Welcome to another episode of Fireside with Facebook!
In this episode Scott Shapiro from Facebook’s Real Estate Group discusses Facebook Ads and Marketplace. Scott points out that there is a way to integrate your agent website with Facebook Ads to promote listings your clients already viewed on your site. Next we cover Marketplace which is a curated shopping destination within Facebook. Finally, Scott advises real estate professionals to use Facebook as a platform for growing their business through creating a dynamic experience.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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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. Now we’ve teamed up with the real estate team at Facebook to produce episodes designed to help agents better utilize Facebook and their entire suite of tools, including Instagram, WhatsApp, messenger, etc. And we have Scott Shapiro from Facebook corporate with us as our ongoing guest. Now Scott is 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 businesses forward. In addition to the client partner role, Scott also serves as the industry relations liaison between the Facebook real estate sales 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 in a sales advisory role acting as a consultant for the digital, for digital and for the sports teams. Scott, welcome once again to keeping it
Scott Shapiro 2:00
real. Thanks, TJ. It makes me realize I need to get you a revised like cut down version of the bio. I’m like, you know less about me more about like how we help. Realtors are like, Whoa. That is what they all have to do after our session today is how do we cut that thing down? A little bit. But it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure always to have time with you to really help agents and brokerages think about how best to use our platforms, we are so fortunate to have the relationship we have with you. I always love just sitting back and talking about the industry and about technology. So it’s always a treat to to have these fireside chats. And I’m excited for the one we have lined up today.
D.J. Paris 2:40
I used to fantasize when I when I first started this podcast, because the number one question that we got from our listeners with risk because we interview all these top producers, and they share these really insightful strategies about how to grow one’s business. And oftentimes social or digital advertising is covered, but not really in detail. And so I used to think about when we first started, like, Gosh, I wish there was a real estate team at Facebook. And there is now and so how cool is that? So we are so grateful to have you on the show, to be able to talk about the tools and how agents can best utilize them. Because as we’ve talked about in previous episodes, of course, everybody listening knows your clients are are using these tools. And they and most agents, you know, it’s something that they’re always curious about how do I best represent myself? How do I find clients on Facebook? And how do I showcase listings? And how do I engage with my sphere of influence and in for people that don’t yet know me? So we are so honored to have you. So thank you again, for taking time out of your busy day to be on the show.
Scott Shapiro 3:45
Always. So we’ve got to do you want to kick off the topic? We’ve got it, we’ve got one that’s a little more brokerage and team faced on the front half and then when that will go back and applies to everybody on the on the backup. And you want to tease this out? Because I’m excited to talk to you about this. Yeah, so
D.J. Paris 3:59
we’re really gonna be talking about two things today. First, is real estate advertising on Facebook, like how do we do that? Why would we do that? What are the benefits? How does it work? And how do we, you know, take advantage of some of those opportunities that exist to us there. And then the second thing is talking about the Marketplace, which is also something that I suspect a lot of our listeners go, you know, maybe I’ve heard of that, but I’m really not super familiar with how can I showcase listings via Facebook’s own dedicated sort of system, which is called marketplace so we’re gonna be covering a lot of ground today. I’m really excited.
Scott Shapiro 4:34
Awesome. Yeah. So it’s funny. So for anybody who may be wondering, and especially if you’re watching on Facebook Live or if you’re listening to the podcast, real estate ads are as I call it, this is I’m dating my age here the artist formerly known as their dynamic ads for real estate reference to the late great prints. But for the last couple of years, if you’ve been out in the marketplace, you probably have heard of this product called dynamic ads for real estate or the You know, again, the acronym dare, we’ve re marketed or relabeled, the product to be called real estate ads. And I think it’s really important as we start out and kind of talk about what our real estate ads as I’m trying to get my screen going.
D.J. Paris 5:16
Before you kick off, Scott, I also want to make a point for our listeners, most of you are probably listening, if you’re watching us, either on Facebook Live or on the YouTube video, that that we’ve made for this episode, great. If you’re listening in your car or on your mobile device, I encourage you to go into the notes and click on the link to watch the video because what we’re going to be talking about are some slides that Facebook has put together specifically for real estate teams, and agents to learn how to better use these tools, we’re going to do our best to describe them. But we probably won’t read every word on the slide. So please go in and watch this episode as well.
