How to Utilize Marketing Funnels
On this episode of Next Level American Dream, Abigail and Sean are joined by Dan Fradenburgh. Dan is a very experienced real estate investor looking to educate others with the knowledge he has attained. Today, Dan informs listeners about the advantages and disadvantages of marketing funnels.
Key Topics
How to you strategize your funnels while staying within SEC Regulations?
What do you do to get people to the ultimate call to action?
You have started a meetup group for full-time multifamily investors, what was the thinking behind it being specifically full-time investors?
Connect with Dan Fradenburgh:
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
funnel, people, Multifamily, real estate, business, offer, investors, page, build, person, deals, email, buy, find, upsell, guess, website, interested, split, shopping cart
SPEAKERS
Sean Thomson, Abigail Thomson, Dan Fradenburgh
Abigail Thomson 00:01
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast brought to you by Thomson Multifamily Group. Your hosts, Abigail and Sean, will discuss how you can take your American Dream to the next level, through real estate investing, business practices, and personal development. Join us as we share our experiences as a father daughter duo who are trying to accomplish our goal of financial freedom. We hope you learn more about how to define and achieve your American Dream. Here's another episode of Next Level American Dream. Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast. Before I introduce our guests for today, please make sure you have subscribed, if you haven't already. We love hearing your feedback through likes, comments, ratings, and reviews. Today, Sean sits down with Dan Fradenburgh. Dan is an experienced real estate investor looking to educate others with the knowledge he has obtained. Today, he informs our listeners about the disadvantages and advantages of virtual flipping. If you found any value from today's episode, please share it with a friend and help us grow. For more information on our sponsor, visit: thomsonmultifamilygroup.com to start taking your American Dream to the next level through passive investing.
Sean Thomson 01:18
Hi, Dan, thanks for being on The Next Level American Dream Podcast. We appreciate you being here!
Dan Fradenburgh 01:22
My pleasure, my pleasure!
Sean Thomson 01:23
It's great to meet you. And I'm really excited to talk to you today. We do funnels in our business, but they're kind of mysterious. So, that's gonna be our topic. Today, we're gonna talk about funnels. You're going to sort of demystify and explain some of those things for us. Before we get into some of the details, you might just kind of tell everybody, what your some of your background, and then how you kind of got to where you are and where you're headed with your business.
Dan Fradenburgh 01:45
All right, sure. It'd be my pleasure. So, I'm Dan Fradenburgh. I have a YouTube channel and all that kind of stuff that's more cerebral and stays away from real estate. But now I'm all in on dandoesdeals.com. I have a I have a weekly multifamily meetup on Tuesdays at 10:30 in the morning. And that's something that I'm really focusing on right now. And I'd love to see more people who are in multifamily. But as far as my past goes, I worked for web.com, back about 10 years ago. And then I opened up my own agency around e commerce websites, helping out seven figure businesses to basically automate their processes very often my program something and then somebody would lose their job because it was completely automated. But Originally, it was called "Affordable VA's. Now, it's called funnelfixing.com. And we offer all the different IT services and all that kind of fun stuff. But basically, as I started growing my agency, I ended up getting a bigger and bigger client, which, when it comes to money, I think all roads lead to real estate eventually. And so once I started really doing the tech, in mass marketing, you know, like 5 million emails a month, when I was doing all that sort of stuff for real estate, and I was looking at the size of the deals, and I was looking at the mechanics of how a deal actually happens. I was like, well, I'm on the wrong side of the right business. So that's why I've made my switch over from focusing just on tech, to getting into multifamily investments and using my data processing skills to to basically grow really, really quickly for myself, because why make rich people richer when I can do it, where I'm getting equity as well. So that's where I'm at right now.
Sean Thomson 03:41
You can make rich people richer and yourself rich at the same time. So, right? Well funnels for me, I understand what they are, you know, and I understand how to utilize them in my business, but only on a very high level. So, I'm hoping you can maybe demystify some of that stuff for me. And for the listeners too. There's a lot of people that are in my audience that are doing this business just like you and I are doing it. So, this may be really helpful information for them. So, let's talk about what is a funnel, just as sort of on a philosophic or whatever you want to call it just on a basic level.
