Category: Carrot News

If you happened to check out carrot.com lately, you’ll notice a lot has changed!

Here at Carrot, we’ve been working intently for the past year refreshing things behind the scenes. We’ve been going through our site, organizing, rebuilding pages using our new Visual Editor, and on top of all of that, updating the Carrot look and feel to better reflect the Core Values that we live and breathe by!

Bright colors and fun illustrations embody the Carrot spirit and our mission to add humanity to business and help you regain time for the things that matter most in life.

But don’t worry; we are still the same great product and nothing will change how you use Carrot in your day-to-day workflow. You’re going to continue to receive the same great service you’ve always gotten from us and a promise that we will always do our best for you!

Being design-led is a smart investment

But why a design refresh? The reality is that design-led companies do better in business. Many people have calculated the ROI on design and there is a lot of data to back it up. According to the McKinsey Quarterly, who created their own design index to measure the success of design-led companies, companies that invested in their design had 32% higher revenue growth and 56% higher shareholder returns than their counterparts.

According to the Design Management Institute who also measures the ROI of “design-centric” companies, there was a 211% return over the S&P 500. According to a report by IBM, design-thinking resulted in a 301% ROI.

What does it mean to be design-led? There are a lot of definitions out there, but for Carrot, it means we prioritize the people we serve. We value constant iteration and improvement in our product, always focusing on the customer needs first. We wanted to make sure that our look and feel reflects our Core Values and our design-led company philosophy.

The Carrot Core Values are: Be a Beacon of Positivity & Possibility, Have Fun & Be Different, Take Initiative & Show You Care, Craft Amazing Experiences, Adapt, Evolve, & Always Improve and Add Humanity To Business. These phrases bring to mind design that has energy, dynamic colors and lots of fun and creativity!

What does this mean for you? We want to continue to grow as a company and bring our product to as many real estate professionals as we can because we believe in our message about regaining time back for the people we serve. This design refresh means that we are committed to always growing, innovating, and bringing the best product we can to our members.

Oh! And since our story has evolved over the past few years, we thought it was about time for a new video to help tell it!

The updates to the Carrot Visual Language

There are a lot of things we did to the Carrot look and feel in order to embody our Core Values visually.

We started with the color palette; we added more complementary tones and more fun and energizing options. 

Our previous color palette was a bit limited and used a lot of dark gray and black tones. Dark gray and black is great in a lot of contexts, but it didn’t complement our signature orange as well as we wanted anymore. 

The new palette is more robust with more bright options that all work together utilizing complementary colors. We also added tints and shades to round it out and give the design a look with more depth and a brighter tone.

We refreshed the logo.

The carrot logo is still the mark that you know and love; we just removed the gradient and updated the carrot top color with our new Carrot teal! This new teal directly complements our signature orange on the color wheel.

Personal touches matter in our business, and we wanted to show that in our designs too.

We replaced generic stock photos of software and dark overlays that had started to look drab with bespoke illustrations, colors, and textures utilizing our new color palette to convey the energy and positivity that we already exude.

We gave our illustrations and icons a facelift to better represent the concepts behind our software.

We value clarity and creativity and wanted it to shine, so we made some custom Carrot Buds to show our team spirit and the trend just grew from there. Our new digital Carrot Bud is our Carrot team mascot! He leads the way through our software with a little flair, adding some fun moments throughout the site.

From a practical perspective, utilizing illustrations to demonstrate our product offerings has a more contemporary vibe, doesn’t require we update imagery every time there is a new device released, and can help us more easily emphasize the parts of the software that we are trying to highlight.

A little bit of effort goes a long way

How is this relevant to you? Many small companies don’t think their brand matters or that they can focus on other areas of the business and be successful. This is true, but putting even a little bit of effort into your brand has a lot of benefits.

1. A thoughtful brand builds credibility. We’ve all been to those websites that are poorly designed, and we don’t trust them. By not putting effort into what your brand looks like, it paints the picture that you don’t care about other aspects of your business either.
2. A clear message makes everyone’s job easier. If your vision and core values are clearly laid out, then your whole team can get behind it and your unified message means marketing and advertising is in alignment with the rest of the company. 
3. A unified vision builds brand advocates. Think of the brands that you love. Have they put energy and effort into their messaging, look and feel? We all have brands that we support and those companies have put a lot of thought and time into how they are presented to the world in order to keep people loyal. Your company should be no different.
4. A well-designed brand drives a higher price point. The service you provide is obviously important, but if you can nail your brand from a messaging and design perspective, more people will value what you offer and will pay a higher price for it. 

