Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Seth Williams, and today I'm talking with a recent acquaintance named Jeremy Resmer.

So Jeremy reached out to me recently because he told me about a new marketing tactic he's been using to find motivated sellers involving TV ads. Now, I've talked with another land investor named Larry Jarnigo, who has also tried this out and has seen some pretty decent results with it. But Larry was doing this more for conventional TV, like the TV you just watch on like network television coming through the antenna in your house and cable TV. And with that kind of TV advertising and the commercials show up for everybody who's watching, that's like a 30-second TV spot.

Jeremy's approach is a little bit different. So he created this and tested it for twelve months and went from doing 48 to 86 deals without changing anything else about their marketing for those twelve months. So they know it has made a notable improvement and their focus is mostly on houses. But as we've seen with pretty much every other household seller out there, this kind of thing can just as well be used for land as well.

And Jeremy's company is called Connected TV where they serve 30-second unskippable TV spots. But it's actually a little bit different because they can target very specific people and serve these up to motivated seller lists and they can retarget any lead in your database. They can retarget any person that goes to your website or PPC landing page. It's like sniper marketing where they only serve these TV ads to the people that they want to reach, rather than using a shotgun approach to serve TV ads to everyone who just happens to be watching at that particular time. And they've been using this successfully in their house business for well over a year.

And aside from their clients, he doesn't know anybody else who is doing this. So we're going to talk about all the questions that I could think of about how this works. There's going to be some overlap between this and the interview I did with Larry, but I think there's going to be different questions because of how these ads are served up and just the different approach for who ends up seeing them and what you say in the ad and all this stuff. So I'm excited to get into this.

And this could be a really, I guess, attractive alternative to direct mail. Or even if you've tried other types of marketing mediums and they're just not working out for you, whether it's the cost or the experience, there's something about it that isn't going well, this could be something worth considering.

So, Jeremy, welcome. How you doing?

Jeremy: Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for the introduction. You explained that very well. So I'm like, man, maybe he should be the one explaining.

Seth: Well, actually, I explained that using the words that you told me, so you kind of explained it, I just said it. Thanks for the good information you gave me. So why don't we start from the very beginning? What is your history as a real estate investor, and how did you get to this point where you're now working on TV ads like this?

Jeremy: Yeah, I'll try to give you the abbreviated version. So I live in Nashville. In 2016, I bought a course and wanted to learn how to wholesale houses and heard a guy on Bigger Pockets. His name was Tom Crow, Wholesaling, Inc. And man, the guy was just full of excitement and energy. I said, “Yep, I'm going to do this. It's time.” Just what was happening in my life. I just adopted two kids. My wife and I just moved back from overseas. So a lot of things were happening and the timing was right. So I got involved in, basically bought a course and just started taking action. Didn't have a clue what I knew.

It was still Nashville. It was still pretty competitive, but it was a different time in the market. And I found that I was really bad at wholesaling back then. I had two really fantastic deals that fell through right away. And I was like, man, there's got to be a better way. Is this what happens on all those deals? 230k assignment fees, had the buyers locked up and everything. And then we ran into some title issues and couldn't close the deals.

So anyways, I ended up getting into flipping in Nashville and had mild success, but really was like, man, this is like a job. So over time, I started to kind of get better at negotiating and figuring out the wholesaling side of the business and started to move in that direction.

And then lo and behold, someone reached out to me and said, hey, I've got a piece of land in like Knox County, Tennessee. And they, you know, would you be interested in selling? And so that was my first dive into the land business. And from that point, know, made out pretty good and realized, holy cow. Like, land's easy. I don't even have to go see the property. I just make an offer, and then we go and either find a buyer or buy it and start posting on Craigslist and Facebook and all the things, right?

Then I started to get excited about that, and I had shiny object syndrome and started to do all the things and realized, holy crap, this is a lot. I started doing land. I started buying rentals. I was buying flips in 2019. I went from zero to 50 rental properties in eleven months. And whoa. Basically was on a tear, but at the same time realized, hey, I got to get out of my own way. I got to figure out a way to have a life because I was out before my kids would wake up.

Was on the job, managing contractors, going, handling inbound leads. I just was doing it all and it was not sustainable. So in 2020, we had a really good 2020, of course, COVID hit, but we picked up two apartment buildings. We started to make a transition. I thought I was going to do land full-time. We bought some really great properties. Some things happened and instead of transitioning entirely to land, then I found a new market, Myrtle Beach, where my parents lived.

And so anyways, over the course of a year, I transitioned from Tennessee, doing really well, buying a lot of rentals, figuring out the wholesale game, to starting to build in a whole new market in South Carolina. So fast forward to today. I've got twelve people on my team. We've got a couple of people in Tennessee, we've got a couple of people in South Carolina, four acquisition managers. And so we are buying houses in Tennessee, we're buying houses in South Carolina, and then we have a land team as well. And we're buying nationwide.

So, got a lot going on. It took a long time to kind of build, but to be honest with you, a lot of it was really contingent upon me getting out of the way and no longer having to go see the houses and do all the things. And so once I was able to kind of build that team, I realized, holy crap, I was usually the problem. And so having people that could focus on specific tasks and do them better than me was really a big secret, a big part of our success.

So that's a little bit about where we're at now, 2023. We're on pace right now to do anywhere between 100 and 110 house transactions. And I'm hoping we can get to 20 land deals.

Seth: Well, it sounds like you've definitely been around the block and you've done a lot of things and you're not just some media guy pretending he understands what real estate investors are doing. Like, you've really been doing this for a long time now, so it's very impressive.

So, historically speaking, what have been your other marketing channels in the past prior to discovering this TV ad? Like, how did you find your deals?

Jeremy: Yeah. So, in Nashville, I started out with direct mail. I actually found my very first deal on Craigslist, but then I realized, hey, I'm not going to continue doing that for very long. But I did find my first deal there. And then I started doing direct mail and moved to pay-per-click and then SEO, and then also found that a lot of other wholesalers had deals. So I was buying from other wholesalers.

And then really around 2020, when I made that shift out of Nashville and started focusing on South Carolina, I really went pretty hard into the online. I wanted to create a brand essentially where a lot of people, they're trying to always see their returns by marketing channel. And I think that's great.

But my goal was, how can we create a brand and the messaging that will drive inbound leads? I didn't like cold calling. I didn't like texting. I tried them, but my focus was, I like inbound leads where people are searching for us. And so we did SEO in Myrtle Beach, had limited success, didn't have any other channels going. Then I realized, holy cow, I have a really good acquisitions guy. I got to feed him. Got into cold calling, got into pay-per-click, and we did pretty well with those. But I still felt like, man, we were having some issues. There was turnover on the cold calling side. It wasn't me doing the cold calling.

So finally I made the full switch and I said, okay, let's just go full out. So direct mail started to perform really well for us over there. We got consistent with it. That was the main thing pay-per-click did okay. Then we started to invest in Facebook ads. And in the early days of Facebook ads, or earlier, before all the changes were made, we had a lot of success with that. So every time we had a deal or two deals, I said, hey, we've got enough capacity to take more of these inbound leads, so let's keep investing in new channels.

