Do you use PPC

[ColoradoHomeHelper]

I have been using Cherie and her ppc services for a little over a month now and have nothing but great things to say. I have closed two transactions in one month and am getting a steady number of leads daily.

When done properly ppc is an extremely effective tool. Cherie has been extremely helpful and more then fair with her pricing. My experience is if your going to go with ppc, which I recommend if your not getting steady leads organically, then pay the money to have someone who knows what there doing set it up and help you through it. I wasted a ton of money trying to figure ppc out on my own, when I started using ppc with Cherie I was saving money and getting more leads.

If you’re running ppc and not getting leads, you don’t know what your doing and need to seek out help!

Just my two cents!

Logan

[Cherie]

Logan,

Thanks for the kudos. I am here to encourage anyone that needs leads and has a budget of at least $300 per month, to have ppc. I am not the only one out here that knows how to do this. I have run thousands of dollars on these campaigns and learned what not to do. I don't want to see anyone making those mistakes.

Every area is different as far as the online campaigns working. I'm not sure who is spreading the word not to use "Real Estate" but that can be bad advise depending on the kw. I won't use "San Diego" for instance because it's expensive and doesn't convert well. But I will use, Coronado, Escondido, and surrounding areas that the agent works in.

I'm really really happy to see that many agents are using ppc effectively. You many not need them forever, but don't miss out on a great opportunity to market. Do not sign up with homegain or those other portals, they are simply Google on steriods, said this before. Don't let someone else take control of these campaigns without teaching you how to manage them, giving you full access.

Also, sign up for the great analytics that Google and Overture offers. At least put the scripting on the homepage, and internal pages if possible.

I really appreciate the opportunity that this posting has given me to provide feedback on using these tools!

[Memphis]

Hi Ed,

I just got done ranting on another post about photos on websites. Don't see yours on there . Beautiful theme oriented Real Estate Webmasters site! And, yes, I am a hypocrite when it comes to my own sites and photos.
I know this is not ppc related, but I couldn't resist.

The wife and I are going in shortly to get some new ones done. I guess I could put up the current ones so folks get a feeling of a personal touch. On the contact page or "about" pages though, I hate seeing them on the front pages.

[The-Yank]

Hi guy's This Is my first post. But I have been using google adwords for a week. I have not upgraded from starter edition and I keep my click charge at$.50. Now I'm trying a lot of diferent ads and google seems to spend my daily limit daily. . Once a clicker gets there what would be a good capture rate?

Thanks

[atxrealtor]

Can you please share a few details about what you do to convert these people. If they leave no phone # and only want into on some property they found on MLS, there's only so much you can do. I'm considering signing them up for a newsletter as a way to force a DRIP campaign on them. A few will get pissed, but most will just unsubscribe if they want to.

We use PPC on both Y and G, with different ad campaigns! We don't use PPC on MSN since we are page 1 and 2 for our keywords (we were at the top spots for a few days, but somehow all our backlinks dissappeared and we dropped a few spots).

Since we do not come up in the searches for either of those engines (Y & G), I figured that was the best way to promote (we have an advertising budget and rather than advertise in print which is way more expensive than PPC we opted to test market this way).

It is working tremendously for us and I continually monitor and bump our advertising when I must!

We will keep our PPC until we begin to show up in the search engines (I could really use some help getting us there *hint hint* ), perhaps longer if we get really busy.

Heck I wish we could afford to hire someone to do our SEO and link exchange for us and get us page 1 quicker, but these SEO guys and gals are just way too expensive for us at the moment. Although, if someone wanted to take us on as a client on spec, I would certainly sign up for that *hint hint* and help promote them in exchange (I can reach over 7000 offices with a single click!)

I disagree completely that paying for PPC is of no value. If you are in real estate, you are paying for advertising some how. The internet can reach far more people than any affordable print advertising.

Our ads show up all over the place on many related (as well as unrelated sometimes) websites. We've been told by our customers they found us on several websites they were visiting and clicked over to us since we were popping up so often.

Sure it costs me money when they click there, but what's a dollar or two on a click when we just made our commission on a sale

Oh, and btw:

Conversion technique is key to weeding out false leads and turning good leads into customers and sales. On another website I owned for 10 years I learned how to weed out 'looky loos' from good prospects and brought that knowledge with me into our Real Estate business.

It works and is fool proof, and goes against everything we have been taught about prospecting in Real Estate! So I'm not changing!

Our office manager disagrees with us in how we convert our leads, but our broker says 'If it works, keep doing it'. Bottom line: It's working.

To date (20 days, only counting the new REW site) we have converted 80% of our contacts to working prospects!

That's a pretty darn good conversion rate! I'm sure as time goes by and we get more and more visitors and contact forms submnitted, this number will drop.

I'm not talking about visitors, I'm talking about people who actually phone or contact us!

We track every call and email we get. We know exactly where people are finding us and how! If you are not doing this, your are doing a great disservice to your business.

Good luck everyone

[jessiesc]

Can you please share a few details about what you do to convert these people. If they leave no phone # and only want into on some property they found on MLS, there's only so much you can do. I'm considering signing them up for a newsletter as a way to force a DRIP campaign on them. A few will get pissed, but most will just unsubscribe if they want to.

We get more phone calls from our website than we do contact form submittals, on average it's about a 4 to 1 ratio. We also get alot of email inquiries, about 2 to 1 ratio against the contact form submittals from various sources through out the internet, not just our website.

Our first contact with everyone is an email with our contact information. We ask them to respond to the email to verify we have their correct contact information. If they don't respond, we assume they are not a serious inquiry.

Of those that do respond, we have converted on average about 60%.

Hope this helps.

[RonnieG]

When I started doing PPC over two years ago, I thought it would be a quick way to get my new site some exposure while I worked on SEO. As it turns out, over time, my PPC results are actually more cost effective than spending lots of time and money on SEO, especially when I could SEO for a few terms, but not every one of the dozens of terms I have in my PPC campaigns. I am in a very competitive market, with lots of high-tech brokerages and agents with long established web sites spending thousands per month on keeping themselves in the top SEO results, which is a constant battle.

Over time, I have managed to keep my site in the top 1-3 Google PPC results for nearly every one of my keywords for a dozen communities, with PPC costs averaging $1.20/click over all of my ads, and good CTR and conversion rates that yield a 8x return in commissions and referral fees for my PPC investment. As you can see by the numbers, being able to accurately measure your results is another great advantage of PPC done right. I do NOT advertise in any magazines, send out postcards, or any other media. PPC and my web site generate 80% of my leads and business, with the rest being a combination of past client referrals and organic search results.