New online estate agents looking for new marketing methods

[247EstateAgents]

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Hi there, I'm new to the whole affiliates thing but have a general understanding of how it works...

We are a new estate agent specialising in selling properties in a certain area (Braintree, Witham,Chelmsford - and a few more in Essex).

We offer incentives for people who recommend our service and reward them for any new instructions we take on as a result.

I have two questions:

1. Do you think the fact that we only target a small geographical location makes affilliate marketing a no-go?

2. What CPA do you think would be reasonable for such a project?

[apg1985]

If you allow PPC bidding then you might find a few affiliates will push you in that.

And how does it work with a website like rightmove, do they take a comission or is there a monthly fee?

[247EstateAgents]

Rightmove charge a monthly fee for us to advertise our properties - a large fee!!!

I don't like PPC as a web visit is not of much value to us unless they instruct us to sell their property - all other visitors I would presume to be looking for details on the properties we sell - which the portals we use already drive traffic to.

I was thinking of something like a £20GBP CPA - but don't know which affiliate group to choose, none seem to be interested.

[apg1985]

Ok little confused here.

Your an estate agent which sells property? rents out property? rents out commercial property? sells commercial property?

What is the target for the affiliate: To get a customer to call you, to get a customer to fill out a contact form?

[247EstateAgents]

the target for the affiliate is to get a customer to sign up to sell their home with us - via a couple of forms.

So I guess ideal affiliates would be those with property, house price, interest rate blogs etc...

Both agencies I have spoken to have said the CPA is spot on but the product is too niche.

Thanks for your responses apg nice to know someone is listening!

[apg1985]

Yeah it is pretty niche.

This is how I would do it:

Create a landing page which is split into buy a home, sell a home. buy a home would link through to your properties and the sell a home would link through to your form.

I would then start a PPC campaign pushing this page which is catering for both sides and run keyword terms like 'estate agents essex', 'estate agents chelmsford'.

This way your capture the percent of users looking to sell there house through a estate agent and if your not your landing page is catering for the buyers.

But yeah its to niche, if I was to market your website I would want to run PPC ads and I would want to direct link.

[247EstateAgents]

Thanks apg - I already get alot of traffic CPC from google and it doesn't convert so think I will give that a miss.

Maybe I will manually look for blogs and contact the blog owner direct.

[nicksthename]

Affiliate marketing is indeed unlikely to work as you are very niche.

In terms of PPC it can work, but because this is a complex transaction for the customer getting them to convert and being able to effectively track results can be difficult. Thus it can look like 'PPC doesn't work', however it might just be the way you're doing it.

I've some experience in a sector with many characteristics to yours (local, complex sales process, difficult to track), so if you want some help please private message me.