The Ultimate Work-Life Balance Strategy For Realtors

Brandi Long: This is a huge compliment. The biggest thing that I can say that I've enjoyed by using Platform is that it truly, and I know that this is a big statement, but it has truly improved my quality of life because I have been able to say no to people more. Like, I'm in the process, I'm in this season of setting boundaries. And people, because it looks like, well, because I am busy and I'm posting that on social media and Platform is helping us do that as well, they're willing to wait. 

Brandi Long: And I wanted to say that because that is something that I can say no to people over and over and over again and they literally will wait. Not that I'm doing that, but because I'm setting more boundaries and because I'm all over social media and everyone's like, "She is the go-to agent in our area," they're like if I can't get to it, like I don't show, I don't do any appointments on Sundays, so everyone knows upfront, they know not even to ask.

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 this morning by Brandi Long, who's in Arcadia, Florida, kind of the DeSoto County, central Florida area. Brandi, welcome to The Platform Marketing Show. 

Brandi Long: Thank you so much for having me. 

Tim Chermak: Let's dive straight into some details here because this is pretty impressive. Brandi is on pace again to sell, or to close, over 100 transactions this year. I think you're at 95 right now, is that what you said? 

Brandi Long: Yes. 

Tim Chermak: And we are recording this, by the way, towards the end of October in 2024. So when we say that she's on pace to do 100, she's definitely going to get 100 by the end of the year. There's still two full months before the end of the year and I'm sure you have a bunch in your pipeline set to close before the end of the year. 

Tim Chermak: You signed up for Platform just 90 days ago so this is gonna be a really interesting episode because this is not one of those stories where, “Hey, I've been with Platform for two years,” or “I've been with Platform for a whole year and here's how it changed my business.” You've just joined basically 90 days ago. So it's end of October, you basically signed up in June, July. Obviously, people listening this can do the math. It's like, well, that means you were already very successful before Platform. You did not sign up for Platform because, “Hey, I have a failing business. I desperately need more closings. I'm hoping Platform saves my business.” It's like, no, no, no. You were already very successful as an agent before Platform Marketing and you signed up in what's going to be one of your best years ever. 

Tim Chermak: Walk me through why in the first place you decided to sign up for this Platform Marketing strategy even though you were already killing it. I mean, you were already on pace to basically close 100 transactions this year. What made you think, “Hey, I'm going to add some marketing?”

Brandi Long: I mean, honestly, like true transparency, that is what I pride myself on, we did 144 closings last year so we won't even get there this year. That last year was insane. 

Tim Chermak: And by the way, is it just you? Do you have a team? What is that 100 transactions comprising? 

Brandi Long: It's me, just me, and my mom is the broker. She kind of helps me out in the background, like going to showings if I can't get there, but it's just me and then her and then I have two full-time assistants.

Tim Chermak: Okay, so to be clear, when you say, “Hey, we're doing 100 transactions this year,” it's not like me and four buyer's agents. It's basically you and a couple assistants, but you are the agent. 

Brandi Long: Yeah, that would be the next hire is probably someone that's already experienced in real estate that I could just hand– because right now, it's such a blessing, but I have too many leads coming in so I need someone to hand those off to. I'm praying that God sends that perfect person here soon. But yeah, last year, we did 144 closings. I'm hoping that we'll reach 120 this year. 

Brandi Long: So we've got about 18 under contract right now, but in regards to your question, why, in April of this year, I had stumbled upon a Facebook ad that y’all had ran. I don't know what it was, I can't even tell you. And then I just stopped and looked at it for more than three seconds, so obviously another one was shown to me, and I looked into it and at that point, I was drowning. I'm thinking, “Man, this would be amazing to be able to have some time and leverage and pay someone to do the marketing for us,” even though that's one of my favorite parts of this job, is the marketing of it, but I just couldn't dedicate that amount of time and creativity to creating the ads. And so I had connected with Diana and at that time I was like, I don't know. Here in Arcadia, I'm selling $10,000 lots. I'm selling $150,000 houses. We're not Selling Sunset over here so I'm like, that's a really big investment. 

