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Show Summary
In this conversation, Todd Baldwin, founder and CEO of Investor Nitro, discusses the essentials of digital marketing for real estate investors. He emphasizes the importance of having a credible online presence through a well-structured website, the common pitfalls in managing online campaigns, and the distinction between websites and funnels. Todd also highlights the significance of owning your website as a business asset, the management of marketing efforts, and the realistic timelines for seeing results from digital marketing strategies. The discussion wraps up with insights on long-term strategies and the importance of ROI in digital marketing.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Todd Baldwin (00:00)
I still prefer a website because, ⁓If someone’s say we run a Google Ads campaign and they land on your site, the reason why I like a full website is for that person that wants to click around and actually look at your pages and do more research on you.
your website should become an equity within your business. And so as you do, as that website is out there, it’s building digital equity, even if you don’t do ongoing work to it, if it’s set up properly from day one, it’s still gaining equity over time. And that should become a real asset in your business. So think of it this way, time is always your ally when it comes to
Dylan Silver (02:06)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Todd Baldwin is the founder and CEO of Investor Nitro. And for more than 10 years, his team has helped investors across the U S generate motivated seller leads through proven digital marketing strategies. And they’re a full service digital agency built specifically for real estate investors offering websites. Investors actually own high-end SEO, Google ads, profile optimization answer.engine optimization, AEO, Google Ads management and ⁓ paid Facebook advertising campaigns. You can find them at investornitro.com. Todd, thanks for taking the time today.
Todd Baldwin (02:45)
Yeah, Dylan, ⁓ thanks for having me on.Dylan Silver (02:49)
You know, when we talk about the digital marketing space, people can kind of get lost and not know exactly where to start. So I’d like to start the podcast there is, you know, when folks are thinking about building an online brand, where is the point where they should start?Todd Baldwin (03:08)
An online brand, a good place to start, I think, is always with your website. I’m still a big believer. Websites have been around for a long, long time. But even if you’re not going to do, say, outbound marketing, try to drive leads to your website, I still think it’s important to have a website just for credibility alone. To me, it gives you instant credibility that, I’m an actual business. I’m real.I’m legit, here I am, here’s what we’re all about. So to me, that is the foundation of a good digital marketing strategy.
Dylan Silver (03:41)
Now, when folks are maybe running their own campaigns or thinking that they can run their own campaigns, what are some common mistakes that you see people making when they’re running Facebook campaigns, meta campaigns, or doing their own Google Ads management?Todd Baldwin (04:00)
Well, just not being, not just going through the training, right, and really diving into what it takes to have a successful campaign. So Google, let’s just talk a little bit about Google. Google’s great at taking your money, right? But they are not, that doesn’t mean they’re giving you good, valid traffic. So they are notorious. In Google’s world, they would love everybody to run their own campaign because they’ll make more money. Because, um,If you’re like me, just to me for example, right? I’m a founder, owner of a digital agency I’ve been for, gosh, 15 plus years, but I hate running Google campaigns. I don’t ever log into Google AdWords because they’re Google paid media now. Because I’m not wired that way, right? So unless you’re really, really ⁓ technical and like that type of work,
to me, you’re much better off just hiring someone to handle that for you. Because Google is great at serving up, giving suggestions within a campaign, making you think, hey, click this button. It’s going to help me optimize that campaign and give me great traffic. I’ll give you a quick story. 10 years ago, we started working with WeBuyHouses.com.
That’s how we got into the space of working with real estate investors, national brand. And we really presented them on Google Ads. they’re big believers. It’s a great platform. They wanted their guys to.
advertising on Google Ads, they would actually build a campaign for them, but they would not manage it. Worst thing you can do is set it up and forget about it. So they had guys in there trying to manage their own campaign. One of the guys clicked a suggestion from Google and unbeknownst to him, he was showing up for We Buy Bounce Houses, right? The bounce houses that kids jump around and play. And he was spending $100 a month on clicks. For that keyword, it’s obviously never going to relate.
translate into a cell. So that’s a perfect example. He had no idea that he was getting clicks for the search phrase, we buy bounce houses. So to me, if you like that type of work, dive in, do the training, ⁓ and go for it. You can definitely run your own campaign. But most people I find really struggle and they have bad results, spend way more money than they need to be spending.
