Any of you savvy ppc techies using cpm instead of cpc or in addition to?

I use limited cpm for my B2B advertising, and even then, only to a very small number of targeted sites. Not for consumer RE ads, though. CPC only for those.

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Ron Goodman, GRI, REALTOR®
Prudential Colorado Real Estate
Denver Colorado Real Estate and Homes for Sale,
AdWords PPC Consulting and Support for REALTORS®
Hobby: Goodman Family History and Genealogy

Ron, can you please provide at least a quick outline of which parts of your site you use PPC for? I know you said you advertise town-specific MLS searches, but what else?

I use buyer oriented PPC ads for some of my community specific home search pages. I have built community specific search pages on my site for nearly every Denver market area, but use AdWords just for the ones in my primary south metro service areas. I have run PPC ads for home valuations (CMAs) in the past, but the response was very poor, and they never led to anything. I think 95% of home sellers start out with home search terms and look at house prices and features in the areas they are thinking of moving to before they ever think of getting a valuation on their current home. I have dozens of buyer prospects who are local sellers also, and they all came in from my buyer oriented ads.

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Ron Goodman, GRI, REALTOR®
Prudential Colorado Real Estate
Denver Colorado Real Estate and Homes for Sale,
AdWords PPC Consulting and Support for REALTORS®
Hobby: Goodman Family History and Genealogy

Ronnie,

Great advise to austinguy, right on target. I respect your opinion. Approximately 70-80% of traffic to re sites are buyers who turn out to be potential sellers. Targeting community pages that have specific links to the community search is the best way to use ppc. I have also been able to work ppc going directly to an outstanding home page, if the content is highly relevant, buyers incentives, and provides excellent information. I don't normally set up ppc this way, usually to a targeted landed page.

Ronnie, you are probably aware that Google is finally offering seminars for ppc. I am attending a class on Feb. 5th. This is not set up for sem's but, I thought it would be a great idea anyway. I'm going to pick their brains and see if cpm's work in a small area for real estate related terms, so that I don't max out impression costs. May be a mute point, but curious.

Thanks for all your great input on ppc. You definitely know what you are doing!

That's interesting, Ronnie. I'm just starting a new PPC campaign and was curious if you tried to measure the incubation period for these leads? Do they sign up right away, or is there a week or so of time? I guess it's something you'd have to ask the clients, hehe.

Btw, does anyone know how to measure conversion? It's not like an e-commerce site where the checkout is your goal. Someone might convert to future client just by bookmarking the page.

Incubation periods: Right away to a year plus.

I had one relo prospect who was on the phone to me and setting up a weekend of showings before I could even respond to their online registration. We went out for two weekends, made an offer, and they closed 45 days after first contact.

I have a house under contract right now with a buyer who started using my site for their search over a year ago. They thought they were going to buy a lot and have a home built, but got burned out on condo living and decided to go with a pre-owned home for a couple of years until they can work out the custom home plans.

Regardless of what they say their time line is, I, or one of my team, contact them the same day, generally after they have done a couple of hours of searching and we can then tell from their activity where exactly they are looking and in what price range. That information gives us a good starting point for the conversation. If they don't come in through one of my community specific search pages, which shows up as the lead source URL for that prospect, it also gives me information that I can use to assign them to a team member who specializes in the buyer's target area.

Conversions:

To me, a registration is a conversion. I track those with Google conversion code, plus manual means, since Google can only track a conversion that occurs within 24 hours or so of the initial PPC click. Google's conversion tracking is therefore only a rough guideline. But when it works, and it does most of the time, it is great for identifying specific ads and keyword phrases that convert well, and those that don't. Over time, it has helped me focus on keyword phrases that convert to registrations, and eliminate keyword phrases that cost me money, in CPC charges, but never convert.

Unfortunately, not all web sites or IDX registration processes allow you to embed the necessary Google conversion code where it needs to be - in the post-registration "thank you" page the consumer gets to after a successful registration. I am fighting that battle now on behalf of several of my PPC clients who use 1ParkPlace IDX, which is one of the products with that limitation. If you are considering a REW custom IDX, or are evaluating another IDX product, be sure to include this requirement in your specs if you plan to use PPC for lead generation!

__________________
Ron Goodman, GRI, REALTOR®
Prudential Colorado Real Estate
Denver Colorado Real Estate and Homes for Sale,
AdWords PPC Consulting and Support for REALTORS®
Hobby: Goodman Family History and Genealogy

Thanks for the info! Btw, when I said incubation, I meant from the initial visit to the point where they identify themselves by signing up or calling me. The reason I view it that way, is sometimes people visit the site and like it and plan on working with you, but aren't ready to commit or sign up. The PPC ad may have worked and given you a new future client, but you have no way of knowing. I guess a better measure would be what % of clicks turn into leads on the first visit.

For the same reason, any kind of tracking, even in IDX is not very reliable. Ideally, I would be able to track each unique user and what they do using their IP or a cookie, but that doesn't always work. And, like I mentioned, not everyone immediately signs up. Some users will visit 10 different realtors and eventually settle on one.

This is great info, but my thread was really regarding ppc savvy sem's or agents using cpm for real estate terms.