Why Most Investors Fail at PPC – And How You Can Succeed! | Brandon Bateman

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I am happy and honored to have Brandon Bateman from Bateman Collective here. What's up, brother? Hey, not much.
Excited to be here, Justin. Well, I want to get into the hottest topic, online leads.
This is something I'm passionate about. You run an entire company, one of the best in the nation on bringing in online motivated seller leads to us investors.
So I want to jump right into the power of the online lead versus direct mail, cold calling, texting. What are you seeing, you know, obviously with motivation, online lead, online lead flow, what's going on in the market these days? Yeah, I think probably the best way I can answer your question is let's just talk about marketing channels and how they're related to each other in general.
Just because I think this, you know, if you're not familiar, is something worth learning. The concept of outbound versus inbound marketing.
And a lot of people, a lot of people say it in a very like binary way, like that's an outbound channel, or that's an inbound channel. They don't recognize that this is really a continuum, like channels can be more outbound versus more inbound, like, like, for example, door knocking is pretty much as outbound as a channel could possibly be.
And then cold calls like ever so slightly more inbound than door knocking, right? Sure, and then that might be like slightly more inbound. So a lot of channels that people call like traditionally inbound marketing channels are actually more what I'd call semi-inbound.
You've got like direct mail, for example. It It kind of falls like right in the middle because in outbound, you're going to the person.

With inbound, they're coming to you.

With semi-inbound, it's like you sent the postcard to them.

They didn't ask you for a postcard.

They were still going to their mailbox,

trying to do whatever they do with the mail from their mailbox.

And then they saw that and they thought,

oh, you know what?

Maybe I'll sell my house to Justin and they call you.

Versus online marketing has the only channels that I would consider 100% fully inbound. And that's the neat thing about it.
So I'm a person, I'm living my life, I create, I have some type of episode of my life that creates some pain. And then I go online and I search for a solution to that problem.
I might search for We Buy Houses or Sell My House Fast, or whatever it is that I search. And then the companies that I find there, I could end up potentially doing business with them.
And those companies, when I reach out to them, they know that I'm a seller of a certain level of quality and I'm likely more motivated than their other leads. So that's kind of the benefit.
It's as if like you had direct mail, but the person had this special mailbox where there's only offers for their house in there. And they just went there like really hoping they could find a postcard from you.
That's kind of what online marketing is. And it produces a completely different kind of conversation with your leads because now you have somebody coming to you versus you going to them, which changes the power dynamic of the conversation.
And it makes it so you don't have to wonder if they're motivated. Generally, you can assume they're more motivated and you can worry about everything else yeah i mean the way i like to talk about it is when they're coming to you the level of motivation is at an all-time high to your point semi inbound would be direct mail like when was the last time you called a piece of direct mail that was not from your mom right Never.
You know if someone's calling you back from a piece of direct mail, there's motivation. At a higher regard, online marketing, PPC, typically PPC, there's also SEO, but whether Facebook, Google, they are filling out a form saying, I want to sell my home.
Not? Not I'm thinking I want to, it's just a fact of what number am I going to get, right? Because they might want to list it, and they might want to do whatever. So let's talk about that.
When leads are, you know, obviously you run Bateman Collective, one of the most successful online lead generating for us, real estate investor. So anyone who isn't yet, make sure you go over to Bateman collective, talk to them.
Actually, why don't we sum the real, where do you want them to go to check out Bateman collective? Just to our, our, go to Bateman collective. It's just Bateman collective.com.
We can put, put a link. My marketing guy might be mad at me for saying that maybe he'll give us a special link that we'll put in the footer.
So, so if that says something different, do that one instead, but yeah, it's anyway, you find this. Yeah.
So when, what are you seeing is a common, um, I don't want to say objection, like what's happening right now online with leads that are filling out forms. Are we seeing a high level of leads that want to go MLS? Are we seeing a lot of just interest? What are your clients? I mean, you have some of the biggest clients in our space, the Jerry Nortons of the world, the Steve Trang's of the world.
These are all your clients. Like, what are you seeing based around your clientele? Let me summarize it like this.
Like if we're just talking about the lead quality conversation, and also I want to preface this, the numbers I'm giving you, I'm giving to you very straight. you very straight we actually as a company we put a ton of focus on lead quality and we can do that because we're not a pay per lead company we're a service that actually establishes a direct relationship between a company and Google and the benefit that we have from that is we don't have to focus on what is the cost per lead as much as we can focus on what is the return on investment.

