Pay-per-click ad campaigns are one of the best ways to generate immediate, qualified traffic and leads for home builders. They're a top outbound marketing method because they're amazing at getting your name out there, especially for keywords you know your target buyer is searching for. The only problem is, PPC isn't inherently geared for local sales.
If you bid on the keyword, "quality custom home builder," it's likely that your ad shows up in the search results pages of a searcher in Texas, which doesn't do you much good if you work in Michigan. Many home builders have started to combat this by bidding on keywords that include their location, like "custom home builder Grand Rapids," but that's just the start of a quality PPC campaign that targets local leads. To make sure you're getting the biggest number of qualified, local leads, here are a few tips to optimize your home building PPC strategy:
Pick the right city
If you're in home building, you know that for many builders, the city they advertise in isn't always the city they actually build in. For example, we're centered in Grand Haven, but many of the builders out here advertise themselves as Grand Rapids builders because Grand Rapids is a bigger city with a bigger pool of potential homebuyers. So before you even start your local PPC strategy, you need to decide which city names you want to bid on. It's a good idea to do some keyword research first, to figure out what people are actually searching, and what your competitors are bidding the most on.
For example, if you specialize in bigger, urban homes, it probably does make sense for you to target those searching for home builders in GR. But if your niche is smaller family homes out in the country, then it might make more sense to advertise your building company in smaller area cities, like Hudsonville, Coopersville, Spring Lake, and Grand Haven. So, do some testing to see which cities get the most qualified traffic for your company, and go with those.
Choose low competition, high search volume keywords
In the same vein, you want to choose keywords that have low competition, but high search volume, as you'll have to pay less to run those campaigns. If every builder in the area is bidding on general terms like "Builder in Grand Rapids," you'll have to pay a lot of money for leads that might not actually be that qualified. Whereas if you pick a long-tail keyword like, "affordable custom homes Spring Lake" you'll pay for less clicks, but you'll get more qualified traffic. Sure, less people are going to search for that long tail keyword, but the people who do are going to fit right into your niche clientele, and they're going to be closer to making a purchasing decision than someone who clicks on a very general, "builder in GR" search result.
Location-based ad extensions
Google, in its infinite wisdom, continues to improve search results in favor of user experience. In their work to make searches turn up the best results for searchers, they've implemented location-based ad extensions, so local businesses with Adwords campaigns can display location information like address, business hours, and even how long it will take the searcher to get to your office. By implementing location-based ad extensions in your Adwords campaign, when someone searches "custom home builders near me" or some other location-related keyword you've bid on, your search result will come up similar to the one below, one of our own clients in the GR area:
As you can see, below the desktop ad itself, Google has placed the location of the Whitmore Homes office, as well as their phone number and their hours. This extension works even better on mobile, because each piece of information becomes clickable. So, clicking on the address would take users to a map, clicking on the phone number would dial up Whitmore Homes, and clicking on the information button would give a potential client necessary information about when the company is open, and what it is that they do. This is easily one of the best ways to get your company more local traffic from paid searches. Check Google's site for more info on how to implement location based ad extensions in your PPC campaign.
Make your landing pages mobile-friendly
An insane amount of all internet traffic these days is conducted on mobile devices. If your PPC ads take visitors to a landing page that isn't optimized for mobile, you're going to lose money. By optimizing a landing page for mobile, you make it faster, more user-friendly, and better fitted to a smaller screen. This means that mobile users can navigate to, and around, that page easily, ensuring they're more likely to convert. If your landing pages aren't optimized, you're going to lose leads as soon as that page doesn't load in 10 seconds on their smartphones.
Have multiple landing pages
In addition to having mobile-friendly landing pages, you should have different landing pages corresponding to different PPC ads. Remember that not all of your visitors are going to come to your site ready to buy, so it's a good idea to have landing pages that address each step of the buyer's journey. Obviously, you're looking to find people in the decision making stage, but some of the long-tail keywords you're bidding on might target visitors who are just in the awareness or consideration stages. Make sure you have landing pages that address each of these visitors as well, so you can capture their contact information, offer them quality content that pulls them through to the decision making stage, and improve the number of leads you're generating over time.
Landing pages should match ads
In the same vein as the above point, you want to have multiple landing pages, but they have to match the ad they're put with. You can't have an ad that promotes a really awesome coupon for local clients, and then lead them to a landing page where they can download an ebook on how to perfect their ideal floorplan. This will only frustrate the visitors who do follow your PPC ads, and deter them from coming back to your site. So, in addition to having multiple landing pages, make triple-sure that each of those landing pages match the ad they're attached to. You'd be surprised at how often these sorts of mistakes happen, but double-checking is a key way to make sure you're not accidentally losing potential clients.
Remarketing
Another very successful way to run paid local ads is to implement a remarketing campaign. If you've ever gone online shopping and ditched your cart, remarketing is the reason ads keep popping up on Facebook and Google for the exact things you had in your cart when you ditched. For homebuilders, remarketing can also be successful, especially if you link your remarketing campaigns to your "Contact Us" or "Request a Quote" page. This way, whenever a visitor seems ready to convert to a lead, but leaves the page before filling out your contact form, they'll be reminded later of that decision when your remarketing ad pops up on their social media page.
It's a great way to keep your company fresh in clients' minds, and it's also a good practice for targeting local leads, because it's likely to be locals who were researching your website in the first place.
If you've got more questions about optimizing your home building company's PPC strategy to generate more local leads, don't hesitate to get in touch. We specialize in inbound marketing strategies for custom home builders, and would be happy help answer any questions you've got. To see how Evenbound has generated massive results for other companies, check out the case study below:
