What Happens When You Spend $1,000 Promoting Every Listing Video

Michele Weaver: And I’m going to say it, minimum at least once a week, someone knows me. At the grocery store, at the gym, at church, anywhere. Anywhere I go, someone recognizes me. And that’s just from being on social media, having great videos.

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 am 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, and welcome back to another episode of the Platform Marketing Show. I'm joined today by Michele Weaver. Michele, welcome to the show.

Michele Weaver: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Tim Chermak: So Michele is an agent near Lake Norman in North Carolina. It's about an hour North of Charlotte. Is that right? 

Michele Weaver: About half an hour.

Tim Chermak: Oh, okay. So just half hour North of Charlotte. Obviously, it's a lake so there's lots of gorgeous lake homes. But there's also homes on the periphery that are in the more normal price range. I actually met Michele in person because you guys lived in Naples for a couple of years. So I live in Naples, Florida. Michele, how long were you in Naples? 

Michele Weaver: Only in Naples for about six months.

Tim Chermak: Okay. So it wasn't long. 

Michele Weaver: No, not at all. And it just happened that we met.

Tim Chermak: Okay. So that's how we first got connected. And then shortly after you basically moved back to North Carolina ‘cause that's where you're originally from. Is that right? 

Michele Weaver: Correct. Yes.

Tim Chermak: Okay. And then you signed up for the Platform Marketing program officially in, did you say 2019 or 2020?  

Michele Weaver: I think 2020.

Tim Chermak: Okay. And you have a really cool before and after story of what that growth has looked like. Because you said the first year, kind of before Platform, you sold about $3 million in real estate. Which is about average for most agents across the country, right? For you, you're probably like, “Oh, wow. That was really bad” or something. But most agents that's what they sell every year. It’s typically $2 to $3 to $4 million means you're in the average agent production. 

But fast forward to this year, here we're about halfway through 2023 as we're recording this. It's like June 1st or 2nd or something today so we're right about halfway through 2023, and you are on pace to do more than $15 million this year. Potentially as much as $20 million this year. So really your business has 5x'd since you first got started with Platform. So that's amazing.

That's not just doubling or tripling or even quadrupling, you've really 5x'd. What has made the biggest difference over the last couple of years? Is it a particular video you did or is it a certain style of ad? ‘Cause that growth like that doesn't happen by accident. What type of marketing is driving that?

Michele Weaver: I mainly do Facebook marketing. Maybe all my social media ‘cause I do a couple other. I do a little bit of TikTok, not that much. But I really concentrate on my Facebook marketing. That's what has propelled me to where I am today. It's on Facebook marketing.

Tim Chermak: And is it a specific type of ad that's done the best? Is it the listing videos you do? Or, ‘cause again, the reason I ask is that growing from $3 million to $5 or $6 million is great, right? But sometimes there's a little bit of luck involved. But growing from $3 million to $15 million, you can't chalk that up to luck. Clearly, something in your marketing is working if you go from $3 to $15 million. ‘Cause there's agents that have been realtors for 10 years or 15 years, and they've never broken 12, 15 million and you hit that within a couple of years. So is there a certain type of ad that's worked really really well for you on Facebook? Or what would you say is like your secret sauce? 

Michele Weaver: I think the listing videos. I think it's everything together actually. All the different social media ads that we put on there. And of course, I work with Platform. And my account manager she just has a way of putting things out there, telling me what to do. Also I do is do what she tells me. The listing videos, the ads that she comes up with, that Platform comes up with, they're just amazing. 

Michele Weaver: I think one of my favorite ads is, it was just a picture of me in a 1980s tracksuit. I got so many hits on that. I got so many comments on that. I still have people saying "You're that real estate agent on that tracksuit, that 1980s tracksuit!" And I think that was about a year ago. And I still have people that see me out at the grocery store or at the restaurants, anywhere.

Tim Chermak: So you are experiencing that effect of when you go out into town, like you said, at the grocery store, you're at a restaurant, whatever, and people actually recognize you because they've seen you on social media. 

