The client marketing experts at CINC manage over $30 million in lead generation spend across Google and Facebook for real estate teams and agents. In our recent webinar, Dan Lott (VP of Client Marketing at CINC) and Harry Kierbow (Senior Director of Paid Social at CINC) shared their insights to empower you to optimize your marketing strategies and drive better results.
What they cover:
Watch the full video or read the transcript below.
Harry Kierbow: Thanks to everybody for joining us today.
Harry Kierbow: I am Harry Kierbow, the Senior Director of Paid Social here at CINC, and I am joined by greatest marketer I've ever known, and also coincidentally, my boss. It's also review season coincidentally, Dan Lot the VP of client marketing.
But seriously, Dan is the person who started our department and I do not know an expert with more expertise on real estate advertising. So we're gonna go ahead and get started. Today, we're gonna be talking about the results from Q3 with online real estate marketing across search and social, which in our word search is Google and Bing and social is Facebook and Instagram.
So yeah. With no further ado, I will turn it over to you, Dan.
Daniel Lott: Hey, there we are! There's our slide, all right. Well, it's exciting, seeing all the places that everybody's coming from across the country. And yeah. So this we're giving a. I guess the title of the presentation is, yeah, we're focusing on, you know. Q3.
But we're doing more. There's much more than that. We're giving a whole overview of the department, and just how results have been for a while, and we've had a good.Yeah. So well, the last one I didn't want to get you that quickly off the last slide, because that's that's a that's a good one, that's me. And.
Harry Kierbow: Oh, sorry!
Daniel Lott: That's the famous finger guns that you have, showing that. So you know, we're both partners of, you know, metal partner, Google partner and we've both been here for a very long time. As Harry said, I started the department 12 years ago, when
CINC was just a tiny little company. And now it's grown into everything that it is. And then Harry joined soon later to soon after, and kind of took over the social department, and there he is.
Harry Kierbow: Yeah. And this was, this must be 8, 9 years ago. Look at my brown hair, my luscious locks.
Daniel Lott: I only had 2 chins. There, now I'm just, I guess, 5. Now I have to position the camera to make it look like I only have 2, all right. So so we're what we're gonna be talking about is the results that we've had so far. And just what's what's working? Well, what are the kind of the ads that are doing? Well, what are the ad types? And just some of the things that you know, even outside of our department, just things that CINC having to do with leads
Daniel Lott: that are that are doing well. We got some new things that actually happened today. And so how would you know? How would CINC set up my campaign? And how can I get more appointments. That's what we'll be focusing on.
Alright. There we go. Q3 results. And generally, if I do a presentation, it's because the results are good. If if we've had bad results. I.
Harry Kierbow: Sorry wrong way.
Daniel Lott: That's all right. If we've been doing that, I make sure we don't have any webinars.
Excuse me, all right. So I focus on the search side. And one thing, if you look at these bars you'll see that the last 3 quarters are very flat and the one before that is a little bit higher and generally flat, is good, flat means that things aren't going up in price. And so that is the case. I didn't realize it was this flat until Harry made the slide, and so over the last 3 quarters there's been very little increase in price. The 4th quarter of the year is always the most expensive. And so that's why that was higher. But the last 4 quarters for Google Buyer, which is the benchmark, which is what most of our advertising is Google buyer our cost per lead improved year over year. And that is important, because, like, we haven't had that since. covid to 2020 that caused, you know, prices to go down. But then, since then they went slowly up, and then, just over the last 4 quarters each last 4 quarters we were better than the year before, which is really good, and then comparing it to social.
The scale is off a little, so the social it makes it look like social is is higher than search, but actually it is not. Social, and metas particularly, It's always less expensive, as you can see there. So one of the good things about, I think later on we talk about diversification, the importance of diversifying, and one of the good things is that
social leads, one of the drawbacks of them are that they take longer to close, but they are cheaper, so in the long run they are as good a value as Google, or even better. But you know, in the short term, they're not as as good, just because they don't close as well, but they will eventually.
And then you can see here, look how big the gap is between search and social. So even though search is doing great,social is doing better it's it, or just it has a lower price. And then one of the other things we'd on another version actually go on to the next one, I was gonna see if it's my fancy line cart line. No, it's not.
Harry Kierbow: Oh, you want to see that here I can go here, and I'll.
Daniel Lott: No, that's okay. No, I don't know. We could go go later. Go.
Harry Kierbow: Alright.
Daniel Lott: Still going on anyway. So here, like things are going great year over year, we are down 5% on social. We were down 1%. And so that, like anything where which is less expensive now than it was a year ago, is a good thing, and especially on the Google side.
I guess we'll send out the presentation. I think that's what we usually do. Yeah, yeah, we do.
And So I was reading a report on overall search marketing trends to new it, I think, was the name of the company that was doing it. And so, year over year in the 3rd quarter, the cost per click, which is one of the 2 metrics that the lead price is determined, determined by the cost per click and the conversion rate. Yet you multiply those together. Actually, those are the 2 factor. I guess you divide it. But that's how you get the cost per lead is in the cost per click. Year over year has increased 9% for search marketing, search marketing with text advertising, which is what we focus on. And so the fact that we're 5% lower when the market as a whole is 9% higher.
That's a really good trend. It shows that We're doing our best to drive down the cost per cost per lead, and when a low cost per lead is good, because that means you get more leads for the same amount of money. There's a lot of things we say that it's like, Well, is that good is high, good, or generally, when things are high it is good, but in here it's low, is good.
Just like social has gone down 1%. But, as we said last slide it is still lower than search.
Harry Kierbow: I did want to go back. Just a couple of things that I wanted to mention about this slide is, I think it's interesting how search and social do kind of mirror each other as we go through the quarters of the year. Right? So just like search Q4 is usually the worst quarter of the year for social cost per lead, which is what we are, you know, in right now.
