If you’re a real estate agent that wants to expand your web presence, read on. SEO is often the foundation of most internet marketing strategies, but PPC ads offer critical support to the success of your SEO efforts. Need proof? Wordstream conducted a study that found that PPC ads account for 64.6% of clicks for keywords with high commercial intent, compared to only 35.4% of clicks for organic results. Click-through rates (CTRs) are the usual metric for measuring a PPC ad’s success, but increasing your CTRs can be a little tricky. Don’t be afraid if you’ve ran ads in the past that have failed. The process can be challenging, and you’ll need someone with experience to manage your PPC account correctly. Ready to take the jump? We’ll give you the lowdown on a few ways to increase your click-through rates. Who knows? They might just surprise you.

Determine your relevant keywords.

First thing’s first: figure out which keywords are most relevant to your real estate company and determine which keywords will perform best for you in the search engines. Need some help? Try the Google Adwords Keyword Planner to find valuable keywords to use in your PPC strategy. You can also try out keywordtool.io or Ubersuggest to get the ball rolling. Ultimately, you should build a keyword list with thousands of terms. Yeah, that might sounds a little crazy, but you just might uncover a super secret keywords that delivers huge results on your campaign. Trust me here. After you’ve got your treasure trove of keywords, organize highly related ads and keywords into their own ad groups. This organization will give you more insight into how your keywords perform (and it will give you more control over each of your campaigns). Before you begin formulating your PPC ads, you should also think about negative keywords to narrow your scope. Negative keywords prevent your ads from appearing in search results for particular keyword phrases. For instance, maybe you’re an agent who sells lofts in Boston, but you notice that any time you type “lofts” into Google, Ann Taylor’s LOFT appears in the search results. You don’t want your ad to appear for people that are looking for women’s clothing. If you select “Ann Taylor” or “clothing” as a negative keyword, then you remove your PPC ads from these search queries, thereby only showing your ads to the correct audience – the one looking for real estate lofts. Targeted your audience with negative keywords will help increase your CTR.

Polish your PPC ads.

Personalization is key to successful copy for your PPC ads. Address your audience directly with words like “you” and “your,” and use keywords that are specific to your region of expertise. You can even use ad extensions (like location and call extensions) to further tailor your ads to your targeted audience. You can also leverage geographic exclusions to remove your ads from other states and towns. Much like negative keywords, geographic exclusions ensure that your ads only appear to a specified audience that will generate real conversions. Overall, you should avoid using overly general keywords in your ad. You should use targeted keywords that describe your real estate services in a very specific way. “Call now to sell your luxury home for the best market price in Boston” sounds better than “Call now for real estate service in Massachusetts.” Use action-centric keywords specific to your city and your clients’ wants, and always finish off your ads with a call to action. Make sure that you organize multiple campaigns around all of your services. This strategy is especially true for real estate agents. You can create specific campaigns centered on messages toward buyers, sellers, land transactions, or whatever niche you specialize in. These targeted campaigns will appear in front of people who search for those specific terms, so your ads will get the most exposure this way. Final step: determine your bidding. There are no hard and fast rules for setting your bids, but the more popular your targeted keyword, the more you’ll have to pay to get your ad in the lineup. Make an educated guess now (you can tweak these numbers later based on your ads’ overall performance). Pro tip: increase mobile bidding to boost your CTRs. People are more likely to click on an ad from a mobile device; your larger bid will make your ad more prominent in the search engines, and it will increase the likelihood of your ad being clicked by a lead.

Tweak your ads based on results.

Once you finalize your PPC campaigns and individual ads, monitor their performance. It’s always a good idea to A.B test your ad copy to see which ads get clicked the most. This information tells you which language works best among your clients and reveals your clients’ motivations. Are they sensitive to price? Are they looking for the best quality? Focus individual ads on these messages, and see which one perform the best. Once you find your top-performing ads, apply their tone to your low-performing ones. A word of warning: when you examine your click-through rates, it’s incredibly important to examine your conversion rates as well. If you have a high click-through rate and a low conversion rate, this means that people who click on your ad aren’t finding what they want. If this is the case, you’ll need to change your approach. You should also monitor your bids. It should be a balance between performance and cost. If success for a particular keyword is too cost-prohibitive, you might want to focus your attention on another keyword.