Your Returns Matter! Spend Your Marketing Dollars Wisely

Stephen S. (00:02.344)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs and service providers to the real estate industry. Welcome back if you’re joining us for a second, third or 100th time or welcome to it if it’s your first time you are in for a treat. Today I’ve got Marc Ensign in the studio and today we are going to be talking about all things marketing. Marc has over two decades of experience in marketing background.

at the highest levels that you can possibly imagine now helping real estate investors primarily in the seven figure marks to actually get the juice out of the squeeze from their marketing agencies. He is the founder of Loud Mouse, which is a fractional CMO agency that drives accountability and eliminates wasted spend and holds agencies accountable. So that way you actually get what you pay for.

Before we hop into it, just remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs 2 to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted, to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Marc, with that being said, welcome to the show.

Marc Ensign (01:08.63)
Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Stephen S. (01:10.224)
Man, I’m super excited to get into this. You have one of the longer rap sheets that I have spouted off for people. And no, not at all. You’re just experienced. Experience doesn’t know age. It’s all about what you’ve been through. Right. So, man, I’m excited to get into this because this isn’t your this isn’t your typical podcast with a real estate investor or a lender or something else. But it’s still an untapped

Marc Ensign (01:17.742)
Is that your way of I’m old?

Marc Ensign (01:23.19)
Okay, I’ll take it.

Stephen S. (01:39.976)
of the real estate industry that I don’t think a lot of people are really truly getting the most out of unless they have figured it out the hard way. So before we get into our topic today though, tell me a little bit about what got you into the field and how you ended up falling into the space you’re playing in now.

Marc Ensign (02:02.158)
Sure, so man this goes back. So I actually started off my professional life as a musician. I graduated from college, from Berklee College Music in Boston, had this idea that I was gonna become a Broadway musician. I thought that was kind of cool because it would be a steady job. My mom would leave me alone, tell me get out of the basement. It was steady work and I lived outside of New York so it seemed like a good fit. Never been to a Broadway show before at that point but I was just like, yeah, I’ll take the gig.

And I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know that it was this impossible industry that you just couldn’t break into. Nobody told me that. I was out of my mind for even thinking that I had a chance. And so about a year and half, two years later, I started playing bass with the Broadway show Rent on Broadway back in, Jesus, it’s like 1997, 98. And that was just like, again, I found that I was really good at getting attention. That’s all it was. I was not the best bass

in New York. was not the, you know, I wasn’t the most well known. didn’t know any, you know, I was the youngest. I had nothing going for me, but I was really, really good at getting in front of people. And so at some point I was just like, hey, I wonder if I could do this, you know, like for other musicians. And

And so I started building websites for musicians and artists, not really realizing that musicians and artists were mostly broke. And so I like, I didn’t really make a whole lot of money. And, and somehow something that I had done caught the attention of, of American Express. And I got called into their office and they said, Hey, we need you to do this like little microsite over the course of the weekend. You know, it’s just an emergency. need it by Monday. And so was like, okay, cool. So I threw something together and I doubled my invoice and I sent it to them and they’re

just like we can’t submit this to billing, it’s gonna cost more to cut the check than it would be for the amount of the check because we’re American Express. And so was like, okay, I’m not doing musicians and artists anymore. And I went all in on corporate. so, web design turned into SEO, which turned into social media, which turned into just a full service digital agency. And over time, our clients were Nike, American Express, Berkshire Hathaway.

Marc Ensign (04:14.134)
Callaway Golf, like a lot of really big companies.

And then after doing that for about 20 years, when you realize you’re just like a little cog in this gigantic wheel for Nike, it’s not like they were thanking me on earnings calls for selling so many shoes. I decided to exit that agency and right around COVID and fell into this role as a CMO for another company and saw that in that company as their CMO, the AdWords company was stealing about $10,000 a month.