Tim Chermak: So you have all sorts of price ranges there. I know that in the Arcadia, DeSoto County area, it's not super duper luxury, wealthy. I mean, what is your median average price for a single family home in your area? 

Brandi Long: It's gonna be probably around $230,000 to $240,000. And I mean, we've sold, like the cheapest lot I've ever sold was $2,500. I mean, we've also sold over a million dollars for a commercial piece of property. It's very much you have to know a lot about a lot. 

Tim Chermak: It really puts in a perspective to when you say, “Hey, we're gonna close over 100 deals this year,” well, your average commission check is probably $5,000 if you were to average it out. 

Brandi Long: It's literally probably not even that big. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, right. I mean, like for you to sell, or achieve really, 100, 120, 140 units, it's like, yeah, you're bringing in probably $400,000, $500,000, potentially even $600,000 in gross commission but a lot of agents can make that much money by selling 30 homes a year in their markets and you're having to hustle to sell 100+ homes a year or so. 

Tim Chermak: I hope this podcast episode is interesting for people across the country that are in a market like that so just that you realize you're not alone. There are many agents in those $200,000-price markets that are absolutely killing it. Brandi is one of them and I'm looking forward to sharing what you're doing that's working. 

Brandi Long: I mean, it's definitely, like to close 144 closings last year that, I mean, we were working 60, 70 hours a week every week. Thank God that we love it. We do it, the kids are with us, and we all just try to be intentional with our time and do everything. But yeah, it is exhausting and so much fun. 

Tim Chermak: So it was April that you apparently saw one of Platform's Facebook ads. You got connected with Diana. You said, “Hey, what's this about?” And I'm guessing that your mental calculus at the time wasn't really, “I need better marketing so we can sell more homes,” as much as, “This is a time-saving strategy for me. If I can hire Platform and it saves me even, frankly, five hours a week of time, then that's absolutely worth it to free up your time to sell more houses.” Was that the thought process? 

Brandi Long: Yeah, I mean, for sure. Honestly, there was a little bit of fear involved too because I know if I'm seeing the ads, there are other agents around me that could possibly be seeing the ads. We were already the top producing agents in our county and we never want to be chasing after someone. We always want to be looking forward. And so this felt like a good thing to take on so that we could go further in other ventures. 

Brandi Long: We went to an event where Platform was in April and I told Diana I would stop by the booth and talk to her and I didn't because I was so scared. I'm like the most introverted extrovert and so I didn't. And then my mom and I were in my office and we were chatting one day during the summer in July and I'm like, “I see this Platform. This is really interesting.” She’s like, “I've been seeing it too. Let's just do it,” and so we decided that she was going to pay for Platform, I was going to pay for the actual Facebook leads and for the Facebook ads. And then, yeah, we said we were going to go all in, like whatever ad. 

Brandi Long: I even told Trinity last week, I'm like, if you give me eight ads, I will do eight ads. I do not want this to fail. I don't want to get to the six-month mark, ‘cause that's what we gave ourselves, six months, to make sure this was successful. I didn't want to get to that and think that maybe it was me. I wanted it to be completely like, “No, Platform is crap. No, we're not gonna do that.” I wanted to really test it out. 

Tim Chermak: And I think that's so important what you just said that because any marketing investment, whether it's Platform or not, it's very ambiguous and sometimes it's hard to measure if it's working and how well it's working if it's working. Obviously, there's so many variables that go into measuring ROI when you're a small business owner. You might get a straight up lead that comes from one of the Platform Marketing campaigns, like an actual lead that comes through the CRM that's like, “This is from this Platform Marketing campaign.” It's like, okay, so that's pretty obvious to know where that business came from if it's that straightforward. But 90% of the time, it's not that straightforward. 

