The Land Geek Podcast #7

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Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek again. And I'm on with the notorious Joanne Fraser from reserveland.com Duran. How's it going today in beautiful Carlsbad, California?

As usual, the weather is terrible. Balmy, 75 degrees with a 10, I would say 10 knots out of the west. So looking pretty good at the beach today.

That's so wrong. All right. It's hard, hard having these podcasts with him when I'm sitting in. You know what's not that bad? It's 93 right now. 93 in Scottsdale. I'll take it. Never mind. I win. Not really. No beach, you win. I don't really win. Okay, so should we continue what we're talking about last week? Should we talk about marketing? Marketing, marketing, marketing. The focus should be on.

Advertising.

Advertising, marketing. So let's talk about when you first start. The most important thing to do is build your list. Right. So how do you do that, Duran? How do you go about building your list?

Well, there's several different ways. I think you'd probably be more of a professional at this than me. And so you'll probably have to. I'll have to reverse ask that question. I mean, you know, looking at you on a call with your big muscles, knowing that you are the King Kong of marketing, I would have to say that I can't answer that question. So go ahead.

All right. So I was telling Duran about last week. I had a monster week. All these sales, and they all came from my list. And I was explaining to him basically that when you have an existing customer, they are 10 times, 20 times more valuable than a new customer is. Right? Because it's so much easier to make a sale with an existing customer who's already done business with you. They already have a relationship with you, they already trust you, they like you. So you can create so much more value to someone that you've already worked with than you can someone new coming out from the cold. Right. So what do I do is I typically use Craigslist, ebay, Land Watch Land and Farm Lands of America. These are all what I call lead generating platforms for me. So it's not really to make a sale in my mind. It's great when I sell something on any of those platforms, but it's really more lead generation. Whenever you talk to me, whenever you have a touch point with me, I want to get you into my list some way so that we can start having a conversation and I can start providing something of value for you. So the number one thing when you start your list is you've got to provide something of value so that they want to opt in and have that conversation with you. It can't just be, hey, look, I'm going to sell you something. I'm going to try to sell you something. I'm going to try to sell you something. Pretty soon they lose attention and they lose focus. Right. So Duran was talking about for his Opt in page, his squeeze page, providing a free land report. I love that idea. There's so many people out there. And you can do a keyword search for what people are searching for on Google. That applies to Land and Duran, I know you're a big keyword research guy. What sites do you use to do that? Do you just go to Google Analytics? What's the exact site?

Of course, analytics allows me to. I'm getting some feedback. Mark, are you getting that feedback?

I'm getting a little feedback. That's okay.

Okay, sorry about that. Okay, so Google Analytics allows me to basically go in and look at everything from the traffic source, meaning where the click comes from, all the way down to the actual keyword that was searched. Right. And you can build based on the time spent on the page based on a number of different variables. You can take certain keywords and know that those keywords are stronger than others.

Right, right. So because I'm so focused on marketing and so focused on working on my business and not in my business, I actually go on fiverr.com and I found a great guy and he does one thing and one thing only, really, really well. Keyword research. So I paid him $5 and I got back an unbelievable list, so valuable to me, worth much more than $5. And they were all keywords. So here is an example of some keywords that he had for me. And first he has the global search for it, the local search, the cost per click, the oci, which I'm not sure what OCI means. He has it written down for me. The results top links, and then the difficulty of getting that keyword seen for you because it could be a saturated keyword and it could be that so many people have been using this keyword. The odds of my site getting seen with it are Very, very small. So to go to very hard keywords, Land for sale by owner. So there were this month 1900 local searches for land for sale by owner. It's a very hard thing to do. The top links for it, there was 271,000 top links for it. The second hardest one was farmland for sale. The third hardest one was vacant land for sale. And then land for sale, Farmland for sale and all the way down the line. So what I want to look for are moderate to easy keywords that I can use in my marketing so that I'm not competing against everyone on Google. Does this make sense?

Yes, 100%, Mark. And I'll tell you, there's a platform that I've used for several years called, called Noble Samurai.

Oh sure, I know, Mobile Samurai.

So not, not mobile Noble with an n. No, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

No, yeah, that's right. Noble Samurai. N, O, B, L, E. Correct, right, correct.

And they have several products. But Noble Samurai is probably where this gentleman from Fiverr gets his information from. Basically throws out the report, gives you the keywords. Based on those keywords, you can, you can, as you mentioned, you can assess whether they are moderately competitive, extremely competitive, low, you know, low, low level competitive key and then base your SEO campaign or your organic campaign. And just so everybody understands, what Mark's trying to say is that when you're putting an ad together, you can take these long keyword strings like Land for sale in Nevada, Land for sale in Colorado, alternative energy, Land for sale and all these different keywords and you can put them in your, whether they're in your ad, which at some point you can. The sites like, with higher rankings like Landwatch and Lands America, if you put some of these low competitive keywords in your ad, your ad will generally pop up first because they are already ranked. And then on your side, if you're putting an ad together on your website, you can utilize these keywords in the title, in the description and then you put them within your keyword market an actual article or ad based on those keywords. So.

