Does paying for online RE marketing work? Let us know!

Question

I'd love to know realtors thoughts on marketing online? Does anyone go beyond social media and pay to promote their (personal?) website to the front page of Google or Bing? I'm looking at purchasing some pay-per-click or pay-per-impression advertising and would like to know if its worth it.

Tim Oppelt · Answer

PPC is good for real estate investors, not so much agents. The main keywords SELLERs search are variations of sell my house, we buy houses, sell my house fast, house buyers, sell home, things like that. Investors use ppc to capture leads when they are way down the decision-making cycle, basically ready to sell. Those are the we buy houses, sell house fast, house buyer keywords. Those are good to find sellers who are ready to sell now...for INVESTORS. an agent can't compete against investors for these keywords on price. Investors profit more per deal than an agent will, therefore can pay more per lead.Investors do not spend money on keywords like sell house, sell house fsbo, how to sell a house, things like that. Those keywords are majority-used by retail sellers, which investors can't profit from. Good targets for agents...except it's not. It's because the decision making cycle for retail sellers is a long time. You will get leads in, but most won't be ready to make a decision to work with you. You won't see a return for a while. You can target buyer keywords like agents near me, best agents in {your market}, etc, which is probably your best bet if you are convinced on testing ppc. Other buyer keywords like homes for sale in {market} are a waste because it's so early on the decision-making cycle that unless you have an amazing multi-year long followup system, might best to stay away from it.  That's why agents usually stay away from ppc.