Michele Weaver: Well, absolutely. And I'm going to say it, minimum at least once a week someone knows me or they see me on Facebook. They might not know my name but they know it after I meet them. At the grocery store, at the gym, at church - anywhere. Anywhere I go, someone recognizes me and that's just from being on social media, having great videos. 

I think the listing videos are top up there. I kind of like to have fun with my videos. I'm known for, I don't try to be funny, but I’m funny on my videos. And I think people like that and I'm genuine. 

Tim Chermak: So of the listing videos you've done, what type of engagement, how many views are those typically getting? 

Michele Weaver: I think I have up to now, I think I'm averaging over 50. That's my average. I’ve had some that are like 30 and 40. Some may be 60 and 70. So I think I'm averaging 50-some thousand views. 

Tim Chermak: 50. Okay so, 50. Fifty thousand.

Michele Weaver: Yes. And I'm actually having a lot of, I don't know what it's called, my view rate? Like how long they view? Mine is typically longer than normal. So I have that.

Tim Chermak: Okay, yeah. I think that's really important to point out that when you say, “Hey, I've had videos get 30 or 40 or 50 or some as many as 70,” that you're talking 50,000 views or 70,000 views on your listing videos. Most agents throw up a video on YouTube and they're lucky if it gets 50 views, like five-zero. But you're talking about 50,000 views on a lot of your videos. 

Michele Weaver: Yes. And that does, I have people call me though they already have an agent, but they will call me about my listing, and they will say that they saw the video. When I ask if they have an agent, they say “Yes,” I pass them back to the agent. I get a lot of those calls on my videos for my listings. And I think that that equates to more offers on the properties. The more offers there are the better.

Tim Chermak: I'm still just kind of in shock over here that you're like just casually, “Oh yeah, my videos get 30, 40, 50, 70,000 views” because again, most agents almost have no frame of reference of what that even means that your average video is getting that many views. Because they might have never had a video even have 5,000 views or 10,000 views. And you're regularly doing videos that get 40,000 or 50,000 video views.

How many people live in the greater Lake Norman area? 

Michele Weaver: We do about a 50-mile radius so I would say about 250,000, 300,000.

Tim Chermak: Okay, so that's a pretty significant chunk of the population if there's 250,000 people and you've had videos get 50, 60, 70,000 views. No wonder people are recognizing you when you go out to the grocery store, restaurants, wherever, that people actually recognize you. They've probably statistically seen one of your posts on social media. 

So learning all that, it's almost not surprising that your business has grown as much as it has going from $3 million to, hopefully, this year you end somewhere, we're obviously halfway through the year here. But it looks like you're on track to end somewhere between $15 million, maybe as much as $20 million in sales. What is your average price point for you, personally in the Lake Norman area? 

Michele Weaver: Last month it was like $375,000. In different areas, maybe $375,000 to $425,000.

Tim Chermak: Okay. So you're not necessarily just selling $2,000,000 lake homes all the time or million-dollar lake homes. I'm sure there are properties there that are a million dollars but kind of the sweet spot seems to be around $400,000?

Michele Weaver: Exactly, yeah. The couple million dollar properties, I mean we do have some of those around but we have a lot of agents around here, too. Last year I sold two $2,000,000 properties. The rest were probably under $500,000. And even had some that, a lot under $200,000. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah. And I think that's important to point out too, that you're in pretty much a typical American market. So when you say that “Hey, I went from $3 million to $15 million.” It's not like “Oh yeah, but she only sold 15 homes ‘cause they were all million-dollar properties.” It's like no, you're building your business the old-fashioned way by selling a larger volume of homes. 

I think you mentioned that before you got started with all of the Platform Marketing strategy you were selling about 10 homes a year. Which again is like average. The average agent actually in the United States sells fewer than 10 homes a year. And now you're on pace to sell more like 30 or more. 

Michele Weaver: Yes. Yeah. So I think the big thing is when I started Platform. I mean I was doing some marketing myself and I mean, you just don't know what you don't know. And when Platform came, when I joined Platform, when I have my account manager - McCall - she is wonderful, love her, love her. And it's very simple. It's simple but it's hard. I think it's very simple on what Platform does, but if you don't understand it, you'll never get it. Did that make…? I know that didn’t make sense.

