Trying to understand BuyerLink metrics

[Brian Brady]

Hey HG Nation,

I'm trying to understand how BuyerLink works and conversion rates, etc. I see it as a PPC campaign on steroids. Some questions for the crew:

1- How many people go to your page, monthly?
2- How many register up for your MLS search?
3- How many actually buy a home, and close, within 90 days?

[Mitch Ribak]

Hey Brian!

I just wrote on your other page and didn't realize this was here. I'll give you some quick stats.

1. We have around 8000-12000 unique visitors monthly and 55,000 total visitors per month.
2. We average 1000+ leads per month.
3. I can't give you the number of how many buy within 90 days as I don't track that number. I can tell you that my better Agents have a 5% sales rate which is about 2.5 times the national average.

It's all about systems. If you have proper systems set up to handle your leads, then it's really not bad at all. Is is alot of work? You bet it is. Last month we showed 140 different customers and only wrote 31 contracts. However, for a small brokerage we beat most of the big boys with the 31 sales. I know when the market picks up we will have converted at least 50% of those customers for 70 sales or more. It's just a matter of time before the market turns around here in Florida!

Buyer Link is my most consistent tool I use on the Internet. My conversion rates are double what I do on Google and Yahoo and my costs are half. I really don't know why anyone wouldn't use Buyer Link was was serious about their Internet Marketing programs.

Let me know if you have any questions and I would be glad to help!

Mitch

[Brian Brady]

Mitch:

Is it safe to say that 10,000 visitors costs about $15K per month ? Without getting too specific, is that numbers "in the ballpark"?

If I had numbers like that, my GCI would be about $80K (loans pay about .8% of purchase price). I could refer out a lot of business to agents and gain a ton of reciprocal biz.

Your volume is way more than I'm seeking (for now); I was thinking of doing about 10% of that volume. If so, $1,500 to $2500/months buy could translate to 3 closed loans or about $15K in GCI. More importantly, I could garner 2-3 more leads back from agents and double that volume.

Forget that I don't have an MLS- I can get that set up. We are members of the board and a licensed real estate brokerage.

Do you see where I'm headed with this?

Thanks for the help

[Louis Cammarosano]

Brian

I'll let the Buyer link 'Gainers answer questions on registration and conversion.

Buyerlink is pay per visitor. You sign up for as many visits as you want, subject to availability.

You can check availability and order online.

HomeGain bills you in arrears once we determine how many visitors you got in the preceding month.

For example if you order 250 visits at $1 a visit and we deliver 235 visits, we bill you for $235.

If we send you 257, visits you get billed only for $250.

You set your own campaign and you don't have to manage key word campaigns.

[Wayne Long]

Brian,
Let me answer your questions from my data. My data may vary from others. I have been using buyerlink since 2004. I started with a limit of about 700 visitors per month and gradually increased to a limit of 2100 per month.

According to my Google analytics visitors who visit via buyerlink view 21 pages per visit vs. a google visitor at 14 pages per visit. A buyerlink visitor stays on my site 9 minutes vs a google visitor at 6 minutes per visit. The bounce rate for a Google visitor is 29% vs 17% for a HG visitor.

I don't track how many buyerlink visitors actually end up registering vs the google visitor but based on the time on site it would stand to reason that about 50% more would register because they spend about 50% more time on my site.

On average I have about 6500 total visitors per month and about 10% register so I have around 650 registrations per month. Of those I end up with about 150 warm leads. That means that they respond to my drip campaign, call or contact me in some way other than the registration. Of these 150 "warm leads" we get about 6 sales per month. This is 1% of the total visitors or about 4% of the warm leads.

Based on this data - if I have 2100 visitors from Homegain - about 2 to 3 actual sales would come from the BuyerLink each month. Homegain has been unable to meet the full 2100 per month limit lately so probably 1 to 2 sales per month are coming from Homegain right now per month.

I hope this helps. Wayne

[Vivianne]

I cancelled my Buyer Link subscription because even though I had lots and lots of leads, none of them turned into sales, they were all just wasting my time since there was no intention to buy a home. I see that other people do manage to turn some of them into sales, I wasn't that lucky and I just kept paying Homegain with no results. I gave up after 4 months.

[Mitch Ribak]

Vivianne!

