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Calling yourself a homeowner is a dream that many of us have. It gives us tranquility and social status while also being a great investment. As the renowned writer Mark Twain said:

Buy land. They aren’t making it anymore.  

Being a real estate agent means that you sell more than property, you sell dreams. While this is a great sentiment, getting clients in real estate isn’t always easy. To make this a little easier, you need to figure out the best marketing strategies to attract more customers. Before you do that, you should familiarize yourself with real estate industry trends that can help you in your efforts.

#1 – Advertise on Google with Google Ads

In the last decade, our world has increased in terms of technological advances and the real estate market has not been left behind. According to The Digital House Hunt, 90 percent of home buyers used Google to start their search. Similarly, searches related to the real estate industry have grown by 253 percent in recent years.

Due to the high level of competition in the organic results in Google, your first strategy to get customers should be to do so using Google Ads. This will allow you to position your ad within the first results on Google through a simple but highly successful technique: pay-per-click.   

Google Ads works for real estate agents because it allows you to target the ad to a specific and local audience, something that will be discussed in detail later. Follow these simple steps to effectively use Google Ads to earn more customers while spending less money.

• Create campaigns using geo-targeting: Like any good real estate agent, you should always keep in mind “location, location and location.” No matter how good your ads are, they will not be as successful as they could be if they don’t appear in the right place. With the geographic segmentation of Google Ads, you can target your ads to specific areas where you are more likely to find the right customers while simultaneously restricting it in areas where you are less likely to find them. In this example we can see that when we want to target our ads to Dallas, we have several options, each with a different potential reach:

• Keep in mind the type of device: 89 percent of new home buyers use a mobile device for their initial research so it is very important to optimize your ad keeping that in mind. For example, it’s a good idea to add a clickable phone number to the ad to make it easy for the user to get in touch with you.

• Create an attractive copy: The text of your ad and what will generate that important first impression on the right customer should be creative and appealing. While writing engaging copy for an ad isn’t always easy, the results are always worth the effort. But what makes a good ad? Simply put, the content! For good content, you must achieve three things:

• • Find out the need of your target audience
  • Put yourself in their mind and speak their language
  • Be convincing and prove your value 

• Use VERY specific keywords: After taking into account who you want to reach with your ad, you must write your copy using specific keywords so the wrong people won’t see it. Why? Because you’re paying for the click. To mitigate risks, use exact keywords and phrases to get the right traffic to your ad and website, such as:

• •     Two-bedroom apartment for sale in Downtown Portland
  •     Affordable country house for sale in Hillsboro
  •     Best real estate agents in Portland

As a real estate agent, the online competition of moguls like Zillow and Trulia is immense. By avoiding using general terms, you can distinguish yourself from this competition. If you do happen to use generic terms, you’ll be in the middle of that competitive pack and won’t attract customers the way you want to. 

#2 – Make Quality Videos

Producing videos of your properties will help you stand out among your competitors and connect directly with your customers. According to a study conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), it was found that only 11 percent of sellers use videos of their property to market it despite the fact that 61 percent of homebuyers believe that the videos are a useful feature to utilize while searching for their ideal home.

To get the best results using this tool, create short and simple quality videos to better grab the attention of those who see them. The shorter and more direct, the better.

Become a real estate superstar by creating quality and eye-catching content to keep potential buyers interested in what you have to say. It is quite common to see videos with more than one message. While this might seem efficient, it actually confuses viewers and drives them away. Do not repeat those mistakes! 

Divide your content into different videos making sure that you have one overarching topic in each. Consider these popular kinds of real estate videos:

Introductory Video

Consumers want to know you so they can assess if you are the right person to guide them in what is likely to be the most important purchase of their lives. A biographical video is a perfect opportunity to do this. 

According to Alice Soon, Marketing Manager of Pillar to Post Home Inspectors, the branding experience is literally the way a customer lives and experiences your brand and how it feels to interact with you. With an introductory video, you can make your representative brand an intrinsic part of the client’s real estate purchase process.

Use the time of the video to explain who you are, your background, certifications, achievements, sales history, mission, etc. See it as your opportunity to connect on a more personal level with the client.

When viewers can hear your voice and see your face, they automatically feel much more connected to you and your brand. In fact, it is so important that searches such as “find an agent” have increased by 46 percent annually on YouTube. An example of a good video presentation is this one by Julia Warren: 

This introductory video of just over a minute and with more than 5,000 hits shows the viewer the kind of person Julia is, makes her look accessible and also shows her passion and effort she puts in her business.

Testimonial Films

Create genuine testimonial videos that highlight positive stories from clients who have had a pleasant experience working with you to buy property.

This type of testimonial can do more to show you’re an ideal choice than any written review can since they can visually analyze how authentic the person giving their review seems. This video will help your potential clients figure out what they can expect to experience when working with you based on a real client’s experiences. 

Highlighting a happy and satisfied customer is one of the best ways to promote your business. Obviously, you should not force a client to make a review, but if you manage to establish a good professional relationship and the client is happy with their results you can ask them if they’d like to help you.  

Prepare questions that will show off their positive experiences and show prospective clients why they should choose you. 

Ask questions like, “Why did you choose me as your agent when purchasing your new home?” “How was your experience working with me?” and “how did I help you find your home?” These questions will ensure that the testimonials convey the messages you want them to while also streamlining the videos so they don’t run too long or have too much irrelevant information in them.

This video by Greg Guinto is a great example of how a video testimony should be made. It uses music to generate positive emotions, it’s short but direct and manages to capture the happiness of the buyers and generate confidence for potential customers. 

In the video, his previous clients highlight the qualities of Guinto that made their real estate experience more than satisfactory.

Neighborhood Videos

A key factor that homebuyers take into account when making their final decision to buy a property is its location, namely the neighborhood and the community around the home 

The property for sale could be perfect in every way: it could have a kitchen with marble tops, spacious rooms, a huge garden and a swimming pool, but it is useless if the surrounding community does not match the needs of your target clients.

A video in which you showcase a desirable neighborhood is a great way to advertise a specific property. Create a clear picture of the location in question where you cover all aspects that may be important to your customers such as nearby attractions, schools, nightlife or transportation to get potential buyers to imagine living there.

Use the opportunity to provide interesting data including its history and architecture, transit options, etc. Then the viewer can explore what their daily life could be like in that neighborhood.

Richard Silver, a Toronto real estate agent, made a great video about the popular neighborhood Rosedale. In less than two minutes, it shows what the neighborhood offers in depth. This includes the type of families that reside there and local businesses and schools. In addition, it manages to show one of the most popular neighborhoods in the country as an easily accessible one.

The way in which he addresses the spectator is soft and friendly, making the clients feel that he not only knows what he is saying, but that he is an open and caring person. His approach to potential buyers and his good use of digital marketing have positioned him as one of the best agents in Toronto.

Video of Property Listings

Finally, you can make a video to show off the property you want to sell. Investing in a high-quality video to show your listing to potential clients will make you stand out among your competitors and is the perfect opportunity to show buyers the key aspects and characteristics of the property for sale.

Many agents believe that selling a property is like selling a lifestyle. The Partners Trust real estate agents in Los Angeles understand that the success behind a good listing video is in a great narrative. In this video, we can see how they take advantage of this marketing technique as few do in the real estate industry:

They have created what could be considered a professional short film complete with aerial shots and impressive drone movements and scenes in slo-mo that tell a great story. The video not only shows the essence and beauty of the property but also the lifestyle and status that it can bring.

They create an opportunity for potential buyers to transport themselves to the moment they open the doors for the first time and imagine themselves as the owners of the home. It is an impressive production full of great visual and emotional content. They use the video information section on YouTube to describe the type of property, location and design then they let the video tell the rest of the story.

Now that you know what kind of videos you should create, let your creativity take over and highlight your brand to outshine your competitors.

#3 – Use Social Media like a Pro

Social media is a very effective way to interact with your current customers and new prospects, improve the perception of your brand and attract more traffic to your website. It also allows you to establish your online presence, advertise your properties for sale and set yourself up as an expert on the channels. The trick is to know who your objective audience is and how to get to them.

Use social media as a communication link between you and your customers to optimize your online presence. Leigh Brown, president of the Council of Residential Specialists and agent of RE/MAX Executive Realty in Charlotte, says that in addition to presenting you with a good platform to show off photos, you must have conversations with your followers, be visible and be present in all interactions.

Next, we will talk about the most effective channels among the agents that will allow you to reach the largest number of potential clients and your objective audience.

Facebook

We all know Facebook as a place to connect with old friends and family. But it is also an excellent platform to connect with potential customers and generate greater business opportunities with less out-of-pocket costs to you.

Your professional Facebook account should be filled with valuable content that captivates the visitor and invites them to interact with your publications. This will allow you to take advantage of this powerful marketing tool to get more opportunities to advertise and sell your properties. 

There are two ways to advertise on Facebook, free organic publications and paid publications.

This publication is a great example of how you can use free organic publications to showcase a property and make it look exclusive while inviting the potential buyer to take action.

Facebook is a great tool to create paid ads with quality content and clear calls to action that can attract potential buyers, similar to how Google Ads works. However, Facebook’s algorithm is quite different.

