Category: PPC Marketing

What State is Your Google Ads Motivated Seller Account In Now?

Right now, you’re probably within one of these groups… 

You paused everything in 2020. Now, you’re back in your account looking to start generating leads again. If this is you, then most of your work has already been done. The campaigns have been created. You just need to enable them.

Or, you may have scaled back your motivated seller campaigns and now you’re looking to rebuild into a larger account structure. This provides an advantage because you have recent data still going for you to base your moves off of.

Lastly, you might be starting out with a totally new account. This way you get to create the account with a new strategy.

COVID Google Ads Motivated Seller Account Audit 

If you have or have had motivated seller campaigns, you know that it’s important to take it slow and do the right thing to your account or you’ll end up wasting budget. 

Let’s take a trip through the items of your account that you should revisit so you can get back up and running properly.

1. Adjust Your Budgets

What you’re looking to spend may be different from what your budget was pre-COVID.

Take a little time to review what you spent pre-COVID, during the past year, and what your spend goals are going to be post-COVID.

How do you know what you should set your budgets to now?

First, you know your market better than anyone. If you’re coming into a hot market, then you might want to increase your budget. If you feel your market is still a little timid, then back it off a bit.

Next, you can use Google’s Budget Recommendations, or use a recommended formula based on what your monthly spend expectations are for the year and projected ROI.

Then you can break down how much you’ll have to play with for daily budgets by using Google’s calculation:

Monthly Budget divided by 30.4 which is the average number of days in the month = Overall Daily Budget

If you’re running multiple city-specific campaigns, you might need to create a shared daily budget or stick with one area as you get a back into the swing.

2. Evaluate and Set Realistic Goals

Your performance metrics might look a little different from previous years, therefore it’s valuable to evaluate where your account performance was and set realistic goals for 2021.

Focus your review on what means the most to you. For most investors, lead volume and cost per lead are the two most valuable metrics.

You can use that data to set some benchmarks to get an idea of where you should be landing in terms of future performance. Factor in market conditions and market confidence.

You could come to the conclusion that you’ll need to expect less leads at a higher cost per lead for the near future.

3. Make Sure Your Bid Strategy Aligns with Your Goals

You’ll need to ensure that your campaigns have a bidding strategy that aligns with your goals and metrics.

We’re still big on using manual bidding, but if you’re using one of Google’s automated strategies, here are some things to keep in mind.

For example, it’s not wise to use one of the conversion-based strategies such as Target CPA if you don’t have recent conversion data for Google to optimize off of.

Keep in mind that certain bidding strategies, like Target CPA, have a minimum historical data requirement in order to use them with some effectiveness.

If you’re starting out with a new account, with limited data, you should default to manual bidding or if you really want to use an automated strategy, stick with Maximize Clicks.

4. Double Check Target Locations

Where you choose to target will impact your reach as well as your spend. For example, if you were targeting all of a specific county before COVID when you had a higher budget, you might want to now scale it back to just a specific city within the county to align with a smaller monthly budget.

Overall, you can restrict your location targeting based on your 2021 goals and budgets.

5. Keyword Deep Dive – Pause or Add Keywords

Don’t be afraid to pause keywords! We’re in times where some motivated seller keywords aren’t as hot as they once were or might be in the future. If your historical data shows keywords that drove leads in the past, but have become slow now, you can always revisit them at another time.

In any market, every penny counts. No one likes to waste money but during uncertain markets, understanding your goals and how many leads are really possible, right now, will help you manage your keywords.

So, pause any underperforming keywords and keep the keywords most relevant to your updated goals. This will help keep your accounts organized as well as ensuring that you are spending your money on the keywords that have the highest confidence levels.

There could also be an opportunity to add keywords. You can use tools such as the Google Keyword Planner or as simple as Google Suggest. These two tools can be great places to check as you refresh your account so that you can keep your expectations as well as your bids working with your budget while using the top converting keywords.

6. Edit Your Ad Copy and Messaging on Your Landing Pages

Don’t forget your ad copy. In this current time, your market might present opportunities to test new ad copy. Align with your audience.

For example, if your market currently has a “virtual” feeling, test something like “100% Virtual Sale” or “We Do Not Need to See Your House in Person”.

In other words, take advantage of your market conditions and how people are thinking right now.

If you have a new site or are using a past site, use that same language on your landing page as you do in your ads.

