Kylie Davis: (00:00)

Welcome to the Proptech Podcast, it's Kylie Davis, and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide.

Kylie Davis: (00:09)

I passionately believe we need to create and grow a sense of community between the innovators and real estate agents, and sharing our stories is a great way to do that.

Kylie Davis: (00:18)

Now, the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a Proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and to explore the issues and challenges raised by the tech and how they can create amazing property experiences.

Kylie Davis: (00:32)

My guest in this episode is Damian Merchan from Spoke. A product that makes it really easy for real estate agents to get better results with Facebook and Google ads.

Kylie Davis: (00:43)

Now, Damian is a former real estate agent who began in the industry as a 20-year-old at Stockdale and Leggo. He sold land off the plan, and he's built his own development deals and a highly successful property development company. And while looking for a CRM for his business, he discovered this thing called RexLabs, with whom he'd worked back with his Stockdale and Leggo days. And he became an investor, and together they launched Spoke.

Kylie Davis: (01:10)

Now, in this conversation, Damian and I discus the growing role of social media in real estate, and how it fits into your whole marketing approach, and how to avoid common mistakes.

Kylie Davis: (01:20)

Damian Merchan, welcome to the Proptech podcast.

Damian Merchan: (01:22)

It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Kylie Davis: (01:25)

No, it's great. I have been wanting to get you on. I've been trying to get you onto the show for about six months, I reckon, if not longer, since the beginning of the year. And finally, we're here now. So Damian, what's the elevator pitch for Spoke?

Damian Merchan: (01:41)

Well, I listened to your last week's podcast and now I'm a bit nervous about actually answering this one. Okay, Spoke's elevator pitch. I guess when someone's thinking of selling their home in an agent's area, every agent wants to be on that magical shopping list, right? To be on that list, though, they need to be perceived as the most active agent in that area. Spoke is a digital social advertising tool that helps agents become the loudest digital voice by making it super easy for them to promote their properties and themselves on Facebook, Instagram and Google Display Networks.

Kylie Davis: (02:22)

Fantastic.

Damian Merchan: (02:24)

Hopefully, that passed the elevator pitch test.

Kylie Davis: (02:26)

Nicely done. Yeah. I can click the timer. That was under 12 seconds. Well done. So what's the problem that Spoke solves? Why do agents have a problem with Facebook, or with social media?

Damian Merchan: (02:43)

I guess what we've tried to do is hide the complexity of getting present on the digital platforms. Yeah, things like ad formatting and setting up audiences, it's time consuming and we do it across both Facebook and Google Network. Yeah, we've tried to hide as much of that complexity as possible, but doing it in such a way that still gives the agent high level control over what they do, for example, how much they spend, or how long they want to run a campaign for, or who they want to push their ads to.

Damian Merchan: (03:20)

I think, now, most agents are now securing a portion of their VPA for social spend. And so we've also got introduced this year a range of branding campaigns, and that enables agents to promote their own services to potential sellers. If they're getting all their listings on social platforms, those audience starter is just building up in the back end. And when they then come along and want to promote themselves, I can do it really cost effectively and re-market to all that audience is building up over time.

Kylie Davis: (03:56)

So look, I'm a digital marketer and it's not easy, the Facebook back end. There's so many options to it and so much variability that you can self control that often makes it just too hard for a lot of agents, right? I mean, I delegated it to my assistance, to the fabulous Jill Escudero, so I'm guilty.

Damian Merchan: (04:26)

Yeah. Look, I think, we're what? Three and a half years into doing this. And every change that we make to the audience settings, we really do split test it. We don't really alter the back end audiences until it's demonstrated that it's pushing the needle in the right direction. And we've also given the agent the ability to really high level tick who they want to reach. They can tick a box that gives them the ability to reach the premium buyers, or tick a box to promote a property to first time buyers. Or in our rental campaigns, they can tick a landlord box and market to landlords in the area. It's just really trying to save time, make it easy and accessible.

Kylie Davis: (05:14)

Awesome. Okay. I'm a real estate agent, I've been doing things really traditionally, I know I need to embrace digital and social media marketing, but I don't really have an understanding of how that works. Rather than try and learn all of Facebook myself, I've rolled out something like a Spoke to help me out. And to make it effective from day one.

Damian Merchan: (05:35)

Yeah. And don't forget the Google Display Network. That's a super powerful platform. Spoke gets you on both. Obviously, Instagram's owned by Facebook, and those two platforms, they work really well together. They complement each other being on both platforms.