This social network allows users to filter their searches in more precise ways, such as by price, size, etc., but it also lets you generate optimized ads and direct them to your target audience.

The best way to generate optimized ads oriented to the right audience on Facebook is through the Marketplace. Here you can create a catalog of your products, in this case, your property listings.

The Marketplace is an excellent way to advertise your business and the different properties you have in a single paid publication. Dynamic Ads for Real Estate allow you to display more than one property and invite potential customers to take action by calling you or visiting your page to find out  more, as we can see in this example:  

Pinterest

Pinterest is the fourth most used social media platform and is a great tool to promote your listings. It allows you to show off your best photos and visuals of the property and connect with quality prospects quickly.

Your listings should be shown through appealing photos that create an emotional connection with potential buyers in order to drum up interest and get them to inquire about the property and eventually visiting it in person.

On Pinterest, you have the opportunity to create “boards” with multiple listings of different properties, posts about the neighborhoods where you are focused, interior design features, and even one about your personal life to introduce yourself to potential clients.

This is a perfect example of a Pinterest profile of a real estate agent in Denver where he has used the platform to display not only the listings of properties he has for sale but also part of his personality and present himself as someone quite accessible and trustworthy.

Yelp

Today, users rely a lot on reviews from others and the ratings they give a business. Since buying a home is one of the most important experiences in a person’s life, it is to be expected that people will base their opinion of a potential real estate agent on the positive and negative opinions of other buyers.

Yelp is the most visited review platform in the world. Here, users have written more than 142 million reviews. As a professional agent in the real estate industry, positive reviews can boost your position in search engines and help elevate you over your competitors so it’s important to focus on providing the best service you can and establish strong professional relationships with your customers. 

At the same time, Yelp can also work as a search tool, so keep your profile updated to remain visible and make it easy for users to locate and contact you. Here’s a Yelp guide on how to add the call feature to your profile.

#4 – Start a Real Estate Blog

According to HubSpot, companies that publish more than 16 blog posts a month got 3.5 times more traffic than companies that did not publish anything. Despite that, only 11 percent of real estate agents have a blog.

Having a real estate blog could improve your odds of positioning your company on the first pages of Google and get you closer to your target audience. You just need to use your blog to create and promote the right content on a consistent basis.

To turn your blog into a successful marketing tool and attract more customers, find a topic that is of great interest but also connected to the phrases or keywords that your ideal buyer would look type into a search engine.

For example, if you sell houses in Salt Lake City you can write about the things that make that city a great place to live and why it should be considered when looking to move.

Dan Bhrom, an agent in Salt Lake City, and author of the blog SearchSaltLake.com knows very well that having a blog attracts a lot of potential clients. In this case, the person searched “moving to Salt Lake City” on Google and Bhrom’s blog post was listed as the first option. 

Dan hasn’t dedicated his blog to the listings of properties he has for sale, but he has managed to optimize it so that it appears for the right people in order to connect with potential buyers. 

#5 – Take Advantage of Real Estate Services and Websites

According to the National Association of Real Estate Agents, multiple listing services generate at least 32 percent of qualified customers so we also have to talk about how you can use that service to get more customers.

This marketing strategy is necessary in order to remain relevant in the technological world in which we live. This is especially true since there are giants like Zillow and Trulia leading the digital platforms. However, they are not the only ones. There are around 800 MLS (Multi Listing Services) that share ad information and invite other agents and brokers to collaborate.

Sellers benefit from greater exposure of their properties while buyers benefit because they can get information about all properties listed in the MLS while working with a single broker. 

According to the National Association of Realtors, two-thirds of real estate agents have their own web pages but report that they list the properties they wish to sell on multiple platforms, including REALTOR.COM, Google, Zillow and Trulia.

#6 – Create Newsletters

It is not surprising that more than half of merchants believe that email is one of the most effective channels for generating profit. 

Maintaining a weekly newsletter to send out to your regular clients allows you to remain relevant while sharing all the content you have already been creating on your social media platforms with them. This will generate interest and, if it is relevant and provides value, will be shared with their friends, family and contacts. Hopefully, those people will then go and subscribe to your newsletter or, better yet, contact you and become a potential client. 

To make your marketing strategy successful, you must follow certain patterns:

• It must have relevance: You must segment the emails that you send to adapt them to different audiences that subscribed to your newsletter. Sending relevant marketing pieces to your audience is a critical technique to ensure that your message is effective. A study by MarketingSherpa found that: 

4 out of 10 subscribers reported that they marked the emails as spam simply because they were irrelevant.  

• Must be goal-oriented: Sending a newsletter should be aimed at a larger goal, namely to generate an even larger customer base. Identifying the purpose of each email will help you decide how that email should look and also measure whether it was successful or not.

• It must contain quality content: Creating quality content is not just something you should do, it is what the receiver expects you to do. The subscriber subscribed because they trust you will provide them with something valuable and interesting. Put yourself in the receiver’s shoes and ask yourself if your content is something you would like to receive, don’t think about selling; instead, give them quality information.

Examples of Good Content for a Newsletter

• Content that is interesting and informative: Share topics of interest based on your experience as an agent or the current times. For example, you can share bathroom remodeling ideas based on features in your favorite properties or you can share interesting developments concerning the current state of the real estate market.

• Show some of your best properties: Since the goal of everything is to gain more clients, you should take advantage of your newsletter and use it to promote the most interesting properties that you have at the time.

• Use your videos: Share one of the videos that you have produced about the neighborhood that generates the most interest to educate whoever reads the newsletter about interesting draws or popular restaurants in the area.

• Keep them connected with your brand: Finally, email marketing allows you to keep the content from all of your platforms together in a single click. Write an enticing invitation for them to follow you on all your platforms and to refer you to other potential buyers through incentives in order to maintain relevance and attract more customers.

These 6 marketing strategies for the real estate industry are effective and we can prove it. Following these steps, you will increase your customer base and position yourself as a great real estate agent. As you know, the industry is quite competitive so it’s essential to use the right strategies to obtain the best results.

The post 6 Strategies on How to Get Clients in Real Estate appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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The real estate industry is a highly competitive field. With an estimate of 2 million active real estate licensees in the United States alone, according to The Association of Real Estate License Law Officials (ARELLO), acquiring buyers could be difficult.  There are multiple ways real estate agents marketing themselves and their listings. There’s the option of going through the offline marketing route and/or the online one. Offline marketing channels such as magazines and are hardly ever used anymore now that we live in a digital world.  

According to the National Association of REALTORS (NAR), the number of existing homes sold in 2017 was 5.51 million!  With online marketing channels such as social media, email marketing, content marketing, and Google ads, more homes have been sold than ever before as these channels are on the rise with its marketing capabilities and effectiveness.   

Companies can rank themselves higher on the search engine organically through content marketing, but due to the high level of competition, it will be very difficult. There’s a limited number of spots on the first page of the search results and in order to be on top, many small business owners turn to Google Ads to rank themselves higher. 

How do Google Ads Work?

The way Google Ads works is like an auction.  When you want your ad in front of your specific target market, you bid on certain keywords that you want to trigger your ad.  But you don’t have to pay a higher cost than your competitors in order to be at the top of the search results.  

The price of the bid is just one factor that comes into play when Google decides on the ranking.  Quality Score is another factor that affects your ranking. The Quality Score is Google’s rating of the overall user experience that your ads and landing pages provide when users look for your keywords.  The higher your Quality Score is, the cheaper your clicks and acquisition costs will be.

Google Ads is divided into TWO networks: the Search Network and Display Network.  

When you advertise on the Search Network, your ad will be shown as a text in Google’s search engine results.  The ads are also included in other Google properties such as Google Maps, Google Shopping, and partner sites on Google that shows texts.  

For Google Display Network, your ad will be shown as a visual banner ad on a large network of websites across the internet.  Video ads are also important and are highly recommended to one-up your competitors. Using Google’s TrueView, your ads will appear on YouTube’s platform as being played before or in the middle of a YouTube video or alongside the list of videos when users are scrolling through feeds. 

Below are 14 proven strategies to optimize your Google Ads Search, Display, and Video Campaigns for real estate to achieve the best results. 

Search Campaign

To give you an idea of how Google Search works, here’s an example: 

Someone is looking for a house to buy in Seattle, Washington.  On Google’s search engine, they type down “houses for sale in Seattle Washington”.

The first thing that shows up are ads from companies that list houses for sale in Seattle, WA.  If you scroll down, below those ads are web pages from Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and RedFin listing the same thing.  There is a high chance that users will click on those ads because Google has made the ads blend seamlessly with organic searches, so users are not always aware that they are an ad at all. 

For independent real estate agents and small brokerages, it’s difficult to beat out these big listing companies and so Google has made it easier for them by leveling out the playing field with its ad platform.  Based on data by Google, search ads can increase brand awareness by 80%.  

Below are 6 tips and strategies to lower your cost per click (CPC) so you get the most out of your budget.

1- Splitting Campaigns by Location, Home Buyers/Sellers, and Device

Splitting by Location

You want to create a separate campaign for each location you target so that when you’re coming up with keywords and creating ad copies within the campaign, the keywords and ad copies will focus specifically on that location.  People are more likely to click on an ad if that ad mentions the location they reside or are interested in.  