Harry Kierbow: And then. But you'll see every year that we'll go up in Q4. See a pretty big drop in quarters, 1 and 2. That's the beginning of the year. The end of the school year. And then, as we go into Q3, especially on sites like Facebook, Instagram, that's where other marketers are really spending a lot more money on things. For like Black Friday, those kind of sales. So there, there are forces outside of just what we're doing that are impacting this. These forces impact You know, anyone in the in this vertical right of trying to generate leads from the real estate side. So I think it's just, you know, to toot our horn a little bit. I think we have done a really good job of keeping lead costs low. You know. We started as at least one of the lower costly providers, and our costs have gone down from the expertise, the work. And just the data, you know that we have.
I mean, one of those one of the previous slides mentioned the data that we're looking at for less than the last 2 years or may, you know, for this time period is 50 million plus 65 million plus dollars in spend specifically towards real estate lead generation across North America. So you know, that's what lets us drive the cost down is we have the most data. We have the best systems. And you know we have smart people working here that this is what they do all day, every day.
Daniel Lott: Yeah, exactly. That's yeah, we don't have a slide just talking about that. But yeah, we have invested. We've invested several 1 million dollars just in the tools to drive down the cost per lead. And because we are the largest lead generator of you know, paid search and social leads. We’re able to pay several 1 million dollars developing this stuff when the smaller competitors can't really do it. And because we have that. You know the economies of scale. We are able to get a lower cost per lead for search and social and you know, we are always like, we're look like I'm pulling out my hair, you know, thinking about oh, my gosh, we're up 5% or down 5%.
We know what other companies are doing, and we're a lot cheaper, just a lot cheaper than a lot of the other companies out there. A lot of our direct competitors. And so although, you know, it's very exciting that we're 5% lower. We're like half of what other folks are. But in our, you know striving to be the best. And so we are. We're achieving best. And we're gonna show some of the historical information I think, on the next slide.
Harry Kierbow: Well, and I do think, too, though it's Well, I'll say that later. You go ahead and go.
Daniel Lott: This is the only slide I produced. So I'm proud of this one. This is good. All right. So the top line shows the quarter over quarter rise over the last 10 years, and you can tell it just really hasn't changed all that much. And actually, if I would have drawn it out from the beginning from 2,012. When I actually started, you'd see that it's a downward, because when I started I immediately lower the cost per lead.
Anyway, it went down a lot and so and then so here we are. And so it's interesting. As you could see, the mortgage line is the orange one, where you can actually tell where the year over year improvements were. And so the 1st little dip was when we started our big investment into automation doing you know things that in bulk scale, I guess. Be before. We didn't really have a bulk scale, so we didn't need to do it. But eventually, when we have, you know, we have thousands of clients. So we need to be able to, you know, make we make changes lots of changes many, many times a day. And so that was the 1st little dip where the 1st great improvement was. There. The second one was a double dip of where we changed our bidding strategy. We still use manual bids now, but we also use automated bidding strategies, and that drove down the cost per lead as well as Covid.
Right after that was Covid. And then. Now, what's exciting is that we are in. I guess the 4th big period where our leads are getting a little less expensive. And that is because over the last 4 months, 4 quarters there's nothing as definitive as those other ones. It's I think it is that we have done a lot more bulk Changes to accounts and just making your accounts are a lot more sophisticated like. If you would do it on your own. You might have like 5 ad groups, to use a Google phrase.
But with us you might have, you know, 400 or something. And because of that. We're looking at niches we're looking at, you know, hyper local marketing, or various sub markets within your the footprint of where you want to get leads. And so we're able to do that, and we keep churning it out, making accounts bigger, more robust, more sophisticated work working on, you know, more changes. On your behalf.
And so that's why, over the last year, even though you know the cost per click goes up 9% our prices down 5%. And that's, you know, that's a 10% improve or 14% swing. And that's, you know, that could be the that lead those leads, those 14 leads you get. If you, you know, usually get 100, you get 114, you know, maybe you sell a house to that guy. So that's why that's why we do it. And that's why it's important. That's why everybody in the company would tell. Talk about how important it is, even though
their eyes glaze over. But we it is very important, because it is the leads. It directly impacts how many leads you get.
Harry Kierbow: Yeah. And I just looking at this, too. I think it's a good time, you know, to just kind of expand a little bit more on the expertise, like, I think one of the main reasons that we're able to drive good leads at the cost that we are is because, you know, we for instance, when you start a CINC site, our implementation team, we'll walk you through that process, help you get the site set up. There's not a lot to customize on the site, and sometimes clients have pushback about that. But the reason that there's not a lot to customize on the site is that every part of the CINC site is geared towards this best possible experience for the lead.
Google, Facebook, Instagram, being being able to to,you know, Read what's on the site. See what's on the site is matching up with the searches. So there's a lot of of expertise and work that goes into this behind the scenes.
You know, like just to drop something one cent in a quarter. But that's a huge difference, you know. And I think, too, just the amount of expertise that we have, the length of time that CINC has been around. I mean, we've been through Covid. We've been through this current market. We've been through the hot market. So, you know, I've learned so much working here in the last decade. And it's just a really. It's a group of smart, driven people that are really focused on driving good leads for our clients.
And then you touched on the hyper local thing, Dan, but I don't know, one of the ways that it's explained to me. That's always made the most sense is you know, where most companies may have ads for Atlanta Town homes or in Atlanta, Condos, Atlanta Home, Atlanta, Condos. It sounds kind of like Anaconda. Atlanta, you know Atlanta Homes for sale. That kind of stuff.
The Seek campaign is, gonna have that, and that's going to get a lot of the traffic. But and tell me if I'm you know, wrong, but the CINC campaign is also going to have these hyper local searches, these niche based searches of, you know. Maybe a popular neighborhood in the Atlanta area or a Zip code that's popular as far as school zones.
So the automation that we've developed through the data that we've gathered, it's what allows us to make hundreds of ad groups where you know someone that doesn't have that automation is making one or 2, and the and a person who searches for a Zip code, or a neighborhood or a school zone is, you know, likely more advanced in their search than someone who's searching for homes in Fulton County, which is the county that Atlanta is in, or homes for sale in Atlanta. You know. So like I always think it's interesting, you know, if you're not utilizing something like CINC, you’re paying more for leads in the 1st placeand then you're also missing out on leads, because they're too close to purchasing because, you know, those searches are not coming up from that provider and that's what that.
