Among the many moving parts of real estate, lead generation consistently rises to the top as agents work to grow their client base. However, it’s easy to overlook the importance of follow-up. Many leads go cold after the initial interaction, as people tend to browse, get distracted, and move on. This is where display ads can make a significant impact. Acting as a powerful tool, display ads help you stay in front of prospects, bringing them back into your funnel and eventually converting them into clients.
By leveraging display ads effectively, you can ensure your brand remains visible, even when buyers and sellers aren’t yet ready to make a decision.
What Are Display Ads?
Display ads are visual advertisements, including images, banners, and videos, that appear across various digital platforms such as websites, apps, and YouTube. These ads are designed to capture the attention of potential clients as they navigate the online world.
Platforms
To deploy display ads, you can utilize platforms like the Google Display Network and the Meta Audience Network. These platforms offer extensive reach, allowing your ads to be shown on numerous websites and apps that are part of their networks.
Targeting Capabilities
One of the most powerful features of display advertising is its sophisticated targeting capabilities. You can reach potential clients based on:
- Demographics: Age, income, family status
- Behaviors: Previous property searches, mortgage calculator usage
- Interests: Home improvement, relocation content
- Geographic Locations: Specific neighborhoods or zip codes
This precision allows you to create highly relevant ads for different segments of your client database—from first-time homebuyers to luxury property investors—ensuring your follow-up messaging resonates with each audience’s specific real estate needs.
Difference from Search Ads
While search ads are intent-based, targeting individuals actively looking for specific information, display ads focus on awareness and nurturing. They aim to keep your brand top-of-mind for potential clients who may not yet be ready to make a real estate decision.
Real Estate Follow-Up Example
When a potential buyer views properties on your website but doesn’t inquire further, display ads can maintain engagement through strategic follow-up. A real estate agent might create a display campaign targeting these website visitors with ads showcasing similar properties or neighborhood highlights.
As these prospects continue browsing other websites or social media over the following weeks, they’ll see these tailored ads featuring properties they previously viewed or similar listings. This gentle reminder keeps the agent’s listings top-of-mind. When combined with email follow-ups, this multi-channel approach significantly increases the likelihood of re-engagement.
Why Display Ads Work for Real Estate Follow-Up
Display ads play a critical role in maintaining top-of-mind awareness. Typically, prospects need between 6 to 8 touchpoints or interactions before making real estate decisions. So, by keeping your brand visible, these ads ensure that potential buyers and sellers remember you when they’re ready to make a move. This visibility is particularly important in the real estate industry, where decision-making can take time.
Visual Storytelling
Display ads allow you to engage in visual storytelling, showcasing listings, testimonials, and your brand identity through logos and headshots. By presenting your real estate offerings in a visually appealing manner, you can capture the interest of potential clients and inspire them to take the next step.
Multiple Touchpoints
In real estate, decisions rarely happen overnight—potential buyers or sellers often need repeated exposure before taking action. Display ads help create those essential touchpoints by putting your brand in front of potential clients consistently. Each time they see your logo or face, it reinforces familiarity and confidence, gradually establishing trust and making them more likely to reach out when they’re ready to move forward.
Key Use Cases for Realtors
Remarketing to Cold Leads
Remarketing is essential for staying visible to website visitors who didn’t convert initially. Display ads allow you to follow up with people who clicked on your social ads but didn’t fill out a form. You can re-engage leads in your CRM who have gone quiet, reminding them of your services and offerings.
Showcasing New Listings
Retargeting individuals who viewed one property with ads for similar homes keeps buyers engaged until they’re ready to tour. By continually showcasing new listings, you ensure that potential clients remain interested and informed about the properties available in your portfolio.
Brand Awareness
Even if prospects aren’t ready to make a move now, display ads build brand recognition so they remember you when the time comes. Creative ads with messages like “Thinking of selling? Let’s talk.” or “We’re here to make the home buying process smooth and stress-free” can effectively establish your presence in their minds.
Highlighting Success Stories
Testimonials and reviews build social proof in a visual way. By incorporating these elements into your display ads, you remind potential clients of your past successes and enhance their confidence in your capabilities as a real estate professional.
How to Set Up Effective Real Estate Display Ads
Audience Targeting
Effective audience targeting is crucial for maximizing the impact of your display ads. Consider these strategies:
- Website Retargeting: Target visitors who looked at your listings or service pages.
- CRM Lists: Upload past leads and nurture them with tailored ads.
- Similar Audiences: Expand reach by targeting users who share characteristics with your existing clients.
- In-Market Segments: Target people actively researching real estate in your market.
- Geographic Targeting: Focus on specific neighborhoods or zip codes where you want to grow your presence.
- Life Event Targeting: Reach people experiencing major life changes that often trigger real estate decisions (marriage, new job, growing family).
- Income-Based Targeting: Align your property ads with appropriate income brackets.
