WS1087: How to Expand Your Portfolio Through Digital Marketing with Brian Driscoll | #TechandTacticsTuesday

EPISODE 1087

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01.0] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell. 

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.3] WS: This is your Daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Bryan Driscoll. Bryan is a real estate investor, a digital marketing and SEO expert, is a co-founder of motivated seller leads, a digital marketing agency that helps investors expand their real estate portfolios quickly by generating quality, motivated seller leads is over a decade of experience doing SEO for both large and small companies, but after investing in some of his agency profits and do rental properties in his business partner, realized that true wealth comes from real estate investing. Now, in addition to real estate investing, Bryan uses his experience to help other investors find quality leads. But Bryan today helped us think through like SEO, Facebook leads and pay per click campaigns. And thinking through how to do that. Should we have them, should we not? Where should we start? The pros and cons of some of each of those, he also provided a few websites and a few tools that if you’re just getting started, or if you have a team that’s very experienced, are gonna be very helpful to you, I hope you will note them down because I know it’s gonna be helpful.

One specifically, now, I’m not gonna tell you A is your Ippolito the show, but it’s gonna help you to get testimonials from your current investors, so you have that content of testimonials to help grow your investor base. Just a great tip that I had not heard of before, I just talked about building your audience on Facebook and just the ability to push hard to through your business and have a balance as well. So I enjoy the show. 

[0:01:59.0] WS: Bryan, welcome to the show. You have some skill sets that our team needs to learn honestly, a lot better, and we need somebody like yourself to help us walk through some of these, I’m thankful for this conversation today, I know the listeners do as well, ’cause we’re all trying to grow our brand and Man, if somebody says, digital marketing, sometimes we’re like, What is that again? What does that mean? Like a, how do we do that and do that well? And that is your expertise. Tell us how you’ve been doing it. You mentioned for 15 years or more, but give us a little more about that background, how did you get into this and let’s jump in to our specific niche too.

[0:02:34.8] BD: Yeah, sure things. By the way, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. I got into digital marketing back in the early 2000, so I got involved, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the platform called Upwork… Oh yeah, I go to one before Upwork, I gotta fall back when it was oDesk, so I started to being around on website, stuff like that, figure it out kinda how SEO worked, and then I hopped on there and started doing it for people for 20 bucks an hour, I found out I was pretty decent at it, and then I grew a whole business on freelancing. About six, seven years ago, I got into real estate investing too, and I started marketing for myself here at Pittsburg, and we crushed it, so that’s basically how I got into this space, real estate versus just traditional digital marketing.

[0:03:12.9] WS Wow, so I’m looking forward to this. Tell me for the listener that’s brand new to this, what does this marketing. Why do they need it?

[0:03:18.6] BD: Yeah, sure, so digital marketing is playing ads, not even necessarily ads having a presence online, so you can do multiple different ways, you have SEO, which is ranking in the free section of Google, you have Google pay per click, which is paying Google to be at the top of their search engine and show ads there, and then you also have Facebook ads, which is showing ads in Facebook’s news feed, plus you have all kinds of other ones, like, Pinter, stuff like that, but I focus on those three. 

[0:03:41.9] WS Okay, where should someone start? 

[0:03:43.6] BD: So each is different. So SEO has a very high return on your investment, it takes a long time to start seeing traction now because you do something, and what you’re trying to do is optimize your website to be relevant from what you’re trying to rank for, for example, if you’re trying to rank for sell your house, you need to make a page that’s relevant for that keyword, and then you have to wait for Google to look at your website, see if determine it’s also relevant, and then they move you up the sergeants, it’s real slow because we’re not paying anything it just we’re optimizing to be there.

[0:04:10.5] WS: You mentioned like free or you’re not paying anything, is that as far as it’s just sitting there in Google, being able to search the site and see those keywords, right? But hiring an SEO company or something to help you that… That could be expensive, right? We’ll walk through that just briefly.

