#193 Mail Right Show We Discuss How To Use Video To Get Leads

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How To Use Video To Get Leads & Build a Powerful Local Brand With George B. Thomas

Video over the past couple of years has become a great way for an independent real estate agent to develop a strong local brand. With our guest George B.Thomas, we discuss the in and out of how to use this video to get the real results you are looking for.

George for the past 15 years, has been helping people and organizations become their best selves. Sometimes, it’s that “aha” moment that happens when someone hears one of his speeches. Other times, it happens during a training session. That’s what he does – unleash hidden potential.

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right Show. This is episode 193. We got a great guest folks. We got George B. Thomas in the house. We are going to be discussing all things video. And how you should be using video in 2019. To those kind of quality leads that you’re looking for. Unfortunately they are really good looking part of my normal partnership. Robert, he’s not with us this week. He’s roaming on a flight probably as we speak. He’s on a business trip. And he wasn’t able to join us, but he should be back next week hopefully. So George, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show. Would you like to tell the new listeners and viewers something about yourself?

George: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. I’m super excited. I love video. I love podcasting. I love when they can come together. And I love the fact that you started out, it’s like 193 episodes. It’s not your first Rodeo. So this is going to be a good, good show to be on, a good episode to have. Because we’re going to learn a lot. So a little bit about myself, I really am a kind of an incognito nerd. I’ve always loved the develop websites. I’ve always loved design. I’ve always loved video. Years and years ago before video became cool, I would nerd out in after effects. But in 2012, I stumbled across this thing that is inbound and got into hubspot and marketing automation and inbound sales and all that stuff. And that led me to this journey that about three, maybe even four years ago, really started focusing on why video is kind of getting to this point where it’s becoming a thing.

Not from the technical side, but from the human side of it. So right now I currently work at a company called Impulse Creative. We help companies with branding, website, video, marketing, sales, and all those things. Not just me, it’s a team. But one of the things that I do is I create a ton of video content on a show called Sprocket Talk. And it’s specific to people in the marketing, sales and service space. So that’s kind of what I do like all day. Spend a time in front of the camera, educating, teaching and really communicating because that’s the major principle of how we’re using video in today’s digital space.

Jonathon: That`s fantastic George. So George, our podcast is mostly aimed at real estate agents. I just wanted to say to the new listeners and viewers, last month was our biggest month for the show. So far we had over 500 new people join so that’s fantastic. So me and Robert, we’ve been plugging about producing really good content for your website. As a real estate agent, really get into video and also mythologies that use paid traffic as well. And combining those into an effective marketing plan of action. But video’s becoming more and more important for real estate agents to build a personal and a local brand. Now, if you were a real estate agent, how would you be looking at utilizing video to help you build a brand?

George: Yeah, for sure. So I think we have to take a step back and we have to think about the term video in itself. A lot of people right now when we say video, they think only marketing videos. They think website. They think maybe a tour of a house or commercial real estate. Maybe some tips or tricks to how to buy or how to lease those things, which is great. And we should absolutely do that. And there’s an entire kind of marketing video funnel. And a mindset of the potential buyers that we should be paying attention to on that side of it. But there’s also this whole other side that if I was in that business. Well the most important thing if I was trying to gain trust. Cause if you have trust, you can sell anything.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. If two people trust you, you’re going to be successful. So if I want to gain that trust, the other side of this that I’m going to pay attention to is one-to-one personal videos. And I mean all the time, everywhere. So using a service, like maybe vineyards, go video, maybe it’s something like Wistia soapbox, maybe its loom. Heck, maybe you Google a bunch of other possible tools you can use. But being able to put a video inside of an email instead of writing 5,000 words. Now they got a video they can watch it. Maybe you think about using a video response. If you’re actually talking to somebody in Facebook messenger. Or if you’re putting something in an actual, a text message, maybe it’s a video that they can watch. And so really figuring out a way that you can use video in all the places that you would have potential customer or lead interactions.

