How Long Should You Let Your Facebook Ads for Real Estate Run

Facebook ads for real estate work. CPC ads in fact are one of the most effective avenues to acquire new users and generate leads. Regardless of how big your business is you can always benefit from running ads on Facebook. However, this method for generating leads appears to be a little complicated since many agents do not get the results they hoped for. One of the factors which is often overlooked with ads in general and Facebook ads, in particular, is how long you should let your Facebook ads run. There’s been a lot of speculation about the best time to run Facebook ads.

People do not seem to think alike when it comes to how long they should run their Facebook ads. If your Facebook ads are helping Facebook more than they help your business, keep on reading.

Why Facebook Ads?

businesses use Facebook to promote their products and services, increase brand awareness and also connect to their customers and clients. In face when you use ads on search engines, you help your clients find you while on social media ads, you find the clients.

If you want to learn about Facebook ads for real estate from scratch you can read our article about Facebook ads for real estate

However, for some reasons real estate agents need to use Facebook ads:

Diminishing Organic Reach

The organic reach of Facebook was once enough for most businesses, however, in recent years, the trend has been on the decline. According to wordstream:

Between October 2013 and February 2014, Facebook pages of all types saw dramatic reductions in organic reach – a trend that came to be known by many names, from “Facebook Zero” to “Reachpocalypse”

In another study there were more sign of diminishing organic reach on Facebook:

In fact, Facebook made the organic reach of posts less effective to basically push companies to “pay to play.”

Read More: How to Use Facebook Ads for Real Estate: A Definitive Guide | 2021

Cost-effectiveness

Compared to other platforms and channels, Facebook is one of the most cost-effective advertising platforms available. According to data from wordstream, the average cost-per-click of Facebook ads is around $1.72 which is an exceptionally low CPC.

In another study, The team at AdEspresso studied over 100 million dollars of ad spend in 2016 Q3 and found the average cost-per-click of Facebook ads is $0.35 globally and about $0.28 in the U.S.

Why Running Ads on Facebook for a Short Time is a Bad Idea

We like to stick to a one-month max for most real estate Facebook ads, but this rule is not set in stone. Depending on your business you should let the data tell you what to do. In other words, there are many factors affecting the performance of an ad. Sometimes the ad you have created has problems with targeting, creativity, etc. These ads should not be left to run. You should take them down and make proper modifications.

On the other hand, let’s assume your ads are properly set up. You should see which ones are doing better and take down any under-performing ones. However, this is the topic of another article. What we want to discuss in this post is about ideal running times of ads regardless of how well they are created.

As a general rule, you should not let your ads run less than two weeks before making conclusions if the ad works or not. Here is why:

It Limits Facebook’s Learning from The Ad Campaign

Facebook does a good job working for you in return for the money you pay. When you run an ad on Facebook, Facebook collects data based on the performance of the ad and decides what works and what doesn’t and then optimizes the ad to maximize the gains. According to Facebook:

“Each time an ad is shown, our ads delivery system learns more about the best people and places to show the ad. The more an ad is shown, the better the delivery system becomes at optimizing the ad’s performance.“

When you cut the ad run time too short you actually limit and stop Facebook’s algorithms from learning how the ad performs and how it should be optimized. What this means is that ads usually do not perform as they are capable of since Facebook is still learning. That’s why shorter ads have a higher CPA.

What is the Facebook Ads Learning Phase? And Why Does it Matter?

Each ad set you create on Facebook has an objective. Facebook uses this objective to optimize your campaign. The ultimate goal behind ad optimization is putting your ads in front of people who are most likely to do what you want them to do.

Facebook does this by doing some tests and experiments where it shows your ads to different types of people within your audience to find out who is more likely to interact with your ad. This is called Facebook ads learning phase.

The same thing happens when you make changes to your ad too soon. Whenever you make changes the learning phase resets. Many people get disappointed when they see their ad doesn’t run well in the beginning and ignoring the learning phase make changes to the ad and we think you know what happens next. Have patience and give it time.

