Over the past decade I have investigated various methods of measuring online traffic for the different web sites I’ve managed, and no single measurement seems to bear up to scrutiny. In fact, most do a pretty good job of contradicting each other. Google Analytics? Smarter Stats? Nielsen? Hitwise? Alexa? Take your pick, and think of a number.

This problem was highlighted recently with the publication of Internet Advertising Bureau’s report ⁽¹⁾ showing that online ad spending in Australia has just topped the $2bn mark (doubling over the past 4 years). Another recent report⁽²⁾ predicted internet advertising will nearly double again over the next 4 years to leapfrog newspapers and TV to become the number one advertising medium in Australia.

The $2bn breaks down roughly to half in search/directories (so, mainly Google Adwords), a quarter in online classifieds (mainly real estate, cars and jobs) with the rest spent on general online display ads (skyscraper banners and the like).

The reports bemoaned the fact that although you could measure dollars spent on online advertising, measuring traffic to & from the ads was a guesstimate at best.

With this growing dominance of internet advertising, it would seem important that we can actually measure the precise number of visitors visit our web sites (and to which pages), something the internet was supposed to deliver. All businesses, even the smallest real estate agency office, should know how many people are coming to its online shop window.

Every time a web visitor clicks onto a web site, their visit should be recorded in the log files on the server (unless there’s some serious caching going on). Server-installed software (such as ‘Smarter Stats’) can interpret these and draw some pretty charts in real time, and send you daily/weekly reports by email so you can keep an eye on things.

Alternatively (and maybe additionally as a double check) install Google Analytics code into your web site code, and let Google measure the traffic, as most people do. And/or for those with high traffic sites wanting third party advertising dollars, Nielsen tags are supposed to do the same thing. Or sign up to Hitwise.

For those that can only really afford Google Analytics (it’s free to install), you may have checked the click thrus from, say, your enewsletter to the referrals from the same enewsletter to your web site (as measured by Analytics).

Or those that have paid for advertising on Google Adwords, or other places, may have tried to compare the reported click thrus with the referral traffic measured in the other direction. Shouldn’t every link one way be equal to the referral click measured the other way?

Of course none of these measurements tally up. Nothing like. I find variance by a factor of 2 or 3 times on all the above.

So who’s right? Are they all wrong? I’ve asked many online marketers and ebusiness people and no one seems to have the answer.

End Notes

1. IAB Australia’s Online Advertising Expenditure Report, compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers,  Aug 2010

2. “Internet Advertising set to Dominate”, Lara Sinclair, The Australian, 2^nd Aug 2010

Photo – Gizmodo (Google StreetView guys)

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For new subscribers to Business2 – here are the previous stages.

Diagnosing your online position (warts and all) – Stage One

Constructing your perfect online real estate media platform – Stage Two

Without a doubt from my experiences real estate agents have little to no – understanding about what exactly defines an online business. Today, they remain a tangled online entity boasting a website with very little traffic and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – the lights are on and nobody is home. Direct online communications are next to non – existent simply because they are reliant on consumers finding them, as against actually delivering then driving online customer communications. Easy to fix so long as you are prepared to lock – up this online market.

Not only are you providing purchasers the best online service – more importantly offering vendors a stand-out real estate media platform. One that you created and paid for (I say this because real estate agents struggle using their own monies to invest in technology) hopefully your online platform model of choice will now  exceed your competitors too! Stop following the market – time to lead it.

Allow me to elaborate on that –  have you read – “Digital Marketing – Strategies for Online Success”? A great and easy read by Godfrey Parkin – a must for your online library (it’s now in mine).

“There is little point in building a website or fine – tuning your e -marketing tactics unless your strategy is right in the first place. To build a competitive strategy to capture the loyalty of your online consumers requires re – thinking your vision for your business from the ground up. It also requires an intimate understanding of what this online environment is all about, from the perspective of your business, from your competitors’ point of view, and particularly in the eyes of your target customers as individuals. Without those insights, you cannot begin to put together a digital strategy that has any hope of succeeding.”

So let’s best sum up where your real estate agency presently sits.

“The answer is that most businesses have an increasingly fuzzy vision of what their future should be, so their tendency is to clutch tightly to the past. As the world around them changes faster and faster, the future becomes even more blurred and uncertain. Without a bright light to head toward, they feel safer not to move away from their fundamentals and put their efforts into shoring up their defences. Those companies that do stumble forward usually head in the direction that they have always followed, tactically groping their way through fog, turning to dodge obstacles and grasping at opportunities reactively as they fly by. Without a vision, they have no idea where they are headed. Without a vision, they cannot put together an effective strategy.” Sound familiar?

“So why, are the brilliant examples of how it should be done so few and far between?” I’m not suggesting that our online strategy is such an example – rather this is what we do – with success.

