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What if your real estate marketing actually worked like a machine and generating qualified leads, closing deals, and scaling your brand? In this video, TREMGroup’s Chief Marketing Officer reveals the 5 marketing pillars that helped agents generate millions in GCI.
Whether you’re a solo agent, a luxury broker, or a developer, this is your roadmap to real estate success in 2025 and beyond. Whether you’re launching, scaling, or tired of marketing that doesn’t convert; this is how you turn your website, ads and CRM into a real estate growth engine. With the right system, you can build a money-making machine that runs on ROI.
Video full transcription
Carlos: This is a collaboration between the pipeline and the lab where you learn about business, but it’s also Steven’s favorite or Steven channel. Um, for those of you who don’t know, who you should already, but Steven Masumoto, he’s the director of marketing, but he’s also considered the chief financial officer for the real estate marketing group and for every single one of our partners in the real estate industry. single agents, brokers, and developers who have come to us after either trying everything else that’s out there without any successful results or when they wanted it to start the right way and they’re looking for the right partners to grow their business when it, you know, when results really really matter, they come to us and they love talking to Stephen.
So today I had the chance to bring you to know his strategy and you know years and years of research and research into what has worked really really worked for our partners nationwide and I think he’s very very interested in sharing it with every single one of you. So Stephen tells us a little bit more about you know the ultimate guide for real estate professionals who really want to grow their business into what they matter and what they should be focused on.
Stephen: Well, Carlos, thank you for that intro. Um, just to confirm, my technical position as chief marketing officer, but my goal and the reason I do marketing or we build tech or do any of these things is because we want to build financial wealth for our clients. So, I pride myself in doing marketing, technology, all these things just as a correlation to build financial wealth for yourselves, for us, for everyone. Because at the end of the day, why did you become a real estate agent? Why do you start a business? Why do you even get a job? Because you want financial freedom. So going back to the topic of today is basically for the past 10 years we have specialized in real estate in the luxury real estate market specifically and pre-construction and we spent over $50 million in ads between Google and Meta. Um and we’ve tested over and over and over and to simplify it I am a huge data nerd. So basically over this past 10 years um at the end of the day everything we’re going to say is going to sound like common sense but it took like you said testing and testing and trying and client feedback. Everything we’ve built even the technology the the map search filters, the landing pages was clients feedback. I remember in 2017 we had a huge client. Um back then we mainly focused on SEO. but we didn’t have it built out to the point we do now. We ranked him number one for Miami Beach waterfront homes for sale. We ranked him number one for Venetian Islands homes for sale. And he walks in the office. He goes, “Stephen, I love this. This is awesome. I use it in my listing presentations, but where are my leads?” And I look at him, I was very technical back then. Thanks to you, I’m a little bit more sociable. When I looked at him, I’m like, SEO isn’t leads. SEO is search engine optimization. That’s ranking number one organically in Google. He looked at me like, Stephen, I have no idea what you just said. So, we went back to the drawing board. We went, “Okay, not only do the clients want leads, actually.” So, we focus on leads. We went to the next stage. We were doing Facebook ads back in 2017. We got our client 300 leads. Maybe one out of every hundred was good. He was targeting Brazil. Um, most of the clients couldn’t tell if it was a hotel, or what it was. They don’t remember filling out. And then we realize, hey, we can generate a whole bunch of leads. Are they good leads? So, the purpose today is not only to educate you on the five most important things that we’ve learned. Uh you can call them the five pillars or whatever you like, but basically what you should be asking is whether you hire us, whether you do it yourself, whether you’re doing your own marketing, but what you should ask your marketing agency, these five things. Because if you understand these five things, you’re already 99% ahead of your competition and definitely probably even your own marketing agency.
Carlos: Before we get there and before you, you release a strategy and you share with everybody watching today, let’s talk about first what’s available today for real estate professionals nationwide.
