00:00:00:00 – 00:01:11:25

Kiley

I don’t want to pay an agency. I think I can figure this out. And like J.T. said, you can totally can. But I think some people underestimate the consistency of effort that it’s going to take because, you know, creating an ad on Facebook is not super hard. You have to learn a little bit inside of ads. Manager But but creating a really good ad and then getting those things to consistently perform over time is really where the magic comes.

00:01:11:29 – 00:02:40:28

Kiley

Thank you. Super stoked to be here. We love paid ads.

00:02:45:06 – 00:02:46:04

Kiley

JT Go ahead, man.

00:02:47:00 – 00:03:18:20

JT

Yeah. So when you’re looking at the the ROI that’s coming from it, typically what we’re seeing on Facebook is we’re seeing a cost per acquisition in between about a 3000 to 3500 on average is overall cost per acquisition. Depending on areas, you can kind of lower that down to about around a $2,000 mark. It just kind of depends on a couple moving parts that could be things like are you paying for management, How aggressive are you in your area?

00:03:19:06 – 00:03:45:17

JT

Are you employing different types of tactics, not just lead generation like branding and and trying to become more of a powerhouse in your area? So there’s a couple of things that will affect that. And can kind of change that cost per acquisition price. But most investors that are coming on for management are sitting around that, you know, you could probably say about 2000 to $3000 cost per acquisition marker per deal.

00:03:46:03 – 00:04:09:18

Kiley

Yeah. And to to, to break that down maybe just a little bit more basically to get that cost of acquisition, you’re looking at your cost per lead, right? And then the number of leads it takes to close a deal. So on Facebook, we see probably right around an average of 20 leads per deal. Would is that wouldn’t you agree?

00:04:09:19 – 00:04:11:20

JT

JT Yeah, yeah.

00:04:12:29 – 00:04:41:05

Kiley

Yeah. About 2020 leads per deal. So depending on what your cost per lead is and then depending on your on your close ratio. So one of the things we find that’s, that’s most important when doing Facebook ads is having a really strong follow up system. So if you think about lead generation in terms of each channel you’re using, you’re going to be finding potentially different people.

00:04:41:05 – 00:05:03:09

Kiley

A lot of the same people. We can talk about that a little bit more, but you’re you’ll find people at different levels of readiness in their decision making process. And with a PPC ad, for example, you have someone that is actively searching for I need to sell my house fast so that person is in this mode of problem solving.

00:05:03:14 – 00:05:43:00

Kiley

On Facebook, we one of the one of the powers of Facebook is that you can find people who are potentially not quite that far in the in their decision making process. Yet the benefit of that is you’re getting in touch with them before they start shopping investors. The challenge with that is you have to be ready and able to nurture that lead so that that follow up system really matters in the frequency of the follow up and the quality of the follow up because your lead time from lead capture to lead close maybe a little bit longer.

00:05:43:00 – 00:06:21:02

Kiley

Now that varies. We have people who start running ads in within 2 to 3 weeks close the deal. So it’s kind of, you know, there’s that full spectrum, but you. Yeah. So I’m yes, I mean, yes, on the Facebook stuff, but I’m talking more specifically about your non Facebook follow up. So text messages, emails, phone calls, you know, you’ve got to be you’ve got to be contacting those leads right away.

00:06:21:02 – 00:07:05:10

Kiley

You need to be following up with them frequently and often and and putting them in an in a nurture sequence to get them towards the the close. Well, I mean, Facebook ads have been effective for many, many years. There’s like a kajillion people on Facebook still even though even though it’s now kind of an older social media which is wild to think about the demographic of users on Facebook skews older.

00:07:05:10 – 00:07:35:11

Kiley

So that fits well with the the typical, like high equity homeowner or someone that would would own a home and be potentially interested in selling. But specifically I think the opportunity right now. Brady you touched on this a little bit earlier. There have been a lot of changes on Facebook. So the iOS 14 change was huge. That dramatically impacted audience sizes and the ability to track conversions and things like that.

00:07:36:02 – 00:08:01:19

Kiley

But then not too long ago there was another update with a a settlement with the HUD where they they changed targeting options a lot. I mean, and we did it we did a video on this as well with you that talking about how talking about how you can’t use lookalike audiences or special ad audiences in real estate anymore.

00:08:01:20 – 00:08:41:21

Kiley

Now that was like that was one of the I’ve been I’ve been marketing on Facebook since 2007 and that was one of the biggest changes I’ve ever seen Facebook make. And the result of that is a lot of people have said, I don’t know how to do this anymore or I’m going to give up on Facebook and I’m talking like individual investors, but also some of the other like agencies that we we know of have really stepped back because they didn’t want to try to figure out how to how to work through it.

00:08:41:21 – 00:09:18:03

Kiley

So the benefit there is the eyeballs are still on Facebook. So if there’s less people competing for those eyeballs, you have an opportunity as well.

00:09:18:03 – 00:09:32:01

JT

And that’s that’s a lot of what we’ve seen. It’s just that that feedback there is that people are using Facebook is exactly that. You want to stay away from those demographics because that’s going to limit that’s going to help you get your targeting more and more direct. So you’re 100% right on.

00:09:32:24 – 00:09:59:03

Kiley

Yeah. And the other thing the other thing to remember is that Facebook now called Meta, you know, they changed their name to Meta. They they own Instagram as well. And then they have their their own ad network, which is similar to like the Google ad network. So when you’re running ads through the Facebook or the meta ads manager, you’re you have a ability to run ads across many other places, too.

00:09:59:03 – 00:10:29:00

Kiley

So your ads will show up on Instagram. Your ads can show up in mobile apps as people are using, you know, if someone’s scrolling and playing a game or whatever, like your app, your ad could show up in that as well. All through that Facebook ads manager Yeah, And also I just think some people kind of think about, you know, I’m going to run Facebook ads.

00:10:29:00 – 00:11:00:09

Kiley

They’re thinking of just the one like in feed ad, which you know, that is a big part of it. But just I think it’s helpful to remember that you’re actually putting your ad in a lot of different places.

00:11:00:09 – 00:11:00:18

Brady

Yeah.

00:11:02:16 – 00:11:24:24

Kiley

I’m totally fine with that. We I don’t ever call it meta because I feel like most people don’t know or like you. Brady Like we haven’t, like, collectively accepted that that’s what it is. So if we you know, if we if we hop on the phone with someone and we’re like we’re experts at meta ads, they’re not going to know what we’re talking about.

00:11:24:24 – 00:11:38:00

Kiley

So, yeah, we’ll call up we’ll call up Mark Zuckerberg. We’ll see what we can do.

00:11:38:00 – 00:12:13:11

Brady

Yeah, you bet.

00:12:13:11 – 00:12:34:00

JT

Yeah. You know, when someone’s, you know, running ads on their own or debating about running ads on their own, there’s a couple of things that we kind of, you know, you have to think about and consider. One is, you know, time. I mean, this is a conversation I have a lot and most investors I talk with, you know, when we have this, we’re talking about ads and learning how to do it.

00:12:34:00 – 00:13:11:22

JT

I really say, you know, anyone can learn, but do you have the time or do you really have the desire to do it? Because if where your desires lag, you are like out in the field, you know, talking to the leads, like getting the contract signed and closing the deals, then that’s a job in itself. And to add on the marketing side of it, there’s there’s a lot that goes into that, you know, in terms of, you know, being on there weekly, watching all the data, thinking from a different type of mindset of a data data mind set of, okay, how is this affecting the algorithm versus how is this affecting my business?

00:13:11:22 – 00:13:30:01

JT

And you kind of have to walk through those different steps at different times while you’re making these changes. So the first thing that we always kind of talk about, if someone is interested in doing it themselves, you are totally capable. You can you’re smart enough, you can figure it out with the right direction, but do you really want to long term?

00:13:30:01 – 00:13:51:22

JT

Is that really going to be what’s best for your business? And everyone’s at different places, so for some people it will be for others. An agency might be a better spot to lead. And when it comes to agencies, there’s a couple of things we have to we have to think about. One is going to be your strategy. What type of strategy they’re using?

00:13:51:22 – 00:14:14:15

JT

Are they focusing purely on your top of funnel? And, you know, that’s pretty typical for most like average Facebook agencies, especially in the last couple of years, a lot of people have geared towards spending 90% of your budget on a broad, no targeting because you’re in real estate and it’s really hard to target people. And then 10% of your budget on your retargeting.

00:14:14:15 – 00:14:37:17

JT

And that’s kind of what they do. I would say that’s not a really thought out process because there are still ways that we could target. There’s still ways that we can filter out our top of funnel, middle of an Obama funnel. It just takes a lot more time and effort and management. So when you have the right strategy in place, that’s going to obviously affect your your leads.

00:14:37:26 – 00:14:56:00

JT

And then second, when it comes to an agency, the next thing you want to consider is how well do they integrate with your team? Because one of the biggest things I hear people talk about when they had a bad experience is, you know, I kept getting bad leads. I wasn’t able to like, communicate with anyone to tell them that, and it just wasn’t working in my business.

00:14:56:00 – 00:15:22:00

JT

And I’m sure if you went over to the agency and talked to them, they’re like, Well, all the leads we were driving were like $10 per lead. It was like a crazy. They were our best account, you know? And so you really need a good team work when you’re working with an agency, a really good team connection and one of the one of the best ways to do it, I tell everybody, even if you manage your own ads or you’re managing with an agency, one of the ways that you can fix this is use UTM parameters on all your ads.

00:15:22:14 – 00:15:40:04

JT

And then that way you can see exactly what AD drove, what lead, and then you get the feedback from in our case, from our client. And and we say, okay, tell us the leads that were the best leads. Okay, There are these people, these names. All right, awesome. So these these names have these UTM parameters attached to them.

00:15:40:04 – 00:16:03:11

JT

So whether you know that the iOS 14 came in place and we tracked it or we didn’t track it, we could manually track that and say, okay, this is where it came from. So now we know that these are our best ads in terms of motivation, and this is how we’re going to scale your results, even if it means we’re spending a little bit more per lead or we’re spending a little bit less, it’s more trackable and it’s going to give more tangible results.

00:16:03:11 – 00:16:12:00

JT

So those are a couple of things. You know, we have a discussion with clients. We’re talking about agencies doing it yourself or, you know, browsing the market.

00:16:12:20 – 00:16:40:25

Kiley

Yeah, that that feedback loop is critical. Whether you are working with an agency or you’re doing it yourself. Obviously the feedback loop with yourself, not really a loop, but but tracking that information and knowing that is important. And like JT said, that’s something a lot of people miss, which is paying attention to patterns in your leads and which which campaigns, which ads are generating the best leads.

00:16:41:24 – 00:17:10:13

Kiley

And if you’re working with an agency, you want to be feeding that information to them. I have two analogies I think of when it comes to doing it yourself versus working with an agency. And one of those is like hiring a personal chef. So if you hire a personal chef to make your meals for you, the reason you’re doing that is because you don’t want to you don’t want to take the time to shop and cook and think about what you’re going to eat.

00:17:11:21 – 00:17:29:10

Kiley

Maybe you don’t think that you can cook very good. Doesn’t taste very good, right? So you hire a professional chef. You’re you’re still going to be very engaged with that chef. If you if you hire a personal chef, like if he makes a meal that you don’t like, then you’re going to tell him or her about that. Right?

00:17:29:10 – 00:17:51:15

Kiley

Or if they make when you love, you going to say, well, I do that one more often, or you may even have requests, you know, like I, I’m craving this or whatever. So that, that even though you’ve outsourced that work, you’re still involved in, in guiding that, you know. And then let me let me give you one other analogy as well.

00:17:52:00 – 00:18:16:11

Kiley

The like fitness analogy. So because I think we see this a lot with people in who think who want to do DIY. So you go to a personal trainer and you say, Hey, I want to get ripped off. And the personal trainer starts with starts listing out all the things you’re going to need to do to get ripped.

00:18:16:26 – 00:18:38:20

Kiley

And it’s like, you know, you’ve got to like follow a you got to count your macros, you’ve got to do these certain kind of workouts, you’ve got to work out this many days a week, etc., etc.. And you’re going, I, I just kind of wanted to get ripped like, yeah, can I just get ripped? And I think that happens with the DIY side.

00:18:39:15 – 00:19:02:15

Kiley

The idea of like, Hey, I don’t want to pay an agency, I think I can figure this out. And like JT said, you can, you totally can. But I think some people underestimate the effort that it’s going to take, the consistency of effort that it’s going to take because, you know, creating an ad on Facebook is not super hard.

00:19:02:17 – 00:20:03:08

Kiley

You have to learn a little bit inside of ads. Manager But but creating a really good ad and then getting those things to consistently perform over time is is really where the magic comes in.

00:20:03:08 – 00:20:31:11

JT

And so what is diving into your seller interests? Obviously, you know using seller interests can help be kind of a bridge between your broad just going to anybody and then going to a more interest based audience that could be interested in things that you’re offering based off of what they’re looking at and browsing online. So that’s still capable of being used and that as well, the custom targeting of using custom lists.

00:20:32:00 – 00:20:56:10

JT

So we can still use lists that we’ve uploaded for like retargeting purposes. And so using those to our advantage. And basically I mean we talked about this in last video, but the combination of what type of media we’re using to help filter out what type of motivation that we’re getting on these and then also the targeting in place.

00:20:56:10 – 00:21:25:15

JT

And then lastly, you know what we just kind of touched on using manual like feedback, like UTM parameters to be able to give us really good feedback on what’s actually working. Those are kind of been our go to options to be able to continue to get consistent results for investors, even though the landscape of the ads are changing, you know, and and that’s just kind of the nature of any platform is over time.

00:21:25:24 – 00:21:50:05

JT

It’s always the landscape is going to change a little bit. But as long as our type of seller that we want is located there, we’re going to be able to find a way to get in front of them. We just have to change up the strategy a little bit to do it. So that’s that’s some of the things have consisted of of changing that strategy.

