LinkedIn Ads for Real Estate: 15 Tips To Win in the Dubai Market

Using LinkedIn ads for real estate offers unmatched potential compared to Facebook or Instagram ads if you know how to use them effectively. The mistake many people make when running LinkedIn ads for real estate is trying to replicate what works on other platforms. But LinkedIn is a different beast. 

While many of the same people are on both LinkedIn and other social media platforms, their mindset is different when they’re on LinkedIn. 

People visit LinkedIn to focus on their careers, network with others in their industry, and explore new investment or business opportunities.

While each segment of your audience may have different goals and what grabs their attention, one thing is clear: most users on LinkedIn are there for business and career growth.

In this article, we’ll explore 15 tips to help you win the Dubai market by leveraging LinkedIn ads for real estate.

• Narrow down your audience targeting.

You can’t run effective LinkedIn ads without this nailed down first. But targeting on LinkedIn works differently from other platforms. It’s much more professional-focused. You’re targeting people in specific roles, companies, or with certain skills, depending on what you’re selling.

For real estate, LinkedIn ads are best for commercial properties, not residential ones. Here, you want to focus on the decision-makers—CEOs, financial managers, project managers, and people with authority. 

For example, you could target real estate developers or investors, but agents usually aren’t the right fit.

If you’re going for real estate developers or agencies, you’ll want to make sure you’re targeting the higher-ups, not just agents. Think of roles like VPs or directors—people who are going to pull the trigger on deals.

You also need to decide if you’re targeting buyers from all industries or specific industries. If your property works well for a particular industry (e.g., tech, healthcare, or finance), then targeting by industry makes sense. LinkedIn lets you get super specific with industries like construction, real estate, or finance.

LinkedIn groups can also help. These groups are full of people already engaged in real estate discussions, so they’re more likely to notice your ads.

If you’re targeting investors, remember, LinkedIn isn’t the place for promoting the lifestyle. Focus on business value and the ROI potential of your property. Investors care about how your property can make them money.

To get even more specific with investors, target by skills—for example, people with real estate investment or property management skills. These are the people who are likely to be interested in your offers.

• Use LinkedIn Ads to build brand awareness.

Before you dive into pushing for sales, if your brand is new to LinkedIn or you’re trying to break into new markets, you have to build brand awareness first. And that doesn’t mean wasted budget. Done right, it sets up your future ad spend to be far more effective.

Use ads to stay in front of your audience consistently. Show off your properties without focusing on the sale. Share success stories from previous clients, businesses that thrived in the areas you’ve sold to, and highlight what makes you stand out in a crowded Dubai real estate market.

This builds relevance and trust. As your audience becomes familiar with your brand, when it’s time for them to make a purchase, they’ll already feel comfortable with you. 

You’ll find it way easier to close the deal than if you’d just shown up with a hard sales pitch from the start. In short, LinkedIn ads should warm them up for the sale, not push them too soon.

• Use LinkedIn’s “matched audiences” to retarget leads who’ve already shown interest.

This works best if you’ve already invested in building brand awareness. 

Once you’ve shown up enough times with different versions of your offering, and spent enough time and ad spend, you can narrow it down to who has engaged with your ads at each step—whether they’ve liked, commented, visited your website, or interacted with content. 

These people are showing varying levels of interest. You’ve warmed them up. Now, retarget them when they’re still warm using Matched Audiences targeting.

Retargeting these warm leads is way cheaper than fresh ones, and the campaigns will be more effective. Look at their interactions and figure out where they are in their journey:

• If they visited your website and bounced fast, create different versions of the landing page and test them to see which one works best.
• If they only liked your post, try to engage them with more valuable content.
• If they commented, go through the comments and understand what caught their attention and what preferences they expressed. This is a goldmine for inspiration for your retargeting.

 

• Post insights on market trends.

Professionals on LinkedIn love to see market insights. It’s what gets them talking. 

 

Share data-backed trends in commercial real estate—if they tie into your project, that’s perfect. If not, it’s still a great way to establish your brand authority. 

 

The more you’re seen as the brand that shares valuable insights, the more you become a trusted expert and consultant. 

 

Investors and professionals need data to make decisions, and when you provide that, you shift from being just a seller to someone they turn to for advice. This approach is always more effective in the long run.

• Position your ads as business advice.

You’re using LinkedIn ads for real estate to sell properties. Sure. But how you sell it differs on LinkedIn, because usually it’s either a business purchase (commercial property) or an investment. 

You’re either selling to an investor who’s buying for the ROI, a developer who needs land for a project, or a business investing in office space or something else business-related. 

People care less about the property for its own sake and more about the value that it brings to their business. 

Always make that your main angle. 

Focus on ROI, growth potential, and how the property is designed to make their employees more productive and push them toward their future vision. Always make it about business.

• Invest in LinkedIn video ads for high-ticket property listings.

Video is automatically more effective for high-ticket property listings because it provides more context and boosts credibility. 

When the stakes are higher (think bigger price tags), video tends to perform better—and that’s true across platforms, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or even TikTok, which a lot of real estate agents use.

