2025 Lead Gen Strategy: Why Top Teams Are Going All-In on PPC with Chris Snow

[00:00:00] Chris: You don't need to sell. You don't need to buy. You need to stay exactly where you are. And they become some of our best customers. 'cause they'll refer us to everyone because we're not trying to sell themselves.

[00:00:16] Suneet: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Reside Platform podcast. I'm your host today, Suneet Agarwal, and I'm joined by a very smart, very successful friend of mine, Chris.

[00:00:31] Suneet: Know the team leader of the Florida Coastal team from St. Augustine, Florida. What is going on, Chris?

[00:00:39] Chris: Great to be here. When you were saying that, , you had somebody smart in the student. You. I was like, am I on the wrong one? Did you? You got another guest coming on or what? So yeah.

[00:00:47] Suneet: Dude, whatever. See, I told you, great guy Chris, and also one of our, , coaches on the reside platform, which is super cool. And I, wanna hear about that too because, , you guys, this is Chris's second time on the show and Chris. Has proven himself to be the master, at least in my book at PPC, lead Conversion.

[00:01:12] Chris: we've been doing it a long time I got off the Zillow train oh goodness, eight, nine years ago, and we'd always done PPC and, , I just, got tired of paying 150, 200, $300 a lead. , especially, you know, looking to see that people that were already in my database, , were signing back up on Zillow.

[00:01:32] Chris: Three months later. So someone that I generated for $10, I'm now paying $300 for. so if those are gonna be the leads, we just get much better, converting them early on to keep them from going to Zillow.

[00:01:43] Suneet: Yes. So I know that many people have a problem with this be, I mean, like, I'll just be straightforward, and I've told you this, you know, my team started with realtor.com.

[00:01:54] Suneet: Which are portal leads more expensive than PPC. And then when I tried to implement PPC after the fact, it was a big problem.

[00:02:04] Suneet: So especially when I was trying to have them both be worked at the same time. So what did you do back those years ago to bridge that gap, to eliminate that problem? 'cause I guarantee that you experienced it.

[00:02:18] Chris: we did and really from the standpoint of a Zillow lead being a little bit further down the funnel than a PPC lead, and also with that person I. already outing themself that, okay, if we're on Zillow and we're not wanting an agent from Zillow to contact us, a little more serious.

[00:02:38] Chris: We're a little bit further down the road. So it was really making sure that when a lead came into us that was PPC, that our mindset was, these people don't know that they're actually gonna move yet. You know, they are just thinking, they're just dreaming. And if I treat them like someone who wants to go see a property right now, which, if you go through any Zillow or realtor.com training, it's all about booking the appointment and getting face-to-face and meeting them at a property.

[00:03:06] Chris: Well, when someone's 12 to 18 months out, that scares 'em. they're not ready to take that. And one.

[00:03:15] Chris: Everybody raised their hand when I said Who likes referrals? You know, everybody likes referrals. Everybody likes the, you know, the low hanging fruit the right now.

[00:03:24] Chris: my statement to them is like, , alright, everybody wants that. So if if I went into your town right now and said, I went on to one of the Sacramento, you know, , moms groups or something like that and said, Hey, I'm thinking about buying a house in Sacramento.

[00:03:37] Chris: you know, is there a realtor that can help me? I would get a thousand responses, right?

[00:03:41] Chris: So now I'm competing with a thousand other agents for that person who's bottom a funnel. So the interesting thing is, is that, and I make this statement, and I truly believe this, I can go into any pretty large room across the United States, and if there are agents in there, I can guarantee that some of their sphere of influence is in my database.

[00:04:00] Chris: And the reason why is that if I'm about to make a move, I'm not telling anybody or if I'm even thinking about making a move, I'm not telling anybody that I know that I'm making a move. I'm gonna do some research. I'm gonna try to figure it out. I'm gonna try to just get a little bit further down the funnel before I raise my hand.

[00:04:17] Chris: And what I found is that if we catch people early enough in the process, when they're in that just streaming and we nurture them properly, we don't give them that opportunity to, not get serviced the way they needed to so that they end up on a Zillow or a realtor.com or they end up driving around, you know, neighborhoods looking for signs and then, you know, ultimately asking a friend or family member like, hey.

[00:04:40] Chris: I need an agent. we didn't know we were gonna move, but we're actually gonna move now. So to somebody you know, you know somebody who you can refer me, well if I do my job early on in that process, they never get down that further down that funnel. They stay up top funnel with me. and I get to develop that relationship.

