Frank Klesitz started Vyral Marketing about 11 years ago. Since then, Vyral Marketing has helped hundreds of professional clients (mostly from real estate) generate leads and get in touch with their existing database, through education-based video marketing.
Frank always keeps himself updated when it comes to the real estate industry. So if anyone wants to know what is happening in real estate and where it's headed to, he would surely make a great resource person. In fact, he is one of the few guests on the show that we’ve had the honor to interview twice. This goes to show the value he can provide for our listeners especially in these challenging times.
Let’s join Frank as he shares his insights on the current status of the real estate industry, what the future looks like and the importance of having an effective marketing strategy.
In this episode, we talked about:
(1:49) What is going on in the real estate industry?
(2:45) What does recovery look like for the real estate market?
(5:08) What will the next 6 months look like?
(5:36) 2 Big changes - Opendoor financing
(7:41) What Frank thinks about Zillow having their own brokerage
(15:13) What is the biggest disruptor in the real estate industry?
(17:52) Why Frank believes that the money is NEVER in doing what you do
(21:32) Two effective ways to get a Listing
(24:50) Things to do to build your database
(27:52) How do you win a listing with marketing?
(32:08) How do I get business to my database
(35:13) Why you need to double down on Matterport and virtual tours
(35:52) What Frank thinks of the “giving all the options to the seller” trend?
(45:36) What is Frank’s one piece of advice for anyone in the Real Estate business
Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 0:35
Alright, Hello, everybody. And welcome back to the GRIT podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth and the host of the show. I'm also the founder of Sisu, the growth automation software for real estate. And today, I think, well, I'm here with Frank Klesitz. And I think Frank is only my second guest, maybe my third to be on the show twice. Oh, anyway, Frank, I'm super excited to have you back on the show. For those of you who don't know, Frank is the CEO of Vyral Marketing. He's the founder of Vyral Marketing. Vyral Marketing has been around for how many years now? Frank? Been 11. Okay. So 11 years and Vyral is really just been focused on the real estate industry for that 11 years. So if there's anything you want to know about real estate, where it's going, what's happening, Frank is always a great person to check in with. I call Frank whenever I have ideas to bounce them off of him, because he just knows what's up in the industry. So Frank, welcome to the show. Thank you. And welcome back. Thanks for joining us again. Thanks, man.
Frank Klesitz 1:34
Yeah, well, I'm excited to be here to be your second guest. That must be and I have some value to add, which is good.
Brian Charlesworth 1:40
Frank. I mean, let's just back up a little bit, before we dive into marketing, which I know is your expertise about the industry right now? I mean, then what is going on in this industry? And is it everywhere that the markets this hot, or is that just is that just in Utah,
Frank Klesitz 1:58
It's everywhere. I mean, what you're just seeing is probably a more divide between the haves and have nots in the industry, where the middle is getting thinned out, like you're saying just society is you're always going to have a big percentage of agents that, you know, through personal relationships, and maybe some limited productive productivity in their business, are able to do, you know, a couple deals a year. And you'll have that. And then you have the big agent teams that got their act together over the past 10 years, when 2007 online lead generation came out. And then when they moved to ISA's, and they moved to showing assistance, and they've been really able to suck up a lot of market share. And honestly, probably because they can lower their prices a bit because they have ancillary services and other ways to make money where they can actually compete on the commission. One more. So you're probably just seeing now like they say, with this K shape recovery, you know, like, you know, half the country is going up and doing well.
Brian Charlesworth 2:51
Down. Is it “K”, or is it “V”? Right?
Frank Klesitz 2:54
Well, V was like, the idea is everyone's going to recover, but they call it a “K” now where it's like, you know, the white, white collar workers are doing great. And the blue collar workers are suffering. And that's why it's okay, there's a split up. I think you're seeing the same thing now with the people that have their act together, that have their systems down, are doing very well. And also even agents that work their databases and have personal connections, the poor, the middle of the market that's really trying to scale up and get their act together and to have the money to sell finance kind of building that team. It's more difficult.
Brian Charlesworth 3:22
Yeah. So, I mean, you I may I may be a better pole for this than you because well, you have customers all over the country as well. I mean, Are there areas of the country that are struggling right now? I mean, I know California is a really hot market right now. But at the same time, I know there are tons of Californians moving to Utah, Arizona, Texas, Wyoming, Idaho. I mean, there are
Frank Klesitz 3:53
I don't know if there's any specific markets struggling. But I will tell you, though, I mean, I don't know what the number is, but I think it's an average of about 400,000 homes a month selling that state, something like that. But with like, an article mortgage demand is down. You know, even with rates as low as about two and a half percent every fed when Yeah. And but inventory down, like you're going to have a game of musical chairs. I mean, just straight mathematics, that there's just not as many homes selling, you know, and you probably had, you basically borrowed into the fall in the winter. of the demand that would be there in the summer. Yeah, so I think it is going to be a little bit of a difficult follow
Brian Charlesworth 4:33
You borrowed from the sprain, right?
Frank Klesitz 4:33
Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. The summer and spring in the same season. And you also kind of borrowed into the band probably later in the year. And yeah, everyone's killing now in the summer. I mean, the teams have recorded amounts of cash sitting there from all the transactions that took place in the mortgage professionals are making a killing. But everyone just kind of like, you know, I think that's almost kind of it's on credit of a lot of the demand that would normally spread out has been like, focused also. Summer, and we'll see where things had. You know,
Brian Charlesworth 5:02
So obviously, you don't know where things are heading. I don't know where things are heading. But if Frank what, what is the next six to 12 months look like?