How to get started with refreshing your own brand

A design refresh can certainly seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Even putting a little effort into a few things can bring great results.

1. Think about your business’s mission and vision. Write it down, share it, edit it and hone it in. This is the foundation of your brand. Until you think about this, you won’t be able to nail the visuals. There are a lot of great resources out there about writing this statement.
   Hubspot has some great examples.
2. Once you have your mission and vision completed, take a look at your logo and color palette. Do they align with your company statements? Do they represent how you want your company to be viewed? A really great logo is usually simple, easy to read, and works in multiple sizes. You can have versions that can be used to post to social media or print on letterhead. Many successful logos are just typography and don’t even have any imagery associated with them. 
3. Once you have your updated mission and vision, logo, and color palette, you can take it a step further and think about the types of photography you might want to use to represent your brand. Don’t be afraid to source stock photography on your website and have some fun! 

All of this can certainly be overwhelming, so don’t be afraid to hire a professional to help you. We have a Design Refresh Service or a full Concierge Setup to help you get your site updated and in alignment with your company brand! 

Plus much more!! Check out the other services Carrot has to offer to help our members generate more leads in our new marketplace.

Have you checked out our new website? We’d love to hear what you think!

In early 2021, the Apple iOS 14 update and Facebook Ads changes are coming.

As usual, the update improves things like speed, ease of use, and app management for iPhone users.

But this update introduces a new feature that has marketers, advertisers, and even social media platforms concerned.

Put simply, the update requires developers to attain permission from iOS users before tracking the person’s information.

Here’s how Apple explains it on their update page…

“Developers will be required to get your permission before tracking you. See which apps you have given permission to track in Settings so you can change your preferences.”

So how does that impact advertising efforts on sites like Facebook?

Let’s talk about that.

The iOS 14 Update: What Is It?

Apple will begin requiring that all apps from their app store provide a proactive prompt that allows users to either opt-in or out of data collection.

This is an evolution in marketing and technology and will no doubt have an impact on the marketing world. If you look back in the relatively short history of digital marketing big changes like this are actually fairly common.

For example, Google updates its search algorithm often – and when it does you will usually hear a few people losing their minds that “SEO IS DEAD” but if you look for the level heads, you will find practical ways to adapt and optimize.

In the mid-2000’s when Pop Up Blockers were created, many people thought digital ads were done for, and even Facebook themselves have implemented multiple changes to their algorithm and policies that have impacted advertisers.

The sky is not falling — and for level-headed, consistent marketers this could well be an excellent opportunity to leave lazy and one-trick pony competitors in the dust. The principles of good marketing remain unchanged – the right message to the right people at the right time

There are impacts to advertisers that use SDK for App downloads – not included in these notes.

What Will Be Changing?

Apple is rolling out a new privatized click measurement protocol – “Private Click Measurement” (PCM)

This does not support app to web conversion measurement (IE Instagram to Website)
This also does not support cross-domain measurement – for example, if you redirect from .com to a .de or .uk

Facebook is implementing their own solution as a counter measure which will support app to web but still cannot support cross domain measurement.

• Facebook campaigns can only optimize on up to 8 events. Any campaigns optimizing on more than 8 events will be paused.
  -This limitation is not per pixel but per domain ( so if a domain has multiple pixels on it, any events would cant towards all pixels)
• Subdomains are subject to this limitation
• If a user opts-in to data collection then you can use the 8 events. If they opt-out, you can only have 1 event which is why prioritization is so important. FB can only report on one event.
• The standard conversion window will also change to 7-day click and NO view through. In the past, the standard was 7-day click and 1-day view-through. For real estate investors where not a lot of events are occurring (by Facebook standards) sometimes a 28-day click window would be used. Those will no longer be available to use. So while the same amount of events might still be happening, your ability to track them will decrease.
  -We will see a decrease in website customer audience sizes and an increase in overlap of audiences.
  -Advertisers using more complex pixel-based audiences will feel this more
  -breakdowns by demographic will no longer be available for conversion events
• You will see less ad reach on the Facebok Ad Network (ads outside of Facebook)

Here’s What You Can Do To Your Facebook Ads To Be Ready For the Change

• Verify your domain
• Prioritize and configure your top 8 events (you must prioritize these so Facebook knows which events to focus on reporting)
• Anticipate changes in attribution windows – conversions will happen outside of that, but will not be reported (audiences rules will change)
• Reestablish baselines of performance.
• After changing one of our 8 events or reprioritizing – wait about 3 days before running ads again)

Watch this video to make sure your your Facebook pixel has been updated so it does not cause problems when the new IOS update is released…

Are You Fumbling Your Way Through FB Ads? Or, Simply What to Get Started?