00:21:50:05 – 00:22:24:20

JT

Yes. So there are like equity interests, so people who are doing like reverse mortgages, people are interested in their their own equity types. There’s like Facebook interest. So like for sale by owner interests, they’re going in through like Zillow and doing for sale by owner stuff. There’s a couple of different things when it comes to like, like debt consolidation or real repairs on your house as well as like overall lending purposes.

00:22:25:15 – 00:22:53:12

Brady

So you’re pickleball anymore.

00:22:53:12 – 00:23:20:18

JT

Yeah. And a lot of that is due to, you know, with all this changing that’s been going on in the real estate industry, specifically, there’s a lot more of like how we have to think that these people are showing motivation inside those interest categories and then combining that with the type of media and the type of copy that we’re using to really be like a hard trigger to filter people who are not going to be interested and filter those, that will be because Facebook is still an algorithm.

00:23:20:18 – 00:23:39:20

JT

I think a lot of people forget that. That’s really what we’re working with, is not, you know, we’re not in an auction like PPC where we can say these are the type of words we bought. This is how much we’re willing to pay for it. We’re with an algorithm. And that algorithm primarily focuses on one, how many impressions they’re able to get out of the audience that we’re running.

00:23:40:15 – 00:24:00:27

JT

So impressions being the ability to have your ad loaded to a cue, that’s when Facebook charges you. So it charges you per impression. It’s not per view, it’s not per click. And then second is it’s going to prioritize engagement. So we understand that we have a really good buy hard filter ad that when somebody is going to be interested, they’ll click it.

00:24:00:27 – 00:24:17:08

JT

They’re not at all going to be interested. They’d make sure that they go past it. Facebook recognizes that, and they’re going to start to understand who’s actually clicking. But the other thing they’re going to see is the more engagement we’re getting, they’re going to start to raise us up in the ranks on the feeds. So it’s costing us less money overall.

00:24:17:17 – 00:24:42:03

JT

That’s why a lot of people who only run ads for like 60 days, they don’t make any changes to it. They just publish an ad, they launch it, they don’t see any results versus somebody who runs it for, you know, 3 to 6 months and they’re in there making biweekly changes are going to see consistent deal flow. So that’s one of the reasons, just because the way that the platform has been made, you know, what we’re working with is very different than other ad platforms that you may be buying.

00:24:42:04 – 00:24:45:05

JT

Media.

00:24:45:05 – 00:25:40:15

Kiley

So one other quick thought there. So over the years, Facebook has made updates to what advertisers and marketers, what information we’re able to use to in our targeting. You know, there have been like you could use to target around lots of different things like income and and yeah well there’s lots of examples in there but as yeah some of that some of that you can still do but the the as Facebook has grown they’ve made updates to some of that and you know some of that is a win for consumer privacy and and those types of things because unfortunately there are bad actors out there that use information for discriminatory practices or whatever.

00:25:41:15 – 00:26:17:21

Kiley

But so part of what’s been so important, I, I started marketing specifically for real estate investors in 2016 and I had previous to that spent a lot of time marketing in other industries, spending several million dollars a year in Facebook ads. And what what I found is any time Facebook makes a change, we we just have to be willing and ready to go in and make a couple of adjustments and continue to test and optimize, kind of like JT was saying.

00:26:17:21 – 00:26:40:11

Kiley

So if one of our targeting, one of our interest based targeting got cut, then we’d go in and like JT said, we’d, we’d have to get creative and say, okay, what else could we think about that might connect to that person? But in a, in a different way. And yeah, and so that’s what we, that’s what we can continue to do.

00:26:40:20 – 00:27:27:01

Kiley

And I think that’s what is difficult for people who aren’t investing the time or energy to know that or if they if they just have a really simplistic strategy, if something in that changes, it’s difficult for them to adapt right? Yeah, it’s.

00:27:33:14 – 00:27:52:17

JT

Yeah, yeah. We definitely talk a little bit about that. So when it comes to copy, typically, you know, what we’re doing here is we’re doing a lot of testing over and over again just because we really want to see what is getting the most valuable clicks. So there’s a couple different things that we do when we look at creating copy.

00:27:52:17 – 00:28:22:29

JT

So one is we’re looking at short form copy and we’re looking at long form copy. So we’re seeing what are going to be the differences between having just a short, you know, 1 to 2 sentence copy piece versus having something that’s, you know, 5 to 6 sentences. And then we’re also testing different things like adding in bit.ly links inside that copy, adding in emojis inside that copy, and then kind of switching out some of our our main triggers, which would be, you know, like get a cash offer or sell without paying for any fees or repairs.

00:28:24:02 – 00:28:52:04

JT

Right now, typically what we’re seeing and this kind of change is per market. So, you know, obviously you have to test and figure out what’s working for your audience. But a lot of what we’re seeing is kind of that that. Sure. And we’ve gone back to that shorter copy has been working really well with direct triggers, right, like hooks right at the beginning of sell your house without pay for a yell, fees, repairs on your home and things like that have been working really well.

00:28:52:04 – 00:29:07:29

JT

I think part of that is because of market shifts. So you do have to understand, you know, because that market people are starting to now realize the traditional real estate market right there, they’re usually about six months behind. They think they could get one thing for their home and that was six months ago, is what they could have sold it for.

00:29:07:29 – 00:29:28:00

JT

So they’re kind of in that point where they’re starting to realize it’s hard to sell a house. And so those things are starting to stand out a lot more and then add in some personal customized like situations or different things. So we always suggest to two people who are running their own ads or to our clients to give us stories that we can also include in those types of copy.

00:29:28:08 – 00:29:52:11

JT

That could be it’s like, you know, so and so, yeah, we help so-and-so move out of their house when they were, you know, facing foreclosure or, you know, whatever that situation might be to kind of give some more context to the person. So we’re testing all these different things inside these accounts to try to figure out what works for every single client, because really, that’s that’s what we’ve seen.

00:29:52:11 – 00:30:12:07

JT

The best way to do it is we look at those metrics and then we make decisions based off of that because it it’s going to change per person per area because everything’s based off of engagement. And in an area they could get different engagement than another using the same message. So and that would then hurt those ads in the area that’s not getting the engagement.

00:30:12:07 – 00:30:13:12

JT

So a lot of.

00:30:51:20 – 00:31:21:16

Kiley

Yeah, engagement matters. It’s part of the quality score that Facebook uses to determine an ads relevance. So Facebook keeps a pretty tight lid on exactly what that recipe looks like of how important eat. At one point I had I got access to this internal spreadsheet from Facebook that had like a weighting system of, you know, abuse complaints, comments, etc., But it’s old enough now.

00:31:21:16 – 00:31:54:00

Kiley

I don’t I think it’s probably no longer relevant, but so the quick answer is engagement matters because if Facebook feels like the ad is engaging, they’re going to show it to more people. I you know, I think it’s important to take a step back and think about what is Facebook’s overall goal, their overall goal is to keep us users on the platform as long as possible so that they can show more ads to us, so that they can they can charge advertisers for showing those ads.

00:31:54:00 – 00:32:16:19

Kiley

Right. So if Facebook thinks an ad is going to help with that, then they’re going to they’re going to continue to show that that that is in combination with Facebook’s algorithm looking at who’s most likely to take the action that you want. So we strongly, strongly recommend that anyone running Facebook ads is paying attention to the engagement on their ad.

00:32:17:05 – 00:32:38:19

Kiley

And that’s important for a couple of reasons. One is if if someone comments and then you engage with them, it continues to feed that also just from a from a like social psychology perspective, if the ad has engagement on it and they can see you engaging, that’s going to encourage more engagement and it’s going to create some social proof as well.

00:32:39:15 – 00:33:00:00

Kiley

And then the last you know, the other one would be there’s a good chance you’ll get someone that comments something on there that is like you could see it skews negative. So it’s something like, Oh, yeah, yeah, right, I’ll sell you my house and you’ll give me pennies on the dollar. Or I bet this is a scam or something like that.

00:33:00:13 – 00:33:21:23

Kiley

And the opportunity there is twofold. One is to feed that engagement out that that that side of the algorithm on engagement by responding to that person. But the second part of that is you get an opportunity to answer that person’s question and explain and other people are going to see that. So we will get comments like that is an opportunity.

00:33:21:23 – 00:33:48:28

Kiley

It’s an opportunity for you to jump in there and say, hey, you know, totally understand what you’re saying. What we offer is isn’t best for everyone, but for some people it’s a great. So whatever you’re going to say, you know, whatever your your pitch is there. And and the only time I’d ever hide a comment is if it was just like, totally spam or like really belligerent or something, you know, other than that, take that opportunity to engage, have that conversation.

00:33:49:04 – 00:34:00:27

Kiley

Facebook has become much different than it was originally, but it’s still a social platform, right? It’s it’s intended to connect people again because they want us to stay on there as long as possible.

00:34:01:16 – 00:35:28:25

Brady

At Yeah.

00:35:28:25 – 00:35:47:18

JT

Yeah. There’s a you know, I think Gary came out with this. I want to say like six months ago he released this where he was like his entire ad strategy was changing to you. First start organic and see what gets the best. Like proof that it would work and then take that style of ad and run it as a paid out.

00:35:48:24 – 00:36:13:15

JT

And you know, something that we can sell our clients with is is similar in the sense that we’re trying to get very transparent and honest content. So things like face to face videos, talking about situations in which they’re helping sellers, you don’t have to have the seller with you. You can I think that’s great what you do. But instead of just getting like a review from the seller that says, Yeah, it was great, you know, they bought my house for cash, that’s good.

00:36:13:15 – 00:36:43:08

JT

But you can go even better and you could talk about situation and give give those details. They’re a little bit more intimate, transparent and honest. And oftentimes that’s going to attract an even more motivated person because they connect with those things. Yeah. When you talk about someone struggling through foreclosure and that you able to stop it, you know, two weeks before they lost their house had all this damage done to their credit, all of these, you know, negatives and you’re like, but they put cash in their pocket.

00:36:43:08 – 00:37:09:19

JT

They’re able we were able to to arrange it so that they could leave on their timeline. And, you know, now they’re off in a better place all of a sudden, like that’s going to appeal way more to somebody. So I you know, that’s a big thing where video is really starting to come back is content. You had a switched couple of years, like probably about a year or two back switch to images again because they changed that some of the rules around how much headlines you can have on images.

00:37:09:19 – 00:37:22:29

JT

So everyone went back to advertising images, but now we’re back to videos. And those type of stories are just mixing really well with videos. So that would definitely be something that we would suggest to all of our clients and anyone who’s doing their.

00:37:22:29 – 00:38:11:02

Brady

Own Facebook ads.

00:38:11:02 – 00:38:30:03

JT

Yeah. And it changing your the way that you run your ads to you. I mean, one thing that we do is we use dynamic, creative, and that helps a lot in how we’re actually running and operating these ads and figure out what’s working best because we’re not having to do so much split test, which can test great because it gives you a definitive answer.

00:38:30:03 – 00:38:54:04

JT

But oftentimes you could spend more money in trying to find the answer than it is worth it, because then you have to test again and again and again. Whereas when you’re running dynamic creative tests that automatically that basically the your budget is shifting towards what’s actually getting the engagement. And so we can keep adding to that test over and over and over again, proving the results and getting the best options that can be in that ad.

00:38:54:14 – 00:39:13:00

JT

So that’s another thing I think a lot of people kind of forget about is is using dynamic, creative.

00:39:13:00 – 00:39:41:27

Kiley

I guess this whole everything I’ve said on this podcast was written by chatty people. I I’m just typing it in as you guys see it. And I’m like, okay, you know, it’s interesting than like a chat. GPT it I mean, air is powerful and it’s going to, it’s going to change things for sure. I, I don’t know to what level or how good it will get.

00:39:41:27 – 00:40:11:18

Kiley

I mean, as of right now, I think the best way that someone listening to this podcast could leverage chat would be to grab some ad copy that you that you’ve seen that that you thought was good and go in and you have to work with chat, you have to prompt it a little bit but basically have it write some variations of that and, and then I would and I’ve used this to do that, right?

00:40:11:20 – 00:40:30:23

Kiley

I for me, one of the best values of Chatty Betty right now is like my first draft of a lot of things because then I can take it and I can kind of iterate it and make sure that my personality is still in there or the personality of the brand and the customer that we’re working with. But if you’re just like, Man, I need I need some help coming up.

00:40:30:23 – 00:40:54:26

Kiley

Like, I don’t even know where to start. Just you could go to chat GPT and say, write an ad for a real estate investor on Facebook that wants to buy a house that is in foreclosure. Whatever. Yeah. And just let chat, chat, start, start going to work for you. I think that’s probably the best way that someone could use it right now.

00:40:54:26 – 00:42:10:07

Kiley

I think in the future we’ll see tools that are built that allow us to and some of this already exists a little bit, but where we can feed it content that we’ve written in the past so that it will get better at writing things in in our style, which, you know, that that then makes the output even more powerful.

00:42:10:07 – 00:42:11:10

JT

Actually, a couple of them.

00:42:11:26 – 00:42:13:09

Kiley

I’m not sure which one.

00:42:14:12 – 00:42:15:04

Brady

I.

00:42:15:04 – 00:42:15:29

Kiley

I, I don’t think I.

00:42:15:29 – 00:42:16:27

JT

Have that one.

00:42:17:13 – 00:43:03:21

Brady

Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:43:03:21 – 00:43:51:09

Kiley

It’s interesting and it’s important to remember that this, these things are language models. So what they’re designed to do is to mirror language that they’ve been taught to provide a response or an answer. So what that, what they’re not necessarily designed to do is to follow a logical decision making process to reach the conclusions that they reach. So if you’re going to use it to discover information or to write information, there’s there’s definitely a chance that some of that information is not accurate because its goal and it’s going to it’s going to take what what you’ve it with into consideration as well.

00:43:51:09 – 00:44:33:00

Kiley

So this is a whole nother like a whole nother interesting conversation. But there’s there are people now called prompt Engineers and their their role is to learn how to ask the AI the right questions in the right way to get the right kind of response. Pretty fascinating. I yeah, it is right now it’s yeah, for sure. I think I just want to say one of the things so why is that?

