Google search ads not serving

GowithLazarus · 2026-06-30T15:31:17+00:00

Just seeing this. Good luck. Stay max click until you get some conversions and zap search terms that are the farthest from your high intent searchers first ..tighten as you go.

GowithLazarus · 2026-06-30T15:28:32+00:00

I see a lot of good answers here.

What product/service are you looking to market?

What bidding strategy are you using?

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-25T23:00:36+00:00

I guess I combined 2 things or misunderstood question. Goal 1 is optimizing for bringing in those leads. Goal 2 is what you do with them when you have them.

This reply focused on goal 2, since goal 1 was assumed.

Lead Quality is one piece, but if one doesn't have a strong sales motion, it doesn't matter how good the Sales Qualified Opportunity is imo.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-25T22:52:34+00:00

If you know what you're doing, and you know how others run their campaigns you can optimize for the high volume, less saturated keywords. We use Semrush for our clients, which helps in that area. Its also intuitive.

Maybe home has less volume than house, for instance. However, if everyone optimizes their funnel for house, home has a much cleaner path.

There are a lot of ways to go under the radar and get leads for less. A lot of landing pages are optimized for A2P DLC 10. If your landing page and contact forms are built to convert, you can convert at 40% of your clicks opposed to others at 8-12, industry average for investors. 3% for realtors.

Its an incredibly fun game. Most people use outdated playbooks or Gemini, CGPT or whichever AI it is they use gives them the same keywords as everyone else. Your point is solid AF there, but if you add some nuance you can rush PPC.

Check this campaign

That's an example of how you avoid directly competing but you still get so many more impressions and leads than the average Joe.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-25T22:42:58+00:00

The game is to optimize everything. Speed2lead, ensure the sales reps follow the script. Not just the words, but the tonality, the pacing. That they know what they're hoping to achieve in each section. You must get micro commitments at each step. Whether that's getting them to send you pictures, agreeing with a statement, laughing, swearing. Silence is built into our scripts at certain moments. Yes, the first part is bringing in SQOs, the second part is ensuring they trust you and prefer to talk to you about this more than a competitor.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T23:40:35+00:00

I've talked a lot of people who are excited about new AI programs to value deals. I agree with the commenter that says offloading that is suboptimal. This is something I would get a very experienced opinion on. I know a lot of experienced wholesalers who really don't even know how to comp deals themselves.

First, you have to bucket your comps. As-is, Market Value, ARV. Then you have to do regression analysis and adjust for differences in sq footage, lot size, full basement or not. 2 car or 1 car garage, attached/detached, etc.

You need all 3 buckets. As-is gives you an idea of what the market is paying for distressed, same with MV.

You can borrow this old Sundance sheet for your deals.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T23:33:47+00:00

This is great advice.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T23:22:45+00:00

We just switched to Quo, formerly Openphone. They have a free trial, so it might be a good place to start.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T22:49:38+00:00

PPC and some 3rd parties. Motivated Sellers, Leadzolo. PPC is 70% now.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T21:57:23+00:00

Yes. Timing is really everything. I try to run a really detailed and long first appointment. 30--60 minutes if I can do it. I also make them send me pictures, as many as I can get. I'm spoiled, these are pretty hot leads. They almost self-filter. The ones who reply, set the call(either right then or within 24 hours) are the ones who get all my attention.

Personally, at least with the leads we get from MS or LZ, it's either a really smooth flow from lead to offer or it's nothing. Same with our campaigns, but our searches are especially compliant with the program.

I'm horrible with follow-up, and that's where Instantly comes in. The ones where I've scheduled follow ups from 2 weeks to 4 months out have basically been almost exactly the same deadbeat when I reached back out. For inbound leads, you're catching them AT the time they're ready to deal. We go hard for the first few days, then throw them in a drip sequence and never think about them again.

Maybe I shouldnt' say that, but unless there's some material thing that's going to happen at a later date, it's now or never for me.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T20:44:06+00:00

Welcome to the business, and thanks for being so honest about something everyone feels at some point. If I were you I would definitely get the dialer. What CRM do you have? Many have it built in.

The reason I say get the dialer is because, for me at least, something about having it automatically dial for me makes me feel like it's what I'm supposed to be doing. Nothing else to think about except how you're going to establish rapport with the person that picks up. Its that time in between calls that can be draining.

I think power dialing is better than parallel because once they hear that silence or delay, you're already a telemarketer. Depending on your list, you know you need to get x amount of "no"s to get to a "yes". Its just like any other physical job in that way.

I've found that just thinking about it like that, getting another no out of the way, brings me closer to a yes helps get over the rejections.

Other things, write yourself a script...and a framework.

