What is PPC and Why Real Estate Investors Use This to do More Deals in 2024

Steve Trang: Everybody, welcome to Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we're recording something very special, very special series. This is the PPC masterclass of Bateman Collective. We're gonna spend the next few episodes breaking down how to effectively run a digital marketing campaign so that if you're whether you wanna do PPC on your own or you wanna be able to properly vet a PPC provider, you know exactly what to look for, when you're deciding whether you wanna work with them or not. So today, we got, Brandon Bateman with Bateman Collective.

And we're talking about today, why PPC?

Brandon Bateman: Yeah. I'm I'm super excited to be here, Steve. Thank you for for having me again on on the podcast.

Steve: Oh, man. I can always geek out on marketing. It's like, Mhmm. You know, I've I've been very, very passionate about sales, very vocal about sales, but sales doesn't happen if the phone's not ringing.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: Right? And so Fair point.

Brandon: And it happens very differently with different types of leads too.

Steve: Definitely. So, before we get into YPPC, let's talk for those that haven't seen any of our episodes that we recorded together, Tell us about your journey into real estate.

Brandon: Yeah. I'm I'm a weird, I'm a weird guy in this industry. It feels like everybody in this industry, they started because they got into real estate. And then one day they realized I have this problem and I learned to solve this problem this way. And then I'm gonna solve that problem for other people too.

And I'm, I'm like backwards because I came from a marketing side, which I think gives me a little bit of a unique perspective. I started this company, it was about seven years ago when I was a sophomore in college. So I was super young. I'm still am kind of young, but I was even younger than I am now. And I knew so so little about anything.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And, and I decided that I wanted to, to to get into digital marketing and started doing some some freelance work and and stuff like that. So I started working with a a few clients, and I did like, at that time, I would do pretty much anything. Mhmm. Like, we did a lot of, like, Kickstarter campaign advertising or ecommerce products. I had I had, like, b to b SaaS products, pretty much everything you could imagine.

Steve: You were doing the pay per click marketing for them?

Brandon: Well, here's the interesting thing. At the beginning, I did a lot of Facebook marketing. That was actually, like, the first the first thing I ever did. Then when I say beginning, like, this this is, like, probably four months after the beginning. Mhmm.

I I got this call from this guy named Mark Stuber. I know you've had Mark Stuber on the podcast before. A lot of people don't know him. You might know him if I say Cody Hofhein's business partner. Right.

Steve: Because everyone knows Cody. Yes. Mark is the one behind the scenes making Cody look good.

Brandon: That's right. I I like Mark a lot. Yeah. So I get this call from this guy named named Mark, and this time, I don't know anything about him or anything. He he just says, like, I am looking for somebody who can help run our PPC campaigns better than they run now.

I've worked with every industry specific company that I can find. We went through all of them and we just can't find anybody who can make this work for us. Can you take a look at it? I said, okay. What I didn't say is I've never run a PPC campaign before.

So I so he asked when I could come by and he asked if I could, like, come the next day or something. I said, like, I I I can't, but I can come next week. Just so I gave myself, like, time to binge everything on YouTube that existed about PPC advertising.

Steve: Right. This is this is, like,

Brandon: my start with PPC. And I knew a little bit about digital advertising, but, like, I I don't know how you feel about your past self. I always look at myself, like, even six months ago, like, a complete idiot that had no idea what he was doing.

Steve: Yeah. I've had many instances of those where I went from, like, a complete imbecile to, like, mildly competent.

Brandon: Yes. Yes. So this is this is one of those journeys Yeah. To to mildly competent. So so, anyways, I, I mean, at this time, this is back before Cody was even like, this is 2017.

Mhmm. Cody wasn't, like, super well known, wasn't doing a time.

Steve: So this is their Wholesaling Inc.

Brandon: Yeah. Their business was a little smaller. I think I I don't remember exactly when you got involved with Wholesaling Inc, but but regardless of the situation, like, it was it was kinda like earlier stage for them. I remember showing up to the office and being like, who are these people? Like, they're not they're not trying to sell something.

Usually, people I talk to are trying to sell something. And, also, they're in this, like, sketchy little, like, basement office. And I was like, what is this place, and what is this industry? And so I walk in there, and then Mark's there, and he's got this he shows me the computer screen. There's, you know, his Google Ads account.

He's like, tell me what's wrong with this account. So I I took

Steve: I took Well, you're minimal BBC experience.

Brandon: I mean, every video on YouTube that could be found, I I watched it before this moment. So I was prepared and I had like a thought through like all the things. So I started poking through the accounts and I tell him, oh, I don't like this. Or I think this should be done this way instead. Like all these things based on, based on what I had learned.

So I didn't know this until later, but turns out like he was talking with like three or four companies and I, the the price I had quoted him was $3,000 at that time per month to manage it. It was apparently, like, twice the price of anybody else who had pitched pitched him on this this service.

Steve: At this point, you're, like, 20 years old?

Brandon: Yeah. I'm pretty I'm I'm about 20 years old. I'm twice as expensive as any as anybody else, and I've never done this before.

Steve: I mean, it's pretty, a lot of chutzpah, right, to to come in commanding 3,000 a month at 20 years old.

Brandon: Well, I didn't know what to charge, to be honest. Like, I just with my other clients, like, my strategy was I just charge a little bit more each time until somebody says no. So here we were at 3,000. That was the running amount Yeah. What I was just charging clients because I I had no idea no idea what to do.

But but here's the like, to me, this isn't like a fake it till you make it story because I was gonna I was going to find a way to make this work.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And and I and I fully believe that. So, anyways, somehow, someway, Mark, like, we just got along really well. Like, because I I'm I'm not the guy to, like, make big promises. You probably know that about me. Like, I'm I'm the kind of guy that tells you I'm gonna be there at 10:00, and then I get there at 09:45.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Just because I don't I don't like to mislead people. Right?

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So so, anyways, I I was still, like, very, very humble about it. Like, I don't know if I can help you, but if I did, I would do all all of these things. And that's what I believe is gonna make the difference. And and Mark saw a lot of, a lot of potential in that. So so over the next few years, I start working in, you know, still continuing to work in a lot of different industries.

I was actually chasing, like, my goal was I wanna work with the biggest clients.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So I found companies spending, like, hundreds of thousands or in some cases, even millions of dollars a month on these marketing channels

Steve: Wow. That I

Brandon: would work with, which is cool because you get to see kind of the enterprise side. And how do those marketers do it? Because turns out the people who work at the agencies that work with those companies or who work in those companies are some of the best in the world. And you can learn there's, like, this huge gap between how PPC is done for small companies Mhmm. And how PPC is done for larger companies.

And What's that gap? I mean, that's what we're gonna talk about over the rest of this this series, but it's it's more, like a lot of people think it's just the people just stare at the screen more. They spend more hours, like more minutes, just, you know, investing into the campaign. And just because of all the, like, time, it gets magically better. Mhmm.

It's not my experience actually as much as it's a smarter strategy. Mhmm. Is and you can have people that have more experienced that are, frankly, smarter people, and that's that's what makes a difference. But but regardless, I did all that. And, and then this this client that I started working with, Cody Hoff and Mark Stoker's business, became, like, this business that I never heard of.

