Google has the potential to provide a wealth of opportunities for real estate lead generation if you manage to get a listing on the first page when someone searches.
Realizing this, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not necessarily going to get your website to show up at the top of page results. If you don’t have the patience to wait for your organic leads for a long time, you should consider utilizing Google Ads’ PPC search advertising sooner rather than later.
Issues in Real Estate PPC Advertising
Real estate Pay Per Click (PPC) has its own particular difficulties, as do all other enterprises. Defeat them, and you will continually receive potential customers that you can grow and turn into purchasers. If AdWords fails to live up to expectations it will not only cause you to question its effectiveness, but it could also cost you a lot of potential customers.
General AdWords Challenges for All PPC Advertisers
In order to use Google Ads, the platform is driven by keywords prior to any discussion of the unique complexities involved in real estate PPC. The extent of your triumph depends on your ability to identify accurate keywords that your viewers are looking for.
Relevant Keywords
You can keep decreasing expenses and growing potential customers if you display your advertisements to individuals who have an authentic enthusiasm for purchasing, selling, or leasing assets (like your business model and objectives dictate).
You will continue to suffer financial setbacks and not benefit from any sales or rentals if your advertisement is visible to viewers that are likely to click on it, yet unlikely to make a purchase from or lease a property from your organization.
High-Converting Landing Pages
Constructing pages with a strong likelihood of boosting conversion is the second most pressing issue for every Pay-Per-Click advertiser. Promoting a product or service without arranging the webpage that shoppers will visit after they choose the ad is like getting ahead of oneself.
AdWords Account Structure
Once the keywords have been chosen, organize them into logical AdGroups. The best situation would be to have a page specifically designed to generate conversions for each Ad Group or advertisement.
Ways to Optimize Real Estate PPC Campaign
1. Bid on Brand Keywords to Capture Hot Leads
You can’t afford to ignore the name of your company or brand in your keyword strategy because of the following reasons:
Understand Real Estate Discovery Process
Individuals looking for a property can find your company in many sudden and unexpected ways.
For instance, people may recall you from having seen an ad on Craigslist or from an outdoor advertisement you posted on your business premises or on a property listed for sale. A pal or apartment directory may provide them with your name, and then they can use Google to discover further details about you.
Capture High-Quality Leads at Rock-Bottom CPC
Those looking for info about your company are likely to turn into promising contacts should they observe your brand on the first page of results and then click through to your website. The CPC bidding for the keywords related to your brand should not be excessive because you want to acquire quality leads without spending too much money.
Thwart Competitors from Stealing Your Leads
In the event that you are not making offers on brand name searches and your opponents are, they can take away your most sought-after leads by showing up over your common listing. Additionally, real estate aggregators can corner the market on the top position and direct people who are looking for something to a page that exhibits all of the contenders in your region.
A helpful suggestion: Offer a high bid on terms that are closely related to your brand, in order to have your company appear at the highest point on the page when someone searches by brand name.
2. Master Geo-targeting to Eliminate Irrelevant Locations
The geo-targeting feature of Google Ads addresses the issue of locality and removes legal memos showing up in unsuitable places. Here’s how to get the most from AdWords Geotargeting for real estate PPC advertising:
- Access Google Ads, go to the Location tab and pick People in, or who display an interest in, your particular areas in the Target section. Your advertisement will now be seen by those who are located in the places you have chosen or have looked for homes in those locales.
- In the Exclude column, choose individuals who either reside in or demonstrate an inclination towards your desired areas. Yup, these are also the recommended settings. They provide services to individuals who want to move to another part of the same city, as well as those who want to relocate to the areas that you are aiming to reach.
- The third most paramount activity is to adjust bids for specific locations. The strategy is to raise the offer when searches are closer to the desired area and reduce the offer when they are further away.
By gradually readjusting your bidding, you can make your advertisement more visible to people located near the geographic position of the property. As searches become more distant and the potential of the prospects diminishes (conceivably), you can decrease the pricing to diminish the number of ineffective clicks.
