This is a second post in, what I envision to be, a series of posts and articles on real estate and internet marking. I did not expect to have any reaction to my write up about pay per click advertising. To my surprise I received one request from a read who would like to stay anonymous, to take a look at his PPC campaigns and to offer some suggestion. I agreed under condition to use my findings in my upcoming posts here and the trade off was that I will not reveal his name. All that I am allowed to say is that he is a real estate agent from Philadelphia.
For someone that is not in the online marketing business he has done an outstanding job with his PPC campaigns. However there was something about his landing pages which immediately caught my eye. I think it will strike home with many other Realtors who are currently running PPC campaigns – but unfortunately that will be the subject of my next post.
For now I would like to ask you this question- Which listings do you generally sell? Let me explain this a little further. Lets presume you have are on the floor and a call comes through about a particular listing. Do you always sell that same listing to that same person? Just use the poll below to answer this question and do not forget to subscribe to my blog for the future posts:
It was very surprising to find out that there wasn’t a Real Estate group over at one of my favorite online community- BlogCatalog. There are however many real estate blogs listed on BlogCatalog.
Anyway, if you are real estate blogger or a real estate agent who blogs consider joining both BlogCatalog as well as Real Estate Group. Evidently BlogCatalog is removing inactive groups and groups that are three members or less. I will be writing in the future how online communities like BlogCatalog can help you grow your real estate business.
If you are already active BlogCatalog member please comment and leave the link to your blog so I can review and rate it via BlogCatalog’s rating/voting system.
On Saturdays I will be posting much lighter articles and will be sharing what is know as “link love” with other websites and blogs. If you have interesting and real estate related blog e-mail me and I may feature it in one of my Saturday posts.
Today I would like to bring to your attention two different online forums I am a member of:
Real Estate Webmasters Community- I have just recently discovered this forum but I am already very impressed with the amount of great information that can be found there. Whether you have a design questions or need some advise about your pay per click advertising you can find answers to your problem there. Great community and support. Highly recommend for real estate agents and real estate webmasters.
Real Estate Forums- I have joined this community back in 2006. Great place for real estate agents to exchange their experience. While they have few forums that are dedicated to subjects like advertising and search engine optimization, I think this forum is more geared to wards non technical part of real estate profession.
If you are a member of these forums please tell us what is your experience and if you benefited from being a member there.
To make sure that this article is not overwhelmingly long, I am making few assumptions. However I do not want you to get intimidated by what I am writing and would hope to hear from you in the comment area if you need me to clarify anything about this article. Here are my assumptions:
You have your own website and not just you profile along with other 100+ real estate agents in your company.
You have at least heard what Pay Per Click (PPC from now on) Advertising is.
As an owner of a real estate website, or any website for that matter, you already know that just by having a website out there does not mean your website will be visited by potential buyers or sellers. Any webmaster will tell you that it takes time to build up your website’s reputation and authority on the internet in order for it to come up on the top in search results across major search engines. Some times it takes weeks or even months to see any decent “traffic” to your website. But in real estate sometimes weeks and months means “unsold listing”. So how do you bring visitors to your website? One of the fastest ways to bring visitors to your website is through PPC advertising. Today there are variety of products and system available to run a successful PPC campaign, and I will write about those in the future posts. Today I will just discuss the advantages and disadvantages of PPC, specifically when it comes to real estate websites.
Disadvantages Of PPC Advertising in Real Estate
One of the biggest disadvantage of running a successful PPC campaign for a real estate website is that real estate website are what is know as e-commerce websites, thus making it more difficult to calculate your ROI (return on investment) . You do not have a shopping chart on your website, even if you do it is unlikely to be used to purchase a piece of lend or a condo. When running a PPC campaign on any given system you should be able to have level a reporting that would show your visitor’s behavior from the moment they enter your website to the time they complete an order and are served a “thank you page”. Knowing how much you paid for that click that brought this buyer to your website and knowing what products were purchased you can very easy calculate your ROI. But as I mentioned already, real estate websites generally do not have shopping charts and even if in the future it will be possible to complete a real estate transaction online, we are not anywhere close to that time. There is a way to calculate ROI even on the websites without a shopping chart but it will be covered in one of my future posts.
When it comes to disadvantages what I have described above real is the only disadvantage when it comes to PPC advertising and real estate website, or any non e-commerce websites for that matter. However I was hesitant to even list it as a disadvantage, because if you know how to confront it- it becomes an advantage.
Advantages Of PPC Advertising in Real Estate
There are numerous advantages of PPC, but I will list only those which I consider to be the most important ones.
PPC is inexpensive. Even if you compare it to that monthly or quarterly mailings you are doing regularly. Presuming your are sending out a newsletter at cost of .49 cents per envelope. $100 will allow you to send out about 204 newsletters. How many of those letters are going to end up int the garbage without even being opened? Now with PCC advertising this kind of loss is virtually eliminated. Once you paid your “postage” (one you have purchased a click) you “newsletter” is opened (your website is looked at by some one).
PPC is much faster. You can create a PPC and almost instantly begin to receive visitors to your website as oppose to regular mail where it takes at least two or three days for the people to act on it, if not longer.
PPC can be very efficient. Some one who receives your monthly newsletter, may be removed by a year or two from buying or selling home. Visitors that come to your website through your PPC campaign are likely to be already considering the purchase or sale of their home.
Last but not least, most PPC providers will allow you to geographically target your potential clients, so that you don’t waste you efforts on some one who is looking for a home in California while your are a New York based real estate agent.
While Pay Per Click advertising can be very successful tool in your hands, you should not abandon other proven methods to grow your business. However if you do not have presence on the Internet or if you are not utilizing your presence on the Internet to the fullest, you may be “leaving money on the table”.
If you have any questions about this post or need advise about your ongoing PPC campaign please do not hesitate to ask them in the comments or e-mail me privately. If do not want to miss future articles about Internet Marketing in Real Estate feel free to subscribe to this blog or simply bookmark this blog and visit often.
If you ever plan to move to Kentucky, make sure to consider building a home instead of buying one.
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October 18, 2007
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Posted in Internet Marketing, PPC, Real Estate 
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