Scott Shapiro 5:50
Absolutely, thank you for the reminder, especially when we when we go into something so visual, if you’re put on a podcast, I will also make sure I do my best to kind of give the listener a better understanding of what we’re talking about. So real estate ads are one product within the greater suite of products on Facebook from an advertising perspective. And really, the way we think about it is it’s a catalogue, fueling a more curated outcome through retargeting and pixel based technology for the consumer. So think about it this way. And this is something we can all understand. If I go to nike.com Potentially, let’s say I’m looking more for a traditional tennis shoe or a training shoe. But my friend Mustafa, who’s my teammate, he loves basketball. So he goes in, and he’s on Nike for basketball. In retargeting, it makes no sense for Nike to give me products that I don’t have that I haven’t shown any intent or interested. So instead of showing me the full Nike catalog, they really should be showing me relevant places that I’ve gone on their website and maybe haven’t completed the action they want in their case, it’d be a shopping cart action and an order. Sure. Similarly, for my friend Mustafa, why would they show him tennis shoes, they should show him only basketball shoes, or like minded shoes in the places that he shopping. Similarly, this holds true for real estate. So real estate ads aren’t automatically curated catalog approach to promoting your real estate listings across all of our platforms. Where there’s been confusion, just taking a step back is most agents at one time have one to two, maybe three to four listings. Real estate ads are really designed for large teams, and the brokerages themselves to take all their listings. So if it’s a team and the team has 50 listings, 75 listings to upload all of them. Similarly, if it’s it’s a brokerage office or a brokerage, and it’s you know, I’ll call it out REMAX results. I believe in Minneapolis, Minnesota, you know, they could have 1000s of listings or hundreds of listings across that DMA spectrum. Loading those up, what happens is real estate ads allows Facebook in the advertiser to actually give a more curated retargeting experience. So when I land on the site, I’m starting to take actions on a site that I’m starting to show some intent, that allows us to retarget a much more curated, targeted approach to the consumer based on their intent, versus showing everything. So couple of things here, you’ll see on the screen that we have that are part of real estate ads. One is geographic location. The other is numbers of bed and bath, potentially the price range. So I live in Austin, Texas, I live in the north part of Austin, again, you know, I don’t need to see maybe listings that are down in a town called Buddha, which is about 30 miles from here. If I’m only looking at listings, in a certain geographical area, it’s compliant. So it does match up to HTC targeting. So I want to make sure everybody knows that. But it mostly it’s really based upon the pixel action of what the consumer is doing on your website off of Facebook. And then we retarget them on Facebook with a much more curated catalog of offerings. So so just
D.J. Paris 9:13
just to make this really clear for the listeners. So we mentioned the REMAX results in Minneapolis, for example, as a company so if they’re participating in real estate ads, what this means is a consumer who visits that particular REMAX website and is looking around at various options, what they have installed, there is what’s called a Facebook pixel on that REMAX site and all that does is passes data over to Facebook to then be able to then when that consumer is back in the Facebook suite of tools to be able then to see as Scott was mentioning the same idea with the Nike ad you know, if I went and went on Nikes website, I looked at basketball shoes, I might then see we’ve all had this experience we get on the Facebook were like hey, there’s you know those those were the shoes I was looking at are those shoes, comparable to what they might be interested in. That’s called retargeting. So the retargeting effort that you have placed outside of Facebook back into Facebook.