Let the expertise of Silver Street do the leg work for you. They will create an account as if it was their own.

Learn More About the FB Quickstart

How The iOS 14 Update Impacts Advertising Results

What makes an advertising campaign effective?

Is it the content of the ad? The sales copy? The image?

Well, partly. But even if you have phenomenal sales copy and an eye-catching image, you’re not going to be able to consistently generate leads if you’re targeting the wrong people.

Advertising platforms have always prided themselves on being able to provide businesses with extremely specific and personalized market information.

On Facebook, for instance, businesses have always been able to target people who are interested in a certain topic, of a certain demographic.

That’s what makes these platforms so darn effective.

You’re not targeting everyone, you’re targeting the right people.

That drives down advertising costs and you get more bang for your buck.

But this new update requires developers to acquire permission from iOS users in order to track personal information.

This means, for instance, that people can opt-out of giving Facebook their information. If that happens en masse, then businesses are going to see more expensive advertising costs.

Even Facebook is admitting to this problem…

“Apple’s proposed changes will limit your ability to effectively reach, understand and engage people on mobile devices and across the web. They will impact your ability to understand performance, control who sees your ads and make informed decisions about your advertising budgets. As these changes take effect, over time you may see an overall decrease in ad performance and personalization and an increase in cost per action.”

This problem becomes a little more real when you realize that over 50% of mobile sessions on Carrot member sites were from Apple products in 2020.

Additionally, mobile devices made up over 54% of all real estate sessions in 2020.

It’s difficult to know just how big of a problem this will be for businesses that depend on Facebook and other similar platforms for their ads and lead-gen.

But it’s certainly changing the game.

In fact, there are two things that this indicates.

The first is that Facebook advertising is going to likely become less profitable as time goes on. This won’t happen immediately, but it’s something that every business owner should be aware of.

And second, it’s a pretty strong indication that this is the way the future is going.

As consumers become increasingly concerned about giving their personal information to advertisers, to compete, phone and desktop companies (like Apple) are going to start giving users the ability to opt-out of being tracked.

Consider that, as Fortune reports…

“Nearly 80% of U.S. adults are “somewhat” or “very” concerned about how companies use their personal digital data, the Pew Research Center said on Friday, proving a suspicion that already existed. Additionally, 81% of adults feel they have little or no control over the data companies collect.”

In other words, this dilemma isn’t going away anytime soon.

The question then is, as a business owner, how should you prepare for what the future holds?

As with all major marketing companies, Facebook will eventually figure out a way around this change. But, now is a great time for you to future-proof your business so that marketing and generating leads doesn’t become a bottleneck?

That’s where evergreen marketing comes in.

Evergreen Marketing is Becoming More Important Than Ever

To avoid prepare your business for the future, you need to understand the difference between evergreen marketing and interruption marketing.

Interruption marketing is what most business owners are familiar with — you interupt the prospects when they’re doing something unrelated to what you’re offering and try to grab their attention.

This is how Facebook ads, direct mail, billboards, bandit signs, and cold calling all work.

If you’re targeting the right people, this can be pretty effective. But it’s the targeting that the iOS update — and likely future iterations — are making more difficult.

Of course, we’re not telling you to completely eliminate interruption marketing from your advertising strategy. So long as it’s helping you close profitable deals, you should keep doing it.

But it’s also important that you work to build a more long-term lead-gen machine.

After all, interuption marketing tactics are short term.

You might get a spike of leads when you run the ad or send the mailer, but if you stop advertising, then the leads stop flowing.

Is there an alternative?

Yes! And it’s called evergreen marketing.

The Oxford definition for “evergreen” is helpful for understanding what we’re talking about…

“relating to or denoting a plant that retains green leaves throughout the year.”

The general idea behind evergreen marketing is that it keeps on giving. It doesn’t stop generating leads when you take a break… it’s sustainable.

For a marketing campaign to be evergreen, there is one main criterion: It must act as a marketing asset and that asset keeps generating leads long after you stop putting time and money into it.

Interuption marketing is like hunting for your leads… and evergreen marketing is like farming for your leads.

