#202 Mail-Right Show With Special Guest Jack Kosakowski From CEO of Creation Agency USA

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We Discuss How To Use Facebook & Instagram Adds To Get Leads In 2019

Currently, Jack Kosakowski is the CEO of Creation Agency for the US division. its client base is global and we work with some of the fastest growing SaaS companies globally. Our agency is your “marketing team as a service.” We focus on all aspects of marketing automation and bring a data-driven approach to multi-channel demand generation. If you are looking to turn your digital into dollars, or your social into sales… We are your team!

Jack major focus has always been to educate everyone on how to use social to sell without spending a ton of money! Check out Skillslab.io if you want to get the best actionable content on integrating social into your sales and marketing process.

When he not building the business he watching Chelsea, hanging out with my amazing wife, or binge watching “Game of Thrones.”

A few times a year I am lucky enough to travel the world and speak globally about sales innovation and how sales is changing. If you are looking for a high energy speaker that will light everyone on fire to start turning social into sales, shoot me an email (Jack@Creationagency.com).

Jack: Yeah, my name’s Jack Kosakowski and I am the CEO of the US division, a global agency called creation agency. Also the cofounder of a media site called skills lab. And I’m just really, really passionate guy about helping educate individuals and helping companies to really use digital to turn it into dollars. Whether that’s small business, medium business. A big piece of our business is tech companies, but we do also work with people on the real estate, tech field and multiple other fields as well.

Jonathon: Yeah, I’ve watched some of Jack’s interviews online. He’s a real expert on how to use social media to actually get clients real leads. And I thought he would be a great person to come on and talk about social media in general. Specifically you also Facebook and Instagram. And I’ve got my great cohost, Robert. Robert, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listener’s viewers?

Robert: I would love to. So my name is Robert Newman. I am an inbound marketer, which is a fancy way of saying that I use attraction marketing to get people to websites. And then get those people to do something that we want them to do, such as create leads. And I’ve been focused on Real Estate for the last 12 years.

Jonathon: And it’s his birthday in a couple of days’ time. Isn’t, it?

Robert: It is. And I constantly get people messaging in from the show and other places and going, oh, you look 35. So hold onto your seats guys. I am not 35. I am turning 49 not, not some much younger age. Somebody that I have reviewed a whole bunch of shows that actually contacted me. Was like, yeah, you can’t be out of your mid-thirties. And I’m like, man, I’m almost as old as you.

Jonathon: Just take it, any blessings you get. And I’m the founder of Mail Right. We are a great platform that gets Real Estate agents called quality leads. And we do that by using the power of Facebook. And we provide a number of tools that will make your life easier and get the quality leads that you’re looking for. If that sounds interesting, go to mail-right.com and find out some more. Jack in this world of social media, you said your mom’s also a Real Estate agent. Have you got any kind of insights initially about how to use social media if you’re a Real Estate agent the right way? And then maybe give some insights about why so many people don’t use it that well.

Jack: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about a Real Estate agent in most cases, unless you’re in big markets. But the smaller markets are you don’t have a lot of competition. I mean you don’t have thousands of Real Estate agents in Marshalltown, Iowa, where my mom’s from. You’ve got about 10 to 15 competitors. So my question would be is how are you winning attention of people that could potentially want to buy a new house or sell a house in the next six months? So I think where a lot of people go wrong in Real Estate as they use it as a reactive tool instead of a proactive tool. And there’s so many simple methods and strategies that we’ve implemented for my mom. One is, she’s very heavily involved in the community.

So one of the things that we’ve noticed is that people like to do business with people that are doing good things in the community. Especially in a smaller area. So not selling, but amplifying, you know, hey, we’re raising money for this, we’re doing what we’re raising money for this. And then running at retargeting ads to those people about a house that’s for sale. So it’s how do you introduce yourself from a marketing perspective, from a personal branding perspective. How do you introduce yourself? What’s the first introduction? We’re raising money for the new park that’s going in town. People get excited. Okay, cool. Love to see that you’re helping us build a new park in town. And then the next thing you know, is they getting a retargeted ad on Instagram,, Facebook to say, Hey, we’ve got look at this property. We’ve got an open house on Tuesday at 9:00 AM. So you’re kind of building credibility and then using business on the back end of that to kind of drive the sales conversation.

Jonathon: Yeah. I see where you’re coming from. Over to you Robert.

Robert: I’m not ready.

Jack: The challenge of the personal branding play. Okay. I’ve, I love it. So if you want to challenge it, I’m cool with it.

Robert: So to our audience, I posed a question to Jack before the show started. Many years ago I had a chance to consult with Ryan Sir Hunt. And at the time he was looking for some help converting quite literally tens of thousands of visitors off his Twitter feed into actual usable leads for his high end luxury Real Estate businesses. Before he founded Nesty the Seekers and moved into the CEO role of a brokerage and so on and so forth. And at that particular time, while I do believe he was occasionally making connections, it was extremely hard for him to leverage social media. And over the years I’ve also had a chance to talk to Joyce Ray and a couple of other people. And it tends to be one of those things where steering conversations off social media in a direction that actually equals revenue seems to be a very challenging thing on using social media platforms. Because for whatever reason, there seems to be a lot of dialogue happening on those platforms.

Now, I’m not saying that that it couldn’t be done, but I asked Jack what he would do. And he had an answer for me at that time. So I’m going to say that part of a question, Jack. And then I’m also going to say, I have a second question because Jack mentioned, hey, this person has a huge brand. And most likely there were factors about having credibility online that might impact his actual revenue. I don’t disagree. I would ask this question though, because 99% of the people that listen to this show. They’re not Maestro or Joyce rate. They’re actually probably like the young lady that Jonathan and I interviewed a while ago where she’s gotten maybe 150 people in their circle of influence. And she’s desperately trying to figure out how to leverage those 150 people. So I’m going to ask you this question. How would you build a social media audience with the intent of selling to it from scratch in the Real Estate business?

Jack: So I would tell you that Twitter is not the right place to be in the first place. So I would have told Ryan, Sir Han to say, why are you wasting your time on Twitter when you’re in Real Estate? That had been my absolute first. But I think where this gets really powerful and I think a lot of Real Estate agents don’t understand it, is the power of targeting that we have with Instagram and LinkedIn or Facebook. So if I was consulting Real Estate agent, the first thing I would say is pick Facebook and Instagram as your platform. Don’t worry about anything else in my opinion other than building your email list. So you have channels to build your email list.

But I think where a lot of people go wrong is the targeting. So build your Facebook page, build your Instagram page, turn it into a business page and Instagram and start to run ads. I think if I was starting right now as a new Real Estate agent, one of the things that I would do is, I would do Facebook lives at open houses. I would Facebook live and open house and do a really, really quick walk through of something. And then I would turn that into an ad and geotarget that towards, I’m going to use Marshalltown, Iowa as an example. My mom’s a Real Estate agent there. I would do zip code 50158, which is the zip code in Marshall Town. And I would take that live and I would boost that with a link to the listing on my site.

And I would run that to just drive engagement. To get people talking. And then I would keep building these kinds of retargeting structures around different content strategy. And I don’t know if we have enough time for that, but you know, one of the content strategies is what are you doing for the community? If you join the Chamber of Commerce, how are you helping the Chamber of Commerce amplify an event that they have coming up that other business owners should come into? Because we know that if I’m a Real Estate agent, I want to get network with as many business owners as possible. Because typically they have a little bit higher pocket books in most cases. So I’m thinking about my ideal buyer and my content strategy, but I’m really using retargeting on Facebook and Instagram ads, a dollar a day, $5 a day, not that much to get visibility into those target zip codes of people that I’m looking to get into those homes to take a look at. Or to become a potential buyer, be a potential sales conversation.

Robert: Okay. That was fantastic. I agree with everything that you’ve said. For our audience though. I’m going to hit the slow down or rewind button. And I’m going to say a couple of things that Jack mentioned that I feel kind of fall into either the intermediate skill level for social selling. Or advanced skill level for social selling. So Facebook live, Facebook live is for a lot of you, I think you might know what it is. You may not know how to use it. We’re Facebook live right now, which is where the three of us are being recorded onto our Facebook page or business page. And that’s how we’re using Facebook live. So John, I’m going to actually ask you, because I don’t use it that much. Just real quickly. Can you say, how does somebody find where to go Facebook live on their Facebook page? Real quick, just so that we can start at the very basic part of this.

