At the beginning of January, Direct Placement Internet Marketing Advisor Isaac Hegenbarth conducted a survey of real estate agents in Naples, Florida and Palo Alto, California. Both are prosperous real estate locations in the housing market. According to Zillow.com, Palo Alto is an especially hot real estate market. Zillow reports that Palo Alto’s median home value has increased 21% in the last year, resulting in the current $3,010,700 value. The questions asked in this survey were created in an attempt to assess how useful real estate agents in prosperous markets find Search Engine Marketing. In this survey, Isaac asked agents three questions: 1) Have you ever used Google to find a product or service online that you ended up purchasing? 2) Do you believe that people will shop more online in the future for products and services than ever before? and 3) As a real estate agent, which search engine do you think would make the most sense to spend your money marketing on?
Out of the 100 agents surveyed in those areas, 84.78% reported having used Google to find and purchase a product or service online. This percentage correlated with the 85.87% of people who speculated that people would shop more online than ever before. However, while 11.96% of agents surveyed said they had not used Google to find a product or service online, 3.26% did not believe more people would shop online than ever before. It is also notable that 3.26% of the agents were unsure if they had personally used Google to find a good or service online and 10.87% were unsure if people would do more shopping online in the future than ever before. This suggests that, while a percentage of real estate agents may not be personally using Google to find services and products online, they could potentially see people shopping more online in the future or are unsure of SEM’s value.
For the third question in this survey, 69.57% of agents reported that they would spend money marketing on Google. Five of the agents that selected Google also selected a secondary option which has been incorporated into the survey results as well. Four of these double answers were for Google/Facebook and one was for Google/Yahoo. Facebook was the third most popular answer with 10.87% of the real estate agents selecting it. The second most popular answer given by 16.30% of the agents was ‘none,’ as in they did not think it would make sense to spend any money on SEM. The remaining agents answered as following: 2.17% for Yahoo, 2.17% Zillow.com, 1.09% Realtor.com, 1.09% unsure, 1.09% paper ads, and 1.09% for an unknown website.
Although the second most popular answer for the third question was none, over 80% of the agents surveyed answered in favor of SEM for goods and services as a whole. Based on these results, it is clear that the majority of real estate agents agree that marketing on Google is useful for anyone offering a good or service, including real estate.
Direct Placement, LLC is a digital marketing agency specializing in SEM. Our trademarked Direct Placement® service is a guarantee that your business will be featured on the front page of the internet’s most powerful search engines within seven business days, or your money back. We are a Google Partner and Bing Ads Certified company with a staff of professionals ready to help you get noticed online. Contact Direct Placement, LLC today to learn more about our trademarked service and start transforming your business one click at a time!