Five Tips To Drive More Traffic For Your Apartment Community With PPC Marketing

Pay per click (PPC) marketing campaigns are among the most effective tools to drive high-conversion traffic to your site. That said, there are a few pointers to remember because PPC is best used to target specific types of buyers rather than general traffic. 

To do this, you need to know a few specific things about keywords, link building, and basic merchandising.

1. Understanding keywords

In terms of traffic volume and profitability, not all keywords are equal. For instance, when it comes to apartment marketing ideas, you should first understand the difference between single keywords and keyword phrases. 

Single keywords consist of a single word that people put into a search engine. "Apartments," for instance, is a single keyword that few people search for. Instead, they often use phrases like "apartments in Houston" because it covers the subject and location of their interest. 

This keyword phrase is known as a long-tailed keyword. Other long-tailed keyword examples include "safe apartments in Houston" or "one-bedroom apartments in Houston." The key to a long-tailed keyword is knowing what it is you want to sell and matching it with common phrases that people actually use.

Matching what you want to sell with the actual phrases people are searching for can be easily done on various sites that allow you to research keywords. Armed with this data, you can get an approximation of how many people are searching for various apartment-related keywords. 

Once you understand what people are searching for and how they are phrasing their searches, you can design your PPC ad around these long-tailed keywords.

2. Rotate keywords while emphasizing value

People search for different phrases, so it is important that you rotate between all the keyword phrases that describe your products. Doing so will help place your PPC ad in front of some people's eyes more than once if they search apartments repeatedly using different keywords. Rotating keywords will also help you reach other people who only use specific keywords.

When it comes to apartment marketing ideas, you need to emphasize the value of your apartments. For instance, you can emphasize size if you have particularly large units available. Other ways to emphasize value include the following focal points.

- size-to-cost ratio

- community reputation and safety

- local amenities

Whatever makes an available apartment desirable or different from competitors should be highlighted in your PPC advertisement because it will draw people interested in those features.

3. Avoid bidding on negative keywords

Some keywords indicate shoppers ready to buy while other keywords merely indicate past customers looking for more information. Regarding apartment complexes, past customers are those that have already moved in or are living in nearby complexes.

For instance, someone searching for "two-bedroom apartments in New York City" is probably planning to move soon. Conversely, someone searching for "movies near XYZ apartment complex" or "grocery stores near ABC condos" might very well have already moved into your apartment complex and is now searching for theaters and grocery stores.

Of course, these keyword phrases might indicate someone who is being proactive, but the best practice is to utilize keyword phrases that seem to suggest--without a doubt--that the searcher is a buyer and not a current tenant of your complex or a nearby one.

4. Link ads to relevant landing pages

Another best practice to incorporate into your advertisements is to link the advertisement to floor plans as this is the initial information that most renters want. They want to see the layout and size rather than the pool and the recreation room. Consequently, you will drive more people to your site if you link to the apartments you want to rent.

However, in terms of PPC ads, linking to bedrooms or floor plans must be done in a certain way if search engines, such as Google, are going to rate your ad high and place it higher in the search results. 

For instance, the link in your PPC ad must link to a page that your internal website pages do not already link to. In other words, you will receive far less traffic to your site if you duplicate link destinations. 

Conversely, if you have unique links, you will receive high traffic volumes because search engines will rank your ad as unique and useful. When they rank your ad as unique and useful, it will be placed higher in the search results, resulting in more traffic.

5. Identify low-competition keywords

In addition to bidding on long-tailed keywords, you can bid on phrases that are not highly sought after yet still represent a significant market segment. For instance, most apartment managers have a budget, and this budget limits their ability to compete for different keyword phrases. 

Consequently, they often select the most popular keywords for their PPC ads. However, PPC ads using popular keywords might not drive much traffic if they are always being shown alongside competing ads.

If, however, you focus on low-competition keywords that still represent a lot of people, you can improve the odds that your PPC ad places high in page placement simply because it has little or no competition. 

Basically, if no one is competing for placement for a keyword phrase that represents 2,000 people, you can reach all 2,000 of those people. If, however, you are competing for a keyword that targets 10,000 people, you might only reach a few hundred due to the higher competition.