00:44:33:00 – 00:45:04:26

Kiley

I don’t know what the future looks like. I think I will get I think we will see all over in the marketing world. So there will be aspects of, of mining jobs that that get taken over by AI. But I think what will always remain is the need for the human empathy of understanding who you’re talking to, what their problem is, and how you can connect with them and and present your solution to them.

00:45:04:26 – 00:45:33:23

Kiley

And and that is, I mean, at the core, the the specifics of marketing change dramatically. You know, I mean, I can imagine the way we feel about AI right now is probably how people felt when TV was invented or the radio is going like, whoa, this changes everything. And but the principles of good marketing remain, which is you got to understand who you’re talking to.

00:45:33:23 – 00:46:30:28

Kiley

You got to you got to understand their need and you got to speak to it. And if you provide value to them, then they’ll be interested in engaging with you or talking to you.

00:46:30:28 – 00:47:14:19

Brady

Yeah, yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

00:47:16:05 – 00:48:02:03

Kiley

Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s yeah. I mean, that the reality is we crave connection as human beings where, you know, call us pack animals. We crave that connection. And, and so I certainly think as we get more and more digitized, I mean, there are studies now that show that even though we have tools that connect us better than ever before, like on average, we’re lonelier and feel more isolated than, you know, generations before us.

00:48:02:03 – 00:48:20:27

Kiley

So I think I think there’s there’s got there’s some truth in there for sure that people crave that connection. And and and there’s there’s always that opportunity to be a real person that’s interested in really connecting with people and really solving problems.

00:48:20:27 – 00:48:55:21

Brady

Yeah. Hmm.

00:48:55:21 – 00:49:26:06

Kiley

Yeah. I mean, I got a couple and then I’m sure JT might too, but this might sound really, really basic, but it’s so critical and we see people miss it, which is just make sure that you are investing the time to set things up correctly. So if you don’t put your pixel on the website and set up your conversion event correctly, then your waste, your waste a lot of money on Facebook, you might still get some leads, but it won’t be feeding that.

00:49:26:06 – 00:50:03:07

Kiley

It won’t be feeding your pixel data. You won’t necessarily know where they’re coming from. So you got to you got to make sure you have that that setup done well. And then the other thing I would say is, well, yes, but that’s only part of it. So when you set up a Facebook ad, you’re going to put your pixel on your website, but then you’re going to have something on your website.

00:50:03:08 – 00:50:42:12

Kiley

Tell that Pixel that the conversion event that you’re looking for happened. So like on a carrot Web site, when someone clicks, submit on, you know, enter my property address or whatever, they click submit and then it takes them to that next page. Your pixel data should be telling Facebook that that person took action. And the reason that matters is the pixel is looking to see if your ad is getting the action that you want it to have one so they know whether it’s relevant to people and to so they know how to continually optimize that, to show that to the right people.

00:50:42:12 – 00:51:17:09

Kiley

So if your pixel is not configured correctly, you’ll see like a little you’ll see little errors in Facebook. That’s like, Hey, the pixel is not getting any data for this conversion event and that that impacts that impacts the algorithms ability to like build and gain like flywheel momentum so that. Oh that’s right. That’s right. Yep, that’s right. And then and then like you said, yes, you can retarget that traffic which is, which is super awesome and you should be doing that.

00:51:17:15 – 00:51:24:17

Kiley

But yeah, you’ve got to have that conversion piece set up correctly.

00:51:24:17 – 00:51:48:26

JT

Well I was gonna say that to test I think, I think a lot of people, you know, we kind of mentioned you have to give it the time and part of that is just consistently testing. Don’t ever think that just because you know you find something that works that you can just stop because we’re talking about a platform that changes all the time and change it, you know, changes as your results are coming in.

00:51:48:27 – 00:52:08:15

JT

So you start having something you never want to just like all a sudden enter into something slow because you haven’t been staying up all on your changes. So just consistently testing, keeping a beat, the alchemy, keeping a feel on the beat of the of the market as well, like not just in real estate but on the Facebook ads side of things.

00:52:08:15 – 00:52:16:05

JT

Just understanding what you need to do to stay on top of it. What the algorithms feeding and now help you be more successful.

00:52:17:08 – 00:52:26:13

Brady

Yeah, yeah.

00:52:30:28 – 00:52:32:03

JT

Yeah. Just just I.

00:52:32:03 – 00:53:14:16

Kiley

Mean, the answer is yes. Yeah. We test. I mean, from a visual, creative perspective, we test so many different variations. You know, we have text on the images. What color is the text, What size is it, where is it located? Does the text have a shadow on it? So you can. Yeah, the answer is yes. Test. And, and we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but I think the other piece I’d add, maybe just as a little bit of a repeat is really consider what you want to invest time and money wise and that will help you decide the best way to approach it.

00:53:16:12 – 00:53:43:09

Kiley

If you are going to put the time in to learning how to do it yourself. That’s why JT said it’s totally doable. There’s lots of education out there. In fact, we we have a course that’s available in the current marketplace that basically teaches everything that we know and do on a Facebook account. It’s several hours long. So it takes it takes commitment to to want to do that.

00:53:43:09 – 00:54:10:26

Kiley

And then part of what we’ve realized over time, you know, I’ve been doing I’ve been doing Facebook ads forever, but specifically for real estate investors since 2016 and what I realized is a lot of people who want to do DIY, they fit really well into the analogy I gave earlier, which is they want to be ripped, but they’re not quite ready to really do everything that they need to do to get ripped.

00:54:10:26 – 00:54:50:20

Kiley

And so we see people jump into that and then they hit some hurdles, they hit some difficulties and they kind of bail and they go our Facebook ads don’t work. Or I you know, I’m going to I’m going to move on. And we’re actually really excited about about this. BRADY We because of that feedback, we we’ve been really thinking about how do we make something that people who are not ready for management either because their budget is a little bit smaller or maybe their personality is such that they’re like, I don’t want to hire someone, What?

00:54:50:22 – 00:55:24:06

Kiley

How can we help them get into Facebook ads in a way that they can be more successful long term? So we’ve created a dashboard software tool where we’ve taken all of our best performing ads and prebuilt campaigns with all of our and everything that we would normally use. And basically people can run Facebook ads with three or four clicks and run everything through through this dashboard.

00:55:24:18 – 00:55:54:11

Kiley

And it’s because part of what part of what’s hard about Facebook marketing is learning how to use ads manager. It’s Facebook ads, managers. I mean, you get in there, it’s a little bit overwhelming. It’s a little bit intimidating. Yeah. So we’ve we’ve we’ve got a tool now that that takes all of that and puts it into like a super simple dashboard where you’re just like, you’re, you’re cooking and you’re toggling things on and off and this is the way I think about it.

00:55:54:11 – 00:56:26:11

Kiley

So to come back to my other analogy about about food hiring an agency is like hiring a personal chef. DIY is like doing it all yourself. So you’re coming up with the meal plan, you’re going to the grocery store, you’re buying all the groceries, you’re chopping it all up, you’re cooking it, you’re and this, this, this, this new tool is like hellofresh or Blue Apron, where someone who knows the the professionals are preparing everything for you there.

00:56:26:11 – 00:56:51:22

Kiley

Do a minute to your doorstep and all you have to do is a couple of steps and then you’re eating. Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s it’s not a perfect analogy. I mean, because really it’s like. I mean, it would be like if all you had to do with the hellofresh was put it in the microwave, you know. Yeah.

00:56:51:25 – 00:57:49:00

Kiley

That’s, that’s how easy it is. So as of, as of today when we’re recording this we are in beta and we have a handful of people in already and are accepting just a limited, a limited few more. If you’re interested in that, you can go to go dot Silver street marketing dot com slash beta. And by the time when this podcast airs, if we’ve come out of beta, we will redirect that link to get you where you need to go.

00:57:49:00 – 00:57:49:18

Kiley

Thanks, Brady.

00:57:50:03 – 00:58:16:19

JT

Thanks. Out of this.

00:00:00:03 – 00:00:22:15

Tony Javier

And so first month I spent three grand and made 35 my first month and was off to the races from there. And over the years I’ve told people that I do TV, you know, high level masterminds I’ve been a part of. And every mastermind that joined there was either zero people doing TV or there might have been one out of like 100 plus high level real estate investors.

00:00:23:03 – 00:00:35:22

Tony Javier

And I wish I had won back then that I had a gold mine for other real estate investors. I would have started, you know, helping people dinner.

00:00:35:22 – 00:00:56:13

Brady Winder

Hey, friends, welcome back to the Kirkus Podcast. I’m your host breadwinner and this is the podcast where we help you dial in your marketing and help you build businesses of freedom and impact. I’ve got our guests with us today, Mr. Tony Javier, a.k.a. the TV guy who happens to be a very good, close longtime friend of Trevor Mark, our co-host and CEO.

00:00:56:21 – 00:01:07:06

Brady Winder

And so I’m really excited for you guys to get to meet him and talk all about TV today. Why it’s an awesome marketing channel and get into the nitty gritty. And so, Tony, I hear the podcast, man, How are you?

00:01:07:18 – 00:01:15:00

Tony Javier

Really good, man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Driver And I’ve been talking a while about putting this together of being on the podcast, so I’m glad to be here.

00:01:15:00 – 00:01:36:27

Brady Winder

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so we don’t do a lot with offline marketing, you know, most podcasts, online marketing and but I think out of the past 400 episodes, we’ve done maybe one or two on radio. I don’t think we’ve done a single one on TV. So this is going to be really valuable. I think it’s it’s one of those topics where the investors just don’t know enough about it.

00:01:36:27 – 00:01:54:11

Brady Winder

And so our goal with this conversation is I want to learn, you know, is this right for me? Is TV something that I should try? And if so, then when? And how do I go about it with without losing a bunch of money? Because I’m sure that’s probably what people are thinking is like, Oh, is this going to be a massive investment?

00:01:54:11 – 00:02:02:24

Brady Winder

Is it a big risk? And so that’s what we’re going to answer. But Tony, how did you how did you get started in TV? What that look like?

00:02:03:08 – 00:02:21:15

Tony Javier

Yeah, before I tell that, that’s actually a good point. Most people, when they think about real estate investing, don’t think about TV, which makes it perfect, which, you know, so. So there’s a lot less competition. So people, when they think about TV, first of all, they don’t think about TV with real estate investing. If they do think about TV, they think it’s too expensive.

00:02:21:15 – 00:02:40:10

Tony Javier

They think their business is not big enough and they don’t know where to start. There’s a lot of intricacies of TV that if you don’t do it right, you can waste a lot of money. So that makes the competition almost I don’t want to say nothing, but when I started ten years ago was pretty much nothing. So. So we’ll start there.

00:02:40:10 – 00:02:56:19

Tony Javier

So ten years ago, I was actually at a poker game. It was a friend of a friend. I went down to his basement and I noticed this guy and he was on TV. He was a he had a TV commercial. And so I kind of got like a little star struck. It was kind of weird, you know? It’s like, Oh, this guy’s on TV.

00:02:56:19 – 00:03:16:07

Tony Javier

Like, you know, he’s you know, you think they’re unapproachable or they’re kind of like this celebrity status kind of thing. But I just started talking to him and I say, Hey, you know, I’ve seen you on TV, just small talk. I’m like, How’s that commercial doing for you? He’s like, his eyes just lit up and he’s like, We do $2 million a year in business off of that TV commercial.

00:03:16:07 – 00:03:34:03

Tony Javier

And that’s all the marketing we do. And I was fascinated. I’m like, Wow, that’s crazy. And so I started dream about it. I wasn’t even thinking about me being on TV, really. And he goes, You know what? I’m going to connect you with my media guy. Maybe drive your business. And I was like, Oh, okay. And so maybe me.

00:03:34:03 – 00:03:51:28

Tony Javier

I called him first thing Monday morning and his name is Drew. And I said, Hey, I heard you got Channel on TV and you’re doing pretty well for him. He’s like, Yeah, Chad’s a great account. And so he learned about my business and he comes back to me and he’s like, I can get you hundreds of commercials for X amount of dollars.

00:03:51:28 – 00:04:13:21

Tony Javier

Pretty low ad spend. It’s about 3000 bucks. And so ran my first month where I was on within 30 days. I did the scripts. I did all the back end buying the negotiations with the stations. He made it super easy for me. And so first month I spent three grand and made 35 my first month and was off to the races from there.

00:04:14:03 – 00:04:33:28

Tony Javier

And over the years I’ve told people that I do TV, you know, high level masterminds. I’ve been a part of. And every mastermind that joined there was either zero people doing TV or there might have been one out of like 100 plus high level real estate investors. And I wish I did one back then that I had a gold mine for other real estate investors.

00:04:33:28 – 00:04:56:01

Tony Javier

I would have started, you know, helping people sooner. So a couple of years ago, I about two and a half years ago, a good friend of mine who is in the real estate space was like, Why don’t you show people what you’re doing? And I’m like, you know, I don’t know if it’s going to work in every market, and I don’t know if people will get results as fast as I can.

00:04:56:01 – 00:05:15:04

Tony Javier

And that’s the other thing about TV is people think it’s just branding and that it takes 6 to 12 months to get results. Right? Right. So for me, it was month one. And so when I watch this, I reached out to about ten people I knew that were in the real estate space. Eight ever raised their hand and said, Yes, I’ll do it.

00:05:15:18 – 00:05:32:23

Tony Javier

So I told them, Hey, I’ll do the production, but I have eight scripts that I know that worked well for me. I’ll put together the scripts. My media guy will go to the stations, negotiate the rates for you within 30 days. We can get you on air. So out of the eight, I think six are still running with me or about two years later.

00:05:33:04 – 00:05:57:25

Tony Javier

And results were quick, were almost every single one of them. And it was just it just blew my mind. So then that was a soft launch and I’m like, okay, I’ve got something here. So we launched it officially next month, I think will be officially two years that we have been helping real estate investors and we have over 100 real estate investors running with us right now and they’re just crushing it.

00:05:57:25 – 00:06:14:10

Tony Javier

I mean, we when we get someone on air, there’s not much competition out there. It builds a ton of credibility for them. It helps other forms of marketing. I’ll get into the benefits here in a little bit, but it’s it’s one of those things that right off the bat, for almost every single one of our clients, is producing a really good return.

