So...What Is Platform Marketing?

Diana Page: Next question I get is, “Is there a company like you that you can recommend?” The truth is, I don't know of one. When you hire Platform, it's like you're hiring a marketing team. I don't know another company that gets on a weekly phone call with every single client and gets to know them and is able to craft ads about their top three favorite books, that go over maybe a parenting book that was a game changer for them or a self help book that gave them the courage to quit their nine-to-five and do real estate full time, and craft ads that feel like something that person would write, where our clients’ friends and family are actually talking to our clients and they think that they're coming up with these ads. I don't know another company like us that has that hands-on approach. 

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 Diana Page. Diana, welcome to the show. 

Diana Page: Thanks. Happy to be here. 

Tim Chermak: What we wanted to talk about today, and this one will actually feel a little bit more of a conversation because we're not actually interviewing a real estate agent and talking about how they have implemented the Platform strategy. This is kind of a behind the scenes peek from our perspective at Platform, like what is the Platform strategy? 

Tim Chermak: That's the central topic of today's discussion is people ask us, “Okay, I've been looking into Curaytor. I've been looking into Ylopo. I've been doing research and I found BoomTown and Sync. I've been spending a huge budget on Zillow every month buying leads, or Realtor.com, and I'm looking for something else and I stumbled across this Platform thing. I've seen people post in Facebook groups talking about this Platform Marketing strategy or a friend who's a realtor told me about this Platform thing, but what exactly is Platform?” That's the question. 

Tim Chermak: It's hard to compare it to a direct PPC, pay-per-click marketing program, where you're just buying leads from Google or buying leads from insert-other-website. It's a lot more complicated and it's a lot more interesting of a question. What is Platform marketing? That's what we're going to dissect today. 

Tim Chermak: If I'm on the phone with an agent who calls us and they ask that question, “Hey, I've seen your price on your website. I've seen a bunch of case studies. I've seen a bunch of testimonials. Clearly, a lot of realtors seem to be really happy with what you're doing, but I still don't really understand what is it that you do? Do you boost my posts on Facebook? Are you getting leads from Google? What exactly is Platform?” 

Tim Chermak: Usually, the first thing I'll say in a phone call like that is that Platform is a marketing agency that just happens to specialize in working with realtors. We're a classic marketing agency that just happens to specialize in working with realtors. I know that sounds like an official definition. “Well, what exactly does that mean?” Every one of those words is actually important in that definition, a classic marketing agency that just happens to specialize in working with realtors. 

Diana Page: Really quickly, it is hard for people to wrap their brain around because most realtors that talk with us are used to buying leads and they view that as marketing, but it's super different. A lot of agents will ask me, “What's your return on investment with your leads?” The truth is that we really are like a marketing firm. It's almost like you're hiring a marketing department when you hire Platform. You're not just buying leads. It's very different from Zillow, Ylopo, BoomTown in that way. That's usually hard for people to wrap their mind around. 

Tim Chermak: That actually reminds me of the saying we have around Platform, is that lead generation is not synonymous with marketing. You'll hear us say that a hundred times. If you hang out with us long enough, lead generation is not synonymous with marketing. Obviously, lead generation is a part of marketing. Any decent marketing plan has lead generation as at least part of what you're doing, but if all you're thinking about is buying leads, “I spent X-amount of dollars last month, how many leads did I get?” and that's the only way that you're measuring your marketing, marketing is so much more than that. That really leads us into, “What is Platform?” because that belief has really shaped how we designed the Platform Marketing strategy for realtors. 

Tim Chermak: When we say that we're a classic marketing agency, what we mean is that think of 1950s, 1960s ad agencies on Madison Avenue, so the show like Mad Men, a classic traditional ad agency or the ad agencies that today work with really big brands like Pepsi or Coke or insert-your-favorite-consumer-brand. What they do is they're exclusive to their clients. They have an agency relationship. In other words, they work with you and not the competition. If the agency working with Coca-Cola was also secretly working with Pepsi, that would be a huge conflict of interest. 

Tim Chermak: The whole point of hiring an ad agency is that they're working for you, not the competition. They want to see you take market share and you be the leader in your industry, not the competition. That's one of the first things that we try to get clear is that when Platform works with you, we're exclusive to one agent per market. We're not this marketing CRM or marketing software company where we want as many people as possible to sign up. That honestly is a description of most marketing “programs” out there. 

Tim Chermak: I'm saying “programs” with air quotes here because frankly, most of the competition to Platform Marketing, so you mentioned, Diana, these names like Ylopo and Curaytor, BoomTown, Sync, there's obviously a bunch of other companies as well, I would argue that they might be perfectly fine at what they do and some people really love working with Curaytor, BoomTown, etc., but they're not really marketing agencies or, frankly, even marketing companies as much as they are software companies. 

Diana Page: I will say too, a question we get quite a bit is, “How do you define market exclusivity?” There are companies out there that will say, “We'll give you one zip code or a couple blocks,” but the truth is that I don't know a single realtor who only works one zip code or a couple blocks. 

Diana Page: The truth is that, number one, not only does it feel unethical to work with our clients' competition because if we're saying that the advertising we're going to do, it's going to grow your business, and then we're also growing your competition's business, there's only so many deals to go around. It's a conflict of interest.

Diana Page: Number two, it allows us to craft ads that work so much better. We've all seen realtors who will do these copy-paste ads that it's like posting services and you're seeing the same irrelevant, copy-paste, generic, cookie-cutter ad from ten, 20, 30 realtors in your market. That just doesn't work. When we know that we are not going to have our clients' audiences seeing the same content from more than one client, we get to get super creative with the type of content that we craft because we know we're only working with one agent per market. 

Diana Page: We always define market as, “Where does most of your business take place?” We want to draw a circle around that so that we're not working with you and your competition because then the ads perform so much better. You don't have to share the results with your competition ‘cause we're not running ads for your competition. 

Tim Chermak: Yes, exactly. This should be commonplace in the industry but it's not. It's frankly just common sense that if you're a marketing agency, if you're a marketing company, and you sign up for Platform and we tell you, “Hey, it's now our job to make you the leading, most trusted realtor in your area and kind of make you a celebrity on social media in your community,” it should go without saying that, of course, we're not also working with your competition because that just feels like if we are secretly, it feels unethical, underhanded that “If I hired you, is the whole point of marketing to make me famous in my community?” Yes, I'm agreeing with you. That is the point of marketing. The whole point of marketing yourself as a local real estate agent is to build a brand for you, or your local community trusts you more than they trust the other realtors. 

Tim Chermak: We've just always felt since we started this company ten years ago, we've been doing this actually for ten years, that I can't look you in the eye and tell you that, “Hey, our job is to grow your business as a realtor and grow your local brand, and then also be working with your competition who might be three miles away or a mile away or a hundred yards away.” That's why we're so strict on the market exclusivity. 

Tim Chermak: Again, I want to compare this not just in a vacuum talking about the way Platform does things, I want to compare this to the way that other companies in the industry operate because that gives you some perspective of really how different Platform is than other marketing programs out there. Think of the names that we keep mentioning, Ylopo, Curaytor, etc. They don't have any exclusivity. 

Tim Chermak: Let's say you're in Waco, Texas, so not a massive city. It's not as big as Atlanta or Houston or LA or Chicago or something, but Waco's a decent-sized town. There's certainly room for multiple real estate agents in Waco to have thriving businesses. Let's say that you're in Waco. There's no limitation to how many agents, really, a company like BoomTown or Ylopo or Curaytor is gonna take in Waco. They might have ten agents using Ylopo there or 25 agents using Curaytor, maybe 50. There's really not a limitation because they're not gonna say this part out loud, but at the end of the day, they're really a software company. 

Tim Chermak: They're selling you a website template and, usually, it includes some sort of CRM obviously with IDX that connects to your leads, but really, they're selling you a tech stack, a marketing software solution. It might be marketing software, but it's not really marketing because unless there's exclusivity, this is the argument I want to make and that's what I want realtors listening to this podcast episode to really, really think about. Unless there's exclusivity involved, whatever you're doing might be interesting, but it's not really marketing unless there's exclusivity. 

Tim Chermak: The whole point of marketing by definition is that we build a brand for you and that the community trusts you more than they trust other realtors. If you are using one of these marketing software services in Waco, Texas, but 14 other agents are too, or 23 other agents are too, that's great, but almost by definition, whatever you're doing isn't creative if 13 other agents or 17 other agents or 20 other agents are doing the same thing as you. That's why exclusivity is so important. 

Diana Page: Something else we've learned over the last ten years is that the best ads for getting somebody to trust you as a realtor, feel like they know you, like you, and ultimately decide that they want to work with you, the best ads for that don't look like ads. When we know we're only gonna work with one agent in Waco or Wichita Falls, we're able to craft ads like, “Hey, Wichita Falls. Here are my top three favorite locally-owned coffee shops. Are you sick of supporting corporate chain businesses? Well, check these out,” or 25 Fun Facts About Tim Chermak, ads that are so custom and so hyperlocal and so personal to you as a realtor in your market that they don't look like ads. 

