Search Results for ppc

How To Beat Zillow in Google With Your Real Estate Agent Website – Case Study + Guide

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Zillow dominated the real estate industry through 1 primary strategy. Ranking high in Google and controlling the conversation online. In this post, we’ll walk through real case studies that show you how to beat Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com in Google in your local market and scoop up traffic and leads for FREE away from the tech giants. (Dive into the video snippet from a recent AskCarrot episode below!) The video above was a short snippet from a live show we recently did, so we’ve typed out a high-level summary of the steps below and are providing the full video transcription below along with enhanced graphics and action items as well. Each well-done Location Page will likely take you between 30-60 mins. But it’s well worth the time investment for the long-term momentum building results you can get. The basic steps to beat Zillow in Google are: 1. Do things Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com can’t or won’t do. They can’t replicate you, they likely won’t build out as much valuable content as you could on the niches you’re an expert on, and they won’t try to be the authority on that niche like you can be. Build value, be an authority, and stand out. 2. Determine your niches that you want to dive deep into and become an authority in. I get pushback all the time from agents who say “But I don’t want to niche down. It’ll limit me!”. But that’s exactly the opposite of what will happen. When you choose to focus on becoming an expert and authority on a specific topic or niches, it’ll attract more people your way because you stand out as a clear expert. If you don’t niche, you’ll just be a part of the crowd. 3. CRITICAL DETAILS: Build out Location Pages in your Carrot site with our “Beat Zillow” framework (infographic below). We deconstructed Zillows strategy, tested it and tested it until we’ve repeatedly been able to outrank Zillow in Google. Start with your primary cities (those will be hard to outrank Zillow for since they’re so competitive) but then focus on the niches within the markets. Example… your primary market may be “Brentwood California homes for sale”… that will be hard to outrank Zillow for. Create a location page for that since it’s your primary city… but then focus your ranking efforts on the niches within Brentwood. Like neighborhoods, types of houses, etc. Here are some great examples of real local searches in Google that could make great niche location pages you could create in your Carrot account, then aim to outrank Zillow with. 4. Track the SEO ranking of your new location pages. As a Carrot member, you can use our Ranking Tracker tool to track where your pages rank in Google and get smart feedback on how to improve the ranking. Content marketing and SEO is a long-term momentum building strategy and patience is key. The page mentioned in that video took about 2-3 months to get the #1 ranking after we made the right optimization changes. But this site has been around for years and was already starting to pop up in other rankings as well. If your website is brand new it may take a bit longer. The more location pages you create, the more momentum you’ll build over time. This is the exact same way Zillow took over the market. It wasn’t overnight, but a strategic long-term strategy. 5. Rinse and repeat. I’d focus on creating Location Pages on your real estate agent website (we hope you use Carrot :-) every quarter. Each quarter, target the cities … Continued

Carrot Success Story: How Carter Steph Grew His Investing Business To $2 Million In Revenue

