PPC for Mortgage Brokers: 7 Tips for Exceptional Campaign Management

PPC advertising for mortgage brokers and lenders is an effective way to reach people that are searching for mortgages online. And Google Ads is the number one platform to promote your business on and get a good volume of leads and enquiries.

If you already have a Google Ads account and are promoting your business, then it’s important to know how to manage the controls.

In this article I list seven tips to help you manage your PPC campaigns effectively. As a Google Ads consultant I’ve worked with many mortgage brokers and these insights have helped me to manage their ads for great results.

 

1. Setup conversion tracking

Effective PPC marketing for mortgage brokers should include good tracking to see which ads and keywords are driving leads and enquiries. This is critical insight that will help you immensely with your campaign management.

So, you should set up conversion tracking in your Google Ads account. And this should be for call conversions and also conversions that take place on your website through a contact or booking form.

Also, you should consider setting up goal tracking if you have a Google Analytics account. In the Admin section, under the Goals tab, you can use a template to set up goal tracking and after that you can import the goal into your Google Ads account.

 

2. Add new negative keywords

Check your reports to see if there are any negative keywords to add. Negative keywords block searches that are not relevant for your business and improve the performance of your campaigns.

In your Keywords tab, you’ll see a link for the Search terms report. This report shows the actual searches that your campaign is getting. Some of these will be relevant and some won’t, so you need to select the latter and click the “Add as negative keywords” link.

Doing this regularly will lead to an improvement in your conversion rates because your ads will be a lot more targeted.

 

3. Find new mortgage broker keywords

PPC advertising for mortgage brokers should include regular keyword research to find new keyword opportunities. So, you should keep checking for keywords to add and there are a number of ways you can do that.

One of the quickest ways is to use the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads. This free tool will help you search for keywords in different locations and you’ll be able to see the monthly traffic volumes for them and what you’re likely to spend for each. And you can use the forecast section to see what budgets to set for the keywords you select.

Another place to find mortgage keywords is in your Search terms report. In here you’ll see the searches that are triggering your ads. And some will not be keywords in your account, but they appear because of the phrase and exact match keywords you are using.

 

4. Check Recommendations

Your Recommendations page is where you’ll see suggestions from the Google algorithm to help improve your campaigns. These recommendations are based on an analysis which lists all the settings that will see your account Optimisation score improve.

You’ll see recommendations to improve your keywords and ads, to improve image extensions, to add dynamic search ads and more. And there are over 50 recommendation types, but you’ll not see them all, only the ones that will lead to an uplift of your campaigns.

 

5. Update bid strategy

One of the recommendations you’ll see on your Recommendations page is to update your bid strategy. Usually that will be a recommendation to change to an automated bid strategy like Maximise Conversions or target cost per action (CPA).

You should only apply this recommendation if you believe the bid strategy will help to improve the campaign. Or if you want to test it to see how it performs, it’s ok to apply it too.

However, the bid strategy you use should be based on your goals. When you first launch a campaign one of the best to start with is Maximise Clicks. This works to get you as many clicks as possible for your budget.

And as you get more conversions, you may want to change to a conversion-based strategy like Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

 

6. Do competitor analysis on other brokers

Knowing what other mortgage brokers and lenders are doing in their PPC campaigns could really help to improve your own Google Ads campaigns. There are tools that can help you find this information.

They’ll reveal to you the keywords they are appearing for and how much they are paying on average for each of those. And you’ll be able to get a good insight into how much they are spending on average each month on their ads. And you’ll be able to see the actual ads that they are running.

A good platform that will help you with this is SERanking with its Competitor research tool.

 

7. Consider broad match type keywords

After running your campaign with phrase and exact match keywords for a while, you should consider adding broad match keywords. This will help to increase traffic volumes in more impressions and clicks. And this should lead to more mortgage enquiries and leads.

Adding broad match keywords will also help you target searches that your other match types like phrase and exact match are not targeting.

This is especially important when you’ve been advertising for a while and have added some negative keywords. And considering that 15% of all searches on Google each day are completely new to them, it’s important to reach many of these searches by adding broad match keywords.

 

Case Study

Mondo Finance is a mortgage broker based in Hampshire, with a wealth of experience built up over many years. They operate in a very competitive sector with very high cost per click averages for their keywords. They needed help setting up a new campaign, having failed to make their previous one a success. The campaign I set up has helped to increase click through rates by 15% and they reached a top of page rate of 81% for the same costs. Read the full case study.

 

Get in Touch

As a PPC expert for mortgage brokers I’d be happy to help you set up and manage effective campaigns. Contact me below to discuss your requirements.