Many advertisers woke up this morning and upon opening their Meta for Business accounts, found that ads were turned off late last night. Adding to injury, in many cases the ads turned off were some of the best performing assets.
Facebook turning all the best performing ads off!!
— Abdulqadir Hassan | Facebook Ads (@theabdulqadird) April 13, 2022
Good morning. Check your ad accounts. A couple of hours ago Facebook decided to randomly turn OFF your ads.
— Savannah Sanchez | UGC | TikTok Ads (@social_savannah) April 13, 2022
Meta has not issued a statement, but if you are running Facebook Ads it would be prudent to log into your accounts and check to see if any of your ads were inadvertently turned off on or around 7 p.m. PST Tuesday.
What to do. Rok Hladnik shared on Twitter an easy way to diagnose if the ads were running and subsequently turned off. To view, simply view ads in ad manager that have been serving, then view “ad delivery.’” Within the ad delivery selector, you will be able to choose the “off” button to showcase ads that are off.
For those of you who will wake up and see your ads turned OFF by Facebook overnight the easier way to figure out which ones to turn back on is:
Filter by Ad delivery = Off. And after that select Yesterday or This week to see which ads were turned OFF but had delivery. pic.twitter.com/s0Uq8AlyjZ
This will show you if ads were turned off after were running earlier in the day/week. It is also possible to see changes within the campaign history.
Why we care. Advertisers need their ads to run to be successful. It appears this issue did not fire notifications and is impacting quality ads that may significantly hinder the success of a campaign. While Facebook has not provided a statement yet, this is a major problem that a diligent marketer can fix quickly.
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Google Ads today announced that advertisers can now use dashboards at the manager account level.
What it looks like. The dashboard is broken down in these areas:
Top Level summary
Conversions over time
Top search terms
Campaign Performance Report
Search Auction Insights
Top Locations
Here’s a screenshot from Google:
How to get it. Simple. Go to the Reports menu of your Google Ads manager account and click on Dashboards to get started.
Additional changes to dashboards. Google said they have also made five improvements. You can now:
Change date ranges and filters for the entire dashboard.
Add interactive table cards, rich formatting features and conditional formatting
Download higher-quality reports more quickly.
Resize cards and layouts dynamically based on window size
Create a dashboard card by copying over existing saved reports
Why we care. Until now, these dashboards could only show data from individual accounts. This change should make it easier for you to find potential issues or opportunities at a higher level, across multiple accounts, according to Google. This dashboard should be a welcome feature for some marketers, such as those who manage paid accounts for franchises, because it gives a high-level, aggregate view of Google Ads performance, costs and other key metrics.
An effective digital marketing strategy for real estate is essential for ongoing success. Refer to this step-by-step digital marketing strategy to conquer everything from SEO to PPC and Analytics.
Search advertising revenue continues to grow. In 2021, according to the IAB, search accounted for $78.3 billion of all U.S. digital advertising revenue, which came in at a whopping $189 billion.
However, the IAB noted in their Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2021 report that the growth of search wasn’t as strong as other formats, such as digital video, which was up 50 percent year on year (YoY). As a result, search lost 0.8 percentage points in total revenue share.
Paid search remains king. With 41.4% of all digital ad revenue in 2021, paid search is still the leading format. Mobile accounted for $54.7 billion (up from $39.7 billion in 2020), while desktop accounted for $23.5 billion (up from $19.3 billion in 2020).
Top advertising format by share/Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2021
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Social media advertising rebounds. Social media advertising plateaued at the start of the pandemic. In 2021, revenue from social platforms (including Meta-owned networks, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok) hit $57.7 billion, up from $41.4 billion in 2020. What helped fuel this growth? In particular, the IAB noted that 80% of brands now work with influencers and content creators, which began during COVID-19.
The state of digital advertising. It’s strong. Of note from the IAB report:
Total U.S. digital ad revenue increased by $50 billion in 2021.
YoY growth was 35.4%, the highest increase since 2006.
YoY growth was strong in each quarter of 2021. (And that is expected to continue in 2022.)
Q4 2021 digital ad revenue hit a new record: $55 billion. That’s up nearly $10 billion from the same 2020 holiday season.
