Why I Quit Spending $5,000/Month On Zillow

 Nancy Brook: They're going to get to know you. That's the difference between Platform Marketing and Zillow. Zillow, yeah, they'll see your little face every time they look at a house, but they don't really get to know you other than, “That's weird. She sure has a lot of listings.” That's what they think. 

 Nancy Brook: With this, all of a sudden, they're seeing all of your ads. It's not about, “Hey, buy for me,” it's, “Hey, here's my other listing. Here's my listing. Here's some information about me. Here's something funny.” It just helps them feel like they're getting to know you. I think, in this day and age, it's all about being a local celebrity.

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 Nancy Brook in Billings, Montana. Nancy, welcome to the show. 

 Nancy Brook: Hey, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. 

Tim Chermak: Nancy has built a successful career as a real estate salesperson in Billings, Montana, as well as started to build out a team that's producing as well. We were just chatting before the show and I think the total volume last year was around $12 million. That's in a market, Billings, Montana, where the medium sales price hovers between $350,000 and $400,000. 

Tim Chermak: I always think that's an important asterisk to add. When you hear that someone's selling $12 million, if they're in a market where all the homes are $1 million, it means they sold a dozen homes last year. You're having to do a fair amount of volume to hit $12 million, so that's pretty impressive. 

Tim Chermak: Nancy, one thing I want to dive right into and ask you about is that you actually have a pretty impressive corporate background before you ever got into real estate. I know you have an MBA, you've worked in marketing before getting into real estate. How has that informed how you think about business development, how you think about marketing in terms of what works in the corporate world versus what you see working now in your real estate career?

Nancy Brook: Just as we were talking earlier, before we hit record, that is a really interesting thing that's happened in the world. Now, I was in marketing and advertising before we even had computers doing all of our work, so it's been a long time. What I've seen through the years is that, I worked for a regional bank and I worked for a regional healthcare center in the marketing area and business development, and one of the things I would say is when you're working for corporate, it's all about building your brand. The brand isn't me personally working in marketing. It's not about a specific doctor, typically a specific lender. What it's about is building the brand.

Nancy Brook: Now, when you're talking about real estate, what I've seen since I've been in the business since 2015 is a change from marketing a box brand. I know there's a lot of people who probably are part of the franchise, which is fine, but that used to be the draw. “You're with RE/MAX. You're with Better Homes. You're with Century 21. We want to work with you because you're with this company.” 

 Nancy Brook: What I'm seeing now is that marketing isn't so much about getting the name out of the brand. It's more about getting your personal connection with an audience. People want to work with you. It's less important what the big box name is behind you as it is you connecting with the individual. That's what I think has changed. It's become one on one. That's why things like video have become just so important to mix in with real estate. 

Tim Chermak: I think that's definitely a point of disconnect between most brokers and most agents now, is the brokers are often living in this world of yesterday where they imagine that people care about Century 21 or the balloons at RE/MAX or Keller Williams or eXp. Whatever brokerage, they're all the same. People do not care. Homeowners do not care what brokerage you're with. They want to work with the individual agent. 

Tim Chermak: We know this because if you're a top agent and let's just say that you are with RE/MAX and you were selling 50 homes a year and you had a great reputation in your target market community, if you move from RE/MAX to Century 21, probably all of those people will still want to work with you again. They have literally, and I mean literally in the literal dictionary sense of the term, zero loyalty towards RE/MAX or Century 21. It's all about the actual agent that they worked with. It just doesn't make any sense to spend your marketing energy or dollars promoting the literal brokerage brand when you should be promoting your personal brand.

Nancy Brook: I started off with a very small independent broker here in Billings. I worked with this broker for a year. I made the switch to RE/MAX brokerage and the reason was just the splits. Even though the office fees were more, the splits were just a little better. Overall, I was going to have a little better opportunity. 

Nancy Brook: What I found is I didn't miss a beat. When I went after a year at RE/MAX to starting my own brokerage, once again, nothing changed. Clients were just interested in what my name was just so they knew how to get a hold of me. “Now, what's the name of your brokerage?” That was it. I think that's a really good point. Again, it's fine. I'm sure there's probably some people where the brand matters, but I haven't found it slowed my business at all when I went from a big box brand to my own independent brokerage. 

Tim Chermak: I know that when we were talking before the show, you mentioned that the Platform Marketing strategy is not the first marketing program that you tried as an agent. You really dove deep into YouTube, trying to build that YouTube channel for a while. Previously, you spent a lot of money with Zillow over the years. 

Tim Chermak: Do you want to walk me through your marketing journey in terms of what you've spent money on? What has worked? Again, I think your perspective that you have an MBA, you used to work in corporate marketing, it'd be really interesting to hear your analysis of the pros and cons of Zillow or YouTube versus what you're doing now with Platform.

Nancy Brook: That's a really great point. I would say so, right before I went into real estate, I had a corporate sales job, which basically, was grueling. When I decided to go into real estate, I knew I did not want to go back to corporate marketing. I did not want to go back to corporate sales. I had to do whatever it took to make this work. I decided that I would invest in Zillow and Realtor.com at the time. Now, this was 2015, so it's been a bit. At the time, I would see a great return, especially with my Zillow leads. With Realtor.com, they disperse them to multiple agents, the same lead. You might click on three houses, and three different agents will get the three different houses, times three. With Zillow, it was a little bit better. It was a little more expensive. What I found just evaluating my marketing dollars was I was making $2 to $3 for every $1I spent, which is great. Who wouldn't want that kind of return? I also focused on areas where they would maybe be newer buyers, so they would be maybe a little more forgiving to a newer agent. 

