Webinars

Travis Thom: Leverage Consumer Behavior To Get More Listings

Guests: Travis Thom, Daniel Ramsey Recorded: November 22, 2019 Excerpt Generating listing leads is always a challenge for real estate agents. So today, we’re going to break down the right way to use Facebook to generate leads & listings with Travis using behavioral targeting. In this webinar, we drill down with Travis Thom of Elevated Marketing, Facebook ... Read more

Guests: Travis Thom, Daniel Ramsey
Recorded: November 22, 2019

Excerpt

Generating listing leads is always a challenge for real estate agents. So today, we’re going to break down the right way to use Facebook to generate leads & listings with Travis using behavioral targeting.

In this webinar, we drill down with Travis Thom of Elevated Marketing, Facebook Marketing Strategist, Coach, and Consultant, to utilize consumer behavior targeted listings to reach potential sellers quickly & cost-effectively.

Behavioral targeting is a marketing method that uses web user information to strengthen advertising campaigns. The technique involves gathering data from various sources about the potential customer’s online browsing and shopping behaviors.

Leveraging consumer behavior information helps create ads relevant to that specific user’s habits and interests and basically places consumers in the context of their online actions. For example, their shopping activity reads like a blueprint for their interests, and these behaviors can be used to predict future actions and interests.

The primary purpose of this technique is to deliver advertising messages to the behavioral target markets that have shown the most interest in them. Using key data points, agents can formulate ads that align with the individual consumer’s trackable preferences and needs without conveying messages the viewer would find unappealing or irrelevant.

Our guest, Travis Thom,  started his Real Estate career at 19 after attending the Academy of Art Institute in San Francisco, where he studied marketing and motion picture films. However, he became interested in jumping into business for himself, left the Art Institute, became a Licensed Realtor, and, at the age of 21, became the youngest Qualifying Broker and Brokerage Owner in the State of New Mexico his current home and place of business.

After several years on my own, I started a small team that focused on new construction developments, which provided him the opportunity to nurture my first love – marketing. From there, his career blossomed, leading to the founding of Elevated Real Estate Marketing, Leads2Listing.com, and many other online ventures.

Transcript

00:00:05:04 – 00:00:44:01
Daniel Ramsey
All right. Hey, everybody. Daniel Ramsey. You know me because we’re friends on Facebook. I’m the CEO of my desk. I’m super excited because I talked to Travis and to hanging out with me today live on Facebook with you guys. We’re doing a really kind of a cool talk, basically talking around consumer and consumer behavior and Facebook, one of the biggest challenges that we have as an industry, real estate folks, is is owning our own leads, like not paying Zillow and Realtor.com and all these folks an ungodly amount of money in order to generate a business.

00:00:44:01 – 00:01:13:16
Daniel Ramsey
Right. And so Travis is the expert at that. He owns a company called Elevated R.E.M. We’ve been buds a long time. And his wife is wonderful, too. And so I love bringing them on. What’s cool is my oldest you know, we have 1200 virtual professionals helping real estate companies grow and we’ve been in business ten years and we’ve helped 5000 clients over those ten years.

00:01:13:17 – 00:01:36:00
Daniel Ramsey
And so I’ve got the opportunity to look into like thousands of business real estate practices. And one thing that is always a challenge is generating listings. So if you’re going to stay today, we’re going to break down the right way to use Facebook to generate leads and listings with Travis. And we’re giving away a bunch of free stuff, too.

00:01:37:08 – 00:02:03:11
Daniel Ramsey
We’ve got How to Ask for five star reviews. It’s an email format that’s really killer. We’re giving away something called the repurpose marketing system, which is what Travis, actually his virtual professional, is in his business, helping his clients and repurposing all of their content. So we’re going to hear from him about how to use that. And he’s giving away a bunch of cool slides with like detailed process based.

00:02:03:12 – 00:02:07:15
Daniel Ramsey
This is how you win. So, Travis, thanks for being here, man. I appreciate you.

00:02:08:00 – 00:02:33:02
Travis Thom
Dana, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Excited to get to share some information for everyone out here. Demystify some of the Facebook myths or, you know, certain questions. People might might have it. And as you said, I’m a Facebook marketing strategist for the real estate industry. I run a Facebook advertising agency and then we have a Facebook coaching and training program.

00:02:33:02 – 00:03:05:18
Travis Thom
And we’ve seen, you know, probably well, thousands and thousands of different types of ad accounts and generated over 175,000 leads from Facebook, Instagram and Messenger over the past couple of years. Pretty much across the world, we run campaigns in London, Australia, Canada, Mexico, throughout the U.S. So we get to see what works and what does it work. Headline gets the best engagement.