Scott Shapiro 10:08
And you can retarget. Anyway, I mean, so I want to make this clear to the listener. The power though of dynamic ads. For now, real estate ads is really a more macro catalog approach. So I really think about this in the case of the large brokerages or large teams, so it’s scale. So the benefit is one scale, we can take all of the homeless things with unique creative, and we don’t have to configure an individual ad. It’s basically pulling from a catalogue, it pulls this information, it allows us to have that scale, it allows us to take advantage of all the stuff that’s living on your website off of Facebook and putting it into an advertising mechanism here, once they’ve been on site. It’s always on. So just setting it up, the feed continues to be on a loop, which is great, because as you get more listings, as listings come off market, you don’t have the maintenance issue, it’s an automatic feed. So it’s a little bit of a set and forget it. The other thing is that it goes cross device. So again, you know, if I’m on in the afternoon, Instagram on my phone would say it’s one o’clock central time. And then at three o’clock, I sit down and I throw up in the laptop, and I’m on Facebook. Again, it follows me across our platforms and across the devices. So it it allows us to use machine learning to again, find the consumer where they’re spending the most time and where they’re doing that. And then frankly, it’s just dynamically relevant. So it’s not static. So you know, again, those inset intense signals of what the consumer has done on your website really allows you to give a more curated approach to retargeting. And so it is really that click a better example, the more I thought about it is when you’re one industry that uses a dynamic ads really, really hit power is travel. Yeah, for sure. Again, you know, if I’m looking for a vacation in Paris, what am I looking for? Where am I looking for? What type of hotels, that type of thing, and it’s similar here, it’s, you know, I don’t need to be shown you the entire catalog. But maybe if you have an office that spans 12 Different suburban areas, again, instead of you having to make those picks for me, my intent signal is going to alert your system. Yes, that suburb that DMA, show me more things like that, right? So there is a basically, show it where people spend their time you’re seeing if you’re on the live stream. And again, if you come back to this from a podcast perspective of what this experience looks like, and it doesn’t look any different from other Facebook experiences, it’s a carousel. So you do see more property. So it doesn’t just give you one property. So again, if I’m the test case, here, I’m looking for a property in North Austin, it’s not just going to find one, it’s going to find multiples that have correlated points, so that I get several options to kind of go in and learn more, go off site, play with the you know, with the website, understand, Oh, hey, I looked at that listing yesterday. Hmm. Okay, interesting enough, now, I’ve got five more things that maybe I missed, or maybe new, because I didn’t take the end action you want to which is most likely submitting a lead. So for folks on Facebook Live, or if you go back to see the video, this particular slide shows you a little bit with just generic creative what
D.J. Paris 13:30
the experience looks like. And we should also mention too, that on these ads, there is the opportunity to create a call to action. So it’s not, you know, you obviously want to capture that lead as the as the as the advertiser, and hopefully drive that through your sales funnel. Obviously, that that exist, if you’re watching what we’re what we’re discussing, you’ll see there’s a call to action on on these on these advertisements.
Scott Shapiro 13:53
And you can you can do the Facebook lead form capturing them on Facebook and Instagram and having the lead generate there or you can drive them back to your website as well and try to get them to submit a lead on the website now that you’ve shown them again, more properties. I’m an A B test what works best for you, but like those are different options. So ultimately, the thing that we’re trying to drive for and that we’ve talked about in previous episodes, TJ and I about, you know, demand generation fulfillment through the funnel. It does this. It’s just a easy, always on dynamic way of capturing consumer intent, and what they’re doing on your website. So it brings your website into play. Basically, that’s the best way to think about things that we’ve talked about what it takes in attributes that it takes into determining which properties to show in the geographic location. Again, all of this does back into HTC targeting so it’s compliant. We will start looking at you know, am I playing with a number of beds and baths, if I’m only looking at four bedroom and three baths, don’t show me a two bedroom, one bath right that is not a relevant expert outcome for the consumer and we are able to The price range. So that’s the other thing that if I’m showing intent that I’m willing to spend $500,000 for a home, don’t show me a million dollar listing. And also don’t show me a $250,000 listing. And this is why and I think one of the big clarification points why keep coming back to this, especially if you’re listening the podcast probably like, okay, he said it now four times is it’s really based in teams, or brokerages. If you’re an agent, and you have 2025 listings absolutely do this. But if you really don’t have probably at least 20 listings, active listings, on a continual basis, it’s super hard to use this product to drive the outcomes you want to click series.
D.J. Paris 15:39
Yeah, but quick suggestion, that’s a really good point. For those individual agents that only have a few listings, what you still can do is you can set up retargeting in a different way, which is anyone who visits your website, whether you know, whatever they’re looking at, you can set it up so that Facebook then will send relevant advertisements to all the people that have visited your website, maybe it’s just, you know, the advertisement is about choosing you and why you’re the realtor that they should be considering. So that is really easy to set up as well. We’re not going to be really discussing that here. But that’s another way to use retargeting. You can just start to think about, you know, how would I like to stay in touch with people that have engaged with me? And there’s lots of different ways you can do that? Absolutely.
