Pay Per Click

[chrishummel]

Anyone have some good news or success stories with pay per click? How much a month? How long did it take to build the site?

[jimkimmons]

Chris:

I'm a Google Certified AdWords Professional (http://www.realestatebusinesssuccess.com/pay_per_click.htm)and have been doing PPC for my real estate site for years. There is no site to build. Once you set up an account, you research your desired keywords, set your budget and build an ad or ads pointing to your site.

There are some things that you can do to dramatically cut your cost per valid lead, such as turning off "Content Match" for more focused traffic. Though I help REALTORS® to set up accounts on a consulting basis, I do not manage accounts for a fee. Our industry's keywords are pretty static and, once an account is working properly, it's not necessary to mess with it much. Don't pay someone 20% of spend to manage an account.

As far as what you spend, it's totally decided and managed by you. You set daily/monthly budget and ads will run as long as budget is remaining, turning off if budget is hit. If you're having to spend $1/click, then a $5/day budget will get you five daily and about 150 monthly clicks to your site. Though there are those that say click fraud is a major problem, I've been using PPC for 10 years and it has generated a great deal of business for me. No newspaper ad can deliver the focused prospect this way. There is a good deal of informaton on PPC here (http://realestate.about.com/od/realestatewebsites/bb/byppcprimer.htm).

[jimkimmons]

Chris:

Since my previous reply, I completed a project to produce videos and instructions for setting up a Google PPC account. It is a series of instructions and short flash videos that walk you through the first sign-up and intial ad design for an account.

There is also some explanation of matching keyword phrases to ad copy to improve results and examples of an actual account. If you check it out, (http://realestate.about.com/od/realestatewebsites/ss/real_estate_ppc.htm) let me know if it was helpful.

[vamoosevarmint]

I like the use of ppc it has worked for me on our web page. We have generated many leads if the right keywords are used.

Dan

[gjtrafl]

Question about PPC campaigns... What happens when the same person logs onto your site multiple times? Are you charged for each individual click or is it charged on a per person hit?

Many thanks!

[Chief Tutor]

The PPC programs have integrated a fraud protection program to stop your competitors from clicking your ad all the time. The way it works is that once someone clicks on your add, your IP address is registered. Then if that IP address clicks on the ad anytime in the next 60 minutes, your account will not be charged.

It doesn't stop them from clicking on another of your ads.

[ColoradoMortgageHelper]

How much does it end up costing you per lead with averaged out with the PPC?

[jimkimmons]

Your question about cost per lead simply cannot be answered, as it varys hugely. You can pay precisely the same amount for each click as a competitor, get the same number of clicks to site visits, and have a much higher or lower cost per valid lead.

Getting them to the site is the easiest part, only taking some PPC money. Once they're there, it's all in the site content, offerings to capture their contact info, and follow-up systems. More on this here. (http://realestate.about.com/od/realestatewebsites/bb/bysiteworks.htm) It's still a great marketing investment, but don't pay for the first click until you've got the back end figured out.

[itsjustshelley]

As nice as it is to feel like you have control over your advertising, it is still a good idea to consider having a professional set up and manage your pay per click advertising. The pay per click industry is constantly changing and the major players (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) are always tweaking and updating their ad distribution and administration tools. It is very time consuming to try to keep up with all the changes and tricks and new strategies but a management company will keep up with all those updates and changes and can even anticipate them.

A good management company will make sure that your account is tweaked and adjusted to meet any new requirements or updates that might affect your advertising account. Many management companies will also give you full access to your account with the understanding that you can make minor adjustments (daily budget, pause/unpause, etc.) and they will make major adjustments (campaign settings, new campaigns and/or adgroups, etc.).

[ChristianOC]

Adwords can suck your wallet dry if you are not careful.

Set reasonable limits at first, and then just study the results. There is a Google keywords testing tool that can help you determine what the average PPC is for certain keywords. I'd post the link but I can't yet (not enough posts).

Go to Google and click on Advertising Campaigns. Go through the Adwords tutorial, and you should find the Keyword Tool. Play with it, and you'll get an idea how much your keywords are costing per click.

[skypix]

google ad words has generated alot of visits from high rise developers looking to see how we can help them sell preconstruction units....a very specialized and targeted customer...it has been expensive though and in our case it was more logical just calling developers up and telling about our view photography service.

Dan Shaw
Skypix Imaging LLC

[RealEstatePromos]

Your words must be very targeted and you must monitor it and make adjustments often.

[missalicia]

Great info! I am thinking about starting ppc advertising campaign. This is the beginning of my research. Anyone know specific estimates about unique hits? I know it depends on search terms, what kind of tracking system do I get to view by using this? will I get to see what ip addresses clicked or some info about the people that clicked & maybe what they looked at, how long they stayed, etc? my friedn has this on her site & I love it.

[kelsheikh]

It really depends on what type of cost/per conversion scenerio your working with. If its email, product, subscription program, etc., your budget should be based on what your willing to pay for in a conversion or sale.

