Despite the growing popularity of various new social platforms and the privacy and security concerns that surfaced after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018, Facebook is still the king of social media.

With 2.5 billion monthly active users, growing 8% in 2018 and 9% in 2019, reaching 60% of the 80% of people that are on the internet, it’s safe to say that Facebook isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

With the growing number of users, come the growing number of advertisers and the increase in cost to advertise on Facebook. According to Shery Sandberg, COO of Facebook, there are around 7 million active advertisers on Facebook so with 2.4 billion active Facebook users that pans out to only around 342 users per advertiser.

The growing competition and the changes in the Facebook algorithm are causing the advertising cost to increase.

Here’s how to profit from Facebook ads in 2020 without spending more.

Build Trust and Profit

 
The important strategy for any business large or small is to build trust. Building relationships, especially trusting relationships are vital for realtors and referrals.

Shoving your services or real estate page in your audiences face isn’t going to have a favorable outcome. Warm your audience up with education material. Show you expertise with home buying or selling tips, what they can expect step by step during the home-finding process, what a first time investor may want to look for, etc. Advertising helpful information will bolster your credibility and build trust with your audience.

Understand Special Ad Categories

 

 
Facebook changed the entire advertising system in 2019 due to ad targeting options being used to discriminate against people based on race, religion, gender, disability, color and family status. Here are the three things that Facebook will no longer allow: targeting based on

1. Age
2.  Zip Code
3.  Gender

Note: this is only if your ad falls under the special ad category list which Facebook defines as the following: 

Credit Opportunity: Ads that promote or directly link to a credit opportunity. A credit opportunity ad includes credit card offers, auto loans, personal or business loan services, mortgage loans and long-term financing.

Employment Opportunity: Ads that promote or directly link to an employment opportunity, including but not limited to part- or full-time jobs, internships or professional certification programs.

Housing Opportunity: Ads that promote or directly link to a housing opportunity or related service. These can include listings for the sale or rental of a home or apartment, homeowners insurance, mortgage insurance, mortgage loans, housing repairs and home equity or appraisal services.

 
Ads that are made to educate consumers and housing providers about their rights under fair housing laws are fair game. They also don’t restrict your targeting options.

Targeting Options

 
Two fantastic features that Facebook ads provides is “lookalike” audiences and “retargeting”. Retargeting is useful because you are able to “follow” an individual who has interacted with your brand online. For example, you visit a website to look at a pair of shoes, you didn’t purchase the shoes but instead exited and went on to do other things. All of a sudden you are seeing ads for this pair of shoes every time you log into Facebook and start to scroll.

 
Lookalike audiences are built based on the similarities of your current customers.  These ads are helpful to get in front of new people.

 
While both strategies are useful, retargeting with audience segmentation will you be your most effective strategy. For example, you post an ad about the benefits of homeownership. The objective is to have individuals interested in buying a home sign up for a seminar you are hosting. You get a few people to click on the link but no one has registered. Now you are able to retarget to those who interacted (liked, maybe commented or shared) your link. In order to get these individuals to register, you want to use a new kind of ad. Likely you’ll want to use a video or carousel of engaging imagery to turn the interest into a signup.

Video

Facebook is more keen on showing content that has a high level of engagement.  Most commonly, that content is video. If you want your ad to perform at a high organic level, focus on creating video ads. This will reduce your cost-per-result.
 
Real estate professionals, use these techniques to profit off of Facebook ads in 2020.