Facebook has been headlining (more than usual) these past days. If you’re new to advertising on Facebook, you may be wondering if now is a good time to start.

We have your answer — yes! Absolutely, now is still a great time to advertise on Facebook. 2018 studies show that 68% of Americans use Facebook and the majority of users visit the mega social media platform more than once a day.

With such a large audience and opportunities for repeated exposure, lenders of all sizes would be smart to take advantage of this mortgage consumer base.

Here’s another important advantage of advertising on Facebook: targeting the right mortgage consumer!

Zuckerberg has been under fire lately with user information sharing. However, the information that Facebook gathers and shares is one of the reasons that the platform is so popular. Since Facebook understands the preferences and habits of their users, they can create a personalized experience — including showing ads for products or services that they would like!

That’s where your mortgage ad comes in.

When you create an ad on Facebook, you set it up to reach your ideal mortgage consumer. A highly targeted ad not only increases the chances of a click-through and conversion, but it’s also a cost-effective way to get leads when compared to mass advertising.

Getting started with your first mortgage Facebook ad is easy. Just follow these steps and you’ll have a conversion-optimized mortgage ad up and running in less than 30 minutes.

How to Create Mortgage Ads on Facebook

Before we get started with creating the ad, let’s go over some of the Facebook ad terminology:

• Campaign – This is where you’ll find all of the ads you create
• Ad Sets – These are groups of ads that you have created to target specific consumers. Have more than one target consumer? Then you’ll want to create a separate set for each group.
• Ads -These are the individual ads that you will create and post onto Facebook.

You have two choices for editors: Ad Manager and Power Editor. For mid-size or single mortgage professionals, we recommend the Ad Manager. The Power Editor is best for large lenders who need control over a variety of campaigns.

The Ad Manager option can be found at the upper right-hand corner, in the drop-down menu. Click on “Create Ad” from the menu.

Choose Your Objective

Advertisers always begin with the objective before creating a campaign, and that’s where you’ll begin too. You’ll have 11 choices, broken down into 3 different categories. Consider each one (some can be easily eliminated) and pick one.

Optimize Your Mortgage Ad

This is the step where you’ll define your target consumer. Facebook will ask you questions to help define your audience (such as location, age, and preferences), as well as set the schedule.

Editor’s note: Be careful not to discriminate by eliminating certain groups! Housing regulations for advertising hold true in Facebook as they do in any other advertisement. While Facebook has a strict policy against discrimination and removes ads if they violate it, the advertiser is ultimately responsible for the ad.

Set Your Budget

You have two choices for setting up your mortgage ad budget: Daily Budget and Lifetime Budget.

Daily Budget will run your ad continuously. You choose an amount that you are willing to spend per day on your ad, and Facebook will charge you an average of that amount. Some days it might be slightly higher, others it might be lower.

A Lifetime Budget will run your ad for a specified length of time. You set the budget for the campaign and Facebook will distribute that amount evenly over the selected time.

You’ll also have the opportunity to further optimize your ad by choosing specific delivery objectives. Depending on your choice, Facebook will either bid on your behalf or you can bid on your own based on the suggestions Facebook gives you.

Designing the Ad

In this section, you’ll choose the format, text, image or video, and links for your ad. First, choose your format. Upload your media, write a clickable headline, and add you link.

Editor’s note: Facebook prefers images to have less than 20% text. This is not a firm rule, however, Facebook favors images with less than 20% text. Review your finished ad in the preview, and if you’re satisfied, then the next step is to pay for your ad.

Measuring Your Mortgage Ad Results

To see how well your ad is performing, you’ll want to go back into the Facebook Ad Manager. On the dashboard, you’ll find quite a bit of information about your ad, but these are the ones you especially want to pay attention to: Actions, Cost Per Action, and Frequency.

• Action is where you’ll find how well your ad is doing at reaching your objective (remember that that was the first step to creating the ad)
• Cost Per Action is where you’ll find how much that action cost.
• Frequency refers to how often your ad was seen by a consumer. If your ad has a very high frequency but low actions, then you’ll want to stop that ad and create another that would perform better.

Running an ad on Facebook is one of the easiest and most effective of all mortgage marketing tactics. What’s more, while Rocket Mortgage is spending millions of dollars marketing to the masses while you can target local consumers that are looking for a mortgage for just a few hundred!

Did you find this article helpful? Please share! And for more digital mortgage tools that are optimized for marketing, call us at 888-377-1265.