A complete guide to Google Ads for property businesses
Here’s everything you need to know about getting results with Google Ads for property.
Google Ads for property: they remain one of the most effective, accountable modes of lead generation for real estate businesses. Get them right and you can generate transformative ROI for your business. Here’s a guide to doing just that.
Fancy a 1,400% increase in leads?
One quick thing before we start. We specialise in managing Google ad campaigns for property that get BIG results – such as a 1,400% increase in leads and £2.5m new customer revenue for Alesco Investment Property. Ask for a free proposal and we will outline what you can expect within three months of working with us. We may even be able to cover your ad spend.
“Since working with Adbetter, our digital paid media channels have grown to be one of our most consistent generators of high-quality leads. Our lead volumes from paid media channels have increased over 1,400% whilst maintaining a low cost per lead.”
– Matthew Fawl, Director, Alesco Investment Property
An introduction to Google Ads for property
You already know what Google Ads are: those listings that appear at the top of the search results. They’re Google Ads. And they are great for driving new leads towards your business.
With Google, you can target people with high conversion intent – reaching out at the exact moment they are searching for the type of property opportunities that you provide.
Before we dive in, it’s worth noting that as well as search, Google Ads includes the Google Display Network – which gives you the ability to advertise across a vast estate of websites, mobile apps and more. However, for this guide we will focus on search. That’s where the big opportunities are for property businesses.
(If you want to learn about getting results through the Google Display Network, hit the link below.)
>> Getting results from Google display ads for lead generation
Why do we love Google Ads for property?
When you get Google Ads right, it’s practically an open door to enhanced profits. Here are three reasons why it’s particularly well suited to property businesses.
- It’s accountable. You only pay when someone clicks your ad. And why would someone click unless they were at least partially interested in your services?
- It captures intent. You can capture leads at the precise moment they are searching for the expertise and investment opportunities that you provide.
- It’s easy to control your spend. Automate daily, weekly, monthly or maximum budgets per campaign. Hit the pause button at any time. And every penny is accounted for in the performance data.
How does Google Ads actually work for property businesses?
The Google Ads interface is slick, intuitive and easy to use. You don’t need any coding expertise. And you are likely to be able to get results with no prior experience. (Especially if you read this guide!)
However, an important regulatory note.
Google classifies property investment as a type of financial service. In order to show your ads in the UK, you may need to complete a verification process – which includes demonstrating that you are authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
However, there are workarounds. Instead of going through that authorisation process yourself, you can partner with a company who is already approved by the FCA – such as a mortgage broker. For the third-party company it’s as easy as ticking a box to say they vouch for you. There’s no risk to them because the FCA doesn’t actually regulate property investment or property purchase.
It’s a quick – and, most importantly, legitimate – way to get yourself verified to run Google Ads.
Setting up your campaign
Create your account
Let’s kick off with the basics. To create a Google Ads campaign, you need to set up an account. Head to ads.google.com to sign up. Your account is where you will control billing, admin permissions and, of course, your ad campaigns.
Think about target locations and niches
Once your account is up and running, take some time to ruminate on the areas of your business that you want to promote. And the type of people you are advertising to.
Is your ideal client looking in a certain geographic area? Do you specialise in a certain type of property – such as apartments with sea views? Or are you focused on certain investment opportunities such as retirement homes?
Niche down and create a list of neighbourhoods and niches that you’d like to target. These will eventually make up your ad groups.
Keyword research – and the need to consider intent
Next it’s time to think about the keywords that you want to target. Put yourself in your potential client’s shoes and consider what they might search for to find the investment opportunities that you want to promote.
Google’s free keyword planner can help you narrow your focus – and will also provide input on the search volume, competition and potential cost for the keywords you are thinking of focusing on.
Ah yes, cost.
Running Google Ads for property isn’t necessarily cheap. Given the potentially lucrative returns, the top keywords often demand princely sums. That’s because you can target search terms that show high buying intent, taking you closer to people who are demonstrably interested in the expertise and opportunities that your business provides.
Always remember: think about the intent behind the search query. For example, “BTL investment in Glasgow” suggests that someone is highly interested in property investment – and could benefit from your services. Whereas something more mundane such as “stamp duty regulation” suggests low purchase intent.
Make sure your bids are in line with purchase intent – and be willing to pay more for high intent keywords.
Creating your first Google Ads property campaign
From your Google Ads account, click the blue plus sign to start creating your campaign.
Set your campaign objective
The first thing you’ll do is choose a campaign objective. For lead generation – surprise, surprise – we’d recommend the leads objective. Here’s a quick summary of each objective.
