Search Results for ppc

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

How Long Does it Take a Real Estate Website to Show Up on The First Page of Google?

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You want to rank your real estate website on the first page of Google. And you’re no SEO rookie — you understand that ranking on the first page for your target keyword phrase is going to take some time, it’s going to take some work, and it’s going to take some content creation. But just how long is it going to take you to rank on Google? When can you expect rankings and passive traffic to pay you back for all your hard work? That’s the question I intend to answer for you in this article. But first… just how powerful is the first page of Google anyways? The Power Of Google’s First Page… What is the primary reason that anyone — real estate investors and agents included — want to rank their website in Google? The answer is simple. Passive traffic. High-quality leads. And less money spent on advertising. With that, you can build a bigger business and establish yourself as the go-to real estate expert in your market. Financial predictability and businesses growth — that’s what high rankings promise your business. But here’s the thing… ranking in Google isn’t enough. Most online tools will consider your website as ranking if it’s within the first 100 results for your given keyword phrase. Answer me this, though: when has anyone ever clicked through 100 results after searching for something in Google? Yeah… never. Which is exactly why the first page of Google is the only place with significant click-through rates (1st position takes 35% of the clicks). (Image Source) If your result gets to page 2, 3, 4, or 5, the click-through rate is negligible. In other words, if you want to live the passive-traffic and high lead-gen dream that SEO promises, you must be on the first page. Nothing else will get you the results you’re looking for. Once you pull off getting your website on the first page of Google’s rankings, though, click-through rate isn’t the only benefit — the lead quality is typically much higher than those from paid advertising, meaning a high close-rate for pennies on the dollar. Here’s what Tyler Ford (a real estate agent and investor) has to say about this. Get Your Carrot Website Today and Start Generating Leads in No Time! How Long Will It Take You To Get To The First Page? Okay — so you know how valuable the first page of Google is. You understand that the lead quality is typically much higher, the leads are much cheaper, and they take much less work to generate (over the long term, of course). Note: This isn’t to say that you should ignore paid advertising altogether. Many Carrot members use PPC and direct mail to get leads immediately but then invest in SEO for their long-term business sustainability and financial predictability. But how long is it going to take you to rank on the first page of Google? Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question with a simple number of months. Generally speaking, though, you should expect to see some type of positive movement with your rankings within 3-12 months, depending on a few different factors. Here are the 4 biggest factors I’m referring to. Taking these into consideration, your website should take between 3-12 months to get near the first page of Google for your target keyword phrase, moving up and down that spectrum depending on… The 4 Biggest Ranking Considerations 1. Keyword Competition The more real estate investors or agents that you have to compete with for page one of your target keyword phrase, the longer it’ll take to see the results you’re looking for. Of course, different … Continued

How This Real Estate Investor Went From Almost Canceling His Carrot Site to Clearing $50k Per Month

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“I’m not getting any leads through my Carrot website. I’m just going to cancel it.” That’s what Troy told himself one day as he drove to work. He almost did it, too. Thankfully, he gave it another shot. And he couldn’t be happier… Watch Troy’s Case Study Meet Troy Troy is a real estate investor out of Milwaukee. He’s no rookie – with over ten years of experience and plenty of closed deals, it’s clear that he knows his stuff. Troy had a good thing going. He was spending his time buying and selling income properties to other investors and making a healthy profit. One day, Troy decided to take things to the next level. He found out about Carrot and got his hands on one of our high-converting websites — powerful, lightweight sites that are made to dominate Google rankings and convert visitors into leads. (Image Source) They’re made just for real estate investors like Troy, so once he set up his own site, he was hoping to get a lot of new leads… But leads started drying up… Some time passed, and he didn’t do much with the site beyond a bit of customization. He wasn’t actively trying to drive traffic to it with PPC or SEO, so it really just sat there. That wasn’t a big deal until the market started shifting and Troy found that leads were getting harder and harder to come by. The other lead sources he used had all but dried up, and his Carrot website didn’t seem to be doing much for him. “Sources that were giving me enough leads and deals these last years just weren’t enough to keep me busy. A lot of those have dried up… I had to find something else.” That’s when he decided he could save some money every month If he got rid of his Carrot site. After all, what good is a high-converting website if no one ever sees it? It doesn’t matter how optimized it is if it’s just sitting there collecting dust. So he started researching how to cancel his Carrot subscription. But then he thought, Quitting is the easy way out… maybe one more shot. And he decided that he wasn’t ready to quit just yet. He realized that he hadn’t been doing as much as he could to drive traffic to the website, so he wanted to give it another go. “I knew if I took the DIY route it wouldn’t have gotten done the way it needs to get done… so, I hired out and the leads that came in were more than enough to pay for it. So, it’s totally worth it — and it happened faster than I expected.” How Troy made it work… The second time around, Troy took it a lot more seriously. He found some great AdWords marketers and hired them to help him with PPC. It was a hard cost to stomach, especially while his leads were buckling, but once the PPC started bringing in traffic, he realized how powerful his website was. “It was a bigger upfront cost, but it only takes one deal to pay for it, so it would be crazy not to give it a try.” Steady leads have been flowing in ever since. For Troy, the high cost of marketing and PPC quickly paid for itself. All it takes is closing one solid lead in a month. Troy closed four. He brought in $50,000. Better yet, he started working on SEO, and now that more organic traffic is flowing in, his PPC is cheaper than it used to … Continued

