#147 Mail-Right Show We Discuss Smart Phones & How To Use Them To Market Your Business

We going to discuss how agents can use their smart phones to market themselves in the most effective way possible. Most agents are on the road a LOT and really rely on mobil technology to help theme be available for existing and new clients. However, smart phones can also be used as marketing engines.

Here a link to Christophe Choo’s YouTube channel and a particular video where he layouts all the equipment he uses personally to produce his video for his 100,000 + subscriber YouTube channel!

Jonathan: Welcome back folks to the Mail-Right Show. It’s episode 147. We’re going to have a discussion between me and Robert and we’re going to be discussing mobile and how you can use your smartphone to promote your business basically. You’re literally doing almost everything connected to your Real Estate business using mobile now because you’re a road warrior, aren’t you?

Robert: Exactly.

Jonathan: We’re going to have a great discussion about that. So, Robert, like to start off the conversation?

Robert: I would. So, we started talking about this, you and I, and here’s the thing, guys, the audience, Jon, for those that are listening to the podcast, I know you can’t see it but I am holding up to the camera my brand new Samsung 9. This isn’t so miraculous or relevant but since I’ve owned a Samsung Note, I have been counseling my clients, my friends and everybody I know in the Real Estate business that they should be using their mobile phone, their smartphone as their primary Marketing tool. Some people have listened to this and some people haven’t. Now that I’ve updated my phone, my conviction about using a mobile phone has increased tenfold because the tools on the phone have increased tenfold.

And what I’d like to spend a little bit of this morning show time to do is to discuss some of the most basic but relevant ways that a Real Estate Agent should be using their cell phone to create content and promote their business online. And if you do it right, I have the absolute, fantastic news that you really should not be adding on too much extra time into your schedule. It shouldn’t actually cost a smart Agent too much additional time than what they are already doing. So first off, I’d like to make a recommendation to all of our listeners which is if you want to see a guy that uses his cell phone really, really well and all of the time and I’ve seen his cell phone. The funny thing is he’s using a busted up iPhone 5 but he’s a brilliant Marketer with it, that’s Christophe Choo. He’s one of the best Agents in the country in terms of promoting himself. Digitally, he’s got thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Facebook followers and I’m going to run through a couple things that he does and I’m also going to run through a couple things I think you should be doing. And Jon, you can weigh in any time that you want, obviously but we had already, offline guys we had agreed that this particular show, I’m going to kind of steer the boat.

So, my first and heaviest tool to talk to people about promoting is, I get asked a lot of questions about like creating content and putting it on Facebook pages and Twitter and then how do you do it blah, blah, blah, blah and people make it, I think that they don’t realize how easy it is. So, with your cell phone and if you’re an Agent you can hit your Instagram, your Facebook and your Twitter all at the same time, in one go. So you have this tool and then you, which I’m holding up a cell phone for those people on the podcast, and you’ve got 60 seconds.

That’s the basic tool inside Instagram is that you can create a 1-minute video and 1 minute doesn’t take very long even with redos edits. So my first suggestion for doing content is get used to, when you go to a property or you’re driving to a property, get used to filming 60-second vignettes and uploading them to your cell phone, through Instagram. Instagram has a setting that says every time that you put something on Instagram it automatically gets sent to both Twitter and a Facebook page that you connected to your Instagram profile. Because keep in mind, Facebook owns Instagram. So, when you’re uploading this content, this Instagram content, you can quite literally hit your Facebook business page and Twitter and your Instagram all at once with a 60-second piece of content. Now, what should you do in that 60-seconds? Well, you can get a lot of ideas from Christophe but I have some suggestions for you.

Obviously, talking about property is one way to go. Looking at a property is one way to go. But I actually suggest deeply, like Christophe does a lot of videos where he’s driving through Beverly Hills and he’s talking about Beverly Hills. You might ask why or that’s retarded for like a Real Estate salesperson but here’s the thing. Christophe, years and years ago, branded himself as an area specialist. He chose a niche and he stuck with it and he walks the streets of Beverly Hills all the time and ducks into his favorite stores and he films it. He does these 60-second vignettes and solo. Like a single one of these videos, I would agree would be stupid. But when you go to his Instagram page and you see years worth of content all about this one particular area, he has massively branded himself at this point.

