If you’re a real estate agent and you’re not using PPC and paid social strategies to market your properties, we’re going to help you fix that.
A 2013 study showed that 92% of house buyers start their research online. Therefore, having a solid online presence has become a necessity for real estate agents now than before.
Having the houses you’re selling or renting online where people can find them is one of the things that you should prioritize. There are so many ways to advertise your properties online. PPC and paid social are some of the most effective ways to drive eyeballs to your properties.
These ads focus on driving quick traffic to your business, influencing sales, and nurturing leads into loyal customers.
Before you even think about PPC or paid social ads, you need to first have a website in place.
Real estate campaign strategy number zero; have a real estate website (if you don’t have already)
No, having a website is not a marketing strategy, but it’ll help all your PPC and paid social strategies. Let’s explain.
If I ever want to buy or rent a property from a real estate agent, I’ll definitely want to know who they are and be sure of their credibility. The first place I’ll think of to get this information is their website.
It’s the same with all your clients.
They’ll want to find out as much as they can about you and the properties you have. They’ll even want to know if you have options for them to choose from
The easiest way to answer their questions and clear doubts is to have a website where you can showcase all information about your business and property.
For a real estate website, you’d want to invest in a beautifully designed, well-structured, and responsive web design. Nothing kills a customer’s interest faster than a slow and difficult-to-navigate website.
Apart from showcasing your properties and educating your customers, having a professional website gives you the chance to capture the email addresses of your site visitors or clients using a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is simply something you give your site visitors or clients for free in exchange for their email addresses.
Collecting email addresses helps you speak directly to your customers in their inbox, thus allowing you to inform them about new services, products, or discounts.
These are just a few reasons why you need a website ASAP.
After you’ve created the website with all the beautiful images, listings, and whatever information a client would need before buying or renting the house, it’s time to advertise.
You can advertise your properties either by paid social or PPC. But which is best?
We’ll discuss the what, the how, the pros and cons, and the proven strategies for running successful campaigns that would ensure that you have a higher return on your investment. Let’s dig in! We’ll begin with PPC.
How does PPC work
Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your business, especially for real estate agents. It is sometimes referred to as Paid Search.
Paid search is a responsive form of advertisement, whereby the ads are shown to people who search for specific terms. These terms are mostly keywords that relate to your business or ad.
It is the kind of advertising where your ads are placed at strategic places on the internet where a lot of people can see them. These places include at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), like this one;
I searched for “real estate property”. From the SERPs, you can see a series of ads displayed.
All these ads are PPC ads. When you scroll further down, you’ll find the Google Snack pack and the organic results below. That’s how PPC works.
With PPC, whenever someone searches for the keyword that relates to your business, your ad would show at the top. The fun part is that you only pay when someone clicks on those ads, hence the name “Pay Per Click”.
This kind of payment method helps if you have a small marketing budget because it helps you pay only when someone is interested in your real estate ad. Therefore, money is not wasted on unqualified leads.
And in most cases, those who click on the ads are those who are willing to buy soon, if not immediately.
Pros and cons of PPC
Pros
- PPC helps you market to people who are interested in your business and are likely to make a purchase.
- It allows you to target people who have already visited your website but haven’t purchased anything yet. This is referred to as retargeting.
- It is very cost-effective and helpful if your budget is limited because you only pay when someone clicks on the ad
- Paid advertising is easy to track. This means that you can easily monitor your ads to know which ones aren’t giving you enough clicks and then adjust accordingly.
- It’s a quick way to drive many eyeballs to your property, compared to organic traffic and SEO
Cons
- Even though PPC allows for some targeting, the options are limited
- PPC only allows you to meet customers at the point of purchase, but not earlier in the buyer’s journey
- With PPC, many ads are displayed at the same time. Hence, it allows customers many options to choose from. You can find your ad and that of your competitor placed side by side.
- You have very little flexibility when it comes to ad designs.
