Quality of Leads on Organic vs PPC

[CLTMichael]

Has anyone read or done a study of the *quality* of lead that comes from organic or ppc? I would love to readup on some thoughts on this.

[Malok]

Lots of variables in that question (forced registration, non-forced, long tails, general searches, etc, etc).


BUT, in general, assuming a decent effort has been made on both: the PPC should have a higher conversion percentage than "organic" on a per lead basis.


If you think about it, it makes sense. Its like using a sniper rifle vs. a shotgun. With PPC, you can specifically design EXACT PERFECT landing pages for a desired target. Whereas with the broader organic searches, you are hitting more targets but they may not be perfect matches.

[webmaster]

I completely disagree - you can target organic SEO the same way you can target PPC - (in fact you can get very generic results in PPC if you are not careful and are not using exact match) - but I really don't think that was the question - the question was "quality" of lead as in is the kind of person that is more inclined to click on an add vs an organic link going to be more or less motivated and able to be turned into a transaction -

My feeling is there would not be much difference - but no I have not extensively tested it - it's just a response based on experience.

Lots of variables in that question (forced registration, non-forced, long tails, general searches, etc, etc).


BUT, in general, assuming a decent effort has been made on both: the PPC should have a higher conversion percentage than "organic" on a per lead basis.


If you think about it, it makes sense. Its like using a sniper rifle vs. a shotgun. With PPC, you can specifically design EXACT PERFECT landing pages for a desired target. Whereas with the broader organic searches, you are hitting more targets but they may not be perfect matches.

[Malok]

I think you misunderstood what I was attempting to say, Morgan.

I was making the comparison based on how I see most persons setting up their efforts. (I'm not saying its the correct way to do things.)


Meaning: Organic for <City> real estate. (broad/shotgun) vs. PPC for a specific neighborhood/area. (sniper rifle)


Yes, of course you are able to set up specific pages targeting the same market for organic & PPC.

[webmaster]

yeah but you have to assume "correct" SEO vs "correct" PPC (sniper vs sniper) or incorrect (broadmatch) SEO or PPC (shotgun vs shotgun)

See what I mean?

[Malok]

I understand what you are saying. I just used what I normally see out there for typical agents:

Most persons try to rank organically for <city> real estate.

And most persons that try PPC for <city> real estate - quickly give up on that, and go with neighborhoods/niches.

[Tim Shepard Destin]

I've been generating leads from an organic site for 7 years and another site with ppc for about 3.

I haven't actually crunched the numbers but the organic results are much higher quality than the ppc.

For example, the majority of my telephone calls come from my organic site.

The majority of my higher end closings came from my organic site even though it generates about 1/4 the leads of ppc.

The percentage of accurate phone numbers is higher on my organic site than ppc.

I keep the ppc going because its cheap, has a good return, and generates a ton of leads. It also has an awesome, automatic, follow-up program that converts many leads years after I capture them.

Generally, I've found that my ppc clients are less sophisticated than my organic ones.

Again, I don't have exact numbers but I deal with both sets of leads daily and can definitely tell the difference.

Bottom line, my experience says organic is much better.

[Malok]

Tim, I think you may be illustrating the point I was attempting to make - only in reverse. It appears you are relying on broad searches for PPC, and more specific focused niches/areas for your organic results.


In this example:



For my data center, you do not rank page 1 for the broad organic search of city real estate or homes for sale. You do however, appear to be doing a PPC for it.

So, in your case - it would stand to reason that your organic results are much more tightly focused which is resulting in higher quality leads in comparison to the results you are seeing for your PPC effort.*


*It also sounds like you are driving organic persons to 1 landing page, and PPC persons to another. (I didn't click your PPC since I didn't want to cost you to verify.) That could very well have an impact on conversion as well.

[Tim Shepard Destin]

Hello Malok,

I doubt that you could reverse engineer my marketing strategy. However, if you want to try, the following info might help.

My primary organic site is http://www.destincondoguide.com

My primary ppc site is http://www.emeraldcoasthomesearch.com

and I'm doing a combo of things with http://www.emeraldcoastrealestatesearch.com

My ppc keyword matrix contains over 900 terms. I doubt you have time to analyze them all.

My experience tells me that organic leads are better than ppc. For example, in the last 10 days I've shown property to the following people:
1. Condo up to $300k - ppc
2. Condo up to $2.5M - Organic
3. Homes up to $1M - organic
4. Homes or condos up to $400k - ppc
5. Homes up to $600k - organic
6. Waterfront Homes up to $1.2M - organic
7. Homes up to $900k -organic
8. I had a couple of other people looking up to $250k that were ppc that I couldn't service.

While I haven't tabulated the data, I can give you 5 years worth of similar examples. You might be right in your analysis, I just don't think so.

However, it wouldn't be the first time that I did something the wrong way and still had success.

[Malok]

Tim, I agreed with you. I said that for you, your organic leads should be higher quality than your PPC.

See: "So, in your case - it would stand to reason that your organic results are much more tightly focused which is resulting in higher quality leads in comparison to the results you are seeing for your PPC effort."


As far as the additional information you provided, you are quite kind in sharing. In taking a quick look using that additional information, again - for you, organic should be superior because your organic results are niche focused (i.e. page 1 condos for sale rankings, etc), and your PPC is broader (homes for sale, etc).

So, yup. I still agree with you - that for you, you should have much better results on a per lead basis organically.