WS1162: Marketing Your Way To Real Estate Success | #Highlights

EPISODE 1163

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01.6] 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. 

0:00:24.0

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your Daily Real Estate Syndication Show. We are introducing a new segment called The Real Estate Syndication Show Highlights, where we’re bringing you a look back at episodes focused on a specific topic that we believe added a lot of value to you in your syndication journey. 

Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe. Also, hit the notification bell so you can continue to know when new shows come out. Have a blessed day!

[INTERVIEW 1]

00:00:49.0

WS: Our guest is John Casmon. Thanks for being on the show, John.

00:00:53.0

John Casmon (JC): Whitney, thank you for having me on.

00:00:55.0

WS: Let’s talk about how you’re using your expertise to grow and get into this business. I know a lot of our listeners are going to learn a lot about your expertise. That’s marketing and branding. I know they’re interested in that too so they can grow their business as you have.

00:01:09.0

JC: Syndication is a great thing but it also is challenging. You can start to do everything you can to learn. This is a great podcast. You’re going to learn a whole lot of stuff listening to all of Whitney’s episodes, but it’s hard to go out and execute every single component by yourself. When you start to break it down into what the components are and what you do well, what I realized is I have a background in marketing and I needed to lean into them, understanding how to grow and understanding how to market. There’s a difference between marketing, branding, and all those different things. What we wanted to do is start to understand how I lean into that expertise more.

What I focus on is the marketing aspect, helping to identify opportunities that open to put together marketing plans, and then driving our branding to help connect with other investors. Ultimately, all we’re trying to do is identify a deal and then pair the deal with the capital for investors who are looking to invest. Marketing is a strong piece of that. I want to talk a little bit about how your syndicators and audience can use marketing to drive themselves. Whether you’re a passive investor, an active investor, or an active syndicator, marketing is a strong component that can help you elevate your business and rise above the rest.

00:02:28.0

WS: I heard a guy say that if you’re a syndicator and you’re on the capital raising side, you’re more of a marketer than you are anything else. Even a real estate investor, you are a real estate investor but marketing is such a big component of what we’re doing. Social media has exploded in many ways and that’s the way we connect with many new people. You have to be good at marketing too. Let’s hear it. I want you to tell us how to do it.

00:02:54.0

JC: There are a lot of things. One thing that I had to learn is there’s a difference between sales and marketing. From a marketing standpoint, one of the things that we were doing was I would put out content and I would wait for the investors to flock to me. It wasn’t necessarily happening that way. There’s a balance in what you can do for marketing and that takes time to build it up. Ultimately, marketing is about attracting people to you. Sales are a little bit more prospecting where you’re going to be more actively reaching out to people. If you look at social media, you can certainly do marketing on social media. A lot of people do it and a lot of people do it great. That is posting content and letting people know what you’re working on, sharing your podcast episodes, writing blogs, and sharing those blogs. Those are all great marketing tactics that you can use.

One of the things that you’d want to do is find ways to connect the right content to the right people at the right time. What’s missing? How do you leverage certain platforms better than others? If you’re going to be on Instagram, it is very visual. You want to engage people with beautiful imagery. You want to have a great copy and you want to be consistent. Facebook is more family and friends. It’s a little bit more casual. You want to engage people a little bit more and you want to tag people. LinkedIn is very professional. LinkedIn is where professionals are looking to network and connect with people. You want to find ways to share relevant information and content to be worth your time.

You want to take advantage of each platform to the best of its capability. What I also realized was on the sales side of things though, those platforms, their prospecting is as important. That’s less about what everyone sees and more about how you use private messaging. How do you identify these people? How do you reach out to them in private messaging? How do you start to connect with them? How do you start to bring them into your sales funnel by getting them onto your email list? Ultimately, you want to drive your email lists so you can communicate with these people in the future when you have a deal, when you have an opportunity, to stay on top of mind.