00:03:06:00 – 00:03:32:08
Travis Thom
What ad imagery gets the highest click to rate, what type of targeting it’s going to produce the best results. So we’re we have a unique privilege in position to be able to actually gather that data and then share it with a lot of our clients. And then people that are inside the real estate space. My goal for the past well, over the past ten years, I started in real estate when I was about 18.

00:03:32:17 – 00:03:53:22
Travis Thom
I had my own brokerage with I had no clue what I was doing when I first started out. But quickly, kind of, you know, in my early twenties, got some speed and got some leverage and we grew to about three different real estate companies, but sold some of those companies. But what we fell in love with at the end of the day was the marketing piece of it.

00:03:54:08 – 00:04:15:21
Travis Thom
And I always want to be able to share and give back what we’ve learned and success we achieved from doing the same kind of marketing tactics and strategies. So hopefully we can give a bit more insight on to what that what that looks like. It’s actually earlier this year, my wife and I were driving our daughter to school.

00:04:15:21 – 00:04:37:20
Travis Thom
It was, you know, early morning sun’s coming up. We’re just driving through our little neighborhood. And my wife says, you know, I’m going to check Facebook. She was kind of scrolling through as I’m driving. She sees this post from a local theater company that brings these big Broadway shows and she saw that they had posted over a little over an hour ago.

00:04:38:12 – 00:05:01:08
Travis Thom
Stop. Have you ever stopped the Broadway musical? Yeah. So it said, we’re going to give away five tickets to stubs to the first five callers that call in and you know, do you think it’s still around is posted over an hour ago I said, yeah, you know, let’s give it a shot. Why not? So she called up. They said, congratulations, you’re the first caller in.

00:05:01:09 – 00:05:29:01
Travis Thom
You won this ticket. So that’s a little bit shocking in my world. But I knew exactly what was going on is Facebook marketing strategies, because what happened was, you know, that’s suppression of what’s called organic reach. So it wasn’t an ad. This is something that they a theater company just posted it. Typically, you know, if you did it about a year or two years ago and said, hey, five free tickets to some Broadway show, right?

00:05:29:09 – 00:06:03:21
Travis Thom
You’re gone pretty, pretty quickly. Right? Maybe 15, 20 minutes. Well, organic reach is where you post something on your business page. And it’s not an ad, it’s just a post. And Facebook will basically serve it out to the people that like your like your page. Right. Your fans or followers. Right. Well, in January of 2018, Facebook decided to change the algorithm and free up more space inside the Facebook newsfeed for a couple of reasons.

00:06:03:21 – 00:06:16:13
Travis Thom
One, for more meaningful engagement with friends and family, and two, to remove more, we’ll move some of the organic post through to really get more advertisers, to free up more ad space.

00:06:16:13 – 00:06:21:19
Daniel Ramsey
And they wanted more money basically this way. Then they wanted to be able to get more money.

00:06:22:00 – 00:06:43:09
Travis Thom
Yeah, they wanted more money. And there’s there’s a fight for more ad space. There’s over 1500 different stories. Right, right. Posts that are trying to compete to be inside of your Facebook newsfeed on a daily basis in only about 300 of them actually make it now to those 300. There’s going to be several of them that are Facebook ads.

00:06:43:20 – 00:07:05:19
Travis Thom
So knowing this and the suppression of or get a agreed well, there’s only a few options that you really kind of have which is going inside the Facebook ad manager platform that Facebook gives you in the ads or doing a lot of Facebook lives and being able to actually get in in front of people kind of like we are right now.

00:07:06:14 – 00:07:25:05
Speaker 3
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00:07:25:05 – 00:07:47:16
Speaker 3
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00:07:47:16 – 00:08:09:16
Speaker 3
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00:08:09:21 – 00:08:27:07
Speaker 3
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00:08:27:07 – 00:08:37:01
Daniel Ramsey
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00:08:37:01 – 00:08:53:16
Speaker 3
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00:08:54:06 – 00:09:13:10
Daniel Ramsey
One perspective, Travis. And I don’t know if you all agree or not, but these companies, they’re smarter than we are, right? They know how to charge us a lot of money to get out there. And I think, you know, it’s really tough to understand how to I mean, it’s not easy to advertise with Facebook. I mean, it’s they make it hard.

00:09:13:19 – 00:09:18:07
Daniel Ramsey
And and you’ve kind of figured that out. Like, tell us a little bit about that.

00:09:18:16 – 00:09:47:04
Travis Thom
Yeah. So, you know, Facebook’s data is is really what is so powerful in terms of of marketing, right. They aggregate an enormous amount of data based on are keywords or browsing habits or emails, you know, certain things that we’re doing inside the Facebook app where they call it the Big Blue, which is Facebook in the old, you know, basically the top four most popular apps in the world, right?