All of his leads come from online methodology and we’re not talking about leads for $500,000 dollar home, we’re talking about leads from million dollar homes, 35 million dollar homes, 45 million dollar homes. So, if you’re going to say, does this strategy really generate business? I’m here to deliver the message, it absolutely can if you’re diligent. And even if you’re not diligent, if you’re just trying to figure out a way to keep in touch with your existing audience, which is a topic that Jon and I talk about a lot is nurturing databases, nurturing lists. Well, if you think of Facebook as a different type of list nurturing tool and change your perspective, these 60-second vignettes are a very easy way to stay in touch with your audience and give them something to connect with you on every day.

And the reason I’m using Christophe as an example is that something, it needs to be something that you’re passionate about. This is the same thing that I am doing with my audience with this particular call, like with this particular show. I’m talking about Online Marketing and a topic that I am passionate about and educating my audience with content. And it’s not driving a lot of additional traffic to my website, it’s not driving a lot of additional conversions, at least not immediately. But I am getting people that in the side of conversations are mentioning, “Oh, hey. I’ve seen this content. I found it to be useful.” And that’s exactly what I’m recommending that you do for your Real Estate business. I don’t care if you’re new or if you’ve been doing it for years. You’ve developed certain business practices that are unique to you.

Whether it’s you have an assistant go examine a property or you examine a property or you have certain things that you say to your clients when you go into a property, there’s certain tax benefits or certain schools that everybody asks you about. I promise you that there is something about the way that you pursue Real Estate that is unique to you and that is what you should be talking about when you do these 60-second vignettes. And you should film something that is relevant and then you should be putting that up on Instagram and you should be very gentle with yourself in terms of establishing this habit. And what I mean by that is another thing that I see inside people using cell phones for tools, is they get frustrated because they forget to do it one morning. They get to a walkthrough and they forgot to film it. So what? Do it the next day or do it the next day after. It takes a while to establish. Dale Carnegie and 100 other people since him have all said the same thing, “It takes 30 days to establish a habit. Be gentle with yourself.”

But if I had one thing I was going to tell new Agents or people that were looking to get into Digital Marketing, like how can I get into Digital marketing? How can I get into Digital Marketing for cheap? Just get used to producing content. Jon, would you agree with me that producing content in terms of today’s digital world is basically the cornerstone or the fundamental thing that you should be doing like to market yourself?

Jonathan: Oh, totally. But a lot of Agents don’t, you know and also promote paid traffic. But I’m not one of these that says, “Forget about your website, forget about organic content, just rely on paid.” I think that’s ridiculous and I would be totally wrong for saying that and I won’t. I agreed with everything you said. My main criticism of myself is I really haven’t really studied Instagram enough. My interest has been more around Messenger but Instagram is so enormous now and so powerful. And you’ve got these phones now and it’s just the perfect platform for that type of thing, isn’t it Robert?

Robert: Yeah. And that’s the other thing is that I guess, and it’s a weird thing to talk about. But I think the thing that my latest phone, I think that both the Samsungs and the Apple, previously Samsung I think was not as good on video or photo quality. So I would occasionally get Agents saying, “Oh, but, I don’t know that I want to brand myself using my phone”. My Samsung 9 autofocuses, it takes beautiful almost model quality shots every time I take it. I’m a horrible photographer. I mean literally, the world’s worst and yet I’m taking some beautiful pictures with my phone. If you’re going to invest in a little piece of technology and keep it cheap and keep it to something that you have to invest in any way inside your Real Estate business, my honest to God first comment to everybody is invest in a nice phone.