Like, I would I would do everything. I'd be, like, calling them, emailing them. I'd come by their office and drop off cookies, just trying to figure out, like, I've been managing your campaign. Can we talk? Like,

Steve: is it good? Is it bad? It's just radio silence.

Brandon: Yeah. Just just radio silence for for multiple years. I would, like, touch base with one of their admins, like, once in a while, but, like, it was it was hard to, like, get ahold of them. I guess they're kinda busy. And, apparently, I didn't know how well it was going.

And then after three years, I finally talked to them. This is my first time, talking

Steve: paying you 3,000 a month, and they don't even talk to you?

Brandon: Correct. For three years. Wow. Yep. So three years later, Cody calls me up.

I never talked to Cody. He's like, I don't know if you know this, but this channel has become our cheapest cost per deal marketing channel, our largest revenue per deal, our highest return on investment marketing channel, and our single highest revenue marketing channel at scale. Apparently, that first year, we kept the ad spend the same, and we doubled revenue. In the second year, we doubled revenue again while keeping the ad spend the same. And then the third year, we doubled the ad spend and we doubled the revenue.

Yeah. So we kinda prove that we could scale it a

Steve: little bit. You you you got the cost per, well, let's see. You got kept the cost but increased revenue. So cost per the spend was the same. So maybe the cost per contract or cost per deal went down so they can double the revenue.

Brandon: There's some of that and then some of, like, growing revenue per deal because this is, like, you know, this is a period. It's like 2017, then eighteen, nineteen, twenty, like, growing deal spreads were normal Right. At that time period too.

Steve: Gotcha. And they

Brandon: were getting better and such. So there's there's a lot of there's a lot that contributed to to the growth over that time period. But we've gotten to the point where we generated 1,400,000.0 in wholesale assignment fees over that year from from the from the online marketing alone. And and that was kind of the, you know, the first, like, case study or the first entrance I had into this industry. And I started getting, I just started getting referrals from them, and those people started giving me referrals.

And once at at some point, I look at my business. This is back in 2020, and, like, the very, very beginning of 2020, right before you and I met. Mhmm.

Steve: And I realized,

Brandon: like, we're mostly in real estate, and I haven't even tried. I don't seek out those clients or anything. And at that point, we cut off the rest of the industries that we worked with and just focus on real estate, which is I wish I could say it was, like, my brilliance that I decided to do that. Mhmm. It wasn't.

I was kinda like basically, it just happened naturally, and and now I get to take credit for it. But in hindsight, that was an amazing decision.

Steve: What were the industries that you you moved away from?

Brandon: Ecommerce. I loved I really specifically love, like, enterprise b two b marketing. Mhmm. We took one of our clients. We did most of their online demand gen until they got acquired by VMware.

If you don't know them, they're like a at the time, like, a $40,000,000,000 publicly traded company. The the reason I love b two b enterprise lead gen is actually the same reason I love I love real estate. There's there's more that they have in common than you think. Very high cost per lead. Mhmm.

Very variable lead quality and high difficulty for marketers in connecting those things so you can actually optimize for the things that matter, which means that most marketers in those industries suck.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And there's potential if you're really, really good to be much, much better than everybody else versus there's some industries where, like, the best of the marketers and the worst of the marketers are pretty close.

Steve: They're they're commodities.

Brandon: Yes. Exactly.

Steve: The the the skill gap is extremely noticeable here.

Brandon: Yeah. That's that's why I love real estate investment marketing. Yeah. Because to Google, a seller, a buyer, a motivated seller, they're all almost the same person. Yeah.

So targeting and finding the right people on online is really, really hard. Just the same as it was for, I mean, we worked with companies selling like, like, IT infrastructure automation software, or like we had one that was like like military drones. Mhmm. Super cool. But could you imagine like a more niche PPC campaign?

Like we're looking for people from the government searching about defense drones. And we could do it and it worked, but, like, it was so hard to find, like, just the right targeting, just the right people.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And it was really hard to connect what's happening in sales to what's happening in marketing, and that's what made it really interesting.

Steve: What would be, like, the filters to figure out to figure that out? Proximity to a base?

Brandon: Yeah. I mean, that's that's not that wasn't as useful as intent. It was more just really, really getting down into, like, what the people are

Steve: searching for. Keywords. Yeah. What's the what's the language that they're using Mhmm. If they're this kind of, if they're in this particular career.

Brandon: Yes. So it's that, and then it's also how are you defining success and how do you optimize for those things, which is, you know, something we'll we'll talk about.

Steve: Which is all over the analytics and the attributions.

Brandon: Yes. Yes. That's yeah. And it goes it goes so deep. That's why we're doing this six part series just about, like, how do you nail that?

Mhmm. Because to the rest of the world, the seller and a motivated seller, they're the same thing. But in this industry, they're so different.

Steve: Well, I mean, when I started my journey, I was it was a lot easier. Right? At this at that time, it was a lot less competitive.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Like, I'm just thinking, I need to find sellers because I need to get listings. Right? I'm a realtor. Mhmm.

I need to get listings. So So what are all the things that you might Google as a homeowner? Mhmm. Right? And so it was, what's my house worth?

Appraisals. I was doing appraisal keywords where I'll send you to a, it was kinda like a you you you put in your address and everything else.

Brandon: Mhmm. And

Steve: then I would reach out to you, and then I would give you an estimated value of your home. Like, that's what I was doing. Right? So I I bought Tempe values, you know, chandlerprices.com.

Brandon: I know you're a domain hoarder.

Steve: I am very a domain hoarder. Right? So I think, Phoenix Home prices, I think, like, we're all the different ones. So depending if

Brandon: you if you're in Phoenix, that's what you have.

Steve: If you're in Tempe, that's what you got. Right? So it's very intentional. Yeah. And what I learned very quickly was that that had nothing to do with motivation.

Finding what my house is worth is not intent. And so the ones that, were finding, I was intent with sell my house.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: And then with that journey, sell my house. Like, these are great appointments.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: But the cost per click is way higher. Yep. Right? And the people that I'm competing against is like, oh, let's Google sell my house. What does this look like?

Everyone's a cash buyer. Like, what is this deal? Right? And that's that's how I went down to this journey Mhmm. Was that I was just thinking of all the different things that people would Google that wanna sell their house.

And then you find, oh, sell my house. Oh, people that say Google sell my house also Google buy my house.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: And so that was that that's when I realized the value of intent. Until then, like, you know, they're they're indicators, and that was it.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. 100%. That that totally that totally makes sense. And and there's a lot of those things you say are still true today, and some of them have changed a little bit.

Like, the the world of, like, buying domains so that you can rank for things. It's like that's like old school SEO.

Steve: Yeah. Right? Right. And it's it's a little bit

Brandon: of a different world here, but it's it's totally, like, you're you're totally right. And then those things, like, getting in the seller's head and understanding, like, what they want Mhmm. And understanding how to reverse engineer that and gather data around that. Like, that's a lot of, like, that's a lot of what PPC is. Mhmm.

So, yeah, that that's why I'm super

Steve: And there was no, like, attribution. Like, we bought their house. That didn't exist.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: It was just, like, it was just, finding that these people that Google here that really wanted to that went to this particular website. I knew it was like, we need to spend more on on those keywords. Okay. I track I could track conversion Yeah. Of registration.