Right. And that plugin that I mentioned last week, that WordPress by SEO Yoast or SEO by Yoast actually walks you through exactly what to do for your keywords. Now don't do what they call keyword stuffing and just write an article that says Vacant land for sale. Vacant Land for sale. Vacant Land for Sale. That is not going to help you. So it actually has to be something of value. And that's what Google really likes anyways is valuable content and they're always changing their algorithm. And really, I don't even like to rely on Google for any of my traffic. If they bring me free traffic, great. But I think there's a lot better ways to bring traffic in our niche than Google. What do you think, Duran?

Yeah, I think you're right. I think Google is not reliable. In fact, it's unfortunate for people like you and I who could work on a campaign for two years on building our organic rankings and then find out that they've just changed the algorithm. And Google wants to let you know, and I think we've talked about this, that they are in control. So it's hard to go out there and define what strategy is going to work, because at the end of the day, it could change within a week.

If anybody tells you they can get your website at the top of Google, like there's these SEO companies out there, that is probably one of the biggest online scams there is, because no one can promise you they can get your site to the front page of Google for any amount of time. They might be able to do it for some amount of time, but Google, if they find out that, that they're trying to beat the system, the worst thing they can do is knock you out forever.

They have a term for that. They have a couple of terms for that, but one of them is going into sandbox. Not sure if you heard of the term sandbox, Mark, but sandbox is basically burying your rankings where nobody will see them. And it could be for a period of a week, a month, six months, a year, or permanently. So you can be sandboxed. And so that's one thing you don't want to happen. And there's white. What do they call it? White hat and black hat SEO. Black hat being shunned upon tremendously in this era because of the changes to the algorithms recently. Three or four years ago, you could do a lot of black hat stuff and still make it to the top of Google. Now, black hat literally is being frowned upon because if you do it, you're going to get caught. It's not if, it's when. Right?

Right. So what's the best way then to start marketing your land?

You have to get creative. I think you and I both have our strategies. I mean, my strategy is a little different in the sense that I would build a report with one of the websites in a domain that I have, which is freelandreport.com and give my sellers or my buyers something to have and to hold that they can read. That's valuable to them. And that's a great way to build a list. The second way, as you talked about, is having a funnel built off of land watch lands of America land and farm and utilizing those. And not every nine out of ten are just simply leads for your funnel and not necessarily something that you're going to convert immediately.

Right, Right. So let's explain to everybody what a funnel is. So if you picture in your mind a big Y, okay? So the Y has a big mouth at the front of it. And that's going to be all our leads going to that funnel. As they go down that funnel, we're going to put a line in between that Y and that's going to be somebody that does something within our funnel. Either they buy a piece of property or they buy a piece of property from someone else that we are actually affiliated with, but they do something. And as we go down that funnel, we create more and more value. And those people end up spending more and more money with us, whether they buy a larger piece of property, several pieces of property. But that's what we want to do as we work down that funnel. So the idea is give them something very inexpensive to get into the funnel or ideally even free. A free land report. I have my three fatal land buying mistakes.com report. And so we bring them into the funnel. Then once they're in the funnel, what do we do? We start providing them valuable information. And then as we continue doing that, we start adding more value there because now we start creating more trust. So then. And the ratio should be maybe one to five. Right. So for every four free, valuable pieces of information that you give your lead or your customer or your prospect, then you can ask them to take a call of action. Whether that's buying an inexpensive piece of property or a moderately priced piece of property. It just depends where your niche is and the quality of that prospect. You got it?

Got it. Sorry, I just keep hearing a beep in the background there. So I apologize, Mark. I'm not sure if that's you or me.

You know what? I'm getting all these. It's supportandwatch.com I'm getting more leads.

Wow. I don't have that problem right now.

So you want to create this ad and then the whole idea of a website, you don't even need a website. I don't even recommend it. When you first start, don't spend money on an expensive web developer or doing a website. All you really need is a simple squeeze page or a landing page that just provides a little bit of information and gets them into your funnel. And we talked about this last week. But for example, your squeeze page might be www.crazylanddeals.com. okay. And we're going to drive traffic to crazylanddeals.com and in there it's just going to be very focused. It's going to have an opt in page that says enter your email address here and receive information on the craziest land deals you've ever seen in your entire life. And that's it. And they might put their email address in just to be curious, like what could be the craziest land deal they've ever seen. Or get instant access to a land report that's going to show you where the most valuable land is in Nevada or Arizona based on our 12 years of experience in finding where the paths of growth are. So it's endless as long as it's something that's compelling and valuable people will put in their email address. Now if it's something like not that great, then it's going to be crickets because today we're fighting for everybody's attention and you've got to give something of value. There's.

