Look Ma, I'm on TV!

Jordan Samuel Fleming sits down with Glen Petersen of Bateman Collective to unpack what is really happening in digital marketing for real estate investors today. From PPC to SEO to the rise of AI-driven search, Glen shares a data-backed perspective on how the landscape is evolving and what investors need to do to stay competitive.

The conversation goes beyond surface-level tactics and dives into what actually makes marketing work. Glen explains why many investors fail before they even start, not because of bad marketing, but because of weak systems, poor follow-up, and lack of data alignment. They break down the importance of speed to lead, strong CRM integration, and understanding the full journey from lead to revenue, not just cost per lead.

If you are looking to scale your business, this episode offers a clear roadmap. You will learn when to invest in PPC, how to think about SEO as a long-term asset, and why AI is accelerating everything. Whether you are just getting started or already doing deals, this conversation will help you build a smarter, more data-driven marketing engine that actually converts.

About Glen Petersen

With over 15 years of marketing experience — including 11 years specializing in Google PPC and SEO — Glen has built a career driving scalable, data-driven growth. Previously serving as Director of Search Marketing at Disruptive Advertising, he led high-performing teams, managed significant platform spend, and developed cross-channel strategies focused on measurable ROI.

Today, as Head of Partnerships at Bateman Collective, Glen bridges the gap between real estate investors and high-performance marketing solutions. By combining deep search expertise with strategic relationship-building, he helps investors align marketing strategy with sustainable, profit-focused growth.

Important Links

Watch & Listen

How AI Is Changing SEO Faster Than Most Investors Realize ft. Glen Petersen

I can tell you one thing: technology is the single most important aspect of every business that has successfully scaled.

It is time for That Real Estate Tech Guy, your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Each week, you will hear from real estate investors who have been there and done that, and learn their favorite technology tips.

Listen in as Jordan speaks with tech companies and explores new technologies and ideas that can help you scale your business.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. I’m your host, Jordan Samuel Fleming, and this week I am delighted to welcome my friend Glen Petersen from Bateman Collective.

Bateman Collective is well known in the real estate space for being an outstanding digital marketing company, especially on the PPC and SEO side. They are incredibly data-centric, and this was a really fun conversation because Glen has a long history in digital marketing and marketing as a whole. He brings a lot of context to how the landscape has evolved.

We were able to dive into how you can get started on your digital marketing journey, where you should be focusing, and some of the pitfalls they see. We also talked about why they sometimes have to turn people away. In some cases, people are not ready to turn on the digital marketing tap because they do not have the backend support needed to get the full benefit from those leads.

Glen also gives great insight into current PPC trends, how SEO is evolving with AI and AI-driven search, and really helps navigate the whole landscape. It honestly felt like I was in a Google Maps session, with him giving exact directions on where I need to go.

They also have a great opportunity for anyone who wants to explore digital marketing further. They offer free audits for both PPC and SEO. So if you are wondering whether you are ready for this, Bateman Collective can help you find out and determine whether now is the right time to move forward.

This is a really great episode for anyone thinking about how to up their game, get more leads, and close more deals. Glen gives a masterclass, and you are going to learn a lot, because I certainly did.

So without further ado, let’s get directly to my conversation with Glen Petersen from Bateman Collective.

I am live with Glen Petersen from Bateman Collective. Glen, welcome to the podcast. Give everybody a little bit of a sense of who you are and who Bateman Collective is.

Awesome. Thanks for having me, first and foremost.

My name is Glen Petersen. I have been in marketing for a long time. I started my career in traditional marketing, like newspapers, billboards, and things like that. After not having any attribution, I hated it. Then I found digital marketing 11 years ago and fell in love with it. More specifically, I fell in love with PPC.

I started doing it in-house at a company, then moved to a PPC agency where I spent the last ten years. More recently, I switched over to Bateman.

In my last role, I went to Google headquarters, met with Google executives, and managed around $13 million a month in ad spend between Google and Bing. It was crazy what we were doing there. So I have a lot of experience with Google specifically, but also with Bing, Facebook, and the wider PPC world.

