Did you know that Facebook now serves ads for more than 2 million businesses? That means you can get your message in front of the right people with pinpoint accuracy and at a far higher ROI compared to many other advertising platforms. Creating and selecting a target audience is one of the most important components of crafting a Facebook ad strategy. You can build the most comprehensive advertising campaign in the world, but if it’s not reaching the right audience, it will fail. That’s why our Group Two team devotes so much time to researching the best targeting options for each and every campaign.

Getting to know who your home buyers really are is a crucial step for a successful Facebook Ads campaign. With more than 1 billion daily active Facebook users, it’s absolutely critical that you target only those who could become potential leads. You can discover your objective audience by utilizing data from Google Analytics, registration cards, or Facebook insights. And lucky for you, Facebook offers a wide range of targeting options that will help you deliver your message to the right niche audience!

Here are five ways to utilize Facebook’s many targeting parameters for a successful Facebook advertising campaign:

Custom Audiences
Facebook allows you to create a custom audience from a customer list comprised of your existing homeowners and prospects. Easily upload or copy and paste your hashed customer list (uniquely encrypted emails and/or phone numbers), then Facebook uses the imported data to match the people on your list to as many user profiles as possible. The benefit here is that this audience has already invested in you and is likely to convert at a higher rate and lower cost than any other audience group.

Lookalike Audiences
This handy feature allows you to create brand new audiences based off of preexisting email lists and website visitors. Lookalike audiences are a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because their profiles are similar to custom audiences you have uploaded, or they have previously visited your website. What this means is that you’re telling Facebook that you want an audience created of people who are most like your email list, website visitors, etc.

Demographics
Targeting by user demographics allows you to reach people based on identifiers far beyond their age and gender. Facebook provides the opportunity to qualify people based on education, employment, household and lifestyle details. You’ll find options to segment users based on the schools they attended, financial worth, recent life events and more. For example, if your goal is to reach move-up buyers, you can create a target list of people who have lived in their home for 6+ years and have a household income of $150K+.

Interests
Facebook’s interest targeting allows you to define your target audience based on their interests, hobbies and Pages they like on Facebook. Facebook identifies interests from information users added to their Timeline, keywords associated with the Pages they like or apps they use, and Facebook ads they’ve clicked on. A few keywords that we typically use to target those interested in purchasing a home are “likely to move” “Zillow” or “House Hunting”.
This tactic is beneficial if you’re a small builder or have a brand new community with a limited customer list and limited website traffic. However, it’s generally less effective than the other targeting options.

Location
Location targeting allows you to reach customers in key locations by country, state/province, city and zip code. You can also choose to target your ads to an audience within a certain radius. Facebook’s location information comes from a user’s indicated location on their Timeline and is validated by their IP address. When selecting locations for builder campaigns, we usually concentrate on the top three cities or zip codes where previous homebuyers have resided.

With these Facebook targeting tips, you can ensure that your content is getting in front of the right audience and attracting potential buyers to your page.

If you’d like help putting these practices to use or furthering your social strategy, contact Group Two today!

By Katie Seibert –
Assistant Account Manager