How to Use Facebook's Special Ad Category as a Real Estate Investment Syndicator

On a previous blog I walked you through the first steps you ought to take when the faceless Facebook & Instagram Ad overlords wrongfully throw your real estate syndication into the Special Ads Category. To check that blog out, click here.

But let’s say you’re still stuck in the Special Ads Category. We aren’t out of the woods just yet and there’s no time to waste. We have to keep moving forward.

The good news is we can still create effective Facebook & Instagram Ads for our Real Estate Syndication from the Special Ads Category.‍

Here’s how we do that—‍

The Special Ad Category still allows you to market to people who have visited your website. This gives us the opportunity to build and launch remarketing campaigns. If we can drive enough traffic to our website (which doesn’t have to be purely Facebook & Instagram Ad traffic) we can stay in front of those very same visitors.

If we want to narrow our audience even further to reach specific visitors, we can set up a custom audience based on traffic to a specific website page. Imagine the power of remarketing a specific offering to potential investors who indicated interest in said offering by visiting our offering page.

Let’s say our offering is 506(b) and we’d like to target future investors from a certain city. Let’s write an in-depth article about that city and some good reasons to invest in apartment buildings there. We focus on getting traffic to this in-depth article (which will also act as a lead magnet on its own) so we can use data from our website visitors to leverage Facebook’s Special Ad Category.

So, even if we’re wrongfully placed into the Special Ad Category, this is one of the ways we can stay in the fight.‍

These are the data sources we are limited to when we are creating a Custom Audience in the Special Ad Category:

• Website visits
• Customer list
• Engagement on videos
• People who have completed our lead form
• People who have engaged with our events
• People who have engaged with our Instagram business profile
• People who have engaged with our Facebook business page
  

I recommend setting the engagement period to a minimum of 60 days to reach people who would actually be interested in your investment offerings.

This is how the Special Ad Category changes our targeting options:

• Detailed Targeting — Some demographic, behavior, and interest options are unavailable. The ability to exclude any detailed targeting selections is also unavailable.
• Location — You can target your ads to people by geographic location (such as country, region, state, province, city, or congressional district) but not by zip code. If you select specific locations, Facebook will include a 15-mile radius around that targeted location.
• Age — Audiences must include people between the ages of 18 and 65+.
• Gender — Audiences must include everyone.
  

When we’re in the Special Ad Category, Facebook & Instagram are wanting us to market broadly. When we market broadly, we’re leveraging Facebook’s algorithm to find the best people to show our investment offerings to. We can narrow our targeting but only through a custom audience, which is based on the data that we already have.

I hope by now you can see why I highly encourage you to tactfully talk your way out of Facebook’s Special Ad Category. While in the Special Ads Category we’re still able to leverage remarketing campaigns, it’s just not the full experience of Facebook Ads. We want to be able to use Facebook’s detailed targeting, age range, and location options as well. We have so much more power and influence that way.

Click here to learn the first step you ought to take when trying to escape the clutches of Facebook’s Special Ad Category.

There you have it. Another way to stay in the game while facing off against the powers that be. 

Do you want to reach out to qualified investors through advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and beyond? Fill out the fields below and I will reach out to you. We’ll set up a time to discuss what a campaign might look like for you.