How Realtors Can (Literally) 10X Your Facebook Ad Results

Bill Catlett: I know that that particular ad turned a key, because within seven days of posting it, I had 10 listing pitches lined up. So, I’d already … I’d had 3 listings that I was able to win. You know, I probably pitched - I mean, my batting average is awful. - I think I pitched 20 listings and ended up with 3 of them. And so I was like, that laid me out. And so to have that kind of shift was a real boost. And now looking at the last 365, I mean, I in 15 years this is the … This doubles my next best, you know 365 day period of, you know, for listing volume.

Tim 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, this is Tim Chermak, and welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I’m joined today with Bill Catlett who might just be the most creative realtor in these United States of America. Bill, welcome to the show.

Bill Catlett: Thanks for having me, Tim. 

Tim Chermak: So Bill and I have actually been Facebook friends for like I don’t know, 5, 6, 7 years. Something like that. We had some mutual friends in common. Sean Malone I think was the main mutual friend we have who used to be the Creative Director at FEE, the Foundation for Economic Education. Somehow we got connected, and I think he used to be in like a band with Sean.

Bill Catlett: Oh yeah, yep, yep.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, so anyways, we were connected. I found out at some point that you were a real estate agent. And it’s like oh, well this is weird. I have a real estate marketing agency called Platform. And I think I shot you a couple Facebook messages back in I don’t know,  2017-2018 something like that. Like hey man, we should talk about Platform sometime. And you know, you were polite and I was polite. I wasn’t harassing you or anything.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: But it wasn’t the right time. Right? You’re like, hey maybe later you know. But in the meantime we were actual Facebook friends. So we would comment on each other’s stuff, like each other’s posts, we kind of knew each other in that digital virtual sense. And eventually I think what happened is you just saw enough of my posts and Platform Marketing’s retargeting posts about the successes our clients were having where eventually you were like, maybe I should give this … Maybe I should give this a shot. So we were just talking before the show here. Your business was at about uh what, $50,000 after your split and everything? Your take home pay was probably around $50,000.

Bill Catlett: Probably, probably less. But yeah, we were in the ballpark.

Tim Chermak: Okay, let’s just say $40,000-$50,000 somewhere in there was your GCI the year before Platform. So that’s kind of the control of like where things were at. And that’s actually very average. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah, mhm.

Tim Chermak: For real estate agents across the United States. I think people out there have this concept that like the average agent is making like $100,000-$150,000 a year. It’s like no, no, no, no. The average agent is making somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 typically. So that was you, you know. You had enough to at the bare minimum maybe be paying your bills, but you certainly were not thriving in any sense financially. And you joined Platform in January of 2019. Is that right?

Bill Catlett: That’s right. Yep.

Tim Chermak: Okay. Uh, so just walk us through what that process looked like that led you to decide to give us a try. And by the way, I’m gonna spoil the punchline right now. Because I hate when people like, you know, use a clickbait. And they’re like we’ll reveal the cool stuff later. Let’s spoil the punchline. You’re on pace this year to probably do a quarter of a million dollars GCI or more. You’re currently looking at your listing pipeline, and it’s like a dozen listings that have verbally told you, “Yes, we’re listing with you.” 

I mean, things are going really well right now, and you started from a point where, you know, you were making like $50,000 GCI so …

Bill Catlett: Yeah it was garbage. Yeah.

Tim Chermak: How did you get to that point where you just decided to give Platform a try? And what specifically attracted you to the Platform Strategy versus other marketing programs out there?

Bill Catlett: Yeah, you know, I spent a lot of time looking at different marketing programs.

I spent a lot of time, honestly, hawking your clients. And seeing what kind of ads they were running. And you know, we were probably having a conversation for a good. Probably, I’m gonna say for at least 12 to 18 months. And so you know the things that I guess really …

Tim Chermak: I think there were several calls interspersed in there where you would call and ask me questions.

Bill Catlett: I would!

Tim Chermak: And I would answer your question and …

Bill Catlett: But here’s the thing, I don’t know if you remember this. I wouldn’t call you. I would send you a Facebook message. And I would be like, “Hey Tim, I have a quick question on, you know, like this ad copy or whatever.” And you would call me, right? Like I would just get a call. I wouldn’t get a response on the Facebook message just right away. So we had a probably good half dozen conversations. And so I was, yeah, basically I was trying to just copy whatever you guys were doing. And you know, I saw the ads that your clients were running. And you know, I mean there’s a wide breadth of different kinds of ads that you guys were running for your clients. So there wasn’t like a pattern, but the most consistent pattern that I noticed through that whole process was that Tim Chermak actually calls me. Like if I, you know,  there was another marketing company that I don’t remember what the name of it was. I had to sit through the hour long webinar. And then I had to have a phone consult. And then at the end of the phone consult, they finally gave me the price. And I was like, “Okay, I’ve invested 2 hours with these people before I even knew what it was gonna cost me.” And then you know, I get a customer service rep out of a call center in Kolkata or whatever right.

Tim Chermak: By the way, that is just absolutely one of my pet peeves, and not even about  marketing companies but just any company for any product or service in general. I hate it.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, uh huh.

Tim Chermak: When you go to their website, and it’s like “call us for pricing.” 

Bill Catlett: Laughs.

Tim Chermak: Like immediately if it says “call us for pricing” I’m like, “Screw you, I’m gonna go with somewhere else.” Because if you are that cowardly that you can’t even put your price on the website, like you’re just not a company that I would want to do business with.

Bill Catlett: One of the … And we do that in real estate, right? Realtors are notorious for that. We do that in this business, is you know, we make people basically sit around for, you know. There’s usually like a meeting to tour the home and a meeting to talk about the price, and then people get the price, right? And so you know, one of the things, one of the heavy hitting points for our relationship was the first phone conversation we ever had.

Right. You called me, and I don’t know if we’d been talking on Facebook or not, but you reached out to me. And you said, “Hey you know, we have a mutual friend in Sean Malone, and he gave me your information.” Because I’m not sure how you got my number. Maybe I had said -

Tim Chermak: I will share with you a secret.

Bill Catlett: Yeah?

Tim Chermak: When someone doesn’t give me their number, I’m aware of the fact that every real estate agent has their number on -

Bill Catlett: Hey, there you go!

Tim Chermak: On the internet. Like you kinda want to be found. So if I know someone’s name, it’s not really that hard to get their cell number.

Bill Catlett: So you called up, and I was like, ‘Aah, you know, what’s Sean doing giving my information out?” And I thought, well that’s stupid. It’s everywhere. 

Tim Chermak: Damn it, Sean!

Bill Catlett; But I think that in the first couple sentences, and I’m probably leaving a lot of details out, but what I. This is what I. The feeling of the conversation was you know, “My name’s Tim. I run a marketing platform for, you know, real estate agents.” And we charge, you know, whatever the fee was at the time.

That was like, you lead with that, and I instantly thought, “This guy’s either just a complete idiot.”

