Utilizing Google Ads is a straightforward and effective way to advertise for your real estate business, increase your ROI and find success in your industry. By implementing a Google Ads strategy into your marketing portfolio, you are opening up your business to the largest potential market in the world, with more than 5.5 billion searches per day!

Although the idea of setting up Google Ads may seem daunting and technical, the process is actually relatively straightforward. And when utilized correctly, can create a massive revenue stream for your business. In this post, we’ll explain what Google Ads are, how to set them up, and how to optimize them in order to generate high-quality leads for your Real Estate business. 

PPC Advertising 

PPC is shorthand for “Pay Per Click” advertising. This type of campaign is the most effective for growing your lead base and finding potential customers. Although PPC Ads are “Pay to Play”, you only pay when a searcher clicks on your link. This means that even though your ad may be shown to millions of people, you only have to worry about paying for those that are actually interested in our offer. 

As you can see, at the top of every search results page are a few ads that Google specifically targets the searcher. This means that when a potential customer searches for key phrases like “sell my house” or “real estate businesses in my area” your ad will appear as if it is one of the first results returned in that particular search. But as stated before, you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and is taken to your website. 

These ads tend to have a very high return on ad spend, as you are only paying for the traffic that is actually valuable to your business. In fact, Real Estate Clients who work with us make an average of 50x Ad spend when leads convert. 

PPC ads are effective in any industry, but they are particularly effective in Real Estate. Adding this advertising channel to your digital marketing strategy is an essential step as you work to take your business to the next level.

How Google Ads Work

When people are looking to buy or sell their houses, Google is often the first place they’ll turn. When people want to search through Real Estate listings they are using Google. When people are looking for Real Estate agents they are using Google. For this reason, Google is an absolutely invaluable platform to advertise on. 

Google PPC ads are set up around a bidding system. Users choose keywords that they think are relevant to their audience and bid on them. Google will then decide based on bid amount and ad quality, which ads to show to searchers. Your ad quality is based on three main components:

• Expected Click-through Rate (CTR)

• Ad Relevance

• Landing page experience 

Ads with higher quality scores can also outperform ads with higher bids, meaning that the higher quality your ad, is the smaller the budget you can operate with. For this reason, it is important that you take time to properly perform Keyword Research, and set up an easy-to-use and effective landing page. 

Keyword research is integral to the success of your ad campaigns. You should spend a good amount of time brainstorming and using Keyword Research tools like SEMrush in order to pick the best keywords for your campaigns. In addition, make sure to keep track of your keywords over time. Trends change and different keywords will fall in and out of popularity so it’s important to update your strategy accordingly to stay on top of the market.

Keywords

Keywords are the lifeblood of SEO and PPC campaigns. When formulating an ad campaign using any software, you will select keywords that will make your ad appear when a user enters a query containing, or closely related to your selected keywords. It is important to select these words carefully, as the relevance and quality of the keyword will determine the effectiveness of your campaign. 

Long-Tail Keywords

The name “Long Tail” refers to the distribution of search terms along a graph. These are complete phrases that are included to narrow in on a sort of marketing demographic. These keywords are more specific, and can have a lower Click-through rate, but will deliver higher quality leads when they are clicked on. For example, a cash home buyer wants to sell more houses in the New York area, so instead of picking the keyword “cash home buyer”, they would choose “Cash home buyer New York”. By extending the keyword phrase to include "New York”, the ad will now be shown to home sellers in this area. This means less competition and increased relevance, both boosting the ads quality and conversion rate.

Short Tail Keywords 

Short Tail Keywords are 1-3 word long queries that are meant to cover a more broad net than Long Tail. For example, a short tail keyword might be “Real Estate agent ” or “Commercial real estate”. The advantage of short-tail keywords is related to the heavy search volume that these terms receive on a daily basis. Because they have a higher search volume, your website or advertisement will be shown to more people. As per the law of averages, the more people that see your website means more potential clicks and leads. However, there are drawbacks to short-tail keywords. These keywords have higher competition than specific long-tail keywords, meaning that your Cost Per Click (CPC) will be higher. You will also find that these words yield lower conversion rates per click than long-tail as they are less specific and can be shown on less relevant searches. 