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How Carter Steph’s closing rate skyrocketed from 7% to 20% within a few months after switching from a custom website to Carrot. Carter Steph is a licensed broker for 20 years and in 2016, he purchased the real estate investing business that he now runs, which operates in Oklahoma City. Snapshot: What I didn’t expect after switching to Carrot, is my lead to close ratio increased 50% on my offline leads! – Carter Steph Carter Steph is a real estate investor since 1992 and is also a licensed real estate broker in Oklahoma City. He’s also a practicing attorney for almost 20 years and has been the General Counsel at 1-800-2SellHomes since 2014 and co-owner since 2016. He’s no newbie to real estate. He and his team consistently generate seven figures per year in net profits, while closing on about 20% of their leads. The growth is steady and predictable. “You ask anybody in town and they know us,” he said in a CarrotCast interview. Read the tips below, taken straight from Carter Steph’s 7-figure growth strategy. The tools: Carrot features For Carter, Carrot is the central hub that brings all of his marketing efforts together. He’s running PPC ads to drive traffic to his site while leveraging Carrot’s easy content marketing tools and strategy to build his SEO for long-term lead generation. Since he’s driving traffic from all of his marketing efforts to his Carrot site, he can track performance across all campaigns and channels, giving him the clarity needed with his marketing strategy. Here’s how Carter is using Carrot as the central hub to tie together the marketing efforts they were once doing on their own to become the authority in their area: Switching from a custom website to a Get a high-converting websiteBefore Carter Steph went on his journey to $2 million in revenue in 2018, he was doing some things with his website very differently than he is now. In fact, with the powers of technology, I was able to dig up his several-year-old website for all of us to look at. Believe it or not, that custom website cost Carter and his business $5,000 upfront and $700 per month for hosting fees. That’s quite expensive. And it’s even more expensive when you find out that it had a terrible conversion rate and almost never generated any leads for Carter’s business — the leads it did generate weren’t very good quality and Carter’s close rate was only 7%. For that reason, they were spending $1,500 on PPC every month but $30,000 to $40,000 on TV ads. Then they switched to Carrot. The difference was immediate, Carter said. After just 2 days, their new Carrot site had generated its first high-quality lead. And within a few months, their close rate skyrocketed from the previous 7% to 20% because lead-quality increased. After Trevor and Carter ran some estimations on the CarrotCast interview, they determined that Carter is saving between $20,000 and $50,000 every single month in lost lead-gen closing potential after switching from their expensive custom-made site to one of our Carrot sites. Wow! Now they close 20% of leads, their PPC budget is $8,000 per month (because their website is converting as it should be), and they’re growing like crazy. Sometimes, the small changes make a big difference. And at Carrot, small, iterative, conversion-optimization changes is exactly what we’re focused on. ;-) Evergreen MarketingIn marketing terms, Evergreen is marketing you do once, and it works for years… not hours, days or weeks. Content relevant for a long time, that serves your best prospects, and gets in front … Continued

Case Study: Google Ads Traffic To Carrot Website Reveals The Most-Clicked Page On Your Site

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If you’re like most real estate investors, you’re already running paid advertising campaigns to your website (Carrot or otherwise). You’re running Google Ads or Facebooks ads or both… And every day, you wake up and check results. How many clicks are you getting? How many of those clicks turn into leads on your website? How many of those leads turn into deals? And do the results you’re getting justify the money you’re spending? Those questions are enough to give any marketer a migraine… But they are important questions to ask. You’re spending hard-earned money on paid advertising; you need to know if that’s money well-spent or not. If it is, great! If it isn’t, you’d best make some adjustments (advertise somewhere else, tweak the ad you’re running, or change where you’re sending traffic — Carrot converts out-of-the-box). To help you, we helped one of our members with their Google Ads campaign. We monitored their conversion rate and we even ran a nifty heatmap on their homepage which only tracked Google Ads traffic. Here’s what we found. The Case Study: Google Ads Traffic To Carrot Website Reveals The Most-Clicked Page On Your Site The website/company that we ran Google Ads campaigns for is called Henry Home Buyers, a real estate investing company which operates out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here’s what their website looks like. From April 15th to May 15th, we drove traffic to their website via the below Google Ad campaigns. During that time, we tracked their PPC metrics, their website conversion rate, and even put a heatmap on their homepage. Here is an example of an which ran from April 15th to May 15th. For the month, that Google Ad campaign received 127 clicks, which took visitors to there homepage. The conversion rate was an above-average, super healthy 16.54%, meaning that 21 of the 127 people who clicked also opted-in on Henry Home Buyers website to become a lead. Considering that most real estate investors need 20 or 25 leads to generate one deal, this one Google Ads campaign could have theoretically amounted to $10,000 or $20,000 (depending on the width of their wholesale fee) — we weren’t able to actually track how many of those leads turned into deals, so this is conjecture. But you get the point. A good Google Ads campaign can pay you back ten-fold. Perhaps most revealing, though, is the heatmap we ran on their homepage during the test. Take a look. It doesn’t take an eagle-eyed human to spot that there’s two places lit up like a Christmas tree on the above heatmap — two places that people clicked more than anywhere else. Their high-converting Carrot opt-in form. And their “Meet Our Team” page (AKA, the “About” page) Well, it’s a darn good thing they have such an awesome “About” page with a high-quality team photo, their company’s core values, and even a CTA at the bottom encouraging visitors to give em’ a call. (Image Source) Which leads us into the main takeaway from this test. And it really can’t be overstated… The Most-Clicked Page On Your Website… Do NOT Neglect Your “About” Page… We’ve said it a million times and we’ll say it again… Real estate transactions aren’t just expensive financially, they’re expensive emotionally and mentally. Because real estate transactions are so taxing, the average consumer must completely trust the person that they choose to work with. They must believe you can solve their problem or help fulfill their dream, and that you can do so expertly. They also want to know that you have their best interest in mind — you might just be building your … Continued