Dan Fradenburgh 04:13
Sure. And usually, a funnel will start off on a website. But there's no reason why your funnel can't start just with a Facebook post or LinkedIn post or something like that. But the main thing is that the entrepreneur, the CEO, whatever needs to figure out a journey for the audience to go through if they accept the offers. So, the simplest way to explain it, as I was saying was that was three websites. So, on you land on the one web page, and if you think of it very similarly, look, as you're in real estate, you understand floor layouts, basically like a hallway really, but separated into separate rooms. So, the first the first page, the first Room is where you get the person to make some sort of commitment, usually, or at least you introduce what you're up to. And then the whole idea is that you that whole page is not to what do you want to call it to solve world peace, okay, you have one goal, okay? And that'll be either to get their email address, or get them to schedule an appointment, or something like that. So, you've got step one, and then the CEO needs to think it's like, Okay, so now that they've done that, what other things can we try and get that person to do? How can we basically say, on step one, they, they finished that step, because they wanted something? And we know what that is. So, they go to page two and say, Okay, well, if they're here, we know that they both wanted that, and they went for it. So, what will be really helpful for that? Now, one little story, and I don't know how you what your opinion is on illegal drugs. But it's one of my favorites examples here that I used at one shopping cart, because one shopping cart had had the funnels, and I used to give an example of the Nintendo Wii, because that was, what was big back then. So, I'd say let's see, we're selling a week. And I mentioned the illegal drugs, because several times because that's what you're selling weed in a funnel. No, we're not selling weed in a phone. But let's say you're selling a weed. Okay, so they buy the weed. And then after that transaction goes through, the next step in the funnel, might be a related offer, like, Oh, I noticed you just bought a Wi Fi, you might want an extra two controllers for 50 bucks, something like that. And the idea is, you make it very, very simple for the person to get all the things that they originally came for anyway, even if step two, or step three was something that they didn't even know that they needed. Okay. So, a great example from real estate would be step one is maybe some coaching product or something like that. And then step two, for real estate, instead of coaching, maybe step two has something to do with learning how to raise capital, because, you know, maybe you know that you want to flip houses or multifamily properties, you know, it's commercial real estate, whatever it is. But it's not until you get a little bit further that you realize, Oh, wait a second, somebody has to pay for all this. So, they call that an upsell. Because if you're interested in the first part, you'll be interested in the second part, most likely, and as a business, you end up making more money or getting closer content, contact or whatever. So basically, just a funnel is just a multi-step process, where you take somebody from zero or wherever they are, to offer them as many different things as you can without them getting annoyed with you.
Sean Thomson 07:55
So, it's essentially a sales process. So, someone is looking for, I guess, a general subject, or general topic. They have an interest in, like you just said, real estate, for example, I want to be a real estate investor. Well, what does that really mean? And you kind of have to drill them down to more and more action steps. Is that kind of do I understand that right?
Dan Fradenburgh 08:13
Well, it's basically the actual funnel itself should be as simple as possible. So, the idea is you create what's called a landing page for the front of the funnel. So, let's say like in your example of becoming an access a successful agent, okay, let's say that is a little eBook that you on the on the first landing page, you offer that to them for free, in exchange for their email address. Okay, so you get them to show up on the page, there's a little thing there says, you know, get your free report, just enter your email, send that Okay, next page is okay, here's your download, you can get that free guide. But since you are an agent, you'd probably be interested in going to our meetup next week, or this webinar that's happening in two hours or something like that. And so basically, each step of a funnel will have its own ask, okay, it'll have something that you're asking for. So, the first one might have been just asking for the email. The second one might have been asking for registration to an event or webinar or something like that. But maybe the first step of the funnel is actually putting in your credit card and buying something. And the second step of the funnel is just getting an additional thing for a discounted price, a one-time offer, as they call it, especially in Click Funnels. That's basically to maximize the profit of the company that has that owns the funnel. So that's what's absolutely vital to every single business, and also real estate investors that are looking to scale and grow their business.
Sean Thomson 09:55
Let's talk about a real estate file. So, what do you want to use multifamily? I guess as an example, we can say you know, we solicited for I don't know if solicits the right word, but we, we have private investors in our business, right. So, I have, I have a personal relationship with everybody that's invested with us. But there's a lot of people that I talked to, especially initially about real estate investing. And a lot of times, they don't know that it's possible, first of all, so once they kind of get me on that they're, they're very interested in doing it, I have a lot of people that don't trust Wall Street, they have, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars with Wall Street people, and they just they have no control over it, they have no clue what's happening with it, they just don't really like being in Wall Street, they don't trust the markets. And they don't even know that they have these alternatives. So, in that scenario, where we're looking for, they're looking for us, those people are looking for an alternative, which is us. And we're looking for them because we're using their capital to buy these larger properties. How would a funnel sort of connect the two people together? How would that that process work?
