Episode 11 - Level Up Your Leads with Scott Corbett, Marketing Strategist at Lightmark Media

Jordan Fleming sits down with Scott Corbett of Lightmark Media to discuss paid advertising, increasing lead generation, and knowing your personal brand. Spending money on advertising is inevitable for most REI professionals, and it can be intimidating to figure out where to spend and how much. Scott explains why getting your ads in front of the right people is a core solution to many of your problems.

“The point is, you've got to try to make your ad spend be as efficient as possible. Put your ads in front of the right people, whether it's driven by geography or a custom data set that you can import, and then use a filtering tool for your ads to make it more efficient.” - Scott Corbett on using technology to drive ad spend.

Jordan and Scott discuss marketing as an investment rather than simply a business cost. “You've got to use that ROI framework,” Scott explains. “It's not just spending money; you’re investing money in generating marketing that's gonna pay off.”

It’s clear that knowing where to place ads is a huge part of effective paid advertising for real estate investors, but so is knowing your unique brand and fleshing out your social media presence. Scott points out that “the stronger your brand presence is in a market, the less hard the paid ads have to work.” Your strengths as a real estate investor aren’t just numbers and the bottom line, it’s also how you’re perceived by potential buyers.

“You’ve got to start with the place of who am I? And how do I help people? And who do I help? Get comfortable being that person, showing up and getting the message out there.”

As always, the Fast Five rounds out the episode, so stay tuned to learn what Scott thinks is the future of effective social media (here’s a clue: video, video, video!).

About Scott Corbett

Scott is the founder of Lightmark Media, a full-service agency that has served operators, educators and capital raisers in the real estate space for over 10 years.

Lightmark has a 10-year track record of helping real estate investors around the US do more deals more profitably by delivering motivated seller leads and ready buyers. Lightmark also helps REI thought leaders build and sell coaching and training products. And if you raise money or want to, we can help you raise more of it, easier and faster, using proprietary strategies and systems. An all-in-one marketing solution for real estate investors, coaches, educators and anyone raising capital for real estate funds and syndications

Scott graduated from the University of Georgia and lives outside of Athens GA with his wife and 2 children. Go Dawgs!

Learn more at https://www.Lightmarkmedia.Com

About That Real Estate Tech Guy Podcast

That Real Estate Tech Guy is the only podcast focused on helping Real Estate Investors make better technology decisions to close more deals and make more money. It is your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Informed by decades of REI and technology experience, Jordan gets into the details with seasoned tech and real estate industry leaders to bring you the lessons you need to get ahead. Learn from guest successes and failures, get the inside scoop on the next big trends, and always walk away with actionable ideas to build faster, better, and more profitably.

Interested in being a guest? Head to thatrealestatetechguy.com and let us know!

For more information about smrtPhone, the only all-in-one CRM phone system check out https://www.smrtphone.io/

Transcript

Narrator: 0:01

I can tell you one thing. Technology is the single most important aspect of every business that has successfully scaled. It's time for That Real Estate Tech Guy. It's your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Each week, you'll hear from real estate investors who have been there and done that and find out their favorite technology tips. Listen in as Jordan speaks with tech companies and learns about new technologies and new ideas that will help you scale your business. And now join your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of smrtPhone for this week's episode.

Jordan Fleming: 0:43

Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of The That Real Estate Tech Guy podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Fleming, and my co pilot for this episode is Scott Corbett from Lightmark Media. I'm excited to speak to him. He's an old friend of mine, Scott, welcome to the podcast, and why don't you give a little introduction to yourself and the company?

Scott Corbett: 1:01

Hey, it's so great to be here. Jordan, great to see you again. I love the idea of this podcast, much, much needed. So glad you you're leading the charge on this one. Because it's a more and more like the technology aspect of lead generation and the whole real estate investing business is critical. So good for you. Yeah, what we do is we help real estate investors around the country in their local markets generate leads, mostly off-market deals, what people call motivated seller leads, right. So we've been doing this a long, long time, over 10 years. And we use Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, YouTube, even getting into Tiktok ads a little bit. So we help people do that. We also help with marketing automation and systems and things on the back end. So they actually get the most value out of the leads. But mostly it's people know us for lead gen.

Jordan Fleming: 1:54

Yeah. And I'm really excited to have you on today. Because, obviously, you know, I've seen you guys work over the past years, you know, directly both for clients of mine. And and in fact, myself at times, you know, so I know that, you know, the kind of experience you guys bring to this game, particularly for the real estate investors, you know, you've got such a wealth of experience, and lead gen, you know, you aside from the follow up to lead gen, which is actually following up and doing it properly. You know, getting proper leads, is where you're going to spend the most amount of your money, probably as an investor, particularly when you're starting out, you know, and I think it's a bit of a minefield. So, you know, can you kind of walk us through how you approach it as a company, you know, how you'd approach a new customer, maybe the things you'd want to know, just so we can give people a bit more of an understanding as to what the fuck that means.

