Q&A Session from PCBC 2014

go ahead what's your name darling uh manarel rman I'm actually a social media manager too um so what would you say about house I know you were talking about Pinterest but house is very Construction and building material specific and I actually think that if I were to pick but well I mean I would probably do both but what would you think about how and sponsored post there because they look very organic when you say house house. com they just went through their second round of funding got it you know I haven't dug deep into them you know and so I'm I can't speak to it um but I think the point since I don't know much about house uh that you made is the important one which is you know that whole little rant I just ended with the 25% of dumb [ __ ] and you said I'll probably do both I can't wrap my head around it being the middle of 2014 and people not allocating 3 to 7% of their monies and times into trying Instagram house Facebook it doesn't make sense experimental budget right you're better off figuring out it doesn't work for you because then it eliminates your time of thinking about it versus just deciding I don't get it we're not going to do it yeah all right and then my other question is with the Facebook dark post are you

talking about sponsored posts no so sponsored post where she's going for all of you know is you post something on your fan page and then you see that little thing on the right side that says sponsored if you play with Facebook a little bit and then it allows you to open up and you can Target Friends of the page or I'm not there's a page editor on the back end of Facebook and it looks more like Google AdWords you go in there you create your content and then you target whatever the hell you want has nothing to do with your page you want to Target recent College grads that are move like if you're in the rental space we're killing it right now because we're just targeting people that are graduating college in June right now and have shown online Behavior to searching around New York so we know they're coming to move to New York and we're just putting out an ad that says rent here they're actually looking there and we're converting at a ludicrous conversion rate things that SEO and sem and all this other stuff we've done for years isn't even coming close to because attention they're actually looking in their phone and in their feed they're actually seeing it not like your ad and wear Magazine on page 97 that's listen that's how I believe look I I'm not trying to make fun of where print what you're going to go to page n that newspaper right there what that person that spent $155,000 on page A8 you guys are going to see that maybe but you're paying eight times that print the way we pay for print is we pay eight times the circulation of a newspaper in case all eight of them get to page 32 bottom left corner and see our Lexus ad it's ludicrous it's fantasy world it's 2000 it's 1994 it's 1986 it's [ __ ] 2014 sorry yes sir Gary uh I was really impressed with you two years ago I went out and bought your book thank you I'm having a little hard

time wrapping myself around something you said today please and the example worked for you yes but there are many of us who really need to reach highlevel decision makers I agree which is why I not necessarily the CEOs of the top uh 25 Fortune 100 companies yep but in our industry please we need to reach the right person give me an example of a right person um by the way this is why I do Q& A because I can sit up here and say this is great this is like this right here this moment is about to be the best [ __ ] part of this whole talk so give me give me the right person the five um the five treasurers or marketing directors of the five top solar installers in whatever Market you're in love it so real quick let's jump into this I guarantee of those five people four of them have a LinkedIn account I guarantee it right correct good and you know the name of these companies and you know their titles you just gave them to me so LinkedIn right now and probably release to everybody in the next six months two things you can do right in six months you'll be able to go to LinkedIn and do the same thing that you can on Facebook dark post on LinkedIn so you'll be able to pre create a piece of content now you have to decide if that's a picture if that's an infographic if it's a white paper you've got to if it's a nice picture of you you've got to decide but you'll be able to create a post that those five people will see when they log into LinkedIn in their feed and I'm in that beta and I'm testing it and it's working incredible and we're targeting CFOs controllers these kind of people the thing you can do right now is take those people's names and do the version that I did with Twitter and Facebook and targeting them in that world so that's the Tactical execution of reaching that person the part that I'm having a hard time grasping please is I just don't believe that they are on um social media as their children are I don't trust that