Refreshing your ad copy and landing pages will not only bring things back up to date, but also give your audience a new look and messages that connect with them more than ever.

7. Pause Underperforming Ads, Ad Groups, or Even Campaigns

Similar to the keywords, you may want to look for opportunities to trim your account upon reactivating it. Pause any underperforming ads, ad groups, or even go as far as campaigns.

Again, markets during COVID have looked different than before.

You may experience heavy lead months followed by slow months. That’s why it’s important to use data and stay calm.

If you have a good lead month followed by a bad month, it’s not necessarily a Google Ads issue. We have found that some markets have fluctuated heavily even month-to-month.

Prioritize what aspects of your business are the absolute most important to advertise and pausing out anything that isn’t necessary.

Find what is driving up your cost-per-lead and weed through those to ultimately get to the highest performers.

8. Keep Adding Negative Keywords

Between Google’s new match type changes and the always changing searcher intent, it’s important to stay on top of your negative keywords.

Review the Google Search Terms report to see what queries you’ve shown up for and ensure you have your negative keywords added and up to date.

We’ve seen some markets shift to more “sell my house fast online” and “sell house by owner fast” queries. Even though these seem to be motivated queries, some markets are noticing clicks going up but leads are not following.

During COVID, when you see trends such as these, don’t be afraid to add a negative keyword to a good term. You can always remove it in more normal market conditions.

Grab a free negative keyword list for motivated sellers.

9. Double Check Your Conversion Tracking

If you haven’t been dedicating time to your Google Ads account, then it might be a good idea to double check your conversion tracking as well.

Possibly over the course of a year, you’ve made some changes to your website that could have impacted your tracking. Or, maybe you’ve changed your phone number so you’ll need to adjust that within your Google Ads account.

Here’s how to be sure your Google Ads conversion tracking is set up correctly.

10. Spy on Your Competition with Auction Insights

Whether your account has been paused for a while or it’s currently active, you can also leverage the Auction Insights report of Google Ads to further investigate the climate of your market.

Auction Insights breaks down who else is on the search results page most often along with you.

So, if you’re wondering if new investors have emerged into your area since COVID-19 or if you’re curious to see who is outbidding you, this is the place to start.

Auction Insights not only tells you who else’s ads are alongside yours but also where on the page they rank, above “Position Above Rate” or below you “Outranking Share.”

Audit a current Google Ads motivated seller account or reactivate your account with confidence

Whether you paused, scaled back, or are starting fresh, there are items to be evaluated with current or reactivated Google Ads motivated seller accounts during the pandemic.

Let’s review the steps covered in this post:

1. Adjust Your Budgets
2. Evaluate and Set Realistic Goals
3. Make Sure Your Bid Strategy Aligns with Your Goals
4. Double Check Target Locations
5. Keyword Deep Dive – Pause or Add Keywords
6. Edit Your Ad Copy and Messaging on Your Landing Pages
7. Pause Underperforming Ads, Ad groups, or Even Campaigns
8. Keep Adding Negative Keywords
9. Double-check your conversion tracking
10. Spy on Your Competition with Auction Insights

When you spend money on Google Ads, you want those ads to consistently drive motivated sellers to your website. But what are the best PPC keywords for motivated seller leads?

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Pay Per Click Report: Are you curious what the most profitable Motivated Seller keywords are for a PPC campaign?

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Well, that’s what we’re going to show you. We just compiled five years’ worth of Google Ads keyword data — 29,000 keywords and 217,416 clicks from over 50 Google Ads accounts.

Of course, there are a lot of different PPC keywords for motivated seller leads, so as a part of our criteria for this report, we are only sharing keywords that:

• Had at least an 8.15% conversion rate
• And a cost per lead of $250 or less

Before we proceed, a few important points to consider provide a better understanding of these keywords.

• All campaigns utilized the Google Ads Search Network with manual bidding.
• Although these keywords have shown performance across more than 50 different markets in the United States and Canada, it’s essential to note that results may vary. It’s advisable to include various other keywords and match types in your Google Ads account, as they can also generate motivated seller leads.
• Additionally, it’s crucial to account for market fluctuations. What may have been a successful keyword last year might yield different results this year.
• For accurate measurement, we relied on conversion tracking implemented on all sites. To our knowledge, all Carrot sites had reliable conversion tracking. If you’re uncertain about the accuracy of your conversion tracking, we recommend reading our conversion tracking blog post to learn how to ensure its correctness.

