PPC advertising can be challenging to pull off for any market, but it is especially so for real estate. This industry has experienced plenty of ups and downs in recent years, and the toughest and most adaptable marketers are the ones who succeed in this business.
Today, the internet has also affected the real estate industry; many marketers invest much of their resources in generating leads through PPC ads. It contrasts with what the industry has used for the longest time: in-person promos or advertisements through traditional media.
Is PPC effective for real estate companies?
Paid ads are great for promoting a real estate business. In particular, text ad search results are more likely to get higher conversion rates than display ads. Don’t have a zero-sum approach to your advertising; you must have a mixture of organic and paid advertisements to generate the most traffic for your website.
Whether you’re going for organic or paid advertising, remember that all channels are different. The way you deliver your content should be tailored to each—for instance, banner ads have a distinct look from magazine posters. However, you must keep your brand consistent across channels and pay attention to your target audience’s needs.
You could say the same for all types of materials. Committing to audience goals for all your campaigns will help you improve your conversion rates over time. Seasoned real estate agents will note the difference that a good PPC campaign makes on their pipeline. If you’re trying to improve your returns, you must make sure you do the following for your real estate business.
Get to know your target market
Effective campaigns have one thing in common; they know their target audience well and can speak to their needs and wants. Before creating a single promotional material, think of the areas you want to target, the properties you need to sell, and the types of buyers interested in properties like these.
Knowing your market also means having the right keywords, details, and demographics for the area you want to target for ads. You can tailor a PPC strategy based on the keywords popular in a place, a specific age group, or a buyer demographic. Your research might also tell you that you’re targeting an area that is too big. Instead of creating ads for an entire city, for example, you could choose suburbs or neighborhoods.
Make sure you have the right keywords
You cannot run a PPC advertisement just for the sake of doing it. In the end, it will harm your real estate business, since you will be spending without guarantee of an ROI. If you do your research well, you will have the best keywords for your audience.
The more people click on your ads, the higher your marketing costs, so you have to be sure you’re delivering your advertisements to people who will avail of your services. If you don’t take keyword research seriously, you will end up showing your ads to people who aren’t serious about buying or selling their home.
Make sure you have custom landing pages
Many users who respond to PPC ads have a particular type of listing they like clicking. You will lose plenty of traffic if you direct all traffic to your homepage. To prevent your site from losing visitors, build custom landing pages for specific listings. Include features, a write up about the neighborhood, and good photos of the place.
Boost your online visibility by highlighting an outstanding feature about the home or your terms. For example, if you offer a flat fee instead of a commission, you could place that on your landing page.
Remember to use negative keywords
Negative keywords are those search phrases that you don’t want to associate with your ad. For example, if you specialize in city properties for rent but don’t want to target people looking for office space, you can list “office space” as a negative keyword. Doing this will prevent your ad from coming up when someone searches “city properties for rent” on Google.
Generate the right kind of traffic
It is not enough to have visitors to your website from your ads. Numbers are great, but completed transactions or contracts should back them. Capturing leads is essential; you have to know how to attract them and follow up appropriately. You also need enough leads in your pipeline to prevent your sales from drying up.
Consider having a pop-up offering a lead magnet in exchange for an e-mail address. Time this to come up after a visitor has viewed several listings on your site; doing so lets you create an e-mail list to whom you can send updates and alerts on new listings.
Prevent listings from other cities to come up
City names sometimes have duplicates. Some cities have namesake areas in other states or even countries. Make sure that the clicks you generate from searches are for your specific location. Besides having a negative keyword list for terms, you should have another one for areas or countries with your city’s same name.
Test your headlines and descriptions
Different text descriptions, images, and headlines work differently for your audience. Testing for the effectiveness of these items will help you optimize your listings. You will get better conversions if you closely study which layouts get the most traffic or get the most inquiries.
In addition to this, you must also study your competition’s ads. It will give you an idea of what works and what doesn’t work for your demographic. As a rule of thumb, you should not settle for anything less than .035 percent in your clickthrough rates.
Conclusion
These are just some of the ways you could improve your pay-per-click campaigns in real estate. Some brokers would say that they wasted time with PPC advertising, which didn’t yield good results. However, you only need patience, insight into your audience, and an exhaustive list of keywords to succeed with this type of marketing strategy. When you can plan your PPC campaign well, you will surely reap the benefits from it.
Direct more traffic, gain leads and drive a strong ROI for your marketing when you partner with Framework Pros. We offer PPC advertising services in St. Louis, MO, and we help real estate businesses focus their marketing efforts in the right direction. Book a call with us today to learn more!