Category: Carrot News

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:23:06

Brendan Holmes

Google ads is how I always related it to two baseball playing baseball through my youth. And our coach always said it’s it’s the little things that can win the game. Yeah. And in Google ads, it’s kind of the same thing. You make these little adjustments and then you can get leads from and those little adjustments for someone just self-managing their campaigns, that that can go a long ways.

00:00:23:06 – 00:00:33:04

Brendan Holmes

It’s not necessarily the home runs and Google ads rarely. It’s something major that you did to a campaign that’s going to drive more leads.

00:00:37:27 – 00:00:55:13

Brady Winder

Hey, friends, you’re listening to the CarrotCast podcast, where we help investors and agents build businesses of freedom and impact by dialing in your marketing, your online marketing. I’m your host, Brady Winder. And today I have with me my friend, my coworker, PC expert, Mr. Brendan. Holmes What’s up? Brendan? How you doing, man?

00:00:55:13 – 00:00:57:05

Brendan Holmes

Hey. Hey. Guess how you doing?

00:00:57:16 – 00:01:16:15

Brady Winder

Brendan has year. Let me. Brendan has been accurate since the beginning, you know, with Trevor when this thing started and he he knows carrot customers. He knows carrot members in and out. He knows real estate marketing in and out. And he’s been running PPC campaigns for. And how many members do you think over the years? Ran campaigns for?

00:01:17:29 – 00:01:36:29

Brendan Holmes

Hundreds. Yeah, hundreds. It’s kind of funny that I mean, before I recall, you mentioned Kylie as on a call with Kylie talking about Cam paid marketing last week and I got out my binder and this is, this is how I learned that that’s that that was Google ads in 2013.

00:01:37:21 – 00:01:38:11

Brady Winder

Yes.

00:01:38:11 – 00:01:49:19

Brendan Holmes

And I read almost every every one of those pages to learn about. And now now probably 90% of the ads probably obsolete. And then the other 10% we we kind of still use.

00:01:50:08 – 00:02:01:08

Brady Winder

Yeah, that’s awesome. So yeah, you’ve been running PPC, Google, PPC, Google Ads for members for years, since before it was called Google Ads when it was just pay per click goods.

00:02:01:13 – 00:02:04:07

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. Yeah. Is that was that’s average. Yeah.

00:02:05:00 – 00:02:26:22

Brady Winder

Yeah. Google AdWords it wasn’t even that long ago. So everybody listening and watching, it’s paid ads month at carat. So before you do anything else or I guess after the podcast, go to Care.com slash ads ads and we’ve got a bunch of resources on Facebook ads, on Google ads, YouTube ads, any sort of paid marketing that you want to run to supplement.

00:02:26:22 – 00:02:48:06

Brady Winder

You’re also, you know, if you’ve listened this podcast for any length of time, you know, the SEO, we practice what we preach. It’s the best way to generate leads consistently, predictably, and, and the most motivated seller leads. And so we always teach people, you know, build up your SEO over the long term. If you’re just getting started, it can take 3 to 6 months to start to see some SEO efforts pay off.

00:02:48:15 – 00:03:13:01

Brady Winder

And so pay per click is a paper click. Facebook ads are a great way to, you know, work into your overall marketing strategy. We’ll talk about where that fits in. But this episode is going to be all about like you know, best tips for PPC, getting started, some of the most common mistakes people make, what it looks like to run campaigns yourself versus, you know, hiring out to someone, which will give you options for that as well.

00:03:14:02 – 00:03:29:20

Brady Winder

Budget expectations like what to expect is it varies so much by market and people have no idea, you know, times if they’re getting ripped off or if they’re getting, you know, leads at a good price. And so we’re going to do our best to cover all those things and not, you know, give you too much of a firehose.

00:03:29:20 – 00:03:49:16

Brady Winder

But yeah, we’re going to dive into Google ads and anything else you always want to learn on, on paid marketing character, on slash ads, and also to get our free PPC resource we’ll talk about later in the call that’s going to be on that page as well. So yeah. Brendan Let’s kick it off, man. You’ve been doing PPC campaigns for years.

00:03:49:16 – 00:04:04:13

Brady Winder

Let’s first talk about like, you know, if someone wants to a real estate investor wants to get started in PPC, what’s the best time? Do they need to be in business for a few years? What are the things that they need before they even consider doing this?

00:04:04:29 – 00:04:40:18

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, consideration number one is a website, so not necessarily do they have to be in business for years. They need to optimize their websites for for conversion. So the optimization side of that is a little bit different than optimization can be a word or term that’s used for more of the SEO side. But for a conversion ad that needs to be dialed in before you’re thinking about any paid traffic, you know, you want to send it to a site that has some credibility now, making sure that looks good on mobile, that’s optimized for the mobile side.

00:04:41:03 – 00:05:08:21

Brendan Holmes

Probably 75% of your leads could come from mobile. So that is one one piece that I think is people get ahead of themselves is that I want to start paid traffic. But when I either audit accounts through our carrot support or, you know, someone’s reaching out to me, potentially looking at Google ads, newer investor, older investor, it doesn’t that piece doesn’t really matter.

00:05:08:21 – 00:05:31:12

Brendan Holmes

It’s they they get ahead themselves and they don’t think about the website first and how it converts and how that and yeah besides the on page making sure their their lead notifications are integrated. So kind of taking a step back and making sure all that is in place before now starting that a Google ads campaign or Facebook or paying or whatever, any kind of paid source.

00:05:31:12 – 00:05:31:21

Brendan Holmes

Yeah.

00:05:32:03 – 00:05:41:20

Brady Winder

And just to just to be clear and reiterate, this is a must have right now. I should have like you’re not going to like you’re just going to be wasting money if your website’s not converting.

00:05:42:09 – 00:06:10:23

Brendan Holmes

Yes, it’s a must have I if I’m going to manage a member or if there’s like we audit through the year, we’ll probably audit 20 accounts through our carrier support. So my just reaching out and looking to for me to review, I’ll see a lot of websites they just purchased, Maybe they’ve been a care member for a month or two months and they, they still have the canned website.

00:06:10:27 – 00:06:37:24

Brendan Holmes

Everything is still the same. They have an ad, A and testimonials. They’re about pages came the can content. They still have the stucco house with you in the background. So there’s no personality to it. There’s no nothing to connect, there’s no testimonials. And you know, over the years that testimonials spot is sometimes a little tricky because there is a new investor that maybe they don’t have testimonials to add to their website yet.

00:06:38:05 – 00:06:52:06

Brendan Holmes

So it’s it could be looking outside their industry. If they are just starting out, they probably are in a different industry, have a different career. Maybe they can bring some of that personality onto their website if they don’t have that true, you know, seller testimonial.

00:06:52:27 – 00:07:16:11

Brady Winder

Hmm. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And if if, if anyone listening, watching this doesn’t have any testimonials, go to care.com slash convert. We just did a whole episode all about how to get testimonials. You know what they should look like, what you should say, or go to YouTube type and carrot testimonials. One question I had, I might be jumping the gun here, but I feel like it’s relevant for what you’re talking about.

00:07:16:11 – 00:07:33:06

Brady Winder

Like making sure your website is set up. You have to have these things in place before you even start running Google ads and putting money into it. But I want to ask how many, depending on the market or the search phrase, about how many other pay per click ads are you competing with? I feel like it’s more and more now.

00:07:33:06 – 00:07:48:01

Brady Winder

I used to be like, Oh, there’s an ad on Google years ago now. It’s like, Holy crap, is it? Five ads are going to scroll past, meaning like, are there five other investors you’re competing with? And if they all have their site dialed in and you don’t And yes, clicking down everyone.

00:07:49:00 – 00:08:33:00

Brendan Holmes

Depends on market. But I think in a smaller market you might only be competing against one or two other investors for the top four ad spots in a metro market, if you’re statewide or national, you’re you’re competing. Yeah, probably all four of those are other investors. And that could be yeah, somebody who is. Yeah, just an investor I can remember or it can be the national investor that I buy or it they, they drive traffic they’ve kind of pulled out a little bit now like offer pad opendoor those types they were running paid traffic to kind of pull back some over.

00:08:33:00 – 00:08:35:00

Brady Winder

They probably drove up costs temporarily.

00:08:36:03 – 00:08:36:20

Brayden Reber

Yeah.

00:08:37:19 – 00:09:11:17

Brendan Holmes

And it could for sure. It definitely could. I’ve seen if you’re in a specific market and it’s a metro type of market, that could impact that for sure. There’s there’s many other reasons costs could fluctuate. But yeah, I saw definitely in some metro markets that had national buyers definitely turning control in the cost in that back cost could have been more like the top number one and number two ad position where that they were really worried about number three and fourth, they wanted to be at the top.

00:09:11:17 – 00:09:14:04

Brendan Holmes

So they were they were willing to pay for those spots.

00:09:14:23 – 00:09:36:14

Brady Winder

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about expectations. ROI, how much are you going to be paying per lead when you’re going into a market? What’s this look like? Let’s say let’s compare. Roseburg is pretty small. Roseburg is like 30,000 people. How big is Klamath Falls? Smaller than Roseburg.

00:09:36:14 – 00:09:38:23

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, it’s. It’s right about the same size.

00:09:38:29 – 00:09:52:27

Brady Winder

Not the same size. I don’t know. Okay, let’s compare, like, Eugene, Oregon. I don’t know, 500,000 people. I don’t even know. Smaller market to say like Dallas. You know what our expectations as people go to.

00:09:54:09 – 00:10:23:03

Brendan Holmes

Number one is like that smaller market the expectation of let me back up real quick is you talked about the expectations are away and what what the most important metric is, is that your your cost per deal metric and that’s then aligning with you have to know where your leads are coming from. If you don’t have conversion tracking or you don’t have good CRM that really had better could harm a member.

00:10:23:14 – 00:10:50:07

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, I’ve had members in the past had no idea where their leads were coming from and then I would have to look into their care dashboard and say, okay, this one was a Google ads, this one was organic, this one came direct. And so knowing number one, knowing where your leads are coming from and then to being able to track those that specific lead to, if that turned out to a deal, the the motivated seller terms have pretty much stayed consistent.

00:10:50:07 – 00:11:14:20

Brendan Holmes

It’s the searcher that has changed so that retail searches are are shifting into more of the the motivated seller type of search, somebody that is not necessarily in a hurry, but maybe their house has been listed for two years. And like I use Klamath Falls as an example, we have a very nice golf course with, you know, some million dollar homes out there.

00:11:15:07 – 00:11:36:27

Brendan Holmes

Californians, that they’re they’re not necessarily in a hurry to sell their house. They’re not you know, that they have plenty of means to keep kids in their pay or they’re no hurry, but they’re starting a certain search for that term to sell their house fast. They’re there. They just want to know how to sell their house fast. But that’s not the true motivated seller.

00:11:36:27 – 00:12:07:24

Brendan Holmes

So those are easy to weed out in your leads. It’s more paying attention and focused on those one leads that you know, if it’s a batch of five leads that come in in the past month, pay attention to those and track those through the deal. And yeah, that deal could take three or four months. But keeping track of that specific Yeah lead that is a whatever source page traffic lead and making sure that your ROI over six months a year not in paid whatever paid source you’re using but in Google ads in this case.

00:12:07:24 – 00:12:46:19

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. Making sure that your ROI is is you know outpacing how much you’re spending on it. So that’s number one. And number two, kind of using the example of these these types of markets like Eugene compared to Dallas, the expectation, how many leads are possible in those areas? And so I’ve had members in the past who have come into like a Eugene market and they they’ve heard from the grapevine that 20 leads is possible in my area and sometimes I wonder, or I’ve known that competitors have kind of said that like they they think that yeah my competitors getting 20 leads.

00:12:46:19 – 00:12:56:24

Brendan Holmes

Well yeah they might be telling you they’re getting 20 leads. So then you kind of feel like me and maybe you don’t even need to go into it. Or maybe your expectations are a little bit too high.

00:12:56:24 – 00:13:14:16

Brady Winder

And do they know? Because based on what you’re tired about and you know, a lot of members we’ve talked with over the years, not everybody has, I would almost argue, enjoyed a lot of people don’t really know their lead sources and have their KPIs dialed. And to be able to say, I’m getting exactly this money from PPC, this money from Facebook, they just know they’re getting leads in their closing deals.

00:13:14:25 – 00:13:15:07

Brady Winder

You know.

00:13:15:09 – 00:13:25:18

Brendan Holmes

We’re not exactly yeah, in that competitor might be the same case. Like they just we’re getting 20 leads. We don’t know where they’re coming from, but we’re getting 20 leads. And so.

00:13:25:24 – 00:13:26:10

Brayden Reber

In those.

00:13:26:11 – 00:13:52:27

Brendan Holmes

The smaller markets that are probably under like a in Google calls it reach, So it’s not necessarily population. It’s based off of how many devices they can actually, you know, potentially show ads to. So usually that reach is much higher than your population and but a reach under 500,000, I’d say you’re potentially going to either really need great leads because you’re only going to be able to drive this many leads per month.

00:13:53:00 – 00:14:19:27

Brendan Holmes

And hopefully those are quality and you could do something with them. And then I always kind of try to build in. Well, the Google ads gave me a great source for you, but you might need other channels, you might need other paid channels, you might need offline channel, so you might need something else to build, build in. And I think that’s sometimes where they in a market like that, they, they fail because their expectations aren’t set correctly.

00:14:20:05 – 00:14:43:05

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. Yeah. Or they, they don’t, they don’t have the marketing budget to be in Google ads and maybe some direct mail and maybe some cold calling or whatever. They’re, they’re putting all of their chips into one thing in that specific lower traffic, you know, area and it doesn’t call them. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

00:14:43:14 – 00:15:09:23

Brady Winder

So we know. Okay so we know we’ve established at this point, you know, if you’re let’s say if you get your website up and running, it’s converting, it’s dialed in and you started working on your SEO, you know, PPC, Google ads is the first thing you want to do to supplement those to get leads. Now, while you work on the long term, one question I have is, you know that we we see all the time people do their marketing.

00:15:09:23 – 00:15:27:16

Brady Winder

You know, Trevor coined the phrase mouth over emotion in your marketing. And so people get emotional and they start you. You’re probably in this day in and day out with, you know, your clients is people see the dollar signs and they see the money going out the door and they’re like, Oh crap, not getting leads. And they get scared and then they pull back.

00:15:27:16 – 00:15:41:14

Brady Winder

And so my question is, how long does somebody need to commit commit? This is a keyword to doing Google ads before you know that they hit pause or reevaluate. Is this three months, six months, a year? You know?

00:15:42:18 – 00:15:42:29

Brayden Reber

Yeah.

00:15:42:29 – 00:16:18:24

Brendan Holmes

I think I if if someone’s asking me to manage their account, I usually say at least three months and that in if not more like if you are getting leads within that three months which you should be anyways, then it’s evaluating those types of leads and it could market and season will also factor into that. So if I start a campaign at the end of November, that’s not the same as starting a campaign at the beginning of May, the market could be totally different.

00:16:19:14 – 00:16:40:01

Brendan Holmes

So that seasonality side of it, yeah, it will factor in. So that’s why I usually say three months. Yeah. And give them the had it, you might need longer if you’re getting leads and we know some of these leads have quality or have been quality but you just haven’t been able to close one. We need to reevaluate after three months for sure.

00:16:40:10 – 00:16:58:23

Brendan Holmes

But then you know cash there is promise here in some markets. So after three months, you just know either that budget isn’t matching, maybe they don’t have enough budget to potentially be in that area and then it could be looking at their locations and what we could potentially do with that. But that, yeah, there’s some other factors in there for sure.

00:16:58:23 – 00:17:30:27

Brendan Holmes

But overall, three months, six months depending kind of what markets they are in Now, timing. Timing is big. It’s I think that’s another expectation that isn’t on a lot of their minds when they’re starting is when am I starting this and what’s my market looking like right now? And it’s hard to I know it’s hard. That’s that’s terribly hard night for investor who is spending thousands of dollars a month on unpaid traffic.

00:17:30:27 – 00:17:53:08

Brendan Holmes

Yeah that’s it’s hard right But like you said it’s their emotion side that you try to hire and eliminate as much as possible and have that clear picture. But again there are times that it is just cut and dry after three months if we don’t make these changes to the account yet, honestly, go, go. Try something else. Go, go.

00:17:53:08 – 00:17:55:02

Brendan Holmes

Put your money in a different channel.

00:17:55:24 – 00:18:09:12

Brady Winder

Interesting. Oh, well, I’m glad you brought up seasonality. Does it do you see the same seasonality as or leads overall like as organic leads, awards, you know, slump in the winter and that comes back up the springtime?

00:18:09:12 – 00:18:35:13

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, I, I do. And but it’s really it’s kind of it’s not across the board it’s very dependent on market too. I have it I mean typically it’s it starts in November kind of like Thanksgiving time this last year in 2020 to kind of a slow down in the paid traffic. We’d started around more around Halloween and then it had kind continued.

00:18:35:13 – 00:18:46:20

Brendan Holmes

But then there were some markets that in December that were like Midwest, snowy, very cold markets that thrived in December. They they crushed their lead volumes.

00:18:46:20 – 00:18:48:06

Brady Winder

They’re not phase two. I went there.

00:18:48:15 – 00:18:50:08

Brayden Reber

Yeah yes yeah where.

00:18:50:17 – 00:19:10:07

Brendan Holmes

The I it and I would anticipate a slowdown is that’s pretty much what always happens and those every year I’ve you know since I’ve been managing campaigns that I’ll get questions what happened what happened to our Google ads campaign. What what do we do wrong. What’s going on? And if we can go back and see the Google ads campaigns.

00:19:10:15 – 00:19:38:13

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. Besides the moves that we always make that like the daily, the weekly, the monthly, if if there were no major shifts in the Google ads campaign, what what other kind of factors or there could be a market, it could be competitors, maybe it could be if you made a website changes. I found that too that members didn’t communicate that they had changed the website and I, I, I checked the websites, but I’m not in there.

00:19:38:27 – 00:20:00:02

Brendan Holmes

They had, you know, every other week looking at their websites and especially if they’ve made changes on their within their previous section that now we have the lead gen banner which I think is amazing, especially in Mobile. Oh yeah. But before that we’d have members putting videos in their their hero section and without checking it on their phone.

00:20:00:15 – 00:20:18:06

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, the video would be pushing their form down and potentially they’re losing out on leads on mobile. So those are those kind of outside the Google ads realm. We can tell Google ads is we didn’t make any changes to really mess up the account. Right. What else could be happening?

00:20:18:24 – 00:20:39:02

Brady Winder

Yeah, it matters a whole lot. We were talking about that a second about that with Brian Driscoll and Chad Keller. And on one of the previous podcasts about conversion and and just the importance of that form placement like having it, we call it above the fold, but near the top of your website so that you know especially if someone’s clicking on a Google ad, they’re usually not going to make it even halfway down the page.

00:20:39:02 – 00:20:52:10

Brady Winder

They’re going to see whatever is at the top, fill out the form, read the information and bounce, and maybe even go to the next ad like they’re finding, you know, they’re looking for exactly what they need. They’re not going to spend the time to usually to browse the whole page. Am I often saying that there’s that.

00:20:52:17 – 00:21:03:27

Brendan Holmes

That’s absolutely right. Yep. Yep. Maybe. Maybe not so much on desktop. Desktop is still important. I still love that. The image and banner on desktop. On mobile. Yeah. So very important.

00:21:04:16 – 00:21:24:25

Brady Winder

Yeah. And it’s funny because we you know it’s it’s crazy because everybody like you mean normal people would look well we visit everything or most sites on mobile everybody’s on their phones but then you build websites on the computer people are you build websites on a desktop and we forget like the main thing. Oh my gosh, Mobile. It has to look good.

00:21:24:25 – 00:21:45:22

Brady Winder

Yeah. Which that’s one of the things it makes easy is making it look good and perform on mobile. So you don’t have to worry about that as much. But let’s talk about I want to talk about the difference between managing ads. If I were to start a PPC campaign, Google ads campaign, and manage it myself versus outsourcing to someone like yourself, what what’s the biggest difference?

00:21:45:22 – 00:22:07:10

Brady Winder

And I guess what I’m asking is like, what is what is the thing you see people mess up or do wrong? Or like, Oh, I should just pass it off to someone else soon or should outsource sooner. And I’m not like, we don’t care. It doesn’t people listening, we’re not greatly benefiting from like we’re not making our bread and butter from getting a few more PPC clients or to have people work with our vendors.

00:22:07:10 – 00:22:23:11

Brady Winder

That’s not our agenda. Our agenda is to help you save your time and money so you can close more deals and have more freedom. I mean that like in full sincerity. And so I have no genuine access. But like when people come to you and they’re like, Oh my gosh, Brendan I did the PPC campaign waste of money, like, Help me, What are they?