Real Estate Investor Success Story: 7 Dead-Simple, Secret Strategies That Lead To MS Home Buyer’s First $100k Month

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We recently had the opportunity to interview Adam Johnson and Brent Moreno on the CarrotCast, two partnered-up investors who finished their first $100k month back in March. On the episode, Trevor asks them about how they got to their first $100k month — exactly what marketing strategies they used and what mindset philosophies made all the difference. If you’d prefer to watch or listen, you can go here to view the full interview. Or below, I’ve compiled 7 of the duo’s dead-simple, secret strategies that they shared on the Carrot real estate investor success story. Want to learn how they got to their first $100k month and how you can, too? Read on. Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #1: Making Uber Do Your Driving-For-Dollars Brent Moreno is likely one of the most innovative online marketers around. While he and his partner often use tried-and-true marketing methods (PPC, Facebook Ads, Direct Mail), Moreno isn’t afraid to think outside of the box in order to get a leg up on the competition. The way he used Uber drivers to find deals is the perfect example of this. Before his real estate investing days, Moreno was a part-time Uber driver. He’d drop his wife off at work and go drive for a few hours to make a little extra money. During that time, he started an Uber Facebook group. When he finally took the leap into real estate investing and gave up on Uber driving, he had an “aha!” moment… Uber drivers literally just drive around town all day… If I could get just a few of them to send me property addresses for vacant or distressed homes, they could do my driving-for-dollars for me. So he reached out to his Uber-driving pals in his Facebook group and asked them to do him a favor. One of them took him up on it and passed him 35 seller leads, 2 of which he was able to close on. That’s just the kind of marketing ingenuity that separates top investors from the rest. Feel free to steal his strategy and try this in your own market. Who knows? Could be a game-changer. Dead-Simple, Secret Strategy #2: Building Your Inner Circle In real estate, perhaps nothing is more powerful than long-term, meaningful relationships in your market of operation. And that is a truth which Adam Johnson doesn’t take lightly: I love to make people smile. I really do. In fact, he’s built so many meaningful relationships in his community that when he walked into the local courthouse (a place he regularly visits, giving chocolates, kind notes, or snow cones to the workers whenever he leaves) to check the title on a foreclosure, something amazing happened. He overheard one of the workers talking on the phone as they said something like this: I’m sorry Ma’am, I just don’t have the authority to offer discounts or lower your payments. There’s nothing I can do. After a moment, the worker noticed Johnson in the room, said Uhh. Hold on, hold on. Let me get someone else on the phone and gave Johnson the county phone to try and help this woman solve her tax problems. That random situation turned into a closed deal for Johnson. What’s more? Johnson literally has his own set of keys to every courthouse in the county because of the relationships he’s built. Don’t underestimate the power of consistent kindness to build meaningful relationships in your community — you never know where your next deal will come from. Moreno even goes so far as to claim that 50% of their success can be directly attributed to the … Continued

