Episode 2 - Matt Feathers

and we have ambitiously booked it in zoom until the end of 2029. So we hope that you'll join us on every single one. Thanks for being here today. and the next one is March 12, th which is coincidentally 3 days before my birthday. So if anyone would like my address. I'm happy to send it to you. I can remind you, on March 12.th

all right. Well, move to Arizona. Yeah. I know Brian Brian in Arizona is happy to help anyone tired of the snow or tired of.

prattled on and on about how you're not supposed to do it in Google. But somebody did not follow our best practices. So I just wanted to make sure. and it was a pretty obscure language is like this is never going to get any traffic. They're not going to be happy. It's.

English. I'm not an expert, but I believe that would have something to do with it. But on the social side, you're able to go in and say, I want to proactively show this ad to people who have said their primary language, is this.

with your help we can also translate whatever ad wording or use a wording that you have. And then the big difference on the social side is, there's a kind of an interstitial page after they sign up on Facebook or Instagram, where there is a form that we can customize, and so we can put it in most major languages, and that helps with the conversion rate, and it needs to be in a place where the audience is large enough. You know. multiple 10 thousands of people

that are that indicate that is their primary language for it to be efficient. But you know essentially what you're doing is. you know, that's a competitive advantage for a lot of people. If they're able to communicate more effectively with people that speak a different language. And so you're just segmenting your ads to show specifically to those people who say. This is my my primary language. So that's why we do it on the social side, and we see a good.

like the day like last week. That went that looked at click through rates of ads when there was an AI kind of summary at the top of the the search results page versus when there is not a AI summary at the top of the search results page, and it was like a shocking reduction in the click through rate. If there is AI deduct or in AI summary, it's something like the click through rate went down 60%, something like that.

and that is not a good thing. And it's because when that's the case, that means that it raises your your cost per click, which raises your cost per lead, which reduces your number of leads. So Strange is that our cost per lead company wide went down last last year with both search and social. So we were able to. Yeah, exactly, James. So I don't know but it's

If that is the case. Google, like, as I always say in these things, Google just wants to make as much money as possible. They don't care how they make it. So if they're gonna they love their AI, everybody loves their AI these days. So they're gonna try it out. And at some point they're gonna say, like, Oh, jeez guys, you know.

we are. Our revenue went down maybe we should curtail the the AI, because we've noticed that it hurts the click through rate. So maybe it. Maybe this will show. Maybe this will be a good indicator to them. That they should, you know, not necessarily just put the AI up there, which would then increase the click through rate which would help us. So maybe that that'll be a good thing for 2025. So.

from your perspective from our clients, like what we want is for everybody to focus on participation not just, you know. Observation, I guess right. Don't just don't just be here and and listen like.

be a part of the conversation right? That chat is there. I did want to point out, because I remember we learned a few things from last time. There is a QA. Like section. But we are gonna monitor the chat a lot closer if we talk about anything and it spurs a question. You know, this can be fairly conversational. Put some questions in there. I can't guarantee we'll be able to

to address everything that comes up in the chat. But if you've got a good question. By all means. We'll either address it right now, or we do review those those messages and everything that we talk about in the chat afterwards. Of course, this is being recorded. We go through it, and it might be something that we we address on another one if we don't get time for it today. So again.

glad everybody's here, glad to be a part of the conversation. And and yeah, throw some throw some questions into the chat. We've got some stuff to talk about. I look forward to hearing from Matt at some point in this my guest speaker on this webinar.

