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Why Using Landing Pages By Themselves Will Increase Your AdWords Budget

By Duncan Wierman in Featured

Google AdWords, or any other kind of contextual advertising for that matter, is about one thing: getting a return on investment. Businesses of all types, from multinational corporations to sole proprietorships’ selling machine parts to real estate agents and investors love the traceability of AdWords and other pay per click advertising models – but it’s entirely possible to spend too much on your AdWords campaigns.

But the whole idea of AdWords is that you can have near total control over your advertising budget, isn’t it? Before we go any further here, I feel that I should mention that I am not knocking AdWords at all. People who end up wasting money on these campaigns aren’t doing so because of any flaw in this advertising model – they’re wasting money because the rest of their marketing strategy or even their entire online presence is ill conceived.

It’s not Google’s fault and in many cases, it’s not really these real estate investors or real estate agents fault either. It’s that they’re using a type of marketing strategy which is inherently poorly suited for the real estate business.

Should these people have known better? In some cases, yes – but there are plenty of newly minted investors trying to make their fortunes by investing in properties made affordable by the currently soft US housing market. These people, by and large aren’t experts on how to reach their target markets, let alone design or deploy an AdWords campaign. What you’re probably asking now is what exactly these people are doing wrong; and of course, how you can avoid making the same mistakes.

The biggest single mistake that real estate investors make when they establish a presence on the web is this: they’re thinking like the online snake oil peddlers, not real estate brokers. There is an enormous difference in how (for instance) someone promoting a dubious home based business does business online and how a reputable real estate investor does business online.

In a nutshell, that’s what it comes down to – but that’s not the whole story of course and it’s useful in this case to look at exactly what misguided real estate investors are doing, how they’re doing it and of course, how this approach results in an AdWords budget which is much larger than it needs to be without producing a solid return on investment. So without any further ado….

Landing pages

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: using landing pages only and real estate just don’t mix and making landing pages the central part of your online marketing means wasted money in your AdWords campaigns, just as sure as the sun will set in the West tomorrow.

Just what’s wrong with landing pages alone? Nothing, if you happen to enjoy wasting time and money.

But I’ve read that landing pages can produce results? OK, there’s a grain of truth here. It’s possible that you could see an inquiry or two at some point as a result of your landing pages – but of course, you’d be able to get the same or better results by standing in Times Square wearing a sandwich board advertising your real estate investment business.

Neither of these methods is really a great way to promote yourself if you’re in the real estate business, in case you were wondering. At least wearing a sandwich board in midtown Manhattan won’t mean budgeting for AdWords ads which don’t get clicks – and it’s a lot faster and cheaper to make this kind of advertisement than it is to build multiple landing pages.

Let’s get to the heart of the problem here. When people decide to build their online presence around landing pages, what they tend to do is to take a shotgun approach, desperately building landing pages for any and every keyword which they think will possibly lure in interested parties.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this other than being a massive waste of time, these same would-be online real estate investors then put a lot of effort and budget a significant amount of money on Google AdWords and other PPC advertising to drive traffic to these many different pages. This would still be fine if this approach actually tended to produce worthwhile results – but if you’ve tried this yourself, you’re probably already all too aware that it simply doesn’t work in 99.9% of cases and even less often in the real estate business.

It’s an approach to online business which is taken from the often less than reputable world of affiliate marketing; while I don’t mean to defame affiliate marketers, you have only to look at how many of these people adopt the same marketing model we’ve been looking at here – and how little return they see on their investment of time and money.

Now of course, some of you are probably thinking that AdWords ads don’t cost you anything unless someone clicks through and I won’t argue this point. However, the problem is that the money budgeted for multiple campaigns is tied up and could more than likely be used better elsewhere – and it adds an entirely unnecessary layer of complexity by requiring you to manage any number of campaigns at once rather than one.

That’s right – one. All you really need is one well designed, professional looking website and a blog in order to get exactly the same results as you will from having a site and who-knows-how-many landing pages. Your main website should be a traditional, largely static site whose purpose is to provide you with a professional business presence online (you know, like grown-ups).

Your blog can easily provide the same function as a dozen landing pages – and you’ll need just one PPC campaign with a budget and management needs which the average person can actually get their head around. You’ll also look more reputable, plain and simple. In an industry like real estate where your appearance is everything, why would you want to make yourself look cheap; or make running your business more difficult than it has to be?