Scott Shapiro 16:21
And, and I think the, the beauty of a more dynamic approach to retargeting is, you know, we, we’ve talked about this in prior episodes that we talked about this a lot, DJ, you and I just, you know, talk before we go over Live episodes, it’s like, it really is about the consumer at the end of the day. I mean, ultimately, yes, it’s about you as the agent, it’s about your listings, or it’s about your team. But ultimately, it’s really the relevancy are the services you’re offering so that the consumer works with you. And I think here, this is really an interesting approach of letting the consumers know more about your inventory. And other again, other like minded, verticals, or what we call verticals, industries, automotive travel, they’re using this more and more, because, again, everyone wants a more curated, more specific shopping experience. And because that data, you know, we hear a lot about Facebook has so much data, but actually, first party data, which we’ve covered in prior episodes, your CRM, other things like that really fuel Facebook to do right, in more optimized advertising. And so here, this is just another example of that person visiting your website. That’s a great way to follow them across our platforms, and give them a more curated approach. And the other thing, I think that’s really important here is to state that this works. So we’re showing on the screen for those of you listening on the podcast, I’ll walk through some numbers. This is a case study, it’s from a company called apartment list. They use real estate ads on Facebook, they used it from a apartment search perspective. So if you have been on the live, you’ll notice that when I flipped the slide over, it showed the experience, if that carousel effect it showing different price points, different matches, they called it revisit your matches find your perfect apartment, what we found is that we were able to to x increase row as compared to regular dynamic ads. So again, real estate ads being more curated by the actions of your pixel and the intense signal of your consumer on your website, actually increased row as by double, we were 2.8, almost 3x, more effective, a dry and a cost effective driving session per dollar cost. So basically, every time you went in, were we driving more row as were we driving more outcomes and more rentals, based upon the session time that person spent. And then there was a 2x growth in the amount spent on retargeting as a result of ads. And I think that’s important because again, you know, thinking about a team or a brokerage, where every dollar matters on a marketing perspective, you want it to be the most efficient place. So the reason I bring that stat up is I think it’s relevant because again, it was so efficient, that they doubled their efforts in retargeting using dynamic ads. So that’s the way to think about it is how do you make the advertising go further for your business?
D.J. Paris 19:16
In this, and in this, this example, this case study, they had a 200% return on their investment. That’s an incredible, I would love to spend $1 and get two back every time that would be that would be amazing. Actually, I’m sorry. I’d get $3 Like as I get a return. That’s, that is an incredible result and something that all of our listeners and viewers should definitely consider doing. Yeah, and I think it’s just another way of like, how
Scott Shapiro 19:41
do you make our tools work better for you, you know, how do we do better by you? I mean, again, this isn’t, you know, uh, you know, it’s not an exclusivity thing. It’s not a package crossing. It’s, you know, it’s a fundamental shift and like, are you doing retargeting for your brokerage? Are you doing retargeting for your team? And if you are using this technology to just give him the more curated effect. And then obviously, we see that row as effect. Here I’m showing just for the listeners, but here for the viewers, you know, this is interested, folks on buying or renting what you’ll see as example. One is reach people who viewed this specific listings. We’ve talked about this on mobile app. And then we’ve talked a little bit about promoting this across Facebook, Instagram, and also what we call Audience Network, which is roughly anywhere from five to 600, different websites, apps, that tie into Facebook. So if you’re on sometimes, you know, let’s say sports, illustrated.com, or politico are any number of sites, you’ll see an ad actually pop up in your feed as you’re reading a news story. Some of that is what we call Audience Network, it allows us to get into those publishers. So you can spread your advertising message out. And again, using dynamic ads, the real estate ads allows for that. So it’s not just finding them on Facebook. It’s not just finding them on Instagram, but it’s also finding them on those sites and those apps that we have partnerships with, so that that inventory shows up that you’re scrolling through ESPN, and you’re whoa, I’m seeing DJs listing. Wow, that’s, that’s interesting. So again, relevancy. A couple of things. These are tips and tricks on targeting. So I’ll walk through this for everybody on the podcast, the first thing we talked about is start with a broad and simple target, a great way or a best practices viewed or added a card to any product didn’t purchase within the last 30 days. So here, the way I’ve been thinking about this is did they view a listing? Have they been on your website the last 30 days? Did they potentially start a lead form an abandonment. And if you have your pixel set up to fire and all these things, that’s where we can start capturing intent signal. The thing we want to avoid is overlaying too much targeting on you. It’s really what’s the consumer doing on your website? And our mobile app? And how are they what’s the pixel telling us? And how are we finding those people on Facebook. So again, we talk a lot in real estate, one of the things that we heard, right after housing employment and credit targeting came in is this, oh my gosh, I can’t target down to the zip code level. But while there were definitely the right reasons that we wanted to put that targeting in place to prevent discrimination, redlining and other actions that, you know, nefarious actors may take on platform. The other thing that it did allow for is to expand the funnel, you know, right, the 15 miles, like we’re getting more people to see our ads. So it’s similar here, don’t overlay too much here, let your pixel do the work for you. The other thing, excluding recent purchasers, this is very similar to some some of the things that we talked about with custom audiences, which is the curation of who you target, you know, if I just bought a house from you today, or in the last week, or in the last month, I’m not in market. So excluding recent purchasers, excluding recent renters, excluding the recent people that you want not to target, it’s wasted money, right? exclude those folks. And then what ends up happening is we’re going to grow the customer base based on the fact that we’re capturing that pixel based intense signal anyway. So more efficiency. And then the other thing is, you know, opening up your retention, windows, targeting all devices, split, you know, avoid splitting audiences, you know, again, we want kind of a macro effect, because it really is machine learning, based on the pixel based technology that’s giving you that signal back. So the more you can stream it, the harder it is to get kind of those are row as effects back that we saw an apartment list. Again, we put everything in a compliant fashion. So again, you don’t have to worry about compliance, we make sure that the product is fully compliant with etc. So again, here, I would say, it’s a little bit of let it run wide open, set it, forget it, and really let your catalog as you continue to, to get listings and offer and sell other listings, do the work for you.
