Specializing in Real Estate Lead Generation with AdBetter
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Build Your Future, the Property Developers Podcast.
Today I have Tom Richardson.
Tom is a director of Adbetter.
Welcome, Tom.
Speaker 2
Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1
My pleasure, my pleasure.
How you doing?
You well.
Speaker 2
Yeah, very good, very good.
We're yeah, deep into Q1 now.
Yeah, been a good start to the year.
Speaker 1
Good, good.
Just for people that obviously new to the podcast or haven't heard of you before, doing just a quick introduction as to coming yourself and your company.
Speaker 2
Yeah, for sure.
So I'm Director of Adbetter, effectively a lead generation paid ads agency, but we've got a bit of a specialism in the real estate sector.
So we work with brokers, developers across well in the UK and across America to buy UAE, etcetera, looking for retail investors.
So we kind of dip our toes into lots of different markets I suppose, but have quite a good window into the ways to present things and the ways to market things, particularly kind of different sized projects.
But yeah, we've been running could have paid ads campaigns generating leads for properties of all different shapes and sizes for the last kind of seven years or so, probably spent, you know, in the region of north of kind of $10 million in terms of ad spend and kind of in terms of capital raised.
You know, we're looking at certainly north of kind of 50 million.
So yeah, it's fair to say we've, we've done a fair bit of legion in this space.
And yeah, you still learn things new everyday, I suppose.
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
So is it just predominantly Legion or are you set up as a marketing agency in terms of the branding side and things like that as well?
Speaker 2
We're very much on the what kind of the business end.
I'd like to call it the kind of dirty end.
So yeah, we would typically come in with a, you know, a company or developer that would take what they've already got and we would take that and then turn it into a campaign.
So quite often that is literally just, you know, a basic website and maybe a bit of a brochure.
That's usually enough for us to kind of get going with it.
So we do do a lot of the kind of creative design, you know, we can use AI to create videos, etcetera.
If it's text based ads, then obviously we would write all the copy and copywriting to go with it.
So it's about taking what our clients have and then turning it into something that will work in the formats that we need it to work in to get them results effectively.
But yeah, definitely more on the kind of the, yeah, The Dirty business and then the fancy brand new one.
Speaker 1
That often makes the most amount of money anyway.
Speaker 2
It's closest to the money, right?
So yeah.
Adapting to Digital Shifts in Property Development Marketing
No, it's great to have you on, but the reason why I set up the this podcast is to get different people of different kind of skill sets to kind of come together and share their knowledge and their, their kind of wisdom really.
And so we've had planners obviously come on, talk about the NPPF draft, and we've had other developers come on and the developer just before you actually was talking about marketing, and they're putting a lot of time, energy and money into marketing.
And what's interesting is some of the conversations I'm having now is there are more development directors coming through that I'd say are more millennials.
Typically kind of your development directors are also used to be the Boomers, and then you had the Gen.
YS.
And we're now seeing more millennials coming through.
And I think they're now starting to realize the strength of this marketing and the impacts that you can have.
And so you're probably seeing a far kind of greater explosion over the last few years in terms of that side of things, right?
Speaker 2
For sure.
I mean, and I think to start with, I think we're just getting a bit older and that's part of the yeah.
But yeah, no, definitely I think it's a constantly changing market and I think that you've got to kind of stay ahead of that curve.
And perhaps, you know, some of the the people that have been bit longer in the tooth and been in the game a bit longer.
Things are certainly probably more digital than they were even, you know, five years ago and evidence kind of ruined at a rate or not.
So I think there's a huge amount of opportunity for perhaps a slightly younger generation to really make their mark now.
And yeah, we've kind of, to echo what you said, really we, we definitely see a a real mix of ages in terms of the the people that we speak to and, and end up kind of working with.
Yeah.
And definitely kind of starting to skew on the the younger side.
Speaker 1
I think age is definitely one thing and then equally market sentiment.
The developer I had interviewed before yourself, he was talking about the market being tougher.
So within the markets tough, you obviously need to be more aggressive when you're marketing.
When the market's high and things are flying off the shelves that equally you could argue you don't need to invest so much time in marketing because the bar demand is already there.
However, when the market gets tight, that's when you really need to invest your time and energy into marketing.
As to why should they choose Developer A's house opposed to developer BC or D?
Speaker 2
It's definitely much tougher, certainly in the UK market.
I think there's, there's a lot more common petition.
I think the flip side of kind of moving into a more digital age is that not only have you kind of got competition locally, but also internationally as well.
I think investors are starting to look and go, OK, well, I could put my money here in something in the UK or actually there are other options abroad.
And increasingly there's these kind of hands off done for you schemes.
And I think that, you know, one of the things that we keep going back to with our our UK clients, it's not the situation that it was, you know, back in kind of 212223 where certainly with the clients we were working with in the kind of off plan north of England by select world, everything was flying, you know, and it was kind of, you know, we were getting leads in at a rate and knots and, you know, lots of people were buying.
It's not as easy now.
And I think it's about kind of fun in that balance of what can we do to make or to really pull out?
What are the unique selling points of, you know, development that we're working with?
I'm really kind of making that appealing in contrast to the kind of hands off Internet kind of international stuff that's on offer.
And I think there's still a lot to be said for more of a tangible asset.
I think people like the idea of being able to they can go down and they can visit it, they can see, you know, the location.
There's a lot to be said for that.
