Pretty much every aspect of Instagram is well suited for real estate marketing: from photo to video-based elements that make it fun to showcase properties, coupled with the mobile-first approach, location data, and geo-targeting, investing in Instagram ads for real estate is money well spent.
Instagram is huge. It’s maintained the growth of its user base in recent years.
According to Statista, “the percentage of US adults who use Instagram grew from 35% to 37% — reaching 1 billion people — making it one f the fastest growing social media networks in 2021.
The truth be told, you don’t have to rely on Facebook to send qualified clicks and leads to your listings, Instagram is a huge goldmine for advertisers.
When you advertise on Instagram, you can reach hundreds of thousands of potential leaders in and outside of your geographic location. This social network also has one of the best campaign targeting options.
When advertising on Instagram, you should understand that it’s a time-sensitive social media platform. You’ll often see feeds turn over quickly and Stories disappear within 24 hours.
This can be a huge challenge for advertisers but also an amazing social platform for promoting timely information.
In particular, you can use Instagram to inform and motivate the target audiences about your current price specials and upcoming open houses. Here’s a good example from Mariana Pearson, a realtor.
These are all time-sensitive events that can do well when showcased on Instagram feeds. It could be a special holiday like Black Friday or Halloween. On the surface, it might be difficult to come up with real estate Instagram campaign ideas, but you can learn from a different industry.
A great example to glean inspiration from is 3Wishes, a Lingerie store. During Halloween, they took advantage of the event to attract new customers and increase orders.
With this type of timely ad campaign, you need to be creative and persuasive with your copy. Add some fun elements to evoke emotions. Use a friendly tone in your copy, and even add some humor to light up the day.
If your website ranking high on Google Map packs, congratulations. You’ll be getting a ton of local consumers.
Unfortunately, not everyone of your audience uses Google to find local businesses, you shouldn’t miss out on these ones.
Instagram gives advertisers a ton of targeting options. By far the most essential targeting option for real estate and restaurants is location targeting.
This must be your major priority when advertising property listings on the social site.
Instagram simplifies the entire process of advertisers, allowing them to get pretty specific with location targeting by using a set zip code and radius.
This is the most effective way to tailor ads to people who are more likely to view your properties and become leads. Remember to include the areas where your target audience tends to move from.
Here’s an example, if you sell homes to new home buyers on the North Shore, approximately 20 – 35 minutes from Boston, but you’re aware your target leaders usually come from rentals in the city, your ads will perform well if you target the city (not just the towns you’re actively selling in) so that you can successfully attract new leads who might be interested in moving.
With a little digging, you can identify potential homebuyers in your city. Quick market research can help you gather a lot of data before setting up your Instagram ad.
However, the type of properties you’re selling or renting will determine what audience you’re reaching out to. In the example below, Glenn Williams is speaking to interested home buyers who can afford to pay $479,000 for a new home.
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If you’re selling high-end luxury apartments in the East Side of Manhattan, it makes sense to target 50 – 70+ years olds who are high-income earners.
Instagram can help you target the appropriate older wealthy audience that might be interested in your premium properties.
Another important aspect is to target an audience that loves and spends money on lifestyles. As an example, you might want to target 60+-year-olds who are interested in women’s fashion, who also love international travels.
There are targeting options for education, relationship status, behaviors and interests, and even life events. Instagram has endless targeting options to help you maximize your advertising budget.
The first step to knowing what type of content or ad campaign to post is by understanding your audience and the type of lead you want to reach.
If you’re looking to reach an audience that is interested in living in a high rise downtown, what’s the essence of creating content about luxury homes?
It’s truly important to consider specific characteristics of your ideal lead, this can include:
Essentially, you must refine your Real Estate Instagram page (more on this later) to be able to attract the right audience.
Regardless of the type of property you’re offering, you must understand and define your target audience first. That’s how successful Instagram marketing campaigns are designed.
To be able to run a Real Estate ad campaign on Instagram, the first step is to create a page and optimize it accordingly. You can quickly set up a page directly from the website or using the mobile app.