Stephen: That is a fantastic question. So before we get into the five pillars, there’s three options available in the real estate industry and we can say six total because there’s also three other options available to anyone in any industry. We’ll call it a service- based industry. So whether you’re a roofer, a dentist, whatever the case may be. So the first three options that are available just for real estate agents, the very first option are luxury websites. They’re basically um build you a beautiful homepage, maybe some okay internal landing pages, but we call that a digital business card. You need a website regardless. And separate from your broker’s website, separate from your YouTube or Instagram profile, you need a domain that you own. That is basic 101 marketing. When somebody searches your name, searches your brand, you need a website. And especially for most of our clients that are in the luxury industry, which I’m going to get into the second option, they want to keep an affluent status, a very luxurious look. The problem with those, at least with the track record from every client that comes to us, there’s two options available out there. They’re in LA. I won’t name drop anything right now. Um, but if you know website companies in LA for real estate, you’ll probably figure out the two companies. Basically all the feedback that I’ve received from clients that have come to us is they’ve never received one lead. They were with them for two years, three years, four years, had a beautiful website, loved their website, and never generated one lead. And if they did generate a lead, it was most likely from someone searching their name from their own network. The second option, and I can’t name these products because most of them have been sold to private equity companies. Um, you can see that it’s public information or what we call the cookie cutter softwares. So, the cookie cutter softwares, the Boomtowns, the KV Cores, the Ylopos, the real geeks, um these softwares, the feedback I get, they do generate leads. They’re not the highest quality leads, and it’s not proven to a process that will basically generate your return on investment. Investing X amount in Y amount of time, this is how much you’ll receive. I’ve never seen that or heard that. maybe heard one or two case studies where they did get sales but nowhere near to the possibility of what they could have gotten. And the major issue there especially for luxury is you lose all luxury. So with a cookie cutter website and you could have the best backend CRM if there’s no leads in there or good leads it doesn’t matter how many powerful tools you have um there’s no one there to use them on. So the second option is cookie cutter websites or softwares like that. And then the third option is the only option that will actually generate your return on investment. We call them the multi-billion dollar platforms. So you can run ads on Zillow, you can run ads with Realtor or Redfin or or Trullia, whatever the case may be, Homes.com. The problem there is it’s hit or miss, of course, and at the end of the day, you could invest 10,000, make 20,000 per month in sales, but like Tom Ferry, like all these top coaches, you’re never building a business or a brand at the end of the day. That’s the most important thing that you should be doing, especially for longevity. If you’re just paying for transactions, you’re just making Zillow rich and you don’t really want to give them 40% of your commission for every sale. So, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you love your broker to death. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the case may be, the number one rule for any agent, for any business, for any person, and why we’re creating content right now, is branding. Branding is the key. You are the business. You are the brand. Whether it’s your name or your brand name, whatever the case may be, you need to be building that day by day.
So, those are the three major options available for real estate agents to do marketing today. I don’t know, do you want to hear the other three just in case real quick?
Carlos: Yeah.
Stephen: So, the three that you could use in any industry is basically you can um hire freelancers which at the end of the day you’re going to lose all your time. They’re not working together. um you think you’re saving money, but you’re losing a lot of time and a lot of headache. You can use things like Fiverr, things like that, and then the quality is substantially low. The second thing you can do is hire a general marketing agency. Uh we’re in Miami right now, so you could just go to marketing agencies in Miami. The major issue there, they know nothing about real estate. E-commerce is nothing like service-based industries. So if they don’t understand real estate, if they haven’t done it, possibly it’s going to be a huge learning curve for them. Um, and a lot of marketing agencies specialize in launching Google ads or building websites, things like that. They don’t think of it from the end user perspective. So the fourth pillar is going to dive deep into this. And then the last option is you can hire an in-house marketing team. Um, which becomes very expensive. Imagine each salary is like let’s say $2,000 or plus. You need to when you work with us, you have at least five departments. That’s $10,000 in salaries. If you’re paying them 2,000 just for those five specialists and at the end of the day, you’re going to spend at least six years going through trial and error until you figure it out. So, we’re able to do in 6 months what will take you six years and a lot of headache, hair pulling, and money.
Carlos: Well, I want to talk because I do talk to a lot of our partners day in and day out. And you know, going back to some of those options, you know, when you go to any of these website development companies that are in the real estate industry space that have set themselves a name for it, I’ve realized and my clients have told me that this they design and program a website that is hard for you to even control. You always will need, you know, their help and, you know, their support to make any changes on your website. So you don’t really have control or ownership of that. Second, they didn’t build their own idx solution. When you’re in the real estate industry, you need to showcase the available inventory. You need to showcase the properties available in your market to your clients, to your end consumers. And it’s not just showcasing the properties because there’s multiple IDX companies out there that can integrate into your site. But those IDX companies are not thinking about the user experience. They’re not thinking about providing value to you or to your clients. So, what ends up happening is it’s a clunky 9090 uh deal experience where your, you know, your buyers and sellers go into your website, look at one or two properties, and since it’s so bad the experience, they end up leaving. So, you’re not going to get any actual results there. And I’ve heard this time and time again.
