Advertising your real estate business on Google AdWords can be very beneficial, as it can lead to a lot of new customers in a short amount of time. This is in contrast to SEO, which is a long-term marketing strategy.
AdWords is popular among agents and brokers because it is an effective way to advertise and strategies can be customized over time to fit the needs of the user.
Many agents believe that AdWords is too complicated to use, which prevents them from being successful. It may take some time to learn all the features of the software, but you can quickly learn the basic terms and phrases associated with it.
Read on to learn more about this powerful tool, so that you can create targeted ads that will get clicks from your niche audience of home buyers and sellers.
Beginner Google AdWords Terms: The Basics to Know for Your Real Estate Advertising
The best way to understand AdWords is to study the basics. This will help you get closer to advertising your real estate agent business on the network. The ad service requires a good understanding of the following definitions.
Ad Campaign
A campaign is a group of ads that share the same keywords, budget, and bids. AdWords allows you to run multiple campaigns at the same time. This means that each campaign can target a different set of keywords, have a distinct budget, and target specific segments of leads that you want to reach. You should label each campaign based on the goal you want to achieve. You could create one low-budget campaign that is aimed at home buyers who are searching for moderately popular long-tail keywords. You could also create a high-budget campaign that is aimed at home buyers who are searching for very popular long-tail terms.
Ad Copy
This term is very simple and easy to understand. The copy of your ad is the most important part, it includes the headline, body copy, website URL and/or phone number, and your business name. AdWords ads are only featured in a limited amount of space on a page, so there is a character limit to what can be included in the ad. This means that the text you use in your real estate ads needs to be effective in terms of both promotion and branding.
Ad Delivery
There are two primary ways to promote your real estate agent ads in Adwords:
- Standard way, which portions out the ads you’ve created throughout the entire day based on your budget for said ads.
- Accelerated way, which goes through your ad budget more quickly by publishing your ads in a shorter time period.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods, but if you are new to AdWords, and want to use your budget efficiently (at least until the item you are promoting in your ad sells or attracts enough interest), it is best to start with standard delivery.
Ad Group
You can create multiple ads within a single AdWords campaign that target the same set of keywords. Together, these ads are known as an ad group. You would create two Ads Groups, each with its own ad text, keywords, and budget. If you want to create different ads targeted toward sellers of both high-end and mid-tier homes, you would create two Ads Groups, each with its own ad text, keywords, and budget. You can use the same keyword list for ads targeting both home sellers and buyers and call the ad group “Home Seller Ads.” The same can be done for ads targeting renters and can be created based on other sales criteria. You can keep track of all your ads by placing them in different ad groups according to what you want them to achieve.
Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool
Sometimes, problems come up with the ads you’ve scheduled to appear on Google’s search engine results pages. Sometimes there are small problems that need to be fixed in order for your ads to appear on search engine results pages. If you’re an advertiser using the platform, you might not be setting a daily budget, bidding more for keywords than your budget allows, or choosing keywords with little to no search volume. You never want to include keywords that are not being searched, as this would be a waste of time and money. The Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool can help you avoid these mistakes.
Ad Rank
Many AdWords ads are not effective because they are not optimized well enough, including the use of poor keywords, copy, extensions, and overall pertinence. This indicates that the most effective real estate ads need to have a call to action that meets Ad Rank requirements, appropriate links, brand info that is relevant, and messaging that is easy to understand. Google is not very forthcoming about the algorithm it uses to determine the expected impact of ads, but as long as you follow the standards set by the company, your ads should be accepted each time.
AdWords Express
Essentially the automated version of Google Ads. You can create an account and write an ad on Google, and then Google will take care of the rest. Sound too good to be true? Some pros of using Google AdWords Express are that it is easy to use and set up, and it can save time. Some cons are that it may be less effective than other forms of advertising, and it can be more expensive.
Automated Rules
A tool that allows you to automatically update your campaigns, ad groups, or keywords based on conditions that you set. An example of an automated rule you could create is one that pauses any keyword with a quality score of 2 or lower. This would stay compliant with Google’s grant policies. You can use automated rules to save time on monitoring your account.
Bid Adjustments
You can use auto-bidding to automatically adjust your CPC bid based on a number of factors, like time of day, day of the week, device, location, and more. If you know that the conversion rate for donations from mobile devices is very low, you can set a -50% bid adjustment for mobile devices in your donation campaign. This means that you are willing to spend 50% less for clicks from users on mobile phones.
Broad Match
The “exact match” keyword match type allows your ad to be shown whenever someone searches for that exact phrase, or a similar phrase. If someone searches for “volunteer opportunities,” Google may also show results for “volunteer positions” or “community service ideas.”
Campaign
Campaigns house ad groups. All budget, location, language, and other settings are set at the campaign level. You will have multiple campaigns within your account. This is a guide on how to create your first Google Ads campaign.