Diana Page: If somebody saw an ad that specific and that custom for you and then they saw it for another agent a week later, it would just be really cheesy and feel like, “Who's copying who here?” Our ads are so memorable that people actually read them, remember them because they're so personal. That paired with the market exclusivity is what works so well here. 

Tim Chermak: We've even had clients run ads where they are Christians and they go to church and they're like, “Hey, could I run an ad talking about some of the churches in our community, maybe for someone who might be moving here and they haven't found a church home yet?” They'll write a profile, a quick paragraph about five churches to check out if you're moving to Waco. They'll actually write a couple sentences, they might do a quick interview with someone who goes to that church, the pastor, so they can share a quote. It's a really informative post. The ad almost looks like an essay that you wrote about cool churches to check out in Waco. This is a really good example of what we're talking about when we say that Platform comes alongside you and helps you craft really, really creative marketing campaigns. 

Tim Chermak: This is not some copy-and-paste, template, cookie-cutter like Five Tips To Renovate Your Kitchen or Three Color Palettes That'll Be In Style In 2024 or The Five Most Valuable Bathroom Renovations, the type of crap that you see agents copying and pasting from their corporate broker. We really connect with you at a one-on-one relational level and we figure out what type of content both adds value to your community. It's actually interesting information, but also is an authentic representation of who you are as an agent. 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, if you're listening to this and you're an atheist and you're like, “No, I don't really go to church. I'm not into that,” cool. Totally cool. We're definitely not gonna run that ad for you. What it also means is that if you're the Platform real estate agent in Waco, this is just an example. 

Tim Chermak: I was leading up to this. Here's the punchline. If you do all the research and we help you write an ad about five churches to check out in Waco, you never have to worry about some other agent in or around Waco running that same ad and basically just swiping it and copying and pasting it from you or even anything similar to that because we're only working with you there. We're not working with you and five other agents around Waco and then we just mix and match what ads we're doing and hope people don't see the same content for multiple realtors. No, we only work with you. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, “Doesn't that really restrict the growth of Platform? It means that you have way less clients than these other companies?” Yes, you're absolutely right it does. 

Diana Page: Naturally, we are a small business. We're always gonna be a small business because of that. On average, out of every ten agents that reach out to us, we have to turn away about seven to eight. 70% to 80% of people that reach out to us, we turn them away because we already have an agent we're working with in their market. 

Diana Page: The flip side of that is we still have our first agent from ten years ago. She's still a happy client of ours. We've got clients that have been with us seven years, eight years, a long time, because they don't want to give up their market. Once they see that it works, who would want their competition to have a chance to sign up? 

Diana Page: Naturally, we're always going to be a smaller business. Honestly, that's more fun for us. Usually, when people hear about us, it's because our clients, they're not afraid to rave about us in Facebook groups like Real Estate Mastermind or Lab Coat Agents or call up an agent in a neighboring market. We've even had clients post about us on their personal page. Most realtors would feel like they need to hold their tricks and the things that are working close to their chest and not show their cards. Our agents don't have that fear because they know that their competition can and does reach out and we simply turn them away.

Tim Chermak: That's the actual stat too. I think the actual number when I looked, at least recently over the last couple of months, it's 78% of people, so almost 80% of people that are reaching out to us, realtors that inquire about Platform, we unfortunately have to tell them, “No, sorry. You can't sign up. We already are working with a realtor in your market.” It means that Platform will always be a smaller company than Curaytor, Ylopo. Obviously, Zillow is a billion-dollar public company. They're going to take on not just hundreds, but thousands and tens of thousands of realtors. 

Tim Chermak: At the time of this recording, just to put that number into perspective, Platform, I think, has 208 clients across the country. 208. There's obviously a lot more cities in the United States than 208, but if you look at a map in terms of the somewhat major cities and midsize cities, many markets are already taken. You should honestly feel lucky if your market is available when you inquire because it is only a matter of time before we probably get a realtor in your market. 

Tim Chermak: As Diana said, usually, once the client signs up, they might be a client for four years, five years, six years, eight years. We still have clients from ten years ago who signed up that gets so much value that they haven't quit even though they've been a client now for ten years. It's a pretty exclusive club because of that policy of only working with one client per market.

Diana Page: What’s interesting too, I will add, the next question I usually get when I have to turn away seven to eight out of every ten agents that reaches out is, “Is there a company like you that you can recommend?” The truth is, I don't know of one. When you hire Platform, it's like you're hiring a marketing team. I don't know another company that gets on a weekly phone call with every single client and gets to know them and is able to craft ads about their top three favorite books, that go over maybe a parenting book that was a game changer for them or a self help book that gave them the courage to quit their nine-to-five and do real estate full time, and craft ads that feel like something that person would write, where our clients’ friends and family are actually talking to our clients and they think that they're coming up with these ads. I don't know another company like us that has that hands-on approach. 

Diana Page: We get that question a lot and the truth is I don't know another company like us. It is a bummer when people reach out and they really want to work with us and their market's taken. The flip side of that coin is it's awesome for our client. They never have to worry about people finding out what they're doing, doing it, and then it's not working for them anymore. They have that safety net that they wouldn't have with other companies like Ylopo, Curaytor. 

Tim Chermak: If you ask that same question of Ylopo or Curaytor or Sierra or all these other companies out there, Chime, whatever, “Hey, can you recommend a similar company? Who are your competitors?” If you're talking to someone from Curaytor, they can easily say, “Our competitors would be Chime, Ylopo, Sierra.” There's loads of companies in that space that more or less do the same thing. It's some sort of combination of pay-per-click advertising paired with a marketing software solution like an IDX or/and a CRM. That's essentially what all these other companies do. 

Tim Chermak: Platform is very, very different than that. We're an advertising agency that just happens to specialize in working with realtors. As we mentioned, we have a couple hundred clients right now across the country. We're market exclusive. We only work with one realtor per market. Now, the question is, “Okay, but specifically on a day-to-day basis, what do you do?” It's quite simple. It's really a two-part answer. 

Tim Chermak: First, we generate leads. Of course, lead generation is part of marketing, but as I mentioned, lead generation is not the same thing as marketing. It's not synonymous with marketing. Step one is we generate leads primarily using social media. Right now, Facebook is the number one way that we're doing lead generation and marketing for our realtor clients. That's because Facebook is the best place right now to get high quality leads of the right demographics that we want to attract.

Tim Chermak: The second part of that marketing strategy is retargeting and staying top of mind and converting those leads into actual appointments and listing appointments and, ultimately, closings. We'll talk about the retargeting and the part two in a second, but let's dive into what the first part of the Platform Marketing strategy is for a second, which is lead generation. 

Diana Page: When you say the right demographics, really, what we know is that the average Facebook user is 30 years old or older. We know eight out of every ten adults that is 30 or older has a Facebook account, but is also actively checking it. That's the platform of choice for people who are more likely to be buy-sell combos. 

Diana Page: If we have people that are buyers and sellers, not just first time homebuyers, it's a better ROI. It's like two for the price of one for the leads we are generating. Right now, Facebook is the best place to put ad spend for helping a realtor grow their business. Now, if that ever changes, we're constantly testing other platforms, but right now, it's just nothing even compares. 

Tim Chermak: Yep. That's really important to point that out because it's a question that we get from almost every phone call we're on if we're talking to an agent who's thinking about hiring Platform, is “Okay, where do you guys advertise and why?” The answer isn't a coincidence that primarily, we focus on local Facebook campaigns. It's because the demographics of Facebook are so favorable to realtors. 

Tim Chermak: The average Facebook user is objectively older than the average user of Snapchat or the average user of TikTok. Facebook skews older and it means Facebook is maybe less cool than some of these other new social networks that have popped up over the last couple of years. All things being equal, if you're going to spend, let's say, a thousand dollars a month on advertising, would you rather get leads from TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram where they're usually going to be under the age of 30, so they might be 23 years old, they might be 28 years old? 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, there might be some financially affluent 28 year olds that got an engineering degree and they already have great income and they're gonna buy an expensive house. Yeah, totally. There's people in their 20s that buy expensive houses. I was one of those people in my 20s that I bought a pretty decent-sized price point home in my 20s, but the majority of people are not. 

Tim Chermak: Just statistically, there's no denying the statistical reality that, all things being equal, you would rather have a lead who's 47 years old than a lead who's 27 years old. Frankly, you would rather have a lead who's 57 years old than a lead who's 27 years old because Diana, as you mentioned, a lead who's in their 50s is way more likely to already own a house, probably with significant home equity, and so when that lead comes in, if they're 57 years old, we have statistical reason to believe that's probably a buy-sell combo lead. You're gonna get a listing out of it and a buy side as the realtor. It's like a buy one, get one free. You're getting two transactions for the price of one lead. That's because you're focusing your marketing on Facebook where the demographic that uses Facebook skews older. There's a very good reason we focus on  Facebook ads. 