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We have five non – negotiable online services that we adhere to on a daily basis. It is imperative that your online platform must strive to deliver so that you can claim this all very important point of difference over your competitors.

1. The largest online database within your demographic area – be proud that your online media platform connects to more buyers and vendors. Our proof is that we display on our homepage our subscriber sales to our online business which presently sits at $952,234,220.

2. Without using Google AdWords – use intelligent Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods where your agency appears at number one position organically on all Google keyword searches within your demographic areas.

3. Write a weekly e – newsletter, send out daily email alerts, provide weekly data on the sales that have been recorded within your demographic area. Each week send out your upcoming open for inspection lists. Provide subscribers the ability to choose exactly which online communication they want to receive. Keep branding your business online.

4. Get a blog going – move with the times. Each comment adds another page to your website as well as on Google which drives your SEO. TAG keywords that appear within your e – newsletter as we try to add at least – 100 new pages to our website on a weekly basis. When you sell or lease a property keep the link live as the more live links on a website the greater SEO. We are over 3,000 pages and rapidly chasing down 4,000 pages.

5. Be relevant – not irrelevant. Use technologies don’t refuse it. Religiously translate your enquiries and open for inspection lists to connect to your online model. There will come a time (and it is happening now) where vendors and purchasers are restricting online communications from agents – where research has identified no more than five (three is the average) and that includes property portals.

When a successful online agency advises a vendor let’s launch an online campaign with a two week marketing strategy before having to commit to a much more expensive print campaign – guess who will win every time?

As Godfrey Parkin said“there’s a very simple, powerful, burning light that all of us need to keep in focus: properly used, the internet frees customers and marketers from the constraints of time and space, which in turn unleashes personal communication and experience – sharing on a scale unprecedented in history.”

Our online communications are very up close and personal – how are yours? When you start digging at your online foundations make sure you use a developer that really knows what they are doing they are few and far between.

Let me say in this my first post for Business2 (thanks for having me) I have no shares in Facebook (more’s the pity) and no real axe to grind either way in this tale. I just thought this might be of interest to anyone looking to brand and differentiate themselves effectively, potentially save some advertising dollars (who doesn’t want to do that?) try something new and maybe make themselves look pretty tech savvy in the process.

Facebook Ads.

OK, I was the same too – deeply skeptical as I was of all Web 2.0, self-indulgent bloggers, twits and lamebookers. I’d heard all about alleged ‘click frauds’ last year (search ‘Facebook click fraud’ and you get 18 million results).

About a year ago I attended a small business seminar where the concept of advertising on Facebook came up, and a quick demo was run on how easy it was to setup and how quickly results were viewed. I had try it for myself. I put up an ad (it was easy to do), aimed it towards 35-55 year olds who live in Perth (I hail from there) and sat back and watched the results.

Now 11 months have ticked over (long enough time to measure results I feel sure), the ad has been served up almost 22 million times (22 million!) to my target audience and it has cost me a tad over $3500 (or $300/month for 2mn views/month on average). I humbly show you the stats (screen shot of my Facebook Advertising account below) and invite you to pore over the numbers.  [Note: $ values are US dollars]

Being a small business owner with a limited marketing budget, I have experimented with many things over the years (local papers, radio, billboards, cinema ads, car ads…) but the results of my Facebook advertising have blown me away.  I don’t know anywhere you can get potentially millions of directed ads ‘served up’ into your local market for this cost. It equates  to an average CPM (cost per thousand views) of 16 cents.

CPM for my various Google ads run at over 10 times that, and I can’t (as easily) send my ads to people on Google as determined by their age nor where they live. Moreover, all Facebook ads include a thumbnail image of my choosing. Google ads are mainly text based.

If you compare Facebook advertising to more traditional advertising (local papers, cineads, billboards and the rest) the latter tend to follow the old media rules of a ‘shotgun blast at a target’ approach, which is (literally) ‘hit or miss’ at best and (to stretch a tired metaphor still further) provides less ‘bang for the buck’, Charlie Gunningham

As audiences reach for their own divergent media, an advertiser can get lost in the choice, or use that choice to target people directly. I know of an experiment done by fellow Business2 contributor Peter Fletcher who targeted a Facebook ad to be viewed by ONE specific person. As Peter knew their profile settings, he could send up an ad on to their pages when that person next logged on to Facebook. The ad garnered 7 views and was clicked on once – by that person. You can’t get any more targeted than that! I’ve seen shorter Ad campaigns targeted at filling a seminar room and this has been their only marketing spend (about $50) to fill a room of 100 paying $200 a ticket. (That’s a pretty good ROI). No need for brochures, mail outs, email campaigns. Grab people where they are, and who you want to grab.