Dan Fradenburgh 10:57
Okay, well, the first thing, which should probably be mentioned is that specifically with investors, there are the SEC regulations that you have to contend with. So, if I'm speaking directly to investors, basically people who have money in Wall Street or whatever, my advice would be to just go to get-togethers to meet more people who are actively investing, just so you get a feel for, for who's actually doing it and what not. And the reason for that is you can only openly advertise for investors, if you have a full accept exception, or the 506. c. And the problem with the 506-c exception is you have to be an accredited investor. In other words, you have to have more than average amounts of money. And it's easy. If you're an accredited investor, you probably know. And if you're not, you're probably have to ask Yeah, so really Connecting, to the actual operators, or the GPS, you know, who are actually in charge of the day to day operations, you know, just basically making sure that there's a maintenance guy working or whatever else needs to be done, that that's the best way to reach the people who are actively doing deals and own apartments already. But if you already own or are the operator, you know, you're finding deals and you're executing on them. If you're trying to find the investors, it's definitely trickier. But at the end of the day, that's, that's what everybody is up to right now is finding ways it's like okay, well, how can we meet like-minded individuals? Because, quite frankly, I think it's pretty easy pickings right now, because everybody, you know, like with the short squeeze on GameStop stock last week, everybody must have seen behind the curtain and realize, Hey, wait a second. This is this is a house of cards right here. And, and that's why I said you know, like, when it comes to money, all roads lead to real estate, eventually, you're going to have to get that kind of stability. And I'm going to drop a bomb on you right now as far as another domain that I'm developing, and it's going to be another podcast and it's a bit tongue in cheek. I just picked up last week real estate is a scam.com. And the whole idea says like, Well, yes, it is, if you don't know this, or you don't know that, you know, there are plenty of ways to lose your shirt. And I think as far as people who are naturally a little bit cynical about any kind of investment, I think, I think it's a good brand and hopefully we can get you on a on an episode of that as well. And I originally was going to name it to make Dan look stupid.com where in these interviews it's like okay, so show me a situation where like, I don't care how book smart you are, you're going to fail this test. So, go ahead and make me look stupid. And say it's like okay, what did you do in this situation? You do this? Nope. You know that's kind of thing that I want to get out there and I think fun as a whole.
Sean Thomson 14:08
Yeah, so I've got a lot to talk about and that just said what you said that the That sounds like fun those real estate a lot of people do think real estate is a scam somehow, I know, and I guess it can be if you're if you're connected to the wrong people, there is a lot of scummy stuff out there in real estate. But it's also a very valid wealth creation tool too. If you if you're connected with the wrong people for sure. It's a bad idea but if you connect with the right people, you have the right information you're getting the right data you're you know you're doing the right things. Real estate is massively I don't just historically a wealth creation device that is unparalleled, really my mind but so let's talk about so funnels the example I gave you in funnels is probably not I guess that's not a good example. Right? So, finding investors if they're using funnels, it's probably because of the SEC regulations. It is kind of a tricky situation, right?
Dan Fradenburgh 14:56
Yeah, it's tricky. But the main the main thing to keep in mind when it comes to funnels in general, is if you think of it as just like a customer pathway. And even a phone call is part of a funnel, right? So just call him and say, Hey, you know, are you know, you have any properties for sale? That would be a funnel? Because the next step, even though it wouldn't be based on web pages would be like, okay, during that phone call, are you getting the person's email? Okay? And then if you're getting the email, are you going to automatically send a, you know, hey, it was great talking to you today, you know, that sort of email? Are you going to get an automated follow up? That happens in maybe three days or a week or something saying, you know, yeah, I'm still thinking of you, I'm sorry for not getting back to you again, you know, and having the system in place so that if you do speak to them between, they don't get that automated email in a week, that's still a funnel, and indefinitely under my purview of things that I I've helped people build in the past and then building all the time.
Sean Thomson 16:02
So, it's really the customer experience, almost through to the through the buy process, where someone has a need or a want or desire, and then you're sort of guiding them to that place, right? They may not, they may have a broad, broad desire broad want. And you're sort of narrowing them down to Hey, do you want this? Do you want, you know, what is it that you're really looking for, and you're sort of guiding them through that that process, but in a digital, sort of in a digital, like you said, mostly digital realm, or I guess you can include phone calls as well, at some point. So, is that kind of how you're thinking of these funnels, so someone has I want this, and it's the topic is this big, you're trying to get them down to the real, the real thing that they really need?
