Online lead generation - my experience so far
- Thread starter JimWhitelaw
- Start date
Hey Jim,
You haven`t updated your online ad results lately.
You`ve spoiled me and now I`m all excited to see new results.
Hopefully you`re still generating some solid leads for yourself.
Congrats on your first online ad deal.
Solid strategy was implemented, action was taken and success was earned.
Bravo! Much deserved
Emil
You haven`t updated your online ad results lately.
You`ve spoiled me and now I`m all excited to see new results.
Hopefully you`re still generating some solid leads for yourself.
Congrats on your first online ad deal.
Solid strategy was implemented, action was taken and success was earned.
Bravo! Much deserved
Emil
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2008
- Messages
- 731
Hi Emil,
I`m just preparing to head out for a little vacation down south. When I return, I`ll update with new data. I modified some of my ads and unfortunately I did it in a way that wiped out some historical data for the individual ads. I am still getting solid leads and will be closing on a great deal this week. The first deal I had lined up fell apart in an unusual way - the seller signed TWO sales contracts for the same house! The earlier buyer is actually another REIN member. Oh well, I learned a good lesson.
I`m just preparing to head out for a little vacation down south. When I return, I`ll update with new data. I modified some of my ads and unfortunately I did it in a way that wiped out some historical data for the individual ads. I am still getting solid leads and will be closing on a great deal this week. The first deal I had lined up fell apart in an unusual way - the seller signed TWO sales contracts for the same house! The earlier buyer is actually another REIN member. Oh well, I learned a good lesson.
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2008
- Messages
- 731
As promised, here is a quick update on my online ad campaign.Jan 18, 2010 - Feb 21, 2010
My CPA for Google ads is now at $59.31, and for Microsoft ads it is $1.98. So obviously, the leads that come to me from Microsoft are a lot cheaper, but also a lot fewer. My combined CPA from both campaigns is $47.25. I`ve asked a few people that track their cost per lead for various marketing campaigns and that cost seems very reasonable and well below what many would pay to have good leads delivered to them.
I may spend some time working on the Microsoft campaign a bit to see if I can get more traffic; however, I think the reality is that Google just handles way more searches than Microsoft. I am starting to see some organic traffic from the Bing search engine now. Incedentally, the lead that resulted in my "shut up" deal came from Google during this time period. I closed on it 16 days after the lead came in.
You may notice that the overall click/traffic/conversion volume is down a bit from what I saw previously. This is mostly because I narrowed the geographical area that my ads are targeting to ONLY the city of Edmonton and a few surrounding locations. That change has pretty much eliminated the out-of-town leads that I am unable to take action on. That reduces the overall number of leads but also reduces my costs so I`m not paying for clicks from people in areas where I can`t help them.
At some point in the future when I develop a good system for distributing leads I will create campaigns for other locations. I now know how to target specific locales and track the ads and traffic for each target area.
As I`ve mentioned before, what really stands out about the leads I`m getting from online vs. what I got from yellow letters or what people experience calling fsbo`s is the level of motivation of the leads. When I call them, they are glad to hear from me and to seek a creative solution to their situation. Of course, not every call results in a deal as not every situation is solvable, but at least the tone and content of the conversations is very pleasant.
Next steps are:
[list type=decimal]I`m going to keep tweaking the ad copy and watching clickthru rates, and;I`m going to experiment with Dynamic Keyword Insertion on some of my ads. DKI creates custom ads that insert the searcher`s search terms into the ad itself. The idea is to create ads that more closely match what the searcher is looking for.[/list type=decimal]I`ve also got a professional SEO (search engine optimization) person lined up to do some analysis for me. I made a deal to swap SEO work for some development work on a web application for her company - another kind of creative business deal!
- Google: 25,091 impressions, CTR 0.78%, 196 clicks @ $4.54, 15 conversions, conversion rate 7.7%
- Microsoft: 590 impressions, CTR 1.86%, 11 clicks @ $0.72, 4 conversions, conversion rate 36%
My CPA for Google ads is now at $59.31, and for Microsoft ads it is $1.98. So obviously, the leads that come to me from Microsoft are a lot cheaper, but also a lot fewer. My combined CPA from both campaigns is $47.25. I`ve asked a few people that track their cost per lead for various marketing campaigns and that cost seems very reasonable and well below what many would pay to have good leads delivered to them.
I may spend some time working on the Microsoft campaign a bit to see if I can get more traffic; however, I think the reality is that Google just handles way more searches than Microsoft. I am starting to see some organic traffic from the Bing search engine now. Incedentally, the lead that resulted in my "shut up" deal came from Google during this time period. I closed on it 16 days after the lead came in.
You may notice that the overall click/traffic/conversion volume is down a bit from what I saw previously. This is mostly because I narrowed the geographical area that my ads are targeting to ONLY the city of Edmonton and a few surrounding locations. That change has pretty much eliminated the out-of-town leads that I am unable to take action on. That reduces the overall number of leads but also reduces my costs so I`m not paying for clicks from people in areas where I can`t help them.
At some point in the future when I develop a good system for distributing leads I will create campaigns for other locations. I now know how to target specific locales and track the ads and traffic for each target area.
As I`ve mentioned before, what really stands out about the leads I`m getting from online vs. what I got from yellow letters or what people experience calling fsbo`s is the level of motivation of the leads. When I call them, they are glad to hear from me and to seek a creative solution to their situation. Of course, not every call results in a deal as not every situation is solvable, but at least the tone and content of the conversations is very pleasant.
Next steps are:
[list type=decimal]I`m going to keep tweaking the ad copy and watching clickthru rates, and;I`m going to experiment with Dynamic Keyword Insertion on some of my ads. DKI creates custom ads that insert the searcher`s search terms into the ad itself. The idea is to create ads that more closely match what the searcher is looking for.[/list type=decimal]I`ve also got a professional SEO (search engine optimization) person lined up to do some analysis for me. I made a deal to swap SEO work for some development work on a web application for her company - another kind of creative business deal!