Do’s and Don’ts for Centralized Ad Campaigns in Multifamily

Centralized Google Ads Campaign

A centralized or regional Google Ads campaign involves creating shared campaigns to target specific geographic regions where you have multiple properties located in a nearby vicinity. There are several potential benefits to a shared campaign, such as pooling together with other properties to utilize a shared budget.

This shared budget can help you save at the individual community level and also help you create a larger overall budget that would be big enough to beat most or all of the advertising competition in the local market you are targeting.

Here are some scenarios where a centralized A.K.A. regional approach may be appropriate for a Google Ads campaign:

• Location proximity: You have a portfolio or group of properties within your portfolio that are in the same neighborhood or close enough to share keywords. The centralized approach only works when your group of properties is similar enough in location where it would make sense to advertise them with the same keywords and geographic targeting settings.
• Budget limitations: Every community has its budget limitations, but some communities just do not have a sufficient budget to be competitive with paid search and other Pay-Per-Click campaigns. A shared campaign is a great solution for communities with lower advertising budgets because you can contribute a smaller amount but still get brand exposure and high-quality traffic.
• Fierce PPC competition: In some geographic markets, even if you have a large budget for PPC advertising, you still might not be able to have a high impression share or consistent ranking at the top of the search results because of the high level of competitive bidding. In these scenarios, a shared budget amongst several properties in the same local area could be the most efficient PPC advertising option.
• Create your own ILS: A lot of multifamily digital marketers utilize their portfolio or regional property websites as if it was their own ILS (Internet Listing Service). Instead of allocating valuable advertising dollars to leading ILS websites to be listed amongst your competitors, you can utilize a shared campaign and budget amongst only your properties. So even if you have your own individual property PPC campaigns, you can also show up on Google search and other PPC ad formats through a shared regional campaign.

When a Centralized Google Ads Campaign Doesn’t Work

As you can see, there are many good reasons to utilize a shared budget for PPC advertising on Google Ads. Before you get too excited, I would like to outline a few scenarios when a centralized advertising campaign would not be effective or even possible.

• Locations too spread out: This is one where you have to use your logic to determine if you were someone searching for a specific location and found a property on a shared regional website that was not close enough in proximity to be relevant to the search intent, would that click convert? If not, you would probably be wasting that ad spend budget and should stick to individual community campaigns where you could utilize a more custom and relevant targeting strategy.
• High traffic needs: Although a shared advertising campaign does provide you with the potential to drive enough traffic for any one property, you need more control of which community the web page visitors will take an interest in after they click on your centralized campaign ads. A stand-alone campaign can assure you that you will get a certain number of dedicated impressions and clicks for a specific community. Utilizing both an individual campaign and a shared campaign could help you make sure you can drive sufficient traffic when your community has more urgent traffic needs.
• Properties not all owned by the same group: A common situation for our third-party management company client partners is that they cannot share an advertising budget amongst different ownership groups. This is understandable since they would be contributing ad spend budget to a campaign that might benefit their competition more than it benefits them. This is a major reason why centralized campaigns are not a fit for every situation.

Other Considerations to Keep in Mind

One of the main challenges to executing an effective centralized PPC advertising campaign on Google Ads, is making sure you have a good landing page and conversion strategy. When someone clicks on your ads and are brought to your shared landing page, are they going to easily be able to find the right property for them? It can be overwhelming to have multiple options to choose from on a shared community landing page if you don’t think through the experience for your website users.

Make sure it is clear what your page is about, and have your community or availability search process be as efficient as possible, and allow them to contact you easily if they need assistance in choosing the right community for them. Overtime you can utilize experiments and data analysis to optimize the website conversion process for your centralized advertising campaign.

Some groups of properties can even share leads through centralized leasing processes, which could be a way of being even more efficient in converting prospects to leases if that option is available to your portfolio.

In conclusion, whether to run a centralized Google Ads campaign for your multifamily property depends on various factors, such as the geographic spread of your properties, brand recognition, budget considerations, target demographics, and the competitiveness of the local housing market. By carefully evaluating these factors, you can make an informed decision that maximizes your advertising ROI and helps you achieve your occupancy goals. Learn more about maximizing your ad spend by scheduling a complimentary consultation today .