Let’s hear it for Google pay per click real estate campaigns. A vehicle for targeting new leads at the exact moment they are expressing an interest in the things your property investment business excels in.
In this article we will share some of the best practices for your PPC campaigns – and explain how you can get the best bang for your buck.
Before we start…
Allow us to be bold. Google’s primary objective is to get you to spend more money on ads – not economise your path to customer acquisition. Recommending strategies that are best for your business is not their priority.
But it is for us.
We are a paid media agency with experience, ability and confidence. And we specialise in building revenue for property investment companies. We will even cover your ad spend if we like the sound of your business. If you’re keen on that, you really should get in touch.
“Leads for Dubai property are typically expensive due to the high net worth requirements & high competition in a niche market – but Adbetter were able to deliver a consistent flow of new clients at a lead price 25% under what we were achieving with the previous agency managing the campaigns.”
Hamid Jaafri, CEO, One Investments
Targeting the right keywords: the opportunities
Promoting real estate through Google pay per click isn’t a cheap advertising strategy. Given the potentially lucrative returns, the top keywords can be expensive. That’s because you can target search terms that show high buying intent, taking you closer to people who are demonstrably interested in services that your business provides.
When you are bidding for keywords, think about the intent behind each search. For example, “buy to let properties in Manchester” suggests that someone is highly interested in property investment – and could benefit from your services. Whereas something more mundane such as “stamp duty rules” suggests low purchase intent because that user is potentially still in the research phase.
Make sure your bids are in line with purchase intent – and be willing to pay more for high intent keywords.
Finding the right words
With Google Search, it’s your words that do the heavy lifting. You have milliseconds to grab the attention of your reader and convince them to click. That requires focusing your attention on them – rather than writing about yourself.
Address your reader directly with “you” focused messaging. Describe benefits and outcomes. Think about what your reader stands to gain from working with you. Consider their potential objections or barriers to purchase and show how you can remove those doubts.
Oh and make sure your headlines and descriptions are within the necessary character limits.
Headlines: 30 characters.
Descriptions: 90 characters.
Test, test, test
Google allows you to submit multiple variations of your ad headlines and descriptions. You should embrace that. When you provide multiple variants, Google will test the combinations that perform best and display those ads preferentially – pushing up your performance metrics.
The same applies for the images you use. Sure, images aren’t part of Google’s search ads. But if you are advertising across the Google Display Network, the images you use can make or break your campaign. Choose carefully and submit multiple options. The more tickets you buy in the raffle, the better your chances of winning.
You can allow Google to almost fully automate this process for you with Performance Max. But this requires large budgets and a willingness to lose (potentially significant) money for a period of time before it optimises. If you have the time, focus and patience, you will likely be able to drive better results by doing a few things yourself. In short: test, test, test.
Embrace your performance data
Your ads dashboard will provide you with lots of data on how your ads are performing. Many businesses pay only cursory attention to it – or don’t have the required tracking setup for the data to be reliable. But if correctly implemented, this data holds the secrets that will help you crack the code of campaign performance.
Is there something you are saying in your messaging that is encouraging clicks? Do your ads perform better with a certain type of image? When you know what’s getting results, you can double down on those tactics – creating more ad variants based on what’s working and ditching the stuff that isn’t. Test, repeat, test, repeat. You should see your ad performance improving.
We’ll come back to this later in the article.
What happens after the click?
We’ve written about that fairly extensively in our article on PPC for Real Estate Investment. That’s where you’ll find some of our top tactics for landing pages and form conversion. But in summary…
- Design and copywriting. Your landing page should feel like a continuation of your ad. That means using similar images and colours, making sure your logo is prominent and so on. Make sure it’s optimised for mobile and create a compelling proposition above the fold.
- Create a closed journey. Single mindedness is a strength when it comes to landing pages. Limit navigation options for your visitor and stay focused on one clear call to action.
- Utilise social proof and trust signals. Customer testimonials are a great way to build credibility and establish trust in your company. Ideally, take your customer reviews from a verifiable source such as Trustpilot or Google Reviews. If applicable, include logos from other brands that act as trust signals – such as your TrustScore or publications that your organisation has been featured in.
- Screen your audience via your forms. It’s better to have a small number of leads with high conversion intent than a bunch of leads who are never going to become customers. Think about how you can ask questions during the moment of data capture that screen out people who are unlikely to convert.
- Remember your GDPR obligations. For your forms that means having a tick box that asks people to actively opt in to your comms, the name of the person or business that will be contacting them and the method that they will be contacted by. You must also include a link to your full privacy policy. The potential financial penalties for non-compliance can be astronomical.
Measure the metrics that matter
To get proper insight on your campaign performance, you have to be able to track all points in your user journey. It’s not just about how many people are clicking your ads, but how many of those are going on to become customers. That necessitates getting your campaigns set up to provide full visibility into onward KPIs. Otherwise you’re throwing money into the wind and hoping.
You will also benefit by gathering an understanding of the metrics that matter most. Lowering cost per lead (CPL), for example, can save you money. On the face of it, that’s a good thing. But tactics that reduce CPL can have negative implications on your lead quality. And there’s very little point in paying for leads that aren’t going to convert.
Many businesses don’t make the effort to track their campaigns correctly. Mainly because it’s technical and time consuming. But doing the hard yards here can help you gain a huge advantage over your competitors. And we can help. We know how to set up campaigns to capture all necessary data points – and we build custom dashboards that provide clear visibility into the metrics that matter most.
Sounds good? Contact us for a chat about how we could help you and to get a free proposal. Or read this case study about how we generated over £2.5m in new customer revenue using paid media for Alesco Investment Property.
You may also be interested in:
>> Facebook ads for real estate: tips to grow revenue
>> How to boost revenue with Instagram ads for real estate
>> Is TikTok good for lead generation?
>> Developing a successful TikTok marketing strategy