Kylie Davis: (05:55)

Okay. Why do we need to be using Facebook and social media? Rather than portals or rather than-

Damian Merchan: (06:02)

All right.

Kylie Davis: (06:02)

Well, and they run anymore newspapers around advertising.

Damian Merchan: (06:08)

Hopefully, there's still a few. Have you seen the Social Dilemma?

Kylie Davis: (06:12)

I have. Yeah.

Damian Merchan: (06:13)

I reckon that is possibly the best explanation of the power of digital marketing. I mean, I know that show really presents social and digital marketing in a nefarious way, but I mean the ability of both Facebook and Google to build up that psychographic profile and then apply predictive algorithms to determine someone's intention, like what are they going to do even before they may know it, it's just so powerful.

Damian Merchan: (06:49)

A lot of us, most of us just think it's plain creepy, but funny enough the next run of buyers coming through, like the millennials, they actually say it is a huge convenience and welcome the connection to the right services at the right time. They're not [crosstalk 00:07:08] by it.

Kylie Davis: (07:08)

It's interesting that you say that because I get quite stroppy when I see ads in my Facebook feed that I feel have no right to be there. I'm a very big slammer of the get rid of that out of my face.

Damian Merchan: (07:25)

[inaudible 00:07:25]. Yeah. But we're not millennials, Kylie.

Kylie Davis: (07:30)

No, proud card carrying member Gen X me.

Damian Merchan: (07:35)

It's just really interesting how the market shifted. It wasn't that long ago that to connect with clients face-to-face, you'd have bums on seats in your car out. The younger buyers, they want to negotiate via SMS. And that is the market that's emerging and becoming a strong part of the buying market. So yeah, it is changing and the way that people communicate is changing.

Damian Merchan: (08:05)

I mean, like the power of these things, just to give some context piece, I don't always think people join the dots. But when you download an app, and often you're asked to log in with Google or Facebook, and most people forget their password, so they'll log in one way or another. If they do that, that means Google or Facebook has your data, they know what you're doing. So for a download, so the domain app, and using one of those to log in, or from a Gmail user, and I email my broker and say, "Hey, I want to buy a home." Or I subscribe to an REA feed, Google knows that. And that means that we can place ads in front of those people. That's really the power of social and digital marketing. It really comes down to the ability to place ads to the right people at the right time. And it's super powerful.

Kylie Davis: (08:59)

And it does make the old ways that we've advertised in the past look really quite primitive in comparison. Yeah. So how big is Facebook in Australia these days?

Damian Merchan: (09:18)

Look, it's huge. Yeah, I think it's close to 80% of Australians are using either Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is owned by Facebook, so is Messenger, so is WhatsApp. And really what they are is really targeted, geo-located capabilities. You've got close to 60% of people are still buying within five Ks of their home, 91% within 40 Ks. So yeah, geolocation marketing is just really clever in reaching the right people at the right time, where they're spending their time.

Damian Merchan: (10:02)

I think the recent statistics coming out on Statistica about digital usage, it's like six and a half hours a day spent online, and 90 minutes or an hour and a half on social. This is where people are, it's where their attention is.

Kylie Davis: (10:18)

They're all soft. What about the other 22 hours in the day [inaudible 00:10:24].

Damian Merchan: (10:23)

Well, no, it's like [inaudible 00:10:27] that's eight hours just staring at devices, it's crazy. But that's [crosstalk 00:10:33] we're living in.

Kylie Davis: (10:34)

No wonder we're all so tired. What are the key blockers? Why have agents struggled to embrace it?

Damian Merchan: (10:45)

Well, I think-

Kylie Davis: (10:48)

I mean, because on one hand, you see inside Facebook, a lot of agents who are very active socially, but they're not an extraordinary... Not a huge amount of sophistication across the board in terms of targeting for advertising.

Damian Merchan: (10:55)

I think that is changing, but I would say the key blockers, I would say there's probably time is money, there's the know-how, and then I'd say there's probably a bit of fear. With time, that's really the problem that Spoke sought to solve here, to just make it really time efficient.

Damian Merchan: (11:26)

The financial element, I think, again Spoke's powerful in that it gives agents the ability to leverage their VPA spent, and that can build up audiences in their back end. And then when they do want to promote themselves, those audiences are ready and ready to be utilised in Spoke in there, trying to get appraisals.