Tim Chermak: Yeah. So when you look at, let's say the Platform strategy, I know that you've said in the past “It's not complicated. I just do what they tell me,” right? If you just do what they tell you, you'll have results. What do you mean when you say, do what they tell me? What are some specific examples of things that you just do that maybe other people psych themselves out over and they procrastinate and then they don't do it?

Michele Weaver: The videos. The videos and the pictures. People don't want to be on social media. And it's that they fear it, and there's nothing to be afraid of. I think that when you start doing videos, people say that you can get better at it. I don't necessarily think that you get better at it. You just don't care about it as much anymore. 

You don't care about if you're missing a sip, missing a sentence, missing a word. You just do it. And I think that fear holds people back and I think that McCall, my account manager, she’ll push you, she encourages you. A lot of people don't like to be on social media but that's where everything is now. Everything’s on the internet now. You have to be on social media, I think, to be successful especially on real estate. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, you know for years, there was almost a distinction in the marketing community between normal marketing and social media marketing. Where if you attended marketing conferences, there were often breakout sessions and speaker panels and whatnot that would talk about “social media marketing” as if it was some type of special kind of marketing that was separate from normal marketing. And now social media marketing just is marketing, right? 

You don't have to create a special separate category of doing Facebook marketing versus other kinds of marketing. ‘Cause it's almost as a culture, as a society, we're at this point where, if you're a local small business owner and guess what? If you're a realtor, you're a local small business owner, and you're not using social media to advertise, well you're just missing out on probably 80% of the marketing results because that's where people are. 

Tim Chermak: People don't read the newspapers as much as they used to anymore. Or they don't reliably watch cable TV or the same network TV channels that they used to like in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. There were only a handful of channels to advertise on. So if you did TV advertising, you could essentially reach everyone, right? Or you basically took it for granted that everyone read the local newspaper. And so if you just advertised in the newspaper, you would effectively reach everyone, right? Well today, the equivalent of newspaper advertising is Facebook. Almost all of the homeowners in your community that are over the age of 30, 35 are on Facebook. So that's where you should be advertising. 

And I know it's again, super popular right now, especially in 2023. It seems to be really popular to be worried about “Well, what's your TikTok strategy or Snapchat strategy?” Or recently, Twitter has started to become a topic of conversation because obviously Elon Musk acquired Twitter and he's making lots of reforms and making it better for advertisers and all that. There's YouTube, right? There's all sorts of different media properties and channels you could be advertising, but Facebook is like old faithful. It's just - it always works. And I think it's because Facebook's demographics are typically people over the age of 35. And for most advertisers, that's like a negative. 

Like if you're running a big brand for Procter and Gamble or something, you're handling some mass-market product, you want the under-35 crowd ‘cause typically trends start with people that are younger. And then once people in their twenties see what all the teenagers are doing, then they start buying a product. And when people in their thirties and forties see what people in their twenties are using, and that's how products get diffused across society. It often starts with young people which is why capturing the young people is so important from a marketing perspective. But that's not really true in real estate.

Real estate’s this weird exception where no, all things being equal, if I'm spending money, I don't want to pay to reach people that are 23 or 24 years old because they don't have any money to buy an expensive home. And they probably don't own a home so you're not going to get listing leads if that's the demographic you're targeting. But with Facebook ads, like you said, if most of the people clicking on your ads, you're engaging are 40 years old, 50 years old, 60 years old… that's exactly the kind of client you want and those are the people using Facebook. 

So sorry for that little rant, but it's a question I so often get of “Why is the Platform strategy so focused on social media and Facebook in particular?” And the answer is “Well, Facebook is modern newspaper advertising.” That's the way to think about it. It's not really social media as much as it's just Facebook is newspaper advertising for the 21st century. So if you were advertising for someone in 1970, or 1980, or 1990 and you weren't doing newspaper ads, you're kind of a moron ‘cause that's where all the eyeballs were. I could say the same thing of Facebook advertising in 2023 and beyond. 

