Digital Marketing for Real Estate Investors

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. I’m really excited, to have my friends Josh and Austin here with us. Today we’re gonna be talking about digital marketing. These guys are doing some cutting edge things, and as we go forward into the year ahead, there’s some things you’re gonna wanna know.

Mike: Professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. In fact, real estate is just a vehicle, the freedom, a group of over a hundred of a nation’s leading. Real estate investors from across the country meet several times a year at the Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also to come together as friends and build more fulfilling lives For all of those around us on today’s show, we’re gonna continue our conversation of fueling our businesses and fueling our lives. I’m glad you’re here.[00:01:00]

Mike: Hey guys, welcome to the show.

Josh: Thanks for having us, Mike. And, uh,

Mike: hey, sorry, . You guys are like trying to not talk over, can you hear me? So anyway, um, hey, glad you guys are here and excited to talk about, um, uh, digital marketing today. You guys are some young guns that came into the group that, uh, really are doing some amazing things and excited to kind of watch your growth and I’m, I’m excited that we’re gonna share it here today on the, on the podcast.

Austin: Yeah. Seriously, thanks for having us. We’re, we’re excited to be on the show and to, to chat a little bit back and forth and talk about Yeah. And marketing and, uh, you know, a little bit about what you’re doing and what we’re doing. So excited. Thanks. Yeah.

Mike: Awesome. Awesome. Hey, before we kind of jump in, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your backgrounds?

Mike: Austin, why don’t you go first and then maybe Josh can follow on.

Austin: Yeah. So, um, really my, my background, uh, my dad was a, uh, a pastor growing up. So he was a, and worked in ministry. So, uh, lived in the ministry life and went to Lancaster Bible College. Um, you know, ha actually have a degree in [00:02:00] Bible. Um, and, uh, so anyways, was working at a ministry and, um, from the beginning I kind of realized like, I’d like to do something with my money.

Austin: I wanted to start investing it. So, um, I started researching, researching, uh, you know, real estate. I read Millionaire Next Door and how many millionaires were built through real estate. So kind of picked that industry to find new ways to invest. And, uh, through that, met Josh. And, uh, he had house hacked. So he, he bought a triplex, lived in it, rented out the other one, and, um, I was like, dude, I want to do that.

Austin: So, bought a triplex, then, uh, bought a duplex. Then Josh and I started the business. I didn’t know what wholesaling was, I didn’t know what flipping was and just jumped in. So, uh, it was probably a 5,000 view of my life there, but, uh, that’s how, that’s how I got into the business.

Mike: Yeah. Cool. And Josh, where’d you guys meet?

Josh: Uh, church. So we actually went at church, uh, Austin’s wife, uh, was [00:03:00] like the children’s ministry director at a church. Uh, I was in a small group at the time, which is a group, you know, it’s a group of like, you know, within the church. Um, and they asked us like, would you take this like 21 year old kid, uh, to be in your group?

Josh: Um, cuz Aus, everybody else was older, right? We were all married and kind of older and Austen shows up. And at th first I thought in my mind, like, is it legal that his wife married him? He’s so young, , but he actually, he was there. Uh, we hit it off cuz I was kinda of the younger guys, you know, kinda doing some entrepreneurial stuff at the time and it just, uh, we was a friendship blossomed from there and we, we went from there.

Mike: Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Well, I’m, I’m excited to talk about today and I know you guys have a lot of experience in the digital marketing realm. And, um, you know, I, I, I run an agency that’s more, well, we really are a tech company and a data company, but our out kind of our, our solution is direct mail, so kind of, you know, old school if you will, but we’ve put, certainly put a new spin on it.

Mike: So I’m excited to kind of compare notes here. But tell, tell a little bit about what it is that you do [00:04:00] from a digital marketing, uh, standpoint, and then we’ll kind of dig into that a little bit more. And I want everybody that’s listening today, we we’re actually gonna share some, some tips and techniques today of things that you can do differently as we go forward into the new year.

Mike: Cuz a lot of people say, I do s e o or I do some digital marketing. Um, but. You know, you really need to learn how to become an expert at this going forward and not just do some cursory stuff. Cuz if you can’t stand out, you’re not gonna stand out. Uh, and so let’s kind of dive in a little bit. Tell us a little bit about what your approach is to digital marketing and what are your kind of primary channels or methods would you say?

Josh: Yeah, sure. I’ll take that, Mike. So, um, and that’s great. We had the background agency background too. Yeah. Um, I come outta the agency world, right? So I had a pretty successful partnership in the agency world and really for digital marketing. Our approach is, you know, it’s, it’s another marketing channel for your business that you need to be able to measure.

Josh: Right. So like, what’s the whole point of marketing, right? You’re, you’re generating interest, you’re generating leads for your business, but at the end of the day, like if you’re not making more sales, you’re not dragging more value for your business. [00:05:00] Like you’re just running around like a chicken with your head cut off, right?

