Chances are if you are reading this, you’re trying to figure out how to make your ads perform better.

Or maybe you want to know how to get higher quality Facebook leads. 

If that is what you’re looking for, then you’re in the right place. So let’s just dive right in.

THE New Facebook “SPECIAL AD” CATEGORY

I’m starting here because this is something that was a major change in 2019 and left a lot of people unsure of what to do. When Facebook added the “Special Ad Category,” a lot of the opportunity for specific targeting was removed. 

The purpose of this category was an attempt to prevent discrimination. In my humble opinion, however, Facebook took it too far out of fear of anything even slightly resembling the possibility of an ad just seeming like it could possibly be discrimination… 

And consequently removed quite a bit of valuable (nondiscriminatory) targeting opportunities that were working for us. 

But that’s life as a Facebook Marketer, you gotta roll with the punches. 

So the first thing we are going to notice is that we can no longer target by age or gender. Those options have been removed. 

For me, those were not a significant part of my targeting beforehand anyway, so not a huge deal. However I know some agents would target ages 30+ in order to bring in more seller leads. It’s no longer an option. Oh well!

Location Targeting For Housing Ads in 2020

Under Location, you have several options in the dropdown. 

For a standard real estate ad that you will be putting up with a homes list, a listing, or something along those lines, you will want to select either “People who live in this location,” or “Everyone in this location,” both of which perform similarly. 

I typically go with “Everyone in this location.”

The other dropdown options might be used in more high-level targeting, but that gets pretty advanced. 

Remember, I am just covering a basic real estate ad that most real estate agents will use. 

Next, choose your radius. Our new minimum thanks to the “Special Ads Category” is 15 miles.

Facebook Targeting By Languages For Real Estate

If you speak Spanish or any language other than English, you have an incredible opportunity to target people as your competition will probably be very minimal!

In the US be sure to select the correct language for your market. I typically choose English (All).  Because that’s the majority of my client’s target market.

Details Facebook Targeting For Real Estate Lead Generation

Since so much of this has now been removed, I’m just going to tell you what you need to do here. 

Type in: Realtor.com (not Realtor.com Pro), Zillow, and House Hunting. 

At this point, you can click “suggestions,” and you’ll see Trulia, Homes.com, First time buyer, starter home, property finder, etc. 

Go ahead and add those in, but skip the really generic options like “real estate”, “property,” or “houses.” 

Another thing you can do is use the “narrow audience” feature. 

When adding targeting options to the “narrow audience” section, a person will have to meet qualifications set in both the main targeting section and also in this section as well. 

This will slim down your target audience significantly, but allows you to target them more specifically and could result in higher quality leads. 

For example, go down to “narrow audience” and you can type in “Mortgage loans,” and then click “suggestions.” You might see “mortgage calculator,” “prequalification,” “lending,” etc. 

Just make sure whatever you have in the “narrow audience” section is different than in the main targeting section. 

So think about it, if you get a lead that is both looking at mortgage calculators and is also looking at first time home buyer grants, that lead is much more likely to be serious about moving than someone who might have randomly checked out Zillow recently. 

This is an opportunity for you to test, test, test. Find out what works in your area. 

I wish I could just tell you exactly what to target and you could just fill in the blanks and BOOM, you’re flooded with leads!

But the truth is that different targeting works in different areas, and the only way to see that success is to start testing, analyze your results, make tweaks, and test some more. 

I know from experience, as I’ve run these ads in almost every single state.

Facebook Ad Placements For Real Estate Agents in 2020

You might be thinking, “what does placements have to do with targeting?” 

Well, it’s not technically considered targeting… but let me show you how we can use it for targeting purposes. 

Facebook recommends that you run your ads on “all devices,” but of course they do. They want to spend our money – they don’t care so much about our ROI. 

So we are going to remove any devices/placements that we are not setup for. 

Remove Instagram, unless you are creating a separate image for it – different from the Facebook ad image.

Only select Facebook Newsfeed and Facebook Marketplace. That’s it for a basic ad. 

This is what I recommend if you don’t want to spend all the time and money it will take to test the different placements. 

As far as iOS devices vs. Android devices, you will get different results and this is a good opportunity to test which works best for you. This is like a bonus targeting opportunity. But hey, if you don’t want to test this out, I recommend just selecting iOS devices only, as that usually gives me the best results. 

Now let’s say you are getting a lot of leads that you call or text and they respond with “I don’t remember opting in for this…” try selecting “only when connected to wifi.” 

Facebook lead forms have become so easy to sign up for, people do sign up on accident. So by selecting “only when connected to wifi,” you’re cutting down on the number of accidental signups by people mindlessly browsing facebook while they’re waiting at a red light or something. 

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Well, by now, hopefully you feel more confident in how to use Facebook Targeting for real estate in 2020. 

For more valuable information on how to get more leads & closings, subscribe to my newsletter and be sure to follow me on Youtube. 

Also, I’d love to know if this was helpful to you so please leave a comment below with any comments or questions!