From off their spend so so they were managing all the ads internally in their own account They weren’t you know, they were they were sending over fake reports and like, you know It was just like that that was that movie a Brill a beautiful mind where you know You got all the numbers and all the things going on like that’s what it was like for me It was just like, know being able to like pick apart like what’s really wrong with this thing almost like from a forensic accounting perspective and finding all these hidden problems with their marketing and

fun. Let me see if I could do it again. Like we went from a 1.5 ROAS to an 8 ROAS within six months. so so brought on a another client was an attorney did the same thing and reduced her you know her marketing spend to about a third of what she was spending while increasing the number of leads. And somewhere along the lines I you know tripped and fell over my own left feet and you know and ended up in the real estate investment space and like and it just became like a really

interesting niche for me because.

Marc Ensign (05:48.75)
You know, brought like the old school marketing, like, you hey, we’re back to direct mail or we’re doing TV, we’re doing radio, we’re doing billboards, you know, and married that to this, you know, new digital marketing, you know, Facebook ads and pixels and, you know, and PPC and all this other stuff. And, you know, and how do you tell that story that crosses that, you know, crosses, you know, that channel of all the old stuff, the new stuff and messaging and bring it all together. So it’s not just this spray and pray.

just throw a bunch of money at marketing and hope something sticks.

Stephen S. (06:22.354)
What are some of the unique things that you do in terms of your strategy without of course giving away all your secret sauce, but what are some of the unique things that you do to actually differentiate between like what you mentioned was spray and pray of just throwing stuff out there versus really identifying like the core person or the core buyer that would be actually interested in the product or the service that’s being sold to them?

Marc Ensign (06:51.15)
Sure, so I think one of the biggest issues that I find is having the wrong people in the wrong place or having your team working in silos. And so what I mean by that is like, if you have your sales team, you have a daily sales meeting or whatever, you bring everybody together, everybody’s communicating, hey, what’s going on with this one? You’re constantly reviewing stuff. With marketing, what you normally have, and especially in this industry, is we have our direct mail guy.

And we have our SEO guy and we have our PPC guy and we have our You know our social media and nobody talks to anybody everybody kind of lives in these weird silos and so you have this very disjointed message that if if you know they say that takes you know eight touches to to You know turn a profit, you know turn a visitor into a lead, you know, and then meanwhile like I’ve seen your billboard I’ve seen the commercial I did a search and you know landed on your website. I got a postcard in the mail

and it felt like I was being marketed from five different people. And so one of the things that’s really important to me and like one of the first things that we do when we sit down with somebody, because when we first start with a client, the first thing we do is we’ve done two days with you and really kind of…

dig into the business and what makes this business special. And then how do we take that message and how do we make sure we’re telling the same story from the very first time that you see us to the time that we close on that sale, you know, and it’s done and like you, you know, you’re walking away, you know, happy and everybody and everything is done. And, and so I think that, that we kind of tear down a lot of that, a lot of those silos because most CEOs or most people, you know, in this space, like they don’t have time to sit down with all the marketing people, bring everybody together.

make sure whatever the PPC guy has learned, he’s sharing with the SEO guy, who’s sharing with the social media guy, who’s sharing with the copywriter. It’s bringing all that together and everybody learning from this experience and telling the same story, I think is probably one of the most important things in terms of really kind of wrapping your arms around your marketing.

Stephen S. (08:59.432)
Is there a direct benefit to hiring multiple marketing roles like an SEO guy, PPC guy, a social media guy? Or should a business hire a full all-inclusive agency to do all of it?

Marc Ensign (09:15.406)
I’m personally, and this has been my experience over the years with multiple clients is that I prefer and the results are better when you have multiple agencies. The trick is finding multiple good agencies. How do you find the best at PPC and the best at SEO and the best at like, so like the, me find one agency to do everything is kind of the easy way out. And it definitely is easier. It takes a lot less time, but you’re not going to find one company that does

everything at an expert level. and so so you’re spending the money anyway, and maybe it’s a little more expensive to have multiple agencies. But, you know, when you have the best, you know, at SEO, and the best at PPC, and the best at direct mail, you know, it makes a huge difference, like, you know, because they’re only focused on this one thing, you’re only holding them accountable to this one thing. And, you know, and there’s not this gray area of you’re doing everything. So now,

I’m kind of at your mercy of, know, like if you tell me that, you know, well SEO is doing good and this is, know, like it’s just, you just have too much control over, you know, that one agency has too much control over one business. Not to mention that if they go out of business tomorrow, so do you, because you’re relying, you know, all your money is going to one, you know, one person, one company.

