Helping Carlisle Homes Reach More Than 3 Million People with Social Media Campaigns

Carlisle Homes is one of Victoria’s leading builders, having been in the business of building quality homes across Melbourne and Geelong for more than 19 years. In 2021, and again in 2023, Carlisle was recognised by the Housing Industry Association (HIA) as Australia’s Most Professional Major Builder.  

Committed to harnessing excellence at the heart of everything they do, Carlisle continues to deliver award-winning homes and customer service. As a part of this commitment, they look for measurable and successful Facebook ad campaigns to boost awareness and generate new leads for their products. They reached out to Property Republic to help them reach these objectives.  

Other goals include:  

• Targeting first homer buyers and next home buyers  

• Increasing website visits through running traffic campaigns 

• Refining campaigns to help Carlisle connect with potential homebuyers in different stages of the customer journey  

Since 2019, the Property Republic team have been creating, managing and optimising social media campaigns for Carlisle Homes. 

The Approach  

Property Republic creates traffic campaigns to increase website visits, as well as lead campaigns to add names to the Carlisle Homes database.  

Property Republic utilise a range of asset mediums and ad types, such as photos, videos, canvas ads and carousels, and continuously optimise ad campaigns to achieve great results.  

The approach was broken down into different phases.  

1. Social Audit and Competitor Review 

In this first phase, we looked at Carlisle Homes’ competitors and their activity on different social media platforms and we ranked Carlisle Homes compared to their competitors in terms of number of followers. While this is not an indicator of success, it’s a good benchmark for share of voice, and therefore, engagement. The findings concluded that Carlisle Homes’ social following is mostly on par with their competition.  

Property Republic recommended that establishing a dedicated content strategy would ensure continuity of brand awareness, audience education and consistent engagement.  

2.Strategy 

The next step involved creating a strategy for the social campaigns. This included identifying the different ad campaigns and layouts that would best fit Carlisle’s objectives. The following ad formats were tested:  

• Single image 

• Video  

• Carousel  

Another campaign element that Property Republic proposed to test out was the copy. We A/B tested the copy based on area, suburb, and project. Examples of what the copy might look like were provided:  

• “House and land in Melbourne’s South East from $399,900. Discover Easy Living by Carlisle Homes.” 

• “3 bed homes available in Officer for less than $300/week. Discover Easy Living by Carlisle Homes.” 

The strategy also touched on audiences. The plan was to begin targeting a larger audience in and around project locations.  

3. Managing Ad Campaigns 

The Property Republic team are responsible for the ongoing creation, management, and optimisation of Carlisle Homes’ Facebook campaigns. A process was established to ensure effective ongoing campaign management. Carlisle provide the assets and the Property Republic team build the campaigns, recommending the set of audiences to use, as well as the ad formats. Every week, the campaign performance is monitored, and ads are optimised as necessary.  

A weekly report is provided to track results, which are discussed in a fortnightly work in progress (WIP) meeting. At the end of each month, a deep-dive monthly report along with recommendations are also presented.  

4. Campaign Education and Strategy Development 

Property Republic also ensures the ongoing delivery of campaign education and strategy development. This involves keeping up with the latest trends and making sure they are consistently recommended and implemented. The Property Republic team constantly develops the campaign strategies to evolve with Carlisle Homes’ needs and objectives.  

5. Refining Campaigns 

Property Republic identified the KPIs for the campaigns and constantly monitor performance. Dips in results are tracked and recommendations for improvement are provided.  

If required, audiences are also tested to ensure the campaigns are targeting the right people and achieving the best results. New audiences are often used for campaigns that encompass brand awareness.  

The ad creative is also analysed to find the best performing combinations.  

6. The BELT Method 

Property Republic recommended using the BELT method to refine Carlisle’s social campaigns. This documented method ensures the campaigns we create for Carlisle Homes target customers at every stage of the buying journey.  

7. The Carlisle Homes Playbook 

Property Republic produced a playbook to help educate and guide the Carlisle Homes team through the different Facebook campaigns. This document details every aspect of the ad campaigns, from objectives and ad formats to best practices and audiences.  

8. Audience Matrix

Most recently, Property Republic did a thorough audit and analysis of Carlisle’s audiences. An audience matrix was produced to effectively track the audiences across campaigns.  

The team also refined the audiences by doing an audience clean-up. Unused and unavailable audiences were removed from the database. The suburbs, ages, and interests were also updated and optimised.  

The Results  

The combined strategies we’ve implemented for Carlisle Homes’ social media campaigns over the years have resulted in a seamless process that ensures every campaign is achieving the desired objectives. 

Since 2019, we’ve helped Carlisle Homes generate more than 46 million impressions and reach more than 3 million people. 

While social campaigns are just one aspect of Carlisle’s digital marketing strategy, they are integral in raising brand awareness, generating leads, driving website traffic, and nurturing customers throughout the buying journey.  

The Feedback  

“When we decided to get someone external onboard to assist with our socials around 4 years ago, Property Republic were the obvious choice. We knew we could rely on Judi and her team’s years of property related experience, knowledge, and insights. They do an excellent job of building, monitoring and optimising the 20+ campaigns and 50+ audiences that make up our social media advertising. We can always count on them to turn around new campaigns and updates quickly to ensure our advertising messages keep up with the fast pace of our industry.  

The Property Republic team make our job so much easier by looking into our campaigns in depth on a monthly basis, and providing recommendations on how we can tweak the ads to continually see better results. Thanks to the regular recommendations to tweak creative, copy, audiences, budgets and ad structure, we see growth in our reach, impressions, landing page views, and leads almost every month, and most certainly year-on-year. 

I really appreciate that the Property Republic team stay on top of the latest capabilities from platforms like Facebook and Instagram so we don’t have to worry about keeping up with these changes. 

I would recommend Property Republic to people who need a partner who can manage their social media advertising strategy and ensure you get excellent results for your budget.”  

Georgie Dobbyn, Marketing Coordinator at Carlisle Homes