00:09:47:04 – 00:10:15:02
Travis Thom
WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. These are all widely used with billions and billions of daily active users. So with that type of data and the average person spending 47 minutes a day on each one of those different types of platforms, it provides Facebook with an enormous amount of data to really predict what we’re going to be doing in the near future.

00:10:15:03 – 00:10:35:24
Travis Thom
And one of them, for example, is traveling. So Facebook can actually predict that I’m going to be traveling to Maui in the next six months. Or I can say we see that you’re planning a trip, we’re going to start to serve you ads well ahead of time for different opportunities of the hotels to check out airlines or check out different places.

00:10:36:06 – 00:11:00:23
Travis Thom
Well, the same behavioral actions online and offline are then attributed to real estate and the consumer’s journey. Have they looked at Realtor.com? Did the download the Zillow app? Have they looked at Redfin online? Did they go to Home Depot and start to get some project management ideas that they had to spruce up their house to to sell it?

00:11:00:23 – 00:11:35:20
Travis Thom
So all of those are inside the Facebook ad platform. They’re developed as actual targeting interests based on their behaviors and their actions. And then from there, what we do is we leverage historical data. So we use reports from Zillow, reports from National Association of Realtors, different types of reports out there, and that’s what we call historical data. So as an agency, you know what we want to do is make sure that we are fishing upstream in that we’re kind of ahead of the game.

00:11:36:03 – 00:11:49:10
Travis Thom
So we can really draw circles around some of these portals and get in front of people based on those behaviors and actions before they actually get in to someone else’s funnel, to some degree.

00:11:49:17 – 00:12:14:07
Daniel Ramsey
Okay, hold on. Hold on. If you’re listening, I’m going to try to dumb it down. I Travis is brilliant, but we talked about life events and then consumer behavior and then a targeted ad that is that speaks to those two kind of steps. Right? That leads. So that’s the formula. Right. So let’s let’s break that down. Like, what do you mean, life events?

00:12:14:07 – 00:12:19:03
Daniel Ramsey
What are the what? What’s and how would a real estate agent know what life events.

00:12:19:23 – 00:12:47:19
Travis Thom
So for breaking it down into like a framework, for instance, let’s take Zillow’s data that they released within the past four months, which they really go through an enormous amount. I mean, they’re generating over 50 million leads a year. So they have some significant data to really work with. So the data that they basically published was the top influential life events that influenced people to move right.

00:12:47:19 – 00:13:19:08
Travis Thom
What was the main decision that made them buy a house or sell a house? So the top one was getting married. The second one was getting separated or divorced? Yep. The third one was having a child or adopting a child. And then the last one was basically graduating from school. There’s like the top, top tier ones. So if we take getting married, for instance, which is a big life event, you just get married or you’re newly engaged or you’re you’re a newlywed.

00:13:20:07 – 00:13:49:15
Travis Thom
Those are actual targeting interests instead of Facebook. So we can do what’s called detailed interest targeting and say we’re going to target people in this specific zip code ages 29 to 51 that are newlyweds in the past six months that are either engaged, just got married for looking for bridal dresses. They’re interested in wedding photography. You know, the the knot, right.

00:13:49:15 – 00:14:18:12
Travis Thom
Which is like a big website for registering those kind of things. You layer those in and those are all life events, life decisions people are entering into. And then we layer the actual consumer behaviors like so did they like or download an app for their club or Zillow or Redfin buying a house, house hunting. But those are different actual consumer behaviors that you layer.

00:14:18:12 – 00:14:42:09
Travis Thom
It’s your life event that actual consumer behavior, and you basically tie those together in interest in detailed interest rate in the Facebook ad manager that’s going to define your specific audience to the life stage. So we’re then going to show them an ad that is either about a new listing or an open house or a list of homes that they can download.

00:14:42:21 – 00:15:14:05
Travis Thom
And you’re basically making sure that you are serving the ad to the right people at the right time based on those. Labovitz So now if we think about this in kind of an anecdotal way, Susan just got married. Yeah, married about three months ago and she is now online. She’s looked at a few homes off one, you know, on Realtor.com and Zillow, and she’s been kind of cruising through and getting ideas, looking at Pinterest for the next, you know, a house she wants to buy.

00:15:14:21 – 00:15:47:01
Travis Thom
Susan is going to leave her house. And, you know, Steven or whoever else she’s bearing, right. They’re going to bid, combine homes and get into a new property. So we’re going to serve ad to her offering a list of open houses within her zip code in a 12 mile radius of maybe a specific home that you listed. What I say about radius is statistically most homebuyers move into their next home within a 12 mile radius of the previous.

