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Show Summary
In this conversation, Austin Wilson discusses the potential of strategic ad spending in real estate, highlighting a case where $24,000 in profit was generated from a two-month PPC campaign. He emphasizes the importance of innovative deal-making strategies, including creative finance and traditional wholesaling, to gain a competitive edge in the market.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Austin Wilson (00:00)
To me, when you have an inbound PPC lead, somebody jumped on Google and said, I need to sell my house fast and I need a solution to this problem as quick as possible. Right. And so when that lead comes in and I get a notification, Iknow that I’ve got a motivated seller, I’ve got an opportunity to work with somebody and to go solve their problem. ⁓ And it’s, you know, the lead volume is not as high as something like cold calling leads, ⁓ or maybe mailer leads, right. ⁓ But ⁓ the intent is very, very high. And so you can work off of a handful of leads a day and do really, really well in this business, which is nice to me, you know, if I get a text at dinner, I’m going to jump up and go call
that lead because I know it’s a real opportunity.
Michelle Kesil (02:24)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to connecting with, Austin Wilson, who has been making serious moves creating a PPC marketing campaign for real estate investors and wholesalers. excited to have you on the show today, Austin.Austin Wilson (02:51)
Excited to be here. Thanks, Michelle.Michelle Kesil (02:53)
Of course, I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching marketing and the new tools you have. So, let’s dive in.First off, for those not yet familiar with you and your world, can you share what your main focus is?
Austin Wilson (03:17)
Yeah, my primary focus is generating motivated seller leads for real estate wholesalers and investors ⁓ nationwide. We do ⁓ a really, really good job at nationwide, but we also focus on specific markets and ⁓ have had a lot of success in ⁓ generating high quality leads at a low cost per lead for our clients.Michelle Kesil (03:42)
Awesome. How did you get started with this?Austin Wilson (03:46)
Great question. I started my career over 10 years ago in commercial real estate, actually. I was an investment sales broker and specialized in selling self-storage facilities. And I had a lot of early success in that and was able to start investing in residential real estate. then around 2017, 2018, I started doing a little bit of wholesaling.And I’m based out of Austin, Texas. And if you don’t know, Austin is a ⁓ decent sized tech hub and a lot of tech companies here. so 2019, 2020, I pivoted into ⁓ the tech world and had the opportunity to ⁓ work at several different tech startups and all the while couldn’t get away from real estate, right? ⁓ Real estate was always kind of a
a constant there, but working in the tech world, learned a lot of, ⁓ know, kind of taught myself coding and learned a lot of the technical background. And ⁓ then several years ago, I decided to go out on my own and go all in on wholesaling.
And I built my own ⁓ virtual wholesaling business nationwide, ⁓ grew that company to 11 employees. We did several million dollars.
in revenue in our ⁓ best year and ⁓ you know the main frustration that I had there my main focus really was on marketing. ⁓ The business ⁓ lived and died on the leads that we could generate and so I had tested every marketing channel possible you know mailers ⁓
paper lead, ⁓ cold calling, door knocking, whatever, you name it, ⁓ and ⁓ paper click leads through Google Ads. ⁓ that was consistently our best ⁓ marketing channel. ⁓ The frustration that I had is we had hired a marketing agency ⁓ to manage that and had a lot of initial success. And as we scaled and started spending more on ads, tens of thousands of dollars
a month in ad spend, ⁓ our management fee increased. And so, not only were we paying for the ads, but we were paying ⁓ five figures ⁓ to our ad agency. ⁓ And I noticed that the lead quality was going down, the lead volume was going down as well too. And that was frustrating to me. And so I said, let me take a step back and talk to you.
some of my folks in the tech world and see if I can kind of reverse engineer and figure out how to run my own ads. And so I started testing that out and ⁓ ended up having a decent amount of success in my own business doing PPC campaigns. And it was a lot of fun and I loved doing it for my own business. ⁓ it was just a better alternative. Now, know, fast forward
to a year ago, my wife and I had our first baby and ⁓ running an 11 person team and working 16 hours a day was ⁓ not feasible with a newborn. And so I ended up winding down my wholesaling business and. ⁓
And we had purchased some ⁓ investment real estate portfolio last year and so busy with that and kind of took a step back from wholesaling for a little bit. And then I had some friends reach out to me that asked if I could run their PPC campaigns for them and had a lot of success with them. And then that led to kind of one referral after the other. And here we are today where we’ve been able to grow the business and help wholesalers all over the country generate really high quality leads.
through PPC Google campaigns.