[0:04:26.5] BD: Yeah, so if you’re gonna hire an SEO company, it could be expensive, it’s usually $1500-2000 a month, and you can get people cheaper, you’re kinda getting what you pay for. With SEO you have two different things on it, you have on-page SEO, which is pretty much optimizing and changing things on your actual website, to your blog, your title tags, you’re content on your website, then you have off-page SEO, which is link building, what that is, Google and the search engines kinda look at links coming to your website, and what I mean by that is a different website has a link on your website to someone can click and come to your website. They look at those like votes. So if your on-page is optimized really well, and then you also have people linking to your website giving those votes, it shows a little bit of credibility and that helps you rank there, but yeah, hiring a firm, it can be free if you do it yourself or you hire a firm, you’re looking… Usually a couple are in a month.

[0:05:14.5] WS: We won’t spend a ton of time on SEO, but what’s something somebody should be thinking about now if they’re first building their website or maybe as they move forward, writing blogs or doing things on their website, how can they be kinda optimizing for SEO. So they don’t have to hire somebody. Release in right now. Maybe they’re on a tight budget.

[0:05:31.2] BD: Yeah, so what I would do if I was doing it on my own, I would look at… There’s tools called SEMRush, there’s a tool called ahrefs.com, you can look at those. And what do you do is… So say you’re writing a blog, think about the phrase, somebody would type into the search engine to find that blog, go type it into one of those tools and do keyword research, what it’s gonna show, it’s gonna show how many people are searching for that phrase, so sell my house fast or sell my home fast. Which one do you wanna write on the page, which one are searching for, and then what you wanna do when you’re writing that content, make sure you have the keyword you’re targeting in your title, and it’s a title tag, you’re meta description, put it in your H1 tag and then put it a couple of times in your body content, so that the start engine, when they’re looking at the page, they can tell what it’s about, you have to have the words on the page that you’re trying to write for it, so they know what your page is about.

[0:06:20.0] WS: Great tips. What’s an H1 tag? 

[0:06:21.2] BD: If you’re on a website, the big bold headline of the page, that’s the H1 tag.

[0:06:26.6] WS: Okay, no, that’s great to know, and some great tip right there, I mean, those websites alone, as you are trying to title your blog that you just wrote, that’s great, man, take a few extra minutes and figure that out, so let’s jump into like Facebook ads, pay per click maybe briefly, what do those do for you, why should the listener be thinking about using something like a Facebook ad or pay-per click campaign?

[0:06:48.8] BD: Okay, so both of the platforms, you can pay to be in front of the audience immediately, so it’s like, oh guys, take a campaign up, people see me tomorrow versus… SEO I’ve built my website. They see me in six months paid market, he’s kind of like running a house as like going out… So while you’re paying Facebook, while you’re paying Google, you’re being shown… Once you put your ads away, you’re not… Differences are Facebook, you’re paying per impression, which means you’re paying Facebook take 20 every time they show your ad 1000 times. In your area, Google pay-per-click, you’re paying per click, so in the real estate space, you can get very expensive, you could be paying 20 or 30 per click, versus on Facebook, you’re not in direct competition with other investors, you’re competing with the bakery and shootouts try just because you’re competing on impressions in the area. 

[0:07:33.1] WS: It does make sense. So, let’s say we’re gonna start a Facebook campaign, many of our listeners are trying to market to investors… Right, that’s a lot of our business and trying to get our name out there and get our brand out their online, so we look at visual, right? We look professional, so we trigger just them wanting to get to know more about us, so we build that no-like trust, and what I also say is missing that loyalty component eventually, but they first have to see us… Right, somewhere. And oftentimes, now, in one of the most efficient ways is through something like this online, so help us walk through the a little bit as far as a Facebook ad or pay per click, which ever think is gonna be most beneficial for the listener or myself, as we’re trying to market to investors, like you mentioned before, we got started recording like so we don’t look like just some guy off the street.

