The future of mortgage marketing is digital. Gone are the days when you have to list your business on yellow pages or pay for print ads to get your brand seen by your target customers. In this digital age, people can easily find businesses with just a few clicks of a button. This online transformation provides both challenges and advantages to mortgage companies. Without knowing how to promote your business online and dominate internet searches, businesses can suffer from inconsistent leads and poor cash flow. Since lead generation and sales serve as the backbone of mortgage businesses, it is important to utilize a marketing strategy that boosts your business to its true potential.
In this blog post, we will learn about PPC advertising, an internet marketing model that has been changing the game for mortgage companies.
Below are the many reasons why you should implement PPC advertising in your overall marketing game plan:
1. Google Is The Biggest Search Engine
The most obvious reason why you should invest in PPC Ads is that 92% of internet users use Google to search for products and services online. It is the most popular search engine in the world, processing approximately 63,000 searches a second. In this digital age, most consumers prefer to conduct an internet search before making a purchase.
Mortgage borrowers are typing their search queries on Google and browsing the top websites shown in search results. PPC Ads allow your business to appear on top of Google search results and promote it to your targeted leads. Businesses that appear on the first page of search results pages have a higher probability to generate more traffic and boost more sales.
2. PPC Ads Deliver Instant Results
Compared to other digital marketing methods, running pay-per-click ads provide immediate results. Social media marketing takes a lot of time to give you results. It will require a creative team to build your social media pages, produce graphics, write content, and manage various platforms. Aside from consuming tremendous time, it also involves a collaborative effort of graphic designers, writers, and social media managers.
Though Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has the same goal as PPC advertising, it takes months to see results. With SEO, you have to optimize content, fix technical errors, and constantly check your website performance. With PPC, you can run ads instantly and get faster results.
3. PPC Ads Make Your Business The First Option
On average, you will see 10 websites on the first page of Google search results. With 71-92% of web traffic generated from the first page of Google, businesses are competing to get their name on top. Businesses that appear on the third to tenth pages of Google have lower chances of getting more clicks and conversions. This is because most people trust the first page of Google SERPs and will not waste time digging multiple pages.
Since PPC Ads are shown on the first page of Google, they simply tell internet users that your website is one of the best results for their queries. With this, your website gets more attention and web visitors will likely prioritize checking you out before finding other options.
4. PPC Advertising Is An Effective Short-term Tactic
If you are just starting your mortgage lending company and have a limited budget, PPC advertising is the way to go. It will be hard for you to set up a social media page and beat your competitors who already have existing 10,000 followers. That will take time and resources.
With PPC Ads, you can put your business in fair competition. It allows you to create ads and launch campaigns instantly without the need to do other online activities. Once you get your ads approved, you can push them live right away and reach your prospective buyers.
5. PPC Ads Pull Quality Traffic
Compared to all web traffic sources, Google Ads brings the best traffic. This is because people are already taking the initial step of the buying journey. The traffic on search engines comes from people who are actively searching for a product or solution. It is different from social media traffic where you create posts that encourage the audience to click on something. This means that you don’t need to push promotions and persuade people to buy. When people are searching on Google, they already have an intention of buying. Search traffic pulls quality and interested leads, giving you higher chances of converting them into customers.
6. PPC Ads Boost Website Traffic
Getting on top of Google search results using organic methods takes years. It involves a ton of content creation, A/B testing, website updates, and troubleshooting. If you recently had your website built, you want to make a strong first impression and stand out from your competitors. PPC advertising allows your business to be seen by potential customers when they are searching for relevant terms.
Even if your website is not performing well in organic rankings, you can still promote your business and get found by interested customers online. When people click on your ads and arrive at your landing pages, it is your opportunity to convert them into paying customers.
7. PPC Site Visitors Are More Likely To Convert
Leads that come from internet search traffic give you higher chances of making a sale. By positioning your brand on search engines, you are increasing your reach and sales profitability. With PPC ads, you do not need to do any hard-selling techniques to convince your buyers. Instead, you can tell them what the next steps are, and guide them down to your sales funnel. Search traffic delivers the best conversion rates and converts 50% better than organic traffic. Other sales tactics such as social media messaging and email drip sequences make you deal with cold leads. In PPC advertising, each lead is a hot lead who is ready to buy your products and services.