Let’s dive into the 20 best PPC keywords for motivated seller leads based on their conversion rates and cost per lead.

Top 20 PPC Keywords for Motivated Seller Leads

What Are the Best PPC Keywords for Motivated Seller Leads?

If mastering keyword bidding were easy, many of us here at Carrot would be out of a job.

There are three challenging aspects to consider regarding keywords: volume, cost, and quality. Naturally, you want your keywords to generate high search volume, which means more ad exposure and opportunities to capture leads.

However, with high search volume also comes many people who have no interest in your service. Attracting clicks from individuals who will never convert is far from ideal, especially when you’re paying for each click. Search advertisers must be cautious with broad keywords and make the most of long-tail keywords.

While it’s true that broad match keywords often have a lower cost-per-click, most Google Ads members want to invest their money in what works.

That’s where long-tail keywords come into play. These keywords target a smaller but highly relevant audience along the intent scale. Bidding on these keywords is crucial for advertisers who want to minimize wasted ad spend.

Don’t underestimate the power of negative keywords. They are truly fantastic! Negative keywords allow you to exclude searchers who have demonstrated no interest in your company, preventing their clicks from draining your budget.

For example, if you’re seeking motivated sellers and have no interest in retail properties, showing your ads doesn’t make sense when someone searches for “what’s my house worth.” By adding this term as a negative keyword, you’ll immediately notice the difference it makes.

In summary, finding the best PPC keywords for motivated seller leads requires a strategic approach that balances volume, cost, and quality. Utilizing long-tail keywords and leveraging negative keywords will help you attract a more relevant audience and maximize the return on your advertising investment.

Top 20 PPC Keywords for Motivated Seller Leads

1. “sell my house” – phrase match
2. [we buy ugly houses] – exact match
3. “sell my house” – phrase match
4. “we buy houses” – phrase match
5. how to sell the house fast – broad match
6. need to sell house quickly – broad match
7. [we buy houses] – exact match
8. [sell my house] – exact match
9. sell house for cash – broad match
10. “sell my home” – phrase match
11. “sell your house for cash” – phrase match
12. “sell your house” – phrase match
13. “home investors” – phrase match
14. “sell house online” – phrase match
15. “ugly houses” – phrase match
16. “we buy homes: – phrase match
17. “sell my home for cash” – phrase match
18. “sell my house ” – phrase match
19. “we buy ugly houses” – phrase match
20. “companies that buy houses” – phrase match

Is Google Ads Worth It for Real Estate Investors?

Google Ads can still be very worthwhile for real estate investors. It offers numerous benefits, such as targeting and reaching motivated leads, a pricing model based on performance, and easy tracking of return on investment (ROI). However, some disadvantages can be overcome with specific strategies.

If budget concerns you, you can avoid direct competition with larger competitors by focusing on more specific, long-tail, or localized keywords. This approach can help lower the cost of bidding on highly competitive keywords related to motivated sellers.

While these keywords may not have the same level of demand as others in your market, they can still effectively drive higher-converting traffic to your website.

Robert manages his campaign. He’s successful because he uses the right keywords within his account. He doesn’t need 1000s of keywords but sticks with a small batch of the most effective.

Google Ads Testimonial

“In 2017 we wanted to shift our real estate business from a standard brokerage model to an investments model that flips homes. We didn’t know quite where to start. After some research, we found Carrot and got our websites up and running.

We needed to start bringing in leads and had Brendan set up our Google PPC. Our business skyrocketed inside of just a few months.

Google PPC has provided us with consistently high-quality leads. Inside of just 2 years, we doubled our business revenue. We couldn’t have done it without the Carrot team and especially Brendan setting up our Google ads. Thank You!”

– Robert Grand

How to Increase Google Ads Conversion Rate

First, let’s clarify what a conversion rate is. The conversion rate for specific PPC Keywords for motivated seller leads refers to the number of people who click on an ad using that keyword and successfully convert, divided by the total number of people who clicked through.

Calculating the conversion rate is relatively simple. You need to divide the number of conversions within a given time frame by the total number of visitors to your site and then multiply that by 100%.

Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%

For example, if your motivated seller site had 292 visitors and 21 conversions last month, your conversion rate would be 7.19%.

To increase Google Ads conversion rates for real estate investors targeting motivated sellers, here are five key strategies:

1. Refine your keyword selection: Choose relevant and specific keywords that align with the intent of motivated sellers. Utilize long-tail keywords to target a more qualified audience and minimize wasted ad spend. Additionally, consider negative keywords to exclude irrelevant searches and improve targeting.
2. Optimize landing pages: Create high-converting landing pages that align with the messaging and expectations set by your ads. Ensure your landing pages provide value, address the needs of motivated sellers, and make it easy for them to take action. Use compelling copy, engaging visuals, and clear call-to-action buttons to encourage conversions.
3. Test ad copy variations: Experiment with different ad copy variations to identify what resonates best with your target audience: test headlines, descriptions, and calls-to-action to find the most effective combination. A/B testing can help determine the optimal ad copy that generates higher conversion rates.
4. Implement ad extensions: Take advantage of ad extensions to provide additional information and enhance the visibility of your ads. Sitelink extensions, call extensions, and structured snippets can improve the user experience, increase ad relevance, and drive more qualified clicks. Utilize these extensions strategically to highlight unique selling points and encourage conversions.
5. Leverage retargeting: Implement retargeting campaigns to reach users who have previously interacted with your ads or website. By staying top-of-mind and re-engaging potential sellers, you can increase conversion rates. Tailor your retargeting messages to address specific pain points or offer incentives to encourage motivated sellers to take the desired action.

Remember continuously monitor and analyze your campaign’s performance, make data-driven adjustments, and optimize your Google Ads strategy to maximize conversion rates over time. Data transformation is a critical step in this process, as it allows you to import insights from your campaign’s performance metrics, helping you refine your Google Ads strategy and ultimately achieve higher conversion rates over time.

Check out these 13 ways to stand out from the competition and increase conversion rates.

Once you get Google Ads and your website dialed in, you can achieve a steady flow of quality leads…

Cracking the Google Ads Auction: Unveiling the Process

It helps to understand how Google Ads determines which ads should show during an auction, which takes place every time someone searches on Google or visits a site that shows ads.

The Google Ads auction process can be summarized in the following steps:

1. Advertiser Bids: Advertisers participating in the auction set bids for specific keywords or placements. They indicate the maximum amount they are willing to pay for a click on their ad.
2. Quality Score Evaluation: Google evaluates the quality of the ads and landing pages associated with the keywords. Factors considered include ad relevance, expected click-through rate, landing page experience, and ad formats.
3. Ad Rank Calculation: Ad Rank is determined by multiplying the maximum bid by the Quality Score. Ad Rank determines the position of an ad on the search results page or other ad placements.
4. Ad Placement: When a user enters a search query or visits a webpage that triggers an ad, Google looks at the Ad Rank of all eligible ads. The ad with the highest Ad Rank typically gets the top position, and subsequent ads are placed in descending order.
5. Ad Display and Cost: If an ad is clicked, the advertiser is charged based on the cost-per-click (CPC) bid. The actual CPC paid by the advertiser may be lower than the maximum bid and is influenced by factors such as competition and the ad’s Quality Score.

It’s important to note that the auction process occurs in real-time for each search query or ad placement, ensuring that the most relevant and valuable ads are displayed to users while maximizing the advertiser’s ROI.

You can learn more about how bidding on keywords can help you create a cost-effective campaign.

Google Ads Testimonial

“Hey Trevor, Just wanted to let you know what a great program you have set up for me. My web page went live the first week of July this Year. I received 5 leads after the 2nd week with a Little PPC campaign on Google.

I spoke and met with 3 Motivated Homeowners that week. I put 2 Homes under contract that week. I sold both homes to a local investor at $30k profit on each home. I also will resell the renovated home at 3% of the sell price of about $700k each.

Thank You for a great program In just over a Month I put under contract 2 Homes with over $100k profit. Can’t wait to see what the next few months brings.

Thank You Again”

– Roy Franklin

Conclusion

Many real estate investors are skeptical about using Google Ads due to concerns about cost. There are indeed risks involved, and the monetary investment can be substantial. Some markets may require monthly budgets ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, and the average cost per click on Google Ads is around $10 to $20.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you need to have such a high budget. However, I recommend investing a minimum of $1,000 per month (for smaller markets) to $3,000 per month and giving it at least 2-3 months to see tangible results.