My second comment on the big platforms is like you said, you mentioned this is they’re not tailoring that branding aspect to you or your market. They’re not thinking about elevating you as the professional in your market and they’re not even having a tailor approach to your campaigns, to your marketing, to your solution. They don’t, they’re not actually doing even a research. They’re asking you what zip code you want? You know, they’re thinking about launching an ad with the minimum budget without considering other aspects that you’re going to talk about fairly soon and that it doesn’t end up being either consistent, reliable, or a long-term strategy whatsoever. And you know when you talk about companies like zillow.com, realtor.com, apartments.com you know while it’s very well known nationwide for the nationwide consumer you also know those leads or those clients are being called by 20 different agents. You’re spending you know an arm and a leg trying to dominate a zip code and then the lead that you’re getting is being called by 20 other real estate professionals in the same market. some of them with the same product knowledge or some of them with more than you are. So, you’re competing against other agents for the same lead on a lead that you pay a high uh premium price for. And in some cases, like you said, you have to share a 40% of your commission to them. And again, you’re not building something for yourself. You’re not elevating your brand. um you know so I think it’s important that we touch on those as well which makes what we build what TREMGroup has built so much relevant for the audience and everybody that’s watching. So if you’re considering investing in ads, if you’re considering staying in the real estate industry, not on the seasonal side for the long run, you know yourself as an authority dominating your market and you know really making something happen on a transactional basis and elevating your business. Let’s talk about those five pillars and what you should be focusing on.
Stephen: Before I jump to the five pillars, I’m going to answer what you said re-emphasize on. So the first part, the luxury websites, the reason we know like you were saying, you don’t have full control. It takes probably at least a week if not months to just change an image on the website, things like that. The reason we know is because that used to be our business model eight over eight years ago. we would get our client. We were a very boutique company. We weren’t yet to the formula to the financial wellbeing of the case studies like we hadn’t reached that level. We’re still in the process of figuring out what we have today. Um and our primary owners, the two original founders come from design and development and they were more focused on the tech and website part of it in the beginning. So we would get a design. So we would hire a designer. We would have to design the homepage, design the pages and then we would have to code the pages. And the whole process took like four months. So we understand that and we built our own technology idx boost because of that because we started realizing how many things do you really need? Wouldn’t speed and optimize and control the ability to change things on your website. Super simple, super easy to where you can change a picture in a few seconds. of course knowing where to go which we can show you.
Carlos: I remember I remember when we went through this process, our partners and and you know the visionaries behind the design and the technology and the whole um company, we were going in a race to become preferred v vendors for a nationwide brokerage. And I remember in those initial interviews, they told us their biggest pain point of what their agents were complaining about was that speed to action, the ability for them to control their site and that it took anywhere between 90 to 6 months to even have a website up and running. And I remember like you said, you know, Alex went and he’s like, “Okay, we in some custom cases that’s exactly what we’re doing, so we need to switch.” So they went in, they got into producing mode. They thought about everything that an agent needed, how they needed to control it, and they had already built a large part of it on the IDX side. So they just went ahead and built this, you know, the website builder component, and then they elevated that and gave control back. So big shout out to our partners Alex, Tino, Giancarlo because you know they have put time, soul, resources, energy to provide value back to the entire industry.
Stephen: So I brought Max in there too. No, but our team has spent over $3 million and countless years time and money in order which that’s number one in the pillars um in order to to build a technology of that that but I want to also emphasize um on what you were saying we were able to keep like you were saying the second aspect of hyper targeting high-quality leads which the second like the cookie cutter websites can’t do while maintaining a high level of brand and luxury. So we didn’t take away from the luxury while still being able to provide high quality leads. So we were able to fuse one and two and number three the multi-billion dollar platforms what we were able to do is um we we realized that just think if I bought this this microphone or this camera or something these lights from Amazon I didn’t buy it from John’s light store I didn’t buy it from Mike’s mic store u mic Mike Mike’s microphones I bought it from Amazon so when you go and buy a property through Zillow not only are they sharing the lead with 20 other agents, some better, some worse than you, but they didn’t buy it with you, they bought it with Zillow. So Zillow is the Amazon of the real estate industry. What Amazon is to e-commerce, Zillow is to real estate. So all of those things we’ve seen from the luxury websites with no leads to the cookie cutter websites that generate low quality leads that you lose all your luxury to the multi-billion dollar platforms. And that’s how all of this was created essentially.
