Leads by Time of Day

[RonnieG]

I always had a strong sense that most serious buyers are online, and therefore most lead registrations occur, within specific time windows. Given that general sense, I have always setup all of my own and my client's PPC campaigns accordingly. Now I have a year of organic only lead stats that prove the point. I tallied all of the past 12 months of my website's organic leads by hour of the day. The result is that 80% of all lead registrations occurred between noon and 11pm, a window that is about 45% of the day. Therefore, scheduling your AdWords campaigns to start at noon and stop at 11pm, allows you to time your AdWords spending to that peak consumer online period. This lets your competition spend some or all of their PPC budgets earlier in the day, before your campaign kicks in, thereby reducing your average cost per click. If you have a very small and limited PPC budget, you should focus your window even further, to start at 4pm and stop at midnight. That 8 hour window got 51% of all lead registrations.

[jaschoenly]

This is incredible information that can also be applied to other lead generation efforts for example Craigslist & Backpage. How do you set up in Google to only run ads during that time period? I am assuming it's pretty easy, but of course I could be wrong.

[Madtown RM]

@RonnieG Wow! That is such amazing info and so great of you to share it! I haven't attempted a ppc campaign yet. do you have any advice as far as a starting budget or the best way to decide on keywords?

[CLTMichael]

I agree with Ron 100% on this. The only exception is the weekends.

The signups happen on after 1:00 pm. On the week days, most of my activity comes up after 1 - 5 then after 7 pm

[ScottFicek]

Ron-
Awesome info. This is a tangent question, but now that you are on organic leads primarily, can you see the difference in lead quantity and quality between organic and PPC? If so, any striking differences?

[Calgary Agent]

subscribed

[MikeNY]

Sundays almost all day are huge too.

[RonnieG]

Lead quantity differences are impossible to track and pin down, since that depends largely on the prior PPC campaign's budget and efficiency, vs. SEO factors. I can say, now that I have built dozens of new pages and done some considerable on-page SEO work, I now get almost 50% more raw leads as I was getting with PPC, and am saving $600-$900/month in PPC costs.

Lead quality however is a bit easier to track. Users who say the have agents when they register are about the same ratio, averaging about 40% of all leads. I delete those immediately. Not everyone's policy, and many don't even ask that question in their registration form, but it is on mine. Of the remaining 60%, I end up doing a transaction with about 3% of them. I could push harder and do better, but don't need to to make a comfortable living.

[RonnieG]

@RonnieG Wow! That is such amazing info and so great of you to share it! I haven't attempted a ppc campaign yet. do you have any advice as far as a starting budget or the best way to decide on keywords?

I generally recommend $400-$600 a month for one agent. More if you can afford it. From that investment, if you follow up diligently, the ROI should be 400% or better. I have posted some keyword suggestions and strategies previously, and as many already know, I also sell that knowledge.

[Bigtoe]

Users who say the have agents when they register are about the same ratio, averaging about 40% of all leads. I delete those immediately. Not everyone's policy, and many don't even ask that question in their registration form, but it is on mine.

"I am working with another agent" is the most used excuse by buyers to avoid the high pressure sales tactics of most agents. Most of the time they are lying when they say this.