Nancy Brook: I think that's important as well. It depends where you are in your career. If you are brand new, first time homebuyers are going to be a little more understanding that you're new, they're new, and they might not mind. I never had anybody mind on that. That's where I started. What I found through the years is that Zillow, what they will do, and I've told my rep this, I'm not trying to bash on him. If it works for you, that's great.

Tim Chermak: To be clear, you can bash on Zillow.

Nancy Brook: They helped me build my business. They helped me get a loyal clientele. I still do some Zillow advertising. 

Tim Chermak: I will add the context that you could bash Zillow, you could bash any other company. Frankly, you could bash Platform also because I want it to be about what's actually worked. We have many clients even right now that work with Platform that are getting results, but they also spend money on Zillow because Zillow also gets them results. Frankly, anywhere you can spend $1 and make $2, why would you not do that? 

Nancy Brook:  Exactly. That's exactly where it was. Of course, Billings, believe it or not, has been a really hot market. A lot of people want to move to Montana. They've got freedom, open spaces, government pretty much leaves people alone, which people like, the ones that are moving here.

Tim Chermak: Are you from Billings originally? Are you from there? 

Nancy Brook: I grew up in a little town nearby called Laurel. I went away for college, but pretty much this has been my home, this area. What I found though through the years is that Zillow would release more, they call it inventory. They'll release more inventory and then you can bid on it. Pretty soon, you're paying more. 

Nancy Brook: When it comes down to it, when you look at how many calls you're getting versus how much you're paying, what they were doing is sneakily raising their prices with these inventory releases without you really knowing it. It took until towards the end of last year and I was like, “What is going on?” My bank account isn't where it should be. I'm making sales. I realized that $2 for every $1 spent was not happening in particular when I have to share some of my commission with my buyers agents because my goal is to help them build their business. Just down the road, it's not just me being a solopreneur. I want to have a business and I want to have something that's sustaining. I want these ladies to really kill it in real estate. It just wasn't making any sense. I was really stunned. I cut out a lot of my marketing dollars at that point to just not be spending the money.

Tim Chermak: At that time, in your business, Nancy, just to give our listeners some specifics and context, how much a month– 

Nancy Brook: I don't even wanna say. It was a bunch of money, thousands and thousands of dollars.  

Tim Chermak: $600 a month or $2,500 a month or $1,000 a month?

Nancy Brook: More than that. It's more than $5,000. 

Tim Chermak: You were spending $5,000+ a month on Zillow. 

Nancy Brook: Exactly. It was a lot of money.

Tim Chermak: At that time, it had a return.  

Nancy Brook: At first, it did. Like you said, if you can spend $1 and get $2 to $3 back, it's ridiculous to not do it.

Tim Chermak: Even though it sounds expensive, if you were spending $1,000 a month on it but it was bringing in $12,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 a month, obviously, that's a really good trade. 

Nancy Brook: Exactly. What I found too is that some zip codes weren't producing. I think I told you I started with a zip code that tended to be lower-end price range and so it attracted a lot of first time home buyers. I was also in zip codes towards the end of this, where they were higher-end buyers, higher-priced houses, but what I found as these are strangers. 

Nancy Brook: I'm good on the phone. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I'm good at converting people, but what I've found with these higher-end people is they pretty much either have somebody they intended to work with, they were just checking things out, or they would ask their friends if there was somebody they should work with. Once they're at a certain degree, they don't have as much likelihood to work with strangers. 

Tim Chermak: If you're in the Billings area, I imagine a $700,000 or $800,000 home is definitely considered luxury. If you're searching on Zillow, request information, let's say, on a $700,000 home, if you're that successful in life to where you can afford a $700,000 home, you probably already have your professional financial network of services built out. You probably have a CPA. You probably have a financial advisor. You probably have a realtor that you trust. You're not going to click a button on Zillow and just be okay with the first realtor that calls you from that. Now, sometimes that's true. Obviously, there's always exceptions. 

Nancy Brook: When people were moving here from other areas, I sold one house that was from a Zillow lead that was over, I think it was $1.3 million. You definitely can get some quality leads, especially from out-of-town buyers. I found myself working with a lot of out-of-town buyers and I found myself having to adapt to what their needs were. 

Nancy Brook: I would do things like I have BombBomb, which I'm sure you've heard of BombBomb. I would record videos on BombBomb and then send it to them or do live showings if they wanted to be there in person. We do zoom showings. I learned how to be real adaptive with the out-of-town clients. What I started thinking about is how can I get in front of out-of-town people without paying Zillow? I really got mad because I finally figured it all out, which sounds stupid. I should have figured it out a lot before, but they're releasing more inventory and what they're really doing is raising my price.  

Tim Chermak: That's a trend, by the way, that we've seen across the country. It's definitely not just happening in Billings or Montana that a lot of people who said that Zillow or Realtor.com worked well for them in 2015, 2016, 2017 and on. In about the last 18 months, we've heard a lot of people say that basically, Zillow has always worked for me and it really just isn't anymore. Now, maybe it's the interest rates. Maybe there's just a lot of tire kickers online that are looking, but they can't actually move forward. Who knows what it is, but I think the undeniable mathematical truth is that Zillow is more expensive than it's ever been for what you get.