Tim Chermak: Wow, worst salesperson -

Bill Catlett: Worst salesperson ever! Who just leads with that? Or, he’s a genius. So the - what finally trigger that decision was, you know, I woke up one morning in early January and I was like. So, I either need to, I either need to make a full commitment because, you know, my referral pipeline is dead effectively. Like I call these people, you know. I’ve sent them gifts. I maxed it out for the tiny budget I have. I was like I need leads, and I need some kind of marketing presence, right? That I haven’t been building, right? And that was, I sort of started to piece together all of the mistakes. I read your book “High Hanging Fruit” and you know. That was pretty illustrative on a lot of stuff I was doing wrong.  And I still had a very, a very fuzzy vision of that. It’s not like everything came into focus for me at once. 

Tim Chermak: I, I have to stop you. I’m pretty sure you’re the first guest on The Platform Marketing Show ever to use the word “llustruhtive”in a conversation. So I …

Bill Catlett: Laughs

Tim Chermak: So I need to send you some cookies or something.

Bill Catlett: Right.

Tim Chermak: That was 

Bill Catlett; Well, let the loquaciousness begin! So I had like, I had this sense that like I was doing a lot of things wrong. And that I wasn’t good at a whole bunch of stuff. And it didn’t matter how good I was at selling houses. All the other stuff I was sucking royally at. And fortunately it was like the same day. If it wasn’t the same day, it was the same week where, you know, where I was sitting down with my wife. And I was like, I think I need to, you know, I think I just probably need to find a different line of work.

And so you gave me a call out of the blue and said, “Hey, you know, we have a,” You know, at the time this was 3 years ago. You know, so you said at the time Platform had a tiered pricing that you had just started to offer. Right? To help people kind of ramp up to the full fee.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, it was basically a discount over six months.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, I yeah, something like that. And so I put pencil to paper and I was like, “Well this is still for me, with the ad spend and everything else, this is a scary amount of money. But like, I’m either going to take out a loan and save my business today, or I’m going to go do something else.

Tim Chermak: You were gonna, like, quit real estate.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, yeah. I probably would have hung on to the license, and you know done it super parttime And been one of those people you really don’t want to buy a house with. Right? Because they …

Tim Chermak: Yeah, because you would have to go out and find like a real job, so …

Bill Catlett: Yeah, essentially, yeah. And that was, you know. And so yeah. So you called me. You just happened to call me that week, and I was like, “You know what? We’re just gonna pull the trigger on this. And full speed ahead.”

And so that was, I mean, that was, there was a lot of pressure to make that decision. But it wasn’t. The thing is like, you know, there’s a sales approach that is like, “Here’s the 17 point bullet list of things we offer our clients.” It’s like if you need a 17 point bullet list to sell anything, chances are you’re probably full of crap. You just like, just find one thing to be able to, like one bullet point to be able to sell on. The rest of it’s just gravy, right? And the one thing that you and I had was like, “Man, everytime I talk to this guy with simple questions he calls and we have a 20 minute conversation.” 

And you were willing to invest like way ahead. Like we’re talking it was a year to 18 months that we were, you know, talking back and forth before you made a dime from that association. Right? And so that level of investment, you know. I look at those things and thought, wow. That’s like, am I? Like I really had to figure out what the reflection was in my own business. Like, am I really doing that with my clients? Right?

And around the same time I read the, you know, I read “High Hanging Fruit,” and realized that I wasn’t quite connecting with my clients in that, you know, on that consistent level. Right? And playing the long game. Right? And so that was.

Tim Chermak: Yeah.

Bill Catlett: I think that was…

Tim Chermak: Yeah, like having that long-term marketing model.

Bill Catlett: Right, yeah.

Tim Chermak: “How do I pick up appointments in the next month” is  more like “how do I position my business to succeed and thrive six months from now?”

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Right and so I mean, you know, it was like in the time I made that decision it was like, “I need revenue today!” But I also had a bunch of skills that, you know, I could like employ to pull that out and so. It was like, “All right, let’s figure out how to get just enough revenue to eat and get by until this thing starts working.” While, Professor Long Game (which is you) kind of schools me on you know on how to move forward. And so you know, that like the, I think that’s the main, that was the main selling point for me. 

Tim Chermak: So you were most interested in hiring or starting a marketing agency program that was focused on building that long-term brand. Just because you knew that’s the way that you wanted obviously to be running.

Bill Catlett: Yep. Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Your business. So one, you know, obviously fast forward to today's present time. Like your business has technically, what quintupled (is that the right verb?) from $50,000 to $250,000 or $300,000.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, yeah in the ballpark. Absolutely.

Tim Chermak: Or whatever that is. So like, things are great. Now you’re at that point in your career where like you can go out to eat and not necessarily look at the price on the menu. Or you can, you know, you have a little bit of spending money that you maybe didn’t have when you were bringing in $50,000-$60,000 a year. So that’s awesome. Let’s talk about the specific marketing strategies and tactics you use to get to that point. Right? So I introduced you on this episode as like possibly being the most creative realtor in these United States of America. And I honestly mean that, because if you go look up Bill Catlett’s page -And by the way, he’s a realtor in Lincoln, Nebraska. So he’s not in some super cool city like L.A. or New York or Miami or something.

Bill Catlett : Laughs. It’s not a metro. It’s not a metro.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, he’s in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Bill Catlett: Uh huh.

Tim Chermak: Which is where The University of Nebraska is. And it’s just a very stereotypical Mid Western big small town or small big town.  Right?

Bill  Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: I mean, what does the population look like? A couple hundred thousand? A hundred thousand? It’s not huge.

Bill Catlett: It’s 325,000. So yeah.

Tim Chermak: In the greater area?

Bill Catlett: Yeah, yeah.

Tim Chermak: So, it’s not even .5 million people. Right? So it’s a city with like air quotes. Again, it’s a big small town or a small big town.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, yeah. It’s in a good spot population wise. I really …

Tim Chermak: And your median price point is what? Around $250,000, $300,000?

Bill Catlett: Yeah, in this year it’s $265,000. So yeah.

Tim Chermak: So for you, it’s like selling a $300,000-$350,000 is like that’s a pretty nice transaction size in your area.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: Because I think a lot of people in other parts of the country, they’re so used to just routinely selling $400,000-$500,000 homes that when they hear that for example, someone had 7 or 8 or 10 million in production, they think, “Well, that’s not even a big deal.”

It’s like, try having 7 or 8 or 10 million in production when you’re selling $250,000 homes.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, right.

Tim Chermak: That realtor is kicking ass.

Bill Catlett: That’s 50 houses.

Tim Chermak: Exactly, so you’re in a very just like sweet spot. Very middle class Americana market, right? Just a very good model market for much of the rest of the country. Where if it worked for Bill, it could work for you. And yet, I love that you’re not just relying on generic lead generation ads or just following some, you know, copy and paste template recipe. Your ads are like, exceedingly creative. 

So as an example, Bill has a musical background. He used to actually be in a musical touring group. He currently is still in an acapella group that, like, records albums and tours. So like, he’s a full time realtor and also somehow a full time musician. Like a professional musician. Bill is the bass in the group. He has this incredibly sexy, deep voice. And you know, he finds a way to incorporate that into his marketing. So we say, “Hey Bill, let’s film listing videos. We have listings. Let’s have you film a video, and we’ll run (obviously) social media ads of these listing videos to help bring in both buyers and sellers.” And Bill say, “Oh okay, that’s something I guess that’s interesting. But I see other agents do listing videos. How do I kind of take this to level, you know, 11?” And he’s like, “What if I wrote an original song?” You know, for these listings. “And I write the musical notes for the song as well as custom lyrics.” And he plays guitar as well. So. He has a buddy who owns a recording studio. So like, this sounds so far-fetched, but I’m being totally serious. Bill will write, you know for some of his listings, he’ll write a custom song, actually go record it in a studio with like professional sound mixing and everything, and then film a music video tour of the house. Because the lyrics are about the house. So he’ll find ways to rhyme the beautiful gourmet kitchen or the backyard or neighborhood that it’s in, or whatever. 

