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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
On today's episode, you'll hear from a real estate pro that knows how to be bold in his marketing. This is the be a marketer podcast, real estate edition.
Dave Charest:My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you, and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
Dave Charest:Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. This is the fifth in our limited series dedicated to the real estate industry. And that, of course, means two, count them, one, two things. Kelsey Carter is here. Hello, Kelsey.
Kelsi Carter:Hello, Dave. I'm glad to be number one.
Dave Charest:Oh, them's fighting words, maybe. Let's see. Because it also means Stephanie Alfonso is here.
Anthony Lamacchia:And I
Dave Charest:I I don't wanna call you number two because that seems weird now.
Stephanie Alfonso:I'm happy to be number two next to Kelsi. All good. I consider it an honor.
Dave Charest:Well, great to have you both here, of course. We've got another amazing guest that Stephanie has lined up for us. Kelsi, tell us about who that is.
Kelsi Carter:I would love to. Today's guest is Anthony Lamacchia. He is the founder and owner of Lamacchia Realty, which is a real estate brokerage that helps buyers and sellers across New England and South Florida. They even assist with relocations across America. Anthony also owns Crush It In Real Estate, which is a training company for real estate professionals in North America.
Kelsi Carter:So a lot he has a lot of things. Stephanie, what else can you tell us about Anthony? Yeah.
Stephanie Alfonso:So Anthony is absolutely a prominent real estate force, of course, like you said, starting off in in Massachusetts and New England and is absolutely going national for sure. Anthony is such a fireball of energy and definitely not one to hold back on what he has to say about the industry as a whole and, of course, driving agents to success.
Stephanie Alfonso:So super excited about our conversation.
Dave Charest:Yeah. This was a lot of fun. Great conversation as you mentioned, Steph. Anthony talked to us about why you need to be aggressive in your marketing and advertising. Once you find a vein in messaging, you need to hit the gas hard, and, you know, why education is the secret to drawing people in.
Dave Charest:So let's go to Anthony as he tells us how he got started in real estate.
Anthony Lamacchia:I graduated from high school in February, barely. Went to work with my dad doing landscape construction. I grew up doing that since a very young age. And since I worked from since I was so young, I I was able to save a good amount of money at a young age and start buying properties right literally ten days after I turned 21, I think it was. It was either 20 no.
Anthony Lamacchia:I was 21. And then I bought a condo, rented it, bought another one, bought a multifamily, then said, jeez. Maybe I should try to be a realtor and get a real estate license. And that was when I got in. It was 02/2004, and the rest is history.
Anthony Lamacchia:It snowballed from there. And and you know what's funny? A lot of the reason I got in and wanted to get in was I wanted to get into development. And I've done some of that, but brokerage ended up being my main focus and it still continues to be my main focus. Last year, just to give you some numbers, we sold 4,764 homes.
Anthony Lamacchia:We did 882 rentals, 182 vacation rentals. So we're working in all areas of the real estate business, but working with buyers and sellers is what we primarily do. What we're most known for, I'd say at least locally in the markets that we serve, I'd say we're known for our advertising. I mean everywhere I go people bring up the ads. They bring up, oh, I love the ad when you're floating in the pool.
Anthony Lamacchia:There's an ad about moving to Florida where I'm floating in a pool with a suit and a bathing suit like this. I don't know if you've ever seen it. And we have the billboard campaigns with that as well. And then I'd say in the real estate industry, the real estate business, probably, pretty known as someone who doesn't, hold back on what I think, and I and I share a lot. I mean, I coach a lot of people through my videos and now quite an audience that I'm grateful for.
Anthony Lamacchia:And then obviously, you brought it up before we came on, but the the famous real estate case and settlement certainly got under my skin, and, I ended up doing so much content on it that the lead plaintiff attorney contacted me. We ended up debating on HousingWire, and that certainly took my name recognition to a whole different level in the industry.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I was telling you earlier, I was watching that with my popcorn. I probably watched it a few times.
Anthony Lamacchia:Yeah.
Stephanie Alfonso:Taking notes and and feeling like I needed to give you a call and be like, good job. Good job, Anthony.
Anthony Lamacchia:Thank you. Thank you.
Stephanie Alfonso:You mentioned you're known for your marketing, and, I know you guys have some creativity with that. Where did that passion come from? Like, how did that start?