Dylan Silver (06:53)
I want to pivot and ask you about websites and driving traffic to a website and this idea of websites versus funnels. And so when you mentioned working with investors and you might get traffic from a number of different sources, it might be someone who’s looking to sell their home quickly, or it might be someone who’s maybe coming to you because they know that you’re an investor. So you could have multiple different offers there.Todd Baldwin (06:59)
Right.Dylan Silver (07:22)
Do you have ⁓ feedback for folks or suggestion when folks are starting out if they should build something that’s more of a funnel or more of a generic informational website?Todd Baldwin (07:35)
Well, I’m still big believer in the website. Funnels can be great, too, especially if you’re a coach and you want to get someone into the funnel with an offer, right? And then that funnel will drill down with, obviously, the goal of trying to convert them. Typically, there’s add-on sales within that funnel, too, as you work your way through the checkout. So to me, there’s a little bit two different worlds. ⁓ I still believe you can also just do a standalone landing page for, say, a Google Ads campaign.But I still prefer a website because, ⁓
If someone’s say we run a Google Ads campaign and they land on your site, the reason why I like a full website is for that person that wants to click around and actually look at your pages and do more research on you. If you just have a standalone landing page, that’s all they can see is what you show. They both can work, but I’ve always been a big believer. Hey, build you a website, do it the right way, make sure it’s properly set up for the back end for SEO, search and optimization as well. And then always make sure you own your own website.
really passionate about that, just because your website should become an equity within your business. And so as you do, as that website is out there, it’s building digital equity, even if you don’t do ongoing work to it, if it’s set up properly from day one, it’s still gaining equity over time. And that should become a real asset in your business. So think of it this way, time is always your ally when it comes to
If you’re going to do SEO, real SEO work, and have someone work on that site month after month after month.
that it’s very important in my opinion to own that site because you own, you should always own those assets, right? So we work on a site for two or three years, four years, and let’s say they for some reason decide not to no longer pay us for SEO, that client takes all that work with them. It’s their work, right? So I also always refer to this website just like a home, right? Would you rather own a home or rent a home, right? Obviously you’d rather own a home because you build equity. Your website’s the same way.
Dylan Silver (09:28)
Right.Todd Baldwin (09:31)
There’s lot of companies out there. can get a site up quickly, pay a low monthly fee. It’s a rental site. ⁓ There’s guys out there in this space that do a great job in that space. There’s nothing wrong. I’ll never talk bad about the competition, but that’s just something we’re passionate about. your own website. Sorry, I get a little long-winded sometimes, so don’t hesitate to cut me off.Dylan Silver (09:46)
NowWhen folks are thinking about owning their own website, they may have varying different ⁓ goals for the website specifically. So something could be like, hey, this is my personal brand. So I’m a realtor, so I might own my own name so that they can go to me. But that same website would not necessarily be a perfect fit for someone who they may be coming to me because they want to ⁓
partner on a deal that I’m looking at or potentially sell their home through me. So do you recommend having a separate website for maybe a more specialized portion of your business if you have separate ⁓ businesses within what you do? Or do you recommend having kind of links to all of those under one umbrella on one website?
Todd Baldwin (11:17)
It all depends on your goals, but a good example, guess, would be, let’s say someone who’s a realtor, they have a realtor license, they have a traditional site, what I call the traditional site, a real estate MLS site, to their business. But they’re also a real estate investor, so they’re looking to buy properties at wholesale from a motivated seller. So in that case, I would separate the two, because it’s two separate worlds. If you really want to market your site and go after and try to convert those motivated sellers,have them find you on Google or Chad GPT, then you need a website all about that service, right? Because the guys you’re competing against, their websites are all about that particular service. And then the MLS site is totally different, right? There’s a lot of, and we typically, we can build a site for traditional real estate, but a lot of times I just recommend, there are so many companies that have the out of the box platform that’s got the tie into the IDX and all that jazz. So, ⁓ but to answer your question, I always,
believe keeping them separate. And same thing too, like if you buy, we have a client, he buys homes in San Diego, he also buys homes in Salt Lake City. We have two separate websites focusing on each geographic area specifically instead of trying to build one site and cover a huge geographic area. Because again, the guys in Salt Lake City you’re competing against, their websites are sending to Google. That’s all about Salt Lake City, their website, right? And so you want to make sure you’re, you’re, you’re
your site is all about that local traffic. So I’m a big believer in separating the two. Nobody wants multiple sites, but if your goal is to drive traffic and generate leads, then I think it’s real important to have each site specific to that type of business.
Dylan Silver (12:56)
When folks are looking at how much they wanted to handle personally versus ⁓ hiring a team to take over some of this work for them, whether it’s the website, whether it’s the marketing, whether it’s ⁓ their ads and so forth, is it complicated when you may be handing off a portion of it to someone else and then you doing it yourself can kind of wires get crossed when you’re managing only a portion ofTodd Baldwin (13:25)
So let me make sure I understand. Can you repeat that and make sure I understand? Are you talking about someone that’s trying to do it themselves, and then they hand it off as well?Dylan Silver (13:32)
So like, let’s say I have a website that I’ve designed, you know, using some third party, I own it or I don’t, but I did the design myself. And then I’m saying, hey, I’d like to continue to kind of, you know, be able to control this website, but I would like this team to handle, you know, Facebook ads and I’ll handle the Google, right? So in a way, they’re only handling one portion of that.⁓ the marketing, does that complicate things because are there like links in between a website and you know Facebook that could then kind of get crossed if the messaging isn’t aligning there?