I have been doing this for years, and I came to Bateman five months ago. One of the reasons I came to Bateman is because I love the data. We will talk about data and how important it is in this world. The way Bateman looks at data is just incredible. If you have ever met Brandon, our CEO, he has one of those data brains that just thrives on it. I love that.

Bateman Collective mainly focuses on PPC and SEO. PPC includes Google, Bing, and Facebook, while SEO includes making sure you are ranking in AI search as well as on Google and other organic channels. We also build websites, but usually only when we come across a client who really needs to improve their online presence and does not have a good website. We do not actively go out and pitch website builds, but we do offer that service when it is needed.

Bateman has about 200 clients, all in the real estate investment industry. We do not work outside of that. We love focusing on this industry so we can build the very best product specifically for real estate investors.

Fantastic. Before we dive into some of the things you mentioned, you definitely gave me a flashback when you brought up print media. It took me back to the days of Yellow Pages ads. The people designing those ads were absolute ninjas. They had no time at all. If the sales team had a rush order, they would build 20 ads in an hour. They were constantly chopping and changing, and it immediately took me back to that rapid-fire design environment that the Yellow Pages created back when there was still a Yellow Pages.

Newspaper was one of the biggest areas I worked in too. I had a section that was very similar to that, where I had to bust out a bunch of ads for one section as quickly as possible.

You mentioned a lot of things there, and I want to make sure we dive into a couple of them. I definitely want to talk about AI search, because I think people are starting to realize it matters, but they do not know enough about it.

Let’s start with PPC first. One thing I hear from a lot of real estate people we work with, and we have a pretty similar avatar of client, is that PPC seems to be costing a lot more right now and feels much harder to navigate. Has there been a big change over the last 12 to 24 months? What is the state of things right now?

I would say it has become a much more competitive landscape. At the same time, everything is increasing in cost because of inflation and the general cost of doing business. Google is following that trend as well.

We are actually involved in a class action lawsuit with Google because they had been inflating cost per click too much. A lot of our clients are joining us in that fight. It is kind of funny in a way, but unfortunately they were overinflating CPC, and we have seen it ourselves.

Cost per lead is definitely increasing in certain areas. Part of that is because Google keeps introducing new products and new ways of doing things, and if you do not follow suit, you often end up paying more. Overall, cost per lead has generally increased.

That said, there are a lot of things people do not realize. Cost per acquisition, or client acquisition cost, has actually decreased a little in some cases, largely because Google’s AI algorithms have improved lead quality when campaigns are set up correctly.

Now, some people do not do it right, whether that is because they are managing it themselves or using agencies that are not focused on the right things. That is where costs can spiral. There are still some markets where Google is expensive overall, more expensive than it has ever been, even on customer acquisition cost.

So yes, I would say it is unfortunately trending upward, just like inflation and everything else.

Given your long history in this space, you have seen the trends and how things evolve. One of the things I get asked a lot by investors who are trying to scale is, “I’m a bit nervous about investing in this. How do I get started, and what kind of commitment does it require?”

Because commitment is a big piece of marketing. It is very rare that a marketing channel gives immediate results, solves all your problems, and can then be left on autopilot. Usually it requires commitment. Can you walk us through what a realistic approach to this kind of lead generation looks like for someone just getting started?

Absolutely. One of the crazy things is that Bateman actually turns away a decent amount of business because people simply are not ready. They do not have the right things set up. They are not focused on the correct areas. If they move forward too soon, they would just waste their money. So we tell them, “Go fix these things, and then come back and talk to us.”

A lot of what we see missing is strong CRM systems, strong sales processes, some kind of lead tracking, and some kind of follow-up process. Those things are often not in place. Sometimes it is just one person answering the phone while also trying to manage job sites for fix-and-flips, and they think they can handle all these inbound leads in a timely way and stay on top of follow-up. That is usually not realistic.

So to us, proper setup is critical. Your business needs to be organized. Getting support from providers like you guys, who have strong follow-up systems and strong client tracking, makes a huge difference in how leads move through the funnel. When we do not see that infrastructure in place, we are usually not successful. I should not say never, because every once in a while someone somehow has it all together on day one, but that setup is absolutely critical.

