Luxury marketing in a small town

Hi Karen,

It’s great you have a quality video as they’re far more effective than images on social. Finding that sweet spot between a highly focused, yet sizable audience can be a challenge — especially in real estate marketing. What makes Facebook advertising great though, are its audience targeting opportunities.

First, think about your customer profile, or what type of person is most likely to purchase this property. This is a lot like what Matthew also said. Those who may be interested in the property may not be those who are already living in the immediate area. Following his example, I grew up in a rural lake town in New Hampshire, the vast majority of lake houses are used as vacation properties for people largely from out of state (mostly Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey) so people are driving anywhere from two to over six hours to get to their holiday home that many use just a couple weeks a year and these lake properties average around $1 million – $5 million.

Point being, think realistically about who where they buyers may be coming from. You can pinpoint exact towns/cities you want your ads to display to, or use radius targeting (e.g. set a radius of 100 miles).

Location aside, consider why they would be interested in the property. In my example, the draw is the lake/mountains. People come from southern states who work in larger cities like Boston and NYC who want an escape from the city and like doing things like boating, hiking, kayaking, fishing, etc… It’s also a good alternative to oceanfront properties as they tend to be more affordable, and are more usable (better for kids as the lake has no rip tides, more water sports, homes come with docks so people can have boats, etc…).

With their interests in mind, you can target people within your geographic area that are likely to be interested in your property. To do this, target your ads by audience interest (i.e., people interested in fishing, outdoors, hiking, etc…).

Targeting location and interests alone will help give you a pool of people who might be interested, but you don’t want to waste ad spend on people who aren’t likely to buy. Qualify your audience by using Facebook’s income, net worth, and job titles targeting. For example, you might say your audience needs to have a net worth of at least $XX in order for your ad to display to them. High value real estate is notorious for getting a lot of interested people who are just having fun dreaming, but aren’t in a financial position to actually purchase high-value homes, so this helps better qualify your audience.

This may still create a fairly limited audience, though it is generally better to go for quality over quality. Pre-qualifying your audience will help increase the chances that they will genuinely be interested in the property you have listed.

Anyway, hope this helps, and for more info on how to target audiences, read this article on Facebook ad targeting.

Kind regards,

Kelly