The SocialMadeSimple Show- Dan Black Ep. 10

In this episode, we break down all things JustListed.Social (JLS), our lead generation social media solution for the real estate industry. JLS Product Specialist, Dan Black, joins Ryan Chiasson, Business Development Manager, to talk about his day-to-day, partnerships with major real estate associations, exactly how JLS generates real leads for real estate agents and brokerages, and more!

Ryan: Alright welcome back to the 10th episode SocialMadeSimple Show! I am your host, Ryan Chiasson. Today, we are joined by none other than the JustListed.Social Product Specialist, Dan Black. Dan, thanks for joining us again today!

Dan: Thanks Ryan, I’m excited to be here! Glad I finally got the call-up!

Ryan: I know – everyone’s just like, “when am I going to be next on the show”?! I don’t even decide that!

Dan: My lucky week!

Transition: The SocialMadeSimple Show

Ryan: When I started out doing content and then transitioned to doing more things on the business development side, I pretty much learned all my preliminary tasks from Dan. So it definitely is interesting to see how both of our roles have played out. I would love to get a brief background on you – even all the way back to school and how you came to work for SocialMadeSimple!

Dan: Yeah, so I went to school for Political Science for the first maybe year, or year and a half. Two years after graduation I worked for a political software company that does motor outreach efforts, as well as fundraising and compliance stuff. That was great, and then this opportunity came beginning of 2019, I think January or February – I came aboard! It was originally a supporting role in the business development office, working as SocialMadeSimple kind of moved away from the singular small business market and into the franchise marketing space. Over the months and years since then, we’ve kind of bounced around to a couple different roles as we’ve built out the business development office. As you mentioned, you joined.

So over the last year or so, I’ve been between concierge, franchise stuff, and now I manage the sales and marketing outreach efforts for this JustListed.Social product. And it is really great to see that our success in general has allowed us to really fill out this business development office and let people take different roles in places throughout the different verticals that we work in. So it’s exciting to see in real time how that stuff grows and develops. 

Ryan: Yeah – absolutely! I think it’s one of the great things about SocialMadeSimple – just all of us having the ability to be versatile in our positions, play to our strengths, and even find these new exciting opportunities to take a hold of!

Transition: Get To Know The Role of Our JustListed.Social Product Specialist

Ryan: I think it would be great to segue into what your current role entails and what your day-to-day looks like. For everyone’s knowledge here, there is SocialMadeSimple, which is our full-suite services marketing company, and then JustListed.Social is what we call our sister company or our sister product that was developed specifically for real estate. I’ll let Dan take it away from here!

Dan: Sure! As I mentioned, I am in charge of outreach to mostly large customers and partners for this JustListed.Social product; and I think we’ll get into the specifics of the product and how it works a little bit later. Just generally speaking it’s a real estate lead generation solution on social media.

Those customers and partners include, but aren’t necessarily limited to, large real estate brokerages, large real estate associations, media companies, tech companies, and sometimes even individual agents (or teams, as they’re sometimes called in the real estate space) who are looking for a solution on social media that actually provides leads rather than just other filler content, impressions, or views. They’re good – they just don’t drive results or business. 

So it’s definitely an awesome product and, as you mentioned, it is branded on its own. So we like to say JustListed.Social: powered by SocialMadeSimple. Yeah, it’s a great product and I’m very excited to jump into it and explain it to some people who might not be familiar with it!

Ryan: Yeah! And for everyone’s knowledge, the company came from a real estate perspective and a mortgage perspective. Seeing this need for social media, being able to connect with their audiences, and just seeing that social media was on the rise. So it’s definitely interesting just to see how it’s stemmed from just this one need, into becoming a full-service company and product. 

Transition: What Exactly is JustListed.Social (J.L.S.)?

Dan: As I had mentioned before in a general sense, JustListed.Social is an automated lead generation solution for the real estate industry. As I said, it’s very unique in that it’s a lead-driven solution, unlike many of its competitors which are more focused on impressions and views. These are kind of less meaningful metrics as it relates to driving revenue and lead conversions. There are two main verticals, or buckets, that JLS products operate under. I’ll go over the first one which is listing ads. These advertise a specific on-market house listing via automated lead capture ad placements on Facebook and Instagram. The agents or brokerages have the choice to advertise the listing as either just listed, just sold, price change, or open house. And it’s a very simple and streamlined product in that the agent simply has to input the MLS number of that specific listing on our order form and our automation will build an ad and serve it to Facebook users that best fit our proprietary likely mover profile. And as you mentioned, this company came from the real estate and mortgage worlds, so we’ve been doing this lead generation solution in the real estate world, in one form or another, for almost ten years. So we’ve built a ton of proprietary data that we’ve used to put together so that we can most-effectively target those users who are most likely to buy or sell a home on Facebook. 

As I mentioned, we use Facebook lead capture technology which is some really awesome stuff!! Essentially what it does is that when we capture a lead, by serving them the ad on Facebook, we are able to take their validated contact information directly from their profile, pre-fill it into the lead form, and then when they do submit that, they don’t have to type out their name, they don’t have to type out their email – all that cumbersome stuff that everyone just kind of types through. All that is taken from their Facebook profile, and then emailed to our client in real time. In addition to that, we’ll also set up our clients with what we call a Campaign Status Page. Essentially that is an aggregation of all the leads we’ve generated for them just put into list-form. So it’s a simple landing page that we create that is – for the lack of a better term – it’s like an Excel sheet that we host for them that has all that confirmed contact information. 