00:15:47:01 – 00:16:11:09
Travis Thom
All right. Right. So that’s kind of where the life events, consumer behavior in the targeting is. So it’s almost serendipitous that Susan will now see this ad about the open house. She goes through the Facebook lead out process where she interest her name, email and phone number. We get the prospect as a lead. And then she said the list of open house is on your RDX page.

00:16:11:16 – 00:16:30:09
Travis Thom
And then the process starts nurturing that lead, right? Sending them a text, an email saying thank you so much for doubling the list so that you listed or interested in our open as it’s coming up. Is there particular price range that you were looking in at way? Is this a first time home purchase or do you need to sell your house?

00:16:30:18 – 00:16:56:08
Travis Thom
And that’s where the process really starts. So if you break that down by like life stage, so divorce, having a child, having a child is a big one. That’s really a big life event where people need to well, it’s a growing family. And so, you know, if we look at the psychographic profile of those prospects, they’re needing to probably sell their home, move it to a bigger home.

00:16:56:19 – 00:17:23:20
Travis Thom
So you are going after buyers who are also sellers because most sellers, before they lose their house, they actually kind of look out in the market and go, you know, what? Is there a school district that we want to be in? Is there the right price range or is now the time to actually sell our house? And they look to see can a price comparison, can we get the equity that we want based on the house that we’re looking for?

00:17:23:20 – 00:17:31:14
Travis Thom
Right. So you think to keep those life events in mind? I know that we talked about the DS.

00:17:31:14 – 00:17:54:09
Daniel Ramsey
So we jump into that real quick. So you’re you’re definitely Amanda’s client. I’ve got a bunch of questions about like Facebook, the average time to sell. We’ll talk about the DS. I love the DS. But before we do that, what I love is you guys are a marketing firm and you bought some of your time back by using our folks.

00:17:54:09 – 00:17:55:22
Daniel Ramsey
Talk a little bit about that real quick.

00:17:56:05 – 00:18:33:20
Travis Thom
Certainly. So, you know, when we were doing, you know, we’ve been doing Facebook marketing and we have a coaching and training program. And so we have several hundred clients. We have a software as a service company that we own. And for a long while it was just me and a couple other people. And it was it was got to the point where it was like a fever pitch of basically, you know, from 5 a.m. to midnight, I’m either answering anything and everything I can, emails and posting stuff.

00:18:33:20 – 00:19:03:20
Travis Thom
And we were getting to a point where, you know, we’re managing three different companies with hundreds of clients and we desperately needed some help because I didn’t have a vacation for many years. I didn’t have really any time to myself for, you know, I could take my wife out on a date and say, you know, I have to work on Saturday because we are launching, you know, this huge campaign and someone has to write the ad copy and knock this out, going to build all of this.

00:19:04:00 – 00:19:34:24
Travis Thom
Right. So we got to a certain point where, you know, I need I need help and I want to spend time with my kid. I want to be able to travel. I want us to really be able to actually owned and operate our business and not be a slave to it. So that’s when we we met, we talked and you kind of enlighten me on, hey there, there’s people out there that can really help you that are very talented and you know, you are basically that, that resource.

00:19:34:24 – 00:19:57:24
Travis Thom
So I started going through and really monitoring what are the actual tasks that are more of kind of what I consider the $12 an hour, $50 an hour tasks, right, that are tying up a lot of my time that someone else can do. And then what are these $500 an hour tasks that I should focus on right? That I should really be executing.

00:19:58:08 – 00:20:22:12
Travis Thom
And I really kind of went back down and said, you know, if I were to work only, let’s say three days or four days a week. Right? Right. What are those? Those top priorities of family working 72 to maybe 100 hours a week, whatever it might be. Right. What are the key things that I feel sorry. Not those, but you know, in work hours, like what should I really be focusing on?

00:20:22:19 – 00:20:46:16
Travis Thom
You know, sort of mapping out like what are the top ones that I should do? What are the top ones that I can actually pass on to an assistant? Right. Is professional, you know, and they’re actually versed in all these different tools and they can buy back my time. So I had to buy back my time, right? Invest in my desk first.

00:20:46:16 – 00:21:07:17
Travis Thom
I was a little kind of, you know, not sure are they going be able to handle some of my things and I let my ego go right and said, all right, so what else can do this? And so now I actually have a pretty incredible life. You know, it don’t mean to brag, but I have time. I have time to be able to actually fly with my family and travel.

00:21:07:24 – 00:21:29:18
Travis Thom
I can, you know, meet with clients and not feel stressed out like I have to run back to the office, meet you know, someone else to knock all these things out. So this is been really huge for us. What are the biggest things that they do is repurpose a lot of my content. So I have a lot of my own personal Facebook ads running to try and win more business.

