Background
Since 2001, Cornerstone Real Estate (CRE) has guided people on the finer points of real estate investment. As real estate specialists, their staff of investment advisors, securities representatives, and CPAs stand ready to assist clients with Delaware Statutory Trust (DST), Tenant in Common (TIC), and other investments and issues without fear. For 12 years, owner John Harvey handled the company’s advertising himself, but believed much more could be done to scale the account.
Key Metrics
99.27%
Increase in Conversions
803%
Increase in Site Traffic
60%
Decrease in CPCs
“Things have always gone better with Logical Position’s help. They’ve helped us stand out from our competition online and off.”
—John Harvey, Owner, Cornerstone Real Estate
Why Logical Position?
CRE originally came to LP because their competition was bidding on CRE’s branded terms. In short, when a Google search was performed specifically for CRE and its associated brands, traffic was drawn away from their site and sent to their competitors instead. In other words, CRE didn’t show up when someone searched for them by name, which is an obvious problem. This had a domino effect of rendering the rest of their physical and digital marketing efforts–such as fliers, signage, and so on–useless.
Financial service companies are restricted in their approach to advertising as well. They can educate and inform the public but can’t directly solicit clients. CRE came to LP knowing we had the experience to craft creative strategies while navigating challenging advertising restrictions.
Our Strategy
Firstoff, we switched to an automated bidding strategy, which creates bids according to an ad’s likelihood of inspiring visibility, clicks, and conversions. To get more granular with our data analysis we also changed Cornerstone from A/B testing to single keyword ad groups (SKAGS). With one keyword per ad group, SKAGS generated more ad clicks (26%) and revenue, boosted CTR by 79% and made it easier to track results and boost Cornerstone’s rank in searches. Furthermore, LP was able to work directly with a Google representative, on behalf of CRE, who manually reviewed ads to ensure they followed all rules and received full approval.
Once the lowest hanging fruit had been captured, LP advised budgeting for the Microsoft ad platform to help Cornerstone scale their account.
Results
In 2019, we brought 275 conversions to CRE. When they came back to us in 2021, we brought in 548 conversions. We did this while generating fewer clicks (27.5K in 2019, and 24.9k in 2021). This means we’re driving more qualified leads to the website. This drastically reduced our cost per acquisition from $345 in 2019 to $166 in 2021.
Successful ad campaigns encouraged them to raise their ad spend to $20K as well. Since signing on, business and hiring are both booming. Cornerstone may have briefly left us, but it was our history of service and solid results that quickly brought them back! We have done so well for CRE that they have recently brought on a second business for us to manage.
If you’re looking for help navigating your corner of the digital marketing world, reach out today for help!
