The Dos and don’ts of facebook Ad targeting for real estate agents

May 27, 2020

Are you confused by the Facebook ad restrictions that is in place for housing? Feel stuck by this and aren’t sure what to do? Then this article is for you! You’ll learn what you can and can’t do with Facebook ads for real estate and 3 ways to target that will convert leads.

The Bad News

Let’s talk about the bad news first. What you can’t do with the restrictions Facebook put in place. In July of 2019, Facebook created new restrictions in order to cut down on discrimination and to comply better with the U.S. Department of House and Urban Development (1).

With these restrictions here’s what you can no longer do if you are looking to advertise a Housing Opportunity or Related Service, a Credit Opportunity, or an Employment Opportunity. So basically anyone in the housing industry will need to comply with this*.

(The ONLY time you wouldn’t have to comply is if you are marketing to other real estate agents that does NOT have to do with an employment opportunity. For example, if you are selling a course or some sort of training for other Realtors®, you wouldn’t have to comply. Another example is if a lender is marketing to real estate agents in order to get referral business. BUT just be aware this will still likely flag your ads and you may have to take extra steps to convince Facebook your ads comply)

Here is what you CAN’T target:

• Locations smaller than 15 mile radius: You can target by DMA, State, Country no issues, but anything smaller than a 15 mile radius around a city, a specific address, or pin-drop isn’t allow.

• Age: All audiences are 18 through 65+ so no targeting by age.

• Gender: Audiences must include all genders.

• Some Detailed Targeting: Information such as demographics and behaviors is excluded, but there is still some interest targeting that you can use.

The Good News

Now that we’ve gotten the bad stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the good stuff. What we CAN do (and in a lot of ways, better than demographic targeting).

Detailed Targeting

As I mentioned above, there are some restrictions with detailed targeting, but there are still a lot of options.

“Detailed targeting is a targeting option available in the “Audience” section of ad set creation that allows you to refine the group of people (they) show your ads to. You can do this with information such as additional demographics, interests and behaviors. (Real estate agents can use this for interests, demographics and behaviors are restricted.)

These detailed targeting options may be based on:

• Ads they click
•  Pages they engage with
• Activities people engage in on Facebook related to things like their device usage, and travel preferences
• The mobile device they use and the speed of their network connection

“Some detailed targeting options, which may include demographics, behaviors or interests, are unavailable. Excluding any detailed targeting selections is unavailable.” – Facebook

Custom audiences 

“A Custom Audience made from a customer list is a type of audience you can create to help build your reach. It’s made of information – called “identifiers” – you’ve collected about your customers (such as email, phone number and address) and provided to Facebook.

Prior to use, Facebook hashes this information.Then, we use a process called matching to match the hashed information with Facebook profiles so that you can advertise to your customers on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network. The more information you can provide, the better the match rate (which means our ability to make the matches).” – Facebook

Ideas for what you do with custom audiences:

• Advertise to existing clients to keep you top of mind
• Reach out to former clients that you haven’t spoken to in a while
• Reach past open house attendees
• Reach anyone who has liked your page, interacted with your content, visited your website, etc.
• Create a “Special Ad Audience” out of your custom audience to expand your reach. 

Special ad audience

“A Special Ad Audience is similar to a Lookalike audience because it uses online behavior similarities from the people in your source to form a new audience.

However, a Special Ad Audience is adjusted to comply with the audience selection restrictions associated with your campaign’s chosen Special Ad Category. It won’t use targeting information such as age and gender, or certain demographics, behaviors or interests.”

“It uses existing information you have about the people you want to reach to create a new audience with similar online behavior.” – Facebook 

Ideas for what you do with custom audiences:

• Reach people who have similar online behaviors as your current and past clients
• Reach people who are similar to those who have liked your page, interacted with your posts, visited your website, etc.
• Expand your reach to those who you have made a custom audience for. There are lots of options!

While it may seem daunting at first having so many restrictions, I hope you now see there are still plenty of options. What do you think about this article? Any questions I can help you with? Leave them in the comments below!