Damian Merchan: (11:53)

But I would say a big one is the know-how. It's one thing to add formats and audience settings, but really, really good holistic, funnel, content generation is not that easy. Google did this white paper on the real estate funnel. They looked at a bunch of people that had sold and bought property and then backtracked and worked out the digital journey. And it was one of the longest funnels that they could-

Kylie Davis: (12:26)

In history.

Damian Merchan: (12:27)

... [crosstalk 00:12:27] any product. Any product or service that they actually analysed. And so essentially, it's a 20 month funnel.

Kylie Davis: (12:33)

Wow.

Damian Merchan: (12:35)

It's a long funnel.

Kylie Davis: (12:36)

With a 12 year buying cycle.

Damian Merchan: (12:42)

To explain that further, you've got people that what they said was sitting in the dreaming phase, just toying with the idea of doing something for 12 months. And then they start to really dive in and start to do their research and homework, and then they become active, and only in the last three months of that cycle.

Damian Merchan: (13:00)

For seven, eight months, you've got people thinking of doing something or doing their homework, and that's where really meaningful localised content comes into play. They're not ready to talk to you as an agent, right? But they are listening. They are doing their home. If you're the one putting really meaningful local content, that's going to get you again on that shopping list. But I think most, across the board, there are some that do this excellently, they're brilliant marketers out there. But broadly speaking, it is a problem. And it comes back to creating really good content although you've got to do it yourself with just time. It's costly from a time perspective. Or you're outsourcing it, and that's expensive.

Damian Merchan: (13:50)

But now there's a bunch of tools that have come into play like Canva, makes designing images easy. I don't know if you've seen copy.ai. But that's a brilliant tool that really helps craft the written element of a digital campaign.

Kylie Davis: (14:07)

I'll have to check it out.

Damian Merchan: (14:08)

Yeah, it's a good one. And then HomePrezzo and Real Content, just to give you a shameless plug. But in all seriousness, I think what HomePrezzo has done is brilliant. It's localised market reports and people actually want to know. They don't want the broad state based stats that are spruiked on the news, they want to know what's happening in their BDA, their area.

Damian Merchan: (14:37)

Whilst it's been a blocker, I think these products are solving that problem. And then there's fear. I still think there's a big fear that agents are worried about how they'll be perceived or maybe even ridiculed, or the content they put out could be used against them by the competitors. To that agent, I would always say and do say, "No one knows what's going on in their area better than the agent that's working it. You're in there every day, you know the silent questions that both sellers and buyers are thinking. And so it's about just getting past that fear, get your phone out, film yourself, answer those silent questions. And you know what, if people aren't having a crack at you, you're not trying hard enough."

Kylie Davis: (15:21)

The well-known newspaper columnist Paddy McGuinness used to write for me when I had the Village Voice. I used to get upset when people would criticise the paper, and he would say, "As long as they're talking about you."

Damian Merchan: (15:33)

Well, that's true. There's going to be people that have something to say, and you've got... What do they call the keyboard warriors? The trolls?

Kylie Davis: (15:49)

Yeah, the trolls. Yep.

Damian Merchan: (15:51)

You just go it politely, comment, or make sure you're just hiding those posts. I think fear is one of those blockers too.

Kylie Davis: (16:05)

Let's just kind of try and do a little bit of a summary, because I think it's really easy to get into the wood for the trees here. But what you're saying from the Google research, and I'm going to dig out that research, and I'll put it in the show notes, because I think that's awesome. I haven't seen it or if I have seen it, I've missed it. How old is it about?

Damian Merchan: (16:22)

I think they did-

Kylie Davis: (16:22)

Anyway.

Damian Merchan: (16:28)

I'm just trying to remember. We got it from Alex from Google, I think it was the end of last year. She did a presentation for us.

Kylie Davis: (16:32)

Oh, okay.

Damian Merchan: (16:34)

I'll pick it up for you.

Kylie Davis: (16:35)

No, awesome. We'll share that out. So there's a 20 month kind of sales funnel going on from the time someone starts to think, "This isn't really working, I think I need to move, or I think we need to sell," to the time that they do it. And about 17 months of that 20 is fairly passive, or sort of in the background arms crossed in the background thinking, "Yeah, I'll work this out before I'm ready to talk to an agent."

Damian Merchan: (17:09)

Absolutely. And I think the objective, what do you want to do as an agent for those that are thinking of doing something? Well, the key there is building brand recognition and personal recognition of you as the agent. And also trust. Building trust in your capabilities, as in their agent, that you can get the job done. And they understand your marketplace, and you're providing really good content. That builds trust. The idea is that when they're active, you're getting the call in and when you step in, they kind of already feel like they... Well, they know your brand, they recognise you, and they feel like they already trust you.