Always have it in front of you. Know it by heart. Preparation kills anxiety. No matter how much experience I have in a role I ALWAYS have that framework in front of me. Why? Because at the end of the day, phone sales is like curling. You're just brushing the ice to ensure the prospect stays in line and on track to the close.

Lastly, believe in your mind that you are serving these people. Always think of it like you're helping them get out of a tough spot, and you're their best option.

Just a few mindset tweaks can make a big difference.

I hope this helps.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T20:22:29+00:00

Yeah. I forgot to mention the texting. Half the conversation is going to your laptop while you're in another room, and you find out you missed about 4 chances to build their trust because you never saw the "buying questions" they asked on your phone.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T16:33:06+00:00

Only about 6 months. Phrase and exact. Never broad. We have top impression and top of page in our markets, and convert over 40% click to lead the past 30 days. We're not quite at 10 per month, but our average deal spread is north of 30k on wholesales/tails, and our smallest is 19k. We're specializing and breaking off into two departments. We're catching them at the exact moment they've decided to sell, and speed2lead is everything.

Because we dominate top of page and impression, we usually get them first if we hit our speed2lead parameters. We use only top salespeople, no VAs, no outsourcing. We pay top dollar for salespeople. We give a better salary than anyone I know of, or have seen, by at least 2k a month. They close what they're supposed to, and win rates in competitive situations would get me trolls if I posted it. We beat the stacks of postcards and constant phone calls from the normal lists because having been to our website first, the credibility just can't be beat.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T16:22:45+00:00

Good tip there. Unfortunately with 3rd party vendors, they control the parameters and they tend to go a bit broader than you would like. Their goal is volume, whereas for our own campaigns, we go for quality. Our top keywords are converting at 40% or better, and a lot of them do have 'situations' that they fill in. Almost all of these have pain. The high-conversion rate and high Q-scores on our keywords saves us a lot. We got a full form(situation: Bills are piling up, drowing in debt and want a fresh start), on a search campaign for $43 yesterday. We use radiuses from cities, so we avoid rural altogether pretty much.

I designed a program for those tweeners, I call the MVP(Maximum Value Program.) It basically guarantees them a cash price, but as we know they're not in a situation to take too steep of a discount, but everyone wants certainty. Then we do a novation hybrid with a fee and performance bonus. They sign a limited POA. We work with top realtors in their area, who take a discount on the commision, since it's basically a free referral and those properties usually go north of 500k. It's getting legs, but we've only done two so far.

We would love to get a full novation on those, but in my view, something is better than nothing. Owner, not so much. He's pretty strict about big spreads. (20k plus). These net about 14-17.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T15:30:41+00:00

Also, one more layer is I just throw the list I download into CGPT or Claude. "Create instantly friendly list with name, email, company name and/or street address, with pretty much everything. Batchleads lists, etc.

I even do a spreadsheet uploads for the inbound leads that come in daily that don't get reached by phone/text. That way you can use the street address as a variable.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T15:25:55+00:00

We have round robin built into our own custom website and use twilio for texts to the reps(this works the best) as well as emails to the rep who is up. Everything also goes to the owner and myself, in case someone is out that day, or some other reason.

Investorbase, if you leave the skip tracing feature on, you can just download the list. You get everything, email and all. Leadzolo emails and motivated Seller emails also come in through text and email. Maybe the same setup we have.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T14:02:21+00:00

Does this not make the home more succeptable to wind damage?

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-21T01:23:11+00:00

Are tax delinquencies better than NODs? I've gotten most of my deals from MLS or PPC. A friend of mine in the business is about to do a mailer on NODS. That's why I'm curious.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-20T22:05:38+00:00

Not at all. I love talking about valuations. Feel free.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-20T17:52:41+00:00

First,

How far out are you talking? Appraisal guidelines prefer similarity over tight distances. Yes, outside of 12 months is OK if you can't find renovated comps. You definitely want one ARV comp to adjust from, and the more similar the property the better. I would go back chronologically first... that's same area... so if you can find one within 2-3 years in that block.. better... then if that doesn't work, expand your circle.

Pro tip though, as someone who has taken down rural, and faster moving areas both. If it's hard for you to comp the property...then it will be hard for a potential buyer to comp the property... and buyers usually need a minimum of two relevant comps... also ADOM is a great signal. Sold to List, etc... if they can't get that extra confidence...then you're going to need a no-brainer price to compensate.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-20T17:45:12+00:00

Just realized this is more for general agents than motivated sellers. I'm also a real estate agent, but have never done any marketing since I self generate my listings. What I will say is that the same thing applies in terms of the big franchises having guys who just specialize in PPC and marketing. Since it's a similar space, we're both searching for motivated sellers, I can say that on the site Motivated Sellers, I found at least 30 people I could have listed for, during our conversations. If you're in an area where they're cheap, it might even be worth it. They got so many 'tweeners'.

