put my headshot over the overlay of the image. You can actually use one of the end cards to actually put that headshot that image that logo. If you’re with Keller Williams REMAX Coldwell bankers at for Calle Realty in Chicago, color that you guys out, you can use those cards to tell a story. So the way I think about this is it’s a slideshow, it’s a if you went on the website, most likely, the linear way you would look at photography is the click arrow right I would go on your website and I’d see curbside two kitchen, two bath the backyard. So this allows you to do that within Facebook’s environment. And Instagram is environment using carousels highly effective, it helps to lower the cost per lead significantly. Again, the more imagery the more information we give the consumer the better performance we see with backend metrics. So that’s an example of using a carousel to your advantage telling a bigger, bigger story about the property itself. The next slide this example from homesnap shows you know delivering important information. You know part of this in these examples for the folks on the podcast what it is is it is a carousel example, but in each part of the carousel what they show is they show the curbside photo. They show the listing price of the house they show the bed Bath numbers, a three bedroom two and a half bath. In this case, this agent had a price reduction on the home. That is the first and big bold copy headline. So price reduction price address, learn more. So again, how much information can you give the consumer to make the consumer journey easier, right. And so thinking about all the tools in the toolbox from a creative perspective is really important. This speaks to it. And so in this carousel example, it’s what we just spoke of curbside photo, but then multiple photos of the actual home, I know what the home cost, I know the number of bed and bath, I know that there’s a price reduction. And I know the agent, because he put his name in talking about what firm he represents. So again, if I learned, if I hit the Learn More button, and I get that lead form going, I’m going to expect that person to connect with me. So we’ve kind of set the consumer up, given them the breadcrumb trail to take an action. The next visual also talks about, you know, just it’s really important to deliver important information. I can’t overstate it, which is these two examples. So again, if you’re on the podcast, what you’ll what what I, I’ll try to explain his newsfeed ads, picture of the home, there’s a home with Coldwell Banker, there’s a home with Berkshire Hathaway. So again, it’s not just one firm doing this, you know, it’s a little bit of I know that technology partners behind both of these ads. And what they do is they offer a overlay of your agent, headshot and image relevant information for the consumer, about you. And then again, what they did in these examples is they lead with a really good copy headline. So the visual on the left hand side of the screen for the folks listening on a podcast is the copy speaks to the price reduced, calls out the number of beds and baths calls out the actual price reduction. And the image actually shows the home. It has an overlay with a price reduced, and it has the agent information. And then the example on the right hand side is very similar, just listed website, picture. In this case, it looks like it’s a
home on a lake. And so they’re showing that imagery. And then the agent with the text overlay has their information. And certain partners provide different things. Some provide that your phone number would be in the text overlay of the ad some donor partners, which we’ve talked about, and we’ll talk about probably more in the coming year, the importance of partners have technology tools that allow you to do this was super easy, because they built on top of Facebook’s platform. So you know this isn’t native tool, technology and Facebook, this is why a partner would help you in matter because they would have templates built that allow you to put your headshot in price reduction message, all of that information. And that’s really where you get more bang for your buck versus boosting a post. Or in a lot of cases trying to do this natively on our tools.
D.J. Paris 18:00
I would also say to just as a as a as a little tiny point to zero in on in the first example, which we Scott was talking about, it’s a price reduction, you know, newsfeed ad and or sponsored posts. And what what it is is actually says the amount of money as Scott said that it was reduced. And you really I really don’t see that very often. And I was I noticed it. And it really stood out to me it says price reduced by $7,000. And I know as a consumer myself as somebody who’s in the process of buying a condo, I you know a lot of things say price reduction, but I never know exactly what that means. I love the fact that this explicitly states how much it was reduced by and I think a lot of consumers are going to connect with that as an actual hard figure that they can wrap their mind around versus just price reduced, which it also says which is great. But it goes on to say by how much and I think that is a really good thing to to experiment with as agents when you’re promoting these on Facebook is trying to figure out what’s going to get the best clicks. And I would think most consumers would want to know how much it’s been reduced by.
