I spent $280 on a fleet of ads to find out what color gets the most clicks on real estate ads?
Specifically, what color border/accent performs best when targeting men in Atlanta.
Same house. Same copy. Same everything.
Just changed the color scheme.
The results were enlightening
Red crushed it at 33 cents per click.
Yellow got demolished at 48 cents per click.
That’s a 45% difference between first and last place.
For doing absolutely nothing except picking a different color.
Here are all results (men only):
Red: $.33 per click (winner)
Purple: $.35 per click
Grey: $.35 per click
Green: $.36 per click
Orange: $.38 per click
Blue: $.39 per click
Black: $.39 per click
Yellow: $.48 per click (ouch)
This makes no sense
Until you think about it.
Red is aggressive. Urgent. “Buy now before someone else does.”
Yellow is… cheerful? Optimistic?
Men buying $500K+ homes apparently don’t want cheerful.
They want that red “act fast” energy.
But here’s where it gets interesting
This was just the male-only test.
I ran the exact same experiment targeting women only.
And then another test targeting men and women combined.
All resutls are no posted in The LAB (including the exact ads, template, headline and primary text used).
The results were completely different.
Like, flip-the-script different.
What worked for men didn’t work for women
And the combined audience? That data made me question everything I thought I knew about color psychology in ads.
Turns out gender targeting isn’t just about budget allocation.
It’s about completely different visual triggers.
The bigger lesson
Stop assuming universal truths exist in marketing.
“Red converts better” might be true for men in real estate.
It might be poison for women.
Your “best performing” creative might only be best for half your audience.
Test everything by segment
Don’t just A/B test your ad copy.
Test your colors. Your fonts. Your image styles.
And test them separately for different audiences.
What converts your 25-year-old female audience might tank with 45-year-old men.
45% difference for changing a color
That’s not margin of error stuff.
That’s the difference between selling a home or not.
Small changes. Big results.
Test everything.
Or let me test for you – join The LAB for access to all my realtor marketing experiments.
Even the stuff that seems cosmetic.
Especially the stuff that seems cosmetic.
