Why Real Estate Investors Should Focus on Deals Instead of Managing Ads & Marketing Campaigns

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (00:00)
So this is where we kind of tried to put things on the head. When we were running the last agency, it was retainer based. So they would pay us $5,000 $9,000 a month, depending on how much ad spend they had. And we would basically manage their ads. The issue was that we didn’t have any skin in the game to make sure that our clients were successful. And we spent our whole time basically justifying marketing to people who had no business knowing about marketing, and to people who should have been really focused on their own business.

Michelle Kesil (01:59)
Hey everybody, Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Drew Carrell, who created Leadzolo, a lead platform for investors. So excited to have you here today, Drew.

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (02:16)
Awesome, yeah, thanks for having me on, Michelle.

Michelle Kesil (02:19)
let’s dive in. First off, those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (02:25)
Yeah, so my main focus is lead generation and

we, ⁓ my partner and I had an agency, it took us 10 years to get to $100,000 a month. And in that agency, we were running YouTube ads for webinar funnels. And in that time, we ended up meeting a real estate investor, which is really interesting because neither one of us knew what an investor was. We thought he was a crooked real estate ⁓ agent trying to get.

deeds to people’s houses. But once we had him as a client and we learned a lot about the industry, we decided to turn our focus to it. So we took all of the 10 years experience we had creating funnels and ads for people in the webinar space and started doing that for motivated sellers to get them to fill out a form that we could then sell to investors so that investors could scale it being quite an interesting market.

We thought it would do quite well plus at the time there’s somebody already kind of modeled the PPL model in this industry for us so we kind of Looked at them as some inspiration and figured we could do the same thing given the skills we had So yeah, but four and a half years ago. We made that shift and it’s been it’s been pretty cool

Michelle Kesil (03:38)
Awesome, and what markets do you serve?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (03:40)
Yeah, so we do nationwide. We have nationwide advertising for our investors, so real estate investors. We also do nationwide ads for real estate agents now. We have a new lead type, which is really cool. And we’ve recently just got into MVAs. So Zola Law just launched last month. So we’re also helping law firms as well.

Michelle Kesil (03:59)
Awesome. And so how does it work for investors? Like what kind of leads can they search for?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (04:05)
Yeah,

this is where we kind of tried to put things on the head. When we were running the last agency, it was retainer based. So they would pay us $5,000 $9,000 a month, depending on how much ad spend they had. And we would basically manage their ads. The issue was that we didn’t have any skin in the game to make sure that our clients were successful. And we spent our whole time basically justifying marketing to people who had no business knowing about marketing, and to people who should have been really focused on their own business.

what we found is that we were

more of a ⁓ shiny object for our clients that took up a lot of their time when they should have just been focusing on what they’re really, really good at. So with Leadzolo, that’s exactly what we came in with the premise was.

We didn’t want to manage people’s ad accounts. We didn’t want to charge them retainers because we don’t have to justify cost per clicks and why we pick this ad and why this headline works and why this color. Because none of that really matters. If you think of it a real estate investor, the only thing that matters is that they’re getting good deals and that if they’re a flipper,

you know, they’re getting a house in an ideal situation at an ideal price that they can flip and that there’s enough meat on the bones that they have profit or whatever their exit strategy might be. And as an investor, that is a full-time job. That is what an investor should be focused on. So when we came in, our idea was to strip away everything else, give investors exactly what they need, deliver them on the product, give them the lead, not the landing page, not the ad account, not the ads and not a weekly phone call to disrupt you, ⁓ but just leads. You can come on

on

to the platform, you can choose specifically what type of lead you want, whether that’s a motivated seller lead, whether that’s a lead looking for a realtor list, whether that’s an inbound lead from text maybe, because they’re cheaper, whatever it might be, you can choose which leads you want, specifically which counties you want, decide, and then as they are generated, they get delivered in real time to that investor, right into the CRM, like I before, without any of the other BS, so they can just go call the lead.

Michelle Kesil (06:46)
Awesome. And how does the service work for investors? Do they pay like a subscription for it?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (06:52)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So they pay per lead.

they make a deposit ahead of time. So they have a wallet balance. And then as leads come in, they get deducted from that balance. ⁓ So it’s kind of cool. You come, you make your deposit. We always have some sort of incentive going on through our sales team. And then you have that money. So like I said, you can set up all those bids in those areas and lead types that it solely gets reduced from. Or we also have a marketplace where all of our overflow leads go to. And there’s tons. There’s hundreds of leads there.

investor with their wallet money, they can come in and just buy whatever leads they want off Marketplace as well. It’s a pretty cool place to be. We have lots of investors that spend all day scraping Marketplace and buying leads here and there.