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Duncan Wierman is an Ex Software company CEO turned Real Estate Investor and Marketer. Discover how you can use creative online marketing methods to do more deals online. For more details on how to set up an automated internet marketing system, please visit Duncan Wierman’s website and get is free 14 day e-course. http://www.DuncanWierman.com

The Reasons Why Marketing Plans Fail

By Duncan Wierman in Featured

One of the most frustrating aspects to business is when you have all the marketing tools your business needs, perhaps even some your business does not need and yet you still see no results. You may even be spending time and effort marketing your business and yet conversion ratios and traffic remain constant or even drop. The reasons why marketing plans fail are numerous however; one of the primary reasons is that it was not the right marketing plan.

Every business is different and that includes businesses that sell the same products and services. Every business has something that is unique, the group of people they are targeting, the area they are working in, the options they have available to them. These different aspects mean that the same marketing plan is not going to work on every business.

When a marketing plan fails, it is important to find out exactly why it failed first. The reason or reasons are is essential. It may be that there is only one aspect of a marketing plan that failed, it may be multiple items or it may be the entire plan.

Research

Research is an essential aspect of marketing and inadequate research is one of the biggest pitfalls that can affect a marketing plan. Research provides a wealth of information that is vital to the success of a marketing plan. Generally, research is done on the target market. If a target market is not known, research is done to determine what market is going to be the most likely to benefit from the product or service provided by your business.

This is the group of individuals you will want to target and in some areas there may be multiple groups. While it may be possible to market to all these groups it is, in most situations better to market to a single group or groups which contain a large percentage of similar traits. This makes it easier to consolidate a marketing plan as well as eliminates a significant amount of research, time and effort.

The second aspect which needs to be researched for a marketing plan to be successful and is also one of the reasons why marketing fails to produce appropriate results involves research competition. Researching competition is not just about researching the prices of a competitor. It includes noting things such as lay out, finding out what marketing techniques the competitor is using and how often these tools are used for example.

Many business owners and beginning internet marketers fail to note anything more than price and perhaps general layout. As a result, they are missing vital information that can save time, money and effort when it comes to setting up their own marketing plans. It is also important to keep in mind that you want your business to be unique from your competition.

Get a good idea of the types of deals, offers, discounts and promotions that your competition uses and offer something different to help your business stand out. Many people simply do what their competition does. In doing so, they often lower their marketability and their marketing plan can ultimately fail in this area.

Marketing Tools

Having enough research to create your marketing plan is only the first step in solving the problems that often cause marketing plans to fail. The next step is to take the time to pick out the right tools. Having the right tools for the job is essential to ensuring you get the most out of your marketing strategies.

Marketing tools have diversified over the years. Tools are not limited strictly to email and promotional options. Video, social networking, SMS texting, in addition to email and promotional marketing tools are also available. The increase in available options means that there is a greater spectrum to work with. It also means that picking the right tools is more important than ever.

Pick tools that are going to be easy for you to use, require minimal maintenance but provide you with maximum potential results. This will help to prevent your marketing plan from joining the ranks of those that have failed. Knowing the right tools to use can often be a trial and error process. The important thing is to avoid one of the reasons why marketing plans fail. In this case the reason involves putting too much into a single marketing tool.

Action, Action, Action

One of the biggest reasons why marketing plans end up failing is the lack of action. Marketing is an active part of your business, it is not a set and forget aspect of you business. In order to ensure that a marketing plan succeeds you must be actively engaged in working that plan. This means that email marketing messages should be updated and redesigned regularly.

SMS messages should be rewritten after very send. These messages should be short, contain only the minimum necessary information. It is important to remember that SMS marketing is relatively new and involves sending messages to mobile devices that often indicate repeat messages.

Videos should be produced, edited and updated to as high a level as possible. Computers and technology can turn just about any computer into a production studio with the right software. Keep videos interesting, engaging and relevant. The videos should be related to the company, the products or the services offered.

It is important to set up a marketing schedule and find out how much time, generally through trial and error that you need each day, week or month to handle all your marketing tasks and keep everything up to date.

The reasons why a marketing plan might fail are numerous. Some of these reasons include, failing to do the proper research into the market, the competition as well as the tools available. Other reasons can be failing to have enough tools, having too many tools or not using the tools you have effectively. Taking the time to make sure that you have the information you need as well as putting in the effort to ensure your success can go a long way to eliminating these reasons.

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Duncan Wierman is an Ex Software company CEO turned Real Estate Investor and Marketer. Discover how to outsmart your competitor, ethically dominate the search engines,and legally siphon off tons of cash in hand buyers from your website! Get a customized FREE report on what is wrong with your website! http://internetmarketingconsultinggroup.com/outsourcing/

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