How much should you invest in search engine marketing in 2016? This includes SEO and PPC. Well in this post we’ll dive into the 3 things I consider when I dive in to create an effective and high ROI SEM (search engine marketing) budget for myself and the clients that we work with in the real estate industry.
If you’re feeling beads of sweat drip down as you try to determine where to spend your marketing dollars to get more real estate deals for the highest ROI, don’t fret. I have three top tips to help you make smart decisions.
1. Dig Into The Long-Tail Keywords, Not Just The “Broad” Popular Ones Your Competitors Are Using
Long tail keywords are easier to leverage and often times bring a high quality visitor to your site.
Why?
They’re very specific – often three to six word – keyword phrases (also less competitive than more general keywords). Long-tail keywords became more important to online marketers with the advent of Google Hummingbird, Google’s major algorithm update in 2013, which gives preference to the long tail keyword.
With a recent surge in voice search via platforms such as Siri and Google Voice Search, there’s no question: long tail keywords are more important than ever.
People are searching just as they speak, so it’s time to pay even closer attention to real estate investor keyword phrases like, “How to sell my home fast?” vs. just “sell house.”
But even if you’ve mastered the art of conversational dialogue and are pretty certain you know how people might search, there’s a science to figuring out how to get ranked for the right long tail keywords with the least amount of effort / cost (relatively speaking). So working with a good SEO agency to ensure you have a solid long tail keyword strategy in place is definitely going to be vital to online marketing success in the coming year.
Here is an infographic that dives into the key differences of long-tail vs. short-tail (or broad) keyword phrases.
Source: http://reportgarden.com/2015/07/09/short-vs-long-tail-keywords/
2. SEM Done Right Is Always a Worthwhile Investment
There are certain online marketing tactics that are a sure-bet for a long time to come, and SEM is one of them.
Overall, U.S. marketers will spend more than $103 billion on search, display, social media, and email marketing by 2019 — growing at a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) — but search will remain the largest share of interactive spend. (MediaPost).
Based on our experience, when doing SEO or PPC, businesses are likely to get at least three to four times their money back. That’s being conservative!
We have some real estate investor clients “harvesting” over $60,000 in closed deals, or, getting as high as 100-200x their money back, and that doesn’t even include the long-term residual ROI of SEM. But of course, results vary from investor to investor, based on a lot of factors.
3. Think in Terms of ROI Not “Expense”
Having the right mindset is crucial when planning your marketing budget. Many real estate investors make the mistake of thinking in terms of costs rather than returns.
While costs are an important consideration, ultimately, your objective is to “move the needle” and get a return on your money.
Need a little extra help getting that needle moving? Here’s some extra real estate investor marketing tips to deliver ROI.
Don’t focus so much about what you will spend “today”, but rather what you can expect to get “tomorrow” (ROI).
Whatever marketing tactic you choose, you want to make sure it’s yielding the highest ROI dollar per dollar.
If you’re wondering how the heck to figure out the potential ROI of SEM, here’s the formula:
ROI Formula
ROI % = $$ sales from marketing efforts / $$ marketing investment
One good question to ask yourself is:
“How many new deals will I need to break even?”
If the answer is one or two, you’ve probably found a safe bet.
It’s Not Too Late To Plan for 2016
Now, it’s time to wipe your brow, take a deep breath, and go plan for a year of online marketing triumph!
[Instant Replay] Watch Our Step By Step Process For Planning An Epic Year
Take a demo of Carrot today or reach out to us if you have questions about how to plan your 2016 Search Engine Marketing budget in the comments section below.
i want to get started right away with ppc
Hey! Thanks for the comment!
Awesome, what are you using for your website? Are you using Carrot?
We’ll reach out to you directly to get you on the right path for sure!
honestly trevor alot of this sometimes is overwhelming at times i want just started my plan with investor carrot once again but this time i want to outsource alot of the time consuming steps that it takes to build a good website and start getting leads. Is there a way you can help me when it comes to getting my website content done, how to view the leads as they come in, and how to add a fully automated follow up system that can integrate with podio crm that i am now going to be using
Hey Gerry! Hope all is well!
Yep, that’s the thing about growing a business… pick the things you do best and have others do the rest.
We do have a service where we’ll re-write all of your website content so it’s 100% unique and fresh for your business… it’ll be hands off for you. As far as viewing the leads when they come in you can get email or text message notifications on leads when they come through our system and as far as Podio… that’s another animal. We’re not podio experts so we can help with the integration but as far as the automation I’ll have to refer you to one of the companies who does that really well. Or also there’s a new software that integrates directly in with Carrot that basically makes using podio for real estate investors much more easy and effective. It’s called InvestorFuse. Tell Dan I sent you there.
But yep, we’re here to help!
Spot on Trevor. Thanks for another great post man.