That is exactly right. What is the point of me turning the tap on if you do not have a glass ready to catch the water?

What drives me crazy is when people pay for marketing, pay for leads, make all that effort, and then let those leads die, either because they do not follow up properly or because they cannot act on them immediately. If you get a lead, get on it. If you have a lead, follow up with it. That is not rocket science. But if you do not do those things, what is the point of spending money and essentially throwing it away?

So if you were going to give someone a quick three-minute preparation guide, what are the things they need to have in place before they start spending money on this kind of lead generation?

Definitely make sure your data connections are fully aligned and communicating with each other. What I mean by that is your CRM should be speaking to your phone system and to Google. In our case, we even push CRM data back into Google so it understands what is high quality and what is not. Data alignment is one of the top priorities.

Then there is lead flow. CRM systems are typically the best place to manage that because you can actually see what stage each lead is in and how it is progressing through the funnel.

The other piece is making sure your team understands the difference between lead types. There are two major kinds: demand generation and demand capture. Demand generation is what you get from things like cold calling, cold texting, or direct mail. You are creating demand. Demand capture is different. That is when people are already reaching out because they are interested. Instead of you convincing them, they are already looking for you.

Those are different lead types, and they require different messaging and different urgency. Speed to lead, like you mentioned, is absolutely critical. We have people come to us and say their PPC is not working, and then we look and see they have an hour-long speed-to-lead time. By then, that prospect has already reached out to two other companies because nobody got back to them. Or sometimes they submit forms to two or three companies because they want multiple offers. But if you are one of the first to respond and you have a strong offer, speed to lead becomes one of the most underrated factors in this industry, especially for PPC leads.

That is such a great point. It is funny, I just shot a video today showing one of our smrtPhone voice agents answering a call and qualifying the lead, establishing motivation, gathering property details, and doing everything you would want, all while answering every call on the first ring, 24/7.

To your point, if someone is reaching out, you have to answer that call or act on that lead quickly. If they are showing they want to hear from you, you have to jump on it. To me, it would be a cardinal sin to spend money, get someone to raise their hand and say, “I want to talk to you,” and then not speak with them right away.

I literally just came from a mastermind event. I got in at 11:40 last night, and a few other service providers and I were talking with an investor. He said he has people answering PPC calls at 11 p.m. on Saturdays. He does not care, they are always available.

I was standing there with somebody who has an AI bot that answers when the team is off, and he said they have great data showing that even an AI bot is better than letting a call go to voicemail. But your kind of system is ideal, because if someone can actually talk to someone immediately and get an appointment set, that changes the game.

It is absolutely critical. Voicemail completely kills the momentum of a potential lead. My message to anyone listening is this: if you are going to spend money on marketing, you better make sure that when it works, you can pick up the ball and run with it. Otherwise, stop spending money, because you are wasting it. You might as well spend it on something you are actually going to act on.

Exactly. That is one of the data points I really like about Bateman. We look beyond just the lead itself. At my old agency, the main focus was getting the lead, and only occasionally did we look further down the funnel.

But now we can see things like contract fallout rate. We can compare it to others in the industry and see if something is off. We can identify if speed to lead is poor, if follow-up is weak, or if someone does not have strong closers. Maybe they are good at getting appointments, but they are not actually making offers. Or maybe they are making offers and not closing them. That is where the data really changes the game.

Now, I am sorry to interrupt this amazing conversation, but I wanted to make sure you knew that smrtPhone, the only phone system built for real estate investors, connects to best-in-class real estate investor CRMs. And because this is my show and I am the co-founder and chairman of smrtPhone, I have some great deals for you.

Click the link and take advantage of 5,000 minutes of free calling with smrtPhone, the only phone system built for real estate investors. Click, call, and close more leads.

Back to the show.

That depth is not what I normally see from a provider like you guys. Being able to identify, “You are getting great conversion here, but while you are getting lots of appointments, you are not putting out many offers,” that is a real point of disconnect. If someone has a huge number of appointments and no offers, something is clearly wrong.

