Is it worth it?

[Commercial Loans]

Is pay per click advertising really worth it? Of-course to the giants I'm sure it is. I would like to hear some of your experiences with pay per click. Who do you use? What kind of worthy hits do you get? Does it improve successful business leads in real estate or financing?

[kthor]

Is pay per click advertising really worth it? Of-course to the giants I'm sure it is. I would like to hear some of your experiences with pay per click. Who do you use? What kind of worthy hits do you get? Does it improve successful business leads in real estate or financing?


Not Really...but if you want to give em a try try it this way..
set your PPC for .15 to .30 per click only..I have mine set to .20
for the most competitive keywords in my area.

[billnad]

I have set up a few Google Adwords campaigns and especially in real estate they seem to be great.

The most important tip I can give is for you to make sure that you are keeping your cost per click down. The best way to keep your cost per click down is to bid on keywords that are not as common. Even though there are alot of searches for Realtor or real estate try using better focussed ones that people would actually be motivated when they click such as neighborhood names (usually cheap) and real estate related terms like apartment, townhome, even school names although in this case you may get low conversion rates.

If you have a limit of only $5.00 per day you should not get your budget to out of whack. In Calgary my prime Adwords campaign only runs around $50-100 per month depending on how agressive I try to be in getting clicks.

[dspotleson]

I know I've been told this before but I can't remember. Can you put a monthly limit on how much you are willing to spend. Like lets say the budget for pay per click is 50.00 for the month and not a penney more and I get the pay per click at .05 can I limit it to spending no more than 50.00 a month. (Ha...that's probably close to only several of days of pay per clicks.

[La Jolla Real Estate]

Curious:

Do any of you with good rankings feel it is worthwhile to consistently supplement your traffic with ppc?

G&S

[GeorgiaCoastal]

I have used pay-per-click for several weekends, which definately doesn't make me an expert. However, I have noticed more people visiting my site.

People frequently sign my guestbook, and I always ask them how they found the site. Most often they can't remember, and say they were "just surfing."

I usually turn it off during the week. When you do that, it wants to "catch up" over the weekend, to the daily amount for the days it was off.

I think it is wisely used in conjunction with other strategies.

[La Jolla Real Estate]

Thanks Jim.

Just started with the ppc, myself.

Any tips on what has been working for you?

G&S

[kthor]

PPC can be anyone's Best Friend or can be your worst nightmare if
you dont pay attention.

I don't recommend PPC instead I recommend to hire a good SEO company
to get your website to the top, some website company are not even worth doing business with!

another way of getting your site to the top is to start a good Link exchange program going..

and always have signatures pointing to your site when using Forums..

now if you still want to PPC, then I would recommend that you pay very close attn to PPC the first 2 weeks and to adjust the ones that are not working - delete them, pay less whatever.

I personally do some PPC but the most iam paying now is .10C a click.
or maybe it's .15C ....I get better quality leads this way and less click fraud.
and offcourse less clicks....

blah blah blah.....

[teamgreene]

So, who are the best pay per click sites? I've never tried it before, but might be able to spare $50-$100 a month.

[Jim]

I am doing PPC on both Yahoo and google for my area. It is very competitive bid wise, over $3. However since it is real estate there is not a hugh amount of traffic so the cpm is still reasonable. It only will take 1 sale per year to more than cover the cost.

[ligroce]

I don't think so... I tried it and cost me money, page was not even in the top 100 search, so I did some digging into SEO and keywords, meta tags, to put into my page and now I don't pay per click,when you type "new home for sale Somerset Ky by builder owner" and you will find me # 1 in google, #1 yahoo, and # 1 msn. "custombuilthomesforsaleinkentucky.com"
Send me email and I will give you more info on this...NO CHARGE for this info. Ok I know that someone will try to knock me out of this slot..so be it but right now I am cooking. Just try it.. type in search "new home for sale somerset ky by builder owner" and see for yourself...

[Jim]

I would love to see the info. you have. Unfortunatly I am unable to access your e-mail address :( I will try to reach you through your site.

[Shimmer]

ppc is working but sooo expensive, if you have budget and no time do it , first try yahoo and msn, google is the last... :) we are mostly using yahoo and msn we are happy, some times google too, expensive.... expensive...:)

[ChrisF79]

I have had fantastic results with PPC. I'm getting roughly 10 solid leads a month at a cost of about $200. Like someone said before, just closely monitor what people are clicking on and make sure you adjust accordingly.

[BajaGeoff]

PPC campaigns are easy to regulate. You can set up the exact amount you want to spend per month and hence come up with a daily maximum as well.

Be cautious though. We were spending between $300-$500 per month with Google Adwords only to discover that most of the clicks were fraudulent. We filed a complaint and Google has said they would investigate and possibly reimburse us. They did just settle a sizable lawsuit last week regarding the matter.

We have since decided not to continue and just rely on our organic rankings in the search engines.

[ligroce]

HEy maybe I should start charging for the info I have on getting the search engine spiders to index your page, with out Pay per click.:rolleyes:

[ChrisF79]

Publish an SEO site full of articles. You could definitely earn some income off of that.

[BajaGeoff]

ligroce,

i do appreciate the offer, but our organic rankings are great. the only reason we ever did the adwords and PPC campaigns were to double up on the exposure. when we discovered that the clicks were not real, we simply ended the campaign. currently 30% of our new business comes from search engines so we are pretty happy about that.

[ligroce]

Publish an SEO site full of articles. You could definitely earn some income off of that. Chris I looked at you website...nice property, nice site.. your missing keywords in your meta= description content.. need keywords "southwest Florida Real estate" then the spider will key off that.