Bing Ads For Real Estate: How To Create An Account The Right Way…

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We’ve already written about why Bing ads can be crazy profitable for real estate investors and agents. But how do you set up a Bing Ads account? Well here’s how… × × Demo Carrot: How many deals are you losing to your competitor’s website? Take a Free Demo But first, we need to clear something up. In early 2019, Bing Ads was rebranded as Microsoft Advertising. In this article, we’re going to reference Bing Ads. Real estate investors can be very busy and sometimes don’t have the necessary time to research and create marketing campaigns, especially when it comes to pay-per-click advertising. We understand the requirement to streamline some of this process. That’s why we created this simple step-by-step guide to creating your own Bing Ads account. It’s for short-on-time investors needing to expand their online marketing. In a previous post, we covered why Bing Ads for real estate isn’t a waste of your time and should be considered as a viable advertising resource. But, just don’t take our word for it, check out this post from another highly regarded PPC company 25 Reasons to Use Bing Ads Now. Create A Bing Ads For Real Estate Account In 15 Minutes First, go to the  Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads) sign up page. You’ll be given 2 options: Use an existing email address or create a new email address. Option 1: Use An Existing Email Address To Create An Account Go to the Bing Ads sign up page and enter an existing email address. Click Check availability to check if your email address is available to use. Image: Bing If you have an email address you already use to sign in to Microsoft products (like Skype or Xbox LIVE), all you need to do is sign in and the transition will be complete. If you’ve never used this email to sign into a Microsoft product, you’ll be able to sign up for a new account. After you’ve created your Bing Ads account, you can set up your campaign by importing from Google AdWords (see below) or by creating a new campaign. You can also skip this step and click Continue. Enter your billing and payment information and click Next. You can also skip this step and enter your billing and payment information later by clicking Skip. Option 2: Create A New Email Address And Then Create An Account Go to the Bing Ads sign up page Image: Bing Select Create a new email address and click Next. Image: Bing A Microsoft account is an email address and password you use to sign in to Microsoft services or devices. If you use an email address and password to sign in to services like Skype, Xbox LIVE, or Outlook.com, you already have a Microsoft account. Image: Bing Image: Bing After you verify your email you’ll be Ready to go! Image: Bing You’ll be taken to the Bing Ads Create Account page directly after creating your new Microsoft account and will already be signed in with your new account. Image: Bing After you’ve created your Bing Ads account, you can set up your campaign by importing from Google AdWords or by creating a new campaign. You can also Choose Option 3 to skip this step. Once you choose your desired option click Continue. Image: Bing Enter your billing and payment information and click Next. You can also skip this step and enter your billing and payment information later by clicking Skip. Image: Bing You’ll be directed to billing. Image: Bing Setting Up Your Billing Information When you’re ready to go live with your Bing Ads campaigns, you’ll need to set up your … Continued

How to Create a Google Ads Account for Real Estate

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Are you ready to take the next step in your online real estate marketing? That step is creating a Google Ads account. Real estate investors face several challenges when it comes to generating leads. Traditional methods, such as direct mail and cold calling, can be time-consuming and yield low results. Even with a strong online presence, attracting qualified leads to your website can be tough. This is where Google Ads comes in. According to data, Google Ads can be a highly effective lead source for real estate investors. Without it, investors may struggle to compete in today’s crowded digital landscape. With Google Ads, investors can reach potential sellers and buyers actively searching for real estate solutions, resulting in a higher likelihood of conversion. Furthermore, without a strong online advertising strategy, investors may miss out on valuable leads. The data shows that 97% of consumers search for businesses online before making a decision. If real estate investors are not visible in these search results, they may be losing out on potential leads to their competitors. In addition to missing out on potential leads, not having a strong online presence can damage an investor’s credibility. With 78% of consumers saying they research a business before engaging with them, it’s crucial for investors to have a professional and user-friendly website. By using Google Ads to drive traffic to their website, investors can showcase their credibility and expertise to potential leads. Overall, real estate investors who neglect to utilize Google Ads may miss out on valuable leads, damaging their credibility and struggling to compete in today’s digital landscape. In preparation for creating a Google Ads account, there are a few important steps. While setting up the account itself is relatively straightforward, running effective Google Ads campaigns requires some groundwork. Before You Create a Google Ads Account First and foremost, ensuring that your website is relevant, user-friendly, and adds credibility is crucial. Your Google Ads account will drive traffic to your site, but once visitors arrive, it’s up to you to convince them to take action. To do so, you’ll need landing pages designed to motivate and engage visitors. Your advertising efforts will likely be wasted if your landing pages are disorganized, lack relevant information, or are otherwise not conducive to conversions. For guidance on creating effective landing pages that maximize the return on your PPC campaigns, we recommend checking out our land page best practices. Before Starting a Google Ads Account, You Need to Consider 1. Planning. You need to have your real estate website dialed in with some personalization and credibility. Your Google Ads account (formerly known as AdWords) can help you to bring qualified visitors to your real estate website. Once they’ve made it to your website, it’s YOUR duty to convince them to convert. To make this happen, you must create pages that will compel your visitors to take action. If your pages are cluttered or lack relevant, credible information, you will have a leaky bucket and will likely be wasting money. Take the time to focus on customizing your website a bit, especially your “Testimonials” and “Our Company” pages. Check why these two pages are so important. Also, be sure your real estate website is mobile-optimized. All Carrot websites are mobile-friendly. Therefore you’re maximizing the potential of your Google ads account. 2. Commitment. You must be willing to build Google Ads into your long-term financial and time plan. It’s practically impossible to see the full potential of your Google Ads account from the start. It’s essential to recognize that PPC is not a short-term venture. Establishing a strong structure, expanding … Continued