So okay, that's great! So lots of listing videos. That seems to be the first thing you brought up, is the videos that you do. Now, have you done any exceptionally creative listing videos? Or what do you typically do in a listing video that's getting it that much exposure? Are you holding the camera? Are you on camera? What do those listing videos look and feel like? 

Michele Weaver: I do both. Sometimes I have people videotaping me. And sometimes I walk around with a selfie stick and a gimbal myself. People seem to like it when I walk around ‘cause I get all excited when I like something about the house. I talk about my top five, I talk about the area, talk about the house. I think that my best, the ones that get the most views are, in the beginning, you have to have some type of action or what is it? The pink elephant, the purple elephant you talk about? It's that catch. Your first 5 seconds that you're on camera. And some of mine had been, I jumped into the lake when it was freezing out, I jumped into the lake. That got a lot of views on that listing video. I was in a golf cart. I was on the 4-wheeler. Anything with action in the beginning. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, like anything where when someone is scrolling their Facebook news feed and they see a video, like you said, of an agent jumping into a lake or driving somewhere in a golf cart or in a boat or whatever, they're going to stop for a split second. They're going to stop and be like, “Okay, what is this video about? Cause this doesn't look like an ad.” Like what's going on here? And then you earn the right to maybe, they watch the next five or 10 seconds because you hooked them in within the first second or two. 

Michele Weaver: Yes. That's exactly right. And I think those videos, I think that they do better than just standing in front of a house. I did the one with an umbrella. Little figure. The umbrella had a flower underneath it, on the inside of it. That got a lot of views. And I think because it's raining out so I just grabbed the umbrella and went for it. We weren't just standing out in front of the house.

Tim Chermak: Well, you know as you say that, I'm sure people are listening to this like “What? So your advice is use an umbrella in your listing videos?” But like the underlying principle here, it actually makes perfect sense to me, of why an ad like that or why a video like that would do well, is the underlying principle of the ads that we see work the best are ads that don't look like ads, right?

You have to remember that people don't use Facebook because they want to see ads. They use Facebook because they want to follow the people that they follow and their friends and family, and local small businesses, and connections like that. Or groups they're a member of. They don't want their newsfeed to be a bunch of ads. So to get them to watch one of your videos or click on one of your ads, you kind of have to disguise it and make sure it doesn't look like an ad. 

So the fact that you would have started a video and it's raining and you have an umbrella, that makes it look like a real authentic video. They don't even realize that they're being advertised to. That you're a realtor running a paid ad. Because the way the human brain works is “Oh there's no way that's an ad. It's raining outside. They wouldn't have filmed a commercial in the rain. Who does that?” So it just makes it feel a lot more real and authentic. So again, with that mental model in mind, it's just not surprising to me that an ad like that would do well. 

There was also a video that I wrote down in my notes here before we hit record on this, of one of my favorite ads that you've ever done was, I actually can't remember if it was to sell a house or if you were looking for a buyer. But you recorded a dog and it was I think, you were trying to help one of your buyers find a house. That was the context, right?

Michele Weaver: Yes. So what I was doing, this was my bestfriend's daughter and her fiance and they had a dog. So we were looking to find them a house. You know limited inventory? So I love the dogs that talk, you know? The animals that talk on camera so I got up McCall and Andrew, and Andrew did the voiceover for me. He came up, all I did was did the video. Andrew and McCall came up with all the dialog and here it was, the dog talking and it was Andrew. And he put that in there. I had so many views on that. That was probably one of my favorite videos that I did.

Tim Chermak: Yeah, so it was literally video footage of a dog and we recorded a voiceover with a human voice as if it's the dog talking. And we kind of edited the voiceover and the dog is saying “Hi! My name is Baxter and I'm looking for a new home where I can have a bigger yard with space to run around. Here's my mom and dad.” And it showed a picture of the buyers and the video starts with this. I don't know if it was 10 or 20 seconds of the dog talking, obviously, but keep in mind, it's obviously a voiceover. And it's just a cute way that captures your attention where you're like, “What is going on here? What is this about?” And then you realize, “Oh okay, they're trying to find a house for this couple that has a dog so that the dog has a bigger yard to run around.” 

