This guest post was supplied by Roger Martin who owns a boutique real estate agency in Houston, TX specializing in West University real estate.
Getting the Most Out of Your Real Estate Website Pay-Per-Click Advertising
With a lagging economy and sluggish home sales, many real estate professionals are looking to pay-per-click (ppc) advertising for new business opportunities. A carefully crafted ppc campaign can provide a steady stream of qualified, targeted leads to your website within a few hours of implementation. Make sure you are getting the most out of your real estate marketing dollars by leveraging some of these basic but fundamental principles of pay-per-click advertising.
1. Organization
Keeping your ppc account well-organized is a must. The major advertising platforms (Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter) require that you create separate ‘Ad Groups’ within each campaign.
Make sure that each of these groups is organized by theme, keeping all of the keywords, ad copy and landing pages relevant to the subject matter. Not only will you save time navigating your account as it grows in size and complexity, you will save money in the long run as all of the major platforms reward advertisers with tightly themed ad groups.
2. Landing Pages
A common mistake that many real estate professionals make is to direct all pay-per-click traffic to the home page of their site. Although in some cases it may be appropriate to send certain users to your home page, often there are other pages on your site that are much more relevant to the searcher.
Remember, the goal is to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to quickly locate the information they are looking for. And as mentioned above, the stronger the correlation between your keywords, ad copy and landing page, the less you end up paying for each click.
3. Match Types
The success of your pay-per-click marketing efforts hinges on the careful research and selection of your keywords. Most of the advertising platforms allow you to select the ‘match type’ of the keyword you are bidding on.
You can specify whether you want your ad displayed for queries involving only ‘exact matches’ of your keyword, or alternatively, broad variations that may include your keyword within the context of longer search terms. Great care should be taken in the selection of keyword match types, as increased website traffic does not always correspond with an increase in quality leads.
4. Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting gives pay-per-click advertisers the ability to display their ads to users based on physical location. When implemented properly, geo-targeting can be especially helpful to real estate professionals seeking to target internet users based on demographics. For example, separate campaigns can be created to target home buyers within a local metropolitan area and buyers outside the same area who may be planning to relocate.
5. Testing
Unlike traditional advertising, pay-per-click advertising gives real estate professionals the unique ability to accurately track and measure the results of their online marketing efforts. More time, effort and money can be allocated to the strategies that deliver quantifiable results. As such, it is critical to assess and fine-tune every aspect of your ppc campaign regularly, testing ads against one another and constantly brainstorming for new and more creative keywords.
Pay-per-click advertising, when managed properly, can be a great way to ramp up business fast. Whether you handle it in-house or outsource it to an internet marketing service depends on your particular skills and resources. The bottom line is this: if you aren’t using ppc to generate new real estate leads, it may be time to start.