00:06:14:10 – 00:06:24:00

Tony Javier

So I’m super stoked about TV and I’ve got plans for all kinds of other ideas with, with TV commercials. But that’s kind of what we’re doing now. And that’s how I got started with TV.

00:06:24:18 – 00:06:39:11

Brady Winder

Well, thanks for Sherman. Yeah, that’s wild that it? Our work in the first month for you. So I got a few questions before we jump into the benefits here. I got a few questions that are really burning I’m just really curious about. And one of them I was going to ask you is like, what’s the biggest misconception about TV?

00:06:39:27 – 00:06:55:03

Brady Winder

I’m guessing that might be the one is that people think it’s a long term thing is that in my head I’m thinking, okay, this is like billboards. This is your your airplane coverage. We call on marketing or it’s just brand awareness over months. Would you say that’s one of the bigger misconceptions or misunderstandings?

00:06:55:13 – 00:07:21:03

Tony Javier

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 100%. You know, when again, when I started TV commercials, I was hoping I would produce right away and I was like, you know what? I’ll give it a few months. And, you know, if I even break even that, you know, it’ll be okay. But I Tenix my money in the first month and it was like, holy crap, like, and, and then again when we launched it, I was like, man, I really hope if, if it takes 3 to 6 months for our clients, about some of them will wait out for that.

00:07:21:18 – 00:07:41:21

Tony Javier

But I would say, I mean we don’t have an exact statistic on this, but I would say about 75% of our clients are doing at least three deals their first month that we get them on TV right now. And that’s and that’s just the first month. So imagine I’ve been on TV for ten years now. They’re my vitamins, someone that saw me ten years ago.

00:07:42:07 – 00:08:02:23

Tony Javier

But and it was it’s been I’ve been in in their head like for ten years and finally the ready to sell today right so it’s it’s one of those things that again it’s it’s a blue ocean when I ask someone like how many people are in your market doing TV, usually they’re like, oh, there’s one guy doing it or Oh, I know a couple of guys doing it.

00:08:03:04 – 00:08:29:20

Tony Javier

But if you say, you know, do you know who else is doing direct mail? That’s like, yeah, I’ve got, you know, ten other people that send to the same list that I do. Right? So that’s, I think that’s, you know, there’s so many different reasons. TV work but works. But I, I think just, you know, people thinking that it’s too expensive, it’s going to take a long time to get results and even if I even if you say, hey, TV works, it’s like, where do you start?

00:08:29:20 – 00:08:45:18

Tony Javier

What stations do you call? Which shows are you on? What’s the scripting like? There’s so many different pieces to the puzzle that if you get, you know, you get one or two wrong, you might, you know, you might still do. Okay. But if you have no idea what you’re doing and you’re wrong, the wrong shows that right there is going to wipe out.

00:08:45:18 – 00:08:59:03

Tony Javier

If your message isn’t clear, concise, that’s going to wipe you out. If your call to action isn’t clear enough and people don’t understand what you do, you’re going to waste your money, right? So there’s just a lot of different things that you have to put together in order in order to make it work.

00:08:59:25 – 00:09:12:09

Brady Winder

Yeah, and that’s probably what makes people so skeptical or nervous to jump into it. It’s like, you know, if if I mess up, you know, one, two, three, these things, it’s, you know, you can easily lose a lot of money.

00:09:12:26 – 00:09:31:19

Tony Javier

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because like with direct mail and, you know, PPC and Facebook, like, you can find so many people that can do that for you, right? I mean, you can go online right now with TV, there’s no one really that, that, that talks about TV for real estate investing and and where they go to to to make it happen.

00:09:32:21 – 00:09:57:27

Brady Winder

Yeah absolutely I’m remembering a we had a carry camp a few months back and kid shows up he awesome kid a lot of drive a lot of ambition and he was pretty new to investing It was primarily wholesaling and he says, Yeah, I just did my first deal a few months ago and like every dollar he made, you know, passed his basic living expenses was just dump it right back into marketing.

00:09:58:11 – 00:10:14:15

Brady Winder

And he’s like, Yeah, I’m doing this. This names like five marketing methods. He’s like, Yeah, I dumped about 20 grand into TV last month. We’ll see how it goes. So like I was working for, he’s like, I don’t know. Yeah, we’ll find out. Oh, man, it’s like, like unsupervised. I’m pretty sure he went direct to the station. That’s like, Hey, I want to buy some.

00:10:14:15 – 00:10:19:20

Brady Winder

Is some air coverage. Like, just go. So, yeah, we want to avoid that So and that’s it.

00:10:19:20 – 00:10:41:01

Tony Javier

And it’s interesting you say 20 grand because there’s very few markets that you need to spend even near 20 grand a month. Right. So if you even if you call the stations directly, they’re going to do probably what they did to him and say, yeah, we’ve got a package here. It’s 20 grand, we’re going to get you 100 commercials a month and here’s what you’re going to be on.

00:10:41:02 – 00:11:00:00

Tony Javier

Right? And so we we’ve had clients come to us that have either done that or got their proposal, didn’t quite pull the trigger yet and said, what do you think about this? And we’re like, okay, so we can actually do it for ten grand a month or less. And instead of 100 commercials, we can get you 500 to 600 commercials.

00:11:00:13 – 00:11:18:03

Tony Javier

And the shows that they’re putting you on are not your demographic, because we know what our demographic is, because we have dialed it in over the last ten years. Right? So ID say we save our clients just tons of money and tons of time trying to figure it out themselves just because we’ve done it so many times.

00:11:19:03 – 00:11:35:10

Brady Winder

Yeah, you’re taking out the trial and error, the costly trial and error. So tell us, Tony, what are some of the what are some of the benefits of TV? A sort a boring way to phrase the question, what makes TV different than, you know, cold calling, direct mail, the other lead sources.

00:11:35:11 – 00:11:37:02

Tony Javier

What makes TV sexy? Basically.

00:11:37:23 – 00:11:39:10

Brady Winder

What makes TV’s sexy.

00:11:40:03 – 00:11:59:19

Tony Javier

So he be a sexy because there’s many live events for TV, but I’ll just narrow it down to to a few. So first of all, the credibility factor, I mean, think about it. If I say Lucky Charms manager magically delicious, right? You know what that is? If you go to the aisles in the stores, you see Lucky Charms, you know what it is, right?

00:12:00:01 – 00:12:14:29

Tony Javier

And it’s because of TV, because they brand TV. So and I don’t even know if that if that commercial runs anymore, but it’s still in my head and I still if I go to the grocery store, I’m still going to know that that brand to go to. If I want something with marshmallow and you know flavor, right? Yeah.

00:12:15:01 – 00:12:44:03

Tony Javier

The credibility factor. Like, you know, people in Wichita, like so many people have reached out to me wanting, you know, wanting to do business with me or lend money to me or, you know, when I when I used to do acquisitions. I live in San Diego now. My business, I mean, the markets, Wichita run, run TV and I haven’t been there in seven years, but when I ran the leads and I go out to the house, they’d be like, Oh, wow, you’re actually in my house, you know?

00:12:44:12 – 00:12:52:24

Tony Javier

And it’s like they have this perception of you like like you’re a star. Kind of like I did with that. You know, they got Chad back when I was at that poker game right?

00:12:52:24 – 00:12:54:06

Brady Winder

Yeah, Celebrity factor.

00:12:54:06 – 00:13:23:12

Tony Javier

Celebrity factor. So the credibility by itself is worth it. Even if you didn’t get a return of a dollar return on your direct money, just the credibility factor, one is probably worth it. Right? So that’s that’s prime number one. Actually, these are no particular order, to be honest. But yeah, this kind of kind of thrown him out there and I you know the second I’ve already mentioned little to no competition you know you you go and you do direct mail, you do PPC, you do you know these are the marketing method.

00:13:23:12 – 00:13:43:09

Tony Javier

You’re competing with dozens and dozens of other real estate investors, whereas with TV there might be one or two other guys on TV maybe, and most of the markets you’re in there are you’re hitting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. So if you have even if you had 5 to 10 people on TV, it probably still there’s still be enough deals to go around.

00:13:43:25 – 00:14:05:22

Tony Javier

So the fact that there’s not as much competition. Right. And then the obvious is the r y, you know, most of our clients that we get on TV are getting a 5 to 10 x return, and that’s just do from there directly from their ad spend. That’s not including all the other benefits that TV has access trackable or ROI directly to them right from the TV ads.

00:14:05:22 – 00:14:28:17

Tony Javier

So if they’re spending, you know, seven grand a month, they’re getting 35 to potentially 70 grand back in return. And then we have some clients that are in some smaller markets that are getting a ton of commercials where TV is just like crazy and they’re getting like a 20 times plus return. So the ROI is is is definitely there, the automation to it.

00:14:28:24 – 00:14:54:00

Tony Javier

So you get a set of get it set up right, which hopefully we help you do. You don’t have to worry about it. It’s like a set it and forget it. You know, you know we’ve over the years, let’s see, we’ve been on for ten years now. I think we’ve done probably 12, maybe 15 commercial variations and the longest time we ran TV without changing it is 18 months.

00:14:54:01 – 00:15:10:06

Tony Javier

So we literally had the same ad running for 18 months, producing the same. The only range that the reason I change it was because of the pandemic. And I tried a different script. They would actually work a little bit better and that’s the only reason I change it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have I would I would have just kept it running.

00:15:10:06 – 00:15:37:08

Tony Javier

So I just wanted a fresh stand up and and in that kind of thing and ended up working well. So and then the fact that this is probably the biggest thing, if someone comes to me and they’re like, okay, I’m doing direct mail, I’m doing PPC, I’m doing what’s another one, Facebook, right? If they’re even doing one of those methods, I know that TV is going to help those efforts.

00:15:37:08 – 00:16:02:03

Tony Javier

So if they’re like, I’m getting a5x return on my direct mail, I, I can guarantee it, but I, I pretty certain that that r y is going to go up. In fact, I stopped direct mail, let’s see, probably three or four years ago just because it got so saturated. But I kept telling my clients, okay, when you’re on TV, make sure you but as seen on TV, on your website and anything else you can think of.

00:16:02:26 – 00:16:28:18

Tony Javier

So clients start coming back to me are like, Man, my direct mail has gotten way better response as I started putting that and people would be like, I called you from your direct mail piece because you’re on TV. So I went, Wow, okay. So I started back, but back up direct mail. Last year we put seen on TV with a with a screenshot of our commercial and our direct mail was just exponentially better than than it was five years ago.

00:16:28:18 – 00:16:52:15

Tony Javier

And there’s probably even more competition now. So the fact that it helps other forms of marketing, if you’re doing other marketing, is is a huge benefit in itself. Like I said, you know, like I said, if, if you know you get direct to are better results from your other forms of marketing, even if you don’t make a dollar on your TV directly, it’s still going to be worth it.

00:16:52:15 – 00:17:09:02

Tony Javier

But luckily the results are typically there on the ROIC. So and I could go on and on and on about benefits. You know, it’s helped me raise private money. I’ve had, you know, people reach out to me for certain things where we’ve created relationships. People treat you differently when you’re on TV. There’s just so many different benefits of TV.

00:17:09:02 – 00:17:10:09

Tony Javier

I could I could keep you on.

00:17:11:02 – 00:17:34:03

Brady Winder

Yeah, Well, and that’s, you know, it’s huge, that credibility factor. You’re talking about how, you know, your direct mail response rate is going up just by having that as seen on TV thing on there, because it just your credibility goes through the roof. And I think that’s the beauty of it. Plus, you know, care coupled with offline marketing methods, is that it just amplifies everything else that you’re already doing.

00:17:34:06 – 00:17:52:15

Brady Winder

And so, you know, when people get your direct mail and people see your TV ad, they’re going to your website. When you have them all tied together, it works really well. It’s not it’s not just I mean, yeah, you’re you’re getting 5 to 10 ROI on the TV, but it’s more than that because it’s boosting everything else with it.

00:17:52:15 – 00:18:04:04

Brady Winder

I got I got a few questions. I got a lot of questions for you. You mentioned 10 to 20 ROI in some of the smaller markets. Why? Why would TV be working better in the smaller markets?

00:18:04:20 – 00:18:34:07

Tony Javier

Well, you have to look at the multiple, right? So we you know, let’s say you’re spending seven grand a month in a market and you make a hundred grand, Right. That’s about a 15 times return on investment if you spend the same amount of money or let’s see, let’s I’m trying to do some math here. So let’s say you you spend 15 grand in a bigger market and you make 100 grand.

00:18:34:07 – 00:18:44:11

Tony Javier

That’s a six times return. You’re you’re not making that much more money, but your return is that much higher in that smaller market because of your lower ad spend, if that makes sense.

00:18:44:25 – 00:18:47:07

Brady Winder

So it’s because less competition?

00:18:47:29 – 00:19:07:16

Tony Javier

No, just because the way the numbers work, you know, if you spend an extra thousand dollars a month and you make an extra 20 from that, then that’s just the way the numbers work. Just because you earn more money doesn’t mean you’re going to multiply your your money as much. So you just have to make a lot more money When you start spending more money, that makes sense.

00:19:07:16 – 00:19:44:21

Tony Javier

So we’ve got clients that are spending you know, I throw out that seven grand because that’s typically what smaller markets are, and we’re getting hundreds of hundreds of commercials for that. And we have clients doing 100 to 200 grand a month, pretty consistent. Those clients, some of those clients are doing that number consistently in the returns. Right. And so if they were doing 100 to 200 grand with a $20,000 a month ad spend, they’re still making a lot of money, but they’re multiple is only like a five to I know what that is 5 to 725 and ten times return.

00:19:44:21 – 00:19:47:19

Tony Javier

Right. It’s still a lot of money, but it’s just the way the.

00:19:47:19 – 00:20:11:16

Brady Winder

Multiplex that makes sense. So you’ve thrown out some figures? Zero. You know, seven grand. Ten grand. We have some ideas. Baselines for what it might take to get started, depending on the size of your market. My question would be, is there an ideal time to get started? So like, when would you want to get started with marketing? It doesn’t sound like it’d be for the guy who’s brand new to investing.