Diana Page: The truth is we want to be good stewards of our client's budget, so we care more about getting your results than making sure you're on every single Platform. TikTok's a big one that's gained a lot of attention in the last couple years and a lot of real estate coaches are saying, “Get on TikTok, make reels.” We don't want to just run to the next shiny thing. We've got ten years worth of split tests on Facebook and ten years worth of experience 2X-ing and 3X-ing and 4X-ing realtors’ GCI from Facebook. We don't want to just run to the next shiny thing. 

Diana Page: When our clients hire us to manage their ad budget, our number one priority is getting them a return on investment. That's why we're going with what's safest, not necessarily what's most exciting and most fun and most shiny.  I know that agents would love to work with a first time homebuyer. If somebody approaches you and you're a realtor and they're a first time homebuyer, you're not going to turn them away and you are happy. You're happy to have the business, but you're also not going to spend your advertising budget in front of first time homebuyers and intentionally seeking out that clientele when you can take that same budget and get in front of buy-sell combos who already live in more expensive houses and are at an above average price point and aren't as impacted by today's interest rates.

Tim Chermak: Again, there's a very good reason, a very well thought out reason that we focus on social media marketing, specifically Facebook. Now, we will also sprinkle Instagram ads into the mix as well because we found that Instagram works really well in a retargeting context. If someone clicks on a Facebook ad, if that person also has an Instagram account, they'll start seeing your ads pop up on Instagram as well. 

Tim Chermak: The way that we set things up with the Platform strategy in terms of getting that first click, the bulk of the budget is usually spent on Facebook ads just because the demographics are just superior of the average user who's using Facebook. There's a lot of people on Facebook in their 40s and 50s and 60s. It means your kids probably won't think you're cool. 

Tim Chermak: If you're listening to this and you have kids that are in middle school or high school, whatever, and they're on Facebook, who uses Facebook? It's totally not cool. That's the point. We don't want to be on the social networks where you're paying for views and clicks to kids that are 18 or that are 23 and are obviously not the demographic you want to be in front of as a realtor.

Tim Chermak: Now, the question becomes, “All right, so you've explained a little bit of the strategy, why you focus on social media and Facebook marketing, but what specifically do you do on Facebook? What do the ads look like?” I mentioned that part one of the strategy, kind of like stage one of the marketing is lead generation. How we generate the leads matters. What you put in the ads matters. 

Tim Chermak: One thing that we try to talk about is the quality of the leads is usually determined by what you say in the ads. If you're just offering some generic ebook, PDF download of free report of homes for sale that are bargain deals for investors or free list of foreclosed homes that you can get a deal, I've seen some people do that and they brag about the cost per lead is only $0.50. You spend $10 and get 20 leads, right, but the leads are absolute trash. They're coming in because of how you're generating leads as you're offering a free report of local homes that are in foreclosure or that are fixer uppers. You're going to get trash leads coming in who want a deal. You don't want those leads as a realtor, all things being equal. 

Tim Chermak: You'd rather have the traditional, hey, it's a married couple that has lived in their home for 18 years and now they're empty nesters. They built significant equity because they bought back in the early 2000s or something. They've lived in their home for a long time and now, they're getting ready to sell and they're going to downsize into a smaller house somewhere. You're getting, again, a listing and a buy side out of that.

Tim Chermak: How do we get those leads? Well, one ad, I'll just give an example here. To be clear, Platform has dozens and dozens and dozens of ad strategies that we've come up with over the years. I'm not just saying we have one ad that we use, just to give you one specific example for the purposes of this podcast episode. If I went through all of them, this podcast episode would be 100 hours long because we seriously do have dozens and dozens and dozens of ads that we've tested over the years. We'll just pick one to talk about just to give people an idea, an example of what some of these Facebook ads might look like that we use to generate the lead.

Tim Chermak: One of my favorites is what we call the Acreage Homes Report. This Acreage Homes Report ad, we've been running this probably for seven or eight years now. It's just like the old faithful. It just keeps working and it really doesn't matter what type of market you're in. Whether you're in the country, whether you're in a small town somewhere, whether you're in the suburbs, I mean, even in cities, this ad works. If you're in Houston or in Atlanta somewhere, this ad still works. It’s the Acreage Homes Report. 

Tim Chermak: What it is is, essentially, it's a Facebook ad that would pop up. I'll keep going with that Waco, Texas example. Let's say that you're in Waco. It would say, “Attention, Waco. I've created a free report of homes for sale here that have at least one acre of land.” This is where you can customize it. 

Tim Chermak: If you're in an area where it's somewhat more of an urban area, yeah, no one has an acre. You can say a half an acre. You can even say a quarter acre, however you would define a big lot in your area or acreage. The default we usually go with is one acre. “If you're looking for a home that has at least one acre so you have plenty of room for a backyard for pets to run around or kids to play or a massive garden, whatever,” so we'll write this in the ad copy, “Click here, I'll send you a free report. WWW.WacoAcreageHomesReport.com.” We will set up that website for you. People can click and opt in to get a free list of homes sent to them in the Waco area that have at least one acre of land.  

Tim Chermak: Several things are happening here with the psychology of this ad that makes it so effective. The first is that we're actively repelling the type of leads that we don't want without saying anything rude. You don't ever want to put in an ad, “Hey, if you're poor and broke, please don't click this link. I don't want to work with poor, broke people.” That would be offensive and would probably ruin your reputation as a realtor and you get a bunch of negative Google reviews and no one wants that, but we're also all thinking it secretly. 

Tim Chermak: It's like, “Man, I hope poor, broke first time homebuyers don't click on my ads,” especially in a market like this, let's be honest, where it's really hard to buy a house right now with home prices and interest rates where they're at. You don't really want to be spending money on marketing and getting first time homebuyer leads. You want listing leads and people that have home equity already and have savings and they have high incomes, hopefully, that'll actually qualify to get a mortgage in this market.

Tim Chermak: With an ad like this Acreage Home Report, who are we repelling? We're honestly repelling first time homebuyers because they just know by reading this ad copy that, “Oh, well. I probably wouldn't be able to afford any of the homes on that list because it looks like they’re homes on acreage and there's no way I can afford that.” Without saying anything offensive, without saying anything that just makes you look off putting, we're actually repelling the people that we don't want to be clicking on this ad. 

Tim Chermak: Who are we then attracting? That's the obvious next question. If we're repelling some people, who are we attracting? If you're offering a home, a list of homes in the Waco, Texas area that have acreage, you're going to be attracting people that are probably move up buyers. They just started to have kids, they have a family, they maybe lived in a starter home for a while and they're finally ready to, “Hey, you know what? We're going to sell this starter home. It's served us well for the last six years or the last four and a half years or whatever. It's finally time to buy our forever home to raise our family and we want something with a little bit of land where the kids can play football in the backyard or our dogs can run around in a massive fenced yard, whatever. We want something with acreage.” 

Tim Chermak: Just statistically, we know that the demographic that most often buys a home that's on an acre, it's people in that phase of life. It's very, very, very rarely a first time homebuyer. Someone who's buying a home like that almost always already owns a house and they're looking to move up to a home with acreage. That's a different way of me saying, “You're getting listing leads.” 

Tim Chermak: As these leads come in through the Platform Marketing campaign, even if we don't ask them, we're not even necessarily asking a question “By the way, do you own a house and will you be selling?” because we don't want this to look like an ad. We don't even have to ask that. Just by virtue of what the Facebook ad says in offering a free report of homes with acreage, we just know statistically that most of these leads coming in are going to be listing leads because they already own a house if they're interested in information like that. I guess there's just a lot of psychology going on in the ad. 

Diana Page: Something that I'll add, too, Tim is a question I get a lot is, number one, “Is it buyer or seller leads?” It truly is a pretty good mix. Number two, a lot of agents will ask, “Do you do any sort of listing specific ads, like find out how much your home is worth? Click here for a free market report of what your home's worth.” The truth is we've tested that. Over the last ten years, we've tested a lot of different ads and this is one of the best ways we've found to get you listings and also get you above average price point buyers. It really is two for the price of one. 

Diana Page: Tim, it reminds me of our client, Heather Mutz, that's in Honda, Texas. Heather's been with us, what has it been? Six years or seven years now? Something like that. When she started with us, she was a solo agent, and Honda, Texas, small market. I want to say there's 8,000, 9,000 people there. The Acreage Homeslist was one of the best performing ads for her and over the years, she's grown her business so much that she's actually hired a team. 

Diana Page: One of her agents on her team is named Chelsea. Last year, it was Chelsea's job to work all of Heather's Platform leads because Heather's business has shifted from being primarily buyers to primarily listings, the Acreage Homeslist being a big way that happened because a lot of her listings are acreage listings. 