Scott Corbett: 2:55

Yeah, yeah, I'll do my best. I mean, so we have investors who come to us all the time and they're at various stages of their development as a company or, you know, sometimes it's just a solo guy. But where most people start out there, really, and this has changed completely. Not so long ago, the place people tended to start out was in direct mail. And now and people still do direct mail, don't get me wrong, it's just that it's, it tends to be on the more expensive side. And it's, it involves several moving parts that I think intimidate people at times, but where people start typically today is by doing text message, outbound text messaging, and cold calling, right. And, of course, they use tools like smrtPhone very effectively for, for for parts of that, and that is what I would call, like a relatively high impact, although there are of course, technical challenges with that with those two methods, you know, for various reasons, it's high impact, but relatively low cost, right. And people love it for that reason. And so where people go next is kind of where we get involved. And the places people go next are generally one of two places, they go to Facebook ads, which are, you know, I mean, I don't need to state the obvious here, right. But I mean, it's just a way a Facebook ad is like, is a little bit like a, like direct mail, in the sense is like it's just interruption marketing. We're trying to interrupt people, as they go about their business, you know, maybe they're looking at pictures of their grandkids or something. And, and we're just trying to say, Hey, by the way, if you've got a house problem, we can solve it. Right. And so I'll try to the other way people go and I'll come back to Facebook in a minute is with Google ads. Google ads are inbound in my in my perspective, right because people go to Google and they have a problem and they're trying to solve

Jordan Fleming: 5:00

They're actively looking, yeah, you're not placing in front of them and hoping, they're looking for something.

Scott Corbett: 5:06

They are, they're looking. And I think, you know, like, my, my campaign managers tell me that there's something like, you know, 200 to 250 keywords that we've identified after spending many, many millions of dollars in Google ads, that actually are indicative of somebody who's actually got a real house problem that they're trying to solve, like, it's a true motivated seller type keyword, and of that two or 250, they're probably, honestly, only 20 or 30 that provide 80% of all the traffic out there. You know,

Jordan Fleming: 5:39

So you've learned that just through the volume of experience, you've whittled that kind of knowledge down?

Scott Corbett: 5:47

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've we've generated 10s of 1000s, of motivated seller leads over the past 10 years. And we, I mean, we have a way to aggregate all that data. And and look at it and learn from it. And yeah, so that's what it's based on. But the cool thing about about both of those systems now, and this is, Jordan, if I start to get in the weeds too much, reach, reach across, Slap me. But Facebook. Now, as soon as I say

Jordan Fleming: 6:15

I'll give you a slap. this, of course, they're going to change the rules next week, right? So I probably shouldn't even say anything about Facebook's policies. But I will say this, they are a pain in the rear end, their policies constantly change. They we have I have a guy, one of my Facebook campaign managers who probably spends two or three hours a day doing nothing, but sitting on chat with Facebook reps trying to get disapproved ads approved again. Or it's I've noticed that, like, I'll see, I'll see an email coming because I don't manage that side of our business. But I get the emails and part of the end, like this ad has been declined or disproven, like, what could we have possibly put in there? That that happens. And that happens to us. So if you're managing that many, you must just

Scott Corbett: 7:14

Oh my gosh. And the truly maddening thing is, is that these so I mean, there are million reasons an ad can kind of like, trigger that automated warning, right? So the robots turn the ad off generally. But it takes the humans to turn them back on. And we have little scripts that we have to say in the in the chat, you know, that because we finally learned the trigger words, so that the humans who quite often are, verging on incompetent or or you know, disinterested, really. But if you say the right things, then you you can kind of get them to put the ad back in the review process. And then eventually, almost in every case, the ad will be back online within a few hours. So it's this whole exercise of like it's randomly disapproved. And then we have to spend time dealing with these disinterested human beings. And eventually they go, oh, yeah, you're right, we'll turn the ad back on. So Facebook is so it's just, it's pretty annoying that way. But But the cool thing about Facebook, there are good things about Facebook. I mean, the main good thing is that you can get somebody to click an ad finally, if you can get it to run. And they can tell you like, oh, yeah, I do have this house for sale, give me an offer. And then, you know, those things turn into deals, which turns into a lot of money, right? We got a client in St. Louis, just recently who I think over the past three months or so has cleared like 100k in wholesale assignment fees just from its Facebook ad campaign. Alright, so it works. And that's why we put up with all the the aggravation, because it actually works. And the leads are actually cheaper than Google leads. So that's good. And I mean, there's lots of things you can do too to you talked about earlier, finding the right people, right, because with Facebook, you you're not depending on them actually searching in on something. So you're looking for them, you're looking for them.