As an example, let’s say you are a selling agent whose main focus is in the Seattle, WA area.  Your target audience is people who are looking to buy houses in Seattle. Those people could come from other states and even other countries.  You could create one campaign that targets Washington residents and another campaign for those currently living out of state. 

Use Google Ads’ location targeting to ensure that the ads within these campaigns will show only to those in that area.  You can choose to have the location be expansive like a state or country or go more narrow such as mile, radius or city.  It is your choice to be as specific as you want. The reason why we recommend splitting campaigns by location is that this allows you to create highly-specific ad copies that are relevant to the user’s search and that will increase your click-through rate (CTR).  

Split by Home Buyers and Sellers

You can also split your campaigns based on your clients.  If you’re both a listing and selling agent, then split your campaigns into Buyers and Sellers and instead of putting location as a campaign, put them as an ad group underneath the Buyers/Sellers campaign.  This way, for each type of client, you can create specific ad copies with both the location and client in mind.

Splitting by Device

You should also split each location campaigns or type of client into two devices: one for computer/tablet and one for mobile.  Do not expect mobile and desktop to perform the same. Mobile and desktop campaigns don’t always perform at the same level and they don’t need to. 

Desktop usually performs better than mobile and you should work to scale it, but at the same time, don’t be too focused on optimizing your desktop campaigns that it limits your mobile campaign’s potential. In 2015, Google announced that mobile web traffic surpassed desktop for the first time and has continued to skyrocket.  

We live in a world where nearly everyone has a smartphone and uses it to search online for information.  The number of mobile users will just increase over the years. According to Statista, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones in 2018.  This is a 1.9% increase from last year.  So even if your desktop campaign is doing exceptionally better than your mobile campaign, don’t assume that mobile is not worth focusing on. 

We live in a world where nearly everything can be done mobile.  Google found that 30% of mobile searches are related to a location, meaning:

30% of people are using mobile devices to search
for their proximity.  

If your site isn’t optimized, it may not appear in mobile search results.  Also, BrightLocal, a professional SEO software company, found that 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site.  This is all the more reason to optimize it!

Below is an example of campaigns split into Buyers and Sellers with each focusing on Mobile and Desktop devices.

Allocating Budget

Allocate your budget based on what device you think your audience is spending most of their time on and what location you want to focus on the most.  Adjust your budget accordingly once you’ve gained enough data to know where your focus should be. For example, you may notice that you’re getting more clicks on your ads from desktop users than mobile users. 

You should distribute more of your budget towards desktop campaigns, so you could have the chance to get more clicks per day. Some real estate agents also prefer to allocate more money towards home sellers in the search campaigns because they are sure to gain that commission as they would sell the house sooner or later. 

Home buyers, on the other hand, might not end up buying a home yet you may have already spent a lot of time and energy into them without any gain. Distribute your budget however you see fit.

To distribute budget for your campaigns, go to the Tools icon on the tab above, the Shared Budgets should be located under the Shared Library category:

Once there, create two budgets: one for each device and enter the amount you want to spend on that campaign.  Add the campaigns that correspond to it.

When you click on the shared budget campaigns, you can see the list of campaigns under it as shown below. 

2- Create An Ad Group For Each Type of House/ Theme/ Topic, Etc

Now, within the campaigns are ad groups.  They contain ads that share the same set of keywords.  Ad groups can be separated by types, services, products, themes, demographics, etc.  There is no limit on how many ad groups you should have. The more specific the ad groups are, the more relevant the ads will be and the lower the cost per click will be. 

You can create separate ad groups for different types of home such as a bungalow, split-level, tiny home, cabin, condo, apartment, etc. or into themes like luxury living and simple/minimalist living. 

For example, let’s say you are a residential real estate agent in San Francisco, California.  Your keyword “residential real estate agent” triggers your ad, but the user may type down “residential real estate agent waterfront San Francisco”.  They’re looking to buy a house on the Waterfront specifically. You don’t have an ad for the Waterfront property listings because no ad group was created for it. The ad that was triggered by the search query, may direct users to suburban homes.  

Note that one of the keywords for that ad was “residential real estate agent” which is a fairly broad keyphrase.  An ad group could be created for houses only on the Waterfront property, allowing certain keywords to be triggered by specific searches with the right ad and destination link.  This also ties in with creating long-tail keywords, another tip for lowering your CPC.

Below you can see that Seattle, Washington’s neighborhood Magnolia and Pioneer Square have multiple ad groups catering to different types of housing, allowing for specific keywords and ads under each of them.

3- Create Long-Tail Keywords and Negative Keywords

Before we get into what a long-tail keyword is, you need to know the different keyword match types to use.

Match Types

There are 4 keywords match types: broad, modified broad, phrase, and exact match.  

• Broad match:

This is the default match type and is the one with the widest audience reach.  When using this match, your ad will be eligible to show whenever a user’s search query includes ANY WORD in your key phrase, IN ANY ORDER.  It will also include synonyms of words in your key phrase.  

Because the broad match is designed to reach the widest possible audience, users may click on your ad when they are searching for something entirely irrelevant to what you are offering.  This will eat up a lot of your budget fast. You need to keep a close eye on the search term report to make sure that you are not paying for irrelevant traffic and clicks. We recommend not using broad match unless necessary due to irrelevant clicks and high cost per click.

• Modified broad match:

Modified broad is a little more restrictive than broad match.  It has a similarly wide audience, but by putting a “+” sign in front of a keyword, you are telling Google that the search query must include that term.  The phrase could also be in different orders, as long as those keywords are included in them.  

• Phrase match:

Phrase match offer some versatility like broad match, but it is more restrictive than the broad modifier.  Phrase match is indicated by a parenthesis sign around the key phrase. Your ad will only appear when a user does a search with your keywords in the EXACT ORDER you put them in.

• Exact match:

Exact is the most specific and restrictive match type.  They are indicated by a bracket “[ ]” around the key phrase. Keywords with this match type mean that users’ search queries need to be exactly the same in its word and order as your keyphrase for your ad to be eligible to show for that query. 

However, in a recent change by Google, exact match will cover plurals, synonyms, and other variations of your keywords. Users who type down your exact phrase are more likely to be interested in your service and listings you offer.

Below you can see how the match types for the keywords are structured:

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are 3-4 keyword phrases that are very specific to whatever it is you are advertising.  According to Casie Gillette, Director of Online Marketing at Ko Marketing:

50% of search queries are four words or longer.  

When users are typing down a long-worded search query, they are looking for something specific, which will trigger or not trigger your ad based on its relevance.  These searches are more likely to convert into sales than generic searches. The more specific your keywords are, the fewer competitions you will have for that keyword.  This also means lower CPC and a better chance of ranking high on the search results.  

But be careful with how specific your keywords are.  If it’s too specific, you may receive very few impressions (views).  Your keywords must always contain the location of the listing so that users who are searching for a property in a certain place will see your ad because the user’s search query most likely contains their desired property location. 

Include the type of property and theme of the listings as well because these are something users will also be searching for. 

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by certain search terms or phrase that are irrelevant to your business and services.  Building a negative keyword list is crucial to maximizing the Return On Investment (ROI) of a Google Ads campaign.    

Going back to the example used in the ad group section, one of your keywords, “real estate agents San Francisco” triggers an ad of yours, but the search term the user typed down was “how to be a real estate agent in San Francisco”. 

The users may click on your ad thinking it is what they are looking (if your ad doesn’t clearly specify what you do and offer) and you will be paying for that click.  You don’t want to rack up impressions (views) and clicks for searches that won’t lead to sales.  

Add the phrase “how to be” on your negative keywords list to prevent any future clicks like those.  Check Google Ads’ Search Terms Insights frequently to see if there are any irrelevant search terms that need to be added to the list.  The more negative keywords you find and add to the list, the more room you will have to receive relevant clicks from potential prospects.

You can add negative keywords at the account level which will apply those keywords to all the campaigns.  To do so, go to the Tools tab above and the Negative Keywords List should be under the Shared Library category.  Type down the list of keywords you don’t want to trigger your ad. 

When you click on Save, it doesn’t automatically apply to your campaigns.  To do so, click on the Negative Keywords again.

Then select all the keywords and click on Apply to Campaigns.

Finally, you select all the campaigns and click done.

Now you are done with creating your first negative keywords list!  Be sure to check on the Search Terms Insight located in the Keywords section to check and see if there are any search terms that aren’t relevant to your business that is triggering your ad.  Add those search term to your negative keywords list to ensure that term won’t trigger your ad in the future, making you pay for clicks that won’t turn into leads.

4- Create Ad Copies That Are Relevant Based on Keywords

Create specific ad copies that are relevant to your ad group and keywords.  You are more likely to convert a potential prospect if you create ad copies that match with what they are looking for.  

Here are some tips that will get you more clicks:

• Max out the number of characters allowed per line. By doing this, your ad will appear bigger than the other ads and that will catch the user’s attention. Use all the lines available, so you can provide more information about yourself or about the property listing and that will give users an idea of what kind of real estate agent you are or a brief description of the property.  

