Episode 6 - Matt Purdie

we or I am Harry Kerbo, the senior director of Paid Social, and I just celebrated 10 years at Sync. So my entire thirties spent at commission zinc to sync. So you guys have officially made me this way. So thank you for forming me. But yeah, just wanted to toot my own horn for a minute.

Matt Purdy and I have known each other for over 20 years, and I absolutely hold him in in the highest respect. And so this is this is a fun moment for me getting to hang out and and chat with him with such an audience, because a lot of times Matt and I hang out quite a bit we went to college together. We actually were in the same fraternity. We've known each other since since I was knee high to a duck. And he's been at Sync like, you. Yeah, think on that, Dan. Figure that out. But

so yeah, we we hang out quite a bit. We talk a lot honestly, when we even when we're talking, we talk a lot about sync. We've done this over the years, but cool to to be here and get to talk to him with such an audience, and I know how much value he can bring to to the clients, to everybody who's on this call, because another bit of of trivia and

Matt joined Sync in February 2014. So some of you might remember. February 2014, especially around Atlanta, is a date that happened. It was called Snowpocalypse. Some of us old timers in Atlanta. Still, remember it. Basically, the entire country made fun of Atlanta because we got like one inch of snow, and it shut down the entire city, and people were abandoning their cars on the Interstate, and it was just wild. But we weren't set up for remote work at that time, and Matt and I were actually housemates back then, in 2014.

I saw Matt when he couldn't. He had been at the company for less than a month, and he couldn't go into the office, and we weren't set up for like calls and remote work, and he took out his laptop, where most people would have said like, Oh, I get a day off because it snowed, or whatever. He took out his laptop, and he watched every video that Sync had at that time, and he just studied the system, and he was a student of what at the time commissions Inc.

The value in what we brought to our clients, and I was so impressed with the way that he just attacked it, and he found a way to be as valuable as possible and as efficient because he knew where he was going at Sync. Right? And he's been a spectacular. It's been awesome to watch his leadership grow with the team and the department that he's in.

he might not want me to say, but actually a ton of other departments that sync basically go to the frontline team to poach most of his people. And in spite of the fact that we're stealing all of his best talent, because we know that they are an awesome cultural fit, that they've been led well, that they've been well informed.

he's just got a great attitude and the entire frontline team knows everything that they need to know to help out our clients. So it's always been a focus of sync that when one of our clients or users calls in somebody in this building, answers somebody is able to help them as quickly as possible, and frontline is the most knowledgeable team we've got. So I'm excited that this is such a QA. Format, and has been, you know, every time we do this for several months, and to have a tank here.

This is his. This is his place is like answering questions. And so really excited to see what kind of value we can bring to some of the conversation we have.

was when that was that day. And so we're in the office, and I'm still learning where the bathroom is, or whatever, and the CEO comes around the corner he's like, and this is around 1030, 11 o'clock, or whatever he's like, all right, it's gonna be bad. Everybody go home. And I'm like, not gonna pull one over on the new guy. I'm gonna go outside and it's gonna so I stayed as long as and he comes back, around he goes. Why are you here? Get get out, go get!

I'm like, all right, you're gonna get. Yeah. We made it home.

let us know, too, and not just how the sync system works. And one of the things that is being emphasized. A lot in lead generation online advertising, pretty much everything in business today is AI, and I'm not a not a huge fan of it. Or I think a lot of it's overblown. but I'm going to show you something that will kind of it's like like, somewhere between 3 and 10,000 people are watching this. This webinar, as we speak. But AI with AI, the importance of like producing content. It's kind of

it's in. Well, it's increased, or it's it's really blown up. It's it kind of increases the benefits of producing content. Which is what this does, what we are doing right here. And so I just want to show something here. I'm gonna show share my screen.

real estate lead generation and conversion. Crm platform. Dan Lott is recognized for his work with Sync's hyperlocal micro targeting strategy. He has been named an Inman marketing all-star for 2 consecutive years. Sync has also been highlighted for generating leads that resulted in the purchase of the most expensive home in Charleston's Mls. In the history of Charleston's Mls.