Diana Page: Heather, she's building a small team. She had Chelsea work all of the Platform leads last year. Chelsea actually told me that, and she's a newer agent, out of the $5 million in sales she did last year, $2.5 million of that was from working Platform leads specifically. Heather said one thing that's been awesome about Platform is that it has shifted her business from being mostly buyers to mostly listings. She's got two team members now that have hired Platform and neighboring markets, so Heather's team actually has a hold of three markets now in Texas. That's been something that's really cool.

Diana Page: A lot of our clients mention is, obviously, we all know the best way to scale your business as a realtor is to focus on listings. The best way to do a lot in sales and still get to spend time with your kids and be a good parent is primarily be a listings agent. The Acreage Homes Report is great because it's helping us funnel that type of clientele into your audience so that we can spend the next six months watering those seeds and retargeting them. 

Diana Page: The truth is we will generate leads for you, but for every one or two lead generation ads we have running, we're also running eight to ten retargeting ads for you. Any company can generate leads for you. That's really not what makes us different. That's not the hard part of the equation. The hard part is everything that happens after we get that person to click on your ad.  

Tim Chermak: Just, I guess, tie a knot on this conversation about the quality of leads, agents are used to asking this question, whether they worked with Sync, Zillow, Realtor.com, or in this context, we're talking about Platform Marketing, and everyone loves to brag about the quality of their leads or, “Our leads are better,” or whatever. Unless you have an actual logical reason of why the leads are better or different, online leads are online leads. It is what it is. That's why I wanted to draw attention to this, that Platform isn't just boosting random posts or just offering free information about homes to try to get you as many leads as possible. That's not the right approach. We don't want as many leads as possible. We want the right kind of leads. We want quality of leads, not necessarily quantity. That's why we love this particular ad, the Acreage Homeslist, because of the quality of lead that comes in. 

Tim Chermak: It's surprisingly simple. If you offer things that your demographic or your price point wants, because as you mentioned, Diana, people that are looking for a home on acreage are usually in an above average price point for your area. If you're in an area where the average home is $300,000, the leads that will come in from this ad are probably $350,000, $400,000+ leads. They're above average leads for your price point. If you're in an area of the country where the average home is $500,000, the leads that come in from an ad like this are probably $500,000+. They're looking at $600,000 or $700,000+ homes because of what we're offering. 

Tim Chermak: Other ads that seem to work well that essentially accomplish the same thing using the psychology of the Acreage Homes Report could be an RV Homes Report where it's a free list of homes that have room for RV parking or that have existing RV parking. If you have a 15-foot garage that could fit a motorhome or a camper in it, more than likely, the type of person buying that home who owns a motorhome, who owns an RV, they're probably a fairly wealthy person and that home is going to be a fairly expensive home for the area. 

Tim Chermak: If you run a really niche ad targeting people who own RVs ‘cause they need a home with RV parking, it's the same thing. It has nothing to do with acreage, but you attract the type of leads based on the bait you're using. If you run an ad that, again, RV parking, you're going to attract higher net worth households who are the type of people who own RVs. That's another one of my favorites. 

Tim Chermak: Another one is a Pool Homes Report for our clients that are in the Sun Belt areas of the country that just have higher temps and it's more frequent to have a pool. If you're anywhere in Florida or Arizona or most parts of Texas, if you live in a home with a pool, it's possible that you're a first time homebuyer. There might be some homes in your market where a first time homebuyer could afford a home with a pool, but all things being equal, just as it is with acreage, just as it is with RV parking, a home with a pool is usually associated with higher price points in your area. We're just attracting that higher price point lead who's more than likely, statistically, a move-up buyer, which means they already have a house to sell.

Diana Page: Tim, one story I'll share about this and then we can move on to retargeting. One story actually from today is about a client of ours named Greg Stroud and I think he's in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. It's not an expensive market, pretty average. He texted us this morning saying one of his Platform leads asked him to help them submit an offer on a $1.2 million home as well as sell their $650,000 home and their $250,000 vacation home. They said they love Greg and his values and how his marketing comes off so authentic. 

Diana Page: It's not just that we generated this lead that's above average price point, buy-sell combo, it'll end up being three transactions that equal about $2 million in a really average market. Because of his retargeting, they feel like Greg is really authentic and trustworthy. By the time they picked up the phone and called Greg, they did so because they already made the decision that they trust him, they like his values, they relate to him, and they want to work with him. His retargeting, it did a lot of the heavy lifting of converting this quality lead for him so that by the time he picked up the phone, they'd already made that decision for the most part.  

Tim Chermak: The quality of the lead matters, but ultimately, honestly, what probably matters even more is part two of this process, which is retargeting. How do you stay top of mind with all of these clicks and all of these leads? If they click on an ad in January, they might not actually be ready to buy or sell a house until May or June or July or August or maybe even September. They might be nine months away. 

Diana Page: They probably won't be. Actually, the average sales cycle is about six months. We know that people clicking on ads today, the average amount of time it's going to take them to do research and be ready to make a transaction is about six months. It's very rare that you're getting a lead that clicking on your ad and then is under contract in 30 days. The sales cycle is about six months. That's why if we were just running lead generation ads, you're basically hoping that you can stay top of mind and they'll remember you over the course of six months and choose to use you, or we're hoping that you're super good at followup and you'll call them every week for six months. 

Diana Page: If you're just putting your whole budget into lead generation ads and you're not retargeting the people that are clicking on those ads, that's a really dangerous game to play because six months is plenty of time for someone to completely forget that they clicked on your list of homes one time.

Tim Chermak: Exactly. Frankly, let's just say that someone's listening to this podcast episode because they heard about Platform. If we didn't have retargeting ads set up, which we obviously do, if a friend told you about Platform and then you just never heard of Platform again and it never popped up in your newsfeed, would you still remember us six months later? Probably not. 

Tim Chermak: You have to stay top of mind with people who click and engage with your brand online. You are not going to convert leads the very first time they click your ad. They're not going to click your ad and immediately drop everything that's going on in their life and schedule an appointment with you. You are pretty far down the priority list as a realtor when you're comparing their desire to meet with you to going to their kids' school games, going to church on Sunday, going grocery shopping, watching their favorite sports team on Monday night football, all the things they have going on in their life. Scheduling a consult with a realtor probably doesn't even crack the top ten. They actually don't want to do that. 

Tim Chermak: If you are assuming in your marketing that, “Hey, my marketing is so good that the first time they see me in an ad, they'll click and schedule an appointment,” that's not going to happen. You have to have a follow up strategy that keeps you top of mind, not just for a week after that first click or even a month, but six months and beyond. 

Tim Chermak: You know what, Diana, I realized there's one more thing I want to talk about in terms of lead generation before we totally get into retargeting here. I want to loop this conversation back into what we said at the very beginning about only working with one realtor per market. This isn't some random feature or benefit of Platform like, “Hey, it's just one of the bullet points of what we do, is that we work with one person per market.” It really affects our entire business model, our entire strategy. Everything we do at Platform Marketing is, in one way or another, related to this decision we made ten years ago that we are only going to work with one realtor per market. 

Tim Chermak: How that affects the actual ad strategy is that, yes, it means we can get way more creative with the ads, but it also means we can get way more niche with the ads. We can target really specific niches of people because if we know we're only working with one realtor in the Waco area, let's just do some basic math. I have no idea how many people live in Waco. I don't know if it's half a million or if it's 50,000. I honestly have no idea, but I'm just going to pick 100,000 because that's a nice round number for the purposes of this example. 

Tim Chermak: Let's just hypothetically imagine that 100,000 people live there. Usually, 50,000 of that population are kids. Any normal town in the US, half the population are under the age of 18, so that leaves us 50,000 people. Probably half of the remaining adults are renters or are not really in a financial position to where they can buy a house. That leaves us with a quarter of the population. Of that remaining quarter that is able to buy a house, wants to buy a house, has the finances to buy a house, only a fraction of that left is an above average price point that already owns a house and wants to upgrade to a newer house. All of a sudden, you can start with a pretty large number and the target demographic of who we are targeting with the ads, which is move-up buyers. That's what I want people to remember is that Platform is not looking to just get you any lead, we specifically want move-up buyers. That's who the Platform strategy is really targeting, is move-up buyers. 

Tim Chermak: Even a larger city can all of a sudden, the number of move-up buyers at any given time is actually a fairly small percentage of people. You might look at a larger city, whether it's Waco, Austin, Texas, San Antonio, Wichita, Kansas. I live in Naples, Florida, Tucson, Arizona, whatever, and you might think, “There's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people here.” Yeah, that may be true, but the percentage of the population at any given time that's wanting to buy a house and already owns a house and is an above average price point, all of a sudden, that's a very fine, specific niche group of people. 

Tim Chermak: That's why when Platform has these ads that we've tested over the years, whether it's our variation, our spin on a Pool Homes Report, an RV Parking List, the Acreage Homes Report, and the dozens and dozens of other ads we've tested, if there were another agent in your town copying this and they're trying to run this acreage that we talked about, the RV parking, it'll stop working really quickly because it'll fatigue. If people see that same ad over and over and over again, it'll stop working. That's why we protect the integrity of our clients’ markets and the territories of only working with one client per area. When the ads are so specific and so niche like this, you can't have ten agents in the same area running an Acreage Home Report. You can't have ten agents in the same area running an RV Parking Homeslist, of homes that have RV parking. It's so niche that there's just not enough people who fit that. If you're the only agent in an area running ads like this, it's a pretty cool competitive advantage to have because you know that you are dominating all of these niches.