[ligroce]

ligroce,

i do appreciate the offer, but our organic rankings are great. the only reason we ever did the adwords and PPC campaigns were to double up on the exposure. when we discovered that the clicks were not real, we simply ended the campaign. currently 30% of our new business comes from search engines so we are pretty happy about that.
Great I like hearing folks are doing well. I'm not charging for anything that I have learned playing around with this stupid computer, I enjoy learning and passing it on to other if they want the info.

[BajaGeoff]

Thanks ligroce.......

Isn't that the reason we are all in the forums anyway? To learn and pass on the info and help others?

:)

[qasamm]

PPC can be effective if you really narrow down your keywords. Don't use "real estate" as a keyword- it will cost a bundle and get you tons of non-specific traffic.

Instead use specific keywords like:

"Austin residential real estate properties"
"commercial property luxury 2 bedroom apartments"

Your clicks will be much less but the traffic higher quality since they have narrowed down their desire.

Sam Mancuso
President, RuzzMan LLC

[propertyhound]

I'm relatively new to the whole online game, but I think I've actually found a pretty good system - I'm doing PPC on both Google and Yahoo! (medium bids with a modest budget) along with some keywords I purchased through Portal Response Technology. So far both have been working really well, but I'm always open to suggestions.

I've found the most vital thing, regardless of what kind of advertising you're doing, is to make sure you have plenty of relevant text on your landing page. Whether you're doing bilboards, PPC, or even natural listings, you want to make sure that you've got eye-catching text on your page that mirrors the search phrases you're using. That way you can avoid a lot of the browsers.

[marcosll]

Regardless of your size I would say PPC is where your biggest battle wages.

It's definately worth it, but it is tricky to do right.


Online marketing is your most cost effective marketing so even a badly run PPC campaign can outperform offline marketing.

We are a small business and we de very well from PPC. Make sure you focus on specific keywords related to you and make sure you take the time to fine tune your campaign.

[Vlad]

I think the biggest challenge that Realtors face is the ability to calculate ROI while running PPC campaign. After all you do not have a shopping chart and I believe we are still far from time when a real estate transaction will take place entirely on the web.

Managing my client's PPC I always stress on importance of growing their mailing lists. There is a way to calculate general "value" of subscriber using Google Analytics. Then you can decide how much you want to spend on PPC. I see way to many real estate angents wasting their money by either paying way to much per click or not trying to capture visitors and turn them into subscribers.

The bottom line is that PPC is far more efficient and faster method of advertising out there.

[billnad]

If you are doing pay per click like Google Adwords then one of the most important things that you can do is to make sure that your ad has a great headline and that once people clikc they are getting exactly what they came for.

If you have an ad that talks about condos then do not point it at the home page for your site, instead point the ad at your condo page and then make sure that there is a call to action to either get contact from you by email or by phone so that you can start a dialog with the prospect

[z9402305245]

I have website, and I hate PPC... it basically took more than I budgeted.

If you were to use PPC.. I reccommend... google adwords.

[jmartin1970]

My answer is YES. But it is more effective with your own computer programmer. :p

[Kawirider]

I've been doing PPC and have gotten very few impressions on Google. My Yahoo gets about 5 times as many impressions and that many more clicks. Plus my yahoo bids are super low compared to my google bids. If you're going with Google you will have to pay big money for good placement.

[Norman.Irlandez]

well, it depends.

some keywords or adwords can be very expnsive. for instance, the keyword home maybe more expensive than real estate (not sure). However, you have to put the readers first into perspective.

you may go to google keyword, adword and compare,

just make sure, you bring a good content to your website,

[charlieberry]

It is definitely worth it. I have a guy that is certified by Google and is very reasonable and has created unbelievable results for me! Let me know if you would like more information

[LiveHmm]

I think the key to creating a PPC campaign is to be specific. You want qualified leads so the more specific your terms the better, plus they will likely be cheaper.

There was an earlier post about hiring an SEO company to get high rankings on search results. Don't get me wrong, this works, but there are a couple of do-it-yourself recipes to get high rankings.

1. Create a blog or forums on your site and make entries about hot real estate topics and material related to your area/specialty. Search engines pick up these 'keywords' and in turn they get you higher rankings.

2. Get the link to your website on as many other sites as possible. The more times your URL is picked up the better. This can be done by reciprocal and non-reciprocal link building, also by having a signature in forums and the like.

3. Have related content to your area served and specialty on your website. If you have neighborhood and school information, near-by attractions, cost of living etc. you will get more hits from people searching for related information. Because let's be honest; how many people search "my area" best real estate agent? None that I know of.

[triplecrowncorp]

I've been running a PPC campaign for my company, Triple Crown Corporation, for 6 months and have had really great results. They key is to focus your campaign. I do this by:

1. Using strong base keywords
2. Focus on a specific geographic region via geotargeting
3. Use keywords that include geographic information (ex "Harrisburg Homes" vs just "Homes")

[Indochine]

Yes, it's worth it. Especially when it's called AdWords.
I couldn't find better.

[MAAOnline]

Is pay per click advertising really worth it? Of-course to the giants I'm sure it is. I would like to hear some of your experiences with pay per click. Who do you use? What kind of worthy hits do you get? Does it improve successful business leads in real estate or financing?

I'd say it can really be worth it. My first pay-per-click campaign was for $100 and I got about 70 clicks from it. From those 70 clicks I recieve 1 client that was able to net a $2,500 from. So it can work!