Kylie Davis: (17:49)

At that top of the funnel, where we've got people for 17 months, that's when you need to be sharing information about your local market.

Damian Merchan: (17:56)

So to break it up, it's 12 months in the dreaming or the watching phase. And that's when they're toying with the idea, right? In that, all you can hope to achieve there is brand awareness and personal recognition. Then they move into the research phase. The objective there should be to build engagement to use digital language, but really you're trying to build trust. Trust in your professional capability.

Damian Merchan: (18:26)

And then it's about funnelling. And then you got to really go by the throat and ask for the business and convert those active people into leads. I think a lot of people make the mistake with social, they think they're going to run one campaign and it's a magic silver bullet that's just going to solve all their prospecting problems, but it really is a long game. If you take a strategic long term approach to this, then that's the way you really got to own your share of voice in the market.

Kylie Davis: (18:58)

And now let's hear a word from our sponsors.

Kylie Davis: (19:01)

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Kylie Davis: (20:09)

I can hear hundreds of real estate agents asking right now, when do we start to promote the properties? When is it appropriate time to post properties on Facebook? Listings?

Damian Merchan: (20:21)

Okay. Like say with your audience settings, you are promoting it to those that are thinking and doing something, those that are researching, but you can wait your campaign towards those that are actively doing something. And so for our listing campaigns, they are targeting the more bottom of the funnel of that cycle, right? I mean, it's-

Kylie Davis: (20:47)

So there are people who have chosen, who have basically said, "Yes, I'm in the market, I'm actively in the market?"

Damian Merchan: (20:54)

Well, their behaviour is indicating that, yes. Their digital online behaviours are showing all the signals. I mean, these are all patterns, right? Facebook and Google, they've looked at these long data sets and established patterns that the human being can't determine. And that's what they build their algorithms off, and then apply that so that anyone that's showing those similar patterns of behaviour, they're going to fall into your audience settings, and we'll be able to push a property in front of that person. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Kylie Davis: (21:32)

Yeah. Yep. It sure does. So how do we know it's working? What's the kind of results that your clients are seeing?

Damian Merchan: (21:39)

Okay. Well, statistically, I can throw some numbers your way. Our average spend on a campaign would be about $250. It's oscillating between 14 and 21 days in that, the average. And this is sort of the aggregate across Australia. We're getting around 73,000 impressions, 625 clicks or engagements, and eight to nine leads. But I would say the biggest litmus test here to know if it's working, is after about six weeks a lot of our clients who... They're building it into their VPA, they're putting every listing on. They start to get this feedback in the marketplace, where people just say, "Tom, I see you everywhere. I see you coming up everywhere." And that really is the tell. That's when you know it's working, when people are saying to you, "I'm seeing you everywhere."

Damian Merchan: (22:40)

That means that when that person is thinking of selling, you're going to be top of mind, and you've got more of a chance of getting that call in. So yeah. That's sort of how it was. Yeah, the performance stats that we're getting are good, really good. I think that feedback is really what you want to be looking for as an agent.

Kylie Davis: (23:03)

So you're getting the technical feedback that the algorithms are able to share with you in terms of the data, but then you're also getting some kind of qualitative feedback that's helping your principal or whoever realise that this investment... But I mean $250 per ad is pretty reasonable I'd have thought.

Damian Merchan: (23:23)

Look, you can do ads with us for as low as $50. The 250 is simply our average. I mean there are agents out there doing $500 campaigns as a standard VPA offering. But it just depends on where you are. If you're in a higher price area, and you can secure the larger VPA... Because the more higher up the socio economic ladder you climb, you start competing with higher end brands who've got bigger budgets. You don't always need to be spending that sort of huge dollars unless you're in a really... But if you're top end, I would say you'd probably want to be at around $50, if you're middle of the run in terms of pricing, 250, and if you're at the cheaper end of town, then 150 is more than enough. So it just depends on where you are.

Kylie Davis: (24:12)

But I think that's the promise of Facebook or of social media that if you're not across all the ins and outs of how the algorithms work and how business manager and all of that sort of stuff works, it's very easy to spend an awful lot of money very quickly and not know what the outcome of it was, right? And which is what makes Facebook so scary.

Damian Merchan: (24:40)

We're continuously working with both Facebook and Google on the changes that they're making to enable what's changing. This new legislation that comes in, there are things like Safari remove pixel tracking, things like this mean that we need to pivot and adjust. And we, thankfully, we're at a place with those companies where we get invited into their beta releases, which means we can make the appropriate changes needed before they actually turn it on, so that we don't get that drop of performance that you may get if you went across those changes that they're planning on making.

