Google Ads is like the Cadillac of marketing platforms. With capabilities to tailor your digital ads to very specific audiences, its versatility goes unmatched. Over the years, Google has evolved to incorporate additional advertising features to help businesses increase their visibility and streamline their Ads campaigns. 

However, despite Google Ads’ plethora of offerings, several marketers have only scratched the tip of the scope of features this platform offers. But, rest assured, there are several Ads tools that you can use besides the more basic configurations that will save you some time and improve the effectiveness of your property ads in the future.

1. Responsive Search Ads

In the past, Google’s ad offerings consisted of an ad featuring a couple of optional headlines, a little expanded text and a pesky character limit for descriptions. Clearly, given the evolving nature of the digital space, these options could only suffice but for so long. Enter responsive search ads. These ads allow users the ability to create ads that can adapt to reveal additional text and include more relevant content to your audiences. You can create multiple headlines and descriptions, and, over time, Google will test various combinations of the ad to determine which offers the greatest performance. The ultimate goal here is for your ads to more closely align with your customers’ search terms to increase effectiveness. By using responsive search ads you can score time to your day by allowing Google to do all the legwork for you as well as increase ad performance by reaching more prospects through greater query matches.

2. Automation

Google Ads automation features essentially allow you to automate nearly all aspects of your campaign in some form or another. Given our tendency to lean towards the “work smarter not harder” mantra, this one definitely deserves a spin. Through Smart Bidding and Smart Creative, Google analyzes data in real time to present the right message to your specific targets at the right time. Through Smart Bidding, Google uses machine learning algorithms to make the most accurate predictions for the most optimal conversions based on performance targets that you set in advance. Its suite of Smart Creative tools leverages various automated creative assets, like images, headlines, descriptions, website content and more, to configure and serve the most high-quality, effective ads.

3. Ad extensions

Ad extensions are yet another high underutilized, but effective Google Ads feature. With the opportunity to expand your ads with additional information, you can ultimately provide greater visibility and prominence in the SERPs. You have the power to customize the selections of your choosing based on your ultimate performance goals. There are a plethora of options available, like call buttons and callout, site link, website snippet, price, and even call extensions. These features are all free and can give your existing or new ads that added boost it may be longing for. Extensions, when used correctly, have been known to increase total clicks and offer greater value to users.

4. Ad Customizers

Through Google Ads customizers functions, you can adjust pieces of your ad’s messaging based on what your prospects are searching for, device type, time of day, or day of week. These customizers can be positioned nearly anywhere within your ad and get replaced with these fillers when the ad is triggered by a specific search. So, if you’re running a summer leasing special for a limited time or are interested in promoting to residents in a nearby city, you can leverage this feature to distribute relevant and targeted ads to prospects without having to create multiple distinct campaigns. Because customizers may seem a little intimidating at first glance, it’s best to experiment on one campaign at a time and tweak your options until you feel confident to expand across multiple campaigns. 

5. Recommendations

In this industry, you don’t always have the time to tweak, strategize, and experiment with your Google Ads campaigns. That’s where Google’s Recommendations feature comes in. To assist you in your journey to create high-performing ads, Google uses human review and machine learning to take relevant content from your account and create high-quality ad suggestions. With this free assistance, you can craft more strategic and optimized ads that improve your chances of conversion. Suggestions can include anything from keyword optimization to bidding tips to better targeting strategies. You receive up to 50 suggestions per week, all located within the “Recommendations” page of your account. 

Rentbot can help.

Google Ads is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to drive qualified traffic to your website. However, given all of the possibilities and its functions, it can seem slightly intimidating to some–that’s where we come in. In addition to designing websites for multifamily properties that are optimized for sites like Google, we also offer online marketing services to help you fast track your marketing strategy and start advertising directly to high-quality, move-in ready leads.

We’re Google-certified and experienced in helping businesses like yours advertise apartments online with great results. With our affordable Google Ads package, we’ll provide geo-targeted research, campaign set-up, full-featured ad creation, automatic inclusion of new Ads features and monthly reports and calls with us to keep you informed of the status of your campaign. 

If you’re ready to turn your website into a lead generator, get started with Rentbot’s Google Ads services now. 

About the Author

Jonsette Calloway joined the Rentbot team in 2015. With a background in public relations, advertising, and copywriting, she has helped a multitude of clients achieve their marketing and communications goals within various fields, but she particularly enjoys working with the apartment industry.