[ventasman]

OK, Everything very nice. Great stuff the ppc but... i believe the costs are to high. You are paying a minimum of 0.5 dollar. That is too much. Clics should cost no more than 10 cents each, because the fraud problem and the fact that the most of the users that clics are not going to buy. Besides the competitors can clic your adds just to make some dammage. Keep all that in mind when you buy clics.

Regards from Panama
The Panama Team

[marcosll]

Here are a few tips to help you get the best ROI on your PPC.

(I prefer google)

1) Target your campaign as much as possible. If your agency has properties in just a few cities rather than the whole state, then target those cities as keywords. If you target the entire state such as Florida Property and you only have properties in the Jacksonville area, most of the clicks will be wasted.

2) Customize your ads as much as possible. One of the big mistakes I see is people just copying the same description for a bunch of keywords. Your description for "property jacksonville" should be different to your description for "apartments jacksonville". You should ideally highlight the keywords in your description.

3) Select the right countries. If you're selling property only to United States clients then you probably don't want to have traffic coming from India, China etc.

4) Don't overbid. Just 1 cent more than the competitor's spot you want is pleanty.

5) Position means a lot. The higher you are the more clicks you'll get. Although being #1 means you'll also be paying for a lot more useless clicks. Find the position that gives you the best quality clicks - position ratio.

6) Micromanage. Check your campaign ofter for performance vs competitors. Keep it updated! Improve on it as you go.

[jimkimmons]

There are a great many helpful people on these forums, and a great deal of useful information. However, some of the PPC info is a bit old, and some just not accurate. Before you spend money on a PPC campaign, have your lead capture mechanisms in place (http://realestate.about.com/od/realestatewebsites/ss/sxswebcapture.htm). If you don't, stop the PPC plans until you do, or your ad money is a waste.

Unfortunately, bidding a penny over competition means little or nothing with Google or Yahoo Pay Per Click. They both now set positions based on several factors, one being click-through percentage, which is highly correlated with ad copy. Google has done this for quite some time, while Yahoo began this year. It isn't a simple "high bid gets position" situation. For a complete, free, nothing being sold, tutorial, see the PPC strategy articles from this hub (http://realestate.about.com/od/realestatewebsites/tp/ppc_real_estate.htm).

[marcosll]

Uhmmm, if they base the ad placement on click through percentage then where do they know where to place 1st time ads? And what about ads that have been modified?

And further still, what would be the point of bidding for keywords?

Here's a quote directly from Google Adwords:

"Learn about AdWords settings

Higher CPCs help your ads appear among top positions in Google search results and earn higher clickthrough rates. (Your clickthrough rate, or CTR, equals the number of clicks your ad receives divided by its number of impressions.) Move the slider below to see how CPCs can affect your ads."

Then there is a slider that directly correlates CPC with position.

Therefore jimkimmons, I would disagree with you because

- According to google the more you bid (CPC) the higher the ad is positioned.

- The higher the ad, the higher the clickthrough rate. A better (more relevant) ad will get more clicks than a worse (less relevant) ad. However, that difference is small compared to the actual position of the ad.

- Regardless of how good or bad an ad is, if it is first it will get significantly more traffic than if it is second. And equally, the best ad in the world that is 10th will get a tiny % of clicks compared with the worst designed ad in the world that is 1st. I have seen this and continue to see this.

So, if CTR depends on position and position depends on CPC, then logically CTR depends on CPC and not vice versa. CPC does not depend on CTR and position cannot depend on CTR since it is determined by CPC.

If 2 people bid the same price then maybe CTR becomes a factor in deciding who gets to be where. But of course, this would only apply to ads that have been running for some time.

Any effect CTR has on the ad placement will be minimal. Your goal should be a nice CTR at a CPC you can afford.


(http://www.palmestates.net)

[jimkimmons]

Marcosil:

You are correct on many points. Of course your bid is important, as a very low bid will never get you near enough to the top to get clicks, thus CTR, thus a higher score for the ad.....and they do actually score the ad with CTR being an important part of the score for future position. It was covered thoroughly in my certification process as a Qualified Google Adwords Professional (https://adwords.google.com/select/ProfessionalStatus?id=6laBiXE9YTWacX0pDoHy6A&hl=en_US). Not a solicitation, as I don't take clients for Adwords management.

Perhaps the words in my post "means little or nothing" could have been better, but they're no more in error than flat statements that a penny more will do the job. As far as quoting Google's help instructions, they are a great help, but can be very out of date also. After five years, the last time I looked at Google's text about the importance of links into a site, it was exactly the same. Few would argue that their algorithms have changed dramatically in that time period as they apply to the handling of the value of links. It's still an accurate statement, but not knowing other things could lead one astray. I think their help text is amended very infrequently, while their algorithms change from day to day.

As far as the importance of CTR, at whatever point in the life of the ad we're checking, here's a real life example. I had a competitor in my own market call me to help him with PPC. He wondered why I was willing to do it, and I told him it was to gain knowledge. With Google you don't know what the other guy is bidding, so seeing his campaign would help me in my writing and consulting. As far as real estate here, his site couldn't serve the visitors' information needs well, so I wasn't too worried about that part.

