Although the global housing market has declined, many construction and real estate companies have maintained the same advertising tempo – some have scaled up their ad budgets.
Here’s a quick analysis of the top advertisers within construction and real estate (in the first half of 2023), mainly residential home builders. Below is a benchmark of their performance across Meta and the Google Search/Display Network.
Key Learning #1: Meta (Facebook/Instagram): The top advertisers showed an average of 2.3% CTR, $5.39 CPM, and a $0.24 CPC, which means they drive a lot of traffic to their sites at good prices.
Key Learning #2: Google, on the other hand, has been more expensive in terms of CPM ($22.78), but the CTR is significantly higher than Meta and is at 5.55% CTR, which means that these companies drive almost the same volume of traffic as Meta.
What does their advertising strategy look like?
Key Learning #3: They all use a multichannel approach and have an average of 3 active campaigns running at any given time. With multiple ad formats.
Their campaigns are normally broken down by either project type or house categories, such as semi-detached and single-family homes, and by contemporary or ranch/cottage homes. They run a combination of Google Search and Facebook, Instagram Ads & Carousels featuring multiple models.
They excel at running retargeting campaigns because they know that the buying cycles are very long, and can afford a very high CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). After all, the purchase value (or LTV) of a new house is huge.
The simple chart below represents a typical buying cycle within construction & real estate (and any other high-value industries). The customer clicks on your ad in month 1 and converts in month 10 or 11. Sometimes even years.
You spend a big chunk of cash upfront to acquire a customer that you close in a somewhat distant future. Understanding this model is key to successfully growing any company that sells anything of high value.
If you’re willing to be patient and persistent in running ads over a longer period of time, you’ll outcompete your competitors and win.
“Advertising is cumulative”, as Mike Damnjanovic (CCO at Adline), often says.
Key Learning #4: They often don’t use any interest groups on Meta, but focus more on demographics such as age and specific locations. When using Google they are good at targeting specific, long-tail keywords.
Key Learning #5: Their CTAs (Call-To-Action) are clear and not hard to find. There are multiple ways to either order a “Free Brochure” as well as Request a Quote.
