Category: Marketing

TikTok is not only on the rise, it’s here to stay. Every month, millions of people around the world are scrambling to download the app. It’s a new social media giant that’s fully dedicated to video content. Soon 82% of all web traffic will go into videos.

If you use TikTok just right, you can introduce your business or product to a huge audience. TikTok has 500 million users worldwide, and it was the most downloaded app for Apple in 2018. According to their reports.

TikTok is all about fun and visually appealing content. If you take a look at the TikTok trending page, you’ll find tons of silly videos set to hit songs.

You are probably aware that TikTok is all about fun and creativity, it’s time to create fun, creative content of your own. Creating your own content is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to promote your business on TikTok. Plus, one of the biggest benefits of TikTok is that you don’t need to create highly-polished videos. Simply Pull out your smartphone and start recording.

Keep it simple. A light-hearted video that shows off your products will come across more authentic than if your business tries creating a viral meme and fails.

Work With TikTok Influencers

Another way you can reach new audiences is to work with TikTok influencers that already have a ton of followers, especially if you manage to find an influencer in your field or that enjoys your products. Working with influencers can really help you make a connection to an upcoming generation that is going to make up a large percentage of consumers within the decade.

TikTok Campaigns

TikTok has included ads and marketing campaigns for its users, these include:

1. Brand Takeovers: This allows brands to take over TikTok for the day. They can create images, GIFS, and videos with embedded links to landing pages or websites.
2. Hashtag challenges: You can now promote your hashtags to grow your engagement.
3. Infeed Native Content: This type of ad is similar to Snapchat or Instagram story ads and supports multiple features.

Now, TikTok is not for every type of business out there but then again neither are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or Linkedin. Keep this in mind, Social media platforms are where you will likely find your customers and are a great opportunity to reach new audiences to get them interested in your products or services.

So if your business has a younger audience, TikTok is the perfect place to attract their attention and users may even become your brand ambassadors by commenting and sharing your posts.

Facebook’s ad platform is an essential tool for political campaigns. President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaigns have spent a combined $175,325,675 on Facebook ads through the month of October this year, according to Facebook data. That’s compared to about $750 million on television ads this year so far, according to Advertising Analytics.

Unlike traditional media, Facebook charges campaigns wildly varying prices for each ad on its platform, with some ads costing a few dollars per thousand views and others costing more than $100 per thousand views. Our analysis of ads run between July 1, 2020, and Oct. 13, 2020, found that the differences also varied by candidate: Joe Biden’s campaign was charged more on average than President Donald Trump’s was. The Biden campaign would have saved $8 million if Facebook had charged him the same rate as it charged Trump.

Overall, for every 1,000 times, an ad was shown, Biden paid an estimated $25.52 on average, and Trump paid $23.09, an 11 percent difference.

We are all familiar with the Fb Ads bidding system. Everyone is competing for awareness and views. However, the companies that are spending more are also those who are reaching and engaging with more people.

It is not easy to run ads during the election because any miswording or too much text can be interpreted as a swing in the election by Fb’s algorithm. The best bet for your ads is probably to wait until after the election if you want to really run anything solid. In the meantime you are going to be very careful about your copy and text on your ads, Fb might not take it.

We know how tricky it can be about running your ads during the election but unless you are experts like we are, you are going to need some tips.

Here are some different types of ads you can run during the election:

1. Image Ads – Image ads may be simple, but they don’t need to be boring, mage sure you have an outstanding photo about your product or service so that it will stop and attract your audience online.
2. Video Ads- Videos can show up as news feeds or stories. Videos can show your product or service in action. Also, videos convert more.
3. Video Poll Ads- This mobile-only option is better than just showing your audience a regular video because it comes with a poll people can interact with and offer their input about product or services. This not only increases your brand awareness but is also an excellent way to get feedback from your customers.
4. Carousel Ads- Carousel ads can use up to 10 images to showcase your product or service. You can highlight multiple products or services all in one post.

These are some of the different ads you can run. Hopefully, you now understand a little more about the implications of the election and how you can set up your ads.

PPC is the fastest platform to run ad campaigns and to get immediate traffic from it. You can easily set up a PPC campaign in about half an hour or so. This feature is extremely integral for new websites that are looking for exposure and visibility. Also, with this, you can generate significant conversions within weeks. Because getting immediate traffic is not enough, the traffic should also be consistent enough so that your campaigns have a place in the long run.

because of the large amount of traffic, you will be receiving on your website. It will break if it is not equipped to handle that amount. We suggest that you get a good hosting plan with their own servers to handle the amount of strain on your site.