Michelle Kesil (07:33)
Awesome. you said it’s nationwide, but is it geared towards particular markets or every single market has like the same amount of leads?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (07:45)
That’s a great question. every

certainly is not the same amount of leads, but we do target nationwide. So obviously there’s going to be like areas that don’t get as much volume as others. So a good question we always make the joke of is Casper, Wyoming, right? We have a client that’s got thousands of dollars in their wallet in Casper, Wyoming, waiting for leads. Now we can’t create demand in Casper. I can’t go and create a hoarder house in Casper and have, you know, the house get handed off to

some poor nephew who doesn’t know what to do with it. But all I can do is capture the demand. So obviously in the areas where there’s less population, there’s going to be significantly less leads in those areas. And the higher population is going to have more leads. So it is geared kind of by the market kind of sets its own pace, although we do target nationwide. What we do allow our clients to do is they can target as mean, like as narrow as a county. So they can just get leads per county based on zip code.

or they can bid on a state or they can bid on nationwide. Obviously it’s different pricing. And then what also happens is we allow our clients to bid more per lead should they want to. So we have clients, Boston’s a great example.

where we have four clients in there and two of them are highly competitive and they want all of the volume. And so we allow them to pay for that. So they’re able to bid more to get ⁓ first crack at every single lead. And so that’s what we do for them. ⁓ And then of course, you know, everybody who doesn’t want to play the games and bid as much as they’re bidding, they can just put minimum bids on and they’ll get the leads at the end of the day when those people have capped out or paused. So we definitely were trying to give the control to the investors, get the leads in your backyard that you know how to work and get deals,

trying to send to statewide or nationwide over time, potentially, if that’s what you’re looking to do. But really, at the end of the day, we just want a service that any investor can use, and it’s super simple.

Michelle Kesil (10:12)
Awesome. And what would you say makes your program different or unique from others out there?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (10:20)
Great. Yeah, I think our software definitely sets us apart. We have a very slick software that integrates with every single CRM, which is super beneficial, as everybody knows. It’s also very easy to use and navigate, to put money on, to select your leads, what types of leads you want. Nowhere else are you able to get diversification of leads, like whether you want inbound or outbound. also you’re not able to choose your price like you are with us. We have leads as cheap as $5 for investors who are

starting

out who trying to talk with say a seller for the first time and just kind of get a feel for it well they can do that at five bucks a lead and then for the investors who have a team and a well-oiled machine they can come and spend $200 per lead and get a bunch of volume and just fill that team and hit their monthly quota that they need to hit for calls taken and contracts sent so we’re geared for everybody in the chain kind of like how Disney does it I don’t know if you’ve been to Disney anytime recently but Disney’s got a plan for everybody right there’s the GA ticket you can walk in

get your basic ticket, stand in line for two and a half hours to go ride Ratatouille, the two and a half minute ride. Or, you know, if you’re privileged enough, you can maybe get a fast pass ticket and you go in a certain time window. So those people are looked after. Other people, you can buy a ticket, a lane hopper where you’re at the front of line. And for other people, you can get the concierge package where somebody literally walks you and your family to the front of every line to let you ride. So Disney doesn’t let a single customer walk away without the product exactly

fit for that customer and that’s what we’ve tried to do. We’ve tried to create a product or a route for any investor regardless of any level, regardless of any Dispo strategy to be able to come find the ideal lead, the ideal price for where they’re at in their journey to come and you know get more deals or their first deal potentially.

Michelle Kesil (12:06)
Awesome. And so when investors are looking for deals who are like the people that upload the deals, like what does that backend process look like?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (12:15)
Well, we don’t deal with the deals. We just deal with the leads that we send to the sellers. ⁓ So there’s no back end process or any dispo or anything like that that we deal with. We do work with other dispo platforms. But yeah, once we sell the lead, it’s on the investor at that point. We certainly do have a lot of investors that tell us about the deals they get, which is really exciting. We run competitions from time to time as well, like most contracts in a month or fastest lead to contract in a month. And those are very exciting months. But yeah, other than that, we don’t touch anything.

back end.

Michelle Kesil (12:46)
Got you. But where do like the leads come from?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (12:49)
yeah, great question. ⁓ So a variety of

places. So we definitely do a lot of meta, a lot of YouTube, a lot of Google Ads. So digital advertising space is big on the radar. We’re looking into radio, commercial we’ve tried, ⁓ billboards. We’re quite open to try and invest array of things, but the way we have them split out is inbound and outbound. So we identify an inbound lead as something we’ve put advertising up and somebody has clicked on the ad and filled out a form to come into our system.

Outbound, we also run with text messaging and cold callers and stuff like that, where they’re reaching out to homeowners and asking if they’re willing to sell. So we separate it in that way so you can bid on those two different lead types and again, different prices, because we definitely find that inbound are more highly motivated than outbound leads.

Michelle Kesil (13:38)
Awesome. And is there anything new or exciting that you’re most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (13:48)
Yeah, right now I think our biggest focus is just helping investors get some more consistency over the last 12 months. It’s been a little rocky. It’s been quite interesting in the industry. I know people have been very focused on interest rates and cost of materials and a lot of other things ⁓ is made being an investor quite difficult. And conversely, what’s been quite interesting is on the media buying side of it, there’s been less demand. It’s like people are kind of like holding and waiting right now. So it’s been kind of interesting as

Typically as we see time and markets rise across multiple states, we also see demand of motivated sellers rise and filling out forms because

it’s more people sitting for longer, potentially closer to foreclosure, closer to whatever issues that are kind of impending. And so we get more form fills that way. We haven’t seen a lot. So volume has been tight, which is interesting. It’s creating a little bit more competition in the industry. But at the same time, within that competition within the industry, it’s lesser of people because everybody’s a little bit weary.

