How Cain Realty Group Generated 700 Seller Leads With Sierra Interactive

Generating 700 Seller Leads in 6 Months: How one realtor is projecting $120 million in yearly transactional volume by improving PPC campaign management.

Low-quality leads in a high-competition market

When Ricky Cain, of Cain Realty Group¹, set his 2022 yearly transaction goal at $120 million, he knew his lead generation and marketing strategies would need to change. Previous efforts had brought in high volume leads, but not transaction-ready ones. If he wanted to hit his goals, his lead quality needed to improve.

Operating as part of Keller Williams Realty and serving the greater Austin, Texas area, Cain was participating in one of the most active real estate markets in the country. Competition for inventory was fierce. Even as housing prices increased, inventory rarely stayed on the market for even a month before closing.

“The first step towards hitting a strong transaction target is generating and capturing seller leads. From there, my team can do what we do best: nurturing the relationship through the sale. The key is finding a tool as successful at lead generation as my team is at lead nurture,” said Cain. 

Cain had previously tried several different lead generation tactics, including paid social media advertising and predictive analytics. Then, he landed on a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategy that generated a high volume of leads, but the leads had low (or no) transactional intent.

“In everything my team does, we need to generate a minimum five times the return on what we’re investing in time and money. Before switching to Sierra, we saw high lead volume, but only a small percentage of leads closing on properties. A majority of our lead contact information was fake. We were nowhere near our ROI needs,” said Cain. 

Cain needed a PPC management strategy specializing in qualified lead generation that would deliver a strong return on investment. 

Switching real estate PPC frameworks to significantly improve lead quality

Sierra Interactive offers a proven, transparent PPC management service for a 10% management fee with minimum monthly budgets of $500.

“Sierra’s transparency with campaign performance and campaign development is a characteristic that we are proud of. Supported by the professional guidance provided by our Digital Marketing Account Managers, our clients are able to understand how and why their campaigns are working. This enables them to make better, data driven decisions about their digital marketing strategies,” explained Sierra’s Digital Marketing Account Manager, Crystal Nosal.

Sierra’s digital marketing team has managed more than $18 million in ad spend and relies on more than 20 years of combined experience to ensure customers are spending ad dollars as efficiently as possible. Plus, with minimal service fees of 10%, more of the ad spend goes toward ad performance. The industry standard is charging 20% of the ad budget for service fees, so other agencies have to perform 10% better than Sierra to compete. Average all-time conversion rate hovers around 11% with average cost-per-lead in the $8-$12 range in the U.S. ($4-$9 for buyer campaigns) and $3-$5 in Canada. Its cost-effective approach focuses on lead quality rather than quantity. (Low quality is a typical byproduct of some lead generation tactics, including lead purchasing.)

“Sierra’s framework is perfect for what my business was looking for. Its built-in framework helps optimize our campaigns so the audience in our target market is seeing the right opportunities at the right times for them. When they click on our PPC ads, we know we’re spending our dollars on a funnel of quality leads,” said Cain. 

Sierra also offered Cain a way to adjust and scale his PPC efforts as needed depending on his business needs. 

“One of the things my realty business values most [about Sierra] is that we can trust them with our business. They’re always reachable, always collaborative. Sierra wants our campaigns to succeed. They make sure the services and support they provide help us achieve our goals,” said Cain.

Sierra’s PPC framework is supported by a strong real estate CRM to track leads and improve follow up. According to Cain, the solutions are moving the needle forward towards what’s best for Cain Realty Group and their clients: transactions.

Using Sierra’s reporting tools, he evaluates PPC results on a quarterly basis. Then, he can pivot spend and strategy when necessary to generate more leads  to meet transactional volume goals. 

Sierra Interactive’s real estate ppc management puts transactional volume goals within reach

Using Sierra’s real estate PPC campaign tool to produce high quality leads and motivated sellers, Cain expects to close $120 million in yearly transaction volume in 2022. From short term wins, he knows the goal is achievable. In the span of only three weeks in the first quarter, Cain estimated the group had closed $1.4 million in transactional volume directly from Sierra’s ad management services.

“Really quickly, we saw our transactional volume skyrocket. We were generating much more than five times return on spend. Our commissionable income was growing by tens of thousands. And, our PPC ad campaign spend is much less than that, so our ROI is high,” Cain said.

“We’re confident for our performance in 2022, because of the improvements we’ve been able to see over the past six months after implementing Sierra. In the last few quarters of last year,  we generated almost 700 seller leads from our Google PPC campaign. We’ve tripled our closings from PPC with the higher volume, lower quality lead generation strategies. That’s the direction we want to move in, and we know we’re on the right track with Sierra,” Cain said.

About Sierra Interactive

Sierra Interactive develops residential real estate software and services for agents, teams and brokers in the U.S. and Canada. Sierra’s proven lead generation and management solutions are trusted by top-performing teams and influential coaches in the real estate industry. Founded in 2007, Sierra is headquartered in Louisville, KY, but has a remote-first workforce across the U.S.

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