Anthony Lamacchia:Well, really, really from working with my dad at a young age, I was very impressed and I would say enamored by the power of advertising at a very young age. I was I was amazed how my dad would send postcards out, and we did most of our work in the city of Newton at the time. You know, he'd send a postcard out. It would hit on, like, a Thursday, and he'd always say, oh, I hope it's nice weather when the postcard hits. You know, if it was early spring, the postcard would hit and literally get 50 calls in two days from people looking for a new patio, a new walkway, you know, plantings, a lawn or maintenance, you know, ongoing maintenance of the property.
Anthony Lamacchia:And I'm like 12, 13 years old. 14, I think is when it really got caught in 1995, I was 14. And I was like, wow. This is, like, amazing. He sends out a card, the calls come in, and he spends $5,000 on the card.
Anthony Lamacchia:And within a week, he collects $60,000 in deposits for jobs that are coming up, and we get a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of jobs from a $5,000 deposit. And I was, like, very interested in that. I found that to be kinda amazing. And that was really the beginning of my being very interested in marketing and my believing in aggressive marketing. My dad taught me at a young age, you need to create Toma, top of mind awareness with clientele and prospects, and that's just what I did.
Stephanie Alfonso:I love that, Toma. Write that down, Dave. That's a that's a good one. I like it. I like it.
Anthony Lamacchia:It is. And and then when I got on the real estate business, I thought, like, oh, I'll just send postcards and I'll get tons of business. Yeah. It wasn't the same. It was different.
Anthony Lamacchia:It was much harder than sending a postcard It was much different, but but the same principles applied. So I just had to figure out the messaging and what to send, when to send it, and I did clearly. Can you talk to us
Dave Charest:a little bit about that then? Like, so what are you doing now to market the business?
Anthony Lamacchia:Well, I can go backwards first. So at that time, one of the things that I did because when I first started, I was taking a full page literally full page advertisements in the Newton Tap, the Watertown Tap, the Walton Tribune. And then, yeah, they were branding and people were saying stuff to me, but it wasn't, like, bringing me leads. Then I was doing postcards and yeah, I was getting a few leads, but it wasn't massive. And then the market started to slow down.
Anthony Lamacchia:And when the market was slowing down, I found a guy in Arizona, him and his wife, they were running ads saying, if we don't sell your home in I think they were doing 60 days. If we don't sell your home in sixty days, we'll buy it. And I was like, that's an interesting message. And I'm like, well, I could probably afford to buy one or two homes. I was already buying properties, but I'm like, what if I gotta buy 10?
Anthony Lamacchia:And then I learned more about the program and learned that they had a strict criteria. And I said, well, maybe I should try it. So I flew to Arizona, filmed television ads in, February. In February, I ran an ad. If I don't sell your home in seventy days, I'll buy it.
Anthony Lamacchia:And I started running it in July of o six. By the time we got to July of 'seven, the phone was going off the hook because homes were having a hard time selling. And the reason they were having a hard time selling is there were so many homes for sale. Right now today in Massachusetts, there's about 7,000 homes for sale. Okay?
Anthony Lamacchia:At that time in 'seven, there were maybe 35,000, 30 30 thousand, something like that. When the market got to its worst a few years later, there were 47,000 homes for sale. So when there's that many homes for sale, you you have to price if when, you know, when you're selling your home, you gotta price under everybody else or you're not gonna sell. And I learned to get very good at that game. I learned to convince sellers to do what was best for them and not put you know, overprice their home.
Anthony Lamacchia:And honestly, I think I had some luck with that. You know, as the years go on, I feel more like, shit. If I tried that ad now, nobody would call because they'd be like, well, what are you doing the other sixty nine days? Right? They wouldn't be they they'd say that's not enough.
Anthony Lamacchia:And then the other side of the coin is the timing. Like, when I look back, I'm like, Jesus. I was lucky to get in the time that that worked, and I was lucky to find that. And, you know, once I found the vein of doing that, I hit the gas hard. It worked really well till about 02/2012.
Anthony Lamacchia:Then it was, 2,015 with all that snow I did, if I don't sell your home in thirty two days, I'll sell it for free. I spent about $300,000 on that advertising, and I brought in, like, $4,000,000 in commissions. And that was something that I did in about eighteen months of that advertising. So the bottom line is every time I call it a vein. You know, when you're in business, you have to find the area that you strike something that's hot.