So, Matt, thanks so much for being here with us. We got a lot of great questions, not just on the ad side, but on the training side as well. So I'm excited for your help today. And Matt's an incredible resource

he says things, and I'm just like, Wow, that makes so much sense that yeah. So he's an incredible resource. Definitely. Drop your questions for him, Matt. Thanks so much for waiting a quarter of the webinar without saying anything. We appreciate that. I know you got a couple of really cool things coming up that you wanted to mention, and then we'll go ahead and get to everybody's questions. So.

report to spring training. But this isn't spring training. It's it's real, it's live. It's gonna be a ton of fun. I'm super excited for it. I don't know if there are any more seats left for for that one. I know it's close to filling up, or it's already filled up. I'm not sure but you can check that out@synccommunity.com. That's the best place to go and get some resources, not just for sync you, but like webinars. And there's links to other bi-weekly, like conversion, training and stuff.

second week. They're gonna kinda look at your database like who to call who not to call kind of clean it up a little bit and then 2 weeks of conversion training in the last week. I believe they're doing a power hour. So it's new, but it should be pretty cool. And I think you guys, our clients will have a chance to to learn a lot and make some money.

There's even if that's not you. There, there's still a place for you, and it will help you find your way, you know.

So again, want to thank you guys for showing up being around. Just to remind you guys, office hours is a open Q&A session. So there's no set agenda. We do have some questions that were submitted at sign up that we wanted to talk about that I'm going to throw out to the group. So I hope you guys will find some value there. If you have additional questions, please just drop them in the chat. We'll be monitoring that. Oh, look at me! I'm a poet, and I didn't know it. Rhyme on a dime anytime.

So yeah, without that or without further ado, let's get into some of the questions, and we got some really good ones around training last time that I wanted to kind of lean on Matt to answer.

So, Matt, I'll just kind of get into it. You know, one of the questions that we got was around, what's the best way to encourage your team to do the dials. You know we've done the training, but we're still having difficulty getting people to commit to the dials on our team. So do you have any advice around that.

your your agents to do something that you're not willing or able or capable of doing, you know. So it's like for me. I've always been like a demonstrator, you know. I like getting into the system and making dials, doing some role play, doing some things like that. But if you're a a team leader with a team of agents, and I've been doing it long enough to where it's like, I've learned what works and what doesn't work, and not not everything's gonna work for everybody. But

I was really like I was just guilty of really wanting wanting it more than they did, wanting it more than my agents did. And I had to shift my mindset to say like, really, what I'm looking for here is, I want more for them. and I used to be like the guy that was like you got to make your dials this week. 250 dials, 500 dials, whatever that number is. But the the shift happened when I sat down with agents like individually, and like, what? What are your goals? What can you commit to?

You know that those are things to like really important things to identify, because it's gonna be different for everybody. Because if you you establish that number for your team. It's like we gotta make our 500 dials this week. Well, then, everybody just starts like chasing a number.

and they're not. They're not quality conversations. You're just like checking that box every day. So it's really came back to like having a 1 on one and and saying, well, what are your financial goals? What are your personal goals? And then you can kind of like reverse engineer it. Because then the conversation was like, Well, what's your average price point, or what do you want your average price point to be.

you know, and we've we've done dials. We know it takes this many dials, to have this, many contacts, to set this so many point, this many appointments, and then work your way backwards. and then moving forward like, hold them accountable to that.

Hold them accountable, that, and then it may not work out for everybody. Right? We've lost a lot of team members, teammates, people on our team. But you always got to be filling that pipeline to no different than in real estate. If you're if you have a team, you're trying to grow your team. Hopefully, some of that stuff makes sense.

or if you have specific questions on that, please reach out to them. We're just not experts there, you know. So we're following the lead of the experts within our company. You have access to them, too. So please reach out if you have questions like some questions around co-branding with lenders to help paying for sites. That's definitely something you can work with your account manager on. If you have questions there. So please reach out and again.

Hearing to do dials. Well, when we say dials, it's typically prospecting, right? That's people we've never talked so she says she has 200 leads. That's people we've never talked to, or maybe we've talked to them at some point, and they've ghosted us, or they're not returning our calls or whatever we move them back to attempted contact. So making dials is that's a reference for prospecting and for for me. It's like trying to commit to mornings and afternoons. Those are the best like confirmed

best times to make contact with folks, and every market's a little bit different, but for us it's it's like 8 to 9 in the morning, and then 4 ish to 6 6 ish in the afternoons. So that's and trying to hit somebody a couple of times a day to dial somebody a couple of times a day. There's nothing wrong with that. We're we're trying to get them to answer, trying to get them on the phone and and convert. So hope hopefully, that helps.