Nancy Brook: It really is. You know the diet industry. The diet industry is always telling you, “It's your fault. You had that snack,” all this stuff. You're like, “Yeah,” you beat yourself up. They use the same kind of tactic. “You need to have a better conversion ratio. Your team isn't quite converting as well as you are when you're doing the leads.” There's probably some truth to that, so we'd work on things and work on things. When I got my numbers and I was looking at the averages, I'm like, “We're killing it.” We're better than 97%, 98% of all Zillow agents. We have really high rankings. It wasn't a matter of people not connecting with us. It wasn't that at all. Now, we could say that maybe it's keeping in touch with people. I think we had room for improvement there. It did help us with that. 

Tim Chermak: Everyone has room for improvement there.

Nancy Brook: I don't think we were sucking, let's put it that way. I don't think we were so bad that no wonder why we're not making money. It dawned on me that I needed to find a new strategy to attract out-of-town, out-of-state buyers, so then I heard about a strategy using YouTube, with videos. Last winter, I think I started, maybe it was right around Christmas time, I decided I was going to do videos. It's a little slower time of year here anyway, so I started doing these long form YouTube videos. I found an editor to help me edit these. There was a list of ideas and my goal was to try to do three of these a week. I was recording my office a lot of times, I was doing it out in the field, it was insane. These are seven- to 12-minute videos.

Tim Chermak: Three a week or three a month? 

Nancy Brook: Three a week. 

Tim Chermak: Holy cow. 

Nancy Brook: Yeah, that was the goal. 

Tim Chermak: You were like a full-time video producer doing real estate on the side. 

Nancy Brook: It was crazy, and then, of course, I'm trying to close deals and do all that. I went to see my daughter, she lives near Louisville, Kentucky, and I was recording videos when I wasn't seeing her at my, we have a little condo there. After that, I just was like, “This is crazy. I can't continue on this way.” I need to get back to it and do something, but I was just done. I was just done with it. I did five months. I ended up with one sale, so it was a legitimate sale, I think $500,000 range. Definitely paid for it, but probably not my time. I just was thinking, “How am I going to do this?” 

Nancy Brook: In addition, I joined some referral program. Dave Ramsey was one and I actually have really good leads from them. You pay referral commission, but the good thing is you don't pay unless you close. I feel like I can compete really well on the phone with anybody else. I'm getting more than my share on those. I'm trying to diversify, not rely on Zillow and Realtor.com. I cut back a lot on Realtor.com and then I cut back significantly on Zillow. 

Nancy Brook: Somebody in one of the groups, and it wasn't anyone I knew. I'm in two different Real Estate Masterminds, one's called Real Estate Mastermind and one's Lab Coat Agents. I don't remember which group, but somebody said, “You should check out Platform Marketing.” I just clicked on the button and I'm just like, “That's interesting, videos, Facebook. Okay.” I just clicked on it. I think they said, “Check to see if your market's available,” so I filled it out. I didn't even think anything of it. I just went on my way, you just are investigating things. I got a call and an email, asking if I wanted more information. It’s like, “Maybe,” you know what I mean? I wasn't really committed.

Tim Chermak: Just like a real estate lead, by the way. That's always what we tell people. What you were doing when you were just casually researching Platform, it's not like you're going to sign up today or whatever, that's exactly the frame of mind that buyers and sellers are often in when they inquire. They're just doing some research. It's everything that happens after that point that determines whether or not you convert a lead. At that point, you didn't inquire because you're like, “I'm going to sign up for Platform Marketing.” You honestly were just like, “I don't know what this is. I want to find out what this is.”  

Nancy Brook: Yeah, I want to find out what this is and what do they mean if your market's available. Sometimes you hear that, “For limited time, sign up now! You got 14 hours,” you see these things all the time on the internet. I wasn't sure if it was something like that. 

Tim Chermak: About Zillow or Realtor.com is way back in the day, they actually had exclusivity over leads. You would be essentially the only agent getting Zillow leads in this zip code. Now, it's not that way at all. I think a lot of agents are understandably skeptical when we say, “Hey, we have market exclusivity,” because it's like, “I've heard that before.”

Nancy Brook: Exactly. I didn't even really know what it was. I mean, it was Facebook videos. I had somebody who helped me start some Facebook groups and was putting content on my Facebook page. It was fine. At least it kept some things going. After our contract was up, I didn't renew. I think we did it for six months. I just was like, “It's not getting me anywhere.” I have content and I've done content on my own. 

Nancy Brook: I didn't tell you this, but years ago, I published a book. That's why I originally got on social media, was to promote my book. I was on Twitter. I was on Facebook at the time. I did all these different posts and people got to know I had a book, but I didn't have some explosion of sales because of it. It felt along those lines, like I was getting attention, I was getting awareness, but I wasn't getting sales as a result. 

Nancy Brook: At the end of the day, it's nice if people see your Facebook posts, but I got things to do aside from posting on Facebook all the time. Once in a while, it's fine, so I was a little bit skeptical. I was curious, but I wasn't expecting anything amazing, let's put it that way. I was curious. I had also been looking at some YouTube advertising and Google advertising with some other people, which I implemented, and that's a whole other story. 

Nancy Brook: I just happened to be driving and you know how it is if you've got a long drive. We have a house about an hour away, it's in a town called Red Lodge. I was driving to Red Lodge just to go to our house. I was leaving, I don't know, it was about 4:00 or so, and I got a call from Diana from Platform. She seemed real nice. You know how sometimes people are like, “Hello, is this Nancy Brook?” and they get into their sales pitch. Usually, you're like, “Not interested.” Click. With her, it's like, “Yeah, I remember. You did leave a message and you did send an email. I'm driving. Hopefully, I have good signal, but yeah.” “Hey, do you want to schedule time?” I said, “Hey, if you got some time, why don't you just tell me what this is all about now?” We talked for about an hour as I was driving. We talked the whole way. 