Anthony Lamacchia:And when you do, you have to hit the gas harder than anyone would. And then you also have to go about it. And I learned this as years went on. You have to go about it knowing at some point this vein is going to dry up, like something's going to change. And ten, fifteen years ago, I didn't quite get that, but I get it now.
Dave Charest:Well, I love that you're and I think this is probably what you learned from your dad. Right? But to be bold enough to make those statements and say those things, which makes people pay attention. Right? Because I think it's very easy for people to just be like, we'll sell your home.
Dave Charest:And, like, you don't pay attention to that.
Anthony Lamacchia:Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't work. I mean, think about Massachusetts. There's 27,000 realtors and there's 38,000 licensees.
Anthony Lamacchia:So it's like, you know, altogether. So it's like, you gotta really have a unique selling proposition, especially in the early days. Now, I mean, yeah, we do branding. I do a two minute segment on channel seven every single week, and it runs it runs on channel seven and CW fifty six. And I just talk about the market and we get calls.
Anthony Lamacchia:Now do we get droves of calls? No. Because it's not our unique selling proposition, but I can tell you this. If 99% of other realtors went on channel seven and did a market update, they'd get no calls. I get calls because I've been on that station for fifteen, seventeen years.
Anthony Lamacchia:We've made our brand a household name. So people see it, they hear me say it and they go, maybe I'll call them. But that takes years. It takes years and it takes giving up income because you have to invest, invest, invest, you know?
Stephanie Alfonso:I mean, honestly, you're like a living, breathing example of what we hear all the time on this podcast when we talk to other customers, no matter the business. Consistency, right? Like branding doesn't happen overnight. Your reputation doesn't happen overnight. You've got to consistently do it.
Stephanie Alfonso:And a lot of times people don't see the grit and the hard work and the sacrifice and the hard times before the success.
Anthony Lamacchia:Take social media, for example, and I can weave it back to email. Let me give you some numbers. November of seventeen, I hire a recruiting coach, John Chet Plaque. And all the viewers should look him up. J o n Chep, c e h e p c h e p l a k.
Anthony Lamacchia:Okay? And he tells me, Anthony, I've heard you're a great trainer. I've heard you're a great speaker. But when I go into social media, I I don't see that, so I don't really believe it. This is what he told me, right?
Anthony Lamacchia:He says, why don't you do videos and why don't you tease some of your training and some of your tips and things? Create a page so you do that. So I created a Crush It In Real Estate page on Facebook and that was when Crush It In Real Estate was born. In one week, I had 1,000 followers. One week.
Anthony Lamacchia:And why? Because I was educated. And when you educate, you attract. So then I did it with my Instagram now. I focus more and I have, like, I don't know, 68,000 followers or something.
Anthony Lamacchia:But that's all because of pushing content and educating, you know, in the real estate business we're very very lucky to be in a business that everyone wants to hear about. Every you go to a family party, no one says, maybe one or two women to another woman, oh, what kind of hairspray do you use or what kind of makeup? But one thing that everybody says at every family party is how's the market? How's the market? So when you're constantly educating about that, you draw people in.
Anthony Lamacchia:And what I did, and this is where I tie an email, I would make videos and then I'd email them out. Email the link out to my database. And my database in 02/2017 was probably, I don't know, three or 4,000 realtors. Well, now it's nearly six figures in realtors across the country. And every you know we do a video and I email it out, not everyone but some of them and they see it on their phone or whatever they click and bumps it up in the algorithm and it helps.
Anthony Lamacchia:So people that aren't consistently email marketing are making a big mistake.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. You had said in a in a publication that I had I don't remember if I read it or if I if I saw a video, probably both, with you. And you said email works. And if you're not doing it, you're missing out. Or those who think differently are wrong.
Anthony Lamacchia:That's correct. And you know what? I've learned some lessons along the way. I'll tell you one that I recently learned, where he my email's not working as well with realtors right now, and we're fighting our way out of it. And what we did is when I did all the videos on the real estate cases, and you said you were watching them and that's how I ended up in the debate and all that.
Anthony Lamacchia:When I did those videos, we emailed them out like we normally do. Well, in the beginning, the average realtor was eating them up as well. Well, as time went on, the average realtor was like, I don't care about all these details with this case and that case, this court filing. Well, the the lawyers in the industry, the executives in the industry, the MLS executives in the industry, they were eating it up. I didn't realize a year ago, I probably ought to slow it down on sending out the detailed videos of what's going on in the cases to the realtor audience, but I should keep it going with the executive audience.
