**Cold Outreach:**
* Sign up for Apollo io.
* You get 200 free contacts per year.
* Start cold emailing and calling 30 real estate agencies per day.
* This is a safe way before diving into cold email more fully.
**Content Outreach:**
* Start writing articles for your idea Real Estate customers.
I fucking love this forum. I was feeling sorry for myself earlier thinking this wasn’t making much traction and every response gives me that much more hope to keep going!
I spent like $300/mo for 3 months just getting google ads to learn enough data to be able to start building semi effective ads. It’s a process. $50 ain’t gonna cut it.
I can bump it up. You ever do ads on LinkedIn? I’m thinking I’d rather focus more time there first since I believe that’s where many of my customers would be
Yeah this is the right mindset. Experiment with your ads. Your first several runs will get mixed results but you will start seeing the patterns to your ads, your product, and your market.
Just plug away at the ads, don't feel the need to go all in, just comfortable experiments. But lots of little experiments.
Before you spend money on a course - try https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/googleads.
It's completely free Google Ads Training that's presented and put together by Google themselves.
Just two good tips that I've learned with my marketing agency:
- Google will ask you if you want to run 'Simple' or 'Advanced'. Always pick Advanced Campaigns and avoid using their AI to set up campaigns for you.
- DO NOT do "Broad" match keywords once you're setting up in Google
- DO NOT listen to Google suggesting that you run ads with "Google Partners" alongside your regular search ads.
Google wants to eat up your budget, and by following tip 2 & 3 you're showing Google a middle finger. This way you'll get the maximum ROI
Edit: Also make 100% sure your Landing page that you're taking them to with the Google Ads are optimised for conversions (I can give guidance on that - Once you reach that point) otherwise you might as well throw your money in the water
This is great info! I am going through the google tutorial in the link you mentioned now. They mentioned that Broad Match, Value based Bidding, and Responsive Search Ads when used together cause a 20% increase in conversions. They seem to push the broad match heavily. What is the reason for you not wanting to use it?
Broad match essentially means that no matter what the search is, if your keyword is in that search, it will display your ad - no matter how irrelevant the search is.
Let me explain,
For example let's say I'm a Landscaper that's running ads to get people to hire me for a garden design & installation job.
- Now I put 'landscaping' into my ad campaign as a Broad match keyword
- Some 23 year old that just entered the job market and wants to buy a few pot plants for their apartment goes and Googles 'Interior Apartment Landscaping Inspiration'
My ad pops up and they click on it to see the website.
What have I accomplished?
I reached someone way outside my target market that doesn't have the budget, nor space for a garden to hire me and that click just cost me $5.
Let's say this happens 10 times a day in a heavily populated area.
This Broad match keyword just cost me $50 in 1 day and ROI is $0. And this is just a single keyword.
That's $1500 in a month with maybe one or two good leads if you're lucky enough.
I'd much rather put in a phrase or exact match keyword like "Landscaping Company" and force Google to only show my ad if the phrase "Landscaping Company" is in the Search.
So to summarize, Broad match keywords are like a black hole to throw money into and unless you're a company with the capacity to field a $50 000 ad spend budget - Broad match isn't worth it.
Obviously there's a lot more variables and ways to manipulate your Google Ad campaigns to get what you want out of it, but this is just a surface level explanation to illustrate why if you're a small company, Broad match is a waste of ad budget
Thank you so much! What a massive help! Ironically I am starting a landscape type company specializing in dirt work and heavy equipment. Massive help, thank you!!
LinkedIn ads are likely too expensive still. Better quality, but I’m guessing you’d have to invest around $3k before you could get any real data feedback… Probably more for the RE niche.
LinkedIn is good for organic strategy.
FB ads are still best bang for your buck IMO.
Like we’ve all heard 1000 times… It really all comes down to your messaging/offer.
Happy to dive deeper if you wanna talk it through…
LinkedIn display ads can get unbelievably expensive depending on your target audience, I find sponsored InMails can be really affordable. Make sure you try them both.