Jordan Fleming: 9:30

your site. Well, and that's one of the things I wanted to kind of to sort of make clear in some ways about this. You know, I think your point about the journey that someone may make in the marketing spend and how they approach marketing, starting with the spray and pray kind of cold call element where you're, you're essentially hitting a very large list and getting a low success rate but you know, it's not that expensive and, and hopefully you get some deals out of it. But, but once you get to the to this sort, you are, theoretically, your cost per lead would probably increase quite a bit. But But the difference is instead of buying, you know, do you want to spend your time with 25,000, completely cold, unproven people who may not have anything to do with you or have a house to sell? Or do you want those people who have seen your ad and clicked on it and then submitted your details? Where you are, then you're almost that you've qualified enough? You can you can start working those leads. So each lead is a potential lead to work as opposed to the cold element. Is that how you guys see it?

Scott Corbett: 10:47

Totally. That's exactly right. You know, you've and it really is this thing where cost per lead is higher on Facebook than it is with text message marketing and cost per lead is higher on Google than it is on Facebook for a reason. It's because the the quality of the lead typically is higher, and you've got more advertisers kind of jockeying for space. So yeah, it makes sense. It's, um, you know, it's like you get what you pay for in a way. Now, I won't say that the low cost methods don't work, because they do. They totally do. Right. It's, it's just

Jordan Fleming: 11:27

The spread you as you scale your business, the chances are, you're going to want to have a spread of marketing activities, to cover different bases like I know, Larry, Larry Goins, who's a good old friend of mine, and you must know Larry,

Scott Corbett: 11:41

Yeah. I Love Larry.

Jordan Fleming: 11:42

Yeah, everybody loves it. Like, if you don't love Larry, there's something wrong. But Larry was on this on this podcast. And he talked about the fact that they still mail out 10,000 postcards per week. So this, but again, the spread of things. As you scale your business, you're going to want to find and assess what is working. So let's move to the assess what's working bit, because obviously, you guys, it's your job to sort of hone in for each customer, what's going to work for them. You can't know right away, you've got to try and, and kind of wiggle around. Because, not -- everybody's different. How do you How important is that kind of process of narrowing down for each customer, each market? For you guys? And what's your approach to that?

Scott Corbett: 12:37

Okay, that is such a good question. Because yeah, it's definitely not one size fits all. Maybe I'll just stay in my world in my lane for a minute. And I'll leave aside the discussion about texting and cold calling. Although we do typically, if people come to us and they say like, Hey, I'm so excited. I want to get started. I've got a $500 a month marketing budget, what can you do for us? Then we just were very, you know, gently and, and, and, you know, kind of this fatherly way, put our arms around him to say, Okay, you need to go find yourself a good cold calling and text marketing solution, because that's where you are now in your business, right? But for other people who have maybe maybe they're a little bit more further along, you know, with their business, they've got a little more revenue coming in doing more deals. So then still, if they want to get into digital marketing, what should they do? A few factors that are really important to look at are, first of all, what market are they in? You know, is it a market? Is it Los Angeles? Or is it you know, Dothan Alabama, right? Because the number of people in a market in some ways is going to determine what your what your options may be. The second thing you look at, and it's not the same as how big the market is, is how competitive the market is. Another thing you want to look at is like how are your back office systems set up? Because I here's one, just a little tidbit on that. You probably know John Martinez, the real estate sales trainer. Such a good guy. And he and he's been hammering this point for years and years now, which is that particularly with Google ads, someone is doing a search. They search for like sell my house fast. Athens, Georgia. They see a list of page of results. They pick one out the ads are at the top the organic results are the maps are down below, right, whatever it is, if they click an ad that ad at that point, let's say it's not Athens, which is where I live, let's say it's Atlanta. The click on that ad is probably going to cost you somewhere between $40 and $60. Okay, that's not a cheap click. They're going to hit your landing page and usually landing pages do want you to do two things, either fill out a form or call. So whether they call or whether they fill out a form. And this is, according to John and everything, you know, we know from talking to so many investors is that you either need to answer the call live, or you need to call them back within about three minutes. Or if they fill out a form, same exact thing, right, same exact thing. It's speed to lead. And so we have to ask questions like that, like, are you set up to do that, right? Because you should not spend $1,

Jordan Fleming: 15:29

Because if you're gonna spend $60, on getting this click, then you buddy, you know, don't waste it by calling them back a week later.