Frank Klesitz 5:11
You know, I think it's gonna be rising home prices, because when rates go down, that drives up asset prices, you're gonna see home prices continue to increase. A lot of the demand is without question strong because people want to buy a house and they have a reason to buy a house. It's not necessarily speculation. It's not like, I want to buy a home to live in because I'm working from home now. And they don't see the value of living in my expensive condo downtown. Everything's closed, there's COVID everywhere. But I think one of the probably the two big changes you've seen, again, I don't think it's gonna affect a big part of the market. But, you know, opendoor got billions and billions and billions of dollars of financing with some social venture capital company. And they plan on rolling out and like, I don't think 100 markets that they're going to come to, and probably take away, you know, three to 5% market share and every market ibuyer activity.
Brian Charlesworth 5:58
Well, when did that financing happen?
Frank Klesitz 6:01
A couple weeks ago. Okay. Yeah, I mean, very, very recently. Yeah, they just, yeah, opendoor had a pause in COVID. And then they needed to find a new suitor of money because SoftBank was caught up in all of the work issues and other things. Yes. And they, I think, I may not be correct, but I believe it's one of the one of the x guys from Facebook, this pile of cash. And it is really big into like using the funds to like change society. And they partnered up with opendoor and opendoor got a huge infusion of capital, billions and billions of dollars to expand around the entire United States. And they're taking on directly Zillow offers, both those companies are market makers. They're basically the only two companies really there might be offer pad pay basically. Pretty darn close to market price for your house. I mean, anyone can have an ibuyer program. Sure, I'll buy your house for 70% of market value. That's not really
Brian Charlesworth 6:55
Every team.
Frank Klesitz 6:56
Yes. Yeah. But that's not really my buyer program, my buyer program is How close do you pay the market price within a small margin? Right? That makes sense for the couple thousand dollars of convenience
Brian Charlesworth 7:06
That could impact the real estate market as we know
Frank Klesitz 7:10
I think they're gonna, you know, we the teams are taking more market share off of a big area, without question, very well funded, organized. And then you're going to have the eye buyers coming in and taking a look at market share. So I think what you're seeing in real estate is just a game of musical chairs is very slowly more chairs are being taken out where transactions are going to other people don't really have their act together. It's kind of putting some stress, especially on the individuals that are kind of in the middle of the messy middle their business trying to scale up.
Brian Charlesworth 7:41
Because I'm always so interested in your opinion. Frank, I want to know your opinion of this new Zillow announcement recently that is coming out with their own brokerage.
Frank Klesitz 7:50
Well, they have to I mean, everyone knows that. I mean, when you go to Zillow, and you know you type in I want to see an agent. No one knows that everyone thinks the agent works for Zillow. People don't understand w two independent contract relationships. So it was happening. I went to Zillow event. This is maybe three years ago, but Spencer who was a CEO at the time was like 50% of the people that request to see an agent on our website, never hear from the agent. And these are from premiere agents paying, like for the leads, nearly half of Zillow's customers
Brian Charlesworth 8:29
The leads paying top three spots.
Frank Klesitz 8:31
Yeah, they have to. I completely agree I'm gonna have to, I mean, half of the customers that go to Zillow to use their website, they want to see a house fill in the form saying I'll have an agent contact me never hear from the agent or the agent misses the appointment. And whose brand is that heard those? Because they think the agent works for Zillow. You know, I heard someone refer to it as like the Home Depot effect, like you go to Home Depot to find someone that can install your floors. You don't really care who the installer is, even though it's technically an independent contractor, you think it's Home Depot, you know, and it affects the Home Depot brand,
Brian Charlesworth 9:06
Because you're gonna hold accountable for it.
Frank Klesitz 9:07
100 percent. And that's what was happening. So then, you know, Zillow decided to get into the concierge program we have to follow up with leads. So that still wasn't fixing the problem. And they're like, maybe we're gonna try out this flex agreement. We're gonna try this but still wasn't fixing the problem because the holy grail, like Bezos says is the customer experience and the only way you can ensure customer experience is to control the process and only control the process by having W2 employees.
Brian Charlesworth 9:29
Yeah, I'll give you that comparison of that from this morning. I'm working from my house this morning. So I ordered a Costco order this morning. And of course I order it from instacart it arrives and a bottle of vitamins. Seems like it's a little bit low. So I opened it up look at it. Someone had opened it. And they I don't know what they did. I don't know if they infused something into those vitamins or if they just stole some of the vitamins. I'm not sure what happened but this bottle of vitamins arrives. It's open. And of course, I don't think the instacart driver did that. I think it was, let's just out came from Costco and Joe but it's a very similar thing, right? I view that as Costco. It's is Costco, Zillow right there.
Frank Klesitz 10:16
Yeah, dude Zillow brought in like one of most brilliant CEOs of our time. I mean, he started like, basically Netflix and then I think was like Expedia and Glassdoor. And his whole thing is like, we want to create a unified experience, all the way through, where you know, the customers are norstar. And that's impossible to do. When you hand the relationship off to an independent contractor that you don't control and I know agents on the flex program, you know, I mean, they're getting tons of business but they're basically a serf on Zillow land. You know, they're an employee of Zillow, essentially, to the limits of what the independent contractor w two model will allow them to be.
Brian Charlesworth 10:53
So how does that play out? Does Zillow roll up brokerages across the country? And am I gonna switch my brokerage from one of the larger brokerages over to Zillow? How does that work?
