"Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Collective Clicks Podcast. This is your host, Brandon Baitman, and today I'm going to be joined by Garrett Kraan. We're going to talk all about the things that are changing in the world of online marketing and how that's likely to affect the real estate investing industry over the next 5 to 10 years. This is all about future-proofing your business, understanding where the industry is going, and we're going to talk about a lot of nerdy stuff, so I hope you like it.

'How are you doing, Garrett?'

'Doing good. How are you?'

'Hey, doing awesome, thank you. I'm excited about our topic today. We're going to talk all about what's changing in the world of search, and really in the world of marketing in general online for motivated seller lead gen. And so much of this kind of follows the path of what's happening just online in general. It seems like, in a lot of ways, what seems to happen in this industry is just whatever happened to other industries just five years later. So we'll talk about some of that stuff, and I'm super excited to dig into it.'

'Nice, let's do it.'

'Yeah, I think it's always fun talking about the future and what's going to change and what we think will, you know, go down. That's always exciting. So let's do it.'

'Yeah, yeah. So this is a little bit of a nerdy episode. If you're not nerdy about digital ads, this probably isn't for you. That's my disclaimer. You can't hate me if this is too boring. Garrett and I basically put together a list of things that we think are going to change. These are opinions only; we cannot predict the behaviors of large corporations, although they're pretty predictable. So let's talk about some of the stuff that's going to happen, whether it happens in one year or happens in five years or ten years. Something that is unknown but likely will happen.'

'The first one that we mentioned is match types for keywords within search marketing. Do you want to expand on that a little bit, Garrett, and what that means?'

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Collective Clicks podcast. This is your host, Brandon Baitman, and today I'm going to be joined by Garrett Kraan. We're going to talk all about the things that are changing in the world of online marketing and how that’s likely to affect the real estate investing industry over the next 5 to 10 years. This is all about future-proofing your business, understanding where the industry is going, and we’re going to talk about a lot of nerdy stuff, so I hope you like it.

"How are you doing, Garrett?"

"Doing good, how are you?"

"Hey, doing awesome, thank you. I’m excited about our topic today. We’re going to talk all about what's changing in the world of search, and really in the world of marketing in general, online for motivated seller lead gen. Much of this kind of follows the path of what's happening just online in general. It seems like, in a lot of ways, what happens in this industry is just what happened to other industries five years later. So we’ll talk about some of that stuff, and I’m super excited to dig into it."

"Nice. Do it."

"Yeah, I think it’s always fun talking about the future and what’s going to change and what we think will, you know, go down. That’s always exciting. So let’s do it."

"Yeah, so this is a little bit of a nerdy episode. If you’re not nerdy about digital ads, it’s probably not for you. That’s my disclaimer. You can’t hate me if this is too boring."

Garrett and I basically put together a list of things that we think are going to change. These are opinions only; we cannot predict the behaviors of large corporations, although they’re pretty predictable. So let’s talk about some of the stuff that’s going to happen, whether it happens in one year or five years or 10 years. Something that is unknown but likely will happen.

The first one we mentioned is match types for keywords within search marketing. "Do you want to expand on that a little bit, Garrett, and what that means?"

"Yeah, so over the last couple of years, Google’s been pushing advertisers to broaden their target with keywords, moving towards more intent-based keywords. They’re going broad and moving away from exact match and phrase match keywords, which historically have been kind of the expert marketer’s best friend. Keeping the keyword match types tight and super focused on just exactly what they want to bid on. But over time, Google has pushed people to go broader and broader. What I think will happen is, over the next year or two, they’re going to just wipe out the option of going phrase and exact match and just make everyone go broad, in the interest of optimal performance. But in reality, they just want to sell their less valuable inventory. So it’s going to depend on the advertiser to still target their ideal persona without having the crutch of match types to do it for them."

