How I Get A New Client Per Every $500 I Spend On Marketing

Chantal Bullock: And I appreciate it because you show us to do the ads and to do everything very genuine and for the benefit of others and then you guys run Platform with that same mentality. It's not just, "Do as I say, not as I do." Between the zoom calls and the Mastermind and all the different things that you provide to us, it feels like it comes very genuinely from the heart. 

Chermak: This is The Platform Marketing Show where we interview the most creative and ambitious real estate agents in the country, dissect their local marketing strategy, and get the behind-the-scenes scoop on how they're generating listing leads and warm referrals. We'll dive into the specifics of what marketing campaigns are working for them, how much they're spending on those campaigns, and figure out how they have perfected what we call the Platform Marketing strategy. This is your host, Tim Chermak. I'm the founder and CEO of Platform. I love marketing and I talk too much, so let's dive in. 

Tim Chermak: Hey guys, it's Tim Chermak joined today by Max Rymer and we want to welcome you back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. Today, we have Chantal Bullock who is in northwestern Arizona. I know you're in the Kingman, Arizona area. Mohave County, correct? And I should ask right away, Chantal, did I pronounce your name correctly? 

Chantal Bullock: Bullock. 

Tim Chermak: Bullock, okay. Really cool story, it's one of those before-and-afters where it's very, very clear that the marketing that Chantal has been doing over the last year is making a difference. For her career, the last several years, she'd been hovering right around $4.5 million, $5 million sales volume pretty consistently. And I know that she kind of felt that she had been at that level of production for so long. She just kind of felt, "Okay, there's a limit in my market. I don't think anyone's ever really going to sell more than $5 million because I've been stuck here at this plateau for several years." And you joined the Platform Marketing program last year and your business rocketed up from about $5 million to almost $11 million. So you more than doubled in actually less than a year because I don't think at this point you've even been with Platform for a full calendar year. 

Chantal Bullock: No, I think we're at six and a half months right now. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah. So, I mean, you made progress very quickly and this year, you were doing your goal setting and you're somewhere on pace to do between $10 million and $15 million, let's say, this year based on where your production and your leads are at the moment we record this in early January. So you're kind of projecting out, but you're already feeling like you're going to end up between somewhere $10 million and $15 million. Less than a year ago, you were mentally convinced that there's really no way any agent in this market could ever do more than $5 million in my town and you're basically on pace to potentially even triple that. So first, congratulations. That's amazing. 

Chantal Bullock: Thank you. 

Tim Chermak: Secondly, I want to ask, how did you even hear about Platform? How did you get connected with us? What is kind of the origin story of what led us to this podcast episode today?

Chantal Bullock: I was in a retargeting program of John Galt's. So I came over from the mortgage side because I love those ads and then I stumbled across Platform. 

Tim Chermak: So actually, first you stumbled upon John Galt Mortgage and then you somehow found out that some of the people that are behind John Galt Mortgage are also involved in this company, Platform Marketing. Okay, I actually honestly did not know that. I'll have to share that with-- 

Chantal Bullock: Yeah, well, and I had to go searching for you. You were talking about that recently in one of the calls in our private Facebook group. 

Tim Chermak: Oh, right. Yeah. 

Chantal Bullock: Where I had to go searching and searching to find you guys, and yeah. The more work I had to put into it, the more I wanted to find out who Platform was. 

Tim Chermak: Right, so what Chantal is talking about there is we had a private call with our Platform clients, I think, a couple of weeks ago, then we were talking about this social media theory we have that so many brands and people are going out of their way to make it easy to sign up, like they put the buy-now button everywhere. They have links in everything they put out about here's how to buy, here's how to get started, and we kind of take the opposite approach to Platform where, yeah, we put out content. That's one reason that we're recording this podcast episode right now is so that we have content for Spotify and Apple podcasts and this will be on YouTube as well, but we don't just plaster our website over everything. "And here's the link to sign up," because then it kind of just feels like everything you're doing is a sales pitch, and so we do the opposite. 

