Ep. 36 | MHP Owner Interview with Jonathan Tuttle – Using Digital Marketing To Generate More Leads and Sell More Homes
On this episode of The Mobile Home Park Lawyer Ferd talks to Jonathan Tuttle, a digital marketing expert and mobile home park owner. Jonathan explains how to use marketing to boost your online presence and shares some tips on how to get more interest in your ads.
“Psychology is the number one thing when it comes to marketing, it’s just understanding your audience.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro and background on Jonathan
6:14 – Facebook Marketplace is like an ad in a newspaper, but more targeted as Facebook know you so well
9:54 – The referral is the warmest lead you can get
10:54 – Ferd asks what else can people do to maximize performance in their parks
12:50 – Jonathan discusses reviews and how they can affect your park
15:33 – Use a service call rail for transparency to give accountability to your property managers
18:58 – Creating a little urgency in your ads is very effective
21:41 – Facebook is the most effective and you should get someone in to help you with Business Manager, and make sure you are using Google Ads if you are a bigger company
26:30 – The more interaction with the ad, the smarter it gets
28:22 – Ferd has the Kansas City Mobile Homes Facebook page, so anyone that searches it, gets his park
Ferd Niemann: Welcome back mobile home park nation, Ferd Niemann here again, The Mobile Home Park Lawyer. Today’s guest, he’s a digital marketing expert, but he’s also an MHP owner and operator. Just like me, just like lots of you. He’s going to share some secrets of the industry from the marketing side, some of the tips and tactics to make your MHP business better, more profitable, more efficient, and ultimately get to your goals. Please help me welcome my guest, Jonathan Tuttle. Jonathan, thanks for being on the show.
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah, thanks for having me. I love your podcasts, I listen every week, so it’s an honor to be on here.
Ferd Niemann: Okay, great. If you would have said otherwise, I would have deleted this content, but thanks for the compliments. Interested to hear more about your story. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into MHP and then we’ll dive more into the weeds as to how you can help our listeners.
Jonathan Tuttle: Perfect. Yeah. So I’ve been in the mobile home park space with my dad, we’ve been in about 15 years. So, we got our first park 15 years ago and I just really fell in love with the space because it was, you know, I said to my friends. I was like, I really love mobile home parks. Like, what are you talking about? And then now everyone kind of knows about it. Your listeners do probably.
Ferd Niemann: Now you are the cool kid, right?
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah, exactly. I went from like the weird to like oh, let me know more.
Ferd Niemann: I can relate.
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah, exactly. So, it is kind of cool to see the transition over the last 15 years. Then I brokered for a few years with one of the big brokerage houses. And we own currently two parks. And then I also have a Midwest Park Capital is my mobile home park fund. We’re doing our first raise right now. So that’s kind of my background in the space. It’s been a for a while. I tried to get all the trade shows. So, some people might recognize me from like Louisville. I was at Texaco this year. It’s a great show. I was supposed to speak on the MH Congress Expo. So, some of the stuff I’m going to present, this is actually some of the stuff I was to speak on stage. So, it should be actionable insights for your audience.
Ferd Niemann: Excellent. I’m looking forward to it. Tell us more about marketing. I think marketing, I think MHP gets like a little bit of a bad rap and it may be warranted that we’re 10 years behind multi-family or 20 years behind something else. So help us get out of the dark ages and get into the internet age here and give us some of the immediate tips and tactics that we can use to, you know, without having to be an expert in marketing that we can do to enhance our web presence, enhance our marketing. So, tell us what you got, man.