Scott Corbett: 15:37

Exactly. And it's even worse than that. Because typically, what we see is, it takes about five clicks to get a lead, you know, so if it's a$30, click, then that's $150 cost per lead, if it's a $40, click, you know, it's a $200 cost per lead, that's $200, that you really just spent to get that person to call you or fill out a form, right? It's, and that adds up. And if you don't jump on that right, then then you can imagine what they do next, they just hit the back button. And they're back at that search results page, right, and they go on to the next one. You know, it's like, in my office here, yesterday, we had this emergency with the hot water heater, it it kind of blew up and it was leaking from I'm in the upstairs of the building, it was leaking down through the ceiling of the downstairs space right. Now, if I start calling plumbers, you know, what do I want? I want somebody to answer the damn phone right now. Right? And if you don't answer the phone, I'm going to the next guy. That's, I mean, maybe that's, you know, not quite, it's not quite know,

Jordan Fleming: 16:47

but but the point is valid. And, and I have heard that over and over again, from successful investors, speed to contact. Yeah, is is critical. Because otherwise, the chance of them going to someone else who does get in touch with them, and then they're locked in there until they'd get disappointed or until, you know, they're not, they're not necessarily going to be like, well, I called this guy first. So I'm gonna give him a shot. Like, no no, this person answered this person's talked to them. They're in that conversation until that they lose it. And that is, and that's a really good point in terms of, you know, in terms of how you can approach the type of leads that we're talking about that you guys work on these, you know, if you're going to spend$200 to $300 on a lead, and you want to generate 50 leads. 10 Leads? You're still spending three grand, exactly. So good, Lord, do not let that sit on the table and go oh, yeah, I forgot to call this back for two days.

Scott Corbett: 17:56

Exactly. And you really, you would be surprised at how often that happens. And

Jordan Fleming: 18:02

I wouldn't. I used to build CRMs for people don't forget, I know exactly how terrible. Most people approach it. But but But you think about it in dollars and cents, and you think about in terms of marketing spend, you know, it's also like, why are you spending, you know, why are you buying the Ferrari if you've got speed bumps all over your, your road, I mean, you just, like, get the two if you're gonna invest in quality tools. And, and for me, anytime someone presses a button to come to see me, you know, when someone's actively making a choice to reach out to me via a form or a phone, that is the top of the level of things that I care about, because I'm not reaching out to them, and then and hoping they've got something, they are calling me back. They are messaging me, you you got to treat them seriously. And I think it's interesting that you guys make that a really important part of the conversation. When you're setting it up. Um, how much does each market like you talked a bit about kind of the market size, the competitive landscape and all that. What about... this is a question because I may be completely wrong, but just do things like demographics matter as well for markets in terms of what you may, you know, where you may demographics and housing kind of prices, you know, types of housing, whether they're middle ground, lower ground and upper ground, you know, we're on all those, how much do you get into the weeds of the very specifics? Or is it much more higher level in terms of volume?