Carlos: Well just as a quick parenthesis I mean TREMGroup is you know uh the number one lead marketing agency right now again working with developers brokers and single agents nationwide especially on the top markets now globally too we’re working with a couple partners international but I want to talk about our team too because it’s over 70 real estate marketing professionals from designers programmers success managers deployment marketing tech team, you know, where with over 10 years of combined experience, we have all driven further into the future. What worked and we have, you know, created with purpose and value. So again, you know, big shout out to the entire team at the real estate marketing group. It’s all because of you guys. So
Stephen: We’re proud of you guys.
Carlos: Proud of you guys. So now I think we’re ready to dive into the ultimate guide of what you should be looking at in 2025, 2026. If you’re planning on establishing yourself, dominating your market and growing your business, what should you be doing?
Stephen: So that’s a fantastic question. What should you be doing? So the very very first part of the pillar and everything that I’m going to say here today is how we train our team. And I want you to understand if you do these five things, if you study these five things and you understand, I can teach you how to build a website. I can teach you how to do automations and integrations and CRM, whether it’s follow-up boss, high level, it doesn’t matter your broker’s CRM. I can teach you Google ads in 5 minutes. That’s not the hard part. that there’s no reason to teach you any of that if you don’t understand these five things because from a holistic perspective you the end goal is to make a transaction in a certain amount of time. So the very first pillar is understanding the two most important resources that any human being has today in 2025 and most likely still moving forward. Time and money. Ironically, people think money is the most valuable asset. It’s not. Time is. Why? Money. You could get paid hourly. You can make 10 bucks an hour. Now, I guess 15. You can make a million dollars. You can make $100. You can make $1,000. Money can be not infinite, but it can fluctuate dynamically. Time you cannot buy more of none of us. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are or how not wealthy you are. So it doesn’t matter what background you come from, time is the most valuable asset. So when we train our teams, we train the team that they need to put an entrepreneurial mindset. When you hire a marketing agency, when you do ads yourself, whether it’s Google or whether it’s your marketing agency, nobody can tell the difference between a good lead or a bad lead. Anybody can turn an ad on. Anybody can design an ad. Anybody can build a website at the end of the day. Are you generating the right type of person and is that person actually leading to a conversation to a relationship essentially a transaction and did the transaction take 9 years or were you able to do that in less than a year? So, right away, the way we’ve built our entire program and why we say you should do this at least 12 months is because we’ve broken down all the cost that it’s going to take you for your ad spend, whether it’s Google Meta or both, the technology and services that we provide, and we’ve broken it down to in 12 months, let’s assume you invest $35,000. That’s the average amount that one of our marketing teams will minimum invest between their ad spend and us over a 12-month period. So, we know over 12 months, my initial investment has been $35,000. What we train our team is from the moment you sign up with us, you are on board to the end of your contract, we should generate you a bare bare bare minimum of 2x return. Assuming that that’s 3% like most transactions are in resale, like you spoke in your in your last podcast, 5% for pre-construction, but we use the 3% variable. So, we always want more for you. So a 3% variable, we know that we need to sell a minimum of 2.5 million. So 2.5 million is going to equate to about $75,000 in GCI. Of course, before paying taxes or brokerage, things like that. So in a year, you just over doubled your money. You invested, let’s say, $35,000, you made over 70,000. So try the stock market, try Bitcoin, try anything. Try real estate. Even at a 10% return, it’ll take you seven years to double your money. at a 40% return, it’ll take you over two years to generate double your money. So, our main objective bare minimum is to 2x your immediate return. But not only that, now we built you a full business. You have a database full of brand new leads, high quality level leads that are also in different stages, which we’re going to get into the other pillars, diving in deeper to what that means. But you’re building a brand, you’re building a business, you’re building momentum. If I invested today in Bitcoin and in six months I made 20 grand. Yeah, I invested six months and made let’s say I I invested 20 grand and made five grand. So I made $5,000 six months of my time investing 20,000. I’m at 25% return. But you’re not building a