Display ads for real estate – a short guide for success
Display advertising – it’s a great way of showcasing your properties and investment opportunities. Here are some top considerations to make sure your display ads are working as hard as possible for your business.
When all is said and done, advertising – in any form – is about driving revenue.
Yet many real estate PPC agencies seem to lose sight of that.
While display ads typically have lower conversion rates than other types of pay per click campaign, there are certain things you can do to make sure your ads are optimised to generate fresh leads and drive revenue for your business. Let’s dive in.
Before we get started…
For property investment companies, a predictable, scalable stream of new leads is the key to sustainable business growth. Adbetter is a pay per click agency working with clients all over the world. And we get results. Ask us for a free proposal and we will outline what you can expect in terms of paid media activity and ROI within the first 90 days of working with us.
“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.”
What are display ads?
Display ads are the elders of web advertising. They normally take the form of text overlaid on a background image with a clickable call-to-action that links through to the advertiser’s website.?
Display ads can also include audio, animation, video and interactive elements. And while in the early days of the www, display ads mostly took the form of banner ads, today they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and can also show up in emails, videos, apps and more.
Display ads are published by ad networks – of which there are several. In this article we will focus on the Google Display Network. It’s the most popular network and reaches over 90% of internet users worldwide.
Advantages of display ads for real estate
Display ads typically have lower clickthrough rates than other types of pay per click ad – such as paid social media campaigns or regular text Ads you will see on Google. However, that shouldn’t automatically put you off. Display ads have many advantages that can make them a very attractive – and economic – advertising proposition for property investment businesses.
Brand exposure
Sometimes you can’t put a price on the value of getting your brand exposed to potential leads. All else being equal, consumers tend to choose brands they know and trust. Display advertising can give you a route to introducing your investment opportunities to people who are likely to be interested in becoming customers further down the line. Softly, softly.
Kickstart TOFU activity
What display ads lack in terms of typical clickthrough rates, they make up for with how cheap they are. They are a really efficient way to kickstart your top of funnel marketing activities – and any subsequent conversions will be extremely economic in terms of cost per conversion.
Creative freedom
Compared to text based search ads, display ads give you vast creative freedom. The ability to include images and video in your campaigns is fantastic for showcasing your latest property investment opportunities. And because Google now uses machine learning to optimise your creative assets while your campaign is live, there’s more chance your ads will drive returns for your business. More on that shortly.
Accountable, controllable ad spend
With display ads, every penny of your ad spend is accounted for. You also have total control over your spend – with sophisticated tools that allow you to set limits on daily ad spend, pause your campaign once certain results have been achieved and more. No nasty surprises.
How to set up display ads for real estate
To get your campaign up and running on the Google Display Network, you’ll need a Google Ads account. Then it’s a case of following the six steps below.
1. Create a new display campaign.
Create a new campaign in your Google Ads account and select a goal from the predefined options.
2. Select your campaign settings.
Choose the locations and languages that you want your ads to appear in. Here you can also select how often you want your ads to appear to the same customer, set start and end dates for your campaign and more.
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3. Set your budget and bidding strategy.
Your budget influences how often – and how prominently – your ads will be displayed. The more you are willing to spend, the more exposure you will receive. Bidding strategy meanwhile gives you choices over how your budget is spent.
4. Choose your targeting strategy.
Google provides incredibly nuanced audience targeting options. You can choose to target people based on certain keywords, audience interests or browsing intent. You can also manually select the websites from Google’s vast network that you would like to appear on.
5. Upload your campaign assets.
In the early days of display advertising, you were forced to create assets in a range of dimensions to fit all available placements. Now we are in the era of responsive display ads. Simply upload a selection of text and visual assets and Google’s AI will do the hard work of testing the available permutations to serve ads that have the highest chances of fulfilling your stated goals.
For maximum impact Google recommends uploading:
6. Review and publish.
Review your ads and once you are happy that everything looks shipshape, hit publish. Your ads will be sent for approval and should be live within a couple of days.
How to track conversions from display
Google provides powerful campaign analytics within your account dashboard. Monitoring this data will reveal what’s getting results – so you can optimise your campaign for the future.
Where many businesses fall down however is failing to connect the dots from their PPC activity to their final conversions. You need a holistic view of everything from the first click, through all lead nurturing activity to the moment your prospect becomes a customer – and beyond. That’s especially important in a sector like property investment where the lead-to-sale time is typically in excess of the averages for other industries.
This holistic, cross-channel campaign tracking can be difficult to set up. But the insight it gives you is invaluable – exposing the true effectiveness of your campaigns and giving you the information you need to continually optimise your campaigns for ROI and lifetime customer value. Need some help? Ask us.
Best practice for pay per click real estate leads
What about other pay per click platforms for real estate?
Of course, the Google Display Network is far from your only option when it comes to pay per click campaigns. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok come with their own set of sophisticated audience targeting options – and with property investment it’s never a good idea to write off paid search.?
We’ve written lead generation guides for each platform below.
Let us drive revenue for your business
Not all real estate PPC agencies are born equal. We know how to combine effective pay per click tactics to bring a predictable stream of leads to your business. And we are highly experienced in the property sector, having unlocked transformative revenue for major property investment businesses including GetGround, Alesco, One Investments and One Homes.?
Ask for a free proposal and we will outline the results you can expect within 90 days of working with us. Or take a look at some of our client success stories.