TechCulture Staff We sat down with James Higbee, Chief Technology Officer at McGraw. McGraw is a data-driven digital marketing firm with a strong focus on the real estate and financial services industries.
McGraw improves your sales by leveraging a robust database of consumer intelligence to develop scalable and reliable digital advertising campaigns that engage consumers and grow businesses. By supplying hot leads, data, inbound calls, outsourcing, and the technology needed to ensure your company’s success, McGraw generates industry leaders.
James, thank you so much for joining us today! A pleasure to have you on. Can you tell us about McGraw and what you do?
My Pleasure, thank you for having me on.
I’ve spent the last ten years, essentially since I was 18, working as a salesman and consultant in various industries. My first job was as a salesman, and I could not stand cold calling, so I began running Facebook ads to generate my own leads. I was able to quickly become the top salesman in the company from this experiment and was subsequently hired, and shortly thereafter, made partner at a consulting firm that specialized in helping private health care facilities reach those who needed their services.
I come from a family full of people in the real estate world, and my passion for tech was only rivaled by my passion for real estate. After a successful career in health care consulting, I moved on to become the VP of Marketing for a real estate boutique while simultaneously working as a mortgage consultant. This combination gave me an in-depth view of all sides of the real estate industry, as well as the ability to market both businesses from a digital standpoint. Following my real estate experience, I was offered a role at a tech start-up that I could not turn down. I was involved with bug testing the initial application, onboarding/selling new users on the service, and providing account management.
Following my work at the tech start-up, I left my position to go work for, at the time, one of the largest publicly traded digital advertising firms in the nation, with offices internationally, as a salesman. During my time here, I quickly rose to the #1 salesman out of 480+ sales reps internationally.
I left the advertising firm to form my own company, which specialized in recruiting/HR needs. I personally created a job board, secured endorsements from multiple former professional athletes, and sold Fortune 500 companies using my platform. I was then given a great offer to run the technology at the firm I am currently with now, McGraw.
The opportunities at McGraw allowed me to not only utilize the existing skills I had learned across the entirety of my employment history but provided room and resources to expand upon my background and learn so much more. I now run the full suite of software for multiple clients of ours, a SQL database of over 2 billion records with tens of thousands of data points, run paid advertising exceeding $50,000 weekly in ad spend, and have directly helped McGraw generate millions in sales for multiple customers.
Truly fascinating. It seems you have gone through many obstacles to get where you are! How do you guys differentiate yourself from competitors?
Indeed! The largest difference between our competitors and us is our experience with data. McGraw has been in the data and lead generation business for over ten years, providing us the ability to have compiled a large consumer behavior database. When we first onboard a client, we spend countless hours going over who their perfect consumer or client is, the behaviors that the consumer may have, and then, using our database, we are able to query demographics to find exactly who our clients are looking for, and from there we are able to target ads directly to those people, without wasting ad dollars on irrelevant targets.
Our differentiator doesn’t end at creating campaigns. Another thing that we offer that truly sets us apart is our automated response follow-up. Utilizing AI, the form fills that we generate from Social Media or websites are run through a campaign that reaches out to the leads we generate and gets them to respond with a phone call, text, or email. This cuts the time that our client’s sales reps have to spend chasing down leads and allows them to be served inbound leads by contacting them directly.
Very interesting; I imagine the AI evolution has really helped differentiate your brand. How have the recent economic events affected McGraw? What has your team done to adapt?
Our company has been very adaptable to the ever-changing issues of the world. When COVID-19 was first beginning in America, we had a customer in the short-term housing rental business. While hotels, AIRBNBs, and other rentals could not get bookings, we pivoted our marketing strategy for this customer to reflect that a short-term rental house was more socially distanced, cleaner, and an overall better option for necessary travel. This strategy resulted in an influx of bookings.
Also, during COVID-19’s worst, we took on marketing for a new company that was manufacturing hand sanitizer. During a time when the market needed it the most, we were able to source products, find additional manufacturing space, handle logistics, handle fulfillment, and onboard large-scale buyers to the tune of 10’s of millions of units. No matter the issue that arises, McGraw is in the perfect position to not only weather the storm but rise above it.
Amazing! It seems adapting to short-term fluctuations is key. Which service are you most proud of and why?
McGraw’s lead generation is what I have been most proud of by far. Our online lead generation secured over $10 million in real estate sales for a single project and has had wildly successful results for many others. Using our automated response platform, we have gotten real-estate agents hitting a 30-60% response rate on their leads, where it had previously been 10% or less. We are able to cut down on time spent chasing leads, which in turn saves the company hiring us on wasted hours, allowing them to reinvest those savings into further growing their company.
Those are fantastic numbers! What is the best advice you would give to a new entrepreneur?
I think the best advice that I have is to remember that success is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be times when you think that things can’t get any better than they are, just as there will be times when you think you’ve hit the lowest of the lows with no way out. Perseverance, particularly in the face of adversity, is the best way to reach an end goal.
Well said! It is important to remember that success doesn’t happen overnight; perseverance is key. James, thank you so much for your time today! Where can readers learn more?
My Pleasure, thank you again for having me! Readers can learn more by visiting our website at mcgrawnow.com.