00:20:12:22 – 00:20:31:06

Brady Winder

Are there any things you need to have dialed in? And then I’ll kind of piggyback that with like if there’s a good time to get started, Is there anything people are doing to is there anything you’re your best clients are doing to help it work? Really well, if that makes sense.

00:20:31:14 – 00:20:50:25

Tony Javier

I think the biggest thing is having a sales process because we can get the phone to ring. So we’ve had people come to us after like, you know, 90 days and they’re like, Man, we got 90 leads. We went on so many appointments and willing converted one or two. And I’m like, Those numbers just don’t work like that.

00:20:50:25 – 00:21:09:27

Tony Javier

That’s definitely not a lead problem. That’s a conversion problem. So we’ve kind of we’ve kind of dug into people’s sales process and and now now we help them with tracking their calls and recording them and, and things of that nature. And we realize those that are dialed in on their sales process, they’re making it work and they’re making it work really well.

00:21:10:18 – 00:21:37:06

Tony Javier

Those that less a few months later are like, we’re not getting the results we need. Most likely as their sales process. So you have I don’t know, we’ve probably helped 5 to 10 new investors with TV commercials and we’re pretty selective. So we did that for a reason. It’s either they already had successful business, they had already within a short amount of time done quite a few deals.

00:21:37:06 – 00:22:01:03

Tony Javier

We had a Division one college quarterback come to us and like, Dude, let me do this. I will make it work. And he ended up making like 50,000 boxes first month, you know, on TV. So there’s there’s people that we will allow in that are kind of newer investors. But what it comes down to is I don’t want to waste your money if you don’t have your sales brass dial dialed in, which, yeah, you’re answering the phone, you’re calling people back if you can.

00:22:01:12 – 00:22:12:09

Tony Javier

You’re getting out of the appointment as quick as possible. You’re getting a deal under contract as quickly as possible. Those that have that dialed in are doing really well, those that don’t and still do. Okay, but it’s not as likely.

00:22:13:15 – 00:22:29:04

Brady Winder

Hmm. Okay. That makes sense. Is there a is there a speed to lead factor with TV? You know, I mean, obviously like Google Pay per click, you got to be on it because they might have just filled out the past three floor forms and they’re hopping from website to website. Do you find that with TV or no?

00:22:29:11 – 00:22:59:18

Tony Javier

Well, I find that TV is a more forgiving lead now, mainly because when someone calls, it’s typically they’re on their couch, they’re maybe thinking about selling the next month or they have a piece of land they’re paying taxes on or whatever, and they see the commercial and they’re like, okay, I’m probably going to sell next month. Or, you know, whenever I’m thinking about selling or my mom is getting ready to go in a nursing home, whatever the case may be, they pick up the phone, what are they going to do?

00:22:59:19 – 00:23:23:06

Tony Javier

They’re going to call you, you answer the phone. You’re as long as the numbers work and you guys can make something work, you’re more likely to get the right. If someone calls you from the TV commercial, you don’t answer time goes by, they’re going to go, you know, maybe I’ll just go look up someone online. Right? But if you’re on the phone with them, like, yeah, I can get out by PM.

00:23:23:06 – 00:23:45:00

Tony Javier

I can get out tomorrow at 10 a.m.. Chance of them calling someone else is pretty slim, right? Because if they went online, who knows who they’re going to find. But if they called you from TV, they think you’re the they think you are the answer, right? You are the authority, You’re credible, you’re spending money on TV, you’re willing to put your face out there and you’re more likely to get that deal.

00:23:45:13 – 00:24:07:15

Tony Javier

The caveat is treat it like a PPC. Lee Right. I still tell my clients like, treat it like a PPC lead, Act like 20 other people are going out to that appointment. But luckily a decent portion of the time when someone calls from TV, you’re the only one they call, which is another benefit that I didn’t mention, because if you’re the only one that goes on that appointment, two things happen.

00:24:07:15 – 00:24:25:13

Tony Javier

One is more likely to get that deal too, is because you’re not competing with a bunch of different people. You’re more likely to get a better deal, right? Because if you’re good, if you have three people behind you or. Right, you right, they’re going to go everybody give me the you know, give me the highest and best offer.

00:24:25:22 – 00:24:47:18

Tony Javier

If you can get in front of them, convince them to sell. At that point, you’re more likely to get the deal. So I’ve had I’ve asked this question to many clients and asked them to compare and those that track it, of course. What is your problem for debt per deal from other marketing method compared to TV? And almost every one of them that tracks it says they make more money from TV deals per deal.

00:24:48:27 – 00:24:49:14

Tony Javier

Wow.

00:24:49:16 – 00:25:00:22

Brady Winder

Interesting. Do you know about what the give us a baseline of like maybe for your average size market of like cost per lead proffer per deal? I know that’s a loaded question, but.

00:25:01:24 – 00:25:25:01

Tony Javier

I hate talking about cost per lead because with TV you’re probably going to pay more per lead. But in another benefit we’re getting to, then I’m kind of leading to is you’re not getting as many tire kickers, right? So yeah, yeah. So like texting, cold calling, you’re going get a ton of tire kickers with Facebook. People just fill out the form because they have a house and they don’t they’re not necessarily serious about selling.

00:25:25:01 – 00:25:46:24

Tony Javier

Right. And so at TV, they’re taking the time. They’re sitting on the couch, they’re watching TV, They take the time to pick up the phone and dial you. They’re probably not a tire kicker. Right. So cost per lead, we try and get our clients statistics. We really try and get them to get those to us. But not everybody is good at getting them.

00:25:46:24 – 00:26:23:12

Tony Javier

But the ones that get it to us, we’ve seen it as low as 50 to $100 a lead where they’re spending a little bit in the market and they’re getting that big return. But there’s going to be some bigger markets where you’re spending more money, you’re getting less calls because maybe there’s more competition. But what’s interesting is the cost per lead doesn’t always correlate with the return on investment because we have some clients, their cost per liter really high, but the returns are really high because they’re not getting as many leads, but they’re higher quality and they’re converting them at the high level where they, you know, their average profit per deal may be 40

00:26:23:12 – 00:26:48:12

Tony Javier

grand, whereas someone that’s getting more leads their their average is 15, right? It’s also. Yeah. Yeah. And the r y is also going to be based it’s, you know, based on sales, but it’s also based on your exit strategy, right. If you’re wholesaling only making 10 to 15 grand compared to someone who might wholesale the same deal to make 20 to 30 compared to someone who may rehab that to make 60, that could skew the numbers quite a bit.

00:26:48:12 – 00:27:10:02

Tony Javier

So cost per lead could be anywhere from to answer your question, $50 to 1000 or maybe more. But it comes down to as I care about the ROI, I say if you can get it 2 to 3 times, ROI TV is still worth it because of all the other benefits you’re getting. But luckily most of our clients have seen a55 times return.

00:27:10:02 – 00:27:33:17

Brady Winder

Absolutely. And I feel the pain when I ask that question, like, tell me about cost relief, because without the context, everybody was like, Oh, now why would I want to pay that much for a lead if you don’t know? But I mean, I hear you because we see the same thing with CEO and we’ve you know, we’ve ran surveys with our members and we know that currently ads are about over seven and a half times more profitable than the non care leads.

00:27:33:27 – 00:27:47:25

Brady Winder

And it’s because it’s inbound like TV where they’re seeking you out or credibility or authority anyways, it’s just a whole different ballgame. And you’re you’re not sifting through all those tire kickers, like you said. So there’s definitely a lot of synergy there.

00:27:47:26 – 00:27:51:00

Tony Javier

Yeah, exactly right.

00:27:51:00 – 00:28:14:00

Brady Winder

So let’s talk about we’re about out of time here pretty soon, but I want to talk about some best practices real quick. So one of them you had mentioned was like when you’re doing direct mail, if you’re doing direct mail than on your website, but as seen on TV, you know, one other thing you do if you’re a carrier, remember, you use a campaign tracking links and you have people drive driven to your website.

00:28:14:00 – 00:28:28:13

Brady Winder

And that way you can know, okay, they came here through the TV ad, you could use a specific URL so you can track that more accurately or having you have any other best practices, whether it’s from scripting to, you know, getting started. The people might want to do.

00:28:30:11 – 00:28:57:27

Tony Javier

Best practices in general. I would say number one is the sales process as already mentioned. So I’m not going to go down that too much again, but just have your sales sales together, you know, answer the calls, tracking your leads properly, making sure you know, when you have a marketing channel. What what’s working. I think also having a just a bigger presence overall.

00:28:57:27 – 00:29:34:06

Tony Javier

So TV, if you did TV and that’s it, you can you can crush it and you can do really well, but some people are going to Google you. So having a, you know, a good SEO with with carrot or and or Google reviews, I think that’s the biggest thing that people will really take advantage of is getting a listing with your name so that when someone Googles your name, hopefully you come up, even if your SEO is not great and then getting as many reviews as you possibly can and try to make your Google Google listing as active as possible.

00:29:34:06 – 00:29:51:29

Tony Javier

So for us, when we have a listing and we, you know, we do pretty much all flips, we pause on everything we do. And so when we have something come up either for rent or for sale, we put it under our Google under Google profile, which helps with SEO. We get as many Google reviews as we possibly can.

00:29:51:29 – 00:30:10:24

Tony Javier

I think we have 110 120 at this point. We’re not as good right now as we thought we were when we tried to ramp when we ramp that up originally. But we’ve gotten so many comments on that, that one, when you go to our site, you see a ton of testimonial videos and then people also will mention, hey, we saw your Google reviews, you have a lot of reviews.

00:30:11:12 – 00:30:18:15

Tony Javier

So that’s another reason that we we decided to trust you when selling our house to you. So. Oh, wow.

00:30:18:19 – 00:30:24:29

Brady Winder

I think this is for your investing business, right? Not the not the TV business. Bridgerton reviews.

00:30:25:25 – 00:30:51:18

Tony Javier

Yeah, well, yeah, the the. So I had a digital marketing guy look at my home buying business, and he was managing my PPC, and he looked at my Google list and he’s like, You have these like 15 or 20 of your reviews at the time. He’s like, That’s okay. And you’re at a 3.8. So he’s like, There is a study that showed that every point one you have on your Google Review as far as stars are concerned.

00:30:51:18 – 00:31:16:00

Tony Javier

So for your 3.8, if you can get it to from 3.8 to 3.9, there’s a percentage too. And it was substantial. I can’t remember the number, but he’s like, if you can get it up from a three and even 3.8 to a four, it was like I don’t know, it was like a 50 to 100% increase in trust factor based on just that point one or point two and stars.

00:31:16:00 – 00:31:38:08

Tony Javier

And so and so I went in, I messaged everybody I could think of for about a week or two, and I said, Hey, we’ve done business together. You know, Did you want him to be credible? Right. They don’t necessarily have to be people. You bought their house, Hey, we’ve done business together. I’d love for you to give a character review about me and my business and and then we started going to sellers and sellers that were happy.

00:31:38:23 – 00:31:59:21

Tony Javier

And yeah, we got it up to 120 reviews, 4.6 stars, I think. So. Imagine. Imagine comparing those two businesses, someone who has a 3.8 star with 20 reviews compared to 120 reviews. It’s 4.5 stars. Who are you going to trust right? I mean, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and for me, I don’t like to do business with anybody that’s under four stars.

00:32:00:25 – 00:32:17:09

Brady Winder

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that’s a good point, because it’d be, you know, like we were talking about earlier in the podcast, you know, it’d be easy to go into TV without the right guy guidance and miss some of those critical things to where you could easily blow through a lot of money. If you have no online presence, you’re not showing up on Google.

00:32:17:09 – 00:32:42:18

Brady Winder

My business, just simple Google my business profile. I could see that being recipe for disaster. So we came across actually got our team. Brian If you guys saw the podcast back in January about SEO, kind of SEO one on one, I think we talked about the study we found with Google, My business where it was something like 30 is the magic number for Google.

00:32:42:18 – 00:33:20:08

Brady Winder

My business reviews, or there’s a substantial uplift for businesses with 30 or more reviews. And then past that, it’s diminishing returns. You know, this obviously it’s market dependent and we’re talking averages here. But yeah, if you can get to that threshold, there’s the SEO juice. Those the SEO benefits. But to your point as well, especially if you’re in a larger market, why not just keep getting as many reviews as possible because of the trust factor and the credibility factor when you have just a massive amount of reviews compared to the next guy with, you know, five, ten, 50 or whatever, it’s huge.

00:33:20:08 – 00:33:41:08

Brady Winder

You know, Do you guys ever put so like on a website, in fact, you have this on your website, we call it a credibility bar, you know, as seen on boom, boom, boom, these these pages, these news outlets, whatever featured and on a website we call it the credibility bar. You guys do that in commercials at all for TV.

00:33:41:08 – 00:33:49:29

Brady Winder

Like would you ever in a commercial bank? We have like flash up five stars on Google now.

00:33:50:00 – 00:34:12:24

Tony Javier

That’s a good point. I do have that on my on my home buying page as well as we have 90 plus five star reviews and we have a bunch of, you know, for four and a half or whatever. So 90 plus five star reviews is what we put on our page. We do have some of our clients who like to do Better Business Bureau on their you only have so much room to put information on the TV commercial.

00:34:12:25 – 00:34:31:03

Tony Javier

And that’s that’s I think one of the reasons that people come to us as well is that we want it to be very clean, clear and concise. You don’t want it’s like some people are like, I’ve seen I’ve seen other people do TV commercials in real estate and outside of real estate where they have multiple domains, multiple phone numbers.

00:34:31:03 – 00:34:53:21

Tony Javier

And it’s like you want like you want people like the lead lease path, the resistance. So if you’re like Omaha County is this number in Wichita counties, this number, it’s like people just are going to get confused. And so, I mean, stand your question. If someone came to us and said, put that in there, we might test it or we’d have to figure out, like, is there enough room to put that in there?

00:34:54:18 – 00:35:03:06

Tony Javier

But I’m not sure. I’m not sure if that would matter too much, because you already have credibility from TV that I don’t know that you need to put it on there.