I always ask people to like, what's your pipeline look like? Because if you don't have anything closing in 30, 60, or 90 days. Well, then, you might want to be calling all day right? And some of that morning and afternoon stuff is really attributable to like people driving to and from work.

that's always really interesting to me around. And that's so like, Covid was something that really changed the way online lead generation works. And that that's that makes sense that it's maybe had an impact on when people are answering phone calls as well. Now.

and you've got to nail it because there is so much noise going on in the world. There are so many spam calls. But it's it's really simple, it's, you know, looking to make a move soon, or just browsing, you know. And hey, Matt, this is or or Hey, Harry, this is Matt with the home search site, saw that you were checking out a few homes at bump, bump, or online looking to make a move soon or just browsing. And we're really trying to get them to say.

just browsing that they think they're getting off the hook, but when they say that well, then, we can take it from there right and start digging deep find. Try and find out the why. Not so much the what we'll get there, but really digging deep and and going 3 wise, deep, hopefully for every what and then the goal, like, I like to ask people like, what what's the goal of a of a call or a dial? And I get a lot of different different answers. But the goal is really to set an appointment.

Yeah, actually, yes, set an appointment not just to follow up with somebody or send them homes. What are you looking for? I'll reach out in the next 30 days like we're trying to meet with people face to face, and if they're in a different state, or they can't meet face to face. Yes, we'll hop on a zoom call. I've zoom call zoom call people in Germany before that are looking to relocate in the military back to Fort Campbell. Like

face to face like you, you've got to give them enough value on that phone call to get them to meet with you face to face. And that's what that's what we're shooting for.

And that's that's wrong. You know. You're going to be stepping all over top of yourself. But when you do start doing more listening, you pick up on things, and then you can ask more questions based on what they're telling you and try and dig deeper, because I mean the number one thing that humans want and need, that they want to feel loved. They want to be heard right? So if you show them that you care and that you're listening on the phone, you're going to get a lot farther.

Some. Some of them are. Some of them might be writing offers this weekend, but here's the thing like we don't know unless we call them we don't know, and that's the exciting part about it. That's why I still get excited about this. And I love. This is because I'm trying to meet people exactly where they are and and help them. That's it, that's it. But yeah, that I'm looking the I have an agent. I'm not buying for X amount of months or years, or

that's not me or I'm looking for somebody else. Those are all just objections. you know. We we have responses built out for that stuff. And he's right, like with, I'm looking or just looking perfect. Well, what are you looking for, or what brought you to the site today. I'm not letting you off the hook, you know. If I got you on the phone, I'm digging deep.

are are not necessarily ready. Right? Just by the way that they're they're targeted. And they're looking for photos are kind of high high in the funnel. That kind of thing. Not just like we're doing it this way. That's how that's how Internet leads work. Right? But I also wanted to address. Ryan, asked a question about leads in the dashboard, and you know, putting in bad numbers and things like that, and wanted to address that we do verify

the the phone numbers as they come in. So we text the number that's provided. And I'm sure most of the people I know we've had a lot of trainings, a lot of comp communication.

About this. We rolled it out I think it was last February we started testing the lead verification. And so we text a code to the number that's provided. And if they respond and put that code in, then we know not just the number is valid, and that it's like a a working phone number. But it went to the person who was actually on our site that it was A. The person who signed in gave us an accurate phone. Their phone number right now, that's not to say.

just find someone with a passion for clicking on fishing text. No, I didn't. I didn't do that. But you know what? Yeah.