Dan Fradenburgh 16:44
That's part of it, one of the things that I think wasn't in your, in your summary there is the limiting factor of, you know, this stuff takes time to build, you know, just the same as an apartment building or something like that, much less time than that, fortunately, it's not in the it's not a two year, you know, timeframe, right. So, because it takes a little bit of time to build a funnel, the problem is, you're kind of stuck with what you got. Okay, so you, you end up building the entire funnel, you have to promote it, you have to see if it's actually resonating with your audience. And, and so as a result, like, what you were just describing is a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I can't remember if those are also in the US or not, or just in Canada. But you know, as you get to a certain page, it's like, okay, turn to 18, page 18, if you turn left and go to page 25, if you turn right, that kind of book, if you if you have enough time and resources to build a funnel for every different type of investor or real estate related professional, you can absolutely do that. And I've done that recently, where you know, I'll get somebody over and say, Oh, you want to get in touch? Okay, like, are you a contractor? Are you an operator? Are you a broker? You know, who are you? And then that way, we're having a discussion that's just on the topic of what's applicable to you, instead of Oh, yeah, I do real estate, you know, if you if you're interested in this, then, you know, get in touch with me if you're interested in that, you know, just basically narrowing and narrowing that part down. But so, the job of the CEO in conjunction with the CMO of a company is they have to decide what piece of the puzzle is most valuable today. So, in some way, I do know, imagine, you know, as well, there are some multifamily investors that right now, they do not have problems with cash, they can get deals funded, they have people who are looking for more deals, but other people are on the other side, where, you know, they're, you know, they've got the deals, but you're having troubles funding them. Usually, that's because they don't know, the buy boxes, their investors, of course, but basically, I'm saying that the CEO and CMO have to decide what's the priority here, let's build a funnel just for those people. So, it might be just to get more brokers sending deals it might be to do something more innovative than that. Or maybe it's, you know, getting a bunch of contractors. So you specifically make a funnel just for contractors, you make a specific funnel specifically for operators, you make a you know, basically all those different types of funnels, but you don't have to, if you don't really have that need for that professional role. So, I hope that clears it up for you.
Sean Thomson 19:42
So, funnel may not be necessary. It just depends on what you're what you're trying to accomplish with your with your dialogue with your with your person that's coming through your through your bite, you're sort of your by funnel, I guess, right?
Dan Fradenburgh 19:54
Yeah, I mean, I put it that way. what comes out is that it's not really a funnel until it's a moment step process. So, the opposite of a funnel would be just a Hail Mary, you know, so that could be a phone call or an email or anything like that, and no follow up. If they if they actually do follow through with what you're looking to do, there's, there's nothing, there's no step two, and it's a funnel when there's a step two, because you figure it out, it's like, Okay, well, what I really want is that, so let's say with real estate coaching, okay, for example, in funnels, they have this idea called a value ladder. Okay, so the idea is that when you're low on the value ladder, then you know, the help that you offer, it's not that great, maybe it's a free eBook or something like that. And then, you know, after that, it's like, okay, maybe it's asked me anything, access, and then after that, maybe it's an actual coaching program, where, you know, it says, Okay, this is how you find deals, this is how you fund deals, this is how you flip deals, you know, that sort of thing. But somebody who's already far enough in where it's like, yeah, I already know that stuff, it's, I need help with my exact market, most coaches end up having an upper level of coaching, that's like five figures for a year or something like that. So, the idea is you keep on, you know, offering more and more expensive offers. So that you can, you can really tailor the help to that individual. And so that's a value ladder, and you need to do a similar thing with any kind of business. Whereas if you're, if you are a investor, and you're just looking to meet more investors, the real trick is to get somebody to know you a little bit, then know you a little bit better, and then know you even better, and then eventually reach out and say, Okay, I want to get involved in one of your deals, or, you know, hey, do you have any work for a contractor in this area, or just something like that, so that people feel that they know you and they're prepared to make the jump. That's the funnel that everybody should be focusing on as an investor right now.
Sean Thomson 22:02
Okay, I'm starting to it's starting to click in my brain, kind of what what the funnel is purpose is because you do have people that are in different form, or different phases of the process of doing whatever it is that you're trying to get them to do. And sometimes they're ready to buy coaching. And sometimes they're ready to just kind of get information, right? So you're sort of providing a product for people at the various phases of their journey, right? And you're, and you're giving them a funnel that says, hey, if you want this, we also have this, but people may stop in that process as well and say, Well, this, I'm good right here. But at least you're saying, You're at least you're saying to them, hey, we you know, we have more if you're if you're ready to move on kind of thing, right?
Dan Fradenburgh 22:44
Yeah, that's right. That's about it. But it's all around automation. So like in your example of you know, you buy the first thing but and not so interested in the second thing, I might set up a system where it knows that you bought the first one in did not buy the second one. So I can automatically send you an email saying like, Hey, you know, we're only offering that extra offer for another six days or until midnight tonight or something like that. If you want a second chance to take up, take me up on that offer, just click on this link, and you know, the magic will happen. That's another automation that would be part of the funnel that most people wouldn't think of, if they didn't have the experience.
Sean Thomson 23:25
Okay, yeah. So now, now high level I've got I've kind of got a comprehension of what you were trying what you're trying to convey. But it took me a while to get there. I'm sorry. But so what is it? So how would you go? So now that we understand who we want to talk to and what we want to provide them? And then we have sort of these steps along the way? Once we've sort of determined all those things? What do we do? Right? So what do we do we go find a software, do we contact you? Do we call somebody? What is it that we want to do next to sort of activate that funnel?