If you already have a Facebook account (who doesn’t), then you can easily connect to Instagram and create your page using the same account. Here’s a well-optimized Instagram page from Ryan Serhant, a real estate broker in New York.
Note: This Instagram page shouldn’t be your personal account. No, keep your personal life out of this. When you take pictures with your friends, don’t post them to your business page but to your personal page. Your Instagram business page must be strictly on professional grounds.
More importantly, a business profile gives you access to Instagram Insights. This is a set of valuable data to carefully target specific audiences — based on Clicks, User demographics, and even Traffic sources.
Instagram Insights helps you to create the right type of content. Because you get a deeper understanding of your audience in real-time.
You can also use the insights to pinpoint the exact days and times your Instagram followers are to be active online.
In turn, this can help you to effectively schedule future posts so that you can reach your target audience at the right time. Use Buffer, Later, or other Instagram scheduling tools to automate the entire process.
Pro Tip: When creating an Instagram business page, choose a username with keywords you can easily remember. It must also be relevant to your business. Keep it short. Avoid complicated and boring username people have difficulty locating.
Instagram is also a search engine. So use a realtor or business name and add keywords that are searchable by potential leads. That way, it’d be a lot easier to be found organically.
Hashtags are the lifeblood of social media marketing. For Instagram, Hashtags drive reach and organic engagement. But it can also boost the performance of your ad campaigns.
Although most Instagram marketers are doing it, you can get ahead quickly when you pair memorable hashtags with compelling ads. This is similar to leveraging online arbitrage on Amazon and other eCommerce sites to make more profit.
Create a ripple effect on your ads and reach a new audience without spending extra money on clicks. Imagine how far your hashtags can go if you invest adequate time answering comments, engaging your audience, and building rapport with them.
Whenever you get a potential lead for your property, you can schedule a call; I prefer to use a predictive dialer tool to simplify the communication. But if it’s the same city, then meet with the prospect in person to talk things over and take them on a tour to experience the property.
You’ll agree with me that some of the viral Instagram marketing campaigns use hashtags to strengthen their brands.
But not all Hashtags are created equal. The successful ones follow a pattern. That’s why you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — rather you should use hashtag research tools such as Hashtagify.
This tool can analyze popular tags and your brand to reveal the most popular for your brand to use. And when you’ve created the right hashtags, make sure to add between 10-13 hashtags per post.
This is highly recommended if you want to give wings to your Instagram ads and reach the maximum number of potential home enthusiasts.
It’s always a smart move to show the many different angles of your property when running Instagram ads for Real Estate.
Of course, there are different Instagram ad formats to choose from, the carousel is my favorite for real estate.
Ultimately, you want potential clients to visit your Real Estate website or read your article. If you don’t have a professional website, this might be the right time to consider Wix or Shopify.
The latter will be useful if you plan to integrate a shopping store into your realtor’s website. You’ll find a lot of stunning real estate templates at Wix.
Carousel ads are creative ways to showcase multiple images of your property and present them in a catalog-style display.
While carousel ads are fantastic, your website must be secure and fast. So that when people visit your site from your Instagram carousel ads, their personal information will be safe.
Since a lot of people now work from home due to the pandemic, it’s important to also have a secured website.
In addition to using SSL certificates, you might want Cybersecurity solutions. A reliable solution is Havoc Shield — we use this at our real estate firm to protect our website from threats and build confidence with potential buyers and renters.
Homebuyers and renters might want to see the front of the property as well as the different rooms. With carousel ads, you can creatively showcase multiple properties in the same area using professional and captivating imagery.
Here’s an amazing carousel Instagram ad from Mansion Media. It’s a ‘showcase’ of one of their luxury mansions.
The pictures are high quality and they have used 10 pictures to create a catalog. The outside of the mansion and the best rooms are presented.
You don’t have to be a well-known photographer to take nice shots. Even if they lack the right composition, use a photo editing tool like Adobe Lightroom to improve them — find some lightroom presets at Pixpa.
Yes, you should use visuals in your Instagram advertising but be creative. Gone are the days when advertisers can use one plain image.