• Highlight your benefits, not just your features. Mention some of the benefits of the community or about yourself to convince buyers what makes this property or you as a real estate agent stand out against the rest!

• Add numbers in the copy. Numbers pops out against the texts and that will draw their eye towards your ad.  Try including some in the headline and description such as how many years of real estate experience you have and how many properties have you sold so far.

• Create an eye-catching headline that matches the search query.  Users are more likely to click on an ad that clearly reflects on what they are looking for.

• Create ad extensions. Ad extensions make your ad even bigger to help it stand out.  It also gives users more information, links to your other web pages, and many more options which we will discuss in the next tip.

5- Create Ad Extensions

Here are the extensions we believe you should add to your ads:

• Call extension: With the high use of mobile phones, this extension is a must!  This lets your phone number be shown right on your ad, allowing potential leads to directly call you without going through the hassle of searching your contacts page.  According to Google, almost 70% of searchers on mobile will call a business using a link from the search, so having this extension will most likely get you more conversions.  Be sure to align your call extension day and time with your business hours. You don’t want potential leads who call outside your office hours, to only get a voicemail in the end.

• Message extension: This extension gives users an opportunity to click to text your real estate business directly from the search page.  Conveniently, they also give you an option to create a pre-written message to encourage conversion between you and the potential prospect. 

• Location extension: This extension allows users to know where your office is located with a click of a mouse or a finger tap and gives them directions to it.  A study conducted by ComScore found that 78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline purchase, so don’t miss out on those leads by not having this extension!

• Sitelink extension: Different buyers are looking to purchase different houses (studios, one-story home, 3-bedroom house, etc.), so why not give them options right on the ad itself?  Leading prospects directly to the page they are interested in can drive high click-through rates and that in turn, lead to improved quality score which, if you remember, is one of the factors to ranking high on Google’s search results page.

• Callout extension: This extension is used to highlight your selling points, benefits, and features.  You can use this extension to list areas such as neighborhood, cities, counties, town, etc  The thing about callout extension is that they don’t link to any pages on your website, so that means they are completely free to use because you won’t have to pay for any clicks on them.

• Structured snippet extension: This extension is similar to callout extension in the sense that they are not clickable.  They allow you to give more information to the users. It gives you various headers to choose from such as neighborhoods, featured hotels, destinations, etc.  Under those headers, you can add up to 10 “Values”, but the recommended minimum is 4.

6- How To Improve Quality Score

There are 3 factors that affect your Quality Score:

• Expected Click-Through Rate: How likely will your ad be clicked on by a user when they type in a search term?

• • Incorporate relevant keywords into each of your ads to improve your expected click-through rate.  As mentioned before, make your ads bigger and more informative to make it stand out by including ad extensions, creating relevant headlines, and reaching the max amount of character for each headline and description lines.

• Ad Relevance: Does your ad match the user’s search query?

• • Create specific ad groups with long-tail keywords so that your ads are as relevant as possible to the search query.  As with the expected click-through rate, incorporate your keywords in each of your ads.

• Landing Page Experience: Does the information and content on your landing page corresponds to what your ad is offering when clicked on and vice versa?

• • Make sure that when a user clicks on one of your ads, the page it leads to matches both the ad and their search query.  Make your website easy to navigate on all of your web pages, so that after they’ve landed on your website, they will have an easier time finding things such as requesting a showing, finding the contacts page, or scrolling through other similar properties. 

Display Campaign

Display ads are used to drive brand awareness and that helps drive potential prospects to click more on search ads and eventually become clients.  Note that Display Campaigns are only for those who want to BUY a property because Google won’t provide data for those who want to sell.  

According to Google, the “Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users worldwide and across millions of websites, news pages, blogs, and Google sites like Gmail and YouTube”.  So you are guaranteed to gain a large reach if your campaigns are done correctly. The campaigns’ location should always be in or very near where the listing is located so you can reach the right target and receive better ROI.

The Google Display Network lets you advertise in a variety of formats and sizes.  There are three types of Display Adverts:

• Text ads: Display allows you to run the same text as you have for Search.  However, Display ads are meant to be visually compelling to capture the audience.  Having just texts on the Display ad platform is does not perform well in gaining leads compared to the other formats because of how unappealing it looks and some people were displeased with the way their brand was being represented.  Below is an example of a responsive text ad:

• Image ads: This type would fill the entire ad block it appears in.  You have the choice to include custom imagery, layouts, and background colors on image ads. Look at the ad below showing how the lighting and composition of a house photo can make the ad pop out and draws interest.

• Rich media ads: This ad includes interactive elements, animations, and other aspects that change and move. 

Below are 5 strategies to optimize your Display Network ads and campaigns.  Note that a lot of them are similar to how to optimize your Search campaign because they work in the same way:

1- Create separate ad groups by theme/ topic

As mentioned before in the Search Network, split your ad groups into themes and types.  Within campaigns are ad groups and each ad group is separated by different themes. Within those ad groups are keywords and ads that share the same themes.  By structuring your campaigns like this, you will make it easier for yourself to manage and optimize them.  

2- Create visually compelling ads and focus on design

Now you know the various types of ads you can create with Display, create visually compelling ads that connect with your clients.  Because some websites don’t show all types of ads, create ads of all formats and sizes to get a better reach. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating your ad:

• Think about the websites placements you’re targeting and what type of people are browsing it.  There are 2 targeting options you can select when deciding where your ad will appear: 

• • By public: Use this option to remarket to those who have visited your website as it will show your display ads to those users.  

• • Contextual: Your Display ads will appear on websites that are in the same field as yours, so you know that your ad is showing in front of people who are interested in real estate, at the very least.  

• Consider what kind of action you want that person to take.

• When they click on an ad of yours, send them to a unique page on your website that would make them more likely to convert.

• Do A/B testings for your ads to find which one works better and find ways to improve it for higher CTR. 

• Include at least one of your keywords in your ad. 

• Consider creating ads appealing to potential clients on mobile and using the mobile version of your website as a landing page.  People who are seeing your ads on mobile are likely to want to know where your office is located at (if it’s close to where they live or the location in which they want to live in) and would want a number to call you at.  For this, add a location and call extension to your ads.

We have a great article you can check out if you wish to learn more about how to create effective google display ads and the size and format you should use to better increase your click-through and conversion rate.  

3- Target your ads effectively to reach the right audience

• Create relevant keywords because your ad groups’ keywords determine where your ads show on the Display Network.  The keywords should relate closely to the ads and the ad group that it is in. The more closely related the keywords are to your ads, the more likely your ads will be shown to your right target audience.  According to Google, 91% of smartphone owners have bought, or planned to buy something after seeing a video ad they described as relevant. Not only that, they pay 3 times more attention to relevant video ads.

• Excluding irrelevant keywords will help prevent your ads from showing up on websites and topics that have no relation to your business.  It would also allow you to avoid paying for irrelevant and unnecessary clicks and in turn, increase your ROI.

• Target multiple website placements that cover the same topic.  Add a combination of popular and specific websites to increase the number of times your ad is shown.  If you only target one or a few placements, then you will be limiting the chances of your ad being seen.

• Exclude irrelevant websites and topics to keep your ads from showing on there by either entering the URL of the specific placement or exclude certain categories of content.  You also have the option to exclude multiple pages about a specific topic.

• Remarket to those who have shown interest in you, your service, or listing before by creating a remarketing campaign which is a feature in Display Network you can utilize.  A case study conducted by ReTargeter noticed that the remarketing campaign from “Magoosh Online Test prep generated $58,608 in attributable revenue.  With a total cost of $11,000, the campaign resulted in an ROI of 486%”. This proves how effective and beneficial remarketing can be, so don’t overlook it!

4- Adjust your bids accordingly

For Display Network, you have the option to use your ad group default bid, set bids individually for keywords and placements, or set bid adjustments for them.  If you see that your ads are performing well for a certain keyword or placement, then set a different bid or automatic bid adjustment to your ad group bid so that your ads will show more often and get more clicks.

Use conversion tracking data and cost per acquisition (CPA) to measure the overall performance for placements.  Do not use CTR to measure the performance because people do things differently when they are on Display Network pages.  They are browsing and reading through the information, rather than searching with keywords.

Thus Display Network generally have a lower CTR than Search Network.  This leads to our next tip which is keeping an eye on your ad’s performance.

5- Keep an eye on your ads’ performance

Look at the websites, videos, and apps that have displayed your ad.  If you noticed that your ads are not getting any clicks, then consider excluding that site.  If it does get you a lot of clicks, then consider setting a higher bid and target that site more. 

As mentioned before, use conversion tracking to review the number of conversions and the value of them to help you decide whether to adjust your budget, change your bids, or any other changes to get more visitors.

The majority of the websites on the Display Network only have a few ads per page.  Your Quality Score is a huge factor on whether your ad’s placement will be on the page or not.  Try improving your Quality Score by creating or revising your ads and refined targeting.

Video Campaigns

Beat out your competitors even further by utilizing video campaigns.  Advertise yourself using Google’s YouTube TrueView. TrueView allows you to show ads to users who are interested in seeing them and only pay when they are viewing them.  Your ads will not be restricted by time limits since TrueView ads are opt-in.