Josh: Yeah. So, um, for us, you know, the first, the first step we always take in that we always advise people is, you know, know your numbers and your business and understand how everything is converting, right? Um, and so when we kind of come in and help other companies, or we kept ourselves, you know, we run the e o s system, but we also make sure.

Josh: When we, like, when we drive traffic to our website, you know, digitally or via other forms of marketing, that everything is being tracked, right? Like everything needs to be tracked so that when a customer, you know, a seller does convert, you know, they do end up sign a contract with us, we end up assigning that or, or flipping that, or whatever we do with it, there’s some kind of value to that transaction, right?

Josh: Um, so our, you know, my philosophy on digital marketing is digital marketing is a great tool that you can use. It’s very trackable that can grow your business. Basically, at the end of the day, you know, you put a dollar in a digital marketing, if you’re able to track it, you should be able to make a dollar plus x on the backside.

Right.

Austin: And, uh, I’ll, I’ll second this too from a standpoint of, um, the [00:06:00] sales team, right? As leads come into your website through multiple channels of digital, I’m sure people have heard their salespeople say before, oh, all these leads are terrible, right? Like, ah, I don’t want to call ’em, everybody just yells at me.

Austin: Well, if you’re tracking your data, with which, which lead source this lead came from. You can confidently tell your salespeople, Hey, this is an SEO lead. We closed one in six of ’em, right? Like, you’re gonna get, yeah, you know, you’re gonna close one in a hundred cold calls, you’re gonna close one in 15 Google ads, or however the numbers work out.

Austin: You being able to track that data, it helps you communicate to your team as well. So, um, that’s something Josh and I are pretty heavy on is, uh, being able to track and know our numbers when it comes to what lead. Something came from, and then how do we talk to that person, right? Yeah.

Mike: Mm-hmm. . And that’s one of the great things about digital marketing is it’s easy to track the source, right?

Mike: I mean, there’s so many o other methods that are a little bit hard to track a as to where the lead came from. You could use different phone numbers, but more often than not, or you know, it’s fairly common that somebody will say, well, I saw you on tv. And [00:07:00] it’s like, but I don’t even run TV ads, so it must be the mail or whatever.

Mike: Like, I mean, all this marketing works together, but digital marketing is, is perhaps the easiest to track the source. Yeah,

Josh: and absolutely it is. It is by far. I mean, you know, you get into what’s called like last click attribution, right? Or like first click attribution. And I know Mike, you do a lot of mail.

Josh: So like mail is, a lot of times it’s a first click interaction or first interaction that drives, then go to the website and then they, let’s say they fill a format, or let’s say they don’t fill a format. They go on Facebook, they see your Facebook ad, they come out, they come back and they fill a form.

Josh: Right? And Facebook gets credit. Right. Even though that mail piece was the first piece there. Sure, sure. So you get a lot of like that last click attribution, which is really how like a lot of the marketing world works, right? You know, you could have this blended attribution models and people talk about that a lot of times.

Josh: But when it comes down to it, you know, as a business owner, if you know you can put a dollar into a marketing channel, Especially digitally, and I’m gonna get $10 back or $6 back, whatever it is, whatever your number needs to be, [00:08:00] you can then scale your business confidently, right? Yeah. Because you’re, you’re basically saying, Hey, um, I know with my marketing efforts that I can grow and make a profit and it’s not a giant black hole for me.

Mike: Yeah. And I don’t wanna take us on a rabbit hole here, but I’ve been talking a lot about a language that you guys will speak as well as, uh, ROAS return on ad spend. Right? And in the real estate space, a lot of people are slamming all their channels together and they’re, they, if anything, they know they’re cost per lead and they’re cost per acquisition, but they’re not.

Mike: Breaking it down, uh, by channel. Um, not as many are as they should. Right. And so what I know, and from, from our research, um, and from our experience is that the return on ad spend for an inbound lead, so it could be paper click, could be seo, could be direct mail, for example, compared to outbound texting, cold calling, um, and things like that is the return is typically two to three x on an inbound lead than it is an outbound because.

Mike: They took the time to research and or contact you versus you trying to convince them that they should sell their house, right? You guys see that as

Josh: well? [00:09:00] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you talk about like a ROAS per channel, like your organic traffic, your SEO traffic, I mean, you know, in real estate world, you’re gonna be probably 10, 15 x plus easily, easily, even sometimes higher than that.

Josh: Um, so you’re never gonna be able to be like, if you’re, if you’re actually looking at your channels, you know, some of your channels are gonna be lower, but they’re gonna be broader, you know, more awareness channels. And then some of them are gonna be what you call like, uh, more lower, like lower in the funnel.

Josh: People have higher intent, you’re interrupt. Interrupting them, you know, PPC or Facebook ads and things like that at a moment of need for them. So they’re gonna be a higher, a higher ROAS for you.

Mike: Right, right. Yeah. So for the investors that are out there that’re listening to this, like sometimes people say, my cost per lead is really cheap on a channel.

