If you're not using digital advertising to market your real estate agency, you're losing clients.
Only 28% of home buyers find their dream home using an agent. At 50%, the majority of buyers find the home they purchase online. If you're not using digital advertising to market your real estate agency, you're losing clients.
With pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you can display digital ads on search engines, websites, and social media platforms. Real estate PPC can help boost brand awareness, website traffic, and lead generation.
Ready to start advertising? Not so fast. You pay each time someone clicks on one of your ads.
Without a plan, that can become costly. Instead, use these 14 tips to improve your ROI. Start advertising with effective PPC management for real estate today!
1. Know Your Goals
First, determine the platform on which you want to get started. You can use Google Ads, Facebook Ads Manager (which controls Instagram advertising), or another platform. Google Ads is a great place to get started if you're creating PPC real estate ads for the first time.
When you first create an ad campaign using Google Ads, you have the choice to set your goals. Establishing a goal for each campaign will help you track your progress. You can align your advertising goals with your overall business goals.
For example, determine if you want to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate more website traffic
- Have people book in-person tours
- Have people call you
- Encourage more form submissions.
- Encourage people to view your listing pages.
You can adjust each campaign to help you accomplish specific goals. For example, if you want to generate brand awareness, you can use a display campaign. Potential buyers will see animations, videos, or imagery that they'll associate with your brand.
It can take five to seven impressions before you start generating brand awareness. As people begin recognizing your brand, they'll remember you the next time they need a real estate agent. Then, you can turn those viewers into leads.
Do you want to generate more site traffic and start booking tours? You can use a strong call-to-action (CTA) in your ads. Then, you can direct potential buyers to a landing page with a few eye-catching listings.
Then, you'll match the CTA on the page to encourage people to fill out a form to reach you.
Knowing your goals will also help you track your key performance indicators (KPIs). For a brand awareness campaign, you'll track impressions and your view-through rate. For form submissions, you'll focus on your conversions and conversion rate.
If your results are low, you can make adjustments to your campaigns to maximize results.
2. Start Researching
About 85% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses. Using research, you can determine what your ideal clients are searching for online. Then, you can adjust your PPC real estate campaigns to target those customers.
First, learn everything you can about your target audience. Is there a specific target location on which you're focused? What price range are the properties you're selling in?
Take a look at your current customers. Try to determine who they are based on demographics such as age, gender, and location. You can also target your audience based on their marital status and household income.
Think about the keywords your customers use in a search, too.
By using Google PPC real estate advertising, you can improve brand awareness by up to 80%. Once you know who your customers are, you can appear in front of those consumers.
That way, your ads will become more effective at converting prospective buyers.
3. Set Your Budget
About 65% of marketers spend 30% of their marketing budget on paid campaigns. About 36% of survey respondents say they run campaigns regularly. Before you start running your PPC real estate campaigns, you need to set a budget.
You also need to determine your ad schedule.
Setting your budget will help you avoid overspending. In Google Ads, you can set a daily spend limit for your campaigns. If you ever want to adjust your budget, you can make the change immediately.
Setting an ad schedule will determine when your ads run. If you're using a call-only campaign, you'll probably want clients to call you during business hours.
If you're directing them to a landing page to fill out a form, you can run your ads 24/7.
The choice depends on your work schedule, your budget, and your preference. If you want to start with a small budget for your campaigns, use a limited ad schedule.
Make sure to check your data after a week. If you're not getting results, there's a chance your window is too small. Open your schedule up to give clients more opportunities to see your ads.
Do you plan on starting with more than one campaign? Try splitting your budget evenly between the campaigns. Then, watch your data.
Which campaign generates the most conversions? You can allocate more of your overall budget to that campaign.
That way, you're optimizing your opportunities for conversions without shutting off other campaigns entirely.
4. Choose Your Keywords
PPC website visitors are 50% more likely to make a purchase than organic website visitors. Remember, you want to spend more time focusing on your ideal customers. Showing ads to your ideal customers can reduce costs to improve your ROI.
You can research keywords using tools like Google Keyword Planner or Trends. Ahrefs and SEMRush can help, too.
If you need help with your keyword research, consider consulting a real estate PPC agency. Their experience can help you save time and cut unnecessary ad spending.
5. Stay Organized
Once you determine your keywords, it helps to organize them. Many first-time advertisers make the mistake of stuffing all their keywords into one ad group. Instead, organizing your keywords into different ad groups can help you optimize for conversions.
Consider using Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs). SKAGs include each match type variation of a single keyword. Using this strategy will help you generate more results.
It can also help you determine which match type is helping to improve your ROI.
6. Customize Your Landing Pages
Where will you send buyers when they click on your ads? It's essential to have an eye-catching landing page designed to help you convert visitors.
It's essential to make sure your landing pages include the keyword featured in your ads. Otherwise, you might confuse your target audience.
