Podcast | Lacy and Alex

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome, everybody, to the NARPM Radio podcast. I'm your host, Pete Neubig. And we have a twofer this week. So every week I always say the same thing. We have a great show. Well, now we have a doubly great show as I have Alex White and Lacy Hendrix. Here they are co-founders of ClearLead Digital. So Alex is self-taught SEO strategist, digital marketing expert, and content creator with a deep rooted background in real estate and property management. As a matter of fact, Alex and Lacy both own property management firms, and so we're going to talk to them a little bit about that as well. He's a recognized industry leader whose reputation is known for dedication, trust and transparency. Lacy Hendrix is an SEO strategist for PM companies, so she combines a a decade of industry experience with SEO space certified expertise to help him boost visibility, drive traffic, get found online, which all equals more business for the PM firms. Alex Lacy, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Alex Zweydoff: Thank you for having us.

Pete Neubig: All right. So I'm going to get into this because that's what most people want to hear about. But it is a podcast. And both of you guys have dedicated lots of time and held different positions at nauseum. And Alex, you are now official. So tell me a little bit about what you're doing, what you've done or doing for NARPM and why. Why are you giving back?

Alex Zweydoff: I give back because NARPM is a place that's always been accepting to me, and it's really been a place of growth for me. It's been a it's been an awesome experience just to when I started in this, you know, industry 15 years ago, I didn't really know what I was kind of wasn't supposed to be a career, but was able to make it that career for me. And, you know, I'm very happy that, you know, the election is over and we I'm officially going to be a board of director for NARPM National. it's something I never thought I'd see coming, but just because of some of the changes that have gone through in the past few years, I was able to get my designation and kind of make those things happen. And I'm really excited about the way we're, you know, 2.0 is going. And I think that's going to be a really cool thing to be a part of. And I'm excited to see what's going to happen with we have a bunch of other great board members that are going to really do some great things, I believe.

Pete Neubig: Oh man. And thank you for doing that because I know it does take time. You don't get paid for it. And, it's just a great way to give back on all the things that NARPM has given you and your business. Now, Lacy, we've known each other for quite some time, and, we, you know, I know that you were, you know, the local chapter president. and I know you also had some other roles in NARPM. What have you done for NARPM? And, what did you get out of it? What did how has it helped you in your business?

Lacy Hendricks: So I was the governmental affairs chair for 2023 and 2024, and the vice chair for the two previous years before that. and I've served as a trustee for 4 or 5 years now. you know, Nahum is what taught me anything and everything I know about property management. and it's only as good as the people that volunteer to serve, right? So the organization is made up of volunteers, and while we do have an amazing staff, the only way for us to make it better is for more people to volunteer. So it's just been something that I've always been passionate about doing because it's made me who I am today in the property management world.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I, you know, obviously I bleed Nahum as being a podcast host. And I know like when I was RVP Houston chapter president, all that stuff, it actually made me better, a better business owner. And it actually and there's no doubt it helped. It helped my it helped my business, my property management business and stuff that I learned from from Nahum has helping you know me run VPM Solutions. So thank you guys both for for giving back to NARPM. But that's not why we're here today. Let's get into it. You guys both are running pretty, pretty solid PM firms like I know you know Lacy, I know we've seen each other from afar. And I know you run a great, great business. Alex. I know that you're running a great business because you're a, you know, a director of NARPM now, and they don't they don't pull from the bottom of the barrel. They pull from the top of the barrel. So. So with that being said, I know how hard it is to run a PM firm. Tell me the story of how you guys connected and tell me the story of ClearLead and how you got like, just tell me how you guys partnered up. And you know, what made you guys prompt to add more to your plate?