Tim Chermak: We actually don't put calls-to-action in a lot of our content. And if someone wants to look up how to join the Platform Marketing program, they're probably going to have to Google us and they have to do some searching to find out how do I even get going with this company, but often in doing so, you stumble upon reviews. Cause if you're going on Google, you'll see our reviews and we have lots and lots of very positive reviews. And so it means that we get less leads intentionally, but the leads that actually come in have really done their due diligence and research already. To me, it's a much better way of structuring inbound lead generation if you make people have to manually research you. 

Tim Chermak: But anyways, that's a tangent. That's not what I wanted to talk about today. I want to talk about your business, Chantal, and how you have grown things so much. So, you apparently heard about Platform via a JGMC marketing campaign. Just kind of following the memes that we post for JGMC, you heard about Platform. What was it that intrigued you that made you want to find out more? Were you searching for a marketing company at the time? Were you researching other marketing companies like Ylopo or Curaytor? What made you even in the mindset of, hey, maybe I should sign up for a new marketing program this year?

 Chantal Bullock: So my husband is very big into social media marketing and he's been pushing and pushing and pushing at me and of course, it's the last thing on my list So when things get busy, that's the first thing I always drop. And, you know, husbands, wives, probably the same. When you have them constantly in your ear telling you, feels like nagging and I just didn't know what to do or how to do it and I felt overwhelmed. That was part of, I wasn't looking at any other companies, but like you said, when I went searching for you, I did run into the reviews and some of the names that were on there, I went and searched on Facebook, so I found their business accounts, I saw their ads. I probably stalked four or five or six of the agents. And then I reached out and spoke to Diana. She was amazing. I pretty much told her as soon as I found out that my market was open. I told her, "All right, get me on there," and then Max was my next person I spoke to. 

Max Rymer: So we have a nagging husband to thank for you. 

Chantal Bullock: Yes, he'll be at Mastermind this year. 

Tim Chermak: Let's go. 

Chantal Bullock: Yes. 

Max Rymer: I'm never that, so I don't know. 

Chantal Bullock: No, of course not. 

Tim Chermak: Don't even know how to relate. Yeah, that's odd. 

Chantal Bullock: Yeah, but it was the stalking part of just seeing them. And then of course, in the back of my head, I went, "Oh, well, if I just follow these people around, then I can just do the ads that they're doing and then maybe I don't even need to speak to Platform." So that does kind of go on in the back of the head, and then I spoke to Diana. She was amazing. She told me how the program worked, explained more in detail, and then I realized that maybe that nagging is what I need. Not that I'm going to say that my account manager is nagging me, but the accountability is a huge part of it. And I think that the fact that you give us somebody that we speak to every week is what so many other companies are missing. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah. I mean, I think it's totally fundamental to the Platform strategy to have that account manager that you regularly connect with whether it's every week. We have some clients who do calls every other week, like whatever works for you and your rhythm. But that's important because if we just gave you ad ideas and marketing campaign ideas and then just trusted that you're ambitious enough and responsible enough to do everything we ask of you, I bet, honestly, 80%, if not 90% of clients would just not do the marketing homework. So having that accountability is a huge reason why it works because it's just human nature. Kids don't do their homework when they're kids and adults are just grown up kids, so you need that accountability. By the way, you work with Taylor, right? That's your account manager? 

Chantal Bullock: Yep. She's just awesome. 

Tim Chermak: Yep. Shout out to Taylor. She's an absolute badass. Max, I know that you worked with Chantal early on getting ads set up. She also has had a lot of success with ads on Google. Would you mind sharing what your results were, Max or Chantal, whoever wants to jump in here, like within the first 90 days? Cause I know that you were one of those clients who things started clicking right away. Like it didn't take six months or a year to work, you saw some pretty quick success when you started the Platform Marketing program. 

Chantal Bullock: Max, you want to tell the story? 