business. You’re not building a brand. You’re not building what I like to call a money-making machine. So essentially our core offer is we build you a lead generation machine in 30 days and we build your money-making machine in less than a year. So understanding those two variables and how we train our team because essentially we have clients making four, five, 10, 20x return on their investment es especially year-over-year. Just look at some of our case studies. And don’t get me wrong, we’re we’re not saying this is magic. We’re this is data. This is this is solid solid financial wealth building based off of numbers and not everybody is getting the results but we we’re able to see and correlate exactly what is wrong where to fix it. I just did a study last week on why I had these clients generating such low cost per lead with such high quality and why these other clients were generating a higher cost per lead that the quality wasn’t low but they could get more leads and higher quality and it was just something as simple as the colors on the page. I had another client just adding two buttons, not changing anything in traffic, the exact same amount ad spent. October last year, 2024, they generated 30 leads. Just adding those two buttons in the right place, they went from 30 leads to 180 leads per month. They’re averaging about 200 leads per month with the exact same budget. So, we’re we’re heavily data driven, always improving. Everything we’ve done has been tested over and over and over. And that’s the beauty about being with us that I hear from clients all the time is we see so many accounts in so many different markets. never ever cross reference any client’s information, but we’re able to see what works for here, what’s broken here, what’s making this, and we implement that across the board. So all of our clients get the best benefit from from that information, from finding that out.
Carlos: We call these the digital transformation, digital transformation of of a business.
Stephen: That’s the third pillar.
Carlos: So let’s let’s hit the second.
Stephen: So the second pillar is what we call the wheel. So the wheel and we’re recording right now. I don’t know if we’re going to add uh visuals eventually. If not, you could probably download them below. Is our wheel is our secret formula. So, our secret formula, it’s not secret. I’m giving it away. I’ll tell you what it is. The goal is that you watch our content. You can do it yourself if you like. Um we’re starting a community also where you can do it with us. We over the past 10 years, it was only we do it for you. Now, we’re trying to expand to to so that this is more available to all agents. Um and basically the wheel is broken down into nine three main segments. Attract, convert, sell. So attract is you need to generate traffic just like you have foot traffic at your office. You need people to get to your website. So no matter what you need traffic whether it’s from Google ads, meta ads, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, whatever the case may be, we have a very specific formula how we do it. But regardless whether you hire us or you do it yourself, you’re going to need traffic. That’s how we attract and we attract the right people. Then most agencies stop there. They get you a bunch of impressions, clicks, and this is where they get stuck is conversion. So that’s a that’s the second part with the other three parts of the pillar is once the traffic actually gets to your website, why is the person actually going to give you their name, email, phone number? Why are they actually going to provide you their information? So we have a very specific tactic on how we convert traffic into an actual name, email, phone number. And again a name, numeral, phone number, leads doesn’t necessarily mean dollars. So the third step is sell, attract, convert, sell. So how do we actually do the offline side? All right, we generated the traffic, we got them to the website. First, we generate the impression, then we generated the traffic, then we generated the lead. Now the offline, how do we actually turn this name, email, phone number into a conversation? Once we talk to the conversation, are they even buying? Is it even the right price point of our market? Is it even our farming area?
Carlos: The timeline
Stephen: And the the third is the timeline of purchase. We don’t they could be buying in two, three years but for us we want you generating that ROI in less than a year. So if they’re not buying in less than a year, less than 6 months, less than 3 months for us, for our team, that is not a quality lead. And then essentially now that you have a conversation with the correct lead, are you actually meeting this person face to face? I’ve I’ve heard all kinds of stories, good, bad, ugly, but essentially when you meet somebody face to face, you see their car, you see their watch, you see their demeanor, you see whatever the case may be, you’re like, “Hey, I want to work with more people like this or I don’t I’ve don’t I have a couple funny stories, too.” When they meet the person, it’s like, I don’t want a lead like that.