So what we’re really highly focused on right now is quality of lead, making sure that the leads that we are distributing to investors are quality, are motivated, are looking to sell at a discount so that investor can do something with that property. And then as well as understanding where that demand has gone, right? Like anything in life, ⁓ nothing ever disappears. It always just kind of pops up somewhere else. If you ask your media buyer to reduce cost per lead, he’ll get you a cheaper lead, but it’ll be less qualified.

trying to get cheaper leads that less qualified, we’re just trying to get more leads that are also qualified. And so that’s been our biggest focus is understanding how much we need to pay, how we can pay more to get more of a quality product.

Michelle Kesil (16:13)
Yeah, amazing. And is this platform like what are kind of like the limitations for investors or any things that they should know in the back of their head before they join with you guys?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (16:29)
Yeah, I think the biggest thing to understand is that we are tiered for everybody. looking at the platform at phase of value when you first come on ⁓ can be little overwhelming as to where to start. So we definitely have onboarding specialists that deal with every client, but it’s really to understand there’s three main phases. There’s the marketplace, which is our overflow leads. So these are leads that haven’t sold. And so now they’re sitting on a marketplace. By design, they’re going to be a little less motivated because they’ve sat there for a few hours potentially.

So that’s kind of our cheapest lead, cheapest entry point. Somebody’s just starting out, looking to get your first deal or first two deals. Those are leads we expect those people to buy. If you’re just bringing on a new acquisition manager who’s never called anybody before, go buy the $5 leads. It’s kind of why we built this little pool.

And then the second tier is the bidding system. It’s where investors can go and choose exactly what lead type and where they want them, very laser focused, and get those in real time. The moment that person fills out the form, it goes directly into their CRM. So their sales team can be calling it within the minute and really capitalizing on that speed to lead and closing conversion rate. Again, these kind of the mid-size offices that are kind of in that scale mode, like three to five deals a month, looking to kind of expand. That’s what that’s for.

And then we have a third tier, we call platinum, which is where we do go back to managing the client’s ads. So this is for somebody who’s doing 10 plus deals and really looking to dominate certain metros. ⁓ We will script and write the ads in the voice and name of that brand. So Joe home buyer in whatever area we use their face if they want to their team where we use our actors and we just script it for that business. We then edit them and brand them with their branding and their company. We run those ads on

Meta and YouTube, it is a retainer service. So we charge a retainer. But then what we’re also able to do that no other agency is able to do is buy any leads that client doesn’t want anymore. So if you’re managing ads and say you’re just looking in Houston, Texas, about 10 % of your leads are still going to come from outside of Houston, Texas, kind of the nature of advertising. People are either driving through or they’ve heard of you or something like that. So in a typical situation, as a client, if you’re paying on retainer, they’re

in your ad spend, you have to take those leads and do something with them or do nothing with them like most people do. What we’re able to do is just buy them from our clients because we can buy that lead from the client who got a lead in Tarrant County even though they were only targeting Harris and we can sell that lead to somebody in Tarrant County who’s on our PPL platform, split the revenue at that platinum client, thus helping them pay for their retainer and liquidating leads that they would never be able to sell anyways. We have clients for example in Miami who don’t want to work with the condos but we have people who love the

condos in Miami. So we do platinum campaign, we filter the condos, sell them to the next client over, keeping the original client that much happier, basically liquidating their entire ad campaign so they can just work the leads that they want. that’s very custom and for the high-end shop that really knows what they want and as their numbers really dialed in. that’s I think what separates us, makes us very different from everybody else ⁓ and what our clients, what we know our clients love most about.

working with us.

Michelle Kesil (19:39)
Yeah, absolutely amazing. how do most investors find and connect with you guys?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (19:45)
Yeah, typically just come to our website at leadzolo.com. We sponsor a lot of events, so people seem to find us there. I’m across on multiple podcasts, on social media, so people typically run across us there, but at the end of the day, anybody who’s ever seen this kind of event ends up at leadzolo.com and can fill out an application and talk to somebody on our team.

Michelle Kesil (20:04)
Okay, perfect. Well, yeah, before we wrap up here, ⁓ are there any other websites or ways that people can connect with you besides what you mentioned?

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (20:14)
Leadzolo.com is definitely the place to be. Leadzolo on YouTube will be fun to watch. We have our CEO. We are training to do ⁓ his own wholesaling deal. So he’s doing his first deal right now and recording the whole thing and launching a series there. So that’d be very exciting for people to watch.

Michelle Kesil (20:29)
Okay, perfect. Well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you so much for being here.

Drew Carrell [LEADZOLO] (20:34)
Awesome, thanks Michelle, appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (20:36)
Okay, and for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Drew who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.