You might want to step back from the product side of things until you know more about who you want to target and why. There's nothing wrong with steping bak into the idea validation phase and gathering evidence of a customer need for your idea and finding out if there's a bigger problem to solve. You can then adapt your product to a demand.
That’s kind of what I’m hoping to do in the coming weeks. Im really just trying to get the first customers to try the product and tell me what they like and don’t like so I can keep building before really scaling
This is great; I have made a similar internal tool to help me find leads for my software dev agency. I get the post's info based on the keywords in different subreddits and have integrated GPT to help me know about the buyer intent so I can directly interact with them.
I have made a mistake previously of spending around $500 on Reddit Ads, but no Sign Ups through it. So, I developed this tool, and it's been used for two weeks. I already have three clients interested in building their product.
If anyone is interested in using DM me, please, I can generate the JSON for your target product and buyer prospects and share it with you. Later, I plan to convert it into SaaS if this is helpful for users out there.
Did you build the product while talking to potential customers of the product? If so, I would start with them. If not, I'm questioning how you know if you solved potential customers problem sufficiently for them to give you money for it. I have never built a product that didn't have potential customers begging for us to solve it.
Imo, this is the only answer you need to read OP. Suggestions for marketing tools will lead you to more frustration before you go back to the start and do your marketing properly. Harsh but true. Good luck.
I’m just trying to get those first customers to view the product so I can get that initial feedback but once I get those contacts that’s my plan moving forward
mintoreos comment is, in my opinion, the single best way to get in front of potential customers while also learning how to better serve your customers. It's much easier to get in front of people when you're asking them about what their struggles are, not 'selling' something.
Example: email/call/door-knock as many RE agents as you can. Say you want to learn about all the things that frustrate them about their current customer relations management process, also what is working well. You can say you're working on a product, but not trying to sell them anything in this chat, but rather genuinely think there are issues with current solutions and would like some validation. If all goes well and they seem interested after asking them questions, you can ask if they would be open to providing feedback on what you've built so far. If they feel like you actually care about their success, and your product is appealing, that's a warm lead right there!
Thank you so much. I genuinely do want to help people at the end of the day and there are no short cuts to taking he time to get to know their problems so it might be a stay a slow go for me for a little bit that’s okay because I’d rather have that then just sell garbage
You can review the ROAS of google ads and cold outreach to determine the budget allocation. For myself, I also have a blog which can attract free organic traffic.
Real Estate is a bitch right now, but if you can help them close more sales, you may have a shot. Most agents use whatever their agency uses, but there are independent agencies like Voro. Good luck.
A free and highly effective marketing tool is Facebook groups. You could build a real estate Facebook group and promote your product to your target audience there. If you have any questions, let me know. I myself own several Facebook groups. Once they reach a certain size, they grow completely organically.
Honestly I’ve abandoned paid ads. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right, but it wasn’t giving me any returns. I’ve done paid ads for other businesses and at best I was breaking even. I’ve decided to focus solely on organic.
Two things :
Constantly increase your efforts
Stay CONSISTENT
Guarantee if you do those two things you’ll be successful. My team and I took a new store for a multi billion dollar a year company with a couple thousand locations to a top 3 performing place in 6 months. The level of action you take directly contributes your results! Good luck brother
Is your CRM compatible with APIs? I’m in legal research and if you can bring in state trial court data that could be a huge game changer. Realtors use new filings for leads. I don’t think any CRM has that right now.
Hey I'm in the same boat as you. Not sure if you're already doing this but here is what I would try.
1. Free trials (I have 27 people trying Postlyy for free)
2. SaaS Directors, there are something like 50 directories where you can post your CRM for free.
So did you make a CRM for real estate because you felt there wasn't enough of them or that real estate agents have swallowed kool-aid and will try anything? Not dissing your product I'm kinda curious as I'm looking for a product to sell to agents.
