Marketing For Realtors That Works “Even In A Slow Market”

Tim Chermak: What was it about the Mastermind? Was there a specific person you talked to? Or is there a specific presentation you remember? Or do you narrow it down to more than one thing? 

Parker Cermak: Two things I probably took away the most from the Mastermind was increasing ad spend and then listing tour videos. Those are two things that I did after the Mastermind that in that December to today being July 10th, those are two things that I did and then really just went up from there. Between this last winter and then today, two things I really focused on were those two items and then that's when I started getting a lot more phone calls. 

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, it's Tim Chermak. Welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I'm joined today by Parker Cermak up in Bemidji, Minnesota. You are one letter different from my name, Chermak. Parker, welcome to the show. 

Parker Cermak: Thank you for having me. 

Tim Chermak: Parker's last name, we'll just dive into some European history here, is actually the original spelling of my last name, Chermak. I'm assuming you're from the Czech region, Germany, Bohemia, that area. That's where all my family is from. When we came over here, people struggled to say our name, so we just added an H to it. Now, it's pronounced Chermak, but I know the original Czech pronunciation is Cermak. 

Tim Chermak: More than likely, you and I, being we're both from Minnesota and we're Cermaks, are probably technically related going back hundreds of years. It's actually cool that now you're in PlatFam. Honestly, I have never met another Cermak in my life before. I knew there were some, but it's crazy that you're right in Minnesota and central Minnesota where my family is originally from and we have the same last name. 

Tim Chermak: Well, anyways, getting down to business here. We have a cool story to tell. Parker joined the PlatFam about 13, 14 months ago. I think it was technically more than a year, but it's not two years. I think it's right about 14 months, something like that. Parker's business is on pace to have doubled. He was doing about $8 million a year in sales volume before Platform. This year, as he tracks out what he's projecting, he should finish right around $15 million, $16 million, which is basically doubling his business. 

Tim Chermak: I will add that that's in one of the toughest years for real estate agents in 40 years. It's not like Parker's business doubled in some booming market like we had in 2020, 2021. I mean, let's just call it what it is. It's been a down, really difficult market the last couple of years, and yet your business has doubled. Are you doing any other marketing besides Platform or how did Platform fit into your overall business plan? 

Parker Cermak: Great question. As far as any other marketing, not a whole lot more. I'm pretty much focusing directly on the content you guys recommend to make. I have been playing with a little bit of Google ads. That's something that I have been using and that's worked out well. I have very little ad spend on that, but for the most part, it's just the content that you guys suggest to make. It's working well. It's fun to do it too. 

Tim Chermak: Cool. Well, I will tell you, this will be our secret and whoever's listening to this podcast episode, that we're about to roll out some major, major new upgrades to the Platform system that'll include a lot of Google marketing that we previously were not doing. We pulled a lot of our clients and found out that a lot of them were hiring other services or paying for other programs to help them with Google. We really want Platform to be a comprehensive all-in-one solution where– 

Tim Chermak: I mean, that's why it's called Platform. We don't want you to have to go out and hire other marketing companies. We're like, “All right, what would it take for us to do all this in-house so that our clients don't have to go hire outside companies?” We'll actually be rolling that out probably in the next 90 days or so. I guess that's our little secret and whoever else is listening to this podcast. 

Parker Cermak: Can’t wait to see it. That’s exciting.

Tim Chermak: Well, what’s really exciting is that your business has doubled in the last year. I always have to preface this by saying that doesn't just randomly happen. People grow from $8 million to $9 million or from $8 million even to $10 million. Sometimes that can happen, you might grow by $1 million or $2 million just because in a random year, you coincidentally get maybe more referrals than you did the previous year. You didn't really do anything more, it just happened. The next year, you go from $8 million to $10 million, but the next year you're down to $9 million again. 

Tim Chermak: Going from $8 million to $16 million in a year doesn't just spontaneously come out of nowhere. There's something driving that growth. What would you say in your community in Bemidji, Minnesota– I'm laughing because I had this whole conversation just last week with Brandon Hedlund. We were joking about how he's in the Brainerd Lakes area and we consider that up north in Minnesota, but people in Brainerd don't really because they would consider Bemidji up north. You are, what, an hour or two north of Brandon? How far? 