It’s always better to showcase the unique angles of your property to the target audience — that way they can easily picture themselves living at that property.
While Carousel ads are fantastic ways to show the various angles, rooms, and perspectives of your property, they use still frames because they’re still images.
Video ads are the new definition of social media advertising.
With video ads, you can captivate your audience and hone the experience of living in your dreamy properties.
Videos take the whole experience to a new level; pulling the target audience in — making it possible for them to relate with the ads.
Other formats of presenting Instagram ads using a ‘one-way’ concept, but video ads speak and expect a response from the viewer. You can also host an online meeting with Zoom or choose from these webinar tools to create an interactive webinar with targeted users.
These actionable steps can send a lot of high-value responses to the real estate marketer or company.
In a study by an Australian Real Estate Group, “listings with a video received 403% more inquiries than those without!”
So how do you convert these inquiries into clients? There are several proven ways, but we like to automate the entire process at the backend. Several sales automation tools such as Salesforce and Reply.io can help you follow up like a pro.
Video ads create rich experiences. In an industry like real estate, you need to build relationships with leads through these experiences. Or start engaging your audience through email marketing. If you’re new to this, you can use the Mailchimp email tool for free, or its alternatives.
If you’re already doing video ads or creating videos for YouTube and other channels, then you’re ready to go. You can repurpose some of your video footage for Instagram ad campaigns.
You’ll often find beautiful and inspirational images on Instagram. Some of these images are often referred to as “lifestyle images.” Here’s an inspiration from Chad Carroll:
These are dream images for viewers. Even if you don’t have a mansion to list yet, you can still take some lifestyle images for your Instagram ads.
If you’re not a photographer, then find a professional who can take various shots of your property. Find some charming angles and use them as your spotlight.
The objective here is to get pictures that make home buyers and renters excited and pumped up. Does your audience love newly renovated bathrooms or the style of the patio? There’s always a way to bring life to your Instagram real estate ads.
Smart real estate marketers tell a story around their property when running Instagram ads. Add some creative juice, it’ll make a world of difference.
When you understand the people buy on emotions, you’ll make up your mind to drive those emotions in the right direction. Incorporating lifestyle photography into your Instagram ads will compel your audience to want to learn more.
Lifestyle Images from @luxury_listings
Looking at these lifestyle images, you can see how the amazing angles of these properties, including the aerial view, are displayed.
Customer testimonials aren’t just social proof, they’re also quite relatable when used in Instagram ads.
Prospective homebuyers, for example, will trust what others are saying about your properties or the relationships they have with you.
Even on Amazon, consumers love to look at what other people have purchased. It gives them the confidence to ‘go-ahead’ with their purchase decisions
That said, it’s important to gather and document your customers’ testimonials.
It doesn’t have to be phenomenal experiences — any little gesture that makes the customer happy during the process of renting a home or buying a home can increase your Instagram ad conversions.
Here’s how Sellfy utilizes a customer testimonial in their Instagram ads.
Customer testimonials build trust. And in real estate, trust is the key ingredient if you must win the hearts of potential buyers and renters.
People don’t buy a house every week, it’s a critical decision that affects their entire life. So how do you leverage past customers’ testimonials in your Instagram ads? There are several ways…
You could simply use the carousel ad format and display the top properties you have successfully sold or rented. You could add brief testimonials or short words from your clients next to each carousel image.
A video testimonial would be amazing. If you can get a video of your clients saying some nice things about your process — use it in your Instagram ad.
Simply set up testimonials as an Instagram ad creative, and easily capture people’s attention, especially those that are already interested in the property. They’ll have a strong reason to call your phone line or visit your office.
All in all, Instagram Ads is a great option for real estate marketers. In addition to the 10 best practices above, you also need to know when to run your ads. If you don’t have this data, then consider the weather conditions.
In general, most people prefer buying homes when the weather is fairly hot; also when the sun is out — people who are interested in a new home might want to inspect more homes and buy.
If you’re not ready to launch your ad, perhaps the time isn’t right, you can schedule it inside the Instagram creator studio. You’re in control and can decide when to run your ad to reach the ideal audience.
