Generating Mortgage Leads with Google Ads

We're going to show you how to create a basic Google Ads campaign for generating mortgage leads in your area.

Why Google? Google is one of the only platforms which targets people who show intent - i.e., people are actively searching for someone to sell their home or get a home valuation.

What do you need to get started?

• Google Ads Account. Don't have one? Click here or contact us and we can create you one for free. *Do not create an Google Ads Express Account.

Getting started

• Research: finding keywords
• Setting up the Campaign
• Setting up Ad Groups
• Setting up Extensions

Maintenance:

• Checking Quality Scores
• Adding Negative Keywords
• Conversion Optimization

Research: finding keywords: This is one of the most important parts of running your Google Ads campaign. You want to focus on finding keywords you believe your target users are going to be entering on Google. For example, if someone is thinking about getting a mortgage then they might type "mortgage pre approval in Calgary". We want to make sure our ads appear when someone is searching for these keywords.

Caution: do not add keywords which are not related to the droplets. Google will punish you if you direct users to pages which are not relevant to the users search. For example, if the user is searching for "homes for sale" and you direct them to the mortgage droplet - this isn't really what the user was searching for. Therefore, Google might not show your ads and will also give you a low quality score. This quality score will make ALL your campaigns more expensive and have your ads shown less (even if they are relevant).

You can use a few tools to find keywords related to your campaigns. Here are a few free & paid tools which will help your research:

SEMRush - paid tool, allows you to find new keywords and search competitors

SpyFu - paid tool, allows you to find new keywords and search competitors

Google Keyword Planner - free tool allows you to find similar keywords and traffic

We would recommend checking them all out. However, if you are on a budget, you can get started with Google Keyword Planner (free) to start your research. SEMRush and SpyFu have tutorials on how to research keywords & competitors.

Here are a few recommended keywords:

mortgage preapproval

• mortgages
• second mortgage
• online mortgage
• mortgage rates

For setting up your campaign, we want to make sure we have a few thing setup:

Goal: Website Traffic

Bidding: Maximize clicks

Location: select your postal codes and/or cities

Networks: Disable Search Network & Display Network (do not include Google search partners or Google Display Network)

The rest of the defaults should be fine.

Here's a quick video on getting the skeleton of your campaign setup. 

Ad groups are what power your campaigns. These are sets of keywords and ads which are grouped together. Basically, if someone searches "mortgage pre approval", we want to show them ads related to getting pre-approved for a mortgage. Alternatively, if someone is searching for "mortgage renewal" then we want to show ads related to renewing a mortgage. You want to make sure the keywords in your Ad Group are relevant to your ads.

When adding keywords, you have a few options for when you want your ads to be shown. You can add keyword match types which allows your ads to only be shown if they enter exactly the keyword, have your keyword in a sentence, or your keyword is related to a keyword in the sentence. Here's an explanation from Google of how these match types work. If you're just starting out, we recommend just using exact or phrase match.

When creating your ads, you want to make sure you're relevant to your keywords and fill in all the fields Google providers. Are all your fields going to be shown? Probably not. This way we can let Google select what they believe are the best fields to show the user. It can also help with our quality scores.

We recommend adding as many extensions which apply to you as possible. These are the extension types you should always have:

• Sitelink Extension
• Callout Extension
• Structured Snippet Extension
• Call Extension
• Message Extension

Optional (if applicable):

• Location Extension
• App Extension 

Here's an article going in depth about each extension. 

You're all done, congrats! Launch your campaign and set a daily budget you feel comfortable with. We recommend setting a low budget to start until you start getting results in, optimizing and then turning it up. Let the campaign run for a few days or a week then start performing maintenance. 

Quality scores are one of the most important metrics in running a successful Google Ads campaign. It will directly affect how your ads are placed (first, second, or last on Google results) and how much it will cost you. We have an in depth article on this but here is a chart to illustrate the effect of quality score:

10 - discounted by 50%

9 - discounted by 44.20%

8 - discounted by 37.50%

7 - discounted by 28.60%

6 - discounted by 16.70%

5 - Google benchmark

4 - increased by 25%

3 - increased by 67.30%

2 - increased by 150%

1 - increased by 400%

We recommend setting up a rule to pause any keywords which fall below a 4. You should also review why this keyword was paused and determine if you can fix it. Quality score is broken down in three main parts: Expected CTR, Landing Page Experience, and Ad Relevance. We also expect a few other things affect quality score but Google is very secretive/careful on what they release regarding this. 

Adding Negative Keywords: Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. Better targeting can put your ad in front of interested users and increase your return on investment (ROI). For example, if someone is searching for a "mortgage broker course" - we don't want your ads to appear. Adding a negative keyword "course" would exclude your ads from appearing for this search and in turn, saving you money.

A few recommended negative keywords to add to your sellers campaign:

database

• bill gates
• insurance
• iphone
• law
• zillow
• sell
• costco
• delivery
• graph
• news
• tax
• time

This is a small sample of negative keywords to add to your list. We recommend checking your search terms and adding them as you go.

Conversion Optimization: Optimizing your campaign for performance is an ongoing process. It involves, improving quality score, adding negative keywords and testing different Ad Groups. For testing different Ad Groups, we recommend trying different keyword match types, ads and extensions. You can also experiment with CPC, locations and bidding strategies. Here's a short video of what we do here at Nuage.

Feel free to contact us at [email protected] if you require any assistance with creating your ads.

Happy Hunting!