Anthony Lamacchia:So right now, our email open rates are much lower than they historically were. But what am I doing to make up for that? I'm just doing videos. I'm doing I just did a video just before we came on. Right?
Anthony Lamacchia:So anybody watching, if they wanna see it, go on my Instagram. You'll see I did a video on time management and, time investments, investing time to learn things. And now I'm just doing that content again and again and again. We've way slowed down the detailed videos about the cases and we'll build it back up. We'll get them hooked again and we'll add more audience members.
Anthony Lamacchia:That's what we have to do.
Stephanie Alfonso:Well, I think it comes down to sending the right kind we talk about this all the time, right, Dave? Like sending the right kind of content to the right people at the right time. And as you get more skilled in marketing and it's so much of it's trial and error, you realize, like you said, right? Like, hey, this isn't resonating as much with this and it's earning my open rate. I got to really be careful about what kind of content I'm sending to the right people and again at the right time.
Anthony Lamacchia:That's exactly correct.
Dave Charest:Anthony, I'm curious. It's so easy today for people to lean on the social side of things and just say, like, you know what? I have social. So what do you say to somebody when you're like, yeah, but you also need email. Like, why do you need the email?
Anthony Lamacchia:I had this conversation with my aunt. My aunt is like my sister. She's in Florida right now and I'm gonna see her there in a few weeks. She's growing a coaching business, Coaching by Row, and she talks about mindfulness and all that. And I see her Instagram videos and they're good, but she has like 180 followers.
Anthony Lamacchia:And I said, Look, you want to grow that audience, you have to boost and you also should email out the link to your video and build your database and email the content. I mean, listen, when you educate, you attract. Would I be here right now if I wasn't educating? Would you have invited me? You know, I met you when we talked, me, you and Lindsay, at that event in Boston during NAR, but you wouldn't have been like, hey.
Anthony Lamacchia:I wanna go to the podcast unless I was known to educate.
Stephanie Alfonso:You're absolutely right. And you have a voice and you're a thought leader. Yeah.
Anthony Lamacchia:Correct. And well, thank you. And and to grow your social media presence and to keep it active, you have to continuously put content out and you have to send it out to people. So if you're not emailing out links to, videos that you do and and not not just videos, but, like, what about housing reports? You know, what about a blog about your local town if they're changing some ordinance or changing real estate rules or whatever the hell it is, you need to email that out to people.
Anthony Lamacchia:And this business about no one reads their emails is a bunch of bullshit. That's a bunch of bullshit. And anybody who believes that doesn't understand marketing. They just don't get it. And you know the other thing I want to point out?
Anthony Lamacchia:Just because maybe half the people don't click, open, read, stare, doesn't mean they don't look down and see it for a split second. Yep. No. So postcard, when people used to tell me, we send out just listed postcards, just solds, and we always get caught. The just solds, we get tons of business from.
Anthony Lamacchia:And when people think, oh, I just throw out all my junk mail. Yeah. Okay. But what do people do before they throw it up?
Stephanie Alfonso:Oh, yeah. They saw it. Well, I think it's like some statistic and Dave, you probably even know better than I do. It's something about like someone needs to see your name 27 times or something before they do business with you.
Anthony Lamacchia:Yeah. I mean, look, you're right about that. And, you know, look at recruiting. I mean, recruiting realtors, it's an average of 14 touches before you get them over. And and that's that's where people fall short.
Anthony Lamacchia:I mean, everybody thinks everything's easy. You go on Facebook, you go on Instagram, and and you look at it and people share the success stories. You know, one of our top agents, Jocelyn Mulcajan, her and her husband are good friends of mine. And, you know, she said she's like, look. She says to our to our agents, like, the newer ones, she's like, guys, nobody goes on Facebook and says, I'm having a horrible day.
Anthony Lamacchia:Hey. I went on three appointments today. I only got one. I went on three appointments today. I failed at all three.
Anthony Lamacchia:No. They share the the wins. So you got to remember that and don't fall for it.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. Yeah. A %. So kind of leaning into we're talking about your social, your email, all this kind of stuff. You know, in real estate, there's so much tech out there.