Nancy Brook: It was a little late, it was a Friday, and I was actually quite pleased that she had enough interest in her job to not be like, “Whatever, 5:00. It's after 5:00.” I don't know where she is or what time it was, but clearly, it's late in the day on a Friday. She had enough belief in herself and her job that she just continued on. I liked what I was hearing. She did talk about some agents that had double, triple, 4X their business over a period of years. She did tell me that. Obviously, you can't predict, she can't predict specifically what's happening in an individual's market, but she did say that markets like mine, which are more like a big city in a rural-type state, tend to do better.

Tim Chermak: Now, is Billings the largest city in Montana? 

Nancy Brook: Yeah, and we have 120,000. In Montana, we're over a million people now, but the whole state has maybe, I don't know, let's say 1.2 million, 1.3million. It's a small population center, but that's what she said. She said places like the Black Hills, and I think she mentioned Sioux Falls. You can probably talk about that more than me. 

Tim Chermak: We have clients who kick butt in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Gillette, Wyoming. Basically, those medium size, small towns that are rural in rural states where you have a little bit of a population center, our clients in those markets always seem to get incredible results. Now, you are 90 days in. I probably should have said that earlier in the episode, but just to give everyone context, we're recording this as Nancy, I actually think it's not even 90 days. You're almost to your 90-day mark with Platform. Everything she's saying, her experience so far, it's not like she's been a client for a year or two years. She's been with us for basically a handful of months now. 

Nancy Brook: It's only been 60 days. I started, it was right before the 4th because I remember there was an ad and I didn't have time to get it together. It was right before the 4th, I started. 

Tim Chermak: You're basically two months in as we're having this conversation. The next question I want to ask you, Nancy, is now that we have a little bit of context about your experience with Zillow, when Zillow started to taper off and just the cost got too high for what you were getting, you did a six-month experience with YouTube marketing, and I'll just add this caveat here that YouTube can work. There are many agents who get incredible results with YouTube. 

Tim Chermak: We actually had a speaker, Ken Pozek, at our last Mastermind for Platform last year who has built a huge business exclusively with YouTube marketing, but YouTube is not something you could dabble in. You basically have to make it your full time job as an agent that you're a YouTube content creator or else it's not going to work. It's not something you can just do part time as a hobby. You have to be all in on it or it's not really going to work. You tried that. 

Tim Chermak: You inquired about Platform, did your due diligence trying to figure out what is Platform, what is this thing. You ended up signing up about two months ago, so you're about 60 days in. What are the leading indicators that you've seen so far that this is working? What's your analysis right now as you're 60 days into the Platform Marketing strategy?

Nancy Brook: I will add that, first of all, one of the things, I don't know if you've ever read the book $100M Offers, but they talk about make the offer so easy to say yes to that it's almost a no-brainer. 

Tim Chermak: Alex Hormozi, yeah. 

Nancy Brook: That's almost what it was like for me. “We don't have you committed to any long-term contract. It's probably going to take you six months before you see some results, could take a little longer, but that's what we're going to tell you. We're going to get you started and you have a discounted rate as you're ramping up just to make it make sense for people.” Compared to Zillow, this is, not to be offensive, but chump change. Give it a shot.

Tim Chermak: It's a fraction of what you were paying to Zillow.

Nancy Brook: To raise my rates. It's just so minimal to try it, and then the videos are so minimal to do. Okay, I record myself going in a house and do something silly. Okay, I can do that. That's not like me learning the history of whatever, this area, and giving this travel log and finding a grave of somebody. It was insane, the amount of work I was putting in. 

Tim Chermak: Here is where [inaudible] took his last stand. Basically, talking about the Battle of the Little Bighorn for a realtor YouTube channel. 

Nancy Brook: Exactly. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed a bank, so I took a little stir on it. Anyway, it was all these crazy videos. I learned a lot. It was really fun and I enjoyed it. I'm not at a phase in my life where I have a lot of agents trained to jump in and do the sale once I get them. 

Nancy Brook: That was the other thing, if I'm all in on this, what's going to happen? We, as producing brokers, have to make sure that our income is matching what we're putting out. Sometimes, we have to pick up the slack and do more deals, maybe then we'd eventually like long term. That was really important. You made it like a no-brainer. It was going to be easy. You had people who could make me look good. The cost wasn't a big deal and there was no long-term commitment. I'm like, “Why not give it a shot?” That's better than most things I've done. 

Nancy Brook: After that, I just started doing videos and I've been trying to do three posts a week. That's been my goal. It's way easier than YouTube, by the way. Three a week is what I'm doing. I have an amazing person I'm working with on your team named Jackie, and she has been really good. We have a weekly strategy session. We come up with what the ideas are and I just tackle them as I can. If I have a busy week, it's not a big deal, but that's what we're doing. I also have increased my ad spend and just have told her, “Look, if you need to spend more on things, don't worry about it. Let's just short circuit this time.” That's what I'm doing as well. Those are the things that I'm doing. 

Tim Chermak: I've so often told people, I have to jump in here and say this, that when they ask, “How long does it take to get results?” the question I always have to answer first is, what is your monthly ads budget? If you're wanting to just do bare minimum, bare bones, and spend $700 a month on the ads, then I'm going to give you a very different answer of how long it'll take to see results than if you're like, “I want to spend $1,500 a month on ads.” 

