
The first port of call for most potential vendors looking to instruct an estate agent would be Google, so an effective Google Ad campaign can be worth its weight in gold when it comes to putting your brand in front of the right audience.
Ben Sellers, Co-Founder and CEO of Starberry, part of the nurtur.group, says that Google Ads can be a really powerful marketing tool with a high ROI for estate agents, helping them to generate quality traffic and leads that convert to good business. “A well thought out and put together Google-Ad campaign can breed amazing results for any estate agency, provided of course they take the time to create engaging advertisements, known as Google Adtext, based on their potential leads online behaviour,” he comments.
According to Sellers there are a number of key aspects and simple strategies that agents can use that will elevate their Google-Ad campaigns and increase their effectiveness.
Understand your target audience and what they are searching for
Sellers says that property professionals should take the time to research their audience and set out clear goals for the ad-campaigns. “Understanding your audiences will help you to make more cost-efficient decisions surrounding the copy being used, copy that should be based on popular keywords searched by your audiences,” he adds. “Also, to avoid irrelevant leads and only attract the most qualified, you must understand what you’re paying for. Campaign insights, offer valuable information that present the results and allow you to ensure your ads are optimised.”
Keyword selection
As mentioned, selecting the right keywords is paramount to the effectiveness of the campaign. “The ideal campaign will target the primary keywords that the intended audience is searching for in a specific location. Using tools such as Google’s ‘Keyword Planner’, an agent can pinpoint the most popular keywords and implement these into their campaign. This will push the campaign-ad in front of the desired potential leads,” says Sellers. “However, keyword strategy doesn’t end there. Estate agents looking to be more targeted in their approach should also investigate the use of ‘negative keywords’. Selecting the keywords that you don’t want your ad-campaign to appear for, which in turn weeds out any
unqualified leads.”
He notes that another strategy when selecting keywords is the use of the right keyword match type. “When selecting keywords, it is possible to select one of three categories, which are broad, phrase or exact match. Broad is generic and can push your campaign in front of a user anytime a search phrase contains a chosen keyword but with phrase and exact, you can have a more precise targeting method, which is more likely to only capture the best leads,” Sellers explains.
Responsive Search Ads
This strategy allows you to create an ad with only ever the most relevant messages being shown to customers. “By entering multiple headlines and descriptions, Google-Ad campaigns can create a responsive ad that tests multiple combinations overtime to pinpoint the highest performing version,” adds Sellers. “The automated editing impacts copy structure also, as responsive ads are highly compatible across devices, restructuring copy to ensure the important message is always on display.”
Utilising Locations
“Making sure each ad is relevant and appropriate to the potential lead based on their location and behaviour is important to the success of the campaign. The predominant method of maximising the localised nature of Google is through Geo-Targeting. This uses location data to push the most suitable ad to the potential lead based on their locality,” Sellers comments.
Bid Adjustments
Sellers adds that this refers the frequency your ads are displayed based on where, when, and how people search. Bid adjustments are a direct resolution towards cost efficiency, ensuring that you are not paying for your ads to be shown to irrelevant searches. Certain clicks are worth more depending on the time of day or location. The key is incremental bid adjustments, which increases the value of your location bid the closer a search may be and decreases the further away it is.
“Using these strategies will help agents to take the initial steps towards cost effective, high performing ad campaigns. Enhancing your Google-Ad campaigns will ensure you are attracting the most qualified leads that have the highest potential of being converted into business for your agency,” Sellers concludes.