So eventually in 2020, we got involved in radio, and then in 2021 regular TV ads. And then in 2022, we decided, that's when I met these other guys who’re friends of mine who reached out to me about connected TV and said, “Hey, we'd love to do a test in real estate, and you're pulling lists, you're doing all these things. We have all these capabilities to reach people and not reach other people that you don't want to reach. Would you be interested in testing this out?” So we did, and I agreed to test everything for twelve months without making any changes to personnel and to any of the other marketing channels. All the spend stayed the same.

So at the time, we had SEO, pay-per-click, Facebook ads, direct mail, radio, TV, and then connected TV. I don't know if I'm missing anything. But it was pretty robust, we were spending around 30,000 per month. I know there's people spending a lot more, but there's also people spending a lot less, so I felt like that was a healthy place to be. We had success the prior year. We did 48 deals, and by doing that, we ended up ending the year in 2022 with 86 properties moved.

And so that was a huge eye-opener for me because we started to see all of these new ways to market to people, new ways to reach specific niches, we could target down to the house level. So one person in a cul-de-sac could get an ad from us. Maybe they were 40-plus, their home value was a certain amount. And then the guy next door was maybe only 32 years old. So he didn't reach our target age. Maybe his home value was too much, or he just didn't fit the buy box.

And so literally, we were serving ads to the very people that we wanted to see our TV ad. And so that's how we kind of jumped into it. And I didn't know any of this stuff. I was just asking questions because the team said, hey, we can do the production, and we can manage the campaigns. And so for me, I just started kind of working with them on building this out, and what's working, and what are the possibilities.

And so essentially what happened is I realized, holy cow, I've got thousands and thousands of leads in my database that haven't been touched, right? We've got to follow up, but for whatever reason, one thing or the next, those are just cold leads. What can we do with those? Well, let's create a campaign.

So we literally could export that list into connected TV. We can match them, right? Our system would match them about 70% to 80%, and then now reach out to them with a 30-second unskippable TV ad. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And then we had other niche lists where we're like, well, we're sending direct mail, or if anybody's cold calling or texting, before the mail hits them or before the texting hits them, you may even be able to hit them with a TV ad. And so we're like, okay, that's another bucket, right?

And then what about those people that are coming to our landing page? Or maybe those people that are for pay-per-click, they're coming to that landing page or homepage. And whether they take action or not, it makes no difference to us. We've got a tracking pixel on there that says, hey, John Smith just came to your site. When John Smith's online streaming serves him an ad, that's pretty cool, right? Because if he abandons and never takes action, he could fill out a form, or he could call, or he doesn't do anything and just leaves the site.

So what was really cool was now we could reinforce our message, because if he left the site, we go and find him, and maybe he sees that. He's like, oh, man, I was just at that site. I didn't do anything. But man, these guys must be huge because they're everywhere. It's like they're following me around, right? And maybe that encourages him to reengage or come back to the site or to place that phone call, or even for those people who filled out a form or did call us. Now that retargeting pixel finds them when they're online, we serve them that ad.

And again, we're still reinforcing the message of, like, wow, these guys are everywhere. I just talked to them earlier today. They're coming out to my house to make me an offer. I definitely called the right company, right? So it just kind of confirms and reinforces your message.

And so we just started to see all the possibilities of this and how we can continue to engage and get into the living room and in the palm of people's lives, essentially, or in their hands. So that is some of the possibilities that got me really excited. And then we started to see those results.

Seth: So I've got a ton of questions that have come up.

Jeremy: I want to hear them.

Seth: Man, I’m pretty excited. And these are going to be all over the place. But one question. When you said that you spend $30,000 per month for all of your different advertising, sounds like you're doing a lot, way more than the average land investor out there. So how much of that cost is just for the CTV ads? Could a person feasibly just do these TV ads and nothing else? Or how many deals come from just the TV stuff?

Jeremy: This is the beauty and the challenge of connected TV. And here's what I mean by that. If you're doing SEO and someone comes to your site and they don't take action, well, we're going to retarget them with a TV ad. And so this happens all across the board, right? Because regular TV, it drives search. If someone sees you on the morning news or Fox or ESPN or whatever people are watching, if they see that ad, then they go to your website. And now all of a sudden, it's hard to track. Did they come to my website because they were searching for us? Did they see the TV ad?

And so what happens is all of your channels are working together with connected TV because whether it's retargeting or it's a list or maybe it's direct mail, and maybe on your direct mail piece, you have your company name and somebody goes to your website. Boom. Now we're retargeting them and hitting them with an ad.

Again, whether it's land or houses, it makes no difference what connected TV does. The way that I best can describe it is it will raise the tide. When high tide raises all ships, it's the same thing. It actually improves the efficiency of all of your other marketing because now people are exposed to your brand. There's credibility attached to that, right? Because, dude, if you're on TV, oh, man, this must be the big shot in my market. This must be so expensive. Well, we can run connected TV based on your budget. So if you wanted to run it for $2,500, if you wanted to run it for $5,000, heck, if you want to run it for $10,000, we can adjust that.

So for my company, you ask specifically what we spend. We spend $5,000 per month and that gets us 150,000 impressions. So an impression is when one ad is served to a potential customer or someone that's watching. So to be able to target people that way and serve that many ads you've got about a 92% to 97% completion rate.

And that's because the ads are unskippable, right? So they have to watch the whole thing. And the cool part is, when people are watching regular TV, a lot of times they just have it on for background or noise or whatever. When they're watching connected TV, when they're watching a show, or when they've got their device in front of them and they're watching something there, they're watching because they want to. They choose to. They're paying attention.

And so with connected TV, it's a little bit of a different experience because those people, sometimes they might be annoyed like, oh man, I got to watch this commercial. But guess what? They have to watch that commercial in order to continue watching the show that they're paying attention to. So by their very nature—they've already done studies on this—people actually pay more attention to connected TV than they do with regular TV because it's kind of that gatekeeping to get to the next part or that next segment in the show that they're watching, if that makes sense.

Seth: Yeah, totally. Couldn't you track what leads are coming into this if you used a unique phone number, URL, and QR code that kind of said, hey, this lead is coming from this source?

Jeremy: Absolutely. So yes, you can do that. And we've tested all those things out and we have the back end to our system.

You can actually track where they were at after they watched the ad, or where they were at before they came to your site. We can see, hey, did they go to Google first? Did they go to they go to Facebook or do they go direct? We can see all of that. So yes, you can track it if you have a unique phone number, and you certainly want to do that.

However, just like regular TV, sometimes people will see the ad and like, hey, they're watching a show so they're not going to be interrupted right then and there. And sometimes those people will come back later on and they'll go direct to your website. And so you just have to really pay careful attention. If you have someone who is screening your calls, a lead intake person, or if you're talking directly to your sellers, you just want to ask the question, hey, where did you hear about us? Do you see us on TV?

Was it the radio? And sometimes people say, oh no, I heard you on the radio. And we can actually track that they came from TV. Or sometimes it looks like SEO and so we don't know. But it's forced us to look at kind of measure our marketing a little bit differently. Because if you only have one or two marketing channels, you know where those leads come from right there's sometimes perfect attribution when you've got TV and radio and connected TV and direct mail, all these channels are kind of working together.

