The Science of Flipping - Marketing vs. Branding: Mastering Your Online Presence | Bob McIntosh

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

In this episode, I welcome digital marketing expert Bob McIntosh to discuss the critical components of building a strong online presence for real estate investors. Bob shares his insights on the differences between marketing and branding, emphasizing the importance of a professional website and effective follow-up systems. He highlights the necessity of maintaining consistency on social media and the value of personal branding in establishing trust and credibility. The discussion covers practical strategies for leveraging various digital marketing tools, the impact of quality online engagement, and adapting to current market challenges. Bob's advice provides a comprehensive guide for real estate professionals looking to enhance their digital footprint and drive business growth. --- Connect with Bob! Instagram - @thebobmcintosh Digital Marketing Website - https://go3dc.com/tsof --- BIG THANK YOU to 10x TV for sponsoring this week's episode. "Use TV Commercials to reach 10X More people, 10X Faster and 10X Easier, with 10X More Credibility." To learn more, go to https://10xtv.co --- The #1 training and coaching system to launch, grow, and scale your investing business! 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞: http://www.thescienceofflipping.com Turn cold real estate leads into engaged motivated sellers on auto-pilot using the power of A.I! 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞: https://www.rocketly.ai/ 
 Have a question? Ask me anything at https://www.askjustin.ai/ 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧: After graduating from UCLA in 2003 with an English degree, Justin went directly into business for himself. He has never had a W-2 job. In 2005 he got into real estate by co-founding a brokerage in the Northern California area. Quickly he realized that being a realtor was not for him. 
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All right, Science Flipping podcast listeners, as always, this episode is brought to you by Rocketly.ai. If you're looking for a seller lead generating system that has automation in AI bot and has sellers coming to you, then Rocketly.ai is your choice. Make sure you head over to the website, fill out an application and schedule a demo now to see the power of Rocketly.ai. What is up, ScienceFlipping family? Welcome back to another incredible podcast. I have a longtime friend and one of the digital masters, Bob McIntosh, is here.

He is the expert when it comes to online presence, driving in leads, making more money, anything to do with online and driving business and revenue to your business. My boy, Bob McIntosh focuses on it. What's up, dude? What's up, man? Thanks for having me here. Appreciate the time. And for all of you watching, listening, joining, whatever. Appreciate your time, too. Yeah. So we are going to be on YouTube and we're going to be on Instagram and Facebook and obviously Apple and Spotify. And so everyone is going to know Bob McIntosh does everything online, digital to drive traffic to your business. So make sure you're following him on social media.

Make sure you go to his company. What is the website to your company? Go3dc.com. Go3dc.com. Make sure you get over there, but also pay attention because we are about to drop some knowledge. Everything about marketing and branding, presence, revenue, it's all about to go down, dude. So I made a post this morning. You chimed in. You spoke up. I asked the question, the short question was, what is the difference and why do more people care about marketing than they do

about branding? And you had a great response to thank you so why don't we why don't we tell the people what you said to that yeah so uh for me the difference is marketing is a revenue driving activity branding is an awareness driving activity but branding improves and enhances your marketing although not necessarily a direct it's on a one-to-one ratio and when when I was talking about in the post specifically, specifically was if you look at it as a KPI, cause we're all KPI driven, like at some point in time in your journey, you're going to hear someone say KPIs, you got to drive it. If you don't measure it, you can't, you know, whatever. And it's true. It's a hundred percent. I'm not saying that's not true, but branding is kind of this nebulous idea

of like awareness and how do you drive awareness and how do you use that? And how do you attach a KPI? Like, you know, you can say, look at my followers or look at my downloads on a podcast, and that's a great KPI, but does it tie to revenue? And it's hard to track that backwards, right? Unless you look at, okay, well, here's this and there's ways, but it's, again, it's nebulous. And I think the problem for most investors is because it's nebulous, they just don't want to spend time on it because it's not easily trackable, easily identifiable. And because of that, it just falls off the radar because there's a million things we've got to be doing. There's a great coach, very talented, knows what he's doing, wants to really make an impact on people.

Yesterday he calls me, asks about being on my podcast. I tell him the whole deal. And he balks. And it's the reason he balk box about being on my podcast is exactly what you say there is no guaranteed line to direct revenue yep right by being on a podcast yeah you understand that because you understand marketing online presence you know you just talked about going live for 277 days yeah 277 or 74 something like that i did back in 2017 it was just facebook live was new was a brand new thing like they were pumping it out there like crazy if you did it and i was like

heck let's just do it and i think i grew i don't know my facebook following at that point was like it was probably right around that 5 000 ish mark and i think i think i had another 8 000 followers on top of that over the course of a year and that was with no strategy behind it it was literally just me rambling on lives for a year but just people were like it was real it was raw it wasn't like scripted it was half the time i was in my car and i was like oh i got an idea let's go live right yeah um and the quality was crap because it was like you know relying on signal strength and it would like decrease the quality to keep the thing it was it was honestly it was terrible but it worked and that's the thing and i almost, it was honestly, it was terrible, but it worked. And that's the thing.

And I almost guarantee you, and maybe you know the number. Yeah. Out of those 8,000 more followers in that given year, you've generated revenue. Oh, 100%. They have become your clients.

