How to Optimize Your Real Estate Marketing to Rank Higher and Close More Deals

0:00Dude, for for sure. So, I'll I'll talk about the different real estate models and how I' I've experienced over the years how we can optimize that with our marketing. So, let's say you are a flipper or wholesaler and and you're you're in the transactional business and you're going after those motivated sellers, right? Now, about 90% of those sellers, the ones that connect with you, don't want to sell at a discount. Okay? 90 90% probably want a retail price or maybe in 6 months or a year, maybe that they're then motivated enough to want a discount. That means 10% of the people that land on your website or in your direct mail or whatever it is that's reaching them, probably 10% are going to be open to a discounted offer.

0:37Okay, so here here's the thing. If you're doing offline marketing, now we've got a guy JP Purle in in Louisville, Kentucky. Biggest investor in Louisville. He's got the billboards, he's got the direct mail, he's got the carrot sites, he's got all those things. He has a big billboard all over town that says jpssold.com and it basically says, "Hey, you want to sell your house? Contact me JP." — I've seen him as I've driven through to Florida from Indiana. — Yeah. — Yeah. So JP is one one of one of our clients. — Nice. — And so J and JP could build a custom site.

1:10And here's the story. He did have a custom site prior. So he had a website. And what I always say is all offline marketing drives online demand. Okay? So, if you're doing direct mail, cold calling, knocking on doors, literally having a one-on-one appointment, billboards, any of that stuff, the very first thing that someone's probably going to do, is they're going to go research you. They're going to pick up the phone and go, — I think Kirby seems like a good dude, but let me like let me Google him and see if he's legit. Mhm.

1:40— So they're going to type up Kirby Atwell reviews or you know Kirby's company name reviews location — and they're going to learn about you. You know there's a very very high percentage of people in big money decisions which real estate is among the biggest if not the biggest that they it's like 70s something percent of consumers research before making a big financial decision and they research online. So the question is, you could capture them offline, but then are we losing them once they go online? — Once they go online, what are they finding when they look for your company?

2:14What are they finding when they research your name? When they research your company plus the word reviews? And so that's the first thing I would have everybody do is go, okay, let's say I've got a direct mail piece or a billboard. What is on that? Is there a phone number on it? Go Google the phone number. Because a lot of us will go, shoot, I don't know who's calling or texting me. I'm going to Google this thing. To see who this even is, — right? And then what happens is people are calling or texting from a tracking number and because you bought it at some marketing company that gives you tracking numbers and what's going to pop up when you Google that?

2:47It's going to be like 1800scamall.com because that's all that's showing up for tracking numbers. So instead, I need to have a website. I need to take those numbers I'm marketing with. I'm going to take those numbers on my direct mail piece on my what I'm calling and texting from and I'm going to put those on my contact page. Now, when someone Google searches those numbers, your website's going to pop up and you can bring them into your story and build credibility. Okay? — With JP, the problem he was having before is he had a jpsold.com site, but and it was a it was a nice site, but it was a traditional real estate agent site.

3:22They would land there, there might be a thing that said sell your house. There was a thing to search for properties and it was losing the prospect. It wasn't optimized well and so we took that over and we made it so we knew when someone goes to jpsold.com they probably found out about it somewhere else offline. We then join that conversation in their mind with the right words, the right images. We build trust. We build credibility, put reviews, testimonials and make it insanely easy for them to take the next step building confidence that JP is the right solution.

3:55So, all offline marketing drives online demand. And I I'll give one last antidote. So, another client in Louisville, Bo Hollis, good friend of mine, and Bo has a company called simplysold.com. And there's another Simplysold in Florida. And the Simply Sold in Florida does a lot of direct mail. And Bo didn't know about the Simplysold in Florida. Neither did I. They're not a client of ours. So, Bo starts getting leads in Florida. And he's like, "Dude, what's going on with my website?" I go, I don't know. Are you doing any marketing in Florida?

4:26Do you have any pages ranking in Florida? He's like, no. And so he started searching around talking to people. They said, I got your direct mail piece. He goes, I don't send direct mail. I only do online or I do networking. He researched it and this company does a bunch of direct mail. People were taking their direct mail piece, Google searching the company name. And because they didn't have a website, they found Bose's website. And Bose started doing deals in Florida. So, he was doing multiple six figures a year in deals just picking up the phone and calling or and picking up the phone and answering those people that were coming from their direct mail.

5:02— Hope he sent a Christmas card to the other guy. — Exactly. So, all offline marketing drives online demand, guys. You're building trust, building credibility, and this is even more important in the AI world right now. — Yeah, absolutely. — Get ranked well in AI search, which we're seeing leads come in every single day. I'm looking at one right now from one of our clients in Baltimore. They just launched this site 4 days ago. The second lead that came in on Saratoga Street. This this seller named Alex. The second lead that came in came from chat GPT.