And so if somebody's watching you on TV and they go to your website and they fill out a form, it looks like, oh, well, my SEO is working really well, but connected TV, they drive search, and so you don't always know exactly. And so where we've kind of pivoted as far as measuring, where we're no longer just measuring by channel. We look at our total ad spend and we say, hey, what's the return on total spend? So it's just a little bit different way of looking at it, just because we have so many things going on.

And you can't always say, well, someone heard me on the radio. They heard me on TV, they saw us on pay-per-click. Well, which one is that? How do you attribute that lead, you know what I'm saying? So it can muddy the waters a little bit if you have a lot going. But, yeah, you certainly could if you were just doing connected TV and direct mail, I mean, you certainly could track that specifically to a phone number or QR code, for sure. And we do that.

Seth: Maybe we should clarify, what exactly does connected TV do? Is it just creating the ad or do you manage the ad spend and the targeting for each person? If somebody has never done online advertising before, they have no idea what they're doing, do you help them with that or how far do you go?

Jeremy: Yeah, so this is a done-for-you service. So it's actually called Investor CTV, is what the company is called. And so connected TV is actually the glass TV.

Like, behind me here, I've got my TV there. If somebody is streaming on a regular glass TV, like in a living room, that's connected TV. There's also something called OTT, without getting into the weeds. But if you have a mobile device, your phone, or an iPad, that's considered OTT, which is like over-the-top is what that's short for. The bottom line is none of that really matters. What's most important is connected TV.

We call it Investor CTV, but we're actually able to deliver ads both to the glass TV in your living room as well as all of your mobile devices as well. So we do all of that. And so what we do is we would work with you to create your ad. We would find wherever your location is, we get a green screen, we set that up, we produce that in the studio, and then our team will cut the ad and then go through that with you, with the client, make sure everything is what they want it to be. We make the adjustments, and then we finalize that ad.

And then we have a whole campaign team that is putting things together, trying to figure out specifically who are we serving the ads to? Who is your demographic? Is it someone that's 40-plus or 45-plus. They own a home. The home is between 50,000 and 150,000. Or maybe you're not buying homes. You're just doing land investing. And you say, hey, you know what? I've got all of these lists, and my lists are in these three counties, five acres plus. And we can literally upload all of those lists before you even send the direct mail. Or we can do it after; it makes no difference. But we can do this, and it's an ongoing process.

And so you can literally serve them a 30-second ad: “Hey, this is Jeremy at Value Land Buyers. Do you have a piece of land that you inherited? Do you have a piece of land that you no longer want or something changed in your life?” Whatever the messaging is, right? And so they can actually see the ad before they get that mail piece, and they'll also get it after because we were hitting them repeatedly. We try to hit them sometimes seven, eight, or 10 times per week, depending on the list, depending on how motivated we think they might be. And so we have a whole team that creates all that for you.

So essentially, what you would be responsible for is helping us to get the lists, helping us to set up the campaign and the commercial. We do all that with you, and then once that's live, you can run this thing without changing anything. You're just going to start getting phone calls and people coming to your website, and you'll get that engagement from people. And that is an ongoing process. There's nothing you have to do.

And then our campaign team will review results with you every month, go over the reporting. We can make tweaks to your campaign. Let's say you're in three counties in Florida, and you say, hey, you know what? I want to mail to Pueblo, Colorado. Well, we can literally just add that list. Nothing has to change in the matter of the same day. We make the change to your campaign. We upload the list to Pueblo, Colorado. And now all of a sudden, those people who you're sending mail to in Pueblo are now seeing your 30-second TV spots.

It's really cool. It's really fast, and it's super targeted.

Seth: Is there, like, an example of one of these ads that I can play right now just to show people? What are we talking about? What does this ad say? What does it look like?

Jeremy: Yeah, absolutely. I'll get that for you.

[TV ad plays]

“Do you want a home and you want to sell fast at a fair price? I will make you a free, no-obligation cash offer.

“If you're even thinking about selling your home, give us a call at 843-305-8888. That's 843-305-8888.”

Seth: What does it cost to create this actual ad? I know you said earlier, I think you spent about $5,000 per month for the ad spend to get it out there. But when it comes to actually making the ad itself, do I have to go to some local studio and do it, or do I have to travel to you? Or what is the cost and involvement to make that thing?

Jeremy: We actually do the whole thing. So let's say you said, hey, I'm in Nashville, Tennessee. We would find a local studio in Nashville that has a green screen. So it might be like a news station or somewhere that has professionals, you know, the whole bit. Everything's going to be professional and look really good. And so we would have one of our guys actually produce the commercial and provide direction while you're there. So he'll be remote and he'll remote direct, and then you'll have the cameras and all that stuff. And all that gets done in about an hour's time. And we can typically do one or two commercials. It just depends what you want to do.

But we do that, we get all the footage, and then we go behind the scenes and edit all of that and then make sure we have the right messaging that you want. Give us your approval, and then we're ready to go live. So it's a really quick process. We could have that done in a week, but we like to tell people, hey, from the time you sign up with us to the time your ad is live and active, we're talking about 30 days or so is about the norm.

And then as far as the cost, so the cost to do that is right around $2,000. So we just charge the $2,000 fee, that covers our cost, the studio, our time to produce all that. So that's not really anything that generates money for us, so to speak, but it at least allows us to cover our cost, and it's a one-time fee. So we do that. And then now you've got an ad or maybe two ads you can be running for two, three years. I'm still running some of the same ads that I shot back in 2021.

Seth: Yeah, that doesn't sound bad at all. I've heard much higher than that for basically the same thing. And then I think you said I don't know if I'm remembering the numbers right, but I think you said for that $5,000, is it 150,000 impressions per week or per month or what was it?

Jeremy: That would be per month. Yeah, 150,000.

Seth: And you also said that you're hitting the same person like seven or eight times, so you're not hitting that many people, you're just hitting that it's airing in front of a person that many times. Is that right?

Jeremy: So what we do is we're going to work with you because there are some people, especially in land, actually, the list rather is so specific. And so with land, it's a little bit different than with houses, okay? With houses, you've got people that fall within a certain buy criteria, a certain range. It's really easy to get all that data through our audience, basically the audience profile that we create.

Now, with land, you don't want to be serving ads if you're a land investor to someone that it's not vacant land, there's a house on the property. And so what we would do is go very specific with your lists because typically land investors, most of the guys that I talk to and work with are either texting, some of them cold call, but everyone's doing direct mail, right? So if you're already pulling that list and you know what your buy box is for land (again, whether you're going after the five acres plus or five to 50 acres or you're just looking for infill lots, doesn't really matter), your list that you're mailing to this is going to support that messaging. And so imagine if husband and wife are sitting in their living room and they get your mail piece and they're looking at it and they're like, okay. And then all of a sudden they get an ad. When they're sitting down watching their show, they're like, “Hey honey, did you ever respond to that company?” Or, “Hey, isn't that the same company that just sent you that letter?”

So now all of a sudden, you do look like you're following around, but you also look like you're massive. You're like, oh my gosh, how did they find us? So you look like you're this huge company, and that provides a lot of credibility. If you're on TV and husband and wife or whatever are sitting there seeing your ad and they just received your direct mail piece or that follows, it doesn't matter. The point is we want them to see us.