I can't even remember what the point of the video was and that was several years ago, and I actually remember that video. That wasn't like last week you ran that. That was a while ago and I remember it like, that's how good that ad was. And so yeah, anytime you can just disguise an ad in a way that makes it look fun and real and just not like an ad, that's going to do well. 

Michelle, how much do you spend on your Facebook ads on a monthly basis? Do you know what your ads budget is approximately? 

Michele Weaver: I think I'm probably spending around $2,000 to maybe $3,000, $3,500 depending on how many listings. My last 2 listings I actually have, that are closing this week, they were just random calls off Facebook. They wanted me to come list their house because they’d seen me on Facebook. And I spend more money on the listing ads than I do on just a picture ad or another video.

Tim Chermak: Yup.

Michele Weaver: I also spend a lot of money on, I guess you would say bringing up - highlighting a neighborhood business. And I think that really helps because you're helping someone else and in turn that helps you.

Tim Chermak: And so every listing, are you spending $500 per listing video or 

$1,000? What is the average listing video you spend for just that video campaign? 

Michele Weaver: I'm spending minimum of $1,000, sometimes more. And I put…

Tim Chermak: Okay. So that's why these listing videos you mentioned are getting so many views. And I think it's really important to point that out. That if you just upload a video to Facebook and spend $20 on an ad or zero like most agents do, no one's going to see it. And it's almost, it raises the question of why did you even waste the time recording a video if you're not going to spend a lot of money to promote it? Cause no one's going to see it, right? 

Facebook is not a charity. If you upload a video, they're not just going to show it to tens of thousands of people out of the goodness of their hearts. They're running a business. And so if you want to get that much exposure and that many video views in your videos, you have to put, in some cases, a significant ads budget behind it. 

Tim Chermak: But I love this strategy because your career over the last couple years, Michele, is really proof that this concept works of every listing. It’s like an endless chain that every listing gets you another listing if you spend $1,000 on every listing video. Because if you do that, that's why you're getting 40,000, 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 video views. And all it takes is a seller out there to see “Holy cow! This realtor got 68,000 video views on this ad” ‘cause it says that publicly on the ad, right? That's not buried in the analytics in the background. It says right on the post how many video views it has. 

So there's kind of some built-in social proof there. If a homeowner sees that, and they're thinking about selling their house, they're probably going to want to call you. Because they're thinking “Wow, this agent gets a lot more exposure for her listings than any other agent I've seen. I want to work with an agent like that.” And the price of that is you have to be willing, you have to have the courage to invest a thousand bucks every time you have a listing. 

Michele Weaver: I agree and I think that in this market you shouldn’t have to have that much courage. I mean it will sell. It goes out to, you hit so many people on it. And like you said, that's my biggest value proposition is my marketing. I spend more money, now and I'm making more money because I'm getting more listings. I'm getting more buyers. I spend more money than probably 95% of the agents out there. I get more exposure for your home. I get more offers. We get better offers. There's more competition. And it just keeps revolving and it's just a big circle. And as long as I keep doing what Platform and McCall tells me to do, then that's what happens.

Initially, we started that with like spending $250 on a listing and I went to $500. And until you got probably up to $750 to $1000, I mean that's when it really changed. That's when it really clicks. That's when it really comes in. And that's when everybody start calling me instead of me calling everybody else looking for business. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah. You almost can't put a price tag on what happens in your business when people start calling you versus you having to call and follow up with them. But I guess you can put a price tag on it because the price tag is “Hey, you got to spend about a thousand dollars every time you get a listing video” because that's what creates the shock and awe effect of like “Hey, your video didn't just get 5,000 views or 10,000 views, your video got 40 or 50 or 60,000 views.” And that's just so surprising to see a video of a home pop up on your newsfeed that has 50,000 or 60,000 video views. 