Kylie Davis: (25:22)

Cool. Have you found that since you're based in Melbourne, although the Rexlabs skies are up in Brissy, but have you found that that's changed marketing for real estate? Has it made people more likely to adopt Spoke?

Damian Merchan: (25:40)

Oh, yeah. I think that's true for all tech. I guess, Spoke specifically, we had a lot of people coming at us from the regional areas, because unfortunately, some of these newspapers were shutting down, they had to seek alternative ways to advertise their listings. But really what I think COVID has done more systemically, it's just catalysed the rate of change. Everyone hates changing, unless we really have to, but what COVID's forced us all to embrace is we had to learn Zoom and finally learn and maybe even use our CRMs. [crosstalk 00:26:22]. Even like EDMs, these magic things called EDMs. I think a lot of agents realised that it was a good time to re-skill. And I think the focus of that re-skilling has been centred on tech, for sure. Yeah.

Kylie Davis: (26:43)

It's amazing what you do with a bit of focus. Spoke is part of Rexlabs. Tell me the story to how you guys are together?

Damian Merchan: (26:57)

Like my involvement or how-

Kylie Davis: (26:58)

Yeah, the whole thing. I think it's a great story.

Damian Merchan: (27:02)

Well, I guess I can tell it from my perspective. Look, I've been part of Rexlabs since its inception. If I trace back the origins, I would say it really did start in an office in Cranbourne around 20 years ago.

Kylie Davis: (27:20)

Because your backgrounds is as an agent, isn't it? You used to be an agent?

Damian Merchan: (27:22)

Agent, yeah. I've been in the game one way or another as an agent, principal. So yeah. But we're always working. I started off my career working at Stockdale & Leggo in Cranbourne. One of my colleagues, Lana, one day bought her son in, her 12 year old son. This kid was just... He was a prick. He decided he wanted to build a digital listing presentation for all of us to use. Now, this is 20 years ago. This is around the same year that someone was coming around telling us about this thing called realestate.com.

Kylie Davis: (28:01)

Yeah. The internet, it'll take off. I tell you.

Damian Merchan: (28:07)

I'm pretty sure it was free. Anyway, this guy came in, this kid came in and he did it. He built this digital listing presentation and it was phenomenal. Anyway, that's enter Alex. Yeah.

Kylie Davis: (28:23)

Yeah.

Damian Merchan: (28:24)

And then Lana went worked for Ray White, and I sort of moved into the project marketing space. Went and worked for LJ Hooker in Melbourne Southeast, so doing project marketing side of the real estate. Anyway, while Lana was there, Ray White Cranbourne office, Alex, who I think he would have been 15, 16, I'm not entirely sure, but he built a customised CRM for them to use. And by all accounts, it was really, really good, and better than anything else that was out there.

Damian Merchan: (28:57)

Meanwhile, whilst I was doing my project marketing thing, I then started my own business in project marketing, and I, like every new person in business, I read the [inaudible 00:29:12]. Have you ever read that? Yeah?

Kylie Davis: (29:14)

I sure have. Yeah, I love it. It helped me when I had my first business, when I had The Village Voice.

Damian Merchan: (29:20)

It's a ripper.

Kylie Davis: (29:21)

Followed it to the letter. Process, process, process.

Damian Merchan: (29:23)

Same. I was building a business and all this process mapping everything, doing procedures, and doing all these things. And I was really looking for a system to hang all those processes and procedures off. I reached out, I tracked down Alex and asked if he would come in and build something for our business, which he did. And to be fair, it was good. But once I could see the good that he had done, I started to get a glimpse of what great could be.

Damian Merchan: (29:55)

Now, keep in mind, we were in project marketing, which means we had sales people across the state of Metro and Melbourne, like other ends. We couldn't really deal with VPN and all of these things. This is before cloud. Anyway, Alex said, "Have you heard of the cloud?" I'm like, "I know what the clouds are." And he's like, "No." And he explained the digital cloud to me.

Damian Merchan: (30:21)

He sort of looked in it, and to take this product from good to great, was going to require an investment that I really just couldn't justify from my own business. So we sort of discussed the idea of maybe incorporating and commercialising this. And that's where Alex wields in his big brother, Anton. Enter Anton. And so we sort of worked out this arrangement, we incorporated Rex, and that was really how it got its start. Anton and I in the early days would hit the pavement and sell it together, and the very first licences of Rex.

