Pay-Per-Click 101

Credit: Dusan Jankovic

Among the many search engine marketing methods, the lion’s share of the industry is based on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

“Everyone wants to be No. 1 on search results,” says Greg Bray, president of Melbourne, Fla.–based marketing firm Blue Tangerine Solutions. “What pay-per-click offers is an almost guaranteed way to get on the front page [of search results].”

At its simplest, PPC advertising is an auction. You pick out phrases that you think your prospective customers will use to search for you online; for builders, it might be “Atlanta townhomes” or “new homes Cleveland.” You place bids based on what you want to pay for each of those clicks—and where you want to end up in the search results. You only get charged when someone clicks on your ad.

Bids can start as low as a dime and go much higher. Bray says the vast majority of keywords will go for between 75 cents and $2.50. You’ll pay the most for the top spot in the results—but that’s not necessarily where you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck.

“We don’t generally find that being No. 1 is cost effective,” he says. “The best return on investment comes in that fourth, fifth, or sixth spot because the cost is lower.”

START WITH KEYWORDS

The process starts with choosing your keywords, says Jessica ­Covello, a senior account manager with Atlanta-based ­Communications 21, which works with several home builders. “Keywords are the backbone to any successful pay-per-click campaign,” she explains, “and since you’re paying by the click, you want to be as ­targeted and on-point as possible.”

She recommends talking to current homeowners and colleagues about the keywords they have used in their home searches. Also, go through your Web site, your brochures, and other collateral materials to pick out central messages that could be used as keywords.

Wondering about whether your keywords will work? Bruce Williams, development manager for Cleveland-based thunder::tech, a Web marketing firm, notes that there are great tools available to help you. “These tools can recommend variations of similar keywords that might have higher search volumes than the ones you might initially brainstorm,” he says. He likes the keyword software from Web CEO (www.WebCEO.com) and Google’s own search recommendation tools (www.google.com/sktool/), both of which are free.

If you come up with a list of 10 keywords, don’t panic when you start doing the math. You control the cost. You set a budget of how much you want to spend per day. When you’ve reached that amount, the ads simply won’t appear anymore that day.

You also can keep costs down by limiting the geographic region where your ads will appear—few builders need national reach. Plus, you can limit your ads to specific days and times. If you’ve noticed a lot of traffic on your Web site in the evenings and on weekends, you can target those times for your ads to appear.

AD COPY MATTERS

The next step in the process is to write descriptive ads to match your keywords. Mike Lyon, author of Browsers to Buyers: Proven Strategies for Selling New Homes Online, says he’s seen builders goof in this area by making their ads too generic. For example, for the search term “new homes Dallas,” they might have an ad that says, “XYZ Homes, building quality homes that fit your lifestyle.”

“While it might produce more click-throughs, they may not be the buyers the builder is looking for,” Lyon explains. “Be very specific and incorporate the search term.” So, XYZ Homes’ ad would look like: “New homes in Dallas, brand-new Energy Star homes starting in the low 100s.” “This tells the consumer exactly what they will find,” Lyon says.

Once a prospect clicks on an ad, most companies send them to the home page of their Web site. To the extent that it’s feasible, it’s better to have landing pages that relate to the ad. That way, the customer gets a result that matches what he was searching for.

TRACK RESULTS

The final element of PPC is tracking to make sure your keywords are generating the right kinds of traffic. That’s the beauty of search engine marketing; the amount of detailed information it generates is enormous.

Jeffrey Nichols, manager of search engine optimization for Atlanta-based McRae, an interactive advertising firm that works with builders, cites the case of Bowen Family Homes. Bowen has been using PPC marketing for nearly five years. In 2008, it accounted for more than 10 percent of the builder’s Web site traffic. Eighty percent of the traffic arriving via PPC were first-time visitors to the site who spent more than 3 1/2 minutes on the site and viewed an average of eight pages. They also were 50 percent more likely to convert from traffic to a lead when compared to all other traffic sources.

“Measurable results is one of the things that got me really excited about PPC,” Nichols says. “You can see exactly what happens when people hit your Web site.”