Jonathan Tuttle: Perfect. I mean, because I had gone really granular, but also want to keep it so like in a way that audience can implement today without getting too confusing. The main thing with digital too, you got to keep in mind is it comes down to psychology and these algorithms are based on psychology. Like with the elections we’ve seen recently either agree with what you see in the timeline or you completely disagree. So, kind of keep that in mind when you, anytime you’re doing any marketing online, the more you put it towards one bias, people are going to really resonate with it. So, you’re putting your content out there. You ever see like the posts that get the most likes, it’s always like the most, it’s all one-sided. The algorithms love that, it’s basically the algorithms are built on biases and engagement. So, psychology is the number one thing when it comes to marketing, it’s just understanding your audience. So, for Facebook is the most effective and it’s nowadays because Facebook went public, obviously, it wasn’t five, six years ago. Then as we all know how much everyone’s been spending on Facebook ads, it’s made it so profitable. They basically got everyone hooked on it. It’s free, make a business page. Oh yeah. And then all of a sudden, they’re like, you know what? Now you basically got to pay to play most likely, everyone sees like you get only so much, you know, showing your timeline. Before five years ago, every single post would show up on there. It was great, but they want to monetize it. They want everyone to get hooked. So, kind of have that mindset when we’re doing marketing, it does involve some money. The one advantage to you could use right now, but I think eventually it’s going to happen. Facebook always monetizes everything. So, Marketplace, you know, like a lot of people talk about like if you’re a traditional mom and pop owner, a lot of them still do use the local newspaper. It’s the same premise is that, it’s basically like putting in like a little classified, but you’re using digital, which is a lot more powerful because you could see how many people viewed it, how many people responded to it. And they’re like in real-time they can message, which basically means they can message you or your, you know, your office manager in real-time basically sends them instant message and they can communicate. And you can actually just see what they’re saying, which is huge because you know, one of the big complaints with you know, some people is with their office manager is I can’t keep track of what they’re doing. But yeah, so give them a context for it gives them ideas. Facebook Marketplace is free right now. I think eventually they’ll start charging. You could do boost, which is basically put more eyeballs on it. Basically, we’d be like putting in one ad, but you’re in, like you put it in multiple newspapers papers, kind of same concept. With Marketplace we recommend any of your, you know, if you’re trying to get some of your park owned homes, perfect spot to test it out. And the cool thing is you’re mostly competitive markets other parks aren’t using it, unless it’s a sophisticated or institutional owner. So, you could command a higher price because you have more visibility in the whole, you know, people see that it’s on the feed, so they get excited about it. So you have a really engaged audience by the time they come in, you actually have the leverage, you know, basically leverage and marketing and you can say hey, you can command a higher price, which we’ve noticed just from, based on research.
Ferd Niemann: No, that’s great. Yeah, we’re big fans of Facebook Marketplace. A few years back, I was doing the boosting and then I heard from someone else or my assistant she’s, she’s kind of a marketing person. And she said, basically, you’re wasting your money on boosting them, just do it on Marketplace. It’s more organic. And her opinion, the algorithm favored the Marketplace to free content. Would you agree with that? Or was that always the case? Is it now the case or is it not the case?
Jonathan Tuttle: Well, it is just a fancy way of saying anytime you’re on Facebook and you see the ads in your feed or anywhere else online, that’s using the business manager. The Marketplace is just the classified, like basically like the online newspaper version. They have a boost in there which basically is like hey, we could see this more. Its more people could see this AKA there’s more newspapers handed out to people basically, generic terms.
Ferd Niemann: The business manager page, Kristin may know how to use that kind of stuff on our team, but I don’t frankly do much of that its side. Is that how expensive is that? And is that better than the boosting? Is it better than Marketplace or not?
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah, that’s where all the data is. So, you know, Facebook collects hundreds of thousands of data points. They know about you more than you know about yourself. That’s why people are like, why is this ad showing, how do they know?
Ferd Niemann: Yeah. They know, I know because Alexa is listening. I know.