Bill Catlett: Some pretty atrocious rhymes sometimes.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, I mean, but it’s … they’re so…

Bill Catlett: It’s fun.

Tim Chermak: They’re so amazingly cheezy and fun that I’m like … These videos just get tens of thousands of views, because it’s a realtor, like, swinging a guitar playing. And it’s like a high quality recording. So again, he’s like actually going into a professional recording studio and recording songs for some of these listings. And if you’re like watching the lyrics, the lyrics actually rhyme, and it’s about the house. And so it just, like, catches your eye, because you know, not only is nobody doing that in Lincoln, like I don’t think they’re agents doing that across the US. So that extra bit of creativity kind of is like pouring gasoline on the fire of your ad performance. 

I’m actually logged in right now to your ads account, and I sorted the campaigns you’ve done by which got the most video views. And I’m like, “Holy crap, you’ve got like so many videos that have 10s and 10s of thousands of views.” The top one is the video you did for 2626 Everet Street if you remember that one?

Bill Catlett: Yep, yep. The yellow house.

Tim Chermak: And uh, that has. That’s been shown to over 174,000 people. 

Bill Catlett: That was just the other day, yeah.

Tim Chermak: The average cost per video view is one penny.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: So like, the ad was doing so well that Facebook was only charging you one penny per every video view. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: And that ad’s been served to 174,000 people. Again, that’s like half the population of … It’s actually probably every adult in Lincoln, because we factor that.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Half the population in any area is kids, like under 18.

Bill Catlett: Right.

Tim Chermak: So if you have one listing video that’s been shown to 174,167 people, that means every adult in the entire metro area of Lincoln has seen that.

Bill Catlett: Mmm hmm.

Tim Chermak: Mathematically. You have another one that has 84,748 views. The third place one has 64,000 views. The next one has 39,000, and a bunch of them have 30,000. There’s another one that has 46,000. I mean. I’m just like, this is insane.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Like I mean, actually here’s another one I just saw that has 80,000 impressions. Another one has 72,000. And so, these videos are getting all these, you know, views and engagements because they’re creative. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah!

Tim Chermak: It’s not like Bill is spending thousands and thousands of dollars blasting out these listing videos. You are investing a good amount of money.

Bill Catlett: Mhm hmm.Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Chermak: But you’re probably spending several hundred dollars on each video, not several thousand dollars. So just to be clear, when I say he’s getting 100,000 views on a video, it’s not because he says, “Oh, I’m gonna spend $3000 promoting this video.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, right.

Tim Chermak: It’s because the ad is performing that well with a relatively small budget. It’s the creativity that’s making the engagement kinda go viral.

Bill Catlett: And that’s the … I mean, the quantitative. I mean, it’s interesting to do quantitative, and realtors like to do that, right. The, for example, I mean, I know that the difference between you know, a music video and just a regular kind of tour like … The first tour I ever did with Platform is just remarkably boring, and it still, I mean, it still performed really, really well. I did that the second day I was with Platform. Because you guys gave me my homework, and I went and did it. And, I mean, I was pretty impressed with that, and that’s probably one … That’s the most boring video I ever made. And the ad spend on that uh you know, I think the cost per view was probably 10 cents. Right? And so, you’re talking about going from 10 cents to a penny. Well, these are all small numbers, but like, imagine spending $100 on an ad, right? And then spending $1000 on an ad. That’s the difference that the creativity brings. That’s the quantitative.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, like actually, literally a 10 to 1. And so actually, your ads, by an order of magnitude 10 to 1 get better results.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Than the average agent who’s not putting in any creativity into those. And by the way, if anyone wants to go check Bill’s page on Facebook to see some amazing examples of these ads and videos, the name of his page is Bill Catlett Realtor, Nebraska Realty. So the name of his Facebook Page is Bill Catlett Realtor, Nebraska Realty.

Bill Catlett: And I have all my music videos tagged. It came up with a custom tag because I call myself the Crappy Weird Al of Real Estate. 

Tim Chermak: Laughs.

Bill Catlett: Because it’s kind of what, you know, I just.You know, I make silly songs. So if you just look up #crappyweirdalrealestate you’ll probably. I don’t know if anybody else is using that hashtag. So you’ll probably find it pretty easily. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, probably not. Now if you actually look at Bill’s Page 

Bill Catlett: Laughing.

Tim Chermak: To be clear, he’s not, he’s not  been successful only because of these music listing videos. Because I’m sure there’s a temptation for someone listening to this interview to think, “Well, I’m not musical. I don’t know how to read music. I never took piano lessons as a kid. I don’t have a musical bone in my body. I can’t write songs for every listing. Like, that’s a cool idea for him, but that’s not relevant for me.” Right? 

And yet, you have tons of other ads you’ve done where they’re just really creative and have nothing to do with music or listing videos. Because you don’t necessarily do these music videos for all of your listings. You just do it when it makes sense and if the homeowner wants it then you will. But you have tons of other videos and retargeting ads that you’ve done that have nothing to do with you playing a guitar or writing, like, an original song. You’re just really creative in everything that you do. And as you said, if you want to get quantitative about that, if we look in the actual ad analytics, it’s literally creating a 10 to 1 difference in the effectiveness of your ads. When you look at hard metrics like cost per view of 10 cents versus 1 penny.

Bill Catlett: It’s really important because if somebody says, “Man, I don’t have …” You know, I run into folks in my own market. I run into realtors who have seen my ads and, “Man, you must spend a fortune on this stuff. You know, I just don’t have that kind of budget.” And I’m like, “Well, if they were boring ads, I would have to spend a fortune, right.” But since they’re like that little spark of creativity. And we’re talking, if you look at some of them, it’s the first 8 seconds in the video that sell that video at a lower cost per clip. It’s literally, it’s probably less time than that. I mean, Tim,  you know the stats on this.

Tim Chermak: Yeah. It’s actually often the first 3 seconds of the video is what determines what  if someone will watch the rest of it. It doesn’t matter how interesting or creative or professional or how amazing something is that’s 30 seconds into the video. If people aren’t watching, if you aren’t hooking them in within the first 3 seconds, they keep scrolling. And are then not gonna watch your video.

Bill Catlett: That’s right. That’s right. So if you spend, you know,  on any given listing I’ll spend 15-20 minutes brainstorming. And I’ll get a lot of different people that I, you know, that I sometimes I’ll call you up. And I’m like, “Hey, Tim, I need a quick idea.” You know, sometimes it’s my ads manager. Sometimes it’s my wife. Sometimes it’s any of the other creatives that I’m connected with. Or it’s just me, but like, so think about it. You’ve got a listing coming up. You spend 20 minutes brainstorming how you’re gonna do the first 3 seconds of the video.

Tim Chermak: Yeah. 

