Video summary

Our 6 Year SMMA Journey | The End

Main summary

Key takeaways

Business

Business shift: from “SMMA” to a real estate growth agency

  • After 5.5 years, Versatile Agency stopped positioning itself as a traditional SMMA (running ads for local businesses) and rebranded/operationalized as a real estate growth agency.
  • The core change: instead of only buying traffic (ads), they built an end-to-end client acquisition system for realtors—covering the full funnel:
    • lead generation
    • lead handling/conversion support (“back end”)
    • solving niche bottlenecks for brokers/realtors
    • building AI/custom solutions around those bottlenecks
  • Goal: become “sticky” (hard to replace) by owning/handling more of the customer acquisition process than a typical ad-only SMMA.

Market & niche reasoning (why real estate)

They argue acquisition is easier because:

  • Realtors are highly reachable (business owners on phones).
  • Real estate is a familiar, high-intent category.
  • They cite a massive TAM in the US and Canada.

They emphasize a performance gap:

  • Top ~20% of agents are “crushing the market.”
  • Bottom ~60–70% struggle.

Business strategy: win by moving agents from lower performance to top-tier performance by increasing:

  • business volume
  • traffic
  • conversions
  • conversations (implied funnel stages)

Positioning & differentiation framework: “Bucket B” vs “SMMA price race”

They claim traditional SMMA positioning often lands you in an undifferentiated “bucket A”, where buyers compare mainly on price.

Their counter-positioning is to be the “special snowflake in bucket B”—compared on value, not cost.

Tactic: sell a bundle of unique capabilities (not “we run ads”):

  • ads
  • appointment setting
  • lead handling
  • AI dialer / AI texting
  • conversion system(s)

Key principle:

If your offer sounds like “we do the same thing differently,” you’ll get competed away. If you offer something new, price comparisons become harder.

Skill stacking / capability build-out (practical growth playbook)

They recommend beginners progress in stages, stacking skills to expand service scope:

  1. Learn paid ads → generate leads for real estate agents
  2. Solve the next bottleneck: lead-to-appointment conversion
    • using calling and systems like AI dialers / AI texting
  3. Continue stacking until you can operate as a full growth agency with multiple tied-together solutions.

Organizational/leadership strategy: build a boutique, not a commodity

Their “North Star”:

  • become a top boutique real estate marketing firm in North America
  • avoid extremely high volumes like 5,000–10,000 agents

Economics implication:

  • To charge higher prices, deliver higher realized value
  • Requires an experienced team and mature systems (which take time)

Pricing evolution:

  • They say: “We’ve always increased our prices,” but claim they are not yet at their ultimate target price level (no explicit numbers provided).

Long-term vision & exit strategy

They reject an “exit” mindset:

  • vision is cash-cow forever
  • leadership rationale: exiting removes leverage and operational control

They cite an example:

  • Eddie Maloof / Bad Marketing: reported to remain active and be used as entrepreneurial leverage for other offers/franchises.

Coaching/program offering (go-to-market for their own business)

They promote a program/community as an accelerator path:

  • 60+ students in the community/program
  • designed to help members reach stages like:
    • 0 → 10k/month
    • 10 → 50k/month
    • 50 → 100k/month (ranges stated as targets)

Delivery mechanics:

  • live group 1:1 coaching calls on Tues/Wed/Thu, 1 hour each
  • includes live breakdowns of ad campaigns (screen share), plus sales call reviews

Positioning: you can pay with:

  • time (they took ~4 years to figure it out)
  • money (their program)

They emphasize selectiveness:

  • first-link booking
  • “take community serious” (implied qualification)

Concrete actionable recommendations (as stated)

  • Don’t start with “ads for ads’ sake”; design a path toward an end-to-end acquisition system.
  • Build uniqueness:
    • don’t market only the media channel (“Facebook/YouTube ads”)
    • market the complete value stack that drives outcomes (appointments, conversions)
  • Use tech/automation to solve bottlenecks:
    • Claude/ChatGPT
    • GoHighLevel
    • AI dialers
    • AI texting
  • Focus on long-term stickiness:
    • become burden-reducing for clients by handling more of the funnel.

Metrics / KPIs mentioned (explicit)

  • Performance gap metric (agents):
    • Top ~20% vs bottom ~60–70%
  • Revenue/earnings outcome targets from their program:
    • 0 → 10k/month
    • 10 → 50k/month
    • 50 → 100k/month
  • Timeline for their own learning curve:
    • took about 4 years to figure out the system
  • Tenure framing:
    • 5.5 years running the real estate marketing agency; 6-year journey total framing

Presenters / sources mentioned

  • Eddie Maloof (associated with Bad Marketing)
  • Carter (speaker name as referenced in subtitles)
  • Iman Gadzhi and Jordan Platten (referenced as context for the “traditional SMMA” era)

Original video