And so that's what. If you look in your dashboard, the leads dashboard. That's what the little blue check mark means. It means that it's a Ver verified phone number that they responded. And we can confirm this number belongs to this person absolutely. Now your question was, if not, why not? So? One of the fo focuses is to get as much information and value from every click that lands on your website. So even if they give us a bad number like

we don't want to just not put, not capture any data from that right? It's still in there. And we found. And this is one of, I think, the biggest benefits to the entire lead verification test that we ran. And when we rolled it out is we found that

you guys remember the exact number. I think it was about 10% of the bad numbers updated because we hide some of the the photos and the school information. Some of that is grayed out. If they don't verify their number, it's behind that verification wall. So if they give us a bad phone number and then they don't respond to our text.

they're gonna go. They come back to the site. About 10% of our total click traffic comes back to the site, sees that that information is hidden and updates their phone number to become verified. So it was just an immediate uplift in legitimate phone numbers. I mean, that's a number that went from bad number will not answer the phone to verified blue checkmark. Right? 10% of the leads did that. And we found

the number improves as traffic comes back with drip campaigns. And you know listing alerts, things like that. But out of the gate about 60% of our lead volume verifies their phone number, and then it trickles up to to around 70% of verified leads.

not to say do not call. For all the reasons Matt was just talking about, not to say don't call a lead. If it doesn't have a blue checkmark they may have left the phone in the car and not been able to respond to it. All the information is valuable in there, but wanted to address that for Ryan Link. That's what that blue checkmark means, and we do absolutely verify. All the incoming traffic. Great question, though. Yeah, but I mean, but also, too, if someone is not ready to give you.

more of what you should be doing right. So taking all those data points that we have and making them relevant to you, so

do great stuff like super impressive stuff. But yeah, I guess I was a little surprised that we're getting so many verified numbers. I I think it's really cool, but I think.

and they might very well be like one and done. They see that one house, or get those photos or find that information, and then they're gone, that that's just the reality of it. Once you kind of realize that and know that that's kind of the norm. Then you're just committed. You have to be committed to calling them regardless. But I love the fact that we have like good, accurate info. That's like, I think I told Harry, like, I'm a database

devotee like I I want like the most flexed awesome database, because it's really one of the only assets that I have in my business, and if I got a database full of good numbers that are verified like that database becomes way more valuable.

right? And I love the fact that, like we're not giving, we, we pay a lot for the platform and and for our leads like I don't. I don't want to give everything away for free like I I want them to be a little committed like, give me your good phone number.

People are are willing. And I I think you're exactly right, too. I I don't. It's not weird to 2 factor anymore.

specifically in the same, or if in the same market, apart from existing competition on keywords. So it's basic, you know, how are we making sure that we're not saturating a market with clients on, you know, when they start with sync.

5 years ago, or whoever long it was I used to do these very, very, very complicated like, oh, look! Look how smart I am! I'm coming up with this really cool metric showing what percent of all searches included a a sync client on it, and then you would add them all up, and it's like, Oh, it's 15! 0, 0, it's 20! 0, so it's

like, it's a small percent of of the time you're gonna see your ad, and then another ad. So of another client. And even if it is, it doesn't really matter, because if they click on yours, then, you know, they're going into your flow. They're they're going to your website. They're entering their information.

there's no indication that the conversion rate or the cost per lead is negatively impacted. If it is next to another client. I think that would be something we would be concerned about if that was the case. But that doesn't seem to be so if if you're next to a zillow ad, or if you're next to a you know

one of our competitors or homes.com ad, or something like that, it's they. Still, they impact the cost per click just as much as if it was a sync client being there. So there's nothing magical about having 2 sync clients. James, do you have any anything to add.

we always recommend having between 5 and 10, like major markets, cities, and things like that in any major metro, and then 10 to 15 supplemental markets, neighborhood subdivisions, things like this. And so between 10 and 20 points of interest, a campaign will have thousands of keywords. Each point of interest has hundreds of keywords in it, right? So thousands and thousands of terms, and

the reach of the ad with us here in Atlanta. If somebody's in Phoenix, and they're looking to move for work, and they search homes for sale in Marietta, or whatever you know the term might be. The ad is eligible to show to that person in Phoenix, Arizona. Right? So basically, there are hundreds of millions of people across North America that we can show the ad to. There are hundreds of thousands of opportunities to show the ad every single day.