So you actually go that deep. Is that almost like a sales consultancy perspective? How do you handle that with most of your customers?

We have dashboards that rely on our clients updating every single lead they get from us and showing where it made it to inside their funnel beyond our point of contact. Then we backtrack all of that data into a dashboard so we can analyze it.

Yes, we watch every step. Then we compare that against our hundreds of other clients. So if the national average contract fallout rate is 25 percent and you are at 45 percent, we can ask what is going on.

We track everything all the way to revenue. We would love to get all the way to profit, but profit has so many additional variables that it is difficult to track accurately. So revenue is usually where we stop. That still allows us to say, “Here is your return on investment all the way to revenue.”

We are very adamant about clients filling this in. What is funny is that we then re-import that data into Google. We can tell Google, “This lead became a contract,” or “This lead generated this much revenue.” That helps the algorithm learn what kind of users are most likely to become contracts, so our lead quality improves.

Interestingly, about 10 to 15 percent of our clients are not good at showing us what happens after the lead stage, and they tend to get worse results. Just by reporting that information back, they actually improve outcomes, because we are teaching Google what the best leads look like. It also helps us identify system gaps on their side and point out where things are breaking down. It becomes a really virtuous cycle.

When you feed data back like that, it makes everything better. We do that with some of our data provider partners. They provide lead data to our customers, and when those customers call through skip-traced numbers or prospect lists, we feed back whether the number was correct. That kind of feedback loop improves everyone’s data and helps refine everything.

You are doing the same thing with your marketing data so quality keeps improving.

Exactly. That is something we really love. At the mastermind I just came from, Gary from Sharper and a bunch of us service providers were all talking about how we want to normalize each phase of the sales and lead funnel. We want to establish what those percentages should look like so we can say, “We are doing our part with the lead quality, but here is where you are having fallout.”

That way, investors can see not just how they compare to a single provider, but how they compare to the broader industry average. It helps us determine whether service providers are truly keeping up. We are trying to normalize a lot of that language and benchmarking.

I know we are going to talk more in person at our upcoming service provider mastermind, but it was a huge topic of conversation for everyone. The more connected the data is, the better it is for the end user.

I really believe in that level of partnership and data flow. For example, we do not connect with every CRM out there. We connect with a select number, and we connect deeply so we can push and pull data properly.

That matters, because from my point of view, if every call, every text, every AI-agent call, and every interaction syncs seamlessly back to the lead in your CRM, then you get the full picture. You have the metrics and can truly understand performance.

I always say, if you are running three different types of marketing across three different areas, and you are tracking everything down to how many calls it takes to convert, how much time is spent, and how much human effort it requires to close those deals, then you might realize that the decision should not be based only on the revenue from the lead source. It might come down to profit.

Maybe one source gives you fewer deals, but because it takes so much less time and effort, it produces more profit. I will take more profit every day of the week over spending a lot of money to make a little. But you only know that if you have the data and if it all syncs together, which is exactly where you started.

Yes, people often do not realize that revenue is great, but it is not profit. As we always used to say, revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. That is the simple truth.

At one of the Google events I attended about a year and a half ago, I took a bunch of clients with me. The Google executives said that if you can find your profit numbers and feed them into Google, that is where you will see the most success. Of course, profit has so many variables that it is hard to track, but even at those events, the people who do not understand their profit numbers are usually the least successful.

They see giant revenue numbers, but their ROI is awful. If you break things down by actual lead type and detail out where profit is coming from, then you can understand the biggest drivers and the biggest detractors. That is really what we care about.

Absolutely. Now let’s pivot slightly to AI, since I think we are contractually obliged to use the term AI in every conversation nowadays.

For good reason, though. This is an interesting one, because I keep hearing more and more about AI search. More people are using AI tools to look things up. That is definitely becoming a trend.

What does the landscape look like here? What is changing? What are you seeing?