Jonathon: Well, it’s normally you can either utilize your postal profile or your business page, I think. And I think you should set up a business page. Because you’re going to use it for paid advertising. So you set up your business page like I say. There’s a tag at the top where you can post a video. But it normally says Facebook live as well. It gives the option, on the mobile app, a lot of people are going to be using their IPhone or android, it’s even easier there. There’s actually a specific app that you can utilize. So they’re probably going to be using a mobile device. Because we’re doing a podcast, I use the desktop. And there are different forms of software, and application depending if you’re using a PC or a Mac.

Jack: Well, I mean it’s pretty easy. If you go to post something, there’s a go. There it is right there, right. Let’s zoom in. Go live button right here. I can’t, why won’t it come on zoom in. But you hit go live and it says start live video. Yeah, it’s really, really simple. And I mean, my mom can do it. Anybody can do that. Let’s be honest. My mom is not technologically advanced. And I taught her how to do it in about five minutes. But she literally has a tripod. She takes a tripod to an open house. And she stands in front of it and she talks about it and she takes the tripod around for about five minutes. Shows you the room, shows you the bathroom, and shows you the backyard. And that’s it,

I mean its super simple, but I think your point Jonathan, is you can do it on your personal page. So like if you’re like super beginner and this, you’re like, ah, I don’t, you’re talking where my head perfect. You know, just like you do a post, go do a live, have your mobile phone talk into it. Flip the screen around and walk around it on your personal page. And your personal connections would see it. But I think the powerful thing is if you put it on your public page, you can spend $10 and target thousands of people to watch the video in a local area.

Jonathon: What I would like your advice on is the reason why I introduced the personal profile on the business page. Because it’s always a difficult one. Especially video, if you push it to your personal profile, a lot of people initially are going to see it. Where if you put it on your business page, a lot less people are gonna see it. Unless you use money to advertise that post, the main thing is time press that boosts that post button. You know that boost button. Because you’re just throwing your money away. You really need to go into business manager. It is another whole topic. And that’s why people tend to freeze. Don’t they? Because they maybe have to go into business manager.

Jack: Well, I think that’s the number one problem with most Real Estate agents though, is they don’t want to spend money on advertising. That’s my experience. And plain and simple, you can network your way to a certain amount of business, but at some point, if you want to kind of take it to the next level, you do have to invest money. I mean, whether that’s into SEO to optimize your website or you know, to understand how to build an email list and have some page strategies around that. I mean, there are so many different things that have to happen when you want to get to that next level. I’ve had to have that conversation with my mom was Real Estate agent, it’s like, you know, you have to do something differently and it’s going to cost you a little bit of money,

How much money that’s up to you. But, you know, Facebook and Instagram ads can be a very, very cheap, attention grabbing strategy. Is it going to be the bee’s knees and, is it a silver bullet? Hell No. I mean there are no silver bullets in anything. But I think does give you a competitive advantage, especially in laggard markets where your competitors aren’t doing anything like that. They’re not might have a billboard up or something, but they’re not doing anything innovative from a targeting perspective. I think the average person spends 45 minutes a day scrolling through Facebook, their Facebook feed. Imagining if you could be the Real Estate agent that, at least twice or three times a week, they see one of your properties in their feed. And you do that over a three months period of time. And when they’re ready to buy, if you’ve owned their attention, which they got to buy from. Or at least we’re going gonna have a conversation with if they don’t already have an existing relationship.

Jonathon: Well, that’s great. We’re going to go for our break. When we come back, I want to ask Jake more about Instagram. And what he thinks of the platform gives them some advice and insights into that. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

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Jonathon: We are coming back. We’ve had a bit of a feast about Facebook. Robert looks a little bit bored, but I think he’s happy. He is pumping himself up for his birthday, so he’s happy. He’s happy. Jack looks puzzled. I would be puzzled if I was a guest on this show. But at least hopefully share some of the experience a bit. Instagram, what your thoughts about it? Got insights about how a Real Estate agent specifically around Instagram should be utilizing that platform Jack?

