What The $#%@ Is PPC Anyways?

There is a lot of chatter out there about PPC, and I am here to tell you that NOT ALL PPC IS CREATED EQUAL!  If you have been thinking about delving into the wild and wonderful work of PPC, this article may be helpful to you.  So let’s start out with the basics, what is PPC anyways?  At the core, PPC is Pay-Per-Click Advertising.  This is a very broad term that overlays a very complex variety of advertising, all of which have their purpose.

Whenever I meet with agents who have approached me with questions about getting started with a PPC campaign, my initial approach always tries to answer 3 main questions:

Who?

What?

Why?

Since there are multiple avenues for running PPC campaigns, all with separate optimization goals, this helps to identify what the goals of the advertiser are.  Generally, the easiest way to break this down is to split between Lead Generation, the collection of consumer data (names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers) and Brand Identity or Awareness.  In my opinion, an optimal PPC strategy would incorporate both, but let’s dive into the benefits and risks of these strategies, and how they can be utilized in unison.

Lead Generation‍

Traditionally, when people are talking about PPC, they are referring to lead generation.  The idea of bidding to place your ad in front of a consumer, have them click it, and somehow collect information (landing pages, squeeze pages, lead forms, etc.).  A lead generation strategy generally consists of specific ad copy with a hook, or offer, that drives the consumer to click your ad and provide their information in exchange for your offer.  This is a great strategy for feeding a sales team, driving leads into a CRM for longer term follow up and conversion.

When we talk about lead generation, we are generally looking at 2 main sources of traffic, Search (Google, Bing, etc.) and Social (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)  From a broad stroke perspective, Lead Generation on the search networks will provide a higher intent, higher cost lead, while a campaign on the social networks will provide a lower cost, lower intent lead.  Think about it for a minute, as it pertains to real estate.  If I am looking for a home in a given area, or possibly considering selling my house, and I go to a major search engine, like Google, and type in “Homes For Sale Near Me”, I have a relatively high intent of looking at homes for sale in my area.  Conversely, if a similar ad copy shows up in my feed on Facebook or Instagram “Click Here To See Homes For Sale In Your Area”, it may pique the interest of a prospective buyer, but that person did not log in with the intention of searching for homes.  That is not to say there is no intent, but the intent tends to be lower than the consumer who specifically went to a search engine looking for an answer.

I often get asked which is the “better” option, and to be honest, I truly believe that a good lead generation strategy incorporates both options, particularly if you are using a robust CRM and are good at following up and sorting your database.  From a lead generation perspective, I usually like to follow a 70/30 rule, particularly if you also have a strong retargeting (don’t worry, I will get to this later) strategy.  With this strategy, I take the overall lead generation budget and split it 70% to search and 30% social.  This generates a decent flow of leads, but also helps balance out the overall CPL (Cost-Per-Lead).  

Brand Identity and Awareness

The other aspect of PPC advertising falls under overall brand identity and awareness.  This concept is more about reinforcing your brand to a potential audience and is more in line with traditional ideas of “advertising” (think commercials, billboards, magazine ads, etc.).   While there may be a specific Call-to-Action (CTA) in the ad itself, the primary goal of the ad is to appear in front of more people at a higher frequency.  This strategy can be useful for agents who do not have any intention of sitting and making a bunch of phone calls, but would rather deal with inbound business.  While these campaigns can be quite effective, they do also come with a particular risk that tends to make people leery, it is quite difficult to track a specific ROI.  While with a lead generation campaign, you can easily figure out a specific dollar amount that corresponds to a specific conversion, and scale accordingly, a brand awareness campaign can be a bit harder to track, as you may, or may not, know that a consumer has reached out to you based on seeing you image or video.  For this reason, I tend to utilize brand awareness and identity campaigns as part of a follow up or retargeting strategy, and they are usually not my go to for upfront consumer engagement or interaction. 

Similar to Lead Generation campaigns, Brand Awareness campaigns can also be run across both search and social networks, generally via image or video campaigns.  They tend to perform well via the Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) networks, but also have a place in Google’s networks (YouTube, Display, etc.)