Moreover, you can run as many ads as you like, set a daily budget (you never go above it), determine your cost per click, pause and delete the ads whenever you want. You can send ads onto Facebook pages of people living in different cities and countries in different age ranges. Enter your credit card details and it gets billed automatically, with notifications of amount spent. You are in total control, can view the results and adjust your ads and settings whenever you like.

Over 6.6 million Australians are on Facebook. 300 million globally (75 million in the States). 1.6mn over the age of 18 are on Facebook in Sydney, 1.4mn Melbourne, 885,000 in Brisbane, 562,000 in Perth… (To check these stats yourself and research further, go to ‘Advertising’ in the footer on Facebook and click ‘Create an Ad’ – under ‘Targeting’ you can play with the variables).

What surprised me at first is that more people over age 40 are on Facebook  than under age 20. It’s a myth that this thing is for kids. And 90% of Facebook users are active (login more than once a week) and 50% login daily. Often 2 or 3 times a day. Do you think these people are interested in real estate?

A few caveats at this stage. You’ll notice that my ad had 22 million views and ‘only’ 6000 or so clicks. A pretty poor ‘click thru rate’ (CTR) you might say (a miserable 0.029%). However, that was deliberate. Being a penny pinching sort of guy I adjusted the settings to maximise possible views (which are free). I was doing it as a branding, differentiation and “getting your name out there” exercise. (You can also set them up to get traffic to your properties, profiles, home page and pay per views if you wish.)

The real estate advertising applications are obvious

• real estate reps can put a photo of themselves, a brief heading and 135 characters of text, and link the ad to their own profile page
• individual properties can be put up (as a normal part of every marketing campaign) linking to their individual pages on the agency’s own sites
• Auction campaigns with standalone web sites or individual pages within sites
• Simple branding ads sending users to your home page, or better yet, some specific landing page (competition, offer, new blog post…)
• Ads linking to your Facebook page to drum up ‘fans’
• Use these ads for recruitment of staff (e.g. you’re looking for a property manager and can using age, interests and possibly gender targeting)
• Setting up these ads as a normal way of doing things could make you look extremely tech savvy with your vendors and other clients

It would seem something to (at least) consider; but if all the above is true (and I have probably missed most of the advantages others can see straight away) is this the future of targeted advertising – if not on Facebook, but on social networking sites in general? What does this mean for traditional media who rely on local advertising?

Facebook.com is already breaking even on this advertising stream. I believe they are going to earn a mint from this, in the same way Google did from Adwords. I have reduced my Adwords spend and moved the money to Facebook. If more and more do the same, what will this mean for Google?

Since the agents are paying franchise fees, should the traffic generated by an agent that subsequently clicks open the franchises corporate site be Free traffic to the franchise? Or should the franchise reward the agent for generating traffic to their site?

Free Traffic Means Franchises Receive Free Home Loan Leads

Most franchises now have their own home loan department & potentially the franchise can generate more revenue from their home loans than they do from franchise fees paid by their agents.

If a real estate franchise wants to increase its profile on the web they could provide a reduction in franchise fees for agents who include links to their corporate website or they could build in a monthly pay-per-click incentive for the agencies who send lots of visitors across to their corporate website.

Just think, if a franchise is prepared to use pay-per-click advertising on Google to generate traffic, then wouldn’t a click from one of their agents’ websites, blogs, twitter/facebook accounts have a similar value?

If the Real Estate Franchises adopted this concept they could reward their own agents instead of paying Google for leads.

I’m sure some franchises will frown upon this idea, but the forward thinking real estate franchises should see that this provides a real incentive for their agents to build a larger web presence, send more traffic to the franchises corporate website & build a bigger corporate brand which could help to generate more real estate offices & increase the franchises home loan revenue.

I feel that anything which reduces the running costs of an agency & helps to encourage agents to increase their web presence at the same time is a good thing. What do you think?

To introduce myself, my name is Sean Wyld and I work for Google as the Industry Manager in their Local & Classifieds team in Australia. I’ve been reading Business2 for the past couple of months and am excited about sharing some insights into the role ‘search’ plays in the real estate industry. For my first post, as you probably gathered from the title, I thought I’d start with something seasonal.

During this time of year, most people are more focused on Christmas shopping then visiting open for inspections and with the last weekend of auctions for the year only days away, most real estate agents are preparing to put their cues back in the rack for the seasonal slow-down over the Christmas period.

However as we all know the Internet never sleeps, being available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So with 87% of Australian home buyers/sellers now using the Internet as part of their research process (Nielsen Australian Property Report 2008), the question of how Christmas affects their usage of the Internet is something which all real estate agents should be considering.