So it means that usually we're dialing in things for the best possible return on investment that we can. And sometimes what that means, and oftentimes what that means when people start working with us, is that they get less leads than they ever did before, but they actually close more deals than they did before.
That's part of the benefit that we provide. so but also what you'll find when you talk to other companies by lead quality and stuff is

they're usually just thinking through like their top three clients and they say well this is this

is what they're experiencing. Versus what we do is we actually have a database where we keep all this information and we aggregate all the data from our most successful clients, as well as our clients that are least successful.
So the numbers I'm going to share with you, they might sound kind of similar to what you're hearing other places. The difference is it's the average for us and it's the best for everybody else.
But here's, here's what it looks like. So it takes about on Google PPC right now, it takes on average about 15 leads to get one contract on a house.
There you go. That 15 number, our top 10% of clients, it's eight leads per contract in our bottom 10% of clients.
It's 22 leads per contract. So that gives you some idea of the range that we're working with.
Um, how that works out 15 leads produces 13 leads that aren't like spam or a buyer or wholesaler or something like that. Right.
So you got two right off the bat that you're disqualifying because you know, it's, it's, it's whatever that makes it not even like a like a seller of a house then from there you're going to have 10 of your 13 leads that are contacted meaning there's three that you're just never going to get a hold of those people no matter how hard you try you can't get them on the phone um so now we have 10 leads of those 10 leads generally about five of them you're going to disqualify because it's already listed on the market, because it's not in the right location, because it's retail, those kinds of things. So it's people that you got on the phone that did have a house to sell, but they're just qualified for whatever reason.
After that, we're left with five leads. These are five opportunities, meaning people who have a house to sell, we've got ahold of them.
We want to theoretically give them an offer, work them through the process. Some of them might be like smoke and hot opportunities.
Some of them a little bit cooler, but from the five, it takes, it takes those five to get one contract. Does that make sense for lead quality? So you, for those that don't know what Bateman collective is, I think I jumped the gun cause I'm so familiar, but let's explain what you guys actually do.
Let's go there first. So people understand what is Bayman Collective? How does it work? Why would someone be interested in contacting you, reaching out to you? Yeah, so the easiest way I can explain this is we're a online marketing agency that specializes in the real estate investment niche.
The reality is, I think that kind of undersells what we do a little that's, that's how you compare us easiest to other companies. Because sometimes people, when they're thinking about PPC, they're thinking about paper lead, which is actually a really different thing.
That's no more similar to PPC than direct mail is to PPC. So if you're talking like companies that sell leads, that's not us.
We don't sell leads. What we sell is a service where we help your company build things to generate leads.
Like if we're comparing this to a channel that people understand better, like say direct mail, it's like we help you get the lists and then we do the service where we create your postcards for you and we mail them out and then you get whatever leads you get from that and then you're going to pay us a monthly retainer to do that work for you. That's the business model.
You're a done for you service for PPC, typically Google, but Facebook and social media as others. But you know, you're done for you service to help people understand to bring in online leads, typically, again, through Google and other resources.
I'll tell you, I have spent millions of dollars on online leads. And it is, I use services just like this for a reason is because I don't know how to do what you guys do.
I mean, could I figure it out? Sure, but now I'm going to waste money marketing on Google, literally torching it, trying to figure out what you guys do full time. This is the definition of what you want to leverage.
If you're watching this or listening to this, make sure you reach out to Bateman Collective. The reason being is leverage.
Leverage. They do this all day, every single day.
Do you think they're slightly better than you would be trying to figure it out yourself? Yes. And for that, there's a monthly, do you call it a fee or retainer or whatever that you guys charge to run all of your marketing.
I will tell you, I want someone to run all my marketing so I can focus on sales. So it's a no brainer again.
Now we started the conversation out with inbound versus outbound. And then we started next to go to motivation.
That is really the key precipice to this, right? So I ran a full blown 20 person outbound cold calling floor in Phoenix for quite some time. And you have to make a whole lot of calls to get just the low hanging fruit.
Right. You know, we got it down to like one out of every 36 leads we would convert.
But you got to go for volume in that model. This model is not that.
Like, what is your typical client? And again, averages are fine. I understand, you know, some do less, some do more, but like what type of lead flow would a typical client of yours look for? You're already talking one out of 15 deals, leads, right? So they want at least 15 leads a month.
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Yeah, yeah. I mean, if the goal is one deal a month, which sometimes it's not, believe it or not.
like if let's just say like, I want to do four flips in San Francisco each year and that's my business, you know, then, then maybe it's not. Um, yeah, this, this, this is a good question, actually.
So when we're looking at this kind of lead flow, most often you're going to be a lot lower lead flow than you are with like an outbound channel, for example. Um, usually because it takes less leads to get to a contract.
And then also those contracts are going to be better than the kind that you would get through those other channels. So number of leads per month, what I can tell you is a function of two things.
Number one, your budget. Budgets that we work with range from on the low end, like four-ish grand a month, all the way up to into the six-figure range.
We have many clients in that range. Usually they don't start there.
Very few people people call me up and say i'm ready to spend 200 grand a month on ppc let's start the campaigns tomorrow usually that's like they've already been doing it and they're switching it to us or they start with us at 20 grand a month and then they scale up into the six figure range um so so it's a function of that and then secondarily it's going to be a function of your cost per lead Now cost per lead is one of the hardest metrics to pin down because it depends so much on your circumstances. That's going to be your budget as well as the exact markets that you're targeting and things like that.
Well, it also comes down to cost per lead. Yes.
Market spend. I guess where I was going to go is the conversion part, which is cost of deal, right? Cost to acquire.