00:21:30:02 – 00:21:59:04
Travis Thom
And I’ll do a webinar or I’ll do a blog post and my, you know, my virtual professional will go from my artist will go and take all that content in, post it on every social network that we have, sit down, email blast, create a blog post out of it, transcribe an actual video, whatever it might be. And what’s cool about that is that the same kind of strategies can easily be deployed across in the industry.

00:21:59:04 – 00:22:21:24
Travis Thom
But with real estate, you know, I was a broker for over a decade. I managed over 30 and a team of 30 people the course. My career managed over 100 people in my brokerage. And I know it very well. That time is an issue. It was a real estate agent or a broker. You raised about 120 different hats on on a daily basis, all.

00:22:21:24 – 00:22:22:13
Daniel Ramsey
Day long.

00:22:22:16 – 00:22:41:24
Travis Thom
All day long. And there’s this up and down cycle of I have to market myself and prospect and prospect and then you would clients and then I worked with the clients and then now you’re in that down cycle because you are prospecting and putting content out there trying to win the attraction of people in the now you got to hurry.

00:22:41:24 – 00:23:06:23
Travis Thom
You know, and go up that hill again and prospect prospects. Prospect. So that’s why this, you know, real estate agents average life is this up and down? Up and down. Yeah, I’m doing awesome. I want to quit it. Awesome. I want to quit. Right, right. Kind of go through that cycle where you’re pulling your hair out. You’re like, I I’m not quite sure what to do next, but I need help.

00:23:07:07 – 00:23:36:06
Travis Thom
And I can easily say that that’s where my desk is really the solution that fills that gap to be able to say, all right, while you’re out with the clients, we’re going to prospect for you real take content blasted out to those people. You know, keep that lead generation flowing, however, where you can really nurturing your sphere of influence by developing some sort of campaign that they can take care of for you so you can go and do what you do.

00:23:36:06 – 00:24:01:15
Travis Thom
Best wishes, talk to clients, win listings, get those closings and be able to actually scale and grow and win your life back. Right. It’s so critical. We’re not in this business to just constantly grind and work. We’re in this business to be able to have some sort of well connection to other human beings, have a positive outlook on what am I going to be doing this week and can I play on a vacation?

00:24:01:15 – 00:24:23:03
Travis Thom
Can I spend more time and have an impact? But if you’re you know, if you’re stressed out and you kind of towards the the part where you’re like, you know what? I think a 9 to 5 job is probably my best bet where someone else pays me. Then you’re probably, you know, in that perfect range of saying, you know what, I need someone actually to help me.

00:24:23:12 – 00:24:25:24
Travis Thom
Yes. Light at the end of that tunnel to some degree.

00:24:26:10 – 00:24:56:04
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, I heard it several years ago. Do the things inside your business that only you can do and get everything else away. And there are a lot of things that only we can do, you know, but there are a lot of things that you can help give give away to somebody. Let’s get back to the Facebook stuff. One stat and it was like, whoa, the average time used to be seven.

00:24:56:04 – 00:25:18:19
Daniel Ramsey
Every seven years, somebody in the US changed their house, but now it’s like ten. Like, you know, it, it, it’s really extended. And I think that’s, that’s a crazy thing. And we talked a little bit about the repurpose thing. So as a real estate industry, it’s getting harder and harder. You know, people are staying put and not selling their house because they don’t know where they’re going to go.

00:25:18:19 – 00:25:46:03
Daniel Ramsey
Interest rates are starting to rise. I think this is the time to double down for 2019. Like every other real estate person out there is not planning. They’re ready for vacation time next week. They they don’t have an order chart. They don’t know what’s the barriers are. They don’t know what they’re. So if you’re in that space, we’ve we’re going to post right here a landing page with elevated marketing on it.

00:25:46:11 – 00:26:07:02
Daniel Ramsey
We’re giving you a repurpose program. We’re giving you a review thing that we’re going to talk about real shortly to help generate more leads for you. Travis is giving us some of his slides with all this data that consumer behavior and the life events and how to combine those and the data. So if you decide to do this yourself, you have a way.

00:26:07:02 – 00:26:27:14
Daniel Ramsey
But really what we want you to do is request a consultation with us, have us help you figure out what your lead stuff is, who needs to be in your office, what your org chart should be. Maybe you need our help. Maybe you don’t. It doesn’t matter. What we want to do is help you double your business like we want to help you grow and I’m a real estate broker.

00:26:28:02 – 00:26:52:09
Daniel Ramsey
God, I’ve now been licensed 14 years. I got a million bucks in transactions right now, which is crazy. I just love it. I can’t stop right. And all of the folks that work here, our job is to support you in this growth trajectory. Like, do you need more leads? Do you need more leverage? What’s the what’s the world that you’re in and how can we support you?

00:26:52:09 – 00:26:59:14
Daniel Ramsey
So jump on there, get all of our free giveaways, schedule a meeting with us and get all Travis’s stuff.