Mike: Um, but it’s not your highest return on asset. It’s not your most profitable, right? You might get a cheap lead, but if you’re converting one out of 30 instead of one out of five, it’s like, you know, in that scenario there, it’s you, you’re, you’re kind of, cost per acquisition is six x what it might be through an [00:10:00] inbound, uh, channel.

Mike: So you really have to look at, you know, what do you spend on that channel and what’s your. Basically all the way through the profit on that deal. Because if you’re just looking at cost per lead and cost per acquisition, you’re missing out on, it doesn’t tell the whole story at the end of the day. Right.

Mike: And it’s not even the most important part of the story

Josh: ultimately. No, it’s not. And I, I’ll give you a good example of that. It’s like a lot of people will talk about cost per lead. They’ll throw ’em like cold-calling, right? Like what qualifies a lead? Like somebody’s saying, Hey, I’m interested selling my house.

Josh: Well, like we can get a lot of those for very cheap, right? Mm-hmm. , but you know, you might close one out of a hundred of those on a cold call. Um, and that might cost you five bucks each, right? But you look at a PPC lead and you might be like, oh wow, PPC costs me 150 bucks a lead, right? But you might closing one out three, so, What’s the better channel?

Josh: Right? PPC all day, you know, you’re spending way less time investing in that. It costs you less per deal, but you have to understand those numbers in order to get to that conclusion. Yeah, for sure.

Mike: And it, and it, it, it throws a lot of investors off. I’ll even at, at the last investor fuel [00:11:00] event, for example.

Mike: I won’t say any names, but there’s somebody, because we, we, as you guys know, we have people track their KPIs and get up and report ’em in front of the room as, as a, as a way to hold people accountable. One investor got up that happens to do a lot of cold calling and texting and shared their cost per lead, and it was like something that just looked super low.

Mike: But again, what do you call a lead, right? And you do generate a lot, a lot more quantity of leads when you’re texting and cold calling, but the quality is not necessarily as high, and then the next person got up. And talked about their cost per lead and their cost per acquisition, and it was way, way higher.

Mike: Cost per acquisition was like 8,000 bucks a deal and he is like, yeah, my, I probably need to pull back on direct mail cuz my acquisition cost is really high. Well then he shared that he makes $80,000 on his average direct mail deal. We’re like, you have a 10 x return. On your investment on direct mail. So it’s eight grand a buy, but you know, it was in a northeast market.

Mike: It’s like who cares what the cost per lead is, or even the cost per acquisition. If you have a 10 times return on that investment, like why would you [00:12:00] ever pull back on that? Like do more of that, right.

Josh: Do more of that, or just that’s your benchmark for everything else, right? Like if you can generate an appointment in doing PPC and it costs you $77,999, do that too, right?

Josh: Like, right. Same thing. So, um, I think you, you know, when you look at your marketing channels, you wanna benchmark. each one independent, like you said, Mike. And we usually do that on a yearly basis. I just did some of ours. Um, and you want to look at it and say like, okay, this channel, is this a directly attributable channel, right?

Josh: Like, can I say confidently that like, Hey, I ran a PPC ad and then this turned into a deal. Or is it a channel where like TV or sometimes direct mail. You know, there’s a lot of accessory activities that lead people to your site to then convert later on. Um, because you know, you do need some of those awareness channels in your marketing mix.

Josh: I think if you just get so, like conversion focused, you’re not gonna be able to get the scale. To grow your business as much as other people. So you can be really honed in and have the best KPIs. Like [00:13:00] we could come to the next investor field meeting and have like the best cost per lead, the best cost for acquisitions, the best spreads, and then be like, well, we only did 10 deals because.

Josh: We only limited ourselves to like that, you know those numbers, whereas, you know, you’re, you’re two feet from gold, right? You might be just spend a little bit more money or opening up a little bit more and you’re gonna unlock a lot more opportunities,

Mike: right? Yep. Yep. Awesome. So awesome. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about like your experiences of organic versus paid.

Mike: You guys do all, all those things, but tell us a little bit about your approach. Well, to

Austin: be honest, when it comes to a sales experience, cuz especially at the beginning I was taking all the phone calls, so just uh, super tangible for people out there who are taking the phone calls. When, anytime that we had a Google SEO lead or a Google paid ad, I treated them as exactly the same cuz they were still people who went on Google to find, you know, I need to sell my house fast.

Austin: Right? So my experience with those. are much better than [00:14:00] whenever. It was somebody who just kinda like we, we, we have a hand raised system with cold collars, right? So if a cold collar calls somebody and they say they’re interested in selling, they slip their hand up. So, um, anyways, when I, um, My experience when it comes to those SEO to ad words, I, we treat them kind of the same in the sales cycle.

Austin: Um, they’re both people who have intent to sell. We actually just had one the other day. It was an SEO lead and, um, they said they wanted to sell. We went that day, we made an offer and we closed ’em in six days. Um, on the property, those aren’t normal, but, uh, you know, they have intent to sell, so it’s easy to do it when it comes to, um, the marketing channel.