It's frequency, right? It's showing an ad to the right people at the right time when they're paying attention and doing it again and again. And that's what connected TV allows for. And I don't feel like there's any other marketing channel, period, that really allows you to hone in on the exact people that you want to reach.

And so, for example, my dad, if I want to serve my dad an ad, and he and I were, like I said before, kind of we're neighbors and I don't fit the right criteria or I don't own a piece of land, I'm not going to serve the ad. It's not going to be served to me, but it'll be served to my dad or whoever fits that buy box. So it's just a smarter way to budget, and it's a really targeted and fast way to reach out to the very people that you're already trying to reach. So that's kind of how this works. It's really powerful because it's not a wasted budget. It's really powerful because if someone doesn't fit your profile or doesn't own vacant land, well, guess what? You're not going to be serving them ads or wasting ads on them. It's going to those very individuals who you're already sending mail to.

Seth: So where exactly do these ads show up? Like, is it on Facebook, Instagram, Hulu? What is a person doing on their phone or on their TV where this would show up before they're allowed to watch their thing? And have you found that certain platforms are more worthwhile than others?

Jeremy: So, interestingly enough, if you're doing TV ads, regular, traditional TV, you're actually buying a show. But with connected TV, you're buying an individual because now you know the individual who fits your profile. So now you're trying to go find him.

John Smith, he's watching a show online, right? Maybe he's on National Geographic or he's watching something online on ESPN. And so especially all those free, you know, either you're going to have to pay for the subscription to skip the commercials, or if you're doing the free version, you're going to have to watch the commercials. And so that's where we're going to show up. It could be. It's all of them.

The inventory we have access to is massive. And so we're essentially saying, hey, we know John Smith has a piece of land, five acres, that's a lake lot. So go find him online and serve him an ad. Serve him multiple. That’s where this is really powerful. Nobody else is really doing this. In the investor space, a lot of people have chosen different marketing channels and they've had a lot of success with it.

But we're really of the mindset that there's so much inventory out there, we can reach the right people for so cheap right now. And it's not going to stay like this. Let's be clear. Over time, just like Google and Facebook, all of their ad costs went up. But right now, most people aren't advertising using connected TV or OTT, right? They're not doing that. And it's still so new. And so for right now, you can serve ads dirt cheap to the very people you want.

So that's exciting. And so for me, I was willing to be a guinea pig in my house business. We saw a lot of success with it. And so I'm talking to some people, yourself included in the land space, who see the potential. This isn't just, “Oh, let's run this for a month and see what happens.”

You're constantly pulling lists. You're constantly mailing people. The goal is you want ongoing reach to these individuals who have land. And so it might take six weeks or six months, but you're continuing to serve those ads, reinforcing your message. And it's that type of marketing consistently that's going to, at some point in time, people are going to be like, oh man, all right, I've seen enough. I'm getting their blind offer letters or their postcards. I'm finally just going to make the call. You see what I'm saying?

So yes, you get people who are motivated and they might see it the first time and pick up the phone or they go to your website. But really the power of this is over time (we know time and circumstance impacts sellers in a lot of different ways) we want to constantly get our brand in front of them and we'll start getting those calls. “Oh yeah, I saw your ad, I've got a piece of land, here's what I'm looking to do with it.” Or “Hey, how can you help me out?” Or whatever. And so that's exactly the response we're looking for and that's what we've been really successful in the house space and so we're starting to add this to retail. We're working with some retail agents and we want to also offer this to land investors because we see the potential.

Seth: Not sure if I totally understand so. And I don't know as much about online marketing for this kind of stuff as I should, given what I do, but you've got, like, Facebook and their whole ad system and you've got Google and their whole ad system. And I don't know what other ones are out there, but what if, for example, somebody just isn't on Facebook, so there's no way to get them on that medium. So do you have some kind of a system where it reaches out to every ad network out there and says, hey, wherever this guy John Smith is, send him this ad and it'll just find a way to do that. Or if he's not on the one that you're trying to reach, then you're just out of luck, you just can't reach him. How does that work?

Jeremy: So our ads aren't going to be served on Facebook or Instagram, they're going to be on the streaming platforms that are out there. So, yes, Hulu. The ABCs and National Geographic and the ESPN. Yeah, when people are watching all of those shows.

Seth: So any show, does that include YouTube?

Jeremy: Yep, you can do YouTube as well.

So there's all these different networks that are out there. And so essentially there's an almost instantaneous bidding process. Just like Google if you're doing pay-per-click, right, there's a bidding process that happens so fast you don't even know what's going on.

And so the same thing is happening with connected TV. There's all this inventory, ads are constantly streaming, and so you have to have the backend that can track all that platform that is connected with all those different networks and can make that bidding process happen instantaneously and then deliver the ads. And so that's what we have.

There's a company called TV Scientific. They are backed by Comcast, I believe they run Peacock. So they're the backbone behind that. And so the beautiful thing is, we have access to all of their data, all of their backend. They have all of this inventory available from all the different ad networks that are serving TV ads.

And so because of that, because of our partnership, our relationship with that platform, that gives us access to, I think, about 90% of the streaming inventory. Don't quote me on that, but it's a large amount of that. And so right now, there's so much inventory because not enough advertisers are using this. But as people are starting to see the power of this and the targeting capabilities…

I mean, imagine you're an insurance agent in Nashville, Tennessee, or, shoot, I don't know, whatever part of the country you're located. Maybe Traverse City, Michigan. And you're like, hey, I'm in this one area, and I want to be able to serve my ad to all of Traverse City or everyone that fits my demographic. And my person has to make 100,000-plus, and they have to own a home. The home value is at least 100,000. Whatever your buyer profile is, we help you to match that and to deliver ads to those people so that if you want to dominate Traverse City like you want to be all over the place, well, great. You can do that. If you want to hit this small town an hour or 2 hours outside of Nashville that nobody really knows about, but you want to be that agent, you can literally serve ads exclusively to people in and around that small town.

And you can do this with any niche. You can do it with real estate. You can do it with any widget out there, any type of product, insurance, whatever it is. And so the guys that I work with, we're doing this in other niches as well. And so I've been working with them on perfecting this in the real estate space.

And it's just crazy how much targeting the depth that you can go and the level that you can reach, the exact people that you want to deliver ads to.

Seth: Yeah, so just to make sure I understand, so thinking of myself, not that I'm an accurate representation of everyone out there. But me and my wife, we watch Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime. We don't watch any streaming services like ABC or Peacock or Hulu.

So, like, for us, since we don't watch these streaming services that show ads before the show, we wouldn't be reachable by this. Is that accurate? Is there some other tricky way you could get by that?

Jeremy: Well, believe it or not, there's a lot of shows that look like they're on cable that actually fall within streaming as well. They're considered digital, and there's access to those as well. So believe it or not, 90% (I think that's the number, the last number that I heard is 90%) of people are streaming and watching shows online. And so that's a massive number.

But there are definitely limitations. I don't want to say that you're going to absolutely 100% reach everybody. Typically what we say is, hey, if you have a list of people, our lists are producing between a 70% and 80% match. Okay? So 100 people, we're going to be able to match and deliver ads to 70% to 80% of them.

