How Negative Keywords Work for Real Estate Agents
When running PPC campaigns, negative keywords are crucial in ensuring that your ads reach the right audience. By adding negative keywords, you prevent your ads from being shown to people who are not likely to convert into clients. For real estate agents, this means excluding searches that do not pertain to your specific services, saving you money and improving your ad performance.
We did a study of more than 1.4 million PPC searches on how people search for real estate agents online, in exact match, phrase match, and broad match PPC searches.
Our analysis of PPC advertising data highlights the urgent need for real estate agents to refine their strategies, particularly by focusing on the implementation of negative keywords to minimize wasted expenditure. Here's a headline breakdown of PPC inefficiencies in real estate advertising:
redo make 2 short paragraphs - make easy to read for a real estate agent - Why Negative Keywords Matter for Home Buyer Marketing
Maximize Your Marketing Budget:
Negative keywords ensure that your ads are shown only to relevant searchers, reducing wasted ad spend. This targeted approach improves the efficiency of your PPC campaigns, delivering a better return on investment (ROI). Filtering out irrelevant traffic means that your ads attract more qualified leads, leading to higher conversion rates. More than 38% of home buyers find their real estate agent through an online search, underscoring the importance of targeted keyword strategies (Omnicore Agency).
Optimize Campaign Performance:
With higher click-through rates (CTR) and improved ad relevance, your PPC campaigns will benefit from better positioning and lower costs per click (CPC). SEO efforts can result in an average ROI of 526% over three years, significantly enhancing your marketing strategy (FirstPageSage). Negative keywords improve the relevance of your ads, leading to higher quality scores and lower cost per click (CPC). This ensures that your ads reach the right audience, increasing the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and improving client acquisition rates.
Why Negative Keywords Matter for Home Buyer Marketing
Maximize Your Marketing Budget:
Negative keywords ensure that your ads are shown only to relevant searchers, reducing wasted ad spend. This targeted approach improves the efficiency of your PPC campaigns, delivering a better return on investment (ROI). Filtering out irrelevant traffic means that your ads attract more qualified leads, leading to higher conversion rates. More than 38% of home buyers find their real estate agent through an online search, underscoring the importance of targeted keyword strategies (Omnicore Agency).
Optimize Campaign Performance:
With higher click-through rates (CTR) and improved ad relevance, your PPC campaigns will benefit from better positioning and lower costs per click (CPC). SEO efforts can result in an average ROI of 526% over three years, significantly enhancing your marketing strategy (FirstPageSage). Negative keywords improve the relevance of your ads, leading to higher quality scores and lower cost per click (CPC). This ensures that your ads reach the right audience, increasing the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and improving client acquisition rates.
High Costs, Low Returns:
On average, only 2.35% of Google Ads convert into customers, emphasizing the high cost and often low return on investment. Source: WordStream
A significant majority of home buyers visit real estate websites to gather information and assess property options before making a purchase decision. This statistic underscores the importance of a well-designed, informative website for attracting and converting potential clients. - Source: National Association of Realtors
Broad Match Wastage: In broad match settings, as much as 65% of clicks are found to be irrelevant, suggesting that a significant portion of the advertising spend is being wasted on clicks that have no potential for conversion. This high percentage of wasted clicks underscores the necessity for real estate marketers to carefully consider their keyword match types and refine their targeting to reach genuinely interested buyers or sellers.
Phrase Match Concerns: While slightly more targeted, phrase match settings still result in about 41% of clicks being irrelevant. This inefficiency indicates that even with stricter keyword matching, substantial improvements are needed to align the traffic with actual real estate intent.
Exact Match Limitations: Surprisingly, even with exact match settings—where the expectation is for the highest relevancy—there is still a 25% rate of irrelevant clicks. This could be due to various factors including misaligned searcher intents or the presence of generic terms within the keywords.
Financial Implications: For a real estate marketing budget of $10,000 per month, these inefficiencies could result in a wastage of $3,500 to $6,500 monthly due to irrelevant clicks that do not contribute to actual business outcomes. This significant financial impact makes it imperative for advertisers to employ negative keywords effectively.
The Role of Negative Keywords: Negative keywords are crucial in refining PPC campaigns by blocking ad displays on searches that contain specific words or phrases, ensuring that only potential clients with high buying intent see the ads. This practice not only enhances the relevance of traffic but also boosts the overall ROI of PPC campaigns.
