I’m going to start this blog with an assumption about you, the reader: you are likely familiar with Google Ads, you understand the benefits of search engine marketing and display advertising for real estate, and you have likely seen your digital marketing efforts grow your business. If these ring true or if you’re simply eager to discover new ways to fuel your growth, read on to learn how responsive display ads can generate more clicks and more leads at a lower cost.

Hold On, What Are Responsive Display Ads?

Responsive display ads are ads served on Google’s Display Network that show users personalized content based on multiple factors such as the websites they’re on, devices they’re using (desktop, mobile, etc.), browsing history and behavior, and more. Google’s machine learning technology pairs images you upload with headlines you provide in order to achieve the best performance as dictated by the campaign strategy. There are strategies to maximize clicks and maximize conversions or leads, among others. Responsive display ads are great because they can be launched quickly and provide really valuable insights. Because Google pairs so many different combinations of images and text together, by adding responsive display ads to your real estate digital marketing strategy, you can get a really good understanding of what matters most to your potential customers, and use that to inform your other marketing efforts, such as search engine marketing, website content creation, social media marketing, blogging, and more. Let’s dive into some of the numbers to see just how well responsive display ads work to drive real estate leads.

Three Ways Responsive Display Ads for Real Estate Work

1. Time

Before I begin a deep dive into the analytical side of the benefits of responsive display ads, one thing is key: the amount of time you will save by running responsive display ads is an important factor. Easily one of the most compelling reasons to add responsive display ads to your display campaigns is that they are considerably less time-consuming to create initially than image ads. Responsive display ads leverage Google’s machine learning capabilities to conduct A/B tests on different combinations of ad headlines, descriptions, and images in a much more robust and efficient way. If you are to utilize, hypothetically, five different images, five different headlines, and five different descriptions, that would enable Google’s machine learning algorithms to conduct A/B testing on 125 different combinations of ad content. You can create this many individual ad variations manually and, by leveraging Google’s advertising technology to do it instead, you can spend more time on analysis and strategic recommendations (i.e. what’s next?). Google helps you use your assets to build the best performing display ads possible in an exponentially faster way than trial-and-error testing of manually created image ads, which means getting further, faster in uncovering the messaging that will resonate most with your audience and generating real estate leads sooner.

2. Performance

As promised, it’s time to dig into the numbers. 

To understand the true potential of responsive display ads, our team ran real estate display advertising campaigns with two different levels of ad spend, low and high. We then compared the campaigns with responsive display ads to those without them. Looking at how they performed during Q2, the differences are compelling. 

➔ The low-spend campaign with responsive display ads saw approx. double the number of clicks as the non-responsive display ad campaign. The high-spend campaign did even better, driving almost triple the number of clicks than the non-responsive display ad campaign. 

➔ The click-through rate on the lower-spend responsive display ad campaign was more than double the non-responsive display ad campaign. 

➔ The high-budget responsive display ad campaign saw 3.8x the number of impressions as the non-responsive display ad campaign; that sheer increase in traffic added much more value to the campaign, driving greater visibility along with the increase in clicks. 

➔ Lead conversion rates for both responsive display ad campaign spend levels were higher, with the low-cost campaign seeing triple the conversion rate vs. the non-responsive display ad campaign. This equated to 6x the number of conversions.

➔ The large-budget responsive display ad campaign had more than triple (3.4x) the number of conversions of the non-responsive display ad campaign.

The performance of display campaigns that include responsive display ads hugely outperforms the performance of display campaigns without them. The fact that the responsive display ads drove double and triple the growth across key performance indicators, as opposed to smaller increases, also speaks loudly to the value of responsive display ads when included in display advertising campaigns for real estate at any spend level.

3. Optimization

Given the value and performance of responsive display ads, it would only be natural to assume that results like these come with a heftier price tag. However, the reality is that the opposite is true. More times than not, responsive display ads see similar performance at a more optimized cost level. Here are some examples: 

➔ The low-spend campaign running responsive display ads had an average cost per click of about half the cost of the campaign without responsive display ads. This is also true for the higher-spend campaign, which had a cost per click closer to one-third of the cost of the non-responsive display ad campaign. 

➔ The cost per conversion and cost per lead numbers paint a much similar picture. The higher spend campaign had a cost per conversion that was less than one-third of the cost per conversion of the non-responsive display campaign. The low-spend campaign saw a cost per conversion that was one-sixth the cost per conversion of the non-responsive display ad campaign.

More clicks and leads for the same or even less money? Yes, please! Letting Google find and create your highest-performing ads, freeing you up to spend more time growing your business in other ways, including leveraging your customer insights to improve your other digital marketing efforts? Heck yeah!!! Simply put, responsive display ads provide real estate companies with an almost too-good-to-be-true opportunity to spend more efficiently and achieve exponentially better results.

Want to learn more about the best digital marketing strategies for your business, including display advertising for real estate? Let’s connect to discuss your goals.