Tim Chermak: I just want to loop that point back into the fact that Platform only works with one realtor per market, because as you said, it affects the creativity and what type of ads that we can run. If we were a marketing company that didn't have exclusivity and that was willing to work with an unlimited amount of agents like, “Hey, as long as you've got a credit card, we'll work with an unlimited number of people in Charleston, South Carolina or Waco, Texas, or wherever,” just right off the bat, by definition, the ads that we write have to be pretty generic. They have to be template. They have to be copy and paste. If we know that this ad has to work for the 22 clients we have in the Charleston, South Carolina area, we can't really do anything interesting or specific or focused on a niche if we know that 22 agents in the same area are going to be running the same ad. It kind of has to be boring and generic because we know that all the same people are going to be running the same ad. There's very specific, tactical reasons that we have this policy. I just wanted to hammer down that point. It's very much related to the performance of the marketing itself. 

Diana Page: Absolutely. I think that that's important to mention. The retargeting is really, I want to get into that, that's really what makes Platform different. A question I get a lot is, “So how are you different from Zillow, Ylopo, BoomTown?” If all you want is leads, yeah, go buy Zillow leads. You'll get leads with Platform, but honestly, most of your business is going to come from what we call Fuzzy ROI. That's somebody just picking up the phone, calling you and saying, “Hey, I'm ready to buy,” or, “Hey, I'm ready to sell.” Unless you ask them, you may not even know that they found you on Facebook. They're in your retargeting audience. 

Diana Page: We have a client named Autumn Nottingham. She's in a small town, Texarkana. She told us pretty quickly after starting, her words were, “It's actually creepy how well this is working. I'm getting calls from people who are talking to me like they know me and I have no idea who they are. It's our first conversation.” The first step is get the right people into your retargeting audience. That's what we're doing with our lead generation ads. The second step is retarget them for 6+ months so that when they're ready to go, they decide to reach out to you.

Diana Page: Actually, Tim, one of my favorite stories of this is a client of ours named Stacey Springer. She's in Columbia, Tennessee, pretty average price point, and she picked up a $3.4 million listing recently. She got a call from somebody saying they wanted to list and when she asked him who referred him to her, he said, “No one. It's just because I've seen your videos on Facebook.” Had she not asked and just went about with that awesome listing that's way above average price point, had you not even asked like, “Hey, who can I thank for the referral?” or “How'd you find me?” she wouldn't have known that's a Platform seller.

Tim Chermak: We're talking about retargeting here. Probably the first thing that I'll address is some people may know what retargeting is, but a lot of people listening to this don't. You've probably heard of it. You've heard people talk about retargeting. You maybe sort of know what it is, but you really don't know specifically, maybe from a technical perspective, what is retargeting. 

Tim Chermak: Very simply put, retargeting is what happens when we install pixel tracking on your ads, which means that anyone who views or clicks your ads, we're tracking who clicks your ads or views your videos. The average lead generation ad will probably convert 20% of people who click on it, will actually opt in and give us their actual contact information.

Tim Chermak: If we're running this acreage ad and you're a realtor in Waco, we have www.WacoAcreageHomeSupport.com just to keep using that example, we might get 100 clicks on that ad in a day, let's say. 100 people click on that. Out of that 100, 20 people might actually give us their contact information, which means you got their name, email, and phone number, these people who want this Waco acreage home support. Out of 100, 20 become actual leads, but that also means 80 people were interested enough to click on it but at the last second, they chickened out, they bailed, they X out. They're like, “Oh, no. I don't want to give this random realtor that I don't know, I don't want to give them my contact information. I didn't realize I had to give them my name, email, phone number,” and so they X out but they were interested enough to click on the ad. Even if they didn't actually register and they didn't give us their contact information, they still clicked on the ad. 

Tim Chermak: What retargeting allows us to do is we're secretly tracking everyone who clicks on the ad even if they don't give us their contact info. We're able to keep showing ads to those specific people for 180 days after they click on the ad. If you do the math, 180 days is about six months. 180 divided by 30 days in a month is about six months. If someone sees your ad in January and they click on your Acreage Homes Report ad in January, they will keep seeing your ads pop up in their newsfeed across both Facebook and Instagram for 180 days after that. In other words, until mid-June, they will keep seeing your retargeting ads pop up again in their newsfeed on Facebook and Instagram. 

Tim Chermak: It becomes impossible to forget about you because we're not putting all of our eggs in one basket. We're not just assuming that, “When they click on my ad, all of them will register. All of them will schedule an appointment with me the very first time they see my ad.” No. Obviously, that's not going to happen. You have to stay top of mind for a very long time before people typically trust you enough to where they're willing to give you a call and actually sit down for coffee or come into your office. 

Diana Page: Tim, what I love too is that if somebody is in your retargeting audience, that's a six-month timeline, which we picked because we know that's the average sales cycle. If someone's in your audience and, say, five months in, they click on another ad or they watch a listing video tour you do, those above average view time, people are also going to be put in your audience, or they comment on a post. If somebody engages again partway into that six-month timeline, what happens is it restarts that timeline. Although that's the average sales cycle, there are absolutely people who will do research for a year in advance or two years and we want to make sure that that whole time, we're keeping our realtors in front of those people so that they don't forget about you.

Diana Page: One cool example, Veronica Bradley, our client in San Marcos, Texas, she sent us a screenshot. It was back in January of this year so it's been several months, but she sent us a screenshot of a text she got from a random phone number and it was a person she'd never spoken to. They said, “Hey, Veronica. We are ready to buy a house. Here's what we're looking for. We'd love to work with you. When can we chat?” 

Diana Page: She did some digging, obviously wanted to know how they found her number, and she actually found that they opted into a Platform lead generation campaign four years prior and didn't reply at that time for whatever reason. Maybe they weren't ready, didn't have a job, had to save up the down payment, whatever it is, they opted in four years ago. Had Veronica just been running lead generation and had they not been in her audience, they absolutely would have forgotten about her. There's no way you could stay in touch with somebody for four years manually. That's just not scalable. That's super time consuming. 

Tim Chermak: It's basically a guarantee that if you're thinking you'll just manually remember to stay in touch with someone for four years in a row, those leads are going to slip through the cracks.

Diana Page: Yeah, you won't. You won't. Absolutely. Anyways, she ended up working with them. They found her four years prior, and at some point, after seeing her almost every day for four years, whether it was a subconscious decision or whether they consciously decided it, Veronica became their realtor. When they were ready to go, they reached out to her. 

Diana Page: Our goal is to reach people, get in front of people way before, months before they ever have the chance to become a Zillow lead or a Realtor.com lead or those low hanging fruit leads. We want to get in front of them when it first starts and over that time frame, build their trust with you and make them decide, “When we're ready to go, Veronica is our realtor,” whoever is our realtor, so that they just pick up the phone and call you. Honestly, that's so much more fun. It's way more fun to scale your business with warm inbound leads calling you and texting you than to have to constantly chase leads who don't have any loyalty to you or don't necessarily trust you or necessarily want to work with you.

Tim Chermak: This is one of the coolest parts of retargeting. It's why it's such a focus of the Platform strategy, is that when a majority of your ads are retargeting, so I'll just say from a mathematical perspective, most of our clients at any given time might have ten ads running and only one or two of those ads are lead generation. Usually, eight out of the ten, or if they're running eight ads, probably seven out of the eight ad campaigns are retargeting ads. At any given time, almost all of our clients’ ads that are running are actually not lead generation ads, they are retargeting ads. Because of that, yes, you're generating leads. Yes, you're obviously getting new leads coming in every day from an ad like that Acreage Homes Report or whatever. Maybe it's a new listing ad that we're using to generate leads. Yes, you have fresh leads coming in every day, but by far, the most important part of this strategy, part of the Platform strategy, is the retargeting. 

Tim Chermak: We don't want people just seeing the same ads over again because if you clicked on one of Diana's ads and then you just saw the same retargeting ad every day for the next six months in a row, that'd be annoying. You don't want to see the same ad over and over again. That's why as part of Platform, when you sign up, we are constantly reshuffling your ad stack and adding new retargeting ads to the mix, turning off old ones. We're monitoring how many clicks they're getting. Once they start to sizzle out, we add new ones. 

Tim Chermak: Usually, our goal is adding two new retargeting ads every week. Every month, that means there's eight new retargeting ads by the next month that you weren't running the previous month. Essentially, that stack of retargeting ads that someone's seeing is almost completely refreshing approximately every 30 days.