8. You’ll Only Pay For Clicks
PPC stands for the “pay-per-click” fee model. This means that businesses only pay for each click received rather than the whole campaign set-up. When you look at other marketing methods, no one has the feature and flexibility that the PPC model provides. In most cases, you will have to invest upfront to create and launch advertisements. If your ads work great, then you can continue to scale. However, if the results are not successful, consider it a loss in ad spending. Using the pay-per-click model, you can minimize risks and pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
9. You Can Control PPC Advertising Spend
The good thing about PPC Ads is that there are no lock-in restrictions. The Google advertising program allows advertisers to make changes to the campaigns if they are not performing well. You have complete freedom to stop them if you want to. How much are you willing to spend on your online advertising efforts? With PPC advertising, you can set a fixed budget and keep the ads running until the budget is all consumed. Also, you can control the maximum ad spend per day and Google will automatically run the campaigns according to your budget – nothing more, nothing less. With flexibility in budget spending, you can test and optimize your strategies without spending too much money.
10. PPC Ads Are Not Dependent On Algorithm Changes
An algorithm is a set or sequence of systems and rules designed to deliver an outcome or result. For example, if you are doing SEO, you need to follow the best content marketing practices when it comes to content creation and website optimization. That might involve researching keywords, performing competitor analysis, inserting backlinks, and more. In social media marketing, a successful post also follows specific rules such as character count, image sizes, and hashtags.
In PPC Ads, you do not have to worry about algorithm changes as they will not be able to affect your campaign performance. There is no need to check previous metrics and changes. Instead, you can just focus on the essential factors that affect PPC performance which include your bid, expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page.
11. PPC Ads Are Measurable
You have probably used different marketing methods for your mortgage lending business. Traditional advertising methods such as newspapers, direct mail, and brochures do not provide enough data that will help you determine the success of your marketing efforts. You are just throwing money blindly and hoping that you will get more clients while not being sure of the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
In PPC advertising, you can easily measure the performance of all your ad campaigns. You can measure your return on ad spend (ROAS) as well as track which ad placements and keywords are giving you the best return. By learning about which ads are working, you can make informed decisions and scale your campaign.
12. You Can Run And Test Multiple Ads
Unlike other advertising methods where you have to wait for a campaign to end to analyze the results, PPC advertising allows you to tweak your ads in real-time. With this feature, you can minimize wasted ad spending and ensure that you are getting the most return on your investment. In addition, you can also run and test various ad sets and identify which ad gets the most traffic and conversions. You can A/B split test the keywords, types of ads, ad copies, and landing pages. If one ad set is not pulling in the right traffic, you can simply stop or alter your campaign in real-time.
13. You Can Easily Get Started
Even though you don’t have any digital marketing background, you can easily learn the ropes of PPC ads. The learning curve is not that steep. It is not as complicated as developing a website or running SEO campaigns. By learning the fundamentals and essentials of PPC ads, you can try it out and eventually run successful ads on your own. The basics of Google Ads include understanding different campaign types, keywords, advert creation, and auction systems. Once you learn how to target the right keywords, craft well-written ads, and set the right budget, you can have a massive chance to outperform your competitors even if they have been running PPC Ads for years.
14. PPC Ads Increase Leads And Sales
Since PPC advertising is easily measurable and you can work on a flexible budget, you can develop effective ad campaigns that attract more leads and conversions. The key here is knowing how to create the best offer for your products and services. When implemented correctly, you can drive more traffic and revenue to your business while lowering ad spend. When running PPC ad campaigns, you can start at a low amount until you determine what strategy works best. Once you get consistent and positive results, you can spend more and scale your ads.
15. Reach People At Specific Times
The ability to target specified times is what makes PPC Ads more advantageous than other forms of advertising. Imagine showing your ad to the right people at the right time. Surely, the results will be incredible! Google ads offer a time targeting option where you can set preferences on what time you would like to show your ad to your target audience. You can set your ads to show during the peak hours of the day or during a specific period of the week.
For example, you can choose your ads to appear between 9 am – 1 pm on weekdays or display them every 3 pm on weekends. By using the time targeting option, you can identify the hours of the day when most of your prospects are online. This will help you adjust your bids and maximize ad visibility.
16. PPC Ads Enable Geo-targeting
Google ads offer a lot of customization features. Aside from time targeting, it also has a geo-targeting feature where you can also show your PPC ads to a specific location. This allows you to create highly-targeted and customized campaigns. With geo-targeting, you can deliver your message to your prospective customers based on their location.
For example, a mortgage loan company in Texas can target people who are looking for VA loans in the same postcode. By targeting specific locations, your ads can effectively reach internet users. You can target different cities, states, regions, postal codes, and even airports. You can also exclude locations where you don’t want to show your ads.
17. Support SEO Campaigns With PPC Data
Though running Google ads won’t have a direct effect on your SEO ranking, it can improve your SEO strategy. By collecting data and interpreting metrics, you will be able to know how a potential customer interacts with your website. Since PPC ads are focused on getting a direct response from your target audience, you can identify what actions you need to implement to drive the best results. This involves identifying questions to answer, knowing what landing pages to create, learning the high-converting keywords, and improving ad copies. Using the information gathered from PPC ad campaigns can help your SEO team to prioritize the key factors that drive the best results.