So yeah, by all means. There are definitely some limitations and there are no guarantees, but we also know that a large number of people are sitting in their house, whether they're in financial distress or not. People are on Facebook, they are on their TVs and their mobile devices. And so we're trying, my company specifically, with our house business, we have been focusing on how do we reach people every way possible. If we can do Facebook retargeting, great. If we can do direct mail, great. But how do we kind of get ourselves through the back door into someone's living room?

And we've just found that connected TV is an absolutely awesome way to do that for houses. And so that's been really great. And again, the same principles apply to land investors. I just don't know of any others that have done it. And so me and my team, we're actually going to start testing this specifically for land.

And that's what I'm really excited about because the potential is there. It's the same technology, right? People are texting, they're cold calling, they're sending direct mail, they're using the same lists. And so there's nothing different you need to do. There's no additional list management. You literally just send us that list, we match it to the mail address, and then we say, okay, great, boom. We find the IP and say, ‘Hey, there's John Smith at 123 Main Street. Serve him an ad.” So that's kind of how the technology works. It's pretty cool. It's pretty scary too.

Seth: Yeah, well, what I love about this is just that you can do away with the shotgun approach. I mean, you can know that the person who is being targeted is being targeted for a reason. It's not being shown to some five-year-old kid watching cartoons who has nothing, just pure wasted money. At least there's a chance, like, you kind of are being educated and smart about who you're showing it to, and you're not paying a bunch of money or just throwing away money.

Now I know you do this with unskippable ads, so just out of curiosity, why not skippable? What is the cost difference between doing one versus the other? I mean, I know obviously with unskippable they have to watch it. So, I mean, there's an obvious reason why you should do that, but if you do a skippable ad, do you still pay if a person skips your ad?

Jeremy: Yeah, there is a cost associated with that. So like if I'm trying to think of one, there's a gentleman who every time I go on YouTube, he has an ad to I'll buy your house, whatever the condition, whatever.

Seth: Yeah, I think I might have seen that.

Jeremy: All the time! Every time I'm online, I'm on YouTube. I see that and it's like five, four, three, two, one..

So we've just chosen the approach that if we already know the people we want to reach, we want to reach them for that full 30 seconds. We want to get the full message across. And so that's just what we've chosen to do. We could certainly set up campaigns where we do those other ones. Really, that's the beauty of this, is we can set it up multiple different ways.

And so if somebody says, hey, my budget is $5,000 a month, okay, great. Well, in that 5,000, what specifically are your goals? How big is your list? Are you mailing 10,000 people a week? Are you mailing 10,000 people a month doing 2500 a week? Do you have people in your database? Do you have people coming to your website? Let's put a tracking pixel on your website so that people that show up there now, we retarget them, right? Because sometimes they won't find us first from the TV ad. Maybe they're going to see your blind offer letter or your postcard that provides that company information. They go to your site, boom, now we find them.

So there are multiple ways where we're using this to reach the target customer. But if you said, hey, you know what? I don't have a $5,000-a-month budget, but I've got really niche lists and I've got $2,500. So we could actually work with you to kind of adjust that based on what your budget is.

And really that's kind of the minimum, though, because you have to have enough frequency. You have to be able to hit those people. And the goal is not to just hit them once and then, oh yeah, they're going to call me. Well, maybe they call you on the first try, but usually it doesn't work that way. Usually it takes five and six touches before someone's seen enough and they're like, all right, I'm ready to make a decision, or, hey, they caught me at the right time. I do have to sell. All right, great. And then they pick up the phone or they go online and fill out that form.

So that's the key here, is we're not talking about, hey, let's just spend $3,000 for three months and see how it goes. This is a strategy for people that, in my opinion, are already doing deals. They have an established either house or land business. And so you're not going to be dependent on this. You're not going to put all of your money into CTV and say, hey, if I don't get a deal, then I'm not going to be able to do this next month. Nuh-uh.

This is for people who are trying to scale it, who maybe have a lot of mail going out, and they want to dominate. They want to add another four or five or seven deals a month because they want to saturate that market and they want to be able to follow up with people. They've got a great follow-up system, and this is going to reinforce that message. This is an advanced strategy.

I'm not going to lie, but this is a great strategy. If you're doing direct mail, you also have a website. Maybe it gets a little bit of traffic. Maybe that's through your direct mail. Or maybe you're doing something else and then you kind of add this third leg to the stool where now you're reaching these people with a legitimate, credible TV ad that people are like, oh, man.

Because you know this, Seth, there's a lot of scams going on in the land business. We get this all the time. We've had properties that we thought we were buying. We actually had one in Cape Coral. We thought it was a great lot buying for $25,000. We already had a buyer at $100,000. We're like, this is great. Well, as it turned out, they pulled up on title and this guy was a scammer.

That's another thing, too, is that a lot of times sellers will ask those questions, well, is this a scam? Is this legit? I'm not really sure. But if they now see your TV ad, now it's like, “Well, wait a second. These guys are on TV. Maybe you're with an A+ with a Better Business Bureau.” We do that just because we want to have that legitimacy. And so you put that in your ad. Now all of a sudden people are like, oh, crap. So they can go verify. They can look at your website, they can go to the BBB, they can see that you're a credible company. Okay, now there's legitimacy to this offer letter. It's just not someone sending me something, trying to take my property, essentially. Does that make sense?

Seth: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure that speaks volumes for those who are willing to do that and put their face on camera. There's something to anybody who makes a video just because most people won't do it. And when you not only make a video, but you also put it out there in this ad format on so many platforms, it's almost like you become a little movie star. It just says something about you.

Jeremy: Let me tell you one of my favorite stories about this. So my acquisition manager, so he shows up at a house in South Carolina, and the lady there, she opens the door and she sees him, and she's like, “oh my gosh, it's you!” And he's like, “Oh, man. What did I do?” And she's like, “Well, my alarm went off this morning, and I heard your ad on the radio. And then I'm sitting in front of my TV, and I had a cup of coffee and I see your ad on TV. And then I went to your website and filled out a form and talked with someone on your team, and now you're right here in front of me. I just can't believe this!”

And so this kind of speaks to the power of hitting people in multiple ways. It also speaks to the power of or the challenge of how do you attribute that lead? Is that from SEO? Is it from radio? Is it from TV? No, they're all working together. And so a lot of house investors have been successful at this. I don't want to say bigger ones, some of the bigger ones, some of the ones who have taken the inbound lead approach, they've sort of been able to have a lot of success creating a brand and awareness in this ecosystem of leads.

And I feel like that's an area where, again, not trying to tell land investors they should do this, but I do believe that land investors, typically it's like direct mail or it's texting or some people are cold calling, but that's kind of it. There's not a lot of branding attached to that. And I feel like having not only a message that provides credibility, but also reinforces that brand of like, “Dude, these guys just sent me an offer. Dude, how is it that they're on my TV?”

To me, it kind of provides that wow factor or like I said, it's helping your other marketing channels. And so I just think that if someone says, oh, I'm going to get an extra seven deals or 20 deals specific to CTV, I would actually say no. What's going to happen is you're going to create a lead ecosystem, right? You're going to start finding that people are going to come in from connected TV, they're going to go to your website, they're going to maybe fill out more or sign more of your offer letters if you do blind offer letters. So there are just different ways where this has potential to ultimately help grow your business, generate more revenue, create a brand.

