How to sell 100 apartments on Facebook

 To sell out one of Norway’s most innovative apartment buildings, the real estate company Eiendomsspar turned to Facebook. After one year with Facebook Ads in the marketing mix, it created the most website traffic, and was the most measurable part of the marketing. 

Eiendomsspar is one of Norway’s leading real estate companies

Partners

Sem & Johnsen – real estate brokers
Fortress – ad agency
24SevenSocial – social marketing platform

The story

P64 is truly a unique housing project. It features large common areas including a huge lounge with deep, comfy leather couches, and a gaming room with shuffle board and snooker table. The interior is covered with murals by the street artist Nick Walker and pieces by Thomas Canto, Laurence Jenkel and Shephard Fairey.

All this while located on one of the most attractive spots in Oslo – Parkveien 64 – right between the Royal Palace, Solli Plass, and Aker Brygge.

The Goal

To sell out 100+ newly refurbished apartments by…

-driving relevant traffic to website
-inviting people to viewings
-lead generation

The Solution

A dynamic marketing mix

The marketing mix consisted of print ads in relevant newspapers, classifieds on FINN.no, Google Adwords and PR. This case study focuses on the Facebook part of the marketing mix.

Creatives

The Facebook strategy was built around Facebook Ads. Formats used were mainly link ads and page post ads. Right hand-side ads were also tested, but discontinued. A typical ad looked like this:

The creative was done by Fortress and featured vibrant colors and strong imagery – often with art from the building. Ad creative was changed almost on a weekly basis, and different creative ran simultaneously. Creative that delivered results were boosted, creative that didn’t deliver was quickly discontinued.

Ads included links to landing pages where you could opt in to be contacted. They also contained info about the next viewing, and ushered people to the website – P64.no – for more info.

Targeting

Targeting went through various stages based on ongoing results, seasons, holidays, size of apartments, and more. Criterias used were interests, various demographics, and geography. We also built custom and lookalike audiences based on form submits with 24SevenSocial Creator and 24SevenSocial Audiencer. That meant that someone who’d already shown interest was less likely to see the P64 ads again, while lookalike audiences at the same time helped us target with higher relevance.

Tools used

Facebook Ads: Power Editor with Page Manager, Sponsored posts, link posts; 24SevenSocial Audiencer for custom- and lookalike audiences; 24SevenSocial Publisher for setting up posts. Note that this project ran in 2013/2014 – before 24SevenSocial had a Facebook ads platform. We do now.

Facebook apps/landing pages: 24SevenSocial Creator, iFrapp

Facebook Page: Facebook Pages, 24SevenSocial Publisher, Compare and Insights.

The Success

By May 2014 – more than 100 apartments had been sold. Facebook was the largest source of website traffic, extremely cost efficient, and got higher relevant reach than any other marketing channel.

Key Stats

250 sales leads from lead forms on Facebook.
Average price per website click: about USD 50 cents.
The apartments started at USD 335,000,-
More than 100 apartments sold.
Peaks at more than 50 showroom viewings per week – a huge number in the Norwegian real estate market.
More than 50% of all website traffic came from Facebook.

As a fun side note: P64 and brokers Sem & Johnsen won the 2014 Norwegian real estate award “Gullmegleren” for best project marketing.

6 takeaways

In general

1) Start with a great product, and find marketing platforms that make sense for your target audience.
2) Don’t compromise on the quality of your marketing material when you’ve got a truly awesome product.
3) Making Facebook part of the marketing mix is a no-brainer. Facebook as a marketing platform has grown up.

More specifically

4) Link ads gave cheaper website clicks than page post ads
5) One ad can achieve several marketing goals. Keep in mind: the more goals per ad, the harder to measure.
6) Keep testing. Run several ads simultaneously, measure and prioritize along the way.

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