Austin: So that’s where we spend most of our. When it comes to, um, you know, ad spend or, you know, putting it back into SEO strategies for link building or, you know, content writing on our website.

Josh: Yeah,

Mike: yeah. And talk a little bit about like, there’s some people that, that, that maybe typically they would outsource this.

Mike: They’re hiring somebody to help with SEO and they pay 500 bucks or $5,000 a month, some amount per month to help with seo. And then, [00:15:00] but, but they’re not. Paid Legion, or they do, uh, only paid Legion, but they’re really not focused on organic. So, you know, maybe Josh, you can share why those are like a hand and a glove, why those things should go together.

Josh: Yeah, you should do that. And I, and I think what a lot of people do, Mike, is they make the mistake of like, Like, oh, you know, my paid ads are just gonna gimme so much value. I don’t need to do seo, or I’m gonna build up seo. So page’s not gonna, they’re not gonna matter. Um, I think if you look at a search result, right?

Josh: Just type in, we buy houses plus your city, you’re gonna see paid ads on that, on that page, you’re gonna see it probably, uh, Google my Business local pack on that page, and then you’re gonna see organic listings, right? So, To neglect, you know, any of those three, honestly. Cause I kind of separate the Google my business side a little bit different.

Josh: Local seo, um, you’re really shooting yourself in the foot, right? Because you can have a paid hat up there, but if there’s 10 positions that are in view before you start scrolling down, you’re only one, you really hurt yourself. So, you know, we, we talk a lot about what’s called cerp domination. We talk about this [00:16:00] in other investors, like when somebody types in we buy, and then your city.

Josh: You want to have as many spots on that page as possible. You know, you want to have a PPC ad, you want to have the number one organic listing. You want to have your local pack because the user, the seller, whoever that is, they’re seeing you three times. And everybody else like wants, who do you think they’re gonna start thinking to use?

Josh: Right? You’re giving yourself a much better opportunity. And Mike, you know this as far we know this as well, like these, this is not like a, hey, buy a $20 product, right? Like these are a lot of money deals that you can be, we had, if you get that opportunity right? So, Uh, for us, you know, working together organic and P P C, a lot of times, you know, when I’m, if we’re starting out, if I was starting again or a new investor, I’d say start doing PPP C day one because it’s like a faucet.

Josh: You turn it on, right, and you start getting data back from Google. And Google starts getting, learning itself about what Keywood convert and what people’s behaviors are in your city. Use that data, right? Because you can go on to Google [00:17:00] AdWords, you can look at your search term report. Um, you can look at some other things that are, you know, what keywords you’re getting bid on.

Josh: What are people searching? What are they clicking on? You can use that data to really inform your seo, right? So like a lot of people ask, do I start with we buy houses or sell my house fast? Like, that’s a great question. Both are really valuable. You can see like, you know, in our market, and we know this, if people are typing in sell your house something, uh, parameters first, they’re way less serious than we buy houses.

Josh: So we, we kind of gravitate towards, we buy houses terms in our market just because like, you know, sell your house fast. I’ve spent a lot of PPP c money on those things and they do not convert at the level that we buy houses does. Uh, so we’re running them together. You know, working on them both together really is beneficial for you because yeah, if you figure that PPP C game out by month three, four, right?

Josh: SEO takes six months, nine months, a year. By the time you figure out your pay gain, your SEO can kind of start kicking. And [00:18:00] then you got a two beast going for you. Yeah.

Mike: And seo, I mean, you know, if you’re just, probably a lot of folks listening to this are not just starting, but if you’re just starting, like generally SEO takes time.

Mike: It’s like a long game, right? Where pay per click, you can turn it on right now and it’ll work. And if you turn it off, it’s gonna stop working. And so while you’re kind of building up that wall of SEO, over time, you should be spending paid ads. And then of course, there’s also the people that are like me, Like, I tend to skip over paid ads and go to who, who’s earned this space organically, because for me, and not everybody’s like me, but I, for me, it’s kind of a voice of who’s earned this spot, not who’s bought this spot.

Mike: And I give, I give a little more. It depends. It probably depends on what I’m searching for too. But I think that gives a little more credibility to me of like, who’s kind of earned this spot because, um, you know, from my perspective, it’s just a more legitimate business if it’s in a complicated space that somebody took the effort to kind of earn

Josh: that spot.

Josh: Yeah, especially, and I, and I think a lot of people, like I was talking about the local seo, the, the map [00:19:00] pack, like so many people neglect that even at like when we’re on this conversation. , um, we track that separately for our, like the map pack. Mm-hmm. , because you think about sellers, they wanna work with people they know they trust and that are local most of the time.

Josh: And so like that screams local to everybody. So if you’re optimizing that, you know, getting reviews in your map pack, building citations to it, you know, really working on your, your local seo. Yeah. You can make a lot of money off that because a lot of times that map pack is actually just right below the ads.

Josh: Yeah. It’s a little known secret. A lot of people like actually they like kind of neglect Google their Google My business investors are like, why would I do this X, Y, Z? Um, but we’ve actually found like, you know, we can make six figures a year off that map pack very easily. Yep.