But yeah, I mean, listen, Phoenix was brutal.

Like, are you even working with people in Phoenix?

Because I spent over a decade in Phoenix.

It is brutal.

Do you have clients in Phoenix?

I say that respectfully because like, I don't want to go to a gunfight every day of my life anymore.

It is tough.

Relative to like, you go to, there's no easy market.

I think you and I would agree with that. But like like Oklahoma is damn sure not as difficult as Phoenix, Arizona.
You know, if we're talking specifically PPC as a marketing channel, I think that in general, people are a little bit kind of skewed in terms of what they think is easier and not based on other marketing

channels so like let's just say let's just say i had to like bet my life on the marketing campaign being successful and i'm choosing a market for that campaign to be in um phoenix wouldn't be far from the top of my list of easiest markets to run ppc in um markets i'd be really scared of, like Amarillo, Texas, Richmond, Virginia, small markets. Those are the ones that you have to be afraid of in PPC.
So big competitive markets, I don't have any problem with that because here's the thing. If you're the best at running the ads, which is like, I literally have an almost 40-person team now that focuses all day, every day.
How do we be the best at running ads right so so when it comes to like can we be the best at that i'm not even concerned so if you go into big markets there's lots of opportunity all you have to do to get that opportunity is be better than everybody else now if i'm going to small markets now you're just scraping over like small amounts of opportunity that are available so what that does is it's like the the the person's gonna click right then, so then everybody has a chance to put the bids on its pay-per-click system. It runs on an auction.
And now we got a bid insanely high just because there's no other way for us to spend budget right now versus in Phoenix, I could have hundreds of clicks coming across the desk, so to speak. And, and we can just choose just the right ones that we want to be able to craft the investment that we're looking for.
So, so I would say actually for a lot of channels, let's just say you're talking cold calling. You go into the middle of nowhere in Texas, you're going to have an easier time than you are in Dallas-Fort Worth.
In PPC, you're probably going to have an easier time in Dallas-Fort Worth than you are in the middle of nowhere in Texas, because it's all about the population that you target. You target more population, there's going to be more searches.
If there's more searches, then you have the ability to be more targeted in which ones you want versus being like a flipper that wants to buy from wholesalers and buys in two zip codes and needs to buy a hundred flips a year. Do you think you have to be the highest bidder every single time you see a deal if you're that flipper? Yeah, you do.
And it means that you're going to be like in a tighter financial situation versus if you just like got to find like those few deals that are right for you. Does that make sense? So what do you say to all the people that, you know, I do national, national PPC, what do you say to them? Do you recommend it? Don't recommend it? Well, recommend or don't recommend is, um, is a hard thing because the, do we have clients that absolutely kill it in that model? Yes, we do.
Do we also have clients that we've recommended it to, and then it fallen on face? Absolutely, right? So I like to figure out, you know, what is working for some people. Like right now, we have about 190 companies that we're doing this marketing for.
So as you can imagine, in all kinds of different models, in all kinds of different markets, like we've got somebody doing that successfully. so what I've learned is instead of just like following people's opinions like you'll notice