00:26:59:14 – 00:27:34:05
Travis Thom
Cause it’s good, man. It’s really good. You know that you hit on a key point there that you brought up about the people are spending average lifetime lives in their house before they sell is ten years it was seven yeah yeah that shift that little bit of like the time I believe is, is because of the recession right back in 2008 through 2010, there were some really big hits to a lot of people and the homeowners, and they lost a lot of equity.

00:27:34:05 – 00:28:03:04
Travis Thom
Now, it’s interesting is that the baby boomer demographic, they own 50% of all the real estate in the US. So, right. Baby boomers, that’s a pretty big demographic. And they own a lot of real estate. So a lot of that, I believe is that most of those homeowners didn’t have the equity in their homes then they were the they were positioned to sell their were sitting on a lot of massive amount of equity.

00:28:03:10 – 00:28:31:01
Travis Thom
But then with the recession, they started focusing more on home improvements and remodel their house and kind of staying put. Now, on the flip side of that, we’re now entering into a kind of a new life cycle and change where you have Gen X and millennials, you know, over 80 million strong that are moving into the market as first time homebuyers and move up families.

00:28:31:01 – 00:28:52:02
Travis Thom
And they’re going to buy well, they’re typically going to buy then the baby boomers home. So it’s this it’s this perfect balance that we’re seeing right now where a lot of those individuals, especially baby boomers, need to downsize and they’re going to start to move in that. So I think, you know, since 2008 to now, we’ve definitely seen that increase.

00:28:52:02 – 00:29:17:08
Travis Thom
But I bet that’s going to actually start to shorten and we’re going to see more activity, basically a trade off between those two or those two demographics there. So in terms of targeting, if anyone’s looking for listings and try to win those listings, you should be targeting baby boomers, right? And providing them information of value, something that is going to help educate them.

00:29:17:08 – 00:29:47:21
Travis Thom
But what’s really awesome is that with data, you can really see what do people want? So, you know, nine times out of ten, most homeowners make at least one major repair to their house six months before they sell it. And a lot of the times that’s just paint painting. So if you to give someone a seller’s guide how to sell your house for more than it’s worth, download our guide, our sellers guide.

00:29:48:08 – 00:30:37:05
Travis Thom
You know the ten steps on how to get your house prepared in maximum. Every ounce of profit to go over. Like what should you do? You know, paint your house, clean a declutter curb appeal, all all those kind of things. So on those prospects during this seasonal time, it’s really interesting. If you go to Google Trends and you just go into Google and type in Google Trends, you’ll see a Web page that pops up, type in buying a house, and you’ll see that right around the Thanksgiving and then through the holiday season kind of in December, there’s this huge uptick where basic searches for buying a house, it almost triples that over a five year

00:30:37:05 – 00:31:00:06
Travis Thom
span. You’ll see it’s kind of like this chart graph. You’ll see that there’s a kind of a down, you know, from August till around November, there’s kind of a down spike. And then from around December to like mid-to-late January is a huge spike of people all over the nation searching, buying a house or how to buy a house.

00:31:00:09 – 00:31:26:23
Travis Thom
Yes, that that right. There is a huge indication if a lot of people, millions of people are searching that keyword term during this holiday season. That’s where you can enter into their mind. Right. And pre frame them. Right. You know, and you can give them that information. You can give them that value because a majority of all your competition, all the other agents are going to go kind of dormant right during the holiday season.

00:31:27:05 – 00:31:46:20
Travis Thom
Yeah, I’ve heard this time and time again and Britney Spears, a decade in real estate sales at the height of my career had 271 listings. So I know what I’m talking about with this, which is that a lot of people, I believe that they go dormant during this kind of holiday time because they think that there’s no business to be won.

00:31:47:10 – 00:32:11:10
Travis Thom
And it’s a mindset issue. It’s a mindset issue. The demand is there. You just know you just need to be strategic about how to get in front of those people and play the long game, play at the seed. And so from now, right, right before Thanksgiving and tell her in February 1st you have this golden time to really get in front of those people.

00:32:11:10 – 00:32:34:16
Travis Thom
So that’s Facebook ads, right? Targeting people that are interested in buying a house, but to call them. Right. Providing them information of value. You’re going to then see those people in the spring be the buyers, right? Those are the actual buyers. So just keep in mind, Facebook is about playing the long game, being strategic and really nurturing this prospect’s winning the now right.

00:32:34:16 – 00:32:55:01
Travis Thom
Whether it was winning them is getting their name, email and phone number as actual leads and then developing a relationship so they’re no longer a leads or a prospect. And then you give, give, give, right throughout the holiday and spring season. Right, buddy? They’re going to go to you. That’s right. That’s really that’s the opportunity that I see coming up.