Carlos: I think it’s also safe to mention that it’s not e-commerce. And when people are buying real estate that either, you know, looking for an investment property, a home that they want to purchase, they’re either upgrading or downsizing. And these are not decisions that people take in 24 hours on the making to decide. So, you know, give yourself the space to know, like you said, it’s not magic. So yes, you need a proven system. You need the right strategy. You need the right team. But you also need to understand the cycle of your clients, what they’re searching for, what their needs are, and how you can measure all of these into your formula. So I’m not going to interrupt from there on.
Stephen: No, no, you’re I want to add to what you’re saying. It is not e-commerce. I over 10 years ago I did Amazon e-commerce things like that and I worked with business owners and I had business owners tell me it’s like I had a click why didn’t they buy and it these were 50 $100 $200 products where I can add a credit card and purchase. Imagine real estate is essentially the largest purchase that someone’s going to make. Doesn’t matter how wealthy they are. What other things are there that are more expensive? Not your car is not more expensive. Your boat’s not more expensive. So essentially, real estate is going to be the largest transaction of most people’s lives. So yes, not only does that apply to real estate, but even in the e-commerce world, there’s a a buyer life cycle. It’s just shorter. And you can add a credit card. We’re a couple years away from adding a credit. We’re working on that, I promise. Um but but yes, is is understanding the and that’s that’s number four. Number four, the fourth pillar is understanding that. So before we get to to that one, let’s get to number three. So the wheel is how we assess. If you speak to one of our sales team members, they can assess using the wheel um where you are right now without using us. Are you going niche? Are do you have the correct infrastructure? Where are you generating your cold traffic? Are your landing pages matching the traffic that you’re generating? Do you have a conversion strategy? What is your your your email, your nurture? Like >> as your CRM, >> um the retargeting, remarketing. So I’m going step by step. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and then what’s your follow-up process? And then number nine is the most important part of the wheel is the feedback loop. Like I mentioned, just Google as big of a multi-billion dollar platform, they can’t tell what a good lead or bad lead is. They’re just going for whatever you’re going after to generate you the best cost per lead. So if this area is generating you 100 leads at $10 a lead, they’re going to go after that not knowing that that’s not even the lead you want to work with. And I guarantee your marketing agency knows even less. They’re going to be like, “Hey, but I I got you 50 leads at at $5 a lead.” Yeah, they’re they’re
Carlos: Looking at a different market. They’re looking
Stephen: I was going to say
Carlos: Window shopping. They might not be
Stephen: It’s the king of Nigeria or something trying to donate, whatever the case may be, but it’s not somebody that’s really serious in buying. So, it doesn’t matter how low cost the lead is. If it’s not the person you want to work with, none of that matters.
Carlos: In most cases, you know, you don’t want to go for the cheapest lead. You want to go for high intended quality keywords. They might be a little bit more competitive, but if it’s more competitive, there’s definitely more value in that lead. So, I mean, I’ll let you
Stephen: That’s for a whole another podcast. So, don’t worry, we’ll dive into all the technical. So, the third thing is what we call the digital transformation. So, the digital transformation is how we actually implement the wheel into your business. So, of course, you talk to our sales team, you sign, you get from there, you go to our onboarding. So the digital transformation starts at your onboarding all the way to the last day of your contract. And we have stage by stage where you should be at, how you should be at. And for our team, we have it broken down into weeks. And for the clients, we have it broken down into stages. Clients travel a lot, things like that. So we want to make sure you’re at the correct stage at the correct time. And we’re a huge relationship based company. We want the best success for our clients. So we always customize everything to our clients. Um, maybe you’re out of town for the summer, whatever the case may be. Just talk to us and we’re we’re always willing to work with you, especially we love working with people that love working with us. Um, but the digital transformation is actually how our teams implement. So, like I mentioned, we have five specialists, a success manager that delegates all these things, gathers your assets, grabs your logos, your head shot, your bios, helps get your vision, all the things that you want, envision for for your future, and they delegate that to the other four technical teams, the marketing managers, people that deal in Google ads and meta ads, our designers, top Photoshop specialists that know the real estate industry, know the luxury, have been trained specifically in our process. what I call our marketing tech team. They actually without them, people like me that do Google ads are lost. They’re actually the ones that connect everything outside the website. So, and this is going to probably be one of the most important podcasts in the future. If you can’t track in Google Ads where