Scott Shapiro 19:06
I think it also has a quality issues too. Right, DJ? So I mean, I think you know, the more you give the consumer that consumers more valuable, because they have context to what you’re trying to tell them. I think we see any industry there’s a tendency to shy away from explaining to the consumer, what it is that you’re trying to get them to do. You know, if you think about any other brand in the world, price is probably up there. new colors, new features, you know, we can go on permutations from auto to, to e commerce to travel. So I think, you know, yes, image is absolutely the key. If you have a terrible image, you’re going to get suboptimal results. But I think again, empower the consumer to know what you’re telling them. Consumers want, I think much more of a linear quick, direct connection to a realtor We’ve talked in prior segments that 50% of consumers only talk to the first agent that they talk to, they don’t go to agent two or agent three. So if this is kind of, you know, I always call it you know, you’re you’re up to play, you’re up, you know, you’ve got the bat in your hand, the game is on the line, right? Know how to use that to your advantage. It doesn’t cost you any more to put that copy in, than it does if you don’t. So again, what we’re finding is, and this is an example of Instagram, we’re showing houses, we’re showing agents, we’re showing some branding, we’re showing in square format. And so I think we’ve kind of walked over this, this one is an example of filling the screen, the agent photo is listed open house, there’s great copy just listed again in the copy. So you know, making sure like in this ad, if I’m on Instagram, and I see this, I understand that this house is it’s Lisa’s listing listing, there’s an open house, she’s put the price, the number of bed and baths in the copy. So again, as a consumer, when I hit that Learn More button, when I’m sending that lead form, I’m really engaging the agent, because the agent has given me that opening contextual information that you need to kind of advance the consumer forward, now they essentially put a face to the advertisement. And so it’s the Learn More is the action item which would exist whether there was an image of the agent in the corner of the photo or not. And the fact that there is an happens to be directly above the Learn More button, I
D.J. Paris 21:31
think also is good, good placement, because it really connects you see the agent, and then right underneath it says learn more. So you can experiment with placing, you know, your headshot in different different areas.
Scott Shapiro 21:44
But I think just being able to see you said providing some context around who’s listening is this what was the agent? Well, now I know the agent, it’s Lisa. And there’s a photo. And I think this speaks again, you know, homesnap This is an example from homesnap. They are a leading technology provider in the space and they have different types of templates as ation. And I think, again, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, partners and why partners matter is like, they have built this on top of Facebook. So you know, I think the way if not to sell, you know not to give their product a advantage over another product. I think if I were sitting here and I’m I know those guys pretty well, you know, they’d say, we built templates to build better creative and a lot of partners do that. So again, whether you’re using Keller Williams command, ReMax megaphone, real G social ad engine, where you go to a third party like this, that’s something you should be asking and looking at, it’s like, how do I make my creative shine because again, targeting is part of part of this ad units as part of it, there’s all a mix, right? We’ve been talking through this series about the mix, but creatives a really big piece to it. So investigate that make sure because that’s not native in our platforms on Facebook’s ad manager. A lot of that comes through either your brokerage tools, or your third party technology tools. Now I’m going to show you guys, if you’re live on the Facebook Live, you’ll see you know kind of this unholy nightmare image. I’m going to try to explain this as best as I can for people on the podcast. It’s basically a lot of listing photos smashed together on one big page to make a wallpaper kind of from hell, thriller. better word. Yeah. What it shows is, and why I wanted to show this is because we’re going to show you some things that we think can take the your creative game to the next level is many, many agents are doing the same thing. Those who can accelerate and do more and work with partners who are doing more thinking more about ad units, full screen. Real Estate, I talked about that real estate on the mobile screen, we’re going to get into more of that. It’s important, no one is doing anything wrong. It’s just a call out that as we work within the industry, we need to kind of diversify the experience for the consumer. Because you know, looking at this, it all starts to kind of smash together and look a little bit the same. Sure does. So again, most stuff looks the same. So the first thing kind of zipping through this. If you’re on the podcast, the slide I’m on is a tease this out use available real estate, no pun intended. So here I’m going to show different examples, I’m going to populate this for the for the audience, who’s watching. For the people on the podcast, what we’re going to do is we’re going to we’re going to show an image of a house, we’re going to show four images and we’re going to show the difference. In real estate, literally the the lack of better word, the real estate on the phone that you get in your ad. So the first is sort of what we probably pull from our MLS listings, which is a 16 by nine photo and if you think about it, it’s almost like a sandwich. I’ve got the top and I’ve got the bottom and that’s the button in the in the in the middle is the image of the of the home. That’s the meat, but it’s not taking advantage of the full screen actually about 65 70% of The available advertising space or the space for the image is not being used in a 16 by nine environment. Now you then go up to the next image, it’s a one by one, so it gets a little bit bigger, we’re still in that situation where we have a top and a bottom and a middle, the middle is just gotten bigger than what that does is zeroes in. So if you look at Image one, and this is hard for the people on the podcast, but what I would say is, it’s a single family home. And in the first image, the 16, by nine, you see the two adjoining homes and the two adjoining homes, it’s fine. But that’s not really the eyes focal point, right, right, and you move to one to one and you get a little bit more less of the side of the homes, more of the home in the listing, you then move to four to five, again, a larger image. So if you imagine we’re taking big stairsteps, for the people in Mecca, podcasts are going you know, kind of up image, the image is getting bigger, it’s filling the screen.
