Realtor cost per conversion

[webmaster]

Ok so I have been working with adwords a lot lately and I am wondering from those folks who actually have appropriate tracking setup for Google adwords and i guess from Realtors in general - what is an appropriate cost per conversion? (How much is the maximum you would pay for a valid web lead (real first and last name, email, phone)

I am sure this will really depend on where you are due to average home sale price - the higher the price of homes, the higher the PPC likely will be (And justifyably so)

I am going out on a limb and suggesting $30 - what are your thoughts for your market?

[FairwayandIsle]

Great question Morgan! I'll be interested to see the answers to this question. I am getting ready to start an AdWords campaign ... and I am not really sure what a good entry level spending amount would be.

[RonnieG]

The average home price doesn't seem to be as big a factor as competition in the specific market, how the AdWords campaign and ads are set up, and effectiveness of the lead capture process on the agent's website.

For one client in a large market, with lots of competition as well as relatively high home prices, their average PPC cost per lead is around $10.00 each. Most of my clients average in the $18-$24/lead range. A few are much higher, especially those who decline to do a forced registration, and/or decline to implement specific landing page improvements to improve AdWords Quality Scores.

BTW: We have found a few markets where PPC for the most commonly used real estate keywords just cannot ever be cost effective due to extreme competition and CPC factors, regardless of how well the website, campaigns and ads are set up. In those markets, the only effective PPC effort will be for some of the smaller surrounding communities and specific subdivisions.

[jaschoenly]

Didn't realize cost per lead could be so high with PPC. Have a number of things I have put together that only cost me a little time, but are free otherwise.

Key point no matter the way your are driving traffic is keeping a really close eye on your conversion and lead capture.

[Oregonlogan]

Hi all,

I have been in the real estate business in the Portland, OR area for more than 20 years. A year back, I started using PPC campaigns for leads and they worked great but of late has been fetching me almost nothing and my ad spend is increasing.

I have been told that a lot of agents now use classified ads to get leads and they work well, craigslist in specific. I know it cost nothing to post ads there and also can find people to help post multiple ads in a day in multiple cities as well.

Has anyone tried it? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
LO

[jsj.saraf]

Hi all,

I have been in the real estate business in the Portland, OR area for more than 20 years. A year back, I started using PPC campaigns for leads and they worked great but of late has been fetching me almost nothing and my ad spend is increasing.

I have been told that a lot of agents now use classified ads to get leads and they work well, craigslist in specific. I know it cost nothing to post ads there and also can find people to help post multiple ads in a day in multiple cities as well.

Has anyone tried it? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
LO

You are right. I have many clients who use classified ads and get a lot of leads. There are a few Real estate clients that I help posting ads in Craigslist, Kijiji, Backpage, etc and they are very happy with the results.

PPC is proving to be very expensive and hence a very low ROI. Feel free to PM me for any specific queries you may have.

JSJ

[Marin Real Estate]

My son is a professional SEM Guru and here is what he said about the matter:

"The key to a successful Adwords campaign is constant optimization and attention. You have to be not only knowledgeable of all of Google's best practices but also use tools to optimize your campaigns. A general rule of thumb is that 70% of professionally managed campaigns will not provide you a return in your first month but by the end of the second month 85% should be providing more than 100% ROAS, if not, you are doing something wrong."

As far as CPL or cost per lead, we have valued them at $45 which is high because of the market and the way in which our campaigns are geo-modified and geo-targeted to Marin County, CA.

__________________
Marin Real Estate | Marin Foreclosures

The Narodny Team services the Marin County, CA Real Estate market

[Mitch]

Our average cost per lead runs between $8 and $11. We have moved our entire PPC program to Homegains BuyerLink program as it eliminates any competition. We bought the entire county so I don't have to worry about any other Realtors bidding up Google and Yahoo. Most Realtors don't know how to do PPC so they just bid up the price to see themselves on top. It drove me crazy when I did Google and Yahoo. With Homegain I went from an average of $2-$3 per click to .79 to .99 per click.

The real question is what is your cost per sale. Since we know it takes many leads to generate a sale, how many leads does it take to make a sale. For instance, my cost per sale is running around $240 right now. Great on some of our home sales and not so great on some of the foreclosures in this area that are only selling at $50k. Of course when we sell a home for our average price of $150k or more the $240 cost per sale is quite worth the cost!

[Portland Real Estate]

I figure the cost per valid ppc lead is $20-$30 based on campaigns we've run.

Of course, as others have said, it really matters how many leads it takes to close a sale and what the average commission is for that sale, all of which are market dependent.

[Brant Douglass]

I have a one pretty large campaign with over 1000 keywords running on Google and I pay around $30 per valid lead -- some days more some days less. Plus it doesn't bother me a bit when realtors who don't know what they are doing run up the cost per clicks : )