Scott Corbett: 19:39

Okay, so So every investor kind of has a buy box, right? Where and the buy box is partly determined by geography but yeah, you're right. It's also partly determined by demographics. So if you're in Birmingham, Alabama, for example, your buy box may be you really like, you know, like a three bedroom, two bath house built in the 1950s that needs a lot of work, right? Because you know, you can buy that house even today, for you know, let's just say 70, 80, 90, 120 and do what you do to it and maybe put a renter into it or, you know, flip the whole, flip it as a wholesale deal. or fix it up and sell it, right. That's your Buy Box. Someone out on the West Coast, for example, has a very, very different Buy Box, potentially, right? Like we have a client in the Bay Area. And they they're actually okay. They know that that house that may be selling for $650,000 is a great deal at $650,000. Right? Because if they put 200 in it, then it's worth a million five. So yeah, you do kind of like so, the investors, I mean, most people are not like that to be clear, right? That's an unusual thing. Most people like the bread and butter of real estate investing around the country still, is you buy these houses that are like three, two, or even, you know, even a little smaller, and they're decades old. And they're typically they typically need repairs, or something's wrong with them, there's some reasons why people can't sell them just on the open market, right, as to a retail buyer, that tends to be the sweet spot. So the demographics that go along with that are typically that that's quite often an older person that lives in that house that they've been there a while, right. Or sometimes the demographics might just be something like, you've got, you've got like in every city, you've got little pockets, right? Whether there are these working class pockets, but maybe out in the suburbs, you've got the more like the high income professional areas, and you kind of have to, like, there are some ways without getting into the details of it, to focus in on those geographic areas that are associated with the demographics, right? That's the key point. So it's not so much geography, it's like you don't want to go for like, you know, places above 500 feet in elevation, like that doesn't matter that geography is irrelevant. It's like where do the working class people live? You know, because they typically those are the quite often usually just the best opportunities for investors. But like the guy in the Bay Area shows you I mean, it doesn't have to be that way. But you can, you can target geography pretty carefully, particularly with Google ads. And there's some things you can do, too, with data. So I think, you know, our friend Chris Richter, right from Audantic, he's really good at pulling lists of people who are likely to sell and he's he operates within what he knows his clients buy boxes are as well, right? So he can pull that list. And it may be like, let's say it's back to Birmingham, it may be all across the city, but it's it's specific properties, there are some things you can do to actually just put ads in front of those particular people associated with those properties. And that's probably too complex of a discussion to get into today, like how to do that. But that's great if you can do that. And the point is, though, at the end of the day, like you've got to try to make your ad spend be as efficient as possible. So you're not showing ads to people who either own these like in Birmingham, there are million dollar homes in Birmingham, right? But you probably don't want to buy that and you don't and you don't want to advertise to those kinds of people. Yeah, so putting your ads in front of the right people, whether it's driven by geography or some kind of custom data set that you can import and then use as a filtering tool for your ads something like that makes it more efficient.

Jordan Fleming: 24:03

Now you talked a little earlier about kind of you know, when someone comes in they says I've got a $500 a month spend I can do and you know the likelihood of of gently pushing them towards the sort of lower cost entry points of cold calling etc I'm gonna I'm gonna ignore the cold texting bit because the TCPA regulations around stuff, I.. anybody listening to this Don't get me started on that. You know, it's it's a it's a it's a very fast slope towards lawsuit around that, but but certainly there are. There's, if you look at cold calling, there are times and places there are there regulations involved, but you can still do it within the confines of the regulations and it can work really well. But if you were looking to up your game in terms of you know, where where you start to go, you know, it's great and all slogging through 25,000 leads to get to the 20 cherry picked ones that I finally get. But it would be much better if I didn't have to slog through 25,000. And then I could get better leads and then and they start to think about the type of of inbound lead gen that you guys can do. What, you know, can you give a rough ballpark, I'm not holding this to you this, you know, you do this? Because I'd imagine markets will determine spend as well, based on you know, there'll be more competitive markets at where the cost goes up. And there'll be lower market, you know, less competitive markets where the cost goes down, but we, you know, are we looking at you gotta be, you know, you got to be sitting there with a $1,500 a month budget, a three, like, you know, what's the sort of entryway to that step up as a general rule without being? I'm not holding you to this?

Scott Corbett: 25:52

Yeah, I gotcha. Can I just can I just plug one of your particular tools, though, like you mentioned, the whole cold calling, approach, which is fantastic. And smrtDialer, which is one of your products is superb. And so I just want to give you a give, give, give it a plug, if I may,

Jordan Fleming: 26:14

yes, I'll take all plugs, man.

Scott Corbett: 26:16

So anyone who hears this and is in need or interested in, you know, a tool that's excellent for cold calling. Follow up with Jordan and ask about smrtDialer. But okay, back to the budget question. I would say that. Google is pretty, pretty expensive. I mean, it's that way, for a reason. Like I said, the quality is that high, I'd say to get into a Google campaign, if you have a market of any significant size, you're going to be spending, you know, probably a minimum of about 2500 in ads, that's about where it starts, you know, because we could do the math on it. But basically, if you can't get -- if you -- your Google and Facebook, to a large extent is all about having this month be better than last month, right? Optimizing the campaign based on a bunch of different factors. If you can't ever do that, I mean, I'll just say this. There are people I know around the country. And if you go to BiggerPockets forums and start reading like about Do It Yourself PPC, there are definitely some people who are having success in their small market. And they're spending maybe 500 or $1,000 a month doing PPC, and they don't, they don't get many leads, but they get a few leads. And they do and they're probably hungry. And they're probably answering live and they're following up quickly. But for to hire a company like ours, it doesn't make sense, unless you're spending enough money to generate enough data to make us earn our, you know what you're paying us, right? Because my guys have been doing this collectively for decades. But we have to have data coming in to be able to know how to optimize the campaign and make it better over time. And if, you know, if you can't spend at least that much, you're probably not bringing in enough data to warrant having us around, you know,