Tim Chermak: 90% of the time, the phone calls you get, the messages you get, it might be a friend of a friend. It might be a past client's cousin. Or maybe it's a past client you just lost contact with and they saw some of your Platform-style Facebook ads but they never actually clicked on any and then they call you and maybe you even go show them a house or you go to a listing appointment and then and only then do they mention, “Oh yeah, I've been seeing you on Facebook,” and you realize, oh, if you hadn't volunteered that information, if you hadn't gone out of your way to tell me that, you would have never known to give credit to Platform for that deal. 

Tim Chermak: That's the conversation we're so often having with our clients, is it's not that we want to take credit for every transaction you do because that wouldn't make sense either, but you have to realize with any marketing you do, you have to be aware that it's not going to be as straightforward as a Zillow lead. 

Tim Chermak: I think, frankly, that's why agents got so addicted to Zillow over the years. Wasn't even necessarily the quality of the leads, but it was so straightforward to measure what's the ROI off of how much I'm paying Zillow ‘cause you know 100% or 0% is this is Zillow lead. But when you're doing actual marketing that's about building a brand and it might be a video of you at a local small business talking about your favorite coffee shop or your favorite bakery to get pastries or your favorite place to grab a slice of pizza or whatever, it's like, that's not necessarily going to create a very obvious, oh, this lead came from this video. 

Tim Chermak: So, you're 90 days in. You're not six months and you said you were going to give it six months so this would be really awkward if you quit in 90 days, but you're 90 days in. What are you seeing so far that, is Platform working? Is it not? What have been the feedback from your community? What is the vibe right now that you're about three months in?

Brandi Long: We were already on social media and so people would comment here and there about our social media like, “Y'all are ahead of the times,” because I always tell everyone Arcadia is about 20 years behind everyone. We still receive a fax every now and then. It's wild. But I would say the biggest change that we've seen or that we've seen over the past 90 days is definitely like more people– let me back up a little bit. 

Brandi Long: I had always been thinking we need to do video. We had been using professional marketing or professional photography but no one had been doing video. I know. Like I said, 20 years behind everyone. And so I'm like, I really wanna do video. And then when I had that first call with Andrew Madsen, he's like, “We're gonna want you to do listing videos.” I'm like, “Okay. I know I should be doing that, but do I really, really have to do that?” And he said, “For sure.” So I'm like, “Okay, I'll do it,” and so we started doing the videos.

Brandi Long: I think that is really what Platform, the first thing, the first benefit of Platform is pushing me to do videos. And I don't have the time to take my cell phone and do the video so we do hire a professional videographer. We've done 16 listing videos in the past 90 days. A lot of people have been commenting on the videos like, “We see you all over.” I see like, “That listing video was super cool,” because we try to keep it interesting and not boring. And so I would say, everywhere I go, everywhere mom goes, she’s at the gas station, like Brandi is just all over Facebook, all over. She's killing those videos. And so I think that's been the biggest thing that we've seen over the past 90 days. 

Tim Chermak: So people are telling you in real life, “Hey, I love that video,” or “I love that post you did.”

Brandi Long: Oh yeah, for sure. 

Tim Chermak: Is there any specific retargeting ad that you've done that you can think of in the last couple months that people actually mentioned to you, again, in real life, “Oh, I love such-and-such post?”

Brandi Long: The one that people reached out to me about the most and people still talk to me about is the first ad we ever did with Platform. Andrew assigned to me the one where I'm holding up a dollar bill downtown. That one was shared so many times, had so many comments, it was shared again the other day even though the ad’s 90 days old. And then people, I stop a lot downtown Arcadia, like little shops, and everyone still comments on that and how right on it was and someone just needed to put the words to what everyone was feeling. So that one was really stood out in my mind. 