I agree. While you were talking, Mark, in that span of 60 seconds, I just bought crazylanddeals.com.

Look, nothing makes me happier.

No, what is really funny, I did quickly search that and find that it is available. So just so you guys all know the interesting part about coming up with just creative thoughts like what Mark just gave you, you can go and search and sometimes those things are there like crazy land deals. Like that's not, that's not a keyword that someone's going to search. But if you find a way to actually viably market the site on another bland blog or something, or you have a listing on landwatch.com or lands of America and you can utilize that domain in your listing, all of a sudden now you've sort of, you're learning how to build that funnel system. You've taken that listing, which they may not even be interested in going. Well, now they have something else to offer me. Let me click on it. What is it? So, and not all the sites will allow you to have a domain they click back to. But, but if you can find a way, some sites do. Some sites don't, you know, Land Watch and Lands of America. There's some areas there where they'll let you put in a domain name. And I don't know if they, you know, if they allow certain ones to. And I think they'd be okay with it. But anyway you got, you have to, to go and put a land site together to showcase your land. Not a bad idea if you, if you're listing on Landwatch and you want to put a site up, but they go spend money with a web developer. And one of the things that Mark and I are working on is putting something in place where we can allow sellers to actually list their land on a, on a, on a theme basis where we have a WordPress theme that allows you to put it together in an hour or two. So and by the way, that was just a lead from Land Watch Crazy.

Land deals dot com.

So what you want to do is like as Mark mentioned is, you know, you don't want to put a site together unless it's something that we can like we had mentioned that we're working on trying to put something there for sellers to utilize. But at the end of the day your focus is building that funnel on Land Watch for Lands America because you're not going to get anything ranked for six months or a year. And how long are you going to be in the business? Are you financially prepared to take a 12 month or 18 month push at buying land and selling land? So don't waste your money up front. Go make money first and then spend money.

Exactly, exactly. Keep your mission always in the forefront. Write it down. Your mission in this business is to create new and better land solutions for your customers. Keep the customer in mind first. You're always adding value for your customer. If you keep that in mind and that's your priority, good things will come to you. But if it's always about trying to make money and, and doing this and doing that and getting the best deal for yourself, well again, it might work for a few months, but you're not going to be in this business for 5, 10, 15 years. So you've got to keep that in mind as well. So everywhere along the funnel it needs to be about what's best for my customer. And a lot of times I'm sure everyone's subscribed to these opt in lists and you get these emails and it sounds so salesy, you know what I mean? It's like hey, this or that. When you write in your autoresponder, write for one person. When I'm writing, I'm always thinking of just one person. Typically it's not Duran, but it'll be my mom, let's say. How would I, if I were going to write something that is going to be a valuable piece of content or a Type of sale. How would I approach it if it was just my mom reading it? That always helps. Dran, when you're writing, how do you approach it?

I write in a very different way. I think the way I try to put something out there from an editorial standpoint or writing to help sell something, I write in a way that is always helpful, giving information, wanting the end user or the reader to know that I'm not here just to make money. And generally, if anyone that knows me in my daily life knows that I'm generally out to help people, that's what I like to do. And so for me, I'm not out there trying to sell you now. You'll get always, every day you get some junk mail from somebody that somehow you got on the list and it's this crazy letter of hey, today, special deal. The scarcity of this or that. The problem is you. Surely you're going to have a conversion rate because they're just naturally, there's conversion rates in everything. You're going to have a conversion rate whether it's 1% or 2%. The more real you are, the higher your conversion rate is going to be. So the more you can put in there that helps someone, that benefits someone, the higher the likelihood of them calling you back for information or emailing you or whatever.

Right, right. So getting back to my point of last week, so as soon as I make that sale, I want to get those people into my customer funnel and man, do I want to make those customers happy. So right away it's. And then what else can I provide for them? Because they're already in that buying mood. They've already seen, okay, this guy has something of value that I want. So my job is to provide them more value. And I'm not shy about it. I come right out, okay, look, I know you just bought this five acres in southern Colorado. I've got the adjoining parcel. I think you should get 10 acres. Let's do it. And I'm going to give you 20% off. They do it, then they buy a 40 acre piece. Why not buy 80? Even better, I've got 120 acres. Provide them more value. So as they continue going down that funnel, I can provide more and more information and more value in terms of, okay, how can you improve your property? What are some raw land income ideas you can use to make money now that you own property? And then as they come down the line, by the way, here's another great piece of agricultural property specifically for that list. So they feel exclusive. They feel Valued and you're treating them the way that you would want to be treated or the way that you'd want to treat your mom. And that pays dividends down the line. So you're not constantly having to go and get new customers through cold sites such as an ebay or a Craigslist or a Landwatch. Because once that person's in your funnel, that first sale, I tell you what, you treat them right, it's gold. And that's really the way to work it. So I hope I was clear here. I know we kind of jumped all over the place. I'll probably create a report for my customers to actually download. So creating the funnel and building lists becomes very clear. And again, don't get overwhelmed with all the tech pieces. Search engine optimization, keyword research, creating a website, creating a squeeze page, all those things are really again, tertiary to what you're doing. Your main objective when you first start is the marketing aspect and the strategy of it. What you want to say for five bucks on fiverr.com you can have people from all over the world create all those tech pieces for you. So for 20 bucks you've got your squeeze page, you've got your website, you've got your autoresponder, and you've created your funnel. Duran, what do you have to add there?

