Josh Kerbel

Next up in the suck hole of real estate advertising – Zoocasa.com (Names people……….talk about trying to be too clever on the names!)

So Zoocasa’s agent offering has “exclusivity” as well – they only allow 4 agents per neighborhood, but truth be told their sale pitch to real estate agents is pretty crappy.  Just as crappy as Zillow and that Trulia site, maybe even crappier as they don’t give you any sort of sales demo and then require you to prove that you are a real estate agent even before buying their service.

We did two searches on Zoocasa to see what exactly they offer to real estate agents.  Take a look at the two screen captures for Deer Park and the Danforth – two Toronto neighborhoods. ( The “exclusive” ads are up at the top – I circled the ones I looked at in red.

and the second.

The ads are less than compelling.  No better than little billboards that show a total lack of understanding the online lead generation process (Here’s a hint – try to capture my attention……..and don’t do it by flashing me some skin, well OK, that might work with me).   And now their respective landing pages.

So what do we see, a few agents who have shelled out some cash to get some clicks and then they don’t do anything with the clicks.  And I bet they wonder why they aren’t pulling more business from the Internet…..

The question to ask is are these agents seeing a real return on their Internet marketing or are they fooled into thinking they are just investing in their brand?

What do you do with your clicks?

So let’s go for a deeper dive and see how agents use PPC advertising on Trulia.com

Beyond wondering what the fuck a “Trulia” is, let’s see how agents use its PPC or rather it’s Pay Per View function

How trulia’s PPV engine works…………….

It seems that agents can by “exclusivity” or “portions of exclusivity”  for certain neighborhoods across the US.  For example, I could by up all the clicks for NYC – an estimated 500,000 views a month for $23,000 or I could by 1% of the views- 4900 a month for $230.  Every market is priced differently based on historical sales and demographic trends.   As you can also see in the above image, sometimes a market get sold out, so you can’t advertise there.   So now, without further ado, let’s see what agents on Trulia are doing with this functionality.

We are going to do a search for a property in Atlanta.   Here is a screen capture of a PPV ad.

The ad shows up about halfway down the page and is pretty non-descript.  It is for a company by the name of Del Webb.  The ad lacks any real call to action and really doesn’t do much for me, but I am curious what they do with my click……

Talk about curiosity killing the cat………or at least the lead – YES, THAT IS THE WEBSITE THIS AD LEADS TO…………So what is the take away here…………LEAD CAPTURE LEAD CAPTURE LEAD CAPTURE

Over the last few years a number of dedicated real estate sites, Zillow.com, Trulia.com and Zoocasa.com (What fucking marketing brains thought of these names)  have promised to be the nirvana of local search for real estate agents.

All three of these sites offer real estate agents the ability to deliver targeted local ads to buyers and sellers.  You work the 90210 area code, you can get your pay per click ads seen only in that zip code?

So does anyone want to make a bet that agents are blowing their brains out on another form of advertising?  Anyone………well, lets take a look.

First up, Zillow and a search for homes in the 10003 zip code.  This brings up a local pay per click ad for the lovely Amy Wilder (and I do mean lovely, I think her picture suits her last name………she looks likes like she is……….wait, let’s get back on track.)   Lets find out where her ad takes me…

Ouch, that has to hurt……all that beauty and just a plain Jane website.  No info capture! No attempt to engage!   Ack!!  Amy, you are killing me here…………and not just with that crazed look in your eyes   And while she does have some information capture on the Zillow site, she isn’t really offering anything more than a sly smile and crystal blue eyes.  If this was a bar, I’d be handing my credit card over to her, but it’s not.

Oh Amy, what could have been    Just goes to prove the point, no matter how much of a hottie you are, ya can’t have a cold website

Up next……………..Trulia.com

(I hope Amy has a twitter account)

Now don’t be sad
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad
Now don’t be sad (Cause)
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad

-Meatloaf – Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad

Two out of Three Ain’t So Bad, but how about Two out of Eight?   That is pretty bad, but that is just how many online marketing agencies attempting to serve the Toronto market actually demonstrate their own competencies in PPC marketing strategies with their own PPC ad campaign……..

Shall we waste some more time on this subject?  Well, obviously you think so, because you are reading this post……..

The best way to tell if your online marketing agency is worth the money is to examine how you found them in the first place or if they were a word of mouth referral, you should take a look at how they use the Internet to find themselves  new clients.