100%. Yeah. So if I look today at like our website offering, if I look at our CRM offering, a lot of that, everyone who came on board once I launched those offers,

not maybe not everyone, but a large majority, 85, 90% were already in my ecosystem in your social media ecosystem somewhere maybe they weren't as close as you and i but they were yeah on my list or whatever this is what i think people we got to keep i want to keep pressing this button because people don't understand that now i'll make an argument i think you'll support like I don't know if Instagram or Facebook lives today carry quite as much weight no they don't they absolutely do not but I will tell you if you are triggery enough cool enough have cool enough stuff right like you don't need to be dancing but like

people are going to start to say dude you need to go check out Bob he goes live every day and he talks about this really funny thing right you will gain traffic there's no doubt about it yeah but good no so so the the aspect of the live doesn't really matter as much anymore like that's sort of irrelevant the reality is like the the format in which you go out there in fact even now uh you know it's it's actually better not to in no cases so but here's the thing just being out there and look i'm guilty of this too like i know i am like i'm not the best about posting my social right i get dive into my business i start doing things i don't you know if i got a team member that can tackle it they'll do it that's usually when i'm most consistent when i have somebody else taking

it on for me and i just have to be there to create the content yeah but if you just focus on doing it and like i have a whole process that like i walk through on a yearly basis it's actually very simple ties back to russell brunson's expert secrets walk through his five things and i add two more so i have a seven day week and i just create like just create a map for the year and even if you only hit 40 30 of what you map out for the year, you're already going to be further ahead than if you didn't do anything. Specifically, you're talking about social media. Yeah. So yeah, with social media.

And then obviously build your ecosystem, have how you got to have a, so here's here. Okay. So here's the thing. It's not just back then. And we got to, I got to differentiate it. And I think this is an important thing. People don't differentiate what worked three, five, 10 years ago to what works today. Cause it's a very different ecosystem back. Right. If you go live 270 times, I guarantee you, you'll get traction. People will notice things will happen. It just may not be as impactful as it was when I did it in 2017. That's right. But with that said, if you simply focus on doing it

and then you have the backup behind it, this is the thing where I think people mess it up. Social is fantastic and it's amazing. And you can make all the commitment in the world. You can execute, you can go live once a day, create a video once a day, whatever it is, right? You go out there, but you've got to have two things behind you to do it. You gotta have a website because if you don't, people look you up and they either, A, they can't find you. B, they don't know what you're about. C, they don't know how to get in contact with you or they don't have any trust in you because it's like, well, if you're legit, wouldn't you have a website? And by the way, if it doesn't look good, it's even worse. 97% of people judge your business's credibility based on the design that they see in the first five seconds.

And I know you have websites. Where can they go to get websites from you? The easiest thing is just head to go3dc.com forward slash T-S-O-F for the science of flipping. Sure. And they can put information in. We'll reach out to you and talk to you just go or 3dc.com if you want forward slash science flipping or tsof uh but make sure you have a website keep going because it's really empowering you know you know i believe in that 100 100 i'm already i'm on your list if i signed up i've downloaded one of your things i'm like yeah i'm always checking yeah who's doing what what's working right but the other part of this and you you do a great job of this, is follow-up, emails, texts, things going on in the background.

Here's like stay in communication because once they're in, they want to be in. Like they've risen their hand in some capacity to say, this is interesting to me. I resonate with you, your story, your message, your whatever, right? But they're like, yeah, I'm in. So if you don't follow up, you don't have a great CRM that's automating that because the reality is you're never going to do it by yourself right right and by the way this is true for anybody like maybe less so if you're trying to communicate with motivated sellers to a certain extent like they don't need to know about your branding and all that i just want to know if you can help them here but i guarantee

you you're going to raise more money you're going to you're going to find more deals find more investors you're going to have more options that become available to you. The more you build your brand out there and people know who you are and the website, the CRM and your social are kind of the three pillars of that. Now, Bob McIntosh is a brand. Yes. 3DC is a brand. Correct. What do you think is more important? Do you want to get inbound motivated sellers calling you and become an authority in your market? Look no further than Tony Javier's 10X TV. Tony has been doing TV commercials to find consistent motivated sellers for over a decade for his business. It is the main reason he has been able to purchase over a thousand properties.

He will use his proven formula to get high quality leads calling you and even setting it up for you. Get in front of 10 times more people, 10 times faster, 10 times cheaper with 10 times more credibility than any other marketing channel. Surprisingly, TV has little to no competition and get you a steady flow of motivated seller leads. If you want to see why over 100 real estate investors use Tony to run their TV commercials, go to 10xtv.co to see if there's a spot available in your market. Again, go to 10xtv.co. Is there something more important? I think it depends okay and so it depends on who you are what you want right so let me explain myself first and then we'll kind of go into

why it would or would not matter i think so for me i really started i was not the guy i wanted to be out there on podcast doing it was not me right like i remember explicitly this is this is an interesting story so i was at an an event and I'd had some success with my very first digital product. We sold 20 grand in the first month and it was like this huge deal. This is back in 2010 or 11. And I'm at this event, like 500 people in the room.