Alex Zweydoff: It was NARPM. NARPM is was what brought us together was governmental affairs. we're both very passionate about government affairs. We both understand the importance of governmental affairs. And it kind of just started in the in the sense of, you know, were in the committee meetings together. And then she calls me one day and she's, she's like, guess what? you're going to be moving up. There's a there's an opening. so I went up to vice chair, which I am this this year. but, and but now things have changed with the new position. So we started becoming really good friends and seeing each other conferences and then just talking. And then the SEO came out one day, and that's when the friendship just kind of blew up in a sense. We really, found that we both are doing this kind of under the under behind the scenes and for each of our own websites. And it just became this sharing tips back and forth and, you know, really becoming a, a center for that little space that no one else wants to talk to us about. People always say, you know, SEO is not sexy and people don't want to talk about it, but we think it is. So we have were having fun just talking about it and seeing each other win and, you know, and it really brought us into this place of like just like, you know, we're talking every day and just really, really became a great space for us. And we just said, you know, we're going to do something about that and makes, you know, help other people with this.

Pete Neubig: So you guys are basically passionate about SEO is what I'm hearing. So and you guys, I think Alex yourself taught Lacy. You took a bunch of courses, and you guys started seeing what you were doing and helping each other out and seeing fruits of that labor. Is that is that correct?

Lacy Hendricks: Yep.

Pete Neubig: All right. Cool. So what makes, you know, ClearLead different than most marketing agencies out there?

Lacy Hendricks: So clearly, as by property managers and for property managers, people outside of our industry don't understand the life cycle of an owner or a property and or tenants life cycle. And it just makes it hard to market to a demographic that you don't understand. So since we come from the background of the property management space, it's really ingrained in who we are and how, you know, that's what we do full time for the last decade. So we really understand this market very well, and it makes it a lot easier for us to get in there and do the specific work we need to do to make it produce the right kind of leads for property managers.

Pete Neubig: So, Alex, why do you think most agencies that are out there kind of miss the mark of property managers?

Alex Zweydoff: I think Lacy kind of hit on it. It's because they don't understand the industry. They're coming in here and they're telling us these things. They're showing us these reports that look pretty and have numbers on it and graphs and all these things. And, you know, they're not it's not translating into our into our actual business. It's not translating into closed deals. You know, you have a, you have a keyword, you're ranking number one for on Google. But it has nothing to do with, you know, your business or, or anything that's going to convert into actual business. And I think, you know, the biggest thing is, is I've been through so many different companies over the 15 years I've been I've been doing this. And, it was always like they were talking at us and they were, you know, putting these reports in front of us and telling us these, you know, you're doing great, you're doing great. But weren't seeing it in the numbers. And, you know, you're paying these, you're paying all this money out and you're, you know, there's we have some great vendors in our space. But they're just not connected in the sense that we are with, you know, we know the content. We could probably, you know, write the content for anything property management related just because we've lived it. And it's, you know, that that disconnect that's there that, you know, and that translates into actual thing. And then one of the things is a lot of the companies aren't following the basics of the basics. Google tells you the footprint that's out there and they tell you what they want to see and what you know, what you need to do, and they're not doing it. And that was what it was for me. I went outside the industry and found someone to look at, take a look at everything. And they kind of, you know, we call it pulled back the curtain. And that's what it was for us. It was kind of a it was kind of a revolt from this information that I received and kind of like. And it wasn't they weren't they weren't misleading us or anything. They weren't lying to us, but they were packaging it up in a pretty little box. And, you know, that pretty little box, you know, has some secrets behind it. You know, just once you start looking deeper in and into actual data. And that's what started for me. And I kind of just ran into the softwares and, you know, looking around and teaching myself because I saw that once I started doing these things, I was seeing real results. You know, we had one of our blogs was getting 10,000 views a month, 10,000 from just from Google, organically. it's kind of slow. It's slowed down recently. It's still a very high performer, but it was about the squatter law that here in Florida and creating, you know, the most important thing is finding your niche and whatever it is and finding what you're passionate about, that's going to translate through your content.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And look, I know most people listening to this, they know SEO, they know the term. Right. It's been out there for years, but they have no idea. It's like this magic black box that we never get to see behind the curtain. And then it's like, oh, by the way, you need to do these things and you might get to the front page in three years, right? Something like that. So, what are some of the shady I hate to use that word, but like, what are some of the SEO tactics and red flags that, that a lot of these companies are telling us as, you know, as potential clients.

Lacy Hendricks: So I don't think it's necessarily shady. I just think the problem is that most property managers don't know what to ask. And that's what we keep running into over and over, is that they're showing you these really high level metrics that look like you're performing really well. But if you know what questions to ask and you know what the intent of your message should be that you're putting out there, that should be what you're ranking for. You don't want to rank for the word mission statement. Okay, cool. You got a number one, ranking keyword, but am I selling mission statements? No, I'm not.