Jack: So this is a tough one for me because, I love Instagram, but I would have to agree with Robert on this one it’s a really tough platform. In Real Estate in my opinion, other than ads using ads for specific targeting. It’s a really hard platform to build an audience without spending a lot of money. And you know, is it the right place for real estate? I don’t know. What I tell people is I don`t know if I’m Tony Robins modeling. Perspective is like, okay, if you’re in real estate, how do you know what you should be doing? Well, I say, okay go find other Real Estate agents on Instagram. And see what they’re doing and model it in your own way. I mean, you can’t copy their strategy, but what I will tell you is that I think Instagram stories is interesting.

Jonathon: That’s where I was leading you to. I agree. I’ve got a love hate affair because we, we introduced the ability or by our system to post to Instagram a month ago. But I am not a great active user of Instagram. I am on Facebook and I am on Twitter for other reasons. I am a great believer in Facebook still. And I believe in YouTube as well. But Instagram I am in and out with it. That part of it I’m interested in, so speak some more about that Jack.

Jack: Yeah, I think it goes back to kind of telling the story of when you’re in a house. Taking a 15 second video of the entryway. And you can have six, seven little different mini segments. You could actually even go live. I mean, the thing about this stuff, this is why I tell people is it’s free to use. I mean, doing a live stream, if you’ve got 3000 connections on Facebook. But as long as you’re not overdoing it and some people will be interested in, some people won’t, But it doesn’t hurt to put yourself out there. You have to, as a Real Estate agent. If you want to get more connections, you want to get more eyeballs. You want to get more sales. Well then you’ve got to put out something that can get you to that point.

The one-to-one relationship thing is like, it doesn`t scale, unless you’re over a long period of time. So that’s where I struggle with people like, well, just put stuff out there, and test it. I mean, do something that’s free. Don’t go out and pay for ads. Brace yourself to get good on video, I mean you’re going to have some shitty videos you might put out a live stream that looks kind of crappy. We’ll just delete it, until you get it to the point where you’ve had enough practice. And now you’re good on video and kind of showing around. One of the things that my mom does once in a while is she just gives you five tips, She just goes on video and says, Hey, like hey, here’s five tips to get the price of your, your home value up.

I mean, and she just tells you because she’s an expert in the field. Here are five things you’re probably not thinking about. And she puts out a video and you’d be amazed how many people are like, wow I never thought about that. That’s great. You know, whether they got something out of the one tip or not. But you’re just consistently kind of building your credibility, giving that value through education, getting people excited through showing them what potentially in the next house could look like. How do you get people excited about and thinking about buying a new house? Put a damn really awesome house that’s a lot better than the one they have in front of them over and over and over enough times. So you got to get strategic and these channels are just another medium of communication. And you just got to figure out how to take advantage of them for free in the beginning. And then if you start to figure out, hey, this does make sense, start to put some money behind it. A little bit at a time. And along with the other strategies. How am I building my email list? How am I nurturing people? There’s so much you can be doing. But I would say doing nothing is the worst strategy.

Jonathon: It’s true. So to get on about what you mentioned in the first part of the show. You mentioned retargeting through Facebook. Can you give us obviously me and Robert understands it and some of our listeners? Cause we’ve been going on about that for months. But we get a lot of new listeners and viewers. And thank you very much for coming on the show listening to us. Can you give me some background on what you mean by retargeting?

Jack: Yeah. So let me an example. So let’s say that you did an open house, and you live streamed it on your company Facebook page. Well, let’s say you had a thousand people that viewed it for 10 seconds or more. What you can do is you can actually take those 10,000 people that viewed 10 seconds or more. And you can build a retargeting audience. So let’s say your first video goes up and you got a thousand people viewed it. So your next, video that you go up, you’re gonna run an ad to those thousand people to get them to see that ad again for another house. Now, let’s say that 2000 people watch that plus 500 watched the other one. Now you’ve got your third video has 2,500 people to retarget. So what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get the same people to watch something over and over and over.