Yep. That's what the only thing I could track was registration.

Brandon: Form on the website.

Steve: That's the only thing I could track. I could never track this turn into a sale.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. 100%, which which as we'll we'll talk about, it can be can be pretty valuable to to, you know, track track more metrics than than just those basics.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So so that's the general background, and that's that's when you and I met was probably, like, 2020 yeah. Just about 2020. Was I remember it was right before COVID. Mhmm. And we got into, yeah, that's when I went deep into real estate investment, and that's that's really when my company grew.

Steve: Yeah. That's probably 2018 or '19 because, see, we launched a podcast in '18, and we were at that Tempe office because it was crowded. Right? That podcast room was me, you, and Cody.

Brandon: Was it? Was that in a different place than here? I remember it's the same office, but just a different room. Right?

Steve: If it was here, then it would have been in that room. That would have been 2020.

Brandon: Okay. It was 2020. I'm pretty sure.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. I think I think I'm not getting my date my dates mixed up. Okay.

Steve: Then it was post COVID.

Brandon: Four years into, like, just Yeah. So then

Steve: it was post COVID because, we got in this space after COVID.

Brandon: Maybe it was. I think we met January 2020 at a collective genius event.

Steve: But for sure yeah. It was after CG. That's right. So it was 2020 then. For sure it was a crowded room.

Yeah. It was it

Brandon: was a crowded room. I remember that. It was

Steve: a little different space than

Brandon: this. Yeah. But that's, yeah, that's the journey in in real estate. And and now we have, about 30 team members, a 190 clients, I wanna say.

Steve: How many team members?

Brandon: 30. 30. Yeah. That's usually surprising to people, but there's there's a lot of work to get done.

Steve: 30. We're talking like w two.

Brandon: 30 w VAs. Probably 25 w two. We have, like, probably five, like, VAs, contractors, etcetera. There are some part time. We have, like, a good intern program.

Steve: Pretty significant overhead.

Brandon: It is significant overhead. Yeah. Yeah. But, there's I mean, to to do what we do for our clients is not, you know, I guess not easy to do.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: But but, yeah, we have about 13 members and, like I said, about a 190 clients. We've had clients across United States, Canada, Australia, pretty much most markets

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Which gives you a lot of a lot of vision to what's going on across the real estate market overall and what strategies are working, and we gather a lot of data. And Mhmm. So, yeah, it's been it's been a super neat experience. And and, like I said, I wish I wish it was like an intentional strategy of mine, long ago.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: But we've found, yeah, we found a lot of potential to to create results that people just can't create without the amount of data that we have.

Steve: Gotcha. So, what are we gonna be talking about over these next few episodes?

Brandon: So there's there's there's a lot into it. So I'll just I'll give, like, a brief brief overview of this, of this whole series. So number one, we have, we have a few resources. So there's a toolkit, and, that's going to include some resources like I'm that I'm talking about and other resources that people can use to, to run their own PPC campaigns, to learn more about PPC. I mean, something that you had mentioned was like kind of two purposes of this at the beginning.

Like let's help people to be able to run their own PPC campaigns or to be able to, vet out companies. There's a third one. It's actually my primary reason for for wanting to do this, and that is that the advantage that a business owner can have if they really understand how a marketing channel works Mhmm. Even if they're working with another agency. Right.

Like, on a basic level, they can understand how that marketing channel works is huge. Because our clients that get it, they're we can have really productive strategic conversations Mhmm. And they understand why things have gone wrong in their other PPC campaigns that they've run and stuff like that. Like, that's my whole goal with this. So there's people listening to this right now that have run PPC before, and it hasn't worked.

And at some point during the series, some light bulb's gonna go off in their head. They're gonna say, that's why it didn't work. Yeah. I have to do that. And that's that's the whole goal of this.

So then they're, like, they could be smarter with their strategy in the future. Because what often happens is we try to take the lessons we've learned from other marketing channels and apply them to PPC, and then it just doesn't work. So what we deal with as an agency all the time is people like like, it feels sometimes like we're, like, fighting our clients just to get them the results that they need because they're constantly wanting us to do stuff that we shouldn't be

Steve: doing. Right. Right? So Gotcha.

Brandon: I think I think education is super important. So, yeah, we'll have the toolkit. We'll have links available. Like, if you want if people want to schedule a consult with with my team, ask about their specific market, ask, you know, questions more specific to them. That's we'll put that in the in the description, but it'll be bitmancollective.com/disruptors

Steve: so

Brandon: they can do that. And this like, my my whole goal for this, and this is the same thing I shared with you when when I reached out to you to first build this, was let's make the most comprehensive information available on the Internet about PPC for real estate investors. So So this is gonna be long. Like, it's an investment to to go through this, but we're going to add so much value, and I'm gonna try to hold nothing back Alright. Just to give as much as we possibly can so that people have the the resources they need to succeed with the channel.

Steve: Yeah. Well, you talk about, you know, our our scenario. Right? We went from, complete imbeciles to, like, mildly competent to competent to decent. Right?

Mhmm. The hope then is, like, if you don't know, at least you know what questions to ask. Because what happens is, particularly if you got a vendor who's not transparent, it's like Yeah. Hey. What's wrong with my campaign?

Oh, well, we're taking a look at it. And that's the extent you get. Right? But if you have the transparency, you can actually look at it. It's like, okay.

You know, this I don't know. Do these ad sets make sense? Right? Mhmm. Are you testing it?

How much testing are we doing? And so so you can ask better questions as a as a as a client, and then we can figure out, like, what strategies make, again, best is is is a best practice versus, like, this feels good.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And and then you can avoid that situation where, like, unknowingly as the client, you, like, steer the company you're working with Mhmm. To actually work worse for you

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Which people do all the time. Right. We try to, like, be really, really firm. But even with us, I sometimes see, like, you just let the client, like, mow over you, and now you're doing a strategy that doesn't work. And it's like it happens all the time.

This is, like, one of the main things I have to train my team on. So so that's why I'm super excited for this. So just just to tease, like, the the series and the the episodes that we're gonna do, so that everybody knows what to expect. So so in this episode, I wanna talk about, like, why this marketing channel like, if you're listening to this so far and we haven't even talked about that much so far because, honestly, I think it's kind of universally a channel that everybody knows can work really well. It's PPC.

It's it's it's so exciting. But let's talk about, like, where does PPC fit within a marketing mix? How do you know if you're ready for it? Like, the the number of, or, or, like, different benchmark metrics. How does it compare to pay per lead?

Like, all that kind of stuff. For the next episode, we're gonna talk about, okay, num episode number two. I'm gonna give a fair warning here. It's it's gonna be the most boring one. Mhmm.

But it's gonna lay the foundation of a lot of knowledge that you need to understand all the really exciting stuff that's gonna make a big difference. So we're gonna talk about how Google works and bidding, which doesn't sound like the sexiest of all of all marketing, but it's it's actually I think you'll find it really fascinating. We're gonna talk in the third episode about location and budget strategy. This is probably the most, like, practically useful one. So if you can make it through number two, the number two will help you understand number three really, really clearly, and that helps you do great strategy.

