The old ways of real estate are just not working anymore. For sale by owners, expireds, and knocking on doors are all valid ways to gain clients, but it isn’t the most efficient way. Online marketing and marketing motivated seller leads specifically for Facebook and Google are, and that’s what we’ll be talking about on today’s episode. We’re diving into the seller lead generation process, but this time, through the mindset of an investor. Real estate agents should be doing the same thing investors are doing, which is, putting their offer or their solution in front of the right people.
For 12+ years now Chad Keller and his business Motivated Leads has done Facebook marketing and Search Engine Optimization for local businesses, startups, and fortune 500 companies. With the experience of spending millions in advertising dollars to learn the game from the inside out they have perfected digital advertising. Now for the 5 years they have reinvested their profits back into rental properties and started a real estate empire.
Listen to this week’s episode to gain insight from the strategies that top digital advertisers use to market to motivated sellers on Facebook and Google, optimize your ad spending, and ultimately perform more money making activities. It’s no secret that with rising competition agents are having a harder time closing deals. However, if you implement these strategies in your business you can respond to these changes and win in areas your competition isn’t even touching.
Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
-How Chad created a lead online lead generation system for investors.
-Getting your leads to come to you through investing digitally.
-The importance and results of targeting the right people.
Connect with Chad:
Learn more about Chad and Motivated Leads at Motivated-Leads.com or call him at 412.254.9225 to get connected.
Resources:
Learn more about Motivated Leads
The Listing Advocate (Earn more listings!)
TRANSCRIPT:
So how do you attract new business? You constantly don’t have to chase it. Hi, I’m Mike Cuevas to real estate marketing. And this podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust Most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living. It’s your job to remind them. Let’s get started. What’s up ladies and gentlemen, welcome other episode of the real estate marketing dude, podcast. We’re getting into nitty gritty today, what we’re gonna be chatting about is direct seller lead motivation. And no, I’m not talking about expireds. No, I’m not talking about for sale by owners. No, I’m not talking about knocking on doors, we’re talking about online marketing, marketing motivated seller leads specifically for Facebook and Google. And we, you know, if you guys have been following the show, the last few months, we’ve really been focused on seller lead generation for a number of different reasons. like nobody likes to work with buyers. But we’re gonna I want you to guys to wear another hat today, because we’re going to approach this from the investor mindset. And I still I just don’t understand why real estate agents or anybody looking for listings are not doing or copying or mimicking the exact same thing the investors are doing, because investors despite market conditions are always good at generating seller leads in any market. But yet real estate agent can’t fucking get a listing for the whatever reason, and it just doesn’t make sense to me. Ultimately, it’s because they’re putting their offer or their solution in front of the right people. And that’s what we’re going to be chatting about On today’s episode. So we’re gonna meet with Mr. Chad Keller, who is one of the partners over at motivated leads, and they’re going to share some of their insight and our secrets with exactly how he sort of like accidentally stumbled into creating a lead online lead generation system for investors just because he’s been an investor himself. And it just started working really well. And just like anything else, or word of mouth. Thanks, bro. So Chad, why don’t you go ahead and say hello to our listeners really quick. Let us know who the hell you are, where you’re at. And then I got a bunch of questions for you.
Yeah, definitely. It’s nice to meet everyone. So we’re based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I come from a marketing background. I’ve been doing Facebook paid marketing, since it was kind of created, built and sold an e commerce company on the back of marketing took a startup 100 million dollar company on the back of paid marketing, and then just started getting the affiliate lead generation companies paid me to basically I’d give them my own money and they would buy leads off me left and right. So from the profits of everything, started buying real estate with my partner, Brian. From there, we we built a rental portfolio of single family homes here in Pittsburgh, and then realized other real estate investors were really struggling to get leads, met a bunch of investors and just started helping a few out. And they were loving it. They were doing traditional mailers, bandit signs, kind of things like we still do those. But we always invested heavily in digital and had our leads coming to us and they It was very enticing to them. So now we work with about 150 investors nationwide. to auto it’s been a fun journey.