you'll hear really polarizing things like you should definitely be national you should definitely

be in a local market. You should have every exit strategy.
You should have no one exit strategy. You should here's like the belief that I've like gathered.
Because I think a lot of people who have different opinions about things are essentially saying the same thing, but they just don't realize they're saying the same thing. I would say that there's two words that mean opposite things that are both very positive.
The first one is the word focus. The second, diversification.
If you look at a typical real estate investment business, there's three things that you can choose to either be focused or diversified on. Number one, what marketing channels do you have? Number two, what exit strategies do you have? Number three, what markets are you in? So what you'll find is some people are really heavy on the local model.
They're like, why would you ever split your focus that way? Why would you be diversified across markets? There's more deals to be done in your market. But if you look at those people's businesses, they have every marketing channel in the books and they have every exit strategy in the books.
And if you look from a PPC standpoint, because they're targeting less population, they have a higher cost per lead. So what they do is they pay a lot of money for leads and then they are the best experts in the world at monetizing those leads.
Versus if you look at a more national model, oftentimes what people are advocating for there is maybe we're going to have like one, maybe two exit strategies and we're going to have probably a single marketing channel, which might be PPC only, but then we're going to be diversified on the markets. Right.
And those people look at these other people who have every exit strategy and every marketing channel in one market and say, why are they so diversified? Why not be focused? And everybody's like just focusing and diversifying in other ways. The moral of the story is if you're trying to be diversified on your marketing channel and on your exit and on your market, then it's just too much.
But you have to kind of be selective about which ones you're in. And if you do that national model, basically what happens is the more markets you target, the lower your cost per lead gets in PPC.
So that is great, right? And your cap goes up, right? You could spend like companies that are spending a million dollars a month on PPC are often going to be in many, many markets.

But what you also have to accept is you're not going to be as good at monetizing those leads across anywhere and everywhere.

But at the same time, those leads are cheaper, right?

So if you just look at one of those businesses, they get cheaper leads and they don't make quite as much money per lead.

And altogether, it works out versus a local market.

You're monetizing the heck out of every single lead, squeeze every single drop out of that lemon. Um, but those lemons are expensive.
You don't get that many of them. I think that was a great, probably the best way I've ever heard someone explain that analogy.
Cause I actually talked in a very similar way about diversification, diversifying your exit and diversifying your markets. Um, because I actually don't believe in being a one trip pony.
I know there's a lot of people out there that kind of stick to the wholesale model. I can appreciate.
I still wholesale. But if you have a diverse exit strategy, you can wholesale it, flip it, or keep it yourself, then you can really open everything up.
So do you have your suggested formula for a clientele? Meaning, out of the three prongs you say, the marketing, the exit, and then the location. Do you say there should be a one to two formula, like one should be focused on marketing and then exit and location be diversified? Do you have kind of your own formula that you suggest? As a real estate investor, one of the most challenging hurdles you'll face is figuring out how to fund your first project and then how to keep the money rolling in for all the projects that follow while holding onto as much of your profits as you can.
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Again, that link is fundandgrow.com forward slash flip. I mean, I guess the easiest way I could describe this is the smaller the company, the more focused it needs to be.
As you get larger and larger, then a little bit more diversified is good. With exits specifically, I think the moment you can branch outside of wholesale and get any exit strategy that touches the MLS, we see across our clients that that correlates a ton with success.
And that could be flipping. It could be wholetailing.
It could be novating. It doesn't really matter what it is.

What matters is that you're not at the whim of cash buyers. You're able to sell the retail buyers somehow that are willing to pay significantly more and then also willing to buy in areas where it might be hard to find cash buyers.
So that's a, like, if there's anything we recommend a ton, it's like, it doesn't matter which one it is just some exit strategy that hits the MLS, um, is usually something we see that changes the game for our clients. Yeah.
I think it's, um, novation has really been a big thing. You know, I'm old enough to have a different definition of what a novation is.
Uh, but these kiddos these days, they've turned it essentially into like wholesaling a property onto the MLS essentially is what it is, right? Which is fine. I don't care how we define it.
That's what people know it is. So that's what it is.
And it's really not that difficult, right? And you know, the ability to offer more, the seller liking that more, you get to monetize each lead, right? And I preach diversity and exit to monetize each lead. That's why I preach it, right? So if you're just a wholesaler, if you're just a hammer, everything's a nail, right? Well, not everything is a nail.
And so being able to do that really opens it up. But you as the service provider, you don't have a whole lot of say in that for your clients, right? I mean,