- Sales: Focuses on increasing the sales and profitability of your products or services. Bidding strategies are aimed at clicks, assets and ads that prompt purchases.
- Leads: Aims to drive leads for your business by capturing customer information through form submissions.
- Website traffic: Emphasises driving traffic to your website.
- App promotion: Specifically designed for creating a streamlined journey to encourage installs of a mobile app.
- Awareness and consideration: This is aimed at boosting the visibility and recognition of your brand.
- Local store visits and promotions: Designed to drive footfall to bricks-and-mortar locations.
Set your campaign type
Choose a Search campaign – we want your ads appearing in the world’s most famous search engine.
Choose (and exclude) locations
Property investment opportunities tend to be location agnostic. But if there is a particular city that you want to target – perhaps people local to a big new development that you are offering investments in – then you can setting your ads to display to people within certain geographic locations. You can also exclude locations where you definitely don’t want your ad to be displayed.
Create your ad groups
Remember what we were saying earlier about considering the different niches that you want to promote? Your ad groups is where you will segregate them. For example, you might have different ad groups for different locations and/or ad groups for different investment opportunities.
Specify your keywords
List the keywords that you want your ads to show up for. You’ll find this easy because you did your keyword research when we mentioned it earlier, right?
Some example keywords:
Glasgow property investment
Property investment opportunities
BTL property investment
UK retirement home investment
Understanding keyword match types
Google lets you define how tightly it matches your keywords. For example, you can set it to display your ad for keywords that are loosely related to yours. Or you can insist that your ad is only served when your exact keywords are searched for.
- Broad match: Your ad will be displayed for all keywords that are similar to the ones you specified. This is the default setting.
- Phrase match: Your ads are shown in search queries that contain the exact phrase or a close variation.
- Exact match: Your ads will only be served when someone searches your exact keywords, with no additional words.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. It all depends on the keywords you have chosen and the search volumes your keywords attract. Exact match allows you to be highly targeted. Whereas broad match can enhance your exposure – although potentially serves your ad to people with less interest in your services.
It’s a balancing act. Experiment. Be led by your data.
What about negative keywords?
Just as you can define keywords that you want your ad to be shown for, you can define keywords that block your ad from being shown.
Why would you want to do this? Let’s say you have an ad based on the keyword “BTL property in Glasgow”. You’ll want to make sure people searching for “BTL property data in Glasgow” are excluded from seeing your ad. This suggests a more research-focused, journalistic intent.
Specifying “data” as a negative keyword reduces the chances of you paying for a click that won’t create new business. Think carefully about other words you can exclude to weed out the searchers with low intent.
Creating your ad
Now it’s time to start actually creating your ads: writing the copy and firing it out into the world.
But first, ask yourself…
Where are you sending your leads?
To start with, you need to provide a URL that your ad will drive traffic to. This should be a landing page that’s specific to your ad group. More on that shortly.
You will also be prompted to provide a ‘display path’. This is simply the way you want your URL to be displayed in your ad.
For instance, your final URL might be something like:
http://www.luxury-investment-properties.com/landing-pages/glasgow/btl-investments
But you could style it as:
luxury-investment-properties.com/btl-glasgow
Much neater.
Creating compelling headlines and descriptions
Grab your biro, it’s time for some wordsmithery.
Google Ads comprise one headline and two descriptions.
- 1x headline (30 characters)
- 2x descriptions (90 characters each)
One important thing to note is that Google ultimately creates your ads for you. You feed it variations of headlines and descriptions – and it finds the best combinations for driving leads to your business.
You can influence the prominence with which Google will display certain headlines or descriptions by using pinned placements: pinning your key copy lines in position one, two, three and so on.
Here are some tips for attention-grabbing ad copy.
Remember your reader
There’s a real person behind every search. Speak directly to your lead using “you”-focused messaging. Think about what this person might be feeling. What are their investment ambitions? What outcome are they looking for? What worries do they have or what potential reassurance are they seeking? Try to get inside your target client’s head. Then write accordingly.
Include your keywords in your copy
It’s a good idea to use the keywords you are targeting in your campaign. When your ad is displayed in the search results, your keywords will be emboldened, helping your ad to stand out.
Make it measurable
If you have any quantifiable successes that are relevant to your ad, by all means include them. Data can make it easier for people to realise the potential benefits of working with you.
That doesn’t have to be anything to do with returns – in fact you should steer clear of mentioning potential returns to escape a regulatory wrap on the knuckles. But it could be as simple as: “Hundreds of BTL investment opportunities across the UK.”
Communicate with clarity
You have milliseconds to grab your reader and get your message across. Be clear. Stay relevant to your keywords. Write with brevity.