Keyword Match Types 

There are three types of matching: Exact match, Phrase match, and Broad match. Each type of matching will have different effects on who the ad is shown to, understanding these differences is integral in running an effective ad campaign.
 

Broad match 

With this match type, a search containing any of the words in your key phrase will display the ad. For example, if the key phrase “commercial real estate” is selected, your ad could be displayed on searches like “wholesale real estate”, or “real estate near me”. Additionally, searches that contain synonyms, e.g. “ business properties” can trigger your ad to be displayed. 

The broad match setting will drive the largest amount of impressions to your ad. This can be advantageous, as your ad is displayed to the maximum number of users, but it is important to pay attention to the quality of traffic driven to your ad. Since the specifications for who is being shown the ad are so low, ad users can end up paying for low-quality clicks. 

Reference: About Keyword Matching Options - Google Ads Help.

Phrase match

Phrase Matching is the goldilocks match setting. This setting will display your ad on searches that match the meaning of your keyword. For example, if your selected keyword is “Real estate services in NYC” then searches like “Commercial real estate services in NYC” or “Real estate NYC” will display your ad. But a search like “real estate services Baltimore” will not display your ad as the person searching is not looking for services located in NYC. This setting offers more control over ad display than Broad match, but will result in less traffic and clicks.

Reference: Keyword Matching Options - Google Ads Help.

Exact matching

Exact matching is the most restrictive type of keyword matching. When using this setting your ad will only show if the search query is the same or extremely similar to what is searched. This form of matching will make sure that the clicks you are receiving are more likely to reach your target audience. In turn, the traffic produced will be lower, but higher quality, keeping campaign costs low.

Campaigns by Zip Code

For Real Estate businesses, it makes sense to set your ad campaigns up by zip code. Let us assume that you are a cash home buyer in the Baltimore / D.C. area. When setting up your ad campaign you would want to select zip codes that represent this geographic area. By limiting your net to only those searching to sell homes in that area you can more effectively reach your target demographic and only that demographic. This way you don't end up wasting valuable ad spend on buyers outside of your range. By implementing a zipcode strategy into your ad campaign you can decrease ad spend and increase the creation of high-quality leads. 

Which Extensions are Best for You?

Ad extensions are valuable ad tools that allow you to include additional information about your business like phone numbers, links to other sections of your website, additional text, and location information. By attaching extensions to your ad you can increase the ads click-through rate by “several percentage points”.

There are lots of extensions to choose from on Google Ads. This can make it challenging and confusing to properly pick which extensions are right for you. Never fear, I have narrowed it down to three main Ad extensions that are most effective for real estate ad campaigns. These Ad extensions are Sitelink, Callout, and Call. When building out a campaign, you can create multiple extension variants and let Google’s Machine Learning do its thing. Google will algorithmically test and choose from this list which extension is best for improving the conversion rate of a given Ad. Over time, Google will learn which combinations drive the best results and will serve those ads accordingly.

Sitelink Extensions

Sitelink extensions are additional links underneath your main link. These links can take users to other pages on your site, testimonials, informational pages, blog posts, etc. These can be particularly effective for real estate ads as they create additional opportunities for searchers to interact with your ad based on their specific needs and search intent, thus improving click-through rate. 

Callout Extensions 

Callout Extensions are similar to sitelink extensions, but instead show searchers offers and promotional content. For example, below your ad would be an extension saying “Receive X% off”  or “Free consultation”. This type of extension is not clickable like a sitelink, but can provide valuable information often linked to an incentive that will increase CTR.

