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Branding For The Big Boys With Jeffrey Brogger

Mitch Stephen|By March 4, 2021

Episode 456: Branding For The Big Boys With Jeffrey Brogger

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REIS 456 Jeffrey Brogger | Digital Marketing

Running digital marketing campaigns will certainly generate leads and high investment returns, but only when done with the right strategies and adequate planning. Otherwise, you’ll just waste resources without actually being seen by anyone. Helping various companies level up their online ventures is Jeffrey Brogger, the Founder of STEEZY.Digital. Together with Mitch Stephen, he talks about how businesses should approach digital marketing by focusing on brand awareness and recognition, as well as the right way to determine your target audience. Jeffrey also discusses how to design a business logo that will not only rock but mirror your core values and overall reputation.

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I‘m here with Jeffrey Brogger and he’s over at Huntington Beach, California. He is in charge of branding for some of the top real estate brokers and real estate investors in the country. He takes this job very seriously, because why shouldn’t branding be taken seriously? Whether you know it or not, we are all in the marketing business. Everything after that is something up for discussion. If we don’t know how to market, we’re not selling anything. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in.

Jeffrey, before I get to you, I need to pay homage to my sponsor, LiveComm.com, lead generation plus mass texting, equals sales and success. Check out LiveComm.com. There are lots of videos over there. I personally have nine days on the market in my last 300 seller-financed homes. That’s largely to do with my mass texting platform where I captured thousands of people interested in what I had for sale, and my Facebook page. I tied them together. I average nine days on the market, I don’t even put signs in my yards anymore, not even one in front of my house. It’s all about these smartphone numbers that capture incoming call or cell phone numbers. They put them in a text distribution list for you to text $0.02 per person. It’s a direct hit right between the eyes. It always gets open. It’s 6% open rate. I wouldn’t be surprised, Jeffrey, if you have some mass texting in your branding satchel somewhere yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background and your company, so we can catch up with you.

My name is Jeffrey Brogger. I‘m the founder of three real estate marketing companies. This one in particular, which is a marketing agency, is called STEEZY.digital. STEEZY stands for style with ease. It’s an extreme sports term from California. I had to pay homage to my upbringing in San Diego. I noticed a lot of real estate brokers out there in their 50s, they’ve been doing this thing 20, 25 years. They were amazing with interpersonal communication, on the phone. When they showed up on a listing appointment, they got single one that they wanted, but they struggled with all the digital stuff. My initial vision with this company was to come in, do everything on the digital side for them as an agency, and upgrade their digital offering, not only running lead generation campaigns but helping them with their overall brand awareness, look and feel online. Fast forward several years, here we are. I’ve worked with some of the top teams in the nation taking them from $80 million to $100 million, you name it. We’ve helped them leverage their in-person local look and feel their business, took it all online and ramped everything up.

How do you start? What do you start there?

It’s a process.

Is this only for big companies or do you have a cutoff somewhere? What kind of clients will you look at?

Having consistency online, print, and everywhere helps people recognize you. Share on X

I was doing some coaching a few years ago and they inspired me to niche focus. This is more for top teams and you do need to be at a certain level in order for this to make sense. Usually, that is between $20 million per year in transactions and up. If you’re a team that’s doing that level, then you have a little bit of funds to be able to allocate toward outsourcing, and having an agency not only handle this for you but then also manage an ad spend budget to make it all worth it. At the end of the day, the reason why my clients didn’t do a branding project with me several years ago and then leave is because after the branding project, we then launched highly profitable, direct response lead generation campaigns which get 12–time return or 25–time return on their ad spend budget. They’re making money, I’m making money, everyone is happy.

Give us a case study of one of your more successful ventures.

Aaron Taylor, The Real Estate Guy, I love him, he’s awesome, look him up online. I helped take him from $80 million to $100 million. He has an amazing local brand in Las Vegas. He was doing TV commercials, radio and a lot of the traditional media. He’s spending $60,000 a month on advertising. When I was introduced to him years ago, he wasn’t doing any Facebook Ads, anything in the social space and YouTube. I was able to take his existing brand and then digitize his logos in a clean way so that they look great online. We did an initial little cleanup of his online platforms, optimized his LinkedIn, and we started to drive massive traffic using his existing lists. We used his database of 5,000 past transactions and all of the assets he had. His TV commercials worked great, repurposing those as Facebook Ads.

In our first six months, we tracked five closed buyer transactions because at first, he wanted to start out with some buyer leads to his team. That only cost him $3,600 in ad spend. $600 a month for six months. He closed five. Out of that, he earned $43,000 in gross commissions. That was 12X ROI. That was just one. If you go on our site, we have testimonials from agents that we’ve launched campaigns. On day one, they double–ended campaigns and all kinds of crazy stuff. Typically, it’s not that fast. It usually takes a couple of months to get things rolling. Some people are 3 months out, some are 6 months out, and some are longer but over time, things start to fall. Having this online lead generation plus branding is key. For the branding piece, you’ve got to have that nailed first.

Why is it that these people have all these pieces but they don’t do anything with them? What’s the issue?

