Set & forget real estate marketing explained

We’ve all got 24 hours in a day with which to work, play, and sleep (if we’re lucky!). Anyone working in real estate is, no doubt, acutely aware of the scarcity of time in their day. Between meetings, constant showings, and 24/7 client calls, it’s natural that real estate agents value their time at a premium, and spend it doing what creates the most value for them.

It was a greater understanding of the hectic schedules of real estate agents coupled with the tremendous opportunities we know are available in online advertising that led us to design AdWerx for Real Estate. We set out to build technology that automates the most meticulous and time-consuming aspects of online ad management, while delivering the value you’d expect from a professionally managed ad campaign. It’s online advertising for agents who don’t want a second job as a campaign manager.

Wondering how “set & forget” advertising actually works? Read on.

“Location, Location, Location…”

We all know these “most important factors in real estate.” So location is where we start targeting our clients’ ads.

When you start a campaign with AdWerx, we’ll ask you to specify the zip codes where you want your ad to show. We’ve found that targeting ads this way allows agents to reach people in-the-market in the neighborhoods they know best, while not limiting their exposure to the point where their ads fail to make a meaningful impact.

Rather than asking clients to experiment with geographic targets of varying sizes and population, we’ve surmised the proper balance for local marketing based on market size, population density, and available ad inventory and vastly simplified the campaign setup process without sacrificing granularity. Targeting local prospects is so simple in AdWerx that most agents are able to complete their campaign setup in less than two minutes!

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

While traditional online advertising targets people by what they type into a search engine, or the sites they happen to be browsing, AdWerx goes deeper to identify ‘in-market’ individuals in the zip codes our clients target. Rather than attempting to infer intent by targeting search keywords, we identify prospects by the actions they take.

For example, according to NAR, home buyers spend an average of two weeks researching online before they ever reach out to an agent. In this time, they’re searching for homes online, using mortgage calculators, and gathering quotes from moving companies; all actions that indicate they’ll soon need the services of a real estate agent.

At AdWerx, we identify individuals in our clients’ zip codes who perform actions like these online, and show them the appropriate ads across the thousands of sites in our inventory. Conversely, if someone comes on our radar, but later stops exhibiting these behaviors, we’ll phase them out of the targeting profile for that zip, and automatically cease showing them ads. This way, we’re able to focus our clients’ ad dollars where they’ll make the biggest impact while eliminating wasteful spend on ads shown to prospects who aren’t actually in the market.

“Y’all Come Back Now!”

If you’ve ever shopped for a book on Amazon, you’ve probably noticed the ads for that book seeming to follow you around the web. This type of advertising, what the industry refers to as retargeting, has proven to be five times more effective at generating traffic than traditional display advertising, and it’s a key piece of the AdWerx marketing mix.

When someone clicks on one of our clients’ ads, we’ll automatically place a cookie in their browser that identifies them as a prime prospect.  When we see that person browsing sites in our ad inventory, we allocate greater budget to reaching them, vastly increasing the likelihood that they’ll see our client’s ad, and establishing them firmly as the real estate expert in their area.

Traditionally, setting up retargeting is a multi-step process involving both the agent and their webmaster or marketing staff, and can take days to implement properly. With AdWerx, every ad campaign employs retargeting automatically for the entire run of the campaign.

Managing ad campaigns is typically a full time job (one I did for 3.5 years, once upon a time), and one reserved for those with an extremely specialized skill set. We’re trying to change that. When we say AdWerx offers “marketing on autopilot,” we’re not just trying to build hype. We’re telling real estate agents that they can advertise effectively online, without sacrificing their time, or their sanity.