The first thing to understand is that recent numbers showed there were about 8 billion AI searches last month. Google, on the other hand, handles about 13 billion searches a day. So the scale is still very different.

Also, if we look at our typical avatar in real estate investing, that audience tends to skew older and less tech-savvy, and that is a major factor.

That said, AI is escalating things very quickly in our industry. The search volume is still much lower than Google, but it is growing fast. Every month there is a new report showing major increases in how many people are searching through AI tools.

One thing we have seen is that SEO results can happen a bit faster because AI tools are picking things up sooner. SEO and AI ranking strategies are probably about 70 percent the same. The reason is that both Google and AI systems want to find the most relevant sources, the most trustworthy data, and provide a good user experience.

AI tools often search across multiple platforms. They might look through Yahoo, Bing, Google, and others. So you want to show up across all of them. It is not just about Google anymore. That is why the remaining 30 percent of the strategy needs to shift and account for those differences.

We had a client last year who made about $500,000 from the SEO side of things, including AI-related search traffic. We were shocked to find that 25 percent of that $500,000 came through AI. AI is picking things up faster.

Traditionally, SEO takes around 14 to 16 months to really ramp up and get to the point where it starts overtaking PPC in terms of ROI. But with AI, we are seeing that happen faster because AI tools are diving in and doing a lot more research across the web, while Google has this massive database of websites it has to crawl and categorize.

There is a lot more to it, and I even have training on little AI ranking hacks, things you can do to show up faster, how to work with the algorithm, and what platforms to be on.

AI is definitely changing the game by speeding a lot of this up. On top of that, ChatGPT has rolled out its PPC product, so we are going to be doing ads on ChatGPT, Gemini, and other platforms as well. This is going to become an ever-expanding set of places where people search.

I have been trying to figure some of that out myself. I have a book out there and some other content, and I still have not really cracked the code on the AI search side. That is probably more your area than mine.

Let me give you one quick hack: do a press release. Use platforms like PR.com or PRWeb. Those are little shortcuts right now that can give you a quick boost in AI visibility. It is not necessarily a long-term strategy, but it can give you a quick win.

Let’s combine the AI and SEO side with PPC for a moment. If you think about the lifespan of an investor, broadly speaking, I would say there are three levels. You have the newer investors who are just getting started and should stay focused locally. Then you have the people who are scaling up. Then you have the deeply established operators who have strong businesses and are doing lots of deals. They have mostly figured out their systems.

It is really that middle group where there is a lot of room for help and acceleration.

So if you were talking to someone who is starting to scale, wants to do more deals, and wants to push aggressively, is there one angle you would recommend they focus on first? Is PPC the easier entry point because it tends to provide quicker feedback than the long game of SEO? What is your general advice when someone is just getting into this and wants to grow?

I have always said that for a brand-new investor, PPC is not ideal because it is expensive. I usually recommend pay-per-opportunity channels first, or even direct mail, before jumping into PPC.

But once you really have your feet under you, PPC can become a strong growth driver. As for SEO, I use the same logic we use in real estate when we say the best time to buy a house was ten years ago, and the second-best time is today. SEO is similar because it takes time.

For newer investors, I usually say get a few deals under your belt through PPC first. Get it running well enough that it is producing at least a 2 to 3x ROI so you can continue to afford it and keep the business healthy. Then start building into SEO.

We usually do start SEO a little after PPC because PPC can generate revenue relatively quickly. Like I mentioned, SEO traditionally takes about 14 to 16 months before the ROI overtakes PPC.

That said, we have a client getting a 19x ROI on SEO. That is because at that point he is mainly paying our management fee to keep him visible to the right audience and maintain the right content and positioning. He is not paying per click the way he does with PPC. His PPC is still doing great at about a 5.5x ROI, but SEO has overtaken it so strongly that he has reallocated more budget into making sure he ranks well in AI and organic search.

This may be a slightly unfair question, but it is my party so I am allowed to ask it. There are all these channels out there: direct mail, cold calling, TV, radio, and others. Where would you place serious digital marketing in the lifecycle of an investor? At what point would you say it is time to really take those channels seriously?