Frank Klesitz 11:03
No, they walk a fine line man, because they get a lot of their advertising from agents. But they also be agents are their biggest Achilles heel because they don't take care of the customers. Yeah. So they're what they're trying to do ever so gently, is to nudge their way into that was the big shift with Spencer and now rich Barton, the CEO, they're trying to edge their way into like, how can we give our our customers at Zillow the best possible customer experience? Yeah, and I just, you know, I think the inevitable inevitably they're going to have to, because the customer's always right, that's where they're held accountable to. And the independent contractor model isn't set up that way. And I'm lucky, you know, so goes California, the rest of the country, they, they voted in California to make all the Uber drivers employees. And technically, they're supposed to employees, but Uber said like, oh, screw you, we're not even doing and God knows. God knows who their attorneys how you pull that one off. So if you don't follow along California, but they did that, it's actually up for vote. So it's actually up for votes in California, if Uber drivers should be employees or contractors,
Brian Charlesworth 12:07
I guess is if the people vote that their employees,
Frank Klesitz 12:11
so goes the rest of the country. And what that's going to do is
Brian Charlesworth 12:14
ugly. Or Uber pulls out of California, and says No, thank you.
Frank Klesitz 12:19
Possibly, that could go either way.
Brian Charlesworth 12:21
If I'm if I'm a business owner, if I'm if I'm the CEO of Uber,
Frank Klesitz 12:24
they had they had that in London, London said To hell with them, and now they're back in London. I mean, but what you're seeing this, this struggle in business now of what is the nature of the independent contractor, like, how much can I control the independent contractor. And if the last subtle, where you can't do it that much, just watch everything, go to W two, with Zillow, we're gonna have to, but if Zillow can control the independent contractor and somehow work with like the best in the business, the best people, the best teams, the best agents that are vetted, and have a working referral relationship where they can still exert the control without breaking the law, then I think you'll have that relationship there. But that's the fine lender walking.
Brian Charlesworth 13:04
Yeah. And of course, they've built their own CRM and require people who are using other CRM to use their CRM so that they can try it out. Who are those top teams, I'm trying to get them to partner with us. So they know that because we would allow that but haven't gotten there yet, Frank. So before we jump into marketing, again, for all of you out there just know this is a normal conversation with Frank, this is not just like, this is as if I had just called Frank. So Frank, what's the situation here? All of these companies tech companies came into the market. Yeah, trying to get rid of the agent trying to eliminate the agents
Frank Klesitz 13:45
Was very expensive, because you have to go direct to consumer. I mean, you have to billboard you have to buy radio ads you to have a financial suitor, that gives you the capital to acquire the customer then hopefully after years of time and brand impressions, you start making your money back because the cost the lead isn't as much because you have some brand name reputation and past clients whatnot, where now it's not so expensive to to acquire the customers and you know, a lot of this you know, look when interest rates as low as they are. You have all this money swishing around and all these rich guys and pension funds and hedge funds have no place to put it because nothing pays anything. It's like really hard to find investment. So you have all this money just being thrown into venture capital because they have nowhere else to put it the bill to get the return the required to return to their investors. Also I got their money, right. So what they're doing is they're basically financing these companies to go out and purchase advertising is really what you need going direct to consumer well. COVID hits Hmm, dries up. I think that's probably what you saw. I mean, I think, again, I don't know I met like an expert in the industry. It's just things that I hear but I know there's a company called knock that does the whole bio before you sell. Like you can buy it. So we got the time to sales, because I was the big objection. Now I love to sell my house. But where am I gonna go? Like, there's no inventory?
Brian Charlesworth 15:07
Like, I think the ibuyer is definitely the biggest threat to impacting the industry. But I think that actually started, Zillow was really the front runner on that and said, Hey, we are going to disrupt this industry. And, I think their goal. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think their goal was, let's eliminate the real estate agent. And I've heard a lot of interviews with Rich Barton, by the way, if you have not heard rich on upon, no, you should go listen to some of those.
Frank Klesitz 15:37
I would say, let's eliminate the real estate agent to the point where you still keep liability on the broker. Okay, that's what that would be my decision. If I was running. Zillow was like, yeah, you know, we need to control the customer experience that is very difficult to do and the legal environment for us to be able to do that's probably on its way out. And we'll see. But there's trends against it. And we got to make sure our customers are good. So, you know, listen to our customers, what do they want? They're not being called by the agents, you know, but we also have agents as our advertising revenue. But we deployed this to 2.0. But I don't think I mean, it can be very difficult for one company to take on the full real estate transaction all the markets and have all the liability. Yeah, I'd love to be able to still keep the independent contractor relationship and maybe deal with the agent, just so the broker can keep the liability of the transaction.
Brian Charlesworth 16:28
Well, the thing that I've seen is I don't care if it's Zillow, Redfin whomever, there's a local company in Utah called Homie that every agent hates, because they just bash the agent constantly with all their billboards. And they all in my opinion, they've tried to eliminate the real estate agent, but I think they've all proven that the real estate agent is going to be required in the long run.
Frank Klesitz 16:54
The emotions are too high, the stakes are too high. You know, the real workhorse of the transaction is the title company. You know, they're the ones really making sure everything's going smoothly and getting all the work done like you as the agent, like dealing the emotions of this and making sure that's taken care of the emotions there and making sure this doesn't fall through and make sure you know that spouse in the divorce gets the signature signed, you know, making sure the title is being followed the calls like, it's very hard to get rid of the agent, I you won't see an end other real estate agent, but you will see downward pressure on the pay is more of the things the agent does to make money are picked off by other companies.
