Real estate is a growing but fickle business. Real estate professionals have probably been in a rollercoaster ride because after all; what goes up must come down, right? The housing real estate cycle comprises three stages: Stage one is where the hype begins and prices start to skyrocket allowing for good biddings even beyond affordability. Next is stage two where homeowners are wary of when the hype might come to a halt and unsurprisingly, a lot of homeowners think this way. So what happens is they try to sell out before everything dies down afraid they might be behind the pack creating a higher supply while the prices slowly take a downturn. Lastly, stage three is when all hell breaks loose. As inventory increases, the sellers try to push prices downward, leading buyers to go into a frantic stage, looking for cheaper prices, causing the prices to spiral down further.
So with a trend like this, how do you corner the real estate market and stay ahead of the pack? How do you get to the right target audience without having to spend millions of dollars on advertising that don’t even give you instant results? How do you make sure your advertising strategies are getting a bang for every buck? Still scratching your head, huh? Welcome to PPC or Pay-Per-Click, my friend; a powerful online marketing strategy that’s guaranteed to give you a great return on investment.
What is PPC?
PPC is an auction-based system where you, as the advertiser, places a bid every time a user (or possible consumer, as what others want to rightly call them) types certain keywords and matches with your ad’s keywords. So if you happen to outbid everybody else in the same game, your ad will appear on top of the search engines. It means your ad will get a 90% chance of getting clicked, viewed, and scrutinized! Still don’t get it? It means you’ll have a higher probability of getting actual customers (or otherwise known as “conversions”). But the best part about it is, you only pay whenever a user actually clicks on your ad. So you can be sure there won’t be a dollar wasted! If you think PPC is only for the big guns in business, you’re absolutely wrong! This can be a level playing field for all scales of businesses, and all types of businesses too, especially in real estate. So how can you maximize the use of PPC in your real estate business? Here are three ways.
1. Know Your Target Market
Before embarking on this marketing route, it’s important to know your target market and select the right keywords. By doing so, you get to weed out all the unnecessary or wrong searches that don’t even match what you’re offering (I’m sure you don’t want to pay for those). The first step you’re going to take is to get to know Google AdWords, an impressive real estate PPC tool. Choosing the right keywords can make or break your PPC advertising journey. Do you know that most real estate professionals failed in PPC advertising because of choosing the wrong keywords? If you have to set up a “Negative Keywords” list so wrong searches will prevent your ad from appearing. A word to the wise: Keywords are important! The real estate target market is very easy to track because it’s purely local. Selling or leasing your house or building means you’re likely targeting people already living in your city or the first nearby city. Who knows, there might be others who would want to move. Either way, you know that the pay for every click is worth it as it might lead to actual customers. This is called geotargeting.
2. Nab Leads
Let’s get into the second stage where you can actually gain real conversions! Okay, so once the consumers have already clicked on your site and have found what they’re looking for, are you going to stop there? Of course not! You want to snatch as many customers as you want. After all, we’re here to make money, aren’t we? When users click on your ads, you want to direct them to a landing page where they have to put in their emails or contact numbers. Or you can create effective call-to-action (CTA) buttons that guarantee customers to take the next step. But if you make the wrong CTA buttons, your customers will be gone before you know it! There are three ways to maximize your CTA’s effectivity. The first one is to give them what they’re looking for. For example, if they’re looking for free trials, “Try a month free” than “Subscribe now” definitely sounds better. Next is to give a personal touch and use casual lingo. Casual means are friendly. Friendly means more sales. The last one is, add urgency. Put up a limited-time offer or tell them what they’ll be missing out when they don’t set up an appointment.
3. Follow Up On Your Leads
Consumers almost always need time to think about venturing into a real estate negotiation. But this is a great time to persuade them with how great your services are. You’ve already got a number of users interested in your ad, but how will you try sales pitching to them? Real estate PPC has the solution for you. You can set up an email drip campaign that will lead to appointments and possibly to sales! All you have to do is to obtain their contact information so you can tell them more about your services over the phone or a face-to-face discussion. If you stick to the best PPC practices, you’ll be driving your real estate business to success through a few clicks on your mouse. If you haven’t made up your mind about the best marketing strategy for your business yet, I’d drop all qualms and start on real estate PPC on the double!