And I think as well that, you know, there might be a bit of a short term boom, but ultimately people come back to kind of stability and that's we just can't be confident on in these international markets.
Yeah, you know, ultimately the UKI think is is still a very safe place to invest real estate point of view.
And I think that that's something that we definitely try and talk about in, you know, in ad copying comms, etcetera.
And we're, when we're working with clients in lead Gen. trying to make sure that that's coming across that, yeah, look, there might be some kind of crazy high headline net returns they're saying might be possible with this development, you know, in a weird and wonderful place.
But there's a lot to consider outside of that that you know it might not be as as peachy as it looks at first glance.
Speaker 1
Sure.
It's one of those things that I think that's time and time again has happened.
I remember people investing in kind of hotel villas in in Spain kind of back in the 30-40 years ago and same with Bulgaria and everything else.
No say Dubai, Abu Dhabi is kind of like the big shiny new thing.
Also, it's been established quite a consumer amount of time.
Then what have you kind of found, as you kind of said there, you do the UK market, but you're doing kind of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
What kind of the start differences you've seen between the two markets?
Speaker 2
That's certainly kind of the rate of development I would say at the moment.
Like it's, it seems like every day there's a new wonder where they find the space to put it.
Every day there's a new development in Dubai.
I've heard the traffic's terrible over there.
So yeah, that's probably not a good thing.
But yeah, I mean, it's, it's a tricky 1.
I think the UK, as I say, is kind of the steady Eddy.
And I think that that's the kind of main reason that people end up kind of coming back to it time and time again.
And it may be that people look abroad, as you say, you know, there's there's opportunity out there and you know, rightly say Spain a few years back was kind of the one Abu Dhabi, Dubai now had a call earlier in the week with a central new client, Montenegro, kind of for a hotel part hotel development down there.
So I think the same things always apply, right?
You've got to do your due to due diligence, you know, you've got to look at the kind of general market around it.
And I think that there's there's probably good opportunities and bad opportunities both here in the UK and internationally.
And the same kind of principles, I guess apply.
But yeah, it's it's certainly kind of changed in the sense that there's just not the kind of rush that there was, I suppose a few years ago.
But I think that that actually creates more space for the good opportunity these positioned in the right way to shine through from a UK perspective.
Avoiding Common Mistakes in Paid Ads and Lead Generation
Yeah, absolutely.
I think just far off from that, a lot of SME developers seem to be spinning a lot of plates.
They're trying to do planning.
They're trying to focus on the build, they're trying to find new sites, they're trying to raise finance and now trying to kind of market the sites themselves.
So kind of running Facebook ads, Google ads, and trying to do everything themselves.
What kind of a key points that lead to their failure when they're trying to rank the Facebook ads and things like that?
Speaker 2
That's a really good question.
I think the main thing really is that these these platforms are not your friends.
Google and Meta are there to make money for Google and Meta.
And fundamentally, that's at the kind of heart of the problem and it's the reason why agencies, you know, like us exist really is that if you just go down the route, they make it very, very easy and seem very simple to get involved.
And it's easy enough to set up a campaign in a sense that it's easy enough to set up a campaign, put your credit card details in for them to start charging you.
It's a very different ball game if you want that to actually start driving something that is going to drive quality leads, drive a return, you know, drive something that is going to turn ultimately into into sales for you.
But I think that you really have to make sure that you're going into it with a clearview of what the KPI's are that you're trying to achieve.
So ultimately, yes, we're looking to sell units on development, you know, however many of that may be.
But I think understanding the role of kind of each campaign that you're running, it used to be very much a case of, you know, almost thinking about the marketing funnel and working it through that way.
So you have your kind of awareness based ads, you base that all around clicks and impressions.
You kind of try and do that cheaply and then you kind of have the more bottom and middle of funnel, which is trying to convert people to given their contact details so you can kind of move them down your sales funnel.
Those days I think are a little bit behind us and I think increasingly we're moving to a world where the algorithms are really sophisticated and it's about the quality of data that you can feedback to it.
So I think look at what can you do to have different levels of engagement and different levels of commitment from leads.
So, IE there's a difference in lead quality from someone who has downloaded a brochure perhaps about the local area and why that's a good a good area to invest versus someone who has kind of given you information about their budget, about the kind of size of units that they're after, you know, their time frame for investment, etcetera.
But ultimately, those are still going to be your entry points.
And then you want to look at your sales funnel and all the comms after that because the expensive bit is getting the lead in the 1st place.
But after that is where you kind of get your best bang for buck in terms of working that leads through.
Yes, of course, you know, you've got to actually kind of working through from a manual outreach point of view, but you can do a lot with automation to kind of follow that.
So, you know, sequences of emails drip feeding to some extent.
It's just about the amount of touch points and people need repetition.
You know, people don't read properly the first time.
So, you know, it's really about making sure that you're really clear on the kind of people that you're going after, crafting those campaigns with clear KPIs and then setting it up according to kind of best practice.
And yeah, you can absolutely learn that I think anyone can go, especially with kind of AI assistance Now you know, you can you can get some some good help from those and set up a campaign.
Don't listen to any of the recommendations in platform because generally they're set up in a way to kind of, yeah, as I say, make Google money and Meta money, not yourself.
So yeah, kind of go against that.
But and then once you get them into kind of your funnel, think about it.
In a case of, OK, this is my kind of cohort of people that are interested, what can I do to get across all of the USPS of this development and all the main benefits, reasons why people would invest and kind of drip feed that information to them in a way.