Brian Charlesworth 17:29
Well, I think all of those companies have now hired or are hiring their own agents. And my opinion, and my impression of what's going on there is they're actually paying them salaries in most cases. So it is certainly driving a downward trend in pay.
Frank Klesitz 17:50
Though, it just goes back to a basic, but it goes back to a basic marketing concept. This is a good segue from marketing is that the money is never in doing what you do. Like the money is never in the actual being a plumber. There's no money in plumbing, there's no money in being a real estate, there's no money being an attorney, there's no money being in doing anything, the money is selling Plumbing Services. Yeah, the money isn't selling real estate services, the money is in selling legal services. And once someone makes this jump from like, yes, I'm really proud of a really great doer of what I do. You're probably not making much money. You have to make the jump to become the marketer of what you do. Um, that's where the money is of selling the services. And then you try to go from there. That's the job.
Brian Charlesworth 18:37
Yeah. So focusing on real estate, what should I be doing in today's market Frank to know the market and capture business and not have to go to these third party companies for 50% of my business, and paying huge, huge amounts for though.
Frank Klesitz 18:54
Yeah, so here's where most people start. I don't think most people but probably the easiest way to start is, you know, call up realtor Calm, calm, Zillow, and send me some leads. And they might have criteria of like, if you're a new agent, or you know, on how good you are, quote, unquote, ever that means but you'll they'll sell you leads and they'll charge 35% 50% whatever it is, or the same concept is going working for a team who's taking the risk on lead generation, they take 50% but you just go to someone who provides you leads
Brian Charlesworth 19:20
Who's going to charge you per lead, or they're going to do it where they take a referral
Frank Klesitz 19:24
Yeah 100% that's where most people go and you realize man, like man, I'm the kind of the hamster on the wheel here. And you know, making the person giving me rich because it's, you know, um, you know, society really is dividing. I mean, you're seeing this with the case shape recover we talked about is like, you know, the people who, you know, bring in the business, the rainmakers, the marketers that people bring in the customers that people servicing the work. You want to you realize that I didn't make the jump to bring into business. So like, Well, you know, I got to kind of get off of the, I can't be a surf on someone else's land, you know, or can these leads from For the team or, or, you know, from realtors or whatever it is, which is perfectly fine to be a good living doing that the wrong with that, but you want more. So you have to learn how to generate your own leads, while the next step where most people gravitate without knowing much as they want to go generate their own buyer leads perfectly fine. buyer leads are cheap, you know, the cheapest way to get them is on Facebook. And it's just running ads like hey, how nice would be to live in this like three bed two bath ranch over here, you know, put your information to see pictures, you know, and even be a buyer leads for $1 to $3 a buyer lead in most markets, a little more other markets, just running Facebook ads, promoting your listings, saying put your information and we'll learn more about it. And you're going to have to generate somewhere between 100 to 160 of them. It just depends upon your conversion to eventually find one that actually transacts with you. Right. And but here's the deal, the numbers actually work the paid $2 lead at 100 leads only pay 200 bucks, gotta follow up, you know, you want to spend $200 plus your time to get a piece of business. So I'd probably say the first place people go are our buyer leads. All right. It's like okay, I'm really sick of running buyers around everywhere. And this is exhausting. Basically, in this market. None other offers are getting accepted. Yeah. You know, if I just got a guard listing, I would have to do anything. I think I'll sell toys. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 21:19
Yeah. So you want to control that? Or do you want to be
Frank Klesitz 21:23
So you know, you work on a team, then you maybe go off and you buy some buyer leads, but you realize you're kind of stuck on the hamster wheel. And you realize the name of the game, which we all know is in listings on call man, it's more difficult. How do we get a listing? Well, I would say there's two places you would start. First, I would say slow down with your buyer leads, and really see if any of those leads at a home to sell. And I'll give you a tip on your Facebook ads.
Frank Klesitz 21:57
Like ask your CRM company or whoever you're running your Facebook as your buyer leads. Tell them you want to run ads for trade up buyers, you want to run ads like at a higher price point where the ads are more like Hey, are you sick of the home, you're in the starter home and doing it? Hey, should upgrade to one of the pool and four bedrooms and fifth bedroom for a workspace. You know, so when the buyer leads come in, they respond to the more of like a trade up ad. And that's nice, because when you call it like Oh, hey, you know buy a house. That's nice. But then yeah, at home, you're currently at liberty to sell in order to buy the next one. And you find that there's a seller lead and that buyer lead. So the most, the most valuable Facebook ads you can run are probably trade up ads, because it tends to attract someone who has a home as
Brian Charlesworth 22:45
Cool, right? You can get both sides.
Frank Klesitz 22:48
Yeah, exactly. There's a seller man. Now the second thing you can do before you start spending more money is, um, this is something I always I've always teach them taught taught, and no one really does is, you know, I can go on Google right now and type in homes for sale and Utah homes for sale in San Diego, wherever you're at. And when I click on the Google search results, there's gonna be someone you know, click here to search all homes for sale in Utah. It's probably someone running a a mission saying or pay per click Pay Per Click ad and they're probably spending pretty good money because Pay Per Click ads generate good buyer leads a little more motivated because their search intent they actually went to Google and type something in to look for a house versus somebody passively on Facebook.
Brian Charlesworth 23:28
Right? I'm just doing this. Interesting.