At the same time, you know, most of those leads are not going to come from that neighborhood or that school zone, but the ones that do are going to be quality at a good price. And it's just expanding that web of you know, auctions that we can win and leads that we can generate.
Daniel Lott: Yeah. And I saw somebody had a question like, Hey, how do you keep up with the trends in in our market? And or in a specific market. And so what we do is we have we have some reports that we are constantly updating, which shows within a cbsa, which is the core base statistical area. That's the metro area. We will. It'll show what are the sub markets within that Cbsa that have the lowest cost for leads and deliver a lot of leads. And then that's 1 of the reports, and then the other one, and that is called our radius tool, where we put in like, if you are interested, this like, where's your home Office? And then we can go like a radius out based on what are the sub markets like within a mile or 2 miles from your specific sub market? And what are the sub markets that are? You know, attractive, like schools, a big one and like things like lakes, are very good. And then these are these are things that a lot of the other. Our competitors don't like a lot of our competitors don't bid on zip codes, and we do, and that often doesn't give a very good cost per lead, but sometimes it does. So we know which zip codes within a market perform, just because you know, we've spent almost a quarter of a billion dollars on search advertising. And so we know over the years. You know, what are the ones that get the best cost per lead, and then we're able to add them to your accounts, and that that's what that's what we do.
And I think that's 1 of I think that's 1 of the most interesting tools that we've developed is that you know, you can enter a market.
Harry Kierbow: And our data will show you, hey, here's 20 sub markets within that market is whether or not you should include it based on 12 months of data across the entire portfolio so I really do think, you know, we're turning it into more of a science. And then, you know, going down the path of things like guaranteed sale program and things like that which you guys could learn about, you know, from a salesperson after if you're interested. But I really do think you know, we're doing a good job of setting good expectations and scientificating the process.
Daniel Lott: Yes. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's 1 of the also with, we talked to another person who worked in another one of our competitors. And just the fact that we're able to say, like, Yeah, okay, you're in St. Louis. You should expect this many leads. And within, you know, 10 like, we're the window is very narrow, so we sort of have made it a science.
So should we move on. I think the fun one is next, isn't it, Harry? Is that.
Harry Kierbow: Oh, yeah, a very exciting segment. The future, with their love.
Daniel Lott: Yeah, that that is off putting. That's.
Harry Kierbow: You're welcome, Dan.
Daniel Lott: That is, that's exactly what it is. Alright, yeah. So I just want to give I was analyzing the market now, and how.
Harry Kierbow: It's AI.
Daniel Lott: How, how. it's reminding me a lot of the Covid year 2020, and because, if you remember from the last chart, the the cost per lead was really really good in the covid year, but a lot of people lower their advertising or just maintain their advertising, even though the cost per lead was better like. That's when you should increase your advertising. So a lot of people just waited on the sidelines, and I, like economists, are projecting that, you know next year, you know, this this year's they say it's gonna be worse than last year, and it's I guess it's in terms of number of home sales, but next year it's supposed to be up a good percent.
So the, the cost per lead is low.I think the number of people advertising has gone down a little bit. The amount of search traffic is, or you know, that's gone down. Once, you know, once the election's over. People are like, Yeah, I'm focusing on buying a house. The amount of search traffic is going to increase. And that hasn't happened. There's something on in Google, there's Google Trend, like, there's a service called Google Trends. And you can just go to trends.google.com. I think it is. And you can type in various phrases and see how many times people search for it. And it mirrors exactly the the number of homes that are for sale. So when people are searching online for homes, more people are buying it, and we're still low. It's still going down. It's still, you know, kind of going low. But at some point once, you know, once it switches, there's a lot of people 4 years ago who are like, who would say, like. I have so much business now. I just wish I hadn't cut my ad spend in half, because now we're incredibly busy, but it'd be great if we had twice as many clients.
So I think something like that's going to happen where it's it's going to switch. It's going to cause a spike in the search traffic, which is gonna cause the cost per lead to go way down, which is good and it's going to cause sales to happen. So I think this is a really good time, like, if you're a currency client I would talk to my account manager about, you know, setting up an appointment to meet. You know, you could talk with one of us on our team. Whoever your account rep is your advertising rep is, or just if you're a, you know. Prospects, you know. Talk to somebody about it, because I think it's just a really good time, because it just it's shaping up to be just like it was 4 years ago, which was a really good, you know.
It's a terrible year in some regard, in some regards, but in terms of real estate. And you know, success from real estate lead generation. So that was one thing I want to mention, and also the other one is, we're going to see a lot of fallout from AI. I think over the next year. I saw read another study about it has maybe second quarter. They would had an impact on the number of, you know, clicks the click through rate, which is a 1 of the metrics in Google sort of went down in the 3rd quarter. So it might be that people have already kind of lost interest in it. But I think, as the AI gets better it will get more and more clicks, which may have a negative impact on the cost per lead. But I don't see that happening like this year or next year. But you know, in the future, plus it, it depends on. If those. If the AI is from Google, then they're gonna plop ads on it, and that's who will do it on. Or if it's another provider we'll set up, you know, the bulk automation, so we can do advertising, or whoever the other provider is there.
But I don't see that taking place like having a huge impact this year or next year. But maybe you know towards the end of next year into the year after. That might have something. But you know it's it hasn't happened yet.
Harry Kierbow: Do you think that's coming from like the AI generate results pushing search results down when you talk about AI impacting the click? Because now a lot of searches have that.
Daniel Lott: Yeah, exactly. They have the rewriting of the Wikipedia article.
Harry Kierbow: Right, yeah.
Daniel Lott: Using AI cutting edge technology. So yeah, which.
Harry Kierbow: Wikipedia.
Daniel Lott: With that. And then but Google, as we know, tries to make as much money as possible. So they are going to realize that they're like, maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe we should have our ads. And then the AI, which we'll bet, is what's gonna happen pretty soon. So Because that will increase the number of clicks on the ads, which is where Google gets all its money. So since our we're trying to spend money, and they're trying to make money. So that's why it's a good relationship.
Harry Kierbow: The match made in heaven.
Daniel Lott: It's match made in Heaven, Yes.