[00:04:54] Suneet: Dude, that's so good. See, he told you all he was smart. That's so good now. So nurture.

[00:05:01] Suneet: That is a problem for most. I'm not gonna be even real estate specific for most salespeople, for most people nurturing something because of the delayed gratification and the work involved. What's that look like, dude?

[00:05:17] Chris: it's figuring out what can I bring of value to this person today? And have that on a regular basis so that whenever they see my name pop up on their phone, when they see a text message from me, , if they see an email coming from me, they know that I'm not wasting their time that I'm, actually bringing value to that person.

[00:05:39] Chris: , And, , you know, you look at the Webster's dictionary, , of, , to nurture, it's to encourage to care for it, to support. So if you are going to nurture that lead, okay, I'm gonna pick up the phone, I'm gonna send a text, I'm gonna send an email. If I'm not doing one of those three things, I'm not nurturing that person.

[00:05:58] Chris: I'm annoying that person,

[00:05:59] Suneet: Oh God. That's good.

[00:06:01] Chris: right? yesterday. I had a whole bunch of leads that, you know, I clean my pipeline out every once in a while 'cause I'm not as much in production, but somehow since I'm the, , the way we set up all of our, , lead routing, we set up ponds and stuff like that. And while I'm the owner of all the ponds, and so what ends up happening is all the stuff that's going on in the database kind of gets assigned to me.

[00:06:21] Chris: So I've gotta go through and clean stuff out, even though it's not my customer. So normally when I'm going and doing a mass clean out or something like that, I try to find something that I'm like, okay, what is something that I could send out to someone that I know, someone that I don't know, someone that I've had a, brief encounter with, or maybe just somebody that's receiving a weekly email from me.

[00:06:42] Chris: What kind of text message can I send out? A hundred, 200, 300 times and not annoy them, but, just be real with them. And more times than not, it's on the verge of being personal. Like, Hey, this is what I got going on this weekend. There's this cool festival. You know, I'm not sure if you guys got anything fun planned, but you know, we're gonna go have some fun.

[00:07:03] Chris: You know, my family and I are gonna go out to that. And if I want engagement, then I'll end it with a question. What are you guys doing? Fun this week and it has nothing to do with real estate.

[00:07:12] Suneet: Yes. And where do you get the stuff? You just send 'em a Google link or like a from a blog on your website.

[00:07:19] Chris: if it's an event, I might send 'em a link to it. because I don't want my link to come off as spam. And if I'm sending it out a bunch of times and one person marks it as spam, the next thing you know, it doesn't go out to everyone. So I try not to put those links and stuff like that.

[00:07:33] Chris: , That would be more of a mass email that I would send out. very seldom do my friends ever send me a text message with a link. They will every once in a while, but more times than not, it's just, it's, a conversation going back and forth. , And maybe they'll send me a meme.

[00:07:47] Chris: Maybe they'll send me a photo. But rarely will it be a link to something salespeople.

[00:07:52] Suneet: that is really good. How do you teach a brand new agent that joins your organization? That,

[00:07:58] Chris: As far as like how how to send out and bring something of value, I.

[00:08:02] Chris: we keep a running list and it's, living, breathing. So as we think that there's something we need to add, we just , have this, word doc that says, here are all the different things that can be of value for someone who's making a move.

[00:08:13] Chris: If they're bottom of funnel, like they're actually, you know, getting ready to do something, you'll see a lot of the things are, Hey, here's a market analysis on a specific property. Hey, here's the five best deals in a certain neighborhood. , , here's the, you know, five best, , , pickleball courts in the neighborhoods that you're looking at.

[00:08:29] Chris: Things like that. If they're a little bit further down the road, then it's gonna be like, here's the best restaurant, here's the three best, , , ice cream shops. , You know, here are the dog friendly parks that are, , in this area. So we kind of have those top of funnel, bottom of funnel messaging. And ideally you're sending.

[00:08:47] Chris: At least a three to one ratio. Three times you're sending something that's personal or event oriented has nothing to do with real estate, and then once a month one communication out of four, you're putting something that's specific to real estate. Yeah.

[00:09:02] Suneet: Good. Super good. I really like it.