Dan Fradenburgh 23:55
Okay, so the most important factor for deciding that would be are you actually going to sell something like do you actually have to, you know, accept payments using credit cards, because if you accept payments using credit cards, you're going to have to have a shopping cart software of some type. Okay, so maybe like, you know, I used to work for web.com and there was one shopping cart area, the Ohio bank that I was the CTO for, they they used a lot of Infusionsoft Salesforce is popular. I get there, there are a bunch of different ones like that. But if you actually want to sell ebooks or sell coaching online, and accept credit cards, that's going to be the most important thing that you get is some sort of shopping cart enabled CRM, right? client, client relationship management software, that part's absolutely essential. But if you're not going to sell anything, then you can really simplify things a lot, but just just by, you can still use a CRM, or a shopping cart as long as like in the big scheme of things. Pricing tends to be pretty good. Compared to systems that only focus on email, like your MailChimp get response, you know, those those different ones, I'm not even sure if the older ones are even popular anymore. Like I remember AWeber used to be really big, they might be being too but, but the main thing is, if you did to build the funnel, you're going to have to have landing pages in that funnel as well. So you're probably going to need a developer, one of the things that I came up with in 2020, that I'd like to ramp up a lot more, as far as my own tech help, because I like basically, I've wound I've been winding down the tech help that I offer for other people as I focus more on real estate every single day. And but I still didn't want to leave everybody high and dry. So I ended up starting a site called a disinterested third party.com. And the idea of that is it's a mastermind or asked me anything kind of format when it comes to tech in automation, mass marketing, and all that kind of stuff. But what I've done is I've got rid of the conflict of interest. That's part of any profession, okay, which is, if I'm your web guy, and you're saying, hey, I need to build a funnel, I don't know anything that's going on, what do I need, I've got a conflict of interest, because I want to sign you up for like a five figure funnel or something like that. But it's entirely possible that that's not even necessary for your business. So instead, a disinterested third party.com, what I'm offering from that is, you should have your own web developer, you know, maybe they're in Asia or something like that. But you can come into the call for Ask me anything, your person can come into the call for Ask me anything, I'll tell them exactly how to do what it is they need to do, you and I talk on a higher level that says, Okay, first I want this, then I want this. So that way the the developer knows what's expected. Whenever I was the CTO of that bank, I'd really only see the CEO once a week, except for when there was a launch. So real estate investors don't really need to see me three times a week like a disinterested third, party.com is offering. But what makes a lot more sense is maybe on a Monday, you and your web person comes in, and we discussed the goals. And then on Wednesday, only your developer comes in. And I talked to them to say, okay, what's the what are the status updates? What are the, you know, challenges that you're running into, that you don't know how to solve? And then basically, all I have to do for you is, you know, if the person doesn't show up, I email and say, Yeah, I didn't, I didn't see them. So I don't know what's going on with them right now. So I think that's, that's a good place to start, in general. But if you already have a web person, that, you know, really, really, it's just a matter of building some sites with some forms in them. And there are lots of different platforms for that. So it's, it's definitely not a one size fits all, because you know, I'm sure your audience has some people who, you know, maybe they have, you know, one or two, six unit, apartment complexes, and that's about it. So, so you need to keep everything cheap and or free. Whereas if you're really looking to, you know, get into four digits of units or something like that, you really should be thinking bigger and better. And the things that slow you down a little bit. When you're when your business is small, they slow you down a lot, once you've got like a quarter million people in your contact database and things like that. So So that's, that's my answer on that where to go first.
Sean Thomson 28:49
So, you would start with everybody needs to kind of CRM, the CRM is going to be just sort of your database where you're, everything's captured, and you can control and kind of, and kind of work that that information you're going to get when people sign up or whatever. And then you need some sort of web presence or web, you know, web site or
Dan Fradenburgh 29:07
Yeah.
Sean Thomson 29:08
a website, a web presence. And your suggestion would be to have either like a part time or some sort of developer that's helping you kind of build these funnels out because they're going to be more elaborate than just building a web page on web.com. Like you said, right?
Dan Fradenburgh 29:23
Yeah, it's, well, the most important thing as far as websites go to understand, is you the homepage of a website, okay? It's more like a brochure like when you go to the bank and they've got brochures saying who we are that kind of stuff, that that's really all that a homepage is for. And I don't agree with the strategy of unless your your company is literally a one trick pony. I do not believe in making your homepage particularly useful. I just like to fulfill the expectations. If somebody says hey, who is Thompson multifamily group, they want to be able to find a website, get a quick idea is like, okay, they're real might be fake, you know that that kind of thing. That's what, that's the purpose of a homepage. Whereas when you're actually trying to do lead generation or something like that, it should always be a landing page. In other words, a page for a specific type of person. And by the time they land there, you already have a pretty good idea that they're likely the kind of person you want. Okay, so so maybe on LinkedIn, you say, Hey, I'm reaching out to I'm looking for applicants for a project in Houston, anybody who's in construction, interested on bidding on a multifamily deal of this many units, go ahead and click on this link, and then they go, they click on the link, they go to the landing page, and then they can put in whatever information you need, you know, you create it, like you have a forum, your web developer makes a forum for them to answer all of the questions you need answered, instead of just one or two, like email. And that's it. That's, that's not that's a waste of your time, right. But that's the idea is leverage your time through technology.