Harry Kierbow: What I think again, I mean, you're talking about a massive change, though, in the way search results work, you know, in the way the ads themselves work. So it goes back to the expertise. And how we do stay on top of the trends like we are monitoring this stuff. And you know, we're going to be the 1st ones doing it right, as the new things come out. And I think AI is a really interesting topic.
I was speaking with a client recently, you asked me, you know, how is Facebook and Instagram using AI, and there are some things you know, like within the ui that are helpful,you know, some parlor tricks of turning still images into videos and things like that. But I don't know if anybody watched the Meta,whatever it is, where Zuckerberg was up on stage, you know. One of the main things that they talked about was the new, the meta glasses from Ray-ban. And I mean, you know, the more I thought about how is Meta gonna use AI? I mean, yeah, I think there will be some things on the ad side, and that kind of stuff, and maybe some cool targeting stuff, but I think the way that both of these companies are really going to use. AI is to categorize these massive data in right? Like, I think if Meta's maybe I've got my tinfoil hat on right. But if Meta's got a video feed that sees everything that you see, they're gonna use that in a way to show ads, somehow, you know, and I think that's where AI is going to be utilized is cataloging that. And you know.
Daniel Lott: Sounds fantastic.
Harry Kierbow: And then we're and then we're all just gonna be in the goo, Dan. We'll be in the goo and the aliens will feed us peanut butter, and it'll be great.
Daniel Lott: It'll be fantastic. We got that to look forward to, but that's not for next. That's like the end of next.
Harry Kierbow: It's like 5 years, 5 years from now.
Daniel Lott: Straight in the goof. Buy a house with a goo.
Harry Kierbow: Buy homes with goof for sale. Okay, Sorry about that.
Daniel Lott: Alright. Well, somebody mentioned the quality of leads. So I think that is something that
Harry Kierbow: Yeah, I was, gonna say, let's do.
Daniel Lott: Going forward, I think, in.
Harry Kierbow: Oh, do you want to do some questions now, or should I go.
Daniel Lott: Well, no, I was just because I think your next thing talks about that that exact topic. So I was trying to figure that.
Harry Kierbow: Oh, okay. All right.
Daniel Lott: Okay, he.
Harry Kierbow: You don't need any segue when you got slides like these, Dan. Look at that gentleman.How happy he is!
Okay, so I did want to talk about. You know what we're seeing that's working now, of course, the search buyer every client with CINC should be utilizing search buyer. You know we do see that, again, I'm biased, but we're the best in the industry at it. We have the lowest cost per lead. We have the most data. You know. One of the things that a lot of our competitors, or one of the things that we have that a lot of competitors don't have is an end to end view of this life of the lead right? So we generate the lead. It goes into our CRM, they're acting on our website.
So we have all this data. And that's what we use to decide what products to create to decide what changes to make and that's gone into over the last decade plus the search buyer side. And I think it's probably the most innovative product in real estate marketing right now. So you know, I definitely think everyone should be using that.
But another thing that we've seen as we've gone through this data, and a few people have said it in the comments. You know, I've been here for almost 10 years, and I think we've done a lot of work towards addressing the perception people have of leads from social media, and you know some of the things that people think about them are right. Some of the things that people think about them are probably not right. But what our data has shown is that leads from social do convert. They just take longer on average than a lead from search.
And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense the way those leads are being generated on the search side. They're going to Google, going to Bing, typing in a search, clicking to the site, choosing to sign up on the social side. We're pushing an ad to them based on their demographics. You know where they are.
And now we're using some newer inferential targeting from Meta, which is pretty cool. But we do see that our most successful clients, in terms of
generating the most leads and generating the best return tend to diversify their ad, spend with the majority of that spend on the search side. And a large minority, maybe 60, 40, 70, 30 on the social side.
And what we see with leads from social is that they're going to be lower in cost. But they're typically going typically going to take longer to convert.
But within about months, 9 to 15, after being in the CRM, Leads from social catch up with leads from search in terms of conversion. And so, after 15 months to to 2 years, it's not strange to see both lead sources converting at the same percent. And so, with a lower cost per lead, you could see a better return from social. But you're just going to have to do a bit more work, at least at the beginning, to get those leads to convert.
But one of the things that we try to do it. CINC is we want to give you an asset, a a pipeline that is just continuously converting and rolling. So the sooner you start the social leads and start following up with them, the sooner they'll start to convert, and then you have leads from 2 sources converting.
And it's just I mean, diversification just in general is a wise strategy, right? I mean, there are lawsuits, metas being sued every day. They've kind of taken a break. Recently, they're focusing on Google these days.
But who knows? Right? Or AI, right? AI results pushing down search results, changes cost per lead. I mean Meta really expanding into the metaverse, you know, like all of these changes diversifying your spend is one of the best safeguards against something happening right? So if people are diversifying, and we would definitely recommend that you do.
What we typically recommend on the social side are team listing ads. So this is one of our newer ad types. It pulls your team's listings and automatically create ads that Meta shows to people based on inferential targeting. Which means that Meta expects that this person is looking for a home in this area based on their recent activity online. Every member of the audience could see a totally a totally different ad specific to them. So it's not one piece of creative going to everyone. And you know some of the things that we look at on the social side when we're looking at performance or things like cpm, so it's cost per cost per milli, or it's just a measure of how much it costs to show the ad to someone just like Google, Facebook and Instagram.
If you provide a user on Facebook or Instagram, an ad that that the user finds valuable. Meta. Facebook and Instagram are more likely to recommend that to other people because they want people to find value.
And so team listing ads has the lowest cost to show ads, CPMs, of any of the net.
New lead types that we run some like branded remarketing. A brand advertising does have a lower CPM. But as far as ads, with a goal of lead generation, Meta sees these as valuable to users, and shows them at a cheaper cost. So we get a bonus from that.
And one of the things that kills me. I hate to talk about CPMs. Because a lot of people, a lot of competitors. When I watch webinars we'll stop at CPMs. But CPMs are 8 cents doesn't matter right, but it also carries the lowest cost per lead of any ad type. So, and this is a snowball that that continues to roll right as the ads continue to refine, we continue to drive more leads, which sends that signal back to Meta, that these ads are quality, and they continue to show it to people for cheaper.