You have free reign to experiment with creative formats such as long virtual tutor of the property, client testimonials, or how-to/ advice videos showing your expertise in the field. There are 2 types of TrueView ad format to be aware of:

TrueView in-stream

You may have seen this type of ad a lot if you’ve ever watched a YouTube video.  The in-stream ads play either before or during a video and allow viewers to see the first five seconds of it and later have the choice to continue watching it or skip the ad.  You only pay when the viewer watches your ad for at least 30 seconds or to the end of the video ad, whichever is shorter of the two. You also pay for clicks on a card and other elements you implemented in your in-stream.

Below is an example of a real estate training webcast by Dean Graziosi.  This video shows up before the actual YouTube video about “How To Buy Your First Rental Property (Step by Step)”.  You can see below that the ad runs for 5 minutes and 43 seconds, but allows you to skip the ad after a few seconds.

You could also see on the upper right side that there’s a display ad from the same person as well as a call-to-action link to save a seat to his webinar.  This shows up when the ad is playing and stays shown even after the ad video has been skipped or watched completely.

TrueView video discovery

Rather than showing the ads within another video, video discovery ads appear alongside YouTube videos, in the search pages, and on websites on the Google Display Network that are relevant to your business and matches your target audience.  For this format, you pay when viewers decide to watch your video by clicking on the ad.

On the lower left corner, you can see an example of a video discovery ad.  Videos listed on the side typically show content related to the videos the viewers are watching as well as videos that they’ve watched before.  This is a good way to gain viewers who may be interested in your video content but didn’t search for it directly, but rather it was recommended by Youtube.

Video ads need to capture the viewer’s attention within 5 seconds otherwise you’ll risk losing them because people have a very short attention span, especially when it comes to ads.  Below are 3 tips on how to retain viewers, increase brand awareness, and ad recall.

• Don’t put your logo at the beginning of an ad

• • Research done by Google suggested that logo or audible brand mention in the first five seconds are more likely to be skipped by viewers despite having a higher ad recall.  Also, logos in ads that are just floating around and not on a product are less likely to be watched and remembered by viewers. So if you decide to show your logo in the first five seconds, then make sure that it’s tied to your service and listings, not somewhere else on the screen.

• Set the right tone

• • Setting the tone is the first step in grabbing the viewer’s attention in the first five seconds.  The same research conducted by Google categorized ten styles and tone, including “humorous”, “emotional”, and “calming” found that humor ads retain viewers the longest, have the highest lift in brand metrics and are most likely to be watched.  You could also use an “emotional” tone which is associated with higher ad recall as well.

• Test out various musical styles

• • In the study, some musical styles were more effective than others when gaining viewers’ attention.  If the ad contained calming, relaxing, or action-oriented music, it is more likely to be skipped and humorous music in ads is better remembered.  

However, regarding brand awareness, the study found that any music in the first five seconds can have a negative effect.  This could be because of the change of pace in ads with no music that people find refreshing or intriguing.

It could also be that they don’t recognize the ads immediately without the music.  Regardless, the music factor is important so you should try a/b testing ads with and without music, then use analytics and Brand Lift to see what works best for you.

Use Google’s Brand Lift to measure marketing effectiveness of an ad.  Brand Lift gives you insight into how your YouTube ads are impacting metrics such as brand awareness, ad recall, consideration, preference, purchase intent, and interest.

These 14 proven strategies to optimize your Google Ads Search, Display and Video campaigns for real estate will help your website rank higher on the search results and produce more leads, all within your same budget.  The real estate industry has become increasingly competitive and so realtors need to improve their marketing strategy to get ahead.

With this, you now have the knowledge to beat out your competitors in Google Ads.  We recommend reading our article about the other real estate marketing strategies that will further improve your marketing campaign and online presence.

The post 14 Proven Google Ads Strategies For Real Estate appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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Real estate is a profession rooted in the real world. It’s not something that can be done 100% over the internet and closing a deal isn’t as easy as clicking a button and putting in your credit card information.

Most people want to see the space they’ll live in before they purchase. Despite all this, as a real estate agent, you need to be visible online and you need to know how to create an effective real estate landing page for your business.

According to the National Association of Realtors, 74% of all buyers frequently searched online for homes and 93% of people used an online website during their search in total. So, as the numbers show, most of your potential clients exist on the internet.

While 86% of people used a real estate agent, only 17% contacted a real estate agent as their first step. That means people do want to speak to a real estate agent and getting leads online is one way to encourage those people to choose you and not your competitor.

One sure way to one-up your competitors is to have a landing page and a landing page that works. Because of the unique nature of the real estate business, it can be hard to make an effective landing page that does what you need. After all, your goal isn’t to sell a product online in the traditional sense nor is it to get people to sign up for a service.

What exactly are landing pages?

If you’re confused about what a landing page is, don’t worry. You are not the only one. Many people think of landing pages and homepages interchangeably. Though some people use homepages as they would a landing page (for example, they link their homepage to an ad), this is perhaps not the best practice.

In fact, landing pages aren’t the same as homepages. Homepages are meant for exploration and are often there to provide information for visitors. Landing pages only have one purpose: to get a conversion.

Whether it’s to convince people to sign up to your mailing list or inquire about a listing, a landing page’s job is to get visitors to click on that call-to-action button. You’re paying for the click and you want to make it count.

So, for example, this is the homepage for FoundValencia.com:

Notice the menu at the top, showing several links for those who want to find more information. If you were to scroll down on this homepage, you would see several videos, links to property listings, and much more.

Now, this is what one of their landing pages looks like:

See the difference? There is only one link: the call-to-action button. If you scroll down, you’ll see a much shorter page than the homepage consisting of photos and a “Why Choose Us” section, but there are no other links besides the one at the top. The main goal of this page is to convince visitors to input their information in the form and press that “Get Free Advice & Browse Listings Now” button.

One thing that will not change, regardless of what type of real estate agent you are, is the best way to design a landing page. The most important thing is to keep your landing pages simple.

Though it can be tempting to include as much information about what services you provide or the type of homes you sell, a crowded landing page won’t get you those conversion numbers you’re looking for.

Conversion rates for landing pages longer than 800 words were 33% lower than those for shorter pages.

Short pages are more likely to straightforward and not distracting.

A lot of factors go into the logic of simplicity, including the psychology around being overwhelmed by too many choices. It holds true for landing pages, especially. There’s only one goal (conversion), so don’t distract your visitors from it.

Types of Landing Pages for Real Estate

You can go in many different directions when creating your landing page and, of course, that’s influenced by your target group. Here are some ways you can use a landing page and who they will attract.

Home Value Landing Page

Home value landing pages offer to tell sellers how much their home is worth. These kinds of landing pages are good for propelling people into action. If you want to catch people at the beginning, this could be a good way to go. One of the first things people will need to know is how much their home might sell for.

The example above is pretty straightforward, which is exactly what we want. There’s no point of exits, the call-to-action button is obvious and easy to click on. It’s better to have fewer form requirements than the number featured here, but it makes sense they would ask for an address as well as email and phone number. According to BluLeadz, the average number of form fields is eleven, but shortening the number to four can increase conversion rates.

Because this business is offering more than just a price value (but also to purchase from them), it could afford to have a bit more social proof. The “As Seen On” section improves trustworthiness to some degree, but testimonials or reviews would help this page a bit more.

Home Search Landing Page

If your target group is buyers, not sellers, a popular and effective way of attracting attention from them is using a home search landing page. This works especially well if you have multiple listings to show.

Still, you shouldn’t use your listing page as your landing page. You should give them the option of clicking a call-to-action button to proceed to a listing page. The goal is to convert, which is less likely to happen the more distractions there are on a page and without a clear call-to-action button.

The example below is from a Landingi template and shows us exactly what a landing page, even one for a home search, should look like.

Source: Landingi.com

The page doesn’t show us the listings. Instead, the visitor is required to input their information in order to view the “real estate offers.” Because this is a template, the language used is intentionally vague. When creating your landing page, specificity is a good thing.

For example, instead of the offers listed in the image above, you could offer something like “access to 100+ San Diego, CA family home listings.” For the second offer, you might say something like “be the first to see new homes on the market.”

Agent Search Landing Page

Agent Search real estate landing pages work best for real estate companies, not individuals. In fact, they’re usually hosted by bigger real estate companies, but that doesn’t mean that if your company is a smaller real estate firm you can’t put this type of landing page to good use.

If you have enough real estate agents working with your company, you can ask a short series of questions (which you can control the answers to) like in the example below to match your visitor up with one or more agents.

3 Best’s information-gathering form is a bit long with nine questions and a scrollable form. The call-to-action button isn’t visible until you scroll to the bottom of the form, where a button in red prompts you to “See The 3 Best Agents.”

The landing page is somewhat long, but it spends the space working on building trust through explanations of how it works. It also emphasizes it’s value in being “Free and Unbiased,” explaining where their honesty comes from.

The page doesn’t need to explain itself as much as it does. Brief, one or two-second explanations for their “How We Rank Agents” section would make the section more digestible.

However, there’s no way to leave the page without clicking on the call-to-action button. The headline and subheadline do a great job of attracting attention and explaining concisely why the visitor should use their service.

