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Bill Childs from Limitless Lending Group is extremely active across social media. So much so that that all of his leads are sourced through apps like TikTok and Instagram.
When asked how important social media is to today’s broker, he replied: “[I]t’s everything.
“I’ll do maybe 1,000 leads this year from socials. It’s the only place I get leads. I don’t have any referral partners. I don’t seek referral partners at all because it’s easier to make a video and get your calendar full.
“If you do it right, it’s crazy how much people will book through TikTok. That’s what most people are surprised about. They think it’s everyone just dancing on there. I did a video once on trust lending. When I posted it, I went to bed and it had like 5,000 or 10,000 views. I had two or three bookings. But when I woke up the next day, I had 150k views, and my calendar booked 60 appointments in a block for the next 10 days.”
This came as a surprise to Childs as no video had seen the traction that this one had. However, while a single video has the potential to blow up, consistency and patience are required to make any progress over social media.
“It’s a patience game with social media. You can’t expect to post one video and have your inbox blow up. You got to be consistent with it. I posted when I first started. I did not have my face on the channel. I actually just started TikTok and I was just doing videos of properties and posting them, ones that I thought were good investments. But I just said to myself, ’I’m going to post every day for a month and see what happens’. And nothing happened,” he said.
“I had like 15 followers. But then I just thought, well, it’s not taking me much effort, 10 minutes a day really to make a video. I’ll just keep doing it. And then I did it for another month and I got 100, 200 followers. So, I just kept going and it took six months before I got a single lead. It’s been about 18 months now; I’ll probably do 60 million this year myself as a broker. And that’s my second year. And it’s all from online.”
How to structure a video
Childs gave some tips for crafting an effective social media video that is engaging and informative. What may surprise some is there isn’t any effort put into the behind-the-scenes set-up. Keeping it grounded and personal is what stands out, he said.
“I always see [brokers] start the video and they’re like, ‘[H]i, my name is Bill, today I’m going to talk about why you should use a broker over using your bank. For a start, brokers versus the bank. We’ve got 75 per cent of market share. It’s not a battle we need to fight. And secondly, it’s just boring. No one cares,” said Childs.
“Brokers will hit me up and say, ’[C]an you show me how to market?’ And I always say to them, ‘[W]hat’s the most outrageous deal you’ve ever done?’ I was talking to a guy who’s a really good broker, one of the best in the country, but he’s not getting any online leads. And he’s amazing. Does massive volumes. And I said, ‘[W]hat is the biggest deal you’ve done in the last six months? And he said, ‘I’ve done a 30-mil deal’. Mate, if I’d done a 30-mil deal, I would be on TikTok straight away and I would be started.
“So, he’s posting content that’s like how to save half a percent off your interest rate or why you should use a broker, not a bank. I said, ‘[Y]our video, literally no intro. We don’t care where you’re from. We don’t care who you are. The video is, I just settled this $30 million deal for my client. No one’s scrolling past that if they’re interested in property’.”
What may also come as a surprise is Childs does not include any references to his company. He is of the belief that if they’re interested in services, clients will seek you out themselves.
“I don’t even weave in anything about my business. I’ve never said in a video, ‘[I]f you want more information, click the link of bio’, because they will hunt you down if they want information. [People will] follow me but I will never see them follow me then inquire that day. They’ll always follow me and then inquire about two months later,” he said.
But despite that, it still needs to be taken seriously, he said: “I think that you have to take it seriously if you want any sort of outcome, any leads to come through and you know what does better just like raw content, not all this highly edited highly produced stuff sitting there in a suit like this trying to look the part. People don’t care these days.
“I see brokers and they’re sitting there, they’ve hired a studio to do a shoot and they’ve got their hair done, they’re all nervous because they’ve probably got like four or five people watching them. You’re better off like me sitting here in a shirt and a hat and just talking when it comes to mind.
“It’s easy for me to produce content if I’m just going about my day. I think of a topic and start filming a video. I don’t care where I am, what I look like. If you’re only going to film content when you care what you look like, when your hair’s done and your beard’s trimmed or whatever, how much content are you going to produce? Not much.”
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