OnCarrot vs (the new) RealEFlow

[Sergio V.]

Hello everyone

I know OnCarrot has been discussed over and over here on BP and it seems to be the best platform in terms of SEO and conversion rates for investors trying to leadgen. I have recently stumbled upon RealEFlow which seems to have been redesigned with similar goals in mind. Additionally, RE seems to have a mailing and CRM component that OnCarrot does not (true or false?)

I am mainly interested in lead generation and conversion. I can manage direct marketing campaigns using other platforms/websites but having it all in one spot is nice. 

Is RE's SEO as strong as OnCarrot's?

I might be missing some aspects which is why I am asking for opinions from folks who have used both.

Many thanks,

Sergio

[Trevor Mauch]

@Sergio V. Great question man! 

Ultimately what we offer vs. Realeflow is a fundamentally different product. 

It's kind of like comparing a Hyundai vs. a high performance sports car.  

Hyundai's look amazing. Sometimes I can't tell the different from a distance between those and a mercedes. But it's not built with performance in mind. The sports car may give up some of that pretty element... but it does so for the sake of greater performance. If you're going after greater performance... the sports car is the ticket. 

They've focused on the CRM and "lead pipes" (buying lots of data from list companies and putting it into their system so investors can download that data to send direct mail to, etc. As far as their sites, with most of those "all in one" platforms they tend to focus on the CRM (their CRM is amazing) and add on the websites as a feature to the overall suite. I like Greg (am good friends with Greg actually) but they'd be the first to admit that they don't focus on conversion performance or the inbound marketing side of things. 

The best way to really tell is to test their sites on a split test to PPC traffic against ours, and the best performer wins out. We just focus on performance above all else both in the search engines and conversion rate and it's what we do everyday... mainly because performance puts money in your pocket... ease of use... slightly lower cost... and pretty designs don't put profits in your pocket. 

But like @Antonio Coleman is mentioning, to rank well in Google there are off-page things that will have to be done in many markets. I say *many* specifically because we've gotten plenty of websites ranked in the top 3 for search phrases that are pulling in leads with no back links at all. But that's for smaller markets and/or lower competition search phrases. 

In a market that is more competitive market you'll definitely have to apply the off-page stuff that we teach. 

On Page SEO... 

As far as what SEO Carrot makes easier vs. a free or cheap website builder like wix, or squarespace, etc... is we take the onpage optimization to about 60% for you. 

• The page structure is all setup effectively
• The codebase is streamlined and loads fast
• It's not just mobile friendly according to Google... but setup to perform at a high rate on mobile (conversion wise)
• The SEO title tags and descriptions are already customized for your market to keywords we know sellers / buyers / tenants (whatever site you launch) gives you a jumpstart on optimization for search phrases that matter (you can always tweak them from there if you want)
• Our "city specific landing page" strategy is baked into our system to make it easier to get rankings in the cities you invest in
• etc. etc. 

Basically even if you drive solid backlinks... if you don't have the on-page stuff nailed you're working uphill. We get 60% of the on-page done for you... then guide you on customizing your content and personalizing your site to be unique to you... to wrap up the remaining 40%. 

Then with our training (the $99 one Mary mentioned above) and our weekly live mastermind calls and 1 on 1 strategy sessions with us we'll help you over the hump when you have questions or run into SEO issues. 

That's something our members value in a big way. 

Sometimes its that strategy that makes the difference between success and struggling... which wix or weebly can't solve for you. Close 1 extra deal every 2 years because of that that averages you $10k... that pays for Carrot for 10 years. 

We focus on the ROI side of the equation with your online marketing.

We'd love to have you! 

Here's a post that may help you compare Carrot to the cheap website builders in a more specific way:
https://oncarrot.com/investorcarrot-vs-those-cheap-generic-website-builders/

Hit me up any time if you have questions! 

But ya, definitely use Realeflow if you're wanting their direct mail stuff and CRM... we can't touch those functions at all.  Consider Carrot if inbound marketing, SEO, and conversion performance are the most important. 

We're here for ya!

==========

@Darrell Shepherd Hope all is well man. For those reading this, I'm the CEO he mentioned above :-) 

And you know what, I'm going to take the hit like a man and own up to what Darrell mentioned above. 

Darrell was one of the original dozen or so people we brought aboard when we rolled out what we were hoping was going to be our "in-house" SEO service. 

We've been doing SEO for years and years before Carrot... are extremely good at it... and thought that would translate into us being good at managing peoples SEO for them. Managing SEO for 1 - 5 clients is easy. For 24-30... that's a different ballgame as we found. 

Frankly, we were wrong. 

Growing a SEO management company vs. knowing SEO inside and out are completely different things. We hired a guy who we let go shortly after who was hired to lead that division and manage it... we brought in a great partner to deliver much of the service... and I stepped back and focused on the core business of Carrot... our software... our websites... our training... and our customer experience. 

Those 6 months were honestly the only times during our almost 3 years in business that we've ever had any bad feedback from customers. Just look on the BP forums here and that's a testament to the way our business is ran. That's what Carrot is and what we're proud of... and the tens of thousands of leads a month our members pull in online are a result of that commitment. 