So you guys just sort of like stumbled upon this. And yeah, so the name of the game is lead generation. And I’m not sure how familiar aren’t the real estate agent space. But I will say that they’re getting drowned right now by a bunch of the AI buyers and they’re getting their ass kicked handed to them by buyers and other investors. But it’s always because they’re not targeting the right people. We say this every other week on the show. So why don’t we go through and start by targeting and let’s just first actually start with this verse. So start with an overview on just Facebook and, and Google and what type of how you’re able to sort of reach them there. Before we get into the targeting why Facebook? why Google? And let’s start with that.
Yeah, a lot of a lot of what we found is like, honestly, about 40% of our ambassadors, though, are realtors or run a team themselves. So they’re looking for leads on both ends, investment leads and listing leads, and they’ll refer them one way or the other. But Facebook and Google they’ve just always been that’s just our wheelhouse. Brian’s known Google, I’ve known Facebook, we know how to vet a better lead through those platforms. And when I’m when I talk about leads, these are like highly motivated leads. They’re not just name, email, phone number address, saying yes, I want to sell these are people saying why are they looking to sell how quick? Are they looking to sell how much they owe on their own on their home? Is it vacant? Is it is it listed with a realtor, all that so we get about 14 data points on our leads, they can be costly, they vary per market. I mean, it’s all dictated between the competition within your market. So but these platforms allow you like Facebook, for instance, allows you to get in front of people that are thinking about selling their home, they might not have that direct intent. But you can let them know about you get out there, get that click from them, and nurture them really push them through, or Google’s more of a direct click. Kind of a direct search out. I should say of the motivated people, the cost per clicks, you’re competing against the eye buyer, Zillow realtor everyone there. So you do have to have more of a budget to tap into Google than you do Facebook because Facebook’s more strategy based where Google’s in some markets, it’s just who has the biggest pockets. And Yogi’s cofely.
Most people are competing against national companies with national ad spend, that’s why they’re getting prioritized. And then, like so like Zillow, or an ibuyers, spending in several different markets, where as a local guys just spending in 1x amount of dollars that could help that could hurt. You said some interesting Facebook branding, Facebook’s more of like, follow them around FTC sort of got some kind of pixel on them initially? Or are you actually finding and starting your lead generation efforts on Facebook? Or are you starting them on Google? Because there’s a major difference? people on Facebook, don’t go to Facebook to say, oh, intently, letting Facebook No, I want to sell my house. But when I go to Google, they’re trying to search for a solution. So Google advertising just like intent based? Or is Facebook’s usually non intelligent, sort of finding people like where they’re at in the process? So what is your opinion on that? Can you explain that a little further?
Yes, so we don’t run Google for a client unless they run Facebook. So majority of our clients start on Facebook, and you’re still gonna get the cheapest lead cost. And quality leads through through Facebook, we see anywhere from like a nine to 12% conversion rate on the leads from Facebook, whereas Google might set it like 13 to 15%. Yeah, you’re very high quality leads. I mean, these leads are expensive. These aren’t cheap leads. These aren’t just ones that kind of like awesome, Pittsburgh, we pay about $75, a lead guys in Florida. Yeah, they pay 50 or higher, like 60. But you get up like Salt Lake City, San Diego, LA, you’re paying 250 $400 for some of these leads. So the more competitive markets, the bigger the bear market, you tap into, there are some big markets that have cheap lead costs, but most of them are higher lead costs, but the conversion rates there. So we always tell people to you know, if you can afford three to $5,000 acquisition costs on the deal, we make sense for you. That’s pretty much Well,
a lot of people don’t look at their ad spend that way, though. They monitor it based upon leads versus cost per contract. So can you explain the difference between the two just so everybody understands that? Not cost per click not cost cost per like, lead? I want a cost per contract. You guys differentiate between that, like how many you can get X amount of leads, but how many leads to take to get a contract?