Paid social
Paid social is the advertisement method that involves displaying ads on various social media platforms and targeting a specific audience.
With paid social, you pay for how long you want your ads to run and the number of people who should see the ad. This term is known as impressions.
Even though PPC ads can be placed on social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter, there’s a small difference.
You can tell a paid social ad from PPC when you see “sponsored” or “promoted” tagged to it.
Every social media channel has a format for ad placement.
For Instagram, it is mostly pictures and images. Facebook has its marketplace for ads, where you put images, prices, and descriptions.
Twitter ads are mainly text. Sometimes, the ads appear as a normal tweet, hence it takes away the “ad-feeling” from it.
The kind of business you have and the campaign you want to run would determine which social channel to use.
No matter how you look at it, paid social has a lot of benefits for your business, including real estate agencies.
Benefits of using paid social
It is widely known that social media is free. It is indeed free, to some extent.
However, social algorithms are getting trickier and smarter day in and day out. Therefore, no matter how many times you optimize your posts, they still won’t get the traction it deserves.
Paid social on the other hand, ensures that your posts or ads get seen by a wider audience.
Statistics show that 98% of people globally visited a social media platform in the past month. Among this percentage, 28% of them use social media to discover and buy products.
For your business to be seen in this crowded social media marketplace, you need to do something slightly different to stand out. That’s where paid social media comes to the rescue.
Social ads are designed to show your business to the millions of people who use social media every day.
This helps you grab the attention of new and former customers, thereby increasing your brand awareness and visibility.
For your real estate agency, it’ll help you target customers and nurture leads who might buy from you later.
Pros and cons of paid social
Pros
- Social ads help customers to find items they either didn’t know existed or haven’t yet realized they need it. Therefore they may impulse buy
- There are many ad display formats and options available. It ranges from text, videos, image carousel, and anything else in-between. This makes it very easy to be creative with your ads
- It’s a quick way to drive traffic to your website and your real estate ads.
- Paid social helps you capture leads and nurture them into loyal fans and customers
- Paid social ads are also a cost-effective form of marketing
Cons
- People in general hate ads, especially the intrusive ones
- Paid social does not display based on search keywords. It is more of intrusive marketing where random ads appear anywhere on your social feed. Therefore ads may be shown to people who don’t qualify as customers
- Social media is dynamic, so you have to keep your eyes peeled for any updates and adjust your ads as such
- There are many social media platforms and paid ad options available. Hence it becomes difficult to know where your audience is hanging out and which ad formats they’ll be interested in
PPC and paid social strategies to drive your real estate marketing campaign
Up till now, we have discussed what these two terms mean and their pros and cons. Whatever method of advertisement you’ll choose, there are a few tried and true strategies you can implement to make your efforts and funds worth it.
We selected the five best strategies that’ll be very relevant to your real estate agency. They are
- Write relevant copy
- Prioritize mobile-friendliness
- Include ad extensions
- Utilize many platforms
- Embrace retargeting
Let’s start with the first one.
#1. Write a relevant, simple, and precise ad copy
No matter what happens, your ad copy should capture attention. From headline to description to images and the call-to-action, if your copy doesn’t hook your reader in, then the whole ad is a huge waste of your precious marketing time.
Always remember that your ad copy is not the place to show how good you are with wordplay.
A simple, clear, and direct copy would convert more than a cleverly written copy.
Make the copy short and sweet, precise, and to the point. Instead of listing unnecessary features, emphasize the biggest benefit of the product, service, or business.
Sure, it takes a lot of effort and skill to write a copy that sells. But you don’t have to do that on your own.
You can work together with an ad copywriter. They’ve trained and practiced writing copy for ages, hence writing effective copy comes naturally to them.
Better still, a digital marketing agency would also take care of your copy so that you focus on growing your business. They have an awesome team of experts who write copy all the time. And because they value their online reputation, they do whatever they can to ensure that your ad copy converts as much as possible.