And my coach is like, hey, I'm gonna call you up on stage to share. I'm like, oh, no, you're not. Hell no. I was like, no, no. So I started packing my stuff up. I'm in the back of the room and I couldn't get it packed before he called me out and then like spotlights are on me and i'm like oh god what do i do now yeah so i go up on stage

and i started sharing and i realized like it's i had this whole out-of-body moment and before that i would have told you you're full you know whatever if you told me that was real yeah but i was watching myself above me looking down at me deliver a message to room and they were just i mean they were eating i had a line it took me four hours to get off the stage because there's a lot of people that want to talk to me afterwards i still get chills when i think about it yeah it's like hey this is what you're supposed to be doing and i was like okay well if i know that now what and so for me and not everyone's going to have that driven like that driven reason behind why they're doing this but at the end of the day

the bob mcintosh brand right is a brand because I understand the power of what I bring, my knowledge, my expertise, the way I explain things. You know, I mean, I've been told I have a good way about explaining it. Do you think Tesla would be as big of a brand if Elon Musk didn't already have the brand personally that he has? Absolutely not. I agree. And people resonate with people right but at the same time and the flip side there are people who are very uncomfortable with things like this they would never be on a show like right and if that's you like either a find someone who

can be plug into someone plug them in your business that acceleration will help you long term or b just focus on your company as the brand there's a lot that you can do without without having to be the face yeah of the brand either way is fine like there's not there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer because the reality is if you're terrible on camera and it scares the living bejesus out of you and you're like never going to do that well he probably is not going to actually help you to be doing that because you're right like vice versa facebook you don't need zuckerberg to be like there was no face right even though it's called facebook right but look at him when he goes live even today he's terrible like he's like he's like he's the worst

he would be it's the he he would actually probably negatively impact his brand for trying to have a personal brand absolutely and to some extent bezos the same way he's awkward he's weird like you're just like god stay away from the camera like yeah but they built other things right like you know amazon built it as hey we have everything initially it was like fast delivery of of your stuff like that was the brand it wasn't a person and that can be the brand that's why it can be on anything just own it i mean zappos thing was customer service yeah and we're like yeah they sold shoes but it was really customer service 100 every brand has a thing

they can be it's not a person if that's not what you're comfortable but you have to and if we really think about what we're talking about we're talking about the online presence which is your expertise again if you don't follow bob go follow bob immediately on all platforms instagram facebook etc um what's your handle just so everyone at vthe bob mcintosh and there's no a mc intosh no a mc int so but what we're talking about is this presence online facebook amazon uh you know again even uh elon started with paypal yeah it is all online yeah if you don't have a personal brand online if you do not have a business brand online you and i both know you are just selling yourself brand online if you don't have a business brand online you and i both know you are just selling yourself like even if you are making money you are making a fraction of

what you could be making exactly right i always love my business partner always says you know like a great website and presence online may not always make you money but it will absolutely cost you money and the worst part about that is you won't even know it's costing you money because they've already checked out before they even called you opted in texted you you know reached out like whatever it is they've already checked out mentally from your brand before you know so you don't even know what's happening i do that listen so many people have heard the story but i have to say it because you're going to get it my father is a salesperson he will not get social media or he has it but he does nothing literally nothing with it he basically waits for me to post on my daughter and my son and whatever and he sucks it's like he's barely making it

financially yeah so when you say it may not make him rich it may not but it is absolutely making him poorer because he's not utilizing it 100 and think back to like even look at your whoever you are if you're listening, watching, think right now. Sorry, dad. How to let everyone know. It's all good. Parents, sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't.

That's it. Let's hope he doesn't listen this morning. Think about your local market right now and think about some company that you know there that is in your local, in your city, in your local city. Not a nationwide company, but like could be a bank. It could be a guy who makes popcorn, it could be a, oh, whatever, it doesn't matter what the business is, right? And think about the branding that goes into that. And the reason I share that is, it doesn't always have to, like, a lot of times we go to these big brands, because they're well known, like Amazon, or Elon, and Tesla, or Zuckerberg, and Facebook, and like, we know these big brands, but take it down to the local level right understand that hey there's like in in my hometown area there's a popcorn shop it's literally

a shack on the side of the road outside of a house there's a guy who just loved making popcorn back in the 50s and it still exists today yeah and if you are in in or within like a 45 minute radius of that drive radius of that you probably have heard of it's called buys popcorn right they don't do a great job online which i you know they do an okay job but they have so much more if they did but it's still a great brand and i say this simply because i understand that hey a great brand carries weight um but i guarantee you if they were online more they'd do better and case in point about four or five years ago they said hey like people love their popcorn so They're like, hey, we want to order it for Christmas, but they're never open. They were only open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And so because of their online Facebook community, they decided to take pre-orders for popcorn for Christmas. And I mean, I don't know

exactly how much, but the number I heard someone told me was like it was an extra like 30 or 40 grand that they made in popcorn for basically taking preorders, opening a couple of days to make it. And you had to come pick it up. You had to ship it. You had to come get it yourself. But no real extra cost. Yeah. Right. No real. And that all came because people were online commenting on their social profile that they wanted this thing. And they simply said, oh, here's demand. Here's supply. I mean, even simple mistakes of someone looking you up me up like in your world obviously you you do a lot your consulting company 3dc