00:32:55:13 – 00:33:17:04
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah. And you know, I would add on to that, I you’re 100% right. November and December have always been my best months for real estate, like always, because everybody else would take it off. The other thing that I would say is now is when you do your planning for next year and really dove into how many leads that I get, who’s on my team, what is everybody doing?

00:33:17:11 – 00:33:40:04
Daniel Ramsey
Like building culture, building a team. You know, because one of the challenges we have as a real estate industry is our margins are super thin. And so you have to have everybody highly engaged. You make sure that your best people are focused on what they do. And they might need help. They might be overworked. I know the worst thing for a business owner is turnover.

00:33:40:06 – 00:33:59:22
Daniel Ramsey
Oh, my God. I mean, that is the. And you’ve got to plan strategically. Think about what’s my team need to be next year, how many leads do I need to generate? Who might how am I going to do that? What’s going to be my conversion process? Who’s prospecting for me? Like all of those questions are now questions answer for 2019.

00:33:59:22 – 00:34:03:03
Daniel Ramsey
So we got the 12 D’s man.

00:34:03:18 – 00:34:06:15
Travis Thom
Yeah, let’s go over there are good.

00:34:07:06 – 00:34:35:10
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, I Was just playing around with a client and we were talking about like and I think, well, you know we’ve got delisted from MLS delusional people who think they’re going to sell their house themselves, you know, there’s fires, you know, divorce, death, debt damage, disability. I’ve bought some drug houses, so I got drugs on like houses that were condemned by the city because of drugs or, you know, so determined to move displacement.

00:34:35:10 – 00:34:57:02
Daniel Ramsey
People who are absentee home homeowners. The point is, I think and you could probably help people with this, you have to have a strategy for each of those D’s and have a campaign and not only Facebook, but emails and a call conversation. Because each of you know, if somebody had a death, you can’t walk in and be like, hey, I’m going to get you the most money for your house tomorrow.

00:34:57:08 – 00:34:58:16
Travis Thom
Like you kind of.

00:34:58:17 – 00:35:17:14
Daniel Ramsey
Start off with like, I am so sorry for your loss, you know, like I and I’m just here, I notice that this and X, Y and Z. I want to make sure that you’re fully supported in this horrible time for you and your family. Like there there’s different, you know, conversations for all of these things. So I don’t know.

00:35:17:16 – 00:35:25:13
Daniel Ramsey
Travis, what are your thoughts about like segmenting your your data and Mike, who you’re going after in your ads on Facebook?

00:35:25:23 – 00:35:58:21
Travis Thom
Yeah, it’s really critical. I mean, you know, people don’t necessarily enjoy ads. Right. And I understand that as a marketer, but people really, really hate ads that are not relevant to them. So you want to make sure that you actually have highly relevant ads specific to the actual niche that you’re going after. Because at that point in time and I’ve heard this actually from actual people that are from different products or as they’ve seen in Facebook based on what they’ve done.

00:35:59:19 – 00:36:27:15
Travis Thom
There’s a woman in her seventies that I heard her say, this is this is almost a sign from God. It’s kind of serendipitous, right? It’s just really good. Facebook ad targeting that she had right. Product served to her at the right at the right time. Now you know, peeling back the layers of it, it’s really important to make sure that you have the right ad copy, the right ad imagery that’s really targeting those specific people within that life, right in that life stage.

00:36:27:21 – 00:36:57:09
Travis Thom
And that you’re sensitive about it. You’re not beating them over the head the majority of time. You should be offering some sort of item of value, right? Getting them to download a guide or some questions that they already have. So if you can use a certain creative tone in your copyright that’s focused on answering a problem that they’re facing or giving some sort of sigh of relief that there is an answer.

00:36:57:09 – 00:37:20:03
Travis Thom
Right? It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s enough information that you are giving it to them. So then you position yourself as the expert, an authority figure. So by giving value, by giving the best information that you can and becoming an educator, you’re then naturally, easily going to be perceived as the authority figure in your market on whatever topic it is.

00:37:20:06 – 00:37:52:24
Travis Thom
Right? It could be condos, it could be probate, it could be. How do you know how to manage to sell your home during a divorce? All those right are unique. Get a sense of the issues during an emotional time, and we often forget that moving is an incredibly stressful time. So we want to make sure that we are not really beating them over the head with Give me your business, but more of Hey, here’s some value, here’s some reciprocity.

00:37:52:24 – 00:38:16:19
Travis Thom
So that experience that I’ve packaged in. That is a quick read for you to truly understand what are the next steps to take. So really dividing all of those down and actually split testing then same can I go after investors that are interested in houses that are basically 30% below market value? You know, some old beat up drug houses, whatever it might be, that would be a test.