So anyone that's interested in that, on the land side of things, I feel like there's a lot of opportunity to do that. And that's kind of how we've run our land business. We haven't done connected TV yet, but that's something that we're about to test and start rolling out. So I'd love to be able to come back later on and say, “Hey, Seth, I know this is really cool. This is a great idea. It did awesome.” Or “Hey, it bombed, here's the results.” But as far as our house business goes, it’s been really effective. And I have a strong inkling that this is going to be effective because it's the same principles.

Seth: If anybody wants to go check them out, we've got a link, you can go through, it's retipster.com/CTV. So just want to throw that out there.

I was wondering, though, tell me about competition. Like, what if three different land investors in Nashville all hear this and they decide to sign up with you and start making their ads and looking for the same properties, saying the same thing in the same markets? Does that screw this up in some way? Or do you somehow manage that so that certain people only see ads from certain land investors? Or what would happen if that somehow got saturated?

Jeremy: So this is the beauty of it, at least right now anyway. If your list and what your specific criteria are driving where the ads are being seen, you might have ten people in Nashville. One of them is looking for infill lots down in the core of the urban core, as we call it. Someone else is looking for vacant lots, one to two acres an hour outside of Nashville. Next person's looking at lake lots in the four main lakes around Nashville, and they're just looking for lake lots one to five acres.

I mean, here's the thing, because this is so targeted at land investors, I mean, riches and niches, right? Every land investor that I know is doing something a little bit different. So even though you're in Nashville, maybe you're mailing Arizona or Colorado or Florida or whatever, honestly, I just don't see that being an issue with competition because everyone's lists are a little bit different.

And for the foreseeable future, the way this is going and how much inventory is out there and how few people are doing it, I don't see a problem with it. I really don't. Because you're focusing on a certain buy box and your buy box is going to be different than the guy next to you. So that's my opinion.

Now, that might change a couple of years from now if a lot of people are doing this, but right now it's the Wild West.

Seth: Say, if I have a very specific list of very specific people in very specific situations, maybe it's delinquent taxes. Heck, maybe it's people who are 60 years old and older and they've owned their five-acre vacant lot for 20 years or longer. Like, it's that specific. Does it ever make sense to create different ads that speak directly to those people? Say, like, “We know what it's like being a senior and a landowner for 20-plus years…”

Could you do that, or does that make sense to do that? How granular could you get or should you get with these ads? And is that effective to home in like that? Or does it make more sense to just have kind of a general, “Hey, I buy land, give me a call” kind of thing?

Jeremy: Seth, that is an awesome question. I'm glad that you brought this up because it's very smart, it's very intuitive. That's exactly what the potential of this is. So for example, I'll just tell you we have a pre-foreclosure process, actually late mortgage. Let me go back further. So before people get into pre-foreclosure, so there's a list that we pull in several counties.

And so what we do is we mail them direct mail. We cold call and text them and then we serve them the connected TV ads. Here's the thing, and this is why I love the question. Because with pre-foreclosure or even late mortgage, if people get behind 60 days on their mortgage, for example, it's unlikely that they're going to catch up. I mean, the reality is it's unlikely.

Okay, so those people typically have to do a loan modification. They need to sell with an agent. But that gets tricky too, because if they've got a timeline where they're like, oh shoot, I have to sell quickly. An agent isn't always the best option. Whether it's land or houses, same thing.

And so as an investor, if you're able to come in and save the day and move quickly and get them an offer fast and help them out of that difficult situation, you're a very viable option. This is to me, in the house world, this is the very best, very most motivated list that's out there. And I don't think anybody's doing what I just told you we're doing. In the last 90 days, we have bought six houses that they're late on their mortgage and we just started doing this in the last 90 days. And so right now we've got about twelve different properties that are in the pipeline.

We don't have them under contract yet, but we are negotiating them right now. And we're so new at this, but we figured out this niche and we're actually speaking exactly to them, like, hey, are you behind on payments? Right? You're asking the very question. You already know they're behind on payments, but because you know who the audience is, you're delivering a message that's specific to them.

So I love your question and the answer is absolutely yes. That's the potential of this.

Seth: Now, kind of going back a little bit, I know you've mentioned a few times that it sounds like the idea is to use these TV ads in conjunction with all your other marketing stuff. So you don't rely just on the TV ads. You could add it on top of everything else you're already doing and then you'll kind of boost those other efforts.

And I know a lot of times when people hear about a new thing like this, what everybody wants is just a very clear-cut, black-and-white answer. If I spend this much on these TV ads per month, it will result in this many more deals. And it sounds like it's just not that black-and-white because you don't do just this by itself. You do it in addition to all the other stuff.

But is there any way to quantify? If I throw $5,000 at this, this is what I could expect. I mean, any thoughts on that? Or is that too open-ended of a question?

Jeremy: So what I can say is this. This is how I knew it worked. My first month in the house business. When we tried this out, we actually closed two deals. The first one, I think, was a $15,000 or $16,000 assignment fee, and then the other one was 60. So we just spent five grand and we just brought in like 76,000 or 72,000, I don't remember what it was, but it doesn't matter.

My return on my spend was massive. I'm like, oh shoot. Well, I know it works, so I can do this for the rest of the year if nothing else even comes from it. And so, fortunately, it did work really well, but there are no guarantees.

Had that not worked, would I have been more skeptical? Yeah, I probably would have been like, oh man, this isn't really happening. Or hey, we're not getting the phone calls. But the thing is, what we did see here is that the metrics that we saw in our house business, is that our unique visitors to our website went up three times. So we were under 500 a month, and we ended up on average for the year over 1300 a month.

Our call volume in the very first month went up 26%, and it was stable over 20% over the course of twelve months. That's pretty powerful. So it drove search, it drove calls, so it did generate leads. And our web forms, the amount of web forms that we received over the prior year, again, can I compare apples to apples? I'm not sure if you can do that, but our web form submissions were up over 12%.

So now what that means is, well, wait a second, if we've got people, more people coming to our site, checking us out, now you're talking about, well, how do I improve other areas of my business, right? If I've got people coming to my site, I want to be able to convert more of those people, because more of those people that I'm able to convert turn into more revenue. So it actually forced our business to get better in our processes and our follow-up.

And so that's the part that I love about this, is you can hit your leads that you want to mail to in the future, but you can also with the land business, one of my favorite things, one of our best ways to get deals is honestly, most investors suck at the follow-up. They just do. And so everyone that comes through or calls us, we've got a follow-up sequence for all of them. And so if we make an offer on a piece of land and someone says no, it goes into our offer, reject follow-up. And so in about 30 days, they're going to get reached out. “Hey, did you ever sell that land?” or “Hey, if you got the right price for your land, are you still interested in selling?”

Gosh, we picked up an awesome property in Arizona, in Prescott, Arizona, four acres. The guy had it listed for like 150,000 and he's like, yeah, I just took the listing down. He's like, “I want 50 for it. First person that gives that to me, I'll take it.” And we're like, “Yeah man, we're at like 25. That's not going to work.” So we put them on follow-up. Six months later, guess what? The guy calls us back. He got a text message from us, from our system, and we put in our contract at 25,000 that day and we sold it for 80,000. It's a perfect deal.