So we would definitely recommend diversification. Across search and social. I just think you need to have the understanding of like the social leads are not going to convert in 3 months. We would expect that your 1st appointment and your 1st sale comes from a search lead. But if you're gonna be a realtor In 2 years, I would start social advertising today because the ads themselves are again, I'm biased, but the industry's best. And the Crm is the industry's best, and the follow up tools are the industry's best, and we have data that shows conclusively that these leads will close with proper. Follow up. It just takes a bit more nurture.
I talked for a long time. Dan, are you wowed, or do you have anything to say?
Daniel Lott: No, that was that was enough. That was thorough. It was very.
Harry Kierbow: What do you have to say for yourself, Daniel?
Daniel Lott: I'm looking forward to this next section. This is, gonna be good.
Harry Kierbow: Oh, boy. Yeah.
Daniel Lott: So.
Harry Kierbow: yeah. And and another thing. So we talked about diversification. When you launch with CINC, we will recommend that you diversify one of the great things about CINC is, it's your budget, so you can choose where it goes.
But our best practice would be diversification.
And we're also seeing a lot of shifting, I think moving from buyer leads to seller leads, and I don't know if that still is pronounced, but I think you know I would caution you to be careful with that because what we see just in general, when you're looking at bio leads or seller leads a bio lead is less expensive. You know, more likely to have correct information and more likely to close more quickly.
Dang it! I couldn't think of another synonym. A seller lead is going to be more expensive, and it's most likely going to be further out than a buyer lead.
And now going back to the data. And again, like this is something that you know is a benefit of CINC. Because we have all this data, we have this visibility. We see that over half the buyer leads that come through indicate that they own that they own a home, and a good deal of those also then claim their address in HomePulse. So if you think about a buyer lead, let's say it's $5. A seller lead is $15, but half of the buyer leads own a home, so for $15 in buyer leads, you're getting 3 leads for the same price that you would get one seller lead.
And again, the system that you use matters. You know the CINC CRM is the best at teasing out these people who are buyers, who are, who are sellers who do own homes. So our best practice even now is to focus on the buyer side, at least at launch.
Do you have anything to add, Dan?
Yeah, we anticipated this was, gonna be a bigger trend just over the last 6 months or so, because the NAR stuff, but that hasn't really come to come to pass. But yes, I think that just buyer is just better, just because the gap in cost per lead is so much. It's so large, especially, I think, on the social side. It's a bigger gap.
And the fact that most people claim their houses, when you do you have the opportunity to say like, Hey, you know, I'm registering as buyer lead, and then but they said, You have a home to buy home to sell. And then they asked you what your address is, so that's a seller lead, that is, both a buyer, lead and a seller lead. So that's good.
Harry Kierbow: Alright. And then I just wanted to talk. This is kind of outside of our area, and then we'll take questions. We have a bunch of questions in the chat, which is awesome. Thank you, guys, please keep them going.
But we've made some big releases lately that you know one of the things we've always felt that we've generated the best leads in the industry. I think that we can continue to find better ways to alert you to activities that are money making,so claiming your house, requesting a showing, speaking to AI and getting classified as agent ready.And so we have a couple of big things that have recently been released that I want to make sure everybody knows about.
The 1st is real verified leads. So this is something that people asked for for a long time I was very hesitant when we rolled this out. I expected that maybe 10 to 20% of people would verify, but what we see from the search side, which is the longest standing path of the verified leads is 60. What 60 to 70% verify when they sign up or high fifties. Over half, well over half, verify their phone number when they sign up. And what that means is when they sign up. We send them a text with a 4 digit code to the number they entered and they have to enter that code back. So we know that that person is holding that phone.
So we're seeing 2 out of about 2 out of 3 of the leads that come through the search side verify when they sign up, which is amazing. And you know we still recommend that clients contact every lead in the system. But this is a pretty intense quality signal, right? That this person was willing to type in the code, and the reason that they would type in the code is that we restrict some access to the site when they sign up. So when they sign up, we're gonna text them the code. If they enter that code and verify, they have full access to the site. If they choose not to enter the code, then we have some locked experiences, and they can still move around the site and see some things.
But again, going back to that data, looking at property alert, you know one of the things that drives the most clicks on the property alert are photos of the home, and so that's something that we love and that is getting people who don't verify. So you know, you've got what 2 thirds that verify on the initial visit. This is having other people that either don't verify the 1st time, or you know, we've seen people come back a month later and verify so like what this verified lead system is doing is it's giving you more contactable leads for the same amount of money.
You’re gonna say something.
Daniel Lott: So what? Yeah, the the major points of this. Why, I was as Harry mentioned, like he said, like, Oh, I think, like 20 or 20. We had no idea that our the quality was so good. But just the fact that it's something like 60% are a like have entered a valid phone number, because they've they they've entered because they did the 2 factor. And then so that's good. So that was like, Hey, yeah, we're doing a great job. But then the better part about this this feature is the additional 10% of people.
Harry Kierbow: Oh!
Daniel Lott: Oh, oh! Is that what you're saying?
Harry Kierbow: Oh thanks for skipping ahead, Dan.
Daniel Lott: It's the 10% who go in who have initially given you a garbage phone number. But then because they want to access the site. They change their phone number to a good valid phone number. So you know our folks, the focus of our department is on the quantity of leads, I would say, just because that is what is most the number.
Harry Kierbow: Sounds good.
Daniel Lott: It. Yeah, it's a numbers game, and it's verifiable, or it's you know, we it's quantifiable. But this is a good. This is like the best way that you know, CINC has been able to improve the they physically improve the quality of the leads because there's 10% of the people who change their phone number. It's yeah, it's just really hard to do. And just, you know, 2 thirds. Or it's like 70%. And so it's like as Harry said, there's people who change it immediately. When they said, Oh, okay, I got put in that through that stupid 4 number thing. And then it's like, Okay, then, like a bunch of those are like, No, I'm not going to do it. And then, a month later, it's like, Yeah, I'm actually interested in this house. I really need to see all the photos. So I am going to do the you know 2 factor. So it's a good. It's a really good thing. And actually, today, we all, as of today, everybody on CINC in has this on their on their sites unless they officially opted out of it. But it's not really a reason to to opt out of it. But but yeah, so this is a really good. It's a really good feature.