Stephen S. (10:35.368)
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. What are some of the things that you see people making mistakes of within the real estate investment space specifically?

Marc Ensign (10:45.454)
everybody seems to, everybody seems to use a lot of the same vendors, you know, for everything, which is kind of funny. you know, there’s the, you know, and, so, so that’s one thing. I think that there is, there’s a sense of, we have to go with somebody who specializes, who understands this industry. And I get why, because, you know, it is kind of different than, than, you know, a of other industries.

But I’ve had so much success with people that, like bringing in like a PPC person who is just a monster with like it just stares at every dollar, make sure every dollar is well spent. That’s worked very little in the REI space, but came in and really killed it because there is just.

You know, I would take somebody who’s really good at what they do over somebody that’s done this a million times, you know, any, any day of the week. it’s just, you know, where, where it becomes important is, you managing them properly? You know, are you just like, you know, setting it, forgetting it, like, like give somebody the job and walk away and never talk to them again and just let them, let them coast and do their thing. Or are you talking to them every week? Are you, know, are you challenging them or you, know, finding out what they’re doing and, know, trying to improve them.

Stephen S. (12:03.4)
Yeah, how do you go about vetting an agency to know whether or not they’re the right fit for one of your clients?

Marc Ensign (12:14.008)
So yeah, so we have kind of like a, we have a scoring system and like a pretty arduous process. it, it, cause it shows up for us a couple of ways. We’re always looking for good agencies. And so we’re always interviewing agencies that like, may not have somebody for you now, but you know, we may soon enough. whenever anybody says like, Oh, I got a great PPC guy. was like, Oh, I want to who that is. Cause I want to dig them apart and see. We also, every time we sign a new client, one of the things that we have to do is we have to, we have to vet their current agencies to make sure that they’re, you know, kind of up to snuff and,

sure they do what they know what they say they’re going to do. So having been in the industry myself for 20 years, like I know where all the bones are buried. there there is a sense of, you know, of

I know, you know, I know what I’m looking for. And so, you know, when they’re talking about what they do and how they do it all that, I kind of, you know, you can’t out tech me on this stuff. Like I know, you know, when you’re when you’re, you know, trying to blow smoke, and I know when you’re, you know, being honest, and you know, what’s really going on. So there’s a little bit of that. But there’s also like some some, you know, real giveaways, like, like, you know,

when you have an SEO company talking about their goals, you know, our goal is to get you listed in the top 10 for, you know, X, Y, Z keywords, you know, stuff like a lot of agencies have goals that don’t line up with.

Marc Ensign (13:38.414)
You know the the goals of the client like, you know, I don’t care what your goals are don’t like I don’t care if you don’t get a single keyword in the top 10 if you’re driving revenue and we’re driving leads, you know, uh, then that’s what I care about so um, so when so, you know when you talk to a company and they say like, you know, We talked to a ppc company and the first words out of their mouth are cost per lead Um, and don’t talk about quality. They don’t talk about conversion. They don’t talk about uh revenue, uh, you know, then I know that like this is somebody that’s out for themselves like like they have their own

criteria of what success is and it’s not going to match up with who the client is.

Stephen S. (14:12.648)
So like, tell me a little bit about like some of those misconceptions between, because I agree with you in the sense of like somebody that only is talking about cost per lead, but they’re not talking about the CPA or the cost per acquisition for those that aren’t familiar. Like, how do you find that balance between the cost per lead, cost per acquisition without like, let’s say, how much time does a client really need to give it?

before they can have real actionable data of whether or not that lead was qualified or a quality lead and what makes a quality lead. Because I think that’s another thing that business owners sometimes have misconceptions of is that every single lead should be a quality lead. But can it be? I know that’s like a multifaceted question, but help us kind of understand that a little bit.