Announcing Carrot University! Learn Online Marketing for Free with Carrot

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For years, we’ve worked our bottoms off to provide you (our members, the people on our email list, and even those of you who’ve never worked with us) free, valuable, life-changing content. Every week for the past several years (with maybe a couple exceptions), we’ve published a new blog post and/or CarrotCast episode meant to help you build a bigger business, live a happier life, achieve financial freedom, and escape the horribly monotonous 9-5 grind. That is our passion: to help you regain time in your life for things that matter most — family, friends, hobbies, etc.  But there’s a problem — while we’ve consistently created content to help you build a business you can be proud of, our website hasn’t done the best job of organizing that content for you. You can click on the “Blog” tab at the top of our website and you’ll see our latest blog posts and CarrotCast episodes, but it’d take some real work to digest our content in any sort of chronological order… until now. :) Announcing Carrot University! Carrot University is our (the content creator’s: Brendan, Trevor, and myself) effort to organize our content so that you can easily digest the most important lessons for your business. Want to learn about SEO? Here are 10 lessons to get you started off on the right foot! Want to learn about PPC? Here are 10 lessons to teach you everything you need to know to get started. Wondering which contracts you need for your real estate investing business? Here are some templates! Rather than choosing random pieces of content via Google and our blog, you can now go to a single place (Carrot University) and learn about those topics in chronological order — from beginner to advanced to ultra successful. Want to see for yourself? Check it out over here! Carrot University SEO 101. What is the Scope of Carrot University? We wanted to get Carrot University out to you as soon as possible, so we’re launching it with just one module of content: SEO 101 — basically, our beginner’s guide to understanding SEO and how it applies to your real estate website. BUT… There’s a lot more to come. ;) We have plans for content modules about PPC advertising, advanced SEO lessons, personal development, and even nitty-gritty business building best practices. Ultimately, we want Carrot University to serve YOU. We want it to be a place that you go to learn, grow, and challenge yourself. We want it to help you succeed. Go check out Carrot University now and let us know what you think! Carrot University SEO 101. And if you have any ideas for module topics we should cover in the future, let us know in the comments. :)

Introduction to Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Real Estate: A Beginner’s Guide