Just your curiosity makes you want to click and see what all the fuss is about. And then obviously if they click and they watch the video, they're on your retargeting list so then they'll keep seeing ads from you pop up and that's why you're getting all these phone calls of people actually calling you. 

Tim Chermak: I know that when we were talking before the show, before we hit record you mentioned, “Hey, one other cool thing about working with Platform is that I no longer feel like I have to cold call people. I don't have to reach out to people as much. They call me. They reach out to me when they're ready to go.” And that's a lot more manageable, I guess of a time management strategy of when the leads are ready to go, they call you not the other way around. 

Michele Weaver: Oh, it definitely is. And it's definitely, cold calling or doing mailers, it just sucks your time. And doing Platform and doing the Facebook marketing, that's all I do. This is all I do. And I have people calling me. And the time that I've saved on this, I can't get it back. And we're actually getting ready to hire, I'm going to get ready to hire an assistant and a buyer's agent, in the future here.

Tim Chermak: That's awesome. 

Michele Weaver: So we're doing that now so we can wrap up to make even more. And it actually helps someone out. I have too many buyers right now, I can't get to them all. And that's a good problem to have, isn't it?

Tim Chermak: I just want to be really clear that when Michele talks about investing that much in her listing videos, it has nothing to do with “Hey I think it’s going to help the home sell faster.” Might that happen every now and then? Yeah. Sometimes you might get more offers or getting more exposure actually does help the home sell. But for the most part, if it's priced right, it's going to sell. Like the reason you invest in these listing videos and spending a lot of money on them is to build your brand as a real estate agent, so that people remember you. It's not about them remembering the house, it's about them remembering you. And that's what builds your brand over time. 

So Michele, when you started the Platform strategy a couple of years ago, how long did it take for you to have a sense of like “Hey, I think this is working”? Did it take 90 days or did it take a full year, or how long did it take for you to be able to look yourself in the mirror and be like, “Okay, I made the right decision signing up for this”? 

Michele Weaver: I think I have my first client within a month. And I think after 90 days it just kept building. It kept building, and building, and building. And I mean, I knew I did the right thing after a month when I got my first client. I didn't have a past client base, I didn't have a customer base, that type of thing, so I needed new people. I have had my license since 1996 but I haven’t practiced real estate and I jumped back into it. I jumped back into it and everything changed in a different area. And I think I had my first client within a month, which I know is fast. But I think probably like 90, 90 to 120 days. After the 6th month, I mean there was no doubt. After the 6 months, I was on a roll. And I just kept building and building. Like you said, it builds your brand is what it's doing. And it doesn't look like you're building your brand.

One of my other favorite posts are the ones about Memorial Day, Labor Day that type of thing, that you guys write up. These extensive posts about history, this type of thing and it’s me in the picture. I would never come up with that. I get so many comments, I get so many likes, I get so many shares on those and that's just building, building, building your brand. And it doesn't look like an ad. But it is an ad. So…

Tim Chermak: Yeah. It's that kind of low-key brand-building over time as a realtor that keeps people coming back to you. It kind of ignites your sphere to want to refer more people to you. So it's not always about super salesy ads. It's not always about even homes that are literally for sale. It's about just staying top of mind with people in a creative way so that when the time is right, they call you and not some other agent. And you obviously do that by just consistently launching retargeting ads.

Michele, how many new ads do you launch per month? Are you aiming for one new ad a week or two new ads a week? Or what do you think your average is in terms of new ads that get launched every month? 

Michele Weaver: Past 2 months, hardly any. That's not good. Before that, we were launching probably 3 to 4 ads, like retargeting ads. Probably for retargeting ads. And I try to do at least do 2 listing videos a month and if I don't have the listings I go borrow them or I go do new construction. So we definitely try to do that. And you can tell a big difference if I don't do them or not. 

… Consistency is the key and your knowledge of the marketing. Because I know nothing. I just send it in to McCall, McCall puts it on and it just goes. Then people comment, I answer them back and that's it. And like I said, now I have people calling me instead of having to go out look for business which I am so glad I'm in that place right now.