Bill Catlett : And it 10x the reach of your ad spend. I would say that’s, I mean if you’re spending $200-$300 on a listing tour video for the ad spend, well you just made $2700 in 10 minutes. Like, you just - or 20 minutes - You just made your ad spend that much more efficient. And so you know, that’s really the take away. It takes so little on the front end of that video. And I think everybody’s got some creative resource that they can tap into.

You know, and you’re right. I didn’t want to be the guy who just wrote. You know, who wrote songs. You know, all the time. You know, I actually kind of. You know, because otherwise it’s kind of gimmicky. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, because I mean. Yeah, exactly. Because it’s like, let’s be honest, there’re probably plenty of homeowners out there who would look at some of these music videos and think, “Well, those are funny. But I want a little bit more of a professional realtor. 

Bill Catlett: Uh huh. Yeah right.

Tim Chermak: Instead of someone who’s gimmicky like that. And I think that’s the perfect word “gimmicky.”

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Right.

Tim Chermak: It’s hilarious, and I love it as, like, a marketing professional.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: I love when someone injects creativity into it, but there’re absolutely going to be people out there that are thinking, “ Well, that’s kind of hilarious. But I’d rather just work with a professional agent who’s going to sell my house at  the highest price.

Bill Catlett: Right.

Tim Chermak: “ And I don’t really want some weird video about my house.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: And so again, you have all these other ads, both photos and retargeting ads, that are positioning you as being an excellent marketer and a top agent. And they have nothing to do with music. It’s just that you add that into the mix, and it’s kind of like the icing on the cake. And looking forward, I think the ultimate proof of this is you’re not just picking up a bunch of buyer leads. Right now you actually have, even in the seller’s market we’re still in, you have more listings in the pipeline than you’ve ever had at any point in your career. I think you said you had somewhere like 6-8 just lined up for basically the next 90 days. And that’s not even summer, because by the way, we’re recording this podcast episode at the end of the summer. 

So when we say that Bill has, you know, 6-8 listings coming up, that’s basically for Q4 of this year. And then he has another almost half dozen almost verbally committed to be listing next Spring with him. 

I mean, most realtors can’t look at their listing pipeline and plot out that far ahead how much business they have coming. And that’s because of your retargeting ads. So one of my favorite ads that you’ve done that seemed to get a lot of business was a stack of pizza boxes. It was a photo, not a video. So again for anyone who’s listening to this, it’s not like you have to film videos constantly. Because I know, like, honestly a lot of marketing companies and like gurus and influencers and marketing consultants for the last 5 years have been saying, “videos, videos, videos. Video is the future. If you’re not doing video, you’re gonna be left behind.” Blah, blah, blah. And a large part of that was true like 5 years ago because Google obviously owns Youtube. Facebook owns Instagram. They’re these big Tech Titans in a battle against each other, and Facebook wanted to incentivize you to upload your videos natively, right to Facebook or right to Instagram. 

Google obviously is biased because they own Youtube. They want you to upload videos to Youtube. And so what Facebook decided to do because they have obviously billions of daily active users, is they kind of gamed the algorithm in the newsfeed to rank videos higher. Like, if you uploaded a video it got a ton of views on Facebook. Kind of in the way right now content uploaded to TikTok gets a ton of views. Because they’re not charging for those views. It’s basically like a drug dealer giving away free samples because they are trying to get you hooked by giving your content a bunch of free distribution. But eventually they have to monetize it. Like, none of these companies have a business model if they’re not at some point gonna evolve and start charging for those views versus giving you a bunch of video views for free.

So there was a period, right like 5 years ago when Facebook absolutely was like, “Yeah, if you upload videos you’ll get a ton of reach on those videos.” Because they were trying to incentivize you to post your videos on Facebook rather than Youtube. And then the inverse was true too where if you uploaded, you know, if you pasted a Youtube link, and you posted that in your Facebook post, Facebook would actually throttle the ad. Which means they would like, they would penalize you. And show it to less people, because they don’t want people sharing Youtube when it’s on Facebook. Because it brings them off of Facebook and to their competitor, which is Youtube. 

That was a long winded way of saying, you know, 3,4,5 years ago, yeah there was some sort of meaningful, competitive advantage if you uploaded video. And almost any video was good because Facebook would give you extra distribution on that. But increasingly we are seeing that’s not really true.

Like you could absolutely upload a video to Facebook now and unless it is an exceptionally creative, thoughtful, substantive video that people are actually watching and sharing and engaging with, like, that video could totally get 50 views. Right? You have to actually be running ads with videos. So what we’ve seen, I’d say specifically in the last 12 months, is that photo ads are often doing better than videos. And I think the reason is that photos don’t look like ads. 

It’s way easier to disguise a photo ad with some well written copy, obviously. But it’s way easier to disguise a photo ad as kind of not looking like a sponsored ad than a video. Because when someone sees a video pop up in their newsfeed, and it’s some realtor just talking about something, they just immediately their brain kind of tunes out. Like, alright, that’s an ad. Which obviously is why, if you do a video, it has to be really creative and interesting. But the photos can kind of use the element of surprise, because if you’re flying under their stealth radar where they don’t even realize they’re seeing an ad. 

So you ran this pizza, and it was a retargeting ad, where this a photo of you with, I mean, dozens of pizza boxes stacked up. And you’re standing next to all these boxes talking about how many pizzas you could order because you crunched the numbers on what a large pizza - What was it? Sammy’s? Am I getting that right, or no?

Bill Catlett: Uh Remo’s. Remo’s Pizza, yeah.

Tim Chermak: So, walk us through the logic of that ad, what that ad is. And why it’s produced so many listing leads.

Bill Catlett: So and that was, again because it was a photo ad it took …I walked in. I know the guy at Remo’s. I said, “Hey man, I’m gonna give you a quick bump. Would you be okay with that?” Like, nobody is not okay with free advertising. This is one thing. As I promote local businesses, a lot of business owners look at me with sort of squinty eyes. They’re sort of like, “Wait, what is it?”

Tim Chermak: “Is there a catch?”

Bill Catlett: “Is it free though?” I’m like, “It’s totally free.” They’re like, “But, you’re gonna call me in like a month from now and ask me to pay you.” I’m like, “No, I’m not. I just need to take a picture with all these pizza boxes, right.”  

So I now the owner over there, and he knows. He kinda … He was already hip to my marketing. So, we stacked the pizza boxes. It took, I mean, not 5 minutes. 

Tim Chermak: So this is obviously, yeah. This is a locally owned pizza place. It’s not a franchise.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, yeah.

Tim Chermak: You didn’t go to a Pizza Hut or Domino’s or something.

Bill Catlett: No. No, no no. It’s, yeah. Yeah, obviously we want to focus on local businesses. As realtors we’re like the hub, right? So the more positioned, the more it looks like we know our community, right? Because there’s only so much you can talk about interest rates and market updates and stuff like that. And that’s pretty boring, dry stuff. But if people are like, “Oh yeah, Remo’s. That’s in my neighborhood.” Like you know, “we go there all the time,” right? So then,  it kind of gets me connected, right? So Remo’s is my neighborhood pizza joint and um, so. Here’s the gist of the ad, right? 