Pete Neubig: So it really goes back to really knowing your your target, right? Yes. And, and then you guys would develop a plan based on that target, and no one knows the target as well as you guys do because you live it day in and day out. Even today with your property management firms. So one of the challenges that I had when I owned Empire was I paid a bunch of money, you know, every month for these SEO folks. And then nobody in the nobody in the industry was using somebody outside the industry. Probably part of the challenge there. But you're overpaying. You're not really seeing performance. And I know marketing firms, they have a big churn rate because one, it's underperformance. And two, maybe it's just not enough time. And people like they want to see they want to do SEO for one day and then they want to be on the front page. So talk a little bit about, you know, the danger of overpaying and underperformance and how do you set those expectations to your clients.

Alex Zweydoff: I think, you know, and it's this industry is very much, what are you doing for me now? you know, and as you're not seeing anything, here's the thing, are just like I do in the property management side when I'm talking to a client, onboarding a client, bringing them into the company, My job is to educate them. My job is to teach them. You know how the processes work. And here's the thing. One of the things that we built. When we built this, we said we're not locking anyone to any contract. You know, this is a kind of a whatever. Month to month thing because, you know, we're not going to live that. You know, you're going to have to do this for 12 months, you know, to make it work. It works for some. And it's and it's here's the thing. There is no perfect algorithm to it. Google changes it every other day, it seems like. And all search engines as well. It's finding those things that niche that you're in and then creating yourself authority in that space. That's what's going to really help you kind of, you know, go forward and some websites do some websites don't. You just don't know. But there's things you can actually do to help the chances of that happen. And you know, you're going to if you're following the fundamentals of SEO, you know, that's that's a really good start. And there's there is tactics in SEO that you can do that are going to help you. They're going to help you get rank higher. But again, it's like, you know, it's SEO is kind of like gambling in a sense, you know, and you sometimes you win big, sometimes you don't. And, you know, you're up one day, you're down the next. But it's all about consistency in content, you know, keeping the health of your website high. And all these things that, you know, really are important to Google and to make sure it gives you that authority and backlinks and all these certain things, you know, we can throw these words out there. And a lot of people are like, they just get shocked. So we make things really simple in our process. You know, we give them the high level overview, we give them the strategies we're going to use. And that's another thing. These companies aren't using strategy. They're using. They're using, you know, just what they think.

Pete Neubig: It's a shotgun method versus a sniper method. They're just kind of throwing out, throwing something out there and seeing what sticks versus like being very surgical in their approach.

Alex Zweydoff: Exactly.

Pete Neubig: So, it sounds like you guys are looking at stuff almost daily for your clients, like you're looking at the website, you're looking at the changes that Google make, which all happens all the time. So let's, let's kind of get kind of under the hood. I've always been taught, like, if you want SEO, you gotta really do a lot of a lot of video and a lot of, like, blogging. You have to have, like, keywords. So talk a little bit about, you know, content that converts.

Lacy Hendricks: So content that converts is going to be targeting your specific audience. And I'm talking down to the field, the age range, like they're very specific demographic. So that by the time they fill out that form to get in contact with you, you've already put them through the funnel that drives them directly to you and not to your competitor. You know, we're all vying for the same leads, but we all have our ideal client. And so getting that specific client into the right funnel, into the right brand funnel is what's going to convert for you. And yeah, you might get 50 leads into your pipeline in a month and only half of them are valid. But I would rather the valid half, you know, 25. I would rather have 25 valid leads where like 20 of them convert, because that's going to be where your bread and butter is. I don't need I mean, there's bots in the internet, so you can't stop those from coming in really. But like you know we manage A minus B properties. I don't need the person that lives in the Ritz Carlton neighborhood to come into my pipeline. That just doesn't make any sense, right? So really targeting the right audience is what gets those the right leads to convert. And if you build it the right way, you will attract the right people. And you will, as long as your BDM is good, you will close those leads. You know, once we get the lead to you, it's your job to convert it. But, you know, by lining you up with the right audience is how we get you there.