Change History
A report of all changes made to your account, including the date and time of the change, as well as the email address of the user who made the change. Being able to identify the cause of changes in performance can be helpful.
Click
The engagement with your ad and the page it links to is important. A click is registered every time a user sees your ad and clicks on it.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
Total Clicks / Total Impressions. The percentage of people that clicked on an ad after it was served to them is called the “click-through rate.” Typically, the higher, the better! Ad Grant accounts are required to maintain a 5% or higher CTR across all campaigns.
Conversion
An action that a user takes on your website that shows that they are engaged with your content (such as watching a video, signing up for an email, or making a donation). In order to track your website’s progress, you need to set up goals in Google Analytics. Traffic and campaign conversions are key to understanding the value of a site! Adding conversion tracking and connecting your Google Analytics account to your Ad Grant account will allow you to see conversion data in your Google Ads account.
Cost per Click (CPC)
Your cost per click (CPC) is the amount you’re charged each time a user clicks on your ad. CPC is calculated by dividing your total cost of clicks by the total number of clicks received: CPC = Cost per click (CPC) is determined by dividing the total cost of clicks by the total number of clicks received. The amount you paid for a click on your ad.
Daily Budget
The most you would spend on a campaign in one day.
Destination URL
The landing page is the URL of the page on your site that you send users to after they click on your ad.
Display URL
The link that appears in your ad that users can click on. This doesn’t mean that the URL you are sending users to doesn’t have to match the destination URL, as long as you aren’t trying to deceive users by giving them one URL and then sending them to another. The example given is if your destination URL is mynonprofit.org/support/donate/recurring, your Display URL may be mynonprofit.org/donate.
Exact Match
This match type ensures that your ad is only shown when a user types in your specified keyword exactly. If you use the keyword “volunteer opportunities,” it will only show up when someone types that exact phrase into their Google search bar.
Geotargeting
You can use the settings to choose which areas your ads will be shown in. You can target a specific state, congressional district, or an entire county.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that allows you to see what users are doing on your website. It is crucial to understand how your Google Ads campaigns are doing.
Google Display Network
There are over 2 million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear on the Google Display Network. The GDN is a large network that reaches a majority of internet users. It is a good place to advertise to people who are in the beginning stages of the buying process.
Impression
The number of times your ad appears on the results page of a Google search is referred to as an “impression.”
Keyword
The words and phrases that you use in your ads. When a user searches for something on Google using a keyword that is in your account, your affiliated ad will appear in the search results.
Keyword Planner
The Keyword Planner is a tool in the Google Ads interface that allows users to find new keywords, estimate search volume, and view other competition metrics.
Language Targeting
A key setting that at the campaign level. Be sure to use the same language in both your keywords and ad copy in order to target your audience effectively!
Limited by Budget
A campaign in your account may be flagged as being limited by budget. This means that the campaign is not being shown as often as it could because the daily budget has been reached. This means that you have not allocated enough money to your campaign to cover the number of searches for the keywords you have selected. Although this might not be seen as a positive thing, it could mean that you would end up spending more money on that campaign.
Low Search Volume
This is because our system has detected that there isn’t enough search activity for that keyword. If you see a keyword in your account that is flagged as having low search volume, this means that our system has detected that there isn’t enough search activity for that keyword. This means that the relevant keyword(s) has/have a low search history in Google. There is a chance that not as many people will see or click on this keyword as others.
Maximum CPC Bid (Max CPC)
The amount you’re willing to pay for a click.
Negative Keywords
A negative keyword match type that prevents your ad from being shown for specific search terms. Adding negative keywords to your account can help you stop your ads from being served to people who are searching for terms that are unrelated to your business or that might result in inappropriate clicks. An example of this would be if an organ donation nonprofit were to want to reach people searching for organ donation, they would then include negative keywords such as clothing or electronics to not show their ads to people searching for places to donate household items.
Phrase Match
An ad that is only shown when a specific phrase is included in a search.
Position
Your ad rank on the search engine results page (SERP) is a number from 1-10 that communicates where your ad was shown on the page. The higher your position on the page, the more likely your ad was to be seen.
Quality Score
A score from 1-10 that Google uses to rate the quality of a keyword, ad, and landing page based on how well it meets the needs of users. The closer to 10, the better! Google uses a metric called Ad Rank to decide which ads to show, and this is partly determined by something called quality score. In general, a high-quality score will result in a lower CPC (cost per click) for a given keyword.
Search Term, or Search Query
The user actually typed the words or phrase into Google. The searches that are being made are then compared to the keywords that you included in your Ad Groups. The ads are then chosen to be delivered based on that comparison. The Search Terms report in Google Ads shows the terms that people have used to trigger your ad. The Search Queries report in Google Analytics provides data on the terms that people have searched for on your site.
Sitelink Extension
An extra link that is located at the bottom of your advertisement that leads people to more pages on your website. You can create these to increase the amount of space your business occupies on a search engine results page.