Austin: And we’re, we’re actually in, um, a market, in a niche with, uh, you know, people who need to sell their home.

Austin: They’re actually looking for people who are hyper local as well. So they do look at the map pack to see who is the closest to them. Cause um, we’ve had, we’ve had deals where [00:20:00] people. Came through that and they were in a high, high distress situation and they wanted somebody who was close to them. So they literally like went to the map, saw that we were central and Lancaster, and came to us because of that.

Austin: So it is very important that you were present on that map pack.

Mike: Yeah. That’s awesome. Can you, let’s talk a little bit more about just how folks, maybe a couple tips on how folks can really kind of build their brand in their local market. So a lot of, obviously a lot of real estate investors we’re talking to operate in.

Mike: Let’s just simplify it and say one market. Obviously we know investors that operate in 10 markets or whatever, but let’s just say if you wanted to really kind of dominate your local. With organic or paid, um, or we can we’ll kind of jump into content, creating content in just a moment here. Like what are, what are, you know, kind of keep it high level I guess, but what are a couple tips you would share for folks, um, to, I guess, kind of get started or take it to the next level from wherever

Josh: they’re at.

Josh: Yeah, the basics. You can, the first thing you can do, I mean, just get a professional logo. Um, I tell people this [00:21:00] all the time because like so many people just go on five or or other places and get like a $5 logo. Um, we have ours professionally done. I can’t tell you the number of people like. You know, we put in all of our gear, we do all this stuff.

Josh: Like, it just looks so much more professional out there, especially to sellers when you’re presenting, you know, yourself in front of them. So a professional logo that, you know, if you’re a home buyer, you know, I know everyone puts like the house on their logo, but just make it look much, much better than your stock imagery.

Josh: Right? Yeah. Uh, the second thing you can do, you know, your website, you know, make, make your website. Make it look different than everybody else. So, so many investors, you know, they’re like, Hey, I have a carrot website. And I went on and I hit publish on one of the themes, right? And then it looks exactly like everybody else’s carrot websites.

Josh: So the easiest way to get started with that, Mike, is just literally type in, you know, we, Levi Houses Lancaster. Go down through everyone who’s doing the paid ads, go down through the top organic results, see what their websites look like, right? Do you trust them? Right? Do they all look the same? They all look the same.

Josh: You wanna be the [00:22:00] different, you wanna be the ugly ducking, right? Like the person over here that’s like totally different than everybody else. Um, so that’s kind of the, you know, two little tips there. The third is like credibility. Um, if you’re branding yourself in a market, you know, people buy, like I said, from they trust, they love, or they know.

Josh: And really the credibility is huge. So if you’re, you’re starting branding, you know, put some, you know, I know people like, oh, why do I need a BBB accreditation? Like, that’s huge. Like, why do I need reviews? Like, all of those things go so far to telling the seller that you’re credible, you’re gonna do what you say.

Josh: And it’s backed up by proof. Yeah.

Austin: Yeah. And I, I want to just second that too. Cause I, I, as he’s talking, I always think of deals that have come through where people have said things to me that they’ve noticed on our. And, um, you know, we weren’t shy about putting our faces on our website. Um, I think there’s a lot of people who go on Carrot and they just, you know, create the website and they don’t want themselves to be associated, you know, they

Mike: don’t want the right, are you stock photos of somebody different.

Austin: Yeah. And it just doesn’t feel genuine. So, you know, we put our faces on there and talked about our [00:23:00] business and talked about our life and, um, I, uh, I put in my bio that I’m a Christian and I literally had a lady say, I looked at a bunch of websites, I saw that you were a Christian, so I went with you. So, like, she literally said that to me while I was looking at her house and we were able to do a nice wholesale on it.

Austin: So you gotta have that personal feel, especially for a local market. I mean, I think if you are in a local hyper-local, like Lancaster’s, probably a really good sized, like, you know, it’s a big city, but not a big city. You know, it’s, it’s not, we’re not talking Dallas. Right. Um, it matters to people that you’re local and know how to talk their

Mike: language.

Mike: Yeah. People. People wanna work with people they trust, right? People that are in their market, they know their market. And, and you, you, there’s probably some people that you guys repel too. They’re like, these guys look too young. They can’t, they don’t have money. I mean, but at the end of the day too,

Austin: yeah, at the end of the day, you can’t, I’m working on my facial hair to stop that.

Mike: There you go. There you go. Yeah. Uh, but, but it’s true, right? I mean, you can’t, you shouldn’t be so worried about repelling people that you don’t put yourself out there as who you [00:24:00] are, because at the end of the day, it’s way. to not have to pretend you’re somebody else and just be yourself at the end of the day.

Mike: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Any other tips on kind of messaging for the local market of how to really, um, really kind of stand out from maybe your competitors?

Austin: I mean, one thing that we do, uh, on our website too that has helped is we don’t just have a page for Lancaster, uh, specifically, we also have pages on our website about each local city around Lancaster as well.