Yeah, exactly. And we say like, if you look at it, like a 10% conversion rate, one in 10 leads is going to equal out to be a contract for you. And that doesn’t mean like, hey, one out of your first 10 leads isn’t equal to be a contract. That means you’re 30 leads in the door, three of those should be a contract that might be lead number, 1721, and 29. That’s not going to be lead number 919 and 29. Like, it’s just like, if you give it a true shot and let it bake out, this is what it’s going to be. And when the cost comes down to it, you look at the cost of manage the ads, and then the cost you’re spending on ads. And if you can get your contract a month, and say we charge 15 $100 a platform, then you’re spending 15 $100 in ad spend. That’s $3,000, you have spent to get that house. So I was talking to a guy in Maryland, actually, Baltimore, he spent even with us, he spent like $14,000 in fees, and it’s paid out to be he refers a lot wholesale, some just pushes some leads off. He’s made about $47,000. So but he’s like it’s found money for me. It’s just Hey, like, but there’s also people in San Diego that I work with us that are doing $100,000 wholesale deals. Yeah, our listing one, like $2 million properties. So it’s all different per market. But yeah, that’s that’s what we always look at on a per deal basis.
So really, what we’re talking about is ROI. I mean, you guys are, I think the biggest problem a lot of agents have or people spend on lead gen don’t aren’t willing to risk $75 per lead to $75 per lead, I’d rather just go to Facebook, and I get them for five to seven, but they’re a bunch of tire kickers. So there’s a major difference. I always like tell people like look at your cost per contract, not per lead, or per listing, if you’re an agent, whatever the hell you want to do. But what you said something else interesting. I think that everybody in the future is going to become or have some kind of investor partner, or for real estate agents specifically have an investor partner or become the investor themselves. Because there’s so many other ways to monetize the lead. Not every deal is gonna work out for the investor. Like if an investor looks at a deal, how many deals actually work out for one in 10 to 110? Maybe when they’re actually looking at properties and price doesn’t get accepted? Doesn’t mean they can’t refer that deal out. Can you share what some of these investors are doing when you’re talking about referring these out to agents and wholesale fees and all that other stuff?
Yeah, so um, some of those, some of our investors refer us even we refer them out to agents in the area, and they just mark it off as a marketing cost because you can’t technically kid a referral fee. And it will depend sometimes we’re just firm $1,000 referral on it. Our guy in Baltimore that I was talking to, he was getting 1200 a referral that was just a flat fee. He’s like, Hey, I have them, I want to talk to them. It just doesn’t make sense for me from an investment standpoint, you can easily go list this property. And then we’re getting a lot of realtors just contacting us, I’m wanting to get into investing. And they’re like, Hey, I don’t want to do this to my brokerage. How can we position this so that it doesn’t overlap with any of that, and say, you’re with Keller Williams, or whoever made REMAX, whoever it may be in your name, Stacy, and you come in, and you want to say we’re making a website that Stacy Buys Houses, or we pay cash, Pittsburgh, whatever it may be something like that, you basically just build a brand off of that and push everything through there. And then they come into you directly, if it makes sense to push it through your, your agency, if it doesn’t go, go invest in it as yourself,
that hybrid model is honestly gonna be the future. It’s gonna happen. It’s just a matter of when I get the I buyers everyone needs a cash offer right now. You know, if you’re not, you’re not competing, everybody has a cash offer, you don’t have a cash offer, we’ll tell you do and get a fucking cash offer. You gotta compete against other people. I’m interested in the content of the ads. So let’s get on Facebook. Specifically, what kind of ad is going to run attention for people? Like what am I going to send? What do I how do I break through the clutter? And who am I targeting, for example, on Facebook,
so a lot of people like I feel like a lot of people when they do this, they like overthink it. And they’re looking at like cost per click impression all this and like, at the end of the day, like that doesn’t matter. Like you put out there clickbait ad that grabs attention stops a thumb, and people click on it or like confuses them. They’re like, Oh, wonder what this is, I’m gonna click on cheap clicks here, get all this to the website. Now you got to be super direct in your ads, we pay cash for houses we buy houses as is, you don’t need to clean it out. Because we deal with a lot of hoarders deaths in the family, divorce just to stress situations. Sure. So especially when we’re at hoarders is a big thing. So no repairs. So let’s take the Pittsburgh. Yeah, just like it just seems like that? Well, because we buy in one specific zip code in that zip code. It’s just like, hey, it’s common, because they can’t list the house, because it’s such a mess inside, they don’t want to clean it out. So you come in and buy it as is printed out. So buying it as is just being very direct in your messaging, because I’d rather pay three, four times for that click to nurture the right person, then get all these cheap clicks, and then be nurturing the wrong people. And then you’re just wasting spend all around. So that’s how we look at it from a targeting aspect. I mean, they’ve really put you into like the housing category. So you have to be very selective on what you can do. If you’re smart with your ad creative, Facebook will target the right people for you. You have to rely too much on their targeting. But there’s always just this refinance. I think there’s like mortgage options, refinancing credit, bad people in those situations, we have a client in ha, in Las Vegas, where we target like gamblers that everyday people that it’s terrible to say but like it’s what’s to the market there. It’s a people that are going through gambling debt or need help with that. So it’s really specific to your market.