So that when I am eventually kind of speaking with them in more of a kind of sales call capacity, they're already kind of warmed up to the extent that they understand the opportunity and understand what's involved in that.
Implementing Multi-Step Forms for High-Quality Lead Qualification
Sure.
It's funny you said about them wanting you to spend as much money as possible because obviously having a business account on Instagram, Facebook and things, every time you do a post, the little pop up saying boost this post for only £20.
And you can imagine if you're kind of brand new to it and just putting 20 lbs into each post, OK, they'll boost it and maybe we'll get a bit of exposure, but that doesn't actually lead to any additional benefits.
But again, if you're kind of new to it, you don't quite understand it.
You just think, oh, I need exposure and I'll just pay this 20 lbs and I'll get exposure.
And then actually you realize that that doesn't actually generate or really do anything and you need to understand the back end of Facebook Ads manager and things actually start generating a decent return.
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, if anyone takes anything from away from this, don't don't boost posts, I think would be a good key take away.
Yeah, look again, they said it up easy.
Like you say, you click a button but £20 in and off it goes.
I think with that, you know, it's a bit of a bucket in buzzword isn't it's like I'm raising awareness.
But you know what that will mean and what the platform, what the platform is very good at doing is exactly what you tell them to do.
So in kind of simple terms is if you put an ad out in front of someone and the objective of that ad is either engagement for clicking through, what it will do is find the cheapest way to find people who either a engage with anything.
They'll watch any old, you know, that gets put out.
They're not necessarily a target audience, not necessarily, you know, people are actually going to be buyers or be they're kind of the happy clickers, as we call them, that, you know, we'll almost click on anything that comes through.
And that's what I meant when I was talking about the kind of the way it's moved away from a funnel of you've got you raise awareness and then you get people kind of clicker do and then you work on kind of converting them to lead.
The problem is, is that now if you've got people at this top of funnel, you're just going to find a load of people who watch the videos, engage with the content, but aren't actually people that are buyers.
Similarly, in the middle of funny, you're going to get people who click through and engage and you know, look the right kind of people, but ultimately, again, aren't buyers.
So you're better off kind of folks in your efforts down the bottom and focusing on different levels of commitment for that lead.
Because once you have that lead, it's nigh on free with a bit of kind of software and e-mail, etcetera to to rework those leads and kind of work them through your sales.
But don't get that message across.
But yeah, if you're kind of paying going to get that message across at every touch point, it gets very expensive.
Speaker 1
That's interesting.
It'd be good to get your insight on that actually.
I mean, I'm a big fan of Alex Hormuzi and Daniel Priestley and you know, obviously every kind of big marketer and sales guy out there.
So it's always interesting kind of listening to some of their YouTube videos.
And some of it is completely clickbait, don't get me wrong, but some of it is super interesting at the same time.
One of the key things that they're talking about I took away was kind of good friction and bad friction and kind of when you click onto a landing page and then you have kind of a questionnaire that you just submit.
And going back to what you were saying earlier about a good qualified lead opposed to a happy clicker, as you said.
And by putting kind of a detailed questionnaire or kind of a landing page, when I have to go through certain elements, then that person is going to be a lot more serious because they've had to kind of go through certain stages.
And although in terms of numbers, you probably have less applications coming through, there'll be more, I'd imagine serious applications because I've had to go through an actual process by myself.
Kind of when we did a developers go karting event last year, we kind of just thought, right, well, let's just do a cost per lead kind of ad just throw out some videos of us kind of go karting and kind of get the exposure out there, drive some interest.
And then we'll kind of promote it and kind of nurture the emails from there.
And although all the branding said developers go karting event and if you're a property developer or work in a property space, you know, welcome to join etcetera.
And then I'd be calling up some of these leads now saying, oh, I just wanted to go go karting really.
And they didn't even realize, well, do you work in the property space?
So no.
And then the event was in Milton Keynes.
And I say, oh, well, I'm based in Leeds now.
That's a bit far, isn't it?
And so even though all that marketing and branding was there for them all to see, as you kind of said about the happy clicker, they just saw a go Kart and went, yeah, cool, I'll sign up for that.
It must be free sort of thing.
So it's funny.
And I myself kind of just learning that process and kind of going through that.
And so that you're completely right.
And that's why I kind of wanted to ask you, what do you reckon are the key elements in that lead goes from a lead need to then an actual qualified leader, a qualified customer?
Because there are some people that I see that that's a that's a nice idea.
And then through the sequencing and through the nurturing, they do become a customer.
And then equally there are some that are just tire kickers and everything else.
So there's kind of that fine balance.
I understand it's a numbers game of let's say 100 people interact with a post, Probably only one or two of them will will end up being customers.
And it's us.
And that's why it's called a sales funnel, right?
It's kind of removing the people that aren't the right fit as you're going down the process, but I'd be good to just get a bit more insight from yourself around that.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean your experience with kind of meta forms is is pretty common so that they have a place some in some places.
But effectively what you'd have used there with the go karting example is they're forms that are kind of in the feed, but effectively you don't leave the Instagram or Facebook ecosystem.
And what it does is it auto fills.
If you use a lead form, it auto fills the lead data based on whatever you've got saved in your profile.
So what you tend to get is 1 A lot of people that have kind of not really understood what they've gone through because it's very kind of micro commitment and they go, they're going, oh, go kind.
Yeah.