Max Rymer: And I told it a little bit at the Mastermind this past year too. But Chantal was one of the first, I would say, that we-- so in the last year here, Platform, we have this map of services that we want to get into. It's why we dove into Google local service ads. Obviously, our bread and butter is Facebook and Instagram, but I actually did Chantal's onboarding for Platform and then a short while later, we got her set up on local service ads. And if anyone out there has tried local service ads, especially in a slower market, seems like everyone was cleaning up three, four years ago. And as it gets slower, you find this nexus of, where it works best is you having a number of reviews on Google and then being in a market that it works well for. And Chantal, I think it was a perfect storm for you where you had a baseline of Google stuff already set up. And then just being in your market, there wasn't a whole lot of competition at the beginning to bid for these ads, if you will. 

Max Rymer: So I remember, Chantal, I remember getting all of her stuff verified, we got her set up, and then probably a week and a half later, what I tell our clients is, “Mentally earmark $200 a month towards this. And if we're ever getting up to that $200-mark, I'll let you know or your account manager will let you know if you want to continue on that track.” And I remember a week and a half-- 

Chantal Bullock: Can I interrupt real quick? 

Max Rymer: Yeah. 

Chantal Bullock: It was five days. It was five days, that first round. 

Max Rymer: So less than a week, because what I do is on behalf of our clients, we have a process where we go in and we'll actually do lead disputes for you. Google LSA is a wonderful program because you're only paying for legitimate calls and you can dispute calls that aren't legit. You can basically affirm that you booked an appointment. 

Tim Chermak: With Google ads, you're not paying, or with LSA ads, I should say, you're not paying cost-- 

Max Rymer: You're not paying per click. You're not paying per impression like you do on Facebook. It's really cost per call, but that leads us to this next part where after five days, according to Chantal here and I believe her, I messaged Taylor and I had this oh-shit moment because Chantal had gotten so many calls. I'm in there every week checking, but Chantal had gotten so many calls over the course of a week that I messaged Taylor and I was like, "Hey, Taylor. I messed up. We have spent $1,700 on these ads in one week." And I'm like, "Explain to Chantal we're going through disputes. I expect it to be cut in half," but when you tell someone $200 and it's $900 and all of these are relatively legitimate calls, I told Taylor, I'm expecting that she got some business out of it, but I'm going to fall on my sword on this one.

Tim Chermak:Yeah, it's like normally when you tell a client that, hey, we accidentally quadrupled your budget this month that you told us, you're kind of bracing like, "This call is going to suck. This person's going to just cuss me out on the phone 'cause they're going to be really, really mad." And so how did that phone call go? 

Max Rymer: Well, Chantal, I'll let you because I-- one, for the listening audience, it never happens, okay? 

Chantal Bullock: Never, but it did to me. 

Max Rymer: I'm usually pretty on the ball with this stuff and our team is on the ball with this stuff. But, yeah, I don't know, Chantal, I went like a dog with my tail between his legs to your account manager and you can tell me how that call went. 

Chantal Bullock: Well, to be fair, you told me you would go in every Friday and check on it. We started it on a Thursday. I got the phone call on Monday from Taylor of, "Well, honey, I have some bad news, but it's actually really good news if you just hear me out." 

Max Rymer: Perfect way to start any conversation. 

 Chantal Bullock: Yes. So, it was crazy. I was getting, I forget the numbers now, but I was ranging maybe in that 7 to 10 or 11 phone calls a day during that. And of course it was the weekend and you hadn't had that first Friday, so you looked at it after 24 hours, but then I was trying just to stay above water all weekend. And I did, I got a ton of leads. I didn't really get any spammy type messages or calls. I did get a few for rentals, which aren't my business model, but-- 

Max Rymer: Disputed. Successfully disputed. 

