Google Ads for Real Estate Agents - Lab Coat Agents

Generating your own real estate leads vs. buying leads

Hi, my name is Joe Khoei. I founded SalesX in 2010. We’re a digital ad agency that’s also a Premier Google Partner (top 3%). We’re also 5x winners of US Search Awards for best agency (3x), best use of data, and best campaign.

I used to work in the Real Estate industry and I used to buy leads. The issue with buying leads from online lead generators is that the leads are fickle. They can be unreliable, unqualified, or worst-of-all, unresponsive. Sound familiar?

The reasons are obvious if you are in my field. I.e., if someone fills out a form online they probably filled out several forms and are therefore getting several calls. Also, the lead generator might sell a lead to several agents. Further, there are usually no self qualifying hurdles and unqualified leads can flow in for the purpose of being sold. All in all buying leads online can be a frustrating experience for the average person.

Of course there are always agents that play the numbers and make tons of follow up calls until they get some results. Yet for most people, when we get a lead, we expect to have at least a decent conversation. Is that too much to ask for?

Google Ads for Real Estate - [city name] + House for sale

Let’s say you are a Real Estate agent in Anaheim, CA. There are 4,400 people each month typing into a Google search box the words: Anaheim house for sale. Who is getting those clicks? The companies that end up selling you the leads. However, if you look at the average click prices for that keyword, they are between $0.10 and $1.40. So on average about $0.75 per click.

Of course getting a click to your website for less than a dollar is definitely far from getting a lead. That click needs to get converted into a lead. That conversion is a process in itself. Yet the process is a known one and it is one that all the lead generators are using. It’s one that you too can use to generate your own leads.

real estate lead generation process using digital ads

Let’s say you are an agent and want to do this for your territory. Here is the process:

1. You need a place to send the clicks. Presumably a website and better yet a specific landing page designed to receive that traffic.

2. You need to have a free giveaway that the visitor can get without giving their info. For example, a home buying guide and checklist for Anaheim and surroundings PDF download. Visitors to your landing page can get this download for free and they have to do nothing other than click the download button.

3. You then use the digital advertising techniques to “re-market” to those same people over the next number of days of your choice (up for 540 days).

house for sale search volume for all cities with over 100K population

As an example of the #2 in the list above, I created a PDF file containing the city name along with the words house for sale (just like the examples above) of every city and town in the US with the population of over 100K inhabitants.

mindset for going after your own real estate leads via google ads

I’ve had my own business for the past 12 years. Before that I worked in corporate since 1995. All-in-all my professional career expands over 27 years. In all of those years I have yet to run into a magic shortcut to success. For me, the long way is the short cut.

Starting a Google Ads campaign means carving out your niche away from the big dogs. That means you need to have smarts and you need to be persistent. Google rewards staying power. Meaning that they will not start taking away clicks from the usual suspects and direct them to Johnny-come-lately.

This is great news. If every Johnny-come-lately could succeed then the click prices would rise and instead of the low average cost per clicks that you see above you would be dealing with outrageous cost per clicks like those of the legal field.

Therefore, this lack of individual participation leaves all the clicks for the big players and they together keep the cost per click prices down for all of their mutual benefits.

This is where you come in. With the correct mind set you would know that it takes time and effort to build campaigns, build landing pages, gather data, improve targeting, create pertinent re-marketing lists, create effective collateral material and offers, etc… and then improve conversion rates and other key metrics over time.

Once that all is done then you can have your own source of inbound leads that you attracted through providing value, generating familiarity, and building trust. Then you can put the power of the Internet to work for you without paying intermediary lead sellers.

There is an opportunity here. Do you see it?