Episode #119 – Google PPC For Real Estate Investors: My Favorite Google PPC Tips

You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.

Dan: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the REI Marketing Nerds podcast. As always, this is your pal, Dan Barrett, here from AdWordsNerds.com. How are you? I hope you're having a great day and a great week and a better month, and I hope you have been having an incredible year so far. [00:59.7]

If you have been listening over the past couple of weeks, you know this is the final episode in our series, all about Google PPC for real estate investors, going over the basics, going back to the foundational information that you need to understand Google PPC, understand Google Ads, and use it to generate motivated seller leads.

Now, if you haven't heard those episodes, go back, check them out. They are absolutely awesome and I cover a lot of the beginning information you're going to need to know in order to use Google Ads and use Google PPC. But, today, to finish up, we are going to be talking about my favorite tips, my favorite tricks, my favorite piece of advice to give real estate investors that want to use Google PPC to generate motivated seller leads.

Look, I named my company AdWords Nerds, okay? Clearly, I like Google Ads. I like Google PPC. It has been my favorite channel for online marketing for a really long time and, I don't know, I just like it. I don’t know. It fits my personality. [02:02.8]

Here are a couple things I would point out to you to do. If you are running Google Ads or maybe you're going to do that in the future, or you're thinking about it, here are a couple of things that I would strongly suggest.

One is that you really don't want to skimp on split testing your ads, and here's kind of an uncomfortable truth, right? If you look at ads for real estate investors across the online space, they all look pretty similar. They're all very, very similar. We are still in the age of kind of using the exact same copy we've been using on direct mail pieces since the ’90s. I mean, it just is where the industry is.

But if you look at what the iBuyers are doing, companies like Zillow with their instant offers, or Opendoor or Knock, or any of these companies that are kind of primarily venture-backed technology-based companies, web-based companies that are moving into this space, you'll notice that they didn't start with the “get an offer in seven minutes. I'll buy your house cash.” That's not their pitch. [03:13.0]

They're using very different copywriting approaches, very different marketing approaches, and, look, the jury is out on whether that's really the future or whether people are going to revert back to what has always worked. But I think there's a lot of opportunity to make yourself stand out in your marketplace, make yourself be a little bit different, make yourself sound a little bit different.

Of course, it's easy to say that, but when you're putting your marketing dollars to the test, when you're risking your money, it's very easy to say, or it's not easy but it's totally reasonable to say, Hey, I don't want to bet a bunch of money on stuff that isn't proven to work. All this classic stuff is proven to work. [03:56.2]

What split testing inside Google PPC, Google Ads, what that gives you is a way of seeing what works with very little risk. You could test 10 different headlines simultaneously for a total cost of, like, 50 bucks and you can see what appeals to sellers. You can see what attracts clicks and leads. There is a ton of robust testing capability within Google Ads. It's super important that you use it because that's kind of our lever for long-term improvement.

I talked in the last episode about the slight edge and about cumulative improvements. This is how we get that done. Whether you're testing at the ad level inside Google Ads, whether you're using Google Ads to run split tests on your landing page or you're sending half your traffic to Version A and half your traffic to Version B, and you're going to see which converts better, if you're doing all of that, you are going to have much better results over time. Do not skimp on testing different ads, testing different landing pages. [05:00.8]

The second thing I would say is this is a boring thing that lots of people skip over, but you really want to sit down and take an hour, and think about what your conversion goals are, because I’ve been saying conversion. I’ve said conversion multiple times in this series, but, of course, conversion could be anything really. How are we going to determine what our goals are?

Of course, we want people to email us, right? But we also want people to call us. Maybe you want people to text you. Maybe you don't just care about people who fill out the first page of your website, but you also want to track who fills out this second page, the second form on your website where you ask for more in-depth information. Maybe as we've been testing recently, you just want to send them straight to a scheduler, so they schedule a call or an appointment. You want to understand what your goals are, and—and here's the really critical part—make sure they are set up correctly inside Google Ads. [06:02.3]

If you can't accurately track which keywords and which ads are producing leads and producing conversions, and understand which conversions they are producing, you're never really going to be able to tap into that slight-edge constant-improvement thing done I've been talking about, right? Because when we talk about improvement, it's improvement towards the accomplishment of a goal, right? I'm not just testing the test. I'm testing to generate more leads, and to know whether I'm doing that is critical to the experimental process. I couldn't run a scientific experiment if I never could see the results. I want to know, Did I successfully clone a goal or not?