That’s all we’re trying to do is stay top of mind so when there is an opportunity, if you are ready to invest, if you see a deal that interests you, that deal is there and there’s an opportunity for you to come to join our team. You want to use marketing for all of those things. The next piece is if you’re starting out and you don’t have something specific to say or maybe you’re not comfortable or confident to start writing blogs or launch a podcast, then the next important thing you can do is leverage other people. Leverage their influence, leverage their expertise, and use that to grow your brand.

00:05:27.0

WS: Leveraging other people’s brands and then doing a podcast. Even if you’re doing a blog, you can interview people. It doesn’t have to be something as big as a podcast. There are other options. Are there other options that maybe we haven’t thought of or even ways to have developed your brand like that? If you’re not into writing and you do not want to do a podcast or a meetup, are there any other ways you’ve seen people do that to increase their brand?

00:05:49.0

JC: Absolutely, part of it is the prospecting. It’s a one-on-one thing. You don’t necessarily need to reach hundreds or thousands of people. Maybe you have a cousin or maybe you have an uncle that you want to talk to. When you go talk to your uncle, it’s better to have something that you can show them, “I’m partnering with this guy, I’ve done this deal or I’ve invested with this guy.” You’re still leveraging that other person or you’re leveraging good property managers. Let’s assume you don’t want to do any marketing, but you have a deal and you’re going to hire a third-party property management company. One question I was going to have is what their experience is?

You’re leveraging their experience. You’re leveraging what they’ve done. If you’re getting a loan from the bank, if you’re getting a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan, they have to underwrite it. If they underwrote the deal and they think it’s a good deal and they’re willing to give you 70% to 80% of the loan to do the deal, that’s another way that you can leverage. Ultimately, leveraging is all about the influence of other people and the other stakeholders and what they say. In anything that you’re doing, there are going to be other people that are going to provide an opinion. That’s going to make people feel either more comfortable or less comfortable with the deal that you’re trying to do.

00:07:00.0

WS: I’d like to hammer on the marketing piece a little bit more. Your expertise and I’d love to get a few tips for helping grow our brand on the marketing side and whether social media or not, but some key things that we can start doing to increase our brand.

00:07:16.0

JC: Depending on where you’re at in the journey, the first thing you want to do is if you are a syndicator, if you’re going to be somebody who’s putting deals together and trying to bring investors together, you have to have your email list. Who are you going to reach out to when you have a deal? I started with MailChimp and what I realized is I’d meet a whole lot of people. I wouldn’t necessarily have the details or I wouldn’t remember where I met people from. I created a whole CRM system. Pipedrive is a system I use. There are a lot of different CRM systems. Start with your email list. That’s where you want to focus. You want to have a CRM system that helps you to identify and stay connected with these individuals and follow up.

That’s the sales plus marketing. You had these people but when have you talked to them last? It’s great to send them a monthly newsletter or weekly newsletter. Make sure you’re communicating with these individuals frequently as you can. Start there and then think about how do you provide value. Always look to provide value. Just because it’s important to you, it does not mean it’s important to them. It’s great and I love pushing out my podcast. Everybody doesn’t want to hear about my podcast necessarily. Probably the same to you even though they should. What we have to do is think as they would think. If you’re talking to a busy professional, what information are they looking for? I have one of my investors tell me the other day, “John, that’s great but what I am focused on is my daughter in college. When you talk to me about how investments are going to help me send my daughter to college, that inspires me, not you telling me about the 8% pref return.” I’m like, “I got it. That makes sense.” We have to make sure we’re thinking about that user or that consumer, our partners, our investors. What are they looking for? It’s thinking about it from their lens. That’s the other thing that we can do.