you can say, hey, you know, because I would assume not every single one of your clients is 100% always, oh my god, amazing. They're probably like, hey, I want more leads, or there's too many of my leads on the MLS or whatever.
Do you give them like some like, hey, you know, are you flipping these? Are you giving any suggestion?

Because I tell people the best way to play this game, in my opinion, is wide.

I'm not the niche down, find the probate lead only type of business owner.

I'm a wide. So I'm not national, but I'm in like North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, like the Sunbelt stage.
Right. But it gives me a lot of diversity.
Yeah. Well, 100%.
I can tell you a lot of people in that position were happy when interest rates went up and some markets, like we talked about Phoenix being a hard market at that time. It was the worst of all the markets.
Right it's better. Before that, it was better.
But if you're in one market, you are subject to whatever flows in that market. But to answer your question, and this is why before when you asked me, what do we do? I said, we're kind of like a digital marketing agency.
But that sort of undersells what we do. The reason is at our core, what we are is basically a data company.
I founded this company on the basis of data aggregation and what could be done in this industry because we're in what's called a data sparse industry. And I'll just describe like essentially what that means is you have a business that you can have a business that's absolutely killing it in real estate investing, working with 10 customers each month.
How many businesses in the world can you work with 10 customers each month and be killing it? Very few. So that's a good thing.
But what that means is if you're then trying to track that success back to marketing and dial it down, you're dealing with situations where I have to spend money on this marketing channel for three years to get enough sample size to know how it actually works or to know if this landing page or that landing page works better or whatever the case is. So we aggregate that data together and that allows us to do a lot of really cool things.
So what we do with our clients is we track everything throughout their whole funnel. Everything from like where most companies stop is like a leads generated.
That's our job. The rest of it, you do your thing.
We actually track everything from that point on. And then what we can do is put their data up against our average client so we can figure out where they're succeeding and where they're not.
So when we first start, what we would do is basically say, well, our goal is to go from point A to point B. There's 100 miles between point A and point B.
We have six months. We need to move this many miles per day.
Essentially that, right? And we're mapping all these funnel metrics out. And then we can see as we're going along, are we tracking for those things or are we not? So we can show a client like, hey, you're doing okay, except your contact rate on leads is low.
You might want to look at these things. Or once you get opportunities, you're not closing them as well.
You're often disqualifying them for retail. You might want to look at other exit options.
So because we have all that limits objective, I can tell you like 75 to 90% of the time I'm pulling this number out of thin air. I have no idea what it is, but that's what my gut says.
When people say like, this is my problem with my marketing, they're wrong about what the problem is. And the data says something different.
It's like, I have too many spam leads. Meanwhile, they have 7% spam leads.
7% is normal. And the issue is that we have 19 opportunities per contract when it should be five so if you have the right data it makes it like clear as infinitely easier yeah you're speaking my language this is that this is why like you and i were just talking about this like too many people want to blame the service provider and not actually look internally or look at the mirror like oh i'm I'm shit at sales.
I'm terrible at negotiating. I don't have enough exit strategies.
I don't even know what an ovation is. Stop the blaming and start to look internally.
That's the point. You have 19 opportunities.
