KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Waking up to Win with Flow.

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Good morning and welcome, everybody. This is another session of waking up to win with a difference. You see, when I came into this particular session, I got myself all prepared, not only physically, mentally, but then I actually had to look at my name because there was this imposter that was on the air call. So when I started this particular call, I thought of doing it in a very unique way and starting it like this. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in the blue. corner coming in at 6.2. And the only reason why is 6.2 is because he has hair. There is Stuarts. Hisslop. Can you believe it? We have two Stuart Hisslops on the actual call. And like I said before this particular session, only one of us has the correct spelling.

But that argument, we will leave to another time. Also, joining me on the call is Arthur. Now, who are these individuals? Where do they come from? Well, they are the team that supports us with flow. So a very good morning to Stuart and to Arthur. How are you guys doing today? Good morning, Stuart. Thank you for the warm welcome. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that.

So that was brilliant. I'm glad it's recorded. We're doing well and we're excited to be here. Thank you so much for having us today. Fantastic. Fantastic. And Stuart, you said that you're in the Pielandsburg, having a look at elephants. And this is the joy of the life that we live in because I think pretty much all of our agents are either operating from home or remote office.

And I know that there's even some of them are in areas that the view is fantastic. So just give us a quick little overview of the view that you're looking at. Yeah, fantastic. Thanks, Drew. So, yeah, I'm also physically ready. I've taken my pre-workout juice. So I'm all pumped up for today. But, yeah, currently I am sitting in Bakubank. in the Pellansburg with flow living.

We are very fortunate that we can work remotely. So from a digital marking standpoint, you know, we can always help out our agents from wherever we are. And currently right now, I am looking at what looks to be possibly a matriarch elephant at the top of the mountain. So, yeah, I really enjoying it today, but also happy to be here with you guys. Fantastic, fantastic. And you know, that's the most amazing thing about Africa and more specifically,

South Africa is we have these amazing destinations, whether we're overlooking the ocean or whether we're looking at the wildlife. But today we're talking about flow. And I've got a couple of questions and I know that's going to come through from the actual agents. And the way the session is going to work is we're going to get a little bit more information about flow. And then I'm going to open this up to the actual audience and they'll be able to ask questions directly to the flow team. So the first question, and it's either yourself, Stuart or Arthur, I know both of you are really at that level to answer the question is what is Flo? What is it?

Stuart, I'll Stuart, if you don't mind. I'll take this one. It's always a very interesting question to answer family gatherings. I think I've probably told my dad three times what I do for a living, and I'm sure I'm going to explain it again over Christmas. But Flow essentially is a prop tech platform that automates digital marketing for agencies. What does that actually mean? we've made software that allows agents such as yourselves and agencies such as ExP, South Africa, to seamlessly promote both yourself and your listing on Meta, being Instagram and

Facebook. Fantastic, fantastic. And where did it originate from? Give us a little bit of a history, something background, because this didn't just pop out of the woodwork, and this is not just a company that has two individuals that just happened to say, hey, I know how to work Facebook, because I saw new. news that came through that you guys are actually quite serious and it's not just a small company. This is quite a big company.

Just give us a bit of a background where it started and pretty much this growth and size that you guys have gone through. A hundred percent, Sturge, 100 percent correct. So our co-CEO's Daniel and Gill, they actually found that a company called Popeye Media a couple years ago and they were one of the first suppliers of Facebook in South Africa. So they were really at the cusp of the expert knowledge in terms of how Facebook works when it first entered the market. So they created the agency Pop-I Media. They eventually sold it to a bigger company called Publicist.