I would say on social, keep it simple. Figure out what it is you like and do that. You don’t have to try to be on all platforms at all times that you’re not ready for that. If there’s a platform you like, find ways to reach out to people. If you’re looking to grow your investor database, you don’t have to come up with some crazy blog, but you can take five people. Reach out to five people through their inboxes. Even if you haven’t talked to them forever, just say, “Jimmy, I was thinking about you. I’m investing in these real estate deals and I’m looking to talk to some other folks who might have an interest. I’m not sure if you’re interested but maybe you know someone who is. Do you have five minutes? I will love to hop on a quick call.” You can do things like that to start the process. That’s not a huge blog post. That’s not something that the world’s going to see. If Jimmy doesn’t respond, it’s okay. You reach out to the four other people and maybe two or three of them will reach out and now you have a chance to talk to them one-on-one. Those are the different things you can do to start growing your investor database and start nurturing those relationships.

[INTERVIEW 2]

00:10:02.0

WS: Our guest is Lyndsay Phillips. Thanks for being on the show, Lindsay.

00:10:05.0

Lyndsay Phillips (LP): Oh, thanks for having me.

00:10:07.0

WS: Tell the listeners a little about who you are and what your focus is and let’s dive in.

00:10:12.0

LP: You bet, I know content marketing is such a big term that some people think it’s just social media, or they’re not really sure what it entails, right? To me, it’s like all that good experience and the knowledge that you have in your head and it’s how you get it out to other people to serve them and help them and give them resources and tips.

Whether that’s videos or blogs, and of course podcasts, social media, live Facebook’s, even options because there are ebooks, and so forth. Email marketing, they’re all the different mediums that kind of makeup content marketing. It is a broad term, so can kind of feel a little bit confusing. We help people in every way; sales funnels, podcast production, of course, I love podcasting. I have my own show.

Yeah, it’s just sharing your knowledge and your expertise with people so that you can attract your ideal client, you can build relationships, and then, of course, you know, the name of the game is conversion.

00:11:12.0

WS: Let’s talk about that, you know? Attracting our ideal client, get us started in thinking about that and how we want to go about doing that – whether the listener has gotten started on their thought leadership platform or not, they need to be thinking about who they’re trying to attract.

00:11:25.0

LP: Yeah, you have to have that information to do anything. Otherwise, you’re just throwing spaghetti on the wall and hoping it sticks.

00:11:33.0

WS: That’s not too productive is it?

00:11:34.0

LP: It’s not really. It might be tasty but –

00:11:36.0

WS: You know, knowing who our ideal client is, you know, let’s say we – I don’t know. Most of the people are going to be looking for that. The business owners or the high-paid professionals, or you know, that are too busy to own their own rentals or manage their own rentals, but they understand that they need real estate, you know, they need to own real estate for the tax benefits and passive income benefits, numerous other things.

Help us to think about how to attract that type of individual?

00:12:03.0

LP: First, and one of my coaches said to me years ago was to think about your top three or five favorite clients that you have. What brought them to you, what was their pain point, what did they need help with, and then what makes them your ideal client? Is it how you serve them, is it their personality, you know, do they pay on time? That’s always a thing. But just that relationship and what you’re doing to help them and what you’re doing to solve their problem.

What is that sweet spot? Really dive deep, write down all your points and really, you know, decipher what they’re about and where they’re at in their business or their life, depending on your business, and again their personalization, their goals, what makes them tick, where are they hanging out? That is huge, you know? Don’t invest your money in LinkedIn if they’re all hanging out on Instagram. You really need to kind of do a little bit of RND and kind of you know, be a stalker for a day, and check them out and see what they’re posting, what they’re asking, where they’re spending most of their time.

I’ll never forget Snapchat was all popular and everyone was jumping on that bandwagon and I said to one of my clients, I’m like, “But your client, they don’t even know what Snapchat is, let alone using it. Why create that platform?” You don’t want to spend your time and money in places that are not going to give you that ROI.

Those things are really key and that will help you not only know what social media platforms to put your time in, but you also don’t need to be everywhere, you just need to be where your peeps are hanging out. Same with content; we did this really great survey once when another client and we found out that the bulk of their time on the resources that they wanted to read, view, whatever was YouTube. Therefore, it made sense to do more videos rather than writing blogs.