And since evergreen marketing benefits the consumer as well as the business (because it doesn’t feel like an invasion of privacy), it’s unlikely to be impacted by upcoming security policies like iOS 14.

The crown jewel of evergreen marketing is SEO — ranking your website in Google to drive traffic and generate leads.

Ranking In Google

Getting your website ranked organically in Google is one of the most effective evergreen marketing strategies known to business owners.

That’s why, this year, businesses have spent around $80 billion on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services.

Why is SEO so valuable?

Let’s look at an example.

Imagine that you’re a real estate investor in San Antonio.

Well, with a bit of research, we find that “Sell my house fast in San Antonio” gets a whopping 1,600 searches every single month in Google.

Think about it: that’s 1,600 people every single month who are searching for someone who can help them sell their house fast.

If you’re an investor in San Antonio, those people are your target market.

Now imagine that you were able to get your website ranking near the top of page 1 for that keyword phrase.

Assuming that your website is built to convert visitors into leads as seamlessly as possible (that’s what we specialize in helping agents and investors with at Carrot!), then a lot of people are going to click and a lot of people are going to convert.

That means more lead and deals for your business without more work or marketing dollars.

And that’s what we see when we look at the data.

The first organic result on search phrases in Google recieve 34% of the clicks and traffic. The second position receives 17%, and the third receives 11.4%. So on and so forth.

But the farther you are from the top of page 1, the less clicks you’re going to get.

In fact, if you’re on page two, then you’re practically invisible.

So there are a few questions we have to answer.

1. How do you get your website to page one?
2. How do you do that for not just one high-value phrase, but for multiple… so that you’re driving traffic on autopilot?
3. How do you make sure that you website is optimized to convert that traffic into leads?

Here’s a brief overview of how each of those pieces works (and some practical advice for what you can do to improve your rankings).

How Do You Improve Your Website’s Rankings?

The content that Google chooses to rank for a given search is based on their extremely complex algorithm.

But the good news is that the most important factors in this algorithm are mostly known.

Because while there are a lot of different factors inside of Google’s algorithm, not all of those factors are equal.

Here are some of the most important SEO for real estate factors to consider…

• Site Speed — Google wants page 1 results to load fast for its users. So it’s important to have a fast website. This mostly depends on your website hosting. All Carrot websites have lightning-fast hosting included.
• Keyword Optimization — Google uses the words on your website’s pages to determine what phrases to rank it for. If you want to rank for “sell my house fast”, then you need to include that phrase in your title tag, meta description, URL, and the content of your page as well.
• Mobile Optimization — Most internet traffic is now mobile. And Google knows that, so your website needs to be optimized for mobile traffic if it’s going to rank. All Carrot sites are automatically mobile friendly!

Learn How Carrot Can Help Your Website Rankings Improve [FREE TRAINING]

How Do You Rank For Multiple High-value Phrases In Google?

The key to ranking for multiple high-value keyword phrases in Google (sell my house fast, how to deal with probate, sell my house for cash, etc) is to create various pages that target those keywords.

You definitely don’t want to try and rank the same page for multiple keywords that are all very different.

By doing that, you’ll probably end up ranking for nothing.

The easiest ways to do this are by (1) publishing new content on your blog consistently — Carrot provides Content Pro and Advanced Marketer members with monthly blog posts! — and (2) creating new sales pages that target different keywords — you can also do this easily with Carrot!

Think of each new page or blog post as a doorway.

It’s another thing that can rank in Google and potentially drive traffic to your website. The more doorways you have, the more traffic you’ll drive!

How Do You Optimize Your Website To Convert SEO Traffic Into Leads?

Here’s the reality.

Website traffic that comes through evergreen marketing tactics like SEO isn’t very valuable if it’s not turning into leads for your business consistently.

So you need to make sure that you website is optimized to convert.

How?

Well, there’s an entire science to this.

And at Carrot, we’ve spent years studying, testing, and iterating to make all of our agent and investor websites convert as consistently as possible.

Many of our members get 10% – 30% conversion rates!

If you want to join the club and get a headstart on your SEO and evergreen marketing, you can try Carrot risk-free for 30 days!

Learn How Carrot Can Help Your Website Rankings Improve [FREE TRAINING]

Conclusion

The iOS 14 update is going to make advertising on platforms like Facebook a little uncertain for a while.

More than anything, this decision is a sign of things to come.

Consumers don’t like their data being taken so this trend isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

The answer, though, is to transition over to evergreen marketing.

And you can use the above tactics to get started!

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