They say online, it takes seven to nine touches before somebody would even make a purchase decision. And that’s talking about ecommerce. Small tickets, size, not, we’re not talking about a hundred thousand dollar house. So maybe it takes 15 touches for them to finally be confident to make the decision. Say, I’m going to call Jack I want to buy my house from him. I’ve been following him for a really long time. I’ve been watching what he’s doing. I love the properties that he’s got listed, whatever that may be. But there’s also website retargeting. So anybody that’s come to your website in the last 30 days, you’re going to retarget those certain people. There are many different types of retargeting strategies that you could be using right away. One would be if you’re a realtor and you’ve got an email list of 5,000 people, but you only have a 10, 15% open rate, well how do you get those other people 85%?

Rather than calling them, you put them into Facebook ads. And you retarget your email list. You put up those videos that you’re doing live streaming at an open house. You retarget those people on your email list with a video on a channel where they live. Because maybe they don’t check their email or the email address is bad. Or it’s another great way to get people reengaged. So we’ve tested it where we’ve taken an email list of 10,000 people that only has about a 20% open rate. We’ve uploaded that email listing and we’ve actually increased our email open rate by doing retargeting strategies on social media. To get them back engaged to say, oh, well I forgot about this. And getting them to sign up for something else. So retargeting is the most powerful tool that we have with digital and online. But most realtors have no strategy for that to stay in front of people on multiple channels over time. They just kind of stuck in one channel in most cases.

Jonathon: It’s understandable. And obviously because Jack when I watched your videos. Obviously you do a lot of podcasts and the information on business to business. And that is great stuff Jack. But obviously when it comes to real estate, there are very few Real Estate agents that have built a list of five or even 10,000 on their list. Something that I and Robert have been consistently hammering away at. That you need to build up a database.

Jack: Like brokers, like you’ve got Real Estate agents that come and go. And you’re not as a brokerage building a full database of all these people throughout your realtors. I mean, you know, brokers are even more imperative that they build an email list from all of the Real Estate agents that are going to come and go. And their customers are going to come and go.

Jonathon: Well it is true. But some of the most indifferent, painful email campaigns tend to come from the brokerage database. I’m actually interested in would you agree with that Robert? Some of the most in different email marketing on the come from brokerages. I don’t know why but I do know why because it’s a bit linked to some of your other conversations you’ve had recently. Because you had one on a podcast where you were saying that it relates to LinkedIn. And Facebook, they, you said you would select like 10 of your closest target audience. And you were trying to engage them in conversation. And then you were talking about when is it the time to actually do outreach. And the same thing I think you can utilize that structure to a Real Estate agent because you do this outreach. And then they should be a time where you should be more proactive and you do outreach. Is any got any thoughts about that Jack?

Jack: I think if I was in real estate, and I do actually. I’m not a real estate, but I do this anyway, so I’ve practiced what I preach. But your personal Facebook feed is a gold mine for referrals. So like when a lot of people do is they look at their Facebook feed, they go, oh, this person could ever buy it from me. I’m not going to engage with them. They could never buy from me. But the problem that you don’t realize is that they might not be able to buy from you or they might not be in the market. But their uncle could be. Their uncle that’s looking for a house and is looking to move to your area. So staying in touch with people, like, just a simple like, happy birthday.

Hey, just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Just messaging, people that are in your network that, you know, like for example,. I have a cousin that loves Volkswagens, So once in a while, I don’t talk to this cousin very often, but once in a while, if I see a really cool article about Volkswagens, I’ll DM him on messenger and say, Hey, I found this awesome article. And believe it or not, not too long ago, he sent me a fat referral out of the blue. Hadn’t even talked to him maybe three months. But he sent me a referral, said, hey, you’ve got a buddy that owns a business and is looking for an agency. And I just thought of you. Because just doing these light touches and staying in front of all these people in your network. And building kind of that connects, that digital connection, those referrals, over time, those will add up.