You may feel as though your traditional advertising routes have done well in the past and why change if it’s working, right? Well, unlike more traditional advertising outlets, PPC allows you to be more than just noise in a sea of ads.

• Control over the budget and schedule – When you begin, you set a budget for the ad campaign, however, it is not set in stone. You have the ability to adjust it at any point and, if you find that each click is costing you more than you want to spend, you can change the keywords you are using to get a lower cost-per-click rate. You may also find some campaigns are not doing well, so you can just turn them off and add that budget to ones that are.
• You only pay for clicks – This saves you a lot of money vs. traditional marketing platforms. You may pay $3 for a click but then get a $300 return in sales. You can also determine the most effective ads by tracking where people are clicking through and where they abandon, especially if your click to conversion rates are low.
• You can measure and track – Virtually any goal, downloads, contest entries, email signups, etc, can be tracked through PPC advertising. This gives you measurable results to present to your boss and other stakeholders.
• Results are fast – People are actively searching the key-terms you bid on and, therefore, you could have a lead in less than a minute. While this is not always the case, you won’t have to wait long to have your company mentioned at the top of search results for queries directly related to your products and services.
• You can target – One of the greatest things about PPC advertising is that you only pay to find exactly who you want to reach. Using keywords, demographics, and interests, the search engine puts your ad up where it matters the most. The leads will be real and relevant, and you can always readjust based on what is working the best. Usually, in about 3-6 months, you can make a great return on your PPC ad budget investment.

Organic Search results are probably the most reliable sources for achieving long term marketing goals. Although this can also be one of the longest forms of marketing which can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to whole months for the algorithm to kick in.

If you are building a brand and business, we highly recommend that you set up a PPC marketing strategy or hire someone who knows about PPC. You want to watch your business grow as well as we do. So if you haven’t started growing organically now is the perfect time to do so.

Our Chief Executive Officer Shawn Greenway has joined the Christian Outdoors Apparel Company, DiscoverHorizons. The company was established in early 2018 but has since expanded online and in retail as of this quarter. Shawn and avid outdoorsman got in touch with the brand through a marketing project and felt with his network and skillset, could help the small but growing brand. The company is based out of Calhoun, Georgia, and ships/prints everything from their warehouse.

DiscoverHorizons is very mission-oriented and part of its mission is to spread responsible stewardship of the creation. According to their website “Every month, we donate a percentage of our total pre-profit & pre-taxed gross sales towards helping further some of these missions. This is a helpful reminder to us to ensure that our faith always comes first in our decision making and we’re striving to make our company a force for responsible stewardship around the world. As of August 2020, we’ve Planted 560 Trees, Donated 1,990 Meals, and 1,395 Gospel Booklets Gifted.”

With Shawn’s vision, business acumen, and direction, he hopes he can help the brand mature and become even more retail-ready and the company hopes to expand aggressively in 2021.

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We just finished a consulting project with CabinRugs.com and the owner was appreciative enough to let us publish this short review and interview about the consulting process. 

What were your challenges in starting a new brand?

To start off, I’m a big picture kind of guy so the little details are always hard for me to map. I knew what I sort of wanted the brand to look like but I didn’t know what to do to make it happen. You guys made is so easy to understand the complexity of brand development. 

What did you learn during the brand discovery?

I learn that its so much more than a logo and that the branding strategy needs to be aligned with my marketing strategies on Google and Social Media. 

Would you recommend BrandLyft to any future clients?

Yes! You all are wonderful guides. 

CabinRugs.com is the home of the largest collection of Cabin, Native American, & Southwestern-Inspired Rugs online. 

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1. Having a poor followup

One of the most important things in any type of sales journey is the follow-up. A Lot of agents have the ability to generate or purchase leads, but that doesn’t do any good if you don’t go through a very good follow up process. Most sales never happen on the first contact, to begin with. Some try a few more times and move on to the next one. Some give up after just one attempt. Then there are some that don’t even reach out at all. I hear many excuses from, “I don’t have enough time or I forgot.” to other excuses that most of the leads from that source aren’t really that good anyway. 

