You hear all kinds of numbers on how much you should spend on marketing — percentages, dollar amounts, different mixtures of marketing areas (Facebook vs. direct mail vs. cold calls vs. buying data, etc.). But what if your marketing expenses needed to generate $1 million in revenue was just $30,000?
That’s right — 3%.
“You’re crazy!” is the first response. But Tyler Austin of Florida Cash Home Sales does just that. Three percent.
Who is this wizard? He must be a master marketer, have incredible connections, work in that mythical “can’t miss” market (wherever that is), or just be plain lucky.
None of the above. In fact, Tyler just about lost his shirt doing direct mail before he gathered his thoughts, used his resources and experience from his prior career, and discovered the real secret to effective marketing: Good Data.
Good Data? That’s it? I can buy good data. He must have bought some REALLY good data (and just got lucky).
Nope. Tyler doesn’t just use the data he receives. He has created a system to examine data, remove the extraneous and useless information, refine it further, rinse and repeat. So when he does his direct mail, cold calls, or other marketing, he is using updated, solid data that gives Florida Cash Real Estate a complete picture of the property they have targeted to acquire. So they don’t spend hours falling down the rabbit hole chasing potential clients who aren’t there; they almost always know who the client is, what is their situation, and why they need help.
Now add in the human touch.
Tyler uses actual humans to talk to actual human clients. He doesn’t use autodialers or other impersonal methods (direct mail is an exception, but the messaging is personalized to the group targeted). His team leaves personal voicemails for people, sends them personalized messages on Facebook or Instagram, or sends them personalized emails. They try to find a family member or friend as a contact who can make a warm introduction for them, which builds trust and helps lower the potential client’s protective shield. And if they can’t help the person, they refer them to someone who can, like a real estate agent or attorney.
Amazingly, human clients really like being treated well, and like, well, human beings.
Tyler’s data-driven marketing uses various software, including Tyler’s own REISift to parse data, remove the junk, and leave his team with data they can be productive using (www.REISift.io). As Tyler says, a great aspect of real estate is that there are vast amounts of public information on virtually every property. This is also the downside, because a large portion of that data is not relevant to your business, but is included in the data sets you get. Manually sifting through copious amounts of data searching for gold nuggets is a non-stop, time-wasting, exhausting process. However, with the proper software tools and defined parameters, you can automate that process and be left with high quality leads which are useful and valuable.
Tyler still does some traditional marketing — direct mail, local networking groups, Chamber of Commerce, Facebook ads (yes, those are traditional now). He can control his costs and highly target these marketing expenses rather than shotgunning around blindly hoping to get a hit.
Don’t be afraid to take your data and work it to extract what you need for your business. An investment in data management can pay off exponentially both in money saved and time gained.For more information and more tips and tricks from Tyler, check out the Real Estate Disruptors podcast featuring Steve Trang’s interview with Tyler Austin at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaI4L11iHV4&t=1094s. Find more helpful information on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcsj9IjfX7-fhzLZRPtWo1Q?view_as=subscriber and www.RealEstateDisruptors.com.
Tucker Merrihew is the Owner and Head Acquisitions & Finance Manager for TTM Development Company. He began his career in the Real Estate business back in 2002 as a Top Producing Mortgage loan officer, and then by 2004 he built his own Mortgage Company TTM Finance, LLC & Davis Financial which is still in operation today. In 2008 Tucker began building TTM Development Company from the ground up, and presently he is in charge of daily operations, Investor Relations, project financing and all new acquisitions for the company. Currently Tucker is looking to expand his company’s brand through projects like the 2013 Street of Dreams in order to make TTM a household name for Portland homebuyers looking for exceptional homes. Tucker also has two very successful and long-running podcasts, The Portland Real Estate Podcast and The Real Dealz Podcast, each packed with helpful information for real estate investors of all levels.
Steve Trang is the founder of the Real Estate Disruptors movement and host of the Real Estate Disruptors Podcast. He started his podcast in the middle of 2018 to inspire wholesalers and real estate agents to double their incomes by adding a second leg to their business. The podcast has now grown to ten thousand followers with new members of the community sharing their success story every week.