Frank Klesitz 23:32
Yeah, I would find out like, who's running the site? Like who is spending money on Pay Per Click leads and maybe my a fluent expensive market? Let's scroll down the bottom of the website, click the privacy policy, click the terms of service like oh, yeah, it's Brian Charlesworth. He's running older. He's running a buyer lead generation. So I call him up he prior meetings, Frank closets. I'm a real estate agent. I'm kind of looking to break away from my team. I was wondering, I see that you're spending money on Pay Per Click on here, whatever website that you're using. Are you happy with how all your agents are converting your leads?
Brian Charlesworth 24:04
Say No, absolutely not
Frank Klesitz 24:06
Good, great. Well, I want to know, can we work something out? Can I take your archives can take the unconverted ones, send them over to me, I'll tag them all. I even work in their system of care. But I'll pay a referral fee 20-30%. I'm looking to kind of get myself going. Can I work some of your existing leads?
Brian Charlesworth 24:23
Okay, all right. So
Frank Klesitz 24:27
It's kind of an easy way to kind of get something to call without having to spend any money. And then, you know, the next step is you start generating your own stuff, you know, and it's all about your existing database. It's all about your existing list. That's my lowest cost place to start.
Brian Charlesworth 24:44
I've started on Facebook Frank, I've then gone to pay per click however, I did that. Yeah. Getting leads. What can I do to build this database you're talking about?
Frank Klesitz 24:55
Yeah, so now it's a matter of like, okay, you know, I've kind of been this you know, Agent The scenes no one really knows who I am is kind of like hustling leads and buying, or you know, hustling leaves give me to somebody else, I'm just kind of showing up as an agent. And honestly, you're probably perceived by the person on the other end of the phone. It's kind of a commodity. It's kind of like this necessary person to open the door because they don't respond to talk to you. They responded to the house, you just happen to be there and convenient for them. Right? So the next step is now you have to really position yourself as an expert. And this is where it comes into, like building a seller website, you need a website. That's different from your buyer site. So your buyer site is, you know, search homes for sale in Utah. And when you go there, it's got pictures of property, it's all about the properties and seeing the homes. It's not really featuring you as like, the expert, the go to guru. All right. Let me give an example of follow ups. We haven't done it but it's I see Dan beers name all over the place in San Diego in San Diego, but yeah, yes. Oh, by damn beer calm. I'll pull it up real quick. But this is just a good example of a seller website. Yep. Yes, we can go on here and like it's a guaranteed offer. It's him. I have a how do we handle selling your home during COVID? How do we send him here's the guaranteed sell plan. Here's all your options as a seller Do you want to get the cash offer me celebrity endorsements there's nothing on here about buying a home, as seen on all this is doing has videos get to know them and is trying to show you like I am a professional for hire, to get your home sold and you need a solid website. This is one of the biggest things that people don't really get listings is because they've been marketing themselves to buy like the buy side. But they never had to make the jump to actually market themselves as a professional, you know, and some type of site that does this. I'll give you another one. Let's do
Brian Charlesworth 26:47
So that site, you guys was sold by Dan beard calm if you are driving, or
Frank Klesitz 26:53
here's another one. This is Carol Royce. She's in Phoenix. She has a good website called Carol has the buyers. And essentially her whole website is you know, this is all about me selling your home. Click here. I have buyers get you top dollar. It's really designed to speak pretty much to sellers. And she has a cash offer program. It's available to you. Yeah. Let me give you one that we built.
Brian Charlesworth 27:16
What was it? What was the domain there?
Frank Klesitz 27:19
Carohasthebuyers.com? Is that good? Yeah, no springhasthebuyers.com go that, go there. Let's do another one. Silicon Valley realestatejournal.com. This is kind of a seller site the point of that a little bit differently. But the whole goal here is you can go on here and you know, meet Brett get to know Brett, he's kind of your guy. It's all about him everything you want to know about selling your home. It's really marketing you agent. It's not marketing, the listing. That's the big difference. So you need a way to market yourself as like an expert advisor that can help people get their home sold. So you know, how do you do that? How do you win listing with marketing? Well, you know, you should probably start a video blog, answering commonly asked questions about buying or selling houses. Maybe teach some seller workshops, make some videos, and Roundup, your whole database, your past clients, your centers of influence leads you've been working all those emails you have in Gmail or Outlook or, you know your cell phone around them all up and started getting some type of what they would call the industry of 36 Touch plan. Like I need to be sending out maybe a print newsletter and some video emails, just kind of keeping people informed update in the market to position me as someone that when you need advice, you need guidance, you need a guide to help solve a problem with your home sale. I'm available here to do it. And that's how you go about to get listings. That's probably one of the easiest ways and even if you're a prospect, you say, Oh, I don't do marketing, I'll spend a dime. Um, you know, what do you, Why would I need all this? Well, you're probably not the only person calling me expired, you're probably not the only person calling the fizbo. And, you know, you know, you just tell people, I just Google my name. Who are you? What are you Google my name? And there should be videos and testimonials a blog that shows up where, you know, it's kinda like you as the agent, you're like, you know, look, Mr. Mrs. seller, I need to stage the home and take proper photos because I have to sell it online first, for them to sell it offline. And it's the same thing with you as the agent. We're going to sell you online first. So then you can go sell yourself offline on a listing appointment.
Brian Charlesworth 29:23
Yeah. Great advice. All right, Frank. Well, tell us what's going on in Vyral Marketing today. Yeah, I'm in business forever. What are you guys focused on right now? What do you see having the biggest impact on what you guys are doing?