Tim Chermak: It seems intuitive when I explain it, but If you're spending $1,500 a month on ads, you are, of course, reaching double the amount of people, double the impressions and views and everything every month than someone who's spending $700. Just mathematically, you're going to get results twice as fast because twice as many people every month are seeing your ads. It's twice as likely that someone is going to see one of your ads that says, “I actually do want to sell a house. Let's talk,” or “I need to buy a house. Let's talk.” Someone might get the results in six months doing that, that it takes someone else 12 months to get if their ads budget is double. Way too often, agents don't take that into consideration. They get into month six or seven and they're like, “Why isn't this working faster?” Your ads budget is pretty bare minimum compared to what some other people are doing. 

Tim Chermak: For all the Platform realtors who are listening to this right now, I'll just speak directly to you. I'd say most of our clients that are getting case study type of results where they're the ones that you see having great success, most of our successful clients that are really crushing it, even at a down market like this year, the average is they're probably spending $1,200 to $1,500 a month on their ads. If you're way less than that, if you're only spending $800, that would be the first thing I would do, is just up your ads budget. Sometimes, it's actually that simple. Sorry, go on. 

Nancy Brook: Again, I really rely on my business coach. What she said is, “You know what? We'll put more money to the listing videos because that's the thing that's going to get you traction.” I don't know how many listing videos I've done. I've been really fortunate to have a lot of listings lately. I probably have done eight or so. I've just been really trying to focus on the listing videos, and then we did the Ducks in a Row video, which those are fun, and then just some posts that are personal moments. I have some coming up that are going to be People You Should Know or Local Business Spotlight. Those are the things that I've been focusing on. Again, I trust her to tell me where to spend that extra money. She's like, “No, you don't need to go to this level, but if you could spend money here, then that would really help. You can spend the extra money on listing videos.” 

Tim Chermak: That's unique about Platform, is that you are assigned a marketing coach who works with you, and they're working with usually about 20 other realtors. It’s not like we farm out your account rep or help support to somewhere in Indonesia or something where it's a call center. No, these are actual American marketing strategists that you work with. You have a weekly call with her and she's almost acting as the fractional CMO of your business.

Nancy Brook: It's amazing. I'll just give you a contrast here. Zillow, I was considered a major account. I was, I'll just say upgraded, to a different level of advisor. He'll check in with me every once in a while, but usually, it's to tell me about the inventory releases. Other than that, we don't have a weekly call. We don't have a monthly call. I suppose if I requested that, he would do it, but you just have that as your business practice. 

Nancy Brook: To be able to have a marketing coach, a specialist in real estate and sees these things around the country that work and don't work, that's incredible. Where do you get that? Again, the cost is so minimal. With how much you're doing, it really is. Anybody who has a question on the cost, I'd like them to call Zillow and see how much it's going to cost for Zillow leads. Once you go through that, you just would be amazed at how affordable this is. 

Tim Chermak: When anyone complains about the cost per lead is up anywhere, whether it's Google, PPC, Facebook ads, whatever, leads are so expensive, the question is, “Okay, compared to what?” Compared to newspaper ads or billboards or Zillow or Realtor.com? It's always compared to what? A lead is only expensive if there's another place you could actually get leads way cheaper, but there isn't. 

Nancy Brook: In the time. Look at YouTube. Maybe if I could hire a videographer who could follow me around and take care of everything, then we'd be talking, but if you're a productive real estate agent, I don't know, what are you making? $250 an hour? You think about all of the costs that you're accruing with your time. YouTube is cheap. I like YouTube. I think it was fun to do, but it's really time intensive. 

Nancy Brook: Leading indicators that I'm seeing already, I powerlift. I work out early in the morning, usually 5:00, and then I train my boyfriend at 6:00 some days a week, 3 days a week. I was leaving the gym one day and I was just visiting with somebody I see every once in a while. He said, “I saw that house that you have.” It's near that town I was talking about, Red Lodge. “I was really interested in that.” He was chatting about it, would be a family house. 

Nancy Brook: This one's listed at $1.4 million. I didn't know, I just figured he saw it on Zillow and saw that it was my listing and just chatted with me because he knew me. I said, “I'm going to be up there. If you want to check it out, I'd be happy to show it to you.” No big deal. I wasn't really thinking he was super interested, but then he said, “You know what? I'm going to talk to my family more and just check into financing. I'll tell you what, if I want to get a hold of you, I'll just connect with you on Facebook.” I was like, “He saw my Facebook ad. That's how he heard about that house.” That was the first one. 

Nancy Brook: That one really made me smile because, again, it's a $1.4 million house, everybody's not going to have the money to buy it immediately, but it's getting traction. Furthermore, that video, we have been promoting the heck out of it and we have, last I checked, it was over 37,000 views. We're in a market, 120,000 people in our greater metro area, probably around us, maybe we're 175,000, maybe 200,000. That's an incredible amount of views. That's one of the indicators. 

Tim Chermak: I want to add the context when we talk about the the analytics of Facebook videos, Facebook ads, that when you say a video had 37,000 views, and let's just be generous and say that the greater Billings area does have 200,000 people cause that's probably a pretty conservative estimate, it might be less than that.  

Nancy Brook: Somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000, I would say. 

Tim Chermak: Half of that is children. That's what a lot of people forget. It's usually about 50% of the population are people younger than 18. By the way, we're not showing your ads to people under the age of 18, obviously. If it has 37,000 views and the maximum amount of adults in the Billings area is 100,000, it literally means that over a third of adults in Billings have seen this video. 