00:22:23:12 – 00:22:25:12

Brady Winder

What are they doing wrong now?

00:22:25:23 – 00:22:50:08

Brendan Holmes

And it’s kind of to add to that real quick is that, you know, Google ads isn’t it’s kind of excite, but it’s not what I love. I don’t really love Google ads. I love when people are successful with it. And I trust in in educating the members who who are either managing themselves or using myself or anyone else when they’re successful, that that piece is still, you know, the way I do this.

00:22:50:08 – 00:23:17:15

Brendan Holmes

And yeah, so I love auditing the accounts that come through our carrier support. And most of those accounts are they they’ve had Google. So number one mistake is having Google create your your motivated seller campaign. So I’ll speak to motivated seller campaign specifically. So you when you start up a Google ads campaign, Google pretty much forces you now to create what they call a smart campaign.

00:23:17:25 – 00:23:45:12

Brendan Holmes

And the smart campaign is it’s industry based. So it’s real estate industry based, not real estate investor, not looking for motivated sellers. Now, some of the keywords that are within there are motivated seller keywords, but the other batch of them are just real estate keywords. Yeah. So that’s number one. Number two, you lose control of some of the management within those smart campaigns.

00:23:46:15 – 00:24:13:01

Brendan Holmes

So it’s it’s trusting that when you signed up with Google and they might have had a call with one of the Google ad strategists before and they’re walking them through the stages, they’re building trust with Google then or Goofy and the sales Google salesman, he’s building trust with the member. So they kind of have this misconception in their mind that this is how I should be creating a campaign.

00:24:13:18 – 00:24:19:02

Brendan Holmes

And so that’s number one. Not don’t don’t put that trust in Google to build your campaign for you.

00:24:19:15 – 00:24:20:13

Brady Winder

It’s interesting.

00:24:20:21 – 00:24:21:07

Brendan Holmes

Yeah.

00:24:21:07 – 00:24:41:24

Brady Winder

And I think but I want to interrupt you just real quick. The thing that pops out to me about that is that, you know, whether it’s Google or not, trusting somebody that’s not industry specific, that doesn’t have industry experience is seems like the key. Google doesn’t know real estate investors, wholesalers in and out.

00:24:42:21 – 00:25:27:08

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are you know I’ve come across over the years some good PPC management companies that aren’t real estate investor specific and yeah, there’s that learning curve though and yeah we’ve anyone that has managed our industry specific ads, we all went through that learning curve and it took that learning curve for Trevor and I was probably 2014 when we had a member in Orlando willing to pay for his ads and we tossed thousands of keywords at Google and this is pretty much what we still use today for our or Quickstart or in the Evergreen webinar we give our Google Ads campaign.

00:25:27:22 – 00:25:57:24

Brendan Holmes

That’s those that’s still pretty much that campaign that we learned from. Yeah, there’s been iterations from it, but that’s kind of where it came from. So no. Yeah. Number one, don’t trust so much in Google. Number two probably would be that again, going back to that expectation of what’s possible and not not learning what or how to self-manage that campaign.

00:25:57:24 – 00:26:19:14

Brendan Holmes

So if you’re managing your campaign, there’s Google ads, there’s you know, night through cares support. If you add that type of means to reach out to somebody who has been managing ads and give you some tips or look over, you know, audit campaigns. So not educating yourself on what the keyword structures are, what that really means, what do broad match keywords mean?

00:26:19:21 – 00:26:50:21

Brendan Holmes

What does that mean? But what kind of traffic am I going to be sending or phrase are exact or targeting options? Yeah, there’s limitations on our industry, on the housing industry that Google kind of sets, kind of limits. Our are what we what we can target. We can we can no longer target zip codes. And a lot of members used to like to target by zip code that was about two years ago that they they removed that.

00:26:50:21 – 00:27:06:05

Brendan Holmes

So that’s probably number two is this educating yourself and if you’re using a specific campaign and maybe number three would be starting to with too too much too much going on two, too big of a campaign.

00:27:06:18 – 00:27:09:07

Brady Winder

So meaning like how many keywords.

00:27:09:19 – 00:27:33:29

Brendan Holmes

Gourmet keywords. Yes, that’s probably a bigger factor to many keywords, maybe using the wrong targeting. You know, there’s a couple different ways you could target your locations. Maybe have a too wide and you’re getting leads from other states or other countries or clicks from those. But the keywords probably is the number one that you’re looking at, the match types and then how many.

00:27:33:29 – 00:28:03:29

Brendan Holmes

So I usually say if you’re doing a manager on a campaign and you haven’t received one like ours. Viviana has been given a campaign start with like 2025 keywords and just get your can get your bearings on what, what that means. And then there’s reports to go look at and in the time to kind of spend, once you have a campaign running and then suspending a little time, maybe getting it going, you’re spending a little time every day and then maybe that goes into every other day.

00:28:03:29 – 00:28:26:26

Brendan Holmes

But that’s it’s definitely being involved in the campaign. Yet. Bailey In the first few weeks, maybe a month and then when you get you see, okay, this is how I need to manage my my campaign. This is these are the key words that are working and aren’t working. And that’s probably number one, don’t use Google to build that number to educate yourself.

00:28:26:26 – 00:28:31:01

Brendan Holmes

And then number three, don’t don’t start so broad. Don’t start with hundreds of keywords.

00:28:32:05 – 00:28:32:18

Brady Winder

Yeah.

00:28:33:05 – 00:28:54:28

Brendan Holmes

One that we’d had in the past that our members used to get a spreadsheet from Sean Terry. So this is good dating back to probably six years ago. And this campaign that you’d get was an amazing campaign for someone who knew how to manage Google ads, but the members who didn’t. So there were thousands of keywords in this in this campaign.

00:28:54:28 – 00:29:11:20

Brendan Holmes

Gosh, yeah. And if you didn’t know what you’re doing, I remember auditing you. It’s through to support a campaign that I think they had wasted about $8,000 and just not knowing what they were doing and using this campaign structure. Yeah.

00:29:11:28 – 00:29:13:00

Brady Winder

So it’s so much it’s a matter.

00:29:13:00 – 00:29:13:09

Brendan Holmes

Of just.

00:29:13:28 – 00:29:15:29

Brayden Reber

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:29:16:00 – 00:29:18:22

Brendan Holmes

If then that then it gets crazy. Yeah.

00:29:18:22 – 00:29:38:12

Brady Winder

I remember trying Facebook ads myself for the first time and I think this was after working at Care for a couple of years as a go. I’ve got my head wrapped around it and you know, back then, little did I know it was like having your head wrapped around even the the copy and the hooks and the messaging and even the creative and the imagery is, in a lot of cases, not enough.

00:29:38:12 – 00:29:52:20

Brady Winder

If you are going to, you know, target poorly and budget poorly and go after too many keywords or too many areas and it’s like it was not a it was not a fruitful experience. So I’ll just say that. So what you’re saying cannot be any more important.

00:29:53:04 – 00:29:58:03

Brendan Holmes

And those are the ones I usually come in and just say, Google ads isn’t working for me.

00:29:58:03 – 00:30:02:18

Brady Winder

Yeah. And it’s like, well, Google, it’s not. The Google ads is working and you need someone to manage it. Well.

00:30:03:04 – 00:30:05:13

Brayden Reber

Yeah, and that’s anyone.

00:30:05:24 – 00:30:32:02

Brendan Holmes

Managing a campaign that that’s what we do. And we know the ins and outs and some will have different strategies like I have a different strategy when I’m managing a campaign, then I would if, if someone used our our Quickstart campaign and our Quickstart campaign, just because I have many members that I can link into and use all their data if.

00:30:32:12 – 00:30:57:16

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. So I use a different strategy, not necessarily. That’s I guess to me it’s yes, it is better, but you can still have success just having your own campaign and managing it correctly. So that could be advantage of someone managing campaign or accounts that they just might have some different data sources. And but the drawback to is then you’re paying a management fee.

00:30:57:23 – 00:31:19:29

Brendan Holmes

But what I think some look at is if if someone is managing a campaign and they can be saving you money by kind of doing it the right way or, or speeding up the process to do it the right way, then might make the member who lost $8,000 if he would have had somebody managing their campaign for however much, he would have saved money.

00:31:20:08 – 00:31:46:21

Brendan Holmes

And so, yeah, there is a cost for the management too, but yeah, it’s I still love seeing members manage their own campaigns if they if they’re willing to to take the time to learn. And and it’s simply like we have a call tomorrow with a Google ads Quickstart just go over like I’m going to train him how to use his his you know, the dashboard.

00:31:47:20 – 00:32:20:12

Brendan Holmes

I always tell them, just get that app on your phone. And for these guys managing their their campaigns, it’s just tick tick 20 minutes through your day and just look on your phone and you could make these simple changes and that’s all the quickstart or a member, you know, that’s all they really need to do. You know, it’s they’re not managing beyond, you know, into the kind of more advanced strategies they’re managing and a strategy that is still effective and can be simple.

00:32:20:17 – 00:32:44:17

Brendan Holmes

And that’s kind of Google ads is how I always related to to to baseball, you know, playing baseball through my youth. And and our coach always said it’s it’s the little things that can win the game. Yeah. And in Google ads, it’s kind of the same thing. You you make these little adjustments and then you can get leads from and those little adjustments for someone just self-managing their campaigns, that that can go a long ways.

00:32:44:17 – 00:32:55:01

Brendan Holmes

It’s not necessarily the home runs and Google ads that you know you rarely it’s something major that you did to a campaign that’s going to drive more leads.

00:32:55:02 – 00:32:58:07

Brady Winder

Yeah, it’s not one keyword. It’s not one line of copy or something.

00:32:58:09 – 00:33:22:19

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could be adding in like the trend of the last year and a half or so or members instead of targeting, you’re targeting a specific area, maybe a metro area or just a Eugene area or something. They go statewide where they go multistate. Yeah. So that that could have a big impact. Obviously, you’re getting more leads and your password leads a lot different.

00:33:22:19 – 00:33:43:27

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. You’re not looking at 20 leads in a metro area now you’re looking at 100 leads statewide. So that that’s a game changer. But they also have to have the the infrastructure, the business infrastructure to manage those leads and understand the different markets. And so that’s presents its own challenges.

00:33:43:27 – 00:34:03:01

Brady Winder

But okay, I’ve got a couple other things I want to cover here. One technical one real quick. What what KPIs are you looking at for a PPC campaign? I feel like this is important for member too, even if they’re not running them themselves so that they can ask the person they’re outsourcing to say, Hey, what are you looking at?

00:34:03:01 – 00:34:06:02

Brady Winder

What does success look like so that they know they’re working with somebody legit?

00:34:07:04 – 00:34:30:19

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, within the Google ads dashboard and what we can see cost per lead, number one. And that’s the most important KPI because we can’t see cost per deal in the Google ads dashboard, but that’s the number one cost for lead. And then then it trickles down. And these are still very important metrics, but depending on what kind of bid strategies they’re using the ad, it doesn’t it doesn’t hold as much weight.

00:34:31:04 – 00:35:06:28

Brendan Holmes

But let’s say if a member’s just starting out, I still recommend starting out with manual cost per click instead of using one of the. And that is also to prove out some keywords, get them familiar with what the keyword cost should be, and then maybe changing over to advanced bit bidding, but looking at our cost per click pin and then your click through rates and making sure your click through rate will determine then how you know, potentially ad position, potentially ad copy, those two are going to probably factor into your click through rates, your bids are going to factor in, you collect your rate.

00:35:06:29 – 00:35:29:05

Brendan Holmes

So those after your cost per lead, look at your cost per click, look at your click through rate. And then yeah, just by those, you can have a pretty good idea. You could be looking at impression share and that’s getting pretty deep and you’re getting pretty advanced when you’re looking at your impression share and you’re potentially you’re you’re in pressure lost it.

00:35:29:07 – 00:35:48:00

Brendan Holmes

You can lose impressions here about your budget but those those get more advanced So just keeping it high level, if I’m just managing my own campaign, I just started out I want to know customer lead, I don’t know, cost per click, I know my click through rate and then I am adjusting my bids from the the manual know manual bidding process.

00:35:48:21 – 00:36:03:09

Brady Winder

Okay, that’s helpful. Simple enough. What are you what are you doing to stay relevant and keep the ads fresh or is there a need, I guess like how often do you end up, you know, hey, let’s go change up some of the ad copy? Yeah. What are you doing?

00:36:03:18 – 00:36:26:17

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, I’ll always a need because Google is what they’ve shifted into what they call responsive ads. So response of ads you have, you could put in 12 headlines if you want and Google is going to now change those headlines. Yeah, maybe not everywhere but they they’re going to frequently change those headlines. So then they look different. And then you have four descriptions so you can.

00:36:26:17 – 00:36:35:14

Brady Winder

Similar to Facebook where it’s where it’s you know, you put in 12 and it’s going to decide the best one and stick with it or is it constantly continue testing.

00:36:35:24 – 00:37:06:09

Brendan Holmes

Yeah yeah. It will stick with winners. Yeah. And depending on sorry that’s the drawback to too is that like on our current Google ads we had a yeah, we’re using responsive ads. And what Google doesn’t show you is potentially what combinations were the winners. There isn’t a dashboard yet to show you what was working. So for our ads, for our current ads, we have now just to do ads and we’re always just testing against those two.

00:37:06:23 – 00:37:26:01

Brendan Holmes

And we only had three headlines because you have to have three headlines. So our ad Mad one will have three headlines and two descriptions. AD two has three headlines and two descriptions and you can pin headlines. So we want that headline number one. We always want to show that first headline. Number two, we always want to show that second.

00:37:26:02 – 00:37:47:00

Brendan Holmes

And then so you you have to kind of get a little bit innovative to look at the data a little bit better at or efficiently to make those changes. So response of ads that maybe you don’t have to change them as often as what you had to in the past because of the big limitations with the extended ad copy.

00:37:47:28 – 00:38:06:16

Brendan Holmes

But still important to change your ads and continue to look at ads and the click through rate within ads. Conversions are always yeah, leads are always the most important metric, but you’re also looking at that click through rate and then potentially looking at how much at that cost that the ad cost is too, but yet always, always looking at your ads.

00:38:06:28 – 00:38:20:27

Brady Winder

Making sure would it be like if your click rate drops and you know, like your ads are doing well for a few months and then your click rate sort of taper off, maybe it’s looking at what are other investors doing? Are we all seeing the same thing? And maybe that’s why it dropped off.

00:38:21:08 – 00:38:51:16

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, that could be absolutely other factors. Budget is a factor, competition factor. I mean, there’s other factors besides just what your ad copy says, but yes. Yeah, it could be. I took a screenshot years ago of another investor page traffic management company and they had well, maybe they didn’t, but there’s three ads. So it was when Google shifted to four ads at the top.

00:38:51:25 – 00:39:14:21

Brendan Holmes

So number one and two and number four were all the same ad copy and I knew this this company. So I could have I could see who was running ads. But yeah, yeah. You don’t really want that, you know. But the other side of this is this response of ads is making sure your ads look and flow correctly.

00:39:14:21 – 00:39:43:03

Brendan Holmes

If you have sell my house fast in a headline and then somewhere else down that line of headlines you have some house fast in Chicago. Well, Google could show those two headlines within the same ad so it starts kind of you can it kind of looks funky if you now off or. Yeah. So trying to make those headlines sound different look different than just having kind of the canned, you know, Copy that.

00:39:43:03 – 00:39:45:24

Brendan Holmes

You just were accustomed to it before. Yeah.

00:39:46:04 – 00:40:05:26

Brady Winder

Right. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it’s good. I’m glad you mentioned that. You know, sometimes it’s not the ad copy because, like, as marketers, we think like, oh, it’s not performing. Let’s, you know, it’s got to be the copy. It’s going to be the creative, you know, it could be budget, could be competition, could be market factors, could be other things, you know, besides just what’s in the ad itself.

00:40:06:28 – 00:40:27:23

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. AD and trying to make ads unique. I, I still struggle with members giving me unique ad copy, something that makes you stand out. Yeah. We used to be able to use how fast you could make it an offer that was kind of like the kind of battle of ads, how fast people can make an offer. I know.

00:40:28:26 – 00:40:37:04

Brendan Holmes

Express homebuyers who say we can make an offer in 7 minutes. America members reaching out and saying, Can I put that in my ad cut? Yeah, Yeah, you can.

00:40:37:04 – 00:40:39:23

Brayden Reber

And if that if you can really.

00:40:39:23 – 00:40:40:13

Brendan Holmes

Legitimately.

00:40:40:13 – 00:40:41:03

Brady Winder

Make a 60.

00:40:41:12 – 00:40:41:24

Brayden Reber

Minutes.

00:40:41:24 – 00:41:04:02

Brendan Holmes

Yeah yeah that’s a good was like this play on how fast we can make an offer I remember some ad said 30 minutes we can make 30 minutes 7 minutes to an hour. 24 hours, 48 hours. Yeah, it was. But if that’s unique to you. Yeah. Okay, test it. Test it in your ad cup and see if it goes but something interesting rather than the canned content.

00:41:04:26 – 00:41:12:16

Brady Winder

Yeah. 7 minutes. I’m almost skeptical on, like 7 minutes. I think that’s the 31 below it. I’m like, these guys sound little midget. Maybe they’re thinking.

00:41:13:05 – 00:41:20:03

Brendan Holmes

They just might. Yeah, that 30 minute one actually worked. It did Well I click through rates went Yeah spiked. Yeah.

00:41:21:07 – 00:41:44:21

Brady Winder

Interesting. Yeah. So that’s a good point You know for the ad copy, think about what you know, what makes your business unique and set apart maybe your hybrid, maybe an investor. And that’s something you can, you know market maybe you can close fast. What’s your unique selling proposition, as we call it? That’s a good point. Any other protests, anything to keep ads interesting?

00:41:44:21 – 00:41:50:06

Brady Winder

Anything you want to mention as far as targeting do’s and don’ts that we feel like people should know what they’re doing.

00:41:50:06 – 00:41:55:17

Brendan Holmes

PPC landing page testing has come up in conversation that fast that I’m.

00:41:55:17 – 00:42:00:22

Brady Winder

Still glad you said that because I was going to ask and I forgot. So yes, let’s dive into it. Yeah.

00:42:01:00 – 00:42:32:00

Brendan Holmes

So that’s more like that advanced move they can go calls and experiments, but you can a test and Google ads putting together ad hoc, abusing your home homepage and then you create another landing page at simplified and you can test that you have a 5050 split and see what performs better for myself I yeah I have yet I know there’s there’s chatter or conversations that you know landing pages or squeeze pages as we used to call them.

00:42:32:29 – 00:43:03:18

Brendan Holmes

Where are more effective than driving traffic to a home page that has a nav bar and some copy to it. And I think the reasoning behind that might be that it’s distracting if you have too much information on your site. But I there are times that maybe I’ve found that to be true. But overall, like if I look at it, yeah, home pages, as long as they have credibility, they’re set for per conversion rate optimization.

00:43:03:18 – 00:43:11:28

Brendan Holmes

I, I still, the home page has always been one of my favorites as long as it has the checks. Those boxes looks good on mobile.

00:43:12:11 – 00:43:15:20

Brady Winder

The quality in ones are still converting. Yes.

00:43:16:11 – 00:43:33:23

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I know that’s been a hot topic but that’s like it advanced piece is that creating a squeeze page and routing traffic against your home page and see which one now wins out. So that’s one. Anything to add, Did you want to add anything to that?

00:43:33:23 – 00:43:53:26

Brady Winder

I don’t think so. You know, it’s it’s hard to make a generalization and say, you know, this one works better because there’s so many there are so many factors in general. You do want to give more focus when you already paid traffic because they’re there for a specific reason. But at the same time, you know, if it’s if it’s the right content on the page, then it’s not necessarily a distraction.

00:43:54:06 – 00:44:15:09

Brady Winder

I think that that thought, that methodology, that concept comes from, you know, if you send them to a really cluttered page where you have like sidebar ads that are advertising a lot of the things, or if you have like a blog feed where it’s like, Hey, check out these seven articles. Yeah, that’s super distracting. And I think when people think of the website, they think of all all this stuff going on and check out these products.

00:44:15:22 – 00:44:41:14

Brady Winder

But if we’re talking about a homepage to attract motivated seller leads, that’s different than your average website page. They’re not necessarily distractions. They’re things that are going to help a convert. And so that’s just my my thought as to why the Carrot home page is still converting over all these years. Well, for running page traffic to my only other thought is where, you know, you and I, we’re working on content right now.