Stephanie Alfonso:There's so many things that kind of make a little bit of noise. Right? Oh, we're going to done for you this or done for you that. Listen, I get it. Agents need a lot done for them.
Stephanie Alfonso:They need a lot of help. Most agents don't go into real estate thinking, oh, I want to be a marketer. Let me go into real estate. But one thing that I know your brokerage is pretty known for is providing a lot for your agents. And when you said the word recruitment, this is what struck a chord because I was like, oh, I want to lead into that.
Stephanie Alfonso:Talk about your in house services, what you provide for your agents, what is your decision making process when you think about what to provide, what your training process looks like, all that good stuff and how you use that to recruit.
Anthony Lamacchia:Well, training is really how I scaled the company. I mean, I started doing weekly training in the February and it's like the rest was history. I mean, once we did it weekly, we saw people's sales increase immediately. And I remember for a year, I did it on working with buyers, and then we started having a hard time with sellers. And I said, I gotta train on that every week.
Anthony Lamacchia:And then it just became a thing. And now Wednesdays is like a thing in our company. The ongoing consistent training for any salespeople is necessary. Look at Navy SEALs. They train for twenty years.
Anthony Lamacchia:Literally twenty years. I read Robert O'Neil's book and Marcus Luttrell and you know, the guy who killed Bin Laden and the lone survivor, and they're like they go on a they they go overseas a few months, and they train while they're there in between missions. Then they come back. They go to scuba training in Rhode Island, right down in Newport. They go to, all the other training out in San Diego.
Anthony Lamacchia:They go parrot jumping training at Carolina. I mean, what you know, it's crazy. And so all of us need training. And the funny thing is people that are in business a long time, they get cocky and they don't think they need it, and they do. They do because you got away from doing the right thing.
Anthony Lamacchia:So training's huge. As far as services go, you know, we offer a lot of services to our agency. We're very high support, high service company. There are other models that are cheaper than us. You know, you look at companies like eXp or Real, they provide less but they take less, right?
Anthony Lamacchia:I mean, you get what you pay for. So our model is more high service, high touch, and we're competitive. But one of the things we do is we have five guys that go out every single day and take pictures of properties. They do pictures, sign lockbox, floor plans.
Stephanie Alfonso:Wow. For all your agents?
Anthony Lamacchia:Eighty eight percent of the properties listed at Lomacchio Realty last year were done with this service and the agents have to pay for it. It's not cheap. It's not free. It actually is pretty cheap, but it's not free. But that's our pre list service, and 88% of the property is listed.
Anthony Lamacchia:So we listed over, over 2,000 homes last year. So there was nearly 2,000 appointments that people went out and did pictures. We do our own in house Matterport, videos, drones. We have photographers, videographers. And then we also have, like, listing assistance.
Anthony Lamacchia:So when someone's gonna be listing a home, we have someone in the office who will help them and assist them throughout the transaction. We have some transactional assistance. We have buyer assistance. We have marketing assistance. So for or 2 I think it's 200 I think it's $200 a month.
Anthony Lamacchia:We do two or three posts on people's social media, their business pages per week. We'll do a mailing program where we'll mail out for them. We can do emails for them. So it's a whole we we have a lot of stuff for agents. And that's part of why, when agents join us, the average growth is 30% in the first year.
Stephanie Alfonso:Nice. Yeah. So would you say that you obviously, it's a big value prop, especially for a newer agent. If I were a brand new agent and I knew that I had all of these things available to me, that would be great as far as the training is concerned. And then if I was a seasoned agent, all of the services you provide that I'd be willing to pay for because I don't wanna do it myself.
Anthony Lamacchia:Well, I'll say this. The newer agents, they're more attracted to the training and the leads because we produce a lot of leads here, and we we buy a lot of leads. The experienced agents, they're more attracted to the services and the support. So it's like two tiered. And we have to remind our recruiters that like think about who you're in front of.
Anthony Lamacchia:If you're in front of a new agent, talk more about leads and and, training.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. No. A hundred percent. Obviously a newer agent, when you say, hey, if you pay for this, if you pay for this, and if you pay for this, we'll do this, they're gonna be like, wait a minute. I make no money yet.
Anthony Lamacchia:Yet. They'll literally run. It's funny. Yeah.