And within two clicks they've kind of submitted their details to you.
It's great for getting that lead cost down, but as you say it's kind of an artificially low lead cost because a lot of it is not kind of qualified people I suppose.
But yeah, really what you want to be doing is taking people into some kind of branded experience.
And what we would always do is build a multi step funnel.
And like you say, good friction is exactly the way to put it.
You want to create a friction in the form that means that you are selecting or segmenting out the people actually fit the criteria.
So a really good example of this, one of the models that we run is we've got a brand that we use, which is the property investment Finder, which we use across a few different clients where we kind of need a brand to just run it straight away.
And we can do that on kind of like a cost per leave basis.
And what we do with that is generally it would be where we're working with a broker.
So they've got kind of a bit more of a wider range of different units available, different developments available, and we would actually have that qualification process happen in the form.
So the way we position it is, oh, you know, if you're looking to invest in whatever the location is, UK property, answer a few questions about what it is that you're looking for and then we can provide some options that can fit your criteria.
So again, it's about creating that element of personalization within the form, but also having that kind of segmentation.
So we would ask questions around firstly kind of understanding why it is that they're interested.
So understanding that kind of motivations, wanting to get involved.
One, it's kind of a nice easy question to start them off with, so a kind of a low friction question, but also it's useful for, you know, the for sales to understand that when they come onto that call and when they have that conversation to understand the motivations behind that.
Well, then you can kind of get harder and harder with the questions, I suppose in terms of understanding.
OK, well, you know, what kind of locations is it that you're interested in and what's your kind of time frame for investment?
You know, have you got the cash now?
Is it something you'd need to raise a bit of capital for?
Or you know, how many, what size of property looking for, how many bedrooms you know, and ultimately you get in towards the end where you go, OK, great.
And you know, what's your budget?
And you can use that as a qualifier even kind of you can do a version of this for single developments as well.
There's kind of just a bit of a qualification, but you just do it on the basis of almost finding the perfect unit for them, no, or whatever it may be.
And then you get into the contact details, which is kind of the highest friction questions to ask because obviously people don't necessarily want to give away that information.
By that point, there's almost a sequence of micro commitments that means that when you do ask them for their details, they're far more willing to give those because they feel like, oh, I've kind of, I've got this far, you know, and I want to find out what the outcome is because you've, you've also created a, a value around having that call.
So, you know, I'm sure if anyone's run any campaigns, that's kind of the the classic kind of brochure download, especially on Meta forms when you do manage to get hold of people because there's a lot of dud data in there because it's kind of safe from the old profiles or whatever.
When you do get hold of them, I'm sure you get a lot of Oh yeah, I am interested, but just send me the brochure and I'll have a look kind of in my own time because you haven't created any value exchange around having that call.
Now, obviously, you know, no one wakes up in the morning and goes well, I really hope that I get sold to today.
You've got to be aware of that, right?
People, people don't are reversed to that.
But if you can create value around the core and you can do that via creating value in the the form with the questions that you asked, you can kind of kill two birds or ones.
Don't create that kind of qualification flow, but also create a narrative around why it's worth having a conversation with you because you can give them a result that you've kind of personalized within within that user experience.
Reverse Engineering Sales Goals for Effective Customer Acquisition
Yeah.
So what you kind of described there is essentially A scattergun approach versus a very kind of detailed.
I'm just seeing from a developers point of view they some of the mistakes that they've probably made is where they've gone right.
We want as much exposure in this area X area as possible.
We're going to run a really kind of just open ads and just try and hit everyone and hope that some leads come through.
And then as you said, even though you might have a cost, like a low cost per lead, be it £2.50 or something.
And I think fantastic, I'm getting a £2.50 lead and I might be able to set them a £400,000 home.
Fantastic, happy days.
But then actually, how many of those leads are on the right fit and everything else opposed to a more kind of targeted approach of having a landing page, talking about the development and the design, then having people submit a questionnaire.
And as you just said there about having some simple questions at the beginning.
So then there's that kind of association and they've kind of built a bit of a bridge and then they've now invested the time.
So it'd be silly for them to then not submit their personal details, their contact details at the end because while they just spent 8 minutes filling out this questionnaire.
So, OK, no, that's interesting.
Speaker 2
It's also kind of it's harder to get going doing it this way, you know, and obviously it does require a bit of know how in terms of, you know, set up with the accounts and a bit of kind of strong copy.
And you know, there's, there's lots of little 1% things that add up to a big difference with it.
But if you do do it the other way and you're getting a really high lead flow and low cost, like you say, it looks great on paper, but what also happens is that, as I said, the algorithm is really good at doing exactly what you tell it to do.
So as it gets more and more of these poor quality leads and the cost per lead is coming down and down now and you're paying, you know, 2 LB, one pound a lead, the algorithms met are going great.
What a great job I'm doing.
Let me find more of those.
And lo and behold, it's more of these kind of low quality, low investment, kind of, you know, tire kickers and and you know, happy clickers as we call them.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that's a lonely process that a lot of people, if they are specialists in development, they're obviously not specialists in marketing.
So they either kind of stumble through and trying to figure out themselves or they'll look towards kind of a competent party like yourself to come in and assist them for sure.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
And I think that, you know, the way that we try and do it is that our cost would pay for itself in a sense of, you know, it's very, very easy to spend a lot of money quite quickly.
And we try and structure, you know, the way that our our business works commercially in a way that, yeah, actually, you know, everything is very much rooted in we need to make sales to pay for the cost of won the ads, but also ourselves as well.