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In 2018, PPC was the second highest lead generation medium for our members. Trying to rank on page one of Google can be a daunting task for some. It takes time and resources to invest in a full, all-out SEO strategy. Even then it could take months to notice. What can you do in the meantime? Well, many of our members make use of both PPC and SEO — using the former to generate short-term traffic and the latter to generate longterm traffic. In this intro to PPC for Real Estate, we run down what you need to understand if you’re considering this route. Including: What is PPC for Real Estate? How does PPC work? What are the benefits of using PPC advertising for Real Estate? Who should use PPC? How to get started with PPC? Introduction To PPC For Real Estate What Is PPC For Real Estate? (Image Source) PPC is a broad term used for various cost-per-click platforms real estate professionals use to get in front of their target audience. These include Google Ads (AdWords), Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and numerous retargeting options. Overall, PPC is a digital marketing strategy in which you advertise within a search engine’s sponsored results by bidding for the keywords, ad sets, and/or retargeting list connected to your real estate niche. Pay-per-click is exactly that… you pay each time your ad is clicked. Although, there are times you can be charged for impressions (number of times your ads are shown). Google Ads (Adwords) still reigns as PPC king for generating motivated seller leads. Facebook ads can also be an effective way to generate motivated sellers as well as buyer leads. Facebook cost-per-click is also considered a lesser amount compared to AdWords. It’s important that you understand where your leads are coming from and the value of your cost per lead to fully understand which platform works best for you. How Does PPC Work? Starting with the basics. When a motivated seller types a search query into Google, the search engines provide two sets of results: pay-per-click ads (sponsored) and organic results. As seen in the picture below, the first three results on top are sponsored ads (indicated by the green square around the word “Ad”). The other results below the ads are organic results. More than likely, the organic website results have climbed the rankings by executing a solid SEO strategy. With PPC, when the searcher clicks on one of the ads, you (the advertiser) is charged for that click. The price of that click will vary per the competition for that specific keyword as well as your target location(s). You can use specific tools to find keyword traffic estimates as well as the competition and cost-per-click estimates. Tools such as: Google Ads Keyword Planner Ubersuggest SEMRush (free or paid) What Are The Benefits Of Real Estate PPC? (Image Source) Advertising with PPC ads can have many benefits. Here are some of the top reasons you should consider using PPC as part of your online marketing strategy. 1. You Have the Opportunity to Control Your Position on Page One of the Search Results PPC advertising allows you to gain the most valuable ad space on whichever PPC platform you choose to use. If that’s Google, then you have the ability to get on top of the first-page search results without having to dedicate the time and resources for SEO. Claiming ad space where most eyes will see them will increase your odds of getting solid lead generation and return on your investment. 2. Place Your Ads in Front of YOUR Audience This is … Continued

How To Track Your Real Estate SEO Performance And Improve Your Strategy

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You want to generate more organic leads but you don’t know how to track your real estate SEO performance. That’s common. You want to pull more traffic to your website (with less money) and you want to convert that traffic into cash for your real estate agent or investing business. That’s good — you’ve chosen the right strategy: SEO. Since people who find your website all on their own are usually more motivated than those who see your ad on Facebook, SEO doesn’t just drive traffic but works to improve the conversion rate of your website. And with high-quality traffic and leads comes less time spent dealing with tire-kickers who’ll never convert, regardless of how hard you try. In other words, SEO benefits your business in a multitude of ways. Less time spent on the wrong leads, more time spent on the right leads, more website traffic, higher conversion rate, consistent lead generation, and even financial predictability. But there’s a problem… How do you know if your SEO strategy is working? How do you know that you’re SEO performance heading in the right direction? After all, SEO can take months or years to start having a tangible impact on your business, so how do you know you’re not just wasting your time? Here are 4 mission-critical SEO metrics to keep an eye on while you’re climbing your way through the rankings. 4 Mission-Critical Real Estate SEO Performance Metrics You Need to Be Using 1. Rankings This metric might be obvious to you… If you’re going to drive passive traffic to your website and you’re going to convert more leads without running more paid ads, you must get to the first page of Google. But that can take months, years even. How do you know you’re making progress? The simplest way to check is to open an incognito web browser window and type in the search phrase that you’re trying to rank for. Then click through Google’s results and see if you can find your website. Problem is, that’s time-consuming, especially once you’re trying to rank for 10 or 20 different keyword phrases. At that point, you don’t want to manually check all those rankings. This is why, at Carrot, we created our Keyword Ranking Tracker tool for our Content Pro and Advanced Marketer members. This tool tracks your rankings for specific keyword phrases in near real time. You can use it to quickly determine where your website is at for multiple keyword phrases you’re targeting. Every page in Google typically has 10 results, so 1-10 means you’re on the first page, 11-20 is second page, and so on. 2. Domain Authority Another way to determine whether you’re making progress in the eyes of Google is to check your website’s domain authority. What is domain authority? It might sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple when you get down to it. Domain authority is the overall authority that search engines (Google, mostly) attributes to your domain. More authority is better and means that your website has a higher chance of ranking in results. Conversely, a low authority means that Google is unsure of whether you’re trustworthy or not (yet) and it’ll be more difficult for your website to get on the first page of Google’s results. But the more content you create, the more opportunities you’ll have to rank in search engines (each page or blog post has a chance to rank). This is why we include monthly expert-written content as a part of our (Carrot’s) Content Pro and Advanced Marketer Plans. Plus, the longer your website exists… (Image Source) …and the … Continued