Because if somebody had a good phone and a willing spirit, I could teach them how to be a great Digital Marketer. That’s it, that’s all they need, like is a good phone. Because I am, as you well know, I think there’s a place for every type of Marketing. But if you said, “Robert, what are you really super passionate about?” It’s Content Marketing. I am super passionate about Content Marketing. I do Content Marketing for my own site. I’ve got almost a 100 YouTube videos established. I do this show with you. I mean I’m leaving the country for 2 weeks and you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to create content. I’m super passionate about it. I’m just going to do it in a unique spot like a writer would, like Hemingway.

I just do content. Like whatever it takes, do content for your business. If I had to give that advice out and the first tool is cell phones. What else can you do with them? You can record messages. The thing that I love about cell phones and most of the Marketing apps that you and I, we review new companies all the time. You know what my favorite companies are? Like my phone has a HubSpot application and I can run my entire HubSpot Marketing platform off my telephone. It’s not as good as sitting in front of my PC and I’m never going to say to somebody that it is. But I also can check my, I don’t know if you can see this or not, but like, I can check my Google Analytics. They have a mobile app and it is as good as my desktop version.

I can check my, I mean everything is on here. But I occasionally use Fiverr for vendors and it has a mobile application. In a crunch, I can run 60 percent of my business off my phone because all of the bigger vendors have what are called mobile applications and these, you keep talking about Snapchat, I think it is. I have WhatsApp on my phone which is trying to take the place of Skype. But I also have a Skype application on my phone that allows me to make calls anywhere in the country for free off my cell phone, not the country, the world as long as they have a Skype membership. I’ve got my Upwork. That is who I do business with many of my subcontractors through Upwork and it has a mobile application that is actually quite stellar. Slack, that’s how I communicate with my team is all off a cell phone, on my cell phone.

I have three or four applications for editing and doing different things inside Instagram, again, all on my cell phone. And so, when people are talking about what they should be doing, and I know we were talking about this last time, like, oh, I can record all my calls on my cell phone. Like there’s a little thing down here that says voice recorder. So when I start getting on the phone with my clients and they start talking about things that they want and I can’t remember, I just hit the record button, tell them I’m going to record the call and just again, record it off my cell phone. All of these things can be adapted to a Real Estate business. We and as Real Estate Agents the thing that I hear most frequently is, “Oh, I’m never in the office.” So what? That shouldn’t be the thing that holds you back. You have technology. While I’d be the first to admit it’s a massive pain in the ass a lot of the time, one of the things that really has advanced and is really incredible is mobile technology specifically as it relates to cell phones. These days, as opposed to being handicapped, like a Real Estate professional that got used to using their cell phone as a Marketing tool would not just not be handicapped. They’d have an edge over all of the people that aren’t.

Jonathan: I think that’s great. I think we’re going to go for a break Robert and when we come back we’ll talk some more about all this.

Robert: Sorry or I monopolized the time. That’s really what’s happening. But okay. Go ahead.

Jonathan: No, no problem at all. I thought it was great stuff. We’ll be back in a few moments folks.

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Jonathan: We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a good recount on mobile. We’re going to continue it. Just to remark what you’re saying, Robert.

Robert: Please, I really am looking for your input. I’m sorry about that.

Jonathan: No, it’s no problem at all. You know when it comes to actual Marketing Content, what I hear from a lot of Agents is, “Oh, I can’t do these videos.” Especially if they’re, for understandable reasons, if they’re a female. Because, you know, females to some extent are judged a little bit more about their looks, especially in a Sales Marketing environment. But what I say to them is that, you know, obviously, you’ve got to be presentable. These vignettes, these micro video blog that you’re going to put up, they’re just little insights of your day and the properties and also like Robert said, showing your knowledge of the area that you’re farming.

But the great thing is that people are just about Real Estate, about housing, about other people’s houses, about the area. The great thing is, you’ve got material that you can talk about which a lot of people are fascinated about. But you don’t want to get too, I’m looking for the right word here, too critical of yourself to start doing. Just start doing what Robert suggested. There is a place for a more professional video and it’s probably linked to what we’ve discussed in previous weeks about evergreen content that’s going to be more static on your website which you’re going to update and keep. That’s probably or on more the luxury where it’s a true promotional video. These are just little vignettes. What would you say, Robert?