Why we care. At the start of the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty about whether we’d continue to see online advertising continue to grow. In 2020, we wondered whether we’d only see single-digit growth heading forward. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened. Search – like all other digital channels and formats – shows strong growth.
The IAB predicts digital ad growth to continue across all channels. However, the IAB notes some potential challenges, including privacy regulation, the deprecation of third-party cookies and measurement. What else could impact digital marketing this year: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ongoing supply chain issues in the U.S. and other economic issues. That said, as the IAB notes, “brands have spoken, and digital is where they are putting their dollars.” That will again be true in 2022. You can view the entire report here (note: the report is free, but you must log in or create an account to download it).
Marketers are still adapting to the major disruptions of the past several years. Buyers, though, still expect marketers to provide personalization and enjoyable experiences.
Luckily, the technology and data that can help are becoming more accessible.
In partnership with Ascend2, Oracle surveyed 853 marketers across the U.S., Canada, India, and the UK. The results showed what trends and technologies are helping marketers pivot where necessary, connect with customers, and drive conversions.
Top challenges marketers face in 2022
38% of marketers said maximizing performance across channels was one of their most difficult challenges. Audiences are now digitally everywhere. They consume and engage with content across a variety of channels and devices.
Somehow, marketers have to keep up with them, stay consistent and relevant with their messaging, and deliver value. Customers tell you everything you need to know about how to please them with their online behaviors. The right technology helps by taking in that data, so marketers can use it to connect with customers and adapt their strategies necessary.
Tactics and technologies for marketing success
43% of marketing organizations plan to offer more personalized content and offers in the year ahead. Videos and virtual events will make much of this content easier for customers to consume. Personalization will also help marketers put more focus on retaining customers rather than only acquiring new ones.
What technologies will help?
A customer data platform (CDP) allows you to anticipate customer needs
A content management system (CMS) helps you manage and create more innovative content
A customer loyalty program incentivizes and rewards customers that keep engaging with your brand
Go all-in on AI
59% of marketers who say they can’t live without AI have highly successful marketing strategies. 30% of marketers surveyed overall fear they’re missing out on AI’s ability to predict customer behaviors and adjust campaigns.
AI creates efficiencies and maximizes resources, especially with manual, repetitive tasks, such as:
Setting up campaign workflows
Testing different offers, subject lines, and copy
Customizing content
42% of marketers say they already trust AI to personalize content and offers in real-time.
Marketers look forward to big things in 2022
An impressive 94% of marketers thought their 2021 was successful. 37% are confident 2022 will also be a successful year.
Find out what trends and technologies will make it so.
Customizing your brand is really important to help you become more consistently noticed. It helps you stand out from other agents. According to Constant Contact: “Real estate marketing has two primary goals:
To get the attention of people who want to buy or sell a home
To establish your knowledge of real estate and your market
Branding helps you do both. By giving your professional identity an aesthetic and a voice, your brand sets you apart from the crowd”.
Print Marketing
AgentMarketing has ways for you to customize your brand and keep it consistent across digital and print marketing. First, there is the Print Shop. From this area in your AgentMarketing account you can order property-specific print material, as well as custom print items. If you want to order custom print items, just scroll down to the bottom and click on Contact Our Print Shop. There you can start choosing what you want to customize. Describe your ideas or what you want for that piece of print marketing. Don’t forget about your property-specific print material. This can be customized too! Then your custom layouts will be ready to order anytime you want for a specific property. Remember, you want all of your print marketing to stay on brand (same colors/theme/look). Once you put in your Print Shop customization, our graphics team will get back to you with a quote (it’s a small price to pay to stand out from those other agents!). Then they will work up the design.
Digital Marketing
Second, there is the Customization Request. This is for your digital marketing customization. For this, go to your Dashboard and at the very top of the page click on Customization Request. You can request customization for things like a single property website layout, personal website, landing page, and just about any other digital marketing in your AgentMarketing account. You want to make sure to give a very detailed description about what you are wanting. The more detailed, the better the graphics team can see your vision! Just like the Print Shop customizations, our graphics team will get back to you with a quote (if needed), then a design.