Pete Neubig: Well, look, marketing is the top of the funnel, right? And I know inside marketing is top, bottom, middle of the funnel. But if you don't get leads, you can't grow your business. you know, and so you don't know if you have a sales problem until you have until you have leads, right? If you have a lead problem, this honestly, if you're listening to this and you have a lead problem, if you said to yourself, we're just not getting enough leads like this is the first, this is the first line of defense to get those leads in the door to find out if you have a. And then of course, if you have low conversion rate, you can determine, do we need to change our marketing message or do we need to train our, our sales team?

Lacy Hendricks: Exactly.

Pete Neubig: When you when you onboard a client, do you find that most people know their target market like that, or do you find that like that's something that you help people with, like by asking specific questions. Alex I'll let you answer that one. Yeah.

Alex Zweydoff: They don't they don't understand their customer journey most of the time. And that's kind of the one of the most important things is like, you know, like you have a blog here, but there's no form for them. There's no way for them to contact you, reach out to you. It's really having those things placed in certain, you know, you should have a form on every page. I truly believe it. You should have some way to get in contact with you on every page, or some or some call to action that's going to get them. And, you know, sometimes people put, you know, the wrong call to action. And it's like, that's not that's not something that's going to convert into an actual lead for that. So it's a it's the whole it's call to actions. It's the content you're doing. It's the forms. It's the it's the whole package. And that's the thing when we're creating these strategies for our clients, we're looking at that. And you know, we're not we're we understand that everyone's different. We ask them their goals for their business. You know, were talking to someone the other day and they don't want to grow heavily. they don't they they can't. They're a smaller organization and they want to make sure that they're, you know, not overloading themselves with their team. And it's very important. That's very important to them. So we're not going to give them the full throttle, you know. Because we don't want to do that because we don't want to crumble them at the same time. But it's just understanding who you're looking for. And like Lacy says, you know, and a lot of times the biggest mistake property managers companies make, I think, is, is that they're accepting every client. every client's not for you. It's that one, you know, those clients that are those time suckers, those clients that are those ones that make you lose sleep at night, that those little things really, you know, affect your whole business, affect your team. And it's like when you really focus in on who your who your ideal client is. And you stick to that. And like, wholeheartedly, every time, every time I've ever waved from our, you know, ideal client, it's always come back to bite me. So it's like, you know, really understand. You have to really stop because we're at this place where we're in the past, like five years, were very selective before that. were we wanted to grow. And so were little, you know, taking this taking that. And it always, you know, came back to us tenfold. And it's like, what is that worth? Is that one, you know, one property that's going to act like 20 of them going to be, you know, big for your business or is, you know, focusing on the ones that are actually going to help you grow properly.

Pete Neubig: So step one is really knowing your ideal client. And then step two is creating the messaging that will speak to that ideal client so that it doesn't, grab those difficult clients, those D, those C and D clients. So give me an example of what is the messaging. Is that, is that the content are you guys talking about. Is that the blogging or is that like paid ads like tell talk a little bit about is that video or is it all the above? Tell me a little bit about the content.

Lacy Hendricks: So we don't do paid ads. That's another big thing that's different with us. We don't do paid ads. All of our growth is about organic growth. that's what's going to be that's what's going to keep you at the top of search. When all of search is the Google AI At the top. you know, it's really about building out your story as a company and then creating the content around that so that you attract the right person.

Pete Neubig: So before I even do messaging, then, you guys both mentioned this. So step one is know the ideal client. And step two would actually, you know, draft out a user journey. Is that correct. Before you actually do messaging.

Lacy Hendricks: Mhm.

Pete Neubig: Got it. Okay. How, and I know this is almost it is impossible to answer but I'm gonna ask anyway on average if somebody knows if somebody, if you guys got the ideal client and you know, they get the user journey down and we start building content, and you guys do all of your black box magic on the back end for SEO. What should somebody expect before they get on a top part of the search for specific items that they're looking for? And I know that's impossible to ask, but just just humor me and just kind of give me a roundabout answer. And I'm not going to hold you guys to it.