you work mostly with real estate is that correct mostly real estate investors and then coaches in the investing spaces love it right and so even by mistake someone types in the wrong thing if you freaking have a website there yeah they might just find it by mistake let's just say one person here finds you whether you're an investor you're an agent you're a consultant whatever it is and you get one extra client a year because you had the branding you had the product you had the website you had the thing it's bottom line revenue yeah 100 it's found money yep um and so let's kind of go back to this, you know, well, first let's just talk about your consulting company real quick. Your focus really is what, is it just the presence? Is it more the branding side? Is it the marketing side? Is it a combination of both? Uh, it's a, it's a little

bit of all of that. So, uh, we focus on, on a couple of main areas. The one is a great website and a great CRM for followup. Cause I, cause without those two things, I guarantee you as any business owner, but especially as investors, because we have to wear so many hats and we have to talk to so many different people who want different things, like a retail buyer, an investor buyer,

a PML, an agent, a seller. They all want very different things. So if you're not automating it, you're already leaving it behind. So you've got to have that, right? So we focus on those two things and then helping you understand how do I use these to maximum effect, regardless of where your budget is, right?

Because like, let's take PPC, for example. Everyone talks about that as a great lead generation and it absolutely is, but it's also very expensive. For most new investors, like, I mean, we talk to people, it's like, hey, if you don't have at least three to five grand a month to play towards it. I say five. Yeah, like bare minimum, you're probably not ready for it and that's okay right but there's a lot of other things that we can do that are not that um or that i could spend the same money for that on other things that will probably produce better results if you're smaller or you're like you know you're only doing let's say 10 deals a year right now which for some of us might be like

oh my god i'd love to get to 10 deals a year that and that's awesome too right uh but understand that that's there so your website your crm is, but then how do I use it for the level that I'm at? Right. And, and, and one of the, I don't know, one of my pet peeves, and this is, this seems to happen a lot is, and actually it doesn't for you. And I, and I want to applaud you for that is that people speak like we, you get to a certain notoriety, you get to a level, Oh, I'm doing a hundred deals. I got a thousand doors that, you know, you get to a certain notoriety, you get to a level, oh, I'm doing 100 deals, I got 1,000 doors, you know, you're here in most people's minds.

And you talk about the things you're doing here, but that doesn't apply to the guy down at the beginning, right, like trying to get his first deal or go from one deal a year to two or three, because that's a monumental shift in mindset for most people, right? And when we look at that difference, it's like, I can't apply the same tactics here as I do here. It's not that I can't keep my eye on those

tactics, but it's just probably not going to be the most effective for me down here. And so understand that where you're at is going to make a big difference in that. And the other thing too, that I want to talk about is understand, this goes back to the personal branding aspect, which is who are you and what do you bring different to the real estate market? In the last four years, basically since COVID really hit, there's been a huge shift in the ability to do real estate nationwide.

So anyone from anywhere can now get in. I mean, the reality is just prior to COVID, there was counties that still you couldn't access information online. One of the counties that we operate in from Buffalo, you could go to a computer terminal at the courthouse and access the record. They were electronic there, but that's it. It didn't exist online. There was no looking it up, so you had to physically be there. Buffalo is one of the more unique cities I've ever been to. It is. Chris Noggle had me come speak

at his event in Buffalo, and I was like, this is like, I feel like it's still back in the early 80s it can certainly feel that way streets even the lights like you're just like are they gonna fall down I go anyways good there's a funny saying keep Buffalo secret and I was like well maybe not too secret um but yeah no I know Chris well um so yeah but you know like it just it's uh when you look at building that brand out there, you are what's different in the real estate market. You have to be the person that stands out.

Um, and again, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go out there and have a podcast and do all this other stuff. Totally. But what you bring to the table, your uniqueness, your ability, your way to see a deal, your way to, uh, to your connections, the things that you do are going to help you differentiate yourself. So part of your website, part of your CRM and part of your social profiles is how do I imbue those with my uniqueness? Right. It's all great to have a starting point, but if it's not unique to you enough,

it's just another email. It's just another text. It's just another website. And there's no differentiator there. So you've got to stand out that way. So we try to help you do that as well, depending on where you're at, obviously. so this is where i would make the argument and this is just an opinion i'm sure plenty of people would argue and i'm probably in some argument somewhere on that post but um i really believe the personal brand is senior to company brand i get it you know the coca-colas of the world right? Besides now Warren Buffett being the largest investor, right? Like no one knows anyone in the Coca-Cola organization. There's no person there.

And there's a lot of those type of examples. I just think today, if Coca-Cola would have started as a company, it would have been a lot different. You would have seen some superstar be a face of that company out of the gate. Yep. Right. Maybe Shaquille O'Neal, whatever it is. Right. So I actually just think in my own humble opinion, I think I know a little bit, not as much as you, but like the person is why people want to do business with people they know, like and trust.

