What is Your Banner Ad?

Your banner ad sits on the bottom of the Real Estate Page in the Home to Castle e-magazine. It covers the full width of the page and has six boxes in it. There are four boxes for four of your listings, a box for a call to action for things like downloading reports on buying and selling a home and so on. The last box to the right has a place for your image and below that is where your name sits as well as your company’s name. Underneath that is your phone number and your email address.

To see what the banner ads look like and where they are situated, please click on the accordions on the left hand side labeled Banner Ad Examples and Banner Ad locations.

1. Banner ad Title – Please give your banner ad a title. If you like, you can use your name or company name, the territory your advertising in and the Issue date

2. Realtor First and Last Name – Please put in your first and last name here. This will display in the Realtor Info Box which is the last box on the right hand side where your image goes. To view examples of what your banner ad will look like, please click on the accordion toggle labeled Banner Ad Examples to the left

3. Company Name – Your company/brokerage name goes here. This will display above your four listings and in the Realtor Info box below your name.

4. Company Header Text Colour – This is the text colour of the company name which is above your listings on your banner ad. To view this, please click on the accordion toggle labeled Banner Ad Examples or Banner Ad Field Locations. To learn how to use the colour picker, just go back to the “Create Your Banner Ad” page and on the right hand help column you will find a button that says, “How to use the colour picker.” This quick video will show you the basics of using the colour picker from using your mouse to putting in hexadecimal numbers that match your brokerage’s brand colours.

5. Phone Number – This will display in all six boxes of your banner ad: The four listing boxes, your proposal box and your Realtor box.

6. Realtor Box Text Colour – This is the text colour of your name, your brokerage name and your phone number located in The Realtor box on the far right hand side. We have created a quick video on how to use the colour picker and you will find it easy to do and master in short order.

7. Email Address – Your email address is located both in your Realtor Box and your Proposal Box.

8. Proposal Box Email Text Colour – This is the colour of your email address text for your Proposal Box. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please watch the short tutorial on how to use the colour picker. it is a simple and easy process and you will be able to customize the colour of all fields that have this as an option.

9. Realtor Box Email Text Colour – This is the text colour for your email address in the Realtor Box. Please select a color that is not the same or so close to the same as the background colour of your Realtor Box colour.

10. Proposal Box Heading – This is the heading that is found at the top of your Proposal Box. Here you can put a unique value proposition or offering. You have fifty characters or less for your heading.

11. Proposal Box Heading Text Colour – Please select the text colour for your proposal box heading. If you need instructions on how to use the colour picker, please go back to the create your banner ad page and watch the short video you will find on the right hand side for a quick video on how to use the colour picker.

12. Details – In a 220 characters or less, please come up with details that support your heading and put in a call to action.

13. Details Text Colour – Please select the text colour for the detailed text. If you don’t know how to use the colour picker, please go back to the Create Your Banner Ad page and click the video tutorial on the help bar labeled How to Use the Colour Picker.

14. Proposal Box Colour – Here you can select the colour of your proposal box. Whatever colour you choose, you will want to make sure that the text colours you pick work with the background colour that you choose for your proposal box.

15. Add a Button to Your Proposal Box? – Here you can add a button to your proposal box for either downloads of things like speical reports and to take someone to a page like a landing page. To see instructions on how to do this please click on the accordion box below labeled “Adding a Button to Your Proposal Box.”

16. Realtor Image – Please upload an image of yourself in portrait format. This will show up in the Realtor Box on your Banner ads. To see an examples of banner ads please click on the accordion toggle labeled Banner Ad Examples.

17. Realtor Box Background Colour – Please select the colour of your Realtor Box. Remember to ensure the colour you choose also allows for the text colours to be easily readable.

18. Background Image – This is the image that takes up the background of your banner ad. We recommend that you use an image that incorporates the brokerage and/or franchise that you’re licensed under.

19. Website Text – This is the text that you want to display on the front end of your banner ad and is located below your listings. You can put in a call to action like, “Download My Home Selling Guide Today!” or “See my other Listings!” and so on.

