In today’s digital landscape, paid search (PPC) is a cornerstone strategy for multifamily marketers looking to attract renters in an increasingly competitive marketplace. But timing is critical - activating your PPC campaign well before peak leasing season will give your campaign time to "learn" and optimize. PPC campaigns undergo a learning phase during which the Google Ads algorithm refines its understanding of your marketing goals, target audience, and KPIs. By starting a few months before leasing season, you’ll have a fully optimized PPC campaign ready to capture leads when demand is highest.

PPC Campaign Planning

Effective planning lays the groundwork for a successful PPC campaign. Here are key tactics to focus on:

1. Establishing a Budget
   •  In order to determine a monthly ad spend, you should consider: some text
     1. Your overall marketing budget
     2. The average cost per click (CPC) in your market
     3. The number of leads you aim to generate
     4. Your desired timeline for achieving occupancy goals. 
     5. How other channels (such as ILS, paid social, or geofencing ads) will contribute to lead generation
     6. Competition in your market and lead-to-lease conversion metrics
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2. Keyword Research
   • Start with broad keywords like:some text
     1. Apartments near me
     2. Apartments for rent
     3. Apartment in <city name>
   • Then add in variations that include specific neighborhoods, property characteristics and amenities, like:some text
     1. 2 bedroom pet friendly apartments in <city name>
     2. <city name> luxury apartments near <attraction>
     3. 1 bedroom apartment under $2,000 per month 
     4. <neighborhood name> apartment with electric car chargers 
   • Finally, leveraging keywords that are driving effective organic search results is also a great tactic for PPC campaigns.  
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3. Defining Your Target Audience: While multifamily marketers must comply with FHA guidelines, it’s still important to define a target audience. Narrow your focus by geography, behavioral characteristics, and lifestyle. This often means targeting people within a specific radius of your property.
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Campaign Buildout

Proper campaign structure and execution are key to PPC success.

1. Campaign, Ad Group, and Keyword Structure: High-performing PPC campaigns start with an organized account structure. Start with defining the types of keywords you want to leverage (brand, non-brand, competitor), then categorize them into tightly themed ad groups with 10-20 closely related keywords per ad group.
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2. Ad Copy Development: Write compelling headlines and descriptions highlighting unique selling points, such as amenities, pricing, and special offers. Include a clear call-to-action (CTA) like “Schedule a Tour Today” to drive a healthy click thru rate (CTR). Features like Dynamic Promos for RentSearch. enable you to showcase enticing promotions and concessions directly within your paid search ads. This powerful feature integrates with RentMarketplace., ensuring your ads always reflect the latest offers.
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3. Bid Strategy: With Google’s smart bidding algorithm, you can set your bid strategy to align with your property’s current marketing goals. This includes maximizing impression share, clicks to the website, lead generation, or target return on ad spend (ROAS). Google also still supports the use of manual keyword bidding if you want more granular control over ad spend and CPCs.
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4. ‍Audience Targeting: For optimal targeting, consider importing custom audiences or leveraging Google’s third-party segments. While third-party data can be helpful, first-party data offers the most accurate and valuable insights, providing a deeper understanding of renter preferences and search behavior. RentSearch. leverages Rent.'s exclusive first-party data to target your ads with laser precision, reaching renters who are actively searching for properties like yours. This data-driven approach maximizes your return on investment by ensuring your budget is spent effectively on the most qualified leads.
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5. Negative Keywords: Add irrelevant terms as negative keywords to prevent wasting your budget on low-quality clicks. For instance, exclude competitor brand names or terms like "cheap apartments" if you’re promoting a luxury property.
   

Performance Tracking

Tracking PPC performance metrics is critical to ensuring you have visibility of campaign results and can optimize as needed. 

1. Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Create a GA4 account and install the code snippet on the property website to feed website data to GA4. GA4 can track valuable metrics like website sessions, user engagement, time on site, and bounce rate.
   
   
2. Conversion Tracking with Google Tag Manager (GTM): Configure GTM on the property website to track key conversion events like form submissions, tour requests, and lease applications. GTM can feed these conversion events to GA4 for reporting purposes.
   
   
3. Call Tracking and Dynamic Number Insertion: With PPC, the majority of leads will stem from phone calls to the leasing office. It’s important you are using a call tracking platform or system to attribute these calls to your PPC campaign. Call tracking platforms also offer sophisticated adtech that can integrate call data within GA4 and Google Ads to drive more effective results via 1st party audience data collected from the campaign.
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PPC Campaign Launch

Once your PPC campaign launches, Google Ads enters a learning phase. This period typically lasts 60-90 days as Google optimizes your campaign for performance and tailors ad delivery, bidding, and ad copy to fit your specific marketing strategy and goals. During this time, fluctuations in metrics like CPC and conversion rate are expected.

As the campaign matures, a Paid Media Analyst should begin optimizing results. Here is a short list of common optimization tactics (note: there are a lot more!)

• Refine negative keyword lists to block wasteful clicks and traffic
• Pause underperforming ad groups or keywords - this could include neighborhoods, amenities, or floor plans that are taking ad spend, but not delivering valuable results
• Apply bid modifiers to prioritize high-performing audiences or devices. When using 1st party audience data, bid modifiers can be a powerful tactic for targeting the right user at the right time with the right bid. 
• Adjust ad copy, calls to action, and ad extensions as the campaign progresses
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Paid Search KPIs

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential for measuring success. Focus on the following metrics early on.

1. Cost Per Click (CPC): Ensure CPCs are aligned with market expectations
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2. Click-Through Rate (CTR): High CTR signals that your ads resonate with your audience and are driving action
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3. Conversion Rate: Are PPC clicks converting to phone calls and leads?
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4. Cost Per Lead (CPL): CPL is often the most important metric on which to base campaign effectiveness
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Bonus Content! Why Stakeholders Might Not See PPC Ads

It’s common for stakeholders to wonder why they don’t see PPC ads for targeted keywords. There are a number of reasons why.

• Geographic Location: Ads only show within a defined radius of your property
• Budget Constraints: Limited budgets may prevent ads from appearing during every search. It’s very difficult to maximize impression share unless your budget is high.
• Auction Dynamics: Competitors or search behavior changes can influence visibility.
• Frequency Capping: To avoid ad fatigue, campaigns may limit how often ads are shown to the same user.
• Audience Targeting: Whether you’re using custom first party audiences, Google’s third-party audiences, or other custom segments, if the stakeholder doesn’t fit this criteria, there is a good chance they won’t be served the PPC ad.

Launching a PPC campaign for multifamily marketing requires careful planning, execution, metrics tracking, and optimization. By starting early and dialing-in your PPC strategy before peak leasing season, digital marketers can position their campaigns to deliver maximum value and attract high-quality leads.

Looking for a multifamily digital agency or PPC partner. Contact us for a free consultation and budget recommendation.