Nancy Brook: Even if they like it a lot and see it twice, you're still talking 15,000, 20,000. Who knows? There've been a lot of people who've seen that video. The video is good, but I don't want people to be intimidated with these videos either. I'm no expert. My boyfriend hates it, by the way. I've been having him video me on these and he's like, “You have to do another take.” I tripped or I said something stupid.

Tim Chermak: It's part of the upside of Platform strategy, is that I'm a big believer that the best videos that are going to work on social media are not the super duper fancy produced ones where you hire a Hollywood film producer to make your listing video. The fancier a video is, the more it looks like an ad. The more it looks like an ad, ironically, the less people are willing to click on it because they don't want to watch an ad for a realtor. 

Tim Chermak: If it's a casual video, it's obviously filmed by an amateur, and it's just an honest tour of a house, people are actually way more likely to watch that if it pops up in their social media newsfeed because, at some emotional gut level, they don't feel like they're being advertised to. They don't feel like they're watching an ad. That's a lot easier to pull off if you don't have to hire a professional video producer every time you want to make a quick video. Just, “Hey, I'll grab my boyfriend. We'll go and film this video in five minutes and knock it out.”

Nancy Brook: Somebody, one of my agents in the office did my last one, and she was like, “This is so fun.” She actually enjoyed it, so I'll probably try to use her most of the time going forward. That is the thing. Also, this is another little trick that maybe people could use. My photographer takes really amazing photos. What he was doing for me was doing videos in nicer houses that you run through the whole house and do a video of it, but it wouldn't have me in it. It would just be the video footage. What I've asked him to do now is just to do clips. He does 10-second clips of the kitchen, 10-second clips of the living room, then we can use those if the footage that I have is shaky or whatever. 

Nancy Brook: The point is don't get caught up if it's not perfect. I have earbuds that you can talk into. I also have a remote mic which I could use, but I just put these in and so then you can hear me a little better, so the sound quality is a little better. I would say, if you have something like that, that'll help. Sometimes, you're away from the phone and it can be a little bit hard to hear you. That's the other thing that's great. It's not high-end production. I've been in the shadows sometimes when I'm talking. We do the best we can, but we don't try to act like we're professionally-produced.

Tim Chermak: You're not trying to win an Oscar for cinematography. You're just trying to give an honest tour of a house and make it look professional enough to where it doesn't make you look bad. It needs to feel real, authentic, and that it's not some super polished advertisement. 

Nancy Brook: Spend your time on looking nice. You don't just have clothes that are going to look attractive on the camera. Usually, real busy patterns don't go well. Just think about those kinds of things if you want to fine tune it. That was the first one, was this gentleman at the gym. The next one that happened was also at the gym. I'm not looking my greatest at the gym. I don't shower. I don't have makeup on. I was leaving the gym and this gentleman, who I know, haven’t seen him in a while, he’s like, “Hey, I saw your Ducks in a Row video on Facebook. I was looking at houses and it came up.” I said, “That's cool. Are you looking to buy a house?” He said, “No, I actually am building a house, but I was just checking what was out there.” It was like, “That's great.” Whatever, we got into a conversation about his house a little bit as I was leaving the gym. That was the second encouraging note. 

Nancy Brook: I would say the third, aside from just the video viewings, are the comments on my videos. I'm just going to mention this because I've seen some people in the Platform group, “I'm getting spam. I'm getting this. I'm getting that.” You know what? Delete them. Don't even worry about it. If you get a negative comment, as long as it's not really nasty, respond to them. 

Nancy Brook: I learned a little trick from somebody who's in sales and does a lot of Facebook marketing, is if somebody says something negative, like somebody will say to me, “You're trying to bring all the Californians in,” so you know how it goes. Sorry if you're from California, but people bash people who are from out of state. We do have open borders for people who live in the United States of America. You're welcome here. It's okay. You can move to Montana. It's your right. 

Nancy Brook: One of the things that I do is instead of just deleting the comment or being defensive about it, I'll say something like, “Yeah, gosh. There are a lot of people moving in. Are you looking to buy or sell a house in the near future?” I turn it into a sales response. Guess what? They don't want to respond then. If they're obnoxious, chances are they're not going to respond because they don't want to be sold to. You come across looking good.

Tim Chermak: Exactly. More importantly there, for all the other thousands of people that are seeing the comments, they see that you engage someone who had a nasty attitude, that you engage them with a positive response and you didn't stoop to their level. You maintained the moral high ground. 

Tim Chermak: I actually view negative comments on your posts as a huge opportunity. It would be better to have an ad that has some negative comments than an ad that doesn't have negative comments because every negative comment is an opportunity for you to leave an enlightened positive response where someone looks at that and they'll be like, “Wow. She really responded positively. She'd probably be great to work with if that's how she responds to that kind of cynical criticism.” That's something that you just can't do with Zillow advertising or a newspaper ad or a radio ad or billboards or whatever. There's no equivalent of live comments on a post where people can see exactly what you said to someone. I think that's something that's underutilized by a lot of agents, is the power of personal replies on social media posts. 

Nancy Brook: The other thing that was interesting, so that again, that house, that's the $1.4 million house, somebody said, “It's right on the highway. It's probably really loud there.” I'm like, “It's pretty far back away from the highway. I've never heard any highway noise from the house,” and I don't know, you had some other kind of snotty comment. Then I had all these people come to my aid. 