Creative Best Practices
To make your ads both visually appealing and effective, focus on high-quality imagery and clear, engaging messaging. Use professional, high-resolution photos that showcase properties at their best, paying attention to proper lighting, staging, and ideal dimensions (such as 1200x628px). Keep your copy concise and compelling, with a clear call-to-action like “See Homes in [City]” or “Get Your Home Value,” while maintaining consistent branding through colors, fonts, and logo placement.
Since most home searches now begin on mobile devices, be sure that your ads are fully optimized for smartphones. Strong headlines highlighting location, unique property features, or time-sensitive offers can drive engagement, while incorporating social proof—like client testimonials or “just sold” messaging—helps build credibility. Consider using carousel formats to showcase multiple rooms, properties, or neighborhood amenities, giving potential clients a fuller view of what you have to offer.
Testing & Optimization
Regular testing and optimization are crucial for keeping your display ads effective and ensuring your campaigns continue to deliver results. Start by monitoring creative performance to see which images, copy, and CTAs resonate most with different audience segments. Conduct systematic A/B tests—for example, comparing “Get Your Home Value” versus “Find Out What Your Home Is Worth”—to determine which messaging drives the best response. Refresh your ad creative every 2–3 months to avoid ad fatigue and maintain engagement rates.
Strategic budget allocation is also key. Prioritize spending on high-performing audience segments and adjust campaigns for seasonal trends, increasing budgets during peak selling periods and scaling back during slower times. Track meaningful performance metrics beyond clicks, such as engagement time, return visits, and form submissions, and ensure proper conversion tracking is in place with pixels to accurately attribute leads.
Other best practices include:
- Frequency Capping: Limit impressions to 3–5 per user per week to avoid overexposure.
- Retargeting Windows: Follow up with hot leads within 7 days and casual browsers within 14–30 days.
Integration with Your Real Estate Sales Funnel
Align your display ad strategy with each stage of the client journey:
- Awareness Stage: Use broader targeting and educational content (market reports, buying guides) to introduce your brand to cold prospects.
- Consideration Stage: Deploy more specific ads featuring testimonials and service comparisons for leads evaluating multiple agents.
- Decision Stage: Create urgency with limited-time offers and specific property highlights for warm leads nearing a decision.
- Post-Purchase: Implement display ads targeting past clients with referral incentives and market updates to generate additional business.
Measuring Success
Performance Metrics
Tracking display ad performance helps optimize campaigns and measure impact. Impressions show how often your ads are seen, while click-through rate (CTR) gauges engagement (real estate average: 0.35–0.45%). View-through conversions capture prospects who convert later, and cost per lead (CPL) measures acquisition efficiency. Return on ad spend (ROAS) compares revenue to ad investment, and brand lift surveys assess increases in recognition and consideration. Together, these metrics provide a clear picture of both immediate results and longer-term brand influence.
Attribution Considerations
When measuring the impact of display ads, consider a multi-touch attribution approach that gives credit to all touchpoints in the customer journey, rather than just the last click. Set appropriate lookback windows—typically 60–90 days for real estate—to account for longer decision cycles.
Integrating your ad platform with a CRM allows you to track which campaigns eventually lead to closings, while analyzing assisted conversions helps you understand how display ads support other channels, such as paid search or email marketing, in driving overall results.
Analysis Best Practices
To get a clearer picture of what’s working, break down performance by audience type, property category, and ad creative to uncover the most effective combinations. Keep in mind that display ads often assist conversions rather than close them directly, providing long-term value by keeping your pipeline warm even if a sale takes months.
Competitive benchmarking helps contextualize your results against industry standards, while custom dashboards that consolidate metrics from multiple platforms enable a holistic evaluation of your campaigns’ overall effectiveness.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Avoid these common pitfalls to ensure your real estate display ads deliver maximum results:
- Creative Errors: Visual overload (too much text or low-quality images), inconsistent branding that doesn’t align with your website, generic messaging that fails to highlight your unique value, and neglecting a call-to-action leaves prospects confused or unsure of what step to take next.
- Technical Mistakes: Failing to optimize for mobile devices, directing traffic to slow-loading landing pages, improperly setting up conversion tracking, or neglecting Google’s quality metrics leads to poor user experience, inaccurate performance data, and ultimately, higher ad costs.
- Strategic Errors: Treating campaigns with a set-and-forget mentality, failing to segment audiences, misallocating budgets, ignoring seasonal market trends, or expecting immediate transactions from a channel best suited for awareness and nurturing all limit the effectiveness of your display ad.
- Compliance Issues: Ads that risk Fair Housing violations, omit required licensing information or disclosures, or use unlicensed stock images or content can create legal problems and damage your brand’s credibility.
Implementing regular audits of your display ad campaigns will help identify and correct these issues before they impact performance.
Display ads aren’t just for big brands—they’re a cost-effective follow-up tool for realtors. By combining display ads with email, social media, and personal touches, you can build a comprehensive follow-up system that keeps you top-of-mind with potential clients.
Need help setting up real estate display ads that keep you top-of-mind and bring cold leads back into your pipeline? We’re here to help! Let’s make your marketing work harder for you. Reach out today to get started.