Conversion rates clicks to leads from PPC

[HawaiiRealEstateReporter]

I am curious about others conversion rates from PPC traffic, clicks to leads.

First I will share: we are getting 10-15% conversion rate of clicks to leads from Google and Yahoo PPC using a landing page with forced registration to search. About 25% of the leads are bogus, but thats ok, its a numbers game. We did some split testing on the landing page to acheive that conversion rate BTW. Im pretty happy about that number but theres always room for improvement eh?

I am curious to hear about others experiences are, from PPC only, because thats the method where you really have control of the user and keywords, and can track it easily, send them to a specific landing page.

IE Are you doing forced registration right off the bat vs letting them view 0-3 property details first then requiring registrations, vs no requirements at all., etc etc.

[HawaiiRealEstateReporter]

How about conversion rate from organic traffic? We are only converting 1-2% of our organic traffic into leads. Not good.

I think I need to move to forcing registration before allowing the user to veiw property details.

[OCTeam]

I think I need to move to forcing registration before allowing the user to veiw property details.

I think you are correct if you want to get 6%-10% conversion rate.

[webmaster]

In terms of PPC campaigns I am currently running for clients - the low end is 6% (with forced registration) the high end on some very targetted campaigns goes as high as 25% some weeks. There is a HUGE difference based on how targetted the area and the keywords

"maincity real estate" might convert at 10% landing on a page that has active listings for "maincity" on it with forced registration when they click to details whereas

"obscure neighborhood condos for sale" converts much higher landing on a page with listings for "just" that neighborhood and just that property type (condos)" along with some optimized text for quality score etc which helps keep the CPC down.

This is for Google adwords only (I don't run Yahoo campaigns) and some of my other settings

Adsense network (turned off)
Ads spread evenly over time
Geo-targetted (I target my campaigns to at least the US in most cases, if not more geo-targetted)
Run best performing ad option
etc etc - (can't share all my settings here or noone would pay me heh)

We do have the benefit for REW IDX though which allows us to create snippets which is nice - example http://www.mckinneyhomerebate.com/allen-real-estate.htm

[Mitch]

I agree. I have seen for some of my members click to lead rates from google and yahoo as low as 6%. I have also seen as high as 20%+. It depends on the campaign. I'm testing a site right now that's getting about 6% so I have to work on the landing pages.

I have found that keyword appropriate landing pages have increased our conversion rate. We get about 15% right now. Sometimes its higher and sometimes its lower. Lately it's been great. The more targeted your landing pages the higher the conversion rate. We have a landing page for each marketing campaign and each city we market. I have a lot of landing pages!

[HawaiiRealEstateReporter]

Great feedback! I havent had too many 20% days, but hope to soon....I have noticed conversion rates seem high lately too, must be "consumer confidence" is rising, people are seeing the opportunity in their faces.

I'm going to be testing some dynamic keyword insertion on my landing pages soon, will let you know how that goes.

Hows your organic conversion rate? Ours is in the gutter. Need to switch to forcing reg, or at least asking for it before letting users see property details.

[alohatony]

have you noticed that bryn kaufman at oahure dot com doesn't force reg? Pretty interesting considering how much traffic he gets and how much biz he does ($20mil).

i force reg, but maybe as you get more traffic you can stop doing it to get rid of the poor quality leads?

[alohatony]

then again, bryn's site is kind of ugly.

but bryn is a great guy, so no offense if he is reading this.

[NORCAL wholesale]

i force reg, but maybe as you get more traffic you can stop doing it to get rid of the poor quality leads?

I was teetering around the same dilemma about forcing people to register and losing someone who may be skeptical or less serious. I think there is a fine line between protecting your business and blowing off possible business. Return business has been the driving force of our main buyers agent. She showed a handful of families homes a couple of years ago with no luck; but because she is a pleasant person and doesn't get discouraged, moody, and irrational, they came back and she closed all four of them plus one of their parents. If someone is looking around the market, not serious enough to sign at that moment and just want to research five to ten listings that day, then research the same amount a time or two after that you have lost them because they didn't want to "waste your time" with looky-lou questions. But if they are allowed to continue their research using your site, you have established a giving relationship without as much as phone call or email.
And to keep things completely honest, I sometimes use your open MLS search sites to run comps on out of area properties