Lacy Hendricks: So I can tell you what I've done with my site. And really the realistic expectation for any of this to start working is about three months, and that's just to implement the technical stuff. Once we get that, you know, you'll start to see leads pick up and then once we get more and more content and that's both video and written, then you will see the real uptick. So every month I just pulled the data the other day, every month for the last three months, we got, we closed five doors from directly from the website, and we're not in like a major growth mode right now. We are trying to take on more doors just to simply avoid churn. but, you know, it's still a very cheap lead source for us. And less than $10 a lead.

Pete Neubig: Oh wow.

Lacy Hendricks: And, you know, we got like. I want to say 10 to 15 per month and then close like five of those.

Pete Neubig: So closing at basically a 3,033% close rate and $10 a lead, which your LTV is probably, what, 4000 a client, something like that. They stay for a couple of years at 200 bucks a year. I'm just throwing some numbers out there. Now one of the mindset that a lot of people have that SEO is really just to get your website to the top, right. And you guys are both shaking your head. No. So talk about that. So if somebody's listening to this, you're like, yeah, you know, I mean I got people here, they got websites for 20 years. I'm just in the business for for two years. I'm never going to jump over them. They got too many Google reviews X, Y and Z. so talk about how you guys can circumvent that and still get to the top, without without your website being at the top. But your website is kind of because you have like maybe a blog or some kind of video. Is that so talk a little bit about that.

Alex Zweydoff: Your website, your website should be your number one salesperson. but it also has a network of salespeople under it. It's the millions of other websites that that are on the internet, you know, and it's having everything be the same. It's having, you know, there's so many different things out there, but it's really creating that brand presence. That's what it's really all about is because if you're not, if you go look at someone online and they just have their website, but then you see someone else who has a website and they're on there on Yelp, they're on Google, they have their Google My business, everything's done and all these different, you know, citations that are out there that's you're going to look because they creates that authority and it creates that trust. And you know, trust is the new SEO and how you know, how things are really kind of proceeding forward, especially with AI coming in and all the llms and it's it's looking for those things that, you know, is making you that authority in that space. It's making you, you know, if you're not found on the whole, you know, all around, you know, it's news articles, it's press releases, it's all these different factors and creating that just like any brand out there that, you know, that's a, you know, a legendary brand out there that's been around forever. They're out there because people know who they are. And if people don't know who you are, you know, that's you're not going to be you're not going to really be able to have that growth mode with it.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So it's not just website. It's it's socials. It's it's Google My business. All that good stuff. I say, an example I have is when were starting out an empire, were not were like on buried on like page 66. Right. You want to be on page one, two or the last page, right. And, but we wrote a blog on the eviction process in Houston. And that blog, you know, people were were anybody who searched eviction. Houston, we actually showed up before some of those web pages. And so that was we found that as kind of I don't call it a hack, but we found that now, of course we who of course, we got people who are who are going through evictions. Right? Not our ideal client, but you can literally say, okay, here's our ideal client. Let's write something for that. Ideal client and as I'm waiting to get my my website up on those on that first page, this would be something that would, uh. And does it still work that way, I guess is my question, because that was a long time ago. So like, can you write a blog that might actually get you on that front page, even if your website's not there just yet?

Lacy Hendricks: Absolutely. You target that one specific keyword, and that's what you focus on. And you write content with all the variations of that keyword. And I mean, what you're looking for is not Just website traffic and impressions. You're looking for clicks. You need clicks because that's what makes your phone ring. And that's what makes the outreach happen from for your company. That's what gets you a conversion, right. So we're not looking at just traffic and like we call them vanity metrics because it is it's just traffic and impressions. And that does nothing for my business I so yes, focusing on that key word it made your phone ring. Now you probably did get some clients from it. maybe they weren't your ideal client, so maybe it wasn't the best keyword for you, but it did make your phone ring, right?

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And look, early on, we just like y'all. We took anybody and everything and early on. And so if you're struggling and you're brand new and you're still just like, hey, I'll take anything for right now, and then you, you know, after a couple of years you trim that. That's a now each one of those blogs though. Now Alex, you mentioned this. You should have a CTA, a call to action. So what? Like if I wrote a blog, should the CTA be to call me, or should the CTA send them to my website?

