How To Target Specific Niche Business Owners With Facebook Ads? [Advanced discussion welcome]

Hi everyone!

Posting this thread today to see if we can get a good discussion going about high level targeting with Facebook Ads.

If you have used Facebook ads previously, you probably know that the targeting options are pretty damn good. However, at times there is still a little left to be desired. Specifically, it's difficult to target a specific niche of business owners - or at least, I find it to be difficult.

Let's use me as an example.

I want to get my ads in front of real estate agents and agencies. Preferably agencies, but agents would still represent a good lead.

What are some ways I can target these groups of people to ensure my ads are getting in front of them, eliminating as much waste as possible?

Within Facebook:
What I have done is target people who have expressed an interest in real estate and things related directly to real estate.

I have targeted people who are owners of small business pages.

And lastly, I have limited it to people in the "Sales" industry.

I feel like all of these options will do a decent job at trying to get my ad in front of the right people. By targeting business owners in the sales industry who have an interest in real estate, I feel I am eliminating a lot of the waste.

However, just because a business owner in the sales industry has an interest in real estate - does not mean they are an agent or agency.

I don't know how to target any deeper than this within Facebooks targeting options?

Using external information to build a custom audience:
This now brings me to my next point.

There are some alternatives such as scraping emails and phone numbers from real estate websites and them adding them as a custom audience - and serving ads to only those people.

This pretty much guarantees that my ads are going to highly targeted prospects.

There are also Facebook user ID scrapers, so I can scrape related groups or fan pages and serve ads to them - again, should be more targeted than the built in Facebook options.



I am wondering - have I missed something here? Is there more targeting I can do within Facebook to get a better target audience? Or have I done as much as I can?

Also, outside of Facebook, have I missed any creative ways of targeting my ideal prospects?


Looking forward to a (hopefully) great discussion!