D.J. Paris 25:53
Yeah, we’re zooming in or zooming in on the home, and we’re making the image taller, essentially, fill up Yeah, to fill up the entirety of the available real estate on the mobile device.
Scott Shapiro 26:04
Exactly. By the time you get to nine to 16. So now you’ve flipped it. So you’re nine inches up by 16 wide. If you look at this, and I would encourage you guys, and again, DJ will have this as a PDF, you’ll see this, ask yourself, if you’re a consumer what looks better, and what engages you more, and I guarantee you, the four to five, the nine by 16 are going to be far more engaging. And the nine by 16, that fills the entire screen. Really what we’re morphing into here is stories. That’s kind of why stories matter. And we’ve talked a little bit about stories with that full screen imagery. So it’s a really great example of the consumer doesn’t lose anything the consumer to gain something by you filling up the real estate, the focal point is the home, the listing, not the size of the home, it’s really zooming in and making that look really, really nicely.
D.J. Paris 26:54
And by the way, just as a quick tip, when you’re hiring photographers to take pictures of your listings, you can ask them for different aspect ratios, right, because as agents, we might not be super proficient in Photoshop or any other editing tools, where you can say, Hey, I’d like a square version for maybe an Instagram post, which is a one to one, or I’d like a 916 or 16, nine or a four or five, you should definitely have them send that to you. Most photographers can easily make those adjustments, and they can do the cropping and editing for you to make it in that particular perfect aspect ratio. So you can test it with various, you know, social media platforms.
Scott Shapiro 27:35
Absolutely think vertical don’t think horizontal? I think that’s just the big thing that you know, we need to make sure you know, for years, it’s been the horizontal the 16 by nine into the GJS point, you know, the world has gone vertical, we hold our phones vertically up, right? You know, so just, again, you get more for your buck. You know, this doesn’t cost you any more to have more the image filled up, it’s how do we fulfill the consumers desire to see a better creative endpoint. And you’re the reason why, you know leading global brands do this is because they know consumers want that type of content. So again, the DJs point, if you’re using a photographer shoot it that way. The other thing is, if you’re just shooting yourself, shoot vertically, shoot vertically, you can figure out how to make this work.
D.J. Paris 28:22
And it used to be the opposite, you know, even with social photos used to be mostly turning the phone on its side and taking the white more of a widescreen approach. And now because of the way that that people consume information on their mobile devices, they want to keep those phones like you set up right. And so you want to use as much of that available real estate on the screen as possible.
Scott Shapiro 28:44
I’ve been on Facebook for eight years DJ, and it’s the I think the three biggest things I think of just Facebook in Instagram or platforms that have changed is that we were a mobile first company when I joined it anyway. So I think it’s the the vertical versus horizontal nature. I think the second thing is when I joined the company, we didn’t have video, we’re gonna get into lightweight video and what does video mean versus you, Steven Spielberg video or you and me video, and then stories. And so each of these really speaks to the consumer, keeping the phone in a vertical position, using it scrolling, you know, thumb up, thumb down, thumb across. So super important. I think whether you hire somebody whether you do it yourself. Again, partners have tools, they focus on this, you know, whether it’s your brokerage tool, whether it’s a third party partner tool, they all have the availability to actually make imagery better. This slide if you’re on the podcast, it’s called consider visual hierarchy. And really what it is, is it’s a kind of cheeky newsfeed ad. It’s a black box and it says in the image, it’s an image within an image in the in the news gate, it says you’ll read this first and that’s kind of the image and then you’ll read this than this one. So it’s like, Where does your eye go? And then at the end, it’s the copy. So it’s kind of like paint by numbers 1234. So your eye will go towards the center of the image, then down, down and then up at the end. It’s just a cheeky way of just, again, backing up to the prior slide, which is we lost none of the effectiveness of the listing photo by having the photo be larger and filling the screen with a senator point. That’s what our eyes go to. That’s what we look for. That’s just consumer behavior. And I would state that’s probably why we have again seen such a consumer movement towards stories because, again, it feels a whole screen, there’s a center vantage point. Couple more examples for folks on the podcast, what you’ll see is kind of what we talked about before, an image of 16 by nine. And then, you know, the second thing is, so I’ll go back here, it’s the image first, second is underneath it, the website, the the bed bath, learn more. Third is the brand Who is it coming from? Fourth is the copy. So as you play this out, again, you can kind of look at this with 1234, I’m gonna go back DJ, just so people can see this. So image first, bottom copy, you know, kind of like your call to action button, the second, the brand will be third, your copy fourth. So again, those who really have good photography really win. And this isn’t that the consumer won’t read these other things. It’s just the way that they process information. Okay, video, I’m going to show you a couple of examples. So here for folks on the podcast, there are two images both by American Express OPEN when both are newsfeed ads. One on the left hand side of