Free Content Landing Page

This kind of landing page offers content in exchange for (usually) information. For example, you could offer a free buyer’s guide in exchange for their contact information. This works well when people are doing research and trying to get started on their home-buying or selling process.

Though the landing page can afford to be a little clearer as to what the info packet will include, the above is an example of a free content landing page. As you can see, they offer an info packet that helps visitors learn “what makes a True Home unique” in exchange for contact information.

Though, as I mentioned earlier, it’s best to be very clear about what visitors will gain from your free content. This webpage focuses a bit too much on themselves. The info packet should be promising visitors information they would find valuable, not more information on why they should want to use True Homes.

Listing Agents Landing Pages vs Buyer’s Agents Landing Pages

Depending on what kind of agent you are, your goals and the target audience for your landing page will be different. Your potential clients might not know the difference between certain types of real estate agents. They might not know the terms “listing agent” or “buyer’s agent” at all.

Think about how early in a potential client’s search you want to appear. For example, if someone is searching “agents who sell homes” or “who can help me buy a home,” do you want your ads to appear? After doing some information gathering, it’s likely someone will figure out the terminology on their own, but do you want to wait that long to reach them?

Listing Agents Landing Pages

As a listing agent, you target people who want to sell their home. You don’t want to accidentally attract people looking to buy a home, which can happen easily considering how similar search terms can be for selling and buying a home. In your ad and in the title of your landing page, you want to make absolutely clear visitors know you’re there to help them sell their home.

You can design your landing page around helping people find the right listing agent, convincing them to submit their contact information so you can contact them, or offering them a free service.

However, once you’ve found a client, you can help them sell their property through single-property landing pages or open house landing pages. Below is a demonstration of an open house landing page from RealToDo.

Source: RealToDo.com

This is a great example of a landing page. It has all the information someone might need (home details, address, time and date, and price) without overwhelming the visitor. The choice to have a slideshow of photos featuring the best parts of the home further piques the visitor’s interest.

There are only three form sections, only one of which is required, and a casual option to become part of the company’s mailing list. It emphasizes the choice on the part of the visitor.

Buyer’s Agents Landing Pages

As a buyer’s agent, it’s your goal to find people who are looking to buy a home. Because many people don’t know that listing agents don’t necessarily also help you buy a home, it may be harder to find people searching for “buyer’s agents.” Instead, you could create an ad and landing page for listings.

People looking to buy are likely to search something along the lines of “2 bedroom house in Washington,” for example. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a landing page related to the search “buyer’s agent.” For example, the landing page below does a good job of convincing its visitors to connect with a real estate agent.

Clever promises to connect you with a top agent who will make sure you get your home at the best price and, possibly, a commission rebate. If you scroll down just a bit, you’ll see the section for “Buy a Home in 3 Easy Steps.” The descriptions are only one to two sentences long, making them simple and easy to read. There’s only one call-to-action button.

If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see social proof such as a “Featured In” section and testimonials. The second button at the bottom takes you back up to the form at the top of the page. If your landing page has to be on the longer side, it’s a good idea to put a call-to-action button that does the same thing as the one at the top of the page at the bottom.

Working as both

If you work as both a listing agent and a buyer’s agent for different transactions, then you’ll need to make both kinds of landing pages. It’s normal (and encouraged) for you to make multiple landing pages for the sake of targeting multiple types of people.

Your conversion rates will go up if you have more than a certain number of landing pages. According to Hubspot’s Marketing Benchmark report, companies who increase their number of landing pages from ten to fifteen or more see a 55% increase in leads.

Tips and Tricks for Real Estate Landing Pages

The Basics of Designing Landing Pages

There are some things that are true regardless of what kind of landing page you’re creating and these are some of those things.

• Make sure your landing page isn’t too long. As mentioned earlier, longer pages get lower conversion rates than shorter pages. Landing pages are not homepages or listing pages. The goal is not to provide your visitors with as much information as possible, it’s to get them to click one button.

• Speaking of the button, it’s important to make your call-to-action button stand out the most amongst everything else on the page. That click is often that last step that needs to be taken before a visitor has officially converted. If you bury your call-to-action button under a lot of information or if the color of the button blends into the background or if it’s not above the fold (what you can see when the page loads without scrolling), you risk making it too difficult for your visitors to find. You can’t predict how much energy an individual person is willing to exert to find, not to mention click, your call-to-action button so it’s best to make it as effortless as possible.

• Keep message-matching in mind. This means that the message you promised in your ad (through your title and/or description) is fulfilled in your landing page. For example, if your ad promises to “Sell Your Home Faster and for More Money,” then your landing page title should say the same thing or at least a close variation of the same thing. If you don’t follow through on the promise you made in your ad, your visitor might feel cheated and immediately click out of your landing page.

• Take the loading time of your website into account when choosing your image. Don’t rely on a visitor’s patience. According to Renata Bitkulova from Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, almost half of users expect a website to load within two seconds and click out if the loading time exceeds three seconds.

• Consider making landing pages especially for mobile devices. According to the National Association of Realtors, 76% of all buyers found a home on a mobile device, meaning it’s beneficial to have a landing page at least accessible and functional on a mobile screen. Ideally, your mobile landing pages will be optimized for a mobile device (smaller photos, for example) and will be easy to navigate on a smaller screen. Mobile devices also make it easier to prompt your visitor to call you. So, if that’s your preferred method of communication, it would be a good idea to include a click-to-call link in your ad or on your landing page.

Here is an example of a landing page that does all of these things really well.

The page is mobile-friendly. The call-to-action button is bright yellow and the form is clear. The ad, which states, “We Buy OR Houses For Cash,” matches the headline on the landing page. They have social proof in the form of the Better Business Bureau logo. The page isn’t very long but you can scroll down and look testimonials.

The testimonials are clearly real and natural. Their clients share bittersweet stories about how they ended up in their situation and heartwarming solutions. The only thing this page could work on is lowering its amount of links. The testimonials are great, but having a link for “More Testimonials” will only encourage visitors to hear more of those heartwarming stories instead of scrolling back up to input their information.

Preview Listings but Don’t Link to all your Listings

When advertising listings, it might be tempting to just link your listing page to your ad (and many real estate landing pages do this), but that defeats the purpose of a landing page. Doing this might keep people browsing but it likely won’t get you enough conversions to justify the click. Showing all your listings right off the bat does the complete opposite of keeping it simple and encourages your visitors to conduct the search on their own.

If you want to show some listings on a landing page, it would be a better idea just to preview a few. The trick is to give your visitors an idea of what kind of property you deal with and enough inclination to want to click that call-to-action button. It is very easy to get distracted by browsing through several listings, especially if someone is just beginning their search. It would be more effective to collect their contact information first before allowing them to become bored with your page and clicking out.

Show off your certifications

If you have some impressive certifications or awards, it’s not a bad idea to show them off on your landing page. At the very least, you have a real estate license, which is something you can include. Though not everyone will know what certain certifications mean, those who do will be glad to see things like Seller Representative Specialist or Certified Residential Specialist.

Not to mention, even though some visitors won’t know what they mean, you’ll still appear more knowledgeable and talented.

If you have certifications for particular kinds of movers, for example, the Military Relocation Professional (which indicates a specialty in assisting military personnel being relocated), people looking for these kinds of real estate agents will be glad to see the specialization.

Terrie Cox makes the mistake of using her homepage as her landing page, but apart from that, she uses some great strategies on her page. For example, she shows off her certifications effectively, without words, and while taking up a reasonable amount of space.

Include a Brief Video Tour

According to Hubspot, videos are extremely effective when used correctly and can increase conversion rates by 86% when used on landing pages. Though, it’s best to keep them brief, less than 2.7 minutes, according to Bitkulova.

Consider including a video tour, maybe of multiple homes or of a neighborhood, in order to give an easy and digestible explanation as to why your visitor should use your business over someone else’s. No long descriptions are necessary!

The video is a little long, but it shows how easy it is to create a video tour. There’s no need to over-explain because the house is beautiful all on its own. The video does a good job of focusing on the details and showing the house in the best light through the camera movements.

Video tours satisfy the curiosity of visitors and reassure those on the fence about a home that inquiring about it is worth it.

Family Photos or Photos of Beautiful Homes

Consider correlating the photos on your landing page with your target group. Showing photos of beautiful homes (inside or out) or neighborhoods is a safe and effective choice. They tend to be less distracting but not uninteresting. However, if you’re selling to families, it wouldn’t hurt to show a picture of a happy family.

Just remember that photos that look very obviously like stock photos tend to reduce trust in your landing page, according to Nielsen Norman Group. Visitors also tend to ignore generic photos of people. If you choose to have a photo of a person or family, take one of a real family you helped or at least find one that looks and feels real. Making a photo feel real sometimes comes down to including names (like the last name of the family) or testimonials.

The above is a good example of what it means to have a picture look real. Their smiles look genuine and it’s quite obviously not an awkward stock photo. It appears as if they’ve been caught for a photo, not as if they’re posing for one.

Also, a good trick to keep in mind is picking a photo or aligning your call-to-action button so the person or people in the photo are looking in the direction of the button. It draws attention to the call-to-action, putting more emphasis on it.

