Holiday home advertising: how to get big results with PPC
When it comes to holiday home advertising, the difference between a good campaign and a great campaign can determine the long-term success of your business.
It’s no overstatement. When you use the right strategy, the right platforms and the right marketing principles, you can unlock significant ROI with pay per click advertising – driving millions of pounds of revenue.
In this article we will give you an introduction to the key considerations for creating holiday home advertising that wins big.
And – as you will see – you can begin improving your results quickly. Especially if you are prepared to do a little learning.
Shall we get started?
Before we start, a quick introduction…
Hi, we’re Adbetter – and we know a thing or two about lead generation for real estate and holiday homes. Just look at the results we’ve generated for some of our clients.
Alesco Investment Property: 1,400% increase in lead volume, generating £2.5m revenue (and counting) from paid media leads.
GetGround: 467% increase in sales without any increase to ad spend.
CPIC Global: Doubled conversion rates while reducing cost per lead by 59%.
One Investments: Reduced cost per lead by 25% and generated five-figure lead volumes.
There’s a very good chance we can generate big results for your business too. And we may even be able to cover your ad spend. Schedule a free discovery call and let’s have a quick chat about what you can expect within three months of working with us.
“Leads for Dubai property are typically expensive due to the high-net worth requirements and 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
Is pay per click the best strategy for holiday home advertising?
We’d say so, yes. Pay per click (PPC) advertising puts sophisticated audience targeting tools at your fingertips. That makes it easy to make sure your ads are served only to people who are likely to be interested in your holiday homes.
It’s the total opposite of the hit-and-hope approach that so often defines holiday home advertising. You can search for audience cohorts by job title, income, location, online browsing behaviour and more.
And there’s another nifty targeting feature you can take advantage of with pay per click too. Feed the platform your existing customer data and it will find a lookalike audience that shares certain characteristics with the people who have already purchased a holiday home through your business.
It’s powerful stuff. And there are plenty of additional reasons we strongly recommend using pay per click for holiday home advertising.
- It’s accountable. The name gives the game away somewhat. With pay per click you only pay when someone actually clicks your ad. And if someone is clicking, it’s reasonable to assume they have a decent level of interest in purchasing a holiday home.
- You build proprietary data. With pay per click, every new lead you capture is yours to nurture. Far better than the antiquated strategy of cold calling people from lead lists and hoping for the best.
- It’s easy to control your spend. Your ad budget isn’t infinite – and nobody wants their overheads spiralling out of control. With pay per click it’s easy to control your ad spend, with options to set daily, weekly or monthly campaign budgets. And if you want to pause spending immediately, that can be sorted in a matter of seconds.
Holiday home advertising: choosing a pay per click platform
With pay per click you can target your audience from two different – yet powerful – directions. Firstly there’s Google search, where you can soar to the top of the results pages for search queries related to purchasing a holiday home.
In other words, if your campaign is set up correctly, your ad will be one of the first things someone sees when they search for holiday homes for sale in locations where you have inventory. You get to expose your business to leads at the precise moment they are expressing an interest in the properties you provide.
Then there’s pay per click campaigns that are served on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. They allow you to reach out with highly visual, aspirational ads that can capture the interest of the people you choose to target – if not right away, then at some point in the future.
5 key considerations for successful holiday home advertising
1. Remember your reader
One of the biggest factors in a successful pay per click campaign is the ability to connect with the person on the other end of your ad.
A holiday home is a deeply aspirational purchase. For many of your customers it will be something of a dream come true: the culmination of many years of hard work.
And it’s not just about the promise of sun, sea and sandy beaches. Lots of people buy holiday homes for the investment opportunity too.
You should always keep your audience’s fears, doubts, desires and ambitions at the forefront of your thinking. Great marketing is about human connection, not shouting as loud as you can about how great you think your properties are.
This mindset extends to considerations about where your audience is in the buying funnel. If they are at the start of their considerations about purchasing a holiday home, they may not have a location in mind. That means you may need to sell the destination as well as your properties.
However if your audience is a little deeper into the research phase, they will likely have settled on a location. One that they have thought about carefully – in which case your marketing messages can focus more explicitly on the specifics of the properties you have available.
2. Think beyond the click
When you’re paying for every click, it’s important to think carefully about where that click goes. Many property businesses take the easy option and simply send people to their homepage.
But you can – and should – be smarter.
Ideally you will send your audience to a designated landing page that’s unique to your PPC campaign. Not only does it make the effectiveness of your PPC activities easier to track, but you get far more control over how you interact with your prospects.
Your landing page should feel like a continuation of your PPC ad, with targeted messaging and a clear proposition. Another big tip is to create a data capture element that allows you to engage with your leads in the future and nurture them towards becoming customers.
Aim to create a consultative, multistep form that invites your leads to self-screen – answering questions about the number of bedrooms and the type of amenities they are looking for in a holiday home.
That arms your sales team with powerful information about each lead. And allows you to be far more personalised with your lead nurturing activities. The more you can make your leads feel you are carefully considering their position – and trying to help – the more likely they are to convert.
3. Create a lead magnet
Unlocking the ability to browse your full portfolio of properties will likely be enough to encourage your leads to complete your form. But you can further incentivise form completion by creating a lead magnet – such as a virtual tour of your latest properties, a guide to the regions in which you have properties or the opportunity to join a webinar about the legal considerations of buying property abroad.
4. Great photography is a must
Whether it’s for your social media ads or your landing pages, great photography is a must. Remember, holiday homes are deeply aspirational. People want to feel the wow factor – and rightly so. Poor quality photography can seriously dent the success of your campaign.
5. Plan your lead nurturing activities
Acquiring new leads is always exciting. But it’s just the start. Buying a property is a huge decision – one that people need time to consider carefully. With a long lead-to-sale time, it’s important that you have a process in place for nurturing your leads – following up with them and nudging them towards conversion.
Your nurture campaign could take the form of a telephone call, a series of marketing emails or even follow up ads on social media. But the end goal is clear: get a viewing booked as soon as possible.
6 expert tips for real estate retargeting ads
Ready to learn?
We made you a promise at the start of this article: that you could improve your PPC results quickly if you are willing to do a little learning.
Well, here you go. We have written extensively about getting results with pay per click advertising for property and real estate businesses.
Browse the article titles below and get them tabbed up in your browser or saved in your bookmarks.
Getting the right strategy in place:
- PPC for property: a guide to getting big results
- A smarter way to supercharge your property investment leads
- The best lead generation strategy for real estate businesses
Using the Google ecosystem for holiday home advertising
- A complete guide to Google ads for real estate leads
- A complete guide to Google ads for property businesses
- Best practices for Google pay per click real estate campaigns
- Display ads for real estate: a short guide for success
- YouTube ads for real estate: a guide to getting results
Using Facebook and Instagram for holiday home advertising
- Grow your business with Facebook ads for property
- Facebook ads for real estate: tips to grow revenue
- Facebook ads for luxury real estate: 4 big learnings
- Facebook Dynamic Ads for real estate
- Why implementing Facebook Conversions API (CAPI) is so crucial for advertisers
- How to boost revenue with Instagram ads for real estate
Using TikTok for holiday home advertising
TikTok ads for real estate: should you bother?
Ready to earn?
Maybe you don’t have the time or the headspace to learn PPC. So let us help. We are a specialist pay per click agency. We know how to unlock transformative ROI for our clients. And we may even be able to cover your ad spend. Book yourself in for a discovery call and we will outline the results you can expect within three months of working with us.