[0:08:16.7] BD: So there’s a couple of things I would start with Facebook first. The reason is Facebook gives you a lot of opportunity, you can make videos, show images, stuff like that, versus Google is primarily text-based, so you can put a person behind your business easier on Facebook. So what I would do, say I’m an investor, I buy flip or things like that, and I’m trying to raise funds. I would start at the beginning. Number one, I would have my ads targeting people that wanna sell the property, we buy houses, we buy property, stuff like that, and then on that Facebook page, the properties that I’m getting, I would start showing before and after pictures, I would have video walk through stuff like that… Testimonials are huge. Testimonials work really well as Facebook ads is your ad text will sell what you’re trying to do, like, Hey, we buy properties, we close fast, stuff like that, but your… Your actual video could be someone talking about at the closing table ever… Hey, this is what our experience was, it was so easy to use things like that also to help build the credibility or your business there. 

[0:09:11.6] WS: So, maybe in our case, that could be like another investor saying, Hey, I love working with this company or lirae capital for us or somebody else. Maybe them giving a 20 or 30 second testimonial. Is that what you’re saying?

[0:09:23.5] BD: Yeah, that’s huge too, ’cause social proof, especially when you’re looking for someone to give you money, you have to be pretty credible, there’s a website that I use too… It’s called Video Peel. And what it is, I don’t know what they charge or anything, I’m grandfathered in, one of the old ones, but you can send a link to current clients, and it’s nice because they click the link and it opens our camera right on their phone, they press record and it records a testimony and send it right over to you. There’s a tip for you, but those are huge just because you can talk well about yourself, but if other people were talking really good about you, that goes a long way.

[0:09:56.3] WS: Incredible. That tip right there alone is worth the show, I hope the listeners… are paying attention to that, ’cause I know we have a process now, personally, that something on our team reaches back out to investors and says, Hey, would you provide a testimony or maybe they say something really great already, we asked him, Hey, could we use that as a testimony or they obviously get their approval, but that is a great option right there, that VideoPeel.com, I’m gonna remember that. I hope the listener will as well as that does, it goes a long way when talking to other investors when they can see that, right, that prove that social proof. So dive into what are some issues we’re gonna have maybe with Facebook or pay per flip or some things that we should expect, or dos and don’ts, pros, cons, those types of things that we need to know is we’re just getting started to run these ads…

[0:10:38.8] BD: Yeah, sure. So first thing that I see this a lot too with people just getting into Facebook, there’s something called a Facebook Pixel, and what that is, that’s a stipe of code that you put on your website, and what it is, it allows Facebook to track user behavior, so someone clicks a Facebook ad comes to your website that allows them to see, did they submit a form or did they only go to one page, or did they call the phone number, and if you don’t have that on your website, you’re probably was of money you might get a lead or might get what you’re looking for, but for everybody doing Facebook, make sure you have that on are it’s super easy, you go right into your ad manager and click pixels, take the code, copy and paste that right into the header of your website. That’s very, very important. If you’d be running Facebook.

[00:11:15.4] WS: Okay, Facebook Pixel. You know, I remember we built our first website many years ago, and it was like two years later, somebody said, set about Facebook pixel, and I’m like, What is that? And then sure enough, we look and what he turned on, I’m like, Are you kidding? After all this time, it wasn’t even turned on and so… Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up. What else? What’s something that I guess most people miss, or maybe a couple of things that even experienced people would miss as they’re starting something like this… Okay.

[0:11:40.5] BD: Two things you’re gonna wanna do once you have the Facebook pixel installed on your website, build an audience, build an audience in Facebook, you can go in there, everybody that engages with your page and goes to your website, what that allows you to do is re-target them… So say someone comes to your website once to sell their property or whatever it is, they come, they don’t… Tout a form that allows you to show ads and follow them in Facebook or Instagram. Kind of like when you go look in to shoes and then your whole Facebook feed, fill his shoes. So that’s very important. Another thing would be set up event tracking on the Facebook pixel too, so if you’re writing a lead generation, you’re trying to get people to fill out a form, there’s a specific code you can put on the page after you fill out the form on your thank you page, it would be a lead event, put that on there too, because then you can tell Facebook, Facebook will give you whatever you’re asking for, so if you want like click like they’ll give you that, you want link clicks, they’ll give you that. So you wanna tell them, Hey, I want a lead, but the lead code on the website, show them what a lead is and then they’re gonna give that to you.