[00:09:08] Chris: the thing is, is I think we overthink. What we're sending, and I would take it back to your best friend, your brother, your sister, your mom, your dad, your aunt, your uncle. If you're sending a text message to them, how much thought do you put in that? get rid of the formality of, oh, I'm gonna say the wrong thing, or it's gotta be perfect, or I'm gonna lose this commission. Well, you don't have the commission, right? You just don't have the commission yet. So the only way you're gonna get it is to, build that trust, to build that relationship where they don't see you as that, person that's always trying to sell them, you know, do they understand who I am?

[00:09:41] Chris: Do they understand what I'm going through, and can they help me solve the problem that I'm trying to solve for? And the more that we can identify that, hey, we're here to help you solve a problem. And sometimes solving that problem doesn't mean buying or selling real estate. Sometimes it does, but identify the problem and see if the solution is you buying or selling something.

[00:10:02] Chris: And more times, I don't wanna say more times than not, but I mean there, they're, some of our best referral customers are people that we said. You don't need to sell. You don't need to buy. You need to stay exactly where you are. And they become some of our best customers. 'cause they'll refer us to everyone because we're not trying to sell themselves.

[00:10:17] Suneet: Yeah, huge. What's the tech stack that your team is using right now?

[00:10:21] Chris: , Follow-Up Boss is our CRM. , We have, , as of today we have two websites. We're adding a third, but we use a Sierra site. We use a site and we are testing out a real.

[00:10:33] Suneet: Yeah, dude. There seems to be a little bit of a resurgence with the, real geeks these days.

[00:10:39] Chris: I believe in what and what I'm seeing and I'll, vet it out because I've been using Sierra now for four years. I've been using YPO for about eight years. So I've got track record on both of those to really get a sense for, you know, are people finding you organically? How easy is it for people to see properties,

[00:10:56] Chris: What does SEO do for you? And, , what I'm seeing right now is real geeks understands, SEO, they understand how to make a website that's optimized for SEO. So, and make it super simple.

[00:11:09] Suneet: Good to know. Absolutely. How about for emails?

[00:11:12] Chris: , So Constant Contact is who I use for my weekly email. , I do have SendGrid, , attached to the backend to follow up Boss, but I do not do as much mass mailing from Follow Up Boss. , And part of it is, is that. The editor that's in there is not a very good editor. So if I want something that I don't have to copy and paste every single time into f , that's why I use Constant Contact.

[00:11:38] Chris: So I've got four emails that I send out on a rotation within Constant Contacts. All I'm doing is just copying and, and sending. The other thing that I do like about it is that it has an automatic feature that you can set up, that you can, , resend to non openers. So on Wednesday at 1205, I send out my first email, and then, Saturday morning at 8:00 AM anyone who did not open that email gets it sent again Saturday morning.

[00:12:05] Chris: And so we have it go out to about 40,000 people. We get on average between a 30 to 37% open rate. and just getting, you know, it's just people seeing our brand over and over and over again and again. This goes back to how do you convert, PPC leads They just have to keep seeing you over and over and over again, and whenever you make the phone call to them, you can't just say, Hey, it's Chris.

[00:12:28] Chris: You have to say the brand, because they hopefully have seen our brand in their inbox 30 times in the first two weeks that they've been in our system.

[00:12:36] Suneet: Good dude. So let's talk about the growing the team. How has that been happening?

[00:12:44] Chris: the last two or three years has been either me or my sales manager doing more of our recruiting. , And because I do some production, he does some production. I. We both have, you know, , responsibilities for the training and teaching of the agents. That's the one thing that we saw was lacking.

[00:13:01] Chris: Not that consistency of having someone reach out to the database of agents and also consistently interviewing. , We were running Indeed ads. So coming over to Reside, you know, we had used Wise Hire in the past, and that just seemed like a big. And so when you gave us that Indeed ab, we started running that and we started to see some trickling in, and then we started putting a little bit more money to it and a little bit more money to it.

[00:13:25] Chris: And so we have a consistent flow that way. , Then we got to the point where, you know, and this is the great thing about what Reside has done, is that it's allowed us to grow to understand, okay, what do we need on our team? And if I don't have the leverage to do it and create it myself, which.

[00:13:43] Chris: Was all of us that joined Reside very early on,

[00:13:46] Chris: you guys are providing that, so y'all are providing that leverage right off the bat. Well, over the last year and a half, almost two years now that I've been with Reside, we've been able to pull some of that back internally. And so some of that has been our own training.