Marc Ensign (14:57.998)
Sure, I mean if every lead that you have is a qualified lead, then either you’re not tracking them properly or you are being too stingy with your budget and with your target. You’re so heavily targeted that you’re only capturing the few, you’re missing all this other opportunity. So you do have to cast somewhat of a wide net. Now, when you cast a wide net, you’re gonna catch a bunch of fish that you want. You’re also gonna catch a bunch of shopping carts and a tire every now

That’s just the way the way it is, you know, but you’re also when you you zoom out

You know, you have a lot more qualified leads than if you just, you if you tightened it up too much and, you know, and only got qualified. So, you know, unqualified leads is just kind of part of the game. It’s just a matter of like, you know, how do you, how do you minimize as much as possible without, without, you know, negatively impacting the qualified leads? As far as what a qualified lead is, like, I mean, for me, it’s, you know, does this person have a house to sell? Is it in the, a market that we want?

And are they at least somewhat motivated to make a decision? Now, if somebody calls up and they’re basically looking for a real estate agent and not somebody to unload the house too quickly,

It’s to me. That’s not really a qualified lead. Like that’s just one of those that’s that’s the tire that we kind of caught in the net, you know, because I don’t want to count that towards, like the the ones that actually have a house there, you know, it’s in the area that we want and, know, and they’re ready to make a deal or they’re at least interested enough to make a deal there, you know, or at least have that conversation. This way, we’re not chasing people down as you know, we’re not wasting resources trying to, you know, try to strong arm somebody into, you know, having a conversation with us.

Stephen S. (16:52.776)
That makes total sense. When you talk about catching some shopping carts and some tires in the process though, what should that ratio be, do you think, of qualified lead that knows what it’s about, ready to have a conversation versus somebody that’s kicking a tire or maybe they read the ad wrong or they were drunk at two o’clock in the morning and filled out the contact form? What do you think that ratio

really should be in terms of like a percentage number of out of 10 leads, this ratio percentage should be qualified. What do you think that typically should be for it to be a successful campaign?

Marc Ensign (17:33.964)
And that’s that is like one of those impossible questions. know, every, you know, because well, because every every every every every market is different. Every source is different.

Stephen S. (17:37.884)
I know.

Stephen S. (17:43.642)
Every market’s different, every company’s different.

Marc Ensign (17:48.46)
Like even down to, like, can come up with a number that says like, Hey, you know, we think that, you know, if we sent out a direct mail piece, you know, 80 % should be qualified because, know, why would they, you know, like, like we spelled it out in the, in the postcard or in the check or whatever it was. But then again, you also have, I mean, you know, depending on what you put in that, that creative, you may drive people to like, you know, where you, where you, you know, triple your phone calls of people that are just, you know, that are hating on you and, you know,

and, you know, spewing whatever vitriol because you offered them too low of a price on their house. You know, and that drives the number down. So, I mean, like, you know, like, I think it’s more in terms of, you know, like from what I’ve seen, like direct mail is usually pretty high. TV is usually very high. But PPC is usually kind of middle to low. SEO is usually pretty low, you know, like, like middle to low again, kind of same, you know, same there. Social media is very low.

So like it really, but again, the creative changes everything, the market changes everything, what your approach is, what your customer journey looks like, all of that plays a role in what those numbers should be.

Stephen S. (19:05.575)
How important is the balance of strategy and platform compared to copy and creative?

Marc Ensign (19:13.656)
think they’re the same.

I think it’s like one of the same. think that your copy, your copywriting, your story that you’re telling the, you know, your approach is very much part of your strategy. Like, like, you know, when we’re, when we’re sitting down and laying out, like, let’s say a customer journey, it’s equally as important to have, you know, like, like, what are we trying to get? Like, you know, the strategy is what are we trying to get people to do? You know, copy is just what words do we come up with, you know, and in what order in order to get them to do it. And so, so those two are married. You can’t have one without the

together.

Stephen S. (19:46.076)
Yeah, yeah, I’m 100 % with you. I wish I had one of those road casters next to me right now so I could hit the little button for game show music for our next segment. know, do do do do do do. We’re here with Marc Ensign for our next special segment that we’re just now creating on the podcast called Top Three Red Flags here for hiring marketing agencies. Marc, thanks for joining us on the show today. What are your top three red flags for 200 points when people are hiring agencies?