00:44:41:21 – 00:45:08:00

Brady Winder

We’re some tasks behind the scenes. So keep it really general because I’m not sure what the content will come out like, but we are working on some tests to look at really slimmed down landing pages versus home pages. And yeah, we’ll see what comes of that. And, you know, follow along guys, go to character on such ads and, you know, check out our blog to see maybe we’ll put up some examples of like what a a really well converting page looks like for sending PPC ads to versus one that’s not dialed in.

00:45:08:00 – 00:45:29:29

Brady Winder

Whether that’s landing page versus home page or whether that’s, you know, good home page versus bad homepage, because like we’re talking all in theory now, you can have a really crappy landing page, squeeze page. It’s not going to convert. Same thing with a home page. And so, you know, there’s not a need to overcomplicate it and go go out and get another piece of software and start building landing pages.

00:45:29:29 – 00:45:35:28

Brady Winder

You could do that with a carrot and have a converter. You know, we’re doing it right now. So that’s what I thought on that.

00:45:36:28 – 00:46:12:27

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, Yeah, exactly. I I’ve, we’ve tested hundreds of other landing pages over the years and still I, I default to home page as long as it looks good and there have been times that I’ve I’ve created another by another home page basically because they kind of had that messed with their copy or their format more specific and made it just kind of I, I know Trevor Trevor likes to say like ugly websites, but these are really like bad, ugly websites.

00:46:12:27 – 00:46:15:12

Brayden Reber

They’re just they were.

00:46:15:26 – 00:46:27:28

Brendan Holmes

They were good. So you had created a different like home page for them. But yeah, and then that’s just it’s not impacting SEO. They’re there no index, no followed and we just use them for Google ads but.

00:46:28:27 – 00:46:29:05

Brayden Reber

Yeah.

00:46:30:10 – 00:46:34:09

Brendan Holmes

Other Yeah I guess it not necessarily advanced it but.

00:46:34:18 – 00:46:35:10

Brayden Reber

Google.

00:46:35:25 – 00:47:08:14

Brendan Holmes

If you’re managing your own campaign, Google is going to give you recommendations daily though, and it’s also educating yourself on what those recommendations mean. You click yes or to accept them or reply them is some of them can really harm campaigns without understanding the danger. And on occasions one of them specifically pops up lately that I am and becoming a believer in more than I ever have been and are broad match keywords.

00:47:08:14 – 00:47:42:00

Brendan Holmes

And I was always totally against broad match keywords. I had seen too many, you know, bad campaigns with broad match and because of Google’s API algorithm that the algorithm, the pieces that they’re learning from this has gotten him in more advanced or more efficient, more optimized for for motivated seller. And the the combination of these broad match plus good negative keywords can really get lower cost per click and then expand the keyword bubble.

00:47:42:10 – 00:48:07:08

Brendan Holmes

You might be missing some keywords. They just know people are searching for. So using broad match. But Google lately though, you know, in the past probably six months in campaigns, they’ll say shift to all broad match. So you click a button and it will make all of your keywords, your same keyword base, but all keywords are turned into to broad match.

00:48:07:27 – 00:48:36:13

Brendan Holmes

And that’s where you really have to be careful of, especially if you’re in a metro mercury or statewide campaign. Your campaign could go crazy. You’re just getting clicks that really don’t make sense and right. But yeah, testing your way into maybe some of those broad match keywords like take a pick five of them, add the man, see what kind of search terms are coming off of them if they’re good or bad, and then adjusting, not just making all 50 or 100 keywords, they have broad match just automatically.

00:48:37:01 – 00:48:53:18

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. So it’s those recommendations, understanding what they mean and how they could impact your, your, your account. And that’s, that’s not necessarily advanced. It’s just like kind of anyone managing their campaigns needs to understand that.

00:48:54:11 – 00:49:01:12

Brady Winder

Yeah it goes back to what you were talking about earlier like don’t don’t always put the trust in Google just because they’re you know just because that’s the platform, you know.

00:49:01:13 – 00:49:01:22

Brendan Holmes

Yeah.

00:49:01:28 – 00:49:03:14

Brady Winder

They don’t know what’s best.

00:49:03:14 – 00:49:35:26

Brendan Holmes

Yeah they are getting better though I think some of these recommendations are getting that they make more of a positive impact than a negative impact on their accounts. So yeah, but still understanding what they mean and especially like I said, I’ve seen it happen in metro markets where some of you just make all 100 keywords, broad match and all of a sudden they’re getting crazy search terms and in their budgets, you know, wiped out and they just they doubt they’re doing good might their means were good they they just didn’t.

00:49:36:18 – 00:50:13:24

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. Make the right choice Yeah yeah yeah. And then there I mean there’s there’s advanced bid strategies you can use, there’s advanced targeting, you know location targeting you could use there’s a lot of advanced to it. But yeah, for someone who is just starting out kind of just don’t, don’t get caught up in what are saying or promising and that is one really common issue that I hear is that I I’ve heard this competitor I just went to this mastermind and this guy’s getting 20 leads from Google ads.

00:50:13:24 – 00:50:35:22

Brendan Holmes

How do I get that? And well, there’s there’s a lot that goes into that. It could be. How long has this campaign been on? Did he say I mean, like his campaign could have been on for a year or two and it’s really dialed in and he might have the best website that it converts where if you’re just starting out, yeah, maybe they strive for that.

00:50:35:22 – 00:50:57:27

Brendan Holmes

But you had Google ads is still it’s still a it’s still a process and it’s still a you have to optimize it. You have to continuously optimize it to get to two points that and yeah, so I have that kind of, that idea of people that once I turn on my campaign, I should be getting leads, right?

00:50:58:23 – 00:51:01:17

Brayden Reber

Yeah, you might. I mean there’s, there’s campaigns.

00:51:01:17 – 00:51:20:21

Brendan Holmes

I definitely could get leads in the first few days and I had a member one down who who got a lead within 10 minutes that turned out to be a deal. But for the next three months, he did not get a deal. He had nothing. And he decided to pause. And that was years ago. But it was that that was one that stuck out.

00:51:20:21 – 00:51:44:24

Brendan Holmes

Yeah, you can turn it on. You can get leads right away or you might not. I mean, the likelihood that you’re your first months kind of that ramp up stage month to year, diving more into the data. And then month three, you have this great data set that you can work from. And if if you’re seeing good search terms and you know, caches, this these people look like they should be converting, then it’s okay, go look at your website.

00:51:45:09 – 00:52:28:13

Brendan Holmes

Go see what other kind of changes you can make. Make a my change maker, make a form change, you know, test something within maybe it’s going from, you know, three form fields to two two. We’re adding in the lead gen banner. Yeah. So it’s once you have good data knowing then if that if that data is really looking promising in something that should be turning into deals, you know, then it’s that next stage of testing and landing you’re not by any pieces is, isn’t like squeeze pages, but other pages other or other other headlines within that the the websites I do have more testimonials to use I mean right.

00:52:28:29 – 00:52:32:03

Brady Winder

Trying to get those leads to convert at a higher rate. Yeah.

00:52:32:09 – 00:52:32:21

Brendan Holmes

Yeah.

00:52:33:10 – 00:52:54:06

Brady Winder

Well I like that man. I appreciate you sharing that. That’s a good wrap to it. In summary, So educate yourselves whether you’re doing PPC yourself or you’re outsourcing, educate yourself on it so you know what you’re looking at. And yeah, I think that’s one of the one of the best things we covered during the podcast. Man, it’s been fun having you on the podcast.

00:52:54:06 – 00:53:14:19

Brady Winder

One thing I forgot to mention, the beginning is kind of funny. You were running this the podcast before. You know, I’ve, you know, I’ve only been here four or five years and you were running there and I had to, you know, how are we doing shown us how do we hurry this whole production thing? And yeah, you’ve been running this show since before I was even around.

00:53:14:19 – 00:53:15:28

Brendan Holmes

Yeah. It’s been a.

00:53:16:01 – 00:53:17:01

Brady Winder

And a team and.

00:53:17:03 – 00:53:33:08

Brendan Holmes

How amazing it’s been one, especially since you taken over. I just, I, I did some show notes. Yeah, I put on the blog, but now you’ve taken over and really made it into a nice production. A great production? Yeah.

00:53:33:08 – 00:53:36:20

Brady Winder

I’m grateful to be interviewed now. Yeah. Yeah, it’s legit.

00:53:37:02 – 00:53:38:12

Brayden Reber

It’s legit. Yeah.

00:53:38:24 – 00:53:59:19

Brady Winder

Or any of our longtime listeners, you’ll appreciate that. You know, Brendan, the OG producer, is coming on the show, so, yeah, it’s been fun, man. Anyone, if you have any questions on pay per click, if it went over your head, if you have any questions at all, email me, birdie at Care.com, We’ll get you over to Brendan or the right person to get your questions answered.

00:53:59:19 – 00:54:13:01

Brady Winder

Go to character com slash ads, Get our resources. We do our best to give you all of the education you would possibly ever need even to the point of overwhelm so that you just are equipped and we’re here to help. So we want you to know that please reach out if you need help, because it can get overwhelming fast.

00:54:14:04 – 00:54:48:13

Brady Winder

That’s it. If you like this episode, share with a friend. Please give us a review on Apple Podcasts. I don’t ask for them often, but good Apple Podcasts give us a five star review if we earned it and tell a friend about the podcast, help us share the work. But until then, we will see you next week.

00:00:00:04 – 00:00:16:00

Beau Hollis

And I have so many my friends. I’ve tried and tried and tried to talk to them. Go to closings. Go to closings. Go to closings, get allies, go for the reviews. And they still don’t have reviews. And they’re trying to run like PPC ads and all this kind of stuff. They’re running all these kind of ads, paid ads with no reviews.

00:00:16:00 – 00:00:22:04

Brady Winder

Wasted money. Everybody listen to this. Like, don’t be run on PPC as with no reviews, no credibility, your waste money garbage.

00:00:22:04 – 00:00:37:22

Beau Hollis

Stop that. Don’t do it. Go to go to the start going to closings for the next month or two. Bring your cell phone. Have great cameras, by the way. Go there. Take a selfie video with these people or go to their house. If you already bought their house and have a good relationship, say, hey, I know it’s crazy, but would you do a review with me?

00:00:38:05 – 00:00:43:07

Beau Hollis

You know, like go, like, spend, spend a little time, do this, invest in it.

00:00:48:16 – 00:01:06:11

Brady Winder

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Care Cast podcast, where James Brady I’m your host and this is the podcast for real estate investors and agents, where we help you build businesses of freedom and impact by dialing in your online marketing. Today I have my friends with me, Mr. Keith Sands, Bo Hollis. Welcome back to the podcast, guys. How’s it going.

00:01:07:15 – 00:01:11:04

Beau Hollis

Man? Glad to be on here with all of these guys.

00:01:11:15 – 00:01:13:10

Keith Sant

Yeah. Bernie, appreciate you having me back.

00:01:14:20 – 00:01:33:05

Brady Winder

Absolutely. It has been a minute. If you guys don’t know, Bo Hollis keeps saying, go to Google and type in carrot. Keith, Bo, whatever. You’re going to find a lot of good content, but these guys have been investing for years are some of the best wholesalers, best investors around and really know their stuff when it comes to it.

00:01:33:05 – 00:01:49:23

Brady Winder

So Keith is stronger on the lead generation side and Bo is the closer, but they both do both of those really well. But if you guys want to know how to generate leads through and closed deals, we’ve got a lot of content on both of those. So what are we doing today? It’s website design and conversion month care.

00:01:50:14 – 00:02:15:08

Brady Winder

In February. And so we’re talking about how to increase the conversion on your website to close more deals. What are the best ways you can increase the conversion on your website and make use of the leads that are coming in is to add testimonials and add credibility to your website. And so I feel like this is a concept to marketers and to some investors that is simple and easy.

00:02:15:08 – 00:02:37:19

Brady Winder

And for some people there’s a lot of questions that come with it. So we’re going to talk about getting testimonials both for credibility and conversion on your website, but we’re also going to touch on how this helps as far as SEO, and we’re talking both video and written, but I also want to know, you know, before we get in this conversation that with recent Google updates, video and video testimonies are playing a bigger role in ranking in Google.

00:02:37:19 – 00:02:53:00

Brady Winder

So whether that’s videos in your website or on your website or in YouTube. And so that being said, Keith Bo, as an investor and agent, where do you where do you need testing ideals and why do they even matter in the first place?

00:02:54:03 – 00:03:16:11

Keith Sant

You need them everywhere. I mean, you definitely need them everywhere. It’s it’s for credibility. You know, there’s so many cash homebuyers, right, for people to choose from. And and they want to know that they’re doing business with real companies. And if you don’t have that, that that testimonials to everyone else like are you even real like, are you even a real company?

00:03:16:11 – 00:03:43:03

Keith Sant

Have you been doing business? Like, yeah, it’s just the credibility is insane. And I’ve had so, so many sellers say they chose me because of my testimonials. Like they, they watch the videos, they read them. They did a lot of research before calling me and just decided they wanted to do business with me regardless of what price. And so the testimonials are extremely important.

00:03:43:03 – 00:04:02:05

Keith Sant

Like they feel like they got to know you by watching, you know, seeing your website. If you have video, which is extremely important, like you just said, like like they feel like they got to know you through all of that. And I’ve had people show like I show up to the appointment and they’re like, You’re the guy in the video and I’m like, Yeah, and my own website.

00:04:02:05 – 00:04:17:09

Keith Sant

Now they’re looking at me like I’m a frickin rock star. But yeah, so video is video testimonials and those are the only videos I have on my website or just video testimonials and, and they work. So definitely get them and put them everywhere you can.

00:04:18:23 – 00:04:38:09

Beau Hollis

Yeah. I mean, you know, talking about what Keith is talking about, I have I, when I first started I didn’t, didn’t do it. I took pictures with sellers like all the time. I would just take pictures because I didn’t really know what to say or I was just like, Hey, did you know? I just took a selfie with my sellers, which was is, you know, if I can give you advice, it’s better than none, right?

00:04:38:09 – 00:04:56:12

Beau Hollis

Like, absolutely. Just take a quick selfie, a smile. Obviously, if it’s a good situation and they’re quite happy with your job, at least do a do a do a selfie list. But I’ve had sellers just kind of like what he was talking about. I had I met a guy one day and he was like, Man, you’re actually quite famous.

00:04:56:12 – 00:05:18:04

Beau Hollis

And I had no idea. And I said, What are you talking about? He’s like, Man, I googled who you are. I Googled your name and you’re everywhere, all over the Internet. And it’s things like this, you know, like different things like this. Plus, like all of our testimonials that we have on our Web site now are video. Testimonials are everywhere.

00:05:18:04 – 00:05:33:01

Beau Hollis

And it’s a really simple process. It’s not that hard, but it makes you stand out from every other person in your market. If you have a lot of just content with you and sellers, I mean, it doesn’t it’s not hard. It’s a it’s a very, very simple process, but it really matters.

00:05:33:20 – 00:05:52:22

Brady Winder

And so one of the reasons I want to talk to you guys specifically about this is because what you just mentioned, it’s it’s simple. It needs to be in order to do well, you need to not overcomplicate it. And, you know, like you said, you start out with selfies and then it’s just recording on your phone. You guys have been doing this a while and I know Bo on your website.

00:05:52:22 – 00:05:57:18

Brady Winder

You have a ton of video testimonials. Yep. Do you ever take your foot off the gas.

00:05:58:00 – 00:05:58:15

Beau Hollis

Because you.

00:05:59:03 – 00:05:59:11

Brady Winder

Know.

00:05:59:16 – 00:06:25:20

Beau Hollis

You know, so, you know, let me just say this is that in the wholesale space, there’s a reason why a lot more people do not have more testimonials. And here’s the reason. It is because there’s been a lot of teaching in the wholesale space is to do this virtually or do this where you’re you’re absentee from the the day to day operations from your business.

00:06:25:20 – 00:06:46:22

Beau Hollis

So the people who teach this, you know, this model of of wholesaling or investing, it’s it’s very hands off approach. It’s get a contract, have everybody else do your work in your business. You have this entire team of people and you don’t go to closings because they assign things and stuff like that. So let me say let me say this is I am the opposite of that.

00:06:47:00 – 00:07:07:01

Beau Hollis

I and the reason we have so many video testimonials is because I believe you should go to closings. I believe that you should be there shaking your seller’s hands, looking them in the eyes and grab your phone. And it’s so simple to say, Hey, would it be okay after we get done here? Could we do a quick video testimonial?

00:07:07:01 – 00:07:20:23

Beau Hollis

And that’s how I’ve gotten all my stuff is people say yes every time and then just give it to Title A title agent or we have a friend with you. Just hold it up and start talking. Hey, you know, we will get into that. I’m sure you know how to do it.

00:07:21:14 – 00:07:28:04

Brady Winder

Kids, what do you what do you ask at the door? You ask him about the closing table, or is it as simple as, Hey, can I get a quick video? Says one for me?

00:07:28:15 – 00:07:33:02

Keith Sant

Yes. I’ve actually never been to a close. I don’t really go to close.

00:07:33:15 – 00:07:37:11

Brady Winder

I didn’t realize I didn’t intend for this to be polar opposites. I don’t really.

00:07:37:11 – 00:08:00:03

Keith Sant

Know. No, I mean, because we do a lot of like virtual closing or like what we do, like mobile notaries and stuff. So, like, a lot of the signing will happen at the seller’s house and, you know, you know, the buyer, you know, signed a different maybe the day before, just in a different location. Right. But if I you know, 90% of all my deals are assignments and I still got to get the keys from the seller to the buyer.

00:08:00:03 – 00:08:19:02

Keith Sant

So I usually meet up on closing day like, hey, can I meet up with you and grab the keys from you? And it’s almost always at the house. And so then I grab the keys, you know, shake their hand. Thank you so much. Now they’re happy. They just got paid, right? Like, are there wires initiated? And then I say, Oh, I kind of just thought about this.

00:08:19:02 – 00:08:34:14

Keith Sant

Like, would you mind stepping over here real quick and just doing a quick video with me and just kind of telling people about our experience would help me kind of reach more people and, you know, situations similar to yours. And nine times out of ten, they’re like, yes, the only time I’ve ever had anyone say no is a woman.

00:08:34:14 – 00:08:40:14

Keith Sant

Like, I didn’t do my hair, but I’ll write you a really good review and I’m like, okay, I appreciate that. Well.

00:08:41:14 – 00:08:43:06

Brady Winder

Yeah, I think if I make a today.

00:08:43:08 – 00:08:43:16

Keith Sant

Yeah.

00:08:43:20 – 00:09:02:01

Brady Winder

Oh, I like that. I mean, I mean, it’s simple, but the timing is key. Like, that’s the happiest they’re going to be in the entire process. Get them then. Do you guys prefer to do you and the seller or is it just us like you holding the phone and you’re, you know, prompting the seller? What do you like?

00:09:02:22 – 00:09:24:15

Keith Sant

I try to get in there with the seller for sure. In the beginning, like the first few that I did, I was just holding the phone like selfie kind of back it out and like, you know, we’re huddle in real close and and then, you know, like, but I have some other ones where I brought like a partner or even brought the buyer with me and he’s holding the camera for me.

00:09:25:19 – 00:09:29:04

Keith Sant

And yeah, it works.

00:09:29:04 – 00:09:52:04

Beau Hollis

Yeah. I personally I like to be in the videos just because, number one, you’re in the videos, you’re in the videos and your it’s your website, right? You’re your faces every single place on your website. So you’re with John and Judy and Ben and Tom and Sally and Sarah and all these young people, right, that you’ve bought their houses from and you’re in different outfits and you’re just there’s so much of you, you’re like, Wow, this guy’s busy, he’s active.

00:09:52:12 – 00:10:11:11

Beau Hollis

You know, he’s actually there. So even if it’s a picture, like, it really matters. I don’t have like the big sold signs like realtors do. But I mean, sometimes I wish I did just because it’s a it’s a visual effect, But I just like what I do is I give my phone, my cell phone to the to the attorney there, unless I have a friend with me.

00:10:13:05 – 00:10:31:05

Beau Hollis

And then I’ll just have them hold it and I’ll just say, hey, I’m with John. I just bought his house and I coached him prior to this. Right. I tell them exactly, Hey, I’m going to ask you how the process went. Was it simple? Was it easy? And would you recommend it? Would you recommend it to a friend?

00:10:32:03 – 00:10:48:22

Beau Hollis

Right. So I just do that and say, Hey, I’m with John and we just bought his house. John, How was it? Working with us was amazing. I loved it. Would you recommend this to a friend? Oh, my God, It was so cool, right? It was. It was great experience. You should definitely you simply. So thanks a lot, John.