Jonathan Tuttle: They take that down and they sell it back to advertisers. So, we could actually pick behaviors. And they’re a little bit less on the cause of housing, a housing credit, they actually had to pull back because of the law suite, remember last week they had the whole Senate hearing with like, you guys control too much data. Well basically you can take that data and find your ideal prospect. So, you can have some basic ads running, not in the booster on the Marketplace, but on the regular feed. And what you want to do is you want to prime Malcolm Gladwell calls, priming your audience, so if you have a bigger park, to say of a 100, 250 units, just run ads, interview some of your testimonials like hey, there’s a great community. Do some videos like hey, this is a great safe place. All the objections and all the benefits, if then they’re already excited to see you and you could do it for, in layman’s terms, it could be, you could put 5, 10, 20 hours a day, 5 or 10 would be, but when you, it’s called retargeting. So, after you see it, then you see a follow-up messages. That’s where it gets a lot cheaper. So, if you do, this is like a really advanced step. You probably need a social media person, but on the targeting side, we do, as you do people’s reactions or play through video views, which that means is people that do like, comment or share, target those people, because it’s going to be way cheaper. Facebook likes engagement. They want people to be on there longer, the longer they’re on there, the more ads they can serve, more money they me, which makes sense. And the video views, you can have like a park drive through video, or you can have testimonials. If they watch 50% or 75% of it, even if it’s like 30 seconds, they watch 15 seconds. That means they are highly likely you could follow up with those people for pennies if you do the right target in the backend. That’s a really way to get people really excited about, and you’re going to handle any objections and you can have those running kind of all your own in $5 to $10 a day. If you have a bigger park or if you have a lot of units, I recommend a lot more obviously, but for every park owner has that size and then we need to put something out in the Marketplace like hey, is that a really nice park I always see on Facebook that all these people say it’s a great? So now you’ve already pre-sold them. And then they’re going to be like, if your other park competitor’s not doing that, like oh, I heard, you know, Johnny’s park over there is so nice. Everyone is talking about it. And what is the algorithm like? The algorithm puts in front of people that want to see it the most. It looks presold by the time they come in there. Even though if they’re between you and our competitor park, you’ll have a lot higher accuracy and you’ll have a lot more demand in your park by doing that technique.
Ferd Niemann: That’s great. And I think we try to do that too a lot of times. I call it the leasing plan. We’ve got a written leasing plan. And what you’re talking about is the welcome, you’re making a cold call, a cooler call, a warm call to one customer. So, the first time they show up, they’re like hey, I’ve heard about you. And the referral in my business, you know, legal side and on the MHP, the referrals are the warmest lead you can get, right? So, then you say hey, my friend, Jonathan, he’s already living in the park. I heard you got a new homecoming in. Can I get on the waiting list? I’ve got homes right now that are already sold, the homes aren’t built yet. So, I can’t even get it through 21st mortgage because there’s no VIN because the home’s not under construction for five weeks, but people have already, I’ve had that referral, that warm leads. So, I think that’s great that you’re getting in front of people. And kind of spam, if you will, on the Facebook. I think that’s a smooth, strategy. I’m not the social media person. My assistant person is pretty savvy. So, she’s going to love it, like, this is what I’ve been telling you. I’m like, I know that’s your lane and do your lane, send me the zoning stuff. I’ll get the code and you know, dork out on permits and zoning, but that’s great stuff. So that’s kind of, something every park owner can implement fairly easily. Some of that on their own, some of them meeting somebody like Kristin or you, you know, to do the social media marketing stuff. What other tips do you have that we can do to even drill down even further to maximize our occupancy, maximize our revenue and ultimately evaluation of parks.
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, a hundred percent. And just to have something knows what they’re doing, that’s the key with that. You’ll find some lazy people out there, but you have somebody full-time, just make sure you do a little research when you’re, cause there’s some people out there have really low standards. It’s kind of a bad stigma in our industry. It’s pretty bad. But then there’s other people that are just excellent. But one thing you do on your business page manager, like on the business page, the settings put your profanity filter high. It’s under settings on the top, also you can put in a negative like words that you don’t want on there. So you can have like any, something that, that would say something bad, like oh, this park sucks or owner, terrible owner, you know, anything bad, you put those words on there. And those posts won’t show up in the paid ads and it won’t show up on your personal page. So, you’re basically eliminating negative comments. Just think of a list you can put as many as you want on there, all the negative words on there. And so, you won’t have negative comments and take reviews off too. Cause you can’t go back in reviews. And I’ve seen, because we’ve managed some pretty big clients. I’ve seen competitors sabotage, not really in the mobile home park space. But like for example, we used to do a lot of plastic surgeons. The competitive doctor would have pay people to write negative reviews. And like this person like in Africa, they didn’t even, they’ve never been here. Like you could see the IP, like they would do that, but you could have a setback. So, we recommend not even having reviews on Facebook because somebody could just be in our space to people that don’t even live there. Just like oh, I don’t like it. Cause it’s like, you know, I live across the street and it makes my house, you know, I don’t like looking at it and they put a review on your site and now you have that and you can’t take it off.
Ferd Niemann: Can you counteract that with positive reviews. Right now, in Kansas City I’ve got the highest reviewed park and in park, because my manager is always like, will you give us a review? Will you give us a review, give us a review. But my brothers may or may not have also been reviewed. So, I’m pushing positive reviews by having friends and family, you know, get me to the top of the list. Does that strategy mitigate the people that are carpetbagging you, that are your competition or as you better just have no reviews period.