Call Extensions 

Call Extensions are a type of clickable link that will allow users to “one-click” call you. This type of extension decreases the amount of thinking a potential customer has to do in order to contact you. Making it as easy as possible to contact you will increase the odds to convert the type of high-quality lead generated by this extension. 

Setting up an Ad Group

An Ad group is exactly what it sounds like, a set of ads grouped together that have similar content and goals. The idea here is to have a few variations - maybe 5-10 - of your ad, with different headlines, descriptions, and extensions so that you can split test your ads and find out which one  is the most effective for your goals.

Formulating the Ad

There are a few key components that go into creating a solid ad that will drive traffic and conversions. The components that we find the most important are the final url, headline, and description. Toying with these components will help you optimize your ad to find the best fit for your market 

Final URL

The url chosen for your advertisement should not simply direct customers to your home page. A Landing page should be designed for the ad that drives customers to exactly what they're looking for, with an area for them to enter their contact information. Quality landing pages that provide relevant and valuable information will keep your bounce rate low, keep people on your site, and improve your ad quality ranking. If your ad is having a hard time getting impressions and an even harder time getting conversions, check your landing page. Often times the root of the issue is that where you are sending searchers is a low-quality page, decreasing your ads viability. 

Headline

The headline that you utilize for your ad should contain the same keyword that you are attempting to target. In addition, your headline should make it very clear to the customer what exactly your offering is and why they should click on your link. This ensures that those searchers clicking on your ad are likely to be a high-quality lead that will convert. 

Description

Although Google ignores keywords listed in the meta description for your ad, consumers don't. It is important that your descriptions are clearly written, make sense in terms of your target audience, and provide additional context to the headline. This only takes a few minutes and when done properly can have a big impact on your potential CTR.

Understanding KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Key performance indicators are integral in the management of ads. KPIs help us understand if our ads are working, and if they aren't they can give us a road map on areas to fix. The three main KPIs that we will focus on are Click-through Rate (CTR), Traffic-to-Lead Ratio, and Lead-to-Client Ratio. 

Click-through Rate (CTR)

Click-through-rate is the most commonly used KPI in the digital marketing industry. The CTR tells us what the ratio of people who viewed your ad to the people who clicked it is. The average CTR for the real estate industry is 3.71% on search ads. If your ads are drastically below this, it may be time to review your ad . Review your copy, keywords, extensions, and bidding to see if there is anything that needs to be fixed. Do not ignore a low click-through rate as it is imperative to the quality of the ad. 

Traffic to Lead Ratio

Here we will divide the number of clicks by the number of leads generated. If my ad received 500 clicks and generated 10 leads this would be a 2 percent traffic to lead ratio. Depending on the industry the percentage here can vary. If you are a cash home buyer for example and you received 10 leads and only 2 of them converted, it’s likely that you would still be very well off in terms of return on ad spend. It can take time and consistent data to figure out what the general ratio for your specific niche is. 

Lead to Client Ratio  

As stated in the example above, it is important to track how many of your leads actually convert to clients. If you are receiving plenty of leads but you are unable to close them this is an issue outside of google ads and could likely be an issue with your sales process.  Make sure that your company has a solid value proposition set up so that you can convert the leads that are generated by your ads.

Conclusion 

Creating an effective ad campaign is a project that takes time and patience. The only way to achieve success in lead generation is to start. Make sure to do your research and be informed about the decisions you make, but do not be overwhelmed by having to know everything. 

Once you have started, do not become discouraged if your ads don't immediately perform well. It's important to let the ads run for a few months at least to collect pertinent data to help both Google and yourself learn what works and what doesn't. 

If you are looking to get a jump start on your PPC campaigns and save yourself the trial and error that goes along with developing an ad campaign, reach out to the team at Further Insights! Our award-winning digital marketing agency is focused on lead generation for Real Estate entrepreneurs like yourself. We will work with you through every step of the process to ensure the development of high-quality leads and the increased revenue that follows.