Should you use assets?
Assets are pieces of additional information that can be included in your ad. We’d advise steering clear of additional links to your website. You want your ad to have a singular focus – driving all clicks through to your landing page.
However, you may want to take the option to include your phone number – which people can click straight from the Google search results to call you. You can also include the locations of your offices if it’s relevant to the region you are targeting.
Beyond the click: optimising your landing pages
When you’re paying for every click, it’s worth thinking carefully about where that click is going to take your reader – and how it’s going to work as hard as possible to turn them into your next client.
Landing page best practice
You should have a specific landing page that’s highly relevant to each of your ad groups. Here are some quick tips around best practice.
- Design and copywriting. Your landing page should feel like a continuation of the ad your visitor clicked. It must be optimised for mobile and include a compelling proposition above the fold.
- Create a closed journey. Single-mindedness is a strength when it comes to landing pages. Limit navigation options and stay focused on one clear call to action.
- Gather data. The main aim of a landing page is to gather data on your lead for future marketing. Create a form that allows you to start the conversation. More on this shortly.
- Remember your GDPR obligations. For your forms that means having a tick box that gets people to actively opt in to your comms. Be clear about who will be contacting your lead and how they will be contacted. You must also provide a link to your privacy policy.
- Utilise social proof and trust signals. Testimonials from previous clients can go a long way to helping build credibility and trust in your company. If applicable, utilise trust signals such as industry accreditations, qualifications or awards.
Create a lead magnet
To repeat: the main objective of your landing page is to gather data on your leads. You can incentivise form completion with some sort of giveaway. That could be a guide to property investment. A portfolio of your current property opportunities. Or perhaps even a free consultation.
Screen your audience
It’s usually better to have a small number of leads with high conversion intent than a bunch of leads who are never going to become customers. And even though you’ve already paid for the click, you can design your lead generation form in a way that screens out people who are unlikely to convert.
For example, let’s say you only want to attract potential clients with a large investment. One of your form questions could be “How much would you like to invest?” – with the available answers starting from £50,000 and increasing in £50,000 increments. This signals to people with a budget lower than £50,000 that your services may not be right for them.
Obviously this increases your cost per lead (you’ve already paid for the person to click to your landing page). But it can leave you with a highly targeted group of people – with high conversion intent – to reach out to.
Set your campaign budget
The final step in creating your campaign is to set a campaign budget. And you have plenty of freedom to experiment. You can set daily or weekly budgets, set rules around seasonality and change your settings anytime within a matter of clicks.
Here are the main bidding strategies to be aware of.
- Maximise clicks: Google will aim to bring you the most clicks possible for your daily budget.
- Maximise conversions: Google will aim to get the most conversions possible for your daily budget.
- Target CPA (cost per acquisition): Like the above, but Google tries to get as many conversions as possible within CPA parameters that you set.
Tracking and optimisation
Your ability to monitor – and draw insight from – your performance data can be the difference between success and failure. No overstatement. You should constantly look for what’s working – and what isn’t – so you can iterate your campaigns to drive performance over time.
Set up conversion tracking
You need to tell Google what represents conversion for your campaign. Under “Tools and Settings,” go to “Conversions” to create a new conversion action.
This will often be measured when a visitor fills out a contact form or signs up on your website, but you can also measure calls.
Continually monitor metrics
Your ads dashboard will provide you with lots of data on how your ads are performing. Many businesses pay only cursory attention to it. But 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? Is one location dramatically outperforming another? Is one type of investment opportunity whipping people into action?
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.
Review campaign search terms
Regularly review the search terms that trigger your ads to show up. This insight helps you refine your keyword and negative keyword lists so that your ads only appear for the most relevant and lucrative queries.
Nurture your leads
Getting a lead is one thing. Turning that lead into a client is quite another. Make sure you have a process in place for nurturing your leads – whether that’s via email, phone calls or retargeting efforts on other PPC channels.
Here are our 6 expert tips for real estate retargeting ads
Let us drive results for you
If you’ve made it this far, well done. As you can see, there’s lots to consider when it comes to creating successful, revenue-boosting Google Ads for property. It takes time, tenacity and no slim degree of experience.
We can help you skip to the bit where you’re making money. Unlocking the big, big numbers requires knowing exactly what tactics to use and what levers to pull to maximise your campaign performance. And it’s what we do for our clients every day.
Read some case studies here. Or ask us for a free proposal and we will lay out what you can expect within three months of working with us. There’s no obligation. If you choose to walk away after that the choice is yours – and you lose nothing. Shall we get started?
