Paid Search Strategies for Home Builders - April Griffith

Greg Bray: Well, let's start off by just helping people get to know you a little bit better. Give us that quick background and overview about yourself.

April Griffith: Sure. So, I have been managing PPC campaigns for home builders since about 2009. I started with a company [00:01:00] called Builder Home Site, which I'm sure you've heard of. But they owned a website called NewHomeSource.com. Builder Home Site has now been taken over by Zonda. They were bought by Zonda this year. I ran their PPC account, so Google Ads, Facebook. At one time, we were doing Gemini Yahoo ads.

I also set up a system that would sort of automate the campaign. New Home Source has around 10,000 communities on their website. And so, every day there would be, you know, roughly 300 or so communities that would either be added or removed from the website. And so, we would have to keep up with that, not only the community, but also, you know, the city. If that community was the only community within that city, we'd have to make sure that all of the appropriate ads, ad groups, campaigns, whatever, were paused.

Doing that manually, keeping that updated manually, took forever. I mean, back in the [00:02:00] day, I would spend hours doing that every week. It was just too much. And so, at one point, I created a system using a set of Excel spreadsheets that would sort of help me to automate that process a little bit more. But it was still like a bit of a manual process. And so, ChatGPT entered the scene, and so I was able to use ChatGPT to help me create several scripts that would basically compare what we had on the website to what we had in Google Ads, and would pause or create whatever was needed so that all of that was entirely automated. So, then I could focus all of my efforts on optimizing the campaigns.

So then, in addition to that, many years ago, Builder Home Site started offering web services for home builders. So, we had sort of like an agency within Builder Home Site that offered, like, web development, SEO, PPC, that kind of [00:03:00] thing. And so, I also ran the PPC side of that for several years. And then in, I think it was 2022, they decided to sell off that side of the company, and at the same time, I decided to branch out on my own, and it has just kind of grown to where I am now.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, unfortunately, Kevin had a last-second conflict, so he is not with us today. But he always likes to ask before we get too far into it for people that are regular listeners, I can't ignore this. So, we need to know something non-business about you that doesn't relate to work, family, or home building, that people will really only learn about you on our podcast.

April Griffith: I guess something non-work related would be, I love to grow food.

Greg Bray: Okay.

April Griffith: Yeah, I have a really big garden in the backyard. I even have a little bit of chickens, and I mean, I live in the middle of a city. So, it's not like I live on a farm or anything [00:04:00] like that. But yeah, I love that sort of self-sufficiency side of things. And I guess like another thing would be, so I have a degree in environmental engineering of all things. That's on my LinkedIn profile, I think. But not too many people know about my engineering background.

Greg Bray: So, how does environmental engineering turn into paid search?

April Griffith: Yeah, that's such a long story. So, you know, I started this career back in 2009. Honestly, back then, I didn't see it going anywhere. I started working part-time for Builder Homes Site, and alongside that, I decided to go to school for environmental engineering because I love solving problems, and I was interested in the environment and how things are changing, and that kind of thing. So, I got my bachelor's, my master's in environmental engineering, and long story short, my manager at Builder Home Site had offered me a full-time job, and it was kind of like too good of an [00:05:00] offer to turn down. Yeah, I'm still here in PPC.

Greg Bray: So, tell us a little bit more about GriffithX and the kinds of services you're offering for builders and how that works today.

April Griffith: Yeah, I focus pretty much exclusively on paid search management for home builders. I have a couple of clients that are also like in the remodeling space. Similar to what I did for New Home Source, I have also built custom systems that automatically update ads and campaigns and that kind of thing just based on like pricing changes and inventory and community changes and that kind of thing, so that things are automated.

Now, obviously, that's only going to work for like a bigger builder. It's not going to work for a smaller builder who only has like five or 10 communities or something like that. But I was able to build out a system for one of my clients, one of my bigger clients, and I am sort of trying to expand on that for hopefully other bigger builders too. [00:06:00]

Greg Bray: So, for those who are listing that aren't as familiar with the term paid search, could you just give us that quick definition so everybody's comfortable with what we're talking about today?

April Griffith: I take paid search literally. So, it's like paying for an ad to show in search results on Google or Bing or something. But the term also could encompass like ads on the Display Network or Facebook. Like my title, I think at Builder Home Site was paid search manager, even though I was managing like PMAX, which to me isn't, I mean, there might be some search ads that show up there, but I was also managing Facebook ads, you know, YouTube, that kind of thing. So, literally, paid search, to me, just means ads on Google or Bing, but for most people, it's everything that encompasses, like the paid ads aspect.