The number four, we're gonna talk all about optimizing for lead quality and how you do that because that's the number one thing that people do wrong in this industry is they focus on generating leads, not generating deals. That's one thing we do differently, and I'm gonna share all the strategies that we use to to focus on lead quality. Number five is what data do we have that suggests how you do acquisitions for PPC leads and how that might vary from your other marketing channels. So we're gonna go pretty deep into that. And then number six, the way this is gonna work.

So you can go and download the toolkit again with the resources in the in the links below. On there, you'll find a place where you can register for a live q and a session, and you can also submit questions for that session. So at number six, we're just kinda got gonna scoop up all the questions from all the prior episodes, and we're gonna do a live, a live question and answer session.

Steve: Awesome. I I think that's gonna be great. So, we're talking about inbound versus outbound. Right? And we're saying, like, you know, PPC, this is it.

Whether you do it now or do it later, but for sure, this is part of your strategy.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? So inbound versus outbound. So talk to me about the the the scalability of those two.

Brandon: Yeah. Let let's talk about it. I'm actually gonna share for for anybody joining on, YouTube. On YouTube. Yeah.

I'm gonna share a graphic just so you can see and understand this a little bit more. I'll put this here so you can see it too, Stio, as we go through this. But the a lot of people talk about inbound, outbound. Like, they're like it's a binary thing. Like, it's a channel inbound or outbound.

I don't think we often think about it as, like, a scale. Like, you could imagine on one side of the scale, you have, like, fully outbound marketing. On the other side of the scale, you have fully inbound marketing. And then there's everything in between. Right?

So just to show, like, some examples of, like, of marketing channels and where I think they fit on the scale, like, a fully outbound marketing channel might be, like, door knocking. Let's say, but that's, like, as outbound as you could possibly be. Be. Maybe close to their way of, like, realtor outreach, and then we have, like, cold call. We have cold text.

So these are, like, your traditional, like, out more outbound type of channels. And then we move into, like, semi inbound channels. And here's the difference. In an outbound, I'm, like, going to you. Like, I'm, like, calling you and trying to see if I can get ahold of you.

As we get to, as we get to these semi inbound channels, what we're getting to is channels where you go to the seller. Mhmm. But and then they selectively choose that they want to respond to you. Right. But they're not looking for you.

Like, let's just say you're doing direct mail. That's a great example of a semi inbound channel. Mhmm. You're not like, people don't go to their postcard or they don't go to the their mailbox just, like, thinking and praying. Like, this is my this is my cash offer mailbox.

I'm just gonna go to the mailbox. I'm looking for a card that's gonna be a cash offer in my house.

Steve: And there's no intent.

Brandon: No. There's no intent. It's just like they go they went to their mailbox for whatever reason. They go to their mailbox, and then they pull that out and they're like, oh, you know what? This actually could be good for me right now in my situation.

Right? So those are semi inbound channels. Like Facebook ads is one of the channels we manage that falls in that that realm, direct mail, and then leaving a little bit more inbound. You're like radio and TV, but they're still semi inbound because these are people that are, you know, you're you're still showing them the ad first, and then they're choosing to respond to it.

Steve: But that one is more general because this is not like you're not targeted. Right. What you're targeting is because you watch this channel Yeah. At this time.

Brandon: Although, ironically, the the lead quality objectively from radio and TV is very good. Mhmm. And I think the reason it's really good is because there's a lot of friction. Like, it's hard to it's hard to, like, write down real quick the phone number that you have to call or remember the name of the company. And so because it's not like like, that's why Facebook ads would have a lower lead quality than, like, TV advertising, for example.

Because in Facebook ads, you just, like, click the button, fill out the form versus in TV. You kinda, like, it's more friction before you get there. So that helps filter and improve the lead quality.

Steve: There's the friction, but it's also the implied authority as well.

Brandon: That's true. Absolutely.

Steve: Right. Like, if this guy's on TV, he has to be legitimate. Why wouldn't that be on TV? Or why would

Brandon: he be

Steve: on TV? Not legitimate.

Brandon: Yeah. Versus Facebook is full of all kinds of junk.

Steve: Anybody and everybody.

Brandon: Yep. Yeah. 100%. So so so that's kinda like moving from outbound to semi inbound. Then there's, like, truly genuinely inbound channels.

Mhmm. And that's gonna be all search marketing. So so here's the difference about search marketing. These people go online specifically to search for a company that can do business with. And the reason I'm sharing this is is to help you understand, like, where does this fall within the context of other marketing channels, but also help you understand, like, why people get so excited about about PPC as a marketing channel.

Because it just falls in line with SEO is, like, some of the most inbound form of marketing where these people like specifically looked for you. That's as inbound as it gets. What that usually means is that you're gonna have less leads per contract than you do from some of these other sources. You're going to have like different quality of conversation. You know, it's it's hard to negotiate prices when the seller is like, well, you just came to me versus they're coming to you.

It's a completely different conversation from from a sales standpoint.

Steve: Yeah. Position is very different. And this is if we're if Yellow Pages would still be, you know, in business, that'd be the yellow pages would be right there.

Brandon: I should have put yellow pages on this graph. Yep. Yellow pages, Valance, ran ran the right hand side of this graph.

Steve: Right. Yes. Because, like, I'm looking for that. I mean, it might even be the back. Right?

Like, that was the Primo. Yeah. That's the back of the yellow pages.

Brandon: Why the back? I never heard that.

Steve: Because it was all color. Like, you saw that like, it's like a billboard on

Brandon: Oh, I see. I see. Right. Like, you didn't search for

Steve: it inside of, like it's like, it's right there. Another thing for my time. Apparently. So the other thing too is, like, you know, I think, I look at Facebook, and TV as, like, disruptive marketing.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? In that, I'm just doing whatever, and then, bam, it's in my face. Oh, that makes sense right now for me. Mhmm. So we're we're it's a little bit more hopeful.

Yeah. Right? And so I think that's that's slightly different. So one is you're not interrupting at all. They chose you.

Whereas the other one is like, I hope they see this ad. I hope it applies to them.

Brandon: Yeah. If somebody ever calls you from your PPC ad and says take me off your list, like, I I don't even know what to think at that point. Like, it's like they they, like, went there. Right? It's like it's like me pulling out the yellow pages and finding a company and calling them angrily Yeah.

Steve: Because they're there. You know? Yeah. It wouldn't be from PPC unless you're unless you're, using your own brand as a keyword, then I guess in that instance.

Brandon: Yeah. I suppose I suppose that would that would happen. Yeah. We will talk about branded campaigns too as part of this. One of the most common misconceptions Mhmm.

In PPC is around branded campaigns. Yeah. But if we look at this, like, outbound to inbound scale, I'm just gonna put a little arrow on here. Right? So this is what I already talked about.

So lead conversion, as we go from outbound to inbound, it increases. Yeah. Right? There's also a couple other things. Number one, the cost generally increases of these channels as we go from outbound to inbound.

And, also, as we're going from outbound to inbound, there's a decrease in the time and operational expense associated with doing deals.

Steve: Oh, you say cost goes up, but it's also like, what's the word I'm looking for? It's, we're we're not necessarily accounting for cost of labor or cost of data, cost of tools and services. Right? Like, the great thing about these guys that do strictly PPC and TV is, yeah, they have CRMs. But they don't really need the best CRMs.