and most of our clients. If if an ad budget on Google is $500. We need to spend 17 bucks a day. Right? So again, this is a ton of numbers. But just to say, we've only got to show the Ad. Maybe a couple 100 times in a day out of an opportunity of hundreds of thousands. So we would

we could have a bunch of clients in one market and still not really have a whole lot of overlap, because there's so much opportunity to show the ad. The search volume in most markets is, is very, very strong. So I just like to to address that from a numbers perspective of none of our campaigns

have absolute overlap in in exactly what markets they show, either. So it's something we we keep a very close eye on as as far as what those percentages are, and making sure, like what the search volume is and we're nowhere near those numbers. There's this huge, huge opportunity to show the ad.

right like they're just going to go somewhere else and spend it. So I mean, the market is what the market is. So it makes sense that you'd want to have the best real estate lead generation in that market. We consistently drive the lowest cost per lead. We have the best tools on the back end. We have real verified leads. So we have awesome training like this.

Most of our bosses are hot, handsome, but not as handsome as Dan, of course. So you know, like you want to work with the best, I would think. And then also, I mean just

I don't know how old all of you guys are. But or how much you know, pay attention to things like the Google Search engine results. Page. But look at the look at the way that that's changed over the last 15 years decade, you know. I mean, organic results used to be there. Front and center and ads are on the side, and then it mixed ads in, and then, like you go there now, it's all ads, that's all it is

and like. That's why I think it's interesting with the AI, I mean, will Google figure out a way to insert ads into the AI and make money that way? Right? So like they're constantly tinkering and just figuring out. How can I show every single ad to someone who's who is relevant and who will find it relevant so they'll use me again, right? So that that user will use Google again. So

I think it's, I know, I think. Search it. Search The numbers of search has just expanded so much over the past few years, and the ways that these networks have developed to harness, that make sure that something like that is is not a concern. I mean, why? Why in the world did Facebook make threads? Is anybody on threads?

Whoever is, though, they're gonna start getting ads because they're testing it. That's what they're doing. They're opening up new ad inventory. So we've killed this on the ad side, though, Matt, I know you had some interesting perspective, or I think you did.

worried or wondering about their ads, like, I mean the 3 constants in my last 10 years. It's what's like death taxes and sync rolls in pretty good leads for a low price every month. Like I just, I don't worry about like me having to generate Google buyer leads, and it's just one less thing for me to worry about. And I can focus on money making activities. But yes, you're going to have some competitors that you well, people, that you would consider competitors in your marketplace.

That are sync clients right? But the difference is is like, and there very well could be a lead in my database that could be in Brian Womack's database, who lives one neighborhood over from me. But I've trained in. He's been to our trainings like it. It's all out there. And the reality is like a lot of these leads are in a lot of different databases. But the difference is is like, who's gonna pick up the phone and get to them 1st and help them.

That's that's where the rubber meets the road. That's the difference.

It's it's pretty pretty simple. There's no harm in calling a lead multiple times in a day. You're you're trying to get them on the phone.

who knows? Maybe a voicemail or or a text is. it's like the your last shot. There's no harm in that right, but we we lead with dials and really stick to making dials.

and signing up for that one question on the Ad. Side we got from Frank. How many target cities can you list? So I guess what's the best makeup of, you know, targeting for the clients campaign.

we say, between 10 and 20, when someone's 1st coming out of the gate, we know that about 3 or 4 of those with Google's algorithm are gonna kind of float to the top and get the majority of traffic, and we'll get maybe 3, 4, 5 that are getting

same as you just said, with the agents in a market, you know, 80%, I'm sorry. 20% of the areas provided are gonna generate 80% of the click volume, right? So once we get north of that 40 50 houses don't send. If you get every zip code in your metro area, most of them are gonna get no volume at all right? Like they're not gonna show the ad whatsoever. It's just too diluted. So

we say 10 to 20, so that when someone 1st comes on board and is going through their implementation, and we're building their campaign, we have enough to get something like that. Number exists

so that nobody provides us. Here's the one city that I want to target. Or I just want leads in this zip code. Right? We need a little bit broader market than that. But but it can get too big at the same time. I would say 20 is a really great number. We can go more. If you've got a big team, if you're spread out, if you're P, if people are willing to take drives. But I wouldn't go north of 50

