You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.
Dan: All right, hello everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of the REI Marketing Nerds podcast. As always, this is Daniel Barrett here from AdWordsNerds.com—and if you are looking for someone to help you with your online marketing strategy to find more motivated-seller leads and deals online, you know where to go. It's AdWordsNerds.com, the one and only, the OGs. [01:07.5]
All right, this week, I want to talk about marketing processes and the reason I'm getting into this is I'm actually redoing a lot of my own marketing processes. Every now and then, I kind of find that no matter how systems-oriented you are, no matter how many automations you've built or processes you've got, or standard operating procedures you've written, sooner or later, you've got to go back. You've got to prune the stuff that you aren't using anymore. You've got to update stuff. You've got to fix it. You’ve got to put it in the best practices of the day, so on and so forth.
I'm doing that for AdWordsNerds.com. I'm going through and I'm kind of redoing a lot of my own marketing stuff and this really has caused me to kind of sit down and think about what are the marketing processes that I see really successful real estate investors using time and time again, and this is a little different from back end processes, which I think investors in general are very good at. [02:09.0]
I think real estate investing is an operator's business in many ways. You've got to have those systems and processes for getting comps and handling leads and following up, not to mention rehabs and all this stuff. I mean, it’s incredibly sort of project-management-oriented, right? And I think the best real estate investors, in general, are the people that really nail the details of those processes.
But you can also apply that to the marketing side and there are marketing processes that I see really great real estate investors using over and over and over again, and I'd love to share with those, at least a couple of those with you today. I mean, look, I don't have all day, but this could be something we can talk about literally all day for a week and not get to the bottom of, but here are my personal favorites. [02:59.0]
All right, the first one is multiplication of organic marketing. Now, most real estate investors have some kind of organic marketing going on, and when I say organic, I simply mean it's not paid in the way that pay-per-click advertising is paid or the way that direct mail is paid, right? You’ve got to put in money to send it out. In that organic marketing umbrella, I'm including things like your website. I'm including things like posting on Facebook. I'm including things like writing a blog article, right? I'm including things like putting a video on YouTube. These are all organic marketing. Twitter is organic marketing, right? Everybody has some kind of organic marketing going on, even if it's just “I have a website. I threw it up there,” or “I’ve got a Google My Business profile that I threw up there,” or whatever. [03:59.0]
Now, when you are doing any kind of organic marketing, it stands to reason that you can multiply the effects of that marketing by simply copying it across an additional channel. This is a force multiplier effect, right? It’s essentially the idea that, yeah, if I attack you in one direction, yeah, that can be very powerful, but if I attack you in two directions simultaneously, it's not just twice as powerful.
It's actually more powerful than that because you're adding in the layer of, I mean, to extend this military metaphor, there's confusion and there's task switching, and it's just good to attack in multiple directions at once. Right? I'm not a military strategist, but if I had to guess, that would be why that would be.
Now it's the same thing in marketing. Right, if I'm seeing you on one channel, let's say it's television, you've got a television ad out. Great. That is certainly a powerful form of marketing. I'm sure it's going to be very effective, provided you put it in front of the right people. [05:05.8]
But if I see that television ad and then I see that ad on YouTube later, and then I see that ad on a billboard again, that isn't just three times as effective. It's actually more effective than that because we're sort of triggering this recognition process in the human mind that's going to make people much more likely to pay attention. So, there's a force multiplier effect to being on multiple channels. At AdWords Nerds, we call it omni-channel marketing. It's this basic idea that I want to be everywhere that motivated sellers are.
Now, for organic marketing, let's say you've got a blog. Are there ways we can extend the effort we put into that blog and get that blog on multiple channels? Right, for example, could I record a podcast about that blog and put that out? Could I make a video about that blog and put that on YouTube? [06:07.3]
Now I’ve got two or three different versions of this content rather than just one, and I'm on multiple channels because some people only go on YouTube. Some people only listen to podcasts. Lots of people don't read blogs. Heck, lots of people can't read, right? Being in multiple places gets me in front of the same people multiple times and puts me in front of new people at the same time.
My personal way of doing this, and I’ll actually put a link in the show notes of this episode on that you can go check out, so wherever you're listening to this podcast, you can find the link in the show notes, or you can go to AdWordsNerds.com/podcast and find this post. The link will be there. I will link to a video I just did on a process that I am currently using, and basically what this is is I will do a Facebook Live. I like doing videos, right, so I'll do a Facebook Live. It's quick, relatively easy. I can speak directly to my audience. Then I will use automation tools to get that video also onto YouTube and onto my blog, which expands the reach and improves my search engine optimization at the same time. [07:17.0]
That's going to be easier to understand what the visual is, so I'm going to add a link to the video where I show you how I do that in the show notes of this episode, so go check that out. Just as a general concept, remember, one of the processes that successful real estate investors use is expansion and multiplication of organic marketing across multiple channels.