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Understanding your conversion goals and making sure that they are set up technically correctly is really, really critical. Look, it's boring. It's something that's a little technically complicated, but you can find all sorts of tutorials on this all over the web, or obviously you work with someone like us over at AdWords Nerds—we'll do all this for you—but you’ve got to make sure this is set up correctly. [07:38.5]

The other thing I would add to this is passing that information into your CRM, whatever system you're using to track your leads and deals, whether it's inside InvestorCarrot or you're using REI BlackBook, or you're using InvestorFuse, whatever system you're using, making sure you can see that where they came from and what ad they clicked on and what keyword that sent them there, see that stuff in your CRM. It's so critical, because then when you close, you know which ad generated that deal and you can really figure out your ROI. [08:12.1]

Last thing I would say, it's just about your website in general, and I mentioned this kind of all the way back in episode one, where I talked about, look, when you run ads, there's automatically a little hit you take to your trust quotient. If you're running an ad, people kind of put their defenses up, and you've heard me say this before if you've listened to this podcast and all, but, look, people don't really trust real estate investors. I hate to break it to you, people have the kind of a bad image in their heads of what real estate investors are, what they do. People are very wary of real estate investors.

So, you've got to do work on your website to make sure that you mitigate that, that you overcome that obstacle, and this could be as simple as using your first name in your copy so that they know who they're going to talk to. It could be as simple as putting pictures of you and your team on the website, so that people can see there are real people. [09:07.9]

It could be as simple as getting rid of the stock photography. I mean, how many real estate investing websites have I seen with the exact same couple standing outside the house, holding the sold sign that doesn't look like any sold sign anyone has ever used in real life, right? It's like you’ve got to get rid of that stuff and personalize it.

Tell your story. Connect on a human level with the seller because, you’ve got to understand, the seller is anxious. When we say “motivated”, what do we really mean? What we mean is that they're in a tough position. They have less leverage in the negotiation. That's what “motivated” is. That's why real estate investing works, and it's okay to pursue that as an opportunity to make profit and to make money, but we also got to understand that empathetically, emotionally, the person on the other end of that transaction, they're in a bad place most of the time. At the very least they're inconvenienced. [10:09.6]

So, how do we ease them through that experience where they don't just come out the other end, but they come out the other end feeling good about it and feeling good about us? That whole process starts in the website. It starts by building trust. It starts by being honest. It starts by being open and transparent. The good news is that that actually helps your Google PPC because it drives up your conversion rate and it makes your leads cheaper.

Everything ends up coming down to this. If you can be better at this, this process of building honesty, trust and reciprocity with the seller, you're not only going to get more deals. Your ads are going to be cheaper than everyone else and you are going to be able to dominate your market. [10:58.5]

Look, folks, I hope you have enjoyed this series all about Google PPC for real estate investors. Look, you know I love Google Ads. I named my company AdWordsNerds.com. If you want any help setting this up, here's what we do. We talk to investors literally every single day for free and help break down the exact strategy we would use in your market. Not a general strategy we use for everyone, [but] what we would do in your market based on what we know about your market because we have been in every market in the United States. We've helped hundreds of investors do deals with Google Ads and we can help you, too.
And, look, if you don't want to work together, it's totally fine. Take the strategy and implement it. I am not greedy. There's more than enough room for everybody. But if you want someone to help you, our expert team of Google PPC managers can help you do just that. All we do is work with real estate investors every day. [11:54.5]

To find more information on that, go to AdWordsNerds.com/Strategy, and you can sign up for a free call with our team today. It's a working call and it is not a sales call. We are there to help you and there to help you meet your goals, whether that includes working with us or not.

Obviously, we'd love to have you as a client, but, look, I’ve been doing these podcasts. I'm over 100 episodes. I'm close to 110 episodes at this point. Look, I don't always do it. I don't do this all for money, right? I really don't. I do this because I really believe this is the best way to help real estate investors achieve their goals. Real estate investors have been wonderful clients to me that you guys have changed my life and I'm trying to give back however I can.

With that, we're going to say goodbye to this series on Google PPC. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Make sure you go back and check out the other episodes, if you haven't already, and I will see you next week. This is Daniel Barrett from AdWords Nerds signing off. Cheers.

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