5:33— So someone was in GPT searching a phrase like how do I sell my house in Baltimore? And because the carrot sites are optimized and we teach people how to make it so you can show up in front of the right people even through AI search. His site was the one that came up in G in chat GPT. — Interesting. I was gonna ask you about that because because I know — AI is changing a lot and you know if you think about Google like if you if you search something in Google you got to go through all the ads first you know and you got to select the right thing that you're you want like narrow it down as opposed GPT it gives you one answer you know and it might not be the perfect answer but in a lot of cases it's it's pretty good.

6:13So I was wondering if it was going to kind of kill the business or you could still optimize to show up there as well. — Yeah, I'll give you the the short answer on it. This is probably five years ago. I recorded a podcast on on my podcast at that time. It was called the Carrot Cast. That podcast is now called the Evergreen Marketing Show. And I recorded a podcast saying the future of search and in that podcast I was predicting that the future of search is one answer, — not pages and pages. And here's why, Kirby. This is way before I knew what AI was going to do.

6:46This is before Open AI came out with anything. And this is what I want people to think about because when they think about online marketing or SEO, which is search engine optimization, I I think people over over complicate it and especially the SEO agencies make it sound insanely complex, which there are things you've got to learn for sure. And some people may just not want to learn that or may not be technically inclined to even, you know, have that skill set. But the the thing that I thought about was I was going, okay, search or search through AI is all about the customer experience.

7:20It's all about getting the customer or the person the highest confidence answer for a specific query. And so the key that we've got to think about is not just an answer, but the answer that has the highest degree of confidence for that user to be able to say, "Yeah, that answered my problem." The problem with Google, like inherently, you know, for years, Google's had the I'm feeling lucky button. — Have you ever seen that? — It's been there forever. Like no one clicks, — right? No one clicks it. And so why why does no one click it? So, I'm feeling lucky button is literally you click and it gives you one answer that that's like I hope I get the right answer.

7:58I'm feeling lucky. No one clicks it because the degree of confidence that I'm going to get the right answer for me with that click is low. And so, that's why Google's model was, well, let's create a an algorithm and search all these sites and we're going to rank order them. We're going to tell you that we think the best ones are towards the top. But what do we invariably do when we're making a big decision? We're doing a Google search and we're clicking them all. Yeah. — Right. We're clicking one, two, three, four, five, six, seven sites on page one. We might even get into page two if we're getting really deep on this thing if it's a really important thing.

8:31— And so why is that? It's because we feel that we need to research and then look at all the options and narrow down to the one that is the one that we feel confident that's going to answer our thing. Okay? We click the first one and we go, "Yeah, that looks good, but I might click the third one now and the second one. And I'm going to compare them." So, I I was I was asking the question. I was going, "Well, that's not a good customer experience. It's not a good experience for me to have to sift through 5, 10, 15 sites to then make a decision on which one's going to be good." The best experience for me, if I were to eliminate the internet, would be I've got a house repair issue and I have a friend who I know has worked with people who who have repaired their house and done a really, really good job.

9:14I'm not going to Google. I'm going to call my buddy and say, "Hey, Johnny. You know that guy that you used to repair your house that you've been raving about? Would you re recommend him?" "Yeah, I would." "Okay. Great. Can you give me his number? Can you make me a referral?" That's the highest degree of confidence way I'm going to try to solve that problem. — Mhm. — Because I have a trusted source that gave a a firsthand recommendation on it and I had had a degree of confidence to maybe I saw the work. I saw the quality. And so I was thinking the future of search is somehow it's going to bring in your preferences, bring in your friend graph, bring in all those things, bring in your location of the search and it's going to go, hey, best Roseberg, best sushi in Roseberg, Oregon.

9:56It's going to recognize that you're connected to Johnny over here and Johnny and you have similar taste and similar area and there's three sushi spots and he actually rated this sushi spot a five out of five two weeks ago. I think Google then is gonna up uplevel and say this is the one you should go to. But then it's always going to give a next option. Hey, here's the one we think you should do. But if that's not it, click this. We'll give you three more. Right? That's what I thought was going to happen. That's exactly what's happening on AI right now. — Yeah. — Here's the answer. But you know what? If that's not it, here's a few links over here to go check out.

10:27— Yeah. — And so, how do we get in front of that? Well, we get in front of that by building the highest confidence in in in the search algorithm or in GPT or in Google AI mode that we are the authoritative trusted source on that. So, we build online reviews, make that just a part of your marketing engine. You close a deal, you ask the person, hey, you know, would you so we can serve other people like you, would you be able to click this link and go give a Google review? Get some YouTube videos like you're doing up. Google's looking at that entire graph.

10:59Link those YouTube videos to your site. Put it at the top of that description every now and then. Talk about it. Google's even even looking at the the transcript of the YouTube video. Now, if people are talking about you or your brand in the transcript, it goes towards the brand authority right now, — which is wild. — Yeah. — links to your website from good quality websites, that's not new, but that that still helps. On your own website itself, where a lot of carrot users, they would just use our stock content. We were telling them for years, guys, update the content, edit it, refine it.