00:10:48:22 – 00:10:54:13

Beau Hollis

Thank you. And what may give a hug or something like that, you know, simple boom, done like 15 seconds, 20 seconds. We’re done.

00:10:55:12 – 00:11:09:17

Brady Winder

Do you do you ever ask them, do you ever have times where like, oh, I’m going to make a case of this? You’re going to ask him a bunch of questions because it went so well. Like, were you ever asking, like, why did you choose us over some of the other investors that gave you offers?

00:11:09:17 – 00:11:36:14

Beau Hollis

I personally don’t too much. I I’m the only kind of questions I might go into would be this is just me personally. I would go into questions like, do we pay you a fair price for the property? You know, Do you feel like we paid you a fair price for the property? And do you feel like we were fair with you or a question like that, just because that’s a big objection that other sellers are going to have, that is the biggest objection.

00:11:36:18 – 00:11:57:13

Beau Hollis

Are they is this company going to be fair with me on pricing? And so I want to overcome that objection by a review. That’s so when I say, hey, was this fair with you? Was I fair with you on the pricing? Say, oh my gosh, and I have other testimonials. You can go on my site, you can say, Oh my goodness, yes, it was so fair.

00:11:57:13 – 00:11:58:19

Beau Hollis

I, I can’t believe it.

00:11:59:04 – 00:11:59:13

Brady Winder

Mhm.

00:12:00:05 – 00:12:21:18

Beau Hollis

You know those kind of things I like. That’s one of the only questions I would ask just because most people are not like me where they totally random off the cuff talk about any subject ever in the world and intelligently like they just, they stutter and they just get really frightened in front of a camera. So I try to keep it really simple so they know what to say.

00:12:22:10 – 00:12:35:12

Brady Winder

Yeah, that’s a good point. I like how you’re kind of coaching them or briefing them at a time because they need to know what to expect. I mean, it’s normal for most people to just kind of stutter or mumble, mumble their way through something. So yeah.

00:12:35:14 – 00:13:10:23

Beau Hollis

I’m not going to ask them, like if I don’t think that they’re going to say yes, I’m not going to. I never have said, hey, say yes, you know, but I’m always I tell them if I feel like it’s going to be a positive or a mutually good conversation, I will ask them for a video review, because I will say this is that if people are going through a really hard time personally, like they’re going through a divorce or they’re going to death in the family or something like that, getting a really happy review is a challenge because, you know, selling this home may be a very sad situation for them.

00:13:10:23 – 00:13:30:21

Beau Hollis

Right. You’re you’re dealing with somebody who’s in a lot of maybe emotional distress. So he was this great experience for, you know, it sucked. I sold my childhood home and I am really sad today that I had to let that part of my life go. So being very careful and conscientious of their feelings and what you ask and say, you know, is really important.

00:13:30:21 – 00:13:47:17

Beau Hollis

And that’s the reason I ask the questions, like, was I fair with you? Was it good with you? Because all of that is not really deep diving into their emotional state. It’s just keeping it really simple and they can answer yes to it because I’m treating them fair. I’m kind to them. Was it a simple process? I already know the answer, right?

00:13:47:17 – 00:13:57:09

Beau Hollis

That stuff’s all yes answers. So it’s framing, framing your questions into, you know, what the answers are going to be, not in a negative way.

00:13:57:23 – 00:14:01:00

Brady Winder

Right? Absolutely. Any thoughts on that, Keith?

00:14:01:18 – 00:14:25:06

Keith Sant

Yeah, just like I was saying, like if you frame your answers, I love what you said about using the testimonials of the reviews to squash sellers objections. I do that with like my Facebook ads and stuff and, you know, kind of frame the question, you know, I want to squash the you know, like can close fast, right? Like, I had one guy I specifically asked him as a cat and we close in like 30 days.

00:14:25:06 – 00:14:30:12

Keith Sant

Right? And he’s like, you close in two weeks. Yeah, that’s right. I knew it because in two weeks I want.

00:14:30:12 – 00:14:31:10

Brady Winder

That one yesterday.

00:14:31:10 – 00:14:48:01

Keith Sant

I want to say that. Yeah, right. And then like another one, this lady, like I specifically asked, I was like, All right, if I remember right, you got other offers, right? Yeah, I got two other offers and you were the highest boom. Like, that’s one of the objection. Like is yeah, they could pay. Maybe they’ll pay fair prices.

00:14:48:01 – 00:15:09:01

Keith Sant

But is, is Keith is kind house buyer’s going to pay me more than the other guys? Yeah we are you know, and you know just other ones as well that try to squash those objections like, you know, can you really close Can you close on time? Are you going to pay me a fair price. Those are, those are the main ones I get and try to squash those and, and yeah.

00:15:09:08 – 00:15:19:02

Beau Hollis

They’re work. Yeah. Yeah. I have a closing tomorrow. I met the seller on Sunday. Okay. And I am closing their house tomorrow.

00:15:19:20 – 00:15:21:14

Brady Winder

So like this Sunday of this week.

00:15:22:04 – 00:15:56:11

Beau Hollis

Yes. And I didn’t get the contract until I believe it was Monday so kill the time of this recording. It is Thursday. So we had Monday. I really sent I had did the title order Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, three days. We’re closing Friday. So it’s a really and so yeah, five days and so you know I already know my review is going to be awesome because I performed so well and that’s another whole thing to this business as well as how to get good reviews.

00:15:57:20 – 00:15:59:18

Beau Hollis

You do really good at your job.

00:16:00:01 – 00:16:01:09

Brady Winder

Exceed the expectations.

00:16:01:11 – 00:16:22:09

Beau Hollis

Really exceed the expectations communi Kate communicate, communicate with your seller. I know where to speak in the basics which but the guys and girls who are the very best in this business, they are brilliant at the basics, right? It’s overcommunicate. Let people know what’s happening and just really do a good job at what you’re supposed to be doing.

00:16:22:09 – 00:16:40:01

Beau Hollis

Like I’m buying a house in five stinkin days and the review is going to be amazing. I paid more than everybody else. I closed faster than there ever anticipated. And it’s it’s a dream scenario for them. So I anticipate getting hugs.

00:16:40:22 – 00:16:48:23

Brady Winder

That’s while you’re close in on the house faster than I can do my laundry at times because it takes me a week just to get back to the clothes dryer.

00:16:49:22 – 00:16:57:14

Beau Hollis

I have a good relationship with my dad that really does help me expedite things. Do what things other people can’t do.

00:16:57:21 – 00:17:17:07

Brady Winder

That’s fast. So you’ll had your boss hit the nail on the head with, you know, the objections like, that’s why the website exists is to combat those specific objections, because when somebody clicks on a Google ad or their search and, you know, sell my house fast. Seattle, Washington, like those, those questions are already popping up in their heads.

00:17:17:07 – 00:17:37:10

Brady Winder

So your copy, the words on your website and those videos need to tackle those. And this isn’t specific to motivated sellers. This is any website, any business. Are there any, I guess, kind of two questions, any other objections you’re making sure to tackle? And then are you doing anything special with these videos on your website? Like are you organizing them, lend them out in a way?

00:17:37:11 – 00:17:43:06

Brady Winder

Are they kind of just a random smattering to make sure that they, you know, you have a variety on their.

00:17:43:06 – 00:18:03:04

Keith Sant

Those are the main objections that I’m really kind of getting after. And I know you asked earlier, like, have you ever put your foot on the air? You take your foot off the gas. I have. Yeah. But I need to actually get it back on there. But and as far as like how many you put on or where you definitely want to put them on your reviews page.

00:18:03:14 – 00:18:30:19

Keith Sant

Right. Like you have a reviews or testimonials page. I do put one or two on my landing pages. I find that like your city and your location pages, I never really saw a ton of sellers actually clicking on the videos that were on the city landing pages, but the people that were actually research ing you and wanted to go to your reviews page the How it works page the our company is page like they, you know, like I said, they’re getting to know you through this stuff.

00:18:31:02 – 00:19:01:14

Keith Sant

And so having it on your reviews page is super powerful. Having a YouTube video on your city, landing pages is super powerful. We’ve done, you know, testing and actually saw it will increase your rankings if you do it correctly. So having it on there is as powerful. Do I see a ton of people actually watching it now, But once it’s over on the reviews page and on YouTube and other places, they are getting watch and and it is helping you a lot.

00:19:01:14 – 00:19:01:23

Keith Sant

Yeah.

00:19:02:20 – 00:19:19:05

Brady Winder

And anything else, anything else you’re doing as far as SEO, like I noticed when I went into Google yesterday and search kind house buyers reviews because that’s what I would, you know, if I was doing business with you, that’s what I would search. Like one of the first results, if not the first one. I think it was after Yelp and something else.

00:19:19:05 – 00:19:31:10

Brady Winder

And then you’re Google my business pages you know kind of house buyers, dot com slash reviews and testimonials, something like that. It seemed like you were specific with the URL and the copy on the page. What do you do in there?

00:19:32:06 – 00:19:43:15

Keith Sant

Yeah, yeah. I actually put like my one right, because that is what people are googling, right? And they’re like kind house buyer reviews, you know, simply sold reviews. Like if they’re already.

00:19:44:03 – 00:19:47:18

Beau Hollis

Those who don’t know that each one is, you know, explain what that means.

00:19:48:00 – 00:19:49:19

Brady Winder

Thank you both. We assume and we forgot.

00:19:50:02 – 00:20:13:10

Keith Sant

Yeah. So your H1 is like your main title or your your main heading on a page, like every web page should have one, each one. And instead of just saying reviews or what our happy customers are saying, I want to like really spell it out and, and get that main keyword, which is company reviews and house buyers go.

00:20:13:10 – 00:20:38:07

Beau Hollis

On on our sites. So for people like myself with like, like things simple like child’s asking for big, bold letters, right on our on our biggest, boldest letters on our websites. Right. Yep. So if they Google your house buyers or my site simply sold, it is the biggest darkest text letters. Color is not necessary, but that is the biggest boldest text on our sites.

00:20:38:18 – 00:20:40:22

Beau Hollis

Correct. What is the H1 H1?

00:20:41:04 – 00:20:41:08

Keith Sant

Yeah.

00:20:41:11 – 00:20:55:14

Brady Winder

And every highlighting that text and you’re saying instead of normal text, which should be your copy or your body text, you’re telling Google this is H1 your biggest header or for the for the smaller ones, each two is three. But you’re telling Google, pay attention to this, This is what this page is.

00:20:55:14 – 00:20:59:11

Beau Hollis

It’s not the most important. You’re pointing that out. Basically. This is the most important. Right?

00:20:59:11 – 00:21:07:00

Keith Sant

Exactly. And all your H twos and threes are like secondary topics under that parent topic of the H1.

00:21:07:00 – 00:21:13:07

Brady Winder

Maybe I’m getting too nerdy and specific for a podcast about testimonials, but what are your age twos and threes look like on that page?

00:21:13:14 – 00:21:34:03

Keith Sant

On that page I’d have to look. But I mean, if I was just going to, you know, shoot, I’d say yeah. And the main one would be the main one would definitely be my company reviews right now. As far as reviews. And then and then underneath that H2 could be something like House Fire video reviews kind of Aspire Google Review.

00:21:34:03 – 00:22:14:18

Keith Sant

I think that’s actually what they are. House fire. I actually break them up after I got enough, I was like, okay, cool. I can actually make sections and House Fire Better Business Bureau. And then I would, you know, see what our happy Seattle or Washington homeowners have to say or reviews from happy Washington homeowners. So I kind of yeah I’m very specific and try to get kind of aspire to review kind of multiple times and then after that I can kind of, you know, get other things in there that are very okay, if that makes sense, and try to kind of fluff it up with location and and some other stuff.

00:22:16:02 – 00:22:24:17

Brady Winder

No, that totally makes sense. That’s helpful insight there on the skills side as well, because people are Googling like this or they are Googling this before they decide to work with you.

00:22:25:22 – 00:22:44:15

Beau Hollis

It’s like you’re researching a product that you would like to buy, right? You’re going to buy something. You’re going to research everything you can about it. I mean, most people do that, right? They research things and stuff about companies and they research. So the best way to do it is just do we’re talking about YouTubing and Googling one.

00:22:44:15 – 00:23:01:01

Brady Winder

And Trevor brought this up before, but the worst thing you can have is, is no reviews. You’d rather have a couple. I mean, you don’t want all bad reviews, but seen with somebody, no reviews. If I’m on Amazon and you see no stars immediately, I’m like scrolling past. Like, I don’t know if I can trust that there’s zero credibility right now.

00:23:01:23 – 00:23:19:02

Beau Hollis

And I have so many my friends. I’ve tried and tried and tried to talk to them. Go to closings, go to closings, go to closings, get a list, go for the reviews. And they still don’t have reviews and they’re trying to run like PPC ads and all this kind of stuff. They’re running all these kind of ads, paid ads with no reviews, wasted money.

00:23:19:02 – 00:23:24:04

Brady Winder

Everybody listen is like, don’t be run on PPC with no reviews, no credibility, your waste of money, garbage.

00:23:24:04 – 00:23:24:21

Beau Hollis

Stop that and.

00:23:25:05 – 00:23:25:12

Keith Sant

Yeah.

00:23:26:03 – 00:23:40:23

Beau Hollis

Go tos go to the start going to closings for the next month or two. Bring your cell phone or you don’t have a fancy camera. Go there, take a selfie video with these people or go to their house. If you already bought their house and have a good relationship, say, Hey, I know it’s crazy, but would you do a review with me?

00:23:41:05 – 00:23:44:12

Beau Hollis

You know, like go, like, spend, spend a little time, do this, invest in it.

00:23:45:01 – 00:24:03:00

Brady Winder

Okay. So I got I got a couple quick technical questions on video reviews and then we’ll move on. We’ll talk about Google reviews and Keith’s got some tips on how he uses Google reviews that we were talking about before the podcast. One. So Bo, your buddy with no reviews. A lot of people are like, Oh, I just don’t want to be on camera.

00:24:03:00 – 00:24:06:13

Brady Winder

I could be on camera. What’s the simplest, fastest advice for that?

00:24:07:02 – 00:24:07:21

Beau Hollis

Stop being lazy.

00:24:08:06 – 00:24:08:14

Brady Winder

Yep.

00:24:09:04 – 00:24:26:15

Beau Hollis

There it is. I mean, for I mean, like, I mean, I’m going to be a coach for a second and say, you know, know that you don’t really care about your business. Stop being lazy and go to the stinking closing like, end of story. Like, get it done. Like figure out a way to do it. I mean, if you really or show your website down, which we don’t want that we’re pro carrot but at the same.

00:24:26:16 – 00:24:28:12

Brady Winder

Well that out of the podcast you can.

00:24:29:21 – 00:24:46:14

Beau Hollis

Either do what you say you’re really there to do or stop, just stop it. Stop being lazy, you’re being lazy. Bam. It takes you 5 minutes and just get yourself an hour. I mean, the iPhone 14 pro max has the most insane camera. Stop being lazy to say hi even. Hi, this is John. I just bought our house.

00:24:47:00 – 00:25:04:22

Beau Hollis

Was it great? You could stutter like it is in a great process. Oh yeah, it was great. Awesome. It Who cares what it’s like? You don’t have to be like a fancy production value here. We’re just talking cell phone in front of a seller. End of story.

00:25:05:01 – 00:25:11:19

Brady Winder

And the next question that pops up, someone’s going to get. Will both of you edit them? Do I’m going to send this to someone. Fiver. Do I have my logo and intro music and all that?

00:25:12:04 – 00:25:29:13

Beau Hollis

Nope. What you do is when you hold the phone in front of them, say, All right, here we go. Three, two, one, click the little red button, and then take a deep breath. Yep. At the end, you hit the red button again and it’s over. And then you can do all the little editing you want. If there’s 3 seconds in front 3 seconds, then you can edit it.

00:25:29:13 – 00:25:49:16

Beau Hollis

Running film. It’s so simple. It is not hard at all. I just find a lot of people, I just think is the culture of what we do. It’s they don’t go to closings and I think most of the time they just don’t do it because they’re not there. I think they get assignments and maybe, you know, I think it’s so is so worth it.

00:25:49:22 – 00:26:09:20

Beau Hollis

I mean, like we’ve talked about this so much today, Like, it’s so worth it to go there because you win deals, you actually make more money because you have them. And it’s fax. It is it is straight fax. If you like money and you like eating food and paying your bills and you want more of it, you get testimonials.

00:26:10:13 – 00:26:11:05

Beau Hollis

It’s not hard.

00:26:11:23 – 00:26:14:04

Brady Winder

Oh, I love that. I love that. That’s a.

00:26:14:04 – 00:26:19:22

Beau Hollis

No. I’m hardcore. I’m hardcore sometimes. But hey, that you want to make more money. That’s why I listen to podcast.

00:26:21:08 – 00:26:45:21

Keith Sant

I do understand like not being not wanting to be on camera and just being like introvert, right? Like, I don’t know, but I was way more extrovert than I ever am. And I remember like the very first video testimonial I did, I didn’t want to get on camera. I no joke. My hands were like, shaking. And but I’ve made so much money from that video and it just got easier.

00:26:46:02 – 00:26:50:22

Keith Sant

It got easier. I remember Brady when you first asked me, you call me. Yeah.

00:26:51:11 – 00:26:53:00

Beau Hollis

We give money in your bank.

00:26:53:07 – 00:27:08:23

Keith Sant

Brady called me like in back in 2019 and said, Hey, Keith, like, would you like to be on like a cast episode? And I’m like, Who the heck would want to hear what I have to say? Like, This doesn’t make any sense. And then I was super nervous, but I’m like, okay, like if it’ll actually add value and help people.

00:27:08:23 – 00:27:27:02

Keith Sant

And so I did it and I was like, I was super nervous during that first first one, like straight up. And I had so much good, positive feedback. I thought I looked like an idiot. I sounded like an idiot, but like I had people reach out to me and say, I listened to that twice. It was amazing. She didn’t like but for me, right?

00:27:27:02 – 00:27:46:15

Keith Sant

Like I thought it was just, you know, I already knew the information and whatnot. But I’m telling you, you know, anyone that’s hesitant to get out there, like, I swear, like you are your own worst critic. Like, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I stumble all the time. You probably think you stumble way more than you do people are going to notice it way more.

00:27:46:15 – 00:27:59:05

Keith Sant

You can always edit like don’t trip, just get out there because it’s so valuable and no one thinks you look like an idiot or sound like an idiot. You’re just literally critiquing yourself for no reason whatsoever.

00:28:00:07 – 00:28:22:18

Beau Hollis

Let me say this about that. You know, like you are, you’re more introverted than I am. I’m like, they don’t get more extroverted than me. Most people. But let me say, this is what’s beautiful about our business, is that I can be me and you can be you and you can hold the camera in front and you can maybe be a little bit more reserved than me and I can be.

00:28:22:18 – 00:28:40:08

Beau Hollis

Hey, guys. Oh, my gosh. Give me a high five. You know, I can do whatever I do in my reviews. And you could be you. And guess what? You are going to reach certain people that I’m not able to reach that may like your personality style better than me. And I’m going to reach people that made that you may not be able to reach because of my personality.

00:28:40:08 – 00:29:07:17

Beau Hollis

So people may resonate with your style and say, Oh man, this guy, he’s just kind, he’s he’s reserved and he’s different than this other guy. I think I like that guy better. And that’s the point of capitalistic ventures that we’re doing, is that we can put ourself out there right next to each other and give people options. You know, Keith is working with some people in my market, ranking them up above me who I’m friends with, by the way.

00:29:08:03 – 00:29:26:06

Beau Hollis

And we talk all the time on the phone. I was with Brian this morning and doing deals together and he’s like, Hey, how about what about this ranking? This ranking? And guess what? He’s starting to get his testimonials up and we help each other out. And people may choose him or they may choose me. And you know, that’s what that’s what this is all about, is just doing your best.

00:29:26:06 – 00:29:49:16

Beau Hollis

You don’t have to be like someone else. You just got to do your best. It’s just you can stutter. But here’s one thing I learned in sales is that I know I’m talking a lot, but maybe this help somebody. Is that the people that you’re doing the testimonial with? If this is your very first testimonial, guess what? They don’t know.

00:29:49:16 – 00:29:50:05

Beau Hollis

They don’t know.

00:29:50:16 – 00:29:51:01

Brady Winder

Oh, yeah.

00:29:51:13 – 00:30:05:03

Beau Hollis

They don’t have a clue. They don’t know. You’re nervous. They don’t know you’re shy. They don’t know that you’ve never done this before. They have no clue. They think that this is your hundredth. They don’t really know unless you tell them. So they’re just like, oh, this is this is the plan.

