REALTORS - Facebook Rejecting Your Ads? Here's Why...
So you want to boost your normal real estate post but Facebook has rejected it, what gives!?! Well, new guidelines brought down by HUD means Facebook must abide by stricter posting rules for advertisements related to housing (also employment and credit, but luckily, these don’t apply to you!). That does not mean you cannot boost a post. You still can — to various targeted areas and with several targeted interests. Detailed options that we used to use to target juuuust the right person are no longer available however.
Here’s the step by step process. Fair warning: Facebook is ever-changing and there is a possibility something gets moved before you can even finish reading this article. Just be patient with yourself! If all else fails, we at 342MAD are here to help, with a social media director on-staff who is up-to-date on all these gnarly changes. We can help in all sorts of ways!
Here’s How to Navigate The New Special Categories
Let’s pretend this cute post of two of our Mad team members is really a beautiful shot of a sweet 3-bedroom on Siesta Key, a post on housing that we would like to boost.
STEP 1: BOOST IT
Click the blue “Boost Post” button, in the lower right-hand corner.
STEP 2: Scroll down, turn ON the switch next to SPECIAL AD CATEGORY…
STEP 2: SPECIAL AD CATEGORY
You will then get a variety of choices to make. The most important selection you need to make requires a little scrolling with the middle bar to find. You want to get to SPECIAL AD CATEGORY. To the right of it is a little switch you need to click on.
Once it is on you will then have to select your particular “Special Ad Category”.
STEP 1 - BOOST IT
STEP 2: …and select the appropriate category for you, HOUSING.
STEP 3: Proceed with your targeting.
From here on out things will be more familiar however definitely limited. Click on the blue Edit near people in your audience and you will see the differences.
STEP 3: Get creative with that targeting!
Gender and age are now frozen to include everyone. (That little monument-looking structure means you can’t edit it.) Additionally, you can no longer do a one-mile radius of, say, a property that you wanted to give a neighborhood sneak peak of, sadly. But you can do a 15-mile radius and whole states if you would like to draw the attention of some potential snowbirds!
Under detail targeting you will be best-served to click on “suggestions”. It will save you time as there has been such a narrowing of options. Ones we like include terms like:
First-time buyers
Luxury Real Estate
Real Estate Investors
…and so on. Once you enter in a couple, a bunch of suggestions will come up for you to go through and select.
STEP 3: New ways to target.
STEP 4: CONFIRM IT
Send that sucker to Facebook for review. The Facebook powers that be have been occasionally rejecting ads relating to the special categories, in order to keep the man off their tail, so don’t be surprised if your ad initially gets rejected. As with everything on Facebook, the more you do it, the better Facebook recognizes what you’re doing, so this problem should decrease over time. If you get the email that your ad has been rejected, just follow their steps to “Request a Review.” This generally clears that up and your ad/boost should begin right away after the review. :) Also, if you categorize it correctly in the beginning, the likelihood of this goes down as well.
Good luck and remember to be kind to yourself. What began as very instinctual and easy-to-use has become more and more cumbersome and convoluted. If you aren’t doing it every day, it can get frustrating! If creating and working through Facebook Ads is not something you want to mess with, contact 342MAD! It is a part of the Marketing and Design that we do to free you up to take care of your real business!