Michelle Kesil (08:50)
Amazing. I love that you were able to really pivot in a way that is able to serve yourself and your network. That’s exciting.Austin Wilson (09:01)
Yeah, I love it.Michelle Kesil (09:03)
Awesome. What are you most focused on solving or scaling to right now in your business?Austin Wilson (09:14)
Yeah, great question. ⁓ You know, there’s a lot of competition in this space, right? And so, you know, typically ⁓ lead acquisition is really expensive. And so what we’re focusing on is, ⁓ you know, pulling lots and lots of different data sources. We’re developing a platform on the back end right now that will allow us to identify ⁓ basically the highest opportunity ⁓ for lead acquisition at the lowest cost in aparticular market. And so what markets should we target nationwide to generate the best leads at the lowest cost? And we’re having a lot of success with that right now and something that is really exciting to, you know, take to our customers and ⁓ offer them some further value.
Michelle Kesil (10:40)
Yeah, absolutely. Why would someone want to use this marketing strategy ⁓ versus, I don’t know, like other marketing tools that are out there?Austin Wilson (10:54)
Yeah, you know…Everybody kind of has a different flavor of lead that they prefer and have had success with. So I really can only speak from my own personal experience.
To me, when you have an inbound PPC lead, somebody jumped on Google and said, I need to sell my house fast and I need a solution to this problem as quick as possible. Right. And so when that lead comes in and I get a notification, I
know that I’ve got a motivated seller, I’ve got an opportunity to work with somebody and to go solve their problem. ⁓ And it’s, you know, the lead volume is not as high as something like cold calling leads, ⁓ or maybe mailer leads, right. ⁓ But ⁓ the intent is very, very high. And so you can work off of a handful of leads a day and do really, really well in this business, which is nice to me, you know, if I get a text at dinner, I’m going to jump up and go call
that lead because I know it’s a real opportunity.
Michelle Kesil (12:00)
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a really good way of sharing that. And yeah, of course there are so many different tools that work for different people, but it sounds like yours is what’s been serving you the most.So what are some of the obstacles you find in marketing when it comes to real estate investors and wholesalers? What are those main pitfalls that hold people back?
Austin Wilson (12:36)
Yeah, you know, I think it comes down to, you know, general business best practices and the most difficult thing, is controlling your costs. And so I see over and over again, wholesalers or investors, ⁓ you know, they do the math and on paper, it’s like, I’m rich, I’m already rich, right? ⁓ Because I know that this is my cost per lead, this is what my conversion is, this is my average, you know, profit per deal.You know, we’re there and ⁓ the real world doesn’t really work out how it does on paper. And so that’s the biggest thing. You know, I was talking to ⁓ a younger wholesaler a few weeks ago who came to me and was asking about different marketing channels. And he said, ⁓ and I asked him, what’s your monthly budget? And he said, $1,500 a month. ⁓ And I could kind of tell that was a stretch for him. That was going to be tight. You know, he had just quit his job. He’s got a limited time.
budget
and he needs to go, you know, ⁓ see some ROI on that. Right. And so ⁓ in his experience, he told me that he had already closed an on market deal, you know, calling ⁓ listed properties and finding an on market deal that he could get under contract and go sign that contract. ⁓ And so I told, hey, hold on to that 1500 bucks, man. ⁓ Save that nest egg. Conserve, ⁓ you know, what dry powder that you have for as long as possible and go hustle
to go close some deals and then start being really conservative about how you reinvest that into your business. Because I’ve seen that over and over again where it’s, you know, you have a good month and then you reinvest that, ⁓ you know, practically all your profit back into the business and ⁓ don’t consider that sometimes there are anomalous events and you hit a big deal. That doesn’t mean that’s going to happen every month. You need to be able to plan for the long term instead of ⁓ the short term.
Michelle Kesil (14:36)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s good advice and I love that story that you shared and how you were able to offer that support. Do you have some other examples of how you’ve worked with clients and what success has brought them?Austin Wilson (14:42)
Yeah.Yeah.
You know, to me, my approach is kind of twofold. the first piece of it ⁓ is looking at more of the technology piece and the branding piece, right? So focusing on a really high performance, high converting, ⁓ optimized landing page ⁓ and building out that custom branded ⁓ to ⁓ the client. so, you know, I’ve got a customer, he’s my ⁓ longest customer. ⁓ And when we first started,
we went in and I built him out a custom landing page focusing really a lot on performance because ⁓ that’s one of the things I think that people overlook is you can pay Google to show your ads, but if your landing page isn’t optimized or highly performant, they’re not gonna wanna show that ad to the best leads. So that’s kinda the first place where we started. And then the second piece is really
focusing on kind of that mixture of ⁓ art and science, right? So ⁓ generating really high quality ⁓ video and image content ⁓ and then testing that to see what’s what’s highest converting for them. Now we’ve got a list of, ⁓ you know, ads that we know convert really high, but we want to constantly test that. The great thing with him is when we first started, he was only spending a thousand dollars a month on ad spend.
nationwide and ⁓ In two months of ad spend he was able to turn that into $24,000 in profit Which which was phenomenal and obviously that’s not a you know a normal result. He’s a very very highly skilled ⁓ real estate professional, but ⁓ You know, that’s that’s the possibility when you’re doing nationwide PPC You can get lower cost per lead in really good markets ⁓ and if you’ve got the ability to
move these deals in a variety of different ways, whether through, ⁓ know, innovations or doing creative finance or even just, you know, traditional wholesaling. ⁓ You’ve got to leg up on the competition and, you know, there’s a possibility to see a really big result. I’ll, you know, just mention this right now too. You know, my whole focus is I’ve seen historically ⁓ Google ads, PPC is really, ⁓ you know, cost restrictive, right?