Tim Chermak: And I think it's really important what you mentioned there, Michele, that even if you don't have any listings, you go borrow listings from another agent. Or you film videos of new construction homes, that saying, “Hey, I don't have any listings. So I guess I can't film listing videos,” that's not an excuse, right? Well, go find a listing to film then, even if it's not your own so that you're regularly putting listing videos out there. Because people will forget whose listing it is. But if they see you in the video, that's what's important, is you're building your brand over time. Because it just makes you look like an active, successful, productive agent. 

So there's a sense of fake it till you make it, right? That even if you don't have a lot of business going on, like back when you were only selling $3 million a year, you kind of manufactured an image of “No, oh no, I'm a really successful, busy agent. Look at all these homes I'm selling.” And you kind of created this reality even before it technically existed. And now you are selling $12, $15 million, maybe you might even hit $20 million in sales because of the amount of exposure and the amount of ads that are going out there. 

So let me ask you one final question, Michele. When you look at people that are maybe struggling with Platform or they're a bit anxious because the results haven't kicked in yet, what do you think is usually the problem of someone who has started the Platform strategy, but maybe they haven't gotten results yet and they're six months in, wherever. They're starting to get a little bit nervous. What do you think the problem is? What advice would you give them? 

Michele Weaver: I think the problem is, because I had this in the beginning once in a while, I wasn't doing my ads. I wasn't doing my homework that you were supposed to send in. Your pictures, your videos. When I started doing listing videos and all my pictures - and you can do 4 to 8. You can do as many ads as you want. Retargeting ads don't cost that much money and that's what really gets you seen. And I think that people are not doing those or not doing them consistently. And I think you have to do your videos, you have to do your pictures. And minimally four, so that will give you one a week of the retargeting ad. If you can do 8, that's great. That's even better that you can do 2 a week. 

I think that people have to stay consistent with it and not say “No, we're not getting anything.” Well, what ads have you run? What pictures have you posted? What have you posted? And they're posting too. They're not doing any listing videos, they're not highlighting any local businesses. The picture ads are pretty simple. I mean you guys write them up, all we had to do is take a picture. And you just have to do it. You just have to take the time, time block, and do that first thing in the month. 

Last month, 2 months ago, I went out. I had a friend go out with me. We went out to lunch. I think I sent in 8 ads. I did I think 8 pictures and 2 videos, so that was 10. I sent in 10 ads and it took us 3 hours. It doesn't take long. You just have to stop and take the time and do it. 

Tim Chermak: So really it just comes down to the consistency of how consistently you're doing your marketing homework. You can't have these periods of months go by at a time where you're not creating new ads. You need to be consistently doing it every week. And if you do that over time, yes you're going to build a brand, right? But you can't just do it great for a month and then for three months in a row or five months in a row not send in any marketing content ‘cause that's not what the Platform strategy is all about. 

Michele Weaver: No, that's exactly it. I didn't send any last month so this month I have to double up. If I want to catch up, you can't even miss a month. That's not even good. But if you miss a month then you have to double up the next month on the retargeting ads. You have to get those in there because people see your face. You guys have it that on the retargeting ads people will see different ads and they start to see my face all the time, all the time. Every time they click on Facebook, I'm on there. And I get people that I know saying “Every time I open Facebook you're on there, what's the deal?” And I said “It's my marketing company and they're branding me. That's it.” And that's what you have to do.

Tim Chermak: Cool! Michele, this was a great interview. I'm hoping that this was really encouraging to anyone listening, whether you're currently working with Platform or not. Hearing that level of growth over the last couple of years, going from $3 million to again, this year you'll do somewhere between $15 million, maybe as much as $20 million in a market where your average transaction is still $300,000 to $400,000. So your marketing is working in other words. 

No one grows that much just by random chance. So I'm hoping that's really encouraging to anyone listening. And we gave away a lot of really specific tactical advice about listing videos and the type of ads to do to have success. So Michele, thank you for your time. And we'll see you guys on the next episode of the Platform Marketing Show. 

Michele Weaver: Thank you!