10 Tips For Pay Per Click Ads and Keywords

Have you looked at your marketing budget lately and decided it's about time to do something different? One of the most effective things you can spend money on is Online Ads - often referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC).  These are ads that you do not pay for until someone CLICKS on it.

We use these at Fathom to generate leads, and you can use them too!  Here are 10 Tips for PPC Ads and Keywords:

1. Make your ad stand out and continue to tweak it to improve its click-thru-rate (CTR). If your click-thru rate is really high then Google will rank your ad higher than other advertisers who are bidding on the same word AND paying more than you.
2. Do not advertise YOU, advertise property listings. No one is actuallysearching for the “Number 1 agent in DFW” because every agent claims they are “number 1”.

Example of effective ads

3. The shorter the keyword phrase, the more people will see your ad but the more competition and the more expensive your ad will be. E.g., “Dallas Real Estate” = 100,000 searches per month = $3.80 per click to show up on the first page. Uh, no thanks… unless you’re loaded.
4. The longer the keyword phrase, the less people will see your ad but the less expensive it will be … however, if you create enough of these “long-tail keyword” ads then you can ultimately get as many clicks while saving a lot of money. In other words, more bang for your buck.
5. Make your text ad specific to your keywords. If you’re creating an ad for Plano, make sure the name Plano is in the ad text.
6. Go for specific terms including property type (luxury condos for sale in Addison), specific neighborhoods (homes for sale in the Lakes of Westridge), and so on. The more specific, the better the lead quality and the better the price per click.
7. Bid low on the high dollar keywords like "[city name] Real estate". These are the most competitive and highest cost clicks. They are also the most generic and have proven to have lower conversion ratios.
8. Unselect the option for Google’s “Content Network”. It’s a waste of money and the clicks do not convert into real estate business. (Thank you @BenKinney for reminding me of this one)
9. Add campaign tracking to your destination URL so you can track the visitor after they've arrived at your site. This will allow you to see which keywords have the highest conversion from click thru to registration so you know where to spend your money. Many visitor analytic services like Visistat (monthly fee but well worth the money and easy to use) and even Google Analytics (free to use but not as easy to get advanced) will give you the ability to add this tracking code to your URLs.
10. Last but most important tip: DO NOT direct the ad’s URL to your website’s home page or search page. Make sure they land on your results page. If you are creating an ad for “home for sale in Flower Mound” then have the ad’s URL send the visitor to the results page for homes for sale in Flower Mound. That is what the visitor is expecting to see when they get to your site, not a search box.

Need some help actually setting up your Ad?  Watch this video with step by step instructions!

Have other questions about Lead Generation and how to set up your ads?  Leave me a comment and I'll try and answer them!