With that said, there were a handful of those initial clients we were running SEO for that we just didn't pull the result we'd hoped. Most got a great result... some just didn't grab a hold in huge markets with this service (since this service was a limited service. That was our flaw in offering it in large markets to fresh domains. Our fault not Darrell's). 

This was a good business lesson and I'm happy to walk through it:

• Going low price isn't the right path to delivering what the customer wants / needs. It may seem like it is, but ROI trumps low price anyday:
  We were initially trying to create an SEO service that was affordable to almost everyone. So we rolled it out at $325/mo that included certain things... didn't include others. But we felt it would pull solid results for most markets.  People loved the price and we felt we could over-deliver on it. What ended up happening was the SEO was crushing it in markets smaller than 500k population... and for sites in competitive markets that were already on page 1. We took them from bottom of page 1 to the top. We weren't making a profit at $325/mo, but were pulling results. Actually that $325/mo plan is what pulled a #1 result in Houston for "we buy houses houston" for a Carrot client in that same group... that he still retains to today. 
  
  But what happened was fresh new domains that weren't already on page 1 or 2 and didn't have at least some backlink history that came in in large cities (like Atlanta) needed much much more than could be delivered even close to break even at $325/mo without doing black hat or borderline stuff (Private Blog Network, etc... which we'll never do). Plus some outsourcers we trusted didn't fulfill what was expected in some cases... even though we'd paid for it.  
  
  Long story short, that falls back on me. 
• Don't go away from your core of what you're great at:
  
  We're great at SEO. Great at conversion. Software. Training. And awesome customer experience. 
  
  We're not great at managing dozens of SEO clients where we're doing the work. 
  
  So we actually made the tough decision in early 2015 to discontinue that "in-house" SEO service and focus on our core. Make our software, conversion methodology, training, and customer success team even better. Double down on what's working, stop what's not. 
  
  It was a tough decision but one of the best ones we'd made. We ended up losing over $40k in that 6 months on the SEO service. Our fault. Lesson learned. 
• Align with people who do your weaknesses amazingly well:
  
  Right after that we created a partnership with the best SEO firm that I know, created a Carrot Marketplace, certified them on our methods as well, and gave our Carrot members direct access to them. They're about 2x - 4x more cost than our service was, but the results and ROI they're pulling is amazing.
  
  Re-cemented our focus on ROI over low cost. Which is why we preach it so much to our clients and investors today... it's crazy important. 

Haha, I know I kinda took this post in a slightly different direction. But it's been a real cool journey here at Carrot. 

When you have had thousands of customers there are bound to be some experiences that just didn't nail it for the client. And Darrell, I apologize that that SEO service was one of them. I love that you validate that our core business (our sites, service, training, support) are spot on and awesome. It confirms we made the right decision over a year ago to discontinue that service and focus on making our core even better than it already was. 

In the end, that service (which only had a couple dozen people in it, and 4 that didn't get meaningful positive ranking increases... of the over 1.5k Carrot clients) has been our only "black eye" in the time we've been growing Carrot and it absolutely sucks :-/

But, I appreciate your candidness on this thread Darrell, and it both validates that we're doing things right at our core (a testament to why you're still a client of ours) but also that I want to work w/ you to find what's right. Let me know what you propose and lets find a fair spot for both. The statement of not driving any links wasn't correct though as we did create a round of citations and several other links during that campaign. That market def needs a full on backlink building campaign. 

Interesting Info On Conversion Rates And The Market Phase We're In...

One really interesting thing and a benefit we have of managing websites with some of the biggest house flippers and wholesalers in the country is we have access to date at an aggregate level that no one else sees. 

When Darrell mentioned seeing a decrease in PPC conversion rate over time, we found it was a market condition vs. a competition w/ other Carrot sites issue. How do we know? We found the same decrease in markets where only 1 Carrot site was ranking. 

Basically as markets shift from buyer markets to seller markets (which we're in a seller market again and that shift started happening in some markets 18 months back... where I live it was about a year ago)... and as sellers have more options to sell quickly (like listing it and getting full asking price offers within weeks)... the performance on "we buy houses type" websites decreased over time as the shift happened across the board.

In Florida, Cali, Portland, Atlanta, Phoenix, etc. 

In markets like Birmingham where we traditionally saw a 15-25% seller site conversion rate (yes you read that right) is now closer to 12-15% on average. 

In Bakersfield it went from a consistent 11-14%... to 6-9%. 

In Portland, from 7-8% to 3-5% in some cases. 

We even tested it on completely different designs no other Carrot members had and the results were still consistent (lower conversion rates in hot markets). 

That's one of the things we love the best, seeing those aggregate results and shifting to the market to give our members an edge (like focusing on mobile in a big way mid 2015, the new design we're rolling out next week based on testing, etc. etc.). 

Things shift and we've seen a big shift from buyer to seller markets which has softened conversion rates to "we buy houses" type sites because sellers now have more options. 

@sergio go crush it man! 

@darrell reach out and lets chat.