00:30:06:05 – 00:30:26:06

Brady Winder

Yes. Well, that’s the thing. When you first start doing videos that when you’re doing it, it feels like, Oh, I’m terrible right now. But on my second video, it’ll get better. And on my fifth video it’s going to be amazing. But it’s not a matter of better or worse. It’s just the confidence going up. It’s their confidence catching up to the quality you probably already have.

00:30:26:21 – 00:30:28:21

Brady Winder

Yeah, I love the way you put that. You don’t know.

00:30:29:06 – 00:30:45:14

Beau Hollis

Yeah, it’s so simple. They don’t have a clue. And you just be yourself, be you be loving and caring and kind to the sellers. And that’s all that really matters is just you. Hey, was this a simple process? And write it down? Like, write yourself a little script. If this will help you write a very simple script. You can watch some of our testimonials.

00:30:45:14 – 00:30:59:13

Beau Hollis

Keith has amazing ones. We have some pretty good ones as well. And just write and say the same thing. Hey, this is Bo. You know, write it down and then write two or three things you want to say and then say it. Practice, record the videos in the mirror like or do one with your mom or your sister or your friend.

00:30:59:17 – 00:31:04:16

Beau Hollis

You know, just practice if you feel that nervous, right? That’s an idea.

00:31:05:04 – 00:31:20:21

Brady Winder

That’s great. No, that’s great advice, man. The only other thing I would add as far as so just wrapping up kind of video section, we’ll talk about Google reviews and in text reviews, when you’re doing the videos, like Bo said, just have a good fun, just a quality iPhone will work if you have a video or there with a camera.

00:31:20:22 – 00:31:37:01

Brady Winder

Cool. But keep the keep the phone close to you If somebody else is holding it, you know, don’t have them be a mile away. You’re going to get garbage audio, so stay a few feet away. It really sucks. We’re like, oh, the review is amazing. You go listen to it after the fact and you’re like, Oh, this audio is suffering because that that matter.

00:31:37:01 – 00:31:56:15

Brady Winder

So stay relatively close. But the other thing is, you know we’re talking about keep a simple pull at your cell phone and do it. You know, we’ve tested on our own Web sites, you know, care member sites and Care.com, our website, the the more real it looks, the better it will convert. So.

00:31:56:16 – 00:31:58:08

Beau Hollis

Oh, that’s so true, man.

00:31:58:23 – 00:32:18:19

Brady Winder

Absolutely far and away by not I mean so with care website you can plug in testimonials and have them auto populate in certain areas of the website. That’s good and that works. And it’s a quick and easy way to get them up there. You should do that. We do that. We also couple it with, like Keith has mentioned on his testimonials, his reviews page screenshots of real reviews.

00:32:18:19 – 00:32:39:12

Brady Winder

So you got your simple raw cell phone videos because that’s what people are used to see in their social media feeds. And when they get a text from a friend, it’s normal. When you when it’s overly polished, it has a tendency to put up this put up walls between people and say, Oh, I don’t know, this feels a little bit too corporate, corporate he is willing to work with.

00:32:39:16 – 00:33:01:03

Brady Winder

Some of that depends on your brand. But anyways, the more real looks, the better. So if we’re talking about Google reviews, Facebook reviews, screenshots of the review itself, screenshot the review and post it onto the page, we found that converts better than oh, do I need to make the text look perfect? Should I put it in Canva? Should I design a you know, it’s not going to convert and it’s going to waste your time.

00:33:01:07 – 00:33:04:15

Brady Winder

What? Keith What have you guys or what have you guys found on that?

00:33:05:13 – 00:33:30:16

Beau Hollis

Oh man, we have done some real serious marketing stuff just over the last years, and I have tried, you know, really high production value stuff now where you have high production value things on our website. But like what you’re saying, the worse it looks, the crappier it is, the better it converts. I don’t know what I mean. Give me an iPhone six in.

00:33:30:16 – 00:33:52:22

Beau Hollis

I promise you would probably be better than 14 like you to go get something janky and like, have my son feel like as a seven year old and he’d be like, in any, you know, go, It would probably be better, you know, people because it’s real. It’s authentic. Right. And that’s what really it says that you are a real person, you know, that’s just my $0.02.

00:33:54:03 – 00:34:00:19

Brady Winder

Yeah. Yeah. Keith, what about as far as like, Google, Facebook reviews, stuff like that, like the esthetic of.

00:34:00:19 – 00:34:25:20

Keith Sant

Yeah, I’m a huge fan of screenshots for a lot of reasons that, you know, the main is, like you said, it’s real. It’s like, okay, it’s authentic. You could actually see where it came from. The other reason is from like an SEO perspective, especially if you get like a really big long review or something really good. But let’s just say it’s 200 words and you just paste that onto your like city landing pages, for instance.

00:34:25:20 – 00:34:48:13

Keith Sant

It’s going to mess with your SEO because it’s going to mess with like the keyword density and other things because you just added 200 words, if that makes sense. And if they start interesting, if they start saying like, Oh, he even took it in with the chicken coops in the backyard and this and that. Now it’s like, is this site about chicken coops or is it about selling houses or buying houses?

00:34:48:13 – 00:34:57:15

Keith Sant

Right. And so I don’t I’d rather have screenshots so that way I could be very I could control the words on my page for SEO. The max.

00:34:58:13 – 00:35:04:11

Brady Winder

Yeah, absolutely. And then name the images appropriately kind of house by review or something like that.

00:35:04:13 – 00:35:06:07

Keith Sant

Exactly. Exactly.

00:35:07:14 – 00:35:34:22

Brady Winder

So the screenshots work for credibility conversion. They work better for SEO. Let’s talk about Google reviews. So getting them. So there was a study done. We talked about this on one of the prior SEO podcasts, but on Google reviews on like how many do I need in the gallery? And the study found that it was either 30 or 35 somewhere on that 35 mark it was that is what you needed to stand out and get yourself to the number one spot.

00:35:34:22 – 00:35:56:09

Brady Winder

As far as your Google page, your Google business page, and then past 3035, it was diminishing returns. But that was where you showed the most significant gain is getting around that many reviews. So, I mean, that’s pretty simple. We know that the more Google reviews you have, the better chance that you have of ranking in Google. You should get as many as possible.

00:35:56:17 – 00:36:05:01

Brady Winder

So my question is, Keith, how are you getting these reviews and when are you asking for them?

00:36:05:01 – 00:36:31:07

Keith Sant

So I like to try to get those video reviews. Right. Well, let me go back to really fast. I found that same thing, right, Like you said, about like 35 after. Well, I found that after like 20 reviews you get. Yeah. Diminishing returns on Asians, they’ll get them. But like, as far as like actually SEO value and you showing up like it definitely goes down and you get a big you get a boost around ten and then you get another boost around 20.

00:36:31:07 – 00:37:05:16

Keith Sant

So if you can if you’re under ten, like, you know, get to that ten and then look at your impressions on your Google my business listing and see what happens. And then once you get to 20 again, you get that like another boost. I haven’t actually found any significant boost after morning. I know a lot of people that are, you know, impression that Google my business and other stuff with with under 20 but yeah definitely get those the way I’m getting for sure is like I like to send emails after the close I try to get them a lot of times if I’m able to get those videos right, it’s hard.

00:37:05:23 – 00:37:25:09

Keith Sant

Then like I’ll also write it. You know, if I get a video review, they’re kind of less likely to do a Google overview, if that makes sense. But if I’m not able to get that, I’ll still send them an email. But I send him an email and and I’ll even offer I say, Hey, you know, hey, you know, so-and-so.

00:37:25:09 – 00:37:51:16

Keith Sant

And then like a little personal line that was so great, you know, thank you so much for facilitating the sale of your mom’s house. Like if I’m dealing with, you know, a daughter or something like that, you know, blah, blah, it would mean the world to me and my business. If you actually write a review. And by the way, I’m actually able to send you a 50 $50 gift card if you write a review here and here.

00:37:51:16 – 00:38:09:22

Keith Sant

Here are the links. All you got to do is basically send me send me an email reply telling me where you want me to send the gift card and I’ll send you 50 bucks and and like 80% of the time they write the review and just say, Thanks, Keith, and don’t send me a return, you know, like an address.

00:38:09:22 – 00:38:33:15

Keith Sant

I’m like, cool. Like just offering the $50 gets me way more reviews than if I didn’t offer because I’ve done that, too. I did it without offering. Yeah, I’m not afraid to pay. I think I’ve only sent out like ten gift cards and got 50 as reviews. And that’s and that’s just on, on Google as well. And so what I like to do is I say if I’ll give you $50, if you write it here and here.

00:38:33:20 – 00:38:46:11

Keith Sant

And so one of them’s like always Google because Google are like really valuable. Then I will alternate between like Facebook for the second link or BBW for the second line or Yelp to try to kick up those other numbers as well.

00:38:47:07 – 00:39:04:21

Brady Winder

Okay. So a couple of things to just to highlight or clarify use of that are actually important. It’s a dedicated email because some people might just throw it in as an afterthought or appear as an email or oh, by the way, if you like to do so now dedicated email specifically saying, Hey, this would mean the world to me, I would really value this.

00:39:05:02 – 00:39:21:17

Brady Winder

There’s that human empathy part to it instead of just, oh, if you’re if you enjoyed this experience. So you’re doing that. You’re incentivizing them for multiple reviews because I think a lot of people are like, Oh, I can ask review, I don’t want to bug them or whatever, so they just won’t. Or the way I go, I have to pay them.

00:39:22:02 – 00:39:41:21

Brady Winder

Well, you don’t, but I like that idea of saying, Hey, I’ll give you a gift card if you leave me multiple places, because it’s valuable to have them in multiple spots. If you had to choose, what’s the best place to get a review? Like if someone only going to give you one or to Google my business Yelp Facebook video hands down.

00:39:42:09 – 00:39:50:03

Keith Sant

Well, the video is I love video, but definitely Google and tell you get that 20 and then after that it’s video and and everywhere else.

00:39:50:03 – 00:39:58:10

Brady Winder

But okay Google I notice I was just googling Bo real quick to see what is at 16. You’re 16, Bo. You need a handful more.

00:39:58:11 – 00:40:03:20

Keith Sant

Everyone go right simply so you get four more. I’m telling you, you get a you get a boost.

00:40:04:19 – 00:40:09:08

Beau Hollis

I know I need two. So if you guys are feeling generous out there, go ahead and hug your boy out.

00:40:10:02 – 00:40:13:13

Brady Winder

Yeah, go review. Simply sold and then go review the Carrot Gas podcast.

00:40:13:18 – 00:40:32:13

Beau Hollis

Talk about how awesome I am. That is so kind of you. Oh, no. Yeah, I need to work on that. On the Google side of things, you know, I think some of the times it’s you’re sitting there and you’re thinking of a video testimonial and you’re trying to get the closing down, you know, a me I’m signing documents, right?

00:40:32:13 – 00:40:48:03

Beau Hollis

I’m actually there to sign documents and papers. So sometimes, you know, you’re trying to think of a video review and, hey, would you do this, this, this and this? Sometimes you just lose it. And I understand why people might not get them. Sometimes you’re busy trying to manage the transaction and you just may forget.

00:40:48:11 – 00:41:08:05

Brady Winder

You know, as long as you do remember. I think one of the most important things to remember is is to make it easy for them. Like either emailing them, you’re saying, here’s the link. This I found the same thing. When you’re with anything, asking someone to do something like, Hey, you know, here’s our podcast that we did together, would you mind sharing this on social media if you just ask that?

00:41:08:05 – 00:41:27:05

Brady Winder

But don’t give them the way to do it. They’re probably not going to do it. And so can you leave us a review? You can text them the Google my business link where it’s one tab, it should be no more than one tap boom. And then they can type it hit enter. That’s it. If it’s more complicated than that, the more resistance in between that I mean, same thing with generating a lead in your website.

00:41:27:05 – 00:41:41:06

Brady Winder

The more resistance you have more forms after fill out are more questions I have to answer the forms the less likely you are to get the lead. So make it easy. Anything else you’re doing to make it easier? I mean, besides, just send them the link or text in the link.

00:41:42:13 – 00:41:43:03

Keith Sant

That’s all I’m.

00:41:43:03 – 00:41:45:03

Brady Winder

Doing that that’s good.

00:41:46:00 – 00:42:04:11

Beau Hollis

You know, I do a lot of hours in person just because, you know, I’ve always liked that. Because tell me not to my face kind of thing. It’s a you know, it’s really hard. Not only do that, I’ve only had two people tell me no ever that they didn’t want to take a picture with me or talk about it at all.

00:42:05:23 – 00:42:06:22

Brady Winder

Out of hundreds.

00:42:07:11 – 00:42:24:11

Beau Hollis

Oh, out of multiple, like multiple, multiple hundreds. Only two people ever. One person said they were already famous enough and they were. Both were, but both were quite elderly and they just felt like, Nah, I don’t want to do it because I’m just I’m too old kind of thing.

00:42:25:02 – 00:42:26:19

Brady Winder

Yeah, that’s awesome.

00:42:27:11 – 00:42:30:00

Beau Hollis

Yeah. And so that was the reason why they didn’t want to. And I said, No problem.

00:42:30:19 – 00:42:52:07

Brady Winder

Yeah, well, that’s encouraging to hear. I know we’re about out of time. This has been super value packed. I’ve enjoyed the conversation. I feel like there’s a lot of really good just tactical takeaways here. My last question, four years and we’ll wrap it up. We’ll call it a closes. Feel free to answer. What was your worst or your best testimonial experience?

00:42:52:11 – 00:42:59:00

Brady Winder

Is there anybody any you didn’t use or someone blew up in your face or you’re like that? That video went poorly.

00:43:01:19 – 00:43:18:06

Keith Sant

I had one like you mentioned that it was so good, but I was too far away. I was like 12 feet away plus and there was kind of a busy road and you could just not hear. But it was really good. That was kind of like my words. I felt like, Oh my God, waste of an hour drive.

00:43:18:06 – 00:43:50:04

Keith Sant

By now I’ve had some really got like, like Beau is saying earlier, like if you do a good job and like, it could be emotional. I met two people on the verge it like had to kind of like stop in the video testimonial because they they’re going to start crying but like they were genuinely so thankful for me like, you know, one of them was a divorce, you know, lost his wife but like, yeah, like they were both like, so thankful and, and both around, they’re like, you know, two of my favorite reviews.

00:43:50:04 – 00:44:06:07

Keith Sant

I use them as Facebook ads and I get a lot of a lot of leads from them. Now, if you do the right thing, you’re going to get some super happy people and let them be your advocates.

00:44:06:07 – 00:44:26:11

Beau Hollis

Yeah, you know, I’ve had some I can’t say I really have had a bad review necessarily as far as no one’s ever said, like it wasn’t a good process or anything like that. No one’s ever said that to me. But I have had some really I have one time I bought this house when I first started from this guy who actually reached out to me.

00:44:26:11 – 00:44:47:17

Beau Hollis

By the way, let me just clarify this. He did reach out to me, but he was just an angry soul. He was just an angry guy. He wouldn’t do a review for me, but he he took a picture with me. And it is the funniest picture because he’s just literally sitting there with like, the most bitter, angry face ever.

00:44:47:17 – 00:45:10:21

Beau Hollis

It’s just like he looks angry at the world and I’m smiling and he’s just so upset. But I mean, I gave him what he wanted for the house, but he was still just angry at the situation. But I’ve had some pretty great reviews of people who actually were just like, you know, this is a godsend. You know, Bowe treated me so amazing.

00:45:11:06 – 00:45:30:05

Beau Hollis

It was the easiest process of ever. They elaborated on their own, right? I didn’t tell them to do anything or say anything. They were just elaborating of is the easiest, simplest thing I’ve ever done my whole life. I’ve sold a lot of houses and I wish everything could be like this easy, but made it amazing. The attorney like this, they really raved and they were just like, so happy I won.

00:45:30:05 – 00:45:55:06

Beau Hollis

They like, give me a hug. It was just I mean, one time this I mean, I had multiple hugs, but this one old lady, she was just so just thrilled. I mean, just we really make a difference there. The what we do actually matters. It’s not just to some hucksters out there. We actually make a difference in people’s lives who need to get a quick sale for their home with a fair.

00:45:55:06 – 00:46:04:21

Beau Hollis

So what we do matters, and that is the reason why reviews matter is the reason that reviews matter is because what we do matters.

00:46:04:21 – 00:46:08:03

Brady Winder

Absolutely. And your elevate in the industry as a whole, you know?

00:46:08:09 – 00:46:28:06

Beau Hollis

Oh, absolutely. It’s so important because every person out there who’s saving somebody from foreclosure or buying an inherited property that maybe they live out of town and they don’t know what to do and they’re reaching out last minute, like my fastest closing is actually three days from the time I met them. I met somebody on a Tuesday and we Tuesday night at like 6:00, met them.

00:46:28:06 – 00:46:52:18

Beau Hollis

So basically Wednesday, met them Tuesday night at six, got the house on a contract and closed Friday morning. So we had Wednesday tidal pool, Thursday tidal review closed Friday morning. So really like a 48 hour basically time frame. And the review was outstanding from the time I closed it, from the time I met the person to when they that was apparently, by the way, that’s come.

00:46:52:18 – 00:47:12:08

Beau Hollis

But yeah, that was but what we do matters. I mean all the people in the scenarios, I think we talk about reviews, but the reason it’s important is so it’s so much more important than just the review itself. It’s the why it’s important is because we’re letting other people know who might need our services, that we are good at our jobs and that we can help them.

00:47:13:14 – 00:47:23:05

Brady Winder

Absolutely. I love that. Thanks for sharing that. Man Two really quick tips in our time. I said we’re going to close and we never do. That’s just how it goes.

00:47:23:07 – 00:47:24:11

Beau Hollis

You’re a preacher close, right?

00:47:24:16 – 00:47:44:02

Brady Winder

Yes, exactly. Well, we’ll be done another hour and then you guys can go to lunch. Um, Keith mentioned retargeting ads I forgot to bring up so. Or you mentioned Facebook ads. Make sure to use them in your retargeting ads. Are you using them in any other ads? Keith’s top of funnel middle Funnel are just retargeting people that have been to your website already.

00:47:44:13 – 00:48:06:01

Keith Sant

Yeah, I use them for like everything. They’re literally like my attitudes for, for top of funnel and retargeting, but definitely for the retargeting because they got to your site for whatever reason, they didn’t fill out the form either. They thought they, you know, you couldn’t actually perform, you weren’t going to pay the highest price, you know, you weren’t going to, you know, just you weren’t the guy, right?

00:48:06:01 – 00:48:15:04

Keith Sant

And there’s a reason why they didn’t perform. Maybe they were just busy by actually squashing those objections and the retargeting and the super power.

00:48:15:04 – 00:48:41:10

Brady Winder

Absolutely. Last quick tip on the video testimonials. If you get a, you know, a great testimonial like these guys are talking about, you can, you know, and you have enough reviews on your care website and let’s say you don’t have enough screenshots from Google, My Business or Facebook. You can take the, you know, transcribe the texts or transcribe what they’re saying in that video or just type out, simplify it, you know, make it a sentence, or to put that in your care website as a testimonial so it pops up on the page.

00:48:41:19 – 00:48:59:18

Brady Winder

You can do it with the video or just itself. So just a way to add more reviews to the page for help with your SEO and just help with the page overall. So yeah, that’s all we got for you. Bo Keith, thank you so much for joining us. Anybody listening? Thank you for tuning in. Have you got value out of this chair with a friend?

00:49:00:05 – 00:49:03:02

Brady Winder

And don’t forget to go live. Bo simply saw the Google review.

00:49:03:07 – 00:49:05:08

Beau Hollis

Listing for Come on people for review just.

00:49:05:08 – 00:49:34:16

Brady Winder

Before kidding. Not kidding. But go to care.com last convert to get the rest of our conversion content for the month and thanks for tuning in everyone. We will see you next time.

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:16:04

Motivated Leads

When somebody comes to your website, initially people are put off by really long forms. It just looks looks like too much. It’s like, I don’t want to fill out 15 things. It’s going to take me too long. So you can break the form into two or three steps and just ask like the crucial things you need phone number and address.

00:00:17:00 – 00:00:37:00

Motivated Leads

Get that up front. Now, you captured that. After they do that, ask all the additional questions. So it looks like it’s easy. And then that second, second step is going to ask like, why do you want to sell? How fast do you want to sell? How much work does your property need? The people that aren’t serious and aren’t motivated are going to leave.

00:00:41:15 – 00:00:58:21

Brady Winder

Hey friends, you’re listening to the CarrotCast Podcast by Carrot.com will help investors and agents like yourself build businesses of freedom and impact. I’m your host, Brady Winder, and today have returning guests, triple, quadruple returning guests Brian and Chad of Motivated Leads. Please welcome back to the podcast guys.