Greg Bray: Typically, I think of those, you know, we're bidding on keywords or things of that nature. Yeah. And it's a competitive kind of auction [00:07:00] of how much you're going to have to pay for a given search. It used to be that that was about all there was, and now you need like a whole degree in like Google to be able to, there's so many options and dials to turn.

April Griffith: And they're always changing things.

Greg Bray: Always changing it. So, I think one of the big questions whenever I'm talking to builders about paid search and these opportunities is all around budget. Like, how much should I be spending? What is the right amount to invest here? And of course, it depends is the first answer. But what does it depend on? What are some of the things that you talk to builders about when you're trying to figure out that right budget spot for them?

April Griffith: That's one of the hardest things I think, when it comes to this. Like, if someone hasn't been running ads, they always want to know how much they should be spending. That's like a business question that I feel sometimes a little uncomfortable answering. But usually, I'll take a look at like how big of a builder they are. You know, if they're [00:08:00] just building in one market, one city, I'll look into that city and see how big it is, the population, the number of competitor builders in that space, and try to come up with a budget from there.

Like, in my experience, you're really not going to see a whole lot of performance if your budget is less than, like, a thousand dollars a month. And so, I feel like no matter how big of a builder you are, you should at least start with a thousand and go from there, you know, depending on how many homes you have, how many areas you're building in. That's the hardest question to answer when it comes to. Yeah.

Greg Bray: Do you find that it's helpful for builders to think of it on a per community basis at all, or do you think that that's too granular from a budget standpoint?

April Griffith: It depends. I have one client who, at least in the past, they had budgets per community, because these were pretty big communities. They were usually master planned communities, and so having a [00:09:00] budget by community worked for them. They were typically building in bigger markets. In those cases, I think it does make sense to have budgets per community.

Occasionally, a client will come to me and say like, You know, this community is really struggling. What are your thoughts? What are your recommendations? And in that case, like I'll say, you know, we could think about having a separate campaign just for that community, and the budget for that community sort of depends on, again, like the location and that kind of thing. But, yeah, I mean, a budget per community definitely could work in some cases.

Greg Bray: So, when you think about the buying process and the types of searches that home buyers do. I think those searches change as they move through when they're just generic, like, tell me all the builders here, and then they're looking maybe for something more specific, like, I want four-bedroom homes. Where do you go from a page search standpoint? Is it only top of the funnel? Does it apply across the journey and we need different [00:10:00] campaigns based on that, or is it just about the things people might search on, and so we pick all of them and go from there?

April Griffith: So, I mean, at the top of the funnel, it's all about like sort of brand awareness. I don't usually get requests for brand awareness, but occasionally, like a client will just need to promote, like a new community or a new property or something. So, sometimes I run like a YouTube campaign just with generic messaging, just to generate some impressions and interest about the builder itself or the community. But for most part, I will start with a search campaign that targets people who are specifically looking like new homes in Dallas, for example.

The tough part about trying to find people who are looking for more specific things like four-bedroom homes in Dallas or something like that is that you pretty much have to have broad match turned on, and that opens [00:11:00] up a whole can of worms with Google. I go back and forth on broad match versus phrase match. But if you do want to get more granular, long tail searches, or if you do want to target those long tail searches, you do pretty much have to have broad match turned on.

But then from there, I also will usually recommend like a display remarketing campaign. Sometimes, like builders have their own opinions on whether or not they want to have branded campaigns, but some do, some don't. For those builders that do want to show up in branded searches, like for their builder name or whatever, then I'll have a separate campaign just for those searches. I don't like to layer in like branded and non-branded into the same campaign because it's just a totally different journey, I guess. And I don't want to spend more than I have to on a branded search.

Greg Bray: You bring up an interesting point about all the different kinds of [00:12:00] searches. With organic SEO over the last little bit, because of some of the new things both with AI and the AI overviews and things that are now showing up on the search results page, we're seeing a general decline in referrals from organic searches. Are you seeing a similar type of impact on paid search and the number of clicks and things that are coming from those ads over the last six to 12 months, based on some of the changes on the Google search results page? Because Google's getting paid, are they still putting the paid stuff up there, you know, and taking advantage of it?