So the things that I underlined or highlighted syncs, hyperlocal marketing micro targeting strategy, the Inman marketing deal. And the thing about Charleston. The only reason Google knows to put this in here is because of these webinars and stuff that I myself have created. like the phrase, 6 hyper local marketing, micro targeting strategy like, that's a phrase I made up, you know, they I like just came up with that. It was hyper local marketing. It's like that's not as that's not as fun. Let's

let's get it even dig down even deeper. So it I came in that. So it's now hyperlocal marketing strategy. And we talk about that every month, because that is the key to our lead generation. Success, the Inman marketing all star. The fact that we've been doing for 2 years the only place that exists from what I can tell is we've talked about it in these webinars is the fact that I'm a 2 time all-star. I'm on their website as being it. Well, I was on it last year, and then this year.

and then the only place that no, the only place that knows, or the only website, or wherever that has referenced the fact that we did the most expensive home in Charleston's Mls. That is because we we did a white paper. I wrote a white paper which which Harry actually spent twice as much time formatting and make it look really nice.

And so we did that white paper which is not even hosted on our website. It's you have to do it from. It's behind the paywall or behind. You have to register to get it. And then we've also mentioned this in a webinar. So these webinars are really powerful, and if you I know a lot of our clients we've we had a at one of our sync summits. We had one of our clients who was extensive into video like talked about what she was doing. And it's like, Oh, it's kind of stupid, but

no, actually not kind of stupid like. Actually, I was very impressed with what she had to say. But, this just sort of like you can almost make up like

this is what Google is emphasizing is in the future. They're going to more and more emphasize these AI overviews by you doing videos. You can kind of change public perception by doing it doing it. So I would, you know, if not just doing videos, but just other kind of like get tweeting or X-ing, or whatever putting on Instagram, or you know all this kind of stuff

it it you could create. It's like, I wouldn't be surprised if the next time I do this. It was like Dan is known for being very handsome, because Harry Joke always says, like Dan's the most handsome guy in real estate marketing. So it's like it. Kind of you kind of create what the AI is. And this is all true. Everything on here is true. But it doesn't necessarily have to be true. And so that's that's kind of the

that. The faults my problem with AI is. It's like, well, people take it for granted that what you're seeing is is is correct, and we've had like we've. There's another company called Sync in in the Greater Atlanta Area Sync.

we're not so even concerned with the videos being perfect, you know, just take a video on your cell phone of you talking about something for a minute, keeping just having that out there over time. We've posted probably 500 videos over the last 3 years, you know, 501 min videos and with well written captions, you know, that. Can. That kind of stuff can be indexed. you know. But then there's also the effect of people see that

like for someone to search sync, they need to know about sync. So you know, maybe that's where for you as a realtor, you know, for someone to know. You're the best realtor in your area. They need to know you, you know. So maybe that is social media content, showcasing your expertise. But then, you know, be thoughtful with the captions and things that you write, because I think AI is picking up on that. And now is a really interesting opportunity to kind of form your reputation with AI, it seems.

you know. And then they're gonna figure out how to monetize this, because it's pushing ads down.

Google is trying to match is trying to maximize its amount of money. So they will start having ads all over that and all that stuff. But with with AI, what what I think, what's powerful about is like social media. It's like, yeah, we've been doing social, like companies have been doing social media for 20 years, and but that was always like kind of from the perspective of

the social, like the company like, hey, this we are the best. Now AI is crawling those the social media stuff and saying, Oh, this! This company is the best that real estate in the North Springs area, or whatever. So they let it. It gives additional credibility to

the the person who on on the company. Because AI is saying, it's true. People don't realize it's not, it's it's in, not, as it says. At the bottom. AI responses may include mistakes. So that's well, that's got it in very small letters. So yeah.

you can change it and tailor it to what you want these AI things to say. So this isn't about Sync or Dan. I might be the only one that's asking the question like Dan, how often do you Google, your own name, by the way, like Lot? More than that.

do it. And if you see our 1st videos, they look like hostage videos like it looks bad. But But any, I just I, yeah. that's my takeaway from this is like, this is an opportunity for you to almost shape your what AI thinks of you, because it doesn't know yet, and it's learning, but alright cool. So we do have.