[0:12:40.2] WS: Nice, I know one of your specialties are finding distressed properties using this technique and being able to find the stretch properties, what about… You’re building these leads, you have all these leads coming in, I know you have some methods made before, what about last… You don’t want… 

[0:12:53.7] BD: Well, leads…That’s a good question. So I invest in one zip code only in the city of Pittsburg, and I market to the whole city of Pittsburgh, so what I do is I’ve parked up with the wholesaler, I shoot him over the leads, he runs them, and we just joined ventures led the profit 55th, so yeah, if you have overflow and we don’t just not call them and think they’re out of the area, find out who wants this, ’cause they’re valuable to somebody. 

[0:13:17.7] WS: Nice, I guess thinking through SEO, Facebook paper, like how often do you see people doing this themselves versus having somebody on their team do it, versus hiring a third party… Completely. Yeah.

[0:13:26.5] BD: So I don’t ever… I know the percent of it, some people do it, most people that are successful in business, especially in real estate, don’t wanna spend the time to learn Facebook, it’s not profitable. Focus on what you’re doing. Some people do wanna do it themselves, and if you know how to do it, then you can hire someone in-house too and oversee them, make sure they’re doing it correctly, things like that. And then other people just say, Hey, I don’t wanna deal with this, I would just wanna outsource it, so I guess there’s no right or wrong if you wanna learn it good, but I tell people to look for your time’s best spent. Profitable-wise, you know?

[0:13:59.3] WS: Yeah, no doubt about it. We listen to her, we talk about that salon, that’s why I encourage people like, find somebody that’s an expert like yourself doing that thing, it’s gonna happen so much faster than you trying to learn it and really taking you away from those most profitable tasks that you could be working on. Okay, so I guess if you had to pick one, where would you say… Sorry, and I think you said Facebook earlier, but is that kind of across the board or is that for a specific type of industry, and obviously for us, like I said, we’re trying to market to investors, what would you say if… Maybe we have a smaller budget, which one?

[0:14:31.3] BD: I would start on Facebook. The reason I say that is, especially in a real estate space, some of this space is maybe not, but in the real estate space, because of the cost, we can get in front of way more people for the same dollar than in Google Pay Per Click and also if we’re trying to get in front of investors too, like I said, you can do videos, things like that, like the branding is huge, so you have two different components, if you’re trying to get in front of investors, number one, you’re trying to generate leads for yourself for deals that you’re trying to do, and then also you’re trying to get in front of investors showing them, Hey, I’m credible. So if you can have both of those going at the same time, it’s like, Okay, we’re generating leads, so they see you have a very credible presence on that side and a good lead flow, and then also you have a separate campaign going for investors, plus they all see the re-targeting, you can put… Once an investor comes to your website, you can re-target them with testimonials, things like that too, which is huge, sometimes you may have a cold ad coming to your website just to get them to click to come through to introduce your brand to them, and then you wanna nurture them, that’s where the retargeting come from an area, stick testimonial videos, pictures of your team, maybe videos are you talk and giving tips, stuff like that, so it’s kind of like overall kind of encompassing thing there. 

[0:15:40.2] WS: How often are these things changing to where…We’ve gotta learn something else or we need to change our plan here. 

[0:15:43.2] BD: Pretty frequently, I know this year with Facebook, Apple just had an update last 14 update, which completely changed a ton of stuff in the real estate space and a couple of other ones to basically what Apple saying is, Hey, you have to click a button and give permission for anyone advertising for us to give your date of them now, so the Facebook pixel that we’re talking about building audience is list showing Facebook who’s a lead. If someone on an Apple does not click the button to share their information, we now no longer are able to give that information to Facebook to optimize. So that created a lot of different things. You have to verify your domain in Facebook, now, you have to set up event priority optimization, stuff like that. So things are changing all the time, you just have to keep up on it. 