I mean, you nailed it. Mark, I'll be honest with you. I think for the both of us, we've learned from the past mistakes that we've made. We started, you know, the interesting part is if you look back to the upsell in our business when we were selling land on eBay in 2002, 2003, 2004, the upsell was always in the ad. If you'd like the additional lot, we'll give you a discount or inquire about the additional lot. But it was never really a personal sale. It was more of like if you want it, it's there. And we never really pushed, pushed that subject. But now because we're building more of these relationship based clients, we can now offer it to them in a different manner and in a manner that they would obliged to purchase the next lot or the adjoining lot. So it's a different process now than it was 10 years ago. And that also is going to continue to evolve, but it's becoming a lot more relationship based and what we do to our clients to help them realize that we're in it to help them.

Right, right. And again, I think it was two or three podcasts ago we talked about social media, you know, don't forget about social media as well. I'm trying to consistently post on Facebook. It's very hard, but it's a habit. I don't know if anything's going to come to it or not. I think it will over time. But, you know, marketing is not going to be the kind of thing where you do one thing and pretty soon you've got a million people coming to your site, bringing it down. It's a very slow drip when you get started. You've got to write articles, you've got to create partnerships, you've got to ask people in your similar niche, hey, if I put a backlink on my site recommending your site, will you put a backlink for me as well? But it's got to be in your niche, otherwise Google doesn't like that either. But you've got to work at it every single day. And we didn't talk about it. I think we should talk about next week is the value of YouTube for generating marketing leads. So, Duran, I know I'm putting you on the spot again. I know you hate this. What's your tip of the week?

Well, I actually sort of already touched on my tip of the week, which was Noble Samurai.

Ah, yeah, that's right.

So I think that people, again, from a. From a technology side, you don't have to really get yourself involved to a point where you need to understand it all, but it's something that you can slowly learn. And Noble Samurai and several of their other products allow you to learn the keyword game, understand SEO a little better. So I would definitely take a look at that, and I think it's noblesamurai.com or something to that effect. So take a peek. If it's not noblesamurai.com, you can probably Google it and find it.

Right, Right. My tip of the week is going to be a WordPress theme that I use to create my squeeze pages. Did I talk about this optimizepress.com I.

Don'T think you did.

Okay. Optimizepress.com is fantastic. Now, there is a learning curve with this. It's just not so easy to build a Squeeze page with OptimizedPress.com and there's other more expensive options out there. But if you do take the time to learn OptimizePress, you can use it on all your sites. It's like the best 67 bucks you'll ever spend. That being said, do I learn optimizepress? No. Come to me. I've got a virtual assistant that is an optimized press expert and for very little money, they will create your squeeze page for you. So you can go and focus on doing what you should be focusing on, which is creating more marketing campaigns and of course making offers every single day and going from there. So I think this is a good podcast. It's a very authentic podcast. Exactly right. So fantastic. So what do you think we should talk about next week?

I want to touch back on your social media strategy. I'm going to start one myself shortly here. I'm just working. I've got a, I've got an employee who's busy cranking away at getting all my listings up. So it's been a little bit of a slow process. She's got a little learning curve that she's got to get over. But once I get them all up, I'm going to start doing some social media as well.

So social media, we should talk about YouTube, the value of YouTube, how to do YouTube, because it's not just putting up videos. You actually have to do a little bit of keyword research and there's a little bit of a trick when you work on the description how to do that and setting all that up and going from there. So this is Mark Podolsky. Do me a favor, download the passive investors blueprint at the Land Geek or check out my land listings frontierpropertiesusa.com Go ahead, don't be shy. Buy yourself a piece of wholesale property or go to Duran site reserveland.com or check out a squeeze page that I built which is three, I believe it's just the number three fatal land buyingmistakes.com and see how I do that there as well. So this is Mark Podolski with Duran Fraser telling you make it an extraordinary week and here's to your success. Thanks a lot for listening. Check you out next week. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Land Geek. Join us next time for more tips, secrets and information that will help you succeed. Stay connected with the Land Geek on facebook@facebook.com thelandgeek.