So what I'm trying to say is it's not one thing or the next. If you have a great follow-up system, that's huge because those old leads are awesome. Those are gold. But in addition to that, what are other ways that you could reach those old leads? Well, yeah, sure, you can do the cold calling, you could do the texting, you could do the RVMs, we do all that. That's great.

But we also are saying, hey, in our house business, we've proven that we can also follow up with those people through TV ads. And I believe that, I guess the proof will be in the pudding, when we test this with land, are we seeing some of those similar results? I don't know. But I know I'm not really answering your question because I can't really guarantee that you're going to get another deal or two deals.

But what I can say is, hey, if you want to create that credibility, that branding and reinforcing your offer or your company that's sending those offers of those postcards, boom, this is going to do it for sure.

Seth: Well, I know a lot of land investors, maybe not so much anymore, but historically speaking, direct mail has been it. That's all they've done, that's all they know, that's all they're comfortable with. And in recent years, it's been getting more into texting and ringless voicemail and cold calling kind of stuff households have done.

But house wholesalers are still miles ahead of where land investors are at, because land investors haven't really had to because it hasn't been as competitive. But things are changing. And I'm just thinking for somebody who wants to try this TV ad thing, but they only want to do one other marketing strategy to support it, what should that be? Direct mail, texting, something else?

Jeremy: Yeah, to me, it's direct mail.

Seth: Okay.

Jeremy: And without question, I mean, man, in the land business, by all means, in my opinion, 1000% direct mail, that's the number one channel. I would not even try to tell people that this is a close second or third or fourth.

Honestly, this to me would be, hey, if your land business is doing really well, and you're doing great with direct mail, but you really want to tighten things up. Maybe your follow-up game needs to improve. So if you have that process, that's great. And then the other piece that I think is huge is this is an added piece for someone like me, for example. It's perfect because I'll be honest with you, I generate 100 to 150 online land leads every single month. Those are all SEO.

Now, part of the reason that I do that is because there's not a lot of competition for SEO online, for lands. And then the other thing is personal. If I'm doing direct mail, I want to target a couple of counties or a couple of areas, right? And so if I'm getting 100 to 150 leads, I'm getting something in Arizona, I'm getting one in California, I'm getting Alaska, I'm getting Hawaii. It's a pain in the butt. It takes a lot of time.

However, with that said, I literally just closed on one last week, which is a great example, where it was an online and SEO lead. We bought it for 85. They paid 150 for it three years ago, and it's in a high-end, $1 to $2 million neighborhood. And we've got that thing listed that's going live for 299. And so I can look at that and say, well, yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of work, but our acquisition manager has been trained to assess land and be able to buy anywhere in the country, or at least he has the capability of doing that. If it's a unique state or something, then we'll consider it. But for the most part, he's good to go. And if he has any questions or there's any challenges, he can reach out to me.

But for me personally, if I've got a lot of people coming to that site, this is perfect. I can literally retarget all of those people. And then how about all the other ones who come to the site and they don't fill out a form or don't call? Boom. We got a tracking pixel that's following John Smith and whoever else around.

So there are ways to make this really work, but you have to be able to kind of see the whole picture. This isn't just a one-and-done. This is a, hey, you already have a successful business. You're trying to take it to the next level. And this is an advanced strategy to really dominate one market or to dominate your particular space.

So it's not for everybody, admittedly, but for those people who are kind of at that place or they've seen the potential of building that brand, dude, this is a great option.

Seth: You mentioned the follow-up thing, and I'm glad you pointed that out, because that is a huge issue where a lot of stuff falls apart. I can't tell you how many offers and things I've gotten from other land investors and they don't pick up their phone, they don't respond to anything. It's just like, why are you throwing this money away?

So if a person sees your TV ad and then calls you or visits your website, what do they hear or see next? Like, are they talking to a live person? Or is it like a voicemail or some call center or what is the messaging they see as they go through this journey, getting to know you?

Jeremy: Yeah. So for me personally, I have an intake team. So whether it's for land or for houses, I have one person in particular who handles all of the land intake. And so he actually is my acquisition manager and we've made it that way intentionally. So he's able to quickly pull up a property, go ahead and assess it. He's probably not going to make the offer right then and there on the first go around. However, if he knows it's a smoking deal or he knows the area or whatever, then he will actually make the offer.

But it comes in direct to us. And then we take the person through that screening process and get as much information as we can and then we turn around and give them a call back, typically with what our offer would be after we do that research. But that's usually the same day. That's usually within an hour. And so that's kind of the process.

And then if they say yes, great, we'll send them a contract. If they say no, then we put them on the specific follow-up. We've got follow-up funnels for every situation. Maybe we make an offer to somebody and they never get back to us. Well, they go on an offer follow-up funnel. So now all of a sudden we're reaching out to them tomorrow and then the next day, and then the next day, and then the next day until we want a response, we don't care. Just give us a yes or a no, we'll go away, but just tell us one way or another.

And so that's how we run both our house and our land business. And that's why I feel like there's a huge opportunity in the land business because a lot of times people just want the low-hanging fruit. They just want someone to sign a contract and send it back and not have to talk to anybody. And I love those, don't get me wrong. But if you really want to have a business that you're doing a lot more volume or maybe you're closing more deals, I am an absolute believer 1000% that the fortune is in the follow-up.

And there's a lot of deals that I think land investors leave on the table because they're just like, he wasn't really motivated. They hang up and they don't have a process. We just click a button, a couple of buttons and put it in our system. We still use Podio, but we put it in that system, and boom, the follow-up happens. And six months later, like, hey, if we get that call back or however long it is, we reach out to them for about five years. Whenever that call comes in and they're ready to sell, hey, we're going to be ready, and we've got someone live to answer that phone call and make an offer. So that's how we run it.

Seth: You mentioned radio earlier, which is really interesting because I've never heard of a land investor doing radio. How does radio work? Is it like a 30-second spot or 15 seconds? Or are you just saying a phone number and website a couple of times? Or how does that work? Is that effective in any way, or is there any way to measure that? That seems like the hardest to measure, but I'm not sure.

Jeremy: So radio is sort of similar because some people, if they hear your company name, they will go right to your website and check you out. And then there are other people who are like, you want to use a vanity number, right? They always talk about this. So 843-555-8888 or something or 555-SOLD or whatever, right? So you pay a little bit more for those vanity numbers, but people tend to remember them, and it's frequency and reach. It's the same as TV. And so if you're on the right radio stations and you're in front of the right audience and you're repeatedly getting your message across, you're going to get those phone calls.

I've been using radio since 2020 in my house business. I've never thought about doing it for my land business, it's just a different model. I feel like land is so niche. I feel like it's so specific. That's why I love direct mail. Like, if I want that five-acre lot, great, I can go and target that person. If you're open to any type of land, yeah, you could do radio, but I can't really say whether that would be effective or not for land.