I got into mid 2021 and …

Tim Chermak: Because most, most people at this point are like, “All right, they’ve been rambling about this pizza ad for 5 minutes!”

Bill Catlett: Laughing. 

Tim Chermak: What is the logical connection between an ad about a pizza place and getting listings?

Bill Catlett: Right! And it is the principle connection. So the first 6 months of 2021, my listing business, like, I was, I had a great batting average. Like I, you know I would pitch, if I pitched 10 listings, I would easily get 9 of them if not 10. For a good long time. And the market took a huge shift here in 2021. And, you know, it was a shift towards the For Sale By Owner end of the market, right? And so our perceived value as a network went down drastically in this community. And so I got to the point …

Tim Chermak: Yeah because the market you’re in, just to sprinkle in some more context here, imagine in Lincoln you have, you know, a homeowner. It’s a couple, and it’s a very middle class family. Let’s say the husband is a police officer and the wife is an educator. You know, she works at a local public school. And they’re just the very definition of American middle class. They maybe have a household income of $90,000 or $100,000. Something like that, right? And they live in a $250,000 house. When they sell that house at 6%, you know, they’re looking at paying, I mean … What is that? 12, no, almost $15,000.

Bill Catlett: No. Yeah. 15 to 18, right? Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Yeah. And you have to cover obviously … And that’s a lot of money for just a middle … I mean, they’re looking at it like, “Uh, this is a large chunk of change. If there’s any way that we can sell For Sale by Owner, we’re gonna do that to try to save $15,000. Because that, that’s like 2 months of income for them. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Right?

Bill Catlett: And that the perception is that we’re saving that money, and we know that’s not exactly …

Tim Chermak: Oh right, right. Totally, totally, yep. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah, so I decided. You know, I wanted a shift down to a flat fee listing model. Where obviously the MLS payouts, and without talking about, you know, I’m very careful not to throw around numbers because the FDC is always listening. But, but uh. You know, the payouts are still competitive with our MLS. But it was just a flat fee. You know, I got to a point where the marketing game …

Tim Chermak: Right, where you’re not just screwing over the buyers agents by saying, “Hey, I’ll …”

Bill Catlett: No, no. Yeah Because our marketing is excellent, we have a machine, right? All that stuff is systematized, right? And so I have a very controlled end listing business. Right? My listing business is time controlled. It’s, you know, unlike buyers. Buyers get, you gotta jump up and show them houses right away. So I got the point where I was like, “Oh the listing business runs extremely efficiently, right? It is now a machine, right?”

I call my photographer. I call my AM to discuss what we’re gonna do to market it. Um, I sit down, and I brainstorm. I build the … to get the ads out.

Tim Chermak: For those listening who aren’t familiar with Platform jargon, AM is your account manager.

Bill Catlett.:  That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. 

Tim Chemak: Which in this case is Karly, and Karly is the account manager that Bill works with. 

Every week she has a weekly phone call with Bill. So Karly is like Bill’s personal marketing manager.

Bill Catlett: Yeah so, a lot of what my work with you, Tim, and Karly especially, is that helped build that listing machine, and make it fine tuned to where I can predict the amount of time that’s gonna go into it. And that allowed me to lower my fee to something that would allow me to pick up a lot more listings. So I shifted to a volume model. And a lot of people get really nervous when you start talking about that. Because we have the traditional, you know, nobody wants to be in a race to the bottom. 

But that ad is almost single-handedly responsible for, I mean, I can trace it back to a lot of my listing business. Now, it’s impossible to say that one ad produced that response, because there’s this thing called “fuzzy ROI”, right? And it is this sort of confluence of all the ads that, you know, that I’ve been producing over the last couple of years, that people have been paying attention to.

Tim Chermak: Yeah. And part of this too is, with the Platform Marketing Strategy, we don’t just  run one ad at a time.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Tim Chermak: At any given time, simultaneously …

Bill Catlett: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: Bill probably has 10 ads running …

Bill Catlett: Yeah, 10-15.

Tim Chermak: Every day.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Chermak:  Like Simultaneously. So that was one of 10 to 15 ads running at any given time. And yet, that particular ad …

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Of you with all the pizza boxes stacked up. Which by the way, we’ll get to what that has to do with anything. Right?

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: That particular ad brought a ton of inquiries in, where you know that they saw that ad. Because they commented on it. They liked it.

Bill Catlett: Uh huh, yeah. And I know that that particular ad turned a key, because within 7 days of posting it I had 10 listing pitches lined up.

Tim Çhermak: Wow.

Bill Catlett: So I had already had 3 listings that I was able to win. You know, I probably pitched … I mean, my batting average is awful. I think I pitched 20 listings, and I ended up with 3 of them. And so I was like, that laid me out. And so, to have that kind of shift was a real boost. And now looking at the last 365, I … In 15 years this is the, this doubles my next best, you know, 365 day period of, you know, for listing volume. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah. Yep.

Bill Catlett: And by the end of Q4 it probably, you know, it’s probably a little bit more. So to dive into the content of the pizza box ad …

Tim Chermak; Everyone’s like, “What the hell is this ad you keep talking about? Are they ever going to tell us?

Bill Catlett: So what I did is, I just said okay, you know, here’s the …

Tim Chermak: Hey Bill, Bill maybe for the next 20 minutes we should just keep talking about the ad but not actually ever reveal what it is. And we’ll just drive people crazy.

Bill Catlett: Laugh. You know, I didn’t wear this shirt to the ad, but it was a shirt that was sort of like it. It wasn’t birds of paradise. It had the business …Nah, I’m just kidding.

Tim Chermak: What was the weather that day? What was the barometric pressure at?

Bill Catlett: You know, it was,  I think the dew point was 62. Anyways, so …

Tim Chermak: Do they use whole milk cheese in the pizzas?

Bill Catlett: Laughing. It’s from cows that have names. I can tell you that. And there’s a …  There’s a very interesting Norwegian lady, and she comes and sings to the cows. It’s fascinating. 

Tim Chermak: And that’s the key to Platform Marketing. Right there.

Bill Catlett: Laughing. Yeah.

Tim Chermak: You just revealed all of our secrets. 

Bill Catlett: Laughing. Singing to the cows. So, so anyway, I decided that I was gonna just go all in on the flat fee listing idea. And so I figured the difference between what people were probably getting, you know, getting pitched and my flat fee. And the average listing is going to save you somewhere between $2,500 to $3,000. And so this equates to however many pizzas. Right? And so the gist of the copy of the ad is, right, with my flat fee listing program - And I, I think we used the words “flat fee” if I’m not mistaken. I didn’t say what the fee was. I broke the rules that dictate against that.

Tim Chermak: Yeah. So you can’t list specifics and all that. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: So you just said …

Bill Catlett: It was a metaphor.

Tim Chermak: Right.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: It’s like, “With my flat fee listing promotion, the average homeowner here in Lincoln will save about $2500. I crunched the numbers. And with this $2500…” It was like, with these numbers  you could buy at least, I don’t know. Was it like 100 large pizzas?

Bill Catlett: Something like that. Yeah, yeah.