Yet they continue to pay these lead sources thinking this is the best way to get deals because they sometimes actually come across one that they contact and it turns into a closing. You should never purchase leads until you have a strong follow-up process in place so that you can help increase your conversion rate. A great follow up process not only can help from day one but more so over time as it helps you build up an incredible database. This can potentially turn into much higher conversions because you will be nurturing your potential clients with a follow system that is educating them with information and answering questions and concerns that they may have about buying or selling a home. The formula isn’t a secret. It’s simply follow up, nurture and gain a client for life. 

2. Depending on a single lead source

You should never depend on one flow for your lead source. The most obvious thing that should be on an agent’s mind is “what if that source goes away” or “I can’t afford that source anymore”. This will put you in a bad spot. You should always be working with multiple sources. Here are a few that will help. 

• Referrals 
• Your Database  
• Organic leads from your social (always have a landing page link on your social post) 
• Paid Facebook & Instagram ads (this way it’s your exclusive leads only)

If you work all four of these the right way with a strong follow-up system, you should never need to depend on any single source for leads. Minimize black swan events like the COVID-19 situation from affecting your pipeline and lead flow. 

3. Not branding themselves

Branding yourself is the most important thing you can do to have a long successful career in the real estate industry. You are a brand. Your brand is your reputation. People make decisions sometimes based on brand alone. Too many agents and loan officers put too much emphasis on the company name over their own names. It’s never been more important than ever to promote your own name and brand. You should be remembered by what you do and offer, not necessarily what the company offers. If you decide you need to change companies one day for different reasons, your personal brand needs to be so strong that most won’t even care where you went. They only care that you are still there for them when needed with the same great experience and ready to help. So, think about all the ways you can brand yourself with all the current things that you do. Social posting, running your own lead ads, videos, Facebook group, just to name a few. A famous comedian once said, “Be So Good That They Can’t Ignore You”.

This is my story on how I spent 8 years in the mortgage industry. I got into the industry in 2010, right smack dab after the entire economy collapsed. I know your thinking, wow, this may have been this worst time ever to get in. Well, you’d be right. But, I didn’t necessarily think that way when I decided to get in, because I thought it was a great opportunity going against the grain. I was actually working at the time as a credit repair agent on the side from my regular job and already had a few loan officers as my referral sources. One day I was sitting with one of the loan officers and we were going through some of her credit repair clients when she just casually said: “You should get your license to do mortgages”. I told her no way because I really didn’t even understand much of the industry at the time. She assured me that getting the license was the hardest part, but after that, I would love it. Once she showed me the potential numbers for income based on the commissions, and that’s all it took, I jumped right in. Within a few weeks, I was taking the training and was getting ready for the big exam. She was right, and It was as tough as I thought it would be but I passed. 

So this was the time after the crash and many loan officers were moving around trying to find their so-called home company to originate loans. It was normal during those times for loan officers to move around to different companies to find the best one that fit their needs. I finally landed with a great group in Atlanta. I joined a team within the brokerage so that I could learn from some of the best in the industry. During those 3 years with the team, I took more applications than some loan officers take their whole career. I am not going to lie, it was brutal. Working seven days a week. Working on builder accounts and working with re-sale agents. It was a grind, but I am blessed to have gone through it to see so much of the industry inside and out. 

Our team then moved to a different company that better suited our needs for more options and programs. During the switch, I decided to go out on my own. I had learned so much from having a mentor and all the great team members around me from the past 3 years and just soaked it all up. So, my journey began on my own and it was definitely tough the first year. I did all the things that I had been previously doing on the team, but without all the contacts. I pushed and pushed and then into the next year I started learning about social media even more and figure out how to run ads. I also, started with videos and posted a few at a time to see if it would help. As I slowly ramped up ads and video along with several routes weekly visiting agents, I was able to breakthrough. I started to grow and finally was able to get an assistant to help. As time went on I had agents and even loan officers coming to me and asked for help with social media and doing some videos. I really enjoyed it and actually started doing videos with some of the agents. I eventually added another team member and was on a great path for more growth with everything that I was doing. 

As time went by I started to realize that my heart wasn’t truly in the mortgage business itself. I learned what I had always loved, which is marketing and coaching. I was at crossroads to where I had to decide my future. Was it to keep pushing and grow a big team or decide on doing what I love and making it happen as a career? Even though I didn’t know if I was even going to make a living, I knew that if I helped enough people that I would be fine. 

“Making that decision was scary but empowering at the same time. I knew there was more to give from me than just growing a team and making money. I have always tried to live my life to reach for my full potential.”