April Griffith: There have been some changes. I would say that, for the most part, I think that the decreases in traffic that I have seen are mainly market-driven and not necessarily like AI overview, like any sort of changes within the search results pages. However, Google is really trying to push broad match, PMAX, automated everything. Like I was saying, if you do want your ads to show [00:13:00] for those more specific searches, you do have to have broad match turned on.

But like anymore, I try to not do that as much as I can just because I've seen so many different types of searches, irrelevant searches, that are triggering ads more and more lately, especially. And so, that has been probably the biggest change on the research side is if you want to go after those longer tail searches, you need to have broad match turned on, which is not always a good business decision.

Greg Bray: Okay. So, when somebody clicks on the ad, it's like a win. All right? We put the right ad in front of them, but now we still haven't captured the lead yet. It depends a lot on where people then send the click. What are your recommendations on landing pages for these types of ads, and the kinds of content, and how that matches with the ad, and some of the best practices around that?

April Griffith: Yeah, I mean, the landing page has to be [00:14:00] relevant to the search intent. And so, you know, if you're a builder who has several communities in Dallas or something, then you should have a page with all of the communities within Dallas on that page. But then if you want to go even granular, I think Allen is a suburb of Dallas, if I remember correctly. So, if you have communities in Allen, you're going to want to have like some sort of filter on that page that you can also use as a landing page. So, that if you are wanting to target people who are searching for new homes in Allen, then you direct them to a page that only has communities within Allen.

Aside from that, I mean in terms of like driving the best leads, once you get onto the landing page, having a specific call to action is the most important piece. So, whether it's, you know, having like a chat spot or a lead form on page that's prominent, like you have to have a prominent call to action so that people [00:15:00] are aware and more motivated to actually contact you.

Greg Bray: Yeah, I think sometimes I see builders just send everybody to the homepage, and it's like, that is such a miss when you're spending all this money. You got to get them as close as possible to the search intent. Right. What are these keywords that they're telling you they're looking for? How do we get them, you know, as close as we can to that specific content on the page or on the site?

April Griffith: Right.

Greg Bray: So, beyond sending all your ads to the homepage is a big mistake. What are some of the other big mistakes that you've seen builders do with their paid search campaigns? When they come to you and say, April, we tried that Google ad thing, it doesn't work. What is it that you look at and say, Oh, well, here's some things you should not have been doing.

April Griffith: I feel like a lot of this is usually a builder has hired an agency that hasn't been a good fit for them. So, a lot of times, builders like to hire a local agency, which isn't necessarily the best idea. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a builder that's hired [00:16:00] an agency just because they're local, thinking that that's the best focus for them, I guess. They need to hire an agency that has experience in PPC, of course, but also has experience in the home builder industry knows what terms to negate.

All I need from a client is to tell me the sort of local vernacular that people use, like midtown or whatever. And then from there, like, I can build out the campaigns. But the learning curve of figuring out the home building industry is much steeper than the learning curve of figuring out the local area. So, I would say that's the number one mistake is hiring the wrong agency.

And then in terms of like within the campaigns itself, honestly, I have tested out PMAX for several builders. It doesn't work, at least in my experience. Maybe there's a unicorn builder out there where PMAX works, but I don't think it does. Tailor PMAX to the hilt. You can add [00:17:00] all your first-party data, you know, all of the qualified leads, you can use all of that information in your PMAX campaigns, and it still really doesn't work that well.

So, I would say stop using PMAX. Make sure that you've excluded search partners. Make sure that you have your campaign segmented by network, so if don't have, like search and display all in the same campaign. You know, mixing branded and non-branded traffic in the same campaign, those are probably the biggest ones, I think.

Greg Bray: And for those who are not familiar with PMAX, Google's kind of do it for you automated piece of it all, where their AI just magically knows everything about you and knows exactly when and where to show your ads. And while the promise is amazing, it takes a lot of data for it to really work well. Especially if you're lower traffic, it doesn't work nearly as well as if you're a much higher traffic, and have a lot more data to feed into it.

April Griffith: Yeah, and I mean, with PMAX, it's also such a big black box. I know that they're rolling out more [00:18:00] insights and that kind of thing, but it's hard to sift through what they are providing you and trying to figure out what's actually working

Greg Bray: For sure. Now, you mentioned, again, the branded campaigns. I had another question about that, that I get asked a lot. Love your opinion on it. Is it okay for a builder to bid on their competitors' names as a keyword?