Nancy Brook: I had somebody who said, “It's some Californian who's trying to get rich quick.” I'm like, “Actually, the family who's selling it has lived there for 25 years. They built the house.” They're like, “No, we know the people. I fished there. You can't hear the noise. It's a football field away. She's absolutely right.” That really delighted me, that because I had a high ground attitude that other people came and defended me. 

Nancy Brook: One other thing, if somebody does get really nasty, what you can do, and I only use this sparingly, you can reply to their comment and then block them so they can't keep on going. If they're really nasty, give them a high ground response. “Thank you so much for visiting my page. Apologies that you don't like this house. Hope you have a great day.” Block, and you don't have to see them again. Something I learned in classified ads. I do that sometimes.  

Tim Chermak: All of this has happened, you've had these people tell you, “I saw your video on Facebook,” or “I saw you post this listing on Facebook,” and these are explicitly Platform ads. It's not other things you posted on your personal profile. They're the Platform Marketing campaigns that you're running and people have told you, “Yeah, I saw that $1.4 million listing,” or “I saw this Ducks in a Row video that you did,” which is one of our Platform retargeting video scripts. You've had people tell you in real life that they've seen these posts and you're in your first 60 days. 

Nancy Brook: Yeah, and I haven't been great about calling, so we also have ways that people can opt in. We didn't talk about that, but they sign up for mailing lists of different houses, so email lists. I also have started having my person make the calls, but even with just sending the email, “Did You Get My List?” so it's an automated email, I got one reply back, asked me if I could talk to them that evening. I had a conversation, met with them in person. I hope it could be a long-term prospect. I'm not there yet, but that was pretty encouraging as well that people actually respond right away. 

Nancy Brook: Even if they are a little lukewarm, they're going to get to know you. That's the difference between Platform Marketing and Zillow. Zillow, yeah, they'll see your little face every time they look at a house, but they don't really get to know you other than, “That's weird. She sure has a lot of listings.” That's what they think. With this, all of a sudden, they're seeing all of your ads. It's not about, “Hey, buy for me,” it's, “Hey, here's my other listing. Here's my listing. Here's some information about me. Here's something funny.” It just helps them feel like they're getting to know you. 

Nancy Brook: I think, in this day and age, it's all about being, I’m gonna use this word, it’s a little overstated, a local celebrity. I'm not saying, whatever, I'm a famous person, but you want people to know who you are. In the old days, we used to congregate a lot. We used to go to business after hours. There just were a lot of things. What's happened, especially when there were a lot of people who just were not wanting to go out after everyone went through 2020, people just weren't the same. People weren't congregating. People weren't doing these activities. Now, more than ever, you have to have a way that they can get to know you without necessarily relying on being in person. That's what I would say. 

Tim Chermak: I think a lot of people were much more civically or culturally involved, maybe not just in the last couple of years, but historically if you maybe go back 25 years, it was a lot more likely that people were involved with their kids’ school or they were involved at their church or they were in a bowling league or a summer softball league. There was things that you did outside of work that put you in situations where you’re in person with other people. I think it was much more common, maybe 10, 15 years ago, to be involved in your local chamber of commerce and attend chamber of commerce luncheons and events. Now, with the rise of social media, people have just realized, “Hey, it's a lot more convenient to network on social media than it is to attend in-person events or be in a bowling league,” or things like that. 

Tim Chermak: As we've shifted our lives to be more online versus offline, I think we've lost a really important part of our humanity in doing that because human beings are not meant to be on screens all day. You should be in person with other human beings and that affects our marketing too. 

Tim Chermak: I don't mean this as social commentary from Tim Chermak. The more in person that you could be in your community, the more situations that you're putting yourself in where you are actually at a bowling league, or you're at your kid's baseball game or a dance recital, or you're volunteering with your kid's school or your church, or you're taking a day or two a week to work at a coffee shop versus hiding in your home office, you're getting out in the real world, that's what I'm saying, that will make your online ads way more effective if you are living a life out in the real world. 

Tim Chermak: In the last couple of years, and the lockdowns and pandemic probably made this a little bit too easy on us, is too many agents are sitting at home in their home office and they're like, “I'm going to run some Facebook ads,” or “I'll film some YouTube videos,” and they think that all of their advertising strategy can just be online ads. The online ads should be supplementing or reinforcing the actual life you're living in the real world in your community. If you're never actually getting out and about in person and meeting people, you're just asking too much of your online advertising strategy because that can't do everything for you. It really should just be enhancing the actual life that you're living in the community.  

Nancy Brook: That's really a good point. I know personally, compared to where I was 20 years ago, it's a different world at least in terms of what I do and what I don't do. That's actually a really excellent point, and how do you connect with people? You want to do something that you find fun. 

Tim Chermak: I was gonna say, even the fact that you go to the gym, two of those examples you just shared with me of people telling you, “I saw your marketing. That was so great,” it was people who came up to you at the gym. Imagine how different your life or business would be if you never went to the gym and never saw those people. They wouldn't know who you are. You might have never heard that people were actually seeing your marketing.

Tim Chermak: Again, there's way too many people that they just live and work in their home office every day. They work out in their own garage rather than going out to a gym. If a realtor, I'll just tell you, if you work out, it's in your best interest to not have a home gym. You should want any situation that you can be like, “Okay, how can I insert myself in person into the community rather than hiding at home?” That's better. You should absolutely have a public gym membership at a local gym, in LA fitness, whatever. Don't just lift weights or exercise at home. You need to be out and about, visible to people as much as possible. 

