Episode #66 – BIG FISH, small pond: Stop Losing Deals & Beat Everyone to the Seller’s Door – Training 3

You're listening to the REI Marketing Nerds podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of Ad Words Nerds, a high tech digital agency focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition and live a freer, more awesome life. And now, your host, Dan Barrett.

Alright, hello everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the REI Marketing Nerds podcast. As always, this is Daniel Barrett, here from AdWordsNerds.com, and I want to get straight into this week because for the next few weeks, we are doing a very special series. The audio from the podcast this week and for the next few weeks is going to be from a series of video trainings that I did that's called BIG FISH, Small Pond. Stop Losing Deals and Beat Everyone To the Seller's Door. This was a multiday, in-depth training I did with a very small group of investors all about how you can stop losing deals, even when your market is being invaded by iBuyers and a million different investors - how you can stop losing those deals, get to the sellers first by using this strategy I'm calling the BIG FISH, Small Pond Strategy. This is going to be a multi video series and this is going to be a multi podcast series. So if this is, you know, the third one or the fourth one or whatever, go back and find the first one and listen to it. If you're lucky enough, this is just the first one. Watch out for it each week. These are going to be very, very special. I mean, this was a really high quality training that we did. I'm extremely proud of it and I can't wait for you to check it out. So without any further ado, let's get into the BIG FISH, Small Pond training series. [0:02:07.6]

Dan: Alright. Hello. Welcome. This is Daniel Barrett and I am super happy to have you here in day three of the BIG FISH, Small Pond training. Super happy to have you back. We're going to dig into a lot of fun stuff today. So let's just get straight into it. So the first thing I want to do is recap a little bit of what we talked about in video two, and I'll have a link below this video so if you missed that video, you can just look in the comments for the link and go check it out. So in our last video, we talked about how the sellers' timing can make the difference between getting a yes or a no to your discounted offer. Remember, people sell when they are ready to sell, not when you are ready to buy. Right? When they are ready to sell and one of the best ways to find people who are ready to sell today to an investor at a discount is by running ads on Google using keywords that get you in front of solution-aware sellers. [0:03:00.8]

These are sellers that are ready to sell, today - solution-aware sellers. Now, since there are tens of thousands of keywords to select from, how do you know which keywords are going to work and which won't without spending a butt load of cash on testing every single one? Well, you either need to get your hands on a proven list of keywords, like our $6,000,000 keywords list that our members get access to, or your second best option is to do some keywords research using Moz, that's the tool I went over in video two, to find out what keywords people are searching for, what keywords have high competition, all that good stuff. Right? Give you a list of stuff that you can bid on. So by now, at this point, if you were following along with me, you should have selected 5-10 keywords that you want to start bidding on to show your ads, and if you want to dig deeper in that topic, remember video two - I go into all of that in depth, so go check out that video if you're not sure exactly what I'm talking about. So on today's video, we're going to cover how you can skip competing with 10 or 20 or even 30 other investors over the same property and have sellers coming to you first for an offer. We're going to do that by talking about how to write ads that get your sellers to click on you first and cover a bit about a bidding strategies that have your ad in the best position. We're going to go over all of that today. It's going to be super fun. [0:04:23.0]

Now, before we get into that, I want to bring your attention to something crucial that most investors miss. Okay? And that's …the fact that there are two ways to get your phone ringing with motivated sellers and you're either going to spend your time or you're going to spend your money, and you're going to spend whichever one you have more of. Right? If you've got more time, you spend time. If you've got more money, you spend money. Now, like a lot of deal sources, Google Ads take money to make money. Right? It's for investors who would rather spend their money than their time to fill up their CRM with leads, and to be clear, there's nothing wrong with either one. [0:05:00.3]

It's about which one is right for you. It's a lot like how Kevin O'Leary, who is Mister Wonderful from Shark Tank, if you've ever seen that show, this is what he says, right, he says, "Money is my military. Each dollar is a soldier. I never send my money into battle unprepared and undefended. I send it to conquer and take currency prisoner and bring it back to me." So what he's saying is he sends his money out, lets his money do the work and lets his money bring more money back. Right? Now, I'm not saying like Google Ads is a money machine, but it's darn close if you can put $1 in and get more dollars out. Right? So if you do it right and you can set up that relationship, that's obviously a very powerful thing. Right? Google Ads gets you leads without you huffing and puffing and trading time for dollars, which is how cold calling works, how driving for dollars works, how knocking on doors works, how handwriting letters works - again, nothing wrong with that if you are looking to trade time for money. [0:06:01.4]