Typically you need to start out with eight to ten thousand dollars a month to start seeing some traction and you know this example really points out the fact that if you’ve got the skill set ⁓ and you know some of the background and the ability to go act, really action is the biggest thing, you can turn that thousand dollars into a really successful profit and so ⁓ you know just really really really want to touch on that as well too.
Michelle Kesil (18:37)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s so cool that you’re able to have all these different ways that you can support people and help their business grow.Austin Wilson (18:50)
Absolutely.Michelle Kesil (18:51)
Awesome. What are some goals that you have for where you want your business to head or the direction you see it going in?Austin Wilson (19:01)
⁓ Yeah, well, we want to help as many ⁓ real estate investors as we can. so, you know, our target and we’re on track to hit this is ⁓ to be working with ⁓ 30 investors by the end of the year. And then we’ll be at about 200 customers by August, September of 2026. And so the goal here is really, you know, we’re scaling fast, we’re constantly testing and we’re leveraging ⁓ technology to help us to grow.And then beyond that, know, one of the biggest differentiators that we have is a fixed cost structure. you know, our management fee will never increase as long as you’re a customer of Allied Advantage. And that’s really our goal is like we want to see success and provide access to high quality leads to people that are maybe starting out with, you know, a smaller budget of, you know, $3,000 to $5,000.
Michelle Kesil (20:00)
Yeah, amazing. That’s super cool that you can work with people of all levels. Are there like any criteria for like certain status or requirements for someone to work with you?Austin Wilson (20:17)
Yeah, great question. you know, typically on the wholesaler side, you need to be doing ⁓ two to three deals a month in order to work with us. And the main thing there is that it requires a certain skill set. Right. And so we need to have a proven track record that ⁓ you have closed deals, you know how to close deals, ⁓ because I can hand the best lead in the world to somebody that just doesn’t know how to handle it. And it’s going to be really hard for them to close that deal. And so I don’twant to see them waste their money on that until the skill set is up. So that’s the primary threshold. ⁓ then we’re really ⁓ strategic about who we work with too. I really want to be aligned with people that have a similar vision from a real estate standpoint, but as well as a technology standpoint, ⁓ and that can collaborate with us. Part of what I love doing is understanding what their strategy is and then
being able to go test out ⁓ new campaigns, new ads to go fit their needs and really be collaborative. So it’s kind of those two things as long as they’ve got the skill set, the experience, they’re doing at least two to three deals a month. ⁓ And then we have ⁓ a good rapport and can collaborate together, then I’d love to work with them.
Michelle Kesil (21:39)
That that is exciting, That’s solid criteria but leaves a lot of room for many people to be able to jump in.Austin Wilson (21:50)
Sure.Michelle Kesil (21:53)
As far as growing your business with networking or just relationship building, are there any specific strategies that have made the biggest difference for you?Austin Wilson (22:07)
Yeah, to me it’s, it’s, ⁓It’s really been community, right? So being in ⁓ and being around ⁓ real estate investors and wholesalers has been ⁓ how we’ve found all our clients. It’s through relationships and through referrals. We haven’t spent a dollar on advertising for ourselves yet. That’s something that we’re rolling out this month. ⁓ really being close to our customer base is super important. And we found that through ⁓
different real estate and wholesaling communities ⁓ either online or in person ⁓ local here in Olson.
Michelle Kesil (22:48)
Amazing. Yeah, there’s so many ways to build relationships. So it’s important in this space.Austin Wilson (22:55)
It is. It’s very important.Michelle Kesil (22:59)
So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more about what you’re doing, where can people find you and connect with you?Austin Wilson (23:11)
Yeah, alliedadvantage.co.⁓ That is ⁓ our ⁓ company website. ⁓ We’ve got a form at the bottom you can fill out and get in touch with us there. Also on Facebook, Austin Wilson. You can find me on Facebook and ⁓ send me a DM and happy to connect and have a conversation ⁓ there as well too. ⁓ And I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. ⁓ Yeah, those are the main two ways.
Michelle Kesil (23:46)
Perfect. Well, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. Thank you for being here.Austin Wilson (23:54)
Thanks Michelle, was great chatting with ya.Michelle Kesil (23:56)
Of course. And for those listeners tuning into the show, if you got value from this, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Austin who are building real businesses. And we’ll see you all on our next episode.