Parker Cermak: An hour and 50 minutes to be exact from in-town Brainerd. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, well, my experience with Bemidji is they were in our high school football conference. I remember back in high school playing Bemidji. They have that super cool stadium because they play their football games at a Bemidji State which is right on, is it the river or lake [area]? 

Parker Cermak: It's Lake Bemidji. Yep, right on the lake. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, yeah. It's a super cool stadium, so I'm actually somewhat familiar with your market in the sense that I've been there for a high school football game. Anyways, I know the area somewhat and I remember having a phone call with you because you were  a non-traditional lead that came into Platform where you didn't necessarily click on our website or you didn't come in through our marketing. I just saw that we had some mutual friends and you were a realtor in Bemidji, which is a somewhat small town in central Northern Minnesota. I was like, “Oh, well, I should just cold call him and tell him about Platform because I will just–” 

Parker Cermak: Same last name, right?

Tim Chermak: Yeah, exactly. I'm going to use this cheesy icebreaker that, “Hey, we have the same last name. We should hop on a phone call.” It ended up, the more we talked, it was like, this actually could be a perfect fit because of where you were at in your career. If you're selling $8 million a year, you're already successful. The vast majority of real estate agents in the United States of America, their entire career will never get to the point where they're selling $8 million a year. You were already successful, but you were at this point where you're like, “Okay, I know there's another next level I can get to. I'm just quite not quite sure what I need to do, what marketing I need to invest in to get to that next level.” 

Tim Chermak: I remember you weren't super excited about spending a shit ton of money on Zillow. You wanted something that felt a little bit more personal to your brand. It ended up being a good fit and you tried it out. Obviously, here we are, about 14 months later since you signed up and your business is on track to have doubled. Parker, I'm gonna turn it over to you at this point. Tell me what happened in the last year in your business that got you to this point. 

Parker Cermak: I pretty much just did the homework that Taylor gives me every month. To be honest, I really didn't see results probably for the first five months to six months. It was just grinding away. I went to the Mastermind, which was phenomenal, by the way. It's so much fun. Can't wait for this year. 

Tim Chermak: It especially helps to go to the Mastermind when you live in Northern Minnesota. It's zero degrees up there by the time the Mastermind rolls around. It's up 75 in Florida, so that's always a plus, but yes, go on. 

Parker Cermak: Super fun. Going to that, that really helped– kind of fired it up a little bit more even because there were two things that really that I–  I took a lot of it away, but two things I probably took away the most from the Mastermind was increasing ad spend and then listing tour videos. Those are two things that I did after the Mastermind that in that December to today being July 10th, those are two things that I did and then really just went up from there. Between this last winter and then today, two things I really focused on were those two items and then that's when I started getting a lot more phone calls. 

Tim Chermak: I know that if someone goes to your Facebook page, and you're with Coldwell Banker, right? 

Parker Cermak: Yep. 

Tim Chermak: If someone goes to your Facebook page, Parker Cermak, Coldwell Banker, I'm not sure what the name of the page is. 

Parker Cermak: We're a team, so Team Cermak of Coldwell Banker Crown. 

Tim Chermak: If they find you on Facebook and they start scrolling down some of the posts and the ads that we've been running on your page, what they're gonna see is a lot of listing video tours. Yeah, of course, there's other retargeting ads and other content mixed in that's not just a listing tour of a home, but that's the bread and butter of what you've been doing. 

Tim Chermak: That's really what we preach at Platform is all these other creative ads that we do help and they help position you as an expert. In the absence of consistently filming listing video tours, people in your community are not going to view you as a successful agent if they don't regularly see you out and about touring homes. 

Tim Chermak: Because what we know that the public doesn't necessarily understand is when they see these videos, they don't necessarily have to all be your listings. You can film videos of other agent’s listings. Even if you give them credit in the video or in the ad copy of the Facebook post, whatever, that, “Hey, this listing is courtesy of Bob Smith at RE/MAX,” or whatever, no one's going to remember that. What everyone remembers is, “Oh, I saw Parker touring this house. He must have a lot of listings.” Even if literally none of them are your listings, it looks like you have a lot of business. It looks like you have a lot of listings. Perception becomes reality. 