18. Nurture Lost Customers With Remarketing
Sometimes, internet users need more time to decide before making a purchase. While there are hot leads ready to buy, there is also a portion who are not ready to convert yet. The important thing is they see your brand online and will probably check you out when the time is right.
However, not because they don’t convert, you won’t follow them up. You can run retargeting ads that remind your audience to complete the desired action. These remarketing ads target those who have previously visited and left your website without converting. Remarketing is an effective long-term strategy if you have a good number of monthly visitors to your website, allowing you to display ads and build more brand awareness.
19. Boost Brand Awareness
Brand visibility is the major challenge that new businesses face when marketing online. If you are starting your business from scratch and have not fully established your digital marketing blueprint, you will find it difficult to generate enough traffic and leads. It is hard to reach your target audience without having traction and engagement.
This is where the benefits of PPC ads come into play. Despite starting from the ground up, it gives you the ability to promote your business and get seen for high-volume searches. By advertising your business on Google, you’re increasing your exposure and creating a buzz about your brand online.
20. PPC Ads Are Scalable
Since Google ads allow you to have complete control over your budget and targeting options, you can start small and gradually increase your ad spend depending on the results of the campaigns. Whether you want to increase or lower your ad budget or pause a specific campaign, you can easily do so at the touch of a button.
Aside from scaling and optimizing your ad budget, you can also gauge and scale keyword performance. You can filter low-performing keywords and adjust your keyword bidding strategy until you find out the best bidding system that delivers the most traffic and revenue.
21. PPC Ads Are Less Risky
The challenge with other marketing methods such as SEO is that Google regularly updates its algorithm. That means, what works today might not become beneficial tomorrow. Similarly, social media platforms are also experiencing various changes that could affect the way how businesses advertise and connect with their audience.
AdWords are not affected by these changes and updates. Instead of worrying about the next algorithm updates, you can just focus your effort on creating a solid PPC strategy. With PPC ads, you know where your money is going, unlike other methods where results are not guaranteed.
22. PPC Ads Can Drive Offline Sales
Though most business transactions today are conducted online, getting more people to your physical location boosts your business reputation and customer service. If customers see your business in search results, they might drive to your physical location and visit your mortgage office.
This trend will continue to grow as more customers are doing local searches to guide their purchasing decisions. Even though the sale happened offline, it all started via an online search.
23. Your Competitors Are Using PPC Ads To Grow
This is probably the most straightforward reason why you should use PPC ads. If your competitors are using Google advertising to grow their business, why shouldn’t you? Online marketing is a clash of sales and lead generation strategies. If you are not advertising your business in search results, you are simply giving away potential customers to your competitors. Instead of not taking action, go with the pack and study the online activities of your competitors. Know what types of ads they are running and how they attract their customers to buy their products and services.
24. You Can Hyper-Target Your Customers
Not all leads that come to your website are qualified leads. In the mortgage industry, there are different types of loans. Some leads might click on your ad but not proceed to convert if the offer and description are not aligned with what they are searching for. To reach your ideal customers effectively, you can use hyper-specific targeting options. This will enable you to send targeted messages based on certain criteria such as customers’ search behavior, demographics, and the type of content they are viewing. Using segmentation and targeting options, you can position your ads better. For example, if someone is looking to purchase a fixed-rate mortgage loan, your ad about that query will be shown and not the one about other types of mortgage.
25. PPC Ads Attract New Customers Fast
Growing leads takes time. If you are using email marketing to get leads, you might work on building email drip campaigns and creating a lead magnet. Then, you’ll have to run ads and ask people to subscribe to your mailing list. That process consumes your valuable time and resources.
With PPC Ads, you don’t need to perform any prerequisites to start the campaign. Once you created your Google Ads account and get familiar with the basic terms, you can start creating ad campaigns right away. This allows you to reach your prospective buyers instantly and grow your customers fast.
26. PPC Ads Have Powerful Targeting Options
PPC advertisers have a lot of options to target their ideal customers. Aside from the ability to target location and time, you can also target your customers based on the device they are using. Another option is demographics targeting where you can target customers by gender, age, and even household income percentiles. By combining multiple targeting methods, you can launch specific campaigns designed for the types of audience you want to target.
27. PPC Ads Make Your Business Competitive
More than 50% of businesses fail in their first year. One of the biggest reasons is the lack of a solid online marketing strategy. Without a sales-driven marketing system, it is difficult to make your brand stand out and almost impossible to beat your competition. Imagine you are just starting in business and your major competitors are already dominating the market for years. It will take years before you match up their online presence, audience engagement, and sales.