Damian Merchan: (31:00)

And then obviously, Rex just iterated and it's a very different product today to what it was. And the team's growing. Anton and Alex have done a phenomenal job, and Lana as well. Lana runs the sales team, Alex runs the tech, and Anton's the CEO. And so these guys have just... I've never met people that work harder in my life, they just give everything to this business. And I was sort of like the silent partner, because I was running a real estate business and I was doing some property development. But now I exited all of that about three years ago, and then Anton basically... I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, and Anton asked if I would actually maybe come and pull my weight at Rexlabs and [inaudible 00:31:50] as the national BDM to Spoke, and I did. And here I am.

Kylie Davis: (31:56)

Awesome.

Kylie Davis: (31:57)

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Kylie Davis: (33:06)

You've got agents out there engaging in social media, and you've got Rex, which is the CRM, which is where you've got the proprietary, where the agents start to kind of own and control their own data. How do those two things come together? Facebook's got its own data and its own audience, and when does it start to connect up?

Damian Merchan: (33:30)

That's a good question. Firstly, I would just like to point out that Spoke is CRM agnostic. So whilst it pairs nicely with CRMs, you don't have to be on Rex to utilise Spoke. But where do they all fit together? I guess you got to look at Facebook and Google as the funnel outside of your funnel, right?

Kylie Davis: (33:57)

Yeah.

Damian Merchan: (33:58)

It's a funnel out there that you don't know yet. And the idea is, is to funnel those people into your proprietary funnel, which is your CRM. And that's where really good lead nurturing tools and there's plenty of good products and active part [inaudible 00:34:14] I'm a fan of that. And Radar and all these good products. They're there to help nurture leads within the CRMs.

Damian Merchan: (34:24)

Spoke can take like a CSV file of your CRM contacts. We tested this and we caution to be careful with it. I can't remember where this stat come from. But it was like somewhere around 7% of people's databases were truly active, actually doing something. To just upload your entire database, would throw off the audience settings, because you have Google and Facebook, then take that and create look alike audiences. It was throwing that out to the wrong people.

Damian Merchan: (35:06)

So we tested this rigorously. But we've got that capability in Spoke now. But what we say to people is, "Hey, bring in your past appraisal, sure, but maybe go back two years tops. And your active buyers don't go past 90 days." Because after 90 days, they pretty much bought something, or they haven't been able to buy something. You just got to be careful.

Damian Merchan: (35:33)

The idea is, if you've got a campaign with Spoke, it will create a landing page, so when the buyer or seller clicks on your ad, they get taken to a digital landing page. We sync your CRM first with Spoke, so it's pulling up all your property information. You create your ads, landing pages created. It's optimised for lead capture. When that lead comes in, you can have that drop into your CRM, and then process it as you normally would. And that's where you start to then be able to market to them in [crosstalk 00:36:08]-

Kylie Davis: (36:09)

Internally as well.

Damian Merchan: (36:10)

Yeah. Does that make sense?

Kylie Davis: (36:12)

Yeah. Yeah. No, it certainly does. It's almost like Facebook and Instagram and Google are like an ocean, and you're the fishing boat on it, and you're going to be pulling fish into the fishing boat, and then sorting them once they're in the boat. It doesn't mean you're going to eat every single fish that comes on board. And some are going to go back over the side. I don't know where I got the fishing metaphor.

Damian Merchan: (36:33)

Well, I'm looking at the bay, Port Phillip Bay, and I like your ocean analogy. It is the Facebook ocean, and the sea of Facebook, and they're huge. And that funnel-

Kylie Davis: (36:45)

The Straits of Instagram.

Damian Merchan: (36:48)

Funnelling into the Bay, and then they do CRM tactics to troll the bay and that way. Yeah. I don't know.

Kylie Davis: (36:59)

It's late on a Tuesday. What are the three things that an agent should do right now to improve their social and their digital media?

Damian Merchan: (37:13)

Okay. I reckon the best thing you can do is actually learn how to explain the benefits of social to a vendor.

Kylie Davis: (37:21)

Oh, awesome. Awesome tip. I love that.

Damian Merchan: (37:22)

Because if you can do that and secure spend on every single one of your listings, it's going to go a huge way in building your share voice. That will be the first thing I would recommend. And build it into VPA, right? Then, Second thing, I would make a plan, like plan, coming into Chrissy, New Year's, the perfect time there. Actually stop and plan out 2021. And think about the seasonality of your marketplace, and everyone's different. But think about the content that you are going to put out that's promoting your services. So make a plan and work that plan.