The key difference with LinkedIn video ads is that they’ll have a different focus. For residential or commercial properties, here’s how the angle changes:

• For investment properties: Focus on what makes the property a smart investment—what about it is likely to increase in value over time, and how far into the future that growth is expected.
• For commercial properties to businesses: Show how each space can meet the specific needs of a typical office in that industry or company size. Highlight how the layout works for the business and the potential use cases for each area.

Aside from building credibility, video is also more likely to get comments and shares, especially when it provides useful, shareable information. 

People love to share content that shows they’re up-to-date with industry and market trends. 

So, present your property in a way that others will feel compelled to pass it along.

• Use “Direct Sponsored Content” to test before you go full scale.

DSC is, basically, LinkedIn’s version of Facebook “dark posts.” You create ads that don’t show up on your company feed, but they’re still targeted to a specific audience.

It’s a smart way to test ads without cluttering up your company page. You test multiple versions of your ad with different audiences without posting them on your page. That would help you avoid ending up with a mess on your feed that none of your followers can keep up with.

Use this to test angles and ideas before committing a big budget. It’s better to start small with a controlled budget, see what works and with which audience, then scale it from there.

• Target skills and groups to find serious investors.

Skills and groups targeting isn’t used by many real estate sellers, but it’s perfect for zeroing in on investors. 

You can find decision-makers through position/role targeting when selling commercial property, because you’re looking for specific roles within companies that can make the call for which property to buy as a new HQ or office space. 

But investors don’t always have a specific title. They can be in any role, yet still actively investing in real estate.

That’s where groups and skills targeting come in. 

Look for LinkedIn groups that discuss real estate, bring investors together, or share market insights. You can safely bet that the members of these groups are interested in the topic and willing to share or engage, and there’s a decent portion of them who are serious investors. 

As for skills, find people who list real estate investment, property management, investment analysis, etc. as their skills. These don’t necessarily have to be people who do this as their main job, but if they have that skill set, there’s a good chance they’re using it for personal investments.

• Use long-form content to warm up your leads.

Not everything that makes your LinkedIn ads for real estate successful will be about how you create the ads. Rarely will someone see your ad and click through to your website, then submit an EOI or book a consultation right away. More often, they’ll visit your company page first to get a feel for who you are and whether they can trust you. When they land there, make sure they find content that helps them make the decision.

That’s where you leverage long-form content. 

Detailed articles and case studies about previous deals, development projects, challenges, and solutions, or ROI for past investors—this kind of content can build your credibility. 

It shows anyone landing on your page that you’re a company they should consider. 

You position yourself as a trusted advisor.

• Use “Sponsored InMail” to cut through the noise on the feed.

InMail is still underused, but it’s a powerful tool, especially when targeting big decision-makers like developers, higher management, and investors. 

These people are often swamped with tasks, which means they filter out most of what they see on their feed. Landing in their inbox with a personalized message helps you cut through that noise.

Lead with value. Don’t go for the hard sell right away—that just makes you sound like one of the dozens of people trying to sell them services or SaaS products. Instead, take an advisory angle. Share a tip, an insight, or an exclusive market report. 

Establish a rapport that primes them to engage with a later ad or, at the very least, recognize you when they see your ad in their feed.

• Track engagement and optimize mid-campaign.

Don’t just set your LinkedIn ads and forget about them. Most people do that and wonder why their ads aren’t working. Think of your ad as a work in progress.

You might think it’s perfect at launch, but once it’s live, you’ll see something isn’t clicking. Adjust, test, and keep refining. 

More importantly, when you start seeing any kind of engagement, track it. This helps you figure out which audiences and ad creatives are working. 

Double down on what’s performing and either reduce the budget on the underperforming ones or cut them out completely. Focus your budget on the ones that got results.

That’s why tracking consistently is a must.

• Leverage account-based marketing (ABM) for high-value deals.

This is the pinnacle of personalization. 

You take one campaign and choose a specific list of companies that your offer is perfect for. Then, you go all in on tailoring your ad angle and creative for each company. 

This is where your research game needs to be on point. Go to the company page, identify the decision-makers, understand their team structure, and get a clear picture of what they’re working toward.

From there, craft an ad that feels like it was designed just for that company. It’ll be so personalized that it’s hard to ignore. 

The key is creating a message that feels insider—something their team will immediately relate to. If you can dig deep enough to find an inside joke or reference something about the company’s culture, use it. 

Not only will that make the ad stand out, but it’ll make it much more likely to be shared within the team, spreading like wildfire.

Final tip: Use this power wisely.

If you follow these tips for your LinkedIn ads in real estate, you’re going to crush it. The majority of LinkedIn advertisers don’t even know close to what you know now. So go out there, implement these tips, and start stacking results.

If you find it hard to execute on your own, then get some help.

At MediaHolic, we’ve got broad expertise in helping real estate sellers—developers and agencies—maximize social media to build brand awareness and drive sales through paid ads.

If you need help with this, book a consultation with us and let’s create a plan to help your business thrive on LinkedIn.