[0:16:27.7] WS: Again, why you do an expert like yourself on your team to help you with these things. What kind of budget should somebody plan for running ads on Facebook?

[0:16:32.5] BD: I’d say it depends on your market. So say you’re trying to generate a local field stuff like that, I would say you’re looking at probably 1500 a month, you’re going national, I’d probably recommend three or four grand a month, so depending on how aggressive you wanna get, I usually won’t start with this super high budget, you can even start with maybe 500 too… If you wanted just to dip your water, if you’re doing it yourself, you don’t wanna spend a whole ton of money in there because some of the ads you’re doing may not convert and some of them will, so you wanna find out which ones are working then divert more money there.

[0:17:00.7] WS: That’s a good point there. You said which ones are working, so how many should we have and how should they differ? So we can test that.

[0:17:07.5] BD: Normally, I’ll build a campaign, so I put a campaign… So in Facebook, you have a campaign structure. Then you have an ad set. Then you have your ad. So normally what I’m gonna do is build a campaign in the ad set, we’re gonna be able to choose which audiences or which interests, ’cause you can target interests, demographics, things like that, if you’re in certain industries, so normal do one campaign, a couple of ad sets to test those and then about four or five ads in each, depending on budget though, if you’re only doing, say, 20 a day, I’d probably have a campaign with one ad set, maybe two or three ads, so the more ads you have, the high or the budget you’re gonna wanna allocate.

[0:17:39.7] WS: Okay, just some great tips, and I think that’s like, I would say the way of the future, but it’s been here for a long time, these things… Anything on that… Is this like here to say, this type of ads, anything else or any other kind of ads that we should be thinking about?

[0:17:52.1] BD: I think this is here to stay. Especially, you gotta look at your demographic, like who are you targeting, so if we’re in real estate, we’re targeting order demographic, depending on what you’re doing in real estate, we’re talking to older people, so Facebook and Instagram, where they are… If you’re doing something where you’re talking to younger people, you’re probably gonna wanna be on tiktok, things like that, and it’s constantly changing through, there’s always new platforms coming out, so you’re gonna wanna… First think, Okay, who do I wanna get in front of? What platform or where are they hanging out? That’s where you’re gonna wanna advertise. Awesome.

[0:18:19.3] WS: So many great tips. Bryan, anything else about Facebook ads or paper click, so anything like that you all leave the listeners with before we move to a few final questions?

[0:18:27.1] BD: Yeah, that’s probably about it. One thing I would say is, If you wanna try to just do it, don’t go down the rabbit hole, just researching, set something up, even if it’s only for 5 a day, just learn how it works, because once you start doing it, you’ll progress and you’ll start learning versus a lot of people just keep diving into blogs trying to learn how to do it, they never take action.

[0:18:46.1] WS: Awesome, well, you had a question or suggest a talking point that your team had sent over, and one of those really stood out to me, and one of those where like staying mentally saying while pushing hard. Wanted to you to be able to elaborate on that. What’s this kind of a story behind that? And let’s dive into that a little bit. While we have a couple of minutes.

[0:19:01.8] BD: Okay. Yeah, so I push really hard, so I have long days. I like what I do, I wake up at four, I work till 5 PM, hang with the kids. Work a little bit more and go to bed.

[0:19:10.6] WS: You have an understanding wife… For sure, if you’re married. Right.

