A Mini-Guide to Bidding Strategies for Multifamily PPC

Unlike other types of paid advertising and marketing, PPC gives you more control over your multifamily campaigns.

Instead of relying on generic ads that you constantly monitor, you can boost your PPC ad spend for the area or demographics you want.

The results? You end up focusing on what works and reducing ad spend on what doesn’t.

PPC ads are highly effective, with research showing PPC is one of the top three generators of on-page conversions.

Despite all the pros, PPC advertising gets expensive and time-consuming quickly. That’s where Smart Bidding comes in.

Also known as Automated Bidding, your PPC bid strategy allows you to algorithmically set bids for each individual auction you set-up based on the different targets you set.

Here’s what to know about Smart Bidding and how to make the most of it.

Different PPC Smart Bidding Strategies

Simplify the process of focusing on conversions with the help of Smart Bidding. It helps you set automatic bids to optimize for conversions or the conversion value across all of your actions.

Think of it this way–your actions as small conversions leading up to one large conversion, which could be a resident clicking on your website.

Here are a few ways you can use Smart Bidding in your PPC strategy.

1) Target Cost Per Action (CPA) - Helps increase conversions while targeting a cost per action (CPA). This CPA is the average amount you'll probably pay for a conversion.

2) Target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) - Increases conversion value while targeting a specific return on ad spend (ROAS), which is a similar concept to ROI.

3) Maximize Conversions - Helps you optimize for conversions while spending your entire PPC budget instead of targeting a single CPA.

4) Maximize Conversion Value - Optimizes for conversion values so you can spend your entire PPC budget instead of targeting a specific ROAS.

5) Enhanced Cost Per Click (ECPC) -  This optional feature is used for manual CPC bidding. You can automatically adjust your manual bids while trying to maximize conversions.

‍

So Should You Ever Use Manual PPC Bidding Strategies?

There's plenty of reasons to use Smart Bidding with your PPC campaigns, but that doesn't mean you should rule out using manual adjustments instead.

Manual bidding is straightforward where you adjust the bid on your own.

For example, you might want to rule out potential residents or entire areas from your strategy.

Manual bidding may be a good choice if you want complete control and prefer to use real-time bidding. It may also prove the better option if you don’t have enough data to work with and want to manually change your bids.

What is Enhanced Click-Per-Action?

Just because you can manually manipulate PPC bidding, there are still some automation features.

Enhanced Click-Per-Action (ECPC) automatically adjusts your manual bids for clicks. It provides some of that automation you want while you still manually make changes.

ECPC automatically adjusts your manual bids for clicks by determining if they’re more likely to lead to the conversion you’re looking for.

Best Practices for Your PPC Bidding Strategies

There are a few ways you can make the most of your PPC bidding strategies. Here’s what to do next, and what to avoid in your marketing journey.

1) Collect data before you use bid strategies - PPC is powerful, but you still need to feed it good information. Machine learning relies on data to learn and without any type of signals to draw from.

2) Use relevant, timely information - Of course, it's not just about data. You need relevant data and information to shape your PPC strategies. It's wise to draw from data collected from your top converters who turned into residents.

3) Stay consistent - Your bid strategy needs time to work and gain traction. Constantly tweaking could mean the Smart Bidding doesn’t have a chance to work and will need to relearn everything.

4) Consider your community’s unique seasonality - Yep, it’s essential to stay consistent in your bidding, but there are times you need to consider seasonality.

Tip💡: You may want to change up your strategy depending on how hot the rental market is and area events that draw in more foot traffic.

5) Stay realistic - A killer PP  bid strategy can perform well, but isn’t the end-all, be-all in your marketing journey. You may need to lower your target to see your conversions rise and make small adjustments as needed.

6) Analyze and measure your results - Just like with any marketing campaign, you need to analyze and measure your results. Over time, you can test different bid strategies and measure your ROI against your other multifamily marketing campaigns.

Tip 💡: Best practices are only worth it when you get results. As you work through the analysis phase, make what’s working part of your best practices for your multifamily PPC campaign.

Truth 💣: Bidding Strategies for your multifamily PPC should empower your marketing journey, not overwhelm you. Start small and find the balance between trusting the machine learning aspect while relying on your data and unique needs.

‍