Jonathan Tuttle: We do this with Google. We do like a free Google review. What you do is you have anybody that you already know that likes the park, just have them go on there and give them some kind of incentive or have a contest like, Have everyone pre-qualify and make sure before they post. And then like, whoever, you know, we’re going to do a, you know, we’re putting reviews on Facebook, but have them pre-qualify, have your assistant park manager pre-qualify only the best ones to have to submit it to email. And like, okay, then approve and put it on Facebook and be like hey, you’re entered into a contest and we have a hundred dollars restaurant gift card. We kind of do that. Same with Google. You have your best and fans basically. And you do that with Google reviews too. So, you kind of give them incentive to do it, but also you have to like, pre-qualify in order to put a bad review on there. So, and what that also does is the more positive reviews competitively, if you do have one or two negatives, obviously you could bring that average up just by the sheer philosophy. And if you have a 100, 150 units and you get 30 positives, you have one negative. Now it just rolls off. But if you have like a community where it’s just a really bad, that was a great question by the way. But if you just have a really bad stigma, and like, it’s like, everyone hates the park, you take it over and probably just keep the reviews off. Cause that’s a losing battle.
Ferd Niemann: Yeah. I’ve actually, I’ve taken over some parks and they have that kind of stigma. And what we typically do is we just rebrand the park. It stinks, you got to get a new Google review page and you’ve got to get the stupid postcard to verify it. Even if there’s no office or address, I’ve got a self-storage park next to that. One of my mobile home parks, but there’s no manager, there’s no office, there’s no address for some sorts. So, we put up a fake mailbox and gave it an address. And then google sent it, it’s the only piece of mail ever going to go to that mailbox. And it still took like five attempts, but then we can become Google verified. We’re rebranding it because the other, you know, the other guy had a similar, there was like such an insurmountable Hill, we got to get new signage. We had to change the street names, the fire department, because the streets named kind of after the park. So, it was a labor of love. But in that instance, we felt like it was worth it because, and we did change the parks and the park was better. But the reputation online, nobody wanted to come look at us. They’d say there’s so many methods in this park and tweakers also, no, we got rid of all drunk people. It’s clean. It’s great. We got new houses, but it’s hard to shake a reputation. In this industry especially, it’s hard to shake a stigma. So, I think that these are definitely good tactics that our listeners will enjoy.
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I love the idea with the rebranding, and you could actually make, helps you on the negotiation side. Like hey, this is not a, when you’re acquiring a park, like, look, I just looked online, I can’t give you the asking price, because people don’t want to come here and then you’d turn around on day one hey, this is a new park. Also, to, if you have with your property management, if you like, yeah onsite for transparency, obviously we know about Marketplace, but also use like a service call rail. And you can record the calls and you could really see if they’re doing their jobs. So, we recommend transparency for like call rail. I’m there to really listen to some of the calls. You don’t have to listen to everything but pick every 5 or 10 calls and be like, okay, you didn’t call this person back. We basically hung up on them. So, get that transparency and keep those managers held accountable.
Ferd Niemann: I’ve not heard of that one. Is that the same as like grasshopper who’s calling, is it just a competitor or is it a different service?
Jonathan Tuttle: No grasshopper is like, you. It’s actually you get an 1800 number, but you could use it for your paid ads. It’s mainly for like Google Ads. Yeah, I don’t ever really use it with Google. I don’t know that aspect of it, you send traffic there. We call ads, which are four times cheaper and then record it. We hold the property manager accountable. And we recommend that since some like Google Ads for any units, because those are still doable and it’s high in time, more working on me like mobile home, you know, available here may just do those keywords in there. So, then you have a call, a call ad, which is basically four times cheaper than that. Sort of really goes like hey, I’m looking for a mobile home near me. And it goes right to your manager office, you record the call.
Ferd Niemann: That’s great. I’ll have to check that one out. We were familiar with who’s calling. I think we have some of that functionality with recording the managers, but this seems like it’s more integrated with the ad. So, it seems like it’s probably a better service.
Jonathan Tuttle: It’s very cheap. It’s very cheap. You could scale accordingly. They make it affordable for everyone. It’s not like some, anybody can get it.