that specific John Smith, Michael Perez, whatever the case may be that lead came from, what keyword, what campaign, you’re just throwing money away. So, that’s a whole class in itself. So, our marketing tech team makes everything above the website and below the website, which is your CRM or database, speak to each other. And that’s number two in the in the wheel, the infrastructure. So, most people are like, “Yeah, I have a CRM. Oh, I have a a website. Yeah, yeah, I got a Google Ads guy.” If they’re not all talking as one unit, like in in synchronicity, you don’t have anything. So, our marketing tech team specializes that. making sure your CRM has the correct automations, making sure the tags, and you track everything from beginning to end. And then the fourth technical team is our um website specialists. They’re the ones that build your website. They’re the ones that build the landing pages, the trip wires, the boost boxes, making sure everything is quick and seamless. Just because we built idx boost and the technology, still about 90% of our clients don’t even want to touch it. They want us to do it, which is fine. We we we built the technology for speed and efficiency while still keeping luxury. So you have those four teams simultaneously working on your so they each have a different responsibility in a different software in a different stage of the digital transformation and the wheel. So this is how everybody communicates with each other and number nine in the wheel that feedback loop when something is broken we know who needs to fix it and what part is broken. So that’s where the digital transformation. So by from your onboarding to the end of your contract, you meet that 2x return and you could track everything. Your total leads out of those total leads, who have you actually spoken to out of those speaking to which ones were quality? How many generated into an actual relationship? And then under contract and close deals. So that’s a digital transformation in a nutshell.
Carlos: Amazing. I mean, we’re missing
Stephen: Four. So number four is my favorite one. Number four and five, I’m actually writing a book on each one. I’m starting with four and then I’ll get to five when I’m done with four. So now that you understand you, you’re the agent, your business, the most important thing is understanding your customer, their buyer journey. So number four is what I call the rabbit hole. A lot of times marketing agencies call it a funnel. You could call it whatever the case may be. I call it the rabbit hole, the customer journey. How we take a complete stranger on the internet all the way to a transaction. So there’s six layers in between. and we probably mentioned it along the way. The very very top layer is an impression. I saw your ad. I saw it on Instagram. I saw it in Google search. I saw it on CNN or Fox, whatever your news choice is. Uh we won’t get political here. Um but when you see an ad, that’s an impression. Once you actually click on the ad, you’ve broken the barrier of being somewhere on the internet, the Twitter sphere, to actually being on your website, your digital storefront. So now you’re on my website, stephenrealtor.com, whatever the case may be. Still, I’m a random IP address. That’s layer two. Until I actually know that Carlos is on my website, you’re basically IP address 1 2 3 7 8 9. And then until you actually fill out a form or ask for more information or download a guide, do you break the barrier from being traffic on my website to an actual lead in my database? And again, like we said, name, email, phone number doesn’t pay the bills, just like likes and shares don’t. So those are the first three layers, what I call the online half. Impression, click or traffic, leader conversion. This the fourth, fifth, and six are the offline side. This is number eight in the wheel. This is actually how you follow up with your lead. So the first the fourth layer is you need to call your there’s quantity and quality. The quantity is how many times are you actually calling this person to make a connection. Most of the time our clients are like, I don’t want to bother them. We actually built an entire department called an ISA, an internal sales agent where we’ll call your leads for you because I’m a data person. Nothing will make me happier than that person coming back to me and being like, “Hey, the leads are bad, but they did their due diligence in the follow-up because I can fix it.” If you’ve never called your lead, there’s not much I can do at that point. So the quantity side is the way we train our ISAs is that you call your lead at least 10 times within a two week span. Why we really it should be in a one week is that the best leads I’ve seen are usually busy just like yourself just like yourself is like we’re all busy. Um if I call you once on a random Tuesday because I’m available that doesn’t mean you’re available. Maybe you’re in a meeting. Maybe you’re on the way to your kids soccer game. Maybe you’re at lunch with a client. Maybe you’re in a board meeting. who who knows. So, what we believe is the lead came in Tuesday morning. You’re already calling them Tuesday afternoon for really you call them right away if you’re available or your ISA or VA is available. Then you call them Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morning, Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning, Thursday afternoon. Not to harass or bother them, just to connect. Hey, how can I help you? I see you’re looking for a condo in Bickell. I see you’re looking for a house in Coral Gables. I see how can I we just to get from