video. And we lost something there. So now we are kind of transitioning to majority of video. But still some posts to like blogs and that kind of stuff. And it is just, you know, we'll take this call and we'll cut that up into 10 different videos, and it'll live on the blog and it'll live on Youtube. So we can definitely talk more about that. But I mean, the biggest thing for us has just been.

you know. Keep in. Keep in mind what you want your brand to look like, but don't. It doesn't have to be in like 4 K. Or anything like that. Just just get it out there and get those conversations going. But yeah, thank you, Wayland, that's a good idea. Mike asked for. Get her done. Yes, sir. Mike asked for price structure for hyper, hyper, local micro targeting.

you as a client, will give us a certain number of areas like 8 areas, 8 cities that you want to get leads from. And then we have assembled a lot of data that shows what are the micro targets within those cities? What are the parks? What are the schools? What are the

you know? Country clubs? What are the zip codes within those cities? Those are the micro targets. And we do advertising. We do an ad group for those. And we have spent millions of dollars creating this very sophisticated software that allows us to do it at scale. If we didn't have this, it would be. It would be

like a lot of times, you think. Well, well, you just do it manually. It's like, well, it would take 10 days to create somebody's account, which is something that we could do in, you know, 15 min with with the software that that our team has created. So the micro targeting is just drilling down into like specific neighborhoods within the greater thing. And then, kind of the hyperlocal, I guess, is the then we also do a lot of niche marketing, which is the like within. You know.

St. Louis, you know you would go like well, luxury homes in St. Louis, Condos, in St. Louis, all of which would have their own little ad group. And Google really likes it when you have it. All plays well together with the landing page, the keywords, and, you know search terms and all that. They fit well together. So you get a lower cost per click and a lower cost per lead, which means you get more leads for the same amount of money. And so with these hyper local ones, we haven't done a lot of research on in terms of.

you know. Well, if somebody searches for this specific neighborhood, they're more inclined to buy a house like right now, but it kind of stands to reason that why it that it is like well, there's somebody searching for a home in a school district you're more inclined to like. You're more eager than somebody who's searching, you know, homes for sale in Atlanta, or homes for sale. And

you know, California or something like that. So anyway. So that that's what it is. And so you don't really buy it. It's just part of, you know, when, like, we'll as part of your managing of your account, we that's just what we do. And so you would give us the 8 areas. And then. you know, if if somebody out there knows what how Google works is like, we would probably have like 200 ad groups focused on those egg areas and the specific sub markets within those areas. So

that's it. That's our hype. That's our hyper local.

you know. And so like, I know, I always say this, but I always tell people, if you aren't using sync. You could be missing out on leads that are too close to buying, you know, because think the sync clients are getting those because they're performing a search. that is, for you know Charleston Battery historic homes for sale and having that level of of automation to create those ad groups.

You're probably, if you're not with Sync, you're probably missing out on that search because the sync client is getting it.

Basically, the the determination was, the leads are kind of like creeped out by like, Hey, I see you're on the site, you know. Let's talk which you know nowadays you go to a site, and it is a Chatbot, and it says, Hey, what's going on? But everybody's kind of conditioned to to Chatbots, saying, Hi, I'm a bot. Let's help kind of thing back in the day it was, you know.

It was before it was commonplace it was. It was just a it was a little too creepy, so we we took it off so as far as chat bots go. The the short answer is, no, you should not put a chatbot on your site for 2 main reasons. Number one sync already has an AI that will communicate with your leads very effectively, Alex. Most of you should already have this enabled. If you don't please do, because it's awesome. So that is kind of the the way that you want the Sync kind of AI to to talk

number 2. If you do have a 3rd party. Chat, bot! Now you have 2 chats going with one lead. That's gonna that won't talk. That's never that. That's gonna create a lot of confusion just for you, for the lead for everybody. And the 3rd bonus reason is because 3rd party chat 3rd party like chat bots. And these sorts of things will really kind of mess with the way your site functions and our front end team is

very good at making sites that that convert the traffic that Dan and his team send your send to it, and that can interfere in that. So the.