Ferd Niemann: I like this. You’re bringing us into the light ages from the Neanderthals that we all are, no, I’m kidding. This is great. Jonathan, this is great. Do you have any other tips or any tactics you want to share before we part? I’m not trying to cut you short, but you’re giving us a lot. I don’t know if I’m about taking all, I don’t want to take all your special sauce, but if you got more, let us know, man.
Jonathan Tuttle: I froze for a second.
Ferd Niemann: I can hear you.
Jonathan Tuttle: You basically started the question, do you have any more tips, so you could just start that over if you don’t mind.
Ferd Niemann: All right, Jonathan, what other tips do you have? These are great. Do you have anything else you can share with us?
Jonathan Tuttle: Sure. Yeah. Definitely in your website, make sure you have a modern website. We didn’t really go much in detail on this. And also, you need to have all your compliance and your disclaimers as well nowadays. Because depending on the states like California is really stringent on like you’re running different advertisements. You have a lot of like language you have to put on there. Maybe kind of Google, like what are the language I need to have on there. And copy and paste it. Have your web developer or your team do it. But you have any modern website that has no fresh photos. It doesn’t even have to be, it can be Squarespace or something. If you’re a bigger park operator like we’ve done it for big, you want to have something that manages, perceives, you in the right perspective. And then when you take it over a park, one of the first things to do, I was like, they probably only have a website. So, add a website, put some testimonials on there. Some videos if you can. Some high-quality photos get a photographer for one, two hours instead of shooting from your iPhone. Pay them a $100. You’ll get a college kid for a $100. Now you have these beautiful photos on there. You tell why it’s good, you know, like testimonials and then give all the benefits to the local community. Why you should moved there, why this is the best park, why this would be the next best home for them, for the rest of their life. So maybe a website’s neglected like in our industry, like, well, it’s tied in, you get a Squarespace when it goes, like, you know, really cheap websites though, theirs and have pay some college kid to do it. Or, you know, get an agency to actually build like something, if you’re a bigger operator, you want something more substantial, but that’s an easy one for people.
Ferd Niemann: Great. That’s great stuff. Anything else? I’m not trying to run you off.
Jonathan Tuttle: Yes. Can you remember, the ads itself, the copy, create a little urgency. So what I do, you know, everyone just says like, you know, mobile home near me, three bed, two beds, you know, put something like, get some like engagement on there where it’s kind of like a little curiosity. So, we felt like this is going to go really quick. Might be gone by this week. We put some scarcity in there and then people are like oh, is it going yet, is it gone yet? So put some of that copy kinda use, you know, Google some copy, but like, think of the ads that made you make a decision, it’s usually something that breaks your it’s, you know, it’s called a pattern interrupt, basically It’s somethings that caused you to stop. Cause the average post in Facebook feed is 1.8 seconds. It’s about all you see of it. So you ever noticed like some of the things that catch your eye, throw an engaging photo, a curiosity photo, have something that’s a little unique and sort of just like the mobile home, like have something, that’s why I said, get that photographer in there and then have a copy that’s kind of like hey, this is too good of a deal to pass up, credible mobile home. This is lovely houses. You know, just have something that’s really engaging instead of like two bed, three baths, $15,000. Like if you saw that, you’re like, wow, that, I’m going to go to the one that’s talking about how great it is. And like paint the picture of them living inside of it, one paragraph. But then at the end, say hey, this is going to be probably gone. Call us today before it goes. I can’t guarantee it will still be available by the time you see this. We put like some like really urgency copy in there. People get mad when they call when it is not there. I saw it, I swear. I was first.
Ferd Niemann: Now, I get the urgency. That’s a good idea. Would this count? If I said something like, you know, 4th of July special, this Friday only something like that?
Jonathan Tuttle: Ties in perfectly. Those work really effectively. Think of like taco bell or pizza. They do like the pizza specials, like this special pizza is only gonna be around a couple weeks oh my God, I have to buy that pizza every week because it’s not going to be around after that. But it also makes sense to ties in like, yeah, exactly, exactly. That’s what they, they get paid lot of money for that marketing.
Ferd Niemann: I’m writing this down, buy one mobile home, get one mobile home, half off. Great tips from Jonathan. There we go.
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah. Free barbecue with the purchase of mobile home.