00:00:59:06 – 00:01:01:23

Motivated Leads

And thanks for having us, man. We appreciate you. Yeah, thanks.

00:01:01:23 – 00:01:20:04

Brady Winder

BRADY Yeah, Thanks for coming on. We appreciate you just as much. If you want to hear more about what Brian and Chad do, essentially they help over 400 investors get more motivated seller leads and they do it through SEO and paid ads and they do it really well. We go back and listen to part one of the podcast from last week.

00:01:20:06 – 00:01:37:13

Brady Winder

This episode is going to be a sort of a deeper dive into website design and conversion. So we’re going to talk about some of the tests of Brian and Chad around to see if we move this form, if we change this color, if we do this, if we modify the page, is it going to convert better? Is it going to get us more quality, more?

00:01:37:13 – 00:02:00:17

Brady Winder

Besides where to talk about some of the psychology of copy and what needs to be on your website to attract motivated seller? But if this is too much for you, go back and listen to part one and then part three later this month is going to be all about testimonials. So anyways, it’s designing conversion month. Go to care.com slash convert to get all the content that we’re talking about and let’s dive in in this episode.

00:02:00:17 – 00:02:34:16

Brady Winder

So kind of picking up where we left off, we talked about online sub. So the three things you need to do, you need a personalized website, you need localization, you need credibility on your website. Let’s talk about kind of first the structure of the website. How do you maintain a cohesive look and feel? You know, we talked about Cara out of the box, but I wanted to ask you, is is there anything you’re doing your website to make sure it is still has a cohesive look and feel while keeping a high converting like earlier design principles you guys follow in building websites in general?

00:02:34:16 – 00:02:52:03

Motivated Leads

Yeah, like some on the structure side, you want to you want to make it easy for people to navigate your website. For example, if you’re if people are coming to your website through your blog, that’s an informational piece, they’re looking for info, they come there. But the whole objective is you want to push them back into the core site, like to convert.

00:02:52:11 – 00:03:11:15

Motivated Leads

So in your blog you want to have calls the action Z Learn more, sell your house fast and push them into your website versus if somebody comes to your homepage, you want to just push them straight to the call to actions. Or for example, one structure. Like I like to look at a website like a Christmas tree, write home pages at the top, and then next step out it branches and goes the whole way out.

00:03:11:21 – 00:03:30:00

Motivated Leads

So home page, you’re targeting like Saga House fast in Pittsburgh and then you have city pages so like I’d like to structure like in areas you serve section it could be state things like that so it could be if you’re doing a national website, you have set your house fast. First, first click in your website would be areas we serve.

00:03:30:00 – 00:03:45:16

Motivated Leads

That’s all the state you serve. Second, click into the cities underneath those states. So you want to make it real easy for people to navigate. More importantly, though, then it helps you rank for all those different phrases as well. But the whole whole objective for every single thing on your website should be to build credibility and get leads.

00:03:46:23 – 00:04:04:22

Brady Winder

Okay. So that’s that’s a that’s how you need to structure website. The second thing we talked about was these stories. Is your website telling the right story. This is a this is the key thing that a lot of people sometimes miss. They want to just talk about themselves. They want to talk about their company. Care already does a lot of this out of the box.

00:04:04:22 – 00:04:19:06

Brady Winder

But what are you keeping in mind as far as a story your website is telling, whether that’s true to the design or the copy? But but mostly the copy. What are you keeping in mind when you’re trying to speak to a motivated seller?

00:04:19:18 – 00:04:35:06

Motivated Leads

I think their pain points that mostly you got to think in their manner why they look looking to sell most of the time and letting them know things like you can sell your house as is. You don’t need any repairs done. You need a quick cash off. Or have you just inherited a home where you gone through a rough financial time?

00:04:36:08 – 00:04:53:04

Motivated Leads

They don’t really. The more you talk about them, the better. Yeah, I would put that upfront. More so than putting this is who I am, this is what I can do. This is me, me, me. You know, like any conversation or anything, when you go meet new people, you don’t want to just sit there and talk about yourself.

00:04:53:18 – 00:05:06:04

Motivated Leads

You really want to like, take in and digest that and like, let them know you’re there, like trying to help them solve their needs. So really thinking within that mindset and structuring content around that can be really helpful.

00:05:07:02 – 00:05:25:19

Brady Winder

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, that’s a I think that’s probably the best, simplest way to put it is have the focus, be on them, their questions, their pain points, their desires instead of yourself. You’re yourself should be the afterthought. Oh, by the way, here’s what we do. Here’s how we can help. But you first need to make that connection with the the seller in their head.

00:05:27:05 – 00:05:50:11

Brady Winder

So you got structure, structure, story and then speed. We’ll go through this really quick page. Speed really does matter as far as one, just a good user experience. A lot of it in nobody likes to use a clunky, slow website. If you’re waiting a few seconds for it to load, the person’s probably going to bounce. I know I’m going to browse the next website that showed up in Google if it’s too slow so it doesn’t matter.

00:05:50:11 – 00:06:00:19

Brady Winder

But it also matters in the eyes of Google. Google doesn’t like to rank slow websites as much as festivals. Anything you are doing to make sure you’re not slowing down your pages.

00:06:01:21 – 00:06:17:09

Motivated Leads

Yet, make sure you’re not uploading huge, huge images, things like that, like size them down, just you can even click on the right whenever the pictures on your computer right click it and click properties, see how big it is, and then shrink it down before you stick it on a website. That’s one of the biggest tips I could give.

00:06:17:09 – 00:06:20:19

Motivated Leads

Just don’t upload massive files to your site. Hmm.

00:06:21:17 – 00:06:42:09

Brady Winder

Nice. Yep. I care. It actually does this for you as well. It’ll shrink down your your photos and as well as if you’re uploading videos. It will. We have features in there to make sure the video doesn’t load the entire video before and until it needs to, basically. So we’ll run through that real quick. The websites are fast, but you need to make sure that you’re not slowing down your website.

00:06:44:00 – 00:07:01:22

Brady Winder

As far as let’s talk about forms and some of the tests you guys have around, because I think this is where some of the really interesting stuff comes in. Take me through like what’s I guess what’s most important for the forum on your website? What does it need to have and in what order does it need to be in?

00:07:02:10 – 00:07:22:09

Motivated Leads

So there’s there’s two different things, like when somebody comes to your website initially people are put off by really long forms. It just looks looks like too much and it’s like, I don’t want to fill out 15 things. It’s going to take me too long so you can break the form into two or three steps and just ask like the crucial things you need phone number and address.

00:07:23:06 – 00:07:44:15

Motivated Leads

Get that up front. Now, you captured that. After they do that, ask all the additional questions. So it looks like it’s easy. And then that second, second step is going to ask like, why do you want to sell? How fast do you want to sell? How much work does your property need? The people that aren’t serious and aren’t motivated are going to leave, but the people that are, you’re getting more information there too.

00:07:44:15 – 00:08:03:08

Motivated Leads

So the second step kind of gets your leads and takes a quality up higher. Yeah, we’ve seen we’ve seen forms actually convert hire. If you call out like kind of how long they’re going to take, hey, this is going to take 30 seconds to fill out this form or one minute or whatever it may be. Sometimes that can take some of that fear away, even if they do see a longer form.

00:08:03:15 – 00:08:10:05

Motivated Leads

Just calling that out to them like it only takes X or whatever it may be merely helps with that conversion a little bit.

00:08:11:03 – 00:08:27:13

Brady Winder

Yeah, that makes sense. Kind of like when you’re reading through a blog post or some of across a blog post like, oh, on a read this. Oh, it’s only 7 minutes. I’m read. Okay, I got time for that. Right. Let’s go to anything else. What have you guys been doing as far as tests on forms, as far as placement or how you’re wording, the questions, things like that.

00:08:28:17 – 00:08:47:12

Motivated Leads

Test on forms are like we’ve seen if you have a form and a top right hand side of your website or right in the center, they convert really well. You have to have strong calls to action right beside that and telling you have to tell people what to do, like fill out this form to get a cash off or fill out this form to get a call today, things like that versus just having it.

00:08:47:12 – 00:09:01:11

Motivated Leads

You don’t want to learn more section it. It’s going to be very direct. You do this, here’s a result you’re getting in. Tell them to fill out the form and then maybe put like a red arrow or something to it and just be keep it super simple.

00:09:01:23 – 00:09:21:18

Brady Winder

Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that. The arrows we’ve actually tested like images of like a, you know, a nice professional headshot of a real estate investor agent versus having a crudely drawn arrow pointing to the form. You know, he maps on those and far and away, you know, the arrow the very obvious thing it works better than having the professional look, if you will.

00:09:22:04 – 00:09:41:22

Motivated Leads

Right and we tested some some lenders too because we did multiple carat tests in some of them we had one that had the call to action on the left hand side and then the form on the right. We had one that the call to action was in the center and then we had one that had a call to action with a button that led to the form in the one with the call to action on it.

00:09:41:22 – 00:09:44:04

Motivated Leads

Right Converted the best.

00:09:44:04 – 00:10:10:03

Brady Winder

Interesting. Okay, so we talked about length of the form it needs to be. It needs to be simpler. So the less resistance, the better. Which, you know, sometimes as marketers we can think like all the information possible for follow up and for this, for that, but less resistance the better. We talked about placement. Anything else add as far as questions on form, you know, we’ve mentioned be direct, you know, air on the obvious side.

00:10:10:03 – 00:10:14:15

Brady Winder

Anything else as far as questions you might want to ask her if you found anything that works really well in forms.

00:10:14:20 – 00:10:46:10

Motivated Leads

To ask you, the more I go ahead, Chad, I would say the more you can auto populate, obviously, the better. And the more like bottled style stuff you can do is better because it takes away like that. Just them having to type things in it. We’ve just seen higher conversion that way. Another thing, another way to think around it too, is if you are in a super competitive market where your lead cost is pretty high, whether that be from paid ads, SEO, whatever it may be, you need to probably minimize that form to be as short as possible and be happy with the shortest form prose you can get.

00:10:46:15 – 00:11:05:18

Motivated Leads

As I push more volume. If you’re in a market where you have a lot of leads coming through and you’re fortunate to be in that situation, so you kind of have more leeway to play with those questions, add questions to it, let it do some of the preventive for you more and more that way. So think about your market when you’re thinking about your form as well.

00:11:06:14 – 00:11:29:19

Brady Winder

Hmm. Interesting. One thing I want to touch on before I move away from forums is on the last episode we were talking about the differences in your website. When you’re talking about SEO versus website, you’re running page traffic to like a landing page. In the landing page needs to be more simplified, more direct anything as far as forms in that regard.

00:11:30:05 – 00:11:45:12

Motivated Leads

It’s worth testing to run page traffic, just a step two of it versus the home page. I know the home page. You capture short information, all that, but sometimes like there’s a lot of click outs and a lot of things to just distract on their where. Step two, it’s like kind of like, Hey, right here, this is what we have.

00:11:45:12 – 00:12:02:22

Motivated Leads

Just fill this out, let’s go and gives them like that, correct? Like just seeing that in that manner. Sometimes it’s like basically make something. Okay, I got philosophical to go into it versus having to read on the website. Hey, let’s give you a cash offer. Now, fill out this form here. Kind of just make them think in a different manner.

00:12:04:03 – 00:12:27:03

Motivated Leads

We have success with landing pages. The more click outs to that, you can take away from it at times on page traffic in general. Like sometimes it’s not good to have a hero menu or something on a landing page. It’s just again, straight form or straight call to action and form. It’s worth testing everything to see how it reacts and how it converts such ads.

00:12:27:03 – 00:12:40:21

Motivated Leads

Chad’s talking about. For anybody listening that doesn’t know what a click out is, if somebody goes to your website, usually have home page about us, things like that, paid traffic, take all those links away so you send them the page. There’s nowhere to go. They either have to fill out the form or leave.

00:12:41:10 – 00:12:58:09

Brady Winder

Right? You want them to capture the lead? Yeah. Yeah. We actually do that with a lot of our pages. Internal care. You’ll notice if you, you know, going to get a resource or official to a webinar or something, we’ll, we will have simplified those, will take it away those options because we want you to be focused on the thing that you should be doing.

00:12:58:12 – 00:13:19:12

Brady Winder

The Internet’s a very noisy place. There’s a million places to go. And so when you’re trying to get a lead, give yourself the best chance of capturing that lead. It’s not time for browsing. Yep. Awesome. Okay, so we talked about forms, we talked about page speed structure, we talked about story. Let’s talk about branding before we’re going to wrap this up in a few minutes.

00:13:19:23 – 00:13:34:09

Brady Winder

Any other spots besides your website you’re paying attention to how to keep your branding consistent because we’re talking about conversion like website conversion. But holistically, if you like, that brand matters can use. Talk about that.

00:13:35:01 – 00:13:57:20

Motivated Leads

Yeah, you want to keep your brand consistent everywhere. So all your social media profiles, your business cards, your email signature, your website, YouTube videos, you want to keep the colors, logos. Look, as you can see, like I were, I’m wearing a yellow shirt, black shirt, like we’re even keep this kind of brand thing going. So keep everything because you want people to see when they see you.

00:13:57:20 – 00:14:32:13

Motivated Leads

Oh yeah, that’s that’s for one two houses or that’s whoever it is versus having a billboard with one logo and one brand and then your website doesn’t match it. You’re losing the connection there. And brand brand isn’t just colors and logo. Like that’s not brand. Brand is tone as well and how people perceive you. So even like tone and font and everything of how that comes off, how that feel, how that look is whether you have you want to be a more direct brand with capitalized font straight to the point type style brand or softer lowercase fonts, really talking in a different way.

00:14:32:19 – 00:14:53:05

Motivated Leads

So you got to, if you establish it one way to always be that way, you shouldn’t go this way and that way because if you come off as a softer brand and then you shout at them through an ad that’s all capitalized and everything, it’s kind of just doesn’t go together. And they look at you different ways and it’s more forgettable versus where if it’s all in the same tone, it’s more memorable.

00:14:53:09 – 00:14:56:08

Motivated Leads

It’s a company that makes me feel like X or makes me feel like this.

00:14:56:17 – 00:15:06:08

Brady Winder

And when you’re saying tone, I’m assuming you’re meaning it’s interesting. I would have thought of that first, your font, your text, but you’re also saying the message, the message itself for it.

00:15:06:19 – 00:15:28:15

Motivated Leads

Yeah, the message itself that you using more direct statement based method messages are you doing sophomore round just like compound sentences saying like, hey, we can help you do X, Y and Z, we’re here to make you do this? Or is it just more of your cash offer today? Or is it, Hey, we’re here to help you get the best value out of your home, whatever it may be.

00:15:28:15 – 00:15:39:04

Motivated Leads

Those are awful examples. But just when you’re talking in that manner, how direct do you want to be? How soft do you want to be? That should be held throughout the whole entire brand, everything that you do.

00:15:40:01 – 00:16:04:12

Brady Winder

Mm hmm. Okay. That makes sense. I feel like, you know, myself and a lot of us would be so much better off to make a dead simple checklist of, like, Hey, I updated my logo are updated. A key part of our messaging are hey, updated this thing. Okay. Website social media. Not even just social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube email signature is usually like email.

00:16:04:12 – 00:16:20:19

Brady Winder

Signature is the thing we all forget. It’s like, Oh crap, You know, they got a logo in there that’s four years old, you know? And it it all adds up. And it makes for this really just like, off inconsistent experience. And so just a simple checklist of update all of these things. So it’s a cohesive look and feel would be probably pretty beneficial.

00:16:21:06 – 00:16:21:18

Motivated Leads

I agree.

00:16:22:08 – 00:16:49:02

Brady Winder

Yeah. Let’s see any I was going to ask Josh we’ll cut of there until I regain my thought. Oh there was. Okay. Okay. So as we started to wrap it up, one other question for you is we kind of touch on this in the first episode, but as far as a a a great company logo, what makes a great logo and how much does it matter.

00:16:50:16 – 00:17:13:13

Motivated Leads

Logo or I don’t know necessarily what makes a great logo, but how much it matters. I think it matters four out of ten like the design of it. I think the message on your website and everything else we’ve been talking about matters way more than the logo because you can get a logo made like our for one two houses logo probably costs five bucks or something like cheap.

00:17:13:15 – 00:17:42:19

Motivated Leads

It’s super simple, but the whole brand behind it and the messaging is what? What I believe matters way more. Yeah. Yeah. And it also like if you think about it as like again what’s your goal? Is this like get leads, get deals, make money, that’s what you want to do. Then like, it doesn’t matter at all if you’re building a whole legit real estate company behind all this and building out long term culture, all of that, then okay, it might make sense to put more thought into that, have some meaning into that logo.

00:17:43:12 – 00:17:59:20

Motivated Leads

But if at the end of the day, like you’re just, Hey, we want leads, we want deals, and that’s what our culture is and we’re just driven like that, then it really doesn’t matter. Yeah, you know what? Yeah, that’s a good point you bring up too. So maybe I’ll take a step back on what I said on a four out of ten.

00:18:00:03 – 00:18:16:08

Motivated Leads

It matters for lead Gen low, but if you’re building a company with a team and like Chad, say culture, it matters a lot then. So there’s two different things. Like you have to keep everything in sync with What is the message you’re putting out to your team on how to behave? A What are core values, things like that.

00:18:16:15 – 00:18:40:11

Motivated Leads

And if your goal is to build a company and make this full time, big time real estate company, it’s fine also to just start with the basics. Start with something cheap, basic as it is, get some deals underneath your belt with that, take some profits, reinvest, build out a whole brand. Then once it starts to get more serious so it’s not something that you should overthink upfront.

00:18:40:11 – 00:18:56:08

Motivated Leads

But as you build and if you’re building culture and internal team, all of that, then you can go more into that. Now, you don’t want the analysis paralysis because you’ll focus on your logo for months and never get to the next stage. So just get the logo, go get deals and then yeah, you can continually refine.

00:18:57:02 – 00:19:18:12

Brady Winder

That’s probably the best piece of advice in this entire month of podcasts, because I know that so many of us can just get stuck in overcomplicated analysis paralysis. You know, I think about the home buying guys, their clients of ours. They’ve been I’m multiple podcasts, but they started out it was simple. We need leads, we need deals. But if you look at them now in the context of like, does a logo matter to them?

00:19:18:12 – 00:19:38:13

Brady Winder

It really does, because they’re building this long term brand. They’re a staple in their community. They’re working with nonprofits, they’re hybrids, so they’re agents as well. So there’s more of a public image that they are displaying. And so it started out really simple, but now they get the home buying guys logo and, you know, the whole website’s branded.

00:19:38:13 – 00:19:54:14

Brady Winder

They got the little characters like of them, you know, animated faces. And it’s a really cool, cohesive look and feel. But it started out like we just need leads in deals. So I guess that’s good context. It does depend on, you know, is this a long term play or is this a just a gig that I’m doing right now, or are you just starting out?

00:19:54:17 – 00:19:55:21

Brady Winder

But start out simple.

00:19:56:03 – 00:20:08:14

Motivated Leads

That’s a great example of brands like we were talking about looking like a bank versus local, like the home buying guys they make you. It just feels like, yeah, I’d want to I want to see what these guys are doing versus X, Y, Z Corp franchise.

00:20:08:23 – 00:20:29:13

Brady Winder

You know? Yeah, it’s, it’s a fun brand, which is I mean, we could go all day on the sort of stuff, but and we won’t. But it’s, you know, I think that’s something you need to decide. Like Chad mentioned, your brand isn’t your colors and your logos. It’s that tone. And so you got to decide, am I is the company me or is the company something else?

00:20:29:13 – 00:20:51:13

Brady Winder

Is it fun? Is it serious? Is it aggressive? You know, I assume that it matters what your market cares about. What does your market expect? So we’re about at time here. Anything else you want to add on design and conversion? What’s the the one magic secret everybody needs to know to get a million leads and make sure their website converts better than anything else?

00:20:52:04 – 00:21:03:11

Motivated Leads

That’s it. Do it like anybody focusing on this stuff, get your website live and start sending traffic to it first. And always be testing, always test no matter what you do and make sure you measure those tests.

00:21:05:02 – 00:21:24:03

Brady Winder

Always be testing, always be closing. They say for sales, always be testing for marketing. That’s true. Always be testing. Always be testing is your website. Well, thank you guys so much for hopping on. It’s been a pleasure. It’s always, you know, I say, hey, we’re going to keep it short. We’re going to keep it 20 minutes. There’s always like a million directions we could go because you guys are just full of so much knowledge and value.

00:21:24:03 – 00:21:26:21

Brady Winder

So I appreciate you sharing for sure you happen on the podcast.

00:21:27:03 – 00:21:29:19

Motivated Leads

Hey, thanks for having us. Definitely. Brady, appreciate you, too.