Are you referring to other real estate teams that might have tried something in the past?

They don’t even recognize all content that they have. They said, “That’s my commercial.” Your commercial can be busted up into pieces and put on the internet.

That’s the concept of repurposing. If you are to put in three hours of the top brokers’ time, shooting a TV commercial, thousands of dollars to have it edited, plus $10,000 for 1 or 2 months to run it on TV locally, the ROI from that asset is tied directly to how many people then make phone calls from that TV ad. What if you then had it split up into little Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, LinkedIn Stories, run as a Facebook Ad, and use as a retargeting asset long-term for people that click the lead form on Facebook but didn’t submit it. We’re going to retarget them with this TV commercial that you shot six months ago, which is super professional and builds your brand. Now, that asset has been used in so many different ways, the ROI has been dramatically exponentially increased.

You’re stretching the life of some of this stuff.

They’re already spending money on it. Another example would be a print campaign. A lot of brokers that I’ve come across that are top 1% focus on listings. Listings are everything. I’ve learned over the years that number one priority, listings. Number two, feed my team of buyers’ agents. Number three, recruiting. We’ve focused on different tactics to help with all of those online. One tactic for local farming is from the title company, you get all these addresses. If you want to send out mailers, give me those addresses and that mailer copy, and we’ll create a digital campaign to launch at the same time that mimics the mailers so that when a lot of people look at it and throw it away, that’s one impression. Now they go on Facebook, Instagram or whatever, it’s right there in front of them as well. 2nd, 3rd and 4th impression is the same message with your brand. That’s an easy way to digitally compliment for not that much more than you’re already spending on the mailer. You can have an ad digitally in the same geographic area. It’s really powerful.

Why is it important to understand where your target market‘s eyes and ears are? Tell me about that.

It’s critical. I hear agents saying, “Should I be on TikTok?” The answer is unless you think that 13–year–olds to 19–year–olds are going to be buying homes in your market, then no. I released this Top Broker Cheat Sheet years ago, which broke down the demographics that are on each platform because if your target market are Baby Boomers, Facebook. They’re looking at their grandkids on Facebook. If your target is more up and coming, 1st or 2nd home buyer, CEO–type people in their 40s, Instagram. They’re on Facebook too but a lot of them have adapted to Instagram. They’re watching Gary Vee and Grant Cardone on Instagram. You’ve got to know what platform people are on. If you’re going for investors, now you’re on LinkedIn. You can do retargeting on YouTube, Google and all these other things.

It’s super important to understand, “Who’s my target market? Where are their eyeballs? Where are their ears? Is it important for me to start doing podcasting? Is that going to be a medium that would give me ROI?” That’s something that I learned years ago. I was running a lot of successful lead generation campaigns for my clients, but when I was trying to get in front of top brokers, I had to go to different mediums and channels. For example, podcasting is a great method for me to get in front of top brokers who are listening, trying to better themselves and learn. I‘ve invested now into podcasting being featured as a guest and then launching my own.

Podcasting has been amazing in my career. It’s taking me places I never thought I‘d go. I‘m still relatively obscure but it sure has changed my life. I can see it close up. I know exactly what it was like before it and what it’s like after it. I also can sense power. I always feel like I’ve never got a handle on putting myself everywhere I need to be. This is a great big herd of cats. I‘m trying to find a herd of these cats on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. They didn’t even have a computer at my school, maybe they were getting one as I graduated. I’ve been chasing that technology bus 10 feet behind it from my whole life after high school. I need young whippersnappers like you to straighten me out. My generation says, “Give it to Jeffrey. We don’t need to worry about it.”

That’s the right mindset because your time is much more valuable used in other places in income–producing activities. You don’t need to be lost in the minutia of posting to Facebook and learning how to post it to five different platforms at once and scheduling posts like running ads, learning how to work with the Facebook media buying platform to place an ad, then they changed their compliance. Now you have to do it a different way. You don’t have to worry about that. Why would you? The whole point is we worry about that.

I‘m glad you said that because I don’t want to worry about it. I would much rather hand it to you. There’s a time and a place. When you’re ready, you guys go over to 1000Houses.com/Brogger. Over there, you can sign up for a free strategy session. It’s a $400 value. Get over there and see if there’s a fit. There’s no pressure. Have a conversation to see if it’s time for you right now to do it. If it’s not time, you won’t waste your time because who the hell wants to be on a losing team?

REIS 456 Jeffrey Brogger | Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing: When you get your business logo, identify its exact colors and what they stand for.

It’s a desperate move to take clients where you are almost certain that what you’re offering is not going to work, and I‘m way past that. I’ve said no to a good amount of people or referred them out to industry partners. You could think of the strategy session as free consulting. STEEZY.digital offers branding, advertising and consulting. We’ve charged brokerages $400 an hour for consulting. The strategy session is about 45 minutes. I would ask you a lot of questions about your brokerage to learn where you’re at and where you want to go. If we could fit into that puzzle, awesome. I talked to a guy and he said, “I have so much more clarity now. Thank you. I‘m not going to move forward right now but I‘m interested in the future.” That’s the luck. That’s sometimes what it is and that’s okay. No pressure. If you’re interested, that’s an offer. I offer one free strategy session for new potential clients.