Tim Chermak: And we calculated. It wasn’t actually a round number. Which actually made it even more believable. It’s like a random number. Like 114 pizzas or something like that. And then we’re like, “If you order pizza every Friday night as a family, this is actually over 2 years in a row of family pizza nights with the money you could save.” And so we kind of elaborated on, like, putting that number the $2500 or whatever it was into concrete, specific terms that it’s not just a financial number. It’s like, “Here’s what this actually means for your life. This is how many pizzas you could order. And with the amount of money you save by working with me.” But I think the important part is we didn’t end the ad there. 

Because if the ad ended there, then it would just be positioning you as just a discount agent. Or like, “Hey, work with me just because I’m gonna save you some money.” And long term that’s obviously not the position we want for you. So after that, after we hooked them in, and they’re reading the ad, then we talk about, like, your marketing plan and how it’s actually just extremely robust. And you’re gonna do a lot more to market their house than the average agent. So just because they are getting a good deal with you doesn’t mean they are getting, like, worse representation.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.  

Tim Chermak: Your marketing is actually better than other agents’, and if someone clicks on that ad, now they’ll start seeing all of your other retargeting posts about the marketing that you do. And they’ll realize, “Oh cool, so not only am I gonna maybe save some money working with Bill instead of working with some other realtor…”

Bill Catlett: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: “But his marketing is actually better than other agents too.”

Bill Catlett: And that’s, so the consistent core of the listing side of my business. I mean the marketing message is always first of all, I guarantee. I guarantee more eyes on your listing. I guarantee more coverage for your listing than any other agent in this market is going to be able to get you. And not by like, “Ah, here’s a couple hundred more.” And not by like, I mean, in some cases, I can demonstrate a factor of 10 or 20. Or in the case of like Everet Street, 172,000 views. Like, the advertising that I get for my listing clients is, at a minimum, 10x more broad. Right? It’s reaching 10x more people than just, you know, the ML … you know, the agency copy to MLS.

Tim Chermak: Yep.

Bill Catlett: You know, when I say I guarantee it, it’s a landslide guarantee.

Tim Chermak: Yeah. Obviously you do that too. You know, every other agent is gonna put the home of the MLS …

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Tim Chermak: And do professional photos. It’s like, well you know, obviously you’re doing that too. And all of this is on top of that. And I think that having the … having the specificity is what makes that powerful.

Bill Catlett: Yes.

Tim Chermak: Because if you just said, “Hey, I’ll film a video tour of your listing, and we’ll run a campaign on social media for it. And it’ll get a lot of views.” And you just use ambiguous language like, “It’ll get a lot of views.” That’s not really that convincing as an argument on a listing presentation. But if you can say, “Hey, here’s an example of a home that I did that got 174,000 impressions. Here’s another one that had 80,000.” And you’re giving very specific examples with the actual metrics. And other agents can’t do that. So you’re actually giving them specifics of what you do that other agents don’t.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. So that’s the first, that’s the most important piece of it. People need to know that, right? And then the, you know obviously, being a flat fee listing. Like, this is, there’s no arguing that this is the best value that you’re gonna find. Because it’s not a discounted … it’s not a discounted product at all. Right? You know, this is a full force marketing program for less than you’re gonna pay, I can’t guarantee that, I mean, I’m not gonna price match my competition or anything like that. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah.

Bill Catlett: But, it’s probably less than you’re gonna pay with most realtors. And so that’s the double whammy. But. And people, now when they call me they’ve been seeing my ads for a long time. So when I say at the listing presentation, and I say this. You know, this is the core of my listing presentation is I guarantee more exposure. Let’s, I mean, we’ll get to the fee in a moment, right? And I, you know, if someone asks me right upfront, I’ll tell them what I charge. Right? It’s not like a lot of realtors do this song and dance like, “Well, I need to have a look at the house first. Then it kinda all depends, you know?” And then you get to the second meeting, you gotta sit there for an hour. And they finally show you your seller net.

If you know, like, right out of the gate I do the same thing with my clients now that you did with me. You know, the first phone conversation we had and that is, you know, “I’m Bill Catlett, I guarantee more eyes on your listing than any other agent. And here’s what I charge.” And you know that I’m just, you know, I remove all the fluff. And you know it’s, the proof is that’s a 4x change in my business in the time we’ve been doing this. Right? So if you want to get quantitative, right? Qualitatively, I walk into people’s houses all the time, and my book is on their coffee table. That’s happened numerous times. Where I didn’t even send them a copy of the book. They got a copy of the book from a friend. Uh, they found it in a free Little Library. And I saturate the free Little Libraries with my book. Or you know, I had one where I walked in and the kids were singing one of my listing jingles. 

Tim Chermak: Laughs. That’s so awesome!

Bill Catlett: So qualitatively, the kids have already hired me, right?

Tim Chermak: That’s so awesome.I already brainwashed the kids.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Yeah. So …

Tim Chermak: The parents are probably just thankful that they’re not singing Frozen anymore. They’re singing Bill Catlett’s advertising jingles.

Bill Catlett: Oh yeah. Yeah. So and that’s, I mean, so I can’t say that the pizza box ad is where all of that started. But that is, that ad has done a lot of heavy lifting. Because by the time people call me they’ve already hired me. I don’t. It’s very rare, I think I’ve had 3 competitive listing presentations since then where they were talking to numerous realtors. And in 2 of those cases they just forgot to call the other realtors back. Like it just didn’t even, it wasn’t part of the conversation anymore. And it was, “Well, we’re gonna make a decision next Friday. And we’re gonna meet with all these guys.” And then I get a call, you know, like the next day saying, “You know, we don;t even need to go through all this work of talking to these other people.”

And then the third one, that was the one listing that I pitched that I didn’t get. So I mean, I don’t know. I think that it works out to be about 1 out of 40 failure rate or something like that. That I can tolerate. I mean, it still put me on the floor that they didn’t, you know, that they didn’t hire me. But, you know. I mean, I’d say that’s pretty near perfection. So that the … I mean, it’s a holistic, like there’s a holistic view of marketing. Right? 

There’s no such thing as a direct response ad. I, like, know that there’s probably other industries where people respond to the ad directly and buy the product. But, I think that if you’re … If in 2022 with all of the tools that we have, if you’re trying to craft an ad that just gets people to put information into a lead for so then you can call them endlessly and email them endlessly …

Tim Chermak: Right. Right.

Bill Catlett: You know, maybe there’s something to be said for that.

Tim Chermak: That worked fairly well 5 to 10 years ago.

Bill Catlett: Yeah.

Tim Chermak: The whole idea of let’s drive people to a landing page. Let’s make them fill out a contact form, and let’s capture their contact information.

Bill Catlett: Mmhm.

Tim Chermak: Put them on an email drip of all these auto responders.

Bill Catlett: Right. Yeah

Tim Chermak: That worked great 5 or 10 years ago I think when this whole idea of online marketing was still like a novel idea. Like, people weren’t yet so jaded 5 to 10 years ago about giving out their contact information away online. But now, people wake up every day and they look at their email inbox. And they have dozens and dozens if not 100, you know, emails from all these random companies over the years that they’ve signed up to their email list. And half the time they’re like, “ I thought I unsubscribed from that. Why am I, you know, why am I still getting emails from them?” 