It’s important to acknowledge that a certain level of risk is involved, as with any advertising campaign. But if your campaign is successful, the potential rewards are significant.

If you’re worried about not having the expertise to use Google Ads effectively, don’t be. You don’t have to be an expert yourself. Let us assist you with our Google Ads QuickStart service.

With this service, you’ll receive:

• Assistance from Google Ads Certified Professionals who will set up your account
• Lead tracking to keep you informed about the number of leads generated for your business
• Keyword research with match types
• Conversion tracking
• Installation of retargeting tags
• Mobile-optimized ads
• Geo-targeting
• Ad extensions such as Sitelinks, Callouts, Calls, and Structured Snippets
• Lists of negative keywords to refine your targeting
• Initial optimization of keyword bids

Discover more about this service and how it can benefit your business today!

In 2022, Google announced that it would simplify Google Ads match types. This post explains what this means and what you’ll need to do to your Google Ads accounts.

Google recently made improvements to keyword matching technology and rules on how it selects keywords in your account.

This Google Ads update is designed to help:

• Control which keywords match a search query.
• Reduce account complexity by giving more control over traffic without managing multiple match types.
• Allow you to attract more qualified and high-performing traffic using fewer keywords easily.

Here’s what Google’s announcement means.

Change: The BERT algorithm has improved keyword matching precision

BERT algorithm technology interprets language, queries, and search intent. This applies to keyword match type behavior. This makes keywords, particularly broad match type, more predictable and aligned with the search intent. 

Change: Exact match type data also applies to broad and phrase match types

To understand this change, we need to refresh our memory about some big changes in early 2022. Google retired modified broad match keywords and announced it will prefer exact match keywords that are identical to the search query. 

Now the same logic that applies to exact match keywords will apply to broad and phrase match. If your ad group doesn’t have an exact match keyword that is the same as the search query but has broad or phrase match keywords identical to the query, Google will prioritize the broad and phrase keywords that exactly match the search query.  

Here’s an example:

If someone searches for house buyers near me and you’re targeting broad match house buyers and broad match house buyers near me, the identically matching broad match keyword house buyers near me will be preferred unless you’re targeting exact match house buyers near me, in which case the exact match will be served.

Change: If you have multiple keywords and match types that are relevant, but not identical, to the search query, Ad Rank will not be the only deciding factor

If keywords are relevant to a search query, but none are identical to it, Google will not just use Ad Rank, but Ad Rank plus other relevance signals to determine the keyword it serves. “Other relevance signals” include the meaning and intent of the search term and the meaning of your targeted keywords based on their associated landing pages. 

Here’s an example:

If someone searches “fast house buyers near me” and you are targeting the phrase match fast house buyer and the broad match house buyer, Google will select the phrase match keyword because it’s more relevant, even if it has lower Ad Rank than the broad match keyword.

Google states, “These rules ensure that the most relevant keyword will always be prioritized, so you can more easily use broad match and still maintain control.” Google provided the chart below to illustrate this logic.

Additional Points

Previously, we’ve directed members about using the same keywords with multiple match types to identify the highest-performing keywords. Google is saying this is not necessary any longer. 

You can get more “qualified” traffic using fewer keywords 

This is only what Google is saying. With these improvements, it’s possible to maintain better control over which keywords match a query. This is especially true with broad match keywords. This should “reduce account complexity” and eliminate the “extra work” of using multiple match types to control where traffic goes in your account.

You should create “thematically” consistent ad groups

Google suggests to “group keywords into thematically consistent ad groups so your ads will serve from the ad group you expect them to.”

A basic example can be, if you’re an investor and inherited and cash are your most popular searches, you would create two ad groups:

• One ad group with creatives for selling an inherited house.
• A second ad group with creatives for selling for cash.

If you’re pairing broad match keywords with a Smart Bidding strategy, there’s no longer a benefit to using multiple match types 

What this means is that since broad match keywords are now more precise and predictable, plus they now follow the same logic as an exact match, you can target the appropriate broad match keywords and get the same results as you would if you targeted the phrase and exact match version of that keywords.

Google says… “Also note that when you use broad match with Smart Bidding, there’s no benefit to using the same keywords in multiple match types. Broad match already covers the same queries and improves performance with real-time bid optimization.”

