Have you felt like this recently? Are you unsure if you should stop your Google Paid traffic right now?
You’re not alone, but stay positive. We’re in this together!
We’ve been answering these questions since March by providing data and challenging our members to shift their mindsets.
This has led us to create this blog post. We want to show you what we’re seeing, why you need to change, and how to make those adjustments to WIN in Google Ads during COVID-19 and other events that can cause accounts to go haywire.
We’re here to put your mind at ease.
Additional COVID-19 Articles:
- What The Coronavirus Pandemic Means for Agents & Investors & Why We’re Doubling Down
- The Coronavirus Podcast Series: For Real Estate Investors & Agents
- How to Win with Content Marketing During COVID-19 | Playbook Emerges
- How Has Lead Generation Changed During COVID-19 for Real Estate? – Exclusive Data and Action Plan
What Our Google Ads Data is Showing During COVID-19
Numbers were compared from January 15-February 29 and March 1-April 15.
- Sessions from Google Ads have increased by 4.01%.
Sessions are defined as…
“A session is a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a given time frame. For example, a single session can contain multiple page views, events, social interactions, and eCommerce transactions.”
- Leads have decreased by 13.55%.
- Across all members accounts, cost-per-click has increased by 39.3%, and to be expected, the cost per lead has increased by 19.4%.
What does this mean? In “normal times” a conversion issue could mean you’re lacking credibility on your website. Or, not enough website personalization and customization.
During COVID, it’s most likely due to searchers whose comfort level with the current situation is low. This presents a major opportunity to communicate with your audience in a different, more impactful way.
So…
Why Are Leads Down By 13.55%?
Our best-educated hypothesis… there is a lack of communication between your visitors and your website messaging.
Visitors need to know, during this time, that they still have options to sell their house right now. If they’re landing on a page that still has the typical message without educating them about what they can do, they’ll likely bounce for now.
Communication is as important as ever. You need to tell them what they can do during this time where people are uncertain. For example, communicate that they can:
- Send photos of their house
- Join a video call
- Join a Facebook Live for a walk-through
- Hop on a phone call
- Get the selling process started without ever meeting in person
What Can You Do Right Now to Increase Leads by 33, 100, or Even 225%?!
The members (not all, but MOST) who have made the necessary steps to communicate to their audiences are seeing an increase in lead volume during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We wanted to give you some general tips to help make your Google Ads accounts more effective until this time in history is over.
3 Simple Things You Can Do Today to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Google Ads Accounts
Tip #1: Communicate and Build Relationships With Your Audience
During “normal” times, Google Ads best practices dictate that you dig deep into as much data as you can find so you can be all but certain your next campaign will succeed.
But, we’re in unknown territory holding a lot of uncertainty. No one knows for sure what to totally expect from their accounts right now.
The ones who will have the most success will be those who take their best, common-sensed, educated move and immediately put their campaigns into action.
Think of it this way.
If you don’t try and decide to wait it out, you’ll fall further behind your competitors.
If you make educated moves but fall short, you’ll at the very least have an idea of how to adjust your approach going forward.
You don’t have a lot of time to collect a bunch of performance data… we can help with that.
Your goal should be to find a way to communicate with your audience.
It can be as simple as creating a Google Ads specific landing page with a COVID-19 message. For example…
Or, adding more content to your website from blog posts. Carrot Content Pro members have access to blog posts such as…
Or, switch it up a bit and shoot a quick video, such as this Carrot member did…
Now, take your video a step further and create a VideoPost to add to your blog. Simply upload a video and receive a transcription for your content for a blog post in minutes.
Check this out… “How to Create Real Estate Content in Under 10 Minutes with Carrot’s VideoPost“
If you need to help to generate ideas for scripts, check out… “The Content Marketing Playbook During COVID-19“
Tip #2: Refine Your Ad Copy
This goes for your Google ads and any other paid advertising you create throughout the current pandemic.
Google Ad’s character limitations don’t allow much room to convey a deeply sensitive and empathetic message, but you can utilize space to communicate that you’re still buying as well as other key points.
We’ve seen ads use copy such as:
- We’re Still Buying
- We Can Rest Your Mind
- No Strangers to Your Home
- No-Direct Contact Required
- You Can Still Sell Your House
- A Phone Call Is All It Takes
- We Can Buy Via Video, Phone, and Email
You want to create ads that showcase the options they have and the value your service can give them during these circumstances your audience is currently in.
If you can get to the heart of how your services can bring peace and closure to your customers’ lives, during this crisis and other times, you’ll stand a much better chance of surviving and thriving in the future.
Tip #3: Trim Wasted Ad Spend
During “normal” times, it can be easy to keep average-performing ad groups or keywords live as long as they’re bringing in some leads.
But right now a shift to pause those ad groups or keywords and add to negative keyword lists might be a smart approach.
Of course, you can then revive these ad groups and keywords once we’re out of this pandemic.
If you need to cut your budget, a simple strategy would be to pause ad groups and/or keywords that haven’t produced a lead in the past month or two. Or, those ad groups and/or keywords that have converted one or two times in the past month or two.
These might be low-hanging fruit keywords. Choose to pause those for now and hang onto the ad groups and keywords that make the most impact.
It’s also important to continue to add search terms to your list of negative keywords.
Negative keywords will prevent your ads from showing up for future searches that seem to be related to your service but have nothing to do with it.
We’ve seen terms that seem really good but aren’t converting into leads. Such as…
“sell my house in 55+”
So, that term is becoming an exact match negative term for now.
We’ve also seen an influx of game-related terms, possibly due to more kids being without things to do. Terms such as…
“how to sell your house in Rocitizens Boblox”
These are search terms that can’t be predicted.
Even during times like these, the old saying “you gotta spend money to make money” holds true for paid traffic. Merely pausing your campaigns altogether just isn’t the way to go.
But, there are just smarter ways of figuring out the most efficient way to keep your campaigns live.
You should always be looking for the most cost-effective approach to Google ads, but right now, it’s okay to tighten the spending up without feeling like you’re missing out on leads.
Wrapping up
The Google Ads industry changed entirely in the last month. Much of what we considered certainties only a few short weeks ago still remain today, but there are things you need to view a little differently for now.
Adapting during these uncertain times will help you to continue to grow.
It’s likely that you have already come under pressure to reduce spend or, at the very extreme, you’ve paused your account. These are sensible reactions given the circumstances, but are they the only options?
The answers to these questions depend a lot on each individual’s situation, but in this post, we hope to educate you on how to make these positive decisions and how to best adapt Google Ads during these challenging times.