Online Marketing of Real Estate: Tips for Succeess Part-III

Get more bang for your buck

A host of techniques to optimize your ads and improve your ROI.

In this tips section you'll learn how to:

• Track beyond the click
• Bring in the right traffic
• Show 'em what they're searching for
• Learn how visitors interact with your website

Track beyond the click

Why is conversion tracking so important for your business? Conversion tracking helps you understand what users do once they click on your ad. AdWords isn't just about the clicks. After all, you spend money on AdWords to get users to do something specific, like view pages for certain properties or contact an agent. We call these desired actions conversions. Conversion tracking is a free tool that helps you track conversions, so you'll be able to tell which of your campaigns, ads, and keywords bring the most business. Based on these results, you'll also be able to make more informed decisions to maximize return on your AdWords investment.

Bring in the right traffic

To curb unqualified clicks and improve your return on investment, use negative keywords. Your ad won't appear when a user's search query contains one of your negative keywords. Using negative keywords can help lower your advertising costs and ensure more relevant clicks for your business. You can apply them at either the campaign or ad group level.

For example, if you are a real estate agent who lists only condos for sale, your negative keywords might include

home homes apartment apartments

townhouse for rent rent sublease

Similarly, if you aggregate real estate listings of apartments for rent, avoid potential customers who are looking for a specific agent or broker with negative keywords -broker and -agent.

Show 'em what they're searching for

Studies show that visitors decide whether to leave a website within seconds, so it's important that your landing page delivers on your ad's promise. Send your visitors right to the source: the page featuring the information, product, or service listed in the ad. If the keyword they search on is San Francisco real estate, send potential customers to a more general landing page that features the various real estate listings in San Francisco. If they type 2br apartment San Francisco, send them to a page where they can view two bedroom apartments in San Francisco.

Learn how visitors interact with your site

Your website is crucial to driving business, so chances are the following questions have kept you up at night:

Where are my visitors from, and how did they reach my site? What do people do while on my site? Where do they spend the most time? How can I generate more conversions from my landing page? Which of my AdWords keywords and ad texts are most effective?

Don't just guess. Find answers with Google Analytics, a powerful tool that integrates with AdWords and tells you everything you want to know about how visitors find and interact with your site. With a variety of useful data delivered in a number of formats, Analytics helps you focus your marketing resources, improve site navigation, and increase ROI. You can easily visualize and track the performance of all of your online advertising initiatives, including search campaigns, emails, and banner ads.


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You can even use the Analytics benchmarking service to compare your metrics to other websites in your industry. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site and identify areas for improvement. Available categories include:

• Property Management
• Home Inspections & Appraisal
• Rental Listings & Referrals
• Home Financing
• Real Estate Agencies

Remember that online advertising can also drive offline sales. Many real estate companies conduct much of their business on the phone. If that's the case for you, set up a unique phone number that visitors see when they click on your AdWords ads. You'll know exactly how many of your calls are coming in through Google and be able to make better-informed marketing decisions.