00:21:30:10 – 00:21:46:21

Brady Winder

Absolutely. All right. Well, if you guys want to work with Brian and Chad, go to Marketplace Dot Care.com and look for motivator leads or just Google and motivator leads and you can work with them if you’re looking for more of a done with the option, want to get more involved with the care team, go to care.com, slash authority, check out our thought leader plan.

00:21:47:19 – 00:22:22:12

Brady Winder

And also don’t forget to go to care.com slash convert. If you really want to dive deep into design and conversion and look at all the other content we have so you can optimize your website faster and easier. That’s all we have for today. Thanks for joining us and we will see you all next week.

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:24:14

Bryan Sekine

With the increase of different types of devices that can be used to access the Internet. I think that has really changed the landscape of SEO. So before it was just desktops. Now it’s desktops and phones. Soon it’s going to be desktops, phones, smartwatches, heads up, display glasses, you name it, you can ask. You can even use voice commands now. So you can search for things on Alexa or Siri or the Google assistant.

And so I think that that has really shaped how Google does SEO in terms of understanding the context of the question and finding the best possible answer.

00:00:42:14 – 00:01:03:11

Brady Winder

Hey, friends, welcome back to the Carrotcast Podcast. I’m your host, Brady Winder, and this is a podcast where we help investors and agents like yourself dial in their online marketing so that you can build businesses of freedom and impact. I’ve got the pleasure of introducing to you today, Bryan, from the Carrot team. Our new search engine optimization specialist is at the title.

00:01:03:22 – 00:01:04:14

Bryan Sekine

Yes, it is.

00:01:04:21 – 00:01:06:14

Brady Winder

Welcome to the podcast, man. How you doin?

00:01:06:22 – 00:01:12:07

Bryan Sekine

I’m doing great. I’m excited to be here and I’m super stoked to get everyone more on the SEO bandwagon.

00:01:12:21 – 00:01:37:01

Brady Winder

Absolutely, man. This is going to be a good podcast. I’m really excited about this one because it is SEO month at Carrot. So this is our first podcast of the month. And if you’ve been following us for any amount of time, you know, the SEO is Carrot’s bread and butter. This is what helps us become Carrot. For years we’ve been helping investors and agents all over the country, you know, rank higher in Google so they can get more motivated leads and build trust, build credibility, build authority with people.

And so we’ve done a lot of content on Real Estate Investor SEO. So how is this one going to be different? So the thing I want to cover in this is we’re going to try to give you a 10,000 foot view of SEO and simplify what is a very daunting thing, and we’re just going to simplify it and give you actionable steps on where to get started.

If you’re just starting out with your SEO, especially being, you know, New Year first January, it’s a great time to start building your SEO as these things are very much worth it, but they take time. And so we’re going to give you some actual steps to get started, but really help you understand why and how SEO works so well.

00:02:13:01 – 00:02:35:07

Brady Winder

If you’re looking for the more tactical like courses keyword research and you want to get nerdy and dive into these topics with us, go to Carrot.com/SEO and you can get those more tactical resources linked up on that page. But yeah, we’ll kick it off and we’re going have a good conversation and yeah.

00:02:35:07 – 00:02:42:15

Brady Winder

Bryan So break down SEO for us. And in simple terms, for people who might not understand.

00:02:43:22 – 00:03:14:02

Bryan Sekine

Sure. So the core principle behind SEO or search engine optimization is that we want to optimize the content that you’re publishing to the website to satisfy the question that someone is asking. So that can be done in a number of different ways. You can do it through written texts like a blog post or an article. You could do it through video, could do it through a podcast, and the response to what ranks well, it changes for every different question that’s asked.

00:03:14:09 – 00:03:36:00

Bryan Sekine

So sometimes things are asked and the best response would be an image. Or this shows a whole bunch of images. Other times it may be a full 3000 word blog post that just covers. It’s a comprehensive guide for whatever the issue is. But at the end of the day, the most important thing that Google is looking for is the best possible answer for the questions being asked.

00:03:36:14 – 00:03:50:13

Brady Winder

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it it’s interesting because we’ve seen some shifts in Google, even more so in recent months, right. Reflecting this like what it used to just be all posts and pages, Right. How has that changed over the years.

00:03:50:19 – 00:04:14:12

Bryan Sekine

With the increase of different types of devices that can be used to access the Internet? I think that has really changed the landscape of SEO. So before it was just desktops, now it’s desktops and phones. Soon as we meet desktops, phones, smartwatches, heads up, display glasses, you know, you name it, you can even use voice commands now, so you can search for things on Alexa or Siri or the Google assistant.

00:04:14:20 – 00:04:25:12

Bryan Sekine

And so I think that that has really shaped how Google does SEO in terms of understanding the content of the question and finding the best possible answer.

00:04:26:21 – 00:04:48:21

Brady Winder

Okay, that makes sense. So we know that one of the things we’ve seen recently is kind of hard to quantify, maybe can explain this better is that Google has been it’s gotten harder to gamify it. They’ve been putting out updates over the last couple of years that have made it a little bit more natural, a little more human, most notably the helpful content update.

00:04:49:05 – 00:05:04:23

Brady Winder

I bring this up because I think there’s this misconception that people think, Well, I have to be really good at SEO or I have to be really tech savvy in order to get my website to rank. You tell us kind of how that’s shifting and kind of address that, that thought, that misconception.

00:05:06:01 – 00:05:28:12

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. So about ten years ago it was a lot easier to game the system or to just trick Google’s algorithms into thinking that your content was the best, either through putting a bunch of texts on your website that no one can see but that this Google search engine crawlers could find or doing things like buying hundreds of backlinks that point to one page.

00:05:29:06 – 00:05:51:16

Bryan Sekine

Neither of those tactics work anymore, and Google has been putting a lot of money into making sure that people cannot game their system, so to speak. So while that has made some things more difficult, the much easier approach to it is to just simply give the best response to the question and I’m going to say that a lot in this episode.

00:05:51:16 – 00:06:14:15

Bryan Sekine

I apologize if it sounds all redundant, but it’s honest. So if you have a if you have a keyword or question that you want to ask, what you should do is just open up an incognito browser and type in that search result or type in the question and study the search results. So whatever is on the top page I’m sorry, the top ten rankings for the search results, that’s exactly what Google wants to see.

00:06:15:00 – 00:06:38:18

Bryan Sekine

So let’s say you’re an investor and you want to, you know, rank number one for the keyword. So my house fashion fast, Miami, Florida. So I do type that in. Look at what ranks number one through ten and then just fine, add that positions or find the areas where you could do better, right? What areas where you have a better response, where you’re more knowledgeable, where you can be more local with it.

00:06:39:01 – 00:06:59:00

Bryan Sekine

And that’s really all there is to it there. You can get a lot more technical than that and you can try different tactics in different strategies, but at the end of the day, that’s what all of the, you know, career CEOs are doing is we’re looking at what the ranking on the first page. We’re assessing what our competitors are doing, and then we are outdoing them in certain areas.

00:06:59:00 – 00:07:30:17

Bryan Sekine

And so sometimes that can be image, sometimes the boss, sometimes the blog post, sometimes it’s an FAA cue. So it really depends on, you know, the particular phrase, the question. But really, like Google has been shifting more and more towards just making sure that the results that they display are answering the question. The best possible way. And so when you keep that kind of the forefront of your mind, I think it becomes a lot easier to explain SEO and to build your own SEO strategy around the keywords that you want to rank for.

00:07:31:08 – 00:07:49:08

Brady Winder

Hmm. I love that. I feel like we could just end the podcast right there and it would be enough value because it’s, it’s, you know, and I love the way that Google is, I love the direction that Google is heading with with this too, because it it should be encouraging for investors and agents because investors and agents are experts.

00:07:49:08 – 00:08:06:09

Brady Winder

If they’re doing their job well, they’re experts in their field. And so they should be able to help someone selling a house regardless of what scenario they’re in financially. And so your content should reflect that. I say that because people can it’s really easy to overcomplicate SEO and like, Oh, what do I what do I write about? I’ve been told I need to do videos.

00:08:06:09 – 00:08:15:01

Brady Winder

What do I do videos on as well? All the scenarios you’re talking about with people on a daily basis, the problems that you’re solving, that’s your that’s your content.

00:08:15:08 – 00:08:17:06

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, exactly.

00:08:17:06 – 00:08:43:06

Brady Winder

And so we know that, you know, we’re not we have a lot of care members ranking in Google for phrases like, you know, sell my house fast. Miami, Florida, how to sell my house fast for cash, things like that, to get those motivated seller leads and the top of Google. And that’s what we’re known for. But before we hit record on the podcast, you were talking about there’s some other use cases for or some other benefits to SEO that people might not be thinking of.

00:08:43:10 – 00:08:44:04

Brady Winder

Tell me about that.

00:08:45:09 – 00:09:11:19

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, definitely. So about a week ago there was an interview with the VP of Search at Google, and he’s a very notoriously mysterious person that doesn’t do a lot of PR, and he let something slip that I think is going to rattle the CEO industry moving forward. And it was that they use the acronym IATI for every single question and every single search result that they display.

00:09:12:09 – 00:09:35:05

Bryan Sekine

And this is huge since IATI stands for expertise, authority and trust. And so what they’re doing is basically making sure that the people that are on page one are that, you know, show you all the results that you see every time you Google something that those people are qualified to talk on the subject and that the answer that they’re delivering is complete.

00:09:35:05 – 00:09:59:21

Bryan Sekine

And so the reason why this is big is because this can change how you create your content. This can change who climbs up the ranks and stays at the top. So it’s not like, you know, these search terms can only be nominated by huge companies. You don’t see Keller William agents just like killin every single, you know, real estate search term, right?

00:10:00:04 – 00:10:23:18

Bryan Sekine

And so it gives people who are the underdogs the opportunity to get to those high places. But also it changes the I think, the ideology behind the content that you create. So most people think when they think of like an SEO lead, they think of someone who is highly qualified, who’s a hotly they’re ready to buy or sell today, and so they land on your website.

00:10:23:18 – 00:10:45:14

Bryan Sekine

They click the button, they call you, they sign up for an email form or something like that. But what most people don’t think about and the sort of side benefit is that when you create content that is optimized for search engines, you are establishing a way of building that rapport with each visitor and you’re able to sort of put them through a nurture sequence or to guide them along the process.

00:10:45:22 – 00:11:09:09

Bryan Sekine

And, you know, a lot of marketers will say like it takes, you know, seven touchpoints with a customer before they buy something. Well, when you talk about something that’s such a high dollar amount, like buying or selling a property, I think that number goes way, way up. And so when you do something like PPC, you may be more laser focused to the people that are ready to buy or sell today or this week or this month.

00:11:09:18 – 00:11:27:20

Bryan Sekine

But what it doesn’t do is allow you to sort of nurture that lead until they are ready to buy. So let’s say you have someone who just found out they had a house and they have no idea what to do with it. They don’t know, you know, what paperwork they need to do or if they need permits or how to sell, you know, how to find a realtor or whatever.

00:11:28:13 – 00:11:52:13

Bryan Sekine

And so you have the opportunity to create content that is search engine advice that will say, hey, here’s the first stuff to do. Here’s your checklist on how to sell this property. And so when you’re the one that’s providing this information, then users will bookmark your page, will share it with a friend. They’ll come back to your website later on to learn more information about the process, because it’s probably going to be too technical and to lengthy to get it all into one post or one page.

00:11:53:03 – 00:12:09:03

Bryan Sekine

And so what my recommendation is for people that are sort of like on the fence as to why they should do SEO in the first place, especially since it’s such a long term play and the answer is that you’re you’re building up your authority and your trustworthiness and your expertise with people that come to your website every day.

00:12:09:10 – 00:12:31:16

Bryan Sekine

And that happens whether you’re awake, whether you’re asleep and it’s exponential. So if you write a blog post that is helpful for someone today, but you posted it ten years ago, if it’s evergreen, it’s still relevant and it’s still helpful and it’s still benefiting your website. And so, you know, you may not even need to be spending as much money on PPC, but you’ll still be reaping the benefits of SEO like years and years to come.

00:12:31:16 – 00:13:00:02

Brady Winder

Yeah, Yeah. Thanks for the explanation. You know, it reminds me of what we were talking about. I think we’re earlier this week. We’re talking about the eat acronym you shared, you know, from the Google exec and that trust for that trustworthiness. And I’ve seen this firsthand with content that we’ve put out on YouTube and that other channels have put out on YouTube is where you can almost reap the benefits of SEO without doing any SEO.

00:13:00:02 – 00:13:24:06

Brady Winder

And what I mean is that, you know, you know, we’re talking about the instance of a YouTube channel with a contractor and he releases a video on, you know, how to use a skill saw or something. And YouTube sees that and it’s like only the title was not SEO optimized was not only keywords, didn’t put a lot of thought into it, but he’s seen in YouTube’s eyes as trustworthy on that topic.

00:13:24:06 – 00:13:37:09

Brady Winder

People come to him to a topic, they stay engaged and it’s the same. What basically you’re saying it’s the same thing with your website. If people are coming to your website for that to learn about these topics, how to sell their house fast, or if you’re the local expert, the local guide, and they’re coming to your website, they’re reading your content.

00:13:37:19 – 00:13:44:08

Brady Winder

Google will recognize that reward you for and say, Hey, this person is the expert in Miami, Florida. We’re going to put you in front of more people.

00:13:44:22 – 00:13:46:10

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, and it’s hundred percent huge.

00:13:46:23 – 00:14:13:08

Brady Winder

Yeah. Awesome. So one thing I want to touch on real quick is intent. Can you share with me like why having the right intent without getting again, anybody listening watching If you wanna learn about keyword research, CARICOM, search, SCA we have other resources for that. But why does intent matter and how does this change your view when you’re doing your keyword research and you’re thinking about what to write about?

00:14:13:23 – 00:14:38:17

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, absolutely. So when we say intent, what we mean is when you’re doing research, different keywords categorize in different ways. So you could have an information gathering intent, you could have a transactional intent, or you can have like a purchasing intent. And so a transactional intent is basically just like you are looking to achieve something to in order to take the next step versus a like purchase.

00:14:38:17 – 00:15:17:12

Bryan Sekine

Intent is like going to Amazon, for example. So every keyword has its own intent and it’s really important to kind of test that intent before deciding to target that keyword because sometimes it’s not clear what that intent could be. Prime example is carrot. So if you type in carrier into Google, what you’re going to see is a bunch of images of carrots in different shapes and colors, and then you’re going to see a couple of like people also ask her an ethical box that talks about things like the nutritional value of carrots, the caloric value of carrots, like whether or not the beta carotene turns your nose orange.

00:15:17:22 – 00:15:55:08

Bryan Sekine

But what they’re not looking for is for our company. So it’s important for us to know that we should not be spending tons and tons of time and money and energy trying to rank for the keyword carrot because everyone searching for that term is looking for the vegetable. They’re not looking for the real estate company. So I think it’s important before you sort of like starting your SEO journey to know to just check the keywords again through Incognito browser or a private browser and just just check to see if what you are targeting matches with the kind of content that you’re going to publish for it.

00:15:55:19 – 00:16:20:17

Bryan Sekine

So a lot of times, especially nowadays with the sudden rise in online purchasing and e-commerce, a lot of things are by requests or their transactional quests versus, you know, sometimes it may be clear that it’s like an information gathering, like they’re just looking for reviews or comparisons. So for me, intent is probably the most important first step for keyword research specifically.

00:16:21:01 – 00:16:30:19

Bryan Sekine

So just make sure that you Google the keyword you’re targeting and make sure that what pops up on the first page matches with what you want published to rank for that keyword.

00:16:31:19 – 00:16:54:15

Brady Winder

Okay, I like that. So a recap, just be don’t, don’t make assumptions. Don’t make blind assumptions. Right? Look at it and make sure it’s the content that you want to put out. Awesome. So let’s dive into a little bit, just a a little bit of like next steps, what people can focus on if they’re just getting started with SEO and will keep it at a high level for people and then we’ll wrap it up.

00:16:54:15 – 00:17:11:10

Brady Winder

We’re talking about, you know, what are some other things may be coming down the pipeline for SEO, but so I just signed up for Carrot and I’ve been told I need to do SEO. It’s daunting. I have all these tips, I have all this information in my disposal. What do I work on first?

00:17:12:09 – 00:17:31:14

Bryan Sekine

Well, first, there’s a 1000 step checklist. No kidding. Now, so first, I would always say focus on the home page. The home page is going to be your most important page. That’s the one that most of your backlinks, the only pointing to that’s the one is going to rank for the most keywords, typically speaking. And that’s the one that people are going to hit first.

00:17:31:23 – 00:17:50:09

Bryan Sekine

So I would say make sure that your home page is squared away. Make sure you’ve got enough text on there, plenty of images. Make sure it’s linking to the other pages on your website and then make sure that your home page is a location page either for the city or state that you that is in your market and then make sure that it has the right keyword.

00:17:50:21 – 00:18:13:10

Bryan Sekine

So I would say start there and then work towards building out location pages. So for local SEO, location pages is really, really important because this is how to tell Google, Hey, these are different areas that I’m doing business in. So maybe some investors are working in just a few cities. Maybe an investor is working on multiple counties or even multiple states.

00:18:13:10 – 00:18:36:19

Bryan Sekine

So if you’re working in multiple states, you can say something like, This is my Florida page, this is my Georgia page, this is my Virginia page. And then on those pages you will link out to your more city specific location pages. So that way you’re telling Google and you show in the URL like this domain dot com forward slash state forward slash city forward, slash, whatever.

00:18:38:05 – 00:19:00:09

Bryan Sekine

So that way you are painting a clear picture of not just your brand and your business on the home page, but also the areas that your business operates in. And if you have Google, my business profiles or just Google business profiles now, I would make one for each of the city location pages that you have and then linking to that.

00:19:00:22 – 00:19:17:21

Bryan Sekine

So that’s kind of and that can that sounds more technical than it is. So what I recommend is if you’re if you just got your carrot’s site and you’re just getting started, focus on one location page. So it can be the state page can be the city page, but just, just start there and then make sure that’s set up.

00:19:18:18 – 00:19:39:07

Bryan Sekine

Then after that, I would focus on doing the automated blog posts. So the automated content library that we have at Carrot is immensely beneficial for SEO because it takes care of 80% of the work. So a lot of people say like there’s this 8020 rule, right? So do the 20% thing that that yields 80% results. And for carrot, this is it.

00:19:39:12 – 00:20:13:08

Bryan Sekine

So the automated content library, it’s not a like one touch solution for your SEO. You don’t just like hit publish and then let alone it’s more like a template that is ready to be personalized so you can change some content about it. In fact, you should. So that way you don’t get dinged with negative duplicate content, which is something that happens if you are just copying and pasting content from someone else’s website and putting on your own, you won’t get any benefit from that because Google’s already aware that this other website already has that info.

00:20:13:15 – 00:20:26:18

Bryan Sekine

So make sure you customize your automated content library posts and then take those blog posts and link them to the location pages or landing pages that you you’re using to either capture the lead or to close the deal.

00:20:27:15 – 00:20:46:18

Brady Winder

So when you say I want to pause real quick, when you say links to what you’re mean is when you’re when you’re writing, when you’re modifying this post that we’ve given you. So it gives you 1224 whatever blog post pick which ones are most applicable to you. Go and modify it, make it unique, make it personal, and then put in the URL to the other related blog posts.

00:20:47:14 – 00:21:10:19

Bryan Sekine

Yes. Okay. So there’s a few different ways you can link to another post, but my preferred method for SEO purposes is to highlight a word or a phrase and then create the link out of that. So this is called anchor text and typically speaking, you want your anchor text to be closely related to, if not a direct match to the destination that you’re linking to.

00:21:11:09 – 00:21:34:20

Bryan Sekine

So let’s say, for example, you have one about selling your house fast in Miami, Florida in the winter. And so you would link some miles fast to Miami, Florida, to your location page as that’s that’s your link. That’s your anchor text points to that. And the whole reason why you want to do this is to create something called topic clusters.

00:21:35:10 – 00:21:57:19

Bryan Sekine

So the idea here is that if you want a page like a location page or landing page to rank high, you need to have at least five supporting pieces of content that help lift that page up on the rankings. So you’re telling Google very clearly, like this is my topic and here are the five subcategories or sub topics that support that.

00:21:57:19 – 00:22:21:16

Bryan Sekine

This is super important and most people on the Internet that make their own websites probably don’t do this very well. So if you want like the secret sauce, this is probably it. It’s not as clearly visible to most people who don’t have the expensive SEO tools. But if you’re just getting started and you can keep track of your pages and where you’re linking things to something that can set you above the crowd.