Frank Klesitz 29:36
Yeah, so man, I mean, I'm on COVID head, there was a freaked out and everyone's canceling and when I mean, this is just the whole industry, like what's gonna happen, no one knew. But then it kind of bottomed out like in late April, and then the sales reps started picking up. And what we heard was, is I'm not comfortable spending the three, four or five grand a month checks anymore for the high level lead generation in this environment. Okay, or You know, a lot of my business came from door knocking. At this point, go ahead, or Hey, a lot of my business came from, you know, client appreciation events, getting people together and doing events and networking. couldn't really do that. And people were looking at, like, how am I going to survive? How am I going to get leads? You know, and obviously, they probably have sort of a buyer lead system in place. But you know, I need like, position myself as an expert to get listings. How do I do that? And the answer pretty much goes back to, you know, what are you doing with your database, and a lot of times in business is easy, and people were calling you and not really do much, or, you know, you had the funds to buy a lot of cold leads, that's fine. But we had a lot of people calling us up. And signups actually ticked up because people needed to reconnect with their list, they had to stay in better touch with their database. And essentially what we do at viral which we're doing for 1011 years, is we build you this seller blog, this video, blog and interview, you want a webcam with a video camera and a webcam that we send you, Toby create some educational videos answering commonly asked questions, people ask about real estate now. And then we edit those we write an article to go with them, we put them on your blog, we email them out, we post them on social media, we read retarget your database with some Facebook ads. And also now we actually use direct mail and becoming really, really fond of direct mail. Because it is very crowded online. But to your best contacts, maybe it's you know, 100 250 200 250 people, basically take what you saw on your blog that month and put it in a letter and mail to them. And, and that type of system, we're gonna have ongoing publication strategy of constantly communicating with the context in your list, we help you execute on that, and the fees reasonable, it's 550 bucks a month. There's a build fee one time, but essentially, it's 550 bucks a month to run that, which is not really a lot less expensive if you're not blowing lots of money on lead gen, right. Yeah. And in many cases, we also get the lender to pick up half the tattoo. So we include the lender in the videos include letters and emails and get your cost down like, you know, 270 bucks a month. So it's an inexpensive way to generate leads
Brian Charlesworth 32:00
For that 550. What all Am I getting?
Frank Klesitz 32:05
I pulled up. Here's the plan. It's like, how do I get business, my database? Well, let's send them two q&a videos a month, out to every email address, you basically have, they're helpful and useful and positions you as the expert. And let's essentially take what you said in those videos that, you know, go out to everybody, I've summarized them into a one page letter, and let's mail, let's reach like your best contacts by mail. Because you're not going to reach everyone digital. I mean, if you're lucky, you're going to reach like 30% of your database by email, open rate, you know. So that's a really good system. And then every month or every month or two, send another email to your database with an offer, saying, Hey, you know, you think of selling your house, we'll find out what's worth click here. Hey, you know, think about buying a home one of my best buys, click here, you know, you think of just typical offers that real estate agents put out all the time, you want to email it out to your database about once a month to spike response. To get some leads on the kind of foundational relationship of the videos and letter. Make sure those videos are visible on Facebook. And in order for them to be visible, you're probably got to put a little money into them in five or 10 bucks, just by remarketing, the people that visit your website and the people in your database. And once you got that little system going on, you have your video blog, you have your emails going out your publishing, it's not hard to find like a financial advisor for your wife, spring, Brian, I think we found a some of Morgan Stanley who's gonna be participating in their marketing, that was the CO advertise for financial planning webinars to reach a fluent homeowners for financial advice, which is kind of cool. Yeah. So you can co advertise with other professionals that are looking to get in front of homeowners buyers in the market you serve. And they can probably pitch in a little bit to help zero cost it out. And this is a very solid plan, very fundamental plan that brings a business. So you have asked about the pricing. Here's the price like this is what you get, would you guys can go and call viral and talk to us about this. But you know, in order to execute this, this requires human beings do work. So you do it yourself. You can hire your own staff, which would be more expensive. But with economies of scale and good management and good processes and good hiring good checklists, I'm able to deliver all that at a price that would be less expensive than you have to do on your own.
Brian Charlesworth 34:18
Yeah, and that's so frank, I know I'm using you guys to do something that podcast that is less than I can do it on my own, which is run my podcast, so yeah,
Frank Klesitz 34:30
Yeah. Good, good marketing personal probably cost us some between 40 and 60 grand a year and that's just someone kind of entry level. So what is that, you know, 344 thousand dollars a month that you're in, plus the computer, Adobe Creative Suite, you know, marketing account unbounce landing page, all the software costs. That's why advertising agencies exist is because it's usually cheaper and more effective to hire an agency has been organized that way, then usually bring it in house.
Brian Charlesworth 34:57
Yeah. Okay. Great. Well, is there anything else that you want to hit on today? As far as what's happening in this industry? What's what, where's COVID? Gonna go?
Frank Klesitz 35:08
No, I got a couple things that didn't come just interesting from the industry is, um, you're really going to have to double down on like matterport and virtual tours. I mean, people are buying homes off the virtual tour, I think making those available. And in order to access them, they have to opt in. So it's like, yeah, here's my website, here's the pictures. But if you want the virtual tour, right, which is something really unique you provide as the agent because you fronted the cost to get that, you you squeeze them, and you ask their contact information for the virtual tour and getting a relationship and doing good, like matterport tours, or whatever it is, that's going to be just a mainstay, and just you need to organize your business around that. Without question, right? You're going to have to have an instant offer strategy. You're going to see a lot of these ibuyers Records amount of investment capital coming in. Let me actually play commercial for it. How does that sound? Let me give you a commercial that's running in Phoenix right now. Where it's kind of like, you know, I'm gonna get you all your offers. So yeah, I could traditionalist your home, but there's other offers to from I buyers and institutional investors, and when you come work with me, I'll present all possible offers to you. And I think you're gonna see more of that.
