Activerain Introduces Pay per Click

Activerain Introduces Pay Per Click

Last week, Activerain, introduced Pay per Click campaigns for the network.  This is a great addition for Realtors that blog on Activerain and consumers that want to look for homes.  I have written three posts on Activerain on my experience with Pay per Click campaigns. Activerain calls the new feature Listing Router.

When a consumer comes to your site or profile, they can search for homes in your area and your community for FREE. However, if a consumer goes to Google and searches for let’s say “short sales”, finds my post on Short Sales, they read it but they live in Austin, TX and want to buy a “short sale” in Austin. They could then go to the top and put in Austin, TX. The agents that signed up with their IDX feed in Austin would on a round robin basis to get that consumer to their site.  That agent would then be charged against their budget, but because I was the referring site in Ann Arbor I would get a credit in my account.

IDX Feeds

The first post dealt with getting leads not hits from your IDX site.  I was surprised that so many agents didn’t really understand IDX. Many MLS boards around the country only allow the Brokers to have two feeds. That is simply not right in this day and age. Some agents can use the Brokers feed, but then the leads come back to the Broker and they assign them out. (Probably for a referral fee) I would not do a Pay per Click campaign, spend my money and have the Broker assign them to agents in my office.

Third Party Vendors

The second post dealt with third party vendors that will provide you that feed and either incorporate it into your web-site, and blog or in many cases you have to purchase a new web-site from them. Kelley Koehler also posted on Getting the most out of your Listing Router. I found out that her husband programs for Applied Research Technology. In my opinion this is an excellent alternative if an agent is not able to get a IDX feed from their board.

Make It Count

The last post and one that Kelley also addressed was making your site look appealing to a buyer. A consumer will decide in a mino-second if they want to search for homes on your site.  The most effective way to do this is show the consumer what they will see first, before you ask for their contact information. What are you offering them that every other Realtor is not? What makes your home search site stand out?

How long you let the consumer search without sharing their information depends on your philosophy on visitors registering on your web-site. I was actually surprised at how many people do require registration, I thought I was in the minority on this.

In my opinion this is the one thing that was missing on Activerain. Over 70,000 readers come to Activerain daily through organic searches; yet they have a high bounce rate. Since consumers are basically looking for houses, this should be a great benefit for the consumers to stick around and search for homes for sale in their own area’s.

***Photo Courtesy of Stuart Pilbrow, Flickr ***