You should be one out of 15. What's going on here? Now, my question to you just out of curiosity is, how are you getting that info? Are it to you like meaning they're reporting it to us yeah okay so then you also get to say well i can only help you guys as good as you report the actual information to me right so if you're reporting incorrect information to me i can't really help you guys right if you just say everything is spam and really there's only 7% and it's because we looked up these leads, you just have wrong expectations, right? And this goes back to you and I discussed the fifth pillar of success, which is proper time result expectation.
If you have improper expectations, then you're gonna be screwed. Everyone is gonna be to blame, except for you, of course.
Yeah, yeah, it happens. And honestly, it also happens the other way.
Like how many agencies, when there's a problem with lead flow, they just tell the client, we'll just spend more money. Or how often does it happen that the client is closing well and the agency says, well, it's because you're not closing well enough or something.
So we use this to hold ourselves accountable too. And the other thing that's really cool when you track all your data on a per lead basis is a lot of people just don't think about this, right? They think like, oh, PPC as a marketing channel produces a 5X return, for example.
But what they don't think is, is it possible that there's things within PPC that are producing a fantastic return and things within PPC where I'm not making money? And usually if you have PPC as a whole producing a 5X return, there's things that you're doing that are producing a 10X return. And then there's things that you're doing that are producing 0X.
And if you can like learn those and dial them in or worse, like maybe it's 2X on average, but then there's something that's 5X and there's other things that are 1X. I guess my point is like using that data, we can really dial that deep.
And because we have that data from so many companies, we, we do tons of testing. Like I, we are the only agency that has a dedicated research and development department where that's all we do is just test, test, test everything from like landing pages, these little things to bid strategies within Google to, uh, add copy to like the way that we're setting up our database, the way that we're feeding feedback into Google.
And that's why if you like, what I can promise anybody listening to this is if you really strive to understand what makes quality PPC marketing, what you realize about Babe and Collective is that we have an enterprise level product from a digital marketing agency standpoint that's for a small to medium sized business. And it's because we have all this data that we can use and aggregate together.
And, and, and it allows us to do like higher level strategies than you can typically make happen with the kind of budgets that you have in this industry. So you're 100% right in terms of talking about data.
And I think data is what most people don't want to rely on. And I'll bring this down to more of the entry level newbie investor, which isn't totally always your client, right? Most of your clients need to be spending somewhere between four and $100,000 as you were kind of mentioning, right? So this vertical of marketing isn't for everybody.
Even I will tell people, if you're brand new, this is probably not your first choice. But data tells the needle for all marketing strategies, not just this one, including something as free as agent outreach is free.
You can go to Zillow, you can reach out to agents, you can use Privy is 150 bucks a month, you can reach out to agents, there's little cost. But how many calls are you making out of those calls? How many times you actually talked to an agent? From that how many conversations actually are getting to a place of getting an offer out? How many offers were made, right? Meaning it's just data.
And if you can compile enough data, you will actually understand how and where you can rely on that data. And what I mean by that is in your world, you need runway.
The thing that upsets me most, I have elite inner circle on my coaching program. So the elite inner circle is active real estate investors.
They're your type of client. They have a marketing budget.
They're doing deals, right? So the science flipping has two newbies and for the elite inner circle, which is active investors. And what I tell people is don't go into a relationship with Bateman Collective for 30 or 60 days.
You're not going to get enough runway to say, does it work or does it not work? You go into that relationship for a minimum of six months. So then you actually have to account for, okay, a minimum I'm spending four or five grand a month.
Do I have that in my budget? Right? Because not