By focusing on meticulous keyword management and the strategic use of negative keywords, real estate agents can dramatically enhance the efficiency of their PPC campaigns, ensuring that every dollar spent is an investment towards reaching genuinely interested clients. This proactive approach is essential in today's competitive digital advertising landscape, where precision in targeting can define the success of marketing efforts.
Why Are Negative Keywords Important?
Prevent Wasted Spend: Negative keywords prevent your PPC campaign budget from being wasted on irrelevant clicks and queries. This ensures your ad spend is used efficiently, targeting only potential clients.
Critical for Success: Negative keywords are essential for the success of any Google Ads or Microsoft Ads campaign. They help refine your audience targeting, improving the overall effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.
Avoid Blocking Relevant Traffic: Without careful management, a conflicting negative keyword can block relevant traffic you are targeting. This means you could be missing out on valuable leads.
Filter Your Audience: Negative keywords help filter out who views your ad, ensuring your ads reach the right audience. This is particularly important in real estate, where targeting the right clients can make a significant difference.
The Impact of Variant Keywords
The PPC advertising world has evolved significantly with the introduction of "variant" keywords. This means that your targeted keywords can have several different meanings. For example, if you are targeting the keywords "real estate agent near me," your ads could appear for terms like:
- "real estate agent license"
- "real estate agent salary"
- "real estate agent reviews"
- "real estate agent classes"
- "real estate agent books"
How to Stop Irrelevant Clicks
The only way to stop these types of clicks is to make them "negative keywords." Add these irrelevant terms to your ad campaign's negative keyword list.
Examples of Negative Keywords for Real Estate Buyer's Agents
Real Estate Buyers Agents:
- License, Licensing: Ensures ads aren't shown to individuals looking to obtain a real estate license.
- Salary, Salaries: Prevents ads from appearing in searches related to real estate agent income.
- Classes, Class: Excludes queries from those seeking real estate education courses.
- Training, Courses: Filters out users looking for training programs rather than buying property.
- Careers, Jobs: Blocks ads from displaying to job seekers instead of potential homebuyers.
Specific Buyer Interests:
- Homebuying Process: Keeps ads away from those just looking for information on the homebuying process.
- Government Programs: Ensures ads are not shown to individuals seeking government assistance programs.
- First-Time Buyer Grants: Excludes users looking for financial assistance rather than property listings.
- Down Payment Assistance: Prevents irrelevant clicks from users interested in down payment support.
- Mortgage Calculators: Filters out users using tools to calculate mortgage payments instead of buying homes.
Property Viewing:
- Property Rentals: Ensures your ads are not displayed to those seeking rental properties.
- Property Photos: Prevents ads from appearing in searches for property images rather than listings.
- Home Inspection: Keeps ads away from users searching for inspection services instead of buying.
- School Districts: Excludes queries about school districts unrelated to purchasing a home.
- Neighborhood Crime Rates: Filters out users researching crime statistics rather than property listings.
Examples of Negative Keywords for Real Estate Sellers Agents
Real Estate Sellers Agents:
- License, Licensing: Ensures ads aren't shown to individuals looking to obtain a real estate license.
- Salary, Salaries: Prevents ads from appearing in searches related to real estate agent income.
- Classes, Class: Excludes queries from those seeking real estate education courses.
- Training, Courses: Filters out users looking for training programs rather than selling property.
- Careers, Jobs: Blocks ads from displaying to job seekers instead of potential home sellers.
Selling Process:
- Home Staging: Ensures ads do not appear for searches related to home staging services.
- Real Estate Photography: Prevents ads from showing to those looking for real estate photography.
- Selling Tips: Filters out users searching for tips on how to sell their property.
- Market Analysis: Keeps ads away from users seeking market analysis services rather than selling.
- FSBO (For Sale By Owner): Excludes searches from individuals wanting to sell their property without an agent.
Property Valuation:
- Home Appraisal: Ensures ads aren't shown to those looking for home appraisal services.
- Comparative Market Analysis: Prevents irrelevant clicks from users seeking market comparisons.
- Property Value Estimator: Filters out users using tools to estimate property value instead of selling.
- Real Estate Market Trends: Blocks ads from appearing in searches about market trends unrelated to selling.
- Home Improvement: Ensures ads are not displayed to users looking for home improvement tips.
Our Negative Keyword Lists for Real Estate Agents have more than 4,000 negative keywords that will block irrelevant clicks like these.
Contact Us Today!
To learn more about how these innovative strategies can benefit your real estate business, contact us at 888.253.0980. Start optimizing your online presence and see the difference in your client acquisition efforts!
