All Forum Posts by: Mark Sewell

Ok here is what I am thinking right now.

Will go with 2 forms of origination campaigns.. one will be a REACH objective and the other is VIEWS.

The reach campaign is just the standard 'custom audience' generated from an uploaded list.

The video views campaigns will be a bit of a mix... one will be a wide grab, allowing FB to optimize and do its' thing.  Another will be aimed at LLA... and here we have at least two:  

LLA based on the uploaded lists I am using and, another LLA based on those that have hit my site.  I might build in an exclusion this audience to filter out all realtors and RE investors - not paying to retarget you guys, lol.

Then the retargeting begins.  Who watched how much of which videos, and who clicked through to the website.  Now we serve them up some other videos. 

Here I haven't decided which objectives to use.  I could use the TRAFFIC objective here.  Or maybe ENGAGEMENT.  Or a mix of both.  

@Angela Russo here is a question:  I just watched an interesting YT tutorial where the presenter actually suggests using REACH to retarget site visitors to bring them back.  I wonder, would that be a bad idea in my case, as I am already using REACH objective in my original targeting efforts.  Would it be making it harder for FB to optimize for REACH like this?  Since I am trying to REACH two different audiences, would that make it more or less OK?

Websites work if you have credibility. No amount of ad spend is going to buy you credibility. If you have flipped a house, even one house, then at least that is something you can build on (this is exactly where I am at). One of my SEO expert buddies will be along here shortly to tell you how many leads he generates with zero ad spend, just by packing good content into your site. And like Mike Mason, he and I use carrot sites. Look them up and get one. But be prepared to put in some work.

Come out to a local meet up. There are dozens of them. Get to know some other buy & hold investors that are doing what you are planning to do. Right now networking is probably the only way to get a cost-effective deal here in this market - not even sure how to explain that in a way that makes sense.

Let me say this.  I have tried hard to bare it all in this thread and let the world know what my results are and what I am trying to do.  I am NOT trying to convince anybody that this is the right medium for them.  This may not work.  I might be wasting hundreds of bucks each months.  Others have wasted way more before me.  I have NO intentions of opening an ad agency or doing some kind of training course.  I would be open to sharing some of my materials, but until they work, precious few would be interested.  And they may never work.

But what I do see is this - PPC is expensive as hell (Houston has real players here), and SEO just takes time and you may never rank high enough to make it truly worth it.  FB is a different beast entirely, but I still say that it is cost effective (it is for some).  You just got to really cultivate your audience.  Go wide, then filter. And this CAN be done cost effectively - provided that you find a way to harness the power of video.  That is what I am trying to figure out.

Yes seen these threads, listened to the podcasts (that Tom C podcast I have almost memorized).

Braden, brother, listen to me when I say this to you -- my mailbox is garbage.  The postman drives up everyday, and unpacks 2 pounds of prepacked paper waste.  Every. Damn. Day.  Thank God the good people of northern LA keep planting more pine trees to feed the paper mills.

And yet, people spend tens of thousands every single month to mail out postcards and those ridiculous yellow letters.  Why is that?  People are killing it if they get a 1% response rate with DM... and still... successful investors keep doing it.  Quarles does it, Don Costa does it, the list goes on.  Why?  Because they are still able to spend $10 to generate $20 or $30.

I think you just have to be committed to it and consistent.  And you have to be ready to put some cash into it. You cannot expect to roll out a couple lead gen ads and expect to really do great things - particularly in a crowded market like where Tom C works. 

Some say that you have to use more than one channel to compliment each other.  I suspect that the results that Mike Quarles shared are not just isolated campaigns. He's probably doing some other work with these folks, maybe using other channels, and they just happened to hit on a FB ad. Might be they also saw some mailers come through prior to doing that..

I have been considering doing some more in-depth video, a kind of info-session that a prospective seller would need to sign up for (we can call it a webinar with no upsell).  But to be honest, I am still wrestling with the content that I should include.  I want to provide some useful information, but not sure how far I want to delve into the math.  I'd like to help them understand what it is that RE Investors are looking for, and give some guidance there about who might be more willing to work directly with us, a buyer, vs. those that might prefer to work with a realtor.  No wrong answer there.  Obviously I am wanting to tread carefully with this, because it will likely steer away a lot of folks.

I wanted to say that this is helpful.

So far, I have been just sending them to the site.  I have several pages and all have lead forms.

You know one of those people happens to be a guy name @Michael Quarles who happens to know a bit about advertising for motivated sellers.  He commented in another thread that @Jerryll Noorden and I were participating in just recently.

He noted that they were getting leads for less than $22 per lead, but the leads were not all super high quality.  But the cost was low enough that it really didn't matter - managed to pick up 3 houses in June, from these FB leads.  

He shared his results from 2 campaigns... and I hope he doesn't mind me reposting the stats here:

—
205 Leads (Form)
83,552 People
214,300 total
$21.58 Per Lead (Form)
$4,424.69 Total

Even if I were only able to close one house for $4425, I'd be OK with that, at least in the beginning.

Originally posted by @Braden Smith:

I have been following this discussion and have not chimed in until now. Here is my two cents on the subject of FB ads for REI:

I am a member of a nationwide mastermind group for real estate investors. We have about 150 people in the group from all over the nation. We all help each other succeed and grow our businesses because we are not in competing markets, and membership is limited per city/area. We have discussed FB ads many times and many members of the group have tried them at one time or another. Not one single person has had success with them as far as being able to actually generate motivated seller leads. Ans a few people threw a massive amount of money into them, as they were determined to make them work. They did not succeed. The general consensus for the group is that FB ads can be good for brand awareness and recognition, but they are not good for generating motivated seller leads. FB is full of people that are on the site because they are bored. They are scrolling along looking for anything that catches their eye. They may click a pretty picture or a short video out of boredom, but that doesn't mean they are actually motivated to sell a property. If you are getting activity but no actual leads, I would think these are people that are more curious than motivated sellers. No amount of tweaking your ads, videos or website will convert them. They are just not actual leads. They are looky loos just browsing around.

The best use we have come up with FB ads is to use them as part of your follow up. You skip trace your lists and obtain email addresses for leads and then serve ads to people on FB by uploading their email addresses. That way you are only targeting people on your list and it is more for brand recognition than anything else, as part of a follow up sequence. For example, you send out DM then serve the list ads on FB, use retargeting and tie in some RVMs. This type of multifaceted approach is what we as a mastermind group have determined works best. As the old saying goes, it is best not to put all your eggs in one basket...

Are you in Mike Hambright's group?

This does mesh with what the guys at Carrot say... they recommending using it for retargeting.

There are a few investors that have had success but not many.

Originally posted by @Angela Russo:

@Mark Sewell  I agree it seems like you have the top of your funnel set up pretty well, and it is usually pretty cheap to get video views or engagement but effective for getting your name out/ building brand awareness. 

What conversion objective are you using for your retargeted audience campaigns? Just hitting the landing page or completing your form/hitting the thank you page?

More thought is required, probably.  Need to take a good hard look at the structure of my funnel.  Right now my plan is run video (wide net) and then retarget... but probably my retargeting is all over the place, not well organized yet.  

I been doing retarget campaigns for multiple objectives, including traffic, more video views and even engagement again.  I am showing them different ads at different points in time.  I'd like the person to some of the initial ads, and them some follow ups over time.

So I gather from your earlier comments that it is not good practice to retarget for the same objectives that I am using for my primary origination campaigns?  Can you expand a bit on that - that sounds like it is good insight (or I just misunderstood).