Jordan Fleming: 28:10

and the ROI on I've always said, you know, the ROI on on the type of activity inbound leads that you guys can generate is really, really high. Because presuming you don't drop the ball, right, the bits you can't control. to you guys you can't control once a lead comes in, that the the investor and the event or the investors team is actually dealing with the lead properly, you can't control that bit. And that's unfortunately, that's unfortunately, probably sometimes an area that hurts you because it was like it was like anybody who's ever dealt with has ever been in that kind of scenario. If the customer is not doing their job, well, there's only so much I can do. But the ROI for people who do actually follow up properly and have a defined sales process or wherever team is working, you know, if you can generate, let's just take you know if you can generate 1010 leads 10 really qualified leads, I'll just say a month at this point, although I think I've seen people generate tons and you can close two of them, let's say because you're a decent salesperson, you you know understand that works. You if you're just doing wholesale selling, chances are the four grand you spend on marketing is turning into 40 to $60,000 of assignment fees. So what are we talking about here? Like you know, I you've got to you've got to at some level, if you're serious about scaling, or building a proper business in this, you've got to look at your marketing spend as as investment into profit.

Scott Corbett: 29:47

It's not a cost. It's an investment.

Jordan Fleming: 29:48

Yeah, you've got to look at it like that. And otherwise, if you're not, I get it if you're so small that that five grand a month or whatever if you've got if you're not in a position to afford that I totally get that. Look at the options you can do to get enough money in to do it properly.

Scott Corbett: 30:04

Exactly right. I mean, it is really like an ROI framework that makes the most sense, particularly with Google ads, which are more expensive. But Jordan, I will tell you, Facebook ads can be like a way to kind of put your toes in the water a little bit with paid ads, because you can actually generate leads for I mean, it depends, like, I don't want to say that too many times. But it does depend on the market. It depends on how strong your organic social presence is, too. Because the stronger that is, the stronger you, let's just call it your brand presence in a market, then the less hard the paid ads have to work, I think is a good way to phrase that. But anyway, the point is, you can actually get in the game with Facebook ads, for closer to around $1,000 a month in spend, right? So that's a that can be encouraging sometimes for people as a way to start. It's just like we've already covered you know, your your quality is generally going to be lower than Google ads. And you're gonna have to, you know, filter through a lot more junk. But in the midst of all that junk, you'll definitely you know, you'll find you'll find some gems in there,

Jordan Fleming: 31:20

get some deals, get some money and then start investing in better marketing.

Scott Corbett: 31:24

Exactly.

Jordan Fleming: 31:26

Well, it's come to that time where we're going to hit the That Real Estate Tech Guy Fast Five questions, I ask everybody the same ones, all the technology partners of which you are, one get the same questions, all the investors get the same questions just slightly different ones. So I'm going to answer them relatively rapid questions, relatively rapid answers. Question number one, what feature? I suppose it for you, it's a little different gives you all sorts of different ones, the types of lead gen, but what kind of, if you had to name one type of lead gen that has the biggest that can have the biggest impact? Are you able to do that? Or is it too specific to the kind of customer?

Scott Corbett: 32:05

I'm gonna twist your question a little bit, may I?

Jordan Fleming: 32:11

twist away.

Scott Corbett: 32:12

Okay. So I'd say that the, the biggest technique or system you can have is really between your ears. And you've got to do exactly what you were just saying to do a minute ago, you've got to start looking, if you're gonna step into the world of paid ads, you have to have the mindset that first of all, you really need to say like, I'm gonna give this a six month commitment, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna have that approach. This is not like, Okay, I've got a

Jordan Fleming: 32:42

try it for five days. And and then if it doesn't work perfectly,

Scott Corbett: 32:48

right, so just commit to it, because there is a sales cycle to everything. And you'll, you won't really know your ROI numbers till after about six months or something like that. So it's like a mindset, it's a it's a brain system. And you just got to commit to stay with it. And you've got to use that ROI framework, right? Don't just know that it's not just spending money, you are investing money generating marketing that's gonna pay off.

Jordan Fleming: 33:14

I like that twist. I'll take it. Alright, question number two, And then this one, I think you can answer because I think it's, I think it's probably gonna be a variation of what you just said. But the what's the biggest mistake people make when they start approaching paid advertising?