00:35:03:26 – 00:35:21:29

Brady Winder

Right, Exactly. Yeah. Good point. You’re on TV. You’re famous at that point. Awesome, man. Well, know, we’re about out of time. I want to ask if there’s if there’s any anything else you want to touch on? Anything you feel like people really wish they would know if they were getting started in TV now.

00:35:21:29 – 00:35:48:01

Tony Javier

I mean, just I think I think as long as you can afford TV, as you know, I think TV’s a no brainer. If you’re doing real estate, you have a budget for it and you’re willing to do it, you know, long term. And and I mentioned, you know, most people are getting results in the first month. We do have some clients that it’s taken 3 to 6 months for them to really start, you know, popping some good deals and getting traction.

00:35:48:17 – 00:36:12:27

Tony Javier

But I don’t know, I just think it’s a no brainer. I mean, obviously I’m a little biased, but I’m doing TV myself. I’m doing it. I’ve seen clients results and I’m putting my money where my mouth is, too. And I’m actually JV partnering with people in other markets as well and doing TV with with other people. Because I, you know, when I started seeing our clients results and I’m like they’re getting 10 to 20 times return on their investment.

00:36:13:09 – 00:36:35:10

Tony Javier

Whereas, you know, for me it’s been anywhere from 5 to 11, so it’s still been good. But I’m like, I bet there’s some other markets that we can tap into where we can we can get that 10 to 20 times return. And I’m like, How can I take advantage of that? So I started JV partnering with other people where we do the TV commercials, they do the deals, we may fund them for them and we partnered on it.

00:36:36:05 – 00:36:45:18

Tony Javier

And so, yeah, I mean, I mean, I’m all in on TV. It’s, it’s, it’s been a game changer for me and now it’s been a game changer for a lot of people that we’ve implemented it for.

00:36:46:22 – 00:37:07:24

Brady Winder

Well, absolutely. You know, I was planning on part of this conversation being about, you know, talking about like why is TV relevant or how is it still relevant? Has it gone downhill, you know, with the you know, the advent of Hulu and all the all the streaming services. But it’s not even it’s not even worth talking about because the results speak for themselves.

00:37:07:24 – 00:37:24:13

Brady Winder

I mean, if you get in 5 to 10 or more return, but then it’s it’s obviously irrelevant and it’s still it seems like with more streaming services, it’s even lower hanging fruit and there’s even less competition. So anyways, I think that’s awesome. Yeah. And I do. I do.

00:37:24:24 – 00:37:44:17

Tony Javier

Yeah. My last last thing I’ll say on that is think about our demographic. If you’re buying a house from somebody, they’re typically lower income, maybe medium income, and they’re older, who’s sitting around watching TV? It’s someone who is typically older, they’re typically lower and middle income. That’s our demographic.

00:37:45:17 – 00:38:03:09

Brady Winder

Mm hmm. Okay, so I’ve got a heart stop at a few minutes, so I truly do have to wrap it up, even though I have a million questions. But one here’s here’s one for you that that might be popping into some of our listeners heads or our viewers heads. So you have got your process dialed in. You’ve done on TV.

00:38:03:09 – 00:38:18:08

Brady Winder

It’s easy for you to speak to this because you’ve been doing it for years and you’ve got a little bit of swagger. You know, it seems like you you talk naturally. What if you you’re like, Oh, man, But I’m awkward on camera. I’m the goofy. We’re looking dude. Like, does it does it really have to be me on the commercial?

00:38:18:08 – 00:38:21:00

Brady Winder

Like, what? What do you say to the people that might be thinking that?

00:38:21:12 – 00:38:37:11

Tony Javier

That’s a great question. Like we’ve had some people that have said, Oh, I just know TV’s not for me. I got a Facebook radio, you know, kind of thing and we’ve done some magic. So, so a few things about that. One is you don’t have to be in the commercial we would like you to be because you’re building your personal brand.

00:38:37:21 – 00:38:57:23

Tony Javier

People see you out and about. They start conversations. It’s it’s building you as as the authority and the brand. Right, too. Is we can do some magic. So even if someone goes in because we set people up in the market, that’s part of the service we do. We set people up in the market to shoot the commercial so they’ll figure out where to go and all that kind of stuff.

00:38:58:13 – 00:39:25:28

Tony Javier

And we get the footage back and sometimes the footage isn’t great. There’s a lot of mess ups, but our video guys does magic with it. Like we can edit the back end. And the other thing is, is that I had say at least have the commercial. You’re not on the commercial anyway, so as long as you can read a script and, you know, just sound natural, we can edit it with the good stuff where you’re in there and you’re confident and actually I’ve had people come to.

00:39:26:08 – 00:39:44:10

Tony Javier

So I have a lot of people that are virtual do virtual deals in other markets. I live in California, so if they’re close enough to me in San Diego, they’ll drive down and I’ve done a few shoots where I’m like, Oh man, this is rough. Like, I’ve had to really pull some good stuff out of them. Then we’ll send it to the editing and it comes out good, right?

00:39:44:10 – 00:39:46:22

Tony Javier

So yeah, I wouldn’t worry about that too much.

00:39:47:06 – 00:39:57:21

Brady Winder

Okay, so there you have it. If anyone’s wondering if you think you only have face for radio, which you don’t, you’re beautiful, but you can still do TV profitably. Where can people find you if they want to get started with you?

00:39:58:01 – 00:40:18:28

Tony Javier

Yeah, go to R.E.M.. TVGuide.com, R.E.M. TV So used to be called Real Estate Master’s TV. That’s why it’s our MTV dot com. And I just if you if you’re on video here, you can see we rebranded to ten TV because we talk TV. Yeah, because we feel like we can get you in front of ten times more people, ten times easier with ten times more credibility.

00:40:19:06 – 00:40:26:22

Tony Javier

And then hopefully if we get you guys to crush the sales process, get a ten x return on.

00:40:26:22 – 00:40:43:10

Brady Winder

That’s awesome. That’s awesome, man. Well, thank you for sharing of the Yes was super tactical super helpful. Appreciate you sharing it with our audience. Everybody listen to this. If you have any questions, feel free to email me Brady at Care.com and I’ll try to get an answer for you or pass along to Tony. But thanks again, man, for hopping on the show.

00:40:43:10 – 00:40:45:25

Tony Javier

MAN Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

00:40:45:25 – 00:41:07:01

Brady Winder

Yep. We’ll see you next week, guys.

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:22:02

Mike Otranto

I started to realize is that my highest margin deals were coming from ACL. So that’s the other thing that you have to say, okay, well, if this is the most efficient way to get me in front of my target audience, well, how do I get more more leads? And how do you scale it? Yeah. And that’s that’s one of the challenges with SEO is it’s kind of mystical and it’s it’s will I hire somebody to do ACL?

00:00:22:02 – 00:00:26:13

Mike Otranto

But, you know, if I’m not getting results, well, what’s the problem?

00:00:31:17 – 00:00:48:08

Brady Winder

Hey, friends, you’re listening to the Access podcast, where we help investors and agents like yourself deal businesses of freedom and impact. I’m your host, Brady Winder. And today I have with me longtime Care.com customer and care camp alumni, Mr. Mike Otranto. Welcome to the podcast, Mike.

00:00:48:17 – 00:00:50:04

Mike Otranto

What’s up, Brady? Great to be here.

00:00:50:22 – 00:01:09:14

Brady Winder

Doing good, man. Thanks for joining us. So so we’re talking Madeleine online marketing. It’s SEO month at Carat. First month of the year. And we want to help you get your SEO dialed in because this is a long game. So we’ve had a couple of other SEO topics during the month. Today we’re talking about the ROI of SEO.

00:01:10:03 – 00:01:24:15

Brady Winder

And the reason why I brought Mike out of the podcast is because he looks at his marketing in a very analytical way where a lot of investors, they just, you know, they get some money from a deal. They say, Oh, I got five grand, ten grand to play with, I’m going to throw it at PPC, I’m going to throw it at TV.

00:01:24:15 – 00:01:41:02

Brady Winder

I’m going to see if it works and are not always as good with the follow up and evaluating that to see, okay, did it work, Why did it work? Why did not work? What was my close ratio on that? And so Mike’s really organized in that way and I like the way that he looks at the math behind marketing.

00:01:41:02 – 00:01:59:08

Brady Winder

So that’s what we’re going to talk about is is really math over emotion when it comes to spending your marketing dollars wisely and specifically with SEO and what he’s done with SEO to be effective and why it makes sense versus other marketing channels and a few other things. So it’s going to be a good conversation. Hope you guys enjoy.

00:01:59:08 – 00:02:08:23

Brady Winder

But yeah, Mike, give us a little bit of background. Like how do you, how did you get to where you are? What’s your your real estate origin story, if you will?

00:02:10:03 – 00:02:35:21

Mike Otranto

My real estate origin story is it really started in around 2000, 2001 when I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I already knew that I hated working for large companies. So, you know, I just started, you know, buying more books and then trying to get into it. I think I bought a couple of courses and eventually I hooked up with a guy that I knew from where I grew up and started out in New York, and I started to call him and he kept telling me, you know, come down to North Carolina, it’s so much easier.

00:02:35:21 – 00:03:04:05

Mike Otranto

Raleigh is a great market, you know, And eventually I followed them down. I started doing buy and hold real estate and general brokerage. And, you know, by the time I got up to about 40 units and these were, you know, for Plex’s six plex multifamily, unfortunately around 2009, a lot of stuff was losing money. So I had to basically come up with an alternative strategy and figure out a better way to invest it.

00:03:04:05 – 00:03:34:00

Mike Otranto

In addition, I had to get a job and join corporate America. So I started to rebuild on the side. I started to do some wholesaling just to get started. And, you know, the more I got into social media, digital aspects of marketing and how emerging they were and how effective they could be, that’s where I kind of started on my journey throughout the teens to say, All right, well, let me skip the MLS and let me skip the brokers and the realtors and let me go direct to consumer and try and buy houses that way.

00:03:34:00 – 00:03:55:07

Mike Otranto

So, you know, I joined Carrot in 2016, and almost immediately I started to see more converted leads come to me through the carrot website and then I said, Well, how do I get more leads? Well, you know, now let’s let’s start the SEO conversation, the paid search conversation and all that stuff. But once I started to figure it out, I worked full time in the late teens, 2018.

00:03:55:07 – 00:04:01:02

Mike Otranto

And then, you know, I’ve been a full time investor ever since. So I do fix and flip, buy and hold and a little bit of wholesaling.

00:04:01:20 – 00:04:09:17

Brady Winder

Okay, nice. Would you consider yourself like what’s the scale as far as tech savvy?

00:04:09:17 – 00:04:28:03

Mike Otranto

The funny thing about tech savviness is that, you know, there are a lot of people, especially in real estate, that are not tech savvy at all. They’re very traditional in their mindset. I think they’re they’re very well behind the tech curve, so I’m well ahead of them. But then there are some people that are very high on the tech curve that know a lot more than me.

00:04:28:03 – 00:04:41:23

Mike Otranto

So I guess some I’m an advanced I’m advanced on the tech curve, but I have to stay humble because there’s always new things that I don’t know about and new types of software and just new trends that I might not be aware of. So yeah.

00:04:42:11 – 00:05:06:06

Brady Winder

Things are always changing. You know, the algorithm is always making little improvements and changes and something we’ve got to be aware of. Oh, cool. I mean, what’s the I want to ask you one question before we go. Sort of what’s what’s the best thing you’ve like? What’s the best hack you’ve ever done to generate leads? A urban One thing, we’re like, Holy crap, man, this this really works for me, like a strategy or a thing you started doing over the past six years.

00:05:06:06 – 00:05:08:02

Brady Winder

We’re like, This is killing it. For me.

00:05:08:12 – 00:05:30:06

Mike Otranto

I would say the website and I would say a carrot website. You know, I’ve been a it’s rare for me to find a brand that I believe in so much that I would stay with it for. I mean, Carrot is what, eight years now? Seven years. And the thing is, is that with the carrot website, it’s designed for real estate investors to convert leads.

00:05:30:06 – 00:05:52:17

Mike Otranto

That’s what it’s for. A lot of other agents that will, you know, once I start talking to them and they visit my website, they’re like, Oh, is this your website? I don’t I don’t know about. Then the funny thing is they don’t like it. But the thing is, is that they’re designed to work subordinate to these big franchise names and their websites don’t get them any business because that’s not what it’s for.

00:05:52:17 – 00:06:19:04

Mike Otranto

It’s there to build the franchise brand. My business is designed to get me in front of my customers directly and buy houses directly from them. That’s its purpose. That’s what it’s for. So I’m not interested in subjectivity of I want green here, read here what converts, what builds authority in my local market, what allows me to provide tangible evidence that I’m a trustworthy business person and will allow me to buy houses directly from my customers.

00:06:19:04 – 00:06:23:02

Mike Otranto

And that’s that’s its purpose. And it does it does the that one thing very well.

00:06:23:19 – 00:06:42:11

Brady Winder

Hmm interesting I premise I genuinely wasn’t team that up to say let me get you to say something good about carrot but I appreciate it that’s you know thank you for that. I’m sure you know it’s interesting you know, especially looking at agent websites, it’s like I never thought about that. It’s building a commercial brand versus your local brand.

00:06:43:02 – 00:06:44:20

Mike Otranto

Yeah. So there’s a difference. There’s a big difference.

00:06:45:09 – 00:07:00:20

Brady Winder

Yeah. Well, let’s talk about let’s talk about our way of marketing. So tell me about kind of just first holistically your approach to marketing and how you how do you decide which channels to go with? Like how do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing and hopefully not lose tons of money?

00:07:02:14 – 00:07:20:15

Mike Otranto

Since I do have a background in corporate sales, you know, I did learn that they they want to look at their salespeople, see how productive they are and say, all right, well, how many leads did you get or how many calls did you make? How many? Now there’s an intermediary there. How many opportunities did you have? And out of those opportunities, how many of those did you convert?

00:07:20:15 – 00:07:38:20

Mike Otranto

So you have kind of three pieces of data using addition and division to come up with some percentages. But I started measuring things like even my bandit signs in the early teens. I would say, All right, well, how many signs that I put out this month that I put out 100 signs. Okay. Well, how many calls I get?