20. Website Text Colour – Here you can decide what text colour you would like for your website text. To easily draw attention to this text, please select a colour that will be easily read on the background image that you’ve chosen.

21. Website URL – Please put the URL of where you would like people to be redirected to after clicking the Website Text.

22. Listing Fields – Your banner ad listings require that you fill out four fields for each one: Your listing Image; Your listing URL; Short listing description; and Listing Price. Please upload all images with the same dimensions and when you write a small description of your listings, try to keep them close to the same in length to keep them looking symmetrical.

Listing Image – Please select landscape images for your four listings and try to ensure that they all have the same pixel dimensions or aspect ratio. This will ensure that they will look even on your banner ad.

Listing URL – To redirect interested buyers to your listing, please put in the complete URL where your listing is located. If you would like people to be redirected to the page where your listing is located on your website, copy and paste that URL in the Listing URL field; If you would like it to go to the page where it’s located on realtor.ca, copy and past the URL  from that page; or, if you like you can copy and paste the URL of that listing where it is sitting on Home to Castle.

Some Mock URL Examples

https://hometocastle.com/myproperty

http://mywebsite.com/mylisting

https://www.realtor.ca/mylisting

Short Listing Description – in 85 characters or less, please put in a property description of your listings in this field. Keeping the character count of all of your four listings on your banner ad close to the same will ensure they will look symmetrical.

Listing Price – Please enter the list price of your property here. Please put in the dollar sign followed by the the list price. Also please use the comma for the thousand separator like the following examples: $480,999; $360,900 and so on.

23. Help Sidebar – Here is the help sidebar. On it you will see buttons with help images as well videos to show you how to better create your banner ads. We recommend that you view all of the videos and go through this entire help page so creating any banner ads in the future will be a breeze.

Any changes that we make on any of the forms will have updates to this help page as well as creating new help videos to make sure you have all the help you need.

To get started, you will have to mouse over the box marked YES below the text that reads “Add a Button to Your Proposal Box?” You have a choice between two button types. One is for downloading a PDF in the form of a special report and the other is a button that goes to a particular website or landing page. An example might be a landing page where someone would fill in their information in exchange for something like getting a weekly/biweekly/monthly report on what properties are selling for in either an area they live in or would like to live in and so on.

Adding a Button to Your Proposal Box

After mousing over and clicking the box labeled yes (Please click on the accordion toggle labeled Proposal Box Button Fields to see where this is located), you will see two radio buttons to select from. All depending on which radio button you select, new fields will be displayed on the bottom for you to fill out in order to create your button.

15A. Download File fields

Download Button Text – in 35 characters or less, please decide on the text of your button. examples might be: Get my Special Report; Download the Report; Click Here to Download Report and so on.

File URL for Download – Please enter the file URL here. You can either upload a new file this form and copy and paste that URL or, if you have already uploaded this file to Home to Castle, all you have to do is go to the media click on the file that you would like to choose for downloads copy the URL and paste it in the URL field. you can watch a short video on how to do this by going back to the creating a banner ad page.

Download Button Background Colour – Please select the colour of your button. If you don’t know how to use the colour picker, please watch the short video on how to do that.

Download File Button Text Colour – Please select the colour of the button text colour. If you don’t know how to use the colour picker, please watch the brief video on the Create a Banner Ad page.

15B URL – This is a button to redirect people to a page like a landing page to get people’s information in exchange for something. This could be something like a report where they have to fill in their information before they get it or it could be for things like a weekly or monthly report on houses selling in a particular neighbourhood and so on.

URL – Please put in the complete URL that you would like people taken to

URL Button Text – Please enter the text for your button. Examples might be things like “Sign up Now” or “Find Out More” and so on.

URL Button Text Colour – Please enter the text colour of your button here. Please select something in contrast to the URL Button Background Colour.

URL Button Background Colour – Please select your button colour here. Please select a colour which is easily distinguishable to the URL Button Text Colour as well as the background colour of your Proposal Box.

Well, that’s it. Please note that any changes that we make to any of the forms we’ve created will be accompanied with help text and new videos to ensure that you will be able to master these changes in short order.