When it comes to senior living or 55+ marketing using Google paid search in your marketing strategy is essential. Google paid search is one of the best ways to capture a relevant, high-intent audience which is why at Creating Results, we always recommend having paid search as a tactic for our clients. However, Google places a lot of restrictions as the senior living and 55+ industry fall under the housing category. The restrictions in this category can make it difficult to curate a high-performing paid search campaign. Here are 5 tips to follow that can make a difference in your results.
TIP #1: Headlines + Keywords
In order to have a high-performing paid search campaign, you’ll want to ensure that your campaign’s ad headlines have as many of your chosen keywords within them as possible. This helps increase the Ad Relevance score and is indicative of the ad content matching what users are searching for. Paid search ads are triggered when a user searches for one of the matching keywords within your campaign setup. To help mitigate unqualified prospects try incorporating age indicators and price in the headline copy.
TIP #2: Minimum of 10 Keywords per Ad Group
To achieve the best results, we recommend having at least 10 keywords per ad group. This ensures that each ad group’s ads have a stronger chance to be served based on what users are searching. Don’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to relevant paid search keywords. Add any keywords that potential prospects might search when looking for a business like yours.
TIP #3: Add Some Essence
Paid search ads can sometimes be very cut and dry in their copy. We recommend adding in some aspirational or captivating headlines and descriptions that represent the feel of your business or the lifestyle of the community. There should be a good mixture of keyword-related headlines and some aspirational ones as well. In this example from one of our clients, we have a mixture of keywords such as retirement and senior living, but we also add in copy that represents the ‘feel’ that this community exudes.
TIP #4: Always Add Extensions
Adding extensions to your paid search campaigns points out certain aspects of your business that may be attention-grabbing to potential prospects. Whether it is a site link extension, call out extension, or a call extension- these help increase the overall performance of your paid search ad by drawing attention to specific aspects of your website or business.
Here is a brief breakdown of a few extension types we suggest:
Site Link Extensions:
Site link extensions appear at the bottom of your paid search ad and link to certain areas of your website. These extensions should be areas of your website that users frequently visit or areas where you want more people to visit.
Callout Extensions:
Callout extensions appear at the end of your descriptions of your paid search ads. These typically are used to call out certain amenities or big selling points that your community offers to encourage users to learn more about these offerings.
Call Extensions:
Call extensions appear beneath your descriptions of your paid search ads and are used to encourage users to call your business. This is very viable and makes it easier for prospects to contact your community for more information.
Price Extensions:
Price is a great way to call out prices for different floor plans or neighborhoods at your community, especially if you find that there is an increase in unqualified leads. These are completely customizable and can link to a floor plans and pricing page on your website.
Location Extension:
These appear like call extensions. Location extensions will show the prospect how close your community is to them as well as the address. When clicked they automatically take the user to Google maps with directions to your community.
TIP #5: Keep An Eye On Your Google Quality Score
Within Google Ads, users can pull their Google Quality Score from the report center of ads manager. This report can tell users if their ad relevance needs to be adjusted to better match what users are searching (and therefore get served more frequently), or if the disconnect is with the landing page. Pulling the Google Quality Score report is a great way to optimize and improve the campaign’s performance overall.
Final Thoughts
When considering tactics to run on Google ads, paid search is a great one to start with. This ad type is not only highly customizable but also traditionally performs very well. These ads help put your community in front of the right audience every time. Following these 5 quick tips can make the difference in your paid search ads performance.
Try it out and let us know on LinkedIn how it worked for you!