Austin: Mm-hmm. . And we don’t just copy and paste that we have created content. About those cities and used actual photos of those cities and tagged photos, you know, tagged the photos about that city. Um, and talk about the uniqueness of the town over, um, Mount Joy from us. We have a page Mount Joy on our website and we talk about Mount Joy.

Austin: So, um, as opposed to just like we buy houses, Lancaster, uh, we have subpages on our website and we didn’t just so kind of repeating what I just said, but don’t copy and paste it. Talk about that local. that hyper [00:25:00] hyperlocal city and have a page about it, and then you can dominate your entire region. And for

Mike: each city, do you talk about like use cases as well?

Mike: Like, you know, we, for example, We help people that are dealing with death or divorce or we help people like, do you kind of have a grid of like cities and then like how you help people or issues you help people in? Do you go that deep?

Josh: Yeah, we go that deep and then we actually are at content, Mike. So this is like a really advanced kinda seo, uh, thing too.

Josh: So you got your homepage right and then you have. , either if you’re a national wholesaler, if you’re state levels, and then your city pages, uh, and then your city pages. They’ll each have content, you know, reasons why, specific reasons why. So, you know, top five reasons, you know, why you should sell your house fast if you’re going through a divorce and mount to ipa, right?

Josh: And you know, we’re taking, you know, the reasons really don’t like. Change too much across different cities, but you’re localizing it to that area. Uh, and Google loves that. So, you know, if you check us out, like on, you’ll see like we’re rank really one of Philly and Pittsburgh and all these areas of Pennsylvania [00:26:00] because we’re really going into like that city bringing relevance from that city.

Josh: So linking out to local authorities like government authorities. Businesses in the area, X, Y, Z, or just knowledge we have. Mm-hmm. from being, you know, growing up here or moving here. Mm-hmm. . Um, and then we’re localizing the content enough so like somebody from that area read it, they’d be like, oh yeah, I know what you guys are talking about.

Josh: Right. I’m related to this article and, uh, I think I should mute you guys. Yeah.

Mike: That’s awesome. Could, could you share a couple tips of people? Cuz again, a lot of people say, well, I try, they’ll, they’ll do it with direct mail too. They’ll do it with SEO paperwork. Oh, I tried it and it doesn’t work. It’s like, well, tell me what you did

Mike: And it’s usually they tried some little thing that was like, you know, pardon my french half-assed. And, and it just wasn’t a real attempt. Right. So talk about. What you, maybe a couple of, of of times you’ve seen people that tried something, but it clearly was gonna fail. Like, what’s the right and wrong way?

Mike: For folks that are listening right now, that in their mind they say, I [00:27:00] tried it. Um, but let’s talk about the right way to try something and not, and, and maybe, maybe a little bit of organic and a little bit of, uh, paid

Josh: well.

Austin: I mean, I could start by just saying, I think in any industry, not just real estate, it has to be consistent, right?

Austin: So like a lot of people who say, I tried it and it didn’t work, which used to be me, but Josh just helped me. You know, like, uh, you know, you have to be consistent in what you do. So if you are gonna do seo, you can’t just like pay somebody to do it one time for two grand and expect to see results. You have to write one blog and you’re.

Austin: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Same with paid ads. You know, you, you can’t just throw a bunch of money into paid ads and expect to make a return right away. You might get lucky, you know, you might be able to make some money on it, but if you are consistent in it, you will see a return on that money that you’ve invested because you’ve spent enough time and you’ve gotten better at it over doing it consistently.

Austin: So I would say consistency is

Josh: key to. Yeah, I’ll give you, I’ll give you a tactical example. So Facebook ads, [00:28:00] right? Um, a lot of investors like have done Facebook ads or kind of do Facebook ads. There’s some companies out there that’ve done Facebook ads, right? And everybody’s complaining about Facebook ads, is they don’t work or the leads aren’t good, or, you know, all this, you know, BS pretty much.

Josh: And the reason is, is because of the way that you’re doing your Facebook ads. Um, you know, a lot of times we do our Facebook ads. We film almost all our creative on an iPhone. Uh, we film our creative at localized places at a house that we’re flipping or we bought or whatever, and we really make, you know, whoever’s watching that ad, we, we make sure they understand that not one we’re local.

Josh: Understand who we are, what we’re doing, or what we were doing with the property, right? And how they can contact us. Mm-hmm. . And so you can see these all over the place. Now, what we do with that ad Mike, is a lot of people, like a lot of investors, one, they won’t get on camera. So that’s like their first downfall.

Josh: They just have an image graphic. And then two, they just like launched this ad and they think, oh, everyone’s gonna see this [00:29:00] video and magically go fill my form out my website, right? Because I’m now a guru. Um, and that’s totally wrong, right? The, the purpose of the ad really is to drive engagement, right? So when we launch our ads, we actually put them on our page.