Those are the 3 main reasons. I guess I do see somebody saying, You know you prefer the bot over the texting, you know. That's I can definitely see where you're coming from on that you know, sometimes is the AI gonna get it right every single time. Absolutely not as Dan alluded to, you know it's good. Is it perfect. No but what we've seen with lots over lots and lots of sessions and iterations and testing is that you know

more often than not it's gonna say the right thing, and it's going, and it just keeps getting better and better over time. Plus. It's integrated already in with the platform. So anything it says to the lead is going to show up in the lead details. So it's all in one place versus you having to check multiple places. So.

kind of thing like it's like, Go away. I went to your site for a reason. Leave me alone. Kind of thing.

you know. So like, that's that's kind of my thought with it, I mean, a more effective thing could be to You know, you could take. You could take leads that hit your site using a pixel and create a remarketing campaign on Facebook and Instagram to allow people that don't convert to send you a message on your page. This is something that we did at the corporate level. because we saw there were a ton of people that you know

the conversion rate is, I don't know. 5. Let's say it's 5 to 10%. You got 90% of people who were interested but not ready to submit their information, you know. So something like that. It that has that was really effective for us for a long time on the corporate side. It was a messenger campaign going to people like who had missed a demo. or people who had been on the site, but not become a lead.

and that just allowed those people to, I mean, not all of them, but some of them would ask us questions, and you know the the whole point is to me that allows you to get as many people to go down the happy path as you can, and get as many leads for as full as many full leads as you can, and then. you know, maybe collect some other people list cast also does things similar to that. But so I mean, that's

I don't know if that's a right answer on chat bots. That's how I think about it is from conversion rate up optimization. And I mean, you see, a lot of you see, a lot of sites do things differently than the way Sync does it. And I think a lot of the time it's because people take advice from like Google or this chat bot provider, or some article, and all the companies read the same thing, and they don't actually do the research. The reason that you know

we don't do a lot of things that other people do is because we've researched it. And it. It actually doesn't work. You know, it actually hurts your conversion rate. So no.

That's it. At the end of the day get you leads so that you can be awesome at your job and and sell houses right? The brand accelerator is designed to, as Harry pointed out earlier. Like to get people to know about you right? And so a chat bot! That's like geared to like expressing your brand would be great for a brand accelerator site, which is just another funnel

into the sync site to get them to register there, so that might be a good place to experiment with chat bots, and kind of what they can do. There.

But yeah, no, I understand. And like, I see Tina's. Big builders use bots on their sites have live chat going, and they convert those leads. I mean, I just I don't doubt that they convert the lead. I wonder if they would get more leads. you know, if they change that flow? I just. I hate taking people's attention away from the goal of why we sent them to the site.

So far in this conversation. We've talked about 3 things Dan mentioned earlier the the house that got sold in Charleston, which we've gone back to several times on several different webinars. So for anyone that doesn't know I'll touch on that briefly. But we also talked about the micro targeting. And then Matt just brought up. AI. And I want to talk about how those 3, like all work together to the flow of what syncs system is designed to do and how we've tried to set it up to the most benefit and value for our clients right? Like

somebody went on and searched specifically for historic homes area. I think you said the exact search criteria a second ago, but I know it was historic homes that they were looking for, and because of our niches and the automation Dan was talking about. We have an ad, a landing page. We were able to filter that click to a page that showed exactly what they were looking for. He these are Mls considered historic homes in the Charleston area. They clicked on

I think it was at like 8 o'clock at night on a Sunday.

at 9 o'clock in the morning on Monday, and that's a lead that came in because of the way that we were targeting the ad, the the search criteria, the automation we used and the conversation that AI had that most people aren't gonna be reaching out to, and they just woke up. And there's there's the appointment now, at the end of the day

you do still have to show up the appointment right as an agent. You still gotta go and show value to that person, that buyer and everything but that person bought a 22 million dollar home like. I think it was 19 million for the house and 3 million for the furniture they bought it for fully furnished. And that's the system and the flow. That's why we do so much testing. To say

what is the best way to get leads into the system onto the site into the system, and then scheduling appointments for you.

turned into a, you know, a closing in one form or another. I'm not saying you got to check your trash every single day. A lot of people say, you know, once a week, every other week. See if somebody filtered by, you know, sort by last login, hey? This random person named Mickey Mouse logged in. Maybe it's worth an email, or maybe it's worth something, you know. But yeah, so you can't delete them, because you never know kind of thing. And also you know.

there's no harm in having it on your site if you just don't want to see it, just trash it so.