that you guys need 30 or 60 days just to get ramped up, but there's still some sort of, you

know, learning curve, getting it all set up and running the leads coming in, getting 15 to 20

leads to get your first deal. All that stuff takes time.
Sellers, you might have three deals,

three, this is three these days. You might have three deals in the first 15.
You might, but they may not all come to fruition for nine months. And people don't get that.
They're literally saying, I have 15 leads. Brandon, this sucks.
What's wrong? Right. And they blame you again, but they're not giving themselves the runway that they're going to need to actually be good at sales, be good at nurturing, and then understand our business is a time and event business, right? Timing and circumstance.
What is the circumstance that's creating the motivation to sell? And then is it the right time right now for them to sell? They might be really wanting to, but they need to finalize the divorce that happens at the end of July. And then they can sign off on the papers.
And then there's going to close in the end of August. Like, so but you don't know that if you give up too early.
Does that all make sense? I'm sure you agree to most of that. Yeah, you're absolutely speaking my language.
Six months is the same thing that I tell people as well. And it's a hard conversation, right? Because when you tell someone, you need to commit to this for six months is the same thing that, that I tell people as well.
Um, and it's, it's a hard conversation, right? Cause when you tell someone, do you need to commit to this for six months? What they think is, well, are you telling me it doesn't work for six months? And I guess like, does it work or not is different from, will you see the results or not? Um, one thing I like to, uh, I like to define, um, and maybe you've heard this before. Maybe you haven't, to be honest, I don't know if this is something that exists everywhere else, or if I just made this up, But what I like to define, and maybe you've heard this before, maybe you haven't.
To be honest, I don't know if this is something that exists everywhere else or if I just made this up. But what I like to talk about with my team and with our clients is the difference between the words performance and results.
And I'll give you an analogy. Let's just say I'm flipping a coin.
The performance of the coin is 50%. It's going to give me 50% of the time heads, 50% of the time tails.
The result of the coin could be, I just flipped this coin twice. I got two tails.
So the result could be 100% tails. Right.
And performance and results could be different, right? So there's always that person who flips the coin twice, gets two tails, and then says, you know what? This coin is broken. It's never going to be a tail doesn't lie.
I just, I just got two tails. Um, and over time performance and results become the same thing, but with smaller samples and we're in a data sparse industry.
So we have to remember that if we're talking like, what's a small sample of marketing in this industry, it could be a hundred thousand dollars. Like people don't realize how much data you need to, to really be able to make like a real, a real analysis of what kind of results you're getting.
So, so anyways, that that's just a simple example. And what I would say is like, if you're starting these campaigns, what's likely happening is that the performance is improving over the first little bit, like maybe week one versus week six, you have better performance, but the result probably takes a full six months in most cases for you to even have enough data to have any idea of where your results stand.
And even then, if you were to build a confidence interval, it'd be like, I have a three X return plus or minus like four X somewhere between a negative one and a like seven X. And that's, that's all you really know.
Yeah. And, and people just, again, people need to understand.
It's not always just the lead part. I just want to bring it back to like, you also have to understand how to negotiate.
You also have to understand how to sell and, and get the number that you want and nurture the relationship. Right.
Uh, it's just too often. I see great, great service providers like yourself, they get blamed for something that's really not totally their fault because they're giving you the lead.
You just aren't doing anything with it. The company is really almost a data company, your point, and you've created it that way because now clients like myself and others can go to you and ask you questions that are data-driven answers so I know how to pivot, right? You might be able to give a suggestion like, hey, based around the last two months, three months, four months, based around your lead flow, your cost, if you pour another two to $5,000 a month on this in the trajectory we're going, we should exponentially be able to see this because your conversion ratio is this.
That type of help from a service provider like yourselves is infinitely invaluable.

And because a lot of times we're too in the trenches to really realize it, right?

We just keep going.

Are we 3x profitable?

Yeah, we're 3x profitable.

Keep going.

You have no feedback, right?

There's no sounding board.

There's no one else going in there and saying, guys, you could be on the precipice of getting a 5X return if you do this little thing right here. Yeah, and it happens all the time, even a mutual connection of ours.
And one of the masterminds that we're in, we had that exact conversation with them. And it turns out it completely changed their business because they got better results, not just from this marketing channel, but also from all their other marketing channels based on what we were able to drive and insights from their data objectively to show you.
What was the change? Was it more sales driven or was it spend driven or what was it? It was, it was, uh, in acquisitions, um, and specifically not, not converting opportunities into contracts, or I guess a lot of leads were being disqualified as not opportunities

that should have been opportunities,

and then also the opportunities weren't closing.

So there was like a cherry picking, essentially.

Of course.

Listen, that's what we want to do with salespeople.

What's the lowest hanging fruit?

I want that.

That way I can, you know.

That's what we do.