Robert: I’ve seen a lot of professional Real Estate videos and a handful of people that I see have done them, I like the way they’ve done them. A couple of luxury agents, Christophe Choo is one here in L.A. They do some professional videos that I like. For the most part though, for me personally, I prefer the unprofessional, unscripted videos. Mostly just because if I’m going to follow somebody, I’m following the person. I’m a personality person. I’m a human connector. And those really well-produced videos, which you can find inside of Real Estate, they do take a lot of the personality out because it’s scripted content. That’s what people don’t realize is that usually, the production team has created what’s called a treatment which is a script.

And even though the Agent probably has approved the script or maybe even written the script, they’re still operating on the script and you can tell. As opposed to catching their thoughts live as they’re walking through or driving to or driving from. Those are the things that I end up looking at. There’s a couple of scripted things that Christophe Choo does that I do follow. He does these market updates where he personally is expressing his opinions about the Real Estate market inside Beverly Hills. And I do actually pay, and it’s scripted. He’s made notes for himself and he’s got that kind of scripted. But it’s just his cell phone on his desk and he is still talking in kind of a live unfiltered way and that’s one of my favorite pieces of content that he does. So, I don’t know. I think it’s probably just an opinion.

Jonathan: Yeah. I agree with you there really. But one of the great things to do folks is to look at some of these people and what they’re doing and I wouldn’t say totally copy them, but be influenced by what they’re doing and find your own little path. And like what Robert said, let it become a habit and this won’t cost you any money but in the end, it will pay dividends, you know, it will work.

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: Now, another area, when we’re talking about mobile Robert which people have got to be aware of is email because email and texting and phone calls, texts and email are central to being an effective Real Estate Agent. Just a quick little bit of advice here folks. If you’ve got your own domain name, let’s say you’ve got your own website, do not allow your hosting company to control the email side of your business. Just do not do it. The reason why I’m suggesting this is that it will bite you in the backside in the end and secondly, there are much better solutions for dealing with the email part of your domain. So, let’s say you’re jonathandenwood.com, I would not have who hosts your website control your email. If I was advising anybody, I would say let Google deal with it and let Google apps deal with your email. Now, if you’re a Microsoft person, I would say Microsoft are the second resource using their cloud-based system.

There are some other providers as well. But if I was really being truthful to somebody, I would say, because of just the technology lead they’ve got at the present moment, I would let Google apps deal with my email and they would even do that in a team situation. It would probably cost you $50 each team member. But then, why do I say that? Because it’s a central pillar of your business and Google’s technology, it would just allow you to have a central place to administrate your emails and the people in your team. And also, it will be available almost on all devices seamlessly. Also, Google’s added new technology when it comes to voice notes. Inside Gmail or Google Apps, you can actually speak to and it will write out an email and then send it and it actually works quite well. What do you reckon about that Robert?

Robert: Well, I appreciate everything that you said about those tools. As usual, you’re more in tune with the email side and the email nurturing side than me. That is something that I focus on a bit but I have most of my system set up automatically through MailChimp and I actually kind of fire and forget. I don’t do as much email as I should. Like you’re saying about, “Oh, hey. I don’t know as much about Instagram as I should.” I certainly don’t know much . . .

Jonathan: I think I want to clarify one thing with you, Robert. I want to make clear and apologize Robert is that you’ve just brought in MailChimp. I was talking about personal email, business email. Whereas I classify MailChimp to be a Marketing email platform and Mail-Right offers that to some extent as well. But they are a Marketing, Drip Email Marketing platform. I was talking about your day to day email communication between your clients and team members.

Robert: Oh! Dear Lord. Yes. I agree entirely. And I do a tremendous amount of email communications through my cell phone, again, through my cell phone and I’ll tell you why. And I can’t really figure out why this is. But actually, mobile technology is better for voice recognition by a 100 times than desktop technology because everybody has focused, like Google has focused and kept a lot of their technology centered around their phone and you have to get different tools for voice recognition for your PC. I find that my cell phone technology which has an application from both Samsung and Google and they’re both excellent now. They’re both amazing. These voice recognition systems. So, when you say you do, yes, I use my Gmail all the time and I use my voice recognition tool. I oftentimes prefer to email from my telephone because I can use it as a voice recognition tool which I love.