Todd Baldwin (14:11)
No, I mean, we just make sure everybody’s staying in their lane, right? So if you wanted to say, I’m going to handle my Facebook ads. I want you guys to handle my Google paid ads. Yeah, we can definitely do that. Those are two different platforms. I mean, there’s a lot of times we’ll take on clients and they have a great site or a great foundation. So we’re not necessarily trying to build everybody a new website. So again, just really go about what are your goals and then what are we trying to achieve?And if they want to handle part of that ⁓ A marketing channel, say Facebook, and we’re going to handle Google, that’s fine. ⁓ Most of our really big accounts, they started with one service line. It could be, hey, I just want you to handle Google Ads. And then we’ll add SEO on top of that. And then we might add some Facebook Ads on top of that. Next thing you know, we’re working through service lines. ⁓ Then we’ll say, hey, go ahead and rebuild the site.
When we get clients that are spending several thousand dollars a month with us in fees, it’s typically didn’t start that way. So we prove value in one channel and then we’re able to grow the account based off that trust and hey, doing a good job delivering ROI. So if they want to keep handling one part of it, hey, no problem. We’ll still work with them. And typically we don’t have any very little conflict or issues, right? We just make sure we’ve got good communication. We’re not crossing over to each other’s lanes.
your Google Ads account just because you have access and start making changes when we’re managing that, right? Just like you wouldn’t want me to go into Facebook and start making changes if you’re managing that. So as long as you communicate, everybody’s got the same goals. Should be an issue. We’ve had success doing that.
Dylan Silver (16:28)
Now,when we talk specifically about ⁓ how long this takes, I know it’s going to be ⁓ depending on what the goals are, of course, and the scale of the business and the reach and so forth. But let’s say someone wants to go from really not having a digital presence and no website. So they’ve done everything ⁓ through a service that their broker uses or a partner, but they don’t have a personal brand online themselves.
And they’re coming and saying, well, what’s the on-ramp? How long should I expect before I’m seeing some type of traction? What type of feedback would you have for folks who are wanting to know how long this process takes to get started from zero?
Todd Baldwin (17:10)
Yeah, everybody always wants to know, how long will it take until I start to see leads? So our websites are typically about a three to four week build, because we are building a custom site, meaning it’s all unique content. We have several sites we’ll send over. So if you like a design we already have, then we can use that design. But we’re still going to customize it for your brand, your logo, your colors. We’re going to write all unique content. So we’re not a push and play. That’s why sites aren’t magically up in one day. ⁓And then once we’re live, mean, Google Ads is the quickest way to start trying getting leads because you’re paying for that traffic. You’re telling Google, I’m willing to pay so much per click. ⁓ All that’s a real live auction, so price per click can definitely fluctuate up and down too. But ⁓ once the site’s up and we know we’re doing Google Ads, we’ll go ahead have that campaign ready to launch. And so we’ll go live immediately. We’ll set up all our conversion track and go live on the campaign. And then we’re typically waiting about a week or so for Google to kind of snip around and.
⁓ What is this new campaign all about? And then they’ll start showing impressions. your ads are actually starting to show. Now we’re starting to get clicks. So there is a little bit of a ramp up even in the paid ad side, just because Google’s, for some reason, become a little bit slower getting these campaigns to ramp up with clicks or impressions and clicks. ⁓ But within that first 30 days, yeah, we definitely want to get some conversions once we’re live.
And hey, we’d love to get a deal. We may not get a deal in the first 30 days, and that’s OK, too. That’s all in our conversation about if you’re doing paid ads, you want to have the right mindset going into it. ⁓ And then if we’re doing an SEO campaign, this is the painful one. Just because it does take time, nobody likes to hear that. But our client sales, the best lead off Google comes from the organic side of the house. Second best is off paid. So if you have the budget, and we ask ⁓ for a 12-month commitment on SEO,
because it does take time. We’re laying a foundation and we are starting to build authority within your site and Google. We’re finding our organic work is translating over to the AI side, which is exciting. But it’s going to take time and patience. So I tell guys all the time, we really have to qualify. Look, you need to have this budget set aside. You have a clear mind. We don’t have to advertising gods working against us. Meaning if you’re like, hey, I got to have a deal in 30 days or I can’t pay the bills. You’re not a candidate for paid ads. Definitely not a candidate for SEO.