Wrapping It All Up
Lastly, wrapping it all up. Once you have all your branding consistent across digital platforms and print, people will start to notice. You want people to have your business card, then maybe get a postcard from you – same branding. Maybe that same person drives down the street and sees a For Sale sign of yours in a yard – same branding. What do you think this does for you? It keeps you top-of-mind for people when they are looking to buy or sell a home. And it makes you easily recognizable if all of your branding is consistent. Constant Contact also tells us: “A strong brand unifies your online and offline marketing strategies. When you have a set brand color scheme, logo, and voice, your printed materials and digital marketing all clearly come from you. This unified image helps people to remember who you are and what you have to offer, and it instantly boosts your professionalism.”
A listing presentation is a first impression for someone getting ready to make a very big decision – selling their home. The goal of the listing appointment is to make them your client. How do you do that? Create and use a listing presentation that makes you stand apart from other agents. You want to tell them about yourself, your values, your marketing strategy and anything else you feel would benefit you and help you stand out from the crowd.
AgentMarketing has digital listing presentations that will definitely help you stand out! (We even have a video on that!) Our listing presentation template showcases some of the things you will do to market the listing using features of AgentMarketing. Some of these features include a virtual tour, single property website, text code, signage, etc. With our template, you can also edit any of the information in the presentation or even add new pages or delete ones you don’t need.
Customize
How do you customize your listing presentation? All you have to do is go to the Flip Shows area of your AgentMarketing account (under the Personal tab). Then click on the edit pencil to start customizing. You should definitely add a few slides about who you are, your goals and other information you feel is important. Towards the end of the listing presentation you could also add some client testimonials that could help seal the deal. Also, be creative! Don’t be afraid to step outside the box when adding/editing slides, just make sure to stay professional.
Great Strategy
A great strategy for your listing appointment is to first create a single property website for the listing. Go by the house and snap a few pictures of the outside, or just try to find some photos of the house online. Why do I want to build a single property website for it before I have the listing? When you create this single property website, we automatically create a property specific listing presentation for you. Done! Just like that. This will help you really stand out. When you go to your listing appointment you will be able to show them the work you have already put in for them, even though you don’t have the listing yet! They will be able to see the single property website you created and the virtual tour. They will even be able to test the text code for more information on the property. These things are all presented in the listing presentation. Tell me that doesn’t help you stand out from the rest of the pack.
The Balance Small Business tells us, “As a real estate agent, you are responsible for your business success, so put together a presentation plan and package that puts all your services forward to the seller prospect in the best light. If you show up and they perceive you as prepared, professional, and competent, you have a leg up on the competition”. Using the digital listing presentation is a great way to show the seller that you are ready to take that extra step to get their house sold.
Who are we kidding? Mistakes are easy to make, but when you are talking about your business they can be costly. We already covered 5 mistakes agents make when marketing their business in a previous blog. Here we continue with 5 more mistakes. Michelle Fradella Barfuss has a great course on udemy.com with certain things agents do that could be detrimental to their business. Here, we review some more of those mistakes and give some remedies for them.
One
Not building relationships with online users. Do you offer your visitors something of value? Something that would make them stay on your site and even give out their email address to you? Getting these email addresses/phone numbers are important because they allow you to start building rapport with your visitors. This, in turn, will hopefully make them a client! Your website needs to offer your visitors information, videos, reports, etc. about things that matter most to them. Being able to connect with them and start building rapport with them will keep you top-of-mind when they are ready to move forward. You can also use landing pages that allow them to fill out their info to get access to or get emailed reports, tutorials, information, etc.
Two
Not having a Call-To-Action in ads. Any advertising that is not geared towards your target audience and doesn’t have a call-to-action so that you can communicate with them, is money wasted. Your purpose for these ads is to gain leads. You can’t stand out and get a lead if your marketing looks like all other agents. You want to give them something they need/want, but the point is to lead the prospect to connect with YOU. For example, you could create videos about the home buying or home selling process. Then create that landing page ad with a call-to-action – “Give me your info and I’ll send you the video”.
Three
Not using video. YouTube is one of the top search engines. People go here and search for topics they are interested in or need information on. Video is a great way to connect with visitors. Guess what else? Google loves videos! Videos can rank higher than regular websites. Think about what your target audience would love more information about. Take those thoughts and turn them into videos for your audience. The content you produce is important. Don’t stress about hiring a professional or buying special equipment. Just start with the basics – start with what you have! After you make a video, put it everywhere you can and make sure to link back to your website or landing page. This will drive more traffic your way!
