Low Inventory? No Problem! 3 Digital Ad Campaigns for Finding Seller Leads

Struggling to find listings in today's low inventory market? You're not alone. From postcard campaigns to door knocking to prospecting FSBOs and expired listings, agents are employing a variety of strategies in the hustle to win more listings.

Key to this hustle is staying top of mind with owners in your area. You want your name to be the first name potential sellers think of when they're considering listing their home.

The problem? Marketing campaigns, especially print campaigns, can be expensive—and that's a tough pill to swallow for agents who are already struggling for listings in a challenging market.

So what's an agent to do? We suggest spending less to get more by employing digital ads that target only those consumers in your area who are most likely to enter into a real estate transaction in the near future. To learn more, read on.

Why Digital Advertising?

Before we talk about ad campaign specifics, first let's explore why digital advertising is so much more cost effective than other forms of marketing.

The most obvious answer is that digital is naturally much cheaper than print, thanks overhead costs that are significantly reduced due to lack of physical collateral. But the reason that's most exciting? Digital ads let you precisely target only those consumers who are most interested in buying or selling real estate. Today's advertising technology lets you target consumers by location, age, homeownership status, and online behavior. That means you spend less money on people who aren't likely to care about your ad, thus reducing overall costs.

Ideas for Digital Ad Campaigns

Now that you know why you should consider digital advertising, let's focus on a few easy campaign ideas that you can try:

1. Just Listed / Just Sold

At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive--advertising your listings is all about getting buyers, right? Yes, partially. But it's also about building your reputation with homeowners in your community. These ads establish that you're an agent with a track record of success--and that listing with you ensures that a prospect's home will sell for a competitive price.

2. Free Home Valuation

The flipside of tight market conditions is that home prices tend to skyrocket. Homeowners in your area are likely to make a substantial profit if they sell their home now. Just how much in profit? Help owners understand by offering a free home valuation. Once they fill out your request form and receive your report, you'll not only be top of mind with them, but you'll also have their contact information for easy follow-up!

3. Branding

Speaking of staying top-of-mind, try digital branding ads that target local zip codes or those in your sphere-of-influence. Think of this like digital geographic farming--rather than spending tons of cash on postcards and flyers, you target those same homeowners in your farm area with online ads.

Quick Tips for Better Digital Ads

Pay attention to your visuals and call-to-action. Your ad is going to appear on major websites where it's likely to blend in with a lot of other elements. To stand out, be mindful of which colors will draw attention to your ad without being too garish. Once your ad has caught a lead's eye, be sure it tells them what to do next--like calling you, searching listings on your website, or requesting a home valuation.

Landing pages: the difference between success and failure. If your ad is getting clicks but no leads, that may indicate an ineffective landing page. Ideally, your landing page should allow visitors to do only one thing--hand over their contact information (and once they do, you can add them to a sphere-of-influence campaign!). One design trick to help make sure this happens is to remove all navigation elements from the page to ensure that prospects stay put. Also, be sure the landing page matches your ad's call-to-action; confusion drives leads away and rarely converts them.

Refresh your ads to optimize performance. Even the best ads get stale over time. If your clicks-to-impressions ratio has declined, it may be time to update your ad. Regardless of whether this happens every month or every couple of months, don't be afraid to keep tweaking until your ad performs as well as you'd like. Use your ad platform's analytics to track the success of your changes and don't hesitate to iterate, iterate, iterate!