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facebook marketing for builders & developers
Digital

Three Facebook Advertising Strategies to Maximize Your Summer Selling


Traditionally, the summer season can be one of the slowest times for builders & developers. Families are on vacation, kids are out of school, and people are generally more distracted than they are throughout other times of the year. This is when builders & developers tend to scale back their marketing campaigns. While this is a perfectly reasonable strategy, a common mistake is scaling back your marketing campaigns without also adjusting the strategy to prepare for the summer months.

If you’re advertising on Facebook, the summer months can offer long days and idle time, which provides developers the perfect opportunity to get in front of their prospects. The challenge is breaking through all the distractions summer has to offer and making meaningful connections through your advertising campaigns.

Challenge accepted. Here are some ways you can make the most of your summer Facebook ad campaigns.

1. Evaluate Current & Past Facebook Campaigns

If you’ve been running Facebook ad campaigns for a few months, then you already have a delicious buffet of data to dive head-first into. Before you begin to build your marketing strategy for the summer, it is important that you evaluate your campaigns to see what worked and what didn’t.

When evaluating your past Facebook campaigns, be sure to ask critical questions that will help you form your summer marketing program:

  • What were my original campaign objectives?
  • What metrics was I tracking, and how did they perform over time?
  • Did the changes I make to those campaigns positively effect campaign results?
  • Is my ad creative still effective? Does it need to be changed?
  • How does a shift in seasonality change the way I approach my advertising?

Answering questions like these should give your campaign a much better opportunity to drive the traffic and leads, allowing you to get the best possible return for your advertising dollars.

2. Personalize Your Messaging

Imagine how difficult it would be to have a private conversation with a friend in the front row of a Metallica concert. Then imagine that same friend has the attention span of a goldfish. That’s what online advertising is like.

It’s more difficult than ever to reach your target customer in a meaningful way. Your prospective buyer is being bombarded with digital ads every time they open their browser. On Facebook, you’re competing against other ads from other companies, cute pictures of babies, endless articles, and memes that have been shared over a million times.

One way to break through the noise is to be hyper-specific and personal in your advertising. By now, you should have a pretty good idea of what speaks to your target buyer. Use that knowledge to proactively address what matters to them in your ad creative. If you already have some buyers in your community, find out what made them choose you, and use that to find more buyers like them.

Personalization doesn’t end with the individual. The story of your community is naturally going to have something to do with where you’re located. Are you in a tranquil locale surrounded by nature? Make that a part of your advertising story. Just blocks away from the newest downtown scene? Appeal to a buyer who is looking for that lifestyle. All of these things speak to people beyond just the houses your sell and the options they have for kitchen countertops.

3. Reengage Your Current Leads

One of the biggest mistakes developers make with their advertising is only focusing on collecting brand new leads and the leads that become appointments. However, the others leads you’ve already collected, the ones who exist in between those two worlds, are invaluable to make the most out of your overall campaign strategy.

Facebook allows you to upload an email list you’ve legally obtained, and as long as those individuals use that same email address for their Facebook accounts, you can target those individuals with remarketing ads. Remarketing ads can be a powerful tool with a number of different applications:

  • Remind your prospects of upcoming events and progress made within your developing community
  • Feature new home buyers who were once prospects, just like themselves
  • Reinforce your community benefits and information
  • Stay top-of-mind during a summer that is bound to be full of distractions

If you have good tracking in place (more on that later), you’ll realize the benefits of remarketing ads. They can go a long way to generating the on-site traffic and sales you’re looking for.

Make This Summer Season Your Best One

Keeping your current leads engaged, combined with a well-thought out strategy to acquire new ones, will go a long way to maximizing your ad spend and getting the most out of the summer season.