Josh: We get a bunch of organic engagement on it, right? And then I actually run like that as an ad for engagement, right? So I just tell Facebook, Hey, go out and get me engagement on this ad. I want people to comment on this. I want people to like this ad, right? Yep. And what happens is, you know, either good or bad comments, what happens is like that ad gets out there a little bit.

Josh: And it’ll get, you know, it’ll get 10, 15 comments. It’ll get 50 likes, and then we’ll take that ad and actually take that full ad with all the engagement on it and make it our actual conversion focused ad, right? So what everybody else does is like, they’re just making it creative and they stick it in there.

Josh: There’s no engagement on it, nothing. And then’s just like, Hey, we’ll buy your house or cash. Versus our ad, which is coming out, which says all these people saying either we’re crazy or we’re crooks, or, you know, we like you, [00:30:00] um, and all this engagement. And we, we try to be funny on responses and you know, when people are scrolling to Facebook, they’re like, you know, which one are you gonna click on?

Josh: The one with zero or the one with all this engagement? Right? Right. Um, and so that’s kind of the correct way to do it. And really you need to run those ads, you know, for months to really build that engagement up and that steam up and you need to be present in the comment. Right. Like, you know, we try to be really funny, uh, back with a lot of our responses.

Josh: I know. Austin, I probably sometimes probably get in trouble with Austin, but, uh, you know, has to crack. We have a little, we have like, you know, we’re, we’re snarky, you know, we’re not like, we’re not just gonna sit there and take it, you know, or hide the thing. So people appreciate that though. And you have people defending us.

Josh: So if you’re a seller and you’re seeing this and you’re going like, oh, I’ve had some negative thoughts about home buyers, or maybe a cash offer, whatever it is. Oh wow, this company is actually like explaining the process. Well, they’re actually like defending what they’re doing well, and other people are saying they’re credible.

Josh: Like it’s already selling you before they get to your landing page. Mm-hmm. .

Mike: Yeah. Versus just deleting the comments you don’t like, [00:31:00] is, is using those as an opportunity to answer that question for other people that are thinking that too, right. Or clearly. You know,

Austin: I, I have to say Josh is the king of responding to people when it comes to negative comments and what to say back.

Austin: So, uh, if you want to, if you wanna find it, go to our website or go to our Facebook and find our ads and see what ta Josh responds to people. So he’s

Josh: the king of it. If you wanna test me, you can do that as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Austin: comment and Josh will give you a good comment back, .

Mike: Yep, yep. Well, guys, we could probably talk about this all day.

Mike: Uh, this is good stuff. So would, would you guys mind, you’ve been in investor fuel for a little while now, um, and I’ve seen you guys progress quite a bit just in the time that we’ve known you guys, but would you mind just sharing a quick testimony on your experience so far as being a part of the group?

Mike: Yeah, sure. For,

Austin: uh, first of all, the first meeting we ever went to, um, it was great because, um, you know, we had to do the hot seats, get in front of everybody, share our KPIs, and, uh, our numbers were okay, like for just starting the business. But I remember, um, there was a guy in there, Tim Har, if you’re listening, [00:32:00] if you know Tim, he basically just like said to me, dude, you’re making no.

Austin: And I’m like, what do you mean? Like I feel like I’m making money. And he is like, no, like you aren’t making any money on your deals. Go out there and ask for more money. And, uh, so anyways, it gave me like some confidence. I talked to him afterwards and gave me some advice through that, but through that it gave me confidence to be around other people like myself.

Austin: But to, to go out there and, you know, say, Hey, here’s our price on houses. I got better at comping. I got better at negotiating down on prices. And since we’ve joined Investor Fuel, our wholesale price has triple. So, um, you know, just from these little tiny tips that people have given us and, um, and actually even since the beginning of joining Investor Fuel to now, cause it’s been a full year for us, we’ve actually doubled our business.

Austin: So, um, we, we’ve literally just doubled our business, um, on the last deal that we closed from the previous year. So, um, anyways. Great. I, I highly, highly recommend it.

Josh: Amazing. Yeah. If you’re out here listening, [00:33:00] you know, uh, and you’re kind of on the fence about investor fuel, I’ve been part of some masterminds in the past and you know, you’re like looking at a mastermind, you’re like, Hey, are they gonna deliver on what they say?

Josh: Like, absolutely. Uh, investor Fuel does that. There’s a huge community of people that care. I think that’s the best part about it, like for us, is that, you know, we have like, not just like business associates, like we have friends now, uh, in the group. And I think like if you’re struggling with something, everybody’s super willing to share.

Josh: And just uplifting, you know, at the hot seats. You know, you’re up there, you’re vulnerable, and people are there to make you better. And I think that’s the, just having like a servant heart throughout it all. Um, it’s great. So yeah, we love investor fuel.

Mike: Mm-hmm. . Awesome. Thank you guys. Yeah. Somebody, I saw somebody post today, like, how do you define mastermind?

Mike: And that word gets thrown around a lot. And I’m not here to. To tell people how, how you should define a mastermind, but I, I define it as like a peer-to-peer group where people are helping lift each other up, you know, be a almost a board of advisors to each other. Right. And sometimes it gets thrown around as coaching.