You were just about there! As you probably know, as most of the Homegain faithful do, I use Buyer Link exclusively. I spend about $7,000 per month in my main office ans half that in my other office. With the exception of a couple of Agents who won't listen and follow my system, all my Agents are doing well, even in the worst market we have had here in 25 years. It would take me a lot to explain our entire system (which just became a piece of cake with the launch of our 100MPH Software) on here in a blog. However, I will give you a little bit that should help. Internet leads are great, but you have to understand the mindset of an Internet lead. Firstly, we don't think of an Internet Lead (Ill call them IL for this blog) as a quick sale. We know that they are going to take on average 4 - 5 months to convert to a sale. We also know that 60% of our leads are just lookers not really interested in doing anything but playing on the Internet. That leaves us 40% of our leads that are solid, active leads using our website on a regular basis. 40% is a ton of potential customers if you drive a lot of traffic to your site. We currently generate around 1000-1500 raw leads per month in my main office But remember, I have to feed 23 Agents. Statistically my first year agents will average about 1 sale in 50 raw leads. My second year and better agents are closing about 1 in 23 raw leads.

So to be successful with your IL's, you need to understand what your leads are doing. Can you figure out your 40%? The way we do this, is through our MLS prospecting tools which let's us know the last time a customer (lead) was looking at listings we sent them through our automatic update system. We know that our average Agent has about 1000 leads in their system, which means that 400 are good. Our goal is for them to sell between 5% and 10% of that 40%. Once you know which of your leads are active, you can then spend a lot more time on the leads that are in that 40%. The more time you spend on those 40%, the more conversion you will have to customers.

One other quick point I will tell you is the power of touch. All the great conversion systems in the world will not automatically convert your leads. It's imperative that you are calling all your leads within 24 hours or sooner..the sooner the better. Once you have called them, it's imperative to put them into a call back system and not just depend on the Internet to make all your contact. If you do, they will most certainly work with the other Realtor who is taking the time to call them.

For follow up, we use our just launched 100MPH Marketing System which not only does a ton of work for our Realtors on the back end behind the seens, it helps them to keep organized in their follow up. Follow up is the key to success on the Internet.

With all this said, and the fact that I have a golf tournament to go to in 15 minutes, feel free to call me if you would like to explore your Internet potential. Internet marketing isn't for everyone and if done wrong can be very costly. However, for those that have a quality system in place, it's a non-stop mechinism to generate new customers and sales. Just ask any of my agents who are enjoying a very busy down turn in the market!

[Brian Brady]

Mitch-

I'm grateful for this education. I owe you a phone call to share some of my magic potions in the Social Media world

[Gabriel Macias]

Hello All,

I can answer from internal numbers here at HomeGain.

We see the national average being anywhere between 5 and 10% registration rate. So for every 1,000 visitors to the site you are looking at 50 to 100 leads.

In delivering service to hundreds of different websites with different landing pages and registration processes we know that we can expect to fall within that 5 to 10 percent range.

We find that the more functionality the broker/agent has in determining their traffic sources, the better BuyerLink compares to all of the other sources of traffic out there. Mitch is a perfect example. We have heard that our traffic captures at up to 3 times the frequency of Google and Yahoo direct traffic.

So it is not uncommon to hear that BuyerLink traffic registers at closer to 15%.

Keep in mind that what we know is based on anecdotal evidence provided from our clients. (We spoke to a broker today who claimed that our traffic was capturing at close to 30%). I'm not sure how much validity there is to those numbers but it speaks to difference that our clients are seeing between BuyerLink and other solutions out there.

I hope that helps a bit...feel free to let me know if anyone has any questions.

Gabe Macias
Manager
Broker Solutions

[Louis Cammarosano]

I might add that for those 150 or so agents that use the landing page that we provide for free the registration rate is between 13-14%

Registraiton rates are a function of the type of traffic as Gabe points out AND the type of registation form.
You need both poor traffic sources with a great registration page or great traffic with a poor registration page will not do the trick.

HomeGain traffic with a HomeGain landing page has been getting 13-14% all year.

Louis Cammarosano
General Manager

[Wayne Long]

I don't really know if I can track what the percentage of HomeGain visitor registration is. I know I get about 10% of all visitors to register and I said earlier Homegain Visitors stay on my site longer than search engine visitors so I would guess the registration rate to be about 15 % with HomeGain.

I am going to try to set up something to track registrations from Homegain visitors.