Harry Kierbow: Well, it's not an add on, or an extra cost or anything, or you know it's something that I mean, we make money when our clients make money. So we're we want to do the best that we can to give those kinds of features. And yeah, like, Dan was saying, or I was saying, 66% of leads from search sign up the 1st time we just released 2 new flows. One is seller and the other is social so that was released in September. I believe we're seeing about 40% of social buyer leads sign up or verify at sign up. So we'll work to increase that.
But yeah, the biggest deal is you've got 10% of leads who are adjusting their phone number in order to access the site.
So that's what I mean when I say, you're getting more contactable leads for the same amount of money, right? Like the leads themselves, are other than changing the phone number. The leads themselves are very similar. Some have a blue check and some don't. But the ability of that lead and the prompting, you know. We always ask them to change their phone number, but now they have a reason to, and they're doing it. So I'm always blown away by that number. And I think that's really exciting.
Now, I know we talked about leads from social verifying at 40% versus leads from search at 66%. But if you do the math, the way that it works out, say that you were to do a $2,000 ad spend split evenly between search and social. you would get even amounts of verified leads from both sources, since the social lead cost is generally lower. And so based on the numbers that we presented today, A $2,000 spend, we would expect, you know, a 150ish verified leads in a month. And so a cost of $12 to $16 for a lead with a verified phone number, which I think is, it's just super.
Daniel Lott: And if you've ever purchased leads from other lead sources, it can be in the hundreds of dollars per lead, and that you're gonna get a name email address and phone number, verified phone number address or phone, verified phone number here, you're getting it for $12 or $16, about $16. So.
Harry Kierbow: Generated specifically for you going to your website.
So yeah, if anyone has questions about verified leads, please reach out to us that it's 1 of the more exciting features I think we've ever released again. Oh, you like, you're gonna say something.
And then, just to kind of cover the last.I think the follow up right. So we see these leads take some months to convert. On average, you know, if you're taking 9 to 15 months to convert a social lead. The system that you're using needs to be good. We just talked about the verified leads that were released.
Also, you know definitely things like property alerts or behavioral messaging. But CINC AI is another really exciting one. We've just released a new version of that which is built on something that I'd never heard of before called generative AI which essentially means it is less of a If this, then that. And the AI is able to have a conversation with a lead.
So we've seen some crazy some crazy stuff. It's really pretty impressive what it can do it's just furthering us towards the goo, but in the meantime we'll be impressed by it.
But with the since the switch to AI, I got some stats from our tech department, seeing more than 7% of leads be classified as agent ready within the 1st 30 days of registering and 12%, So what more than one out of every 10 leads, being classified as either interested or agent ready since the update. So those are both increases.
So yeah, that's all the material that we had today. We have some time left. We'll take questions. We got a again, a ton of questions. I really appreciate it. If you are not currently a CINC client, though, and are interested in learning more, please check us out. You can go to CINCpro.com. There's a request a demo button there in the top, right? Or
you know, if you like to cut out the middleman. Just go right to that, URL. If you hate buttons. We work with anyone, we don't care what your stance on buttons is. So yeah.
Definitely, though, we'd love for you to chat with us and learn more about CINC, about all the things we talked about. There's other things we didn't talk about obviously. The and the deal here you can get up to 12 months of free leads. But that's for new clients only, and we need to. You need to schedule a demo here by the end of the month to chat with us.
And other than that. Mitchell, I see you came on.
CINC Marketing: I was gonna recap some of these questions.
Harry Kierbow: Yeah, yeah.
CINC Marketing: For Eric, who just asked our verified leads and add on
it's been rolling out over time to accounts. But actually, as of this morning. All CINC clients are now on real verified leads. So, Eric, you should have it as well. We'll go back some of the questions. I have some of these.
Daniel Lott: If you are a current CINC client, if you see next to your the lead in your dashboard, there's a little blue check, that means it's verified. Little blue check.
CINC Marketing: Wayland had a few questions. One that saw came from him and Rob, it's like, how hyper local can you get? And like can boots on the ground help determine hyper local searches. And Rob basically asked similar, like, if we're increasing ad spend, can we tell our account manager? You know this country club or this Lake community.
Daniel Lott: So what we do is we do use like country clubs are great. That's actually one of the best hyper local, lakes are the best, and country clubs, I think, are country clubs and baby schools, but country clubs are great because nobody advertises on them, and one of the good things about our CINC sites is that we have real text searches. Some of the competitors don't have text capabilities. And so that's why we're able to do country clubs. But yeah, so we're able to do them.
But you, it's a it's a kind of a crapshoot as to what is actually gonna generate a lot of leads. We'll put them in there.But they might not generate a lot of leads. So what we do is like we'll have the city that the Country Club is in, and then we'll have all the little sub markets associated with that city, and we'll just let it go. And hopefully the the Country Club will bring in traffic, because those are. Those are really good leads. So but yes, that's a good point. So we have. We have to have both of them in the campaign country clubs, the niches and the hyper local generally have a lower cost per lead. So it's good when they do when they do perform. So good question.
Harry Kierbow: Well, I found a good one. Can I read one.
CINC Marketing: Yeah.
Harry Kierbow: blah! Blah! I lost it. I found it again.
Alright. This move. How does Linkedin market and or linked with CINC as a user impact? CPL, if any.
And then also, how do the number of CINC sites in a particular market impact cost?
I read it. So, Dan, you answer.
Well, I didn't get the the 1st was, were you talking about Linkedin, did you say, Linkedin?
CINC Marketing: No Linkedin, Linkedin.
Harry Kierbow: No, no, no.
CINC Marketing: You've been in the market, or how long you've been with CINC, does that impact your CPL
Harry Kierbow: Yeah, I think.