100%. Same thing for companies. The fact that you are here as Bob, but you're also here as your company validates the company. So if someone hears about 3DC, they'll, oh, oh yeah, that guy, Bob. Okay. And they'll have a connection. Yeah. But they always want the person, in my opinion, again, being a consultant, a podcast host,

a consulting company, a firm, a service company, the people want to like Bob more than they want to know what 3DC does. Do you agree? Do you not? I mean, to the point where I just think the personal brand is senior to the company brand. I think yes, but with an asterisk. So where are you,

for those of you listening or watching this, where are you right now? If you're trying to get your first, like if you're like sub five deals a year right now the reality is your personal brand should probably not be your focus not just yet because you got to make some money because having a personal brand takes effort it takes brand in general who cares at that small of a level go make some money yeah make some money exactly 100 now but you're building your brand by doing this that's the point that rj was talking about that's actually building the brand because you're actually doing what you said you're gonna do and that builds the brand that precisely yeah

and so as you as you go take a portion of what you make and reinvest it into that and reinvest it into and if you're like look if you're someone who's like totally terrified of being out there like to get a coach find someone who can do that like go to toastmasters i like even though this is actually a crazy story so i've probably spent at this point over 4 000 hours teaching from stage physically wide yeah including zooms or anything like that just on stage and uh when i was at my peak of doing this i was like man i want to get better how do i get better at this and i went to toastmasters it's like i don't know i think the one i joined was like 15 bucks a quarter i was just gonna say

it's like basically free i mean it's like nothing and and and look the reality was almost everyone in the group that i was in was uh underneath me in terms of skills like they were they did not have my skill level but it wasn't about me like learning from them necessarily it was about just getting repetitions in and learning and feeling more calm. And I'm sure you had some golden nuts. Someone probably said something somewhere, gave you a piece that you got that I almost guarantee it. Yep. And so go out there and do that,

but do it incrementally and build it. So is a personal brand senior to the company brand? In most cases, yes. And again, we can't look at Coke. You can't look at Pepsi. You can't look at the,

I mean, where I mean, Coke was, what was it like 1920 year or something like that? I mean, it was like, it was like a 100 years ago. Four years ago is different to your point than today.

Before COVID was different to today. I mean, the ability to have a personal brand didn't even exist really back then because, you know, like, what would you have done? I don't want to talk in my local paper to people. Like, oh, like, you know, a thousand people in my city. Let's talk to your clients. You know, many of my clients can be your clients, right? So I run a coaching consulting business. You run a service business to help those people just do more deals yeah it's great hand in hand would you recommend uh there to be how do you recommend the person breaking in they want to go get their they're done one or two yeah what type of communication

should be there should they be pointing people to a website or they should be, you know, I'm the buyer, right? Or I'm a, you know, I'm a part of a bigger network. How should they be marketing, branding themselves when they're in these type of conversations? That's a great question. And the answer has shifted a lot actually in the past few years. So here's, here's what I'm seeing across wallets of clients right now. There's a general distrust of real estate investors for a lot of reasons. The, you know, like Nudge, Zirks,

all these big companies that were doing education, basically ripping people off. It doesn't matter that they were educators and they were, you know, whatever, doing bad things. In people's minds, they hear and they see this and they think, oh oh investors are all slimy people right you've got a ton of shyster wholesalers i don't know what else to call them out there and and if you're listening to this and you know who you are um who have no intention of

closing a deal they're just in it to make the money and if it doesn't work out well tough luck and they leave the seller by the wayside and you already moved there i've already gone yeah now they're screwed and so they get they give all the rest of us a bad name and so and that's that that has dramatically increased as we've gone more virtual and it's there's like i'm not there's like the best i could say is like if i'm not physically there at the kitchen table with you i have less emotion yeah right and so if i dropped your your deal and whatever it's like i'll never see you again anyways sorry granny tough luck right and so that in general has, has become very pervasive across the industry.

And so there is a general distrust of investors right now. And so when you are trying to scale up from one or two deals to one or two deals a month, even for right now, let's just say, right. The biggest thing that you can do is look professional. And that's going to, again, what comes down to three basic things in my mind, number one, a great website behind you because they're gonna they're gonna google you right everyone talked and if they the only thing worse than them not finding you and they google you is finding you

and your site looks terrible it looks cheap and i'm gonna straight up if you built your excuse my language here but shitty website on wix and it was free yeah that that communicates something to like oh look they couldn't even take the time to build a professional game website yeah they got some shitty free website it shows your mindset to them before they even sit down and talk to you before they pick up the you bring up a great point make sure you go to Bob get a website I don't care who you are because if that if a person doesn't know you right like right now people are googling bob 100 right now you're watching this or listening to saying who the hell is bob mcintosh if you

don't know him you are googling him that's what's happening yep and if bob doesn't have a website which he obviously does like people go i don't know who this guy like why am i going to do any business with them and they're not gonna spend a lot of time looking for you either right like they might spend a few minutes whatever and this is actually funny i've had to work very hard there's another bob mcintosh who had a lifetime movie made about him because he got he went to break up a party at his neighbor his neighbor's kids were throwing when the neighbor's kids parents were gone yeah got beat up and killed and so they made a lifetime movie so i had like that was like for the longest time that was like the first 10 results

on google brutal lifetime movie and i was like i'm not that guy i'm alive i'm yeah um but you know but like that that makes a difference right i had to work really hard to beat that out and the same thing is true like you've got to look professionally you got to be seen and does this mean you need to go spend tens of thousands of dollars on seo to get up there probably not not when you're just getting started yeah but i guarantee you they're going to look you up they're going to check you out they want to see who you are and if your site communicates that you are unprofessional they assume that you're and they're going to look you up they're going to check you out they want to see who you are and if your site communicates that you are unprofessional they assume that you're and they're going to treat you as such yeah and by the way let me just say this like right like if you were to get all of our like our crm interwebs and all that you're going to pay

like like three grand a year yeah like that's it it's not very much i guarantee you if all of that all it does is just one deal extra for you a year. Yep. It's free. 3X return at least. It's free, right? I mean, the way I look at all these type of things, so I close my book out every quarter in my real estate business. So if we had a lead come in in Q1 of this year, and in Q4, we contract it and sell it or buy it and flip it, whatever we do with it,

