While we were setting up a Google AdWords pay-per-click campaign for one of our customers last week, I thought back to just how few agents are using it effectively.
Despite being one of the most popular topics (read 'em!) on this blog over the last year, still only a handful of estate agents actually run any sort of PPC marketing at all - and it struck me that perhaps it's a case of just not knowing where to start.
After all, even some companies advertising 'Professional Managed Campaigns' still only do the absolute basics. I was horrified to see that one customer who had been paying almost £200 a month had been receiving less than 35 visitors on average in return.
At those prices, maybe Rightmove isn't so expensive? :o)
So, what I thought I'd do is use this campaign and some example research we have conducted to set a few expectations for you. Show you what the results of your research might look like, explain how many keywords you might be targeting and discuss what results you might expect.
A good PPC campaign is mostly about research. It's about thinking about who you'd like to target, what they might be searching and why your business could be a good answer.
And then putting some real effort into drilling down into the detail and multiplying everything together, so that you can cover all of the possible variations.
Click the mind-map below as an example of what I mean. This is a good typical structure for any letting agent to follow and should give you some inspiration.
For the customer we were working on this week, the research and planning resulted in two campaigns (one national coverage and one limited to their local area), with 19 ad groups based around 373 different keywords.
If you've tried Google AdWords before, but found that you didn't generate sufficient interest, or it was too expensive - I'd hazard a guess that you hadn't gone to that level of detail?
On the results side, take a look at this article on where people click, that I posted back in July. If your AdWords advert appears in the top three, above the organic listings, you can expect between 4 and 11 percent of impressions to earn a click. If the advert appears down the right hand side, perhaps it's more like 1-3%.
It's worth bearing those figures in mind when you're calculating your daily budgets - after all, if your adverts are converting into more business than their cost, you should be spending as much as possible!
Martin
Martin