During my last two years as a loan officer, I always said that I wanted to build a lead machine so that I didn’t have to keep chasing after agents or other lead sources. Well, I finally made it happen here at our marketing agency. But the kicker here is that now that I am on the other end of this. I see that in today’s market, leads are not enough. You must have a great follow up on your sales journey in order to increase your closing ratio. Some agents and loan officers either do not even get to all their leads and most only try once or twice. This is our mission here at BrandLyft, to help loan officers, builders, agents, and brokers polish their sales journey, increase leads, and improve meaningful conversations with those leads that lead to conversion. 

Here’s a story for the books! Back in 2015, I had just sold a small business and it left me looking for a new opportunity. I was approached by a friend of mine that showed me some of the opportunities in the insurance business. She explained all the different ways to help families and how it could be a very lucrative business if you apply yourself and put the time in. I was very interested, but wanted more information and wanted to meet some of the people in that organization that had been killing it. I always like hearing it from the top producers. Come to find out, the company was actually a marketing agency that provided leads, coaching and many other things to help it’s team members grow their own business. The only thing I had to do was get a license. Well, here I thought that would be manageable, but it was actually troublesome for me. It took me three times to just pass the state licensing test.  Now that I had my license, I thought I was ready to go to the top. I was “gung ho” for sure.

I started studying up on the products to offer and practiced scenario numbers on my laptop. I finally jumped out there and started purchasing leads that the company offered and actually got a few deals here and there. I continued to dive into all the training calls and went to as many company meetings and conferences that I could possibly attend. Over time I kept running into colleagues that were making the kind of money I wanted to make and I would always ask them more and more questions about what they would do to close so many deals. As always the answers were basically the same. Read, be on all the calls, go to the meetings, know your products and schedule appointments and repeat. It took me a while for it to sink in that that’s it. I finally gave in and it worked.

During this time period, I consumed every business and sales book I could get a hold of and went to every meeting that I could go to and attended all the conferences. I was on most of the company calls each week. I was a sponge. This was an incredible process for me as I was learning and growing at a faster pace than ever before in my life. I quickly started booking more appointments than I could actually handle. I was running on all cylinders and loving it. I was getting deals and it was consistent. I knew I was gaining more and more momentum because I had totally transformed my mindset with all of the reading and being around like-minded people that had a passion for winning. 

How it happened

During the time I was all-in on transforming my mindset. Every week, I received another set of leads and called everyone up and set up my normal route for the weekend. I set out that Saturday to hit several appointments and I noticed one of them was in a very affluent neighborhood in Atlanta. As I pulled up to this particular home, I understood it to be a multi-million dollar house. So, truthfully I said to myself that there is no way these folks will buy anything from me. I was assuming that they already had everything covered or had their own financial guy that took care of everything. I knew that this home was just going to be practice for I thought to myself, “ I should still go ahead and go through my routine and see what I can offer them”. It was an older gentleman and we sat in his living room. I had my laptop out going over a few scenarios based on his age and what coverage amounts he was looking for. I gave him a few numbers almost hesitant to even say the premium amount because I had never even looked at a number like that before.

I finally got it off my tongue and he didn’t even flinch. He paused for a minute and then asked if I could meet him the next week at one of his businesses, which was basically a horse boarding farm about 45 north of his house. He told me he was going to have his business partners there as well to possibly look at a policy to cover each one in case something happens to any one of them. So, I agreed. Still, at this point, I didn’t think too much about it. I figure once all of them hear the pricing, they would just get their financial advisors to get the same thing. So, I went on out the next week telling myself again that at least it’s good practice.

I arrived at the farm and sat down with all three and about an hour later I had quoted out for all three and the main business owner looked at me and said: “Write it up, let’s do it”. I sat there going through the application for each one and then got the check for each one and was quickly on my way out. I told them I would be in touch in just a few days with more information to give them about each policy. Then I headed back home and as I was driving, I realized what I had just done. I did some quick math in my head and realized that I was about to get $20,000 in commissions from this one deal. I was blessed to have this opportunity but also realized that I could have easily not closed this deal because of my mindset going into it. Even when your mind is not in the best place, deals can still happen. It doesn’t always happen that way and that’s why it’s so important to get your mind right. 

Lesson

The lesson in the story is to never judge a book by its cover. We have all heard that before, right? This particular experience was a big breakthrough for me in my life and sales journey. Always be ready and have the certainty that everyone you encounter will be an opportunity in one way or another.

Shawn Greenway, CEO