Personally, I find the best strategy for Brand Awareness campaigns to be part of a well-structured campaign serving the content to specific audiences and datasets.  These groups also tie into custom audience definitions across Google and Meta networks.

Audience Definitions

When we talk about defining our audiences, there are also separate strategies involved for WHO we want to show our ads to.  With lead generation campaigns, we are generally using the targeting options provided by the search or social networks to optimize that our ads show to the consumers most interested in our product or service.  Pertaining to real estate, these may be interest categories based on real estate websites, area homeowners, etc.  The algorithms tend to do a pretty good job of serving your ads to the ideal consumer with a well-structured campaign.  Where things get kind of funky, is when we start talking about audience definitions for a Brand Awareness campaign. For me, the ideal use of a Brand Awareness campaigns is to serve your content to people who have already expressed interest in you brand or product some examples of this are:

• People who have visited your website. Some text
  • Both Google and Meta offer tracking pixels which can be installed on your website in order to track visitors.  These pixels offer you the ability to serve people additional content. This is part of the reason why we devote a larger percentage of our Lead Generation budget to search networks. It drives higher intent traffic through the website.  Even with an optimized search campaign you may only convert 10-15% of that traffic into an actual lead on the first interaction, this means that 90% of the visitors may have had intent, but didn’t go through with registration, this is a great dataset to continue to brand to with and additional call to action.
• People who have engaged with your social accounts (Meta)some text
  • The Meta network also allows you to create audiences based on people who engage with your social profiles. This is a great way to stay relevant to people who already engage with you socially. Generally, these people are usually the ones who already know and like you, or at least your content.  For this reason, I usually devote a higher Brand Awareness budget to social networks than Search.
• Database Lists
  • Both Google and Meta networks allow for the generation of audiences based on specific consumer lists. By integrating your CRM contacts into this list, it will help with data matching and remaining relevant for longer term follow up.

Strategy

While it is nice to have an idea as to the different types of PPC campaigns, keep in mind that this is a very simplified version of actual ad objectives available via the search and social networks, but you may be left thinking, what is the best strategy for getting started with running PPC?  Here is an example of a well-structured strategy to get started:

• Set your monthly advertising budget (ex. $3000/month)
• Use an 80/20 rule to split between Lead Generation and Brand Awareness ($2400 Lead Generation - $600 Brand Awareness)
• Use a 70/30 rule for Lead Generation split between search and social ($1680 Google – $720 Meta)
• Use a 70/30 rule in reverse between search and social for Brand Awareness ($420 Meta - $300 Google) to Custom Audiences

Conclusion

Now that we have a general outline of how PPC works, circle back and think of the 3 questions posed at the beginning of this article and begin to structure in your mind the ideal layout for your PPC campaign.

• Who Do You Want to Serve Your Ads To? (Audiences)some text
  • For Lead Generation, this may be people who have recently visited real estate websites as well as an array of different interest categories provided by the Meta and Google Networks). For Brand Awareness, these may be the retargeting audiences mentioned above, the people who have already expressed interest in you, your product, or your service.
• What Do You Want to Show them? (Content/Copy)some text
  • For Lead Generation, this may be a specific call to action (i.e. View All Homes Available in Your Area). While for Brand Awareness, this could be an informational video about you, your business, or your process.
• Why Do You Want to Show It to Them? (Intention/Call-To-Action)some text
  • For Lean Generation, the purpose is generally going to be to collect contact info, while for Brand Awareness, this may be to have them give you a call, shoot you a DM, or just reinforce your brand.

To truly understand and optimize a PPC campaign this initial framework can help you to get into the mindset of what is possible in regard to Pay-Per-Click advertising and realize that the answer may not always be as simple as it seems.  Be leery of people or companies who are unwilling to provide you with the full picture of their overall advertising strategy and one trick ponies who have learned how to run one ad variant to generate low-cost leads.  Take time to consider what your overall business goals are, and how they relate to your PPC Strategy!

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