And they don't

Brandon: There's less data. It's like, yeah, when you have Right. When you have tens of thousands of leads Right. A CRM looks different than when you have, like, hundreds.

Steve: Yeah. And then on top of that, you don't have to manage the cold callers. There's a lot of work. Right? So, you know, we've done a lot where we pull data.

Right? And there's all these different places. We, recently worked, started working with Propwire. You know? But you got batch.

You got ProwStream. You got investor machine, eighty twenty, like, friends that run all these other ones. Right?

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: You pay for the data, and you gotta pay for the skip tracing, and you gotta pay for the phone numbers, and you gotta, like, like, to actually use the phone numbers to call them or text them, and then you gotta pay for VA. Right? They get launch control, get smartphone.

Brandon: And then you're paying the

Steve: person rail.

Brandon: Like, organizes all that stuff, or that's you. Yeah. Or and then you're paying the person who manages those VAs. Like, when it goes sour, like, I, like, I chuckle inside sometimes when people tell me that they have, like, a business that, like, runs without them. Mhmm.

And usually what that means is, like, there the cases where that's genuinely true, but in a lot of cases, what that means is, like, unless somebody quits. Yeah. Until somebody quits or until I have to fire one of my, like, cold calling VAs or whatever. And then it's like and what you don't think about when you think that is, like, that happens all the time. All the time.

Yeah. If you're running it well. Right? So, say, you're right. You're you're totally right.

Like, that's and that's where time and operational expense is.

Steve: I know. When you say time and operational expense, but I look at that, there's still a cost.

Brandon: That's cost. It's a

Steve: different cost. It's not a cost for the lead. It's a cost to get the lead. Great point. RJ Bates.

Right? Pardon the disruption. He or him looking his own data, and he has found that PPC and he does nationwide. Right? His cost per leads are lower.

But, you know, cost per lead, for PPC versus cost per lead or all those other things we just talked about, PPCs actually end up being cheaper in the long run.

Brandon: And, yeah, if you're if you're national, that's that's fully true. And the other the other element here like, I'll just give you an example. And this I did this kind of, like, informal study. Right? Because you hear about these people that are, like, cold calling and have, like, great numbers.

Mhmm. Right. Like, I have an eight x return on cold calling. I have a 10 x return on cold calling. True.

Pre COVID.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: It's a little bit less true now. But what I did is it's, like, took some of these companies that mostly focus on cold call.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And some and, obviously, I know a lot of companies that mostly focus on PPC, and and look at the businesses and see, like, what is the net margin of the business. What you'll be surprised to know is at the end, like, all like, from from either group, of course, it vary between company to company, but the net margin of the business on either was not significantly different. Mhmm. What was really different was their marketing return on ad spend that they measured. Their marketing return on ad spend for or return on investment.

Mhmm. I'm speaking more like a market like a like an online marketer than a normal marketer. Right? But, yeah, their their return on investment for that cold call and stuff was, like, high numbers compared to their, compared to the companies that did PPC. But if you look at the P and L basically like how it worked out is marketing expense on the P and L was smaller if they did outbound marketing, but operational expense was higher versus if they did a lot of PPC and their marketing expense was high, and then their operational expense was low.

So a lot of people when they're focusing on, like, they're already doing outbound stuff and they're looking at, should I do PPC? They're thinking I have to hit the same return on investment targets that I have with my cold call. And usually, it's not true. Like, to hit the same net margin as a company, you actually don't need to hit those numbers quite the same. And then also you look at companies with certain revenue, how many heads do they have in the company, how many people, how much to manage, how complicated is it, and it's a whole different story with with PPC.

So that's, I think, that's a super attractive piece of it.

Steve: Yeah. And I think the, the other thing too is things that we don't account for is that it takes a a lot more effort to build trust with outbound, with cold calling. So not to say it doesn't work. It just takes a lot more effort.

Brandon: Yeah. What's the cost of lower sales team morale?

Steve: Yeah. Right.

Brandon: It's something.

Steve: And then the other thing too is, the relationship is because it didn't start off on a great foot, it's also harder to maintain. So, they don't cross the line to the final closing as often. The fallout rate is higher, with outbound versus inbound.

Brandon: That's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Personally, I could see that one going either way because PPC also gets you some crazy people. I know you have some personal experience with some crazy people from PPC ads.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I mean

Brandon: And that can contribute to fallout too.

Steve: That was a fallout. Yeah. The guy went to prison. That was really unfortunate.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's I I don't know if you shared the story. Wild, wild story.

But, yeah, there's so, I mean, I could see I could see it going both ways, but there's, there's something about, like, somebody who's actively looking. The other thing's cash conversion cycle. Like, if you're cold calling someone, how long is it gonna be before they close? If you're versus if they're, like, coming to you. It's almost like if you're cold calling, you're waiting for the time to be right, and that's when you're finally gonna get it under contract versus with PPC, you know the time's right from the beginning because they're searching right now.

That means they have a problem right now. They're motivated.

Steve: They're feeling more heat right now. So versus Mhmm. A paint indicator that you see from a a motivated seller list. This is like, hey. I need to sell.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Brandon: So it's it's a it's definitely a different type of lead, different type of conversation.

Steve: I'm not

Brandon: the guy that's gonna tell you that it's, like, it's right for everybody. I can tell you, like, number one reason that people don't like PPC sometimes is let's just say let's just say I have no money and I'm looking for the cheapest way to find a deal. The answer is not PPC. No. The answer is like you pick up a phone.

Mhmm. You go knock some doors. Like, you you gotta like because here's the thing. Outbound channels, you're using your time as part of the asset for the marketing.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And then for inbound channels, you're it's like your money's working for you. Right? So what that means is you're just sitting there twiddling your thumbs waiting for a lead to come in, and then it comes in, and then it's, like, all hands on deck. But it's, yeah, it's a completely different thing. So what I find is oftentimes, like, especially if you're willing to grind, the the cost per deal with some other marketing channels can be lower.

Mhmm. And it can be a, like, faster way to get to a deal. A lot of people assume that because PPC has a faster cash conversion cycle means that it's the quickest way to get to a deal. That's not necessarily true because it's also really expensive.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So I'd say the place that PPC usually fits for companies, we'll we'll talk in a later episode about, like, specifically how you choose your budget and your timeline. Mhmm. But the spoiler there is probably takes a little more money than you think, and it probably takes a little more time than you think.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And You don't turn it

Steve: on today and then have a contract tomorrow.

Brandon: Yeah. Or not usually. Like, it's things like that happen. I mean, I just had a conversation with one of my sales guys recently Mhmm. And he comes back from this conference.

Like, you know, we go to a lot of these conferences. It was just one of these masterminds. And he's sharing some good news with the team. He says, oh, there's this client there that's super happy. They've been with us two weeks.

They already have three contracts. They're super happy. And he's expecting me to like, like, rah, rah with him. And I was like, did you tell that client to shut up? Literally the words I said to him, they kinda like took him, like, took him off off guard a little bit.

He's like, I'm sharing good news here. I'm like, yeah, but that good news is making other people think that they're going to get three contracts in two weeks if they turn on PPC campaigns with us. And I'm not happy about it. It's like some of you will find it's really different about me. It's like a lot of agencies that like highlight their best stories.