[00:14:00] Chris: And so I was at that point where it's like, do I hire the trainer or do I hire the recruiter? And I went the route of, let me hire the trainer first. And so we started getting more, we had our newer agents having someone that was, you know, three days a week, five hours, six hours a day of a dedicated point of contact so that myself and the sales director could, still function and do other business for the team.

[00:14:27] Chris: Once we got that up and running, then the opportunity came to hire a full-time recruiter, and that's been a game changer for.

[00:14:33] Suneet: Awesome. And how's that growth been this year with a full-time person?

[00:14:37] Chris: I wanna say we've brought on 18, 17 people in the first four, what are we, five months in? Three or four months in. So we're doing it once a month. Yeah. So once a month we are bringing on a cohort of people and so , , we, we bring on a group once a month. And so, , in January, I think we had two or three come on.

[00:14:58] Chris: , As part of that group, February, we were, I believe, four that came on in that group. That's when we brought on the recruiter. She started end of February. So the first group of people was, the first group would've been March for her.

[00:15:13] Chris: We had seven, come on in March we had five. Come on in April, we had three that just started last week.

[00:15:20] Chris: And we are consistently seeing between three to five faces at our team meeting every Thursday of people looking at our team.

[00:15:27] Chris: So our goal last year was to get to 50 before the end of the year, and we ended the year at like 27, 28. I wanna say we're sitting at 41 right now, 42. And we've, I mean, if I told her to go get 10, she could get then, but we're trying to keep it at that four to five.

[00:15:50] Chris: We're running on a 90 day cycle. So people on the first 30 days, they're onboarding and people who are on their second 30 days are going over the same content a second time as our first group, and then our third group who's 60 to 90 days, they're hearing it for the third time, but they may be teaching it now to our group.

[00:16:12] Chris: So it's just that layer upon layer upon layer, and. 90 days worth of content. We're just doing it 30 days at a time

[00:16:21] Suneet: I really like that. , Let's talk about coaching. How's that going?

[00:16:24] Chris: I love it. you know, I've always enjoyed , , , , teaching and coaching. That was my, degree was in. I got my degree in education and.

[00:16:29] Chris: , you know, I was gonna coach, , baseball , and just teach and enjoy that. And I, graduated from, college here at the University of North Florida and finished up my playing days and my coach was like, Hey, do you wanna stay on and, and be a pitching coach here?

[00:16:41] Chris: And I'm like, yeah, I, I kind of like that. And then I started looking. I'm like, man, you got any money? .

[00:16:45] Chris: I'm a pretty competitive guy and going through and doing my student teaching, the one thing that just stood out to me was that, , my income was gonna be determined by the day that I started, not the outcomes that I had. And so I just said, nah, I don't think this is gonna be for me. So I went the sales route.

[00:17:01] Chris: , But I've always enjoyed the teaching aspect and what I quickly learned was that you. You're doing it wrong. If you are teaching and educating, you've got a great opportunity for someone to self-select and say yes. Now, at some point you do have to ask someone to, Hey, would you like to move forward?

[00:17:19] Chris: But you do it in such a way that it just makes sense as opposed to the, you know, I, I didn't do any of the Mike Ferry, Tom Ferry. You know, scripting, that type of stuff. That just wasn't something that appealed to me from a training standpoint. Not that it's not great training, it's just it's not my personality style.

[00:17:36] Chris: , And so, you know, I just went the route that I thought was gonna be best for me. It was just how we operate here and so. I never lost that desire to want to coach and train. , you know, when we partnered up with, , reside, you know, a lot of us were in the same boat. doing, , kind of at the same point of our careers growth of our team.

[00:17:54] Chris: It's like, okay, we're kind of plateaued. How do we get to that next level in that next step? Everyone brought something to the table and you know, everybody was very, very open to share and, very free to do that. And, yeah, that's why I loved it and I just kept doing it and people evidently got something out of it because I, I do it a little bit more and do it a little bit more and,

[00:18:14] Suneet: your coaching list keeps on growing.

[00:18:17] Chris: yeah, yeah. I think I've got seven, eight teams now,

[00:18:20] Suneet: Yeah. You just got a new one today I think. Why Chris?

[00:18:27] Chris: Because you guys are growing,

[00:18:29] Suneet: well number one, it's because we're growing. 'cause you're a part of the family. Right? And because you're doing a damn good job. Right? Like and, and I hear from people and it's proven. So I like before this becomes a coaching call for me telling you how great of a coach you are. I think you're a great coach, dude.

[00:18:48] Suneet: And , I heard you were on my other podcast the other day. Have you been on that one yet?

