Immobiliare.it provides an online platform and tools for real estate listings and searches. They currently record more than 30 million website and app visits monthly, feature more than 1.2 million property listings and are used by more than 19,000 estate agencies. With an eye on cost per lead, Immobiliare.it wanted to maximise leads, both among estate agents and private individuals.
About Immobiliare.it
Founded in 2005
Headquarters in Milan
www.immobiliare.it
Goals
Maximise leads (both estate agencies and private individuals) at a given cost per lead
Approach
Created new campaign structure aligned to business objectives
Defined custom audience segments using signals measured in Google Analytics
Set up product listing feed and launched Remarketing Lists for Search Ads
Initiated automated bidding using AdWords’ Smart Bidding algorithms
Results year over year:
Cost per acquisition went down by 36%
Leads increased by 100% with 28% incremental investment
Click-through rate doubled
As a first step, Immobiliare.it designed a new structure for its search, display and remarketing campaigns to better suits its business. The marketing team selected a huge amount of keywords relevant to the business and created several ad groups.
The team used Google Analytics to measure users’ navigation signals such as recency of visits, frequency of visits and onsite behaviour. They then defined custom audience segments to leverage across display campaigns, creating one campaign for each specific custom audience segment. At the same time, one ad group was created for each ad format – text, image and responsive.
“With a campaign structure more oriented to the business, Google Analytics audience signals and AdWords Smart Bidding algorithms, we’ve been able to pursue an integrated strategy on search and display, guiding users through the complex path to buy their home.”
– Alessio Cantoro, Head of Digital Marketing, Immobiliare.it
Within AdWords, Immobiliare.it set up a product listing feed to include the site’s huge number of property listings. By launching Remarketing Lists for Search Ads and dynamic remarketing on display, the brand could then serve ads that showed specific properties that a user had previously viewed on the website.
They also set up automated bidding using AdWords’ Smart Bidding algorithms. The campaigns started running with enhanced cost per click (ECPC), which automatically Immobiliare.it’s manual bids for clicks that seemed more or less likely to lead to a sale or conversion on the website. After two weeks, the campaigns were switched to target CPA bidding. Each week the target CPA was reduced by 10% to progressively reach the desired cost per lead.
"Machine learning, audience signals and attribution are the key pillars of our digital marketing strategy in 2018. Google is a strategic partner to pursue our business objectives."
– Silvio Pagliani, Co-Founder, Immobiliare.it
Immobiliare.it registered outstanding results. Six months after the implementation, Immobiliare.it recorded a 28% year-over-year incremental investment, resulting in a 100% increase in new online customer leads, while the cost per acquisition went down by 36% and the click-through rate doubled.
Looking ahead, the next steps are to replicate the same successful strategy across all other real estate platforms owned by Immobiliare.it (Casavacanze.it, Agriturismo.it and LuxuryEstate.com) and to leverage additional signals from the planned implementation of data-driven attribution to optimise performance.
