Google Ads for real estate investing is a way different animal than other industries. I’ve seen tons of articles about Google Ads best practices, and how they should impact your campaign overall. The fact of the matter is that Google is not putting out very much content on service related industries. The majority of Google’s ad customers sell a product, which means that things like reach and exposure are key.
Real estate investors don’t sell a “one size fits all” solution. Even if the process that you have for making an offer on a house is the same 100% of the time, the offer is different. The circumstances for the seller might be different. Google Ads tries to provide a “one size fits all” solution to advertising across all industries, but realistically the service industry is the one that gets left out of their thought process because it is a tiny segment of their overall advertising base.
Here are four best practices for Google Ads for real estate investors (and other service industry professionals) that can help you create and run a better campaign.
1. Be Local With Your Ads
There are quite a few national cash buyer companies that run Google Ads campaigns. Some of them appear to be location specific, while others don’t mention anything about the city/state that they are advertising in. Letting your potential clients know that you are a locally based company can be the thing that sets you apart from other advertisers online. Here are a few quick pointers on creating those differences:
Use the City/State in some of your ad headlines.
Include the term “Local House Buyers” in a headline of an ad.
Make sure the City/State is mentioned in one of your description lines.
Link your Google Business Listing to your Google Ads account to show your business’ physical location.
2. Get Personal
Ad Extensions can be a valuable part of any campaign. For real estate investors, they could make the difference between getting conversions and just accruing ad spend. One of the most popular and best converting ad extensions is the “About Us” sitelink extension. This sends potential customers that are “fact finders” to the “About” page on your website.
This gives you the opportunity to be different. As a company the about us page should have some business related information on it, but real estate is a relationship based business. People want to work with other people. They want to be able to make a real connection to you and what you’re providing. Making your “About Us” page primarily personal can create deals, and not just generate leads.
3. Ensure Your Site Is Mobile Friendly
This might seem like something that is a given, but I’ve come across way too many sites lately that are not setup to convert as best as they can on mobile. Most website providers now offer sites that collapse down nicely, run fast, and rank over time. The CTA (call to action) sometimes gets lost in the mobile view.
If a customer has intent to sell, then you need to make it as easy for them as possible. That means having a phone number at the top of the page, and having the form be within view when they land on the page. You can take a look at the image below to see an example of what that looks like:
4. Think About Intent With Keywords
Real estate investors target the Google Search network with ads because that is where intent is. If you need a plumber to fix a pipe that is leaking badly under a sink, you’re probably going to Google to do a search and to find one near you. Google is the place where people with “right now” problems get “right now” solutions.
The best way to filter out the right kind of intent is by using keywords. Focusing on intent with keywords can help to reduce costs by showing you in fewer searches that show less motivation. For example, targeting the term “sell house” will get you shown in searches for people trying to sell their house. This will be a mix of people looking for realtors, looking for an offer because their “house hasn’t sold after 2 days”, and looking for the “best paint color to help sell a house”.
Looking for intent means thinking like your ideal customers. Targeting something like “sell house for cash” can get you placed in searches for terms like “need to sell my house for cash”, “how to sell my house to a cash buyer”, and “sell house for cash to investor”. Those are much more in line with what we as investors are looking for.