Parker Cermak: Oh yeah, absolutely. 

Tim Chermak: I got this message, you work with Taylor as your account manager?

Parker Cermak: Correct, yep. 

Tim Chermak: Okay. I got this message a month ago and it was like, “Hey, Parker has 10 listings going live over the next month.” I was like, “Holy cow, I don't think he had that much business going on last year.” That was the genesis of like, “All right, reach out to him. Let's schedule a podcast episode cause I'd love to hear his story if you're at that point where all of a sudden, in a one-month time, you have 10 listings going live.” What percentage of your business would you say right now is listings versus buyers? Is it 50/50? Is it 70/30? What do you think the ratio is? 

Parker Cermak: I'd say it's probably 70% listings, 30% buyers right now, but that fluctuates, of course. At the moment, it's definitely, without a doubt, transitioned way more to the listing side. 

Tim Chermak: Awesome. That's always great because that gives you more time leverage to obviously sell more and not spend 80 hours a week driving around. What is your typical ad spend in a given month? What are you actually spending on the Facebook ads? 

Parker Cermak: I think I was at $1,000 or $1,200. Now, I did chat with Taylor when I told her, I was like, “Hey, I'm going to have probably eight to ten coming up this month.” She said, “Certainly would recommend going up from there.” I think we're, as far as I know, we had chatted, I should probably know this more, but I think we're more in the $1,500 a month.

Tim Chermak: That's a very common answer when I ask that question on these podcast episodes. A lot of clients are like, “I actually don't exactly know. I just trust my account manager.” I think that actually speaks volumes to the trust that most of our realtors have with our Platform account manager that's like, “Hey, I just trust McCall to handle it,” or “I trust Taylor to handle it,” or “I trust Carly or whoever to handle it,” because you just know that they're monitoring it and you don't have to worry about that stuff. That's why you hired Platform in the first place, is to not have to worry about that. You just know that someone else is managing and testing and is monitoring all that.

Parker Cermak: Taylor's absolutely amazing. 

Tim Chermak: She is. 

Parker Cermak: If I have something that I need, early in the morning, late at night, midday, she's always extremely responsive and always very positive. Certainly a blessing. 

Tim Chermak: Your business has grown from $8 million to, hopefully, doing $15 million, $16 million this year. What have been the most successful ads that you've run? If you can point to a couple, like, “Hey, this particular ad. That particular video,” are there a couple that stand out in terms of what your community engaged with the most? If you were out and about at the grocery store or at church or at a sports game or something and people were actually telling you in real life, “Oh, I love this ad you did,” or “I love that post,” have there been any that stand out more than the others? 

Parker Cermak: Recently, the Sears ad catalog. That one went well. That one, I'll go out and about and people will say, “Hey, that's good Intel,” or “Good info, appreciate that.”

Tim Chermak: For those who are listening who have no idea what he's talking about, that Sears ad is actually an ad that Taylor wrote. Shout out to Taylor on that. I didn't write that ad. That was all written by Taylor. It's basically a fun little history, fun fact post about way back in the day, 75, 80 years ago, you used to be able to buy homes from the Sears catalog and they would ship you the materials, basically a home kit, and you would assemble the home. Sears would ship everything to you, almost the same way that today we order stuff on Amazon Prime. 

Tim Chermak: Imagine if you could go on Amazon Prime, order a house, and they just ship it to you, and you have to assemble it when it arrives. Actually, many, many, many Americans did this back in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. It wasn't just a niche thing where 10 or 20 people did. No, thousands and thousands of homes across the US were from these Sears kits, and many of them are still standing today. 

Tim Chermak: What that ad is, is we wrote this history ad, obviously comes from Parker's Facebook page, and so all the people in his community are just getting this interesting background information about the history of home building, but it's coming from Parker's page. That ad positions Parker as being an expert not only on real estate, but also the history of homes and real estate. 