And from there during COVID, when everyone was on lockdown and we were staying home, they came up with the brain child of flow, taking all of the expert knowledge and the connections they had within Facebook and wrapping it up in a really nice package that they can give to agents so that they don't necessarily have. to go to an agency. They can do everything themselves. So it just made sense from that perspective. But then like you said in terms of being serious, I'm so some of you might have seen the news over time, but we've had heavy investment into our company from international companies. We've actually bought into our company and also support us in this growth strategy. So I'm sure that's what you're referring to, Stuart, is the $4.5 million dollar buy-in into flow. Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, that that gives us this nice, warm, fuzzy feeling that we're not just general, we're not just dealing with individuals that just happen to say, hey, I understand Facebook and I can put things through.

We're talking about a company that really truly understands how to take what we know as a property listing and actually put it onto Facebook in the correct way. So this leads me onto that next question because it's always. very well that you guys know what to do, but how? How do you actually help the agents with flow? So to give you a perspective of why this is actually important, and just so we can understand it a little bit better, there's, I'm sure some of you have attended some of our sessions before, and there's a slide I always like to refer to where we go through the numbers. But to give you really perspective, the average South Africans spends four hours a day on their cell phone. 26 million South Africans are on Facebook and Instagram and 8.3 million South Africans are on LinkedIn.

Now, these 26 and 8.3 million people respectively, 70% of them come back to those platforms either daily or more than once a day. Now, what does this tell us? I clearly spend more time on myself and then the average South African, but it also tells us that you need to promote yourself and your listing where your client spends the most amount of their time. And like we can see, see from those numbers, they spend the most amount of their time on social media. Now, how do we actually help agents with this opportunity that's available? Through flow, you're able to reach these audiences without the need of a graphic design or a campaign manager. We'll show you in a second so you can actually see how easy it is to do. But you by yourself, you're able to create a beautiful

set of artwork. You're able to identify the area you want to target, and you can promote yourself or your listing through your expert local lodge to your target audience. And that's what we help agents achieve through our technology. Fantastic, fantastic. But you know, this comes into the first top of mind is, you know what? Why do I need to spend money with a company to do it? I can do it myself. You know, it's easy.

I just take my listing. I put it on to Facebook. And then what I do is I see that big blue button that says boost, which is so easy. I'll pop that particular button and guess what? Out it goes. So why do I actually need? So why do agents need flow? Instead, I can see you've done your research.

So I'm very impressed. The blue boost button on Facebook. And if you do a little bit of reading, you'll even see Facebook themselves say it's a waste of money. The reason why is when you put a post on Facebook and you boost it. The reason why they've made that available is a couple years ago, I used to say three years, it's been a little bit longer now. This time is just dragging on. But a couple years ago, Facebook changed the way their algorithm worked. So I'm sure that you guys, over the years,

you've liked various different things. If I use myself as an example, I'm really into cars. So when I was a student, I really enjoyed BW. I got a little bit more ambitious and I started liking BMW and then from there my life change and I actually started liking Buckeys etc. So from student days I liked VW, I went to BMW, I went on to Nissan and now Toyota. Those are the different brands I liked. However, if I go onto my social media feed, very seldom will I actually see a post from VW? And the reason why is Facebook changed their platform to be a pay to play platform. They want people spending money to see their content. So when you put up a post, that is,

referred to as organic content, only three to five percent of your audience actually sees that post. For the rest of them to see it, you need to put money behind the advert. Now that's where that blue boost button comes in it so that the ad can just go out to as many people as your budget allows for them to see it. That is not a good allocation of spend. We refer to it as wastage. Where flow comes in and what flow does differently is when you're setting up your advert and you're choosing the areas you want to target, where you're doing all of that heavy lifting for you. We're doing all of the interest overlaid

targeting is what it's referred to. We're doing it for you. So to give you context, by working with the different media, the different property agencies in South Africa, such as EXP, South Africa, we're able to identify what are the internet behaviors of a buyer or a seller or a tenant or maybe someone looking to join a agency. We're able to identify what are they doing on internet that shows them as a candidate to buy a property. And then we show that advert to said person based on the area you've you've targeted. So in a nutshell, the blue boost button is not very effective, whereas running a sponsored advert, which you can also do yourself, it just takes very long to do. That's what we are specializing in and helping you