Fortunately, PPC advertising can put you on a level playing field where you have strong fighting chances against your competitors. You can work on a limited budget, target niche keywords, run ads, and enter the competition immediately.
28. PPC Ads Help Customers Make Informed Decisions
In this digital age, everyone is becoming a smart buyer. Instead of making impulsive decisions, consumers take time to research businesses and compare options. Most people trust the results on the first page of Google. Since Google Ads show on top of search results, customers will notice your business and give it a click or visit. Your business will be one of their options when making a buying decision. By showing up on Google, you are sending signals to your audience to check your website and review your offering.
29. PPC Ad Format Is Better Than Organic Search Format
When you look at the organic search result, you will commonly see an SEO Title Tag and a 160-character meta-description. That format gives you limited words and space to use to provide descriptions of your products and services. PPC advertising formats are different. They give you more options to provide details about your offerings. Aside from site links, you can add customer reviews, call tracking, and related search terms. There are also different types of ad formats that you can utilize depending on your campaign objectives.
9 Types of Google Ads:
• Responsive Search Ads
• Dynamic Search Ads
• Display Ads
• App Promotion Ads
• Shopping Ads
• Video Ads
• Call-only Ads
• Local Search Ads
• Local Service Ads
30. PPC Ads Allow You To Advertise Locally Or Globally
Google Ads gives you the flexibility to reach out to your potential customers wherever they are located. Whether you want to advertise your local business, market to specified locations, and drive traffic globally, you can do it. If your target audience is local, you can specify regions, cities, and even the mile radius where you want your ads to be shown. Compared to social media posts where only your followers can see your content, PPC ads promote your business to a wider audience.
31. PPC Ads Limit Your Ad Spend
With Google Ads, you don’t have to worry about unexpected bills and hidden charges. Google Analytics is mostly free and you can access data in real-time. With free analytics tools and resources, you can have an in-depth look at your ad campaign performance. You will see the different ad sets, budget allocation, and how each campaign generates results. This will help you ensure that every penny spent is worth the investment.
32. PPC Ads Are Better Than Other Advertising Methods
There are many advantages of PPC ads compared to other marketing tactics such as Facebook Ads. In Facebook advertising, you pay for ad space while in PPC, you only pay each time the ads get clicks. Also, Facebook Ads demand more work and monitoring because you can be marketing to a cold audience. In PPC advertising, your audience is already in the buying stage, hunting for your products and services.
Other sales tactics provide you with the hassles of finding customers on your own. In Google Ads, you let your customers come to your website naturally without the need for hard-selling and persuasion.
33. PPC Ads Help You Gain Market Share
With thousands of mortgage lending companies out there, you need a way to differentiate yourself from the rest. You may have a great website and an interesting offer but if you are not appearing on search engine results, chances are you’re losing potential customers.
If your website is buried deep in search results, customers won’t waste time scrolling down many pages to get to your website. Most of the time, they will only scroll the top 2 pages of Google. According to recent studies, around 75% of internet users never scroll past the first page of internet search results. Gain market share by appearing on the first page of Google and being one of the top options for your customers.
34. PPC Advertising Is Real-time
In email marketing, you have to wait until all your emails are delivered before you can determine the success of your ad campaign. Similarly, increasing your page ranking through SEO strategies takes months to see positive results. In PPC advertising, you can get access to the results and data in real time. You can make changes and adjustments to the campaigns on the go instead of waiting for them to end. Having the ability to make immediate adjustments can save you time and ad spend. This can bring you more conversions and higher sales profitability.
35. PPC Ads Act As Your 24/7 Sales Assistant
In the traditional mortgage marketing model, you are relying on manpower to generate leads and sales.
With PPC Ads, you can turn your website into a sales assistant 24/7. Once you have launched your PPC Ads, you can ensure that they are running and meeting your objectives even without you doing the marketing. The software does the heavy lifting for you and all you have to do is optimize ad campaigns, allocate a budget, and set a period for how long you would like to keep your ads running.
Get More Leads And Sales With PPC Advertising
PPC ads might be easy to learn in theory but it requires a savvy marketer to execute successful ad campaigns. PPC advertising is not a set-and-forget marketing method but rather a type of ad that needs constant monitoring and improvements. If you want to develop a strong PPC strategy that will help your mortgage business gain massive traffic and close more sales, you can schedule a FREE Marketing Assessment with our team of PPC experts. We will help you maximize your business reach and bring more prospective customers to your website with the lowest ad cost possible.