We, when this launched around a year ago, I was expecting to be like 30% verified. But it's around 75% of the the leads are verified. Which means it's 2 factor. So it is the right. It is the person. The person is, they put in a phone number that they did on their device. There. That is the right. That is a hundred percent accurate. That's, you know.

that's the person. But the 25, the other 25%. They're just somebody who doesn't didn't have their phone nearby, or you know their phones in the car, or they're like, you know, to heck with that, I'm not gonna to factor verify. So there's there's still people. But they just didn't. 2 factor verify. So that does it. It doesn't mean they're garbage, and they should be deleted. They just didn't feel like doing it. So just celebrate the 75, don't you know, to diminish the 25.

down the road. So yeah, I mean, that's why I would be against deleting leads as well as you know. I mean you never. You do see those posts in the owners group of this person came in 8 years ago, has looked at 800 properties, and finally called me. You know.

it's called a pay per click, right? Your ad spend is used as soon as someone clicks on the ad, regardless of what they do. After that moment Google got paid. They're happy, right. The the Facebook's. They cash their check for the cost per click, whatever it may have been. But

that's whether they just click and bounce off the page. That's whether they register and give a good number a bad number, or that's whether they register and you know, you put them into the trash leads. So it's just value that you've already paid for. That's in the system that's on the dashboard. And if literally anything comes, if 1% of them show up, you know, 2 years down the road. It's either trash them or or don't right, but Just keep in mind like

the budget was used as soon as they clicked on that. And then any value that we can get after that click is only positive like, that's what we're doing for it. But just keep that in mind, because, like, I said, somebody mentioned that recently that they didn't realize like we pay per click. And then we we just extract as much as we can from that. 70 cents or dollar 10, or whatever you know cost per click varies, of course, but

alright got an interesting question about sly voice mails. So you got let me know if I'm not understanding to me a slide voicemail like a slide dial is you call, and it doesn't ring goes right to a voicemail this client uses agent legend with sync because they offer slide dials da da da so agent legend, it seems, is also using AI, so

it looks like the. So there's 2 questions. It looks like the question is really around, you know, has sync investigated side aisles, you know, is that something that is on the roadmap, I mean is there? I don't know of any. I know it's a topic that's been talked about.

that we're investigating. For, you know, the next, the next iteration of the dialer. So you know, we're looking at what other you know. More dialer for more. Yeah, more dialer focused platforms use. And trying to, you know, kind of see. Okay, what are

you know? What are they doing right? What could? How could we incorporate that kind of thing? How do we avoid the the mistakes that they may be making that sort of thing so sorry. Short answer is, yes, we are looking into that you know. Believe me, whenever we roll out something like that, you will hear about it, because we'll shout it from the mountaintops. So.

You know what you're doing. There is. You're limiting the algorithm's ability to find you people who are searching, you know, and your cost per lead may be a lot cheaper at night. And I mean, that could be someone you know. What if that's a a you know a parent who's going to works and goes to school.

I don't know the timeframe feel free to put in the chat, like what you feel like? A timeframe would be appropriate. If is is it 30 days? Is it 6 months like, when when do you feel like you've been ghosted by a by someone on the site? But I am curious, and I want to ask Matt, like. maybe for

a top 5, you know. Like, while we've got you and we're coming up on the last couple of minutes here. What are some of the questions, I guess, either frequently asked questions or the most common like points of confusion, that that you and your team get that people call in on. That might be a good time to to let people know. Is there a difference between, say, site owners and and agents and people, you know, who use the software? Do they have different

concerns, or or points of confusion like that. But.

the platform along with all the extra formatting and whatnot, and it will send, and it won't quite look the way it did in word. And so the formatting gets all kind of kind of wonky, and then they'll call in and say, oh, it looks dumb. How could this have happened? Blah! Blah! It's like, well. sync isn't word. And so the formatting can kind of break when you do that. Our recommendation on that is just make the email in the Sync

compose message thing. To avoid that, you can still put pictures you can format, and that'll then it'll send properly. So. Number one thing is, you know, when we go to inspect the email. And it's just a wall of HTML formatting that, you know, can break things so skip that just make it in the sync platform.