So, you know, we're not going to sit here and kind of we don't have meetings at the end of the month or whatever and say, oh, look, how many impressions we got.
Leeds is one part of the conversation.
Yes.
But ultimately you want to look further down your fund and say, OK, well, how many of those were qualified?
What percentage of those we get in that qualified once you're there for your cost per qualified lead, you know, including the agency cost as well.
And ultimately where we would start with every client is working back from, OK, you know, what's the, the revenue that you're hoping to get from from these sales?
How many do we think leads do we think we would need to get that fit the right profile that are qualified in order to convert them?
Work back from there to essentially work out.
Where's the kind of break even point where if we were to spend beyond that, it's not actually going to make any money at all.
And you kind of work back from there because that's a really important place.
And that comes back to my point at the start about really kind of knowing your, your goals and your KPI's at the outset, doing those, the kind of the maths of that and working out the numbers of what kind of internal ad spend you're going to need in order to make this a profitable enterprise.
And I think one of the big challenges is it is harder when you have less data.
So kind of counter intuitively, you know, some of the clients that we work with that are spending big money, you just have more data to work with.
And so it's you can learn quicker.
And I guess that's another advantage of working with, you know, a partner like ourselves is that we have got that kind of basis of know how that you can kind of skip a bit of the learning curve that perhaps we had when we were first starting out.
You kind of, you know, you have to make the mistakes to learn what not to do in that process.
Speaker 1
The cost of entry, the cost of learning as you just said there.
So one of the key takeaways then is to reverse engineering instead of exploring kind of a cost per lead or cost per impression or anything, you actually want to be working out your CAC, your customer acquisition cost and in reverse engineering from there.
So if your customer acquisition cost is cheaper by actually being a more targeted approach and actually it's more effective.
Speaker 2
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, yeah, exactly that.
So if you think about it in terms of your funnel and actually we would always create this quite literally, you know, in a spreadsheet.
So you can kind of see the steps within that, see the costs and then we'll plug in different levels of conversion rates, different levels of cost per lead trying to understand, OK, where are the kind of the the guard rails for this?
So for example, you know, if we are running a more kind of personalized funnel with multi step, what do we think if we think, you know, for example, if we think we can convert those kind of leads that go through that process at 5%, you know, one in 20, what can we therefore afford to pay where they still make sense in terms of a campaign?
And that's a different calculation.
If you're looking at and going, OK, well, what if we're just doing a simple brochure download campaign?
We're targeting a lower commitment, but a lower cost per lead.
Now, how do those numbers work when you work it through the funnel?
Obviously less of them are going to be qualified and less of them are going to move through to sales.
So it's about kind of finding that balance.
And I think, yeah, again, when you start, I think you want to have a few different types of Legion campaign with different levels of commitment, because part of it will be working out what's going to kind of work best for you on that kind of slide.
Speaker 1
So as a developer then that probably thinking, oh, great, this is another thing for us to worry about.
And once you start getting into it, you start kind of watching YouTube videos or allowing these sorts of things, you can then kind of get carried away and start going down a rabbit hole as you just said there.
So are there any other kind of automation software pieces or any other sequences that they can use to help kind of pre qualify some of these leads?
So then they actually only spend their time speaking to real investors and people that are kind of actually there that the NGS that they're interested in speaking to.
Speaker 2
Absolutely.
So I would look at this, there's a few kind of what we call it no code form builders.
So for a long time we've used a tool called type form, which is quite useful for kind of building these branded user experiences.
Again, qualification funnels and you can sit that, you know, you could use the URL address and put that straight into kind of meta or Google or whatever you wanted to use it in.
So you can actually use that almost as a landing page directly if you wanted to.
Or you could take it and link it off the back of the button on your website.
So, you know, require now or whatever it may be that links then into this multi step form.
There's a few out there.
I mean, it would be remiss of me not to mention we've been building a a, a kind of legion app that is more targeted at marketers really.
So it's kind of a bit more a bit more advanced, but part of that is a multi step form builder.
So watch this space for that.
The app's called Nurture NERCHR.
So we'll yeah, be bringing that out hopefully later in the year.
Balancing Google and Meta Ads for Optimal Lead Generation
Oh.
Speaker 1
Interesting.
A podcast exclusive.
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1
So if a developer then has X amount of marketing budget, where would you say are they best kind of allocating that budget right now?
Do you find from your experience Facebook performs better than Instagram?
Is Google performing better than Meta?
Kind of?
What is your kind of thought process around that?
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a really good question.
So if we think about it in this way, you've got kind of Google search, which is kind of what most people think of when they think of Google ads.
It's very much what we call kind of demand capture.
So if you think about it in that sense, it's people are going on searching on Google for a particular keyword and if it's kind of relevant enough to what it is that you're selling, you are capturing that demand with an ad saying, oh, hey, you're looking for this, this is what we sell and you bring them through the funnel that way.
Meta, which when I've been doing this long after, it's kind of still kind of Facebook ads in my head, but Meta ads is Instagram and Facebook kind of all in one.
So often when you buy the placements, it would just rotate them between those two.
To be honest, we don't worry too much about splitting it out.
We'll have a look at the data and the analytics afterwards and kind of work out perhaps where we want to spend more than the other.
Then the early stages, the algorithm is pretty good at just putting the budget where it it kind of should go.