His bid for our top two keyword phrases was three times mine ($6 vs $2), yet he consistently fell a position or two below my ad, while jumping over it at times. His ads were poorly written and I'm sure that, even when his position was above mine, his CTR was not as good. Also, his landing page wasn't very helpful to the visitor. There are those who will tell you that the rating of the page as far as relevance to the key phrase is also checked and factored into the score for the ad, just like the free SEO positioning. I wouldn't attempt to guess at what Google and Yahoo are doing behind closed doors, but this real life competitive situation should indicate the value of the content, ad wording and CTR in the long term.

Another real situation, or two of them actually. Two new sites I started from scratch, one real estate and the other technology consulting are the tests. In both cases, my initial bids for the top key phrases had to be almost $2/click to get in the top three or four positions. In both cases, for several weeks, the average cost per click was around $1.50 to $1.90 depending on the site. After several weeks, with no changes to bids, ads or the sites, each was averaging half (about 80 cents/click) of the original cost per click for roughly the same positioning. This is a factor of the CTR due to the ad wording and whatever other secret things Google looked at in my ads or on my pages. Thus my statement, however poorly worded, still intends to point out that the bid isn't the only thing to be concerned with by a stretch.

Perhaps I think too long term, and a high bid at first will definitely perform as you stated for a while. It gets you up to or near the top. However, from then on, I stand by the need to have proper ad copy and a landing page with high relevance and stickiness. Of course, a really high bid that buys the number one position can perform well just because of that and hold it. The number one ad in our market is a poor one, but gets CTR just by being there. However, his budget is in the $Thousands per month, while mine was $250 to hold in position 3 through 4. I guess it just becomes a case of making sure that the members who come here for advice get a complete picture instead of snapshots that, though technically accurate as they were stated, could be interpreted a number of ways by the reader. I can be guilty of that at times, and will try to do better.

[jimkimmons]

Can someone dig further into ppc fraud?

Too many are frightened away from PPC with the "click fraud" phrase. Actually, if you take a look at its definition in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud#Non-contracting_parties), you'll also find an explanation of non-contracting parties and the statement that this is a "secondary" type of click fraud.

The huge portion of click fraud is automated clicking of sites that in some way provide a payment to the perpetrator from the clicks or exposure. Ads are placed and various methods are used to make it look like legitimate visitors are clicking in order to run up the "impressions" or clicks for ad revenue. The average real estate site has no ad type of activity, nor should it need it. The job of the site is to serve a visitor with area real estate related information, not a string of ads.

The "secondary" non-contracting parties" fraud is when one of your competitors repeatedly clicks on your ad to run up your costs and try to stop you from advertising due to budget. Or maybe they just don't like you. I've been doing PPC for years and have never had this happen. I've also used a paid service to catch repeat clicks. After three months, the only activity it reported was visitors who forgot how they got to me the first time and clicked again in a search to locate the site. And it was very few of those.

Forget about click fraud and go ahead and do PPC if it fits your marketing plan.

[the-ref]

I hate to be 'that guy', but PPC fraud is always going to be around. When the major search engines figure out a way to fix the problem, fraudsters are just going to figure out another way to exploit the system. Plus another thing is the major search engines are willing to credit you back any costs that came from click fraud, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

If you are a victim of click fraud, all you need to do is report it and it will be looked into. If records indicate an abnormal surge in clickthroughs (or however else the look for evidence of click fraud), then that normally indicates click fraud and your money will be refunded.

[Wally]

I've used PPC for a few network marketing companies. They were Business Ops and new to the market. I have done well in that industry with ezine advertising and other forms of marketing so I decided to try PPC.

The first time I did get to the top of Google but my leads were costing me about $55 a piece. As the spiders searched my site and my Search Engine Optimization (SEO) went up my Cost Per Click (CPC) went down a bit but it was still costing me way more per customer than all other forms of marketing combined. In fact it was twice as much.

The second time I decided to give PPC a click a paid a guy $500 to get my Yahoo PPC system set up. That time the keyword competition was even more competitive. It cost me $3,000 in 3 weeks and 4 days. I did get quite a few leads and some high dollar sales but again, I just could not justify the cost.

Now, if you're using keywords from a niche business, you should not have that problem.

In most new marketing I always say start out slow and consistent then poor it on. But most say in PPC you have to come out strong to get ranked and then taper it off. Especially with Google where you get rewarded for having relevant content on your site. If people stay on your site longer, you will end up paying less for a position than the people that are just getting clicks but viewers are just clicking off.

I have not tried PPC with my Creative Real Estate business because so far I have enough business without it. I doubt I will ever try it again.

Wally Carmichael

[RobM]

Ive used Yahoo PPC and had very good luck with it...you really have to stay on top of it as you get pushed out pretty quick if you set it up and forget about it. But it can really drain you if you dont monitor it closely

[MAAOnline]

I've used Yahoo, Google, and MSN's pay-per-click systems. I've had times were I've recieved good quality leads and other times were I haven't recieved any leads from the pay per click. It really has varied for me.