And then real estate as for prospecting, it’s just again, it’s another way of prospecting. You know, it’s a way that we can reach out and find those folks who are actually showing that intent likely to be in market, if they’re on your site, they’re praying, they’re in, they’re playing around with several listings, they’re probably in market, right, we, you know, are probably not poking around just for you know, the heck of it. So again, it really helps from a prospecting mentality. And the other thing that you can start to do is you can start to build what we call a special ad audience, which is again, a compliant way of looking at folks who are more likely to be in market, depending on upon their prospecting behavior, and or building it off of people who’ve recently closed on a property or closed on a rental. So it’s fighting folks in a compliant way. Finding folks who maybe you don’t have a relationship today, but have hundreds of different corollary effects of people that you’ve closed recently in market. And then just best practices. I’ll walk through this carousel format, making sure we have our catalog fields to learn more the call to action that TJ spoke about a strong value proposition. I mean, still, you can kind of set it and forget it, you know, you’re talking about a whole catalog. So this one in particular says incredible Chicago homes for sale, we could say, Great homes in North Austin, great homes in South Austin. And then making sure you use the high resolution imagery. Most people do that with their real estate ads, because they’re pulling it from the MLS. They have direct feeds, but just making sure again, that if you’re building your feed that you’re building a good high quality feed. The other thing that you know, I would say too, is in this case, if you watch the video later, this was an example by a Berkshire Hathaway brokerage that used real estate ads, you know, the last end cap of what they did was they kept an end cap for their logo and also for their website. So, you know, beyond the CTA, there’s a way to also market the firm.
D.J. Paris 26:15
Yes, so for those that are listening, who aren’t watching this as as a consumers on Facebook, and is swiping through, which is what carousel style means left to right or right to left swiping, and they get to the end of the list. What Berkshire Hathaway actually a local Chicago chapter of Berkshire Hathaway, which is a great, great company. And what they did, which was very smart, is they thought about their brand. And they said, you know, by the by the time somebody scrolls to the end, we want them to see the Berkshire Hathaway logo. So that’s what they’ve done, which is brilliant thing from a branding perspective is otherwise you’re really just looking at pictures of homes, you might not necessarily associated with the company itself. And what they’ve done is they’ve they’ve really solidified that by when you get to the end, you know, who’s who’s, who’s promoting this, and very, very smart,
Scott Shapiro 27:02
are they permitted their website to which you know, again, we talked a little bit earlier about to learn more, you can do a Facebook, and or Instagram lead form, where you can drive off site traffic. So, again, I think testing what works best here for you and for your team and or your brokerage is really important. And then just again, there’s some, there’s some tips and tricks here about how to get started. Making sure you update the Facebook pixel on your website and or the SDK, uploading your online home catalog to business manager with the appropriate fields, choosing targeting to focus on broad audience, or recent site, the app view visitors, and then creating the ads within ads manager. Here is one thing I will say. And we talked a little bit about this in a couple of a couple of episodes back, this is where partners really can be of help to you. Yeah, DJ, this is a little bit of an up lift. Technically. Now, if you have someone in your office or on your team who really understand this. Absolutely give it a try. What we have seen is this goes back into where partners are so important because they understand the technology and they have it in their offerings. So a lot of times, they’re already saying, hey, in our offering for you as an advertiser for a brokerage, or a large team, we can do these, these, I still want to call it dynamic ads for real estate, but real estate ads dynamically retargeting audiences. So as someone who readily admits to this to DJ that, I’ve never coded, I don’t, you know, I don’t pretend to know these things. I’ve been on engineering calls where I just go Holy smokes, these people are brilliant. This stuff can be a little bit of an of an uplift. So again, I would really think about the use of a partner. And if you’re using a partner, ask them, you know, if you’re the if you’re the digital manager for brokerage, or you’re the one on your team, actually in charge of your mobile and digital marketing, ask those folks that you’re working with, if you’re already working with a partner, do they do real estate ads on Facebook? Do they understand the dynamic remarketing ads that we offer?