Brian Charlesworth 36:19
And I've actually spoken with some agents, that that's what they do, they'll actually go out and publicly put in that address to all the big I guess, and they'll do their listing appointment with offers from each of those sites. Here's the offer you can get from each of these. Or we can list your home and sell it for this.
Frank Klesitz 36:40
Correct. Let me see if I can play. I'll play a commercial for you of a company that actually does that sound good? Ready?
Brian Charlesworth 36:46
As long as we can hear it?
Frank Klesitz 36:47
Yep. Well, you let me know. So here we go.
Frank Klesitz 37:30
So that only plays it the certain homes that we want with like a customer is that kind of cool. I send a list into a cable company now. Yeah, I'll play one more for you here. sell your home fast and easy. without all the hassles, no showings, no repairs, no negotiations, no problems. With my rocket listing, it's easy as three to one sold. Three, contact us to on site evaluation, one offer in your hands within 24 hours, and you pick the day you close and move to good to be true. Nope, just simple. Visit my rocket listing.com for a certain unpredictable sale on your timeline today. Now, the purpose of these is just real estate teams running these as DDS they file a DBA for my rocket listing or a DBAs history offers. And the reason you do that is because if you try to market your instant offer program as a real estate agent, it'll tank because people just assume that you do open houses and they link a real estate agent to you. So you file under a different name. So how do you get leads when you run ads on Facebook, get an instant offer you send out mail to homeowners saying I have a buyer call me go here. Now all the typical stuff, but it's all about I have a buyer for your property. Okay, so we send out these letters. And people will either call or they go to a website like easiest route offers, or they'll go to my rocket listing. And again, there's no mention of agent on there really, it's about it's a company doing this, which removes a lot of the improves response because there's negative connotations toward this is not what an agent does. This is confusing. They're baiting and switching me. Yeah. All right. So now somebody follows up saying, Hey, you know, thanks for reaching out to the easiest route offers my rocket listing, you know, whatever you want to call it, and say we can we come out for like 15 minutes. Um, when you take some pictures of your property, we take some measurements, we take a look at the area, look at the condition, ask some questions about the new features. And then that's it, nothing else to discuss, because I'm a table and information. And I'm going to go show it to the buyer. In fact, not just the buyer, I'm going to submit it to this hedge fund this hedge fund this institutional buyer, I'm gonna submit the offer pad and other places and usually have a VA that does all that, right. And then you schedule an appointment A week later, and you come back with all these net sheets and you say, look, let's go Here you go. Did the research. Let's start at the very bottom, and I'll buy it today as an investment property in my line of credit for 70% of value. Like literally here's a check, right? Or you could take this off or you could take this off or you could take it This offer or, you know, given the market right now, I think if we were to list it based upon the research, and here's the research and days on market, and you kind of show that you're the local economist, this is why I think you would get a nutrition listed if you want to do that. Which option do you want? And then the seller chooses and you have pre negotiate, you have some way to get paid on whatever those offers are that the seller shoes. Okay? You're seeing a trend that way of listing with that model?
Brian Charlesworth 40:26
Are those guys paying for bringing them deals as an agent like that?
Frank Klesitz 40:31
Oh, say again,
Brian Charlesworth 40:32
If I go out and get all these offers, from people like Opendoor?
Frank Klesitz 40:36
Yeah, they all pay. They all think Yeah, so you can I don't know what it is. But you can sometimes, it's 1%. It's something. Yeah, but what you're trying to do is you're trying to make money some way off the deal. I mean, you might even, I mean, we have a client in Hawaii, that started a property management company, because a lot of people want to rent it. And she went from zero to 700 doors, like six or seven years, because one of the offer, she says, Well, we just rent the thing. I'll manage it. So or we can do it. So it's really you're seeing it probably a trend in this space where it's like, you're going to have a more of a palette of options to the seller than just trishing listing it but you have to a lot of it isn't how you present it. And the best way is they come in through a separate brand. And it's a to appointment clothes as opposed to a one appointment clothes because you truly are going on the first appointment, getting research space buyers and come back for a second appointment, which is like hearsay for most real estate professionals because we get the real estate, it's like I'm gonna close this thing right now. Right? It's a different model.
Brian Charlesworth 41:36
Yeah. Okay. Great stuff. Frank. Thank you. Before we wrap up today, I just wanted to ask you just a couple questions. As far as your favorite book or source of learning over the last year, I know you gave us this tour as a year ago. But what's a book you've read over the last year? Or what's a podcast that you just have fallen in love with?
Frank Klesitz 41:58
Well, the podcast I listened to every day as I love the daily by the New York Times, that's a really, really good ton of business podcasts. But they do some excellent journalism on that podcast. If you have a chance to listen to the daily, it's a really, really, really good
Brian Charlesworth 42:12
guy probably done that. So
Frank Klesitz 42:15
That's a good podcast, man. I was actually listening to it right before this meeting. They were talking about the debates last night, it was just really well done. And the second book is not even a business book. It's you find the book, The color of law. Dude, this is a messed up book. It goes through like, No, we all run in real estate. You know, dude, our country was racist, like, big time. And like, nobody knows, nobody talks about it. And it goes through, like, how access to loans and all these other things for minority groups. And it really does a really wonderful job of kind of getting you up to speed of a lot of the disparities in the housing market and disparages wealth in real estate if you're in the profession. You know, yeah, go written a business book. There's a lot of those. But just to kind of open your mind a little bit. This should be required reading for anyone in the real estate space in America to understand the history of real estate with regards to racism throughout the history of it. So it's called the color of law, or forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Okay, a little bit different answer than you expected. But those are the 2000 pounds.