I specifically exclude our best success stories from our case studies. Yeah.

Steve: Because I

Brandon: don't want people getting, like, the wrong idea of of

Steve: what

Brandon: how this works. So, like, yeah, there's stories like that. I I can show you tons of clients. I like, probably over a dozen clients that, like, have gotten a lead within the first week that turns into a contract. But is that norm.

No. But it's not the norm, and and that's that's luck. And I don't like marketing based on luck. That's why you'll notice most of our case studies are, like, more than six months even if the client had success right away because we're, like, we're looking for, like, you know, like, we we see that this person starts PPC and and they have success in their first week with some other marketing agency. Then they're a case study for that marketing agency.

And then the next month they're working with us. That's the reality of this industry is like, it's a it's a really up and down thing and like sustained long term success is really what we're looking for. So I like to play games that I know I can win predictably. Like, I don't like to play the lottery, and I feel like that's what a lot of people are doing with the marketing channel if you're just you're just kinda hoping it's gonna work right away.

Steve: Are you here for the long haul?

Brandon: 100%.

Steve: Now, what's the difference between pay, pay per click and and and pay per lead?

Brandon: Good question. So and this is when I get super often. Have you noticed this that people consider, like, pay per click and pay per lead to be, like, almost interchangeable. Like, I've heard people sometimes say, like, I'm doing PPC, and really they're just doing pay per lead marketing. Interesting.

I don't know if it's because they both have, like, the two p's in the name Mhmm. Or if they think that, like, it's because cause paper lead companies, like, skew more towards online marketing.

Steve: But here

Brandon: here's kinda how I think about it. Like, direct mail, you're like, you're paying per postcard. Facebook, you're paying per impression. Google, you're paying per click. And since it's called PPC, paper leads, it's just a different way of paying for things.

Mhmm. It's not the marketing channel, though. You'll notice like this whole this whole graph I laid out that has all these different marketing channels on it. I didn't I didn't put paper lead on here. And the reason paper lead's not on here is because paper leads on a marketing channel.

Paper lead is a way of buying leads. The marketing channel is what underlies the leads

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: That the paper lead company is generating. And different paper lead companies use different channels, and many of them use many channels. Mhmm. So the the thing with paper lead is you don't control the actual marketing Right. Underneath it.

Steve: Or the intent.

Brandon: Or the intent. Right? So, like, let's just say, like, I'm a pay per lead company. Am I likely to use a home value keyword? Mhmm.

Yeah. Right? Because it gets me a lead that is not refundable. Mhmm. Because it is a person who has a house to sell.

Mhmm. And they're not technically listed on the market. So so it's still like that. That's the that's the for paper lead companies, that's the goal. Like, I need we need to generate leads that are good enough that they don't get refunded Mhmm.

Basically. So it's a The

Steve: incentives are different.

Brandon: The incentives are for sure different. Yeah. Now that said, I'm not saying I'm not, like, here to to say a bunch of bad stuff about paper lead. Like, it's it's a good way to get leads. I just for me, I think paper lead is a good way to get leads if you have a smaller budget and you're not really able to do the big ramp up for PPC.

It's also a really good channel supplementary.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: It's just I'd be really, really slow to have that be a core part of my business, and I've seen a lot of people where, like, one day, they don't change anything, but the paper lead company changes the way that they're doing the marketing underneath the leads. Yeah. And then now all my lead quality has changed. Yeah. My cost hasn't changed.

Yeah. I've done nothing. That's the the issue that you run into with it. So I think it's good. It's like one of those things where, like, when it's good, keep going.

Does it work? Absolutely. Does it not work sometimes? Absolutely. Yeah.

Test it. Play with it. If I had most of, like, my marketing budget and paper lead, I'd be really, really nervous even if it's going well. Because concentration on the channel sounds like a really good strategy until suddenly it doesn't. Yeah.

And then diversification seems like what you should have been doing all along.

Steve: Well, so pay per lead is one of those things that's it's always good or not always good. It's generally good when they're rolling out. Right? Because when they're rolling out and they don't have a lot of clients and they have these excess leads Yep. They can sell the leads, and it's great because they're, you don't have much of you don't have a lot of volume, so your cost per, you don't have, you don't have a supply problem.

Right? You have a demand problem. Yeah. So you need to go find more people to buy your leads. And as you grow, then you have more demand.

And at some point, don't know when, your demand exceeds your supply. And the moment you have more demand for your leads than your supply, now you need to go source more leads, and now your lead quality suffers. Probably. Right? Because your your first leads were some fixed cost per lead, right, as as a person that's aggregating the leads.

But as demand increases, you need to fill that demand or you don't. You could choose not to fill the demand and maintain quality. But then as a business owner, you're, ignoring you're you're you're turning down revenue. Yeah.

Brandon: Or you're driving price way up. Yeah.

Steve: If you're if because that's why a lot

Brandon: of them have an auction system in it. And, like, I wanna be careful about, like, what I say here because I'm not saying, like, I'm not saying, like, people who run paper lead companies are bad people. We have to recognize I actually have a lot of friends who run paper lead companies, and I think they're really good people. We have to recognize that the the standard economics of that business are such that there is a misalignment of incentives.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And that's the the issue. Right? Even, like, as well intentioned as somebody running it. Like, another common thing that's happens in paper lead even, like, outside of the control of the people running the paper lead companies Mhmm. Is all paper lead companies buy leads from other paper lead companies or their affiliates that they have and stuff like that.

In fact, there's some that that's most of what they do. Yeah. And then they get screwed over sometimes because somebody sells them a bunch of bad leads, and then they're accidentally screwing over their clients. And so it's it's this big thing. Like, it's it's a kinda tricky situation where even, like, well intentioned people can, like, screw up the lead quality sometimes.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: It's just not the right not not exactly the right incentive. So that's where I think, like, for for me, the the place of for pay per lead is early on. Mhmm. And or it's supplemental to other channels. That's, like, in my opinion, kind of where it fits in the in the mix of things.

Mhmm. And you just wanna be really careful with it being most of your marketing.

Steve: Gotcha. So we're gonna go into this much deeper level in the next subsequent modules, episodes. But for now, like, what are some key metrics? Like, they don't watch the other episodes for whatever reason. Right?

Like, at a high level, what are the key benchmarks that people should be targeting?

Brandon: Yeah. Let's talk about a few things, and I just wanna share, like, you know, just some some basic numbers just so we can get a start of of what what what what's pretty normal. And I'll share, like, some of the, like, most common questions that we get. One thing that you'll notice here is this is probably like, what we were just about to go over is probably, like, on the Internet, the most comprehensive overview of PPC benchmarks that exists. It's not even gonna be that much.

But, like, the the thing is the way that most people get their data is they just think in their mind, like, oh, well, I have a few clients that I could think of that all have these numbers, and I'm just gonna, like, spit those out. Mhmm. Also, humans have, like, a bias towards positivity. So I'm gonna show some numbers, and some of them are gonna look a little prettier. Some of them are gonna look a little uglier.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And it's, it's mostly from the standpoint of, like, this is everything. This is, like, the winning case study. Mhmm. And, like, the worst client we've ever had all just merged into one.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So it's it's fascinating, but it's it's I think it's transparent as I could possibly be. Number one question we get all the time is what is the cost per lead? I don't like that question. I think there's way too much focus in this industry around lead cost Mhmm. And way too little focus on lead quality.