Testimonials

Testimonials work great because they prove you get good results. According to Boast:

89% of B2B marketers consider testimonials the most effective marketing strategy

One reason for this is because people trust testimonials written by other consumers as much as recommendations from friends. Like photos, testimonials should be real and they should feel real. Including testimonials on your landing page without including any information about the people giving them, such as names or locations or photos, make them feel that much less credible.

Take a look at Effective Agent’s testimonials.

The testimonial includes names and a detailed review. Notice how the couple’s testimonial includes the name of the agent they listed with, what made him effective, and how their plans changed after using this company. It reads like a real review and the inclusion of names (even with the last name blocked out) makes it feel that much more real. The picture doesn’t hurt either!

Many real estate agents say they’re worried about keeping up with technology but, with some effort, you can learn to use technology for the benefit of your business. If you found this article useful, check out some of our other real estate articles, including this one about Powerful Real Estate Marketing Strategies.

The post Landing Page for Real Estate: How to Create an Effective One appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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If you’ve been in real estate awhile you’ve probably heard the debate surrounding Facebook and whether or not you should be using it for your business. And maybe, even if you’ve decided to use it, you’re finding yourself asking: how do I make sure I’m not wasting my time and money on marketing strategies that don’t work?

If you were someone looking to rent or buy, where would you start? I know, every time I’ve looked, I’ve started online and I’m not the only one. The National Association of Realtors reports that, in 2017, 51% of buyers found the home they purchased on the Internet. That’s definitely enough to justify having an internet presence but does it mean you have to be on Facebook?

Let’s look at some simple, solid reasons you should try to reach people on Facebook.

Why Facebook?

• It’s popular

How many times a day do you open up Facebook? How long do you spend scrolling through your feed? As you probably expect, Facebook is extremely popular, beating out Instagram and Twitter by a long shot.

After YouTube, Facebook is the second most used social networking site in the U.S. 68% of Americans use Facebook and the average person spends thirty-five minutes a day on the website. That means there’s definitely an audience to reach there.

There’s an advantage to advertising to people on a platform they enjoy being on. It’s like meeting them in their space, somewhere they know how to navigate and feel they can control to some degree.

It appears most Realtors have already discovered this:

77% of Realtors reported using social media and 69% of them reported using Facebook in particular for business purposes.

So, not only is Facebook great for finding leads, but it’s also great for networking.

You could join a real estate Facebook group or follow real estate agents who give good advice or keep up with real estate trends. Networking as a marketing strategy can be slow-going but it can create great opportunities for more deals. Not only can you receive great advice from a connection you can also receive referrals! Just make sure to return the favor when you can.

• It’s effective

Putting Facebook’s popularity aside, the numbers also show it’s a particularly effective place to market your real estate business. Real estate is alive and thriving on Facebook. Take a look at WordStream’s article on Facebook Ad averages organized by industry. It goes over average click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate, and cost per action for seventeen industries.

Click-through rate refers to the percentage of people who click on one of your ads while conversion rate refers to how many of those people become clients. The higher the number the better in both cases. On the other hand, you want to keep the cost per click and cost per action low as they refer to how much you have to pay for each click and how much you pay for a conversion respectively.

Real estate is between the best and the worst for most categories but definitely leans towards the good. Real estate’s average click-through rate isn’t the highest or the lowest (0.99% while the highest is 1.61% and the lowest is 0.47%) but the conversion rate (the number of people who take action after seeing your ad) is 10.68%, making it one of the top industries for finding prospects on Facebook (the fifth top industry, to be exact). 10.68% is a significant number, going above the Facebook average of  9.21% for all industries.

The cost-per-click, referring to how much you pay to Facebook every time someone clicks on your ad, for real estate is slightly above the Facebook average of $1.72 at $1.81. So it’s important you do everything you can to make your ads count. The average conversion rate is good for real estate but it’s only the average. With a good marketing strategy, you can increase your number of clicks and maximize your return on investment.

The Facebook Marketplace

Facebook’s Marketplace has a category for “Housing” which you can use to list the homes you have for sale. Though still somewhat new, the Marketplace for real estate is already making a splash. It’s got the reach of Craigslist without the anonymity, which means much less spam and scams.

It’s easy to set up. All you have to do is click the “Sell Something” option under the Marketplace menu on the left. It will lead you through the steps necessary to set up a listing on Facebook. You can set the location as well so that only people looking for your location will see the listing.

People will message you if they’re interested in one of your listings and you can discuss money or arrange for them to see the home or answer their questions or talk about any other small details. People can’t purchase anything over the Marketplace (which is probably for the best), only inquire about details.

The Facebook Marketplace is huge because Facebook itself is huge. Not only that, Facebook makes setting up a listing for something extremely accessible and easy. Facebook is widely used and neglecting to put your listings on the Marketplace could lose you a lot of opportunities for leads.

You can also set up ads to show up in the Marketplace (in addition to the News Feed) which could be especially beneficial if you catch someone actively looking for the kind of home you’re selling.

Marketing Strategy #1: Your Facebook Business Page

Your Facebook fan page is like your home page. If someone clicks on your business name at the top of an ad, it’ll take them to your fan page where they can see your business information. It represents your business as seen on Facebook and we want it to look simple but attractive.

Include a cover and profile photo. Without these, your page will look incomplete. Fill out your about page too. Provide information about what kind of real estate you work with. Clarify your location to avoid confusion, like in the example below.

On this Facebook about page, they clarify what their location is and have a cover image that relates to what kind of real estate they work with (equestrian property).

Make it easy for people visiting your page to see what is unique about you and your business. Specificity is good. It makes it easier to attract the sort of clients you’re looking for and it saves you time and money dealing with people who would not be interested in what you’re selling.

That said, you don’t have to overcomplicate your page by adding every bit of information you can think of. You can link outward for listings so don’t feel the need to list them on your Facebook and clutter your feed.

When a particularly nice listing appears, it’s fine to make a post about it to let people who like or follow your page know about it, but your Facebook page needs to include more variety than just listings. Post articles or tips related to real estate. Try to stay active and post at least once a day to stay visible on Facebook.

Keep in mind that the time you post is also important. If you want to find out what are the hours in which you’ll get more engagement, take a look at our article on the best time to post on Facebook.

Things you can consider putting on your page are reviews. Have you received multiple five-star reviews? Definitely show it at the top of your page.

Notice how this Facebook page shows that 184 people have given them 5 out of 5 ratings. Lower down, you can see the section for “Recommendations and Reviews,” emphasizing the positive ratings even more. Showing that thousands of people like and follow the page under the Community section also looks good.

People are more likely to use your services if you have positive reviews. It makes you appear reliable and trustworthy. The Spiegel Research Center found that showing positive reviews can increase the likelihood of a purchase by 270%.

Also, emphasize how easy it is to contact you. Notice how in the screenshot above, the page has the typical “Send Message” prompt but it also has a link for booking appointments in the sidebar. If you prefer people email rather than send you a message through Facebook, or something similar, let them know!

Marketing Strategy #2: Facebook Ads

Facebook allows you to use ads in a multitude of ways. You can go as simple as a typical image ad or you can make videos or slideshows. Let’s take a look at what kind of ads Facebook offers and how you can use them for your business.

Types of Ads on Facebook:

• Single Image

The single image ad is probably the easiest to create. All it consists of is a photo, a caption, and a link. It’s important for all ads to have interesting imagery and attractive captions but even more so for one that attracts attention only using those two things.

Most likely, potential clients will notice the picture first. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words but make sure the picture is relevant and eye-catching. Advertise your most beautiful listing or show how happy your last client was with their home.

Always include a call to action—something that gives whoever is interested in the ad direction. Ask them to click to sign up for more listings or instruct them to call for information on a particular home. Every word counts here.

Source: AdEspresso

In this example, Northern Atlanta Real Estate uses an image to showcase one listing but includes a call to action (clicking on the picture). Not only do they prompt viewers to click on the ad but they also tell us what we’ll get from clicking.

• Video

According to Hootsuite’s 2018 social media trends study, video ads have been shown to be the most effective kind of post for engaging users on all platforms. This is probably why YouTube is the only website found to be more popular than Facebook.

People love watching videos, especially on their mobile phones. So one of the best things you can do is create an ad that instead of a picture has a video attached.  All of the same suggestions apply for the caption. Don’t forget to include a call to action. But what kind of video should you post?

Walkthroughs of homes or interviews of past clients with positive things to say are a few things you could do. Take a camera through a new listing to show your audience what it looks like on the inside. You could also use videos to incorporate content marketing into your marketing strategy.

Make how-to videos or give advice to people looking to buy or rent or share your opinion about some recent news. You can make a video about anything related to real estate. You can do this with organic, non-ad posts as well.

• Slideshow

Slideshow ads can be made with a collection of images or a video. The name is pretty self-explanatory. The collection of images or the video you choose make a slideshow a few seconds long to tell a story. This kind of ad is perhaps a bit easier to do than a video ad and it has the advantages of engaging moving pictures.