Ferd Niemann: You ever heard of the comedian; I forgot his name. He died. Yeah, I forgot his name. He had a real fry sense of humor. But he said, man pizza had been so cocky, they say pizza, we will match all competitor coupons. He’s like, so I made this coupon Ferd’s Pizza, buy one large soda, get a free franchise. And I took it in there. They did not honor the coupon, false advertising. That’s kind of what I’m thinking here as well, but that’s great. Are there any other tips or tactics?
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah. So, like going back to the psychology, having the good psychology, having the good website, make sure all your disclaimers on there. Facebook is the most effective, use the business manager, have somebody come and help you set that up. If you’re a smaller operator, your onsite property management. Like, you know, they don’t have multiple skillsets, especially depending on what you pay them. Definitely Google Ads. If you are a bigger operator, Google Ads are very effective. And like I said make sure if you’re doing Google Ads have them do negative keywords. So, like your ads only show a cheaper way to half costs. Lowering cost is have call ads only. So those are cheaper, record those calls to call rail. Then also you could put your competitor parks and then you put the copy and it’s, if it’s a big operator next to you, this is really Ninja tip and say, you put in the copy like best park in the same town. See why we beat that other park and it’ll show up one or two on their keywords. It’s really cheap. And they’re like, they’ll click on your ad because why is this better than the other park? It’s a great way to get in front of people you want to, and basically kind of ethically steal business from the other.
Ferd Niemann: That’s hilarious. I’ve never done that. I feel like that’s like poaching, but instead of poaching their houses, which is kind of a taboo, it’s like no, approaching your ads. Make sure you don’t mess with the bull; you may get the horns. Got to make sure the operator’s not too good. Maybe they’ll do it back.
Jonathan Tuttle: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can do it in a way to like to get more eyes. And like kind of what the Facebook targeting too. Like I said, target Zillow. If you’re using the business manager, obviously the boost would just boost it. But the business manager. You could target, target Zillow, target truly all the real estate ones. And then you’ll get your ads in front of people that are looking for regular houses and be like, here’s another thing I forgot to mention. See why living in mobile home parks, top five reasons why living in mobile home parks is a way better deal or a better value. And then you list it and then they follow up with another ad retargeting testimonial video or just testimonial Picture. Videos actually are cheaper. And then you could, because they have more engagement because people see the video, they don’t just scroll down oh, what’s this. And yeah, it’s more powerful because you see face to face. And then plus when you’re doing retargeting, you could follow up, like if they watched 50%, then show them the next message, if they haven’t watched 50% keep showing the first message. You could do some advanced stuff like that. But the whole idea is to basically, and target local apartment, like the same thing with houses, if you have a lot of garden style units, communities, this is like the modern day, like door-knocking slash, but you’re doing it through digital and you get the most ROI effectiveness because it’s so cheap. Just target the local community and be like top five reasons why living in our community is better than, you know, a garden style apartment. You don’t have neighbors knocking. You don’t have people screaming. You have your lot; you can pull your car up. You don’t have to walk upstairs. All these things like oh yeah. So, it lists the objections ahead of time and the benefits. And then you’ll, like you said, it’s going to warm them up. So that’s kind of a really good way to get people engaged that might’ve not considered mobile home park. And then they start thinking like, yeah, that actually sounds really good. Let me go check this out.
Ferd Niemann: That’s great stuff. You’re teaching me some stuff man, this is great. Appreciate it.
Jonathan Tuttle: Good, good, good.
Ferd Niemann: I just got on this email stuff. I thought it was a fad, but I finally have come around and now I’m doing emails. You’re taking this next level.
Jonathan Tuttle: Well, that’s another thing you could do too. You could put the email list into Facebook. If you have community, all your community and you can upload that list into Facebook. So, Facebook has, like I said, has all the data, you could put that, actually they got rid of this for housing. But up until years ago, you could put it on your email list, and you could say hey, create a lookalike audience. And they put the ad in front of people that were most likely people that are in our email list. But they got, they actually got it. That was actually one of the things they pulled, by the time this comes out, there’ll probably be new laws and stuff, but that was one of the, it was so advanced. You can literally take your current tenants, your current audience email list and say hey, Facebook, go find me another person’s like very similar to this person.