It’s a great offer. Go to 1000Houses.com/Brogger. I picked that because I‘m pretty sure I haven’t used that as a keyword. There are not a lot of Broggers out there, is there?

There’s not.

Anything else you want to say? I don’t know your side of the business that well, so I might have left something out. If I’ve left anything out or anything more you want to say, I‘d like to give you the floor so you could say it to make sure we get everything covered that we need to hear.

I appreciate that. I would think the focus would be on branding. A lot of people understand consulting. I get advice, instead of taking a year to figure something out, I can get through this week. Consulting saves you time. People understand advertising. I pay money. If I pay people to manage that ad spend, then ideally it gets better results. A lot of people don’t understand the value of branding or what it even is. I‘d like to elaborate on that if that’s okay.

In my book, My Life & 1,000 Houses, 200+ Ways To Find Bargain Properties, the first 31 pages was how to get everything pulling in one direction from your website name to your email addresses. If you mess this up, you’ve screwed up a whole paper trail that you can’t fix easily. Get it straight in the beginning.

Branding is not your logo. Your logo is a part of your brand but branding is so much more. For example, your brand should have an opinion on social issues. It should have its own Social Security number, essentially. Would Nike comment on a certain social issue? Probably or you would expect them to because you have a feel for what Nike is. Nike is a corporation. Why would you feel a corporation should comment on something? It’s because they have a strong brand. Take that back to your local real estate brand. You need to get very clear on what your mission, vision, values are, what your slogan is, which usually ties in your unique value proposition, and get a very catchy real estate name that isn’t incorporating your name.

Branding is not your logo. Your logo is a part of your brand, but branding is so much more. Share on X

If your goal is to scale an exit on your real estate brokerage, which is a lot of goals out there for brokers, you shouldn’t have the first name and last name real estate. It should be a little bit more of a catchy local type of synonym to something that means something to you, then you can easily hand it off and sell it later. There’s a hit in valuations when the CEO leaves, and the hit is bigger if the CEO’s name is tied to the business. If Gary Keller left Keller Williams, how are you going to value that company now? That’s just an example. Keller Williams is cool. I have read The Millionaire Real Estate Agent book by Gary Kelly. He’s great. The point is branding. You should have a lot more to your brand. When you do get the logo, identify the exact colors meaning the RGB code of that shade of red, white, and blue, whatever. What happens is as you go down farther down the rabbit hole, you’re doing business for years, you’re buying merchandise, you’re buying postcards, and you’re buying all these things. Let me ask you this. Has Coca–Cola changed their shade of red?

After all these years, the answer should be no but they messed up some time and did. I don’t know.

The answer is pretty much no. I believe they only did it once but it was a very strategic move. The point is, they could have had all these weird shades of red, Cardinal red or cherry red. Their cans are different and their merchs are different, but Coca-Cola is a massive corporation. They focused on branding first so that every time you see that shade of red and classic font, you know it’s Coca-Cola. Those little subtleties that the human eyes are very keen, and having the consistency online, print and everywhere helps people recognize you so that your efforts aren’t wasted.

With that, the last thing that I’ll say about branding is once you have all this in place, it might seem like a lot of work and an initial monetary investment that’s unnecessary, but if you ever want to scale your content and be able to not have to go post things on Facebook, or not have to be the person that’s typing out the Instagram caption, creating a brand book early makes outsourcing content effortless. Your message stays the same because now, every new agent that comes on board, you hand them the brand book, “Read this.” Every single new virtual assistant, “Here’s our brand book.”

Tell me about the brand book.

A brand book consolidates all of this into one document that might be 20, 30, 40 pages, and it has your manifesto. Ten things that you know to be true. It has your slogan. It has all of the things that I’ve described and more in one document, so that when the virtual assistant is looking to post something on social media and they’re thinking about a caption to write, all they have to do is go to the brand book and say, “There’s one of his favorite quotes.” Pull it into the caption, done. I have been able to scale and outsource content this way with running multiple businesses. My best friends didn’t know it wasn’t me posting. That’s how powerful it is once you get to this point because now you have a document that gets everything out of your head and onto paper that people can read, and then it can help perpetuate your mission. It’s important. Doing that early is critical.

Digital Marketing: Creating a brand book early makes outsourcing content effortless.

You guys, go to 1000Houses.com/Brogger and get your free strategy session, the $400 value. Check out and see if you’re ready for this level of branding. As you said, if he’s not, he can refer you out to someone who’s more your style or your fit. He’s not for everyone. He’s looking for a good match, which is a good thing. I learned a lot from stopping in and getting this free consult. Jeffrey, I‘d like to thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It sounds like you have a neat thing going and you’re tearing it up.

Life is good.

I‘d like to thank my sponsor, LiveComm.com and check out some of the videos on the homepage and see why my last 300 houses I’ve put up for sale have only been nine days on the market. LiveComm has a lot to do with it. Lead generation through mass texting is becoming more popular. It’s very effective and very affordable. This is Mitch. We’re out of here.