the screen is a static image. You can see how old this is back to TVs, January 2017. But it was you know how to earn miles and points on an American Express card. The second image is just putting lightweight motion into the same type of ad. So there was a visual hierarchy where there was lightweight motion, showing you basically a plane, a chair, a couple of other things, it’s just it’s saying the same thing, the offers the same for the credit card, the product is the same. It’s just one is static one has lightweight motion, lightweight motion, really does drive a lower cost per lead a lower cost per acquisition. And again, a lot of these partners that can work with you offer that and in this case, a lot of it was text overlays. So again, we weren’t doing any sorts of you know, crazy, Christopher Nolan, that type of cuts. Here, same thing for people on the podcast, there’s an image of unstoppables, which is a I believe, a detergent of some sort. And so one is a static one is a video again, the video is basically very lightweight, with a text overlay. You know, it doesn’t change the product, it just changes the consumer experience. And again, I would say it’s important because we talk a lot about video and I think agents get apprehensive and I understand that about video being like, Oh my God, I’ve gotta go shoot like you know, Jurassic Park with this thing is like no lightweight tools can really help and drive. Lightweight motion consumer drawing the consumer in slideshows video, this is another great example of three boxes for the focus on the podcast VW, with Beatles having different like almost like stop motion, background colors. Car colors, is an example for Expedia, where the screen is literally split in half where there’s a woman on one side she’s in a kayak on the other side, she’s showing different city images on the on the right hand side. So it’s stop motion photography, stance stocks.
Same thing just okay, Image one, Image two, Image three. And so the way I think about this for real estate is, you know, similar to what we’re going to show here for kayak on the next slide, you know, transitions lightweight animation, you can do this with a house, there are a ton of tools that show this almost in a slideshow mentality where the first image that you see as the consumer newsfeed is the outside shot and then we transition to the kitchen, the bathroom, the backyard, the pantry, the garage, you name it. So it’s a little hard for me to explain some of these. For the people on the podcast, what I would say is, you’ve probably seen ads once you go into your feed that use lightweight motion. So going back, just again to go forward. Kayak was using almost like a Flipboard carousel was using quick pricing. And there’s a Korean example It looks like a travel app on the end of just taking kind of lightweight motion in the background. All this does is it just makes the consumer a little more sticky. Again, this is not a native tools. This is where when you talk about your broker solution, your partner solution, ask them do you do what lightweight animation do you do lightweight motion, that’s really what we think about with video. It’s just motion. It doesn’t have to again be a large Academy Award winning Presentation, text animation. Most partners have this again, this tells a story. So we’re looking at three different examples from three different types of companies where text overlay really can tell a story about the property about the product. Again, most partners have this this is really where you can put back to a DJ and I used as an example, the price reduction, what if that agent could put price reduced, and it comes in with text animation, price reduced by $7,000.03? bedroom, two bath, northwest to Austin, Saturday open house. So if you’re on the podcast again, come back, try to watch this episode, because I’ll show this again, for the people who are on the live of just look at what lightweight text animation does. It just gives it again, another added aspect. So we’re going from that real traditional, we showed that wallpaper of everybody doing the same thing. This is how you can really stand out and this these are things that I think when you are considering advertising across Facebook’s family of apps and services, talk to partners ask them do you do this? Is this in your interface? Do you offer this? A lot of them do actually. So food for thought. We’re then going to transition just really quickly into examples of video slideshows. So we’re back to the first example of using a slideshow in feed. This is an example from Instagram. It gives a wonderful visual hierarchy. I’ll play this twice. So for people on the live, that way, I can go back and explain it to people on the podcast. It’s really a series of four to five videos in a slideshow. AD. And what you’ll notice is that it’s a newsfeed ad. And so again, when you come to the ad, when you see the ad, the first thing you see is you know, it has an agent example. It has, you know, here, well, this is actually multiple listings by the same agent. But it’s the same principle of slideshow can show more photos. So it’s back to almost the way we thought about carousel. The reason we love carousels, carousel tells more of an story, it gives more imagery, same thing here, I’m going to go back and just show same multiple photos at the same home. Since the second time through, we go from the curbside to the bedroom to the kitchen, simple slideshow wipes, all the changes is the imagery similar to a carousel, they have relevant information, the address numbers of bed bath price, and then below the agent, information sets. And then here, if you’re an agent with multiple listings, you can actually do the same thing with a slideshow, which is show different properties through a slideshow, the dress, price, number of bed baths. So just things to think about as to how to really make a difference in creative animation.
