Google Adwords

[ISellRiverview]

I am thinking about paying for some Google Adwords. When I first tried to sign up it told me I needed a budget of at least $50 a month to get optimum results. I don't have that much in the budget right now. If I do, say, $20 a month, will I see any traffic from it?

And what type of keywords are best to buy if I have a low budget? Should I try to get some more obscure keywords like "short sales in tampa" as opposed to "tampa real estate" or something generic?

Any advice is appreciated.

[Joshua Sloan]

I did google adwords for some time and didn't really see any substancial results from it and I had a budget of $300 which I thought was low. I did get leads, but they were of low quality and many didn't leave the correct information on the form.

In my opinion, with a budget of $20/mo. I don't think you'll see many results from it. I hope this helps, I would hate to see you spend the money and end up being frustrated because you didn't get anything from it.

I'm also in the San Diego market, which my have different results that what you may get in Tampa. I would be interested to hear other member opinions.

[BrandonSternfield]

If you have a small budget, you need to plan to get the obscure words instead, as they will cost less per click. Don't really shoot for city real estate, as that is most likely over $10 per click or so (at least it was around there for Fort Lauderdale... and Tampa is big right now.. as I'm sure you know).

You want to get obscure ones, build some long tails When I got started with PPC it was the same way with me, I did it and forgot it, using it to add a little traffic here and there.

[RonnieG]

AdWords is a reasonable way to build your RE business short term if your website is still new and/or not ranking well enough to pull in leads from organic results. But you have to build it right and have a relatively reasonable budget to start with. See the Pay Per Click forum section for lots more info.

My current AdWords budget is $20/day, generating 1-2 leads per day, and an average of 35-40 leads per month. Of those, 90% enter good contact info, maybe half are serious buyers, and one or two will eventually become a transaction for me within a year. The long term return makes it work, but only if you work the leads properly, with quick initial calls and a good drip email campaign. My other AdWords consulting clients are generally spending $12-$30/day, depending on their budgets. Their lead production and cost per lead varies by their market, and by the quality of their website's IDX and its registration processes, ranging from $12 to $30 per lead registration. Targeting obscure keywords may help keep the cost down, but will it also reduce the quality of the leads? Hard to tell. Still, $20/month will hardly be worth the effort. You might get 40-50 clicks for obscure long tails, and maybe 1-3 actual leads for your investment.

IMO: Websites that get lots of bogus info from registrations can't blame it on AdWords. It is usually that they force registration on everyone too early in the lead life cycle. Unless they have an opportunity to test out and see the value of your website's home search capabilities, many consumers will enter bogus info just to get around the registration process, especially if they come from a paid ad click.

[NealRM]

To get more bang for the buck, try limiting your ads just to your area. Those ad will give you the highest percentage on your return. Once you budject increases you can add in other areas.

[ISellRiverview]

When you say adding registration too early - at what point do you add it? I took it off my IDX listings for now.

[ISellRiverview]

Google Adwords is the program that shows you under Sponsored Links, right? So there's no pay-per-click program if you just want to be ranked higher in search results, correct?

[BrandonSternfield]

Correct, as that would messed up. That would mean all the SEO in the world could mean nothing if someone wanted enough to pay to get to the top of SERPS.

The SERPS are not affected by money. PPC is the sponsored links.

[ISellRiverview]

Yeah I see what you mean. I guess I just think about it in terms of when I search Google for something, I almost NEVER click on the sponsored links, I usually look at the first 5 or so results. Hmmm.

[Joshua Sloan]

You'll want to let the guest look around a little bit, do a search and see some information about the properties, but hold back the address or additional pictures. When they click on "address" or "additional pics" then that is when you should ask them to fill out the form. I think that wolfnet does it this way, and since your a KW agent, I think it's free, I haven't looked into it fully, so I apologize if I'm wrong. Also, I currently am using 1parkplace(dot)com for my IDX and it works well. These are probably the best two solutions versus having REW build you a custom IDX.

When you say adding registration too early - at what point do you add it? I took it off my IDX listings for now.

EDIT: I see that you currently have IDX pro, have you looked into Wolfnet? It's a great IDX and I believe free to KW agents unless you upgrade to include map search.