What Is Real Estate SEO? Learn the Basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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What is real estate SEO? By definition, it is “creating relevant content with keyword focus to improve website visibility in the organic search results for real estate professionals. The process includes building landing pages, updating metadata, content modifications, and analyzing keywords.” Whether you’re doing apartments, looking for motivated sellers, cash buyers, private lenders, or note sellers — even if you’re a real estate agent — the whole thing is you need to understand search engine optimization and how it can change your business for the better. What is Real Estate SEO? So, what is real estate SEO? To break it down simply, by giving Google and other search engines what they want, Google will reward you with higher rankings. You see, each search engine — Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. — has an algorithm that crawls online web pages to determine which results to show people when they search for any given keyword phrase (i.e., the words they type into the search engine). By “optimizing” your real estate web page(s) for a search engine’s algorithm (usually Google since it’s the biggest), you can rank for high-value phrases and drive passive traffic to your website. Carrot members, for instance, often rank for market-specific phrases. Here’s the best part: that algorithm determines where you and every other website ranks in Google — experts already know what factors that algorithm considers. Partly, they know because of testing and experimentation. And partly, they know because Google consistently releases updates about how their algorithm interacts with websites and online content. Note: I’ve transitioned from talking about search engines in general to talking about Google specifically. This is because Google accounts for about 93% of the search engine traffic online. It’s the heaviest-hitting player in the search engine world and the one whose algorithm you should most seriously consider when crafting your SEO strategy. Which means you can too. But it’s important to note the difference between working to please the search engines… and trying to trick them. One will get you rankings. The other will get you banned. Black Hat SEO VS. White Hat SEO Black hat SEO and white hat SEO, are basically just search engine marketing jargon for a bad way to build rankings and a good way to build rankings. Black hat is gaming the system. It’s trying to trick Google’s algorithm into giving you higher rankings. While this will sometimes work over the short run, it is likely to get your website into trouble when Google finds out what you’re doing. You can learn more about black hat SEO no-nos over here. White Hat SEO Strategy – Maintaining Your Integrity. White hat SEO strategies, on the other hand, build rankings the way that Google wants you to. That’s the way that we work at Carrot. That’s how we’re going to train you, is on white hat strategies. With white hat SEO, there’s less risk and more opportunity. As an example, if you go to Google and type up phrases like “Sell my house fast Pittsburgh,” “Sell my house fast Baltimore,” or “Sell my house fast Birmingham,” or “We buy houses Bakersfield,” or hundreds of other phrases. Or, on the cash buyer side, “Investment properties in Baltimore, Baltimore wholesale properties.” Or maybe “real estate agent in Boston.” You’ll see Carrot members popping up very high on the search rankings, leveraging their training and our search engine optimization tools, and getting more leads. For SEO search engine optimization, we’re focusing on the section in the Google search results and Bing search results, and Yahoo search results. But mainly Google. We’re focusing on the area that’s above the orange … Continued