or unlocking it for you. Fantastic. And the big thing that I've done, and I've used it personally, is saving you time, saving you money, and almost sounding like an adverts. And we can't use that slogan because someone else has actually done that. But fortunately, because I don't have any hair, I can say it. So when we start looking at this particular platform and it sounds so simple. Now, I'm pretty sure that you've got your computer ready to share and to show us how to go through this little process. Because I know there's a lot of people that look at this and say, it's technology. I can't do this. How simple is it to actually take a listing and move it all the way through

so that it actually gets the greatest audience? Just with regards to this is technology and being scared of it. I can honestly tell you guys because I work with quite a few agents with in Expe. We all do. We have agents in their 20s all the way up to their 60s using this tech. So it's not limited to age. Anyone can use it. It's just about being brave enough to take that first step and start playing around with it. So on screen over here, I've got the dashboard. This is what it would look like if you log in for the first time.

Blank Canvas, EXP, South Africa. You've got your flow fuel campaigns and your flow brand campaigns. So just very quickly in a nutshell, flow fuel is to promote your listing. Flow brand is to promote yourself. On the left hand side, we've got our campaign. Pains, our analytics, and what Stewart was referring to your properties. So when you load your property onto the rep system for it to go through to the EXP website, etc., it automatically feeds through to flow as well.

So from there you're able to actually take that property and promote it. The caveat being there is a little bit of a time delay, so usually within three hours of uploading it, you're able to promote it on flow. You've got your leads. So when someone clicks on a property and they inquire, it is SMS and email to you, immediately, but you're also able to access it over here. And then you have your organization info, not really too much to worry about. Now, you've signed a listing, you've loaded it on rep, you're ready to go, you want to

advertise the property. How do you actually do that? Very simple. You click Start campaign over here. You select Flow Fuel. And then you're presented with various different templates over here. The nice thing being, these are already EXP approved. You don't have to send them to anyone for approval.

you can use whichever you want and off you go. So let's say I want to use this one, blue and yellow. The software will now take that template and we'll start to build your advert for you. And your first step is to select the property you want to advertise. Now, because I'm a super admin, I can see everyone's properties. You would only see your own. Let's use Sufisoian Empangani Central. Let's use this property from him.

So we've got a 1.3 million around property in Empangeni Central. And now we can see his image that's on the rep system has pulled through along with his contact information and the pricing. So Fiesel is looking at the property. He's not 100% sure if he's going to sell with that kind of image. He wants to have a look at the other ones. Everything you've loaded to rep is available for you over here. In this case, the first image or the hero image does look quite nice. So we're going to stick to that one.

And we're going to click next. There we go. And then, sorry, guys, my PC is acting. up a little bit there we go then he's going to select his Facebook page I'm just going to select the random one for now but he would select his Facebook page he'd adjust his copy he can say here for example if he likes to engage with his clients on WhatsApp you can say what's up me and book of viewing my numbers over to etc etc you know it's fully customizable you can put in the

information would you want to put you if it's an open house on Sunday say it's an open house on Sunday book of viewing with me come check it out etc customize it as you see fit you can click next over here and now this is the heavy lifting I was referring to what the software is doing is it's now first taken that information and created that beautiful design for you but it's now gone and geolocated where this property is based so you can for example say as the local property expert I've started receiving a lot of inquiries from meyer and seeer just as an example these guys are moving out of here and they're moving to you would know your audience

better than anyone else. So over here I'm going to say mere and sier in rich let's just go back near ins here sorry in Richards Bay we're going to add a three kilometers pin there and it's a 1.3 million ran property so I don't think a lot of 25 rules will be able to afford it I might look at people between ages of 30 and 60 in these two areas and here's that heavy lifting I was referring to So we're looking at people that have been spending time on, for example, property 24, looking at bond originators, cost calculators, or just even looking at properties in general on Facebook, for example. All of those interest overlays are being taken into account and being shown to those people on meta. Now we're going to click next.

