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How to Boost Your Property Management Marketing Using Google Ads

Written by Heather Park | 1:00 PM on November 19, 2019

With all the juggling you do in your property management business—keeping clients happy, managing leases and tenants, working with service providers for move-in, move-out, and repairs—don't you wish new clients would come to you? Marketing for property management can take time away from your daily business activities. 

Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) reach potential clients faster than organic searches alone. Instead of waiting for months, ads target the people who are searching right now for property management help!

A strategy is a plan: you build a strategy with tactics or action steps that help you accomplish the goal of your strategy. If your goal is to get new clients, Google Ads facilitates almost instant results. 


Set up Your Ads for Best Results

You'll need a Google account to create your Google Ads. Then, go to Google Ads to start your advertising campaign. You pay for Google Ads on a pay-per-click basis. That means you only pay for people who respond by clicking your ad. It's cost-efficient targeting—unlike ads in local papers where you pay for everyone who sees your ad.

  1. On the first page, skip Google Smart Campaigns (formerly Ads Express) and choose Expert Mode. You'll end up with more control and data to help you plan future ads.
  2. On the next page, you are asked to choose a campaign. Before you choose a campaign, go to the bottom and choose, Create an account without a campaign. Then, confirm your business information.
  3. Once that's done, click Explore Your Account. Go to the top of the page. Under Tools, select Billing and Payment. You need to set this up to run a campaign.

When you are just getting started, choose Search Campaign. 

Choose Your Goal

Google Ads work best when you have a goal. So, before you create an ad campaign for your property management website, know what you want to achieve. 

When you are starting with Google Ads, keep your goal simple, like getting people to your website. Your Ads goal is to have them fill out your contact form. 

For the ads to be most effective, connect your website with Google Analytics. Go to your admin page, then follow procedures to link analytics with your Google Ads account. This creates auto-tagging for your Google accounts. Now you'll be able to see Analytics information in your Ads account. Set up goals in Google Analytics like page views and duration to track actions from your ads, then import your goals into Google Ads.

For example, if you set up a Page Views goal, use this to track Conversions in Google Ads. 

Track for Google Analytics and Conversions to get the most information on the results of your ad campaign. Once you're set-up, you are almost ready to create an ad campaign. There's just one crucial step missing: your landing page.

Create Your Landing Page

Google Ads are designed to bring you new customers by directing them to a landing page on your website. This is one of the best ways to track visits from your ad. Its primary purpose on your property management website is to capture lead information—like email and phone numbers. A Google Ads campaign directed toward a landing page will start bringing you leads who are already interested in your business. 

With a page to respond specifically to your ad, you are ready to start your campaign.

Select Your Keywords

Your ads will have the best results when you select keywords that people use when searching for property management help. How do you know what people search for in queries? There's a great free tool called "Answer The Public" that harvests the phrases people use online. 

The right keywords get your ad in front of the right people. Selecting your keywords is crucial to getting prospects to respond to your ad. Keywords are so important that Google Ads has a helpful keyword planner that will refine the keywords and estimate the cost of using each keyword. 

  • Make your keyword list.
  • Save it in a file to easily import your keyword list when you create your ad.

Set up Your Ad Campaign

To start your campaign, you need to pick a campaign type.

  • To start, you want a Leads campaign: your goal is to get more clients to use your services.
  • Decide on your monthly spend budget for your campaign. Google will average your daily spend over the course of the month based on this amount. Keep your budget small for your first few ads as you learn how your ads perform.
  • Add extensions to your ads—like a site link for your landing page, or a call extension with your phone number to help ad viewers get in touch.
  • Set the maximum bid price that you want to pay for each click. You only pay for people who click on your ad, not whoever sees your ad. Start with one dollar to test the waters.
  • Set your ad group to Standard. 

Now you are going to use the keywords you found earlier and add them to your ad. As you continue, separate your keywords into groups for separate ad campaigns. The more targeted you make your ad groups, the better your quality score with Google. Yes, Google scores your ads, and higher scores lower costs.

You can create up to five ad groups, so think about lease management, tenant complaints, move out, and other specific concerns. Focus on the areas property owners struggle with the most. Use phrase-match keywords or modified keywords when you are starting with Google Ads.

Now you are going to create the text for the ad with headlines.

  • Create at least three ads for each ad group.
  • These ads help Google optimize your campaign and serve the best performing ads. 

Finally, you are ready to run your ads to get highly targeted leads!

Make Your Marketing Easy!

Google Ads create a system for property management that eases your workflow. Once set up, your ads bring leads to you—saving hours of time and expensive non-targeted advertising. 

Google Ads work faster than SEO: they increase brand awareness to reach more potential clients. You'll discover that marketing for property management becomes more efficient with targeted results for your advertising dollars. 

At Geekly Media, we're ready to help guide and monitor property management Google Ads to increase your flow of quality leads. You focus on your business—we manage the workflow automation. If you could use a little extra support, reach out to us for a consultation! It'll give us a chance to get to know you and the unique nature of your needs.