What Does This Mean for Real Estate Agents and Investors?

Test different match types. Even going as far as creating broad match experiments.

We’ve always recommended taking Google’s messaging seriously but also with caution. Historically, broad match keywords have caused more wasted spending in real estate campaigns than they have lead generation.

If what Google is promising, broad match keywords might be the future. Just monitor your account and make adjustments to keep quality searches high.

Changes to Consider Making Now

To help you get the most out of these upcoming changes, we suggest the following best practices:

• Monitor performance and shift budgets where necessary: Traffic may fluctuate due to these changes, so make adjustments as needed.
• Regularly check your “Recommendations”: Check the “Add new keywords” to maintain keyword coverage and “Remove redundant keywords,” which helps you consolidate duplicate keywords.
• Continue to use negative keywords: Exclude matches you don’t want with negative keywords.

Moving Forward

We’ll monitor these new policies and send updates as they become available.

For now, it’s important to be aware of these changes. This at least gives you an idea of what some recent changes mean.

If your real estate Google Ads campaign is getting the “limited by budget” notice, you’re probably asking yourself some questions:

• Should I trust Google?
• Are they just trying to get more money from me?
• What can I do?
• Is Google Ads even worth it on a limited budget?

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If you are limited by budget, you’ll likely not get as many clicks as possible if you have more to work with.

Here’s a real-life comparison of a Google Ads account for motivated sellers who took a budget from $55.92 to $16.67 daily.

$55.92 per day budget: 14-Day Period:

• Leads: 6
• Clicks: 56
• Impressions: 1836
• Spent: $671.27

$16.67 per day budget: 14-Day Period:

• Leads: 1
• Clicks: 16
• Impressions: 452
• Spent:  $292.24

As you can see, the drop in daily budget can significantly impact accounts.

When your account is limited by budget, it’s as if you are trying to withdraw money from a bank account with no funds.

That means Google has to wait until more money is available to be able to show ads.

In this post, we explore what that “limited by budget” notice means and some strategies you can use to get the most out of your real estate Google Ads campaigns after seeing this message.

What Does “Limited By Budget” Mean?

The Google Ads support guide states that your campaign status is “Limited by Budget” which means:

“A campaign status used when your average daily budget is lower than the recommended amount. When this happens, ads aren’t regularly showing as often as possible.”

Simply put, if your keywords and bids could spend more than your daily budget limit, you will get this message.

To see what Google recommends your daily budget be, click on the bar graph icon “Eligible (Limited) Limited by budget” message. You will see a graph like the one below. This can help you understand how much you limit your account and what a new budget might mean.

What Happens When Your Real Estate Campaigns Are Limited By Budget?

Your ad impressions will be lower. Being limited by the budget will impact how often your ads can be shown throughout the day. If you run out of budget early in the day, you’ll have data that don’t necessarily represent the campaign’s health. 

Your ads will not receive as many clicks. Obviously, your clicks will go down if your ads aren’t getting impressions. From the example above, sometimes you can see a significant dip even in 14 days. We’ve been asked, “Isn’t having fewer clicks a good thing?” meaning “bad” clicks are eliminated. That’s not the case. Even a limited-by-budget campaign can attract clicks that aren’t 100% what you’re looking for.

Your conversion rates can suffer. Hockey great Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” If your Google Ads budget is limited, you’re missing opportunities to convert visitors into leads with each missed click.

What Limited By Budget Factors Impact Your Real Estate Campaigns

Your real estate keyword selection. If you’ve done your job finding the keywords that fit your real estate business research, then the keywords in your account should give you a chance to convert to leads. So, if people search for motivated seller keywords and click on your ads, your limited budget will be spent quickly.

Your real estate ad copy. Be specific in your ad copy. If your ads are too broad, it might attract the wrong type of real estate visitor.

Your keywords bids. Every keyword clicked is going to cost you money. You’ll tap out your budget sooner if your bids are higher.

Your campaign settings. Google Ads offers many campaign settings that can impact your budget. You can raise and lower device bids, ad schedules, and target locations and use automated bid strategies.

Overall… Your daily budget will be the #1 factor.

