Are you wondering how to block other real estate agents from seeing your Facebook advertisements and running up your ad spend with curiosity clicks?
There is a section of your Facebook advertising where you can add an audience. It is the same place you upload your database or add a tracking pixel to your website.
First, click on “audiences.”
Click “create audience” in the top right corner.
Now click on “custom audience” in the drop-down box.
Click on “customer list.”
There are two ways you can manage this next part. The first way is a tedious process of uploading a .txt file of all the other agents’ email addresses. If you use this method, you ensure there is only one email address per line in the text file.
The second way (which is much simpler) is selecting “copy and paste your customer list.”
If you have a spreadsheet open with agent contact information, just go to the column with email addresses, copy all email addresses and paste them into Facebook.
You can leave Facebook and come back to it 30 minutes later, and the audience should be completed. Behind the scenes, Facebook is taking your list and matching it to Facebook profiles that use the same email address.
In my experience, Facebook typically finds matches for 60 to 75 percent of emails provided in a list of real estate agent email addresses purchased from email-list.com.
Most multiple listing service (MLS) boards do not publish these lists, so it might be worth the $79 to $200 it costs to purchase a list for your state. If you happen to have a list of real estate agent email addresses in your area, you may not even need to purchase a list.
Creating the custom audience of local real estate agents is only part of the mission. Now you need to block the audience.
Assuming you know how to create a Facebook ad (not just a promoted post), you should be very familiar with this “custom audiences” field. Click in the field, and you will be able to select the audience that you set up in the prior step.
The biggest mistake you could make would be to not complete the following step. I have seen agents stop at the step above, which basically means you will specifically be marketing to every real estate agent in your area!
Click on your audience and select “exclude this audience.”
This tip alone just saved you about 15 to 30 percent of your marketing budget. It lowers curiosity clicks from other agents, which cost you money, and it prevents a lot of copycat real estate agents competing for the same clicks and driving up the price per click!
John Pohly is an author, coach and thought leader for Internet marketing and online conversion funnels.