11:30That's more important now than ever. Go on there and swap out the photos with actual photos of you and sellers or if you're in the rental property business with your properties or happy tenants. Put real testimonials on there that talk about real situations. Talk about how long you've been doing this because they want to know your experience level. Hey, we've been doing this for 15 years and we've helped 925 sellers in the Richmond, Virginia market sell their home with confidence. Have a good about page.

12:01It's just all the normal things that we would do to not game the system, but to truly show the right story to show that you're reputable, you know what you're talking about, and you're trustworthy, and that's it. — Yeah. — That's it. — Yeah. Yeah. And I think most people can see through when you are trying to game the system, you know. Exactly. Or whether it's authentic or not. — Yeah. Exactly. — That's that's really great advice. I I want to talk about building, you know, an eight figureure business and and your leadership. But one more question before we move into that.

12:32You you've got 6,000 customers at this point. I I've been one of them for the last decade. — you you by nature of that, you get to see a lot of transactions. You get to see a lot of data. So I'm curious from your standpoint, — do you where would you say the biggest opportunity is for investors today? Like if somebody is just starting and they're like, "Well, I want to find the lowest hanging fruit out there." what do you what do you recommend? — Yeah, I mean, there's a few different ways I could take it.

13:04So, if the person was wanting to be hyper local and they're like, "Yeah, I want to invest in my in my market." what what I would what I would first do is I would I would play the long game. I mean there are quick things you can do. You can go knock on doors. You can drive for dollars. You can buy a list and start calling. All those things work, right? They all work. But the problem with those is they will eventually wear you out. And event and that's what I call hamster wheel marketing. And so the first thing is like play the long game. And for me the long game is become the the local trusted source and authority in that topic.

13:39Mhm. — So when we talk when we go back to Gan, Gan's not in a giant market, but he's got an amazing high high-profit business with him and a business partner, no other employees. He has a part-time executive assistant. And and so with Gan, what we what we did is we're like, Gan, you go out there and literally just network the heck out of things, add value to people, get to know people, and over the next one, two, three years, you will be the guy everybody sends your deals to. It's not immediate, though. And so that's the first thing I would do is play the long game. Invest in relationships. Invest in things that AI can't do, right?

14:12AI cannot build those relationships for you. And I think people are going to be leaning into AI maybe too much to try to do too many things. And I want people looking at AI to go, yeah, let's use AI to accelerate and amplify who I am and how fast I can go, but let me really focus on the things that AI can't do that are unique to me. — So, that's the first thing. Get off your douff. Go out there and talk to people, meet with people every single week and add value. Even if you're brand new and you don't know what you're doing, find a way to help serve people.

14:45Okay. The next thing that I would do on the online side, if I were just going in, is I'm probably going to start with Google Paperclick. It's still really, really good. Some people say it's too expensive, but it's all relative, right? If I'm if my average profit per deal in a market's 30,000 and I can get a deal for $5,000 through pay-per-click and you know maybe took me 20 leads to get there and they were 250 bucks a lead. I'm going to take that all day. I'm going to take that trade $5,000 to $30,000 all day long.

15:16And that's about what we're seeing in most markets. A $3,500 to $6,000 deal acquisition cost. — But you got to answer those really really quickly those quickly. So, I still see a lot of opportunity there because we're seeing people drop out of paid marketing right now because some markets are getting a little bit harder. Or they're just not optimizing, you know, the back end and calling those those leads quickly and following up with them. Well, so paid marketing, SEO or ranking well in Google, I I'm still big on it, but things are changing so much right now that, and like I said, I do believe the future of search is less results being shown.

15:57So, will that be less real estate, online real estate for people to compete in? Possibly. But I I like I said, I think I think what's going to happen is is every searcher is individual. Every searcher has individual tendencies and preferences and locations. So I think as long as we're doubling down on building that online credibility, we are going to be put in front of the right people that we can serve best. So that's the third thing. Double down on the long game on building your online credibility, building your website, building content on there, putting testimonials and reviews on there.

16:34All marketing channels are going to get made better from there. — Yeah. So, the other one, if you're going national, we I work with a lot of clients in my Epic program that are all over the country doing really, really well, and there's pockets of them having challenges right now, dude. The ones up in Ohio, they're all crushing it. It's like all of them are crushing it up in Ohio. Jean down in Augusta, this last week, we had a property that that had a bidding war on it and $27,000 over asking. — Wow. And so there are pockets and markets that are blowing up right now still that are amazing for flipping and wholesaling and there's pockets that are really really hard.

17:12So if you're not if you're like location agnostic and you don't have to stick in one location. I would go do the research. There's a great site called housingalerts.com that's kind of technical but it's amazing for the data. And I would peg one to two markets that have a two to three, two to five year runway of being a great wholesaling or flipping market or rental market. And I would just market heavily in one to two markets that are that are on the that have a better trajectory. — Got it.