Tim Chermak: I think that this ad, from a psychology perspective, why I love this ad, because I actually reached out to Taylor after I saw this ad go out. I told Taylor, “This is one of the best Platform ads that I've ever seen written,” whether it's by me or anyone. This ad is really genius. The reason why is that it checks this mental box that I'm always thinking of when I'm writing an ad, it checks this box of does this ad set the expectation that it's so interesting when you read it that after you finish scanning it, reading it, whatever, you subconsciously think to yourself, “You know what? I'm looking forward to the next time one of Parker's posts pops up in my feed because every time he shares a photo or a video or any kind of post, it's always interesting. I look forward to seeing his post because I always learn something. It's always interesting.” 

Tim Chermak: Once your ads achieve that vibe, you achieve that feeling with your followers where they're actually looking forward to, “Oh, I wonder what Parker's gonna post next,” it permanently elevates the click rate of your ads. Even if an ad maybe doesn't look like it's gonna be exciting, if you've set the expectation with all of your previous ads that they're always interesting, they always have some substance or humor, or they're worth spending 30 seconds to click and read, or if it's a video, worth spending 30 seconds to click and actually watch the video, even when you have ones that are a little bit boring or less interesting than others, you've basically earned the right for people to stop scrolling and click on your ads. Again, it permanently elevates the click rate you get on all of your ads. That ad just really checks that box. I actually read that, I'm like, “This is really interesting. I did not know a lot of the stuff.” Yes, I loved that ad. 

Parker Cermak: Fourth of July this last week, a lot of people talked to me about that one, that we saw different Fourth of July events and family events and events and stuff. Yeah, that one got out pretty well. To answer your previous question, the other one that I thought that seemed to do pretty well was the For Sale by Owner one where I had my feet up and I was lazy sitting there with the sign. That one got some pretty good engagement too. 

Tim Chermak: Again, what that ad was, this is using the visual to make fun of for sale by owner. It's Parker in the front lawn of a house with a beach chair set up and he looks like he's going to the beach wearing a swimsuit, t-shirt, etc., a sun hat, sunglasses, whatever. He has a cooler next to him as if he just camped out in the front yard. There's a For Sale by Owner sign and we're visually making fun of, “Oh, it's so easy to sell your house as a for sale by owner. You'll just plop in the sign in the yard, sit there, and wait for all the buyers to show up.” 

Tim Chermak: We're making fun of, obviously, that's not how this works. Obviously, there's a lot more prep and work that goes into getting a house ready to sell and actually marketing it and negotiating it and getting it sold and all the paperwork that happens behind the scenes and the home inspections. 

Tim Chermak: Even if you're the listing agent, doing your due diligence and checking in with the loan officers who are representing the buyers and making sure, is this buyer going to close? Is this a solid file? Vetting all the offers that way, there's a lot of work that agents do, obviously, that the public never sees. They just think, “Oh, he put a sign in the yard and got paid $10,000 when it's sold.” Obviously, there's a lot more hours that go in. 

Tim Chermak: We wrote this For Sale by Owner ad, but the image is just quirky, so it catches your attention. It's like, why is Parker look like he's going to the beach, but he's just sitting in the front yard of some home? You click on it and it's basically saying, “Here's what you would have to do if you actually wanted to sell your home by yourself.” We're actually giving away the formula of, “Here's a checklist, more or less, of all the things I do to sell listings. Now, if you want to try this by yourself, go ahead. I will tell you how to do it. If you ever want to work with me, here's my number.” It's a good way of pointing that out without being snarky or passive aggressive. 

Tim Chermak: You actually are telling people, “Hey, if you want to sell your house for sale by owner, here's everything I do. You could use this as a checklist and go do it yourself,” but it's more like implied that, “If this sounds intimidating or you're starting to realize how much work this will actually be, here's my number. Give me a call.”

Parker Cermak: Third thing I would say that stands out for people are, it took me a while to do this, but I'm starting to do a lot more creative intros to listing tour videos. One I had last year that did pretty good is I had a property that was next to 10,000 acres of state land. I just did a video of me on my four wheeler on that state land. That was one. I did another one with a kayak the other day, one with an inner tube, one golfing the other day. The creative intros–

Tim Chermak: So you are having a lot of fun?

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