Real Estate Investment Company Decreases Cost Per Lead with PPC

Introduction

A New York-based real estate investment company provides a platform for real estate investors to invest safely and strategically in properties while providing redevelopers with a means for finding and sourcing their next property to renovate. Acting as the liaison between the investor and the borrower, the company brings years of experience to both sides of the deal.

The Challenge

The company was previously managing its PPC and paid social efforts with another agency. However, leaders wanted to get more value for their money and efforts, in addition to having more transparency into their demand generation efforts. They were keen to have access to regular reporting to gain insight into whether current efforts were successful. They partnered with Kuno Creative to help them improve their results and bring down their costs.

In particular, they wanted to get their cost per conversion down, as it was higher than desired at $150 per lead.

The Strategy

After assessing their current efforts, the Kuno team made changes to optimization efforts and account settings to utilize the budget more efficiently. To implement best practices, Kuno restructured the PPC campaigns with new keywords based on search data. Kuno updated goals and the way they were structured in Google. Kuno found that the way things were running was at a basic level, and the real estate investment company needed more sophisticated strategies for their campaigns. The ads that were running when Kuno began working with them were largely broad-match keywords that took users to landing pages with little information. The pages were in need of better targeting, with more details included on the landing pages.

The Kuno team also restructured the company's Facebook campaign. They made modifications such as making the target locations broader and employing search-based targeting for borrowers, lenders and investors. Kuno added variations of campaigns, incorporating pillar pages, video and long-form content into landing pages used in demand generation. Making the landing pages more robust provided users with more information upfront.

Demand Generation Efforts

A PPC analysis by the Kuno team found inconsistencies in the strategy where best practices such as frequency capping were not being used. Not implementing ad frequency capping caused viewers to see the same ads dozens of times, when a limit should have been set from the beginning.

Kuno tweaked aspects, such as the income parameters, to enable better demographic targeting opportunities. With Kuno’s expertise, they were able to better use the Google Ads platform, and the integration with HubSpot helped with reporting results. The company experienced a significant amount of success as the results of all efforts combined.

Additionally, Kuno held weekly progress meetings to help the company understand the numbers, determine if strategies were effective, and answer any questions they had. Kuno put emphasis on open communication throughout the process to ensure the client was always kept in the loop on their efforts.

Maximizing Marketing Dollars

After Kuno’s initial PPC optimizations, the company experienced positive results within the first two months. This included:

• Increased CTR to 6.39% (up 28% YoY)
• Drove 338 unique conversions (up 38% YoY)
• Increased conversion rate to 11% (up 115% YoY)
• Decreased cost per conversion to $69 (down 35% YoY)

More Positive Results

Three months later, new campaigns and ads were launched. Kuno designed a new landing page that included more content, client testimonials and trust symbols in an effort to improve quality score. This also yielded positive results, including:

• Increased CTR to 7.94% (up 51% YoY)
• Drove 413 unique conversions (up 87% YoY)
• Increased conversion rate to 14.52% (up 155% YoY)
• Decreased cost per conversion to $79.07 (down 15% YoY)