Getting a pay-per-click advertising campaign for your real estate business to set up and generate leads successfully can be time-consuming.
While having your own campaign that you can control and constantly improve is usually the best way, it can be overwhelming, at least in the beginning stages.
Adwerx is a digital advertising provider that can help you with done-for-you Facebook and Google Ads and save you time.
Therefore, I decided to write an article about the company’s service and dig a bit deeper into what they can offer and the limits.
In this article, you will learn…
…what Adwerx is and who owns it
…how to use Adwerx (the different ad campaigns explained)
…where Adwerx ads appear
…about the differences between Adwerx and Google Ads and Facebook Ads
…the difference between Adwerx clicks and views
…and about alternatives and competitors
What Is Adwerx for Real Estate and Who Owns It?
Adwerx offers digital advertising services and is an advertising automation platform that serves industries such as real estate, mortgage, insurance, wealth management, sales teams, and franchises.
It features five ad campaign types: target by zip code, TV commercials, ads for your sphere, recruiting ads, retargeting ads, and listing ads.
The specialty for real estate is the listing ads that are not available to other industries Adwerx serves.
The owner and CEO of Adwerx is Jed Carlson, who founded the company in 2013. It is derived from the company ReverbNation.
The latter produces business tools for independent musicians.
How to Use Adwerx – The Ad Campaigns Explained
As mentioned, Adwerx offers five ad campaigns: target by zip code, TV commercials, ads for your sphere of influence, recruiting ads, retargeting, and listing ads.
So, you can mainly use Adwerx as a done-for-you advertising service.
The main different advertising campaign types I will explain in this section.
1) Zip Code Ads (Brand Awareness)
The zip code ad campaigns target real estate prospects in your local area.
According to Adwerx, these prospects can be targeted by their behaviors, such as using a mortgage calculator or searching for houses.
While Adwerx does not indicate this, this is usually done by using particular interests on Facebook’s advertising platform.
There, for example, interests such as “mortgage calculator” exist.
So, overall, interests are used in these campaigns that correlate with people being “in-the-market” for real estate. In the case of mortgage calculators, these are likely potential buyers.
Since you will need to select a particular zip code you want to target, ads will only be displayed to people in a 15-mile radius around the center of this zip code.
At the same time, these people need to have the already mentioned interests indicating buying intentions (e.g., mortgage calculators, looking for homes).
By using retargeting campaigns for these ads, the ads will do the “creepy” thing you may have also experienced in the past, that is, following you around the web across various websites, no matter if it’s CNN or Fox News.
The following around the web thing (retargeting) is not done via Facebook, although Facebook also offers retargeting.
But this is done via the vast display ad network that Google has at its disposal.
This works as follows.
The local zip code ad from Adwerx is shown to someone on Facebook. Once the potential lead clicks on the ad, the magic starts working.
The ad usually leads to a landing page of your choice.
Once the prospect arrives at your landing page, a cookie is saved in the browser.
This cookie can be used by Google Display ads to recognize the prospect on all websites, allowing Google Ads to be displayed.
When they arrive on these sites, a relevant ad (in that case, the Ad created by Adwerx) is displayed.
To create a zip code ad, you can use pre-made ad templates.
The ad can be generated by just entering the address of the respective property listing or your name and location.
The ad’s property details are pulled from publicly available data.
If you don’t like the ad copy or creative, you can customize the ad afterward.
Depending on your copywriting skills, this may be a good idea to stand out even more and increase your key marketing performance indicators, such as lead conversion rates.
A campaign like that allegedly receives an average of 10,000+ views per month.
2) Sphere of Influence Ads
The next advertising campaign offered by Adwerx is called “Sphere of Influence Ads,” It is based on the assumption that real estate agents get 66% of their business from repeat clients and referrals.
I write “assumption” because statistics about how much business real estate agents get from referrals vary as much as the mood of cats.
Getting back to how it works.
Adwerx creates an ad for you for this purpose, and you let the company know who is in your sphere of influence.
The latter is done by either uploading a file with the respective contacts, copying and pasting, or importing the contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, and/or iCloud.
Once Adwerx knows about these contacts, they can start the campaign and target the leads, specifically around the web.
Both Google Ads and Facebook Ads allow you to create campaigns using email addresses and other contact information you already have.
3) Ads for Listings
Ads for Listings is basically the digital version of a just-listed postcard (I invite you to read my article about marketing with postcards here).
But the ad copy used is not only about just-listed properties. Additionally, “price reduced” and “just sold” properties are included.
Three further ad copies are used for older listings, second homes, and active listings.
This ad campaign type has two aims: delighting the seller client, showing that the real estate agent is working hard, and generating buyer leads.
For the listing ad campaign, potential buyer clients are targeted geographically.
In this context, it is similar to zip code ads, with the difference that a particular property listing is advertised instead of the real estate business.
Retargeting is also implemented for this campaign so the ads can follow local prospects as they use the Internet.
To delight and satisfy the seller’s needs, they are emailed a daily report with ad performance results (e.g., ad views and clicks) that can be shared on social media.
Since the geographic location of the seller is targeted, chances are high that the seller’s client will also see the ad.
Again, this is actually one of the aims of this type of campaign, too.
This doesn’t have any value in generating buyer leads, but it does have value in satisfying the seller client and improving your branding and overall image.
So, your chances of getting good word of mouth and, thus, future referrals will increase.
Like zip-code ad campaigns, behavioral targeting is used for that (e.g., mortgage calculator interest, new school districts, etc.).