Daniel Lott: 2 good questions in one. I thought Harry was making a reference to his new Linkedin test. But yeah. So it doesn't matter how many CINC sites are in a market. We used to be concerned about that, and it just sort of kind of worked itself out. There was like in the instance of one really small town where we had, like a person who wanted to spend an incredible amount of money, for like this small town, and it's like it's in the middle of Oklahoma, or something like that. It's like, well, we can't. We can't do it like that was like the one time when we couldn't really support a client. But it doesn't matter, because there's so many other advertisers out there whether it's, you know, our competitors, or if it's a home builder or zillow, or homes.com decides they want to do paid search. They their money counts the same as our money.
And then the length you've been with us It matters a little bit in that if you're really new, like the 1st 3 months your cost per lead is going to be a little bit higher than your mature cost per lead, and so, after 3 months, we hand you off to the kind of the regional advertising specialist. And because it's then then it's like it's a kind of a mature account after 3 months, and you shouldn't expect much of a swing on your lead after that.
Harry Kierbow: And I think, going back to that cause I remember way back when we used to, you used to do this crazy report that would basically tell you the likelihood of our ad showing up twice in any given market for any given search.
Daniel Lott: Yes.
Harry Kierbow: I remember those days. And well, I think you know, one thing is Google, Facebook, Instagram. Bing, they've done a lot like you. Look at the search engine results Page now versus 10 years ago. They're doing a great job of opening up inventory to get money, to be able to effectively spend money. And then, you know, one of the most I think effective responses to you know, like how many clients are in my market, or how does it impact it when another client purchases in my market? You know, I think if like, if they don't buy a site with CINC, are they just not going to advertise, you know? So I mean, it's not necessarily, It's more related to the number of realtors in your market than it is to I think, number of CINC sites. And if you are in a market where you have a lot of competition, I think you'd want to go with the company that's able to generate leads at the best price and has the most expertise.
So it's not a thing of CINC overselling a market. It's just the market is what it is. And then how are you gonna.
Daniel Lott: And it's like, probably our number one market is Atlanta. That's where we're headquartered. And so we keep adding clients in Atlanta. And it's also because you know, it works in Atlanta like, and people recommend it to their fellow realtors and say, I'm using sick, and it's great. And so if in the markets, where maybe it's really small or the houses are inexpensive, you might be the only one there. But it's like, maybe it's not as good a deal as in Atlanta, where there's, you know, lots of homes for sale. They're above average cost per home, and you know the cost per leads low. So it's a really good market, for you know, a new, a new client.
Harry Kierbow: Waylon said. He's gonna do the Meta glasses for Tours.
CINC Marketing: Yeah, he did say that whenever you were talking about right after you talk about inferential targeting and what Facebook will use.
Harry Kierbow: Did have a really cool app that they talked about briefly.
Is it Meta Connect? I should know what it. I can't remember what it's called. But they talked about briefly where you can essentially take pictures of a room and then turn it into like a 3D model that someone on a headset could walk through in the goo from the goo.
Daniel Lott: That's right. We could have done that at the battle and brew on on Friday. Eric.
Harry Kierbow: I'm just saying that's a cool. The metaverse is it? I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. But it's you know.
CINC Marketing: Yeah.
Daniel Lott: Well, well, said Eric.
Harry Kierbow: Thank you.
Daniel Lott: Thank you.
CINC Marketing: So basically, you have, the Linkedin market will impact your CPL. And yeah, Wayland kind of was clarifying. If it's a market with high CINC sites, low population, Yeah, we haven't really seen it impact. It'd be hard to saturate. There are enough searches to go around essentially.
Daniel Lott: But yeah, if there was a low but they wouldn't keep adding, you know, they kind of kind of works itself out.
CINC Marketing: Right? Yeah, typically, like, we don't have a small area. That'll be that much. Mark, good. And I think Madeline also had the same question was about if they started posting blogs on CINC, will it help them with their Google SEO? So I imagine, like putting them on their CINC sites if they want to start doing blogs.
Daniel Lott: We don't do a lot of SEO on our site. It it does help a little bit, I I guess. If you have another site, it would work just as well.
It's tough, like even a really good performing blog. It's just you can't.
It's not dependable like you. It's that's what's so good about, you know, paid advertising. It's you know, you're gonna get a certain amount of leads, whereas, you know, we've dabbled like a court like corporate wide. We've also dabbled with some SEO initiatives, and it's like, Oh, yeah. And if this works great well, in 3 years we're gonna be getting, you know, a minimal amount of traffic. It's like, Oh, okay, that's great. So
it couldn't hurt. But if it's a good blog that you think your readers would benefit from. You should put it up there, not thinking that's going to help you, SEO Wise, but it would help your current clients, and you know future clients like, if it's interesting stuff.
Harry Kierbow: I always just say the site is more of a lead generator than an SEO.
CINC Marketing: Alright cool.
And then David had a similar question. But on the social media side that can CINC, or do we have a recommended vendor to help us improve our social media page, which I assume you meant, like the organic side of things on social media.
Harry Kierbow: So yeah, I'm not exactly. I don't see. Oh, our social media pages. I see you, David.
Okay, cool. So I think you're referring to like building out a Facebook page and that kind of stuff. I don't have a specific. I mean. I've been. And so like, I've been doing this for 15 years, you know, so I don't have a specific person that I would recommend. There are a lot of good guides
on how to do it. You know it. Websites like pexels, P E X E L S dot com
allow you to purchase or not purchase, but getfree stock photos.
Some of them are a little out there, but there are some good ones, too.
You know, canva.com is a great resource. They have a free account, or at least they used to,that lets you create like profile images. They have templates in there.
So I don't have anyone specific that I would recommend to design the page. I wouldn't spend like a lot of money on it or anything like that, you know, when you think about ad spend on the social side. We don't see a lot of people go to the page. A lot of people either interact with the ad, or they don't.
And so you know really what they're seeing. There is the profile photo, you know, which should probably be something that identifies you as a real estate brand.We use logos. Sometimes we use pictures of homes.
So I'm sorry I don't have anyone specific that I would recommend
But I've done a lot of. There's a lot of good stuff on Youtube hubspot.com. social media today is another good resource. They'll have guides that you could download if you wanted to go that route. And then also If you are a CINC client and an owner of the CINC Facebook group for site owners is a really good resource. There's a lot of helpful content in there. Or just any, You know, I know there are a lot of active like Facebook and other groups on Linkedin, that kind of stuff for real estate. I think that would be a really good question for people there, just because I don't have experience with that specifically.