Alex Zweydoff: They're already on your website if you know if they're seeing your call to action. So like, you know, for example, like your eviction blog, that was the squatter blog for me. It ranked above the actual bill, above the governor, you know, and all his stuff. And it was at the height of it. I think it had over 600 keywords on it. And so like that was bringing massive traffic and it was bringing those calls that weren't the, you know, I got some I got some crazy squatter calls. Let me tell you, over the past year, and it's, it's really about whatever how you're positioning it. So like for that one how I positioned it was, you know, contact us. if you know, you're not sure how to handle it, we'll get you in touch with the right people. So you're being that resource for them. So I wasn't asking them to say, hey, let me pick on your squatters. That's not what we wanted. but, you know, it was. We can point you in the right direction to the right people. So being that resource. And with that, it creates, again this level of trust and it creates this, you know, you're a resource for these people. And when like I said, Lacy said, it's about the clicks. It's about, you know, it's about the interwebs of your website. The more people go around, the longer they stay. All these things matter. The traffic is a part of it, but it's not the main thing. It's about the what they're doing, how long they're engaging, you know, so it's having those certain things. You're having a video on the page, you're having, you know, these things that go out to, you know, quality backlinks and internal and external. it's really just making sure that you're keeping people on your website. That's kind of the that's going to be your big, your big thing. So mine is like, contact us. But it went to our Contact Us page to get the contact our, our contact information or went to a form. so it's really getting someone to convert somehow. And every time someone does that, it's giving your website a little more authority. So you may not be able to help that person that has the squatter in their house right now, but that's helping you raise up on Google. And then the clients you do want are going to come in the other the back door.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So you're... Go ahead, Lacy.

Lacy Hendricks: Oh, I was just thinking about how, you know, we've been to all these conferences. We listen to all these talks about how property management is a relationship based business, and it's almost the same. It is the same with Google or any other search engine or AI tool. You're trying to build your reputation and an authority or, you know, these relationships, you're just trying to build it with a robot instead of with a human.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And you guys mentioned authority. So there is something called a domain authority that I think was it Google gives that domain authority out there. In a higher you are the more you rank. Is that is that kind of right? Like do I have that right?

Lacy Hendricks: Sort of.

Pete Neubig: Okay. Tell me tell tell us about domain authority. real quick, high level. Because I'm like a ten year old.

Alex Zweydoff: So it was created. It was manufactured. It was manufactured essentially. It was a it was a vanity metric that was created and that kind of that stuck. And it's something that you do thrive for because what it's basically telling you, it's saying it's a it's a range from 1 to 100. that basically says, you know, your website is getting traffic. It's adding value. There's you're you're not you're not a clickbait website, you know. So the higher you are so like, I remember I remember talking to the highest one I've ever seen is an NBA. Is an NBA the NBA. Dot dot NBA. You know, and I was like, whoa. I was like I've never seen that number that high. I think it was like 90 something other than like Wikipedia. but you know, and it's basically creating this, it's giving this score that's going to kind of Google. I'm sure Google calculates that in some which way we don't know their algorithm, but it's basically saying that this website is providing those things that we want, and it's a safe website to go to. One, it's a healthy website. You're not going to have these bad backlinks. You know, one of the biggest mistakes people make is buy backlinks. They think it's going to get these backlinks, and that's great, but it's these toxic little webs that kind of just push you down further and further because it's.

Pete Neubig: It's not just any backlink, it's the right backlinks.

Alex Zweydoff: Mhm. Yeah. So you know don't go buying backlinks because that you know like if they're in other countries and all these other things, if they're not in your target areas and they really they'll red flag you and they will hide you. they will put you, you know, if you have that. And here's the thing, low authority score is not bad either. If you're a new website, it takes time. We just launched our website a couple of months ago. We're it's a slow growing. It's a slow growing thing. And, you know, the average, the average property management company is anywhere from, I'd say, 18 to 26. from what we've seen in the data we've been able to pull. Let me say this. If were out there, we probably pulled your website. we me and her have been doing this for fun just before we even started the company. We just, like, love knowing where people are at, what they're doing, and we watch what we watch. A lot of the big players in the area. and it's just those things, they matter. But it's a it was something that was kind of created. And I think if I'm not wrong, I should know this as a, as an ambassador. But I think SEMrush created it, didn't they? 