Tim Chermak: If someone clicked on your ad in January, the ads they see in January are almost entirely different than all the retargeting ads they're seeing from you in February, which are almost entirely different than all the retargeting ads they're seeing from you in March, and so on and so forth. They're constantly seeing new ads from you. 

Tim Chermak: Guys, this is our secret sauce. This is honestly what makes Platform so different from any other marketing program out there. It's not that we have the greatest lead generation because leads are leads. It's not even that we have retargeting set up. Other companies can technically do retargeting. It's not something Platform invented. Other companies can do retargeting too, but it's how we set up the retargeting that at any given time we might have seven or eight or nine retargeting ads going and we're constantly adding new retargeting ads to the mix so that you're just constantly top of mind with people that clicked on your ads.

Diana Page: That stack of ads, if people were seeing the same ad over and over for six month, that gets really annoying, but also if they're seeing what I like to call a business card ad where it's just your real estate headshot and your name and number and it says “#1 Realtor in the World” or whatever, that doesn't work. Everybody's running that. 

Diana Page: Not only is the frequency important, because you're not going to build a ton of brand loyalty and brand trust with somebody after one really cool piece of content. It takes frequency. It takes a ton of pieces of content and it takes months. Not only is that frequency important, but also the type of content we're showing them is really important.

Diana Page: We actually had a client. I don't remember which one it was, but we had a client tell us they met with a Platform lead for the first time for coffee. They'd never spoken before other than setting up the appointment. That lead was talking to them like they were old friends and said, “Hey, I think that we became friends on Facebook. How are your kids doing? How's the family?” They're not friends on Facebook. That lead is just in our client’s retargeting audience. That was their first time meeting. The type of content we're showing is just as important as the frequency. We're not doing any copy-paste business card, billboard ads, but it's personal stuff that really just makes people psychologically start to think of you as a friend. People want to work with their friends.

Tim Chermak: What makes a good retargeting ad? Our rule when we come up with ads, and if you hang around with us enough, you'll hear us say this a thousand times, is that the best ads don't look like ads. If we know that because you clicked on an acreage homes report that we're now going to be popping up in your newsfeed for the next six months in a row where you're seeing our ads every day, it’d be really annoying if those ads were super sales-y and they were just talking about, “Hey, I'm the best realtor. I am the top producing realtor. Here's the awards I've won. Here was my volume last year.” 

Tim Chermak: It's important to remind people that, yeah, you're a successful realtor and you do a good job, but 80% or even 90% of the ads honestly shouldn't be about real estate, it should be about you highlighting your community, highlighting your favorite local coffee shops, your favorite spot to grab a slice of pizza in town, your favorite spot to grab a milkshake and a cheeseburger, or I mentioned your favorite church that you go to in your community, your favorite books. That's one of my favorite retargeting ads. 

Tim Chermak: We’ll just ask you to pick three of your favorite books. One of them might be a novel, one of them might be a business book, one of them might be a self help book, whatever, and you just take a picture of you with your three favorite books and then you write a quick little sentence or two about why you like each of the books. It pops up in people's newsfeed and it says, “Hey, here's my three favorite books. Has anyone else read these books? If so, do you have any recommendations of similar books?” People love to comment on a post like that because they feel like at some subconscious level, they're getting to know you. 

Tim Chermak: I guess the point I'm making is that whether you with a retargeting ad are highlighting your favorite spot to order pizza in town, your favorite books, or maybe it's just a family memory, that's also one of our favorite retargeting ad strategies, is type a paragraph about a family memory if you went out to eat together or you went to the local high school football game on Friday night, you took a selfie picture with you and your family there and you just say, “Hey, I love going out and supporting whatever-your-high-school-team-is-called.” It has nothing to do with real estate. 

Tim Chermak: What all these ads have in common, what makes them so effective is they're retargeting ads that don't look like ads. Over time, if stuff like this is popping up in people's newsfeeds just constantly, they can't help but feel like they're getting to know you as a person and they almost feel like they're friends. We call it a parasocial relationship because you've only ever met each other online since you obviously haven't met in real life, but if we're sharing enough details about what are your favorite books, what are your favorite TV shows, what are some fun facts about you.

Tim Chermak: We did this post for someone who's a huge Texas A&M fan. We wrote an ad about what are some of the most historic, most important, memorable Texas A&M football games. It was a photo of him wearing a Texas A&M jersey going to a game in college station. That ad had nothing to do with the fact that he was a realtor. It didn't end with “PS. If you're thinking about buying or selling a house, contact me.” There's no tie into real estate at all because that's intentional. 

Tim Chermak: We want these ads not to look or feel like ads so that when we do sprinkle one in that has a little bit of a call to action that says, “By the way, I'm a realtor. Here's my cell phone number. If you're thinking about buying or selling, here's how to get ahold of me,” that by that time, at some point over those six months, that if they're going to see 180 ads from you in those six months because every day, something new is popping up, that they're like, “Oh, that's right. Yeah. I really liked that guy. I really like her. She seems really, really cool. When I'm ready to go, that's the realtor that I want to work with.” 

Diana Page: One retargeting ad, too, that I love that I'll throw in because it's performed so well, it's called Time With Kids. If you're a realtor that has kids, whether they're in school, whether they're grown, we might have you send us a family picture. We have an ad that we wrote that says, “I read a statistic recently that by the time your kids turn 18 and graduate high school and move out, you've already spent 93% of the time with them that you will ever get to. Knowing this has made me cherish every moment, even mundane things like cooking dinner for my kids. It's made me cherish every moment more.” Or if your kids have graduated and moved out, we changed this to say, “Knowing I'm in the final 7% of my time with my boys or my kids is bittersweet. It obviously is sad, but I'm also so happy to get to see them create their own life and I cherish every single moment with them more.” 

Diana Page: We're not mentioning real estate there because that just feels tacky. What's happening is all the other moms in your audience or all the other dads in your audience are seeing, “Oh, Karen Hall's a mom. I'm a mom too.” Psychologically, they start to just know you and understand you more. After enough of that, they feel like they're friends with you and they feel like you're approachable and they can reach out to you or say hi if they see you out in public, which happens really often for our clients, where they're approached in public by people who are like, “Hey, how's everything going?” talking like they're friends. Our clients are like, “You talking to me? I don't know you. Who are you?” That's what we want to accomplish, is good marketing should do the heavy lifting of building trust and winning business for you so you don't have to start at ground zero when people are ready to go and ready to start the conversation.

Tim Chermak: Really, Diana, what you're saying there without saying it just leads me perfectly into this point, is that good marketing, creative retargeting ads, these Platform ads that don't look like ads, it gets leads to call you rather than you having to call the leads. It shifts the normal order of marketing where when most realtors think of marketing and lead generation, they think, “I get leads and I have to follow up with the leads.” 

Tim Chermak: Of course, we tell people, when leads come in, if they email you, duh, email them back. If they text you or call you, of course, return their call. Call them back. Warm leads are warm leads and you want to follow up with people, but the majority of leads that opt in, they're not necessarily gung ho to schedule a consultation, schedule a listing appointment right away. They were interested enough to click on the ad and opt in, but they're not necessarily going to reply to all your email and text follow up. 

Tim Chermak: The cool thing about retargeting ads is that over time, we can change that. If they feel like at this subconscious level, after seeing all these ads, that they're actually getting to know you and who you are and what sports teams you root for or what your favorite restaurant in town is, or some of your hobbies or books that you're reading or whatever, whatever you're passionate about, they actually feel like they're getting to know you at a personal level. 

Tim Chermak: The end result of all this, I think one of the most cool things that would allow me to answer the question, how specifically is Platform different from other marketing programs, it's that the end result of doing marketing in this different way is that it gets people to call you versus you having to call leads. 

Tim Chermak: If someone's been seeing your ads month after month, usually what happens is at some point, whether it's in the third month or the fourth month or the sixth month or the seventh month, whatever, at some point, they're like, “You know what? I'm actually finally ready to sell my house.” Maybe their wife, let's say, was a school teacher, their husband was a school teacher and they were waiting till the end of the school year in May and then they were going to sell and move, what that means in other words is nothing you could have done from a sales perspective or an objection handling perspective, whatever, nothing you could have done would have made them move any faster because they had actual life reasons that they had to stay put in their house through the end of May. 

Tim Chermak: What most agents do with their marketing is in a situation like that, if they can't schedule an appointment, a listing appointment to consult where you meet him for coffee or whatever in January, February, or March, they basically just give up on that lead because they're like, “They're not serious,” when in reality, most people actually have logical reasons for their timeline and there's nothing you can do to change that. Really, the purpose of marketing is just staying top of mind long enough to that when they're actually ready to go, you are the first call they make, that they think of you.

Tim Chermak: They've been seeing your ads. Eventually, what happens is if they clicked on your ad in January, probably in March or April or May, they're going to reach out to you. They will message you. They will call you, not the other way around. That's what's so cool is that if your marketing is set up this way with the Platform strategy, it buys back some of your time. You don't have to spend so much time following up with people and trying to set appointments so aggressively because if the marketing is set up in this way, the warmest leads will actually reach out to you, not the other way around. That changes everything in your career when your marketing is set up in such a way that leads reach out to you. 