So you were able to, you guys do this for all your clients, right? You kind of audit the numbers and you get feedback so you can better advise them on what they should be doing. Exactly.
Yep. And that's our goal is to make that as data driven as possible, because I think there's a lot of people with the intentions of that.
But if you don't have all the data, then you can't do it properly. So that's our goal is to just form the most objective truth to where we can look at it.
We can say this is where, cause just think about it like this. Like to me, everything's a funnel, right? You put, you put money in the top, you get money out the bottom.
The goal is the money out the bottom should be some multiplier of what you put into the top. Right.
Um, this is the cool thing about how funnels work. Um, the more, like if there's something that's like, if your funnel is not working as good as it was six months ago, or if it's not working as well as you want to right now, maybe you just started.
It's because of some ratio in that funnel that's not working out. And in our funnel, this industry is super simple.
We have our ad spend. That's what we put in the top.
And then we have impressions. That's how many people see the ads.
Then we get clicks. Then we get leads.
Then we get net leads. Then we get contact seller leads.
Then opportunities. Then contracts.
Then deals. Then revenue.
Right? So that's like your basic funnel that you work with. And that's specific to PPC.
But for every marketing channel, it's pretty similar. Right? You have money in.
And then you have your number of mailers. And then you have like your response rate, et cetera.
Right? So it works the same for all channels. If it's not working right, it's one of those ratios where people go wrong as they say, I have a ROAS problem.
I have an ROI problem without distilling it and saying, actually everything in my funnel is working right, except I'm not contacting leads at the rate that I should be. So I have a lead contact rate problem.
That's the value of data is it distills a big problem into a very specific pointed problem. And then from there to actually solve that problem sometimes requires a lot of work, but at least you know which problem you're solving and you're not out there trying to decrease your cost per lead because you're bad at sales or something like that.
Yeah, but Brandon, I don't want to do the work. I don't like doing the work, right? I mean, that's the reality is that's what your clients want to say.
That's what they're really saying. When you audit their numbers and you say, guys, if I distill this all the way down, it takes you eight minutes to call the lead.
Everyone else is doing it within 60 seconds. You got to do the work.
Come on. You know what I mean? That's a simple example.
But the fact that you and the entire team at Bateman Collective actually go in, audit the system, coach them to some extent about how you can perform better and execute better. That is the missing link to all service companies is help them be better and they will stay with you longer, right? Essentially be their coach if they don't have coaching or even if they do, because a lot of us, we are too in the trenches, right? You can't see the forest through the trees type of thing.
And being able to provide that type of feedback is invaluable. And again, if you don't know already, I highly encourage you to go to Bateman Collective.
Yes, you should probably be willing to spend somewhere between four or five, six grand a month at least. And so until you're at that, they may not be the right fit, but still have a conversation with them, talk to them, feel them out, figure out where they could be a good fit and when they could be a fit for you.
Brother, I appreciate you coming on. Any last words for our listeners? No, you summed it up super well.
I'm grateful for this time, Justin. One last thing I would say, if you want to reach out to us, there's basically three things that you can do.
So number one, if you listen to this and you just want to see what's it like to work with us, what do we think about your market, whatever, reach out to us.

It's super simple.

Number two, this happens all the time.

If you're running, if you've run campaigns before, it hasn't worked, which is insanely common.

Most of our clients that we take on have gone and worked with a lot of other companies first because transparently we're not very cheap.

So it's also really common.

Someone's been in our funnel for like three years and they went and worked with like four other agencies and now they're just like finally deciding to like

spend the money to do it. Right.
Um, so the biggest mistake that people make is they never figure out

what went wrong. They just kind of move on and try it again, move on and try it again without

pinpointing the problem. We can do an audit of your account where we'll look in, we'll see how

things were run. We'll see what all the metrics are and we'll help you pinpoint what was wrong.
So we can identify, is that something that we can fix or something that can't be fixed? Like maybe for some reason, it's just not going to work for you. Maybe it was, we do think it was sales.
That's the problem. And you don't see how that could have been the problem.
Like we'll tell you, you know, we're not going to get you any better results here. So that's the second thing.
And then the last thing, if you want to just learn a lot more about digital marketing, learn about these channels, how they work for your business. I think it's one of the best things a business owner can do if they're interested in a specific marketing channel to learn enough to be dangerous in that marketing channel so that they can have good quality strategic conversations.
I made a podcast with the whole goal of that specific thing. It's called the Collective Cl.
Go check it out. We talk, we've got a few series in there.
We've got one that's an eight part series called PPC essentials, where we go through everything we do in through eight separate episodes, talking about in detail, how we run campaigns. If you're interested in potentially doing this yourself, or, or you want to learn about the inner workings.
And then we have a lot of conversations, like I just interviewed Justin on there talking about, you know, how your mindset affects how

you could have success with your with your marketing and with scaling your business.

But yeah, highly recommended to check that out.

Hell yeah. You're a go giver, dude.
Make sure everyone go check out the podcast and also just

go to Bateman Collective. I mean, this is a strategy I've been using for years.
I believe

in it. That's why he's here.
Thank you for joining us all in the science flipping. And with that said,

Thank you. Also, just go to Bateman Collective.
I mean, this is a strategy I've been using for years. I believe in it.
That's why he's here.

Thank you for joining us all on the science flipping.

And with that said, stay tuned for the next episode and next guest.