Damian Merchan: (37:58)

And then it's about actually executing on the plan. Again, you're going to need that meaningful, localised content. If you don't know how to do it, get on to the tools that I've mentioned or pay someone to help you do it. Yeah, that's what I'll do if I was an agent.

Kylie Davis: (38:17)

Awesome. That's great advice. Thanks. Thanks, Damian. What do you reckon the next five years holds for the real estate industry and real estate marketing? Where are we going?

Damian Merchan: (38:27)

I love this question. Let me get my crystal ball out.

Kylie Davis: (38:27)

I love a little bit of crystal ball reading.

Damian Merchan: (38:38)

Yeah. I just hope in five years, if I listen to this, I'm not checking my [crosstalk 00:38:40].

Kylie Davis: (38:41)

We all will be. We'll all be going, "Oh, my God, we said what?"

Damian Merchan: (38:44)

In the next five years, well, I mean, some of these are already in play and will just get more prominent. I think if you at the Proptech game more holistically, I think automations and integrations will continue to get better and better and better. The advent of middleware tools like Zapier, it's going to make one system talk more succinctly to another. And then when you pair that with the ability to automate functions, that becomes super efficient. And again, it pushes agents back to more dollar productive activities like spending time with people. I think those two things would be the first.

Damian Merchan: (39:34)

I think auto-responders are going to start passing the Turing test, meaning that people won't know the difference between a bot and the person. And I think they're getting better and better and better on a daily basis. Again, that will add a greater customer experience to every buyer and seller out there. And it kind of then means that agents can call those people who they need to phone call.

Damian Merchan: (40:05)

I think there's a big one in the Internet of Things. So 5G, obviously, is a prerequisite for the IoT, Internet of Things to really emerge. And I think that's going to... Sorry, Kylie.

Kylie Davis: (40:21)

Do you see that affecting your space? Is that going to affect social and digital marketing? How does IoT affect that?

Damian Merchan: (40:32)

IoT? Imagine being able to just... Okay, what's a good real estate analogy? Imagine being able to link someone that's engaged with you online, and be able to pair that with a signal as they walk into your open home? So if you have an IoT device, it's maybe rating people as they scan in.

Kylie Davis: (40:56)

It says, "So Damian just checked into your open house, Kylie, and he's a friend of yours on Facebook."

Damian Merchan: (41:01)

All these audiences, they're code, right? It's not a person. It's not identifiably a real person. But as soon as they walk in, it can identify that person is that. So you think about the power of that. Then that person goes to the shops, and they're walking through the local shopping centre, and there's digital signage, and you can push signage as they walk there, oh, there's-

Kylie Davis: (41:28)

Oh, now we're in Minority Report territory, right?

Damian Merchan: (41:32)

That's exactly.

Kylie Davis: (41:33)

It's Kylie's house, it's for sale. You should buy it.

Damian Merchan: (41:36)

That offline, out of home marketing space, will 100% playing in here. Again, it's a little creepy, but it's cool. If it's used in the right ways.

Kylie Davis: (41:53)

If it's used to sell home furnishing, it's fine. If it's used to sway elections, it's not cool. Yeah.

Damian Merchan: (42:07)

Yes, exactly. Yeah. AI is so powerful. The intention. You imagine wearing a wearable device, which is an Internet of Things thing. And they can track. That's paired with your computer, with your phone, and those wearables they're tracking your heart rate and your temperature when you actually click that by Proceed to Checkout button. That can be used and reused, and you can start to really understand when people are likely to make a decision based on their moods, and serve up ads accordingly. Yeah, that's another application of how the Internet of Things can play out.

Kylie Davis: (43:02)

So playing it cool in the negotiation. So sort of just asking the agent, "How much are they looking for, for it? What do you think?" And trying to be really kind of on the down low. If you really love the house, your body's going to give you away as you walk past the scanner on the way out.

Damian Merchan: (43:18)

Imagine you're wearing a device's as an agent and you can get real time biometric [inaudible 00:43:26] and you're like, "I've got them. I've got them."

Kylie Davis: (43:29)

They're mine. Push them for another five K.

Damian Merchan: (43:32)

That's beyond the five year parameter. But this is [inaudible 00:43:36]. I think AI is getting more and more prolific. These are narrow AIs, and they're getting smarter.