D.J. Paris 37:54
I’m sorry, so I’m going to just to say that if you are thinking right now, well, gosh, I don’t know how to create some of these, these effects. You don’t have to and if your brokerage isn’t able to do that there are plenty of people in your local community, or globally even, that you can access that can build this stuff for you very inexpensively. And effectively. So you know, there’s lots of resources of places online to find, you know, people who, who do this kind of work, and you can just send them your images have a conversation about what you’d like the creative to, you know, to look like, and they can create these, these animations for you.
Scott Shapiro 38:33
Yeah, and a lot of our partners that we see in the space are really thinking about this, whether it’s the brokerages or whether it’s third party providers, like you know, I think we’ve worked closely and collaboratively enough with them that they know that we need to transition as an industry, consumers expect this. So part of this is like how do we meet the consumer expectations. And so these are ways to DJs point of, yes, this doesn’t this is hard to do in a native Facebook tool. That’s okay. That’s why you hire a partner, you get somebody who understands this, it’s the performance versus what you pay out is such a huge difference. Here, what we’re looking at is animation of the potential of announcements, new to market, open houses. All this is again is just using text overlay. So partners that have text overlays, simple simple tools. And then this for folks on the podcast. This image that I’m showing right now is about stories. And it’s really about building vertical and growing medium. So here you almost are bisecting the story. So on the top side, what we’re showing is a slideshow, several images at the same listing. The bottom is just the agent for photo photography where they work, contact information that didn’t change. So again, you filled the entire screen. It doesn’t look like one of those stories where you have that sandwich mentality right if we think about the sandwich the bottom, this will be entire screen and it was really again In taking a simple slideshow, making stories work for you. This is a example and stories of just the use of text overlay with a full screen visual. Again, simple, easy to use, most partners offer these types of tools, I’ve got five images, or the opening image, I want the flip board. And then I want my my text overlay to come in and explain what it is I’m trying to do. And then lastly, collections is very similar where that’s multiple that allows you to show multiple rooms. So again, this example here is these are simple slideshows, simple, different types of way of taking static imagery and putting a little bit of lightweight motion. So I’m gonna replay that one just because I think it’s an interesting one, where, in this example, you started with a text overlay must have a pool. And then you know, this agent is showing all their listings that have pools. Yeah.
D.J. Paris 41:01
And we should also mention, too, that Facebook does have some of these text overlay tools, depending on the types of advertisements that you put in for the their lead form. tool, where you create a lead form actually does have these text overlay tools, and they’re really easy to use, I’ve used them personally. So you don’t necessarily have to always find a third party or a partner, if you’re, if you have the images, Facebook has a lot of neat sort of ways to to animate and a text overlay said, so definitely check that out.
