The 4 (or 5) Facebook Custom Audiences Every Real Estate Agent Should Create Now!

We have all had it happen to us. You’re shopping for shoes online, then add your favorites to your online shopping cart, and abandon the cart in that digital store. The next day (or even the next 2 minutes) an advertisement for those same shoes pops up on your feed on social media.

This, my friends, is called retargeting. In fact, I would bet that 75% or more of the ads you see on your Facebook News Feed are from a website you visited, an ad you clicked, a page you checked out, a post you liked, a video you recently watched or even a location you were recently at. Like it or not, thanks to good ol’ social media, we are all being DIGITALLY STALKED online by advertisers.

Why not use these tools and tactics to YOUR advantage in your real estate business?

These 4 (or 5, if you count Instagram) Facebook custom audiences will help you get your message in front of the audience that is the most likely to interact with you and your brand. Why? Because they have already interacted with you whether they know it or not.

Creating these audiences are very easy using the Facebook Ads Manager. If you are more of a visual learner, here is a video that will walk you through the steps to create each one of these.

1 – A Custom Audience based on a customer file

Let’s say you have been a busy real estate agent for the last 10 years, but you haven’t done a great job of staying in contact with your past clients.

Putting your message in front of them on social media is one way to reintroduce yourself and remind them that you are their trusted real estate resource.

Here is how it works: You upload your customer list containing any of these fields:
• Email
• Phone number
• First name
• Last name
• Zip/Postal Code
• City
• State/Province
• Country
• Date of Birth
• Year of Birth
• Gender
• Age
• Facebook App User ID
• Facebook Page User ID
• Mobile Advertiser

With the exception of the last 3 on this list, you should have most of this information.
This data is used to find their Facebook and Instagram profiles. Once the profile is found, that user is added to your Custom Audience.

Now you don’t have to have ALL of these fields for every contact, but the more information you have increases the match rate.

In my experience, contacts with mobile phone numbers and email addresses have the best match rate.
NOTE- It is documented that the minimum size for this custom audience is 100, but for best results your list should be upwards of 1000.

2 – A Custom Audience of video views

If you are using video in your marketing then this is the easiest one to create.

This custom audience of “People who have viewed your videos” is the best way to reach people who are already in the top of your sales funnel.

You can create audience based on how long people watched your videos. From 3 seconds to 90%.

OK, let’s be honest here. There is a big difference between someone who viewed one of your videos for 3 seconds, and one that viewed 90% of it. Anyone who views 90% of a video, that is not your spouse or your mom, probably deserves a medal. Either that or it was a REALLY great video.

That said, if you put a lead capture ad in front of someone who viewed 75% of your video, there is a pretty good chance you will capture that lead.

On the flip side, anyone who viewed your video for 3 seconds, might need to see a few more ads to move them down the sales funnel, right?

If you have a few videos that have an exceptionally high number of views and shares, this is the best way to retarget those viewers.

NOTE: This audience requires you to have the videos on your Facebook Business Page. Videos on your personal profile cannot be used to create these audiences.

3 – A Custom Audience based on page engagement

This Custom Audience allows you to interact with anyone who has interacted with your business page in any way.

Options are:

This is what I like to call a “Warm Audience”. They have already seen or been exposed to your brand. Now it’s just a matter of getting in front of them again and moving those users further down your sales funnel.

EVERY business that has a Facebook Page should have this audience created and be reengaging with them on a regular basis.

4 – A Custom Audience based on website traffic using the Facebook Pixel

This one is a little bit tricky and has some special requirements.

First requirement is you MUST HAVE A WEBSITE, and you (or your web designer) MUST HAVE the ability to add a line of code to your website.

If you have a website, but you are unsure if you have the ability to add code, consult with the provider of your website. Chances are they can add the Facebook Pixel code to the header of your existing site.

You also must do something else. You MUST DRIVE TRAFFIC to your website. Simply having a website is not enough. You have to have visitors to your website in order for this to be effective. An audience of 50 people who visited your site in the last 90 days will not be sufficient. If you ever needed a reason to push traffic to your site, this is IT!

Now, exactly how this works is simple. In fact, it’s probably the most used tool in every advertiser’s tool belt.

Once a visitor comes to your website, they are “pixeled”. They have left a breadcrumb trail back to their social media profiles.

The owner of the website creates an audience of anyone with that Facebook Pixel, and puts a sponsored ad in front of them.

This is how those shoes you shopped for the other day end up in your feed. Now, if you are selling products online, there are several more options for conversions (people who BUY based on an online click-through) but for those in the real estate world, we just need to keep it simple and retarget website visitors.

5 – The Instagram Audience

If you are a big Instagram user, and you have an Instagram Business Profile, you can create an audience of anyone who has interacted with your content on Instagram.

This audience is one that is becoming quite popular recently and can help you build a much bigger following on Instagram through targeted ads.

Selecting the right audience is the first hurdle when it comes to running a successful ad campaign on social media. Crafting the RIGHT message is the next one.

What your ad says to each audience is really up to you. Do you send them a video? A link to your reviews? Invite them to an open house? Or maybe it’s a simple “Just Listed” ad. The possibilities are endless since most of the individuals you are marketing to have interacted with you or your brand at least once.