Scott Corbett: 33:28

I couldn't, I could flip the answer and say they're too impatient. They don't give it long enough, or they, they're there. They're just nervous about committing. Like, sometimes if you can take a Google campaign from spending three or $4,000 a month to five or $6,000 a month, then all of a sudden, you get two and a half times more leads, right? Like there's a there's the people who are willing to invest in Google really, like reap the benefits of it, for example. But I would also go back to what we talked about earlier with, like, if you're going to invest in paid ads, in particular, you have to have a rock solid back office system. And that's where people drop the ball probably as often as anything. And if I could throw in one bonus answer, you don't have it, you don't have enough disposition options. If you're only a wholesaler, that's all you can do. Then what happens if you get this perfect flip opportunity? Or what happens if you get a house that's actually ready to be listed on the MLS today, get it under contract, get a relationship with an agent and and work out a deal right pass that house on to somebody or maybe it's a house that you could pick up and use as a rental like just have multiple disposition options and that really gives you I mean that can that can do wonders to your return on the on the marketing investment because now you've got more ways to make money.

Jordan Fleming: 34:53

Well, and I'm gonna guess you're gonna be a real weird case for me in this podcast in terms of the first five questions because really cool because yours is a relatively you know, if I'm talking to a company that that build CRMs, we've got a very defined use case you, you got a much broader thing. And question number three actually I think you've answered with questions one and two. And so because which is about the best advice you would have on someone new into getting into paid advertising what you've just said, like you've got three best advices there that I would 100% agree with, and particularly around, you know, interesting around the dispo kind of side of things. I actually have been, you know, I've been thinking more and more deeply lately around the misconception that people have around how important lead gen is versus buyer gen. Because if you're if you're only concentrating on lead gen, but you've got nowhere to flog your leads, you're you're spending lots of money, and you're not going to be able to make any cash, buyers are critical.

Scott Corbett: 35:55

That is such a good point, Jordan. Such a good point. Yeah. And that's a completely different... That's it. That's what I would call a campaign, right? I mean, and there are lots of ways to build your buyers list. Lots of ways to build a buyer's list. But yeah, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad you brought it up. Because you've got to give that really as much attention as you give as you give the leads. Yeah,

Jordan Fleming: 36:18

Otherwise, where are you puttin' them, you've got 50 leads that you put under contract, right? Can you close any of them?

Scott Corbett: 36:25

Exactly.

Jordan Fleming: 36:26

And if you can't close any of them, you're not making any money.

Scott Corbett: 36:29

So I'll drop I'll drop this just as a reference point. So we work with a guy named Jimmy Vreeland in St. Louis, Missouri, on his, his social media, and we do paid ads for Jimmy too. But, but I'm talking now about organic social media. So which people really like because it takes time as opposed to money, right. So in some, for some people, that's, that's a good situation. Go check out what we're doing for Jimmy his his buyer's brand is called U Buy STL. And I think it's we're using a lot of video, we're using a lot of rich content. And we're really like making a full press effort to attract all the other investors in the St. Louis area. And it's, it's working out really well now. Because the more buyers you have, probably the higher the assignment fees, you're gonna get, you got people,

Jordan Fleming: 37:28

or the higher you can offer, as well. If you've got better buyers, then you can, you can win more deals because you got the confidence to offer more money.

Scott Corbett: 37:37

Great point. Great point.

Jordan Fleming: 37:39

And otherwise, you know, do you want to do you want to sniff at the bottom the whole time? Or do you want to know, I've got these buyers who really liked these properties. And if I can get one, I know I can make more money so I can get that property by offering more.

Scott Corbett: 37:54

So true. Great point. Yeah, it makes everything in the business go better. Yeah.

Jordan Fleming: 37:58

Alright, question number four. What is one thing you wish everyone knew about paid advertising?

Scott Corbett: 38:06

One thing? I would say probably that paid ads are a marketing strategy, or their marketing channels that you should not be afraid of. You should not be afraid of 'em, you shouldn't be intimidated by them. Because they, I mean, like if you've ever logged into Google, in particular, if you've logged into like the admin, it's, oh my god, whoa, oh, my God, get me out of here, right. But what I will tell you is that, like, companies like mine are not crazy expensive to begin with. But there are also lots of great resources out there. Like if you go to BiggerPockets, or you know, some other places, start small, like, even if you want to do it yourself, do not be afraid, do not be intimidated by these, you know, these ads, dashboard, these consoles that looks so crazy. And even Facebook, I mean, Facebook used to be simpler, it's not that simple anymore. But don't be intimidated. Like, if you want to just play around, give yourself $500 to play around and just see how it works that so that's my main thing. Just don't be afraid of it. Because if you can get comfortable with it as an ad channel, I mean, you can it's it's unique. And what it allows you to do is reaching more people

Jordan Fleming: 39:35

Fantastic. Last question. Someone's just starting out, brand new investor or they're just getting started. Your best advice to how to start the journey into lead gen. You know, and they're just starting out. I think we touched a bit about the journey earlier in the podcast. Just clarify, just crystallize it if you were just starting out and you had to pick three things to just start looking at, what would you look at?