If you don’t have a lot of time, those aren’t marketing channels that make a lot of sense. Instead, you're going to turn to marketing channels like Google Ads. Right? It's not about getting the cheapest leads or paying as little as you can. It's about getting the most leads at a positive ROI and getting to the seller first. Right? The more you can afford to pay for a lead and still be at a positive ROI, the more you're going to be able to fill up your CRM with red-hot sellers from Google Ads and beat your competition to the door. Alright? So I want to make that point. Remember that difference between paying time for money or paying money for money. You can do both, but make sure you pick the one that's right for you.

Alright, so with that said, let's jump into today's training because we have got a lot of stuff to cover. Now the first thing I want to talk about is how you write ads that get the sellers to click on your ad first and come to you for an offer. Right? So like other than having the right keywords, you know, because you got to have the right keywords in order to get in front of the right people, the ad and getting people to take action is the second most important factor when it comes to making Google Ads work. [0:07:08.7]

So what we're going to do today is we're going to show you different tactics you can use in your ad copy and then walk you through setting up your first ad. So I'm going to pop over here. This is like sort of an example test account that I have set up. I'm going to scoot up in my chair here. Now, if you've just started this, right, what's going to happen is you're going to have an empty campaign. So if you've been following along with me, you set up your Google Ads, right. In the other video, we sort of selected our keywords. Now we need to create a campaign and we need to put an ad in that campaign. Alright? So I'm going to show you this process. You would run through this for all of your keywords. So the first thing I'm going to do is click this "new campaign" button, and I'm going to click "new campaign" here. Alright? Now, remember when I said Google makes a lot of suggestions and we generally want to ignore Google's suggestions and just do what I'm going to tell you to do. [0:08:00.4]

So we're going to click here where it says "create a campaign without goals guidance," and we're going to select - this is very important - we are going to select "search." You do not want "display" or any of these other things. You want this campaign type, which is called "search." Once you click that, say we want website visits and phone calls - actually, let's just do website visits for now. We can always add phone calls later. And we're going to put our website. I'm going to put AdWordsNerds.com; that's my website. Obviously, you are going to put your website. Alright? We're going to go ahead and click "continue." Now, coming down here, we want to name our campaign something clever, so I'm going to say like, you know, like Dan's Campaign and usually what I'm going to do is put like the target, so let's say it's Hartford, Connecticut, right, just so I can tell what it is. Now you're going to scroll down a little bit and it's going to say "networks, search, and display." You want to uncheck "display" and just leave "search." Very critical. This is a really good example of Google suggesting something that is terrible for you. Do not mix search and display. You only want "search." [0:09:03.0]

We're going to scroll down where it says "targeting." I'm going to put my zip code, right, zip code I want to target, write it in there. Alright. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to set my budget. Let's say it's $10 a day. We're going to focus on … now, here's where we have some different options here and I want to get into bid strategies. Okay? And I'm not going to talk a ton about these, but bid strategies have a big effect on how your campaign runs. So for most of you, depending on where you are targeting, like what market you're in, you're not going to have a ton of data coming in every day. So Google gives you a lot of algorithmic bidding solutions. So for example, let me, you know, let Google change your bid based on whether they think there's going to be a conversion. Let Google change your bid based on whether they think there's going to be a phone call. And all those are cool and they have potential uses, but in the beginning, what's going to happen is that you're not going to have a lot of data and so Google is not great at making that decision. [0:10:03.3]

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Dan: So right here, it says "What do you want to focus on - conversions, blah, blah, blah, blah." What we're going to do is right here, this little blue line, it says "or select a bid strategy directly," okay? And notice how it says "not recommended." Okay? Just pointing this out. Once you click that, you're going to have different options here. The one I want you to choose is "manual cost per click." Let's just go down this list really quick, so you have a sense of what this means. [0:10:59.7]