Hiring a copywriter or consulting an agency may cause a slight dent in your marketing coffers, but it’s worth it.
Imagine selling a house worth $800,000 and you pay a copywriter $400 to write a killer ad copy. How much profit do you think you’ll make when you get the sale within a week, if not in a few days?
Isn’t it better than writing so-so copy and waiting for months in hopes that the copy would convert someone?
It is recommended that you hire a digital marketing agency for your ad needs. However, if it is beyond your budget, then start hiring copywriters.
#2. Ensure your ads and landing pages are mobile-friendly
As a digital marketing agency, it still baffles us at FVG why people forget to make their landing pages and websites mobile-first. Here’s what we mean.
Many ads and landing pages look absolutely gorgeous on the desktop. But when you open those same links on mobile, it’s something else.
In our digital world now, over 50% of the world’s population search for things on their mobile devices.
Therefore, if you don’t optimize your website and landing pages to be mobile responsive, then no matter how stellar your ad would be, no matter how many times the ad gets clicked, your customers would quickly bounce away from your landing page.
There are many ways to check the mobile responsiveness of your site. Google has a mobile-friendly test tool that you can use. Simply paste the URL you want to test into the box and hit “run test”.
Whatever the results would be, just make sure that at the end of the test, your site and landing pages are showing properly, and are easy to use and navigate on mobile.
When you make your site mobile friendly, your landing pages would start to convert better, especially when the ad copy is clear, precise, and useful.
#3. Add extensions to your ads
Ad extensions are a feature that many ad networks like Google have incorporated into their ad systems.
These extensions include a call extension, a price extension, and a message extension. They work together to make it easier for your leads to contact you and convert them into customers.
Just for grins, let me talk about each of these extensions briefly.
Call extension allows you to add your phone number to the ad. That way, it’ll be easy for your potential clients to call you.
Message extensions allow you to include a message box or button to the ad, whereas the price extension allows you to list the price.
For a real estate agent, the call and price extensions would be the handiest.
Call would make your clients call you effortlessly, and price extension would permit you to list your discount and promotions.
If you want to ignore all the extensions, at least don’t abandon the call extension. Your business would thank you for that.
#4. Advertise on many platforms
Casting your net wider would ensure that you catch as many fishes as possible. It’s the same with PPC and paid social.
People are scattered everywhere on the internet. It is important to meet them wherever they are. That’s why it helps to place your ads in as many places as possible.
Apart from the top of search engines, you can place your ads on social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Linkedin.
You can also place your PPC ads on high-traffic websites. No matter what you do, ensure that your real estate ad is displayed on many platforms as possible
#5. Focus on retargeting
Have you heard of the rule of 7? It says that customers need to hear your marketing message at least 7 times before they make a purchase.
Well, that doesn’t mean you should advertise seven times or more to the same person.
What this rule means is that a person needs to see your ad several times before they make a purchasing decision.
It makes sense because you don’t expect prospective clients to trust you with one or two ads. They need to see your ad several times before they’d decide to choose you over your competition.
That’s why customer retargeting is very important.
Retargeting helps you show your ads to people who have already visited your website but haven’t taken any action yet.
Research shows that when you market to the same person over and over again, they are 70% likely to buy from you.
Final thoughts on PPC and paid social, which is best?
PPC vs paid social, which one should you use to showcase your houses? The short answer is both!
You have to grab your clients and customers wherever they are on the internet. However, if you don’t have the bandwidth for both, then analyzing your real estate business goals would help you know which one would best serve your needs.
If you want to drive traffic to your real estate website and build a following, then paid social is the way to go.
However, if your goal is to sell or rent that house now, then it’ll be best to run PPC ad campaigns. As we mentioned earlier, you’d have to use both methods, probably in varying doses.
Even though you’re investing in ads, it is recommended that you also pay attention to your local SEO. That way, you’d know which keywords you need to target for your website.
And these keywords would help your PPC campaigns to be more profitable.