Diana Page: Tim, something I'll add too. These personal moment ads, small business highlights, those are really important. Obviously, we want people to feel like they know, like, and trust you. Something else we want to do is build your credibility with people who have no idea if you're a part time realtor who sells two or three homes a year or a full time agent that's been doing it for 20 or 30 years and helps 50, 60 families per year. 

Diana Page: One of my favorite ads that does this is a listing video tour. Now, lots of agents have filmed listing video tours, but we want to have these in your retargeting mix and we want to do it the right way. You can't just film a video, post it on Facebook, and hope that people see it. You basically have to pay for your reach on Facebook. 

Diana Page: What's so cool is when we can have people regularly seeing videos of you looking busy, it creates that social proof of, “Oh, that person must know what they're doing. They're always in houses. They must be the expert in the area. I'm gonna reach out to them.” When we can get listing video tours that have 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 views, that tells other sellers that person is a genius marketer, they know what they're doing, and they're the expert. 

Diana Page: Actually, a really cool example of this recently, our client named Michelle Clemons, she's in Joplin, which is actually my hometown. It's a small area, average price point is $220,000, so it's a more rural area, super affordable. Michelle's been with us about six months now and she told me that she had one of her highest price point deals ever at $537,000. 

Diana Page: The way that those buyers found Michelle, and they're under contract, the way they found Michelle is their mom saw Michelle's very first listing video tour ad that Platform ran for her six months ago. Michelle didn't know their mom, but their mom found Michelle's listing video tour, watched it, was put in Michelle's retargeting audience since she watched at least ten seconds of it, seeing Michelle every day, and then told her kids who were moving from Washington, “Hey, when you move here, you've got to call Michelle. She's the expert in the area.” 

Diana Page: This lady did not know Michelle, but when she saw that video tour and saw ads that make Michelle look busy, show that Michelle is an expert that's been doing this for over 20 years and knows the area really well, she was confident enough to recommend her kids use Michelle, which is really powerful to recommend your own family to somebody you've never met. Means that what you're doing is building credibility and trust and, “Oh, she must be the true expert in the area.” Now, they're under contract at more than double what the average price point is in that market. 

Diana Page: Actually, Michelle's added eight to ten deals to her pipeline. I keep track of them ‘cause I work with her personally. She's got eight to ten extra deals since starting directly from Platform, and I would say more than 50% have been from people like that, just calling and saying, “Hey, I see you all over my Facebook.” or, “Hey, I heard you're the expert in the area. Here's what we're wanting to do. Let's chat.”

Diana Page: Now, Michelle also does an awesome job of calling her leads when they first opt in. Now, that's important. I don't want to make it sound like you shouldn't call your leads because we know statistically, 68% of people work with the first realtor they talked to, but call them once, call them twice, try, and then trust that your retargeting is doing the rest of the work. 

Diana Page: We don't recommend calling leads once a week for six months. That's not sustainable. That's just a cool testament to how listing video tours and ads that make you look busy and make you look like an expert realtor that sells a lot of homes per year are important to sprinkle in even if you're not busy. It's the classic fake it till you make it. If you don't have any listings, go borrow listing video tours. We're gonna make you look busy and kind of fake it till you make it. That's a big part of it. 

Tim Chermak: Imagine too having that peace of mind of knowing that even when you get busy, if you're getting hundreds of people a month that are clicking on your ads, let's say the average Platform client probably gets somewhere between 600 to 1,000 people a month are clicking on your ads. In other words, 600 to 1,000 people every month are being added to your retargeting list, which means they will keep seeing your ads next month and the month after that and then by the way, next month, another 600 to 900 people click on your ads so they kind of snowball rolls. It keeps getting bigger and bigger. Imagine just the peace of mind of knowing that you don't have to personally follow up with 600 or 900 new people every month, but the retargeting ads are going to automatically run and keep you top of mind with all those people without you having to manually do anything. 

Tim Chermak: That's what makes Platform so unique, is that it gives you that peace of mind of knowing you can just focus on being a realtor going out and going on listing appointments on behalf of your clients, negotiating deals. Whether you attend closings or attend the photography sessions or home inspections, you can focus on being a realtor because your marketing is running 24/7 behind the scenes with all these various ad structures that we have both generating the leads and essentially converting them for you.

Tim Chermak: One final last thing I want to talk about before we get into the specifics of the price of Platform and what it costs and all that stuff is the weekly rhythm of the weekly phone call we have with our clients. One thing that makes this all work and also is honestly just an example of how different Platform is from other companies is that we have a weekly phone call because these ads are not just copy and paste. If we haven't made that clear yet, I want to make that clear. When someone signs up for Platform, we're not just using copy-and-paste template ads. We really customize everything we do to work with you in your specific market. 

Tim Chermak: The ads that you run, even if you're somewhere in a similar part of the country, if you're a realtor in Florida and you're in Tampa versus a realtor in Sarasota or, whatever, 45 minutes away so they're pretty close and they're culturally pretty similar, the same homes, Tampa look like homes in Sarasota, but you're gonna run different ads from the agent in Sarasota because you're a different person. You have different hobbies and interests, and restaurants you like going to are different, your ads will be different. How we do that is you're assigned a personal marketing account manager at Platform who's essentially your marketing manager and you talk to them on the phone every week. 

Tim Chermak: When I say that you have a personal phone call at Platform every week, I mean it's a personal phone call at Platform. It's not a group coaching Zoom webinar where it's you and a hundred other agents. I'm talking about a one-on-one phone call. If it's every week, that means assuming that we take a couple of weeks off a year for vacation and Christmas, that's 50 weeks a year. It means that you are talking one on one to your Platform Marketing coach 50 times a year, every week. 

Tim Chermak: Usually, those phone calls are anywhere between 15 to 20 minutes long, sometimes a little bit longer, but usually, they're around 15, 20 minutes. What's happening on that phone call every week with you is we're giving you marketing homework. That's what we call it, marketing homework, and your call is at the same time every week. We just pick a recurring time, whether it's Mondays at 10:30 AM, Tuesdays at. 1:00 PM, Thursdays at 4:00, whatever. We just pick a time that we know is going to work for you every week. We call you at the same time every week and we give you your marketing homework. We say, “Hey, this week, here's the new ad we want you to do,” or “This week, here's the new video clip that we need you to send to us.” By the way, a part of Platform is any video that we do, we're going to edit all of your videos for you too. It's like having a personal marketing department, as Diana put it.

Diana Page: We simply want to take everything off your plate that we can when it comes to having a really strong marketing campaign strategy. The truth is, yeah, you could spend a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of resources learning this and doing it and managing it yourself, but you might be in the wrong seat in your business if that's what you're spending your time on. We do, we edit all your videos unlimited. 

Diana Page: When we give you your marketing homework, as Tim said, it's based on what we know is already working. We're not ever experimenting with your ads budget or reinventing the wheel and saying, “Hmm, I wonder if this will work. Let's try it with your money.” Our first and foremost goal is to make sure your return on investment is here. When we say, “Hey, this week, I want you to send me this picture or this video footage. We'll edit it so that it performs well,” we're not doing that based off of a hunch that it's going to work or because we want to try it. We're doing it because it's already worked in markets like yours and states like yours, maybe even in your same state. We already know that it's going to work.

Tim Chermak: Again, that's because Platform has been doing this now for literally ten years. By the time you listen to it, we might have had our 11th birthday as a company. Over time, we've built up what I call a Greatest Hits Catalog. We've tested. We've spent not even hundreds of thousands, we've spent millions of dollars on these ads. We already know the ads that works so it's our job to just customize it for you and make sure that the ad reflects you and your beliefs, your attitudes, your hobbies and interests, and your community too. The core ads, the ideas themselves, we already know what ads work really, really well to get these higher quality listing leads as well as what ads work to help convert those leads over time with our retargeting ads. 

Tim Chermak: How we make sure that we're constantly customizing these ads to you is by having that weekly commitment of a weekly phone call with your marketing account manager. There is no other marketing company you are ever going to talk to that works with realtors that is going to have a weekly marketing coaching phone call with you going over new ads that you're doing.

Tim Chermak: Other companies, again, because they're really marketing software companies more than they are marketing agencies, they might have a phone call support line that's linked to a call help desk in India or something if you have tech support issues, but they definitely aren't assigning a marketing professional to work with you that proactively calls you every week just to give you new marketing ideas for new ad campaigns. That's part of Platform too, is it really comes with a full time marketing coach devoted to you. 

Tim Chermak: I'll just go ahead and answer one of the questions I know people are thinking as they're hearing me say this, and that's like, “Okay, that's interesting, but are these marketing coaches actually marketing professionals? How many clients are they working with?” That's a really great question ‘cause I get that almost every time. The answer is yes, these are marketing pros. These are not people that we’re paying $16 an hour that we previously were working at a gas station or something. These are seasoned marketing pros managing your accounts. 