D.J. Paris 29:11
And as a quick suggestion to for our listeners who might think oh, gosh, I don’t know what who to partner with. And I don’t know, who actually is skilled at this. I have a quick recommendation. You know, if you there are websites such as guru.com upwork.com, which are basically global marketplaces, where you can say, here’s what I need, and your need would be I would like to hire somebody to help me who has experience with Facebook real estate ads, and you will then get people from all over the world bidding for that business. You’ll get to read them and their their resumes their CVs, you’ll be able to, to, you know, to interview them, and that I cannot suggest more highly enough get a partner to do this. This is complicated. It’s not that it’s so much it’s complicated. It’s just there’s tips and tricks that you won’t know All right away, because you want people who have had done this time and time again, to be able to give you those shortcuts. And typically, it’s a lot less expensive than you might think. So find someone that does this professionally to help you. You will I did it myself as a quick story, I did it myself. for about seven or eight years, not these particular types of ads, but different types of retargeting ads, I thought I knew it all. And finally I went, you know, I better I let me just hire someone just to see if I’m missing. And oh, my gosh, my return jumped like two or 300%, simply because I thought I knew what I was doing. And I really didn’t do it as effectively as somebody who who this is their job. So really encourage you, as Scott mentioned, have to find a partner or consult with a partner and just maybe get some assist assistance there.
Scott Shapiro 30:43
Yeah, and there are a few companies in real estate that do it. And I think the other thing that I would say is, you know, it goes back to the forgiveness, we once they set you up, you’re good to go. Yeah, so this is not a consistent repetitive setup that a lot of them, especially to if you’re a brokerage, and you’re looking for already a real estate partner or tech partner to help your agents to singular ads, while you maybe want to do that dynamic ads for your whole catalog. You know, I know off the top of my head homesnap. There’s a company out in Seattle called vocalized just off the top of my head, a couple of partners that really know this really well. And again, you know, similar to the partner conversation we had a couple of weeks ago, if you’re talking to a partner, ask them about this. You know, it’s another thing to kind of go ooh, do they know, what do they not know? Why don’t they know it? Usually, the companies we partner with are us usually deploying all of our best practices. So that’s even just a really great way of understanding their technical charts. If somebody goes, absolutely I understand dynamic ads for real estate or now real estate ads, real estate targeting in your brokerage and you’re like, look, I want you I want to do lead generation on behalf of my agents, or I want all my listings up on the team. Really important questions you can ask because usually, either you get a we absolutely know how to do it. We know how to do all the catalog listings, the pipes everything. And you’ll know because it’ll be like, it’ll just be so certain in their mind. But if they kind of hem and haw and go, real estate ads, what’s that, that’s probably your first clue that, wow, okay, we might not want to talk to these folks. And a lot of it to DJs point is just, you have to set it right. And it’s so important to use the right people to set it up. So hopefully that was helpful. We’ve seen again, great success. And I think, again, if you’re a team of your brokerage and you really want your full catalog on Facebook and Instagram Audience Network, it’s a wonderful place, great quality, great way to get intent from the consumer based on what they’re doing on your website. So we’re going to switch gears now. Now we’re going to go back to another another kind of pillar of what we have, which is Facebook marketplace. It’s at least funny, like I feel like if DJ, if we were in a live room, we can like do that how many people have heard it, or how many people have shopped on Facebook. And I realized that was about to do that. So I realize it’s just you and me and a lot of people viewing us are listening to us. So probably not a good strategy. But Facebook marketplace is really a curated shopping destination within Facebook. So I’m just doing this because I think everybody has a little bit different build, whether you’re on iOS or Android, I want to look at my iOS. When I go in, I can look and there’s a hamburger menu on the lower right. And then you can click and marketplace will show up. It’s a little tab. Within all of the different features on Facebook, you guys probably can’t see my phone. But when you click on marketplace, it really becomes a place where you can look at rentals, you can look at vehicles, you can look at all sorts of different things, you can look at things locally. We have this in a place where you know if you’re looking for, you know, a lot of photos for a used car, if you’re looking for a rental, we have relationships where some of the larger rental companies have feeds in so that we can actually start looking at heat maps and look at okay, you want to rent a place. Where is that? Where are you living? Where are you located. However, there’s also an opportunity for for sale agents to use marketplace as well. And there