But Meta generally is what we call demand generation channel.
So you're profiling the kind of person that you want to target, what kind of audience you want to target, and you're pushing out ads in front of them and trying to generate that demand.
They haven't give you any a kind of direct indicator of interest in the same way that Google search has, which is where you're going to capture that demand.
The challenge with that is that obviously there's a finite amount of searches for any given search terms.
And obviously if you're going more niche, I mean, if you even if you're looking at kind of, you know, maybe like a, you know, invest in city property, you know, invest in Manchester property or whatever it may be keywords to that effect, it can be very expensive and very competitive because there's a lot of big developers with deep pockets who are kind of bidding on those keywords.
And in simple terms, a person who's searching for that is obviously going to be the right kind of person that's kind of interested and to some extent further down that funnel.
So you want to find a balance of a little bit of test and learn because every kind of development will be different.
So if you put a bit of money into Google and it proves to be a little bit expensive, but you probably do want to start there as a starting point because they are going to be the people that whilst it might be more expensive to get them as a click, they are going to be closest to that buy point.
Whereas kind of with Meta ads you're pushing out generally speaking cheaper because you've got a broader kind of targeting there.
But you are going to have to do a bit more work to move them down the funnel as a as a bit of kind of data to back that up.
When we've run these kind of UK by to let North of England campaigns with the brokers in the past, we were able to build up kind of four or five years of of data.
And what we were doing is tracking back from when the sale happened back to when the lead initially came through.
What we found as a kind of general rule of thumb is that it was around 7 months from a lead coming through on Google, from Google lead coming through to them buying and it was more like 9 to 10 months of a lead coming through from Meta and then buying.
I think that's a good indicator of the typical kind of differences between the two.
But yeah, to kind of skirt your question a little bit, I suppose I would test both.
And I think you need to kind of a little bit of balance.
And certainly I would set up, you know, if you have got a, you know, a development with a few units, if you can set up a simple landing page and a simple funnel and then bid on the brand, turn around that so you can make sure you're going to capture that traffic.
That'll cost you pennies.
But what it'll mean is that anyone who sees an ads in Meta that you're running and rather than kind of clicking through, they have a look at it and then they go and then they search in Google, you're going to make sure that you do capture that demand that you've created on the other side.
And it's a very kind of cost effective way of doing it.
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Together in partnerships and.
Speaker 2
Exactly, You can create the demand over here in Meta and then kind of capture it with a a branded campaign over in in Google.
It's a it's kind of a difficult one to measure.
Of course, obviously none of these platforms want to share data with each other.
So it's not kind of a case of going 0 great.
Well, we saw the the impression of the click over here and then we've seen a click here and we can join up that journey.
But yeah, you can, you can get a sense from it from, you know, if you increase the void of impressions over a matter, you do generally see an increase in the number of branded searches in Google.
Building Trust and Brand Through Consistent Long-Term Marketing
It's interesting that you said that it's between seven months and nine months from actually kind of seeing the brand, then actually going through the process.
And it just goes to show how much time it takes in terms of building a brand and building those touch points and building that trust process.
I think a lot of people don't often till into consideration because from a consumer's point of view, you go, well, I want some trainers, so I'm just going to go online and buy some Nikes.
And you kind of go, well, first of why you buying Nikes are because they've been in your brand and your association for 1520, thirty years, whatever.
And then E3, why did you buy from X website to buy those Nikes?
Well, again, that website you've been using for X amount of years and you've been seeing it around and everything else.
And so changing that from consumers perspective now to a developer's perspective, you now need to reverse engineer that developer that I had on last week, Oliver was saying that that's not what he's doing.
When they find a site, they start as soon as planning permissions achieve, they run essentially a marketing campaign for the they run a planning party.
So once the planning permissions will achieve, they run it.
They organize a party to showcase fantastic with the with the locals play permissions been achieved.
They then able to obtain all that data and information which they can obviously use for retargeting.
And then they'll start to tell the story throughout that development of while we're kind of building these type of plots and why we're using these sorts of materials and they're telling that brand, telling that story and all that time, the hype of the development and making them stand out opposed to kind of the major house builders.
But at the same time, they're acquiring all that information that then when it comes to marketing and selling the sites, well, they've got a higher chance of selling them off plan, which is from developer's perspective, fantastic.
And E create gives you a far more likelihood of selling all the units and having a stronger exit.
I think a lot of time sales are kind of the back end.
Thoughts for some SME developers and they've focused on, you know, getting the planning permission, doing the builds, getting everything done on time and then it comes to sale and they're like, right, we now need to put this on right move and get out there.
But by that point, you've missed so much opportunity and exposure.
And now, like I said, you're planning to the Nike shoes.
Imagine now you're going out there and you're trying to buy it tomorrow and you never heard the brand before and do you trusted the brand and everything else?
They've missed all that storytelling.
I think that's really important in today's market.
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.
And you can see with those timeframes I think you need that time to be able to kind of get that across.
And that comes back to my point about look the expensive bit is, is getting the leads once you have the e-mail address and you have the opt in, it's very cheap to market to them via e-mail.
Like you say you know you can do loads with construction updates, you know with if you're doing multiple developments, you know examples of the you know previous completions etcetera.
You know, and also on that point, if you are viewing it as a long term game and you are doing multiple developments over time, that's a huge opportunity because actually, you know, one of the longest times we had between kind of lead and sale I think was just shy of three years.