Sean Thomson 31:09
Okay, good. And then so, so CRM website, and then we're going to build out the more specific landing pages with an admin or administrator for our webpage. And then you were saying that, if that, if that kind of gets more complex than then say, I say, I understand you have a place where people can come to talk to you, and get sort of a an unbiased, third party opinion of, Okay, this is what needs to be structured. And you can sort of be the conduit between someone who doesn't know anything about the website and the technology to the guy who's actually going to build that for us. Right.
Dan Fradenburgh 31:42
Right. Right. Exactly. And, and I understand terms for real estate that that are very important, like cost segregation. You know, if you turn around to your web developer and say, it's like, okay, so you're saying, you're building this, and it's three grand, give me a cost segregation analysis, you know, just go ahead and tell me, what, where's the time being put on this, where's the time being put on that. And there are two different types of web developers out there. Most of them, they just use plugins, you know, free plugins, paid plugins, something that somebody else programmed. And then they use the web, they build a website that way. The other kind, they actually learn how to program and I'm one of them, you know, I studied electrical engineering in school. So so when I build a page, usually I'll just hand coded because then it can't be hacked. Okay, whereas a WordPress site, you know, Click Funnels, like whatever else, you can't actually hack it all. Like, the ones that I build, all you can do is bots can still can still submit spam submissions, but at least it won't give malware to your to your traffic when when they show up because your WordPress site has been hacked. So, that's where I'm a bit different on those things. The nice thing about me being the disinterested third party is that I can tell you, it's like, Okay, well, this person, you know, they're charging you two grand for this, and I'm like, okay, and how much per hour? Is that supposed to be? You know, because all those like, Okay, well, yeah, there's absolutely no way that person spent 20 hours, you know, doing that thing, because that's, that's like, you know, it's a solid one hour and 15 minute thing, but it's not a 10 hour, you know, 20 hour thing. So, so I think that's a really nice sweet spot, especially because my end goal is just to get to know everybody in the in the commercial real estate space. And so if I can be that guy, it's like, we're like, I do not want to build your website for you. But I'm more than happy to tell you everything I know, as long as I can, like, vicariously take a little bit of credit for it, you know, it's a it's like, Okay, well, you know, I'm, I'm helping out these guys, you know, they did, you know, eight figures last year, you know, and that sort of thing. That's where I see myself providing the most value to people. And then where I see myself actually working.
Sean Thomson 33:59
Okay, so what would be the next step? So, we've got our we've got our CRM, we've got our web page, we're sort of working our funnels. What comes is what is the next steps after that?
Dan Fradenburgh 34:08
Okay, so the next step, even on the first phone, which is usually forgotten about by most people, it's the copywriter. copywriters are one of those things where early entrepreneurs, you know, they're gonna think it's a waste of money, because, you know, I've seen long form sales letters. In other words, that's a web page where it's selling you on one thing only, and you have to scroll down about 2530 times just to get to the bottom of it. That's called a long field, that's long form sales letter. And it's, it's not uncommon to pay 10 or 15 grand for the copy alone on that page, okay, if they're a hot shot copywriter, and there's a reason for that, but you should really only be going for those sorts of people. If you are very confident that you can make like 50 K, at least off of off of the page, right? You know, and that's even after it's built in whatever else. So now is is a copywriter 100% you know, essential? Well, not exactly. Because I think that you're there there is an X Factor online of people choose you people choose you for whatever reason and say it's like, Okay, this is the person I want to work with. So it's like some people say how, you know, you can't say the wrong thing to the right person, you can't say the right thing to the wrong person. It's definitely one of those situations. So a copywriter will be highly recommended. But that's not the sexy answer that you're looking for. The sexy answer you're looking for, for what's next would be split testing. So the idea would be like, like that's, that's the opportunity where you can find out if a copywriter is even worth it, you might find out that you're pretty good at writing copy, it's unlikely, but it's still possible. So what you can do is you can make your own copy your own version of a page with your own copy, trying to entice people to follow through with whatever you're trying to get them through. And then the other copy of it is the copywriter that you paid for. Okay. And so you send half of your traffic to one page and half of traffic to the other end, you just let them duke it out. Which one, which one worked better? And that's the one that you go with. So and then once you keep on doing those sorts of split tests, then you know that you have a more effective funnel. So that's, that's the real, the real next step. But it might not even be the first step of the funnel that you split test. Okay, so the original first step might be getting their email, you might want to split test it with two people actually want to register for a webinar instead. Or, you know, would it is it easier to get them to buy an E-Book on on how to make your first million in multifamily, or whatever it is, you know, those are the things that you you try out and find out which one's more effective. So, but it doesn't have to be that first step that you split test, it might be like, in the example of the video games, you know, the first upsell might have been 50 bucks for two controllers, you might want to split test that with one controller for 30, or, you know, both controller for 45 or whatever, just to find out what gives you the most revenue, or the most conversions, you know, and of course, conversion could be just getting their email, it could be a registration for a webinar or whatever. That's the next step is split testing the parts of the funnel.
