“We Love Ads & 3 Beds, 2 Baths”
Q&A With Motivated Leads Co-Founder Bryan Driscoll
By Carole VanSickle Ellis
I got into investing first, failed at that first, then got into marketing, then got back into real estate,” states Bryan Driscoll with characteristic forthrightness when asked about his early days as a real estate investor. Back in 1998 when Driscoll first entered the investing world courtesy of the classic Ron LeGrand course that brought so many investors into the space in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the future co-founder of Motivated Leads was not really sure what to do with the leads he generated.
“I was only about 18 years old,” Driscoll said wryly. “At the time the best decision seemed like going into advertising instead, so I got into digital marketing.”
Entering the digital ad space in its earliest heydays, Driscoll thrived, providing clients with search engine optimization (SEO) services and working in a wide swath of industries. A decade later, he decided to leverage his skills back into real estate investing, making a conscientious decision to invest in only one ZIP code.
“I don’t want to drive too far and I’m super busy,” he laughed, “so I try to be really cognizant about time.”
While Driscoll stayed in one place and built up his portfolio, however, his lead generation abilities enabled him to find leads anywhere, and this led to the creation of the business he runs today with co-founder Chad Keller. The company generates more than 5,000 leads each month for more than 400 clients nationwide, and those leads average a 10-15% close rate for clients.
REI INK sat down with Driscoll to talk lead generation, real estate, and how to make the most of high-quality leads in any market.
How did you get into the lead-generation business for real estate investors?
Well, it started when I bought my first property. Like many investors, it was a wholesale deal and I had to pay a wholesale fee. I did not mind that because the numbers made sense, but it got me thinking. I thought, “I bet I could slap up a website locally and generate my own leads way cheaper than this.” I partnered up with Chad; we tried it out, and we crushed it. It just made sense. My background was all national marketing in highly competitive spaces, so generating business locally was, by comparison, a lot easier.
Once we had things running pretty smoothly for our business, I wondered if we could do it for other people. We started running Facebook ads for investors and that went well, but we were seeing a lot of “churn” because real estate investors really hate paying monthly fees, which most advertising agencies charge. Because we are investors ourselves (mainly 3-bedroom, 2-bath homes), that made sense to us, so we started looking at a model that involved generating leads on our dime, then selling them to real estate investors without monthly fees. They only pay for the lead, and there are no contracts or anything. That spiraled so successfully it transformed our business into what it is today.
Your website says you provide the leads and it is up to the investor to close them. Do you have advice for investors on getting to closing?
Absolutely. It can be tough for investors because many of them do not have processes in place in their business for getting leads to closing. We want our clients to successfully close leads so they will need more leads, so we follow up every 14 days just to see how things are going and provide a little help if it is needed. If a client says they are not closing their leads, we try to help them break down their systems to see what the problem is. We look at the quality of the leads and the caliber of their process. If it is the leads, we fix it. If it is the process, we try to help them fix it.
What types of things do you tell your clients to do to get the best results from their leads?
First of all, I recommend that whether you are working with us or doing some other type of lead generation, you have to have really good KPIs (key performance indicators) so you can tell what is and isn’t working in your process. In my investing business, I track:
» How many leads I get
» How many leads turned into appointments
» How many appointments showed up
» How contracts were sent as a result of those appointments
» How many deals we closed
These metrics enable us to break down the process with our clients and examine what is going right and wrong. For example, if your leads are not turning into appointments, maybe there is a traffic problem or a messaging problem that is affecting your conversion. If you are getting qualified leads that come to appointments but you are not sending out contracts, maybe it is an issue with your sales team. If the contracts are going out but not closing, maybe you are making offers that are not working. One of our main strengths is that we can look at our clients’ KPIs, and that helps us help them.
Also, this is crucial: You must call or text within two minutes of contact for any leads generated online. If you fail in this, a lot of those people will have already moved on because people who are submitting their information online do not wait around. They start scrolling again as soon as they have filled out your form, and they will keep filling out forms until someone reaches out to them and they feel like they have accomplished their goal and taken steps to solve their problem. We recommend setting up an auto-text system that thanks people for filling out the form as soon as they submit it and directs them to an automated appointment system so that they will hopefully stop scrolling, stop reaching out to other investors, and start preparing for their meeting with you.
So, what is one of your favorite client success stories?
Well, of course we have a lot, but one of my favorites is a guy who was on our podcast, “Eat, Sleep, Invest,” recently, named Liam Dalbow. He is only 25 years old and has 27 rental properties, and he said we are his number-one marketing source. He recently did a deal using one of our leads and made $65,000 on that one deal. He is a great example of using our product to really ramp things up in your real estate business, and we are really proud of the work we have done for him.
Learn more about Bryan Driscoll, Motivated Leads, and the “Eat, Sleep, Invest” podcast at MotivatedLeads.com.
