What Is PPC in Real Estate?

PPC means pay-per-click. You write an ad. It appears above the search results. Then Google charges you each time somebody clicks it. Nothing about that definition changes for real estate. The auction runs the way it runs for a plumber. So does the bidding, and so does the budget.

Those mechanics are covered properly elsewhere on this site. Meanwhile this page is about the one thing real estate does that almost no other trade does. This site also carries a definition of manufacturing PPC, where the auction runs on different terms.

Every Other Advertiser Is Selling Something They Own

Think about who else is bidding this afternoon.

A plumber advertises plumbing. Then a dentist advertises a cleaning. Software companies advertise the software. In each case the thing named in the ad is the thing that business owns. Nobody else can supply it.

Now write the ad a real estate agent writes. Homes for sale in Bridgeland. Whose homes?

Not yours. Somebody listed them, and it might have been you, though mostly it was not. The same houses sit on other agents’ websites across the city. They sit on the big property sites as well. Whatever appears behind that click is a shared record, updated by a system nobody at your brokerage controls.

So you are paying by the click to advertise property you do not own. To people who can find that same property in plenty of other places for nothing. Content you own is different, which is the idea behind real estate SEO.

The Query Everybody Bids On Names Somebody Else’s House

Read the keywords carrying real volume in this market. Most of them name a place rather than a person. A neighbourhood. Some price band. One street.

Meanwhile the money in the business gets made on representation. Somebody hires you for judgment, for negotiation, for whatever you know about a street that no database carries.

None of that is what got searched.

That gap is the shape of real estate PPC. The loud half of the market asks about houses. Meanwhile the paid half of your business is you. Then the click connects the two only by accident.

Somebody Will Point at the Portals

Fair. The large property sites bid on those searches every day. They are right to.

Only look at what they are selling. Their product is the shared listing record. Handing over the whole market is the thing they built. So when one of them buys that click, the ad and the product behind it are the same object.

Buy the same click and yours are not.

That is no small difference in results. Rather it is a difference in what the ad was ever able to deliver.

The Click Lands at the Moment You Matter Least

Follow the person through.

They typed a neighbourhood. Seeing what is for sale in it was the whole errand. Then they clicked, and you paid.

Now watch what they do on your website. Scrolling photographs. Checking a price. Working out whether the garage is a real garage. Nothing they searched for involved choosing an agent, since choosing an agent was never the thing they sat down to do.

You bought attention at the one point in the process where your name sits furthest from the question.

Why Nearly Every Real Estate Ad Ends in a Form

This explains something the industry settled on a long time ago.

Ask why the listing page holds the rest back behind a form. The answer often arrives as a tactic. Capture the lead. Build the list.

Only that is a consequence rather than a plan. The click was never about you, so nothing about it turns into business on its own. Collecting the person is what is left, so a form goes up. Sooner or later somebody has to be introduced to the agent who paid for the visit. That introduction had to be manufactured, since the search never asked for one.

The Half of Real Estate PPC Where You Are the Product

Here the argument turns, and it turns your way.

Some searches in this market do name your service. Somebody asking about selling a house is asking about a person rather than a property. So is anybody looking for an agent in a particular part of town. Nothing sits shared behind those clicks. What gets asked for is representation, and that is the thing you supply.

Those searches carry far less volume. They cost more as well. Other agents worked this out already.

Still, the arithmetic on them is a different arithmetic. On a buyer search you are buying attention pointed at a house. Meanwhile on a seller search you are the answer to the question.

Where the Real Estate PPC Argument Stops

Buyer ads are no waste, and nobody should read this page as a reason to switch them off.

Plenty of agents build a real business on buyer traffic. That click usually costs less than a seller click. Somebody signing up for alerts today may well buy something months from now. Where a brokerage has the patience to stay in touch, it works.

The point is narrower. Whatever your ad promises, be clear about who owns the thing it promised. Then price the click accordingly.

One case sits outside all of this. Advertise a property you listed yourself and the promise really is yours. Only the audience for one address is a small audience.

Nor is any of this a claim about how Google decides which ads to show. That question belongs elsewhere. Whatever the click costs, tactics for how to reduce CPC in PPC campaigns still apply here. None of this changes the reality of PPC and AdWords underneath the auction.

Read Your Own Ad Back

Open the ad you are running now. Read the headline. Then read the page it opens.

Now put one question to both. What is being promised here, and could another agent in this city promise exactly the same thing?

Should the answer come back yes, you are competing on something you do not control. Those fights tend to go to whoever spends most. Should it come back no, you have found the ad worth putting money behind.

No statistic about other brokerages settles that one. Yours is on the screen in front of you.

How To-The-TOP! Handles Real Estate PPC in Calgary

No guarantees. SEO Company To-The-TOP! has been doing this work in Calgary since 2007. The first useful hour on a real estate account often goes on sorting those two halves apart.

Buyer searches and seller searches want different ads. They want different pages too. Often a budget of their own. Search engine optimization does the patient half over three to six months. Neighbourhood content earns positions that paid traffic has to keep buying by the click. A Google Ads campaign covers the stretch before that lands. The portfolio shows the keywords this work has reached.

One campaign doing both jobs at once turns up at To-The-TOP! regularly.

Common Questions About PPC in Real Estate

Is PPC worth it for real estate agents?

Often yes, though it depends which searches you point it at. Seller searches name what you sell. Buyer searches name property somebody else listed. Both can work. They do not work the same way, and pricing them the same is where accounts get into trouble.

Why is real estate PPC so expensive?

A single transaction is worth a great deal. Every agent in the city knows it, so the bidding reflects it. Worse, on a buyer search everybody is pointing at the same property. The ads end up looking alike, and an auction between lookalike ads gets settled on money.

Should a real estate agent do PPC or SEO?

Most do both, for different reasons. Paid search starts this week and stops the week you stop paying. SEO takes three to six months to show much. A ranking earned that way then keeps working. Neither one replaces the other.

Do buyer leads from PPC ever turn into business?

Those leads do convert, and plenty of brokerages run on them. Only the timeline is long and the follow-up is the whole job. Buying the click is the inexpensive part of that arrangement.

What should a real estate PPC landing page do?

Answer the search first. Somebody who clicked a neighbourhood ad came to see houses in that neighbourhood, so show them. Whatever you want them to do next has to be worth the interruption, since nothing about their search asked for you yet.