According to Adwerx representatives in the video below, with this campaign type, they could get 2-3 times the industry average of CTR and 7000 impressions in one week.
The higher CTR contradicts a bit with the experience of this company, which states that they reached a CTR of .002% with Adwerx.
This would mean either that the industry average is super low (which is not) or the 2-3 times industry average claimed is not entirely right.
To remind you shortly, according to this source, the average CTR in real estate for Google Ads is 7.7%, and for Facebook Ads, it’s 0.98%. (source)
I would have loved to know more about the CPA or cost per lead numbers and the lead-to-customer conversion rate to learn more about how the lead quality performed.
But I understand when some companies want to remain more private about this detailed marketing performance data.
There is enough competition out there that would love to use data like that to their benefit.
4) Open House Ads
The last campaign type is open house ads.
This is a campaign that lasts for three days.
One type of ad is run two days before the open house and another one the day the open house event occurs.
The main aim is to increase awareness of the open house event.
If you like to read more about advertising open houses, you may find this article interesting.
5) Streaming TV Ads
Finally, Adwerx also offers Streaming TV Ads. These are ads that can be displayed on different streaming channels and also be targeted by geography.
One advantage of this ad campaign is that it’s not as expensive as traditional TV advertising.
However, still, it can be displayed on your potential client’s TV when they use a particular streaming channel.
You can also claim a specific zip code that once claimed other competing agents or real estate businesses are not able to use.
So you can basically lock out your competition.
Below is a table where I added the major devices, providers, and channels used for this ad campaign.
| Devices | Providers | Channels |
|---|---|---|
| chromecast | hulu | HGTV |
| fire tv stick | philo | food network |
| Samsumg Smart TV | fubo TV | tbs |
| tv | Direct TV Now | CNN |
| Roku | sling | ESPN |
| Zip Code Ads (pricing per month) | Ads for Listings |
|---|---|
| $40-$99 | $59 (1 week) |
| $118 (2 weeks) | |
| $149 (3 weeks) | |
| $199 (4 weeks) | |
| $239 (5 weeks) |
Where Do Adwerx Ads Appear?
My research on various Adwerx sources shows that their ads can appear on numerous websites across the web, provided the pre-determined targeting fits.
As already discussed above, Adwerx uses geographic or web browsing behavior targeting.
Geo-targeting with Facebook ads means that people within a 15-mile radius of the selected zip code get your ad displayed. (source)
The web browsing behavior includes retargeting and tracking particular interests (e.g., using mortgage calculators) and then following them around the web across different websites.
Here, you can find a small selection of various websites where ads created by Adwerx are often displayed.
Adwerx vs. Adwords vs. Facebook Ads
The main difference between Adwerx and Adwords or Facebook Ads is the following:
Adwerx is an advertising service that offers done-for-you campaigns, and Google Adwords or Facebook Ads are digital advertising platforms.
Adwerx uses these platforms to offer you their ad management services so you can save time.
The Facebook and Google Ads platforms don’t do the set-up, targeting, ad creation, and overall management for you since they are self-serving platforms.
Adwerx Clicks vs. Views
Earlier in the section about zip code ads, I mentioned that Adwerx allegedly received an average of 10,000+ views per month.
If you don’t know the difference, you may wonder what the difference is between Adwerx clicks and views.
Clicks and views are terms from PPC advertising, and views refer to the number of times a particular ad is displayed and seen by a potential lead.
On the other hand, the term “clicks” means that potential leads clicked on an ad shown to them.
But clicks would be a better metric to use.
Why?
Because you can show an ad 10 million times, but if it is not clicked on, it doesn’t have much value.
And the ratio between clicks and views results in the marketing performance indicator called click-through rate (CTR).
Adwerx Alternatives & Competitors
You can consider all pay-per-click advertising service providers as alternatives or competitors of Adwerx.
Three I can mention will definitely have higher price points since they belong more to typical advertising agencies. They are:
It’s Lyfe Marketing, Thrive, and Real Estate Webmasters.
But since you were already looking for Adwerx, I assume you may need more affordable options.
Two of them I already mentioned in different articles and collected them in my tools and services collection page with more than 500 real estate marketing tools and services here.
They have similar price points and are called “madgicx” and “leadPops. “
Does Adwerx Work, and Is It Worth It?
According to an Adwerx video, agents working with them get 77% more yearly listings.
This is a bold claim and difficult to verify.
I also researched what other users and/or customers had to say about Adwerx and whether it works or is worth it.
You find either overly positive reviews not mentioning specific marketing performance data on this and this source or excessively negative reviews that didn’t like the service.
The latter was difficult to verify as reliable since it was published on Reddit, where everyone, be they a customer or not, can comment on anything.
From my observations and logical deduction, I want to leave you with some final strategic thoughts regarding whether Adwerx works or is worth it.
The whole point of using Adwerx is that you get a done-for-you advertising service using Facebook Ads and Google Ads with geotargeting, behavioral targeting, and retargeting.
If you don’t have time and don’t want to do it on your own, it is likely worthwhile, although you may get better results when putting in the time and effort to test various ad creatives and copies on your own.
You can customize the pre-made ads from Adwerx to stand out better.
I would recommend doing the latter to differentiate yourself from other realtors using the same service.
But this would again involve more of your time, which can make the primary value of done-for-you advertising almost obsolete.
Nevertheless, if you don’t do this, you likely will get some positive results, but not necessarily “butt-kicking” ones.
Since you can cancel at any time (source), you may want to give it a test drive and see your results.
Pricing is not too steep, and I assume the results will also depend on how many competitors you will have in your local area using the same service.
This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.
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