For example, let's say someone clicks on an ad with the words “real estate properties in Tampa.” If they suddenly arrive on a page for properties in Houston, they'll leave.
You can also create custom landing pages for people who are interested in specific listings. Adjust your landing pages with a list of features, details about the area, and eye-catching photos.
Why should buyers choose your real estate agency? Highlight your value and the benefit you're offering them to appeal to their interests.
Your website design and development are essential, too. Google looks for mobile-optimized websites that load quickly. If your site is slow and outdated, consumers might leave without clicking around.
As they leave, your bounce rate will increase, and the clickthrough rate will drop. These metrics can impact your ad quality score. A low-quality score will cause your ads to appear lower on the page.
You might have to pay more for each click on your ads, too.
7. Test Your Ads
What language are you using in your PPC real estate ads? Do you know which words and phrases are most likely to appeal to your target audience?
You can use A/B testing to find out!
Create two ads for each ad group with the same headlines and descriptions. Then, change one item in the second ad. Watch the ads for a few days to determine which one works best.
Then, change a different part of the ad, such as the CTA, to determine which one generates more clicks.
Try to create more than one ad for each ad group. You can also use multiple headlines and descriptions, too. A/B testing your ads will help you improve your campaigns for more conversions.
You can also work with an experienced real estate PPC agency that can handle the A/B testing process for you.
8. Try Geotargeting
Geotargeting can ensure your ads only appear in front of consumers who are interested in locations relevant to your listings. Appearing for irrelevant areas, on the other hand, can cost you money and waste your time.
When you're in Google Ads, find the “Location” option in your campaign settings. You should see an option that mentions people in or who show interest in your target locations.
This setting will allow you to display ads in front of people in your target area and people outside of the area who have searched for properties there.
There's also an exclude option. You can exclude certain areas to avoid appearing for those searches.
To improve your real estate PPC campaigns, try setting location bid adjustments. You can increase the bid for searches that are around your target location. That way, you're more likely to appear for those searches.
You can also decrease your bid as people move away from your target location (allowing you to avoid low-quality leads).
9. List Your Negative Keywords
Adding negative keywords to your campaigns is another great way to avoid appearing for irrelevant searches.
Try to develop your list of negative keywords before you start running campaigns. Otherwise, you might appear for unwanted searches. If these searchers click on your ads, you'll still have to pay for every click.
You can also review your search queries as you begin running PPC campaigns. What phrases are people using as people search for your real estate business? What keywords are location-based?
Take a look at the keywords that have nothing to do with your agency. For example, someone might search “how to become a real estate agent.” You don't want to pay for that click.
As you review your search queries, you can add new negatives to your list. A robust negatives list will help you avoid wasting your budget.
10. Add Every Ad Extension
There are numerous ad extensions you can add to your ads. Extensions allow you to take up more prominent space on a search page. It can also help you improve your clickthrough rate.
There are different extensions you can use, including:
- Locations
- Affiliate locations
- Sitelinks
- Prices
- Calls
- Callouts
- Structured snippets
You can use different extensions depending on your goals. For example, the call extension is ideal if you want people to call you directly. You can use the price extension to show prospective buyers a few listings and prices before they even ask!
Adding these extensions provides convenience to your buyers and helps you weed out low-quality leads.
11. Start Automating
Once you start attracting new leads, you're going to get busy. It's essential to revisit your campaigns to make adjustments. If you don't have time, you can start automating your campaigns.
Automation allows you to pass off part of the work to Google. Google Ads will even give you suggestions that you can use to improve your ads. For extra help, consider consulting a real estate PPC specialist who can optimize campaigns for you.
12. Try Video Ads
About 50% of consumers look for a video related to a brand. Videos will account for 80% of all video traffic by 2022. Using video ads within your real estate, PPC campaigns can help you garner more attention.
Make sure to keep up with trends, too. New formats and strategies pop up throughout the year that can help you further optimize your campaigns.
13. Keep Remarketing
Remarketing allows you to display an ad in front of a previous website visitor. If you want a second chance in front of prospective buyers, remarketing gives you that chance!
Try to create eye-catching animated and visual ads for your remarketing campaigns. Make sure to include elements of your brand to boost brand awareness. Then, direct people to a customized page that welcomes them back!
14. Analyze and Optimize
As you use these commercial real estate PPC tips, keep analyzing the data. Which campaigns, ad groups, and ads are attracting leads? Which ones are falling flat?
Analyzing the data will help you recognize areas where you can make improvements to your campaigns. Then, you can improve your ROI and generate more leads!
Real Estate PPC Advertising: 14 Tips to Help You Boost Business
With real estate PPC advertising, you can attract more buyers and get ahead of the competition. Give your brand and real estate agency the boost it needs. Start advertising online using these 14 tips today.
Need help getting started?
Contact our team for cutting-edge, managed Google Ads for your real estate agency! Discover online advertising that works today.
Need more local marketing tips? Check out our entire Guide to Local Marketing for Real Estate Professionals