Jonathan: I think there’s just one thing I need to clarify even there. I just realized it. Gmail. See, Google’s got two sides of their email platform, their day to day email platform. They’ve got Gmail.com which would be like jdenwood@gmail.com.

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: So it’s branded. But then they’ve got this, what they call, Google Apps which offers a suite, Word docs, a form of Excel, their Google Calendar, which they have recently greatly improved. And basically, that can be your domain. So you could have a domain, example jonathan@jonathandenwood.com. That’s their paid service. Gmail is their free email service.

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: You can integrate the free with the paid in one interface as well. I would suggest anybody, any Real Estate Agent, you need a professional email address. You want it to be the same to your main website domain. But I wouldn’t allow your hosting provider to control your email. It’s reasonably simple. Any I.T. person will be able to help you set this up is to set up your Google Apps account and then have your existing domain be controlled by Google Apps. Did that make any sense Robert?

Robert: It did. I think that we’ve probably have lost a few of our listeners.

Jonathan: Unfortunately, we have, haven’t we?

Robert: Because I don’t know of very many Real Estate Agents that actually use Google Apps. I do. But here’s the funny thing. My primary email address is still inboundrem@gmail.com. Not that I don’t have Google Apps, because I do but I built the business on top of that general thing and I own the domain. So any time anybody puts anything in front of it, sales@inbound or robert@, it comes to me. The time that I’m going to need a lot of email addresses is when I build my staff up a different way which I haven’t had to do. But, yes, what you’re saying, I totally do agree with what you’re saying and I understand what you’re saying. And in terms of having an email address that establishes himself, I do agree with you mostly. Though I agree with the concept of, I don’t care who you work for, Keller Williams, you name any type of Brokerage and they’re all going to give you an email address that says sheila@kw.com, right?

That’s what Keller Williams does. You should probably build your business around Sheila, your business name because you’re going to have to have one as an Agent or as a Broker. Most of the time you have a business name and it’s usually like Sheila Real Estate or Real Estate in whatever it is. That is what you should use as your domain name. And clearly denote, because if you should ever decide to change Brokerages, instead of having to rebrand yourself entirely, you keep all of your Digital Marketing separate from your Brokerage Marketing. And that is the smart way to build your Real Estate business which is kind of adding on to your comments about Google Apps and things like that. So, if we’re going to get into the advanced version, there you go. I’ve added another layer to confuse our listeners even more.

Jonathan: Well, it’s extremely good advice. Unfortunately, your Brokerage, it depends on the Brokerage though, they might not be too happy. Well, they can’t make you. Let’s put it this way. They will encourage you to use their domain name and their one-page section about you but you’ve really got to understand that you’re really there to market yourself with the help of your Brokerage, obviously.

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: But you’re both independent businesses that are working together, aren’t you Robert?

Robert: Yep. And we’ve just hit the 30-minute mark but when we come back, what I would like to do is I have a question for you about Facebook Live.

Jonathan: All right. We’re going to wrap up the actual audio podcast part of the show but we’re going to continue the discussion for probably another 12 minutes, 15 minutes which you’ll be able to see on the Mail-Right website with a full set of notes and links to everything that we’ve discussed during the show. But before we go, Robert, how can people find out more about you and what you’re up to in your passions?

Robert: Sure. I’m the founder of an Online Marketing company that specializes in Real Estate. I’ve been doing Real Estate Marketing for a long time and you can find out all that information right here at inboundrem.com. You can see it on my hat. There it is, inboundrem.com

Jonathan: Right. That’s great. And if you want to find more about Mail-Right, go to the Mail-Right website, mail-right.com. And like I say, there will be the full shows on the site with the bonus content from our guests with full show notes. And there’s other materials and stuff there. And if you need any advice from me, just fill in the Contact Us form or go to the Facebook page and ask me a question. I’m always here to help folks. We’ll see you next week folks. Bye

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