are two ways. One is to put their property on marketplace which allows for a consumer to go find it. The other is to use marketplace as an advertising unit. So similar to lead to what we talked about a couple of weeks ago about choosing as many different places and platforms within Facebook from an advertising perspective, to have your ad show up. You can actually run ads within marketplace on your listings. So you know I’m gonna flip this over so that we can show this and if you’re watching the video, this is really easy to kind of follow but if you look at this experience on the mobile on the mobile device, and then marketplace I’ve looked at now properties and or rentals are for sales. This is what I come up with. This is what I found in Austin, Texas. You know there’s a rental home on the in the middle bracket on the right But then there’s a house for sale you’ll see for 319,000, almost $400,000 in cedar park, Texas. So it’s a mix, as you can see of rentals, as well as almost, you know, individual listings that Realtors put up. In the experience you can use and give information, think of it is when I click on this, we’ll go to the next slide. The listing information for that house in the $319,000 house, you’ll see actually pops up it shows my home location. On rentals, there’s map functionality, so you can see all the different rental properties that are in marketplace based upon in this case, I think I set a 40 mile radius. And then when you open up, lastly, the
the experience itself, it starts to give you details. So the way I think about this is it’s almost like we you know, we have listing details on our websites, or we have listing details that we put into direct mail or email or other approaches. Even on Facebook and feed or in stories. This just allows for a destination where I’m giving the consumer a little bit more information. So here is the third bucket, you’ll see. It shows where it’s located, it’ll show you driving times, it’ll show you a description. Then I took another screenshot just to show a more full experience where there are other things that are available that talk about things in marketplace, nearby transport nearby schools. And this is by us pair again with like great schools Walkscore crime risk with neighborhood risks. So it really becomes an immersive place within Facebook in particular, where the consumer can go and showcase and look at more property. So I’ll kind of go back and stop there,
D.J. Paris 36:42
we should mention to the Facebook marketplace to list is actually a complimentary service, there are additional pay services that you can explore and see if it makes sense for your listings. But to just put your listings out there to get them into the marketplace, there is currently a no cost option to do
Scott Shapiro 37:01
that. Yes. And so I think there’s the listing side, which you’re absolutely spot on DJ about. And then there is what I talked about earlier, if you want your listing ads, so your ad that you would place anywhere across Facebook and Instagram, like the traditional newsfeed ad or the traditional stories that you can pick marketplace as a placement to also have that. So when I’m scrolling, I also see ads within that environment. So you can do both, which is have the listing live there for that more detailed approach. But you can also then put paid advertising for all of your all of your listings, or all or the listing itself across all of our platforms. And this is just another emerging destination. I believe 800 million people a day are on marketplace. So it’s it’s it’s a growing destination, we’re seeing people really look for product and have a shopping experience, it’s easy. And I would say for the agents, whether it’s rentals, or whether it’s for sale, you know, play with this and see about the functionality and how much it can describe. So to GJS point, it’s a free cost to put your listing into this environment. Look at how much bang for the buck for lack of a better word you can get by just being in marketplace and having that it’s another destination. It’s an augmentation to your website. It’s a maybe an augmentation to other places that you have that, that listing up across the Internet and across mobile apps. So it’s an emerging emerging place. We work really closely with the team, we have the listing feeds already set up for rentals through some of the portals, they right now, it’s important to know that for agents, it really is they need to go put their listing in some of the advertising programs that were listed in our guide us marketplace already as a add destination. So again, when you advertise with a partner, most of the time, that’s taken care of for you. But when it comes to actually placing your listing into marketplace, you’re going to have to do that on your own for sale. Sure. So hopefully this was helpful for the for everybody. I mean, these are two emerging places that we think, you know, one of the things we love about doing the series with TJ, as you know, it gives us an opportunity to explore further and deeper. Because there’s so much to talk about. And these are two areas that people may have heard a little bit about, but also may have questions about and I’m hoping that our time together was helpful and instructive. And again, these are things that are also highlighted on our new Facebook for business slash real estate website. So there’s a host of ways to find out more information. If you guys have questions beyond what we’ve shown here today.