And so people now, in 2022 and you know into 2023 and beyond, they’re extremely skeptical of giving their contact information out to anyone. So marketing, if it’s really going to work over the long-term, has to be more pull than push. It has to be more magnetic, where you are convincing people to call you and reach out to you. Not the other way around where you generate a bunch of leads and then you start calling all those people. And you. So, marketing has to be like that, especially in an industry like real estate where so much trust goes into making the decision of which agent am I gonna list my house with. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Exactly.

Tim Chermak: That’s not. It’s not something where they are thinking of selling their house let’s say some time in May. And then, you know, on April 30th they click on a Facebook ad by Bill Catlett, and they’re like, “Oh, let’s work with him.” And then they call you from that one click on that one ad.

Bill Catlett: Right. Yeah.

Tim Chermak: Usually it’s gonna take dozens of touches and then repeatedly seeing you over months. Which is why we set up the retargeting sequence to actually last 180 days. So they are seeing you constantly over a period of months with different ads. You know. They’re not just seeing the same banner ad over and over again. They’re seeing a huge diversity of ads. You mentioned that at any given time you might have 10 to 15 ads running. Most of those are retargeting. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah, and that’s, you know. That’s an important distinction. I hope everybody knows about retargeting by now, but it may not be a thing. Like this idea that you’re just gonna send an ad out to every random stranger. It’s just not an efficient way to spend. Whereas if you’ve got people who are continually engaging with your content Like, you know that’s your audience. You’re building your audience. I don’t know what my audience size is. I think the last time I checked in with Karly it was like, I think it was approaching 80,000 people in the retargeting audience. And that’s not all time. That’s just from the last, you know, like you said, I think it’s 180 days. But it’s probably less than that. I mean statistically, a lot of those people are probably long gone. But like, the majority of those guys probably interacted within the last 30-90 days. So like you know, that’s the real take away.  

We have this ability to retarget, right? Once we get people in the funnel, it becomes dirt cheap to talk to those people. And so you know. And we know that people have to see a marketing message repeatedly before they’re going to make a decision anyway. So this is I mean, we are just leveraging this technology. And you know, I mean, that’s something that sometimes if someone really wants to see how the sausage is made - that’s gonna list with me- I walk them through how retargeting works. And in a very simple way. You know, I don’t get down into the meat of it unless I know I’m …

Tim Chermak: Sure, sure.

Bill Catlett: Unless I know I’m speaking to a marketer. Right? But most of the time I don’t have to explain that stuff to people, because the reason they called me is they …

Tim Chermak: They’ve been experiencing …

Bill Catlett: They already know, right? And so there’s an important distinction here for anybody that is puzzled over how to get new business. And that is, would you rather have a lead or would you rather have an order? Right? Because you’ve got to have 100 leads for 1 order. Or whatever your ratio is, right. And maybe it’s because I’m a lousy lead converter, Right? Like, if you give me a stack of random contacts, right? It’s you know. I’m just … I’m not Alec Baldwin’s character from Glengarry Glen Ross where it’s like “Always be closing! Coffee is for closers!” Right? I’m just not like, I’m not a sales wunderkind. And I, I mean, maybe I’m pretty lousy at sales. I don’t know. But I’d rather just generate an order than have a thousand leads that now I have to sift through and find the needle in that haystack. 

Tim Chermak: Exactly. No one has time to do that, nor do they want to do that even if they did have time. I think the role of marketing, now and into the future, is not to generate leads. I mean we’re actually. Platform ironically is running an ad right now from our Facebook page that says the headline of the ad is: Lead generation is overrated. And that’s like, it’s kind of a subversive headline for a marketing company to say that because so many agents, they think of lead generation and marketing as being synonymous. It’s like lead generation is marketing. And I just like, “No, I completely disagree with that.” I think marketing now is about convincing people over time and building trust and getting them to call you. Getting them to message you. Getting them to email you. So they’re basically saying, “Hey Bill, we want to work with you. What’s the next step?” Right? They’ve already basically emotionally decided, “we want to work with Bill. We’re not doing this song and dance where we interview multiple agents. We just want to work with Bill.” Right? 

The more that your business shifts to that, the more scalable it is. Because you can actually grow and make more money and do more volume without necessarily spending 2 hours a day cold calling leads. You know.

Bill Catlett: Sure, sure. You know, that’s uh, the major shift for me. You know, so the first week of Platform I filmed my very boring walkthrough tour video. And I had, you know, it was a listing that had sat for a little bit. It was during the winter. I had a call from some people who had seen that video. And that was the only piece of content we had at the time. Right? And so they called me up and they said, “Hey, our realtor is on vacation, and he doesn’t even really know we’re looking for a house because we quit looking last year. But we’ve watched this tour video like 6 or 7 times. And we really like, you know, we really like the house. We’d like to come have a look.” So I opened up the house, and because I was able, because I gave them a tour I was able to build a report, right? But they had seen me in the video. They met with me. 

I’m not gonna write the offer for them. So I didn’t get that side of the transaction, and I’m not bothered by it. Because they wrote at the time, in 2019, Lincoln wasn’t … We still hadn’t made that surge into 20 offers on every house. Where people would waive inspections and give you their first born, right? We were on our way. But this house had sat for a couple of weeks, and so these guys came in. They said, “Hey, we’re gonna give our realtor a call right now.” And they said to me, “Do you think the sellers would accept the full price offer with no inspections today?” And I said, “Well I mean, you know I can’t say one way or the other, but that sounds like a great offer.” And that’s the offer they wrote. Now the difference between that and, “Well, we’ll wait til our realtor gets back from vacation. You know. And maybe we saw this house on Zillow. And maybe we like it, maybe we don’t” 

So in that case, just having my face in the video, they already knew who I was walking in the door. Right? And so I think that’s like, you know. You have to be willing to put yourself, your face is the brand. Right? And your broker is not the brand. That’s another huge take away. Brokers are not the brand. And 50 years ago brokers were the ones who had the ad outlays because it was expensive to advertise. And so you know. If you’re still, you know, if you’re still relying on your broker for leads, I guess I feel sorry for you. But the point of that whole story is, the reason they wrote that fantastic offer and basically just handed us a sale was they were able to relate to me from the moment that they saw me. And so there’s not like, like I said, maybe I’m kind of a lousy salesperson. I don’t know, but all I did was make …

Tim Chermak: The marketing is basically doing the selling for you.

Bill Catlett: Yeah, yeah.

Tim Chermak: So when they come to you, they already want to work with you. So Bill, yeah. We only have a couple minutes. I want to ask you two quick rapid fire questions. 

Bill Catlett: Sure.

Tim Chermak: First is just getting really granular. What do you typically spend every month on your advertising? What’s your ads budget every month? 

Bill Catlett: Ads budget? If we’re talking about ad spend and assets photography, videography, time in the studio … You know, for your average listing I’m probably going to spend to develop the ad assets and then promote them, $800-$1000 And that’s probably $400 worth of ad spend. At least, because listing ads are a huge thing. So you know overall the budget that I aim for with my Facebook ad spend is about $1800-$2000 if I’m listing a lot of property.

Tim Chermak: And that’s, again, that’s because you are literally going into a recording studio. And you …

Bill Catlett: Yeah well, that’s before the production, right? If I’m just looking at ad spend, you know $1800-$2000 seems to be the sweet spot for …

Tim Chermak: Okay. 