Ferd Niemann: That’s crazy. I knew they changed the laws a couple years ago on fair housing type stuff, is that what you’re talking about. Because I used to be able to do on my ads and I used to do this myself. I would go and be like, I’m looking for, you know, young family within 10 miles of this that has two kids, you know, white picket fence and a dog, you know, whatever I wanted. But obviously like that feels like profiling. And then it could have, I think that the ruling was, you know, I’m looking for a young family, well, by nature, I’m discriminating against old families or no families or senior citizens. And it didn’t give you things like race, religion, creed, there were protected classes, but things that were not really protected, they deemed to be steering or discriminatory housing. And they got rid of it. It is that basically what you’re talking about the laws?
Jonathan Tuttle: It’s basically kind of like redlining when you’re brokering. It’s like hey, you’re steering. But now the algorithm, the more data collects. It gets smarter. So even the 15-mile radius, once people start engaging on the ad, it gets smarter and smarter, because they want to keep people on there. So, they want to serve better ads. And if you start getting likes and comments, you know, they’re going to show it to that person more like that. Actually, it got better that the targeting is less important isn’t what used to be. The main thing now is just using kind of like the retargeting. That’s the biggest, most powerful thing about it is because you could literally target, okay, they saw this ad and I will show them something that makes them more inclined to come to the community or check it out at least, or be more aware of it. So, it’s basically just taking an old school psychology and implementing into digital and then using these algorithms that basically find the people. And then you can literally say, I put X amount of money into this and rightly they basically make you pay to play now. And then I get this return. We’re talking, you know, $5,000, $10,000 house and at a bare minimum or $50,000 or $80,000, it’s totally, I don’t see, and I just kind of on the subject here, I’ve kind of looked at some of the dealership, mobile home dealers. Some of the big manufacturing, they’re leaving so much money on the table, because we have tools we could see like, they’re leaving tons of money on the table, but not using some of these techniques. They don’t have, it’s pretty amazing. But like you said, this industry is like 5 or 10 years, comparative like behind multifamily or some of the other asset classes. Like our technology is just now catching up, like in still behind.
Ferd Niemann: I mean, I agree wholeheartedly, and I feel like we do a good job on our hands. You obviously are doing an exceptional job in your ads. And we regularly are outselling the big boys in trade areas we’ll go into and it’s like, we have better Facebook, better ads. We have more active management, you know. And it’s like, we’re kicking your butt. It’s like, why? This is one of the key reasons. I mean, like for example, I have parks in Kansas City. Kansas City is a pretty big city. There are 85 parks, 30 miles in the metro. All the big players are there. All the big players are in Kansas City. Guess who has the Facebook page, Kansas City, mobile home rentals? In the city, mobile home sales, I do. So, anybody who’s searching on Facebook, mobile home, Kansas City. They’re going to find my Facebook page, not the big guys. And I’ve got parks specific pages too. And city-specific suburbs, specific pages. I got always dang Facebook pages, but it’s like, how did no one have this one? You can’t have two people at the same name. How does somebody not already grab this? Just blew me away.
Jonathan Tuttle: No, you’re a hundred percent, right. I have like 28 business pages myself. For the same premise, you set up a page and you create an audience and then you could use like targeting, you basically. And if you do this stuff now, like you’re saying, this is an asset you can control. You can eventually sell it. If you say you get out of this face, you can say, you can add value to it because visuals were so much, they’re saying, you know, with the election, like with political approach, Trump, he said he has more data. If he ever wants to use that for other things, he’s got more data, from all the advertising than anybody in history and what can you do with them? The same thing, these big operators. It’s fascinating that does think, they do a great job, but they’re still leaving a lot of money on the table and just investing in digital, even on a small scale, it pays us off 10 or 20 times over. If not more, it makes everything easy feel on top of that.
Ferd Niemann: This is great stuff, Jonathan, where can our listeners find you if they want to get ahold of you, what’s your website? I know you’ve got a bunch of them, but how can our listeners reach out to you?
Jonathan Tuttle: Sure. So, they have the mobile home park fund it’s called Midwest Park Capital, just like it sounds www.midwestparkcapital.com. We also have, they want to see the PPM in www.westparkcapitalfund.com, just like it sounds. And then my agency is Revenue Ascend, just like it sounds Revenue Ascend.
Ferd Niemann: Appreciate it, Jonathan.
Jonathan Tuttle: Thank you, for having me.