[00:18:52] Chris: Yeah, so I was on , with Alex. Yes.

[00:18:55] Suneet: Okay. How did that go?

[00:18:57] Chris: That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. It's just talking, you know, strategy when it comes to, again, converting leads and, and not everyone can go out and afford to do. Zillow or they don't want, and like me, I don't wanna pay a 42% referral fee to send me someone and then have somebody that's, you know, 22 years old, never sold anything, telling me how I need to convert a lead.

[00:19:18] Chris: I just, I don't need any other business partner that way. So, Alex was on there and we were just kind of chatting about different ways to, convert leads and, and how we route leads with the ponds and stuff like that.

[00:19:27] Chris: So.

[00:19:28] Suneet: Awesome. I heard you recently went to LPT. How's that going?

[00:19:32] Chris: Yeah, so we we're about a year and four months now, a year and three months. , And it was, you know, I was at exp for five and a half years and I absolutely loved my time there and it was nothing that I was like discouraged or upset about. , But when I saw what the opportunity that LPT had and how early they are, , , with, in their growth cycle, I'm like.

[00:19:54] Chris: This makes sense. And, , you know, just speaking with some other large teams that were considering the same thing, we all just kind of came in together and it, been a fun ride. it's opened up something that, , a part of my business that I never would've even thought of, which is more direct mail, more tangible marketing print. I've always been on the, the digital side. you know, let me give Google my 500 bucks and I can see leads tomorrow. You know, that's what I like, you know, having a little bit more of that delayed gratification of, you know, hey, there's some stickiness to direct mail, to print advertising.

[00:20:29] Chris: And it's one thing to have it. But there's another thing to have a leader in Robert Palmer, who understands and can communicate, why are you marketing with this piece? What are you trying to accomplish with it? As opposed to, oh, just buy all this print material and, you know, hand it out. There's like, there's this method to the madness.

[00:20:50] Suneet: So final question. What has you most excited about your business and the future inside of business right now?

[00:20:56] Chris: For me, it's, knowing that we can have consistent growth on our team, , month over month, over month, we can turn it off or turn it on, but , it makes no sense to turn it off. , And then also utilize, especially, you know, bringing on our recruiter, , Brandy, it's, you know, she's amazing. , Is if we do get to the point where it's like, okay, we've had enough growth, we get to 50, we get to a hundred, whatever that number happens to be.

[00:21:21] Chris: I've gotta re recruit all those people on my team every single month, every single year. So turning her back into that for our team and re-recruit the, we've already brought in. That will never go away. And so, that's what excites me is, we can impact more people without having to worry about are we growing too much?

[00:21:41] Chris: Do we have the resources? Do we, no, we've got the resources, we've got the people. Place. , Now it's how many, more agents can we impact and help them grow their business? And, we're not a magic bullet, but we're gonna be a place where people can come and, you know, feel loved on.

[00:21:55] Chris: They can feel like I. Hey, I'm gonna learn and get a PhD in real estate that I can't get anywhere else, and you wanna stay with this forever. Awesome. If we wanna just help them grow up and, and, stand on their own, that's okay too. You know, just let us know upfront, you know, how you want us to coach you.

[00:22:12] Suneet: dude. Love that. Love that. If somebody wants to coach with you or send you a referral there in the Augustine area, how do they reach out to you? Dude.

[00:22:21] Chris: Yep. So email, , chris@floridacoastalteam.com. chris@floridacoastalteam.com or , I would be remiss if I did not give this number. It's my F number. Always give your F number. Uh, 9 0 4 3 2 9 7 8 9 5 9 0 4 3 2 9 7 8 9 5.

[00:22:40] Suneet: Yes, dude. Great job. Thank you so much for being on again, dude, like every time I talk to you, I get something out. In fact, I'm gonna take the beginning of this and have my team frigging listen to it.

[00:22:51] Suneet: you just helped me by doing a podcast for the show and for a team meeting. Oh, see, what a great guy.

[00:22:57] Suneet: Good. So everybody out there watching and listening, I really hope you got something out of our awesome conversation with Chris. on today's episode, if you did find value in this episode and got something out of it, let us know. Leave us a comment with a thumbs up or maybe a thumbs down if you want to be a hater, but it's probably gonna be a thumbs up.

[00:23:17] Suneet: , Share with a friend and make sure you tune in to our next episode of the Reside Platform Podcast. See you later everybody.