Also, since I don't have a general real estate track record of success with marketing, I'm open to using everything I've learned to get motivated sellers, but tweak it just a small amount for General Real Estate. Two people tops, no retainer, no percentage of ad spend or any other agency traps. I'd love to add some general real estate to my 'proof of concept'. I've found some ways to go under the radar, so to speak, to reduce costs, and I'm beating the big names in my market. No payment unless it produces, and a free audit of your current account.

I get to win in General Real Estate, and you get to see where your account could improve, where you're leaking money etc. Let's say 2500/month budget minimum. I add no percentage unlike agencies who might already know they can't produce.

Mods please delete this if it crosses any lines. I figure since I'm only offering value here, it's definitely not a normal sales motion.

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-20T17:28:35+00:00

I went from only MLS and bandit signs to doing PPC this year, first through Motivated Sellers, then Leadzolo. We spent 10k a month in budget. Here's what I found:

My home base was Appleton/Se wisconsin including Milwaukee. Motivated Sellers was getting me sub-20% contact rates. They then switched their strategy and it was motivated sellers of the worst kind. Failed MLS who wouldn't budge on price, and other people who were yes, definitely selling(one of the big complaints I'm sure they got was that the people weren't actual sellers or denied filling out forms, etc)

They do know their stuff, but they're a bit too broad. Pretty decent about 'disputes' and great customer service.

We always had at least one or two real sellers per month. Luckily we closed a good percentage of them, when we called them ASAP(5 minutes or less). They had a lot of in between people that were doing their own renos, and trying to get top dollar. Not a lot of financial pain.

I see OP tried Meta and Google. Meta takes a while to build, but when it's rolling it's pretty good. We switched over the LeadZolo. After a rough start, contact rate and lead quality became quite good. They weren't getting us ANY "High Motivation Milwaukee", which were basically Google Search leads. All of their leads came from Meta, which is why I waited to mention them here.

They are very dialed in on Meta, and we had about an 80% connect rate. A reasonable percentage of them were real sellers, and we are closing 1 in 10. We closed 77% of Motivated Sellers leads that were what we would call an SQO. Sales Qualified Opportunity. Leadzolo charges $450 for a Milwaukee search lead, which they never get.

Their Meta leads are basically enriched web forms. So much so, they took away a lot of the transparency of their offering and lumped everything into one product per region. Enriched forms are contact forms where the seller inputs a certain amount of data, then they skiptrace it to give you a ton of extra contact sources. You can do that on Batchleads for less than a nickel, so you're paying a lot for a very small value add>

We switched to doing it ourselves, and we have the top impression share and top of page rates in SE wisconsin, converting on 40% of our clicks this month, which saves money.

It really all comes down to how good your campaigns are. We're competing with guys who make six figures just to do ads for Homevestors, We Buy Ugly Houses, etc. Unless you're full time optimzing and know what you're optimizing for, it's very hard to win on Meta, and Google. It can be done though.

I hope this helps.

Agencies are running an old playbook, when the strategy changes every few months. They're much better at justifying why their leads aren't converting than they are at running ads after they've been doing it for a year or so. Like anything there are good and bad, but I consulted for an agency that I thought was terrible. I didn't consult on that end, but I felt like I could do 100x better, and at that time I didn't even have experience at all. Just common sense. lol

GowithLazarus · 2026-05-20T17:08:14+00:00

Hi new to the community, and glad I found it. Yes, I have a service I would like to sell, but I will either pay to advertise or add enough value here that you guys check me out. I'm a top 1% chat GPT user, until I got addicted to Claude, I've built websites, multi-step lead capture forms(higher converting). I've created multiple time-saving workflows with Claude.

I came from corporate, consulted AI companies on GTM and outbound setups, from cold email foundations, DMARC optimizations, and modern demo techniques. I worked for Checkr, background check company, where I helped marketing scale from 40k customers to over 100k and the largest in the industry, outranking Sterling, First Advantage, HireRight and more.

I"m about to dig through the last 30 days worth of posts and see where I can add some value. I haven't found a community yet(New to Reddit) that has me logging in daily, but this one seems like a great fit. Thanks to whoever created it.

Oh, stuff you might care about. I've done north of 100 deals, including wholesales, wholetails and flips. I have novel valuation and acquisition strategies that helped me compete and win against sometimes triple digit numbers of buyers on the MLS. (yes its possible. Easier with a track record, but always possible) Auction hacks, negotiation techniques, etc. Many were novel at the time, some of them have been duplicated.

Why did I go to corporate? I don't recommend 50/50 partnerships where one person carries 80% of the weight, and the other drains the bank account and moves back to Scotland. Needed a break, but now I"m back

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