[0:19:14.9] BD: And then be insane. Back in the day, years ago, I push too hard and kinda lost it, I didn’t sleep for a night or two, and your brain doesn’t work like that, so it’s so important, I push hard, but make sure you have that balance to find what Callum… I take the family camp and during the weekend or things like that, or I always make sure the evening is like the hang with the family, so push as hard as you can, but also you gotta find that balance ’cause you gotta reset, you can’t keep sprinting all the time…

[0:19:42.0] WS: Yeah, you mentioned like going camping on the weekends, how do you just shut it off? I know for me that’s difficult, right, as like, I’m trying more than ever now, I just leave the phone in the office in the afternoon, things like that. Any tips around that? How you’ve done that, ’cause it is so important to be able to have that like just time away. Especially with family like you mentioned.

[0:19:59.5] BD: It is. Yeah, it’s tough to… I turn my phone sometimes all the term I found on airplane mode is because people are hitting up all the time, like when I go to camp and I’ll leave my phone in a camper all day, it’s like, Okay, I’ll check it in the morning. I’m done all day, if I check it in the evening, otherwise, you’re gonna be sitting… Your life’s gonna pass you by, especially in this world, especially in digital too, you got people messaging all the time, most of it’s not… If I look at something, one moment away from my family and I look at it like in a year, am I gonna look back and be like, I’m not gonna remember what that was. So make that time and space it out. And put your phone on airplane mode. It’s awesome.

[0:20:35.2] WS: Yeah, that is great. My wife challenged me recently, like leave the phone in the bedroom when you get up until like 6, 30 or seven, and that’s been great, and I’m not even tempted to be looking at it when I’m like, How is just focused time in the morning be reading or something else, Bryan, what about daily habits that you’re disciplined about? That helped you achieve success.

[0:20:53.4] BD: Yeah, so I wake up early and that just naturally, not by an alarm clock reading. So in the morning, I like to read… ’cause it kind of clears your head. Starts today, and then what I’ll do is like the night before, and then also in the morning, I have a detailed calendar, so I pretty much prep myself, okay. Here’s all the appointments I got today. And me personally, what I do, so I don’t have to even think about them, I go on my phone and I set an alarm for five minutes before every call or everything I need to do for the day, and it’s like, Okay, alarm went off. What do I get to do so I can focus 100% on what I’m doing, and that would just pull me off whatever it’s time to be done doing.

[0:21:26.3] WS Number one thing. That’s contributed to your success?

[0:21:27.3] BD: Failing, I think. I would have to say probably pushing really hard and getting punched into faith and then getting back up and just keep trying like I was looking… It’s like you don’t have to keep trying, you just have to try one more time, it’s not like you gotta try for 50 years, it’s like, Okay, you failed. Let me just try something else. Went and then you found it, okay. One more, you can always do one more time, it’s really easy, you know.

[0:21:48.8] WS: I love that thought process there, and if you think it’s just one more time, it seems more accomplish able… Right, I can do one more time. If you think, like you said, it’s gonna be 50 years, you’re probably gonna give up, and it’s not gonna take that long, it most likely… Right, that’s incredible to… How do you like to give back?

[0:22:03.0] BD: I donate, I do a lot of donating. I usually do an anonymous-y stuff like that, just to keep in focus where it’s supposed to be, and I like to work with people also that wanna learn and try to help them get to good levels also, so some people, they just don’t have the surroundings or the knowledge, but they have the ambition that they wanna do something, so I kind of like coaching, never just given them those tips and giving them the help, they succeed. So those are kind of things I like to do.

[0:22:26.8] WS: Oh, Bryan, you have provided so much value to the listeners and myself today, thinking through SEO and Facebook and pay-per-click marketing, just those campaigns that it’s almost like if you don’t have that as part of your business here… You’re gonna grow a lot slower than most, I think. Right, and they’re just such a valuable tool there when you use properly, and it also just shows me, again, I will… Somebody like yourself on our team that can help us to do that well, instead of me having to learn it all and making those mistakes, but tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you.

[0:22:57.5] BD: Yeah, sure. And you can just go to my website, it’s motivated-leads.com. You can go there, just give us a call fill out a form, we can hop on a call and see if we can help you out. 

[0:26:34.2] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption, Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.lifebridgecapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

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