Lacy Hendricks: Yes.

Alex Zweydoff: Yeah. So SEMrush is a is a software out there that is a conglomerate of softwares, so many different pieces to it. But it's very helpful in, you know, all of all things SEO, but it's they created this metric and it kind of just trickled on to the other companies. And it just made this. They created their own domain. They created their own authority around domain authority. And that's it's been awesome to see.

Lacy Hendricks: That's really it. It's all about trust.

Pete Neubig: That's like the trust score that that Google looks at. Right. So we talked a lot about trust. All right I got a couple of quick questions here because we're we're getting up against it. But my first question is people listening to this. They're probably like man I'm already super reactionary and so busy I don't have time to write blogs. Is that a requirement or is that something that you guys could do for your clients?

Lacy Hendricks: We can absolutely do that. I do. I write blogs probably 4 or 5 days a week. I mean, it's just become part of my daily workload at this point is to write blogs, whether for myself or for a client.

Pete Neubig: And so if I wanted to do this myself, I really need to become like a SEMrush expert, a writing expert, a Google expert. Like, there's so many pieces to this. Or I can literally just call you guys and say, hey, you know, you guys take this over and it could be literally done and dusted, and you guys are looking at it almost like a almost like a full time employee. But because you have all the knowledge and tools, you can obviously do it in a fraction of the time that it would take me to do it.

Lacy Hendricks: Right. But we want to be clear that, if somebody wants to learn how to do this themselves, we can absolutely teach them how to do it.

Pete Neubig: So if I had a marketing person that worked for me, I say, hey, I need them to literally level their game up. I can reach out to you guys and you guys can kind of help with that.

Lacy Hendricks: Absolutely.

Alex Zweydoff: If you're the first to hear the breaking news, we actually that's part of our business model is we are going to be doing actual trainings where we're going to be, you know, we have a three pronged kind of like an academy in a sense, where it's you can either do the fundamentals, you can do the, you know, intermediate or the advanced. So depending where you are in the level, what you want to do, you know, we can help you with that because we learned this because someone taught us and that's why it's passionate. And to see like in property management you have this cycle again and you don't see results take time. But here you can see things happen and you can watch the numbers and it's addicting. That's what got me. It was like I look at analytics of like so many different companies every day, and it's like, because I love to see the jumps and the volatility and just like, like it's like you're at it's you're in Vegas, you know, at the roulette table. And it's just you don't know what you're gonna hit. Some days it's a good day. Some days it's a bad day. And you know, me and Lacy's texts back and forth about our personal websites down today, you know, and it's just like. But when we're up, we're up. So it's a good day.

Pete Neubig: I need I need you guys to come back on and, literally do a breakdown of vpmsolutions.com. I think that would be pretty freaking cool.

Alex Zweydoff: We would. I think we've already. I don't think we've already done it, Pete. Let's do it live right now.

Pete Neubig: I'm sure, I'm going to get a sales pitch as soon as this podcast ends. So let's look ahead at marketing trends. Ai is kind of a big thing. So tell us about what's going to happen. You know, marketing trends you know, 2025 and beyond.

Lacy Hendricks: So Alex and I share articles about this every day back and forth. Because the truth is nobody really knows what's going to happen. what we can see so far, is that you really need to take a comprehensive look at your online footprint. So where are you? Are you in front of your clients? That's always a good question, but how big is your online footprint? You know, you've got your website, you've got your YouTube channel, you've got, Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and Pinterest and all that stuff. But you really need to take in account exactly how big your brand footprint is and the way you grow your brand footprint is by telling your story on all the different platforms that are out there. So get a product like Hootsuite or something of that nature where you can push it all at once because are you kidding me? We can't post in 15 different websites or algorithms and different platforms every single day. That's insane. But, really taking a comprehensive look and being mindful of the story that you're putting out there about yourself or your company, that's what's going to make a difference in the future. And I actually came across a tool where we can load your information into it, and it will show you exactly where your footprint lies on, like a it kind of looks like a topographical map. And where if you need to put more content on which websites and which platforms. So that would really help with the way that we're moving forward in AI.