LinkedIn yes I trust okay so I'm hungry for what's going to be around the corner yep but I don't trust that uh CEO that I yeah totally different example I want to reach the president and chairman of Wells Fargo okay this is I cannot believe this is a man who's um looking at LinkedIn I don't believe this is a man who's spending his time on social media listen two things one great believe what you want to believe two you may be 100% correct three I'm thrilled with the thesis of these executions may not work for your Target audience I'm not sure how you plan on targeting the Wells Fargo CEO versus social media I'm sure there's some Theory you have right you know buy an ad in the Wall Street Journal because you think he's reading it that's not going to work right so here's what I can tell you and this is the real kicker of this story one I get it I get what your thesis is I hear it every day 900 times a day let me tell you about something we did recently that completely will blow your mind we had a client who said the same thing we're trying to reach it's a hedge fund play think about how what kind of net worth individuals you need and the guy says to me Gary I think you're the best you clearly helped the business that you're working on that I invested in this is why we're sitting together I got to him because we're crushing it for one of his businesses he goes but you can't figure this out right because these 80y old guys 60y old guys they're not on this I go okay if you believe that we did the LinkedIn thing in real time he was blown away by how many of them were on Facebook and Twitter here's my real question these five people have you put their name in with Twitter and Facebook into Google to see if they are or aren't I'm just I'm curious uh no I'm I just gave that to you as an example got it so one you should do that okay because you might get surprised but even if they're not here's the tactic we took and we've converted our first person you said the most important thing my friend you said I don't believe they are but they're children are right we've just converted our first $10 million check to this fund by knowing who the individual was and by making content for his children that we thought they would show to him we made we made a piece of content that was worth the price of admission you can stop right there and I'll give you another example we just started working with a retirement home and we're targeting you know 50 to 70 year olds who are putting their parents into the home everybody doesn't think 50 to 70 the fastest growing sector in Facebook is 50 to 70 year olds and they're sticky right once they're there and they're like for anybody here who's got who's in that range or has a parent in that range you know that once your parent gets into that world they're just bothering the [ __ ] out of you this Facebook thing's incredible they telling you Mom all right last question I see him at double zero Gary I'm getting ready to go have breakfast with an executive for Twitter he'll be writing you an endorsement Checker it's cool um this

industry is one where approximately 85% are searching for their new home online everyone heard that statistic only 40% according to Burell of developers and home builders even spend their money online yeah no I know I saw that okay and then there's another percentage 1% of expected sales should be spent on marketing yep so there's a $ 1. 4 trillion doll home industry yeah I mean there's $ 1. 4 trillion dollar of new home sold every year 1% of that 14 bill ion no one in here you're I mean I'm so pissed off about this data cuz I've looked at it that if you [ __ ] don't move soon I'm coming into this business and putting you out of business so here but here here's what here you are a disruptor which makes your uh methodology great but these guys are trying to do it themselves yeah okay and the challenge with these engineering constructive construction Finance Minds because I deal with all of them and I was an ex- Banker now technologist yeah is what's the metric so right we used to measure cost per lead cost per lead truly a Zillow New Home Source C lead well with our CRM we track BB back so we don't just see where the buyer Source from what their lead Source was cost lead but what's their beack what where do they come back to your content of course right that's how marketing works right so smart touch is about the 52 touch points it takes over 290 days to reel in a buyer okay but we can't convince this industry to hire vendors to do it for them because they not they're not having they're not measuring the ROI they're having a hard time saying okay if I invest in your digital media agency your social agency yep they'll hire vendors to do their sheet walk rock and their foundations and project I mean there are developers that I know they have no staff they're a one guy a finance team and they're all their vendors yep yet they're still trying to hire one person in house to do it themselves and I think it's because they can't get their head around the metrics yep how do I get an Roi out of social media can you talk about that for a second the only two pieces of advice I have for you are this one the biggest way I've been able to win the ROI conversation is by auditing the ROI of everything else they do right so they've made the mental commitment to running an ad in the local newspaper the local magazine or outdoor Media or calling or direct mail or what and then I just asked them what's the ROI and the truth is you know nobody's got good C r m they don't know they've just accepted it they've made the decision that this has an Roi because we've been doing it for 80 years that's number one number two I'll be very honest with you and this is now for you and your business because I noticed how you set it up I have spent zero minutes zero seconds zero hours zero days weeks months years trying to convince somebody to use me or my company there is enough people that are at least somewhat interested the notion that I'm going to convince somebody or spend my time and effort in 2014 to make them convince to use this stuff and do this stuff I have no time for that person zero spend all your time being on the offense not the defense is meeting somebody who's a big get and they don't get it they don't care I mean I met with Albertson had a real long conversation their CEO could care less and I don't give a [ __ ] right cuz I just move on to the next there is no follow up there is no knock again in two weeks there's no hit me up in six months I just look at that dude and go good when Amazon puts you out of [ __ ] business I'm going to laugh in your [ __ ] face I'll leave with that thank you thank you