3. Use Negative Keywords to Prevent Unwanted Exposures
Ads should not appear when someone searches for phrases that have been labelled negative keywords.
For example, if you are trading in homes and don’t wish to draw the interest of farmhouse purchasers, then you can enter ‘farmhouse’ in the list of non-desired words. It will stop your advertisement from being visible when somebody looks up farmhouses in the area that you are targeting.
One must include areas in their list of negative keywords when advertising a real estate PPC campaign.
For instance, if you’re putting up a house for sale in Dover, New Jersey and not setting down places you don’t want your advertisement to show up for by naming them as non-target keywords, you may have the possibility of your ad showing up in searches for more than 20 Doves located in 20 distinct states.
The workaround for the non-unique location issue is rather simple.
Create a list of state names and their corresponding abbreviations to use as broad-match type negative keywords. This will stop your advertisement from appearing in response to someone searching for “Dover” in a different state.
Make certain that the goal state is not included in the list of exclusive keywords!
4. Aim for Best Ad Positions for Real Estate PPC
Google has stated that Ad Position is the ranking of one’s ad when compared to other advertisements participating in the auction.
Being placed at an ad position of “1” indicates that no other ads are before yours, however, it does not guarantee that your ad will be prominently featured at the top of the organic search results. If no adverts are visible at the top of the page, the first advertisement which will be seen below the search results will be this one.
The location of an advertisement depends upon Ad Rank, a measure utilized by Google that is based on five components. This list of elements is necessary for your success in a bidding process: bid amount, Quality Score, Ad Rank thresholds, the query issue of the searcher, and the expected influence of ad extensions and ad formats being used.
The positioning of ads is indicated precisely from one to seven. However, average ad positions may be reported in decimals. By being in the top spot on the page (Ad position 1), your advertisement will have a favorable CTR (Click-through Rate) and a higher-than-average CPC (Cost per Click).
Occupying the apex spot implies that your advertisement will be chosen much more frequently.
The CTR (click-through rate) between the ads in the first 1.4 positions and those between 1.8 and 2.2 can vary by up to 50%. You may end up spending so much money at a remarkably high cost-per-click rate by driving more customers to your site that you won’t make a single penny of profit.
What is the optimal location for real estate PPC advertisements? The most rewarding normal advertisement positions are 2.1, 3.5, or 4.6.
It’s likely that the position will differ in different industries, however, it is highly unlikely for it to be the highest position. If you notice that your advertisement consistently appears at the top of the page, it would be advisable to reduce your bid until you get the optimum amount of cost-per-click and click-through rate.
An exemption exists solely for keywords that incorporate your brand name. It looks probable that the CPC will be low, so you can be aggressive in your bidding and aim for the top spot to dominate the market with your brand.
5. Local Service Ads Are a Game-Changer
Google released this marketing initiative across the country in 2019, and extended it with supplemental services in 2020. It is essential to conduct a trial of this type of campaign if you are bidding on phrases such as “real estate agents near me.”
You will need to go through an initiation process in order to commence and be able to have Local Service Ads. In order to get your Google Screening, you must go through a background investigation and license verification.
6.Prevent Other City Keyword Matches
Not many city names are unique. Unfortunately, not many community brand names are unique either. The task is to eliminate clicks created by the various city searches.
A simple strategy here? Create a new list of negative keywords which only includes complete states and their abbreviations. This will eliminate a lot of these overlapping (and unfocused) searches.
It is imperative that you take out the name and abbreviation of your objective area before you use the list.
Removing Low-Intent Searchers
As Google is increasingly allowing for a greater degree of flexibility in terms of keyword matching (even for “Exact Match”) it has become increasingly difficult to stop a wide range of keyword matches.
In every new campaign, it is part of the procedure to use this list and negative from the state when creating the campaign. Examples of what to avoid include Craigslist, Home Depot, dwellings that are very small in size, Zillow, resumes, and Section 8 housing.