So I mentioned that we have two main verticals; I just went over listing ads and the other one is agent ads. The technology works mostly in the same way, but rather than promoting the same listing that the agent wants to promote and generate traffic for, we are promoting their services as a whole. So that’s a great service to find prospective buyer and seller leads, just in a general sense. So we see great success with both of them! Typically, I like to suggest agencies and brokerages to buy an agent ads subscription, which will go month-to-month. As well as maybe 20, 30, or 40 pre-paid listing ads that they can just hand out to their agents as listings come on the market. So, you know, there is a little bit of overlap but there is also a bit of distinction between the two sides. 

Ryan: Yeah – definitely! I think it makes sense, especially from a brokerage point-of-view, where they’re able to manage all their listings in one convenient place. I think that really just helps them be able to scale the product even. Just talking about how they’re able to leverage everything that we’ve been doing. Like you said, it’s great with all that proprietary data that we’ve been able to use and speak on, when talking to new brokerages and even just on the singular agent level as well.

Dan: Absolutely!

Transition: Get to Know Our Partnerships with Real Estate Associations

Ryan: Of course, like you said, we have been doing this for a very long time. We have also had some very long-standing partnerships that I would love for you to speak upon as I know you’ve had a very big hand in those!

Dan: Yeah – absolutely! We work with some of the largest associations in the country, specifically the California Association of Realtors and the Florida Realtors. These are great organizations that have a pretty sharp focus on membership development, which is where we come in. Essentially what we do is, depending on the partner, we either put on bi-monthly, or even quarterly, webinars to their members in which we teach them about social marketing as a whole: the environment, the landscape, the changes, etc. As well as educate them about our product and how they can use them to increase their business, generate leads, so on and so forth. And I do find it pretty meaningful to get a chance to showcase this product to these memberships as most of the individuals within those organizations are individual agents and small business people. They’re not mega corporations, they’re just regular people making a living in an honest way. So it’s pretty gratifying to help them power their business with such an effective tool, and I really do love that aspect of what we do.

Transition: Real Estate Agents & Brokerages Should Work with JLS vs. Other Vendors Because…

Dan: I think the viewers here might think I’m a broken record when I say this, since it’s the third or fourth time, but we generate leads and that is something other solutions in this space don’t do. They’ll try and get you the most inflated and ridiculous amount of impressions and views, which pretty much mean nothing if you can’t get a lead from that. As I said, we capture contact information and send it directly to our clients in real time so that they can do direct outreach as soon as possible. If you have a boosted post that gets ten thousand views but you get no contact information, you’re lighting your money on fire – so to speak. I would definitely say that’s the biggest distinction!

Ryan: Yeah, definitely! And this is something I hear about too so I’m curious to get your take on it – but what do you think is the biggest misconception that individuals in the real estate industry have about social media?

Dan: That’s a really good question and I think my answer is the same across all industries, not just the real estate industry. I think most people who aren’t as involved in social media in a professional capacity get the sense of two things. One, they think social media is just kind of fluff, filler content that you put out on a Facebook page, they show you someone is monitoring the Facebook page, active on the site. You know when you come across a brand that hasn’t posted since 2016 and then you know that obviously no one’s home. So people think it’s a good filler or for answering questions and stuff, but in reality, it’s a super powerful advertising medium that you can serve ads exactly to your desired audience; which if you take a step back and think about it, it’s massive! 

Who doesn’t have a Facebook page?! Everyone has a Facebook page! 

The audience is there, the targeting mechanisms are there; I think it really is the perfect tool to power your business. In order to use Facebook, you have to have a profile that’s verified with contact information: an email address and sometimes a phone number. So you’re not just serving ads to people searching Google, who can stay anonymous or stay unknown. 

The last common misconception about social media that I like to point out is that because so many people have personal Facebook pages and personal Instagram pages, they get a false sense of expertise on the platform as it relates to actual advertising. Most people can write posts, post articles, and post updates on a business if you’re running a sale, things like that. But to actually and effectively target people through the advertising tools that exist, you have to have some sense of expertise that’s legitimate there and professional in a sense. So I think people try their hand at it and get frustrated because it can get pretty cumbersome and confusing so they move onto other things. When you come to a team like us, we’ve been doing it for ten years, this is what we do, we’re good at it, and we have awesome tools and technology that we use to generate these leads. I think those are the two main misconceptions that I’ve gathered in my almost two years doing this: SocialMadeSimple and JLS.

Ryan: Yeah! And we have a great team behind it, obviously!

Transition: Final Question (For the New England Fans) –
Will the Patriots Make the Playoffs This Year?!

Dan: They are certainly making it interesting aren’t they. I’d say the schedule is unfavorable moving forward but it’s tough to count out Bill Belichick; that is not a man I’d like to bet against too many times. 

Ryan: I agree – I’m sure it’ll definitely be very interesting! And for everyone else that is not from the New England area is just going to bash us for this.

Dan: I was just going to say, I think all the good we just did discussing our product we just threw all that goodwill away by talking about the Patriots. 

Ryan: Hey man, if you can’t beat em’, join em’. 

Dan: Exactly!

Ryan: Dan, thank you again for joining us today! I hope everyone has been able to get a little more insight on SocialMadeSimple and JustListed.Social and all that we’ve been able to do in the real estate industry and just a variety of verticals in the digital marketing world. If you’d like to check out our other episodes please visit our YouTube channel or our Resource Center. Of course, if you have any questions always feel free to schedule a call with me on our website at www.socialmadesimple.com! Until then, we will see you next time!

Dan: Thank you, Ryan!