We get a lot of lead routing questions usually they're pretty pretty quick fixes a common miss. A common thing that people will do is, they'll give all everybody on their team like a city or a state routing, except for like one person, or they'll forget to turn that on for their their brand new agent.

And suddenly that agents getting a ton of leads because lead routing is like, oh, it didn't match one of these cities, so they've suddenly become kind of like this default, you know. Send it to this person. Kind of thing. So lead routing is really flexible. It can do a lot of fun things, but just common little things like, you know.

not putting in a city when all your other agents have cities can kind of mess with things. So it's best. If you're gonna route by city, have everybody have cities. You know. Don't leave one agent out if you can help it. If you have questions on that. If you have some, you know, really complicated system, or just want to try to tighten things up, give us a holler. We're happy to. We're happy to work through something with you there. And then I would say the number one thing that would that

would help help us help you is if you call in with an issue, a question, a concern. Something's weird, a missing, listing examples we we need. We thrive on examples. If you call us and say my site broke. we can't do much without with that. But if you call in and say, Hey, listing number 1, 2, 3, Main Street has a missing criteria or a missing photo. We can work with that. We can help you with that, you know. If a lead. If you call a lead, and they just say, I want a house. Okay.

give me more kind of thing. So give us examples. Happy to help. But you know. Come, come with examples, and we'll we'll fix your fix, whatever it is, a lot faster. That's about all. I got off the top of my head, but happy to answer any other questions.

when a when a site owner calls in or a broker level user calls in and says, Hey, can you do? Can you help us with the following? Or you know we will. We'll do what we can with. If it's possible we'll do it kind of thing. If an agent Level user calls in and says, Hey, can you do something? And they don't have that permission, like an agent says, Hey, I want to change lead routing, or I want to do do an import kind of thing.

you know, if we tell you. No, it's not because we're being mean or don't like you. It's because you don't have that permission. We do need permission from the site owner or a broker level user that can do that, you know. Copy them on the email. If they say Yes, go, for it thumbs up happy to do it. So I promise you, if we're saying no, we can't. It's not because we don't like you. It's just because we can't.

So that is, you know, that is an area of focus that we're looking at there. So.

You know, they are people that we generated that then got reactivated by something. So that's a focus of ours right now, and AI is going to be a really big tool for that. Leanna Leanne. Oh, you're Gonna say something, Matt. Sorry.

how many people you have. We always want you to generate more leads and spend more money on advertising, not because it helps us, but because it helps you, because if you know, a certain percentage of the leads will close. And then that will improve your roi. So I've heard 70. But if that that might be a little bit too much. But yeah. so I don't have a good answer for that.

have their finger more on the pulse of that, because, as as Harry just said, it depends obviously on the size of the team the number of agents, how much they need to be fed, but I feel like I've heard. I thought it was less than that, so Dan might be talking more of what like our average user and average size and stuff like that is. But I thought it was like 30 or 35 leads per month per person feels familiar. But

reach out to your account manager. They probably have that. If not, they're probably sitting right next to Chelsea who, they can ask, and she would definitely know. But yeah, from our team's perspective. I don't actually know, because our goal is more is better than less, and we have a budget. And this is what we have, and so do as much as we can with that number. Right? So that's what we've been aim aiming for.

Nick and I were freshmen in college in 2,004, when Facebook was invented. Nobody knew what it was gonna become later. Right? So my point is, there are no complementary pictures of of me.

yeah, we hang out all the time. Now we get late night coffee.

tell your acquaintances to oh, oh, oh, that's fine, Dan! I'm just in the middle of my thing. But no, you go. You go, Dan.

Matt's team knows all all the answers to pretty much every question you would have. So call them up, and they will answer any questions, not even about sync, just anything in general, yeah.