I don't really go back and say, okay, that's allocated q1 it's a free lead at this point the money's already been spent it's already been closed we're done this is now free and it's because we nurtured it but i say that to just say like to some extent people don't understand the gravity of that and that's why there is this hand-in-hand branding and marketing right you need to be having marketing we have a mutual friend rj who was talking about this his marketing was in a way that he was able to build the brand because he delivered on his marketing yeah so deliveries that's so that's key the delivery part what

you're talking about do what you say so if you're out there just contracting deals willy-nilly not really knowing not really caring it creates the bad reputation which ruins the brand like the brand of wholesaling yeah has a bad rep yeah there's no doubt about it nationally just kind of as a concept there are incredible wholesalers i still wholesale there's a lot of our friends still wholesale right but you know it is important that you as a person do what you say you're going to do to the best of your own ability can things come up of course always but i think you know when you market and you drive leads into your company

seller leads for in your way way consulting leads my world consulting leads like we got to deliver yeah you cannot and and by the way over time that carries a lot of weight. So in our market, right, I can confidently tell an agent, we have a 100% close ratio on every accepted offer. Because I know that if I'm putting an offer on a property, I already know my numbers. We'll figure it out, right? Are there some cases where I'm like, oh, shoot, I probably should have come in lower?

Yes, but to me, the way of being able to say I have 100% close ratio on every accepted offer. Now, does that mean every offer I put out there gets accepted? No, no, we don't close a lot of deals, right? Because they just, they don't want it or whatever. There are a million reasons why, but that, that right there says a lot. And, and, and that's something I could talk about on my site. It lends to the professionalism and the credibility we do because people go, oh man, okay. Like if I work with these guys and I take their offer, I know they're going to close. I don't have to worry about those other people, the horror stories that people have heard from the other folks. So what are, when people are

watching this, listening to this, besides going to 3dc.com and it's what, um, go3dc.com. Besides going like, what are some things people can take away saying, Bob, thank you for that. That was a huge websites one. Websites one. You got that covered. Yep. What's next? Follow up. Okay. Someone gives you their information. They call in, they text in, they email in, they scan a QR code, they go wherever, right? Have a follow-up for them. It doesn't have to be a six-year length follow-up, but get a hold of them for the next one to two weeks at the very least.

It does not take a lot of effort to do that. And make sure that the follow-up speaks to what they want yeah why they're there what they're doing right so like if you go for example if you go to go3dc.com slash tsof for the science of flipping and you get i'm gonna there's gonna be emails tailored to you saying hey thanks for coming on to or watching this podcast because i understand the value of you watching this and what that means for you and where you came from. And the more that I can speak to you in and around the reason that you came to me in the first place, the deeper the trust runs. And that's a huge thing. It's a massive thing for people. So do that. And look, as investors, there's a bunch of people that we

have to talk to, which is why we give you preset, already pre-written campaigns. But you should go in and you should tweak them, right? They got to be modified slightly. But it's easier to tweak than it is to write from scratch in most cases. So that's number two. And number three, I think, honestly, is having what I call a high-value social. So to me, that is not necessary that you need to be out there posting every single day all the time. Should you? Yes.

Will it help you? Absolutely. Like we were talking about earlier. With that said, however, for most investors, the idea that is they're daunting, they don't want it, they don't see the value yet. So here's what I say. At the very least, you should be on every platform, every platform, right? I am on every single platform that exists. Now, do I participate in most of those platforms? No, like I'm not on air chat. I'm not really on parlor. I'm not on truth. Like in terms of-

By the way, I don't even know all three of those. I've never even heard of them. That's like, God, I don't even know those. Yeah, right? And so they exist. They're there. So what I look at it this way is I find every time I hear about a social, the moment I hear about it, I'm like Oregon land rush guy.

I got my flag. I've stuck in the ground. I claim my flag. I've stuck in the ground. I claim my username. Even if I never post on the platform ever, I know that I have the same username across every platform. So if you go look for me, you're going to find at the Bob McIntosh on every platform is me. And that way, if you're on Twitter,

and I don't really post a lot on Twitter, you still know, oh, here's this guy on Facebook. Here's this guy on Instagram. Here he is on YouTube. Here he is on TikTok. Here he is on whatever and they'll usually go find you on all the different platforms yeah because because they want to know like they'll see oh okay like i want your content you're not posting here so where are you posting so make it easy and then also have the same photo get a good high quality professional photo and i want to say professional i mean you have to go

spend thousands of dollars right you don't need you know i'd say go to sears but that's not a thing anymore oh my god we're so old that probably dates me but yeah um but no like literally get your iphone out right go to a local these cameras are as good as i mean obviously these cameras are really impactful like this is for social media though right like all you need this this is what i tell people literally if you've got a teenager a niece a nephew a cousin someone who is decently okay with technology they'll know how to use these things have them take 200 to 300 photos of you in various locations using like portrait mode regular mode with your iphone or whatever your camera you have like their your phone camera guarantee one or two of those will be good and that's all you need and just use the same one across all of it and that costs you what 30 minutes of time what the thing that the thing