Maybe its five referrals a year, but five referrals a year that close is a lot of money. Just by doing some simple outreach and touches and showing people that you care and that you’re there not even selling them. You know, that stuff is the easy stuff you can do as a Real Estate agent that nobody else is doing. It’s just saying hi sometimes, hey, just wanted to say hi. Hope all is well. Let me know if I can do anything for you. I haven’t talked to you in a while. Maybe let’s grab coffee when you have time. Talk about how you’re kids is going to college. Nothing to do with real estate, but you’re just staying in front of people and actually showing that you give a shit. Because you’re not the realtor that’s just spamming them, trying to get them to buy another house. Or sell their house and buy from you again. It’s really about just staying in front of people with the entire right motive over time and using that as what I like to call compound interest. Like one of Warren Buffett’s sentences.

Jonathon: Well, I totally agree with you. But I think a lot of agents really struggle with that. Because of the time, the ups and downs of being a Real Estate agent. But I think that you’ve got to have different packets for different people and the ones that you see they’re consuming your content. Or they’ve done business with you in some way. That needs to be in your top bucket where you do this personal outreach. But you’ve got to have a methodogies about how people get into that top bucket. And especially if you’re starting out because you won’t have a lot of initial seller and buyers. But it will happen. But you got to have a mythology of how people get into that top bucket where you’re doing a lot of this personal outreach. Would you agree with that Jack?

Jack: Yeah, I think it’s funny because somebody said to me not too long ago. They said I’m in insurance, this is an insurance agent, I sell insurance. And I said, well, I didn’t know you sold insurance. I’ve been Facebook friends and friends with you for years and I just got insurance. Like if I would’ve known that you sold insurance, like I would have got my insurance through you. It was like simple concept and they’re like, Whoa, well how do, how would you have known? I said, well, I follow you on Facebook. I follow your sports posts and all this stuff. Like all you had to simply say is like, you know, take a picture in front of State Farm. I don’t know if that’s going to work. But take a nice picture in front of the State Farm office and say, you know, today was a good day.

Here are five lessons I learned in the insurance world. And puts out on your personal page. Because what I think a lot of people don’t, and this could be in Real Estate as well. How are people going to buy from you, especially people that are in your network that you have a relationship with but haven’t talked to you in years? How are they going to buy from you if they have no freaking clue what you actually sell? Like, I mean, at the most simple format is like twice a month post on your Facebook page, very strategically about how you’re excited that this house just sold. I’m so excited that I just sold this freaking house to my best friends. And I can’t wait to see what the future holds for them. I mean, that’s a subtle way of letting people know, hey, I sell freaking real estate.

I’m available without actually being a selfish jerk. I mean, there’s, visibility is a powerful thing. Attention is a powerful thing and you can do it in very subtle ways. But like I said, if people don’t know what you sell, which I would challenge a lot of Real Estate agents right now. How many people know that you actually sell Real Estate that you are friends with or have been friends with in the past? Social media is your vehicle to make sure that they know so that they don’t go buy from one of your competitors because they didn’t even know you sold it.

Jonathon: Well hopefully Jack is going to stay on, and we are going to have some bonus content. I am going to wrap up the podcast about the show. In the bonus we are going to be asking Jack about his own mom’s experiences. And what she’s achieved if she’s used paid advertising herself. Robert, how can people get hold of you and find out more about you Robert?

Robert: If they really wanted to, they could go to inboundrem.com. And most everything about me and all of my marketing philosophies is pretty much all there online. Plus reviews of all the top Real Estate marketing technology companies.

Jonathon: That’s great. And Jack, how can people find out more about you and your words of wisdom?

Jack: Yeah, just connect with me on Facebook or LinkedIn. Shoot me a DM let me know you watch this. And let’s just connect there. I think that’s easiest way to go about this.

Jonathon: And if you want to contact me you can go to the Mail Right website, you can book a Free Demo. And I will personally walk through the software for you. Or you can, through Facebook or Twitter. You can get out of me. I’m pretty easy to communicate. I would love, to chat with you and for you to come on the Mail Right system. We’re going to continue the discussion a bit longer. You should be able to watch on the Mail Right YouTube channel. We normally post all our latest content there. So go there, or the Mail Right Facebook page. We will see you next week folks. We are going to have another great interview or internal discussion with my great partner, Robert. We will see you soon. Bye.