And of course this all comes back to what's your budget? How much you know? Spend what's your daily spend and things like that? There's a lot of factors involved. But that's a pretty safe estimate.

an area that might have only, you know, a total of 40 houses for sale. So it it's always good to have, you know, you know, if like, if you know, Matt's in Nashville, so it's like he's in Hendersonville, but like, if they also have an like a Nashville ad group, that will that will do. It'll have a lower cost will lead if he diversifies outside of just the core of of Hendersonville, to add

Nashville, or Antioch, or or wherever they are good. Let's fill or think of some other ones. But you know, yeah, so it's it's good to diversify just because it will lower your cost per lead. But there are limits to it. But don't be too. Don't have too small of an area like. Don't have one like oh, I only want John's Creek, or or one little area that's not. You're not going to do very well.

And do people ever change their mind or shift gears absolutely. And then, if it is somewhere that you're not, you know, interested in going to, or a price point, maybe you're not interested in working. Then it's a referral opportunity, so don't. Don't. Don't be handcuffed by a lead that might come in. That doesn't look that sexy, you know.

with our team. They're happy to to go over things with you and make changes based on the feedback, because one of the important things is we're looking at things from kind of that macro level. A lot of the time of cost per lead conversion rate.

you know, especially if people are not using the pipelines. There's really not anything we can tell beyond that. So you know, we, your feedback, is beneficial to the campaign. You're the expert. You're the person who's calling people, you know. You can tell us that everyone from this city is, you know, too low of a price point or something like that. So please keep us in the loop when you're doing that. And the area thing

is another just kind of differentiator, I think, for sync. You know, we've developed automation over the last

1112 years that when you give us an area we're creating those groups of, you know, zip codes and things in those areas. Automatically, we have data that says in this city, these are the most searched areas. And this is the average cost per lead. So we're creating those ads. And the automation is creating ads that some people will probably never see right for a Zip code or something like that.

But if they are searching for that, they're far along in their home search. They know what they're looking for, and your ad would sync is the only one that's going to show up, because it's just not scalable for someone that doesn't have the automation that Sync has

to do this. So I always tell people like, if you're not using sync, you know, going back to the competition question, you know, if you're not using sync, you could be missing out on leads because they're too close to being ready to buy right because they're searching for a neighborhood or a Zip code, or and it's just not in your campaign, because they don't have the tools that we have to drive your campaign, and those leads are never going to be the majority of your leads.

You know, most people start searching at the city level, or but if you have someone that knows what school zone they want to be in. They're typing that in in Google. Don't you want to get that person, you know, and have them their information and and get them on the phone. So you know, good guidelines along the target areas. But I would say definitely, you know, one of the benefits of sync is having this Us based team of experts. I mean, we have over a hundred 50 years of experience

betwixt us. I was hoping I'd get to use betwixt today.

being near a golf course is something that people search for. And so we have landing pages that are set up for homes for sale near, you know, Country Club of the South, some something like that. So within.

like they're closer to than somebody just saying homes for sale in Marietta, or homes for sale in the Atlanta area, you know, it's and so that's what we. And so we we use these tools to like. Oh, to get the better cost per lead, as well as to diversify your account by you know. subdivisions, school districts. net like lakes. Lakes are really good. All this kind of stuff for generating a good cost. Relief like physical areas. Geological things, geological.

I guess we'll wrap it up here. We'll be back next month. Matt, man, thank you so much like you give a whole nother layer of this that we just can't provide. And you know I really appreciate it. We'll have the replay out on the Youtube, Channel.

So please subscribe there and be on the lookout for that. And yeah, we hope that you will join us next month. You can go ahead and sign up. Now tell all your friends. Tell all your enemies tell everybody. So. Yeah, that's all for me. But yeah, Brian, go get that buyer lead. You guys feel free to say bye to everybody. If you want to say anything to to wrap it up. And yeah.

Anybody else, Dan.