So this was the lead that had come through, had three years of comms, you know, and then eventually, because I think there are lots of people that have an interest in it, but don't necessarily haven't, you know, saved up the capital yet or, you know, whatever it may be.
And they just need that kind of that time.
And really it's about having that drip, drip, drip of information, of education, of building trust, building familiarity going along over that time period.
And that is what then makes them go when the time comes and they have got the capital and they do want to get involved.
You're the brand that they think of or it's the development they have to go for.
So, yeah, it's very much a long game.
And the kind of the we view the kind of paid ads bit as the first bit of getting them in the expensive bit.
And then it's about a combination different channels and yeah, some, some retargeting, which you can do cheaply once you've got that list.
But yeah, playing the long game is is where we see the success, that's for sure.
Overcoming 'Pay to Play' with Authentic Personal Branding
Just pivoting slightly, I just want to talk about organic traffic as well.
I find it'd be interesting to get your perspective on this.
I've seen some posts recently, especially on LinkedIn and things, where a lot of people's organic exposure has actually diminished.
And back kind of 2-3 years ago, they'll be doing a post and they'll be getting a lot more kind of traction, a lot more exposure.
And now they seem to really be reducing that.
Is that because they're trying to make it a bit more pay to play sort of style?
They say, oh, well, the only way now to get the exposure as well, if you want it, you've got to stop paying for it.
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I think that's absolutely the model.
You know, ultimately these are commercial base, these platforms and they are all about getting people, you know, into their feed.
And there's always going to be a place.
Ultimately what these platforms want is, is relevance and good content.
So the more you can create good, relevant, useful content that people engage with from Mehta's point of view, for example, the longer that their whole thing is about how long we keep people in feed.
If you can keep people scrolling through in their feed, the longer you keep them in, the more ads you can share them, the more money they make.
That's essentially what the whole calculation is about.
So they definitely kind of look to have looked at a limit reach and make it kind of more of a, you know, you say pay to play in recent years.
I mean, TikTok is a really good example of this.
I was reading a post someone was looking at earlier this week talking about lots of TikTok organic creators are talking about quite a noticeable drop in organic reach just since it's been handed over to the American companies managing it kind of taken out of the Chinese hands.
And they were hypothesizing that it's probably a precursor to having more of a pay to play model.
And they were saying that actually, you know, perhaps what they were doing when they were setting it up is really, really pushing content when people were putting on TikTok initially almost to kind of get people hooked on the engagement they could get.
So they invest the time and start to create it.
And once they're in the rhythm, kind of off they go from there.
But yeah, it's a challenge I think everyone's facing.
Certainly kind of anything posted from, you know, brands, organic reaches really, really stifled these days on all platforms.
Really, if there is an opportunity, you know, within within the projects that your listeners are working on to have more of a face to that.
We're finding that kind of, you know, and I hesitate to use the word influencer because it's not quite that, but we've got a kind of thought leadership based content.
So, you know, taking whether it be, you know, posts on LinkedIn that you then kind of promote the do particularly well or running the ad from a real person's accounts rather than running it from a brand account, we actually find that the engagement is better doing it that way.
So that's one way to kind of get around this, this trend at the moment.
I think ultimately, I think people buy from people, right?
And I think that's another, another thing to consider in how you structure your ads forever as well in, in the last few years, really, we are increasingly seeing that what we call lofi ads outperform highly polished glossy adverts.
I think that there's an increasing banner blindness from people.
So you'll kind of notice it yourself now when you're next scrolling through, almost before you've even seen what it is, you've subconsciously gone, that's an ad and you're already scrolling past it.
And so we find a lot of kind of best results recently in Meta in particular, come from kind of talking head videos.
So almost like an elevator pitch about the development, the hooks really important.
You know, they talk about kind of 85% of the value in an ad being in the hook.
So what are you doing to stop the thumb, as we call it, to get them to kind of engage with it.
But that applies across organic and paid content.
Once you get them in, people aren't stopping.
So people are more much more likely to stop when it seems like it's an organically made post, even if he is positioned as an ad, someone is to explain the development.
You can then cut to kind of B roll footage or you know, over the top of this, the nice imagery, the CGIS, etcetera if it's off plan.
But I think having that a face rather than a brand sometimes can really help to overcome that kind of banner blindness and the fact that increasingly, you know, these platforms are not promoting the kind of brand LED.
Speaker 1
I guess, I guess that's an advantage then for an SME developer where if you are up against the Bellway, Simon and everything else, if you focus more on being personable and then buying a development from you opposed to a faceless corporation sort of thing.
And that is such a strong and key advantage there.
And I think you're right.
When you're kind of scrolling through and you see something really, highly, really polished, you just go, oh, that's an ad and you just immediately kind of switch off.
And so having something that's actually a bit rough around the edges and a lot more personable and a lot more real, I think people are are looking for that.
I think in the world now where you're just bombarded with ads constantly no matter where you go.
I think by having an ad, even even if it is ads, having an ad that's actually personable when someone's actually talking to you opposed to just buy my product ran down your throat, I think that's a really kind of strong value out there.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
That's actually a really, really, Yeah, really good point.
I mean, we have a partner we work with who they focus on kind of social housing investments and we've been out here running an ad for them, the same ads pretty much with kind of variations of copy etcetera.
But it is just, we gave him, we wrote a script for him and he spoke to the camera and we just run that and it's kind of like a 45 second explanation of how the scheme works.
