Buzzword bingo continues here on the AdWerx blog with our latest entry in the digital marketing lexicon: PPC for real estate agents. In this case, PPC is not a hallucinogenic. It’s an acronym that stands for Pay Per Click advertising.
Here’s how PPC works: a user types in a search on Google. That search contains keywords and phrases. Google serves up links to relevant websites. Google’s organic search results appear in the middle of its results pages. But at the top and along the right side, you’ll see results that look a little different. These are the PPC ads created with the Google AdWords platform.
The ads work just as their name suggests: you pay every time someone clicks. A PPC campaign is like a real-time auction. Here’s how it works:
1. You decide how much a certain keyword or phrase is worth to you.
2. When that keyword or phrase is typed in by a user, Google looks at your bid and compares it to the bids of other people.
3. The order of the results – also known as the ranking – is decided by who bids the most and who has the ad copy and landing page most relevant to the keyword.
4. When your ad is clicked on, you pay the amount of your bid.
Tips for getting started with PPC for real estate
Know your limits. Establish a daily budget. This is the most you can spend in any one day. Start with a small amount on a single ad for a set period.
Test and measure. Every time you run an ad, you set a budget and a time limit. When the time is done, take a look at your results. Then do it all again.
Test 1:
Test2:
Do your homework. Make liberal use of this nifty free keyword planning tool. You know your area well, but tools are great to offer some additional ideas for helping you find the combination of keywords for your PPC advertising.
Make PPC one of many tools. PPC advertising should be just one part of an overall brand awareness strategy. Even if folks don’t click on your ad, Google will tell you how many people saw it on their results page.
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