Ideas That Can Help Optimize Google Ads Accounts Limited By Budget

Here are some ideas you can implement for an account limited by budget. These ideas can help stretch your daily spending, but at some point, you’ll be sacrificing keywords, impressions, and/or leads if you don’t have the budget to 1) show ads throughout the day and 2) show ads in the top four ad positions.

1. Decrease keyword bids. Since your budget will only stretch so far, each click puts your ads closer to shutting down for the day. You can decrease your bids on keywords that you’ve found are too expensive to be at the top of the page or have consistently been within the number one or two ad positions. You can bid for a lower ad position, such as three or four. You’ll need to monitor your average ad positions to be sure your ads still serve on the top of the page.
2. Create an ad schedule. You can run some reports to see if you can find time pockets that have generated the most leads and create schedules only to show ads within those times. Unfortunately, real estate isn’t like other industries. Your best-motivated seller lead might come at a time you don’t expect. But, if you can find good data, playing the odds can help extend your budget.
3. Consider your target locations. Run some geographic reports to find the areas with the highest cost per click, the most clicks, and, most importantly, the highest conversion rates. If you’re targeting multiple areas, find those with a lower cost per click and enough search volume to help conversion rates. Remove some areas from your target locations if they are too expensive and/or aren’t generating leads.
4. Device bid adjustments. You have the option to change your bids for devices – mobile, desktop, and tablets. Run a device report to find your cost per click, clicks, and leads. You might find desktop devices get clicks, but leads aren’t as high as mobile devices. You can adjust your desktop bids by decreasing them by a percentage.
5. Negative keywords. Not all real estate keywords are created equal. Motivated seller campaigns aren’t looking for buyers, and real estate agent buyer campaigns aren’t looking for sellers. Find the keywords that don’t make sense for your campaign and add them to your negative keyword list. This will allow your budget to, for the most part, be spent on searches from your target audience. Need a little help? Here’s a free negative keyword list for a motivated seller campaign.

You always want to be evaluating your Google Ads account. That could be on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. It would be best to constantly track your current keywords, ads, settings, bids, and so on. You’re always looking for the best ways to accomplish the end goal… generate more leads at a lower cost.

One of the biggest advantages to Google Ads and other paid traffic sources is you can see data quickly and restructure accounts to improve results quickly.

If you have keywords that aren’t generating leads but have the most clicks in your account, it might be a good time to re-evaluate your keyword approach. Ask yourself:

• Are you getting enough leads to justify the cost of these keywords?
• What are the actual search terms that are converting?
• Is it possible to focus on less expensive variations of that keyword?

For example, if you’re bidding on “sell house,” but the actual search terms that convert are “sell house fast,” you might be able to save some money by being more precise with your keyword targeting.

Being limited by budget might be part of your Google Ads experience. Some might be starting and managing their campaigns without the comfort level. Others might split marketing budgets between Google Ads, Facebook, and direct mail.

But you can still make the most of your real estate Google Ads account by knowing what causes the “limited by budget” status and adjusting your strategy to fit your account’s expectations better.

When we speak with potential members and host our Coaching Calls about Google Ads, one of the most common questions we hear is:

How much should my Google Ads for Real Estate budget be?

That’s a great question and there can be a couple of answers.

Adopting the Right Mindset for Your Google Ads for Real Estate Account

Before we dive into calculations, we need to cover the mindset approach you’ll need to have before starting a Google Ads account.

Understand You’ll Need Time for Testing

It is important to realize going into an ad campaign that you’ll need to do so with a realistic time frame in mind. The time frame will depend on your budget and it also depends on your market.

There might not be enough search volume for your target keywords to get leads data in one or two months. For example, “sell my house fast” might be searched for 30 times per month in your market and you would get 4 clicks from that particular keyword.

Is it realistic that you would get a lead from only 4 clicks? Probably not. Of course, though, you’ll be targeting more than just one keyword.

The goal is to make sure there is enough search volume for your target keywords to achieve your goals within your time frame.

Mistake #1: Don’t Stop Too Soon

Stopping too soon is one of the biggest mistakes we see, not just for real estate investors or agents, but in business in general.

Too many of us stop way before we actually should stop. We invest a little bit of money in this marketing type and it doesn’t pan out right away and we go…

“Oh my gosh, that must not work.”

We throw up our arms and then we start something else and then we do that for a little bit. Then that doesn’t work like we thought it would, and we throw up our arms again…

If you create a pattern of going and investing a little bit, dabbling, and then pulling back because you didn’t get the results you wanted, you’re probably going to be in that pattern forever until you change your thought process.