Well, there's kind of a focus on each, but it seems like the only one you focus on is whichever one's not good at the moment. So, like because there's a lot of focus on lead quality too, but, but let's talk let's talk about cost per lead and and what's normal. I'm gonna share a graph here and just explain kind of this range and and how it goes. So this is a, yeah, this is a graph showing our cost per lead. This is as of, as of, like, last year, across our different clients.

So this is a histogram Mhmm. For for those that don't remember their college or high school years. We're basically kind of, like, visualizing the, you know, sort of the bell curve of, like, natural distribution of the sample. So you can see here at the bottom, we have, like, different buckets for for cost per lead, like, between 0 and $50, 50 to 100, 100 to $1.50. And then at the top, we can see, at this time, the number of clients that we had data on from a significant period of time that that can fall into each one of those buckets.

Mhmm. So so what you'll notice here is the most common cost per lead. And and this is like, seeing this, the reason I share this instead of just saying, oh, the average cost per lead is $220. By the way, that's our average cost per lead. That means almost nothing when this is behind that data.

And this tells you, like, you know, how much is in each The

Steve: range and likelihood.

Brandon: Yeah. And for people listening through through audio, I'll I'll describe it because you can you can understand it. Basically, we're looking at a a bell curve distribution here where the most common cost per lead is somewhere between 250 and $300. Mhmm. But you'll see cost per lead as high as $850 and as low as less than $50 on this graph.

So the natural question that everybody asks after they see this is why is it so different Mhmm. For all these different companies? And and that's a lot of what we're gonna be talking about from a strategy standpoint. And there's a couple things. Like, one, the idea is always get the cheapest cost per lead that you can, but you don't wanna prioritize cost per lead over other things.

Sometimes there's strategies where where you wanna run with a higher cost per lead and strategies where you wanna run with a lower cost per lead. Like, we can intentionally shift the quality of the leads Mhmm. Towards a higher quality at a higher cost or lower quality at a lower cost. Like, that's the decision that you have.

Steve: Yeah. We had a a Robert Wensley in here. And, one of our close went viral where he just had a breakdown on return on ad spend.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? It's like, if you know, for example, like, the best ZIP code in your city, it's the best ZIP code. Like, any any property shows up there, you know it's like a grand slam. And you could target and, you know, hoarders have the best margins. For example, if this is your business.

Right? Wouldn't you be willing to pay And you know that you you convert 25%, say, for example.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? Wouldn't you be willing to spend 2,500 a lead for a hoarder home in your favorite ZIP code? Right? If you know that you close one in four, if you know that,

Brandon: it has to be you you

Steve: have to know this for a fact. Right? That means your cost of contract is $10,000.

Brandon: Yep.

Steve: Wouldn't you wanna spend that if you know you're gonna make 80 or 90 k

Brandon: on the back end? Yeah.

Steve: Right? But no one will spend $2,500 on a lead.

Brandon: 100%. And it means that, like, a common scenario in PPC is that some of the highest value leads are actually undervalued in the marketplace.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So that happens for sure. And we'll talk about, like, auction economics. Mhmm. It's it's a super it's a super interesting thing. But, yeah, you're you're 100

Steve: right.

Brandon: Like, cost per lead is not the end all be all. But that said, would your return on investment improve if you could get that same lead for a thousand dollars instead of $2,500? For sure. So the goal is always the lowest cost per lead, but we don't wanna think that's the only thing that matters. It just it mixes with the other things.

One thing you'll see about this particular graph here is that the, yeah, these these basically, just to describe, like, who falls in what sector

Steve: They're they're under $50 a lead.

Brandon: Is it two? Yeah. So under $50 a lead happens pretty much only when you're, like, supernational. This is like I'm targeting 48 states with my marketing. Yeah.

And this is a natural relationship that exists in PPC is the wider you go geographically, the cheaper the cost per lead. That's why you'll see a lot of companies that focus really heavily on PPC. Often, they are in multiple markets or even national. So there's a and and we'll talk about that. That's all part of our location strategy.

It's not the only way to do it. We have some clients that are, like, fully national. Much more common is to be, like, in this, like, seminational range where we're, like, in, you know, we're in a lot of markets, but we're not just looking for the cheapest possible leads. But some people do well with that strategy. For single markets, anywhere from, like, 200 to $400 per lead is pretty normal.

That's where you'll see, like, the bulk of our clients being in single markets and then the bulk of the the cost per lead being in that range. As we start to get higher, those are usually really small markets.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Tiny markets have a higher cost per lead.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And after we go through the second episode, you'll understand exactly why. But as of now, just leave it at that. And as we get to, like, these really high cost per leads, that's where we're, like, really, really small markets. And then sometimes often, like, the more money you spend, the more of a diminishing return you get. Mhmm.

Like, I just had a conversation with a client yesterday where they're like, well, my cost per lead is $400, and I'm killing it. Let's push the cost per lead up to $600 into way more volume. Like, that's a real thing that companies do. And some people are looking at that, like, $600 per lead? I would never pay that, but it's just like you were saying, Robert Wensley.

If you know, you convert a certain percent of those leads to that quality and you know what those deals are worth. In this case, that client still can hit a four x return on investment at $600 per lead.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So we'll do that all day long. We had another conversation with a client again yesterday where their revenue per lead and their business is $3,000 from in their market with PPC leads. So when you're thinking of that, and our if our revenue per lead is $3,000 and our minimum return on investment is three x, we could pay a thousand dollars per lead. Mhmm. And you could think, like, why would you ever do that?

You do that because you could push volume really hard if you're gonna do that. Right? A lot of these companies dominate a market. They do it at a lower return on investment,

Steve: but a really

Brandon: high volume. So that's that's absolutely something to to consider. So so that's that's cost per lead. Before we move on, I mean, I know I know it's like a I know it's a deep topic, but any thoughts on cost per lead?

Steve: No. I mean, I think that's it. I think the key here that we're saying is, like, cost per lead is just one thing. It's not n l b it's not the n l b all.

Brandon: 100%. Yep. I am gonna pull up one other really insightful graph here.

Steve: Mhmm. This is

Brandon: our Google leads per contract percentiles. So, I mean, the two questions that we get asked the most is how much do leads cost and how good are they? Mhmm. Obviously, those are the things that people care about.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: This is my best attempt at using numbers to answer those questions. Right? How much do leads cost? And then here we have how many leads per contract by percentile. The reason this is really useful, our average across all our clients is just over 15, leads per contract Mhmm.

On Google Ads. It varies, though, because you'll hear people talking about how they have 10 leads per contract or something like that. Does it happen? Absolutely. You can see here that would put you somewhere between the eightieth and ninetieth percentile.

If you're one of our clients, tenth percentile would be, like, 24 leads per contract. Mhmm. First percentile is probably, like, a 100 leads per contract. Like, we'll we'll see that here

Steve: and there.