Scott Shapiro 41:33
Absolutely. And then that one of the other ones that I love is 3d video. You know, this is just another good way of like, you know, taking a fun photo, putting a little bit of a different slice on this, this is an example of travel, the imagery that we have for folks on the podcast is a beach resort in Curacao. But like it’s the same idea of taking that 360 video, showing it making it actually work for you. And then we talked in our last segment, I believe, a month ago about messenger. So again, messenger really helps here, again, how to get started, how to have a proactive conversation. There’s a fun example here about you know, it’s called on broker BOD, where are you looking to buy consumer actually can start the car, the process there? So even that is a form of creative and communication, the conversation? And then actually, you know, does the bot actually suggest that you go on a guided search, and in this case, this example says, Okay, you go through the process, I you reply, I know, let’s go. And then it keeps going on and is very proactive. It’s another form of creativity, it’s another form of communication, it’s another form of really bringing in the consumer more immersively. In so, you know, it’s not just about imagery, it’s also about, you know, how do you fill the screen. And in a case like this with a messenger bot, it does. And then by the time you get to the end of this example, they’re using a carousel that shows, in this example, for national multiple listings, this bot is allowing you to save a listing. So again, functionality really showing off your wares. Super important. And this thing keeps building for about five minutes. So you can see the I will spoil all of it. I’ll let you guys look through the final example here. It’s really taking you through a very immersive environment. And then it’s showing all of the different listings. And it’s using creative, it’s using carousel to really kind of like build into the future. So that’s a little bit more advanced. That’s where we hope to go. I think the other thing I just wanted to show statistics to kind of round out the studies. This, we looked at 3000 different brand studies across Facebook, what we found is mixed assets, what we call mixed assets. So the idea of not just doing the static imagery, doing kind of a melding of them, static text overlay, lightweight carousel motion, all the different things that we’ve just talked about is you actually get better results. And so what ends up happening is there’s a higher ad recall, there’s a higher top of mind awareness. So again, we think back to if 50% of consumers only talk to one agent, we got to get top of mind awareness. That’s a huge help. Message association is huge. And then familiarity and affinity really go into this. So again, the more you’re shaking up your creative, the better. And the thing that you and I talked about DJ, one of our prior conversations was around Facebook Live. Here again, is where you can take video and really start to talk about your brand so you can combine you know, a quick, easy 15 seconds Hi, I’m DJ I’m, you know, a kale Realty here in Chicago and the market is doing XYZ if you’re looking for something in Wrigleyville come to my website, look for more listings, you know, you can talk about things that are gonna be on the listing here. So We have three things that we want to leave you with, because we’re coming up on time. First, use the available real estate. So whether it’s natively through Facebook, whether it’s through a partner, think bigger think filling the screen, think about, what do you like to do you know, how much are you in stories? How much do you look at videos that fill the screen? How much do you look at a bigger image that has text? Overlay, right? Motion and animation is huge. Again, carousels slideshow. This stuff doesn’t have to be Steven Spielberg, I know that technology can be extremely daunting for agents, we’ve seen it through a lot of the narratives of Facebook Live, it’s, it’s tough, right? You know, especially if this is new to you. But know that a lot of this stuff can be done very simply very easily. And it adds that benefit. And then we’ve talked a little bit about, make sure you don’t just get caught in using only Facebook, or using only Instagram, or using only news feed or using all these stories, mix it up. Consumers are all over the place on our apps and services. They’re in a variety of environments. So you know, it’s simple, right? If we were playing, I think about it this way, it’s probably a bad analogy. But if we were playing roulette, would we put it all on one number? Or would we evenly split across several numbers that we hope for the ball to land in. So here again, use a variety of opportunities to meet the consumer, where they’re at across all of our platforms. So that was creative, it’s kind of creative one on one, I
hope you guys got a deep dive into creative and you know what makes that work across Facebook and Instagram. I think the net image I would take away is you know, think vertical, use more screen. If you really don’t know how to do this, that is okay. That’s again, where your broker tools, your partner tools to DJs point local production houses, there are so many people and so many resources to allow for this. You know, again, ultimately, my job and the job of our team is to deliver the best experience for your business to grow your business. And so the more that you expand your creative, the more you put more placements, the better results you’ll get. And frankly, the better we can drive your business growth. All of this. Everything DJ and I ever talk about in every session is rooted in one thing, we’re here to grow your business. And so these are just tactics to help you get there. So always know our core mission is we want you to grow your business, we feel that our platforms, we know our platforms can do that for you, effectively, we just have to unlock some of the tools and strategies. So hopefully, you guys enjoyed the learning a little bit about creative today.
