#39- Facebook Ads: A 2021 Marketing Strategy Essential for Multifamily Housing
Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Jennifer Spivak.
Jennifer and her team have been helping us navigate Facebook ads for Sprout Marketing and I thought she’d be a wonderful resource for our multifamily community.
Jennifer Spivak is the CEO and Founder of #TEAMSPIVAK, an all-female Facebook Ads agency. She has helped hundreds of businesses generate millions of dollars on Facebook & Instagram, with many seeing a 500%+ return on their ad campaigns. Jennifer has been featured in Forbes, listed as a Top Facebook Ads Manager to Watch in 2019, and is an adjunct professor of digital marketing at The City College of New York.
[You can listen, watch or read highlights of our conversation.]
Watch the full facebook ads training here >>>
Read Highlights from the transcript
Q:Who do you think could benefit from a Facebook ads strategy?
A: So potentially the answer is anybody and everybody. At the end of the day, there is an insane number of people that regularly use either Facebook or Instagram on a daily basis. And I know whenever this conversation comes up, there's always somebody that's like, "But aren't people leaving Facebook?" And the answer is perhaps, but then they're going to Instagram. At the end of the day, Facebook is way ahead of the curve in terms of making sure that change in user behavior doesn't actually impact their advertisers and their advertising platforms.
So if your people, which is going to be the case for almost any business, any offering, are on Facebook or Instagram, and you have an understanding of your messaging and your offer and your call to action, then it could absolutely be a viable strategy.
Q: Should a management company invest in Facebook ads or should it be done by individual communities?
A: I think it could really go either way. Rather than saying it should be one thing or the other, I think there's a bigger picture discussion to be had first, which is what is the action that you want people to take? And yes, we know it's renting with you, but what does that look like? What does that process look like? If somebody sees your ad, what do you want them to do from there? Do you want them to sign up for something? Do you want them to come in for a tour? And so having a better understanding of that customer decision journey would ultimately help you determine if it was a better fit for one or the other.
Q: For many, undertaking a Facebook ads strategy feels hugely overwhelming. Where would one start?
A: It drives me absolutely bonkers that the industry, which is very overrun by bro marketers, is really about keeping all the secrets behind the curtains. I just can't stand that.
Here's the truth. It's not that the other side of it is, "It's just easy. Anybody can do it." There are technical aspects that you do want to understand before you are putting your money into any marketing platform. But at the end of the day, let's take the curtain away. Let's make it really simple.
This is a channel. Like any other marketing channel. And so what you really want to understand first and foremost is the really basic Marketing 101:
Who are you targeting?
Who are they really?
What's your messaging?
What is the offer or the journey that you essentially want to take people through?
What do you want them to do?
How are you going to track at each stage?
You need the full journey and understanding how you're going to track people from start to finish. If you have those foundational things in place and an understanding of that, then all you really ever need to do is set up your tracking properly and look at your data in the Ads Manager to find out, is everything working the way that I want? And if it's not, where is that dropping off point? And then let's go to work there. There are a million elements within that, but at the end of the day, that's all my team and I are ever doing. We're looking at data, and we're using that data to make informed decisions around how to improve things.
Never Miss Any of our Sprout Goodies
Q: So to start with the beginning of knowing your audience, would you say that a good place for them to start is to look at their current residents?
A: Absolutely. The conversation that I have with prospects all the time is let's not treat Facebook Ads as anything other than a channel. And if you've been in business for any amount of time, you have some data, even if it's anecdotal, in terms of where do people find you? What was their decision making process? What was the thing that ultimately made them pull the trigger? What were the steps they took? Looking at that is always going to be the best way to figure out where we start with Facebook Ads, because then you're starting with something that's already been validated. And you're essentially honoring the customer decision journey that your people have already told you they want to go through.
Q: How important is the digital graphics and messaging you use in Facebook ads?
A: I would say that messaging is probably one of the number one most important things. While your creative assets are also definitely important. But we’ve seen success with stuff that looks really organic, shot on your phone, a quick selfie video, or this is the introduction to my apartment lobby. So yes, creative is absolutely important, but you don't need unbelievably produced stuff to ultimately have your ads convert.
Q: Can you guide us through picking the right partner? How do they start to set a budget? And also what are good expectations when working with an agency?
A: Facebook Ads has become like the gold rush of 2020 because everybody and their mother wants to do it, because they know businesses really need it. And so there are a lot of horror stories of people who said that they knew what they were doing and they didn't.
So in terms of knowing who's the right partner, I think asking questions that will ultimately let you understand how they think is probably one of the smartest things that you can do.
Make sure that you're picking a partner that has a big picture, strategic conversion-oriented approach. Because there are people out there that do Facebook Ads and it's really focused on just list building. And that's okay, but it’s not the same thing as having a strategic partner focused on your growth.
Ask them, “What's your experience? What type of results have you generated?"
Listening for how technical their answers are, will ultimately help you see, do they even have the ability to be a partner in profit, because that is what they should be.
At the end of the day, you shouldn't be spending any money on any marketing, if it isn't driving the bottom line. And look, there's always going to be some marketing that isn't so directly able to be tracked, and that's nature of the beast. But Facebook ads is something that can be tracked. So it should be. And I know when we're working with our clients who are spending $5,000, $10,000 and $30,000 a month on ads, we better be able to show them that it's driving revenue. That's not money you're just spending for fun.
Really being able to look at that overall return. And what's nice is, a lease is worth a lot of money over time. This is a really high ticket, which Facebook is really, really well-primed for because you have a little bit more wiggle room to do a lot of spending, do a lot of nurturing, retargeting, and know that one good lead could be worth a lot of money.
Q: Are there any other marketing tips or trends or tools that you're seeing, maybe in or out of Facebook or Instagram, or just anything that you can share with our audience that maybe they should start getting comfortable with?
A: One of the things that's always going to come to mind whenever I get asked this question is just again, bringing it back to testing. The question that I've got asked probably the most in the last two years is, "Video's doing better now, right?" And it's like, "Well, for some clients, it is." There's no hard and fast rule.
Really having that mindset of testing different things, and again, looking to your market to be that feedback of what they actually want and what works for them is the trend that is working, as far as I'm concerned.