I would usually say around third. The first stage is often outreach like cold calling and, historically, cold texting, though cold texting has started dropping off with all the recent changes.

Then there is direct outreach to audiences and more manual prospecting. If you are a solo operator, you are a hustler, and you are really good on the phones, pay-per-lead or direct outreach can be strong early on.

Then direct mail comes into play because it gets your message out there in a targeted way. You can go after specific neighborhoods and really control your market. Direct mail has some drawbacks, though, because it can take three or four months for those pieces to really start working.

Usually around the time you are doing direct mail, PPC should be entering the picture too. The challenge is that PPC can be expensive. In some areas, we see cost per lead between $200 and $400, which is a hard pill to swallow.

But when we surveyed more than 100 real estate investors, we found that they spend more on PPC than on anything else, especially the most successful operators, because they are seeing the return.

Since we look closely at the data, cost per contract is one of the big metrics we care about. Cost per lead is fine, but cost per contract is what really matters. That is where the business value is.

So I would typically say start with those earlier outreach efforts, then bring in PPC, and shortly after that, begin building into SEO. Just do not expect SEO to bring in leads in the first three months, because most people start on page 80 of Google. Even if we improve your position dramatically every month, you are still probably not seeing real results for eight to ten months.

Absolutely. One of the most important pieces of advice I give about marketing in general is that almost any channel can work if you stick with it.

Real estate investors tend to have a bit of shiny object syndrome. We all like to look around and wonder what we are missing. But when it comes to marketing, consistency breeds results. So whichever lane you choose, commit to it. In my opinion, sticking with it matters more than anything.

What do you think?

I agree completely. Brandon loves data, and one of the things he sent us last week was an evaluation of every single account showing how long it takes to get to the first contract. The data was really interesting. Some clients do not get results in the first month, while others get their first contract relatively quickly.

Still, I recommend sticking with whatever channel you choose, even if it is direct mail. A lot of these channels compound over time. TV does that too, because it plays into branding and long-term recognition.

To us, it is very much about committing to what you are doing and giving it time to grow. Google itself says it can take three to six months for the algorithm to really understand who your users are, who you are targeting, and where it should allocate your budget. That learning phase is one of the most critical parts of the whole process.

Fantastic. Glen, this has been an absolute joy. Before we wrap up, tell everybody a little bit about how you can help them, what type of customers you help most, and how they can get in touch.

I would say the people we help most, and the ones we really start helping grow, are those doing at least 10 to 20 deals a year and up from there. At that point, they can afford to put some more money into this and give it time to grow while we work through the learning phases.

Those are the kinds of investors we work best with, especially the ones who understand this is not always going to work on day one. Really strong results tend to show up around month ten. Some clients do get traction in the first few weeks, while others take longer. But month ten is often where things really start to click. So we recommend this for long-term-minded operators who are willing to invest over time.

As for how we help, we offer audits. We can look at your numbers, compare them to industry averages, and identify where the gaps are in your sales process. We can help determine whether you have a marketing problem or a sales, follow-up, or systems problem.

We offer both SEO and PPC audits. On the SEO side, we can tell you exactly what is missing and what you could potentially do yourself to start ranking better. Of course, most people look at that and realize they would rather have an agency help them with it. But at the very least, we can point you in the right direction. If it turns out you are ready to move forward, then we can help from there.

The best way to get ahold of us is through BatemanCollective.com. If you want to go straight to the audit page, it is get.batemancollective.com/rlp. That is a quick and easy way to sign up for an audit and talk to someone on our team. We can review your account, understand what is happening, and show you where you can improve your numbers, even if you are currently running everything yourself.

Fantastic. I will make sure we include those links in the podcast description, the YouTube page, and everywhere else.

Glen, it has been an absolute delight speaking with you. I know I will probably be seeing you in person in a few weeks, which I am looking forward to. Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing some wisdom today.

Thank you for having me, Jordan. I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to another amazing episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. Head over to ThatRealEstateTechGuy.com to check out all episodes and get special discounts on tons of awesome real estate technology platforms.