Alex Zweydoff: And it's not giving up SEO either. That's the thing. You have to have the fundamentals of SEO in there to make the LLMs find you. you know, that domain authority, all those things, that's what they're using. So many different sources every, you know, LLM but you still have to be on there. If you're not on the internet, you're not on the things you're not being found by the LLMS.

Lacy Hendricks: I hear often that SEO is dead in 2025, and that is so not true, because you still need the fundamentals to make the LLMs pick you up.

Pete Neubig: All right. So last question. What is one other than calling you guys, which we're going to get to that here in a minute. What is one thing that you would recommend somebody who's listening to this to do. Should they look up their domain score. Should they, you know, look and like what is one thing, one action item other than calling you guys that that they can do?

Alex Zweydoff: That's I think the biggest thing is if you have a marketing agency, ask them questions, hold them accountable. and, you know, really ask for the for the, the deep level in because half the time they don't even know. They're just spinning and doing things over and over and just sending you these reports. And a lot of companies want to just make you buy more Google ads. Guess what? Our company hasn't used Google ads in two years. were putting thousands and thousands of dollars a month out, and were getting tenant clicks and all these things. We're paying with no paid lead sources other than one right now. and that's for a backlink, a high quality backlink. but it's, you know, you don't need Google ads, but ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't let any marketing agency intimidate you because this is your business. And when I did it for me, it was taking back the power in our business when we took back the power on our website.

Pete Neubig: And I'm going to say, Lacy I'm going to ask you the same question, but you guys should have the top ten questions to ask your SEO provider on your website. So get that done before we, before we.

Lacy Hendricks: Funny you should say that.

Alex Zweydoff: Done.

Pete Neubig: Lacy, what's one thing that you would recommend?

Lacy Hendricks: From a technical aspect. You know, you could just do a a basic audit on your website and make sure that everything is aligned like you're make sure you have an H1 on every so like a title on every page. Just make sure you have a title.

Pete Neubig: No broken links. Make sure you don't have broken links.

Lacy Hendricks: Yeah, no broken links. Very simple things that you can do to tweak the accessibility of your website and the technical aspects of your website. So just go make sure every single page has an H1 on it. That's something super simple that takes hardly any effort.

Alex Zweydoff: And a picture.

Lacy Hendricks: And a picture.

Pete Neubig: Guys. Thank you. I could literally talk to you. We're like, literally over. I could talk to you guys for another hour or two on this. We'll have to have you guys get back. Back in. but if somebody is like, man, I really need to reach out to those guys. How do I get in touch with you?

Alex Zweydoff: You can find us on ClearlyDigital.com. Or you know where to find us. We're all over the NARPM network. And, that's one thing. That's when we built this company. Like, listen, we're not going to look crazy in front of people. So, you know, we're here doing this for real. And because we're passionate about it and we care about the industry, we want to see everyone win. And that's really what this is about. So we're happy to provide you a, you know, free visibility report to kind of let you know where you stand, you know, and we're not we're not going to push you into anything. We just want you to know, we think that there's power in knowledge. And, like I said, for me, it was the revolt. Once I got that knowledge, I revolted in a great way. And here we are today, you know, a couple years later with the company all around us.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. If you're a data junkie, this is probably right up your alley. for sure. But it sounds like you guys go a little bit deeper than the average SEO firm. And you from, you know, you guys both are still in the business, running property management firms. You're using your own product, you're getting leads, you're closing them at a high rate. So I highly recommend. If so, it's just giving you the URL one more time. ClearLeads.com.

Alex Zweydoff: ClearLead Digital.

Pete Neubig: ClearLeadDigital.com. Thank you guys so much for being here. If you're listening to this and you're not a NARPM member shame on you. Go to narpm.org or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. Thinking about people that could use you guys. narpm.org can probably use you guys big time. and if you are looking for a remote team member that will know a little bit about this information or can take that on for you, help you write your blogs, help you do your videos, go to VPMSolutions.com. We have, I think, at this at this time we have like 43,000 people looking for work in the property management space. And you can reach out to me at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Guys, thanks so much for being here today.

Lacy Hendricks: Thanks for having us.

Alex Zweydoff: Thank you.