Four
Forgetting past clients. Just because your transaction is over with a client, doesn’t mean you throw them to the side and move on. You need to keep nurturing and marketing to these past clients because you never know when they will need you again, or refer you to someone else they know. How do you keep nurturing these clients? You can send them market reports, birthday cards, your monthly newsletter, community events, or anything else you can think of. Be creative! The point here is this…keep up with those past clients! Failing to do so is one of the biggest ways you, as the agent, leaves money on the table.
Five
Not taking advantage of social media. Why social media? You know what they say – social media is king! Some of you have avoided social media, maybe because of privacy issues, no interest in it or maybe just simply because it’s overwhelming for you (we’ve got a good basics article to help you with that). Want to hear a statistic that will make you rethink staying away from social media? Backlinko.com tells us: “3.96 billion people use social media worldwide, according to platform reports on the current number of active users. 58.11% of the world’s population is active on social media when looking at eligible audiences aged 13+ years, rising to 82% in North America”. 82%? That is a lot of people to not reach. There is a lot of good information out there about social media platforms. Do some research, start simple and ramp up from there where and when you feel comfortable.
I hope diving into 5 more mistakes agents make when marketing helps steer you in the right direction. It’s easy to overlook some of these things, but making sure to take advantage of these tips can help you reach more people and stay in touch with past clients. Remember, you want to build your business and keeping up with technology will help generate leads and keep you top-of-mind!
Let’s face it. Leads are important. You need them in order to get business. Landing pages are a great way to generate leads. Landing pages can be pre-built or you can build them yourself. HubSpot says: “A landing page eliminates distractions by removing navigation, competing links, and alternate options so you capture your visitor’s undivided attention. And complete attention means you can guide your visitor where you’d like them to go, i.e., to your lead form. In sum, landing pages are specifically designed to create conversions.”
AgentMarketing has pre-built sites that are great for generating leads. We call them pre-built because we “built” them for you. There is nothing you need to do to create them. You just need to go out there and use them! They are already branded with your information, photo and logo. They also come with information that is geared to a specific audience. Each one of the pre-built sites also has a contact form that interested people can fill out with their information.
First, there is a My Listings pre-built site. This one showcases your active listings as well as any listings you have sold that are in your AgentMarketing account. The nice thing about this is you can send this site to anyone or advertise with it and people can click on any home to see the single property website for it! The layout is simple, your information is at the top and the contact form is at the bottom.
Then there is the List With Me pre-built site. It can be used to generate more leads and listings. Find more homes to sell by highlighting all the services you offer. Help home-sellers see the value in choosing you as the real estate agent they can trust. It gives them different things you can do to market their home (using features from our system) – like a YouTube video, flyers, virtual tour and more. This is a great site to post on your Facebook business page or even create Facebook Ads with it.
The third pre-built site is the CMA Report. This is another good lead generation tool for your arsenal. We all know that setting the right price from the start is among the most important steps toward successfully selling a home. This CMA Report allows a home-seller to enter their address and their information. Then you can whip up a comparative market analysis right from your AgentMarketing account for them. Again, feel free to use this pre-built site to advertise wherever you would like!
The next pre-built site is for FSBO Prospecting. Want to work with For Sale By Owners? This would be a great site to use for that. Send prospective FSBO clients a quick page about your services and how you can offer them a good commission with fast results. This site explains how you can easily help them market their listing better, get more exposure for it and sell it faster. Don’t forget! It also has the contact form down at the bottom. People can fill out their information here.
Now, if you are a loan officer, check this out…we even have a special pre-built site for you to help with Agent Prospecting. Yep, we built you a site to help you approach agents and grow your team! Show agents all the quick and easy services you can offer them by utilizing AgentMarketing tools. This site gives an overview of what is included. It even has a nice little video for agents to watch to give a fun visual! We want to help you be successful with agents and this is the first step toward that success.
One last thing, you will notice on your Pre-Built Sites page that some of the sites have multiple URLs. We just wanted to give you a choice of which one you want to use. For example, for the CMA Report site you have a choice of three different URLs. They all lead to the exact same page, it’s just the URLs that are different. Choose the one you want and start marketing to get more leads!
the easier way to figure out which ones to turn back on is:
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