According to andreavahl.com changes to the following elements will cause the Facebook learning phase to reset. Which means you have to wait even longer to see if your ads work or not. Therefore have patience and let Facebook do its job before deciding to make any changes:

• Targeting
• Creative
• Optimization Event
• Pausing the ad set for more than 7 days.
• Adding a new ad to your ads set

You Miss the Valuable Learning from Ads Data

When you run an ad for a short time you are wasting your money since you can’t gather enough data like the point above, although that’s not what you had in mind, you wanted to reduce costs. To make the most out of your ad campaign, you are supposed to collect data from the ad to learn and use for later campaigns. This is how to create a winning long term strategy. Cutting the ad too short will stop you from getting important insights.

Running Ads on Facebook Is A Long-Term Investment

Step back and look at the bigger picture. Why are you running ads? Running ads should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. It is not a one-time effort to be forgotten. If you have no serious plan to run ads as a part of your marketing plan, it is better to reconsider. Short-term and one-time ad campaigns are a waste of money.  

Consistency is the Key

Like many other things in the world of digital marketing, consistency is key. You need to stay on top of your audience’s mind. Many of the people who see your ad do not need your services right then, but they may in the future. By keeping a consistent presence with your ads you make sure that you are there when your audience needs your services, provided that you have done a good job reaching people. However, to avoid ad fatigue make sure you don’t use copy, design, etc. that are other agents are using a lot.

Facebook Ads for Real Estate Running Time Tips

Here are a few tips you should bear in mind while running ads on Facebook for real estate:

Monitor Your Ads

We recommend all agents log in to their account and monitor the performance of their ads. See how many times the ads have been shown. The more the better. If you see your ads are not getting enough impressions, there is something wrong with the ad. Further to the point above you need to be watching your Click-Through-Ratio showing how much your ad has been clicked on.

Running Ads for Too Long Is Also A Bad Idea

Although we believe running ads is not a short-term investment, running ads for too long can also hurt your campaign, especially when you are running the same ad over and over without optimizing it.

Ad Fatigue

Ad fatigue happens when your audience sees your ad too often. In this case, they will ignore your ad without reading it, reluctantly have a look and in the worst-case scenario close the ad or the window they are looking at. This will cause a huge decrease in your ROI and will increase your advertising cost.

Ad Blindness

This happens when your audience is overwhelmed with the ad as it seems too familiar and they think they have seen it too much already. This happens when you do not test the copy and design and copycat other agents’ ads. A method that might work in the first few stages of running the ad but running it for too long will hurt its efficiency.

Roomvu Social Media Automation Calendar: Facebook Ads

All that being said, if you find Facebook ads too complicated, don’t sweat. After all, you have every right to be worried about the money you are going to spend. The good news is you don’t have to do it yourself. We at roomvu offer an all-in-one social media marketing dashboard for real estate agents. This provides agents with an automated calendar to share content across different social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. As a part of our automated platform, we also offer the services where we take care of your real estate ads on Facebook.

All you need to do is join and create your account today. Then connect your dashboard to your social media accounts and leave the rest to us. We even create the content for you with your branding. You do not need to do anything. Leave it to us, set your budget and we will advertise your branded content or your own content for you on Facebook.

How Long Should You Run Your Real Estate Facebook Ads: Final Words

Running ads on Facebook is a complex topic. Since you will spend your hard-earned cash on the ad campaign, you need to make sure every dollar counts while aiming at lowering your advertising cost for every lead you get. However, reducing the time ads run to reduce costs is not a good idea. Facebook ads need time to deliver data that can be used by Facebook to optimize the ad and make changes in the way it is delivered to the appropriate audience.

On the other hand, you can use this data to create a killer marketing strategy for your future ad campaigns. This requires ads to be consistent to deliver the desired effect on the target audience. As you run your ads on Facebook you are gathering data on your audience and how they react to different ads, their copy, CTA, creative, etc. Running ads short will deprive you of gaining such deep insights that will help you define and modify your direct marketing strategy.