April Griffith: It's fine as long as you're okay with reciprocal bidding. If you're builder A and you're bidding on builder B's brand, then you kind of have to expect that builder B will eventually figure that out and start bidding on your brand. For the most part, it's fine. It's not a strategy that I typically recommend because it usually doesn't work very well. It gets you traffic, but it usually doesn't send you traffic that is going to convert, in my experience. I've tried it many times. For some builders, it [00:19:00] does seem to work actually, but for the vast majority, I would say it's not a bad idea, you know, test it. See if it works. If it doesn't, then now you know, and pause it if it's not providing you any leads.

Greg Bray: That's a great reminder. All of this should be tested, regardless of what we're saying. Right? Whether PMAX works for you or not, whether branded or this bidding strategy or that works. That's the great thing about paid search. It's actually pretty easy to test things.

April Griffith: Yeah. Yeah. You test things. It's not like SEO, where you test things and it's maybe months down the road before you know if it worked. You test things within paid search, and depending on how much traffic you're getting, you can get a pretty good idea if that test worked within a few days, maybe a few weeks.

Greg Bray: For sure. So, in today's world, is a builder crazy for trying to do paid search in-house with somebody on their own team? Is that something that's even doable today? What are your thoughts there?

April Griffith: I mean, I think it's fine [00:20:00] as long as they have the right person in place. The only thing that you possibly lose is like access to data from the industry in general. So, like, if you have an agency who focuses on home builders, then that agency has some insights into the industry as a whole. You also have to make sure that whoever is running the Google Ads account really keeps on top of any changes in the platform because Google is often really sneaky about the changes that they put in place. You have to stay on top of that. You can't just set it and let it run. A lot of smaller builders probably do that; they just set up their Google Ads campaigns and trust Google to just let it run.

It's sort of along those same lines. The problem is that most builders are too small to hire someone with the experience that's needed, because the experience needed is someone who's been in the paid search industry for a while, and that experience doesn't come [00:21:00] cheap. You're probably not going to find someone who just wants to do that part-time or just wants to do that as just a small part of their job, and also take on, you know, SEO, effectively paid social, effectively, that kind of thing, so.

Greg Bray: So, when you are measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns, what are some of those top numbers that you think are most important to say, is this working, is this not? Like, you're running one of those tests we just talked about. How do you decide if it's working or not?

April Griffith: I focus first and foremost on qualified leads. So, PMAX, sure, it could bring in a ton of leads, but if they're all spam leads or bot or unqualified, then that's just a total waste of money. So, I focus on qualified leads. And then, along with that, of course, cost per lead.

The other metric that I really like to focus on, too, is cost per click because it affects [00:22:00] everything. It affects how much traffic you can get within your budget, which then affects, you know, your lead volume. It affects your cost per conversion. So, yeah, I like to look at cost per click as well. But that one's really tough because there's only so much control that you have over it, given the competition factor and different bidding strategies that you can use, and that kind of thing.

Occasionally, I like to look a little bit deeper, and this depends on the client and how effective their CRM data is. But I like to look at which keywords are actually driving qualified leads. Builders should always look into whether their leads that are coming in are like actually marketing qualified leads. That's the biggest factor is really, making sure that the traffic that you're driving all the way down to the keyword level is driving qualified leads.

Greg Bray: So, April, I appreciate all the insights that you've shared [00:23:00] today. We really appreciate you being with us. Do you have any, like, last thoughts or words of advice you'd like to leave with our audience today before we wrap up?

April Griffith: I would say own your data. I've seen too many accounts that are a hundred percent controlled, even owned by the agency, and the client has zero access. I totally disagree with that tactic. There's no advantage to the client whatsoever when you don't have access to the account where you're spending all this money. Even if the client doesn't get into their account, which the vast majority of my clients don't, they should still be able to anytime they want. I mean, it's the sort of the same message applies to anyone who's managing the account, even if it's a client account, you know, own the data, own the results, like it's your own. Be transparent about what's working and what's not, even if it's painful to admit.

Greg Bray: Well, April, if somebody wants to learn more and connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out and get in touch?

April Griffith: I think [00:24:00] probably to visit my website, griffithx.com. My email address is there, phone number, links, and info. Otherwise, yeah, I mean, getting in touch on LinkedIn, just search April Griffith, and I'll be there.

Greg Bray: All right. Well, thank you so much, April, for sharing with us today. And thank you, everybody, for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. And I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine. Thank you.