And in as easy as that, the first step being creating your artwork, the second step being able to set up your targeting, you've got a nice. A nice little summary of your ad, you're targeting, you select how long you want to run the advert for, you select when you want to start it for, purchase and go live, off you go. The advert is running as easy as that. There is another example. I just want to briefly mention over here, and it's what we refer to as flow brand, which is your top of mind awareness, which to us is very important. You should always have top of mind awareness going because, for example, a seller is not an immediate. decision that is made. It's three to six months they're considering selling. So you want to be top of mind and make sure that you're contacted first when they decide to make that decision. So once again, start campaign, blowbrand, and then you'll notice the template gallery is a bit different. You've got agent specialist, sold stock, testimonials, etc. And from there, the set-up

process is very much similar. So very, very simple technology to use to round off what Stewart was saying when we get agents in and they start using the tech for the first time maybe 10 15 minutes to set up an advert I've seen agents set up ads in less than two minutes once you get used to it it's very simple to use and that's absolutely fantastic thank you so much the author you know it was so amazing because I'm a person that's pretty much time bound and that took you with explanation less than five minutes let me repeat that with explanations it took less than five minutes to take it from a listing all the way to actually going live and actually getting it

out into the Facebook. And that is a huge power. And that's something that really is absolutely phenomenal. Now, this is going to be posed to both yourself, Stuart and Arthur. And I'm pretty sure there's going to be times where suddenly I've pushed the wrong button or where am I? I can't find my Facebook page or the details are. There's needs a little bit of support because we're running in a technology. Tell me, and there's going to be glitches that's come from time to dime where we know that from our platform. Suddenly we do an upgrade and it doesn't talk to your platform and things of that nature. So suddenly someone sitting on a Saturday afternoon or not two o'clock in the morning and going,

I really want to get this out. What do I do? How do they get support? So the beautiful irony, I don't know if you actually saw, but as you were alluding into this question, my internet dipped and I disconnected. So that's the beauty of technology. But you're 100% correct, Stuart. And it happens from time to time. I mean, there's various different technologies speaking to each other year. You have the rep system speaking to us. You have us speaking to, for example, meta. There's a whole bunch of technologies working together. When the rep system, for example, is upgraded, there might be a new. feature in place with properties in terms of location and then that information might not feed through to us and the property might be missing for example so we are actually working on something like that right at this moment some of you might have experienced that your properties are not pulling through etc there's various different support channels available for you you can either

on the flow dashboard bottom right there's a chat functionality for you to speak directly to our team you can WhatsApp one of us immediately a lot of you have a contact information, but you can get it from, for example, Marika or Stewart, or even Marika within EXP as well. She knows everything that there is to do with flow, and she can support you as well. But there's various different channels depending on what you're comfortable with, where you can reach out to us for assistance. We even do one-on-one training where needed as well. So there's a lot of support, and that's the thing with technology, especially fast-growing technology such as ours. There'll always be little things that we're working on in the background to make

your life's just a little bit easier. Fantastic. And you know, that's the big thing about technology is for us, there can be a limiting belief. To go beyond that limiting belief becomes the unknown territory. So how do we get there? Well, that little gate that gets you to that next level, those are those communications. And please do not hesitate, reach out to myself or Marika. We'll be able to assist you with that. If you do have Arthur's number, he has said to me that 2 o'clock on a Sunday morning is a great. great time to make contact with him. So you can actually do all of that. But we obviously work within a normal time and turnaround. Now, we're from here. You know, we've got this fantastic