Sean Thomson 37:33
So creating, so once you've got a plan you want to do you want to do the plan, but then you also want to try a couple different approaches to that plan. And then and then sort of measure the KPIs of the success of those two and then and then focus on one of the two, right? Is that what you're saying?
Dan Fradenburgh 37:47
Yeah, that's right. Or you can you can find the part that seems to be underperforming, and say, okay, that's the part that we should be split testing, okay. Like, in that example, maybe the upsell you find is like, Hey, you know, it's really weird that out of the 170 people who bought this, we only got five people taking up the first upsell, that's a pretty poorly performing upsell. So So what you'd want to do is you'd say, Okay, let's take another look at it. Is it the copy that people aren't resonating with? Is there is the page broken? 95% of the time, you know, you know, might be a server issue, you know, do we change the video, those sorts of things. So there's always more, there's always more stuff to what to split test. But unfortunately, because, you know, Facebook and Google and them, you know, they rule the world these days. So the only way you're really going to know is if you've got enough cash to dump into it. And for a small to medium size business, I don't think that's really feasible. Because, you know, like, if you get some of the bigger software packages for tracking, you know, they're gonna want like 50,000 visits within a month before they'll say like, Oh, yeah, this one's definitely better. And you know, at like, $5 a click Yeah, and a conversion rate of even like 45% or something, you know, that's, that's a lot of cash to be sinking into pay per click advertising to make absolutely certain according to them, what's going to work and what isn't, but, you know, if you if you're looking to be fresh as well, then split testing might not make as much sense as as a completely new product or something like that. So it it's a it's a balancing act, and definitely figuring out, you know, where it hurts, or you could call it like a game of whack a mole, that sort of thing. It's like, Okay, well, this one's not performing anymore. Oh, this one's starting to lag, you know, just keep on changing what you do. So, it's it, it's just the digital form of entrepreneurship, which is you just always have to be constantly adapting right.
Sean Thomson 39:53
So, once you have your funnel built, you still have to go out and promote the funnel to so there's there's social media, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, all those different things to advertise on, you've got direct, so you can advertise with an email to get the funnel started with your already existing database. So you have all these other things. So I guess you're split testing not only the funnels themselves and the sort of the bioprocess that your experience your, your your end customers having. We also split testing those funnels within different mediums or outlets, I guess, with your emails and things like that. So you want to kind of track all that stuff at the same time, right?
Dan Fradenburgh 40:34
Yes, that's right. And you mentioned emails, so you've definitely want to split test your emails. And the biggest thing to go off of is your is your subject line. So the subject line of that email, it's like, that's where all starts and finishes in a lot of ways like the body, it doesn't matter how good the body of the email is, if somebody doesn't open it. So So that's another thing that absolutely is part of the funnel. And it's absolutely something that needs to be, you know, you need to look at the metrics to find out like how what percent of recipients actually opened the email, what percent of recipients actually clicked on the link inside it? You know, how many actually bought? How many actually registered? You know, all that sort of stuff? That's all absolutely essential to to find out.
Sean Thomson 41:18
Yeah, so you're constantly you're constantly kind of sort of tweaking those things. If you're split testing, you're finding something that's working, something's not working, you're modifying what's not working and improving what is working, I guess, all the time, right, is that that's kind of theory. And you're trying to we're trying to get the maximum amount of people to engage with the minimum amount of effort and resources, I'm guessing.
Dan Fradenburgh 41:40
Yeah, that's right, too. But I think the other thing to keep in mind is I think we're getting to what are the qualities in the marketing manager or the tech person who's handling all this kind of stuff? What are the qualities that you want to have to make sure that those, those needs are actually met? And I'd say the most important thing is making sure the person is is self motivated. Because that's, that's the biggest thing I find, especially for programmers, because programmers have a nasty habit of going to college, getting their degree. And, you know, they've got a weird way of talking that nobody understands. And and basically, like, well, what are you going to? What are you going to do about that? The other thing too, is they can go ahead and get these highly paid jobs, you know, you know, like six figure jobs or something like that with very little self reflection, or understanding of marketing or anything like that. And they've got an attitude of Oh, well, this is the easy way to do it. So I'll do it that way. And they might not be thinking about, but what is the customer experience? Okay, looks like, it's tough to use examples without visuals. But like, for example, with a drop down menu, there are sometimes with a drop down menu is efficient and nice in there, sometimes where they're very unusable. Like, like, if you're talking about a date, okay, like January or February, if you haven't dropped down from one to 28, or something like that, that takes a long time to scroll on. But if you want to use like, it's a question that yet that the developer or the marketing team has to figure out, is, does it make more sense to have briefing buttons on the screen for contractor, operator, finding seer, all that sort of thing, or should it just be a drop down. So when you're looking for a better route, when you really want to make sure that your business is moving? If you have somebody who's not self motivated, they're not gonna care about whether your second upsell is performing or not, they might not even be paying enough attention to, you know, like, how those are doing. And the other problem, too, they're not going to be going to the conferences to find out what is the industry standard for conversion rates? Because, you know, when you're first getting into this stuff, you know, like, if I tell you what, 20% open rate, does that mean? Wow, that's incredible, or does that mean? It's not that great? Like 100 is great, you know, like that, that sort of thing. You have to get used to what what people are achieving so that you have a better idea of if you're wasting your time if you're going in the right direction.