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Now, the other kind of process that's really, really critical, specifically to closing more deals from the leads that you're getting—right, so we're not necessarily talking about getting more leads at this point. We are now talking about closing more deals from the leads that we have—one of the most important processes that an investor can have is the follow-up process after the lead converts.
Let's think about this for a second. Online lead generation, you basically think is, yeah, we've got this giant population of people on the internet. They have not converted, by which I mean they have not become a lead yet. Right, so when we say conversion in online marketing, we mean they're becoming a lead. They're emailing us. They’re calling us. They’re texting us. However they're going to do it, all right. We've got all these people that have not converted. [09:03.8]
Now, for most investors, what happens is they get that person to their website—maybe they're running Google Ads with us. Maybe they're running Facebook ads. Maybe they're doing SEO, whatever, but they get that person to their website—and that person converts. They become a lead, and then at that point, it kind of ends. That's the end of the process and this is a huge, huge mistake, because after talking to hundreds of investors, I can tell you that, on average, almost 60% of the deals you will do from online marketing will come after the fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh point of contact.
If all you do is this lead comes in, they convert, they contact you, and you try to get them on the phone once, and then if they close, they close, and if they don't, they don't, you are leaving many, many, many deals on the table and you are losing lots and lots of money. All right, we do not want that. [10:06.5]
What do we do instead? What do successful investors do instead? They have a process for systematically following up across multiple channels. Obviously, speed to lead is a major factor here. You want to try to follow up with the lead as quickly as possible, right? You want to try to get the person.
At AdWords Nerds, we have this rule, the five-minute rule. You want to try to contact this person within the first five minutes after that lead converts, so you've got that. You’ve got to speed to lead. You've got to get that person on the phone as quickly as possible.
Secondly, we have email follow-up. You can extend an automated email follow-up sequence over many, many, many months. Now, most investors, what they do is when the lead converts, they send one email, if that, and then that's it. But I always say, I give the example of the world's simplest email follow-up funnel, right? This is really, really simple. Once a month, you send out an email that says: [11:09.5]
Hey,
It's Dan from your investment company. Have you sold your house yet?
Sincerely,
Dan.
That's it. You send that email once a month until they tell you to stop sending. Now, is that the world's most sophisticated email follow-up process? Of course, not. Is it the best email follow-up process? Probably not. You could probably come up with a much better version of that. But my point is that even something as simple as that one email a month saying, Have you sold your house yet? is incredibly powerful and will go a long way to helping you close more deals.
So far we've got speed to lead and we've got email follow-up. You've also got staying on top of mind using retarding. What this is is, once someone lands on your site and they convert, you can follow them around the internet with ads. You could show them testimonials. You could show them houses you've remodeled. You could show them direct messages to them, right? [12:13.8]
Now, what this does is, after this person converts, it just keeps you top of mind. You can start to address potential objections they might have. You can start to position yourself against your competition and you can say, Hey, I know you're probably shopping around and probably a big guy iBuyer made you an offer, too, but here's why you probably want to work with me.
What this does is, for one, it makes them much more likely to return your call and pick up the phone when you call, because, Hey, they've seen you a bunch of times, have a sense of who you are. They have a sense of how you speak and how you communicate. They have a sense of how you work. That goes a long way towards alleviating the anxiety people feel about picking up the phone when a number they don't know calls. [13:00.7]
Then the second thing is you start to, as I mentioned before, answer objections. You start to get in their head and say, Yeah, you may be thinking this. You may be thinking that. You may have this problem or that problem. Here's how I'm going to solve that problem for you. You start to chip away at their resistance to working with you.
Again, if you just say, Hey, once they become a lead, that's it. They're either a good leader or badly lead. They either closed or they didn't. You're going to give up your opportunity to start planting seeds in this way to make your job a lot easier and to close a lot more off.
Now, all this I think comes from this idea that online leads are some of the most motivated leads you can get and that is true. On average, online leads close and a very consistent and very aggressive rate compared to, for example, direct-mail leads. It just is the case that that's true, but that doesn't mean that every lead that converts and contacts you online is just going to be a deal that's going to fall in your lap with no work. [14:08.4]
That just simply isn't the market that we are in right now. It simply isn't the reality of competing with iBuyers and hedge funds and a million other investors. It just isn't how it is. Even if these leads are more motivated, you are still going to close way more often if you follow up aggressively, if you have a really fast, really short time to lead or fast speed to lead, and if you use retargeting to chip away at their objections ahead of time. If you can put these really valuable marketing processes in place, you are going to close way more often.
I hope that makes sense. As always, this is Barrett from AdWordsNerds.com, signing off. And, hey, I have a Facebook group. It is free and I'm posting free content in there all the time, strategies, tips, and tricks for finding more motivated-seller leads and deals online. You can get there by going to AdWordsNerds.com/group and request to join. I will add you. I will love to have you. [15:14.3]
As always, thank you so much for listening to the REI Marketing Nerds podcast. This is Daniel Barrett, signing off. Cheers.
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