"Understandable. And to expand on this a little bit, just for anybody who’s listening that might not really know what match types are: This is kind of the way that you communicate to Google what inventory you want and what inventory you don’t want when it comes to search engine marketing. A lot of people know that keywords exist, right? They understand, 'I want to bid on X keyword or Y keyword.' But what a lot of people don’t realize is where do you draw the lines of what fits to that keyword or not. A good example of this could be like 'we buy houses.' Maybe you’re bidding on that keyword. Back in the day, you would try to bid towards 'we buy houses,' and what would happen is you’d get 'we buy houses' when someone searches that. It was kind of simple. Nowadays, maybe you try to communicate that to Google, and then Google gives you something like 'buy houses' as the actual term that someone searched. We know, as investors, that has a very different meaning than 'we buy houses.' Google is kind of just trying to expand the meaning of that because now your single keyword can match to so much of their inventory instead of just a smaller sliver of that inventory. This is good in some ways and bad in other ways. Like, I know that you and I have both seen our clients getting some search terms recently that are really fascinating but also really high quality. I wish I could think of an example right now, but there’s a massive number of Google searches every day that have never been searched in the history of Google, even today. Some of those are really valuable to you, so it’s good to have an algorithm that kind of sees, 'Well, this is close enough to what we want.' But Google has just been expanding and expanding the definition of what that means to the point that it hardly means anything anymore to say that you want this keyword. I know there was an update, what was it, June or July? There was an update in how Google was viewing a specific match type of a keyword, and it threw a lot of advertisers in this industry for a loop. In our case, we had such a strong negative keyword list that it didn’t really create any issues. But for somebody who wasn’t expecting that type of change, you thought you were getting some type of inventory, and then you get something completely different that’s way lower quality."

"Yeah, and I think it kind of just speaks to the principle of you can’t be too married to any particular strategy that Google is eventually going to take away. They’re always going to— I mean, what I think is—they’re always going to shift away from advertiser control towards platform control. It’s so important that you’re working with Google. Like we always talk about, if you fight Google, they’re going to always win. So it’s important that your tactics kind of follow the flow of innovation that’s happening on the platforms."

"Totally agreed. And actually, along that same vein, another thing that Google’s been making a lot of moves on recently is bidding. This is a world—I mean, we’ve talked about bidding over and over again on this podcast. Obviously, I’m convinced that if an advertiser does nothing right except for their bidding, they can do pretty well. For example, you could have every keyword in the world, including a billion of them that aren’t actually valuable for your business. You could have them and be targeting them, but if you pay the right price for them—which would be like an infinitesimally small number for most of those keywords—then you’ll still win. Bidding is like the magic that fixes most problems that you could have in Google Ads. But they’ve been shifting from a very manually controlled bidding system where it used to be like, 'I have this exact match keyword and I want to pay this exact price per click for it,' whatever the case is. This is why it’s called pay-per-click marketing. It’s like, that’s how Google started. Once upon a time, they allowed people to just buy up inventory on the search pages. Then they realized they could make a lot more money by charging per click on those pages and having things be really relevant. They went that path, and advertisers have been trying to game the system for the longest time, just trying to figure out how to make it as efficient as possible. But Google keeps moving towards these more automated strategies instead of just a cost-per-click bidding system."

"Yep. And there are a lot of people that are still very anti-auto-bidding, right? There’s this fear of like, 'If I can’t dictate the exact amount that I’m going to bid, then I’m going to overpay, and Google’s going to take away my—' they’re going to overcharge me, and I’ll waste money. But it’s my belief that by using all of the data that Google has available, that we don’t have available, you’re going to be much more agile in bidding based on the individual making the search, not just what they’re searching. I would think it’s smart at this point to start to shift to more of an auto-bidding strategy away from manual because, one, it’s probably going away; and two, when done properly, auto-bidding drives better results at scale than manual can, in my opinion."

"I totally agree with you. I’m going to like stereotype in a way that’s probably very offensive to a large number of people."

"We can do that, right? It’s free speech, free country."