But yeah, for sure you would get people that because it drives search. You'll get people to your site. You'll get people that will call the number, and then sometimes, too, you'll get people later on who… That's actually kind of funny. What they'll do is they'll save the number on their phone. They'll call it, and then they'll hang up really quick, and we'll call them back and they say, “Oh, sorry, we heard your ad on the radio. We just wanted to save your number. We're going to sell in the future, and we'll call you when we do.” So it definitely works.

I like radio, but again, I like it a lot in conjunction with the other marketing channels saturating the market.

Seth: Along the same vein as these TV ads we're talking about. I almost wonder if you could do radio streaming ads on Spotify or Pandora or those kinds of things where it’s almost like a similar concept, but maybe that's like even the next level up.

Jeremy: You totally can actually. So I talked with my radio gal. We run at one point when we started, we were on seven stations and then iHeartRadio told us our prices were way too low. They said, this is the lowest rates of anyone. They're like, we won't renew your contract. So they jacked it up like five times and we dropped it.

So we're not on those two stations, but we're still on five radio stations. And my gal, my rep reached out yesterday and she said, hey, I sent you the renewal contract. Just want to make sure you're good with it. But hey, we have all these other things too. We're doing digital, we're doing the streaming ads.

So yeah, you definitely can. And those have been around. We don't personally and the reason is we have a formula for our radio buys and so we just stick to that formula for traditional. But as far as all the targeting and whatnot, we just feel like we love the targeting for TV just because people are actually seeing you. And so we've just chosen to invest our marketing dollars in the TV side of it.

But yeah, a lot of similarities that you can target the individual viewers or listeners. Rather, you can target specific demographics, specific stations. There are a lot of cool things you can do on that too. But I can't say what the results would be. I've never actually done that before.

Seth: Is there like a minimum volume you should plan on doing if you're going to do this streaming TV route? Like, for example, let's say there are 20 self-storage facilities in my township where I live, or zip code or something city, and I want to reach those people with a very specific ad talking about a storage facility that they want to sell.

Just kind of an extreme example. But does that not make sense? Because it's such a small number of people don't do that, just call them up.

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. So that would be too small of a sample size. So here's the thing. You could run that if you had a campaign going. You were doing connected TV and you said, “Hey Jeremy, I've got some land mail that I want to go out and I've got these lists and then I've also got storage. I want to add that to the mix.” You have to have a certain size that it really makes sense because here's what's going to happen. You're not going to match every single one. So if you only have 20, it's really hard because, okay, maybe you're matching 70% to 80% of those 20, but it's like, how many times are you going to serve those people ads? There's just not enough inventory for those to be able to do it effectively.

But if you said, “Hey, Jeremy, I want to integrate a buy with my houses, my land, and my storage. And they're going to be very specific lists.” We could definitely target that. We can definitely make that work. But if you're talking 20, that's not going to work.

I mean, you really want to be able to if you've got a list of 1,500 or 1,800 or whatever, 2,000, you want to make sure that you're prioritizing those individuals, you're serving them enough ads, you have a high enough frequency. So, for example, if I'm going to do a pre-foreclosure list, I want to hit those people at least 20 times a week. So in order to do that, I may have to pay a little bit more. And so what happens is maybe I'm lower on overall impressions, but because I want to reach that person.

For example, this is what I told my campaign manager. I said, “Hey Adam, I have to hit these 1,800 people.” So instead of me getting exactly 150,000 impressions, impressions don't matter to me. The individual seeing my ad enough times, that's what matters. And so I can actually tell my campaign manager, hey, let's allocate a greater portion of the budget, let's be willing to spend more to acquire that customer to reach them. And so there's a lot of different things we can do.

Honestly, we can slice this and dice this a million different ways. But I will say you have to have enough people that you can reach, otherwise, it wouldn't make sense because there's not enough inventory for a small sample size like that.

Seth: And as we wrap this up, just kind of going at this from a different angle. So at what point would a person conclude that this is not working for them? Like if they're spending the money, they're running the ads, how would they know, okay, this is not something's off. I'm not getting the deals because I know in your example you talked about how over a twelve-month period went up substantially in terms of the number of deals. Like basically almost twice as much. But what if that was just because the economy changed or something else is different? If you're not really tracking it, you don't know exactly why a person ended up coming to sell to you. How would you gauge that and know if it's working or not?

Jeremy: Yeah, I know, that's a great question. So this is why I like for people to have a website too. I know some people, I mean, they just do direct mail and they don't even care about a website. I get that. This is one of those things where, hey, if you're going to go that branding space you can have these, there's several of these out-of-the-box websites. I know you guys have a few of them featured. We have a Carrot site. I think there's Jesse has his sites and there's some other ones as well. But if you have that site and you're putting on your blind offer letter to go to your site, what you'll start to see is you have to be getting the phone calls and or the form fills. Both of those should be happening.

So if you have a site out there and you generate no traffic, I guarantee that when people see your ads, you're going to start generating traffic to your site. And so the goal is that you convert those people into either a phone call or a form fill. And so from there, now you're going to go and make that offer.

Now, maybe you already made an offer. Maybe they say, hey, I got an offer from you in the mail and I came to your website, or, hey, I saw the TV ad as well. All those things are going to work together. But I would say that you need to see people calling in or filling out forms. That's ultimately the true test of this. And then if you are getting those people to do that, you should be making offers for all of them or with all of them, assuming it's a type of property that you want.

But if it's coming from your list already and they're just being retargeted or they're coming to your website, it should be a pretty close match. So if you're not getting deals, then by all means, it's not working for sure. But you should be getting, like I said, phone calls, form fills. You should be talking with some of those people who maybe needed a little bit more information or hey, they weren't sure, is this a scam or what? And then you calm those fears and now you get that phone call and you make the offer.

Seth: If somebody out there is watching this and they don't have a buying website yet, and they want to set one up. I've got pretty detailed tutorials on how to do this with both Carrot and Pebble that Jeremy just mentioned. And again, if you guys do want to check out the service, connected TV, just go to retipster.com/CTV. C, as in the letter, not the ocean, so CTV, and you can check that out.

Jeremy, is there anything else we should know about this, if we're considering this or, I don't know, any last parting words on the matter?

Jeremy: No, I would just say that if you have very specific lists and you're really good at the data portion and you know who your people are for land investors (that's typically happening through that list and through the direct mail) and you want to try something different. I think what's cool about this is you're filming an ad and then literally the rest of it is done for you. So there's no additional work you need to do. You don't need to go and film additional ads. We do all that for you on the front end. Hopefully, if it's working, then you're getting calls and leads every single week as long as you're doing it.

So that's been our experience with houses and we think that, again, so similar that there's a huge opportunity out there for an investor that you know, this really makes sense for. So I think that's about.

Seth: Yeah, that's awesome. I really appreciate you reaching out, Jeremy, and letting us know about this. It kind of blows my mind and now that you say it all, like, it makes perfect sense, but I never would have thought of this on my own. So it's cool to see what you've been making work and it's always good to get a glimpse into the world of what house wholesalers are doing because that's kind of the direction the land business is going in the next five to ten years anyway.

So if it's working for you now, it's almost certainly going to work for the land crowd in most cases. But again, appreciate your wisdom on this. And again, retipster.com/CTV if anybody wants to check it out. And thanks again, Jeremy.

Jeremy: All right, thank you. Appreciate it.

Seth: You bet.