D.J. Paris 39:41
Yeah, and so really what what we’re talking about is going beyond as our listeners who are real estate professionals are are always already are already doing which is posting oftentimes new home for sale in a traditional Facebook newsfeed where it’s their own personal feed or it’s their business page fee. Eat. And they’re saying, Hey, I just listed a new home and they’re uploading some pictures, they’re writing a short description, what we want to do is go beyond that. And so we’ve talked about, you know, creating a dynamic experience where someone maybe visits your own personal website, and then text back over to the Facebook sort of suite of products, and then sees other relevant advertisements, with your information on based on, you know, what they were looking at on your website. And then we also talked about, okay, well, that’s great, too. But I also maybe I’m not quite ready for that. I’m not that it’s an either or scenario. But if you’re, if you even if you aren’t quite ready for that the Facebook marketplace is something you can do instantly, you can get your listings up there, you can also have advertisements in there as well. But you can just get your stuff in there and 800 million people, as Scott said, are shopping on the Facebook marketplace. So you really need to be there. The good news is, it’s also that part of it as a complimentary service. So you want to learn how to use these tools. And I could not encourage our audience whose minds might be spinning a little bit at the moment to really seek out a professional to assist you, at least with getting it set up or showing you the ropes, it is you’re gonna save yourself a tremendous amount of stress and headache and time. And really, this is one of those things that there are so many ways to do it. Find a partner, that that really understands these tools to help you get it up and running. And then maybe you can do all the maintenance yourself, but really encourage everyone to explore these options. Don’t Don’t just put the posting up on your Facebook feed, come up with an advertising strategy that will actually get results for you.
Scott Shapiro 41:35
Yeah, I think on marketplace just to kind of put a final taken as it’s just another destination to hit the consumer to reach your consumers to reach new consumers. I think you know, we often DJ, you and I’ve talked about this, I mean, I think the biggest thing is, you know, we’re out there with listings to attract consumers and to build our sphere and to build our real estate business. And the way I always think about this as where is the consumer spending, the more you know, the majority of their time. Another experience like marketplace is just another way to make sure you’re hitting the consumers where they’re spending their time. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, which is mobile. And so again, it’s just making sure that as you think about Facebook, there’s so much more than just Facebook feed, or there’s just more than Instagram Stories, there’s so much more to it. So I think the reason the two of us wanted to bring this to light is it’s just another great opportunity to make sure you’re doing right by your business and you’re growing your business and that we’re playing a role in that growth.
D.J. Paris 42:37
Awesome. Well, Scott, thank you so much, again, for coming on giving us such amazing content to help the listeners understand how to better use the suite of tools that Facebook provides. And we want to also encourage every well firstly want to thank Scott for his time. And on behalf of the listeners, really for your continued persistence. And the level of content that you provide is really truly impressive and very well received. The feedback that we get from our listeners and our viewers is that they greatly appreciate having somebody from the corporate side explaining how to best utilize these tools. Because of course, you know, other than how to best use the tools directly from the company itself. We’re reliant upon a consultants and where it’s sometimes it’s not always easy to determine who’s really skilled and who is just a good marketer. So this is a good example of hearing it straight, straight from the company that’s producing these tools. And then also, we want to thank the on behalf of Scott and myself, we also want to thank everyone for participating and listening and watching this particular episode. And we just ask everyone to do one quick thing. Think of one other real estate professional that could really benefit from listening or viewing this particular episode with Scott, maybe it’s somebody who’s just wanting to get more exposure on social media or maybe find more buyers or sellers that they didn’t know before or just even, you know, connect with your existing sphere of influence in a way through retargeting, right? There’s ways to do this. And so we’re going to be discussing all these things on future episodes. And please go back and also watch and listen to our previous fireside chats with Facebook, you can find us all the episodes we’ve done and we have them even broken down into categories. So if you wanted to say I want to see every Facebook video episode that we’ve done, you can go to our website and do that it’s keeping it real pod.com scroll to the bottom, look for the fireside with Facebook category and you’ll see everything we’ve done. So Scott, thank you so much, once again, gave us a tremendous amount of time and energy today. Thank you and we will see you next month.
Scott Shapiro 44:38
Absolutely. Thanks DJ. Thanks, everyone.
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