Warning; You’re Losing Money by Not Using These 3 Facebook Advertising Secrets

Facebook has recently come under fire for alleged data misuse. Regardless of your stance on who may be fault, it’s undeniable that Facebook collects and evaluates tons of user data. From the posts we like to the comments we make, Facebook’s algorithms carefully analyze and store thousands of data points that future advertisers and marketers can leverage to create micro-targeted campaigns to place the right message in front of the right person at the right time.

Let’s be clear, this approach to psycho-graphic marketing has been around since the MadMen days of advertising. Profiling potential customers and placing persuasive messages or images in their line of view in hopes of swaying their purchasing decisions is called strategic marketing. What has evolved is the process of aggregating this digital data, the micro-specificity of that data and the accessibility of cost effective platforms that serve our targeted marketing campaigns.

Facebook remains the social media platform of choice for the largest home-buying and selling demographic. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults use Facebook with an average visit time of twenty minutes per day. Because of the volume of consumer usage, Facebook still offers one of the most successful advertising platforms around for low cost, hyper-targeted digital advertising campaigns.

While Facebook offers extremely powerful advertising features, navigating through the Ads Manager dashboard and understanding the nuances of its detailed targeting options, audience creation options and retargeting processes can seem daunting to even an intermediate advertiser.

As of October 2018, Facebook will be making changes to their “Partner Categories” which will remove some of the targeting options that many real estate professionals currently use within their ad targeting. It’s unknown if this will remain a permanent change.

If you are currently using Facebook ads or considering adding these campaigns to your marketing arsenal, it’s critical to understand the following three tips:

1: The important difference between “Or” versus “And” targeting

Facebook offers thousands of demographic, interest and behavioral categories to help you identify the group of consumers who are most likely your target audience. By using these identifiers, you can then craft compelling ad copy and imagery that seems to speak specifically to those consumers who will see your ad.

For example, if you are targeting renters, your ad copy could include the benefits of home ownership. If you are targeting new parents who may be thinking about moving up to a larger home, your message might include an image of a young family and ad copy about outgrowing a small home with an expanding family.

One of the challenges that many Facebook advertisers don’t understand is how the different targeting entry fields work. Typically, new advertisers think the more categories they enter, the more defined their audience becomes. But adding more categories in the search field won’t narrow the audience by default. Let’s take a look at the main detailed targeting section closely:

(navigate to this section by going to Ads Manager > Create Ad > Select your Objective > Name your Ad > Scroll to the Audience Section of the Ad Set Section > “Detailed Targeting” Section)

While many users simply add more and more categories into the main search area, what they don’t realize is that by including multiple identifiers, they are asking Facebook to search ads to people “who match AT LEAST ONE of the following.”

That means if I enter “income x” along with a second category of “homeowners” Facebook will serve my ad to EITHER people with that income range OR people who are homeowners NOT BOTH!

If you want to target people who make a certain income AND own a home then you will need to enter only one category in the main search area, then click on “Narrow Audience.”

Download The Agent Marketer’s guide to Facebook targeting for real estate for more information!

2: BULK UPLOAD OF ADDRESSES

Did you know that you can upload a list of property addresses?

And then serve ads to the people living in them. You may already know that you can upload a list of emails or phone numbers to create your very own “Custom Audience,” but did you also know that you can upload a list of addresses?

You may never have known this because the bulk address upload section is in a COMPLETELY different area of the Ads Manager dashboard than where you upload your contact lists!

That’s the tricky part about Facebook!

Facebook has “hidden” this option within the Audience section directly under the Location section. The blue link is called “Bulk Address Upload”

Once you have entered in the addresses (it could be one or hundreds) Facebook will automatically “draw” a radius search around each one of these addresses which can be reduced down.

If you have a mailing list, a geographic farm, this option is ideal!

3: ENGAGEMENT CUSTOM AUDIENCES

Custom Audiences are an essential component in a successful Facebook advertising funnel and re-targeting campaigns. Now, Facebook helps you go even more granular with behavioral targeting through their “engagement custom audience” options which are found under the “Custom Audience” section.

Where to find them?

Create a New Audience > Custom Audience > Engagement

As you can see from the below infographic, Facebook Engagement Audiences give you an opportunity to re-engage with people who have already some level of familiarity with your brand.

With the coming changes to Facebook ad targeting, it will be even more important to use the Facebook ad platform to cultivate the audiences that YOU are building through your website visits, your own contact lists and engagement custom audiences. We can’t rely on only targeting categories, it’s important to build your own audience and then create Lookalike audiences based off of those original source audiences.

Download The Agent Marketer’s Epic Guide to Custom Audiences here!

The Video Audience includes the following options

If you’re already using Facebook Lead Ads, you can use this option to retarget folks who clicked on and opened your Lead Ad but didn’t submit the form:

Ultimately, you creating quality content and proactively connecting with your target community is the only disruption proof marketing. You can pay with your money (ads) or pay with your time (content creation). At the end of the day, while advertising is hugely popular and powerful, creating relationships and distributing your personal brand across the channels where consumers spend the most time is perhaps the most critical marketing tactic now and in the future.

Jason Frazier & Chelsea Peitz are national speakers, thought leaders, social media evangelists, and marketing practitioners that have joined forces to create a "Next Level"​ coaching group called, The Agent Marketer. Their program focuses on the "Chemistry of Marketing"​ where the building blocks of a complex modern marketing plan is laid out taught to professionals in the Real Estate industry.

They have created high level, highly tactical marketing courses that are broken down in easy to follow steps, so that beginners and advanced agents can both take advantage. This is the first of it's kind coaching group teaching their "Periodic Table of Marketing"​ that includes: Landing Pages, Scripts, Technology, Social Selling, Lead Magnets, Email Marketing, Consumer Experience, and much much more.

Find and follow Chelsea Peitz here;

Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube
Instagram: @chelsea.peitz
Snapchat: @chelsea.peitz

Find and follow Jason
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Instagram: @RealEstateCIO
Snapchat: @RealEstateCIO
Twitter: @RealEstateCIO