If you fall into that pattern you’re going to be looking back in a year or two and going…

“Oh my gosh, I ended up investing a lot of money, I lost a lot of money, I didn’t grow the business that I wanted to, and I don’t have the freedom that I wanted and thought that I would have in my business.”

You’re going to blame it on everything but your marketing mindset. Having the right marketing mindset can save you from that.

Give yourself enough time. For Google Ads, that’s typically gathering three months of solid data before taking a hard look at if it’s working for your budget and market.

Google Ads Budget – How Much Should You Spend?

If you’re just starting out, it’s smart to start with a test budget. You’ll want to hold your costs while you’re figuring out what is going to work. 

While you’re in data-gathering mode. It’s possible that your initial campaign will be profitable, but you may break-even, or you may lose a little money. 

We’ve created many campaigns that were profitable right out of the gate, but you shouldn’t put all of your chips in and expect this to happen. Instead, it’s helpful to shift your mindset to looking at the first month or so as investing in market research.

With your initial campaign, you’ll:

• Gain insights into what ad messages are resonating with your target market.
• Learn what keywords are converting into qualified leads and customers. 
• And, you’ll be able to test your landing pages to figure out what is working best for converting clicks into leads and customers.

Before you get started, learn how you can get “cost per click” estimates before going live with an account using the Google Keyword Planner tool...

Related Content: Google Ads Traffic Has Increased 4% During COVID-19. The Necessary Adjustments to Also Increase Your Leads

What should your budget be? Here are a couple of ways to formulate your budget

First, you can calculate an estimated budget by multiplying the number of keywords you want to test by the cost per click and by a minimum of 100-200 clicks. As a general rule, you’ll want to get at least 100-200 clicks to determine what is converting for you.

For example, if you’re going to test 10 keywords with a cost per click of $10, we’ll need to plan on a test budget of $1,000 to $2,000. You’ll find that there will be a mix of winning and losing keywords, ads, and possibly landing pages from the start.

As you see the data come in, you’ll “prune” your campaign by keeping the winning keywords, dropping the losers to bring your campaign to profitability, and ready for the next round of expansion and testing.

The second calculation is how we typically estimate a monthly budget. Start by looking at how many clicks it’s going to take to get a lead. As a general rule, it takes 15-20 clicks to get a lead. Let’s say your cost per click averages $20 per click. Next, let’s say it takes 5 leads to turn into a deal.

• 15 clicks to get a lead
• $20 per click
• 5 leads to get a deal

The equation looks like this:

Clicks x Cost Per Click x Number of Leads to Get a Deal

15 x $20 = $300 x 5 = $1500. You’ll need to budget $1500 to get one deal.

Need a calculator? Use the Carrot ROI Calculator! You can also read this post to determine your Max Cost Per Lead.

Mistake #2 Eventually… Focus on ROI, Not Cost

If you want to dominate your market, you can’t just focus on “costs”, you must focus your energy on maximizing your return on investment (ROI) from Google Ads.

We have a client who spends more than $10,000 per month with Google Ads. He’s happy to do so because he earns healthy profits on that advertising.

The million dollar question is…

“How do I get to that point where I’m scaling up my Google Ads and capturing more of my market share?”

That is how you scale up your Google Ads. Know your numbers and remove emotion from it.

1. Find your average profit per deal first.
2. Find out how many leads it takes you to close a deal.
3. Figure out your conversion rate on your website.
4. Figure out how much it’s going to cost you to get those visitors to your site from Google Ads.

Conclusion

You can’t fully explore Google Ads for real estate without money. And, making room in your budget isn’t always easy or fun.

At least, there are a couple of quick ways to create a Google Ads budget from scratch.

First, start by researching how much your keywords are going to cost using the Google Keyword Planner tool. This will give you an idea of how much your keywords will cost per click.

Once you’ve done that, you can do some simple calculations to find what you might need to start your budget at.

If you don’t have enough to make that budget work, take a look at what you might be able to cut right now to test Google Ads. Can you cut down one of your other marketing platforms to give it a full test? You might want to keep an eye out for being limited by budget status as well.

If so, it’s time to put that money into action.

Lastly, you have to give it time, monitor your campaigns, and double down if they start performing well!