Target CPA means you're going to give them a target amount that you want to pay per lead. Target return on ad spend is more for ecommerce; we can't really use that. Maximize clicks tries to get as many clicks as humanly possible within the budget. Maximize conversions is the same thing but typically for leads; it's trying to get the biggest number of leads. Maximize conversion value is again, more for ecommerce, so like if someone's checking out and a certain amount of value per cart, it's trying to maximize that. Number target impression share tries to get you in front of the biggest percentage of everybody searching for your keywords, so it just tries to get you on the screen as much as possible. Then finally, manual CPC, which stands for manual cost per click allows you to set your own bids. All of these other options basically allow Google to change your bids or set your bids entirely and that can work. I'm not saying it never works, but what I'm saying is in the beginning, it's very dangerous and it gives Google the ability to spend a lot of your money. [0:12:05.3]

Instead, what we want to do is we want to use manual CPC because if you are paying attention to your own account and you're managing it, then doing this yourself is going to be much better for you, especially doing this kind of like 5 to 10 keywords strategy that we're doing right here. So I'm going to select "manual CPC" and I usually leave this thing where it says "help increase conversions" and there's nothing in there right now to do that but I usually just leave that in there. All of these things you don’t have to worry about where it says "add extensions," okay? This is sort of like advanced ad creation, so we are going to talk about that in a little bit, but we're going to leave that for later. If you have a new campaign, this is the first time you've ever set anything up, you won't have anything here, so it's not a big deal. We're going to go ahead and click "save and continue." Now, this is going to take us to creating our first ad group. It's like a folder that contains some of our keywords and an ad. Alright? Now my general rule of thumb is I only use keyword per ad group. That's how I keep things sort of tightly organized. So let's say my first keyword is going to be "sell my house fast," okay? [0:13:08.2]

Now, the default bid for this, we don’t have to set anything up, what I'm going to do and we don’t have enough time to get into all the specifics on this - what I'm going to tell you to do is type in "sell my house fast" this is very important, in quotation marks. Okay? Really, really critical - do that in quotation marks. We're going to go ahead and click "save and continue." I've got to put something here. So I'm going to put $5. Alright? Go ahead and click "save and continue." Now, we are actually in the ad creation zone. Alright? And I know I'm going through this fast. Okay? But that's okay. Because we want to focus today on creating ads. All that other stuff you can get into. You can take your time. Creating ads - just a couple of things you need to think about. Now the final URL, this is the first thing here, you can see the sort of preview here in the center of the screen and then the final URL is sort of like over here - I should say this whole left side of the screen is where we're actually creating the ad. Now the final URL is where you send the traffic when they click. It's where they actually go. [0:14:07.3]

This has to be your real, actual, working website. So for me, it's AdWordsNerds.com. Now, we have three headlines. Okay? Now there are a variety of ways of doing this, but what I'm going to suggest that you do is focus on speaking directly to the benefit to the seller. And when you keep doing this, sort of consistently, there's a testing process that you use to constantly raise the performance that you're getting, but for right now, we're not necessarily going to have time to implement that, so we're going to just focus on speaking directly to the seller. Okay? What are the benefits to the seller? And we want to think about, specifically, who is typing in the keywords that we chose? Like I chose "sell my house fast." You're going to choose one of the keywords that you chose when you did your keyword research. Right? I'm not saying this is a better keyword than anything else. It's just the one that I chose as this example. So who is typing in "sell my house fast?" That's the person I want to speak to. [0:15:04.8]

Like really think about them, like picture them, picture what they want when they're typing something in. The other rule of thumb is try to use the keyword, in this case "sell my house fast," in the ad copy. Anytime that you use the keyword in the ad copy, it gets bolded. It's a little easier to see. It makes the ad a little more eye catching. It makes more people click on it. Alright? So usually for the headline, I'm just going to leave it like "sell my house," I'm going to say "sell your house fast in Connecticut." Now, if you look, while I'm doing this, see down here? This is your character count. Okay? So right now, I've used 35 of only 30 characters. It's colored in red. It basically means, hey, you used too many letters here - we won't allow you to use that headline. So no problem. I'm just going to abbreviate as CT. Now I'm going to keep this sell your house fast because I want to try to use those keywords in the title, right, and I'm going to abbreviate CT, which is Connecticut, that's where this is theoretically targeting. Alright? [0:16:09.2]

So that's my first headline. The second headline, I'm going to try again to call out more benefits to the seller. So I can say "sell fast, no repairs needed." Okay? So again, calling out the benefits to the seller. And then finally, headline three, I'm going to say something like, "get a cash offer in 24 hours." Now of course, you're going to customize this to your business. Right? So I've got sell your house fast in CT, sell fast - no repairs needed, get a cash offer in 24 hours. This is a little redundant here because I said "sell fast" multiple times, but I know they're typing in "sell my house fast," and I'm thinking like, well, okay - for that kind of person, typing that in, speed is probably really important, so I'm just going to hit that a couple more times. Alright. Now down here, where it talks about display path, this is not actually where they go. [0:17:04.5]