00:38:17:05 – 00:38:44:01
Travis Thom
You can easily win investors from it. We have a client that actually did over 3 billion in sales or a coaching program just from one investor. And we did stories that are that are basically focused on exactly that. So you want to make sure that your follow up email, text, copy, all of those things are really dialed in to the actual what we call top of funnel ad, the actual pull of those people in your funnel.

00:38:44:01 – 00:39:04:22
Travis Thom
So if it’s people that are moving up in there are growing family, you want to talk to them. They are also people that need to sell, that need to buy. They have kiddos that they’re dealing with, you know, school and school districts and everything else. That’s kind of combined with being a parent in a fairly and then the same thing with divorced couples, right?

00:39:04:22 – 00:39:13:20
Travis Thom
You want to make sure that you’re actually coming from a place of empathy. So the right message to the right person at the right time is it’s really critical.

00:39:14:02 – 00:39:21:19
Daniel Ramsey
That’s awesome. Okay. We’re going to wrap up because we’ve already passed 30 minutes how much I spent on Facebook as a real estate person.

00:39:22:20 – 00:39:24:01
Travis Thom
Know it’s an.

00:39:24:11 – 00:39:25:05
Daniel Ramsey
Like, what do you think?

00:39:25:11 – 00:39:49:05
Travis Thom
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s really what are you comfortable with in terms of your budget? And because really, Facebook is about playing the long game. So, you know, we have clients that are spending 50,000 a month in ad spend. We have some clients that are spending $500 a month in ads. But so really, it’s it’s about what can you budget for?

00:39:50:01 – 00:40:15:09
Travis Thom
How many leads do you want? And it’s not just about leads to, it’s also about brand awareness and keeping your brand in front of your friends and family and past clients. And Facebook and amazing job of really being able to build a solid brand awareness in the market so you can become kind of a rock star, make people, you know, basically perceive that you are the head figure and authority figure of that.

00:40:15:09 – 00:40:37:18
Travis Thom
So really work with the end in mind. How many sales do I want by the end of the year? How is that going to take me? What is my pass conversion rate with internet based and personal data behind the go? Okay, now we know that the average cost per lead for me is going to be around 6 to $8 for a quality.

00:40:37:18 – 00:41:02:10
Travis Thom
Finally, you did you can kind of map out from there based on that. So there’s not an easy answer for that. I would say that the average person in our Facebook coaching and training program is spending around 400 to $500 a month on ad spend. Our agency clients are definitely, you know, definitely a little bit more above that because they’re typically bigger teams at bigger organizations.

00:41:02:10 – 00:41:22:11
Travis Thom
They have a lot of mouths to feed and keep happy. So. Right, a lot of leads really pump through there. So there’s there’s not a magic answer. It’s really about what do you want to get out of it and understand that Facebook is playing the long game. It’s not for instant wins that I’m going to get a lead that’s going to be a buyer the next six or ten days.

00:41:22:18 – 00:41:51:08
Travis Thom
We’re talking about six to 8 to 9 months. And you do that. You will see some great rewards and keep this in mind as you enter into that space. Loandepot Quicken Loans. These are companies that spend millions of dollars in Facebook advertising. Now they buy leads from other Facebook advertisers and they buy the leads they’ll pay top dollar, five, six, $7 for the leads are the oldest leads.

00:41:51:21 – 00:42:25:24
Travis Thom
The leads that are six months, eight months, ten months, 12 months. All right. They pay top dollar for those because they know that those people raised their hand from some sort of ad months and months ago. And now they’ve moved through the decision cycle. They’re now ready. Ready yet? Not ready yet. So keep that in mind when you’re doing your Facebook advertising and your campaigns and, your planning, what you should do because it’s about playing the long game algorithm is so smart it can predict what they’re going to do in the future.

00:42:26:05 – 00:42:36:11
Travis Thom
And if you quit only two months or three months in, you’re giving up on an opportunity for the future, right? For future wins. So just just keep it.

00:42:36:11 – 00:42:55:19
Daniel Ramsey
Mike I love it. Travis You’re awesome. Guys, visit our Web site. It’s linked right here. We’re going to get you that repurposed thing. Travis’s slides and a consultation if you want to grow my out, just wants to be there to help you. Travis, again, thanks for all your time, your expertize and care for our people, man. I appreciate you.

00:42:56:01 – 00:43:03:03
Travis Thom
Yes. Have a beer. Thank you for having me. Is great to actually chat back and forth. I think we could do this for another 5 hours. Oh.

00:43:03:13 – 00:43:06:00
Daniel Ramsey
Yes, we could. All right. Thanks, man. Have a great day.

00:43:06:07 – 00:43:09:11
Travis Thom
Thank you. Bye, everyone.