Brandi Long: And then the one that was like, “Holy moly, that's really good marketing,” was the one where Trinity had me stand in front of a house with a sign and then they Photoshopped 100 For Sale signs behind us. That one was like, dang, that really puts it into perspective. It's not four signs, it's 100. 

Tim Chermak: So for people listening that have no idea what we're talking about here, that first ad that Brandi mentioned, basically what we have the client do is you hold a $1 bill and then we wrote some ad copy that goes along with that that basically just talks about your dollar goes further when it's spent locally and then we just list off all the ways that people don't think of like, hey, if you spend a dollar at a local boutique, for example, versus buying something off Amazon or whatever, that boutique now keeps the wages in the community that employs someone who works there. They might go spend money at the local coffee shop on their lunch break. Now, the coffee shop has money. Obviously, the cashflow circulates much more if you keep your dollars local. 

Tim Chermak: The cool thing about that ad, the psychology of that ad is there's a built in incentive for the community to share it. Obviously, if you own a small business, you're like, oh yeah, definitely, and then so they're gonna share that video for you. So, often we're thinking about that next level of ad psychology when we write ads at Platform. It's not just always about real estate, it's about what incentive structures can you create with your social media that actually incentivize other people to share it for you so it gives you extra reach above and beyond your actual ads budget. And then the second ad that Brandi just mentioned there is, I’m actually not even sure what we call that ad. 

Brandi Long: It's like Not Your Average Agent, I think. 

Tim Chermak: I’m not even sure what we call it internally, but basically what we do is we have you send us a picture of you standing next to one of your listing signs in a yard somewhere and then our ads team basically crops out the sign and then duplicates it and Photoshop it so there's actually like 100 signs in the yard and it just looks ridiculous.

Brandi Long: Yeah, it's so cool. 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, we do however many homes you sold last year. So if you sold 20 homes last year, which more people are frankly closer to 20, 30, etc., then there'll be 20, 30 signs in the yard. But we make it look pretty realistic where it's like, oh wow, there's actually 27 signs in that yard, whatever. Brandi had 100 so it just looks absolutely ridiculous. But it's like, here's how many actual transactions we had last year so it visually puts things into perspective of just how many homes you guys are selling compared to the average agent. 

Tim Chermak: That's, I think, what good social media does, is it's not just empty bragging with words, but you always find an interesting, compelling visual that hooks you in so you can hook them in with something visual, whether it's a photo or a video, then they'll actually read some of the ad copy. But I think a lot of people spend a lot of time writing an essay, writing ad copy, and they don’t do a whole lot of thinking about how am I actually gonna convince people to stop scrolling and read this. And you could have the most badass essay ever, but if no one reads it because there's not a catchy image with it, then there's no point. So, you've been with it for 90 days now. Have you gotten any leads who mentioned seeing your Facebook posts? What has been the ROI? I know it's only 90 days in, so it's kinda hard to judge. 

Brandi Long: I think just more of people want to– when we show up to listings, I'm mainly a listing agent. I do some with buyers, but just based off past and other marketing, we've just always been more heavily on listings. And I will say, people look for several reasons to hire you. They wanna see you everywhere, and I think the more reasons you give them to hire you, the easier it is for them to just not even look at the listing agreement. They just blindly sign it. 

Brandi Long: And so I think doing the videos, when we go to listing appointments, they already know what we can do. Most of the time we don't ever get shocked when we show up to a listing. They don't call anyone else and they already have their mind made up just because of social proof. And now that we've added ads on top of that, the people that I didn't have as personal friends on my Facebook, they're getting marketed to on the business page. 

Brandi Long: We just ran one, it just went out this morning, about capable kids, about my kids putting out signs and helping me that they kind of already get to know me. They feel like we're BFFs by the time we get there and ready to sign on the dotted line. So, I would say it's just more social proof and just more like, “Okay, I can't not hire her. I can't go interview anyone else.” 

For more of this episode, listen on Apple or Spotify Podcasts.