Mike: It’s like, I don’t, I don’t view a, a coach [00:34:00] teaching a, a group of a large group of people, cuz I do coaching too. So I’m not knocking that. But I would never call that a mastermind cuz it’s not, you’re not putting your heads together. It’s one person. Kind of communicating how to do something Right. And, and I think that that’s the power of the group is just, you know, we have almost 200 members that are there that are sharing what works and what doesn’t work.

Mike: And like, I think I’ve heard people say it before, and it, and I’ve, I feel the same way. I’ve never seen a single person in investor fuel in five years. Like, I know they know something. I’ve never seen them hold back. Like, everybody’s just like, look, I’ll tell you exactly what I do. And part of it is because they’ve gotten so much.

Mike: From other members of the group, if they feel this calling to give, like, I need to just share back because I’ve gotten so much outta the group. And that’s just this flywheel of people giving and sharing more and more every time they come. Right.

Austin: Yeah, absolutely. I feel that personally I felt like last meeting I wanted to share more cuz I’ve gotten so much so, yeah, I, I personally

Mike: felt that way.

Mike: Yeah. Awesome. You guys are, you guys are amazing. I know you guys have shared some knowledge here today. I know you’ve shared it with a lot of, in, uh, a [00:35:00] much deeper dive with a lot of investor fuel members. So, hey, if, if folks wanna connect with you guys in, in any way, they’re either in your market and might wanna do deals with you or just like connect for one reason or another, where’s the best place for them to.

Josh: So you connect with us seven seven home buyers.com is our real estate business. Um, you can find both of us on LinkedIn. Uh, if you look us up there, Josh Everly and Austin Glanzer. And Austin is actually a TikTok star, so I’m gonna let him talk about that. Uh, I’m not

Austin: a star, not a star, but uh, yes I do. I do have, um, a TikTok and a YouTube channel and, uh, my TikTok.

Austin: Uh, surprisingly has 80,000 followers. So it’s, it’s decent. And, uh, anyways, if you wanna follow me there, I think if you look up Austin Glanzer, it’s, it’s that, but it’s actually called Real Estate Hacks. Uh, so if you find it Real Estate Hacks and then I have a YouTube, um, real Estate Jumpstart. So, uh, just giving tips to people who are kind of newbies in real estate, how to do it.

Austin: And, uh, so have fun with that. So if you looking for more subscribers? Followers.

Mike: So if you’re out there, well that links in the show notes down [00:36:00] here. So the question is, Austin, do you guys get business from TikTok? Because I think a lot of people realize they get a lot of activity, maybe some vanity metrics that look pretty and everything, but do you guys, would you say you guys get business from either buyers or.

Austin: From what I do on it? No. No. Cause I, I’m giving more content. I, I have tried to like JV with people in the past and I’ve had a lot of engagement with that, but then I ended up having to like, Pull the strings to get these deals going, and it was like, just absolute crap stuff. So, uh, no, but I have gotten some really good connections from it, um, with people.

Austin: So like I’ve connected really well. Um, I had a course for a little bit of a time where I was helping people and like had people sign up for that. So, uh, it’s, for me it’s more about like the connecting, uh, building a network around it Right now. I’ll probably figure something else. To do with it, but it’s not, it’s not for motivated

Mike: sellers at all.

Mike: And it’s hard, and you guys know this in the digital marketing space, it, it’s hard to quantify this, but like some of these things that you do, just [00:37:00] like me doing a podcast, like I don’t make money from the podcast, but first off, I guess spend time with you guys and a lot of awesome people, but just the credibility that it gives you that I’ve had a podcast going for nine years now under several different brands and done over 1500 podcasts, and it’s fairly common for me to run into somebody that’s like, Hey, I’ve been listening to you for five years.

Mike: And you know, it’s just the credibility that gives you. Is really hard to measure, but it’s a real thing. Right?

Austin: Oh, for sure. I mean, just cuz my TikTok has a lot of followers, I mean, that, that gets me in the door all the time. Yeah. Um, with conversations, it just gives me a little bit of credibility, uh, especially cause it’s harder to get followers now than it was two years ago, so.

Austin: Sure. Um, anyways, I, I completely

Mike: agree. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well guys, thanks, thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate you. All right. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Yeah, and everybody, thanks for joining today. Hopefully you got some tips and tricks out of this. Make sure you connect with these guys.

Mike: We’ll add some links down below in the show notes. If you’re listening on a podcast, uh, go check us out on uh investor fuel.com and look at, look up this show and you’ll see the links there. So appreciate [00:38:00] everybody. Happy holidays. Uh, looking forward to seeing you soon. Until then, we’ll see you on the next episode.

Mike: Take care.

Josh: Are you an active

Mike: real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nations leaving real estate investors. All committed to building stronger businesses and living richer, fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us. To learn more about investor fuel, simply visit investor fuel.com to get started.[00:39:00]