that i think is too rampant right now in our space is all people want to become personalities yeah they want to have like camera people follow them and shit yeah right i get what has happened because the people such as gary v and you know gary v has 22 or 24 people just doing his social media right do you how much money that would cost even at a base salary of let's just say 40 000 per person times 22 people like you you got to earn that you can't no doubt and what we're talking about is I want a clear, I want a clear line of what Bob and I are talking about versus reality. Right. Right now,

for anyone listening to this, trying to go get a couple of deals, do not care about being some personality and everyone knows you and you have this massive following and you're Insta famous, right? Yeah. Go make some money, do a deal,

get a check and then get another check and another check and probably do five to 10 checks before you still have to really give a shit. Because then you have some traction. Now you have a track record. Hey, I've closed ten deals. I want to start to build the brand. Yes. But you still want to make sure you have professionalism like the website.

When you are talking to sellers, you have a way to nurture those sellers, right? The social media is hyper hyper important but it is to your point part number three of this whole thing correct and it's because you're not going to be here yeah right like there's one gary v yep that's it right and that's okay you don't have you don't have to be right like like the reality is social media for business was not a thing when we got started no and we did just fine and is it a thing now yes will it help you now yes but uh just document your journey and he talked about that all the time like how many times does he say that those words right document what you're doing and that's your that's your your proof my first my very first live stream i ever did was on periscope back the way back and was that till i remember

716 i think something like that um i had nine views not not letting viewers nine views total two of those were my mom because she watched it twice and she's like i watched your live and i was like oh but thank you yeah um and it's like that that was there's not literally nine views that was what that's what it got was nine and i was like man what it it's like that that was there's not literally nine views that was what that's what it got was nine and i was like man what it feels depressing but that that's all right yeah it's not nine views today yeah it's not nine views today because of time and consistency and runway yeah i talk about this i literally replied to someone on this thread which is i've done this podcast the science of flipping since 2013 you will know when it started making me money 2024

in january yeah literally i said i spent 2023 building the business creating people putting the marketing team in place doing so it cost me money every single episode this cost me money right i have multiple people you are seeing them that are a part of this whole thing right i say that to say many people would have quit over the 10 years before they made a dollar yeah but you and i understand one thing which is if you have enough runway it will pay off yes people quit before they're even at the point of that there's almost nobody i'm aware of in our world that would have done that for free with no income coming in and running a podcast with 500 episodes for a decade yeah right but i had this idea that if i just kept going something's gonna it just took me 10 years call me stupid or

something to figure out oh fuck there's a real business behind this yeah yeah and it'll get there but but you had to get to believe in it you had to get there and that's the thing like yeah most people will not spend 10 years most people won't even spend 10 months but let's let's talk about someone who's like really social media famous grant cardone yeah real estate investor came out as a sales guy right right but look at when did he start look at his early stuff right go watch him if you go back same with gary v2 go back to the early shit yeah like look at that look at what it really looked like it was just that it was oh it's dude it was terrible by the way i bought his cardone university whatever the worst not that he what he was

delivering was the worst like the value but the quality of the production he's in these big shoulder pad suits his hair's all peacock like you're just like this is awful right um and i say that only to say he understood the value of what you're talking about the branding and the consistency of posting on social media to the point now where he's still i think he's 65 years old 66 i just interviewed him again in january but like every saturday i show my wife because she's like why do you work so much still you don't need it i'm like honey i'm nowhere near where we need to get right like this guy's fucking has four billion dollars worth of assets he's on a saturday every saturday for four hours he's going live on instagram like i gotta work more right like and so what i say to that is like

don't dismiss the power of what social media could do just because you're not getting the results today. Would you not agree? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Look, like I'm still not anywhere near where I'd want to be. And like, I'm a social media expert, you know, as far as that's concerned, I'm still not anywhere near there. Right. And the reality is it, it, all it takes is one post one time to get someone over that hump, but you don't know when or where.

And it's, I don't care what anybody says there's sure there's things you can do to improve the odds of a post getting out there and going viral if you will but it's not a science not truly right uh but yeah just just keep going just keep posting just like even to this day here's the funny part like i look in in the buffalo market we still get deals but i haven't actively marketed in buffalo for years i don't send out flyers i don't do i'm not even doing seo anymore like i literally zero marketing is happening i don't email our agents anymore like nothing yeah and still probably two to three deals a month come my direction just because people know that we are buyers and we have been for a long time. And when they, if I say yes,

I want the deal, then it's a guaranteed close. That's the same point I just made about the podcast. Right. You built such a great brand over time that to this very day, you're getting free money. Yep. Right. And it's because if you do the right thing and put in the work and do the

marketing, the brand itself will last for a very long time. Yeah. And here's the funny part, too. I could, right now, today, if I wanted to, spend, I don't know, let's just say five grand a year and just pushing it a little further. Not a lot. I mean, in the bigger scheme of things, that's a very small amount of money.

Yeah. Right? But that will generate so much more if I did. Now we're not really actively trying to, I'm happy with where we're at in that, in that particular capacity right now. Um, but here's the funny part,

like that just little, little, once it's been built like this, like if you were to stop this podcast today, it's the momentum you built for 10 years is going to carry it. Even if you never did another episode after this one, right. We'll carry it probably for another five years. You know, we will be declining every year.