Brian Charlesworth 43:22
Thank you. And what's your favorite place to visit? Right?
Frank Klesitz 43:26
Oh, man, I just got back from Northern California. For the first time. I flew out. I've never been in Northern California. We went out, we went to, we're drinking and getting drunk in Napa. My wife loves drinking wine. And then we decided to drive up the coast and we ended up in Mendocino. And Whoo, that is a nice place. I love the, you know, Southern California of the beaches, you know, which I'm used to now, let's say they're beautiful, by the way. But up north, it's cooler. And you basically it's cooler, you have the cliffs, like a flat quieter. And you basically are in a cabin. So where do you get the blend of emotion and a forest? You know, and as of right now, at least with the recency effect that is my new favorite place. Is that the Northern California coast
Brian Charlesworth 44:12
What I'm hearing from you reminds me of the Oregon coast but you've been to Napa before but just not north of Napa. Is that right?
Frank Klesitz 44:19
Yeah, we were in Napa for a mastermind and like I never drove around like check them out.
Brian Charlesworth 44:22
Yeah. Okay, cool. And what in your spare time Frank, what's your favorite thing to do?
Frank Klesitz 44:27
Oh, my guitar.
Which I haven't played much of.
Brian Charlesworth 44:33
And how are you here and the guitar gun. He's got his Fender there. How long have you been playing the guitar?
Frank Klesitz 44:42
I'm not that great violin players High School. College. But um, I finally got my practice and I just sit back here on my couch in between meetings and try to practice and learn some scales. That's where I'm at right now. But that's why I enjoy doing. I'm not not taking care of a four year old and a four The five year old and my, my wife and work and everything else.
Brian Charlesworth 45:03
So just so you all know, I've been in Frank's office around I don't know, it's probably. Well, midnight, maybe one in the morning. And Frank pulls out the guitar. Oh, yeah. Anyway, fun stuff. Last question. For you, Frank. What's the one piece of advice you would want to leave with everyone today in today's market, speaking primarily to real estate business owners?
Frank Klesitz 45:28
Hmm. Man, that's a big, great question.
Brian Charlesworth 45:33
And maybe
Frank Klesitz 45:33
I got it, I would say the number one thing you can do is, in a great market, when there's money flowing, and it's pre COVID, you don't have to be very disciplined, and you become a little maybe ungrounded in your business. Meaning, you know, deals are easy, I can just run a check and buy some leads and money's come in. So it's not a big deal. You know, it's a little more loose, right? Then when things tighten up, or lease, maybe probably made more things may go, in my opinion, the feeling is gonna tighten up because there's less homes for sellers or inventory last year, right. You need to open up your Facebook, you need to open up your LinkedIn. And you need to open up your cell phone and pull up your address book, and you need to go through and try to find yourself somewhere between, I don't know 100 to maybe 200. Some people that's about the maximum number of relationships, like any human being can handle those, they teach financial advisors, like you shouldn't have 100 clients, like what's some of the higher net worth comes in, you drop one lower net worth, and you only keep 100 clients cuz you only can handle so many relationships, go find like 100 250 200 people that like, are like your true database being like, if you were to run them to a bar, you would just go join them for a drink, or you would go hang out with them. It's not awkward. And make sure you have their phone numbers, make sure you have their emails, make sure their best mailing list, a mailing address. And the only way that you're able to do that is you really got to go into Facebook and click all your friends and you have a memory jogger of like everyone you know. And the other way is by going to LinkedIn and looking at your connections, your memory jogger and going into yourself or just scrolling through your contacts, let alone all your send or receive emails over the past month. And start writing down some names and making sure all the contact information is there of those individuals. And put some type of plan in place where they're getting your newsletter, they're getting your Vyral marketing, your calling and staying in touch, you're looking for referrals from that list. Because it's where a lot of your profits are going to come from, from deals that hopefully smooths out when you're not so profitable from other deals that you're spending a lot of money to acquire on. So my best piece of advice is use this time to like get yourself back grounded. Make sure you have a database touchpoint in place, but even more specifically, make sure you have your list of your couple hundred of so a list contacts ready to go for you to make calls like in your Rolodex. And most people do not have that.
Brian Charlesworth 47:54
All right, Frank. And if I want your help, once I've done that, how do I get a loop
Frank Klesitz 47:58
Getvyral.com you can go on there, you can request the free video marketing plan. On the front of the website. I also teach class every Monday, I teach a one hour marketing class, you're welcome to join the six months syllabus, you don't have time, you can join on the classroom option that's on there, it's free. And then I'd like to talk to us about working together, you can request a strategy call and there's a 90 day money back guarantee. So if you don't get business from working with us in 90 days, we will give you all your money back.
Brian Charlesworth 48:26
Awesome. Okay, Frank. Well, thanks for joining us on the show today. It's always an honor. It's always a lot of fun.
Frank Klesitz 48:33
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Brian Charlesworth 48:34
All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us on the GRIT podcast. And if you haven't already, go subscribe to the GRIT podcast. And also feel free to give us a rating and share us with a friend. The more you do that, the more it allows me to bring in some of these top notch guests, which we've had a lot of this year. So thank you all, and we'll see you next week.