00:22:21:23 – 00:22:50:06

Bryan Sekine

So make sure you’re linking your blog posts to the supporting page. Make sure that you get at least five for every topic that you want to cover. So if you’re doing things like Sell my house fast mix, you got five blog posts. If you’re doing something for, you know, foreclosure houses, five supporting blog posts. And then once that’s done, you’re creating these topic clusters and you’re telling Google, like, here’s my website, and these are the categories that I am the expert in, So you should show these results to anyone that asks about this high level category.

00:22:51:09 – 00:23:13:23

Brady Winder

MM Yeah, that, that really simplifies, you know, how people are picking their content too because we have these automated Yes. Blog posts. I think automate is a misnomer. Maybe we change that, maybe we don’t. But you know, people will look at it and say, how am I going to pick, you know, all these different blog posts? But what you’re saying is have those those clusters, as Google calls them, have those topics, those buckets, and pick ones from those.

00:23:13:23 – 00:23:17:02

Brady Winder

So you could be seen as the expert in those multiple areas, is that right?

00:23:17:14 – 00:23:45:00

Bryan Sekine

Yes, absolutely. And normally, writing five blog posts to support one landing page is a huge undertaking, right? Most people are not great at writing. Most people not like. Yeah, I I’d love to write a 1000 word essay, so to speak, on why someone should do this. And that’s the real benefit that care provides. Like these blog posts are already written, they’re already optimized, they’re written by real people and not A.I., and they are topically relevant.

00:23:45:07 – 00:24:08:23

Bryan Sekine

So these are categories that you will actually get value out of and that your readers will get you out of as well. And so we take care of 95% of the legwork on these blog posts, and you just go in and you change some information, you make it personal, you add like, I don’t know, neighborhoods or districts in the area that you operate in, and then you publish those and that’s all it takes.

00:24:09:06 – 00:24:23:11

Bryan Sekine

And so we’re doing the overwhelming majority of that. And once you get two or three these of clusters going, now you have enough content on your website for Google to really start picking you up and take you more seriously as an authority in that niche.

00:24:23:21 – 00:24:39:16

Brady Winder

Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. I love the way you explain that. You know, the only context I would add is that, you know, when we’re talking about automated content, it’s like part of this is going to depend on what market you’re in, how competitive is, how many other people are trying to rank on page one of Google.

00:24:41:03 – 00:25:03:19

Brady Winder

So the ideal for content is 100% unique, long thought out, well developed responses on the things that you’re an expert in, like we’re talking about earlier in the podcast. So what that would look like is maybe I’m recording a video on how to sell your home fast and all the things you might be considering. Then I’m taking that video using our video post tool, transcribing it.

00:25:03:20 – 00:25:30:02

Brady Winder

Turn into a post and then, you know, wordsmithing it, edit it so it reads well. So it’s grammatically correct. And then, you know, it’s 100% unique and nobody else has that. That’s the ideal. But we have the automated blank voice because we recognize that not everybody has time for that. But I say that for context. If you’re in a really competitive market, it’s going to take a little bit more customization, might take a little bit more work to outrank other people.

00:25:30:02 – 00:25:30:15

Brady Winder

Is that true?

00:25:31:12 – 00:25:33:07

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:33:07 – 00:25:33:15

Brady Winder

Yeah.

00:25:34:10 – 00:25:52:17

Bryan Sekine

I think it’s also worth noting that the results that you receive will take anywhere from three months up to 12 months. I would say the fastest is probably going to be three months. So it’s not something where you’re going to publish a bunch of blog posts and then in the next week you’re going to, you know, be ranked number two, right?

00:25:52:17 – 00:25:54:03

Bryan Sekine

So it’s it’s going to take some time.

00:25:55:00 – 00:26:25:11

Brady Winder

Yeah, absolutely. You know, Trevor calls it the DCO ranking Sprout and we’ll link up in the show notes. And on Care.com and Kirkham slash SEO, another podcast we did with Andy Carlos. Three things you need to know about Real Estate Investor SEO, where we talk about like timeline and expectations. But yeah, 3 to 12 months, like Bryan said, you can pop somewhere around the three month markets, typically around six and then you might even once you do hit page one, it’s going to be a slower climb to get to four, three, two, one.

00:26:26:16 – 00:26:45:06

Brady Winder

And then in that podcast as well, we also talk about what you can typically expect for leads depending on your market size. But yeah, like Bryan said, it’s a long term game and so it’s this is it’s worth it. You know, these are you talk to anyone that’s generating leads through KERA they’re the they’re the hottest leads are the best leads.

00:26:45:13 – 00:27:03:22

Brady Winder

But that’s the difference in evergreen marketing that you build over time versus the hamster wheel market that you have to keep on doing. So if you’re new to care, all we recommend is start building your evergreen while supplementing with some of the paid marketing like you can supplement with pay per click marketing that’s getting those hotter leads like Bryan mentioned.

00:27:03:22 – 00:27:08:21

Brady Winder

But start of the year, just start building that. Start building out. Yes. You hear Evergreen marketing?

00:27:09:08 – 00:27:10:14

Bryan Sekine

Absolutely.

00:27:10:14 – 00:27:33:20

Brady Winder

Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask you, Bryan, is, you know, I built a website, I’ve built custom websites, I’ve built a website on Carrot and I’m creative. I love going in there and spending hours and days. And I’m sure 90% of people listening to this can relate to me. I love going in there and tweaking all of the things that probably don’t matter all that much.

You know, I could spend 3 hours on colors and is this right image? And I just I labor over it, you know. And so my my question is, at what point do you move on? So, like, how much should you be optimizing? Like we don’t get your domain linked up, get your logo up there, you know, pick a couple of colors in that.

00:27:57:20 – 00:28:13:22

Brady Winder

But like at what point do you stop optimizing and dialing in your homepage and move on to your location pages? And I mean, it could be the same question for every part of it, like Google my business, like how far do I go on everyone to reap the most benefits? Like where’s that? Where’s that balance?

00:28:14:22 – 00:28:45:05

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. My, my gut instinct is to say launch with your minimum viable product, like whatever is going to be the absolute minimum they can do. Go ahead and do that and then work on the next step. Because as you go on in your journey with your website, with your SEO and even with their business, like there’s there’s so many opportunities to go back and to update, to optimize change things and things are constantly changing anyway.

So you may spend 6 hours laboring over just your homepage and in a month Google’s come out the new ranking algorithm update and it’s just going to totally rock everything and you got to go back and make changes anyway. So what I would say is like, don’t spend so much time just nit picking every fine detail unless you have a team that is already trained up and knows what to do.

Like there are exceptions for big companies and stuff, right? But I would say for the average investor, the average agent just focus on getting the minimum viable product out there and then come back and update and maybe set something on a calendar. It’s like, hey, every three months, come back, tweak some things, see, see what changes, and then move on to the next part.

Because Real Estate Investor SEO and building a website and building a business is so complicated and so intricate that you really could waste a ton of time in the weeds and just completely miss huge opportunities in other areas of your business or especially other areas of your website. So like example for local SEO, you know, doing on page optimization, tweaking the colors, the headlines, the keyword focuses, the word count, the backlinks, like all of that is maybe only a third of the importance of local SEO.

00:29:58:06 – 00:30:28:01

Bryan Sekine

So then you have the whole like back linking and local citations and go my business and those things are just as important. So they, they deserve just as much time to focus on and to critique. And so I would just say minimum viable product and move on to the next thing and then create a rotation. So that way you’re constantly checking back and updating things and keeping your content fresh, keeping your website updated, keeping your Google, my business updated and that sort of system in my experience as works the best.

00:30:28:17 – 00:30:48:03

Brady Winder

Hmm. Yeah. So anybody listening, you just got full permission to stop trying to make it perfect because it doesn’t matter. Get it, go and get your MVP and then come back to it. It correct me if you already mention this, but do we talk about Google my business that that review threshold would be important to know?

00:30:48:14 – 00:31:14:10

Bryan Sekine

Not yet. Not yet. But this is hot off the press. We have also discovered that Google has set a minimum threshold for the number of reviews that they want to see on your Google business profile before you start getting a significant boost in local searches. So the good news is that the the number is only ten. So you need to get ten reviews on your Google business profile.

00:31:14:15 – 00:31:40:03

Bryan Sekine

And from there, you should see a noticeable uptick in local keyword rankings, local search traffic coming in through your Google business profile, higher search results in the map packs. If you’re using Google Maps or if it’s just a local search in general. So map packs show up in Google. Search results all the time. But the bad news is that there is a very quick diminishing return on the investment past ten.

00:31:40:11 – 00:32:02:00

Bryan Sekine

So you don’t need to build up 100 reviews or 40 reviews, but you do need to get at least ten of them. And so this is a case study that we did accurate, and the results that we saw were phenomenal and they were fast. But the speed in which we got the results was probably influenced by the amount of SEO that we do across our whole website, both on page and off page.

00:32:02:06 – 00:32:22:01

Bryan Sekine

And so I don’t want to promise results to members, listeners at the same speed that we receive them, because there are probably a lot of other contributing factors. But ten reviews on a Google business profile is significant and it’s worth doing. So if you’ve got ten previous clients, just hit them up for review. Tell them it needs to be as honest as possible.

00:32:22:06 – 00:32:45:14

Bryan Sekine

It doesn’t matter if it’s a three star, one star, five star. I mean, obviously it’d be better to get more five stars than one or three stars. But Google’s not looking for a perfect score. In fact, they’re looking for average of 4.8 stars on all reviews. So just get ten reviews. And then once that’s done, you can pretty much let your best profile costs and you can collect reviews passively, you know, after that point.

00:32:45:21 – 00:32:51:22

Bryan Sekine

But just hustle hard to get that first ten and then watch as your keywords just start climbing the ranks.

00:32:52:09 – 00:33:19:18

Brady Winder

MM Yeah. So a quick note on reviews, It’s, it’s funny because like this is, this is really good news for anyone in a really small, even mid-sized market because Google, my business is still really low hanging fruit and a lot of people just don’t try, you know? Right. I’m in Roseburg, Oregon, a town of 30,000 people. I look up plumbers in Roseburg, Oregon, and I’m probably going to find, you know, a guy with zero reviews and not even a phone number.

00:33:19:18 – 00:33:41:07

Brady Winder

The next guy’s got three in the next Folmer has, you know, maybe five, 20 reviews, whatever. But it’s usually not really hard to cross that ten threshold and then to get on top he had mentioned is diminishing returns past the ten. That’s true. There’s also benefit to, you know, when someone’s looking it’s just you shop the same way on Amazon.

00:33:41:07 – 00:33:55:15

Brady Winder

We’re not Amazon. It’s like okay, which one has the massive amount of reviews? Like, is there one that stands out? It’s like, okay, these people at 520, this one’s got 57 five star reviews, okay? So they don’t even need to read any information. I’m calling them, you know, hit the call button.

00:33:55:15 – 00:33:56:19

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, exactly.

00:33:57:12 – 00:34:19:10

Brady Winder

Yeah, that’s wild. Yeah. And anybody that struggles with getting reviews. This is a question we get all the time. Like, how do I get more reviews? I think it’s really easily over. Complicated. A couple quick things you could do is I like to, you know, have coffee cards, like coffee gift cards with you. So, like, if you’ve just done a deal, give people a gift.

00:34:19:10 – 00:34:40:19

Brady Winder

Don’t say I like to reverse it. Most people say, hey, leave us a review and we’re going to send you a free gift. I think, to give people that gift, say, hey, here’s this. Thanks for doing business with me. I would really appreciate it if you left or if you left us a review. It really helps us out and helps other people that are in your shoes, that are going through what you’ve gone through because you’re telling them the value that they’re going to provide.

So there’s meaning behind that. It’s not it’s not help us with a review is saying, Hey, would you mind sharing your experience so that other people can hear about this and then just give them that gift and leave it at their you know, the the most you have to lose is a $5 coffee card.

So that’s one you could also automate it. A lot of people listening probably have follow up sequences built in the email. You can automate it and just send out a Google link. Go my business review link after you do the deal. But I like to just, you know, get that link from your Google my business profile and just text it to them so it’s easy.

Just make it as easy as possible for them. And also one last note on Google my business. This is the if you’re listening, this one, it’s coming out. This is the beginning of January. Later this month, we’re actually putting out a video on Google My Business, where we get a little bit more tactical on what to do and things you can optimize so you can get your good members profile to rank.

So check that out on testcarrot.xyz/SEO or on our YouTube channel. Anyways, I know we’ve been going for a while. We’re about out of time. Is there anything, Bryan, you want to mention as far as like SEO, where it’s headed, what might be changing, what people need to look out for?

00:36:01:04 – 00:36:07:10

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, so this is a topic I could probably talk about for a another hour. So I’ve try to avoid getting too into the weeds.

00:36:07:10 – 00:36:07:19

Brady Winder

Three hours. So let’s go!

00:36:10:18 – 00:36:39:22

Bryan Sekine

Right. So I think this first started when Google announced that they’re changing their Google Analytics and they’re doing away with what’s called cookies. And these are just like in invisible little Internet browser pieces of code that follow you around from one website to another. For those who are watching or listening that aren’t aware. And that was for probably almost 20 years the tried and true method of gaining data on people that visit your website.

00:36:40:17 – 00:36:59:21

Bryan Sekine

So Google sort of that completely out the window. And that shocked a lot of people, especially people in the UK, like it became a data security issue. And Google said, okay, fine, we’ll just throw it away. And everyone was just like, Wait, what? But one of the important things that I think most people didn’t consider at the time is that cookies are device specific.

So if you’re Googling something on your phone and then you want to send it to your computer, Google is putting more money into figuring out how to make that work. And so like follow the customer journey from two or more different devices. So let’s say use Alexa to ask a question about, you know, maybe or like adding some to a shopping list and then, you know, Google picks it up and that data carries with you over to your phone and then it picks up location data when you’re in the store and says, hey, don’t forget to buy this thing.

And stuff like that starts becoming more and more, especially with the Internet of Things, so to speak. So you have refrigerators and TVs and gaming consoles and smartwatches and everything that connects to the cloud. Everything shares data back and forth. So Google is investing tons and tons of time and money and resources into figuring out how to make that happen the most seamless way possible.

Now, good news is, is that that’s super convenient for us. It’s more secure and in terms of like your online identity, but it’s vastly different than how it’s built now. So my educated opinion and guess on this is that Google is going to lean way more towards an entity based search engine optimization versus a keyword based so up until now, I guess for the past 30 years or so, everything has been basically a keyword.

And so when you have certain keywords, it only pulls results for that country and for that language. But Google is national company and they are looking at the bigger picture. So if we’re doing 10,000 views on a CEO today, they’re talking about 1 million views. And so they’re like, okay, well, the keyword is going to be different contextually depending on the language.

And it’s also going to be different depending on the dialect, different depending on which country that you’re in. So you may use the same word in six different languages, in five different countries, but they all mean something different. So what they’re looking at is the semantic meaning behind the search. So people on the Internet start to call this semantic SEO.

And a lot of times they are sort of diluting that down to something called entity SEO. So you can already see evidence of entities that are being used in Google already, if you look at Google images. So let’s say you type in a keyword there on the image tag and you’ll see at the very top there’s these little like ovals and they’ll say something like real estate company or RE/MAX or Keller Williams or whatever, and it’s a bunch of what kind of looks like search suggestions.

But what these are are entities, and it’s essentially a collection of information about a person, place thing or a concept that Google tracking and adding to as people search for different questions. So one of the like common stats though not there is like 60% of all Google queries are brand new because people are typing in, you know, ten word search phrases or they’re typing in a bunch of weird variations that Google’s never seen before.

And so they are kind of tired of having to, like, sift through all of this to figure out what people mean and entities. Another solution to that problem. So they’re saying, okay, if you have a question, that’s something like like US President. Right. So the the intent, the search intent behind that could be a whole slew of different things, like who was the current U.S. president?

Who has been the president in the past. You know what political party is president belong to things like that. And so you can glean a lot of different information or a lot of different context from that one keyword. And so Google’s trying to find a way to provide, again, the most helpful answer depending on the context of that keyword.

00:40:55:16 – 00:41:20:21

Bryan Sekine

And that was probably not a great example that I use because it’s it can be a little bit vague, but it works in a way that the current SEO landscape cannot satisfy. So if you’re typing something and like let’s say it’s it’s a French word, you know, like let’s say you’re typing in baguette, so baguette may mean something totally different or how it may have a different search intent in the U.S. than it does in France.

It may have a different intent in, you know, like New Orleans or something. And so the idea here is that Google is slowly shifting away from keywords and backlink based SEO for ranking factors and then moving more towards like helpful, contextual, what we call entity based SEO. And so I think it’s really important that people start considering like if you have a business, how do you focus more on your brand and how do you let Google know exactly what your brand does and how it can help people?

And I think the answer to that is rooted all the way back into the type of content you’re publishing. So the more content you publish on the various topics that you want to dominate, the more content that Google has to the type of entity that you are. And then it gives them more information to provide your website and your products and services to people who are asking, even if they don’t fully understand the terms that they’re using.

So if they type in some ten word long string question, they may not know that what they’re looking for is house foreclosure sales process. But Google knows that, okay, this particular long string, long tail keyword, as we call it, is related to this subject and your website, the authority of this subject. So we will go ahead and serve your website is number one, and we’ll see if they click.

And if they click, then Google registers. Okay, this ten word longtail keyword is now best satisfied through your website. And so they’re sort of adding it to your entity. And as that entity grows and it’s information, your website ranks are more and more quote unquote keywords because at this point we’re kind of leaning away from that. But your entity satisfies more questions that people have and that can go with you from your laptop to your smartphone to your voice command device, whether that’s like Syria or Alexa or whatever.

And that information just carries across devices, carries across language barriers, carries across countries. And that’s the real infrastructure that Google is trying to build. That sounds like customers globally.

00:43:24:01 – 00:43:39:22

Brady Winder

Hmm. So would it be correct in saying that this is it’s another Google is taking another big step in having a holistic approach to SEO and showcasing the people with the best answers?

00:43:40:15 – 00:43:41:02

Bryan Sekine

Oh yeah.

00:43:41:07 – 00:43:49:07

Brady Winder

And making it so it’s making it much harder to gamify. It’s less focus on specific keywords. But Google saying, are they an expert or are they not?

00:43:50:04 – 00:44:14:20

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of the more recent product updates have been kind of supporting that hypothesis that this is direction Google’s going. So if you look up Google Lens, it’s an app that you can pull up on your Android phone and you can look around using your camera and it’s kind of like augmented reality. So you can look at a storefront and it’ll say, Hey, this is their Google business profile.

These are the products they sell, these are services they offer. They can move your phone around and they’ll do the same thing. And the results change in real time. They can also do things now where they’re using image recognition. So if you take a picture of a cherry pie and it can say you can type in like, where can I buy a cherry pie?

And it will show you results based the image you took and not necessarily just the keyword. So it’s kind of like combining those two data points and saying, Hey, here are other entities that can satisfy those same two data points. And so this is just kind of the beginning of what we believe is going to be more entity or semantic based SEO.

So if you really want to stay kind of savvy on what Google is doing, don’t just look at Google search, but also look at Google Maps. Google my business, look at the new products it was coming out with and the things that they are wanting to support across all of their devices.

00:45:05:23 – 00:45:16:05

Brady Winder

Mm hmm. Yeah, That’s good insight. That’s good insight, man. Thanks for sharing that. And it’s encouraging again to see where Google is heading. It’s is getting easier. It’s more holistic, it’s more human. Really?

00:45:16:05 – 00:45:17:11

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00:45:17:21 – 00:45:26:21

Brady Winder

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing, man. That’s a that’s a really valuable explanation. I really love the way you broke it down, and it’s been fun having you on the podcast. It’s been awesome.

00:45:27:11 – 00:45:28:14

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

00:45:29:02 – 00:45:47:21

Brady Winder

Yeah. All right, everybody watching and listening. Thank you so much for tuning in. If he got value out of this, share with a friend. I know you probably won’t because you don’t want your competition to turn out like, you know, whatever. But go to Carrot.com/SEO and to get our SEO keyword Bible and all of our other resources podcast episodes, you can dive deep on this.

And then one last note, I’d like to invite you, if you’re watching this beginning of January to our annual Epic planning call, our CEO, Trevor Mauch, Every single year it is epic. It’s about a 2 to 3 hour long call, which he breaks down his biggest lessons learned from the year’s biggest mindset shifts is best frameworks he’s learned as a leader and CEO of this very fast growing company.

And it’s just a great motivating tactical way to get the New Year to get started in the New Year the right way. So go to Carrot.com/epic and plan out your New Year along with us. We will love to see you there. So that’s it, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in and we’ll see you next week.