00:07:38:20 – 00:07:55:16

Mike Otranto

Well, I got 30 calls. All right. Well, out of all those calls, how many of them were actual leads? And then you start coming up with numbers like five and six or seven and then add up all those leads, how many deals that I get. And then you would get like one or two. And it was every other month.

00:07:55:16 – 00:08:16:11

Mike Otranto

It wasn’t quite as consistent. And what I started to learn is that when I have when the bulk of the calls that I’m getting are people complaining about the signs, I have to conclude that that is not the most effective way to get in front of my target market. So when you start doing things like direct mail, I would say, Right, well how many pieces that I send out, how many calls that I get?

00:08:16:11 – 00:08:43:16

Mike Otranto

And I would notice this real volatility in the amount of calls that I would get versus it’s because a lot of people would call up to complain about the fact that I sent them a letter and I’m like, This is not who I want to talk to, but sometimes I would get deals from it. So what I started to notice with people that found my website organically, especially in the beginning when I was doing my SEO and it was starting to gain momentum in the late teens, I started to notice that I didn’t have to do a lot of selling and a lot of negotiating.

00:08:43:16 – 00:09:11:17

Mike Otranto

They wanted someone that they knew and they trusted. Money was not the most important thing for them. They just wanted a very smooth, easy transaction and that allowed me to provide service in exchange for a discount where everyone was happy. I got my profit, they got their smooth, easy transaction and I was just easier. Yeah. So, you know, at the end of the you know, at the end of, let’s say a year, I’ll say, well how many leads that I get for the year.

00:09:11:17 – 00:09:34:17

Mike Otranto

Well all those leads did come to me from my website. But how did they come to my website, Did they get a postcard for me? Did they come via paid search or did they come by your S.O.? Now, in the last couple of years, I started tracking the source. You’ll see either Google search, you’ll see sometimes Bing or DuckDuckGo.

00:09:35:04 – 00:09:55:22

Mike Otranto

You also see paid search campaigns. So that allows me to delineate how or delete by channel is a paid search for. I use the category organic because whether or not they came via Bing, Google or DuckDuckGo, I’m not as concerned with that. I’m more concerned with SEO or paid search because how do I most efficiently allocate my marketing dollars based on channel?

00:09:56:12 – 00:10:25:07

Brady Winder

Hmm. Exactly. It’s more than just online. Yeah. Well, and I like how you mentioned it’s not just the how many deals did I close from this channel, but it’s like, how much time did that take me? Like where there’s this underlying sense of like, where’s my energy and my time go and don’t even if I am closing a bunch of deals from you, just, for example, direct mail or cold call inside, do I really want to spend if it’s working that much time, addressing the people that want my sign out of their yard or business, you know?

00:10:25:17 – 00:10:42:14

Mike Otranto

Yeah. And the way I look at it is, well, you take your total spend for the period, which is usually a year, but I’ll also do it by quarter. Then take how many leads you got and then got how many deals are closed. So you know, take it to expand, divide it by the amount of leads and that I’ll give you a cost per lead.

00:10:42:14 – 00:10:59:18

Mike Otranto

And also you want to get well what is my cost per lead really need to be to be efficient. I also look at the amount of deals I closed. So how many leads do I need to close? One deal. So that’s really a conversion rate is really what that is. Right. And then I’ll measure something else called a cost per deal.

00:10:59:18 – 00:11:21:04

Mike Otranto

What did it cost me to close this deal? Now at the best of the best from SEO, I think it was about 1000 to 1500 dollars cost per deal. And when I compare that alongside paid search page, search has always been higher, you know, anywhere from 2500 to 7000, just depending. I mean, there’s a lot of variables there.

00:11:21:04 – 00:11:31:23

Mike Otranto

But what what really dawned on me as well, what’s my so I will buy houses from wholesalers. I will do that. Yeah. With my average assignment fee you’re looking at least.

00:11:32:00 – 00:11:34:17

Brady Winder

Yeah. Thousand. So what’s your. Yeah. Your average far for deal.

00:11:35:08 – 00:11:48:16

Mike Otranto

So I mean even if paid search it costs me 6600. I mean I have to say to myself well how many wholesalers out there are satisfied with 60 $600. Therefore my direct marketing endeavors are more efficient.

00:11:49:20 – 00:12:09:23

Brady Winder

So what’s your you know, like in our marketing for care, we’re usually looking to get a 4 to 5 LTV, the lifetime value of the customer in a customer acquisition cost. Anyways, don’t get too deep here, but it’s a it’s a 4 to 1 return on your outspend. Yeah. Or, or more at the end of the minimum. So you’re looking at like 2 to 1, two to 4 to 1 at least that seems to be a range.

00:12:09:23 – 00:12:25:21

Brady Winder

Like 2 to 1 is acceptable, but 4 to 1 you can usually predictably pull out for sale. It’s for talking like maybe 2500 bucks or so, 15, 20, 500, put it into the SEO efforts and then, you know, a $10,000 assignment fee. Is that about right?

00:12:26:08 – 00:12:50:06

Mike Otranto

Well, the way I’ll do it is, you know, I’m familiar with the 2 to 1 or the 4 to 1 ratio. When I really started to compile the data and I started to see things how SEO always year after year would beat out the other channels based on, let’s say, conversion rate. So last year I was converted one out of 7.25 leads.

00:12:50:06 – 00:13:16:03

Mike Otranto

So it’s a very high conversion rate. And when I look at my cost per lead, it’s always been under $300 in the SEO world. The other thing is the cost per deal was a B about, you know, a thousand 1500 dollars depending on the vendor that you use, it could be upwards of $2,000. But the other thing that really stood out to me was my highest margin deals.

00:13:17:08 – 00:13:39:10

Mike Otranto

For example, this year I closed out a flip where at closing I got $272,000 back and Trevor was nice enough to jump on the carrot cast. Not think this is the carrot cash, but the the the annual summit, the carrot summit run on the end. And because what happened was when I got the I sent him something via Instagram and said, Hey, check this out.

00:13:39:10 – 00:13:40:05

Mike Otranto

This was an SEO.

00:13:40:21 – 00:13:43:08

Brady Winder

Oh, it’s coming back to me now. I’m remembering.

00:13:44:04 – 00:14:10:19

Mike Otranto

Yeah, yeah, come on, tell us about it. And I told him about it and it’s like this great deal. She was happy with the $275,000 purchase price. I put 150 into it, and my net was about 150. And since I funded the repairs, I got about $272,000 back at closing because I sold it at 651. Now, the person I bought it from, she knew they sold it for $650,000 because I let her tour the property once I was done with it and she was perfectly happy.

00:14:10:19 – 00:14:27:15

Mike Otranto

So the other thing that I started to realize is that my highest margin deals were coming from ACL. So that’s the other thing that you have to say, okay, well, if this is the most efficient way to get me in front of my target audience, well, how do I get more, more leads, right? And how do you scale it?

00:14:27:15 – 00:14:37:16

Mike Otranto

Yeah. And that’s that’s one of the challenges with SEO is it’s kind of mystical and it’s it’s will I hire someone to do SEO? But, you know, if I’m not getting results, well, what’s the problem?

00:14:38:08 – 00:14:52:23

Brady Winder

Yeah. So I want to touch on that in a second. Yeah, we’ll talk about outsourcing. One thing I want to touch on those. Before the podcast we were talking about what’s your spend like per marketing channel? Would you mind sharing what you know, the breakdown 2021, where your money was going, You don’t get it.

00:14:52:23 – 00:15:17:09

Mike Otranto

Context 2021 I was doing about $1,000 a month in SEO toward the end of the year. I did bump it to 1500 with paid search. I was doing about 3000 a month, 2500, $3,000 a month in spend. Now the interesting thing, in early 2021, the results were they weren’t that great. And I was trying to figure out why.

00:15:18:14 – 00:15:40:16

Mike Otranto

And part of it was, you know, we had record low inventory. I mean, there was almost no houses on the market. But what I was able to determine by looking at some KPIs was is that I needed new I needed new people, I needed a new SEO company and I needed a new paid search guy. And that’s what I needed to get better results.

00:15:40:16 – 00:15:46:20

Mike Otranto

So, you know, these very simple costs per lead cost per deal and conversion ratio was really what I used.

00:15:47:19 – 00:15:57:06

Brady Winder

Yeah. And you would have known that had you not been tracking what was, what were your close ratios like on SEO versus PPC versus direct mail. Do you know that.

00:15:58:01 – 00:16:26:08

Mike Otranto

Yeah. My clothes ratio was one in seven and a quarter on SEO and then it was one in 12 on paid search. I think direct mail was like, you know, I spent I spent like ten grand and I got one deal. So I mean, I didn’t make that much sense. And, you know, there’s a concept that is used on the carrot carrot website about evergreen marketing versus hamster wheel.

00:16:26:19 – 00:16:43:14

Mike Otranto

The reason why I like hamster the hamster wheel analogy is because to think about direct mail, you’re constantly pulling lists, you’re constantly going through data, there’s skip tracing. You know, you actually have to select the type of piece that you’re going to send out. You have to pay for it. But it’s this ongoing thing that I have to be involved in.

00:16:43:14 – 00:16:55:02

Mike Otranto

And I, you know, the I am notorious for starting things and not finishing. So, yeah, you can say anything you want about direct mail, but it’s not the best fit for me because I just don’t want to be involved in churning that hamster wheel every month.

00:16:55:11 – 00:16:56:14

Brady Winder

Yeah, exactly.

00:16:56:14 – 00:16:58:00

Mike Otranto

Yeah, I want to be buying houses.

00:16:58:19 – 00:17:18:05

Brady Winder

Yeah. And so. So two things I want to kind of dig into before we move on is one, before we recorded the podcast you were talking about like SEO is your bread and butter for sure. It’s it’s predictable, it’s consistent. You’re, you’re getting your best leads from there. But it’s also important to realize you don’t want to build your business on a three legged stool.

00:17:18:05 – 00:17:30:22

Brady Winder

And by that we mean fully relying on one marketing method. Putting all your eggs in one basket can be a little bit scary. And so you’ve got SEO, you’ve got your paperclip going and you’ve got are you still doing some direct mail? Right.

00:17:31:09 – 00:17:46:20

Mike Otranto

I’m still doing some direct mail. I experimented with some Facebook advertising. You know, I’ll buy some some stuff from wholesalers sometimes on the MLS. So you have kind of these alternative strategies as well. But yeah, I do like to have multiple sources to find deals, not just one.

00:17:47:18 – 00:18:07:16

Brady Winder

Yeah. So with our and so you mentioned set one and what it’s seven and a half, seven in a quarter, one in seven and a quarter SEO leads that you’re closing, That’s very respectable, that’s some of the best. So we see about let’s say on average about one in ten for SEO leads to a deal, PPC 1 to 10, 1 to 20.

00:18:07:16 – 00:18:27:22

Brady Winder

Somewhere in that range you a cluster of 20 direct mail cold calling. You start getting up into the forties and above. That’s a lot of leads to sift through. So with without turning this into a sales negotiation podcast, you had mentioned that your, your view on sales is a little bit different. Is there anything different that you’re doing because these are SEO leads, Are you handling them differently?

00:18:27:23 – 00:18:28:15

Brady Winder

Like what’s that like?

00:18:28:22 – 00:18:58:08

Mike Otranto

The way I handle my sales is I have to basically I have experience, hands on experience in corporate selling in two different types of selling. One is something called ESR, which is inside sales and really inside sales. As you never meet your prospect, you’re always on the phone meeting and about, yeah, B2B. The other thing about inside sales, this is involving outbound cold calling which it’s very aggressive, it’s very tactical in nature and it’s very pushy.

00:18:59:04 – 00:19:32:08

Mike Otranto

Now you have very low conversion rates. That’s where a lot of your your tactical questioning comes from. Like if I were to pay cash and close Friday, what’s the least you’ll take things like that. Now, when I went into another type of selling, which was enterprise sales, this was where our minimum contract was about $100,000. We I worked for a microsoft partner and what we did was we configured an existing project, Microsoft project, because it was so large and complex and the organizations were so large, the first call was, All right, we don’t know what we need.

00:19:32:08 – 00:19:53:19

Mike Otranto

What do you think we need? And there would be usually about a six month to a year sales cycle. And there was a lot of talk around, well, what is it that we need and what’s it going to cost? Now in enterprise sales, there was a total absence of this tactical selling style. So what I did with these SEO leads is I found that people were more relationship oriented.

00:19:53:19 – 00:20:08:19

Mike Otranto

They weren’t concerned with price, they really wanted service and trust. And I dispensed with a lot of selling tactics and just talk to them like human beings. I whittled down my sales process to keep it very, very simple, and I found that it worked. Hmm.

00:20:09:17 – 00:20:27:16

Brady Winder

That’s that’s really interesting. I had never thought about I asked that question not knowing or expecting. Does your sales strategy or your technique change based on the type of marketing that you’re doing? But from what you’re saying, it does and it sounds like the opposite would be true too, where if you took that strategy and applied it to cold calling, I would imagine that it would fail.

00:20:28:08 – 00:20:38:03

Brady Winder

And would it be if it was treating it relationship based and a little bit more relaxed, less tactical, would you agree or no?

00:20:38:03 – 00:21:06:09

Mike Otranto

I would have a reservation. I would say it depends. The thing about outbound cold calling, it’s a different style. When I was in inside sales and I was actually working for a Google partner and it was actually I was selling paid search to auto dealers. So that’s one of the reasons why I’m so comfortable with paid searches. I kind of have an idea of if it’s not working, it’s usually something the manager you have the campaign, there’s usually something else that’s going on that’s cause it’s not.

00:21:06:13 – 00:21:07:00

Brady Winder

It’s not the.

00:21:07:00 – 00:21:35:19

Mike Otranto

Platform platform itself. But what I learned is you had people with two different styles. You had your real aggressive outbound cold callers talk very fast or very pushy, and then you had some laid back people that were a little more relationship oriented. They took their time. I think that’s this more of a laid back approach. I think in the long run it’s more effective and you will see that that style in someone like Chris Voss and never split the difference.