Stephanie Alfonso:Hey, recruiting is marketing, knowing your audience, giving them the right information to the right people at the right time. That's a lot to chew on. And I think that that's obviously a beautiful model that you've been able to implement. And I think people see that. What would you say is do you have a target agent?
Stephanie Alfonso:Like, is there somebody that you're like, this is the perfect agent for LaMakia, this type of agent?
Anthony Lamacchia:We don't really bring in new agents at all anymore. So if they're brand new to the business, we tell them go somewhere else first and if you wanna come here later, let us know. But it's funny because we built the company on new agents way back in the day, ten, fifteen years ago. I would say a perfect agent for us that is probably the most common is people that are in the business three to ten years, and they're selling anywhere from five to 15 homes a year. They come over here, and we help them get that five up to 20.
Anthony Lamacchia:We help them get 15 up to 40, and we do a lot of that. And then we, you know, we recruit people that are doing thirty, forty sales a year, 50 sales a year. We recruit them all the time.
Dave Charest:Why the change, Anthony? What causes that shift to happen?
Anthony Lamacchia:Well, when you're a younger, newer company, it's very hard to attract experienced agents. Experienced agents are not easy to recruit. You have to be further down the road to recruit them. So when I talked to you know, in the summer, I had an event, we had 14 company owners into Boston from around the country, we charged 10,000 a head, and we showed them our whole playbook. And there was a guy there from Missouri, and he's going on and on about always been working on recruiting this top top agent out there that sells a hundred homes a year, and I and he's going on and on and on, and I said to him, stop.
Anthony Lamacchia:Stop trying to recruit that person. You're too wait too early. I said, you're gonna have to give such a deal that it's not gonna make financial sense for you. It's gonna get screwed up later, and it's also going to set a precedent in your company. Forget it.
Anthony Lamacchia:Like don't go after those. And you know that's any business, I mean you have to target the right segment. I mean look at the landscaping business, you know, we're in that business as well, my family started it, that's where I came from, my brother's the president, He and I are on the top this morning. And when I got involved back involved with them so I left that company, left working with my dad in, February. I told you July of o six, I started on television.
Anthony Lamacchia:I was completely uninvolved in the family business until the spring of twenty, and my dad, he ran into some trouble. He had some bookkeeper that messed up his books and had some trouble. So I got pulled back in, and my brother got in, and he's running the day to day. And I had for a while there, I was spending an hour a day with the family and our head of finance, so we're like, where'd the money go? What's going on here?
Anthony Lamacchia:But when things settled and I started meeting with my brother and my dad, I was asking them, tell me who the best jobs come from? And my brother says, you know, I notice I convert better when it's someone that bought the home in the last few years. And I said, okay, let me guess. They're somewhere between 35 and 55 years old. 50 years old.
Anthony Lamacchia:He goes, how'd you know? I said, well people spend the most money between 35 and 50 years old And you're dealing primarily with people that are buying their second property. They're not first time buyers. It's usually the move up. And he's like, what do you mean?
Anthony Lamacchia:I said, well, they owned the condo in Boston. They sold it. They moved to Newton and they bought a four bedroom, you know, 4,000 square foot house. He's like, yeah. How'd you know?
Anthony Lamacchia:I said, well, I'm in that business. Right? And we were laughing about it. And I said, okay. I said, with that said, we're gonna target that segment.
Anthony Lamacchia:So my dad my dad calls my dad's, like, the most aggressive marketer. If my dad was given a million dollars, he would spend it in five seconds marketing. Right?
Stephanie Alfonso:We need to bring your dad on the podcast.
Anthony Lamacchia:I know. You should. You should, actually. It's not a bad idea. But but the thing is, he would say he would say he might not always use the term carpet bomb.
Anthony Lamacchia:Carpet bomb the whole town. Carpet bomb the whole town. And I was a believer in that in my early days, and I still am to some extent with television and billboards and all that. But we took the budget of the landscaping postcards. Okay.
Anthony Lamacchia:Okay. $10,000 a month in this in the spring, and we're a corporate robbing one town. Well, in that one town, there's only, like, a thousand people that bought the house in the last three or four months. It, no. No.
Anthony Lamacchia:No. No. There's only a thousand people that bought a home in that town in the last year or two. Right? So what I did is I went to our real estate people and I said, pull lists of everybody who bought in the last five years in Newton, Watertown, Waltham, Sudbury, Weston, Wayland, Manic, and give me the list.
