Retargeting campaigns are one of the most effective ways to harness the website traffic you already get to your real estate website.
Dynamic Facebook Ads for Real Estate is a type of retargeting ad campaign tailored toward the real estate industry, and it can increase ad conversion rates drastically if done right.
This article will discuss what they are, how to create Dynamic Facebook Ads for real estate, and how they can perform by crunching some marketing numbers.
What Are Dynamic Facebook Ads for Real Estate
Dynamic Facebook Ads for real estate are part of the dynamic ads Facebook offers to marketers.
So by explaining what dynamic ads are, we can already explain what dynamic Facebook ads for real estate mean.
Sometimes, you find the best explanation right at the source, which would be Facebook itself.
This is what they explain on their website about dynamic ads, obviously a bit in a “salesy” tone:
“Facebook dynamic ads automatically show the right products to people who have expressed interest on your website, in your app, or elsewhere on the internet.
Simply upload your product catalog and set up your campaign one time, and it will continue working for you for as long as you want—finding the right people for each product, and always using up-to-date pricing and availability.” (source)
So, what happens in the case of dynamic Facebook ads for real estate?
Well, at first glance, they look like regular carousel ads, but upon closer examination, you can see they already include some essential information, such as price and number of bedrooms.
You would have to add this data manually on a standard ad.
But in this case, this information is pulled automatically from the real estate professional’s website.
This data is pulled by integrating an agent’s IDX website with a particular Facebook account.
So, Facebook will need to be able to first track the user behavior of potential buyers on your real estate website.
This is done by the Facebook Pixel, which can observe and watch views, likes, searches, events, triggers, and more.
Once the website visitor leaves your site and goes on Facebook, Facebook can use relevant listings from a catalog and show them in the news feed of the potential lead.
So, these dynamic Facebook ads for real estate are a variation of a retargeting campaign.
Well, this is retargeting just specifically for real estate listings.
The nice thing about this is that Facebook can use the visitor’s preferences to display comparable or similar listing ads from your property inventory.
These ads are displayed both on Instagram and Facebook.
How to Create Dynamic Facebook Ads for Real Estate to Promote Your Properties
The fact that Facebook needs to be able to access your property inventory also implies that you have a large enough inventory in the first place.
If you have over ten property listings that are not too similar, or if you have more than 20 property listings that are similar, you are good to go with dynamic Facebook ads for real estate.
Why is that?
Facebook’s algorithm wouldn’t work as well as it could or should since it can’t get enough inventory data from your website.
You might be better off with just carousel ads if you have only a few property listings.
For a more in-depth article about real estate marketing with Facebook, you might want to head over to this one.
There I also discuss other Facebook ad campaign methods to promote real estate.
Another requirement you will need is traffic to your website.
If you don’t get visitors to your website that browse through your property listings, then again, Facebook’s algorithm will have difficulty reading the user behavior.
What happens if it can’t read the user behavior?
It won’t be able to generate a user profile that can be used for targeting purposes and suggests similar properties via dynamic ads.
Now you might wonder: “Wait a minute, aren’t these dynamic ads supposed to send me traffic in the first place?”
The answer is yes.
But this type of Facebook advertising campaign isn’t designed to bring you first-time traffic.
Still, it only sends traffic from potential leads who have visited your website and browsed your property listings.
It’s basically “second-time traffic.”
The idea of these retargeting ads is that you have better chances of decreasing your click costs and increasing your conversion rates because the visitors are already more familiar with your brand.
If you don’t get enough traffic to your real estate website, you might want to consider other methods first to generate that necessary traffic.
Here are some articles of mine about how you can generate traffic to your real estate website:
- 254 Real Estate Content Ideas & Samples [How-To Included]
- 8 Real Estate Marketing Video Ideas and How Long a Video Should Be
- How to Use Google Ads for Real Estate – All You Need to Know
- How to Successfully Use Native Ads for Real Estate
- The Facebook Marketing Strategy Guide for Real Estate
Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t give specific information about the minimum amount of traffic necessary for a real estate website.
The only thing they say is this:
“While there isn’t an explicit traffic minimum, the solution is designed for high traffic sites.
Therefore, we recommend real estate ads for listing sites, brokerage sites, and sites with at least 100 property listings given that there will likely be more traffic for these types of real estate sites.” (source)
So, the most important basic requirements before you think of starting with dynamic Facebook ads for real estate, which are more important than the other technical ones which I will come to in a minute, are these:
- Have enough property listings in your inventory (more than 10 with more variation or more than 20 with lower variety).
- While 10 or 20 listings are the minimum requirement, these ads likely work better if you have at least 100 property listings.
- You get enough traffic to your website.
Now, let’s get to the further rather technical requirements so you can set up dynamic Facebook ads for real estate.
You will further need the following:
- A Facebook ad account
- A Facebook page
- An installed Facebook pixel on your real estate website
- A Facebook catalog
How to go about the first two points (the creation of the Facebook ad account and the Facebook Page) is already covered when you click on the links.
The Facebook Pixel for Your Real Estate Website
I won’t fully cover the basics of the Facebook pixel, but if you need them, you can find some good information on Facebook itself.
But the two most crucial pixel parameters you want to use are content_type and content_ids.
You could configure your Facebook pixel with many more events, and it can get quite technical quickly.