00:21:35:19 – 00:22:02:14

Mike Otranto

He was a hostage negotiator. He I think selling has it’s evolved over time and the theories behind it are starting to change. I do think that there are different types of products that are sold. For example, one of my favorite books is spin selling and one of their their basic premises was you had features and benefits selling for things like coffee and watches and trinkets and stuff under 100 bucks.

00:22:03:04 – 00:22:24:16

Mike Otranto

Then you had these six figure plus type sales where they’re more complex, there’s less features and benefits, almost no features and benefits. And what they did in the book is you see two things. You see an ad for Digital Watch, which is all features and the benefits, and then you see an ad for a Rolex, which is no features and benefits because it’s a different product for a different market.

00:22:24:16 – 00:22:57:18

Mike Otranto

I think that real estate is more toward the enterprise space where it’s a more complex transaction. You’re dealing with high dollar amounts. There’s plenty of room for the transaction to fall apart. So I think it does lend itself to a little bit more enterprise style, relationship style selling. That’s my opinion. And based on my experience and one thing I noticed is that when I was doing cold calling, my no show rate for appointments was over 90% because people it didn’t matter what you told them, they weren’t listening because they get hammered with, with these types of yeah, these types of calls all the time.

00:22:57:18 – 00:23:11:06

Mike Otranto

But with anything inbound when they’re coming to me, especially when they’re coming to me via SEO, they’re much more serious about what they want to do. And I think that a lot of that has to do with the higher conversion rate and the the style of selling.

00:23:11:15 – 00:23:31:05

Brady Winder

Yeah, that makes sense. That’s helpful context. And really all things aside, it’s like trust still trumps tactic at the end of the day, regardless of which marketing channel the trust and relationship always comes before the tactic, regardless of what type of selling you’re doing. Before we hit record, you mentioned you spent 11 grand on Facebook ads and didn’t get a deal.

00:23:31:10 – 00:23:33:12

Brady Winder

What did you learn from that?

00:23:33:12 – 00:23:51:12

Mike Otranto

What I learned from that is that I got a lot of leads. So I think I got about 53 or 50 leads or something like that. I got two contracts, but both of the contracts had title problems. So that’s what really stopped me from buying the houses. Now, once I saw $11,000 and I saw there were no deals, I paused.

00:23:51:12 – 00:24:13:10

Mike Otranto

The campaign because even if I closed one of those contracts, that would have put my cost per deal at $11,000, which is too high. What attracted me to Facebook is that the cost to generate a lead is under $100. It could be 40 or $50. So I saw it as a more cost effective way to advertise my business.

00:24:15:06 – 00:24:36:11

Mike Otranto

What I learned is that people from Facebook are very top of the funnel. So if you’re going to do Facebook and you’re a self-employed person and you’re just, you know, you’re running the show, it’s going to be a lot of more, more work and follow up. And it’s much more long range. The way I am in my business.

00:24:36:11 – 00:24:43:22

Mike Otranto

I don’t have that kind of time anymore. So I do have some plans on maybe doing some more Facebook this year, but the follow up is going to be handled by someone else.

00:24:44:07 – 00:24:49:19

Brady Winder

And you’re talking about follow up with the leads, not even just managing the campaign, not the Facebook campaign. Oh, yeah.

00:24:49:19 – 00:24:53:08

Mike Otranto

I don’t manage any campaigns, any marketing campaigns. I manage the manager.

00:24:54:00 – 00:25:12:09

Brady Winder

So so so let’s talk about that. Yeah. So S-so a lot of people, you know, some people are going to listen to podcast and say, yeah, I’m going to dive into it myself. And awesome. I think, you know, there’s not a right or wrong either way, but a lot of people are going to listen to this and say, okay, I want to outsource my echo, and that’s okay too.

00:25:12:17 – 00:25:35:06

Brady Winder

But the the most important thing is to understand the marketing channel, the marketing platform enough to know how to manage the manager before you start spending money. So I say that. What’s your experience been like outsourcing SEO and for for context, like what was your you didn’t have a lot of SEO knowledge coming in. You sort of learned it.

00:25:35:11 – 00:25:39:09

Brady Winder

What’s what did the outsourcing journey look like for you?

00:25:39:09 – 00:25:59:05

Mike Otranto

I started out in your early teens with a VA that was doing a lot of spammy stuff and that was not very effective. Then I would say later on, once I joined Carrot, there were plenty of coaching calls where Adrian at the time he would discuss SEO strategy and that’s I kind of learned a lot of it from him.

00:26:00:19 – 00:26:22:05

Mike Otranto

And I noticed that, you know, trying to learn about SEO from books really wasn’t effective because it was just too general. I was like, Well, how do you create great content to get people to link to? And I remember I talked to Adrian about this and he said, Well, when you start out with a We Buy Houses website, a lot of people don’t want to link to you because their impression is that you’re the lowball or that’s going to rip people off so they don’t want to link to you.

00:26:23:04 – 00:26:44:12

Mike Otranto

And that’s one of the problems. So you had to kind of build your own foundation by creating your own content that you create and link back to your own website, sort of build that out. Sometimes they call it tier at link building or link pyramids and use that in conjunction with some more organic natural, some guest posting and some other strategies to get a real good strategy going.

00:26:45:22 – 00:27:14:14

Mike Otranto

I would say that to manage the manager, you need to find someone that specializes in not just real estate SEO, but real estate SEO for real estate investors, the problem is, since our industry is very traditionally minded and wants to do networking and postcards and motor mouth and all that stuff, our industry is not spending money on SEO, so there’s not a lot of incentive for an SEO to focus on on industry.

00:27:14:14 – 00:27:33:14

Mike Otranto

The people that are spending the money on SEO are e-commerce websites. So a lot of the companies out there are their main focus is ecommerce. So you had someone like Adrian who was a wholesaler and had some buy and hold properties and he had he did it all his own SEO and then gradually developing SEO company on the site.

00:27:33:17 – 00:27:37:22

Mike Otranto

Generally speaking, those are the people that you need, but they are very difficult to find. There’s a unicorns.

00:27:38:07 – 00:27:51:03

Brady Winder

Yeah, a So you mentioned that you hired a VA and they were doing some spammy stuff. Did you know it was spammy at the time or was it like, then you learn something from it and you’re like, Oh, that stuff wasn’t working.

00:27:52:07 – 00:28:15:14

Mike Otranto

Yeah, it wasn’t working at the time. And I think I had talked to someone else that was in the CEO world. And when he started to look at the reports, he said, Yeah, you know, this is spammy. And the other thing is he was using a lot of the tactics that were used in the 2000s when you could kind of stuff keywords and just like buy a domain and then point it back to your domain kind of thing and then you re spin content.

00:28:15:14 – 00:28:19:23

Mike Otranto

And it was just the craftsmanship wasn’t very good.

00:28:19:23 – 00:28:40:02

Brady Winder

Yeah, we talked about that on a podcast earlier this month with Brian where it’s like Google over the years thankfully, has made it harder to gamify it. Yeah, it’s harder to give a fiasco and it’s becoming more human, more natural. So you had mentioned that you were spending you were spending about a thousand on ASO and then you’d bumped it up to 1500.

00:28:40:11 – 00:28:47:05

Brady Winder

What said, What does that mean? Like, what are you getting for that money? What’s what’s the work involved? How does that change?

00:28:47:20 – 00:29:06:13

Mike Otranto

You’re building links. So really what you’re doing is, well, there’s two things with SEO is on page and then there’s off page. A lot of SEO companies will not touch on page and on pages are going to be the copy. And what keyword density you have on your page is relevant to what the person is typing it.

00:29:06:23 – 00:29:13:00

Brady Winder

Interesting you said a lot of SEO companies won’t touch your on page, correct? They just want to do backlink building.

00:29:13:10 – 00:29:29:18

Mike Otranto

Mm hmm. And it might be a liability thing. Like, you know, once you start touching someone’s website, is it going to break? And you’d be surprised how many SEO is that did do on page. They said, oh, you work with Karen. Well who owns the website. Well they own it. What happens if they go out of business? What happens if this whatever?

00:29:30:06 – 00:29:39:16

Mike Otranto

And I’m like, Dude, just do it. What’s the problem? I’m like, I already had a website. Then I’m the one that’s responsible for the plug ins. And when things break and I don’t want to be responsible.

00:29:39:16 – 00:29:48:01

Brady Winder

For that, that’s a bigger risk then. Yeah, right. That’s a bigger risk than wondering about what if carrot, you know, is what if I. Yeah, it’s a lot to manage.

00:29:48:13 – 00:30:06:07

Mike Otranto

Yeah. That’s why a lot of investors throw their hands up because they’re like, Hey, I’m not an SEO guy. What’s the problem? Get it done. And then there are five grand, ten grand in the whole and they have nothing to show for it. I kind of understand it. So one of the reasons why, due to the many algorithm updates that we’ve seen over the last couple of years, I’ve always stuck with SEO because the results were always there.

00:30:06:07 – 00:30:26:00

Mike Otranto

I could always look back and say, What are my best deals? As they came to my website, the ratio, the the highest margins, the best conversion rates. Therefore this is a good channel. How do we get the best results possible at the lowest cost possible? But you would ask me a question. I think I digress a little bit off page.

00:30:26:00 – 00:30:47:12

Mike Otranto

Okay, so with link building, really what it what it’s doing is someone’s writing an article and they’re there have a link and they’re pointing to your website. So the way it was described to me is like picture link building, like a soccer game where there’s a bunch of players passing around a ball and every time a player gets a pass to them, that’s like a link.

00:30:47:16 – 00:31:12:01

Mike Otranto

It’s a pointer saying This guy knows what he’s doing with Google. The way it was explained. And you know, there’s been a lot of changes. Is it used to be, well, the person that’s the most authoritative is the person that gets the most passes. And it used to be in the early days of the search engines in the late nineties, you know, when you typed in something and you got a bunch of search results, you had to scroll back to page two and three to figure out what you were looking for.

00:31:12:01 – 00:31:30:02

Mike Otranto

The search results were garbage. So one of the things about page rank, as it is explained to me is that Google started to look, well, let’s not concentrate on who’s getting the most passes, who not only who is getting the most passes, but who are they passing the ball to. So who are the blessed best player passing the ball to?

00:31:30:09 – 00:31:54:08

Mike Otranto

And then you started to look at things in a little bit different light. So to bring that back, I mean, to get a backlink from like a local news website or university, those have a lot of authority. Those are very valuable. They’re also very difficult to get. And that that, that in lines, that’s where the art form comes in is how do you get the most, the most valuable backlinks.

00:31:54:08 – 00:31:55:05

Brady Winder

Nice value.

00:31:55:15 – 00:32:08:02

Mike Otranto

And because the thing is you could either buy it outright or you could hire somebody to go and ask for a backlink. But either way, it costs money. So the question is, how do you do this without spending $10,000 a month?

00:32:08:19 – 00:32:10:14

Brady Winder

Yeah. So yeah.

00:32:11:11 – 00:32:29:03

Mike Otranto

Some of the problem you have to hire someone that knows what they’re doing can do it affordably and knows how to do it for our industry. Specifically, things like how do you hire the best real estate agent? Well, tens of thousands of them all over the country. I mean, you have to whittle it down and maybe go through four or five and until you find the right one.

00:32:29:18 – 00:32:32:11

Mike Otranto

Yeah, for the most part, that’s kind of how it is.

00:32:33:07 – 00:32:49:21

Brady Winder

That makes sense. So for context, for people listening, you’ve already got your on page. Now then your website has been dialed in for a while, so most of the money you’re spending is going to backlink building to further increase your Holger SEO rankings. Who’s doing it? Who’s handling your SEO right now?

00:32:51:03 – 00:32:56:16

Mike Otranto

The guys that I met at Carrot Camp, so SEO meets real estate investing.

00:32:57:08 – 00:33:02:16

Brady Winder

So yeah, yeah. Facebook group. Go to Facebook search, SEO meets real estate investing.

00:33:03:03 – 00:33:03:06

Mike Otranto

Yeah.

00:33:03:15 – 00:33:05:01

Brady Winder

We’ll link it up in the show notes. Yeah.

00:33:05:08 – 00:33:10:05

Mike Otranto

That’s Keith Sansone and Andy Ecology. So they handle both on and off page for me.

00:33:10:23 – 00:33:29:14

Brady Winder

Okay, awesome. I’m glad to hear they’re working for an awesome dudes really know their stuff. You can. I believe you could find Andy’s backlink building service in the current marketplace. So if you guys are a care member marketplace dot Care.com and these backlink service in there or you can look at the Facebook group and learn from Keith and Andy, we’re going to wrap this up here.

00:33:29:14 – 00:33:45:21

Brady Winder

Anybody listening? If you want to dive deeper into SEO or if you missed our episodes earlier in the month where we talk about the strategy of SEO and why you might want to get into it. And we’ve got like a ton of resources, all of our resources on SEO at Care.com slash SEO, and so you can go check it out there.

00:33:45:21 – 00:34:03:01

Brady Winder

Just dive down the rabbit hole with us if you have any questions, any comments, anything you’d like to hear on the podcast or if you have a question for myself or Mike, hit me up. Brady at Care.com, I love to hear from you and we’ll talk about it on our next podcast. Mike, anything else you want to address before we wrap it up here?

00:34:03:02 – 00:34:04:06

Brady Winder

Any last final words?

00:34:04:11 – 00:34:11:06

Mike Otranto

Sure. If anybody has any questions for me, you can reach me on my Instagram at Mike underscore otranto. I’d be happy to answer any questions.

00:34:11:19 – 00:34:14:19

Brady Winder

Yes, and I’m sorry I forgot to ask. Yeah. Yes.

00:34:15:19 – 00:34:18:03

Mike Otranto

Actually buying houses by what I post on my Instagram.

00:34:18:21 – 00:34:49:08

Brady Winder

Yeah. And give Mike a backlink. So thank you for listening this episode. All right. Well, thank you, Mike. Appreciate the conversation. It’s been good. Everybody. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. And we’ll see you next week.