If you choose to download the list, be sure to go over it carefully to make sure you won’t be taking away anything that you really need to have.
7. Don’t Forget The Demographics
Targeting specific demographics with precision is an incredibly effective strategy – not just for Search Ads! Over the past few years, Google has rolled out additional ways to reach your target users in the real estate space by adding categories around:
- Detailed demographics: Homeowners or renters.
- In-Market: Residential properties.
- Life events: Purchasing a home or recently purchased a home.
It is essential to recognize that you have the option to either target, monitor, or exclude these spectators categories. Let’s also not forget the power of combination.
For example, if your goal is to target renters who are looking to purchase a home, you could create a combined audience that includes “Detailed demographics: Renters” and also must include “Life events: Purchasing a home” or “In-Market: Residential properties.” That example would look something like this:
It is critical to be aware of the subtleties of these targeting options. Certain targets are solely accessible in either Display or YouTube promotions, whereas the rest of the targeting choices pointed out previously could be employed in Search campaigns.
Specifically for real estate, you can use the following for Search, Display, and YouTube:
- Detailed demographics: Homeowners or renters.
- In-Market: Residential Properties, Moving, and Relocation.
For Display and YouTube only, you can target by:
- Detailed demographics: Homeowners or renters.
- In-Market: Residential Properties, Moving, and Relocation.
- Life events: Purchasing a Home Soon, Moving Soon.
The use of these targeting options is hugely important for the success of your real estate strategy, especially if you are limited in terms of resources. Experiment with combining multiple targeting options for your Search campaigns in order to access the most pertinent users.
8. ALL The Ad Extensions
Google has brought out a new Ad Rank equation that now includes ad extensions as a variable. It is beneficial to make use of at least three ad expansions per ad, beyond considering the worth they add to real estate.
Location Extensions
A no-brainer in general for a local business, for nearby searchers, location extensions help provide the user:
- The distance to your location, and its city (mobile).
- The location’s street address (computer).
- A clickable “Call” button.
- Tappable or clickable access to a details page for the location – with information such as hours, phone number, photos, customer ratings, and directions.
Sitelink Extensions
There are lots of techniques to use sitelinks in the advertising text. Floor plan pages are especially fitting for real estate situations. Not every consumer is the same. Some might be considering a small apartment or a single-level home as opposed to a one-bedroom apartment or a dwelling with four rooms.
Directing a customer to the exact page they would like to see is a major part of the process, which could result in better click-through rates. Those elevated click-through rates have the potential to improve overall quality scores.
Price Extensions
The price extension debuted in 2017; it works for both handheld and desktop electronics.
If you’d rather just keep your sitelinks for more common items, such as “Contact Us” or “About Us,” that’s a good approach and may even look better with floor plans included.
Up to eight pricing options can be selected and, when clicked, will lead people to the floor plan or model they’re interested in on your website. These cards increase the amount of space available on advertising (particularly on mobile devices), which restricts the visibility of your competitors.
Call Extensions
The skyrocketing mobile usage and the widespread implementation of Google Ads by advertisers have opened up a world of opportunity to speak directly to prospective leads. It is an incredibly profitable source.
It is recommended to use a call extension or a call-only Google Ads campaign for this project.
Be sure you have your call extension times set up in accordance with your business hours. It could not be more annoying to forward a possible customer to a telephone number that just keeps ringing or goes to voicemail.
Conclusion
The real estate market is unpredictable. It doesn’t matter if you are self-employed or affiliated with a big real estate company, every capable lead you have is important.
Decrease the specs of your Google Ads locality campaigns to minimize the quantity of inappropriate traffic so you can attract more suited prospects. Using the advice presented in the text, you can accomplish your goal.
If you are inexperienced in Pay-Per-Click (PPC), it may take some effort to locate the combination of campaigns, target audiences, and add-ons that will provide the greatest benefit for you. When in doubt, test. And then test again.