It's purely just a line of copy. It doesn’t actually change anything about where they go. So it doesn’t even have to be a real web address. So I could say like AdWordsNerds.com, you know, sell-fast and then Connecticut. So then you can see over here in the example ad, it displays that as the URL. Alright. So now, I have two description lines, description one and description two. Now, just a general… you've probably seen me doing this, but like as a general rule of thumb, when you're writing an ad in Google, you want to use every single line that they give you and you want to try to use the characters that they give you. So shorter ads are not necessarily worse, but just in general, the more space the ad takes up, the more likely they are to click. That's just a general rule of thumb. You always test that in your specific thing. But if you're just starting out, make sure you use every line. Try to use as many characters as possible. So I have 90 characters per line in the description. [0:18:00.8]

So let's get into this. So, I am going to try to use the headline again, or the keyword again, so I'm saying to "Looking for sell my house fast. I'm buying ugly houses in Connecticut." Okay? "No repairs needed." Oh, 89, beautiful. Alright. So then description line two "Get a cash offer in just 24 hours, a fast online form is what it takes." Now, what I'm doing here is I'm sort of preparing them for what they're going to get when they click on the ad. What are they going to get? They're going to get an online form. Right? "Call or text. Text or email." "A fast online form is what it takes." What about something simple like "We can help you." We can help you. Alright. Cool. [0:19:01.5]

So this is the ad "Sell your house fast in CT. Sell fast. No repairs needed. Get a cash offer in 24 hours. Looking for sell my house fast." Now again, that kind of sounds weird, but I'm trying to use the keywords specifically so that it gets bolded in the ad. "I'm buying ugly houses in Connecticut. No repairs needed. Get a cash offer in just 24 hours. A fast online form is all it takes. We can help you." Okay. Again, you notice I'm saying "fast" like multiple times? I've said it's only going to be 24 hours. Again, it's because the keyword I'm targeting is "sell my house fast," assuming that this person is looking for speed. Right? I'm going to go ahead and click "save and continue." And then I'm done. I'm going to go ahead and click "continue to campaign." Now I've got one ad. So now what I'm going … what I'd like you to do at this point is go through that process for each of the 5-10 keywords that you created. Now you don’t need to create a campaign every time. You've already had your campaign. You can come to this ad group screen and just click that plus button to create a new ad group, put in your keyword, each time put them in parentheses - I don’t have a ton of time to get into why that is, but just trust me, do that. [0:20:09.1]

And then create the ad, thinking about who is searching for that keyword. Really, really critical. And remember some of those basic principles that we talked about - making sure that you use every line, making sure that you use as many characters as possible, trying to restate the keyword wherever possible in order to get it bolded, thinking about what that person wants and then focusing on the benefit to them that lines up with what they're searching for. Right? Really, really critical. Really, really critical idea. Alright?

So, after that, I want you to go through that process and then take a screen shot. Take a screen shot of what you've done. Post it in the comments on this video. We are going to giving away some really cool prizes to people who get their ads set up in 24 hours. Look, all you got to do is get one ad set up. That's all you’ve got to do. Just get something going because we really want to incentivize you to take massive action. [0:21:06.2]

I know that you can't get the benefit of this strategy if you don’t take action. So again, go through that process. Set up just one ad in the next 24 hours. Post a screen shot as a comment on this video and we'll be giving away some really awesome prizes, and they are going to be really fun and really cool. So go ahead and do that, and I will see you in the next video. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for checking out the BIG FISH, Small Pond training series for this week. If you want to get the whole rest of this series, either look before or after this one, depending on which one you're listening to to go get the rest of them. They are very high quality and I hope you enjoyed it. Now, if you are curious about the BIG FISH, Small Pond training series and you want to get plugged into that, you want to get the videos, you want to ask about whatever programs we have, just drop me an email at danbarrettvip@gmail.com. That's d-a-n-b-a-r-r-e-t-t-v-i-p@gmail.com. That's danbarrettvip@gmail.com. Drop me an email. I'll be happy to hook you up with whatever resources we have and I look forward to talking with you. Thanks a lot.

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