"Gotta love America. So, blanket statement: Do you agree or disagree? Pretty much everybody I know that’s way into manual bidding falls into one of two categories. They’re either someone who’s been doing this for a long time, with a lot of experience with Google Ads—10, 15, 20 years into this kind of marketing—that just hasn’t adapted, or they’re an advertiser that works with really small clients for the most part, who overall don’t have a lot of data. Everybody I know that’s way into manual bidding is in one of those situations. Whereas all the people I know and trust, who are managing budgets for some of the biggest companies in America and spending a ton of money on channels like PPC, if you ask them about manual bidding, they’re like, 'Is that still a thing? Does anybody do that still?' And then there’s this hardcore group of people that are like, 'You need SCAGs in manual bidding,' that are like a decade in the past, or they just work with accounts that have no data, where manual bidding will work better. If an account has a lot of data, then auto-bidding will work better. There’s that point where you pass that threshold, and that threshold has just been going down and down over time as auto-bidding gets even smarter. But anyways,

that’s just a little side rant I wanted to go on. I have nothing but respect for people who have a lot of knowledge and manual bidding. But I think that people should start to shift to more automated strategies because the bidding will get smarter and smarter over time."

"Totally agree with you."

"Cool. So another thing that’s changing is marketing channels, right? We kind of talked about this a little bit. This is another side of the future that’s super interesting and that’s not just a Google thing. You mentioned how Facebook’s doing some cool things. Talk about that for a minute."

"Yeah, it’s been a huge trend that we’re seeing. Facebook’s actually been pushing for a while, but they’re shifting more towards even higher quality lead generation opportunities. Whereas before it was kind of like this blanket approach of getting as many leads as possible and now it’s moving towards more customer profile-based advertising. So, understanding who’s in the market to buy a house or sell a house and targeting them specifically with content, not just like a broad reach approach. So that’s a big trend that we’re seeing, and it’s something that’s really exciting because it aligns with a lot of the other changes that are happening in digital marketing as a whole. You’re starting to see platforms like Facebook and Instagram really moving towards a more personalized experience, which in turn makes the lead generation process more efficient and effective."

"That’s awesome. And what about AI in general?"

"Oh man, AI’s changing everything. Whether it’s content generation, data analysis, or even customer interactions, AI is making a massive impact. We’re seeing AI tools that help with ad targeting, optimize bidding strategies, and even create ad copy. The technology is evolving so fast that it’s hard to keep up. But it’s crucial to leverage AI to stay competitive. For instance, AI can analyze vast amounts of data to find patterns and trends that human marketers might miss. This allows for more precise targeting and better ad performance. The use of AI is going to become even more prevalent in the future, so it’s important for marketers to stay on top of these advancements."

"Absolutely. And speaking of AI, I know that you and I both love discussing it. There’s always the debate about what’s a gimmick and what’s something that’s truly revolutionary. For example, AI can help with writing ads and maybe suggest some copy, but you’re still going to need a human touch to refine it. What are some AI tools or techniques that you’re excited about or that you’ve seen work well recently?"

"I’m really excited about AI tools that can help with predictive analytics. These tools analyze historical data to predict future trends, which can be incredibly valuable for strategic planning. For instance, AI can help predict which keywords or ad formats are likely to perform best based on past performance. Another tool that I’m excited about is AI-powered chatbots. They’re becoming more sophisticated and can handle more complex customer interactions. This improves the user experience and can lead to higher conversion rates. Overall, AI is making it easier to make data-driven decisions and optimize marketing strategies."

"Definitely. AI is a game-changer, and I’m excited to see how it continues to evolve and influence the industry. Well, Garrett, it’s been an awesome conversation. Thanks for joining me today and sharing your insights."

"Thanks for having me. It was great to discuss these exciting changes and trends in the industry."

"Absolutely. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to the Collective Clicks podcast for more insights into real estate investing and online marketing. We’ll catch you next time!"

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