Let’s do a specific search for something like…………….online marketing agency toronto

This brings up something that looks like this:

Let’s dissect some of the PPC ads……start by thinking, if I am looking to for an online marketing agency, I’m looking for a solution to a marketing problem I am having.  So what I want to see is an ad that is written so it speaks to my problem – personally, I have become really attached to the whole Problem – Benefits – Features type of ad.  Let’s get a little deeper and look to see if any of the ads do this

And now the ones on the side:

Its pretty safe to say that most of these ads don’t really follow the whole problem-benefit-solution model.  But what is more important here is how they handle the post click process.  They have my attention, now lets see what they do with it.  And behind link #1…..

Crappy PPC ad not withstanding, this page isn’t too bad. I would make sure the information capture fields were a little higher.  Now on to link #2 from Mindshape.  Well they have the info capture set up, but  they seem to want to do a few things with this page.  At least its not bowing down at the alter of blatant self indulgence.  They are set up to pull in leads with this page, just like the guys behind link #1………these guys have a clue.

I threw the rest of the ads in to a little poster.  Most of them are fails.   The one I am most surprised about here is PAGE ZERO…….considering they claim to have written the book on paid search, you would think they would know not to just throw PPC traffic a their home page.  Andrew, the owner of the company, has been around the net for ages.  Someone may want to give him a spanking for this poor set up.

So, 8 ads and 2 passes………from people who are supposed to be experts on this area. Um, ouch?

and an exercise in crappy landing page design for you

So I decided to move to Tampa  (Go Devil Rays!!!)……..OK I didn’t, but if I was, here is how I would go about it.

I head over to the wonderful Google machine and search for  – buy a newly built house in Tampa.  The screen shot below shows the results.  We are going to focus our attention on the sponsored ads.

The first step in the analysis – do any of these ads pull me in?  Not really.  No one is really hitting the whole problem-solution-benefits very well.  Assuming that buying a house is a substantial investment, there are usually questions that need answering, lots of unknown variables and plenty of concerns bouncing around in a prospect’s head.  These questions could be:

Where in Tampa do I want to live?  A guidebook to Tampa’s neighborhoods may help.

What do I look for in a newly built house?  A handy checklist would really aid in my search

Do you see anything remotely approaching these in any of these PPC ads?  No?  Me neither.

There is a simple formula here.  Your prospect has a problem.  You need to offer them a solution.

On to the next part of the journey to Tampa….Landing Pages

I’m going to throw up five of the seven pages here, most of which come from experienced companies.  You know how many are well designed?  Take a look at the five and tell me.

So which one works?  Well, not withstanding Lennar’s crappy PPC writing, whoever is running their campaign seems to know what they are doing.  The PPC ad is positioned low down on the first page, so it doesn’t get random clicks and the landing page seems to understand that people buying a newly built house could be first time home buyers and MIGHT HAVE SOME QUESTIONS about the process.

So Lennar makes a swap…………..give me your contact information and I’ll help you buy a house…………hopefully one of our houses

Does Kraft know the craft of direct marketing?

Anyone out there want to place any bets?

Multi-billion dollar company, huge ad budget, should have piles of expertise. No?

Let’s see how a large food and beverage company handles a query for – frozen dinners for kids.

If you look at the screen shot, the ad has good placement not to get random clicks.

The title of the ad addresses Frozen Dinner Recipes.  This wasn’t quite what I was looking for.  I was looking for a ready made frozen meal.  I am not sure if Kraft should be using this keyword, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt and say there are a lot of people that look to make and freeze food for their kids.  I’ll buy in to that for now.  Let’s see how well the landing page plays to that.

Let’s address the top of the page first.

Step back and imaging why the marketing types might want to attract people looking for recipes for frozen food?

Maybe because that is what Kraft sells?

Sounds like a reasonable start.

Now how is Kraft going to engage prospects if it has no way to engage them?

That’s right boys and girls, ignoring all the links on the page that will distract the user from completing the designed task, there is no information capture mechanism on this page.  In fact, the designer want you to go to a second page if you want to sign up for their mailing list.

So beyond not really addressing “frozen dinner recipes”, the page blows an easy way to  exchange some contact information for some dinner information.

Maybe not.  Maybe they are luring you in with their “Use what’s on hand widget”.  The designers lure you in with the thought of a solution of what you can make with the lettuce, tuna fish ketchup you have left in your fridge, but then hit you up with a request for your information before they show you the solution to your frozen dinner dilemma.

Let’s give it a whirl…………..

Whats missing from this page?

OK, so the kitchen wizards at Kraft couldn’t come up with anything to make with lettuce, tuna and ketchup, not a big deal.   The real issue is the lack of any quick mechanism to capture prospect information while the prospect is in the process of using your site.

This, is just sloppy work.