layer four to five is having a conversation. Even if they say, “Hey, no, you called the wrong number.” That’s fine. That’s data for us because calling a lead and having no one answer, you don’t know if it’s the right information. You don’t know anything. But just having someone answer already broke the barrier. Wow. Whoever lead left that information, I had a an interaction. So then the from the the fifth layer is is now we have conversations. And there’s different conversations, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s like I have no idea who you are. is like, “Hey, never call me again.” That’s fine. That’s a part of the digital space. But as soon as you and we can again backtrack that to where they came from and stop spending money there. The goal is that you provide us that information, good, bad, ugly, and the good we spend more money. The bad we spend no money. And we can track everything along the way. Once you have the conversations and you get to the good is yes, I’m interested. Yes, I’m looking for a house in Coral Gables. We need them to say for us yes to three things. Price point, farming area, timeline of purchase. So, if our client is going for a million dollar properties minimum, is this person buying at least a million dollar property? Hey, yeah, I’m buying 1.5. Perfect. Uh, what area looking? Well, I was searching Coral Gables, but I might be interested in Coconut Grove, Key Biscayne. It’s like, hey, that’s within the vicinity. Okay, it’s our farming area. Oh, no. I’m thinking of buying in three years. Nope. Bad lead. Oh, no. I’m actually purchasing in the next 3 to 6 months timeline of purchase. So 1.5 million near Coral Gable’s area within 3 to 6 months. So right away we had a conversation. Now we can officially say that is a lead we want to work with. At that stage we want to now meet this person face to face to show properties. We deal with a lot of international. So it’s fine if you do Zoom. A lot of our pre-construction clients they will actually go to the sales gallery and give the presentation at the sales gallery. Um, and that’s fine, but you met the person, you have a connection, you now have a relationship face to face. Once you’ve broken that barrier, of course, the due diligence, you’ve been in real estate for quite some time. If you have the ability to hire us, we know you have some transactions under your belt is under contract and close deal. We can’t help much there unless you really, really want us to, but that’s a conversation for another day. But once we’ve gotten you a stranger on the internet, to a person on your website, to a lead in your database, to a conversation, to somebody saying yes to their price point, uh, farming area and timeline of purchase, to somebody you met, you saw them pull up in a Mercedes, an Aston, a Ferrari, whatever the case may be. Um, a decent car. You see them with decent family, and you’re like, “Hey, yes, I would love to work with these people.” At that point, it’s your due diligence to put them under contract and close the deal. We haven’t made it that far yet, but our clients are doing wonders. Like, like just check out our case studies. We’re we have tons more. These are just the ones we published. Um, and that’s the entire rabbit hole from beginning to end. And then the last pillar, number five, is what I call the bottleneck. Where along those six layers are you stuck and how do we unstuck you? So, I know that’s not a proper terminology, but but it just it feels right using that word because that’s what we do. Hey, um my client’s not getting any leads. Are they getting at least 20 clicks a day? It’s like they’re not. That could be a huge sign. Oh, they are getting 20 clicks. They’re actually getting 100 clicks a day. Then it’s the landing page. It’s the conversion tracking. It’s the speed. Things like that. They are getting leads, but they’re all saying, “Leave me alone.” That’s fine. Where is the traffic coming from? Things like that. So we have an exact process, formula, KPI to measure each step of those six layers. So that’s the bottleneck in a nutshell.
Carlos: Well, I really appreciate you for sharing all of that. I think it’s going to bring a lot of value to everybody watching. And for those who have the time and want to learn more, I invite you to follow our social media channels, to follow our YouTube channel, to go and look for the lab, which is where Stephen goes and, you know, show you step by step on how to do this. He just mentioned he’s going to bring a new class out there to bring all of this content available for those of you who want to do it yourself. But if you know that you need, you know, the right team, if you know that you’re already investing on marketing and it’s not working out for you or you’re again investing in any of these options that we talked about at the beginning and you’re not growing your personal brand, your team, you’re not getting to the transactions that you want, we invite you to, you know, click on the link below, talk to our team, you know, schedule a one-on-one consultation with our sales team. We would love to talk to you. They would love to assess your business using this process. And at least you’ll leave that call knowing exactly where you at in in your in your business today and what you you need to do to fix it or how we can help you get it done. Um so I mean being that the case, I appreciate you for sharing all this information and we look to see you in the next episode of the pipeline and the lab. So thank you again for watching and we’ll see you in the next one. We’ll see you on the other side.