CINC Marketing: Alright cool.
One of the questions kind of earlier was Chris asking if we had data about Canada lead volume in addition to the US.
Daniel Lott: Do we? Unfortunately we don't do the same in depth reporting like we do these kind of buyer lead and sell lead reports. We don't do it for Canada, just because there's not as many big Cbsas or market areas. But yeah, we internally, we do. And we the same tools that we use, the same radius tool and all that we have.
We have the same we've had to like make up the the market areas, though, because the phrase Cbsa does not exist in in Canada. But but yeah, our cost per lead in Canada is less than it is in in the US. Some areas like Halifax is crazy, low. And you know, Toronto is a little bit more expensive. But yeah, we've had success in Canada for sure. And we do. We have the same data. But we just don't share it as much as because it takes a long time to do those reports which I'm not sure how many people read, but it takes a lot. In fact, I think there's a greater chance. Somebody in America will, because there's more Americans. But that's about it.
CINC Marketing: And there was a couple more. Eric Webster asked about what we find the average Pbc closing percentage.
I guess we're sold rate.
Well, that one.
Daniel Lott: Oh, yeah, you can go, Harry.
Harry Kierbow: Were you? That's up to you. Is that what you're gonna say.
Daniel Lott: Oh, yeah.
Harry Kierbow: Well, I know in a lot of the data that we looked at across the portfolio. So this is everyone right? People that were doing well, we're closing somewhere between 1% and 3%, I believe. We had some very established clients who were above that and also some who are below that, because that's how averages work. But you know, I think that's really important.
I see a few other questions in here around timeline and some people saying, You know, I've been around for a while. I haven't closed anything.
I think you have to realize that you're you're building a new database like you're building a new pipeline. And so I mean, if we could generate leads that click and sign up for $6 and then a day later, buy a home, I'd be selling real estate, you know. I mean, it's just. That's just not the way that it works.
That's why the system that we have behind it is so important. And options like the training online conversion day. If you guys haven't checked that out, the next one's coming up November 7.th That's a free online training with John Marone or Kristine Dunn who are agents in production and
just really good trainers. You also got Lance Simpson, Matt Feathers and the Murn dog. Everyone loves the Murn dog, Steve Murnin. Say, hey to Steve?
But yeah, you know that's something. And I mean, really when we bring a client on, we look at this as a long term relationship. And I mean, I think the hardest part of the relationship for both of us is getting to that 1st closing because it does take time. But the data shows that you know, within 12 months you should start closing leads, and then that is a snowball, a compounding effect. It just rolls downhill.
And of course there's differences in some markets like, you know, a market like LA, with 10 million dollar homes might take longer might take shorter. I'm not sure, but just on average, across the portfolio we see people following. The best practices are converting leads. And with the math, I think if you can convert at half a percent or 1% you will be profitable and then that will continue to grow, and you'll close more and more until you're just banking. That's the way I wanted to in that I wanted to stream banking.
Daniel Lott: So if you go to our website, there's a report called the Lvi Report, which shows it factors in a 1% closing rate. And then some of the other factors, like the average home price in the area average cost per lead in the area, things like that. And you can see like what kind of return you should expect from $1 in advertising, and it's like it's usually pretty high. There's unless you're in a very in a market where the average home price is around $80,000. It's your average return for a dollar of advertising. It's usually around $15. So it's good. And then we use the 1% is our guide.
CINC Marketing: Yeah, the 1% of what we hear and even just related to whenever people ask like how to earlier, there's a few questions about, how do we size a good lead? And Harry touched on it. But yeah, I mean, we're lucky that these leads aren't all taken, and then going into their own crms like we can see how these leads are acting downstream and aggregate across our thousands of customers. So
Harry Kierbow: I am seeing something from a few clients which is some additional feedback that we've heard. It may be coming from team listing ads. So I see, like Susanna here mentions that she's getting leads that are indicating they'd like to tour a home but then are confused when they come over. That's another one of those quality signals. So I mean, really, for any of these things, So the question that's asked on the form is, would you like to tour this home? Yes or no.
It's an iteration of us not asking that question which right now we bring into the system. But it's something like with feedback like this that we are always looking to improve, and I saw a few people mentioned it.
What we have seen is a lead that says yes to that question, whether or not they pick up the phone and automatically tour the home is, I think, 5 times as likely to set an appointment within 30 days as a lead. That doesn't say that. So that's why we provide that information. Because it's a quality signal is, there are.
Can we make improvements in the way that we present everything? Yeah, absolutely. And that's really good feedback. I appreciate that from you guys. Thank you.
But just know. That is why we do it. And there, there's some other questions here around, like Seller leads out of out of market. That kind of stuff. If you got you can reach out to your account manager at any point at support@CINCpro.com like, if you're having. If you're getting leads out of area, please let us know. Just send us an email reach out to your account, manager. That's you know some of the main stuff for us to fix.
Daniel Lott: Some stuff slips by, but especially with the seller leads. If you are running, just seller leads not. The buyer leads with seller leads attached. But Seller leads. We do a good job of honing it in on your market. So if you're getting, you know, if you're in in the Phoenix area. And you're getting lots of people in, you know, San Diego or Michigan. Something something's probably wrong or so, or something. So just let us know we can fix it.
CINC Marketing: Alright. Well, I think that was most of the questions in here make sure there wasn't any other big ones. Yeah, those all the ones I see are a good lead. And yeah, I think you just addressed most of most of those.
And if you are seeing client and you have questions about the campaign, reach out to your account, manager, and we're happy. I mean, you have a dedicated account, a dedicated marketing manager who is working here in this office in Atlanta. And we would be happy to to have a conversation with you if you have questions about it. And your feedback like, Dan said, is very important.
So please let us know what you're experiencing, because what we're looking at is we're able to generate this many leads within the rails of what we consider quality at this price. You're the one that's actually having the conversations. So that's another benefit of CINC. We have real people here. They have conversations every day, and we'd love to talk to you.