Do "We Buy Houses" PCC campaigns actually work?

Question

Out of curiosity has anyone tried a google adwords pay per click with success? I was considering giving it a shot, and alot of the words in my area like "we buy houses dallas" cost $10.00 + per click.

Seth Williams · Answer

Samantha M. - About 18 months ago, I paid $600 for SEO on my lead generating website and I can say with absolute certainty that it was effective (though it took about 4 months to really start kicking in).

Since the SEO was implemented, I've gotten hundreds (and probably well over a thousand) of lead submissions. The SEO work consisted of optimizing the words on my website and putting hundreds of back links all over the internet. Even since Google has changed their algorithm - I honestly haven't seen any negative effect in terms of the traffic that I get.

The traffic tends to come in waves - and is rather unpredictable. Sometimes I'll go a week without getting any leads, other times I'll get 6 - 8 submissions per day (this is on my absolute best of days).

The only downside is - these leads are coming in from all over the country, so it's difficult to keep my business concentrated to any one market (and it's definitely harder to make offers and sell properties in a market you don't fully understand). Nonetheless, the submissions I get are definitely coming from motivated sellers, because several of them have accepted some pretty ridiculous offers from me.

I'm not sure how much the same volume of traffic would have cost me if I had been using PPC - but I'm sure it would have set me back a lot further. Not to mention, I've been told that organic traffic tends to respond much better to the kind of website I have...   so in my opinion, SEO (instead of PPC) has definitely been a good way for me to go.

Blair Halver · Answer

@Dev Horn  - thank you for bringing up this point here.  It is often overlooked by investors seeking seller leads.

David Lunsford · Answer

A friend of mine just went through $5000 and about 50 leads he bought from a lead provider. Didn't buy a single house... and the guy is a well seasoned pro. Sure can do a lot of direct mail to your "targeted" list for this kind of money.

James Vasquez · Answer

Samantha, I agree with most of what has been said from other members here.  However, in the San Antonio TX market, in order to get into the top spot for keywords like "We Buy Ugly Houses" & "We Buy Houses", clicks were averaging $15-$24/click.  I was getting great calls and leads, but at that price point, if a deal doesn't come quickly enough, an investor could certainly run out of money before success arrives.

So, for my house buyer website, I decided to focus on SEO instead.  I just felt that with less money, over time, I could get more calls/leads from home sellers looking to sell fast, than if I had just stuck to the expensive ppc campaigns that I had going.

Either way, I just want you to know that if you do get started marketing we buy houses on ppc, when the leads start coming in, you had better answer every call or return every missed call right away, and call every website lead quickly.

Samantha M. · Answer

Thanks for your feedback everyone. And Jerry Puckett I did some research about how to lower your cost per click as you described in your message. I found out that this is called google ad sense "quality score" and the things you mentioned are exactly right. The higher your quality score the lower your bid can be and still rank you in the top bids.

Jerred Morris · Answer

You have to run your PPC like a business.

What is the average deal size?
What is the average margin?
How fast can you turn the deal?
What is the average net profit on the deal?
What is the average cost per deal (no lead)?
What is your timeframe?
Do you have a large enough data set?  (1-2 months doesn't count)  ($100 in adwords isn't large enough)

Which will give you "cost to acquire".

Now you can run your adwords campaign.

Not sure why people think adwords is expensive.  If you don't know the cost to acquire then how can it be expensive?

Food for thought

Samantha M. · Answer

Thanks Phil, I appreciate the feed back. Have you tried doing SEO as well so you can get more "free leads" instead to pay for clicks?

Phil Z. · Answer

It works, but it has gotten very expensive $6-10 per CLICK! And no all clicks don't turn into leads .. not even most of them.

Do "We Buy Houses" PCC campaigns actually work?

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