Chantal Bullock: Yep, and then I took a break for about a week or two so that I could catch myself up and then my husband pushed me and said, "Chantal, you did the wrong thing. You should double down on it, give it a budget, a real budget that we're going to stick to, and attack it for 30 straight days." And so I gave it a $5,000 budget and we did 30 days leading up to Mastermind, which is the end of that 30 days. So we did it from the end of September to the end of October. And it has produced very well other than I had to take a break again so that I could kind of work through the leads, but all in all, the results were amazing. Do you want numbers? 

Max Rymer: That'd be great. I mean, if you have numbers. 

Chantal Bullock: So I did a $5,000 budget for September to October, I've closed three for just over $14,000. And I have six more listings that are going live from that group here in the next two to three weeks. 

Tim Chermak: Wow. From $5,000 of ad spend? 

Chantal Bullock: Yes. Thanks for the mistake, Max. I owe you big.

Max Rymer: That is incredible. And I think for everybody out there, when you come into Platform, what Diana explains to you is it's a lot of high hanging fruit. It's a lot of getting into people's heads before they're ready to make a decision. And when Tim and I connected about what else can we provide to clients, Google local service ads are almost a low hanging fruit component of the Platform Marketing program where it doesn't get much more low hanging when I'm like, “I need a realtor in Kingman, Arizona,” and the first person to pop up is Chantal. And that's really part of the mix that we've gotten into over the last year here is rolling out that service so that we're not only capturing people before they're ready to make a decision, but at the very bottom of the funnel too. So when you hear Chantal said, "We got all these leads. We got all these calls," most of those conversations, Chantal, were probably people who were ready to make a decision of some kind. 

Chantal Bullock: So in my market, I find that the local people here are mentioning about my Facebook ads through the normal Platform channel. And then in my phone calls through the Google LSA seem to be, you know, somebody passed away. It's more of the estate owner that's now in charge and they live in Chicago, they live in Pennsylvania. They're not here seeing my local. So I feel like it's a good, rounded, balanced approach of marketing both near and far. 

Max Rymer: Well, that's Google LSA.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, it's low hanging fruit. I mean, I'm just doing the quick napkin math in my head. Within the first couple months of Platform, you were getting a new client per every $500 you spent on the ads. If you got that many clients from that batch, I mean, just basic math dictates about every $500 you spent, you were picking up a new client. And that's not even counting the true long term effects of what we're doing with Platform. That was just like, immediately in the first six months, here's what the marketing math looks like. 

Tim Chermak: Because most people who get started with Platform honestly take, for sure, six to 12 months on even on the long end. Six to 12 months to really see the results kick in, to really see it snowball where people around town are recognizing you from your social media ads and you're building that local brand. I mean, you've only been with Platform for about six months, so you're kind of just starting to enter the time frame when most people report the biggest results and you've already obviously had incredible results, so that's awesome. 

Chantal Bullock: I'm super, super excited. In 2023, I did 32 units. And last year, I did 60. So it basically doubled.

Tim Chermak: And again, the year 2024, I guess– I don't know when someone's going to listen to this podcast episode. Maybe they're listening to it five years from now or something. It's important to remember that the year 2024 was just objectively worse than 2023, which was objectively worse than 2022, which was objectively worse than-- Every year for the last four years, the market has been worse than the year before it. So if your business has doubled as the market's getting worse, that's just even more confirmation that you know that your marketing is working because no one's-- I promise you, in the year 2024, no agent's business just spontaneously doubled through dumb luck. 

Chantal Bullock: No. And just to clarify, you had said that other agents weren't doing these numbers. I was nowhere near the top, so there were other agents that were hitting numbers in the $10 million to $15 million. Our average sale here is about $250,000, $260,000. I do a lot of vacant land, so it's not uncommon for me to have a $10,000 sales price, so my numbers are a little bit lower. I'm averaging like $171,000, but it was just the mere numbers that had helped that. I had a mental ceiling and I couldn't break $5 million at all. I mean, my closest was $4.9 million and I was like, oh, I'm so close, but I was ranging in that $4.3 million to $4.9 million and I just figured, well, I do vacant land. It's just not going to be for me unless I do only homes.

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