And are you guys using like buying data lists and using csvs? Are you just targeting multiple layers of interests on these
will do multiple layers of interest, and things like that, that that’ll just like don’t pan out as much as they used to two years ago, it used to be amazing. The matchback rate on those is just so bad. Now this? So yeah, just really finding the right interest making sure your ads speak to that interest. You don’t want to target an interest and not have the ad speak to that you’re talking about if you’re if you’re targeting somebody that’s going to refinance their house or looking for a loan, have that ad speak to that as well. Don’t just say, we pay houses, we pay cash for houses or sell your house as is speak to whatever you’re targeting.
I just saw an ad on Facebook, I keep getting retargeted from tirek, you know from the Flip or Flop house, and he’s like, I don’t know why he’s retargeting San Diego guess. But yeah, his ad they’re very direct. And he gets, you know, some people are like, Oh, you’re just gonna take advantage of these units. And we always get the hate mail on these things, right? We just got to shut that off. Let’s switch over to Google. So tell me the difference. You guys like starting on Facebook. And then following around with Google, I see different strategies here. So tell me what, why Google and let’s get into a little bit more in depth.
So yeah, on the Google side of things, you can spend a lower budget and still compete on there and get the clicks in the door. The way we like to start it on Facebook is that on Google, you’re typically going to have a higher cost per click, you’re going to have a higher lead cost where it might be two to three to four times of lead cost on Facebook. But you can use some strategies to get some strict some some good clicks in the door, and you might get 100 clicks in the door and get one lead. So those other 99 people if you can pixel them through your facebook pixel and then start retargeting them on Facebook. You’re kind of creating that full funnel where you had all these high tech clicks. It’s the first time they’re hearing about you. They might not trust you, but then you come back with some personal, personal Facebook ads, they start to get to know who you are. So it’s like, oh, yeah, I found them on Google. I clicked here on it. And then you just start seeing it working Where? Hey, yeah, you’re caught. You’re the cost on Google might not be sustainable. You might be like, why am I paying $600 compared to $50, a lead or $100? Lead on Facebook, it’s like, that’s actually what’s driving it. somebody sees somebody clicks on Google goes back through Facebook, and you’ll see that left on the Facebook side. So that’s why we like it. Because a lot of people, they’re nervous when they get into digital advertising. Yeah. And you can’t start somebody on a platform that’s super nervous coming in at three to four or $500. leads. Yeah, so even here in Pittsburgh, again, we pay 7565 75 bucks a lead on Facebook. But on Google, we still pay 150 200. But a pencils. Yeah, it makes sense from it, would
you still take in that multi prong approach? If you were be absent of either Facebook or Google, you’re saying that those costs both go up?
Yeah, so Google will naturally run down your lead cost on Facebook, there’s always like a, also a limit that you can push on Facebook, like here in Pittsburgh, we every time we spend over three grand, we get the same amount of leads, our lead cost is just higher on Facebook. But if we push that three grand and push an extra two grand on Google, see the lead costs come down, there’s more opportunity there. super interesting.