Brandon: This largely has to do with the acquisitions team Mhmm. Because these numbers are actually normalized based on, based on the types of keywords that leads are coming from and stuff like that. Right? So this is, like, leads that should be the same quality Mhmm. This is how much it varies still.

So it has a ton it's a ton to do with your acquisitions team. Just to give people a little bit of a picture of, like, how does this typically go, normally, if we're gonna average 15 leads per contract, what that means is that you'd end up with 13 leads that are, like, non spam. Like, so two of them, you'd be like, 123 Main Street, really.

Steve: Like,

Brandon: that kind of stuff.

Steve: Right. Or some crummy wholesaler that's, hey. I wanna be a buyer.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Something something like that. Right? Yeah.

Alright. So so you knock those two out. Now you got 13 leads, which which this by the way, it's a common misconception for PPC because people people are like, well, PPC is supposed to be the highest quality leads. In my cold call, I never get an accidental, like, buyer lead.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: But in PPC, I just got this lead that, like, 123 Main Street is not even your real phone number. Mhmm. Like, that sucks. I paid a lot of money for that. Like, that's the thing is you'll still have less leads per contract.

Like, it takes that into account. Right? So we're we're taking out two leads, and we got 13 left. Mhmm.

Steve: Of

Brandon: those 13, normally, we're gonna be able to contact about 10 of them. So three people, we're never gonna get in contact with. Of those 10, about five are gonna get disqualified for various reasons. Mhmm. These are these are people that we, like, got on the phone with and do have a house to sell.

Yeah. And then they're, you know, they're disqualified because they're retail. They're disqualified because the lead is in a different location than we're located in, which that's actually one of the most common frustrations that we get from clients. It's like, I'm in Phoenix, and you just got me a lead in Florida. What the heck?

Are we spending my money in Florida? And, you know, what happens is people live in Phoenix, but they're trying to sell a house that's in Florida or, they use VPN sometimes or, You know? So that kind of stuff happens, and you'll get leads out of your location. And and by the way, there are ways to minimize that.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So a lot of people I'm not trying to say, like, you should have like, there's a lot of stuff that we do to, like, whittle that down a lot, but you'll still get some. Mhmm. You'll get properties that are already listed on the market.

Steve: Get properties from realtors.

Brandon: Yep. Properties from realtors. So that kind of stuff is the reason that you generally or, like, wrong property type. Like like, it's a mobile home and you don't like mobile homes or something like that.

Steve: Yeah. So

Brandon: you have 10 people that have a house to sell that you talk to on the phone. Whittle that down to five that you consider actual opportunities. From those five opportunities, you should get one contract. Gotcha. So that's, like, the basics of PPC.

So people ask these questions like, I'm getting spam leads from PPC. Is that normal? Yes. But how many? 50% of your leads are spam?

Like, no. That's not good. Alright. Or, you know, I'm getting these out of area leads. Is that normal?

Up to about 10%, pretty normal. Beyond

Steve: that likely, is spam coming from PPC?

Brandon: How likely is it? Or how

Steve: I I mean, how does that even happen?

Brandon: Well, it's one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. I mean, there's there's I mean, there's a ton. So, I mean, we could do a whole episode just on click fraud. Mhmm. So that's a that's a big thing that happens in PPC.

And and there are ways to mess this up where your PPC campaigns will get almost a 100% spam leads. It's it's a real it's a real thing. So I'm what I'm sharing here is, like, numbers from a campaign that's run well.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: A not well run campaign could be all over the place. And then sometimes even a well run campaign could have, like, a higher spam rate or something like that. But the, yeah, reasons for spam are going to be sometimes Google Partner Network? Oh, that is that is, that is a nightmare. Don't even don't even go there.

So, yeah, that that's like when I talk about, like, how if you run it wrong, you can get, like, a 100% spam leads. Like, that's if you're on the Google Search partner network Yeah. Where there's a ton of click fraud. There is some click fraud on Google's actual network, and that, you know, you might get a spam lead here and there, but it's hard to say exactly why spam leads exist. Sometimes it could be a competitor's messing with you or

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Could be bots. Maybe they get past Google system. Google's incentive is to get rid of those as much as they can, but, you know, it happens still.

Steve: One of my favorite stories, was, Sean Terry. Right? He was holding a live event in Phoenix. Mhmm.

Brandon: And he

Steve: was talking about how pay per click was really good. And everyone in the room took out their phones and Googled sell my house fast.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: And just drained his PPC account.

Brandon: Oh, that's hilarious.

Steve: Right? And just one day, just drained his PPC budget for the day. Right.

Brandon: That's so funny. Because they all they all quit. I mean, like, weird weird stuff happens. Right? Yeah.

But that's funny. I I I think he did that to himself.

Steve: Oh, he definitely did it to himself, and that's, like, one of his, like, you know, SOPs. Like, when we have events, we turn off our PPC campaigns.

Brandon: That's so funny. I didn't even think about that because they're all just hunting for the website so they can see it and Yeah. And see the landing page and everything. Yeah. That that's that's a little bit wild.

But that is yeah. Like, there's there's real like, and there's there's ways to to deal with this. Like, we use, we use software to, like, block IP addresses from people if they click more than, like, a certain number of times within the same day or a certain different number of times within the same week or something like that. Yeah. So, yeah, there's there's ways to, like, deal with that stuff a little bit.

But the the thing that nobody tells you about for all that stuff is, like, you already paid for it. Mhmm. By the time you know it's a problem. Right. And then you've gotta like, you can try to prevent from paying for it more.

Mhmm. But you've already paid for it.

Steve: Gotcha.

Brandon: It's a it's a tricky game.

Steve: Perfect. Alright. So, you know, hope hopefully, you guys got a ton of value here. This is just the intro. Right?

And in the next episode, we're gonna talk about laying the foundation. So, tune in for the next episode where we're talking about how Google works and bidding effectively.

Brandon: And before I forget, I wanna make sure that we get all the resources out so everybody can get them. The first one is if you're looking to book a call with someone on my team so they can talk with you about strategies specifically for your market, for your business, help answer whatever questions you have, you can go to batemancollective.com/disruptors. We're gonna put that in the description as well. And then number two, if you are looking for more resources, and this is something that we'll continually reference throughout the series, we have something we call a PPC toolkit, and there's a bunch of stuff in there. And we'll we'll kind of reference, like I said, some more of those things as we go along.

You can go to batemancollective.com/toolkit-disruptors, and that gets you access to a whole bunch of resources. I honestly saw this for the first time yesterday. I'm a little bit mind blown at all the value that my team put in this whole toolkit. It gives away a lot of our processes that we use for for managing PPC, things like an account maintenance checklist, specific geo targeting parameters. There's two separate other master series in there that go even deeper into PPC and then one for Facebook ads.

So it's it's a pretty cool resource. And then in there, you'll after you sign up for the toolkit, you'll also see the the place where you can sign up for the, the q and a that we're gonna be doing at the end of the series.

Steve: Alright. Perfect. So, guys, you know, hopefully, in in listening to today's, you know, mini, or first episode and our mini, our in our first, module inside our PPC masterclass abatement collective, you guys got a ton of value. Right? So, make sure you guys tune in to our next episode where we're gonna be going over, how Google actually works and how to bid effectively.

We will see you guys on the next one.