Marc Ensign (20:15.278)
Number one is definitely transparency. So I learned early on that that you know when they control the reports and And they only show you what they want you to see

Stephen S. (20:17.767)
Mm.

Marc Ensign (20:28.778)
And you know, is like that to me is like, fire agencies over that. Like, so, so like, won’t hire an agency that says like, we’re going to do your PPC, but we’re going to do it through our account. So you know, we’ll just tell you what you, know, what to pay us. And you know, and then there’s no transparency. It’s just a no go. I’ve seen too many people get, you know, kind of get screwed and, and, and it’s, it’s a,

You know, not to say that everybody’s out there doing that, you know, or screwing you over that. but it’s like, you know, if I can’t see what’s really going on, if I can’t see the numbers, if I don’t have access to stuff, if you get hit by a bus, I don’t I no longer have a PPC campaign going like there’s too much risk there. And you know,

Stephen S. (21:08.136)
or your cards attached to it.

Marc Ensign (21:10.476)
Yeah, right. Exactly. So that’s, that’s the number one thing. you know, number two, and this sounds stupid, but nothing but good news. you know, and SEO companies are notorious for this. you know, when you get on there like, great news, you know, we have, you know, here’s, here’s 10,000 keywords that you’re ranking in, you know, in the top 10. Like we got your rank number one for, you know, a blue house in Pittsburgh with a red door and green shutters and, know, and a broken sidewalk. Like who’s

Who’s searching that keyword? Nobody. You know, so there’s this sense of like, you know, if you’re not going to tell me like it is, if you’re not going to be honest, if you’re not going to, know, like I want to hear the bad news, how do we fix stuff? If, you know, if everything’s always just good news, you know, cause meanwhile, like, like, you know, and I see this all the time. I would sit in on these calls when I first, you know, start working with a client and, the clients just sitting there, smile and nod, just go, okay, I guess everything is great. And then they get off the phone and then we have a followup afterwards. And they’re like, they say everything is great, but we’re

getting any revenue from SEO. We haven’t gotten a single lead from PPC in two weeks. So it’s just like agencies have a tendency to kind of beat you over the head with marketing speak to the point where you just go, okay, okay, okay, we’re doing great, fine, I got it. So when you’re too positive and you’re not really willing to look at where the improvements are.

That’s definitely a problem. then, of course, anybody that has a hard time working with us, because a lot of times we come in and we have agencies that just like, we don’t want to deal with him. We’re just going to go direct to you. You can sit in and listen, but we go straight to the client. No, we’re the client now. Because we’re not an agency that gets hired. We’re brought in as on your leadership team. So talking to me is just like talking to the CEO.

COO, that level of leadership. And you have to be willing to play nice and you have to like, you know, we’re here to make your job easier. Like we’re not this bully that comes in that just wants them, you know, know, beach into submission, but we are going to have high expectations and we are going to make sure that everybody’s doing their job.

Stephen S. (23:21.224)
Yeah, which goes back to I think even point number one, which is that transparency piece, right? Yeah, 100%. Well, Marc, this has been an absolutely terrific episode. If anyone wants to learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Marc Ensign (23:26.413)
Yeah.

Marc Ensign (23:37.87)
go to loudmouse.com L O U D M O U S E dot com. I guess spelled a lot of times, a lot of times people think it’s loud mouth. And so like, I was like, I don’t think I have a list, but yeah, it’s definitely loud mouse. That’s right.

Stephen S. (23:43.432)
Everyone, I hope you

Ha!

Stephen S. (23:51.386)
Loud Mouse. You got it folks. It’s like the small rat. Loud Mouse. Kind of. I’m just kidding.

Marc Ensign (23:56.504)
Well, I don’t know if I would put it that way. mean, first you call me old, now you’re done.

Stephen S. (24:01.32)
No, I didn’t call you. I didn’t call you old. You said it not me. Man everyone. I hope you enjoyed today’s show and if you got as much value out of it as I have I know you’re gonna be off to the races and we’ll see you in the next episode

Marc Ensign (24:05.048)
Yeah.

Marc Ensign (24:16.782)
Thanks guys.