Damian Merchan: (43:51)

You asked me a question around Facebook, and it's a juggernaut, and what's its future? It's like, these things are not going away. These companies, both Facebook and Google, they have more money in the bank than the government's have in the bank. And they can just continue to buy companies. And people think, "Oh, they're just buying companies." No, they're buying talent. They're buying the talent of people. They've got the best people. And it's an arms race of talent. And so these guys are just going to keep on, keep on, keep on getting smarter and smarter and smarter, and pouring new ways of reaching people.

Damian Merchan: (44:30)

I think the last thing for the real estate industry, which has already started happening, is the whole concept of data liking. I think groups are more and more and more focused on this. And they're really doing that to protect themselves from the lead interception tactics that we're seeing emerge. I think that'll play out and be pretty important over the next coming years.

Kylie Davis: (45:00)

Damian, to wrap up, what's the future for Spoke? How do you guys play in this space going forward?

Damian Merchan: (45:05)

In the short term, I can tell you that we're really focused on building a broader suite of brand and capabilities for our customers. If we think about the vendor wants more buyers, the agent wants more listings, the principals want more landlords, potentially staff. They're the sort of objectives that we want to be able to bring greater and greater value to.

Damian Merchan: (45:31)

In the mid to long term, we just need to be super ready to pivot and adjust and ensure we're keeping our customers ahead of the curve, as these things change and emerge. It's just such a fast moving space. We just need to stay at the cutting edge and make sure that we are always driving increasing value to them as these new tech's become ubiquitous. The day we stop doing that, will be the day we die. That's really where... Yeah, it's hard to say what the long play for Spoke is, because conjecture at this point.

Kylie Davis: (46:10)

Are you Australian only at the moment, or Australia and New Zealand or?

Damian Merchan: (46:14)

Spoke, no, no, we're in NZ and UK.

Kylie Davis: (46:18)

Oh, awesome. Okay.

Damian Merchan: (46:19)

Yeah.

Kylie Davis: (46:20)

Any plans to go to the US?

Damian Merchan: (46:24)

Yeah.

Kylie Davis: (46:24)

We'd all love to go the US, but we're not doing that until the border is open. And even then.

Damian Merchan: (46:33)

Yeah. We've got a lot of work here to do to get right. The UK is an interesting market, that's in a state of flux with Brexit and the different privacy laws there. [inaudible 00:46:49] I think that's going to happen here as well. But yeah. Yeah, definitely. We want to go where we can add value, and if that happens to be the US, then great. Because sometimes growth at all cost is a bit dangerous, so you just want to grow steadily and like [inaudible 00:47:14] style of growth.

Kylie Davis: (47:15)

Yeah. Well, Damian, it's been absolutely wonderful to have you on the Proptech podcast. Thank you so much for chatting with me and helping us to understand how agents should be using social media better.

Damian Merchan: (47:30)

Thanks for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Kylie Davis: (47:34)

That was Damian Merchan from Spoke, which makes it super easy for agents to effectively target audiences on Facebook and Google Ads without needing to be social media gurus.

Kylie Davis: (47:45)

Now with COVID being the final nail in the coffin for many local newspapers, the need for real estate agents to embrace and understand digital media has never been more urgent. But as a marketer myself, I know how bloody hard it can be to get your settings right and targeting the right audience for different types of promotions inside, especially the Facebook ad manager.

Kylie Davis: (48:06)

The systems have so much complexity and so many options to be so flexible, that actually just knowing what is the right thing to do straight out of the box can feel really hard. I love how Spoke removes all that complication and just focuses on what agents need to do, to do their job. And then it helps them improve and get better and better at it, and to get better results.

Kylie Davis: (48:28)

I also love that despite its links to Rexlab, Spoke is genuinely agnostic about the CRM you work with on this. And I love how easily it can tie in with tools like Active Pipe, and even HomePrezzo, to be part of an end to end marketing suite. So if you're a Spoke user, I'd love to hear about your experiences and success stories. So drop us a line.

Kylie Davis: (48:48)

Now, if you have enjoyed this episode of the Proptech podcast, please tell your friends or drop me an email, say hello on LinkedIn or our Facebook page. And you can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple iTunes, and Anchor. I'd like to make my audio support Charlie Hollins and the fabulous Jill Escudero, and our sponsors, Mitch Wines, proud to be the official wine of Australian Proptech. Direct Connect, making moving connections easy. And HomePrezzo, turning your data into amazing marketing content for email, social and traditional marketing with a click.

Kylie Davis: (49:23)

Thanks, everyone. Until next week, keep on propteching.