Cyprus Real Estate Website PPC Case Study – Four Steps to a Fivefold Increase in the Number of Leads

As explained before in other posts, the real estate niche is quite complicated for marketers. This case study reveals the peculiarities of promoting the business of selling apartments abroad in Cyprus. While this post does not offer magical pieces of advice, we share our tried-and-tested strategy on how we reduced cost per action (CPA), effectively used satellites, obtained leads from Google Display Network and entered new regions.

Results: A three-fold decrease in CPA (-68%) and a fivefold increase in number of leads (+357%).

The Client

Prime Property Group specializes in the sale of villas, apartments and other properties in Cyprus. It’s not just an intermediary company, but also one of the largest entrepreneurs in Cyprus.

It is important to keep in mind that people often buy property in Cyprus in order to obtain citizenship under the state investment passport program.

By buying real estate for more than 2 million euros, both the purchaser and their family can get citizenship. Buying real estate for more than 300 000 euros grants the buyer a permanent resident card.

Considering the high average costs of a deal and the large earnings from it, there is stiff competition for customers. A lead can cost up to 800 euros.

Get the checklist

With the help of this checklist, you can succeed in picking the best contractor for your needs.

How to Choose a Digital Marketing Contractor

Marketing in such an expensive niche has its own unique features:

1. Managers of the company persistently process the lead within a year after the request receipt.
2. Companies pay a four-day stay in Cyprus for potential customers.
3. Satellite sites are actively used here.

In this case, the project had features that initially complicated promotion. For example, due to project specificity, we couldn’t implement call tracking or a callback widget, as well as fully track the actions on the site.

Do note that we didn’t consider all ways of addressing. Additionally, the share of requests through the site form is low.

The Challenge

1. Generating leads of Cypriot citizenship and permanent place of residence.
2. Being present in the search results as an element of branding.
3. Generating leads in the "Real Estate Purchase" segment.

The Solution

• Connected media tools including Yandex advertising network, Google Display network, remarketing.
• Tested new geotargeting.
• Tested landing.
• Optimized behavioral indicators.

1. Connecting media tools: Yandex advertising network, Google Display network, remarketing.

We started with the search and used thematic queries for all areas.

This is how the structure of the search campaigns looked like:

Once the cost per click increased, we suggested that despite the lower conversion rate, the total price of addressing from the media sources may be comparable to the cost per action in the search results. Our assumptions were true. As a result, we drove more than half of the leads using Yandex advertising network and Google Display network.

Which targeting worked better? We focused on the keywords related to Cyprus and immigration, but the audience targeting of interests was more effective:

2. Testing new geotargeting

Thanks to the assistance of the client's team, we started testing geotargeting. Prime Property has a multilingual website and service that is not influenced by the client's location. So, we were not limited by the original geotargeting settings.

Here are out most interesting observations.

• Try Yandex.Direct, not only for the CIS countries but also for the rest of the world. There is not much traffic but it is cheap. Besides, Russian-language users are still using Yandex services and visiting Yandex advertising network sites. We were pleasantly surprised by the cost per click for the campaigns of "Other Regions" in Yandex advertising network.
• For the CIS countries, the main corporate website was more effective in the area of passports and permanent residence permits. For other countries (Great Britain, India, European Union countries), the one-page landing worked better. 
• Campaigns for brand names of the competitors worked perfectly.

3. Testing landing pages

The client decided to create special landing pages for investment citizenship and permanent residence. As a result, we got three landing pages (each of them had two language versions). The use of landing pages, together with the main website, resulted in about 30% more requests.

4. Optimizing behavioral indicators

Considering the difficulties with tracking the target action and low CR on the main site, we decided to optimize our behavioral performance. We set up a "Session duration is more than 60 seconds" goal which corresponded to the lead generation goals in Google Analytics both on the landing pages and the main site. Thanks to this, we were able to upload enough data into the Google Ads automated conversion optimizer in the Google Display Network campaign. With an average cost of $265, the average cost per action of campaign activities in the Display Network was $91.

The Results

We managed to reduce CPA and fix it at a stable and low level for this subject.

Weekly dynamics of the number of leads and CPA:

Monthly dynamics of the number of leads and CPA:

If we compare the last three months of promotion to the first stable three months (where CPA was lower than $1000+), the result is a three-fold decrease in CPA (-68%) and a fivefold increase in the number of leads (+357%).

Results by campaign type:

Based on the results of work on this case study, we recommend using opportunities that may seem non-standard.

In highly competitive topics with expensive traffic, appreciate this traffic — increase conversion (even if you need to create additional sites) and streamline the sales department.

Testimonials

The project's team

• Alex Aychew — PPC Team Lead;
• Dmitry Samoilov — Middle PPC Project Manager.