platform. We've got everything together. I'm pretty sure that you guys are got something up your sleeve for the future. Where from here? What is actually coming out to excite the agents, whether it's in the next three months or three years? Where are they going from here? there's like I said because we're a fast-growing property company there's there's a lot of things on the horizon that that get us giddy so from a here and a right now something that's coming soon that you guys will be able to utilize is being able to use flows dashboard not only to create the sponsored adverts but let's say for example you want to create a nice little design that you can send out on WhatsApp to your client to make your WhatsApp story etc you're able to use that organic functionality to take that artwork and use it wherever you like. We are adding the video function for you as well. So you'll actually be able to use the ad builder to create videos from your properties as well, which is amazing. I think the ETA on that one is another month or two, then that's going to come

out. So there's a lot of things we're working on to just further expand quality of life, things for agents for the right year and the right now. Future bigger plans, just for a bit of context is we're working on different platforms. So we're bringing TikTok, for example, and that kind of stuff and then more from an expansion point of view like Stuart I'm sure you've seen but we've partnered with EXP global so over 88,000 agents globally have access to flow they're using flow so this is a tech that's really it's it's been perfected in South Africa we're working with the teams in Mexico Portugal India Australia you name it the agents all over the globe are using flow to promote themselves in their listing so it's really it's a partnership that we don't

foresee ending anytime soon and we're going hand in hand and expanding globally with exp. Absolutely. And I can definitely be a testament to that because I do have the communication with a lot of the agents that are from a global and when I have these communications and they suddenly go, I'm using flow and it's done this, I know that it's actually working and I've used it personally myself. So before we get into a Q&A, any final thoughts or comments from yourself, Arthur or Stewart before we open up the floor. Stee, I've spoken a lot. Anything you want to say?

Yeah, thanks so much, guys. So just from my perspective, I know it might be a little bit daunting to try something new, but we have tried to make this entire process as easily as easy and seamless as possible. And talking about future and where we're going ahead, just remember that you know, ourselves as a company are going to grow organically and we are going to figure out the better way is how to do things, but also our connection that we have with meta. You know, we're understanding their algorithms of who we need to target and what is going to be the best for our agents and what is going to be the best return from the

budgets that you allocate with us. So the longer that you're with us, the more that you engage with the campaigns, you know, it's only going to get more and more powerful over time. So we're learning as we go. We're a fairly new company, but yeah, the sky's the limit here and we're excited to work with enormous global organizations such as EXP. So, yeah, I guess the sky is the limit, and we look forward to working with you guys. Fantastic.

What is the typical dimensions, the pixel size of the images that should be pulled through into flow? That is a good question to which I do not have an answer right now, but I will get it for you. David, you are here. Do you perhaps know? Hi, everyone. You are looking in the background.

There aren't any dimension specific. but as long as it's squared really a ratio of one-to-one, that's your safest bet. Perfect. Well, there's the answer. One-to-one ratio is probably the best bit. And I can tell you, it really does work on, I think, every single profile viewings that we actually do on that side there. So, David, thank you so much for that. That was actually probably one of the most complicated questions we've ever asked on a session. Because our supply had to refer it to somebody. But one-to-one, that was actually great. Thank you so much from that.

So, guys, I want to find out, let's get some final comment, any final questions, or let's have a little bit of fun. You know on the bottom of your page, there's that little smiley icon. Click on it. It's going to give you an array of little buttons. Start pressing those buttons. Let's make this page look like it is a party time. There we go. It's starting to pop up, and there's the big explosions coming out of there.

Guys, I want to thank the team from Flo, from coming on to this particular call. David running in the background, Stuart the imposter, my doplanger, the guy that is about that much taller than me, only because he has hair. That's the only reason he has hair. Other than that, I've got my howe heels on and we'll go face to face. And again, Arthur, thank you so much for your time, your support. It's been absolutely the whole of the flow team have really taken us to that next level to take our business. You guys on this particular call, it's always fantastic. to see all of you again and I wish to see you on our next sessions. Have a fantastic week ahead

and as I always say the future of your real estate starts right now. Awesome. Thanks guys. Fantastic guys. Thank you very much.