Bill Catlett: My particular market. And I guess I could spend more, but that’s where it’s at. And all the other asset production, you know, is on top of that. You know, if I have a particularly busy listing month, you know.

Tim Chermak: It might be more. But obviously that’s because you’re gonna make a lot more money.

Bill Catlett: Yeah. I mean yeah, if you consider the assets as part of your marketing, right? $4500 a month probably on average. 

Tim Chermak: Okay.

Bill Catlett: With all the assets.

Tim Chermak: So, final question here is often when I am on the phone with a realtor they’ll ask me a variation of the question. “Okay. What is Platform? I keep seeing all your case studies. I keep seeing your retargeting ads. Maybe I listened to an episode of the podcast or I went to your website, but can you give me more specifics on, like, what is Platform? Like if I hire you, what do you actually do for me? Like what are the specifics of what you do when I join the Platform marketing program?” If someone asked you that, Bill, how would you put that into your own words if an agent were asking you, “Hey, I heard you were with Platform. What exactly do they do for you every month?

Bill Catlett: Let me think about that for half a second. Platform is a business development firm that happens to also do fantastic marketing. So and what I mean by that is the business development that I’ve gained through my relationship with you and with Karly and the rest of the team and the network of agents that you’re helping across the country, because I mean those are people that I talk to. You know, I’ve had 2 conversations with Platform agents in the last week. And that’s about, you know, in an average week I’l have about 2-3 phone conversations with Platform agents all over the country. Right? 

Tim Chermak: Just like picking their brain or answering their questions or having kind of, you know, like mini Mastermind phone calls?

Bill Catlett: And Platform has the digital Masterminds. You know, you and I have conversations from time to time. I have weekly conversations with Karly. So there’s a lot of business development value with Platform that is just not, you know, all the other companies I ever looked at, you know, “We have ad templates!” You know, and stuff like that. You know, a guy in a call center, that’s not biz dev. Right? So you know, maybe you could call it coaching, but I think coaching’s too fluffy of a word. So business development is a key factor here in my relationship with Platform and you know, obviously specializing that towards branding and marketing. Because a huge proportion of what you should be spending your time on if your goal is to own a business and not own a job, right, I think there is an important distinction there. If you’re really an investor for your time, a huge proportion of your time should be dedicated towards branding, towards your story, towards you know just having a brand that builds trust. Right? And so that’s biz dev is this building the brand. And then figuring out how to consistently build that marketing message. So that’s my, I would say that’s my summation of Platform. There’s a lot of business development that goes on.

Tim Chermak: Yep.

Bill Catlett: As a result of being affiliated with you guys.

Tim Chermak: How I summarize it is a classic marketing agency that just happens to specialize in working with realtors. Because we’re not a, unlike a lot of other companies, we’re not a website company. We’re not an IDX or CRM company. And we’re also not just a coaching company. We’re a marketing agency that just happens to specialize in working with realtors. On a granular level obviously we’re going to be launching all of your Facebook ads, you know Instagram retargeting, we even edit all of your videos. We put your videos on Youtube. So it’s kind of like having a full blown marketing department, but beyond just editing the videos and literally launching the ads. We’re also writing all the ads and coming up with the concepts in the first place. So it’s not …

Bill Catlett: Yeah. Right.

Tim Chermak …Like you have to generate the ideas. We’re kind of doing all that for you. So I actually kind of love how you put that. It’s kind of like Platform is my business development, and oh yeah, they also do my Facebook advertising. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah, soup to nuts. That’s the really impressive thing is, I mean, you guys wear a lot of different hats in the developing this stuff. And I know there’s firms that they have a vertical, and then they scale that vertical. And you know, Platform is not one of those companies where I ever have to worry about, “Okay, it’s me and 10,000 other agents competing for your attention.” And you know, the lack of … It’s just not. I’m not sure how you could scale Platform to be to serve as that …

Tim Chermak: Actually we can. We’ve kind of determined that because, you know, we don’t have 10s of thousands of users. As of this recording I think we have about 215 realtors that we are working with across the country. 215. So we’re not some tiny company that only has like 9 clients. But we also don’t have 12,000. We have 215 clients. I think reasonably, looking at  a map of the US in terms of all the markets that may be are still available that would make sense for an agent to hire Platform, we could probably grow to around 250. So there’s probably room to go from 215 to 250. Something like that. 

So the model honestly isn’t scalable in the classic sense of the term in that we can’t just grow to 500 and then 1000 or whatever. But the flip side of that is the results we get for realtors are so much better than other companies, because we're not trying to be the biggest marketing company out there. We’re trying to get the best results. And I think when you focus on that, just like your business when you focus on just getting results for clients, what happens is you get tons of referrals and your business grows because of that. And I’d way rather run a business that old fashioned way than just try to scale at all costs even if the results aren’t  good for your clients. 

So Bill, final parting thoughts here. What’s your final piece of advice for anyone who just started the Platform Program? So they already signed up. Maybe they’re in their first month. They’re just getting going. What’s your advice to them of what you would do differently if you could go back to when you first started? What should you do in your first 6 months of Platform?  

Bill Catlett: Challenge the notion that you can’t afford to spend more on ads. Thoroughly. LIke there’s this very … There’s this firm resistance, right? So if you’re …and the numbers are different for every market, but they seem to hover around like, you know, when I first got in I spent $600-$700 a month. And I mean that was really squeezing the budget. I understand a lot of agents are where I was. Get to a point where if it means, you know, one of the things I did, I looked at my coffee budget. You know, that first month, and I was like, “Well, every time I drink a coffee, right, like a $5 Starbucks, I just made a choice to drink a coffee instead of spending $5 on ads. And that $5 on ads changes my life in ways the coffee isn’t gonna. Just go buy a bag of beans and make it at home, right. 

So like Find every way you can, squeeze, and make if work if you’re not comfortable now, challenge everything. Challenge every purchase decision you make, because the most important thing, the most important expense of your business, right? Like, if my car blew up, I can take an Uber, right? Or you know, I could ask my client to give me a ride to the house. But without the advertising, we don’t have growth. So challenge every notion of “I can’t spend money on ads.” And instead, ask yourself how much money could I spend on ads? How much comfort could I remove from my life? Because you’re adding to your life later, right? So that’s the first thing.

Tim Chermak: And I’ll just wrap up by saying this. If you’re someone who doesn’t have a huge advertising budget, and you’re listening to this. Remember how we started this episode that creativity quite literally gives you a 10 to 1 lift in the effectiveness of your ads. Like we’re talking about going from a 10 second video view to a 1 penny video view. A 10 cent video view to a 1 penny video view. So it literally made a 10 to 1 impact in the results Bill got in his marketing when he started putting more creativity into his ad. So that’s a multiplier early on even if you don’t have that big ads budget. You’re building towards that point. Make your stuff as interesting and creative as possible, because then your business will grow. And it creates the money necessary to fuel more growth. 

So, Bill, thank you for your time. I think this has been an awesome episode. And I really do think that you just might be the most creative real estate agent in the United States of America. So go check out Bill Catlett’s page on Facebook if you haven’t already. It’s Bill Catlett Realtor Nebraska Realty. That’s Bill Catlett Realtor Nebraska Realty. And Bill, keep kicking ass. 

Bill Catlett: Yeah, thanks Tim, appreciate it.