Absolutely. It won't be growing for sure. Right. But the, the weight of time compounding your actions over that time is unbelievable. Totally. So marketing is a wide topic. We both agree. You need to have an online presence, right? Website, social media. Do you have, for the real estate investor, when you have clients, do you suggest they do PPC, PPL, Facebook ads, direct? Do you say venture outside of online? Do you say direct mail?

Do you say TV ads? Do you say, you know, we have mutual friend Tony, right? Where do you push people to kind of create the marketing, which consistent with the branding? Yeah. So, so a lot has happened, especially this year, 2024 with online marketing that has made it more difficult and it's only going to get harder. So a couple of things, if you're watching this and this is, this is really a time thing for the next six months of 2024 if you're not already actively doing ppc or you're just trying to start your journey i would probably wait until after november because the election people are buying a ton of traffic on top of all the normal black friday traffic uh i've already seen in the last two

months on average ppc costs rise by 20 for most people yeah all right so it's it's just going to be the next six months really it's gonna be a hard time for them. Now I always say, look, I I'm marketing agnostic and here's why. What, what is your budget? Figure that number out. What can you, what can you afford to sustain for six months? That's my, my minimum, like, cause it takes three to four without making a dollar. Yeah. Without making, yeah. Without making any return. Right. Um, I say six in most cases, you should start to see returns in about three months in most cases. But give yourself six because the other thing is like, especially if you're flipping, for example, right? You might get a deal today, but it might take you six months to get the deal, close the deal, renovate the house, put the house on the market, and actually get your check back in the door.

And you've got to sustain the marketing for that period of time. So what can you do for six months? Take that number and then look at all the marketing that's available to you and say, well, what can I afford to do? If you say, hey, Bob, I have $1,000 a month to spend on marketing. Well, you're not doing PPC. You're probably not doing PPL. You're not doing direct mail. You're not doing TBS.

Yeah, you'll be doing things that are more time. That's not a lot of money to be able to do effective marketing. That's right. All right. So I don't care what marketing you do. But here's what will happen right um over the course of a year whatever marketing you're doing whether it's ppc whether it's direct mail whether it's door knocking whether it's just buying wholesales and connecting with wholesalers which is totally fine by the way

yeah totally your your crm your website and your high value social those three pillars i talked about will support any marketing activity you have going on, regardless of what it is. Because the people that you connect with are going to look for you, they're going to Google you, and if they come into your ecosystem, they want to hear from you. So if you can do those things, it doesn't really matter.

My system will help support all of those. And it's always this hard thing for me. It's like the things that I teach are not necessarily direct lead generation activities, but they support it. And it goes back to the same conversation, which is why I love that you posted this today. It was serendipitous, if you will. Yeah, sort of, I guess.

Right? Yeah. It's branding. Those three things are really your brand. That's it. Your marketing is your marketing. That's what's bringing the things in. But this is supporting.

It's elevating. It's putting yourself on a pedestal so that you stand out from every other investor in your local market. That's what those things will do for you. And if you, like, the reality is if you just get the basics, even just the most basic stuff online, right? It should boost your bottom line by 1% to 3%, bare minimum. Like, bare minimum. Probably more. But in most of our brands that we've with it's about a three percent if you literally just do like i don't change the follow-up sequences in the crml

i put the website up i don't put any unique content i just have it yeah sitting there in the background i'm not actively working on it i just do the the bare bones it's usually between a one and three percent boost and for investors that's a big deal right like like let's just say you're doing two deals and you make 50 000000 off those two deals this year. Right. Which is very, very doable these days. And I'm being very like ultra conservative. For sure. Right. Well, 1% is an extra five grand. Right. So, or 500. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's it. That extra 500. But here's the reality. An extra $500 pays for another marketing campaign. That's right. It pays for this. If it's 3%, all right, well, I got $1,500 now.

What can I do with that? That's right. And that's like, again, just bare minimum stuff. Well, and to your point, everything you are doing is assisting the person who's going to go do PPL, go do the agent outreach. Listen, agent outreach is a massive thing right now that is essentially just time, no money. I mean, maybe people use Privy, right? But guess what they're going to go do? What is the agent going to do when Bob McIntosh calls?

When Justin Colby calls? They're going to Google you. If you don't have a website with Bob, then you're not going to be the one they prioritize. And if you have a website that's shitty, they're not going to prioritize. 100%. It just is an ecosystem that you have to. So, again, make sure you go to go3dcconsulting.com go3dcconsulting.com go3dcc.com go3dcc.com go3dcc.com we'll make sure to edit that uh make sure you are

in uh bob's ecosystem he will be able to assist all in every marketing that you are already doing or want to be doing because everything is intermingled, right? And it just assists the ability for you to convert those leads and actual deals to build more revenue so you can focus on branding for the long run in the big game. Brother, I appreciate you being here. Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah. Any last words for the people? No, man, just go out there words for the people? No, man. Just go out there and get it done. Make it happen. The most important thing you can do is just continue to take action.

And I think going back to what you said earlier, which is do the things you say you're going to do. That will build your brand for you and then back it up with the digital and it'll take off. Done deal. Yeah. All right, y'all. That's it for this episode.

We will be on with another very important guest on this next episode. See you guys in the next one. Peace.