March Social Media Updates
March was a big month for both LinkedIn and Facebook: Facebook had the longest outage in their 15 year history, they took away ad targeting options while LinkedIn added new ones, and LinkedIn added a meeting scheduler within their messaging stream. Keep reading this blog to see how you can apply these updates to your existing marketing strategy.
Facebook Takes Away Targeting by Age, Gender or Zip Code
Realtors, this is a big update to discuss. Facebook removed targeting by age, gender, and zip code in an effort to stop discrimination in housing, employment, and credit ads. So, how does this affect you? Though those targeting options are gone, you can still find your target audience on Facebook — you just have to think like them!
Let’s say you are in the luxury market. Who is your target buyer? Think about everything they would like and do. What car do they drive? Where do they shop? What brands do they wear? What foods do they eat? It sounds silly, but now this is how you have to think. Going off that example, when you go into detailed targeting, here’s some sample data to consider: your target buyer drives a Maserati, shops at Saks Off 5th, wears Gucci, eats whole and organic food. Try mixing up a few of these options and there you have it: your target audience.
Want another example? Let’s take middle- income market into consideration with those same questions. Here’s who you would target: your middle-income client drives a minivan, shops at Target, wears GAP, eats at Costco. See? It sounds time consuming at first, but it’s quite simple because YOU know your client best.
LinkedIn Adds New Meeting Scheduling Tool Within Messaging
Remember our “Branding Yourself In Real Estate” blog where we mentioned networking as a strategy to establish your personal brand? Well, LinkedIn made networking even easier. Gone are the days where you had to exit LinkedIn in order to send a Google Invite when scheduling your networking meeting; now, you can do so right in your messaging thread! There is an option to select “availability” where you can access your calendar and schedule a meeting. This allows you to schedule in real time, with a confirmation within seconds. There are more than 7.2 million Realtors on LinkedIn, so make the effort to reach out to one and schedule a coffee meeting!
LinkedIn Adds New Targeting Options
While Facebook has retired some of its integral targeting options, LinkedIn just got more detailed. LinkedIn added three new options last month: lookalike audiences, audience templates, and Microsoft Bing search data. Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn’s lookalike audiences allow you to upload a database (emails, phone numbers, etc), and then LinkedIn matches your data with it’s data to bring you a new audience that is similar to your database. Magic, right? LinkedIn does the work for you!
Another update to targeting options was the addition of audience templates. Now this option is for LinkedIn advertisers who may not have a database and don’t know where to start when creating an audience. This is how it works: you enter the ideal type of person you are trying to reach, and you are suggested a match based on those details. Simple, and user-friendly! Lastly, LinkedIn integrated Microsoft Bing search data into it’s platform. This partnership allows advertisers to target users based on content they search on Bing, paired with the interests users indicate on LinkedIn. Basically, you can tailor your ads to a user’s interests using the Microsoft Bing search data.
That’s a wrap for last month’s social media updates! Still feel lost navigating Facebook and LinkedIn ads? Let us do the advertising for you. Contact us today for more information.
