Asterisk Creative

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a realtor and the team lead of a real estate brokerage in Maui. I do technology and marketing efforts as well.

What challenge were you trying to address with Asterisk Creative?

We were looking for someone who could manage our marketing efforts and a PPC campaign. We wanted to take our marketing dollars and manage them effectively by placing ads.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re primarily focusing on PPC advertising on Google and Microsoft Bing, but they also provide SEO efforts. They log into our account and manage everything; that helps us with transparency by showing us what’s happening in real-time without us needing to request reports. Many companies will only manage within their own accounts, and if you were to move from that company, you’d lose all that data— that was something important for us to avoid as well.

What is the team composition?

We started working with Phil (President). As they’ve grown, they moved us over to Mark (Project Manager). Mark took over and is very hands-on.

How did you come to work with Asterisk Creative?

We found them on the Real Geeks Mastermind Facebook page. I read through the conversations and threads looking for a PPC manager focusing on the real estate area. We made a few selections there, taking our time to interview and talk to them. We over-analyzed each one of them and spoke to references. After that, we decided on Asterisk Creative; it was the right decision to make.

How much have you invested with them?

Just on services, we spend a few hundred dollars per month. For the PPC campaign management, we can spend as much as we want, and we invest around $300 per month. They’re flexible, and we can even pause the PPC campaign when we want to. We don’t need to have a minimum monthly spend, and they always have a flat fee—we can spend $100,000 on our campaigns and still charge us the same for their services. All this allows us to adjust our investment accordingly.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

In the real estate market, closing 1% of the online deals means a lot, and we’re now somewhere around there. For every 100 leads that come in, at least one goes to escrow, and that’s what we’re looking for. We’re now connecting with higher-quality leads than normal. The overall quality has been good enough to keep us going and keep us happy.

How did Asterisk Creative perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been excellent. Everything that we work with them on is detail-oriented. We communicate well and have a checklist of what needs to be done at the start of every process with a timeline. As we move through things, they keep us well informed. We have monthly check-in calls, and after that, they send back a detailed recap with action items to move forward. We communicate through phone or Zoom, and they come back to me whenever we have questions; it’s a nice format. If we have a question, we email them, and they respond within the day. I also try to be as detailed as possible, with screenshots or even videos of what I’m seeing; that lets them get back with a detailed answer.

In terms of deadline compliance, the only time frame hang-up is when, for instance, we’re doing something with Google. In those cases, we have to wait for their team to get back to us. They also bring new ideas, processes, and techniques as we continue to move forward; we appreciate that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What distinguished Asterisk Creative from other providers was the minimal startup fee. They also brought to us several references f in real-time. They didn’t just show us their marketing deck; we were able to ask questions to people they’ve worked with in the past and see examples of their operations. They did a nice job setting up the calls, and everything was positive from them; I’ve even offered myself to be a reference as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We don’t think there’s something they can improve upon. They’ve done everything we’ve asked for and exceeded our requirements. They always bring us new marketing channels, so they’re outpacing what we do, and we’re very pleased with them.

Any advice for potential customers?

Commit to a spend per month metric when it comes to PPC. Realtors do not have significant capital, so I recommend establishing a budget, stick to it, and follow up the process. Otherwise, people are going to get out of the process because they’re not going to see results— it takes a while for these things to happen and mature.