The combination of a poorly targeted landing page (based on the PPC ad) and no real information capture makes this page a dud……..no matter what their marketing company says.  Either scrap this keyword (the campaign manager clearly doesn’t understand what the customer is looking for with this search term)  or redesign the page – improve the copy, get rid of links.

I am amazed at the number of people who run PPC ads who do not understand the principles at work.

Most people make the mistake of viewing their PPC ad cost as an expense.  This is because they operate their PPC promotion program from the wrong perspective – they think of it as traditional brand advertising or even yellow page advertising.  The typical thought process is along the lines of:

“OK someone is searching for XXXXXXX (insert the name of your product or service here).  They are going to Google or Bing or Yahoo (I’m trying to be equitable here)  this term and my PPC ad will be #1, they will click on the link, see what I am selling and then contact me to buy it.”

They look at PPC ads as a one time chance to bring in a new client

This is WRONG WRONG WRONG.  It is simply not how it works.

Do you know how many people simply use the internet for research purposes before making a buying decision?  What you need to do is develop a mechanism to integrate yourself into that research process so that even if they never visit your site again, they will still have a way of contacting you.

PPC advertising is a low cost way of building a prospect database……………an ASSET…………….your PPC costs are an investment in this asset, just like how you invest in an apartment building.  You invest money up front with the hopes that the asset will generate a return on that investment in the near future.

But if all you are doing is throwing some PPC traffic at your home page, how do you plan to create that asset.

Lets see this misguided approach in action.

Say you happen to own a building in New York city and you need to get some maintenance work done.  Well first thing first, I am going to start by researching a few companies

- building maintenance new york -  This seems like a pretty good search query

And this is what we get:

Let’s see what is hiding behind the uninspiring PPC ad in the #1 position

This is where I end up.  See anything missing from the page?

If the company is lucky, maybe I’ll bookmark them for later use when I make my final buying decision.  If not, whatever they spent on the PPC position was a total waste.  Had the company gotten some good advice, they would have developed a mechanism to encourage me to give them my contact information and get me in their prospect database  so they could provide me with information to guide me in the purchasing process………….guide me to buying their service!

Oh well, better luck next time guys.

More of the same with these three characters

Brandmovers, Archrival (Dude, you sent me to your Facebook page………..ACK!!!)  & Eric Harr (Your landing page makes it sound like I should know you already?  Do I?)

Just a total lack of thought went into building these PPC campaigns.  The landing pages are show absolutely no thought in how to generate a return on investment as none of them deploy any robust strategy to harvest leads.  In fact, all they want to do is tell YOU about THEM.  You are not the solution to my social media problems, your skill set maybe.  How about giving me a little taste of you skills in action………

Direct marketing is not about you……..it’s about your customer.  And before you start telling your customer about how wonderful YOU are, you had better figure out a way to build some rapport before I start parting with my money.

How to fix this……….

Try a real landing page and go from there………..

I love the url – wegetsocialmedia.com – of their home page.  Yes, they just transported you right to their homepage.

Top of the page to ya

And now the bottom

Beyond the lack of any form of information capture on the landing page.  Who in god’s name wrote the self-serving copy?

Unless of course your problem is that you need to hire a firm with “a history of developing breakthrough social media strategies and activations for top marketers that include Pepsi, T-Mobile, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson, Mr Youth has been named as Social Media Agency of the Year by Mashable”, cuz if it is, I think these guys just solved your problems.

But you were just looking to hire a social media consultant.

This is another example of people confusing brand advertising with direct marketing.  I don’t care about you.  I care about me.  What can you do for me?  Does your being named social media agency of the year do much for me?  Well considering we don’t have a relationship yet, and you really aren’t attempting to build one here (No one likes a braggart), I’m not sure your campaign is going to get much traction with this sort of layout.

Again, you have my attention.  What are you doing with it…………beside distracting it with a whole pile of irrelevant links.

Let’s take a look where the top PPC ad takes us.

Abracadabra………..we are magically transported to…..Buddy Media’s home page?!?!?

Top of the page:

Mid Section

And for good measure, the lower portion (look at all those links):

I thought they knew social media?  Well maybe they do.  What I would question is do they know what to do with someone’s attention once they have it?

Beyond being the home page (vs. a specialized landing page) they don’t even attempt to capture some demographic/contact information from the user.  No attempt to get a potential prospect into the funnel.  The fact that I clicked on their PPC ad in the first place is reasonable indication that I am worth getting in the pipe and then filtering me out after.  Whatever they paid for the click is just a cost, not an investment…….

But I am glad they were mentioned on TechCrunch.

Ladies and Gentleman, a round of applause for Buddy Media.