And generally spending, like, one questions we get a lot is like, Okay, how large my audience be? Right? If I’m gonna go out there and create or do ads, like on Facebook, what should be the size of my audience? And if that’s the case, how much do I need to spend on that audience? Well, you,
it depends on your market, because like, no matter what I say, the size of the audience could be like, that might not be the size of your audience in your market. So like, if your markets 100,000 people, you obviously you need to look at how many people are you reaching for $10 for $100, back it out, see how much you can flood your market for and then you can back it out, though, okay, I can reach 50% of my market for X amount. Based on the numbers. We typically say like you want to spend about 1000 to 15 $100 on ad spend per month, per channel. Some markets, it’s too small, some markets, it’s not enough, it really depends. But you can usually compete in every market with that. If you want to spend less, you just have to give it more time, you can go into a market and spend 507 50. Just know that we even tell the people that spend start off spending 15 $100, like, Hey, this is gonna take like, three months to get fully optimized to get going. So if you’re spending half of that, give it six months, if you’re spending 500 bucks, you go be in this game for eight, nine months and realize it’s gonna pay off that and this isn’t just a switch that you turn on and get leads.
How many people do that where they just like ever wants instant gratification they give up after the first 30 days or 60 days, but it never really gave them the chance, right?
Yeah, we get a good amount of people that like, no matter how much you tell them, like, hey, this isn’t making sense. But a lot of people understand that that like, people are getting to know who I am. Because you’re pushing me out of my ads, you’re pushing my testimonials out, it’s building more credibility, and we get mentions comments here. And it makes sense for us. So we just really set the groundwork up front of vetting and really explaining that to people so that we don’t have that high churn rate where they don’t understand.
Make sense, um, talk to me about lead comes in, how they converted? are most of these people are asking for a cash offer. So a lot of people Oh, do I need to have a super duper email autoresponder or like revenue leakages, where you’re picking them up and get them on the phone.
So usually, you’ll see unless somebody is doing multiple states, multiple markets, your lead flows not going to be so heavy on this type of quality lead, unless you unless like, we have some guys that are doing 678 states here, some virtual wholesalers that are doing the whole United States where their volume is so heavy that like they need a team to help call on everything. But nothing beats calling that lead as soon as it comes in. Typically, especially on if you think about it from Google standpoint, when they see your ad up there, you’re up there with two other ads. So they’re filling out your your form, they fill out the next person’s form in the next person’s form. Like we’ve created two three brands in our area and got duplicate leads. And we’ve seen that happen. So sit in the same thing on Facebook, Facebook’s logarithms so smart that like you click one ad to sell your house quickly. Immediately you’re getting shown your competitor or another another one. So you have to be quick to call these people back. What we personally do on our side because we run the business and we’re pretty busy, is that we send an automatic text message and an automatic email. That text message says like, hey, we’d love to come to your property. here’s a here’s a link to our calendar instead of a calendly link. And then we do a text message drip in place just to ping them if we can’t call them it still goes up to everyone but you would see about 40% of the leads actually booked that appointment and that appointment is for us to come view that property. We check on the back end make sure it’s not listed. We just want to get in front of that person. You know, you’re the person that says, Hey, I want full value. I want this we’re like, cool. Let’s just come see the property first. There’s always something that you can negotiate or talk down. So So that’s our main, that’s our main lead comes in, fills out a form we, if we can’t call them that that automatic text message sets up the appointment for us, we confirm the appointment, we go view it.
A lot of people get stopped in like, I don’t know, the shiny object syndrome. Oh, I can’t start doing this shit because I don’t have my autoresponder set up. And it’s not seven emails deep or blah, blah, blah. But this type when you deal with a motivated seller, and they’re raising their hands, they want to call back right now and you can’t ask for a warmer lead because the offers usually Yeah, but to buy your house like that. You have to you’re marketing their solution to their issue, not their freakin any other way around. people confuse that so so much, maybe not so much in the investor space, they get it. But when you’re dealing with like a retail agent, they’re like, Oh, shit, I don’t know. But I can tell you guys, there’s not a better way to convert a lead then to face to face. It’s the only way to do it. And finding them if you’re an agent finding the best solution for them. If you’re an investor, it’s the same thing. How often have you seen like, investors used to have, I would say bad name, but people go, they’re gonna take advantage of you or whatever the very first thing people are worried about is they’re just trying to make sure you’re legit when you get these callbacks. So building that rapport is fucking like, super important. And there’s no better way to do that than belly to belly. So don’t overthink this stuff. Folks, this is really that simple. You’re marketing a solution to someone who has a problem, aka highly distressed in some way, shape, or form, whether it’s credit card debt, I like cash out refinances are good. But you’re answering solution for that problem. That’s it. Don’t overthink this stuff. You don’t need a slick salesman type of approach. You don’t need some super duper slick ad copy from what he’s saying. He’s like, get right to the point. And just tell them what you have for them and see if they like it. Is that fair? Yeah,
I mean, they’re truly motivated, they’re gonna pick up the phone, when you call, it is great to have a nurture system in place just because like we close a deal from like, five months ago from a text message trip, but like we were measuring on a month to month to month basis at the point will wear out now, where these people are, if they’re truly motivated and want to sell, they’re going to pick up the phone. And yeah, I’d say out of 10 leads, you get six that don’t answer, but four of those are going to answer immediately.