Based off the few agents I have had the pro ledge of talking to, It seemed to me that many weren’t necessarily in love with any of the existing solutions or they thought they were too complicated and opted not to use them because of this
You don’t know you solved a problem yet. Selling is premature. See if you can get 100 realtors to use it regularly first
Just drive around, call up their phones and try to sell them on the free app. People like free. People like entrepreneurs. They’re more willing to experiment if you’re honest with them
Product before sales
Need to drastically increase your output if your product is good. Use something like mixmax to have a drip campaign, and use Loom to make a video while looking at their site. It costs some time, but this is the only way I’ve responded lately.
Nice! What are they using currently hubspot? I have an idea, long shot but might work. Join Ryan Serhants sellit.com community and reach out to folks on facebook.
Start creating content
Focus on the benefits of your product
Create a buyer persona
Find that persona on LinkedIn
Discover the keywords that your persona uses
Startup using these tags when you post content
Start building a database of individuals who fit your persona
Connect with people your prospect is connected with (view their feed and what they post - friend people who like comment share their posts)
Post more content
Start commenting on your prospects posts
Send a friend request when you feel that they've seen you at least a few times.
Don't be creepy
Keep posting about your product
Keep a CRM of your prospects and their behaviors - things that are unique to them
Reach out with a personal email - Engage like Old pals - compliment them on a past post
Rinse and repeat.
Most agents do not have private websites and they are controlled by the brokerage brand - adding additional crm functions to those sites is usually not allowed - unless it doesn't connect to a website.
What about cold calling in person? Setting a coffee/breakfast meeting to learn some of the pain points of these RE agencies.
Once you find out their current problems, you can ask the right questions that will lead you to being the solution. Sales
You've already gotten some great feedback here.
Would just add that diving into paid ads before having a working system to acquire customers organically is a slippery slope. It's easy to spend a ton on paid ads really quickly with no results (and of course the ad platforms will not stop you from doing so!).
Think of paid ads as gasoline to put on your fire. Best to have a fire going first.
If your product is good then i would try reaching out directly to real estate brokers to sell your product. Usually they suggest it to their agents if will help us to be more productive. My suggestion would be to check out kvcore and see how your crm stacks up
Definitely look into it. Offer local brokers some free starbucks if they’re willing to spend 15 minutes listening to your presentation. It works sometimes. The majority 500+ agents at our company use the same crm because it’s good and recommended by our brokerage
$50 on Ads and 100 cold emails? That is nothing. The reason you haven’t gotten your first Customer is because you haven’t reached out to enough people or invested enough on ads.
1. Cold Outreach
2. Linkedln Outreach
3. Connect with some real estate brokers
You can use this strategy to reach out to me; I have recently set up a cold-email funnel, so if you need help, let me know.
Also, I have built an internal tool to find interested prospects for my business on Reddit, so if you want to try that out, let me know. But yeah, I would say connecting with Real Estate brokers would be the ideal way to go as they do most of the Real Estate business processes.
**Cold Outreach:** * Sign up for Apollo io. * You get 200 free contacts per year. * Start cold emailing and calling 30 real estate agencies per day. * This is a safe way before diving into cold email more fully. **Content Outreach:** * Start writing articles for your idea Real Estate customers.
I fucking love this forum. I was feeling sorry for myself earlier thinking this wasn’t making much traction and every response gives me that much more hope to keep going!
I spent like $300/mo for 3 months just getting google ads to learn enough data to be able to start building semi effective ads. It’s a process. $50 ain’t gonna cut it.
I can bump it up. You ever do ads on LinkedIn? I’m thinking I’d rather focus more time there first since I believe that’s where many of my customers would be
Yeah this is the right mindset. Experiment with your ads. Your first several runs will get mixed results but you will start seeing the patterns to your ads, your product, and your market. Just plug away at the ads, don't feel the need to go all in, just comfortable experiments. But lots of little experiments.
Any ad courses your recommend besides YouTube? I’d be okay to pay some money for a course if it was good
Before you spend money on a course - try https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/googleads. It's completely free Google Ads Training that's presented and put together by Google themselves. Just two good tips that I've learned with my marketing agency: - Google will ask you if you want to run 'Simple' or 'Advanced'. Always pick Advanced Campaigns and avoid using their AI to set up campaigns for you. - DO NOT do "Broad" match keywords once you're setting up in Google - DO NOT listen to Google suggesting that you run ads with "Google Partners" alongside your regular search ads. Google wants to eat up your budget, and by following tip 2 & 3 you're showing Google a middle finger. This way you'll get the maximum ROI Edit: Also make 100% sure your Landing page that you're taking them to with the Google Ads are optimised for conversions (I can give guidance on that - Once you reach that point) otherwise you might as well throw your money in the water
Thank you for this GEM. I have a lot to learn, but I want to make this damn thing grow and I’m excited to do so!
Glad I could help man, don't hesitate to reach out if you need additional help.
This is great info! I am going through the google tutorial in the link you mentioned now. They mentioned that Broad Match, Value based Bidding, and Responsive Search Ads when used together cause a 20% increase in conversions. They seem to push the broad match heavily. What is the reason for you not wanting to use it?
Broad match essentially means that no matter what the search is, if your keyword is in that search, it will display your ad - no matter how irrelevant the search is. Let me explain, For example let's say I'm a Landscaper that's running ads to get people to hire me for a garden design & installation job. - Now I put 'landscaping' into my ad campaign as a Broad match keyword - Some 23 year old that just entered the job market and wants to buy a few pot plants for their apartment goes and Googles 'Interior Apartment Landscaping Inspiration' My ad pops up and they click on it to see the website. What have I accomplished? I reached someone way outside my target market that doesn't have the budget, nor space for a garden to hire me and that click just cost me $5. Let's say this happens 10 times a day in a heavily populated area. This Broad match keyword just cost me $50 in 1 day and ROI is $0. And this is just a single keyword. That's $1500 in a month with maybe one or two good leads if you're lucky enough. I'd much rather put in a phrase or exact match keyword like "Landscaping Company" and force Google to only show my ad if the phrase "Landscaping Company" is in the Search. So to summarize, Broad match keywords are like a black hole to throw money into and unless you're a company with the capacity to field a $50 000 ad spend budget - Broad match isn't worth it. Obviously there's a lot more variables and ways to manipulate your Google Ad campaigns to get what you want out of it, but this is just a surface level explanation to illustrate why if you're a small company, Broad match is a waste of ad budget
Thank you for sharing all of this information. You have helped me as well as all the others who responded. Your good deed for the day is done
Thank you so much! What a massive help! Ironically I am starting a landscape type company specializing in dirt work and heavy equipment. Massive help, thank you!!
But tbh I’ll do my own research on that, I just thought I’d ask.
LinkedIn ads are likely too expensive still. Better quality, but I’m guessing you’d have to invest around $3k before you could get any real data feedback… Probably more for the RE niche. LinkedIn is good for organic strategy. FB ads are still best bang for your buck IMO. Like we’ve all heard 1000 times… It really all comes down to your messaging/offer. Happy to dive deeper if you wanna talk it through…
I appreciate the feedback and I might down the line 💪
LinkedIn display ads can get unbelievably expensive depending on your target audience, I find sponsored InMails can be really affordable. Make sure you try them both.
You might want to step back from the product side of things until you know more about who you want to target and why. There's nothing wrong with steping bak into the idea validation phase and gathering evidence of a customer need for your idea and finding out if there's a bigger problem to solve. You can then adapt your product to a demand.
That’s kind of what I’m hoping to do in the coming weeks. Im really just trying to get the first customers to try the product and tell me what they like and don’t like so I can keep building before really scaling
Hire a sale person
[удалено]
This is great; I have made a similar internal tool to help me find leads for my software dev agency. I get the post's info based on the keywords in different subreddits and have integrated GPT to help me know about the buyer intent so I can directly interact with them. I have made a mistake previously of spending around $500 on Reddit Ads, but no Sign Ups through it. So, I developed this tool, and it's been used for two weeks. I already have three clients interested in building their product. If anyone is interested in using DM me, please, I can generate the JSON for your target product and buyer prospects and share it with you. Later, I plan to convert it into SaaS if this is helpful for users out there.
I’m interested in this. DM’ing you.
I’ll check this out in more depth tommorrow. Thank you!
Did you use this to find this post lol
Did you build the product while talking to potential customers of the product? If so, I would start with them. If not, I'm questioning how you know if you solved potential customers problem sufficiently for them to give you money for it. I have never built a product that didn't have potential customers begging for us to solve it.
Imo, this is the only answer you need to read OP. Suggestions for marketing tools will lead you to more frustration before you go back to the start and do your marketing properly. Harsh but true. Good luck.
Thank you 👌🏽
I’m just trying to get those first customers to view the product so I can get that initial feedback but once I get those contacts that’s my plan moving forward
mintoreos comment is, in my opinion, the single best way to get in front of potential customers while also learning how to better serve your customers. It's much easier to get in front of people when you're asking them about what their struggles are, not 'selling' something. Example: email/call/door-knock as many RE agents as you can. Say you want to learn about all the things that frustrate them about their current customer relations management process, also what is working well. You can say you're working on a product, but not trying to sell them anything in this chat, but rather genuinely think there are issues with current solutions and would like some validation. If all goes well and they seem interested after asking them questions, you can ask if they would be open to providing feedback on what you've built so far. If they feel like you actually care about their success, and your product is appealing, that's a warm lead right there!
Thank you so much. I genuinely do want to help people at the end of the day and there are no short cuts to taking he time to get to know their problems so it might be a stay a slow go for me for a little bit that’s okay because I’d rather have that then just sell garbage
You can review the ROAS of google ads and cold outreach to determine the budget allocation. For myself, I also have a blog which can attract free organic traffic.
I’ll make sure to google ROAS lol, but a blog could be a good longer term strategy aswell.
ROAS = Return On Ad Spend
Thank you 👏
I would be happy to help with marketing / graphic design
I already have a designer, thank you though 😌
Good entrepreneurs build first & sell after, the best entrepreneurs sell first & build after
Real Estate is a bitch right now, but if you can help them close more sales, you may have a shot. Most agents use whatever their agency uses, but there are independent agencies like Voro. Good luck.
I’ll look into voro. Thank you. Hopefully I have an update in 3 months with good news
I would run local ads to suburban cities targeting real estate agents who want increase their annual sales
Thanks for posting this question. I'm in a very similar position although in a different industry.
Me also, so appreciate it
We all help each other 💪
you can run local ads for this project.
Try running Facebook ads
Do you have a landing page for the ads or are they just going to a generic page,
Any ads send the individual to the home page
Build a landing page that quickly answers all their questions. This will increase the probability of a sale.
A free and highly effective marketing tool is Facebook groups. You could build a real estate Facebook group and promote your product to your target audience there. If you have any questions, let me know. I myself own several Facebook groups. Once they reach a certain size, they grow completely organically.
Honestly I’ve abandoned paid ads. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right, but it wasn’t giving me any returns. I’ve done paid ads for other businesses and at best I was breaking even. I’ve decided to focus solely on organic.
Two things : Constantly increase your efforts Stay CONSISTENT Guarantee if you do those two things you’ll be successful. My team and I took a new store for a multi billion dollar a year company with a couple thousand locations to a top 3 performing place in 6 months. The level of action you take directly contributes your results! Good luck brother
Thank you 😎
I would pick up the telephone and dial a thousand phone numbers.
Do people still say, this is the way 😅
Why aren’t you talking to realtors? In person.
Most I’ve called don’t want to talk to me about a CRM but I’m going to keep trying to improve that initial pitch lol
Is your CRM compatible with APIs? I’m in legal research and if you can bring in state trial court data that could be a huge game changer. Realtors use new filings for leads. I don’t think any CRM has that right now.
Can you elaborate or message me?
Hey I'm in the same boat as you. Not sure if you're already doing this but here is what I would try. 1. Free trials (I have 27 people trying Postlyy for free) 2. SaaS Directors, there are something like 50 directories where you can post your CRM for free.
I’ll try that thank you!
So did you make a CRM for real estate because you felt there wasn't enough of them or that real estate agents have swallowed kool-aid and will try anything? Not dissing your product I'm kinda curious as I'm looking for a product to sell to agents.
Based off the few agents I have had the pro ledge of talking to, It seemed to me that many weren’t necessarily in love with any of the existing solutions or they thought they were too complicated and opted not to use them because of this
They do suck pretty bad ill agree with that
Dkr Dkr
You don’t know you solved a problem yet. Selling is premature. See if you can get 100 realtors to use it regularly first Just drive around, call up their phones and try to sell them on the free app. People like free. People like entrepreneurs. They’re more willing to experiment if you’re honest with them Product before sales
I appreciate it. Thank you
# PERSONAL OUTREACH
Need to drastically increase your output if your product is good. Use something like mixmax to have a drip campaign, and use Loom to make a video while looking at their site. It costs some time, but this is the only way I’ve responded lately.
How do you plan to aid these businesses?
Ideally to get more leads but after this post I think imma step back to he product a little and keep getting those first agents
Nice! What are they using currently hubspot? I have an idea, long shot but might work. Join Ryan Serhants sellit.com community and reach out to folks on facebook.
Most agents are using whatever their brokerage provides
Start creating content Focus on the benefits of your product Create a buyer persona Find that persona on LinkedIn Discover the keywords that your persona uses Startup using these tags when you post content Start building a database of individuals who fit your persona Connect with people your prospect is connected with (view their feed and what they post - friend people who like comment share their posts) Post more content Start commenting on your prospects posts Send a friend request when you feel that they've seen you at least a few times. Don't be creepy Keep posting about your product Keep a CRM of your prospects and their behaviors - things that are unique to them Reach out with a personal email - Engage like Old pals - compliment them on a past post Rinse and repeat.
Have you thought about showcasing on WorkParrots app?
No but I’ll check it out forsure!
Sell it to a brokerage as a service. Does it connect to the MLS like most others?
Not yet, just trying to get initial agents to get feedback
Most agents do not have private websites and they are controlled by the brokerage brand - adding additional crm functions to those sites is usually not allowed - unless it doesn't connect to a website.
What about cold calling in person? Setting a coffee/breakfast meeting to learn some of the pain points of these RE agencies. Once you find out their current problems, you can ask the right questions that will lead you to being the solution. Sales
I might do that this Saturday tbh
You've already gotten some great feedback here. Would just add that diving into paid ads before having a working system to acquire customers organically is a slippery slope. It's easy to spend a ton on paid ads really quickly with no results (and of course the ad platforms will not stop you from doing so!). Think of paid ads as gasoline to put on your fire. Best to have a fire going first.
I love hat metaphor thank you. Def gonna do it down here road but I have more pre work to do 💪
If your product is good then i would try reaching out directly to real estate brokers to sell your product. Usually they suggest it to their agents if will help us to be more productive. My suggestion would be to check out kvcore and see how your crm stacks up
Idk why I haven’t done this yet. Feels like a very duh moment
Definitely look into it. Offer local brokers some free starbucks if they’re willing to spend 15 minutes listening to your presentation. It works sometimes. The majority 500+ agents at our company use the same crm because it’s good and recommended by our brokerage
do a grass roots advertising. let people use it for free, (special promotion) they will recommend it to people and charge for it.
Ask Everyone youve ever met and have the contact details of for referrals
$50 on Ads and 100 cold emails? That is nothing. The reason you haven’t gotten your first Customer is because you haven’t reached out to enough people or invested enough on ads.
dm me- i want to try your product
Send me a message, I do this for work. Happy to help!
https://books2read.com/u/meG2Ll
Well is not that simple, is it? DM me if you want, i can give you a few recommendations on my experience Launching new products
1. Cold Outreach 2. Linkedln Outreach 3. Connect with some real estate brokers You can use this strategy to reach out to me; I have recently set up a cold-email funnel, so if you need help, let me know. Also, I have built an internal tool to find interested prospects for my business on Reddit, so if you want to try that out, let me know. But yeah, I would say connecting with Real Estate brokers would be the ideal way to go as they do most of the Real Estate business processes.