Anthony Lamacchia:They give us a list, I bring it to our marketing people who also do the marketing to the landscape company. I said now instead of sending one postcard to 30,000 households in Newton once a month, we're gonna send three postcards to 4,000 households in a month. So we're gonna save on budget and we're targeting direct. It was immediate. My brother was raking in huge jobs, happy as could be.
Anthony Lamacchia:Recently, he learned something else. You need to not play this podcast to landscapers. So we realized in the last five years that those were the best hardscape jobs. So the big high end hardscape jobs that my brother does, you know, kitchens and outdoor this and pool decks and, you know, crazy backyards. Like, I'm talking $300,000 backyards.
Anthony Lamacchia:They're they do a lot. So my brother said, those are the people that bought within, like, two to five years ago. So we bought the list. Bought yesterday to six years, and that's what we get. But on maintenance, taking care of the property in an ongoing basis, my brother's like, I noticed those those best appointments of the people that bought in the last sixty days.
Anthony Lamacchia:I said, oh, okay. So now instead of us pulling a list twice a year, we're gonna pull a list once a week. The first postcard is gonna be congratulations on your new home. So do you follow what I'm saying? The market in my brain does for real estate.
Anthony Lamacchia:We do the same thing in the in the and for real estate for buyers and sellers. We do the same type of principles in the landscaping space. We do the same principles in the crush it in real estate realtor space across the country. And now, I learned the hard way, but and I'll admit it. Now we're segmented even more.
Anthony Lamacchia:Okay. Is this video should this video be targeted to owners and industry executives, or should it go to the average realtor on the street? That's what I got smacked in the face with a little bit. But now I know. Now I know.
Anthony Lamacchia:And and, you know, when when was the last time our industry was attacked legally to that extent? Nineteen fifties. To that extent. Right? So now I know.
Anthony Lamacchia:Now guess what? We're updating our database. We're flagging who the owners are. We're flagging who the industry executives are, and we're segmenting our marketing. So, you know, if tomorrow, me and Stephanie opened a restaurant, right, and and we wanted to tech segment wealthy people 35 to 45, I would find a list of those people.
Anthony Lamacchia:We postcard them. We drive them to a web page. When they went to the web page, we have an offer. They would get their email. When we got their email, we email market them.
Anthony Lamacchia:It's a freaking game, folks. Play every fucking day.
Stephanie Alfonso:Love it. Well I rose my hands up with that one.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I mean, so this is so what do you say to somebody who isn't doing that work?
Anthony Lamacchia:They're lazy, and they're and they don't believe it's gonna work. You know what makes me laugh? When people say to me, for years, I've heard this. Does TV work? No.
Anthony Lamacchia:It doesn't work. No. No. Everybody and their mother, every big company advertises on television since nineteen forty something, but it doesn't work. Come on.
Anthony Lamacchia:So don't words work? No. No. It doesn't work. And let my competitors think it doesn't work.
Anthony Lamacchia:I don't care. Let them think that.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. So with all of this, obviously you've become a master marketer. You've been doing all of this, growth within your company and the real estate. You created Crush It in Real Estate, which I'm excited about that. I know you guys just had a big conference, didn't you?
Anthony Lamacchia:We had our big annual event last week. We had seven seventy two realtors check -in and only 400 were the ones from our company. So on a snow day, on a snow day, we got 372 realtors from other companies to come to our event. The competitors, the competitors love me the most that day.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. So with everything so tying it together with, like, like, the prominence that you got with speaking out with, the NAR lawsuits, how did that slow you down? I mean, that this past year, like, that's been, like, all everything I saw, you know, was all consuming with that and with every with every voice in the industry. But yours was such a big one. How did it slow you down or did it?
Anthony Lamacchia:It didn't slow me down. It helped. I mean, it was is I will say this. 2024 is the busiest year of my career. And frankly, I hope I never have another year that I work that much.
Anthony Lamacchia:And when people hear that, they might say, oh, he's always talking about working harder. Yeah. I got to the unhealthy level of work in 2024 between the legal implementation of the changes we had to make, all the videos that I was doing on the cases, and we bought seven companies. So it was just crazy. And now I'm getting it more back under control and making sure that I'm running my schedule in a better manner.