And then obviously a kind of a lead form of the qualification off the back of it.
And that works really, really well.
We do a small volume of leads to him.
So you know, he's a kind of a one man band and the leads are excited by the fact that when they get on the phone, it's the person that they saw in the ad.
So I think you're absolutely right that there's a real opportunity there and an advantage that perhaps some of these bigger businesses don't have is that that creates a really nice joined up user experience.
From OK, this is the person they seem trustworthy.
I understand what it is they get across.
You know exactly how it all works in the elevator pitch, take them through the qualification process and then the person that actually calls them up is the person they've seen in the ad.
It's a really nice kind of user experience.
Speaker 1
Thing there yeah, Alex Mosey talks about this in his book and he says everyone has a strength, everyone has a weakness and your weakness might be you might not have the same finance as some of these big developers, you might not have the same kind of ability and everything else but what you do have is that personal factor and so you should be able to be leaning into some of those things.
It's kind of just moving away from that now and just talking a little bit about finance.
Digital Finance Raising and Effective Lead Remarketing Strategies
So what are the the key ways that people can kind of go about raising finance and kind of this digital economy now?
Speaker 2
I mean, so our world is really all about retail investors.
So kind of that's pretty much, but you know, the extent of my understanding of those financial models work to some extent.
So it's really all about finding people that the opportunity fits.
And a big part of that is is just timing.
And so like you said earlier on, I think it is a little bit of a of a numbers game in that regard that you kind of haven't have to have enough people in the park.
And so that, you know, when the right opportunity kind of comes up that the shoe fits, so to speak.
But yeah, it's kind of, as you say, it is a bit of a numbers game and it's about making sure that your positioning of what it is that you're offering is as clear as possible from the outset.
So that that whole way through from add, from the multi step formula you're doing the qualification when they get there to the end, it's clear to them that it's the right kind of opportunity for them.
And that's really kind of the best way to yeah, to identify those prospects that are probably hottest.
Speaker 1
I guess using a stock market analogy there, it's a bit like time in the market versus timing the market, right?
And by timing the market, I mean that consistent marketing, that consistent branding, as you guys said, they're building those consistent touch points.
So then when that person is at a point where they're then ready to invest or they do a post and we're now looking to raise finance or anything like that.
And they've built up that, that trust and that brand that people are then kind of associated.
I've seen it before where on Instagram and things, every time you'd load it up, there'd be this brand all over it kind of really in your face.
But then a week later they disappear and you never see them again.
And I think that's kind of the version of the timing, the market where they've just thrown all their money at the marketing spend, tried to get as much exposure in a week or two weeks and then lo and behold, it hasn't worked out.
So they kind of give up and never do it again.
And actually they've, they've looked at it from kind of the tortoise and the hair sort of analogy hasn't, haven't they?
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.
And that yeah, that's exactly the way to do it.
I think you build a lead list, you know and then it's very, very cheap to remarket to that lead list.
So you know, what you'd be able to do is that kind of coverage you talks about there where you get, you are getting, you know, a lot of ads in front of them.
That's very, very cheap to do.
If you've got a few thousand people in a pot or even a few 100 people, you know, we're talking a few pounds a day to be able to kind of hit all those people multiple times.
Now at terms of looking at the metrics, ones that people can look at to measure this is frequency, which is effectively a calculation of impressions versus reach.
So IE the number of times you've shown an ad versus the number of unique people that that has reached.
And that's quite a good one to look at.
You can look at that both on an individual ad level.
So you can understand, OK, if you've got a selection of different bits of contents, you've got perhaps construction updates, you've got, you know, social proof, so you know, testimonials or whatever it may be.
You've got some nice video content, you've got some talking head content, etcetera.
Looking at which ones, yes, people are engaging with, but making sure that when you're in that retargeting pool, you're not just showing the same stuff to the same people again and again.
And it's about finding that balance.
And that's a bit of an art rather than a science, I suppose, to some extent.
But yeah, making sure that you're getting a variety of content across that, as you say, taking the approach where you can can do that over a long period of time.
And it's a drip, drip, drip, not a kind of a sudden rush of, yeah, look, we've hit all these people all at once, and then in a week's time, I've once forgotten about it.
Repetition is key, and that's for sure.
And yeah, if you can do that in a way when you've got the lead and you can make do some of the legwork via channels like e-mail or SMS or whatever it may be, that makes it a lot cheaper because the expensive bit is running the ads.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I guess once you've got the ad, it's and that cross pollination, right?
How to Connect with Tom Richards and AdBetter
Then use the emails to retarget and everything else.
Speaker 2
Exactly that.
Speaker 1
Yeah, amazing.
Well, thank you for coming on Tom.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
I like to get a bit nerdy within analytical as well.
So it's nice to have son's going to run some numbers and kind of get that experience on the podcast.
For people that are listening, kind of developers and other property professionals that are probably benefit from your kind of skill set, your team skill set, what would be the best way for them to get in contact with you?
Speaker 2
Probably just to hit our website with
[email protected] or reach out to me on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active on, on there.
But yeah, always happy to kind of have a chat and hear about what you guys are doing.
Even if it's a case of, you know, you're perhaps not quite there at the moment and but it's something you're kind of looking to get involved with, with running some ads in future.
We'd be, you know, happy to have a chat and yeah, give some advice and put you in the right direction and say, yeah, please do reach out if it could be useful.
Speaker 1
Amazing.
Tom, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2
Thanks very much for having me.
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