Tim Chermak: They only work with typically about 20 accounts at a time. Because they're doing weekly phone calls with all these realtors, you are one of 20 realtors that they're working with. It's not like they're assigned 100 accounts and they're forgetting your name and have no idea who you are. They only work with 20 people. They're talking to those same 20 people every week so they actually get to know you really well, like your family, your husband, your wife, again, what hobbies you have. They'll be able to help you brainstorm the best possible creative ads for you in your market. 

Tim Chermak: Precisely because they're working with 19 other realtors besides you, they have a really good perspective on what ads are working right now. As Diana said, we're not just guessing or hoping when we launch ads for you. “Oh, I hope this works. We've never tried it before.” No, we've probably run that similar ad for the last five years or the last ten years and hundreds of different realtors have run a variation of this ad. We already know that the core idea of that ad works. It's our job to customize it for you and make it personally relevant to you. A cool bonus of the Platform Marketing program is you get a dedicated marketing coach that'll have 50 different coaching conversations with you every year and we don't charge extra for that. It's just included with the Platform Marketing program. 

Diana Page: One thing I'll add too, a question I get a lot is, “This all sounds great, but am I going to have to film a video a day? Is this going to be super time consuming to implement?” No. Typically, it's only going to take about an hour at the most to send us the photos or videos we ask for each week. We really try and make it doable and possible and realistic. We know that if you're a busy agent, you're not going to have time to film three, five videos per week or anything crazy like that. 

Diana Page: Often, the retargeting ads we do will be photo ads. We will ask for videos, but when we ask for videos, we provide scripts, we provide creative ways to start that video tour so that people watching actually pay attention and finish watching. We'll say things like, “Don't give us a 30-second intro outside of the house because you're going to lose all your viewers by the time you even get inside of the house. Instead, start the video by pulling a batch of cookies out of the oven or riding up on your bike or a golf cart.” We'll give you creative ways to film those videos so that they perform well. We'll edit them so that they perform well, and then we'll launch the ad so that all this work you put into this awesome video is seen by enough people, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 views a lot of the time, so that you're not just doing all this work for 20, 30, even 200 or 300 views. We want to make sure it's seen by a good amount of people and the right people.  

Tim Chermak: Let's land the plane here. I think people probably have at least a pretty good idea now of what is Platform, what does Platform actually do for me when I sign up. That’s we manage all of your ads, we edit all of your videos, we're launching new social media ad campaigns for you on Facebook and Instagram literally every week, we're having a weekly phone call with you, we set up your lead generation campaign so that new fresh leads are coming in at any given time. Once you get rolling, we'll have seven, eight, nine, ten ad campaigns running simultaneously. Really, what does Platform do for you? We become your marketing department. It's like having a full blown marketing department and we're dedicated to only working with you in your area because we have market exclusivity, not the competition. 

Tim Chermak: You also get the built in advantage of when you sign up for Platform, we have 10+ years of tests and experiments and ads that we've run that we've developed our own in-house greatest hits catalog of the best ads ever over the ten years. You don't have to waste your marketing budget testing new ideas, testing “Is this going to work or not?” We already know on day one when you sign up for Platform what ads to run because we know what ads work based off of the last ten years and millions of dollars spent on ads. We already know what ads work. Your ads, or basically your effectiveness, is at full speed from the very first month.

Tim Chermak: If you've ever heard a marketing company say, “It takes a month or two for us to dial it in or for us to run some tests and really figure out what's going to work for you so make sure you give us a couple of months to dial it in,” you'll never hear Platform say that because we already know even in the literal first month you sign up what ad campaigns are going to be the most effective because we've been doing it for ten years. That's what happens when you hire a marketing company that actually specializes in working with realtors. That's what Platform Marketing is. 

Tim Chermak: Now, the question is, “Okay, cool. What does it cost?” It's right on our website. We don't hide from it. In fact, we're proud to say the price of Platform is $1,820. $1,820 a month, so basically, $1,800. We don't hide that. We're not trying to like, “Oh, you can sign up here for more information and we'll send you how much it costs.” No, it's right on our website because for everything we do for you, we're actually really proud that it's that cheap for everything we do. That's basically the cost of, frankly, a less than minimum wage employee. That's the cost of hiring someone and paying them $9 an hour. That's what $1,820 is a month. 

Tim Chermak: Now, It's not $1,820 when you first sign up. I want to be clear on that. We actually give a very, very generous discount when you first sign up for Platform. You're not paying anything near $1,820 when you first sign up. We won't get into the details on this podcast episode, but just schedule a call with us, email us. We'll be happy to send you the details on that. 

Tim Chermak: I do want to be very, very clear that when someone signs up, you don't owe us $1,820 the first month. We actually very gradually start charging you over a period of six months. The first six months of your client, we give you an extremely significant discount off the $1,820. If you're listening to this and this sounds awesome but you're just like, “Hey, I can't afford that,” that's fine because we don't charge you our normal price for the first six months. We give a very, very significant discount for new clients in the first six months ‘cause we want to prove to you that we have skin in the game too. 

Tim Chermak: When someone signs up, we know that you're probably not going to get a bunch of closings from the marketing the first month or two because most of these people are four or five, six months away from being ready to buy or sell. We've structured the pricing so that in those early months, when the marketing is working, when leads are flowing in but you don't necessarily have closings yet because that just takes a while because of the sales cycle of real estate, that we're giving you a massive discount to make it as affordable as possible in those first six months. That explains what we do, the pricing.

Tim Chermak: The last thing I want to say is that looking back over the last decade we've been running this company, I think the most powerful thing I could say, the most persuasive thing I could say about why realtors should give this a shot is that when someone signs up for Platform, they very typically become a client for life. We have clients that have been working with us for five years, for six years, for seven years. 

Tim Chermak: We actually just did a study last month and we crunched all the numbers and made a big spreadsheet of who's been clients for how long, which percentage of our clients have been with us more than six months, which percentage have been with us, whatever. About half of our clients, I said we have slightly over 200 clients right now, more than half of those, so more than 100 of our clients have actually been working with us for more than two years. That's pretty much unheard of for a marketing program, specifically in the real estate industry, to have that many of your clients have been working with you for more than two years because we don't have long term contracts. When you sign up at Platform, you don't have to sign an annual agreement or a two-year contract or anything like that. We do not have long term contracts. 

Tim Chermak: When we say that someone's been working with us for four years or five years or six years or even longer, it's because for, whatever, seven years in a row, they've made the decision that “Seeing all the Platform does for me and the actual results they get for me, I want to keep working with them. I want to keep that exclusivity over my market. I don't want my competition signing up for Platform. I want to keep this for myself,” even though they're not locked into a contract because we believe that a marketing company, frankly, is one of the very few types of companies that shouldn't require a contract. 

Tim Chermak: I understand if you have to sign a contract to retain the services of a lawyer or an accountant or frankly, almost any other type of business service that contracts seem useful, but a marketing company? The whole point is that when you hire a marketing company, you should be making more money as the result of hiring that marketing company because they actually grew your business. That marketing company should not have to lock you into a contract because the reason you stay with them is that you're making more money than you were before you hired them. Frankly, who cares about having a contract if it's actually working? You would never quit. 

Tim Chermak: That's actually one thing that as the founder, CEO of the company, I am really proud of, is that we don't require long term contracts because we know that when people sign up, they typically become clients for life. I think you can see that in all the reviews we have on Facebook and Google that are Platform clients. 

Diana Page: Something I'll add too is that what's really cool is at the end of that six-month period, if you only stay with us for six months when we're giving you a really heavy discount, to be quite transparent, we break even. We're essentially betting our whole business model on the fact that we're really confident that even when you're paying that full price starting month seven, it is going to be a no-brainer investment for you. That's pennies compared to the business growth that’s possible here. 

Tim Chermak: What Diana is saying there just to be really, really clear is that we give you such a discount the first six months, that we're actually losing money as a company. Obviously, we have to pay our team to launch all your ads and edit your videos and everything so there's a cost to us of giving that steep of a discount. We actually lose money the first six months that someone is a client, but that's how confident we are that when someone signs up and they see it working and they stick with it, they very typically become a client that works with us for three, four, five, six, seven years. 

Tim Chermak: Again, that is unheard of in the marketing industry to keep clients that long, but that's how cool the Platform Marketing program is, is that we've just designed it in such a way with this one-client-per-market philosophy that our clients succeed over the long term and their results often get better as time goes on because you're compounding the referrals and the leads that you've converted and they start referring people to you. Again, it all works because of this one-client-per-market philosophy. 

Tim Chermak: Guys, hopefully this podcast episode helped you answer the question of, “Okay, what is Platform? What are the specifics of what you guys do?” If you want to schedule a call with us, reach out. Obviously, go to our website PlatformRealEstate.com and we'll be happy to hop on the phone and explain any additional questions that you might have. 

Diana Page: Thanks for listening, guys.