Today's Guest: Brandon Bateman
Brandon started a digital marketing company as a sophomore in college and never looked back. After volunteering to do digital marketing for companies, he started the Bateman Collective, which is now the premier digital marketing company for wholesalers across the country. His company handles all digital marketing, from SEO to PPC to Facebook and Instagram ads, as well as designing and creating content for those platforms. He is currently helping real estate investors target motivated sellers in over 90 markets across the United States, Canada, and Australia. Brandon has been a recent podcast guest on Real Estate Disruptors, Wholesaling, Inc., and The Real Estate Jam, among others.
Highlights From The Show:
We begin the episode with Brandon sharing his background story and how he got into the lead generation space and real estate. Brandon shares that he’s a marketer and started out in digital marketing. He partnered with a company that was doing wholesaling in real estate in 2017, and they went from hardly breaking even on digital marketing to doing over a million gross profit in a few years. According to Brandon, there were profits from various channels, but consistently, the highest return on investments, largest single lead generation source and lowest number of leads to a deal were best in digital marketing compared to other marketing channels.
We then discuss what platform to pick and where to invest your money in marketing if your goal is to grow as fast as possible. Brandon shares that google is the best because it is a volume platform. They put the activities they do for their clients into three categories; page search, organic search, and socials. He shares that for social media, they don’t use TikTok. It has a lot of motivated sellers as of now, but the future could change. According to him, Facebook is completely stable, then Instagram is secondary, and it doesn’t have much going on in the real estate industry yet. Google is more scalable from a budget standpoint. On average, the organic side of google has a 3 to 4 higher return on investments from the page site. However, it’s a long game compared to paid ads, which can be short-term.
Next, we talk about the budget you should be willing to spend minimally if you want to get into google ads. According to Brandon, there are some key factors that will put someone's budget higher or lower. The first one is sustainability. You have to make sure that whatever budget you use, you can afford to spend that consistently for a period of time. Brandon recommends six months. This is sufficient time to follow up on the ads and see what is happening. Pay-per-click can work with any budget, but execution can be tough. If you are working with a small budget, you might pay an agency a lot of money to manage your small amount of money to work miracles.
We then talk about the chasm between incoming leads and deals getting signed. Brandon shares that you can drive good leads, but your sales strategy, phone calls, and acquisition can be problematic. Brandon shares that one of the things that they do differently from other agents is that they track things closely with their clients. They interview clients with a high closure rate in the top 10% and those in the bottom 50%. They look for things those people do that are in the top 10% that none of those who are in the bottom 50% and have found three core things. The first one is urgency. When you get leads, urgency is key. The second one is assuming motivation. Being delusionally optimistic about every lead that comes in even though 90% of the time it is not the one will help you not to miss it when it is the one in the 10% chance. The last one is who potential clients talk to matters a lot. You get the contract when it’s time, but you win the contract when you establish trust. According to Brandon, most sellers go to the internet to search because they have a problem, and if you can make them feel like their problem is solved, they don’t need to talk to anybody else. However, if you set an appointment to solve their problem later, they will still have the pain and keep looking.
Lastly, we talk about the best practice for handling inbound calls. Brandon shares that the best practice is having the acquisition team receive, make the calls and set appointments. According to Brandon, the reality of lead marketing is that over time there are fewer leads and those leads are more valuable. There are also a few jobs in wholesaling that are more valuable than the first phone call to an inbound PPC lead. However, most people pay lead generators more money than the person making the calls and driving the conversation, which is potentially the highest value interaction in your entire business. People answering your phones and getting appointments are your ambassadors. If they are not good, they will not represent you well, no matter how good your solution is.
Make sure you don’t miss another amazing episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with Brandon Bateman and get valuable information on how to use paid ads to find motivated seller leads!
Notable Quotes:
“The most expensive marketing is marketing that doesn’t work. You would rather spend your $10K well than waste your $50.”
“When you hire a marketing expert, trust their experts and let them guide you through the process to become better. They have done it a hundred times in hundreds of markets.”
“When someone searches your keyword, google greets them with massive results, and if you're quick, you have a greater likelihood of getting the deal.”
“People lose motivation when they find a solution and when they find it somewhere else, they don’t care about you.“
“Unless you assume that every lead is golden, you will miss the one that actually is.”
“Marketing is an attitude thing, and your outcome is a little dependent on you.”
Thank You for Listening!
Help Out the Show:
- Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help, and I read each one.
- Subscribe on iTunes.
Resources and Links From Today's Show:
Bateman Collective
Brandon on LinkedIn
Brandon on Instagram
Brandon on Facebook
Previous Interviews & Articles:
More Resources From Mike:
