KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Scott Lissa Shares the Importance of Having a “Marketing Mix”

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

You're listening to Expansion, the podcast for EXP agents. Expand your skill. Expand your value. Here's your host, Glenn Sanford. Hey, everyone, Glenn Sanford here. And today on our expansion podcast, I'm excited to talk with Icon agent out of Nanaimo, British Columbia, Scott Lissa. He's six years in real estate, been with EXP for a few years.

and Scott, welcome to the expansion podcast. Very, very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, you're welcome. So now, Scott, maybe, I don't know we didn't talk a whole bunch about this before, but I'd love to kind of just learn your background, you know, how did you get into real estate? Looks like you've been in the industry for about six years, probably did some other stuff before that. So what got you into real estate and then how did you ultimately make your way over to EXP?

Well, my history has been in technology for a good while. I worked for tech companies for a good five, six years. And eventually I ended up landing at a marketing company for real estate agents where I helped brokerages actually build teams and generate leads to feed the team members to grow their business and over a certain period of time I just had such great success and actually helping other teams grow I got a taste for actually learning a little bit more about the industry so I decided to look a little bit into taking my real estate exam which is very restrictive in British Columbia to say the very

least so I doubled down I got out of my job and decided to take the test which I then I was surprised past my very first try and got into working with a local company, a great local company actually. I was very happy to work with them for a period of time, but sometimes I found these boutique brokerages just didn't have the reach that I was looking for. My business is mainly based in relocation. So in working with a boutique brokerage that didn't have any other agents that I could work with internationally or nationally, I started looking around. And some of the people that I used to help actually generate leads and recruit agents, they got talking to me.

They're close friends. I ended up dealing with the Funks, Renee and Jeffrey Funk, along with Mitch Ryback, who I worked with directly when he was doing different things within tech and real estate. So they ended up telling me about what EXP is, which was very interesting because it literally solved a problem that I explained to many other real estate. that existed in the industry for years. And it didn't take me long after having my license and starting with my first brokerage that I switched over,

and it's been smooth sailing ever since. Awesome, awesome. And if you don't want to mention it or not, but would it be the obvious Nanaimo-based lead generation company that you were working with, or was it a smaller? It would be the obvious one, yes, yes. I don't want to necessarily draw up names if I'm not allowed to. But the gentleman that works at the company.

Certainly you can. Oh, yeah. Morgan Carey. He is a very, very interesting CEO. And I don't mean interesting in a negative way. This guy speaks his mind. He knows his business. I have great respect for him.

And I learned so much more about the industry that we're in, obviously, real estate. But just capitalizing on what I understand about paper click lead generation, social or search engine optimization, social media marketing. And not to mention just the interactions, teams and their technology and just how I could capitalize on that. So yeah, big thanks goes out to Martin King and Kerry for what I learned. Oh, awesome. Yeah, no, it's, yeah, I certainly got to know Morgan quite a bit over the years, but I end up building a number of top-rank websites, especially in the mid-2000s.

And so I was competing head-to-head with a lot of the real estate webmaster sites in different cities. He's never could break number one in Nashville because Gary Ashton was always sort of Oh, Gary Ashton, yeah, no, I've been at a few conferences with Gary. He knows where to spend, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but good stuff. So you come from kind of this lead gen background. Maybe, you know, maybe it'd be helpful, you know, if you don't mind. I know there were probably some questions there, but this is stuff that, you know,

agents still, you know, I know this stuff, you know this stuff, you know it from the perspective of both being on the vendor's side, but then also actually execute against it. So when you think about lead gen today in today's market, what do you feel is the most important online lead gen strategies or which ones do you think, at least from the way you work, What are the best ones that work for you? Well, just like anything, you can't put your eggs in all in one basket. You need to have a marketing mix. I would say just like anything, it's almost like being healthy.

I refer to it actually a lot of times when I used to explain this to realtors. It was like going to the gym. First and foremost, consistency is key, but it's not just about lifting weights or having a good diet. As I said, this is what I explained as a marketing mix. So always having some form of Google PPC running within your marketing. marketplace, always very important. Obviously to some type of lead generation website. I know we have some great tools through EXP that people utilize. I use a little bit more of a robust system that cost me an arm and a leg, but nonetheless, Google PPC is a good thing that you should just be doing

at all times. Secondary to that, some form of social media marketing, I find for the biggest demographics that are going to click through on home purchases just for the general cost of real estate. You're best usually using Facebook for that. To be perfectly honest, I've seen people using Instagram for years and having very little success unless they're building a very organic following. But finally, the real key for me, even in the last years, as the economy changed and mortgage rates really started to increase, I found that just having ads that people click on wasn't as valuable as introducing myself to people in a more, well, digital way. I've doubled down. I've doubled on YouTube and I committed myself to doing at least a video a week where I was

introducing people to the island the process of buying homes here and everything around that and from that and those three avenues I've built just an unstoppable lead platform that feeds myself and really I'm bringing on other agents at this point just to help me satiate the demand for what we're offering to people so if anybody's not doing it now Facebook Google PPC, that's all great stuff. But if you're not educating people, if you're not giving them something of value opposed to just advertising to them, you're going to start seeing a drop off and what you're going to see for your client engagement. So I can't encourage people enough

getting comfortable in front of the camera and start posting at least on a weekly basis on YouTube, TikTok, anything you can. That's pretty much what I'm doing right now. Okay. Now, when you, maybe I'll jump to the next question. I'll come back to another one. So how are you organizing your database? What are you using for a CRM? So this is where, unfortunately, I've got to give a dig to my previous employer. I love the real estate webmaster system. I really did. But where it was lacking for me was down to the CRM. It's, theirs have been improving massively and they've actually caught my eye to go back to them just in the last couple months. But currently I'm using Sierra Systems. It's one of the best self-contained ecosystems that introduce different versions of AI, the lead capture system, the funnel, which is the front end website, and then the CRM in the back end.

So using that system, I've used multiple different tools to start classifying my leads based off timeframes. Because I primarily focus on people who are doing relocation, I can be working with people who are anywhere from three weeks to three years away from purchasing a home. So I've created different drip campaigns that obviously allow for these people to stay in contact with me. But I don't find those to be necessarily personal enough. And this is why, again, I've really got into doing different type of marketing where I'm putting fresh content out, if not on a weekly basis, sometimes two or three times. And a lot of times the way that I'm classifying people based off what countries they're coming from,

what provinces they're coming from or even if they're local. This has gotten very personalized to them. And it's amazing how these people react to this content and they jump out to me. So people can be classified based off of price point. Again, location, as I mentioned. But the biggest thing that I've found to be of value when I'm classifying people is personality type. Some people want to be educated and some people don't want to be talked to in that capacity. So not to change channels here a little bit.

but I actually did studies in something called consumer buyer behavior. This was a long time ago, going back 20 years ago, I actually attended school in Finland doing this. And finding how people's persona work in their buying process has really allowed me to change my tactics when I'm marketing to them so that I get a better result and they want to engage on me on different levels. So that's generally how I classify and organize my systems. Okay.

Okay. And now when you, let's say you're doing an out-of-area buyer and what would be your follow-up campaign? What would be a typical? Is it, do you just, you obviously send them something via whatever method they reached out to you, most likely an email lead? And then how do you, how do you, how do you, you know, normally then think about it, how many touches do you have in your base campaign? How many times do you personally try to follow up with them over the phone or some other way? What does that look like? Of course. Well, and this comes down to specificity, of course. As I said, I could be working with somebody who's three weeks away, some people three years away. The average person is going to be anywhere from three to six months out, which is the vast

majority of leads that are going to fall into one of my campaigns. Now, automatically, just from the content we're creating on a weekly or monthly basis, these people are going to be touched through email where they get updates about our videos or anything else that we're doing, market reports, just the basics that anybody should be doing. They're getting that about six times a month. Over those, let's call it three months, though, I would probably be putting in a phone call at least to them every two weeks, just checking in. And if they don't answer just a quick text message, where possibly I send them a quick

listing based off what we've discussed. But one of the most important components of this is not actually the individual touches. I find it's the first week. Speed to lead is important, but it's not necessarily as important as making it impactful. So what I make sure that I'm doing with people, because a lot of this is relocation, because people aren't coming here. We have, where I think one of the fifth largest growing cities in Canada, so again, relocation is huge out here. What I make sure I do is send out an email based off what I think they're searching for and then I follow up with a phone call as soon as possible. I have my assistant schedule that as quickly as possible. Once that phone call is established and I understand that there's going to be a good, good match between us,

it's time to start educating my client. So the next thing I try and do is schedule a Zoom meeting where we can see face-to-face so they know exactly who they're talking about my temperament and how I work. And then I start educating them on Vancouver Island. I explained to them the climate that exists out here, different areas they need to look in, two areas they need to stay away from, boating life, which you're more than familiar with. And once they start understanding how I work and what my process is, there's a bond that's developed and these people look forward to hearing my phone calls all the time. And to be honest,

as much as I'm only targeting them with a phone call in these three-month period, people that are going to be out every two weeks, they are almost on a personal basis with me at that point. They're sending me text messages. We're sharing photos back and forth. I'm sending them pictures, a little adventures that I'm going on, the mountains are out onto the islands. So really, as much as I have a system in place that everybody can, that involves drip emails, fresh content going out, listings going out, of course,

through automatic safe searches, that first week in developing a relationship with them is super important. And it may almost seem forced initially, but once people understand that I'm providing something of value, they're hard pressed to find any other realtor that's going to replace what I'm doing for them. Awesome. Now you mentioned relocation. Do you, one of the things I did, and want to find out, you know, your take on it. I used to physically send out relocation packages for the area so that I could put something physical in their hands, even though we were just meeting virtually. Do you do anything like that? Well, and that's where, as I said, I doubled down on YouTube and do as much as humanly possible. So my YouTube videos will go through absolutely everything. They break down absolutely everything.

every single community. They will give you the top five things that you need to look out for homes here on Vancouver Island because we obviously have our wet and waning weather that people need to consider. Things to consider when buying rural properties, things to consider when buying condos. So the value that I'm usually providing to people as much as not physical, yes, absolutely digital is the way I go with this. Everybody that has gotten these digital materials, these digital videos that I'm sending out have just stated it's completely changed the process in which they're using to move to

the island. One thing I have to say, I don't want to ever downplay the effort that I put into things is, how do I put this? I'm not necessarily selling with steak. I'm selling with sizzle. In other words, I live in a place where obviously it's the most beautiful place in Canada, Vancouver Island. It's the most temperate place in Canada. People automatically want to come here. So really all I have to do is illustrate the process of how they do it, how they get here, what the costs are associated with living. And because I'm constantly giving these updates to people, and I'm using evergreen content,

if you've heard the term before on YouTube, people are engaging in that capacity, but I might actually look into sending them something physical. I've never really considered that, to be perfectly honest. Okay, yeah. I found that the relocation packages helped solidify the relationship, and a lot of times people would come to town with the relocation package in hand.

Really? Yeah, so that was that was because we were we were at the time was buyer tours realty when we converted to EXP but I found that was one of the most valuable one it was one of the emails that I got them one of the most responses was would you like a relocation package on the area and that was like had one of the highest RIs in terms of just just response and engagement because people are like oh you're gonna I can get a relocation package and they fill out their info and I'm gonna look into that. I think there's a lot of value to that. Where are we working out of

then, Glenn, when you were doing that? I was in Bellingham, Washington. Oh, in Bellington, Washington. Okay, absolutely. I was going to see it's amazing how similar, like the Pacific Northwest is for how people are relocating. So yeah, I would see that working very well. So I will look into that. Thank you for that suggestion. Yeah, you might even consider just even testing out a link on your website request or reload package. And you might find that that improves the Excuse me. Normally I have a notepad always ready to work, but that is something I will definitely be working on here. So yeah, that that was just one of it.

It was the second most effective. I mean, for me, it was obviously I got a phone call. Those are the best leads. The second one was request for property info on a particular property. And then number three was relocation package request. And so those are my three that worked best. So anyway. If you don't mind me asking, did you have any problems with actually attaining people's addresses?

Or was that just simple enough? Not at all. They were happy to give the address. Yeah. One things I would do, I kind of had a strategy to, how do I create the most engagement in this amount of time with the person? And so one of my scripts, which was a perfectly valid script, was whether they, whether they're moving 20 miles or whether they're moving, you know, 500 miles away. I said, you know, one of the things that I think a lot of people get value from is when, you know, sending some local materials that, you know, from here in the local market and just getting a sense of the area from some of the stuff that maybe you won't see online. and you know if you're interested in it i'm happy to send that out to you all i need is i would love

to see that absolutely um i i i'm not here to reinvent the wheel i'd love to improve it but yeah i'd absolutely love to see what you were sending there yeah well this was this was 15 years ago so so but so i don't have a current relocation package but it was you know it was uh you know you x basically ex p folder and and then whatever local magazines that are still out there that or relative to the home moving process, maybe something from the Chamber of Commerce, and maybe a map. And so that's what I would send. And it really was more, it was the most important part of my mind was getting them something physical.

