Google Ads vs Facebook Ads Real Estate: Which Is best?
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) and Facebook Ads are ways for real estate agents to generate more leads, gain new clients, and earn more sales. But which one should an agent use?
As a real estate agent, you want to be sure you are reaching the right audience, growing your clientele, and increasing your sales. There are two very popular methods of achieving these goals: Facebook Ads and Google Ads. But what is the difference between the two, and which one should you be using?
The Difference Between Google Ads and Facebook Ads
Google Ads and Facebook Ads are popular means of advertising that help real estate agents gain exposure, grow clientele, generate more leads, and get more sales. Both marketing methods utilize two of the world’s most popular platforms. Despite their similarities, there are quite a few ways in which Google Ads and Facebook Ads differ. Here’s how.
Google Ads utilizes paid search, which essentially works through targeting specific keywords and paid advertising. Real estate agents or their staff determine which keywords their audience uses and then target these keywords, place a bid on them, and hope that their ad is displayed at the top of the SERPs (search engine results page). When a user clicks on the ad, the agent is charged money. This is known as pay-per-click advertising.
Facebook Ads utilizes paid social, which is like paid search, except that the advertising is done on social media. Additionally, Facebook Ads target the things an agent’s audience is interested in and their online behavior rather than through keywords. Thus, Facebook Ads helps an agent’s clientele find them, while Google Ads allows agents to find clientele.
The Benefits of Facebook Ads
Real estate agents can benefit significantly from using Facebook Ads. As an unbelievably popular social media platform with over a million users worldwide, placing ads on Facebook will undoubtedly catch the attention of many new clients. Other benefits of Facebook Ads include:
• Granular-Level Advertising
Users post virtually every aspect of their lives on Facebook, “like” pages that align with their personal interests and beliefs, and search for specific content based on these interests and beliefs. Agents can create a lookalike audience to obtain this data, zero in on their target audience, and create ads accordingly.
• Uniquely Visual
Created from images or videos, Facebook ads tend to be visual—unlike Google Ads, which are merely text-based. This allows agents to place advertisements that appeal to the user’s eye and their emotions, interests, and needs.
• Competitive Pricing
Facebook advertising campaigns tend to be priced competitively. With a combination of competitive pricing and particular advertising potential, Facebook ads allow agents to get the most bang for their buck—even if they have a small budget.
Best Practices When Using Facebook Ads
If an agent decides to utilize Facebook Ads in their marketing strategy, they should follow a few guidelines to reap the most success.
• Ensure that video-based ads feature a vertical or square aspect ratio. Because most Facebook users utilize their phones while scrolling, this ratio ensures that your ad covers more of their mobile screen.
• Less is more when it comes to placing text on images. Remember that web users prefer content that appears clean, concise, and easy to scan.
• Use a carousel format to break up your ad into more digestible content. Users would much rather view multiple images than trudge through a long, wordy advertisement.
• Animate your ad to help it stand out in a user’s News Feed.
• Add calls to action that entice users to act rather than keep scrolling.
The Benefits of Google Ads
Google is, without a doubt, the world’s number one search engine. Because of this fact, it is also number one in online advertising. Real estate agents who advertise on Google Ads find themselves positioned in front of a massive audience, with endless potential to generate new leads and gain new clientele. Other benefits of using Google Ads are:
• An equal chance at success, regardless of the agent’s budget. This is because, like Google itself, Ads prizes ad quality and relevance over the amount of money an agent spends.
• Many advertising formats to choose from. Google Ads allows for the use of many different types of ad formats, including text-based ads, shopping ads, user reviews, location targeting, and a host of others.
Best Practices When Using Google Ads
If agents are interested in using Google Ads, they should follow a few guidelines to achieve optimal results.
• Target specific, long-tailed keywords rather than vague, short-tailed keywords. This ensures that your ad lands in front of the right audience.
• Run ads that are relevant to your audience.
• Pay attention to and improve your ad’s Quality Score. The better your Quality Score, the higher Google will rank you in the SERPs, and therefore the more people see your ad and have higher chances to convert.
How to Determine Which Platform Is Right for You
Google Ads and Facebook Ads are both powerful marketing tools, feature high ROI’s, and allow for creativity in advertising. So, which one do you use?
Many real estate agents choose to run both. Google Ads and Facebook Ads complement each other perfectly: one targets a massive social media platform and targets an enormous search engine audience.
Google is the world’s most-used search engine and receives more than 5 billion search queries every day. Because of the sheer scale and Google Ads’ extended tenure (just about 20 years), Ads is an obvious choice for many real estate agents.
Also, many competing real estate agents utilize Google Ads. This allows agents to step into the competition and create well-targeted, high-quality ads that stand out from the rest.
Facebook is, without a doubt, a social media giant. Similar to Google, many competing real estate agents choose to advertise on Facebook. This gives agents yet another chance to stand out from the crowd. Other reasons to advertise on Facebook include:
•Nearly instant ad placement, leading to quicker results
•Increase brand awareness on social media
•Increase website traffic by drawing more clients to an agent’s social media page
•Helps build user engagement, as well as word-of-mouth and referrals
•Can help grow an agent’s blog traffic
•Can help increase an agent’s web site’s SEO rankings
When the benefits of advertising on Google and the benefits of advertising on Facebook collide, the combination gives real estate agents a clear advantage. Not only are agents more visible on Google (especially in local searches), they are also more visible on social media. In targeting the correct audiences on Google through thoughtful, relevant, long-tailed keywords and Facebook through researched advertising, real estate agents will reap double the rewards. Not only will an agent grow their following, generate more leads, and gain more clients—they will also earn more sales in the long run.
