Fair Warning

[ericbramlett]

I'm now signed up for AdWords. Prepare for a million questions. Ronnie, you're my new best friend

[drewnick]

Don't spend all of your money in one place.

[Saodavi]

Eric, let us know how it works. Not just hits but conversions to closed sales. Also, if you're making specialized landing pages and stuff, that'd be nice to know.

[drewnick]

I'm still trying to figure out how to track PPC --> Closed Sales. Any concepts that are working for folks? I'm using analytics from Google but beyond that I can't sort the leads whether organic or PPC.

[webmaster]

Google provides tracking scripts via adwords that you can place on the backside of your contact form, your confirm or thank you page - that way if it is a PPC lead, you can gather that data.

Once you know what leads you received from PPC, store them somewhere like an excel spreadsheet, and then whenever you close a deal, you can check your PPC leads and find out if they came from that campaign. This takes a lot of time, because internet leads are not all fast closes. Some close in a week, some in a month some in a year. So the longer you conduct business and as your pipeline matures you will be able to get a good sense of conversions. If it turns out that in the end it doesn't convert that well, it was an expensive experiment.

[osobluwtr]

WHAT EVER YOU DO !!!! DO NOT ALLOW CLICKS for "CONTENT NETWORK"

It is a waste of money and the clicks do not convert!!!!!

Tip #2

Bid low on the high $ key words like "city Real estate"

Big high on "City waterfront homes" "city luxury homes" "lake (insert name) homes" "expensive neighborhood names"

Pick the small towns closest to you or the small name neighborhoods and bid on all small terms and it will save you money!

Tip #3

MAKE YOUR LINE SPECIFIC TO YOUR KEY WORDS AND CREATE MULTIPLE ADD GROUPS

For your most expensive words make your AD stand out and be powerfull. If your click through is good you will rank higher then people who are paying more then you. I achieved this by the following ad

Bellingham Real Estate
"Bellingham's most powerful
real estate search"

KICK A@# Ad!

Even though a lot of people have my same IDX consumers dont know that and I get a good click through.

Also tailor your ads to your key word ad groups - Dont have one ad for all of your keywords. If you want condo clicks then make your ad say

"Bellingham Condominiums
View ALL Condo Listings
Pictures & Virtual Tours"

"Bellingham Waterfront
View ALL Waterfront Listings
Pictures & Virtual Tours"

"Bellingham Land
ALL land, acreage, &
vacant lot Listings"

Hope that helps

[Eric Blackwell]

I'm now signed up for AdWords. Prepare for a million questions. Ronnie, you're my new best friend

Compliment ahead

Darn good choice of friends IMHO. I have done some pretty decent sized PPC management and have learned a lot rom RonnieG's posts on PPC. That's his specialty and it shows.

End Compliment


BTW-best of luck with the PPC campaign--you'll do fine!

Best;

Eric

[itgl72]

osobluwtr,

do you dump visitors to a landing page or right to the idx search out of curiosity?

[osobluwtr]

I direct them to different IDX pages

If they click on my condo PPC campaign I send them to a list of condos for sale in the area.

If they click on my waterfront listings PPC campaign I send them to a list of waterfront properties for sale in the area.

If it is a generic PPC campaign I send them directly to the mapsearch page that is centered on a specific community or city.

I use wolfnet as my IDX - I have predefined searches for everything from homes, commercial, vacant lots, condo's, by price, by feature like waterfront ....

Hope that helps

[sellinggalveston]

Good info... I only have one ad group because I am lazy... I liked yahoo's "pay this much place here" Google leaves too much to guess... like how to word the ads and click through... but I might go change my ads now!