Scott Corbett: 40:04

Okay, just starting out. So

Jordan Fleming: 40:09

And I'm taking cold texting off the menu, because I will not be part of that.

Scott Corbett: 40:14

All right, well, I suspect some people are out there going well, I made a lot of money from it last month, Jordan, but yeah, they've made they better save that money for attorneys fees right. No, I mean, it I'm actually not as doctrinaire about it as you are, I think it can be legal in certain situations, but let's not go there. What I would tell people just starting out is, start with the free or the cheap stuff, right? And really, and really use it. So for example, I mentioned like the U Buy STL that my friend Jimmy Vreeland does in St. Louis. He's also got his, his organic socials for their kind of seller facing. It's called I Buy STL. So he's really focusing on organic social media for both those two markets, right? He creates video. He, he's, he's posting every single day, pretty much. He's actually he's clear about how he helps each of those groups. And he's putting the message out. In other words, he's getting himself out there and use the free platforms, you know, get comfortable with video. That's almost like point number two, get comfortable with video. We haven't talked about TikTok yet. But it's in some ways the demographics,

Jordan Fleming: 41:34

podcast number two, podcast number two, you come back on.

Scott Corbett: 41:38

Okay, I will, I will. I mean, but like, TikTok may seem like something that you know, teenagers use, but I guarantee like if we if we're back circle back around, like at the end of 2023. The people who got into TikTok earlier are going to be really glad they did. But the main thing is YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, TikTok, well, I mean, the world is going video video video all the way, you've got to get comfortable with it in some way. And, you know, so I'm not really telling you how to do that. But there are ways to get comfortable with with video. But mostly, it's like, you got to start with the place of who am I? And how do I help people? And who do I help? And what can I say to those people, and then just get comfortable being that person and showing up and getting the message out there. So that's probably one thing. And the other thing is embrace a philosophy of failing forward. That is just like, just absolutely critical. It's really true with paid ads. Because it's like a great success is if we run an ad like on a Facebook ad or something and it just bombs. It's like, yes, that's so great. Now we know what not to do. And now we can pivot and try something else. Right? Embrace that philosophy, like, failure is just part of the learning process. Everybody who's successful, has a long history of failures behind them, right? It's just how you respond to the failures. Because you're gonna fail, guaranteed. Embrace it, say, excellent. Now I know that and I won't do that again. What's the next? What's the next experiment I can make? Right? So I mean, that's my main thing. And then and then of course, you know, answer your phones when somebody calls you.

Jordan Fleming: 43:32

Call them. Yeah, quick.

Scott Corbett: 43:34

Yeah, you might want to, you might want to do something about that, as well.

Jordan Fleming: 43:38

Well listen, Scott, it's been an absolute pleasure to catch back up with you. And to learn a bit more. I mean, we touched on a number of things past just the paid advertising that I think are really valuable. It's just part of the marketing, the marketing and and growth mix. That that goes into, to scaling a business as a final kind of part of the today's podcast. I mean, how can people find you out? You know, people listening to this who are like, Man, I gotta up my game? How can we find you? Let us let me know.

Scott Corbett: 44:09

Well, you can go to a website Lightmarkmedia.com, li ght, ma RK media.com. And there's even a way to get on the phone with us. If you want to talk more about any of these topics. Just go to I think it's, it's the button, it's all over the website. I forget what it what it says but fill out a form, get on the phone. I've got some really good campaign managers who are happy to talk through, you know, any of these marketing channels they love. That's what they that's what their passion is. So yeah, the websites probably the best thing.

Jordan Fleming: 44:40

Awesome. Well, we'll be we'll be dropping the website address into the podcast page on the website. Also, of course, there'll be links to Lightmark Media on the technology store part of the website as well please, if you listen to this, do the things you're supposed to do with podcasts and subscribe like review it does help push this up. On this topic of real estate technology, which is a, which is a critical part of scaling your real estate business, and, you know, if you really want to scale a business technology is going to be a huge, huge, huge part of the process of doing it. So, do please support the podcast by liking and subscribing and doing all that stuff. Scott. Thanks so much, man. I will speak to you very soon.

Scott Corbett: 45:22

Thank you, Jordan, take care.

Narrator: 45:26

Thanks for listening to another amazing episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. Head over to ThatRealEstateTechGuy.com to check out all episodes and get special discounts on tons of awesome real estate technology platforms.