I see it all the time.

Real estate agents asking if they should run Facebook ads.

The thing is, it isn’t a matter of asking if you should or shouldn’t, it’s a matter of asking what, when, how, why.

Yes, absolutely, unequivocally, you should be running Facebook ads for your real estate business page.

However, you should not be running your basic, classified ad. Nor should you be running “boost your post” ads, or sponsored ads.

The first thing you have to do is ask yourself seven basic questions before you run a Facebook ad campaign.

The next thing you need to do is set up an ongoing campaign for Facebook page likes.

Instead of asking your real estate colleagues around the country to “like” your business page, do a targeted ad campaign focused on people who will actually use your services.

It works. Very well.

When I set up my Facebook business page, I asked approximately 25 people that I truly knew personally – that I knew worked in the “space” I was focusing my business in and on. People that I knew would either be a big help to me by promoting me or, people that I knew were a perfect target client for my business.

I did not ask every real estate agent I knew (even though many of them are target clients). I most especially didn’t ask every person I knew (who had nothing to do with my business).

Before I started running an actual ad campaign, every couple of days I would do a promotional post on my personal page pointing my targeted demographic to my Facebook page and asking them to like it and giving them a reason why it would be valuable for them to like it.

Once I hit my requisite 30 likes, I started focusing on studying my Facebook page insights. See, I didn’t want to run ad campaigns until I could see and study and fully understand my Facebook page insights. I wanted to know what my future clients were doing, what they were looking at and when, why they were looking at it and how they were looking at it.

Foolish waste of time and money if you can’t see what’s going on, and why.

So, on November 4th, I had 45 likes. I had stalled at 45 likes for about 10 days. It was then that I knew I needed to implement an ad campaign. Everything before that was simply from my own personal targeted focus.

As of the writing of this article, December 8th, I have 171 likes. In five weeks I was able to increase page likes by 380%.

I’m currently averaging 2 page likes per day. And as you can see, the amount of likes I’m getting daily is increasing. Which means my average will soon rise.

Here’s what I did to increase my Facebook page likes by 380%.

First of all, I run a continual campaign with a very low daily budget ($1.50/day) and a strict focus on generating page likes. So I am spending $45/mo to get people to my page and to like my page.

Secondly, I have been running a single ad campaign focused on generating clicks to a landing page on my website which is focused on getting people to sign into my email newsletter.

This campaign gives them a free book, targeted towards a need/focus that they have, in exchange, they sign up for my email list.

There are no sales involved, no push for sales, nothing. Just a book in exchange for an email address.

I ran the ad from November 15th to December 15th for a grand total of $50.

Now, I focus these ads. Deeply focus. I want to make sure that the likes and sign-ups I’m getting are from people who need and would use my services and products. Having page likes and a big email list mean absolutely nothing if they are the wrong people.

Between these two ads, they have increased my page likes by 380% (taking me from 45 likes to 171 likes) and they’ve added 142 people to my email list.

I like the ratios. I’m running a 1 to .83 ratio. This means for every 10 likes I get on my Facebook page, I’m getting 8 sign ups into my email newsletter. I’m running an 80% conversion rate from Facebook to email.

That’s the goal.

Getting people from your Facebook business page into your email system so you can nurture them. So you can convert them. So you can turn them into happy closed clients.

In an online, information marketing business, there is a direct correlation between the number of people you have in your email list vs. the dollar volume of sales you can expect.

In real estate, it is a 50:2 ratio (when it comes to your unmets). Remember, although these people have subscribed, you still don’t know them personally so they are in your “unmet” database. When you are nurturing your database, you can forecast 2 real estate sales for every 50 names in your database.

Ok, back to the topic at hand.

Yes, you need to run Facebook ads for your real estate page, but you need to do it on a targeted scale, testing ads, testing your targets.

This holds especially true now that Facebook has “revealed” that they are going to continue to decrease organic search to business pages. In other words, you are going to have to pay to play.

Do it wisely. Don’t waste money. Increase your conversions.

You’ll come out on top.