The configuration of these different events defines which condition it should be fired or triggered.
Below, I will give you an overview of further important events relevant to dynamic Facebook ads for real estate.
| Pixel Event | App Event | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Search | fb_mobile_search | A visitor that searches property listings |
| ViewContent | fb_mobile_content_view | When someone checked out a particular property listing |
| InitiateCheckout | fb_mobile_initiated_checkout | When someone liked, saved, or showed interest in a particular property listing |
| Purchase | fb_mobile_purchase | When a potential lead contacted a realtor about a property listing |
There are many more events you could check together with your tech guy.
Preparing Your Real Estate Catalog
To create a new catalog, you need to head over to this Facebook page.
Next, you select “Add Catalog, choose the “catalog owner” (your Facebook page), and click “Create.”
Click on “View Catalog”.
Now, it’s time to choose the right upload option and click next.
Then, you click “Overview” and “Add Items.”
Here, you will have three options to add items to your catalog.
You can upload a spreadsheet or file, use a file hosted on your website, or a Google spreadsheet.
If you choose a spreadsheet or file to upload, it should be in CSV, TSV, or XML format.
A file hosted on your website should be on an URL that is HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or ftps. It can be up to 8 GB and should also have the CSV, TSV, or XML format.
If you want to use a Google spreadsheet, you can just enter the link to the spreadsheet, and that’s it.
But what should these files look like so they are not rejected by Facebook?
These are the required fields you should use:
- home_listing_id
- name
- image
- address
- neighborhood
- latitude
- longitude
- price
- availability
- URL
If you are not that tech-savvy, you might want to have a developer look over it.
If you don’t have a developer, there are several Fiverr gigs from $5 where you can have someone tech-savvy do that for you.
Here is a short selection:
On a side note, if you don’t have or can’t define “neighborhood” as a parameter in the feed, you can insert the city of the property instead.
You also need to prepare your Facebook Pixel, which can be done by most of the Fiverr Gigs above.
The important events you need to know about are already included in the table above.
Should you want to do it yourself, you can check out this support page on Facebook.
How to Create Dynamic Ads for Real Estate Campaigns
Now that we have the preparation in place, we can move on to actually creating Dynamic Ads for real estate campaigns.
There is not much magic to it because this type of campaign is the same as other single or carousel ads.
The only difference is that you create an ad template that automatically uses images and details from your prepared catalog or, in other words, from your product feed.
So, first, head over to the Facebook Ads Manager and then click on “Create.”
In the “Conversion” column, you will find the option “Catalog Sales” that you need to select as your objective.
You won’t see an error if your catalog is already uploaded to Facebook.
It usually exists if you see an error because Facebook couldn’t find a product catalog yet.
First, you enter the name of your campaign, and then, of course, you need to choose “Special Ad Category” since it’s about the real estate industry.
Then, you select “Housing.”
In this article, I already mentioned what this special ad category is all about.
So, in the section “Catalog” (scrolling down a bit), you can click on “Create Catalog,” which will lead you again to the section I already discussed above, where you prepare your whole catalog and connect it with Facebook.
What Ad Formats Can Be Used?
You can use the single image ad format or the carousel ad format.
Single Image Ads should use an image ratio of 1:9:1 and a 1,200 x 628 pixels resolution.
And Carousel Ads should use an image ratio of 1:1 and a 600 x 600 pixels resolution.
What About Lead Costs and Conversion Rates of Dynamic Facebook Ads for Real Estate
Now, I am sure you also want to know a bit about the performance of Dynamic Facebook Ads for Real Estate.
So, let’s take at the conversion rates or, rather how they can improve the typical conversion rates of Facebook real estate ads.
In my article about real estate prospecting conversion rates with a nice overview of conversion rates and costs per acquisition of different marketing channels, I already mentioned that the normal Facebook ads conversion rates for real estate are 10.68%.
To find out the conversion rates for dynamic Facebook ads, we need to look at Facebook retargeting campaign conversion rates.
Why?
Because dynamic Facebook ads are actually a variant of retargeting ads.
So I researched some retargeting statistics.
And here they are:
- They can increase the conversion rate over time by 147% when combined with prospecting (source) and, according to this source, even by 150%.
- They can lead to a 1046% increase in branded search. (source).
- Compared to regular display ads, the average CTR for retargeting ads is ten times higher (source).
Now we have something to work with and crunch some marketing numbers.
The most important statistic to me is the 147-150% increase in conversion rates.
Let’s stay with the lower number to be conservative.
So, instead of a 10.68% conversion rate with a cost per acquisition of $16.29, you could get a 15.69% conversion rate.
This means that instead of 9.36 (1 divided by 10.68%) clicks, you would only have to buy 6.37 clicks (1 divided by 15.69%).
Since the average costs per click on Facebook for real estate are $1.81, you would pay $11.52 per lead instead of $16.29 when using normal ads.
But of course, we can’t directly compare that.
To be fair and unbiased, we also need to factor in the costs you need to generate traffic for your real estate website.
Because, if you remember, without enough website traffic, the retargeting wouldn’t work.
So, you might want to give Dynamic Facebook Ads for real estate a try, and if the whole setup seems overwhelming, you can also look into services where you just buy the leads generated by such a Facebook campaign.
One such provider is the real estate software suite Chime for real estate, which I just recently reviewed in this article.
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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