• Carousel

Carousel ads let you choose up to ten images to showcase in a single ad. Facebook users can scroll horizontally through one ad to see the multiple pictures. As Facebook themselves put it, you can

“highlight different products, showcase specific details about one product, service or promotion, or tell a story about your brand…”

This would be a great way to highlight multiple positive things about a specific listing or to show what listings you have available in a particular location all through one ad.

Source: Wishpond

In this ad, the real estate company showcases two properties and includes two photos for each one. Showing what it looks like on the outside and giving a peek to the listings’ features (the pool and the kitchen) garners interest and emphasizes some of the homes’ attractive aspects.

• Collection

Collection ads are more interactive than some of the other ads on this list. You can use them to showcase, in the case of real estate, four listings at once underneath the main image or video ad. These kinds of ads are meant to accompany another type of ad.

For example, you could have a video ad showcasing a collection of your most recent listings and underneath it an interactive, clickable display of the actual listings themselves.

The ad above shows how you can click on a regular video ad and also see four showcased products from Adidas.

• Messenger

Messenger ads let you market yourself on Facebook messenger. Facebook has a different app for their messenger system and so making sure you’re advertising there can expand your reach. If someone clicks on your ad, you can send them where you choose, be it your website, page, a particular listing or even into an automated conversation with your business, according to Facebook.

Sending them into a conversation does away with all the extra steps they would have needed to get there without your ad (e.g clicking on your business page and clicking through to get to your messages). That makes it as convenient as possible for them to contact you.

• Canvas Ads

Canvas ads can only be viewed on mobile devices. When someone clicks on your regular ad, it’ll bring up the ad in fullscreen. You can design this part of the ad like a storefront, contact form or whatever you would like (think of a condensed webpage).

You can see how clicking on the ad brings up a whole new webpage, where you can scroll through to view their listings and take a virtual tour.

According to Statista, as of January 2018, 95.1% of Facebook users worldwide accessed Facebook through their smartphone. The fact that the vast majority of people use their smartphone to access Facebook makes it that much more important to focus on making some or all of your ads translatable to mobile. Canvas ads were made for mobile devices and could prove to be a great way to produce more leads.

Ad Formats to Enhance Your Ad Types

• Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads can be used to automatically create ads tailored for the person viewing them. Instead of manually making individual ads, you just make a template that will create the ads for you. They don’t look any different from non-dynamic ads.

Before you set up a dynamic ad you have to create a catalog. A catalog is made up of three things, the catalog itself, the data feed, and product sets.

The catalog itself contains all of your products.  In the case of real estate, your “inventory” can be made up of the listing you want to advertise.

The data feed is where you put all the information you have on each of your products (pricing, availability, etc.) The last requirement of a catalog is product sets.

Product sets allow you to choose what products (listings) appear in a particular ad by category. You can include all your listings in one product set or you could organize them by type of home, location, price, etc.

After setting up your catalog, you can set up your dynamic ads. In the words of Facebook, dynamic ads automatically promote your inventory to people who have expressed interest on your website, in your app or elsewhere on the internet.

• Lead Generation Ads: AKA Sign Up Now Ads

Facebook lead ads are made for mobile, designed to make signing up on forms easy. When someone clicks on your ad on mobile, a form will pop up asking them to give you their contact information. Because Facebook already has their information, it’ll just auto-populate, making it that much more convenient for your potential client.

Facebook claims:

Lead generation ads increase lead generation by 2.8x.

This type of marketing can be especially beneficial to real estate agents, considering how real estate functions. It’s not as simple as someone going online and buying a house. With lead generation ads, you’ll make it easier for people who want to and have to contact you for one of your listings to do so.

Marketing Strategy #3: The Importance of Targeting

Because of the information users provide to Facebook (interests, location, education—the list is endless), Facebook is very good at targeting the right people. It’s up to you to make sure you give Facebook the information it needs to utilize it’s targeting system.

Want to target people in a specific area? You can tailor your ad to only show for people who live in that area. Looking for newlyweds or families with kids or grandparents? Facebook knows who those people are. You only have to indicate you want your ad to target them.

Be Niche

Remember when we said the average cost per click for real estate ads was higher than the Facebook average for all industries? Facebook, just like Google, bases whose ad gets seen by who wins the bid for that spot. Unlike Google, you’re bidding for the spot on a Facebook user’s feed. Facebook bases this partly on who you’re targeting and that’s why aiming to reach a niche group of people can be very effective and save you money on clicks.

Remember the real estate agency specializing in Equestrian property? Their specialty is a good example of a niche target.

The real estate group has built their entire identity around Equestrian property to the point that their slogan also references horses. This is a good example of a niche specialty that will pay off for their business because they’re targeting a very specific group of people. The competition will be low and the cost-per-click will cost less. The more specific you are in who you’re looking for the more significant your results will be and the less money you’ll spend on clicks with no return on investment.

Take a look at your listings and think about what kind of person would be looking for them and why. Maybe you have a listing for a small one or two bedroom home right outside downtown Portland, OR. You could target middle-class newlyweds who spend a lot of time in downtown Portland and would be interested in living nearby, for example.

Marketing Strategy #4: Get More Eyes on your Posts and Ads

There are a few options to be aware of when you’re posting content on your timeline or creating ads. Facebook provides certain features for businesses meant to either widen awareness of your brand, increase engagement for your ad, or prompt their users to take action. Here are things to consider when using Facebook.

Boosted Posts

If you make a regular post and you want more people to see it, you can easily make it into an ad by pressing the “Boost Post” option on the post. Boosted posts are not the same as Facebook ads. They are not created in Ads Manager and are less customizable but it still uses Facebook’s targeting system by prompting you to pick who you want to see it, your max budget and how long you want the ad to run.

So, if you make a video that you’re particularly proud of and think would get you a good amount of leads if more people saw it or maybe the post isn’t getting as much attention as you hoped, you can press “Boost Post” and make it into an ad. This is a good way to increase brand awareness and engagement with your post.

Event Posts

You can utilize the “Boost Post” option to make an event post, like an open house, into an ad. This allows you to reach more people who might be interested in attending an open house and increases the number of RSVPs for the event.

Marketing Strategy #5: Remarketing

Have you ever clicked on something you thought you might buy, decided not to, and then found the product followed you from website to website? Say you browsed through a website looking for two-story houses, clicked on one and then clicked out. Later, when you’ve left the website and are browsing through your favorite social media platform, that house you clicked on is there again in the form of an ad. That’s remarketing.

Facebook Ads (Like Google Ads) use cookies to track you around the internet and remarket the product you’ve already shown interest in. On Facebook, there are a few ways you can remarket to your audience. When you go to create a custom audience, Facebook will offer you five options: customer file, website traffic, app activity, offline activity, and engagement.

The first on, customer file, relies on a contact list. You can choose to remarket to your contact list with personalized messages. You just need to upload a list of information such as email addresses or phone numbers and Facebook will find their profiles and market your ads to them.

You also can remarket to website traffic, those who have visited your website and through engagement, meaning those people who somehow engaged with your content or clicked on your Facebook ad.

Offline activity finds people who have come into a store or called your business before. The app activity option is only relevant if you have an app as it remarkets to people who have interacted with your app.

Once you choose your audience type, Facebook will lead you through the steps necessary to create a remarketing campaign. It will ask you to upload your contact list or choose what kind of engagement you want to prioritize. For example, you may only want to remarket to people who clicked on an event or on one of your ads.

To reduce cost and market to more relevant people, use Facebook’s targeting system to remarket to a smaller contact list. It’ll save you money on cost-per-click and you’ll likely get more conversions because you’re reaching out to the people most likely to be interested.

The Last Steps

Organic Posts

We’ve talked briefly about content marketing and posting on your Facebook timeline. We’ve mentioned how making videos, sharing articles, or giving advice can keep the users who like your page engaged and aware of your existence.

The more active you are, the more visible you’ll be on Facebook and the more likely your followers will continue to follow and like your page. There’s no substitute for quality posts and you’ll benefit from having a social media schedule that reminds you what and when to share content.

In this example, PNW didn’t write their own content but they shared an article related to real estate that their audience might find useful. Though it would be more beneficial to make your own content, when it comes to sharing organic posts, anything related to real estate that you genuinely find useful or interesting is a good way to go.

You don’t have to limit your posts only to housing and real estate, though. In fact, it would be a good idea to expand somewhat to keep your posts unique, useful, and interesting. Give advice that has to do with decorating your home or saving money while moving.

ABODO keeps their audience interested by sharing articles that would be useful even for those who have already found a home or apartment through them. This is a good way to keep current clients interested and encourage them to go to you first when they’re ready to move again.

Post about your community too. Share articles and news that talk about what’s going on in your city or why it’s a great place to be. If you keep up with what’s happening in your area, you’ll become a go-to source of news and updates.

Follow Up with Clients

Be timely with the clients who reach out to you. At this step, you’ve already gotten the conversion—the Facebook user has taken action and it’s up to you to take care of the rest. Don’t give them time to find another agent or property listing.  Your online marketing has paid off and it’s time to begin the real sale.

Now you know the potential of Facebook for real estate agents and how to make the most of this social media platform to win more clients. Do you dare to put these strategies into practice?

The post 5 Facebook Strategies for Real Estate Agents appeared first on Kolau Blog.