Any other channels that you’re combining with this? Are you guys are straight up just doing Google Facebook? That’s it.
We’ve been testing Bing and snapchat a bit. starting to see some traction there. We do SEO as well. But the majority of our client base is Google and Facebook. And that that’s what we’ve just seen the most traction and spent the most money today.
One more question for you. We’ll get this wrapped. website when we’re driving to traffic, people are coming in how important what do you need to have on your website? What does it do and why?
So I don’t know how familiar you are with carrot. Yeah. kalkbrenner websites? Yeah, care websites convert. Great. So if client doesn’t come to us without a website, that’s what we set out for him. We’ve always seen a great conversion rate for those leads, just because they have a great form. And you don’t have to overthink the website. I would definitely like if you don’t have a website go with that. Just because 60 bucks, you can’t beat it. No. But you can always just look up the landers look at what competitors are doing in your area, look at look at ibuyers to look at just copy some of them like you don’t have to go make something super pretty unique. find out who’s the best in your area. And, and mimic something like it you can go on Fiverr or Upwork. hire somebody to copy something for super cheap.
Yeah, if you guys we have a couple episodes with carrot, you could Google in the show notes or search on the website in the show notes or on the iTunes wherever you’re at Trevor mock Karen and he will walk through that a lot what Kara does, basically they’re like conversion sites, they have all the elements that de degress I guess people’s bullshit meters, they have the core pages on your website that people really look for that answer or lead to the answers for the objections that they have when they’re just looking at you online. So their sites do convert very, very well because they’re designed to convert for this specific type of lead. So if you’re interested in that, go ahead and check it out. They have a great product and we highly highly recommend them. Very cool. Do
Chad anything else you want to mention here? No, I think I mean we’ve covered it all. It’s the main thing just can’t be like when you’re spending on on paid marketing just can’t can’t stop you guys got to give it time. Give it 345678 months a year. Invest in it, it’ll pay itself back, guarantee it I mean, I’ve never seen it not pay itself back. So give it a shot. Love it dude. Why don’t you go out and tell everybody if they’re interested where they can learn more? Yeah, you can check us out at motivated dash leads.com that’s a hyphen motivated dash leads comm check us out there. You can go through the forum book a call with us, me and Brian still talk with every one of our investors. We’re very personal, personable with our clientele. It’s not like hey, you’re going to be handed off to this person or this person. We want to know what’s going on in every market because we’re active investors ourselves. So we A lot of talk with you guys
appreciate it dude thanks for sharing Thank you for listening to learn so the real estate marketing dude podcast he has any additional questions feel free to visit these guys and if you guys are wondering on how you convert some of these motivated leads once you visit our other website called listing advocate.com where we show you multiple solutions to convert motivated seller leads through offering multiple options to them one of those being a cash buyer for that so also if you guys are looking for you’re building your brand with your spelling of brands people who the hell you are visit us at real estate marketing do.com we’ll script and distribute your video content put you on the map so people stop forgetting what the fuck you do and who you are. Thanks for listening other episode of our show connect with us on social facebook i G and YouTube and we’ll see you guys next week for another episode peace. Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at www dot real estate marketing do.com we make branding and video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training, and then schedule a time to speak with a dude and get you rolling in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcast. We’ll see you next time.