There is a ramp up time is what I’m getting, not only the pay, but definitely on the organic side as well. In the organic world, Google doesn’t make any money, right? So they don’t tell you. They don’t give you the playbook as to how to rank a website, right? There’s best practices. There’s lots of forums, lots of good information out there. But they’re not telling you, hey, do this and do that. And then they’re also changing their algorithms all the time, shuffling the deck, if you will. So.
a good organic campaign is kind like the stock market doing, meaning it’s going to kind of go up and down. But at end of the day, if it’s up from where we started and our traffic’s up, our impression’s up, we’re getting actually real leads and conversions and we’re definitely heading in the right direction. So different timeframes for ramp up. Same with Meta, right? If you’re doing Meta, it’s going to take time for that campaign to, for Meta to…
Dylan Silver (20:04)
Yeah.Todd Baldwin (20:28)
search it or not search it but snip around hey what’s going on with this campaign and then meta is really a lot about little tests too right do a test i mean make a change test see if it works do some more testing the worst thing you do on meta in google is to make a ton of changes because then if you see a positive impact you don’t know what caused it right because you made so many changes so it’s ⁓ biggest thing with that too i just say like people have to have realistic expectations andWe really, there’s a lot of times we say no, like we’re not, you’re not ready yet. Dylan, you’re not ready to start this campaign and here’s why. Because you’ve got to have budget set aside and you can’t be worrying about, didn’t buy houses this month. Well, what if next month you buy two houses, right? We’re still averaging one a month. Or what if you buy three? Or what if you go two months and then all of sudden you buy a house and you made 80 grand on it? So we’re huge on ROI, right? It’s not how many leads I’m gonna get.
in a campaign, tell me quality leads can I get and then how many quality leads does it take to get an actual deal, right? To actually get a sell. And also last thing on that too, a lot of success is predicated on the investors back end. Are they set up properly to actually handle leads and close deals, right? So these leads come off the internet. You’ve got to get on them ASAP, right? And if you’re at least sitting around in your inbox for two or three days or even a couple of hours, you’re too late to the game. So
We talk a lot about, tell me about your back end, how, when a lead comes in, what is your process? Cause we want to build long-term relationships, right? We want, we want to work with people for years and years and years. We still have clients we signed up 10 years ago at that We Buy Houses conference that have been with us. And that was April of 20, April of 2016. So we’re approaching 10 years to be exact. But so a lot goes into having a successful campaign, not just what we’re doing, but also that, that investors back in and how they handle the leads. So.
Again, long answer, I apologize. When we talk to internet, it’s a web, right? It goes on and on and on. It never stops. ⁓ anyway, but there’s, think that’s all good information because guys, you know, they sometimes they want to know how many leads can I get and how many leads it takes to get a conversion. And that is always, always changing. We have averages and ranges, but it all changes. then again, it’s about, ⁓ did we do it? What’s the ROI, right? We have status calls every.
30 days to six weeks, and we have to have our clients show up. If clients don’t show up for status calls, we’ll have to have kind of a come to Jesus meeting with them because it’s important for us to know, ⁓ for them to know what we’re doing and for us to know the quality of these leads and are they converted in any. If I can prove a positive ROI and give great service, I’m gonna have a client for really long time. And that’s what we’re aiming to do.
Dylan Silver (23:13)
Yeah.in any kind of ⁓ marketing or ad campaign of any sort, there is this idea of like seasoning, right? And you have to understand that some of it is going to be transactional. You could close a deal based off of a lead that’s coming in. Some of it is gonna be building a brand and then you have that footprint over time, right? And so you’re, like you mentioned, it’s a little bit like the stock market. You’re building…
Todd Baldwin (23:29)
Right.Dylan Silver (23:47)
equity with time. And so in that early phase, can feel sometimes like, well, what’s happening now, but you’ve got to have an idea, you know, eyes on the long term over a year and beyond. But we are actually coming up on time here, Todd. Where can folks go in our audience if they’re interested in reaching out to your team? How can folks get in contact with you?Todd Baldwin (24:09)
Yeah, investornitro.com can find us ⁓ on the web. We’re there. Love to chat with anybody. I appreciate you having us on, Dylan. Happy to help real estate investors. we love seasoned investors, but we’ve also had a lot of success taking ⁓ guys and gals that are new into the space and really giving them a footprint and a plan, an action plan to grow their digital presence over time and at a budget that they can actually afford, right?We don’t just work with season guys. We’re happy to talk to the newbies as well.
Dylan Silver (24:44)
Todd, thank you so much for taking the time today. Thanks for coming on.Todd Baldwin (24:47)
You bet. Thank you, Dylan.