With search being the number one upstream provider of traffic to real estate websites, along with being a tool used by 69% of active home buyers/sellers throughout all stages of the home buying/selling process (Nielsen Australian Property Report 2008), examining search trends over the Holiday period is a good indicator of the affect Christmas has on potential buyers’ and sellers’ browsing habits.

As you can see from the above graph, while there is definitely a lull in people searching for real estate agents in the days immediately preceding Christmas, the drop isn’t as dramatic as one might have thought, with a lot of people still researching buying or selling a house. Perhaps more interesting however is the spike in searches for real estate agents between Boxing Day and New Years.

So with real estate agents offices closed but buyers and sellers still active over Christmas and New Years, it poses the question… how can real estate agents continue to engage with existing and potential clients during this period?

The answer to this question is to remember that your website is an extension to your physical office and that just as the Internet is open for business 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, so is your website! I was surprised this morning that when I visited a number of local real estate agent websites, I couldn’t find one which had their opening hours over Christmas displayed clearly.

It’s important to remember that with your office closed but potential clients still active, that it’s more vital than ever that your website contains all the information which you would normally have given to clients in person or over the phone if your office was open. See below for some of the ways you can ensure your website is ready for the Christmas period.

• Ensure your opening hours for the Christmas period are prominently displayed on the front page of your website
• Ensure you set expectations with existing and potential clients about realistic response times for phone & email enquiries over the Christmas period. This includes ensuring that you have an out of office message activated on your email.
• Include content on your website about what people should expect from the real estate market in 2009, along with tips for buying and selling etc
• Email Christmas Greetings along with your opening hours etc to your email list.
• If you are using Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing etc to drive traffic to your website, try using Christmas & New Years specific ad text.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has any other tips to add to this list. Lastly, for anyone who’s interested, the above graph was generated using Google Insights for Search, a great free tool which at the risk of blatant self promotion you can try at www.google.com/insights/search

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and a happy New Year. Cheers, Sean

Google invest heavily in their customers, who are the browsers on their search engine. It is their focus to enable the browser to navigate as quickly as possible to the information they are searching on.

This is equally as important to their advertisers. Google strongly suggests that advertisers construct their ads so that when the browser clicks on the ad they are taken directly to what the advertiser is promoting. And, they will reward advertisers with a “quality score” that brings down their cost per click and elevates their ad higher in the rankings.

For example, if the heading of your text ad were to read “Lorne Accommodation” your destination URL should deliver the browser directly to the page on your site that is offering accommodation in Lorne.

Furthermore, there should be a heading on this page that reads Lorne Accommodation (not in an image format). And, your content should be for Lorne accommodation. If done this way you will be given a high “quality score”.

Go to your AdWords account, open your campaign, select your ad group and then open the “keywords” tab. Next to each keyword is a magnifying glass. When you run your mouse over this it should reveal a “quality score” out of ten.

Having said that the opposite will apply if the browser does not land directly on what you are promoting. I have seen a number of accommodation homes using keywords for towns that are 100 kilometres from their establishment. The effects of this are a low quality score, higher cost per click and a browser that is not happy for their time being wasted. This can also adversely affect your brand.

Do not let your AdWords manager use keywords that give 1000’s of impressions but no clicks. They will tell you it has cost nothing because no one has clicked on your ad. However, the hidden cost will be a higher click through rate and a lower ad ranking.

The majority of press releases/marketing from the major portals are really aimed at two distinct groups.

1. You the agency – letting you know just how darn popular the portal is is an easy way to get your attentiuon.

2. Your Vendors – They know you live and breath (and spend) by your vendors, so getting into vendors heads is a sure way to make you spend money with them.

I mean, why would you risk losing a potential $15,000 commission just because you are not on either of the two major portals? They know this and they are very clever with their marketing, if they can get vendors to ask you the questions – they in turn get you to spend money with them.

Getting them to understand the difference between a premium and platinum package is left to the agencies, who are always looking at ways to differentiate from their competitors.

So here are a few hints to get you to reach through the hype and understand the real benefits.

Results Count – Create a spreadsheet and sample the amount of page views a property gets in first 30, 60 and 90 days with each portal and your own website.
Then also add a field for the amount of email enquiries generated for each property through the portals and your own site.

Incoming – Have your receptionist ask a few questions for each enquiry. “Is this a property enquiry? May I ask which property you are enquiring about? Where did you find this Property?

This will help you to understand which portals have strengths and also help you to understand how you can improve your own sites performance.

Another hint – Do not spend too much money promoting your own site in traditional media. It does not work. If you want to promote your site do it through a Google Adwords Campaign. You should always include your web address prominently in traditional advertising but if you are going to run a campaign just promoting your website, then do it where your market is – and that is online!

As for measuring performance from portals, this will help you to ask questions when they hand down their annual fee increases. If they are not improving for you, then why should you pay more!