It wasn't the actual content. It was more of getting them something and seeing that I was providing something about. You refer back to. Absolutely. And law reciprocation. I can see that being really valuable. Yeah. Robert Chaldini, he talks about the law of reciprocation, and he uses a lot of examples of even providing something of low value in terms of the cost to you. I've heard of this. It will improve closing percentages dramatically on whatever, even if you're selling a high ticket item. So it's just any way you can add value. It's just a whole. I hope you don't mind that.

taking notes. I'm a fastidious note taker and I find that at the end of the day I go through these things. And that's what keeps me up the rest of the night is all the things that I wanted to capitalize on through meeting people. So I appreciate the tip. Oh, no, you're welcome. So now you're in the Nimal. Obviously, there's a number of cities around Vancouver Island, Sydney, Victoria, obviously, everybody knows. Do you build, do you sell, obviously going all the way to Campbell River, probably not a big market for you. But so when you think about Vancouver Island, do you focus mainly on the NIMO or do you focus on the southern side of Vancouver Island?

Well, just this morning, I just launched a $2 million listing down in Sanich, which is just about Victoria. So yes, indeed, I actually cover a fairly large geographic area. And one of my most recent videos that I put out about this was, and I wasn't meaning to be inflammatory, it was called don't move. to Nanaimo. And the reason that I say this is every one of those meetings that I have with people once I get them on Zoom within the first week when we're chatting is I explain to them as much as I'm based out of Nanaimo. The only reason I live here, it's the most central location. It's a beautiful

city. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, there's lots of other places that I'd like to live on the island. This really gets their attention. And I explained to them, or the analogy I like to use is you should cast a widen out when you're coming here. Unless you need to be close to somewhere due to family health or health reasons or a job. Really the islands beautiful all over. So I end up showing people places down in Victoria, which is generally not what people are looking for unless they have to be down there for work. It's just too busy. There's insane amounts of traffic with the development that's going on down there. But there's so many communities as you go north from that, there's Cobble Hill, there's Cowbell Hill, there's Cowell Bay, there's Cajun Bay, there's

Maple Bay, there's Duncan, there's any number of different lakes between there, Lady Smith, Nanaimo, of course. And then once you get above that, if you're a retiree, the retirement zones, in Danes, Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Qualicum Bay, and moving further up from that, usually I'm telling people to cut off their search once you get a little bit above Qualicum Beach, because that's where you start getting out of what we call the Mediterranean zone, the temper climb that we have up here. But yes, I cover a fairly large geographic area. And actually this morning, I was going through my gas receipts. And of all the things that I had to enter in, I'm going to have a lot of time for my taxation going through all my gas receipts because I put on many miles every single week.

Okay. Well, good stuff. We've got to wrap up here. Of course. Great conversation. I think there's some great takeaways. But if there was one piece of advice that you could give to an EXPA, agent to wrap up. What would that be? Honestly, you need to engage. The one thing that I

warn people about, and I get a lot of people that inquire with me because I've had a lot of great success. And I think it actually came from the tools that I got from the XP. This company really aligned with who I was, which is amazing for me to continue to grow. I have no plans on going elsewhere. But one thing that I think hurt me in coming to the company is that I didn't engage enough and take advantage of all the tools that were being given to me. Sometimes you focus too much on what's going to get you paid next week, opposed to the things that are going to allow you to create a business that is going to grow for years and years and years. Now, because of this, I've avoided a lot of recruitment, which I think really hurts me because I've definitely

reached a ceiling at this point. I know I can always sell more, but there's only so much time I have. again, this company is set up in a way that you're meant to truly start building people around you. So the only tip I would give somebody is not the things that I've had success in, but the things that I've actually avoided. And at this point, recruitment in building a team is the only way that you'll ever be able to have much more freedom and growth. So I have to encourage you to, every time that you see these meetings, these teams, whether it's down in Atlanta, Toronto, or anywhere else across the world, if they're offering you suggestions on how you can build a team and build a business, you should really take your time and engage with that because these people

have done it before. And you'll definitely always have something to take away from these people. So engage with all the tools that are being given to you. Don't think that you won't benefit from them because you will. Awesome. Great, great stuff. Scott, thanks for jumping on with me today. Now, you have, I think, where's the best place for people to connect with you? Is it, I see an Instagram handle here? Honestly, I would connect with me. Scott's Island Life is where I am on Instagram.

But if you wanted to check me out anywhere, I've just used the Nanaimo, RE, Nanaimo, RE over and over again. A lot of people call it Nanaimo. But if you type that in, you'll be able to find me. Definitely look me up on YouTube. I have a large following there. And I'd be happy to help or talk with anybody

if they had any questions. Good stuff. Okay. Well, thanks for jumping on. And hopefully everybody enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. So with that, I'm going to sign off. And until the next podcast, see you soon. Really appreciate it, Glenn. Lovely meeting you. Thank you, sir. You've been listening to Expansion. Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Thanks for being the best part of EXP.