Yes, you still want to have some blogs at your feed for your site and stuff for organic traffic but really, they were just all into the videos. Put your time into that, and again, with podcasting,right? If your ideal client is, I don’t know, 60 let’s say and they barely know what a podcast is, don’t start up a podcast because your ideal client is not listening to them, that is your crucial starting point.

You know, even look at your competition, right? The leaders in your industry. What are they doing? Like, do a little RND there, right? Where are they hanging out? They may have a bazillion followers on Facebook and have hardly anything on LinkedIn. Just kind of paying attention to those nuances, the topics that they’re talking about, even look at their YouTube videos, you can see which YouTube videos have like, you know, a thousand views and which ones only have a few views.

You can really kind of start to garner a lot of information that is useful to you to know how to step forward on where to be, what kind of content to put on, and even the topics to cover. It’s amazing how much information you can get.

00:15:03.0

WS: That’s great advice, look at what other people are doing, right? I mean, look at what’s working already before you get started. I guess, could you walk us through some things that we need to know to get from knowing who that ideal client is, and I appreciate that, thinking about who your top ones are now. It seems so simple.

00:15:19.0

LP: Yeah, totally.

00:15:20.0

WS: Think through that. That’s awesome, but now I’m going from thinking about who that is, we figured that out, to that conversion. What are some steps and things we need to understand to get them to the conversion?

00:15:31.0

LP: Sure, I always say that content marketing is as easy as ABC. A is attracting your client, B is building relationships and C is converting. I mean, I could do a podcast episode on each one individually, it’s a lot of information but now that you’re, you know, putting out content to attract your ideal client, you of course want to convert them, it’s great that they’re interacting with you on social and they’re on Facebook and they’re loving your videos but you want to get them on to your email list so that you can nurture them and make more offers to convert them.

You want to go for the ask, right? Ask them, DM them and just say, “Hey, I noticed you’ve been commenting on a lot of my stuff, maybe you’ve got some more questions, let’s hop on the phone, let’s have a phone call.” That’s a conversion, right? You’re bringing them closer into your circle, you’re growing that relationship, and you’re having a chance to have the conversation and then potentially, you know, convert them into a sale or whatever you want to call it.

Again, if you have lead magnets or an opt-in, you know? Put in your name and your email to get a checklist or a video series, or whatever it may be. That is a conversion. If all your peeps are like hanging out and loving you on Facebook, you want to put that call to action out to “Hey, I’ve got this awesome resource, check it out, you know, go here.” Then you’re going to convert them to get on to your email list.

This kind of moves them into your sales funnel, it moves them into that kind of – that B part where it’s building relationships and you’re just going to serve them, give them some great tips, give them some statistics of what’s going on in the world. Especially with you know, real estate. I mean, there are so many statistics, there are so many legalities and changes and like I just found out the percentages of how many people have gone into debt and foreclosure and you know, bankruptcy rates and like all that information is useful, especially when you are in the real estate sphere.

Share that stuff with them, that’s going to be useful. That is going to help build that like and trust and they’re going to feel like you’re in their corner. You’re not just asking for a sale or whatever it may be, asking them to do it fast. I mean, this is cliché but you can’t ask them to marry you before you’ve like, you know, you’ve dated and you’ve gone out a few times, they like you, you feel like you’ve got some mojo together, you connect and you know each other a little bit better. You can’t just jump and close them. Especially as you know Whitney, with real estate investing, that like and trust factor is everything, right?

[END OF INTERVIEW]

00:18:06.0 

Whitney Sewell: We hope that you enjoyed the Highlights show today. You can always listen to the full episodes that were featured today by clicking the links on the show notes page. and in the description box. Let us know what you’ve thought of this episode or you can go to lifebridgecapital.com/podcast and click the feedback button. Let us know how we can add more value to you. Thank you and talk to you tomorrow.

[OUTRO]

0:18:32.0 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.

[END]