Tim Chermak: Even something like banking. Yes, I know that online banking is more convenient, but you should almost look forward to physically going to a bank in your community. Every time you do, it's an opportunity for a serendipitous connection where someone sees you at the bank. Try to live your life in person as much as possible as a real estate agent. I guarantee you, you'll be more successful doing that.

Nancy Brook: Costco. I see people all the time at Costco. The only thing I would say that's really awful is now, I just can't go looking like a bum to these places. It's like, “Okay, at least have to have some makeup on and look halfway decent, not in my workout clothes, looking like I just got out of bed.”

Tim Chermak: By the way, I was actually talking to Jackie this last week. She said that we have a pretty cool ad. We have a cool retargeting ad plan highlighting your powerlifting. That's another example of your online ads, your Platform retargeting ads will be more effective if we're talking about interesting things you're doing in real life. It's sharing something you're doing in real life and we're just using digital social media marketing to promote that and talk about that. 

Tim Chermak: If you don't do anything in real life, if you're not involved in your church or your kid's school or a gym or some civic group or a bowling league or a softball league, all these examples that I mentioned, there's not really a lot of source material, raw material for us to talk about in the ads to position you as being an interesting, involved local person, because at that point we have to make it up. We can't really talk about anything interesting if you're not doing anything interesting. 

Tim Chermak: I'm glad to hear that you're involved in your community, you're powerlifting, you go to the gym, because that gives us, as marketers, lots of interesting material to work with to write interesting ads. Even though I haven't seen the ad yet, Jackie told me she's working on it. When that ad goes out as a retargeting campaign for you, I already know it's going to do really well because when that starts popping up in people's news feeds, it doesn't look like an ad. It's not the typical thing you would see a realtor talk about is, “Hey, I have this powerlifting hobby.” People will read it and click on the pictures. It'll never occur to them that they're being “advertised to” because really, they're just getting to know you as a person.

Nancy Brook: One of the things I would say came in handy yesterday, I have a client with a bad back. He was struggling to get out of the house and he had some stuff left. There was this other guy and he's like, “I don't want to ask you to help me with this cabinet.” It's like, “It’s okay. I powerlift.” It's like, “Okay, go for it.” Comes in handy if you have an agent who can lift some heavy things once in a while.

Tim Chermak: Are you connected with Jess LeCour down in Gillette, Wyoming?

Nancy Brook: No, I'm not. Jackie mentioned her. 

Tim Chermak: Jess is also one of our clients. She wakes up at 4:00 AM every day and lifts.

Nancy Brook: Me too. 

Tim Chermak: Her husband, Blaine, actually is the world record holder in squats and bench press. 

Nancy Brook: I'm looking to better my world record and set a world record in deadlift on Friday.

Tim Chermak: There you go. 

Nancy Brook: I know you have age groups and all those things, weight classes. 

Tim Chermak: I'm going to have to connect you with Jess. That's crazy that you guys are only a couple hours away, you both work with Platform actually, and you guys haven't connected yet. You have that in common.

Nancy Brook: No, that's awesome.  

Tim Chermak: Cool. Nancy, thank you for your time. I know we've already taken a while here. Is there any last bit of advice that you would want to share on this episode either with someone who has not signed up for Platform yet or for someone who recently signed up for Platform and they're not even sure what they just got themselves into? 

Tim Chermak: You are only 60 days into it. Again, it's not like you've been a client for years and years. You're personally only two months into Platform. What would you say to someone who's either thinking about it or they just signed up? What's your advice to them that you wish you knew when you first signed up? 

Nancy Brook: I had done so many things that I really felt like this was going to be, like I said, a no-brainer to do. For somebody who's considering signing up, the people you talk to will give you references. Check out the references, see how they're doing, see what they're doing that works. Try to find people in a market that's similar to yours. I'm in Billings, Montana. If you're in New York City, it's not the same kind of environment. Think about that. 

Nancy Brook: I would say, if you're in it and you're not seeing results yet, first of all, be a little patient. My YouTube video, it took me four months before I got a legitimate lead. With this, it could take six months. It might take eight months. I know there was a gentleman in our Platform group who was over a year before he really started seeing some results. Hang in there. 

Nancy Brook: The other thing I would say is, and this is going to be a little more esoteric, but check your attitude. Check your presence. Check how you are presenting yourself in the world and in your video. Do you have a friendly disposition? Are you warm? Are you welcoming? Are you having fun? Or are you just, “Here's my listing at 123 Main Street, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That's boring. People don't want to see that. People want to connect with your heart. I would say, be confident and have that connection when you're doing the video. Don't just do the video to do the video. Do it with purpose. 

Nancy Brook: Also, this is more of a manifestation technique, visualize in your mind what you want to accomplish. My goal is, within four months, I want to have a legitimate person who's either buying or selling. That's my goal. That's what I need to visualize. That's what I need to expect will happen. Don't just put it all on the vendor. You are the main reason it's going to work or not work. I'm not blaming anyone if it hasn't worked. Talk to your marketing person, see why it hasn't worked, what suggestions they have, and really listen, and don't be defensive about it. That's what I would say if it hasn't worked, if you've been at it for a short period of time.

Tim Chermak: Awesome. Nancy, thank you for coming on the show. Hopefully, I will see you at the Platform Mastermind later this year in Florida. 

Nancy Brook: Yes, I have it planned. 

Tim Chermak: All right, awesome. See you there. Guys, we'll see you on the next episode. 

Nancy Brook: Alright, thank you. 

Tim Chermak: Ciao.