D.J. Paris 47:37
Yeah, I mean, it’s always important, as Scott just said, to remember that Facebook wins when to win when both parties win. So when the advertiser or the content creator creates great content that is well received by by their audience, and then when the audience is absorbing that content and coming back to to learn even more. So every one wins in this scenario. So this is you know, our intention with with all of these fireside chats with Facebook is teaching agents, of course, how to better use these tools, which will, as Scott said, you know, hopefully drive your your business forward. But the cool part about it, and especially what we talked about today is a lot of the more advanced ideas about how to promote listings, with respect to using different different types of mediums, or static image versus, you know, versus light animation, text overlay, combining a bunch of it is really not being done by the vast majority of agents out there. So you have a real opportunity to especially during this winter season, when things might be slower, to really, you know, get your marketing up to that next level. And again, if this is something that that you want to learn how to do yourself, there are ways to do that, if there’s you know, but as Scott mentioned, there are all sorts of partners that can help do this for you, and get you back to what you do best, which is probably communicating and servicing clients. Absolutely. And I think that’s the key last point is, you
Scott Shapiro 49:02
know, it’s great to be a DI wire. And I know that a lot of you love to do that. And, but it’s also, you know, a time and an expertise issue. And so I think the message here is if you’ve if you’ve figured it out on your own, and you feel good about it, and you like the product, and it’s driving your business forward, that is awesome. And please continue to do it. But if you’re finding that it’s it’s a step you need to get some help to get there. I think that’s also very important because Similarly, for other forms of marketing, messaging, you know, you wouldn’t do it yourself, right? You’re not up on the on the Billboard, putting up the big billboard on the side of you know, I 35 here in Austin, you’re hiring somebody to do that. So it’s okay. I think sometimes there’s this, but I shouldn’t have to do that. But it’s like, well, that’s, you know, how best can we drive business forward. So, really looking forward to this evolving? I think DJ made a huge point. If you can learn how to do this. You really stand out He really can elevate your game, it can really use our platforms to your best advantage. So more to come. You know, certainly as we roll out more things like Facebook shops and Facebook marketplace and all the new stuff, I’ll be working with DJ to kind of produce that content for you guys in the coming year. But for those who listened to all of our episodes, and attended all of our Facebook Live, thank you very much for just being a great audience. And I hope that you’ve learned some things along the last week, I think we’ve been doing this but five, six months now DJ, yeah. So hopefully, hopefully, you guys are getting some, some good learnings and ways in which we, you know, again, our mission every day when we wake up from the the team at Facebook, who works in the real estate industry is to grow your business. So my hope is that these are helping you think about ways to grow business and 2021.
D.J. Paris 50:50
Yeah, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. And we’re so grateful to have Facebook, on our show. And they’re They’re so generous with their time. And so we want to take this time to also thank all of our listeners and viewers for continuing to show up and participate with our podcast. And we would like everyone to to let us know what you would like to hear from Facebook in the upcoming year and 2021. What are some sticking points for you? Were you struggling with your social media, and send us a link or send us a comment, let us know what you’d like Scott to cover so that we can better meet your needs. Because of course, this is all about our listeners and viewers. And we’re so grateful that that everyone is participating with the show, but we won’t we need your feedback. So the easiest way to do that is you know, send us a message through Facebook and go to our Facebook page, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Also, you can find us on Facebook, I’m sorry, you can also find us on our website, which if you want to listen to all the Facebook, fireside chats with Facebook, they are listed there. So our website is keeping it real pod.com. And you don’t have to scroll through and find the ones that Scott does every month because at the very bottom of the homepage, you will see that we’ve categorized all of our particular series there and you can actually just scroll over swiping left to right, I guess, or clicking left to right. And you can see the fireside chats with Facebook and actually go through those if if that’s your particular interest in in our in our podcast. As you know, we tried to make things really easy for you. And that was based on feedback that we got from our listeners that said, you know, I love some of these series that you do, but it’s kind of hard to scroll through and find each one once a month. So we said we can we can build that. So continue continue to send us what you would like to hear in the next upcoming year. And Scott, thanks again for being a great, great co host and a great guest for us and a partner. We’re excited to move into 2021 with you as well. And if if anyone has wants anything they want to see out of this podcast with this fireside chats with Facebook, please let us know because Scott is the guy to provide that and it’s got happy new year and happy holidays.
Scott Shapiro 52:57
Likewise to you DJ, to your family to your loved ones and to everybody out there again. I know this is we’ve heard it from everyone we know this has been a really challenging year but thoughts prayers and just joy to all for a good happy healthy holiday season. Let’s turn the corner and have an amazing 2021 and drive some impact for everybody in their business.
D.J. Paris 53:18
Awesome. All right, everyone. We’ll see you next year. Thanks,
Scott Shapiro 53:20
Scott. Thanks CJ
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