Sean Thomson 44:16
Okay, and then So what are some areas that people are successfully deploying I guess these funnels for their business? I guess I'm mostly I'm concerned about real estate. So if you know if I'm a single family guy, are there Are there areas that people are using funnels that are really successful? If I'm a multifamily guy, how are people using funnels in their multifamily business to make to make the most progress? Let's start with multifamily if so if I'm a multifamily guy, how can funnels help me in my business? In general, I
Dan Fradenburgh 44:47
guess. Okay, well, the best thing to do, you don't because I do consultation as well. It would be some form of standing over your shoulder, seeing what's working and what's not working first. So it It's better to give a recommendation for the person who's in front of you than to give a general answer.
Sean Thomson 45:06
But what I mean was, like you were using some examples, are there if you're trying to find brokers or if you are, if you're trying to find investors or trying to find contractors, or in multifamily, are people using funnels for successfully doing those things?
Dan Fradenburgh 45:22
Oh, definitely, people are using funnels for everything, especially because your your outbound your traffic generation, is something that that's separate from the funnel itself. So the traffic generation, it might be, you know, autodialers, you know, people calling up owners or brokers or whatever, but you know, it's just when they take that action and end up on a page or something like that, that's when that's when they've actually hit the funnel. So everybody, everybody who's on the bigger time, now, you know, they have some sort of system to reach out. Basically, in multifamily. A lot of people they try to be, they try to do the job of a broker, so that they end up getting off market deals. So really, the question is, where are you going to get your traffic? And the funnel is what are you going to do with that traffic once you've got it. So your options are, you know, you can either go ahead and pay Google and LinkedIn, Facebook and all that kind of stuff. So the traffic arrives in your funnel, or you can do you know, outreach by any medium. So it could be it could be in postcards, or bandit signs, or, or the cold calls or through meetups or whatever. So So basically, if you show me a successful business, I will show you a funnel, that's part of it. I've never seen I've never seen a business that's successful that doesn't have sort of some sort of funnel. But you know, it has a, it has a certain buzz word quality, right? Where it sounds like something that you know, is like gold to a proc specter. But at the end of the day, it just means planning out the customer journey, and making sure that you're maximizing the relationship as much as possible.
Sean Thomson 47:13
Okay, yeah. So everybody, I guess, everybody has a funnel of some kind, it's just a matter of, is it effective, right, and how you're deploying it. So it's, it's people are successfully doing this in their businesses. And I guess, even if you have successful funnel, you probably want to look at it. And like you said, do some split testing, do some other types of things to make sure that it's operating at its maximum? Right, so. Okay, good. Well, well, thanks, Dan. I really appreciate it I I kind of have a higher level understanding and I'm still kind of have some questions. But it's such a it's such a big topic. And talking to you. It's such it's, it's a lot to unpack, I guess, and just like a little podcast. So we'll be sure to put your resources in the show notes and things like that when this goes out. So I'm sure people are gonna want to reach out to you, I know you have some information that you're putting out as well. It's more details, I guess, more specific things about this type of about funnels, and how to use these types of things in your business. So it's hard to really kind of get this larger topic nailed down into just like, like I said, our our little time together. No, but I really appreciate you coming on and sharing that with us. And hopefully everybody got something out of that. And and then at least they get to know you and where to go for more information for sure.
Dan Fradenburgh 48:27
I really appreciate being here. Thank you very much for having me!
Sean Thomson 48:31
Yeah, I know I'm going try and get you back on. We'll do some other things about about the technology and stuff around real estate. So, it'll be good and I appreciate you coming in. Good to see you!
Dan Fradenburgh 48:42
Alright, thanks!
Abigail Thomson 48:43
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level American Dream. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, want to contact the team directly, or are interested in passively investing and being a part of our deal room, head over to our website at www.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com - Before you go, please leave a review! Your comments help us create more episodes for you to enjoy.