Anthony Lamacchia:We moved our headquarters from a place that we were in for sixteen years to where I am right now. So it was just everything was at once. But I will tell you doing those videos and speaking out helped me even more than I expected. I knew they would help. I knew, you know, I listen, I'm a I'm a feisty person by nature, if someone crosses me or the people around me or our industry, and I don't think a lot of people realize that because all my videos have always been friendly and helpful.
Anthony Lamacchia:And when I started speaking out and speaking out in a tough manner, I think it surprised some people and, you know, the masses loved it. Of course, there's a percentage of people. Well, I think that he shouldn't talk that way. I think that he's not representing the industry the right way. Well, they can feel that way, but I'm not a wimp.
Anthony Lamacchia:Okay? And if someone's attacking our industry, I'm gonna go after them. And if someone's talking bad about realtors, I'm gonna go after them. I did a video just last week, Josh Kraft, running for mayor of Boston. He had originally said he was gonna do rent control.
Anthony Lamacchia:I I was very respectful. I I very much respect the Crafts tremendously. But I said, he shouldn't be talking rent control. That's gonna hurt Boston. It's gonna hurt tenants in the long run.
Anthony Lamacchia:And I heard five days later, he reversed course on that. I don't I'm not gonna solely take the credit, but I did hear he saw the video. I know Wow.
Stephanie Alfonso:Can you have any influence over the Pats recently or what? Can you do a little help there? I know I'm getting sensitive subject.
Anthony Lamacchia:No. No. I I think I don't think I have influence in any of those places, but maybe, with the real estate industry and the directions that it goes and some of the policies, I think it's fair to say I have some some influence.
Dave Charest:So, Anthony, I I wanna kinda wrap us up here because I know you gotta go, but I wanna know what's the most important thing that people need to know about marketing then?
Anthony Lamacchia:Be bold. You know, you gotta be bold and you have to do it consistently. You know, this isn't a so many people always you know, I sent the postcard once and it didn't work. Well, no shit. Right?
Anthony Lamacchia:I I sent an email to my database. I heard from one person. Well, you probably won't keep sending them. It's a constant, constant effort to educate. And it's a mix.
Anthony Lamacchia:When you educate, you attract, but when you mix the education with offerings, that's how you make things happen.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that conversation. Steph, tell me, what stood out to you?
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. So number one, tailor your messaging. Understanding your audience and your messaging really is no longer a one size fits all, right? You need to be flexible to adjust your strategy based on your audience's response. So if something doesn't resonate, try something new Or if something works at one time and that vein dries up, pivot, find a new vein.
Dave Charest:Yeah. This is what great marketers do really well. They really find the pulse of the audience and become part of their conversation. Right? That only comes from being really in tune with their needs and the reality of their situation.
Dave Charest:So speak to their needs. What do you got for number two?
Stephanie Alfonso:Number two, educate to attract. Providing valuable content, whether it's through video or email or whatever channel you choose, that really is gonna position you as a thought leader and give you the ability to brand yourself as the expert in your field and in your community. And, of course, ultimately attract new business.
Dave Charest:The reality here is that no one really likes to be sold to. But if you can teach people what they need to know so that they can make the best decisions for themselves, well, then you're gonna have more opportunities and more people feeling good about doing business with you. Give us number three, Steph.
Stephanie Alfonso:Alright. Number three, as Anthony says, be bold. Do not be afraid to be yourself. And whatever you do, success is gonna really come from consistency. Consistency builds that Toma, that top of mind awareness.
Stephanie Alfonso:So we learned from Anthony's career that being consistent and with the ability to be bold is what really shaped him into being a fireball in the industry. And the Tomah is real with this one.
Dave Charest:Yeah. There's so much noise out there, friend, but big rewards come from those who take those big risks. And in this case, the risk is doing something your competitors won't do or can't do because they're not you. So you really need to lean into those strengths that make you and your business unique to attract the right people to you. Alright.
Dave Charest:So here's your action item for today. Look for a vein that you can tap into. Who is your audience, and what's top of mind for them right now? How does that relate to your expertise in real estate, and how can you offer guidance?
Anthony Lamacchia:Well, there you
Dave Charest:have it, friend. Steph, thanks for being here as always.
Stephanie Alfonso:My pleasure.
Dave Charest:We'll catch you next time.
Stephanie Alfonso:Catch you next time, guys.
Dave Charest:I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/bam.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.