And why I’m saying that is because it comes down to face to face time. It comes down to communication. Being able to see the verbal and nonverbal things that are happening on the screen that you can’t see in text, in messenger or text in an email. And really it is a way that you can connect at a deeper level with folks. Because it’s the closest thing we have to, like if we were sitting at a coffee shop and talking face to face, we can do that. Actually we are doing that right now on this video. So if I had to start from a foundational piece, I would say pay attention to the marketing side of the videos, but then also the one to one communication. And when I say one to one, I mean very personalized type videos. I would pay attention to those as well.

Jonathon: I think you got a great point there. Because in the real estate area, just like in any online marketing, marketing automization is the buzz word. But also there’s a great, I feel great demand for that kind of personal interaction. So the two things seem very contradictory. Don’t they George? I think by utilizing video you can bring the two together to some extent. Can’t you?

George: Yeah, I think it comes down to, and here’s the problem. Most times we like to bucketize as humans. We like to bucketize things. And so if you hear people talk about video right now, they’ll say, well, it’s a marketing strategy. Or somebody else might say, well it’s a sales tactic. And what I’m saying is that we need to think bigger than that and actually it be a company culture. So you think back to like when mobile devices became this thing and there was this like mobile get in. And everybody was like, oh, we got to think mobile first. Because people are going to be using a phone and they’re going to be using a tablet. Well, here’s the thing, I think there’s going to be a video getting, meaning and you’d need to think video first.

You need to have a culture of video and you need to realize that video is not a tactic, not a strategy, but it is a communication device. Or way of communicating with people who if they like, you will want to spend money with you. So why not do that? Then there’s a bunch of hurdles that people usually have when it comes to video, but we can talk about those. But again, it’s a mindset of a video culture. It’s a mindset of having canned videos and also really personalized videos. And even a strategy on maybe how to use those together when you’re communicating with folks.

Jonathon: Now where does this lies? Because we failed unfortunately for this episode to push it live to Facebook. But I think it might be something to do with Facebook itself. Cause last time we got trouble. Facebook was having an outrage. But how do you fit live video into your genuine video strategy George?

George: Yeah. Yeah. So let me just preface this that I think that live video is the deep end of the pool. Meaning if I’m, somebody is just getting started or thinking about getting started with video, that’s not the place that I’m going to jump in first. I’m going to start with something that I can control a little bit. Meaning I’m going to record a couple of canned videos. I’m going to realize that I have the editing process to clean those up. And I can polish them up and make them nice and presentable so that I get comfortable with that type of creating a video. Then I’m going to step into one to one personal videos, which is almost like a live video because you can hit record and it’s recording you. And you’re maybe showing them a browser tab or a window in your browser.

Or maybe it’s just you’re talking to them. But you’re not really doing any production. There’s no intro, there’s no outro, and you’re not cutting it. It’s just like a human conversation put into video and sent over. And then past that is where I get into live video. And what I think live video is great for us when it’s time for, not one to one engagement, but one to many engagements. So for instance, we do what called Sprocket Talks unpacked. It’s a live show for 30 minutes where we take one tool of hubspot and we unpack all the things that you can do with that, tools, tactics, strategies, how to use it. And people join in and they ask questions about that specific tool or about specific strategies around that tool. Another thing that you might do with a live is let’s say you have 10, 15, 50, a hundred people and you want to do a Q and A about a property.

Well, instead of just answering a bunch of questions, a bunch of different times to a bunch of different people. Maybe you actually say, Hey, Thursday, December 27th, we’re going to have a live Q and a on property X, Y, Z, log into my Facebook or log into my, well, not really log in, but join me on my Facebook or join me on my live YouTube channel, wherever. And you can do that. Or the other part of this is that it’s something that’s happening and you just want to share with a broad audience. Like if I’m a Realtor by the way. I’m always working leads. Like I would probably have 200 people that eventually someday could buy a house or lease a property. Like that’s just how I would work it. And so if all a sudden there’s a new property that is available and I’ve done a really great job of getting those people to talk kind of puddle around me as the thought leader in the space.

Now I go live and I start doing like, oh my gosh, guys just came on the market. Look at this living room. Is that fireplace not dope? Oh my gosh. Because now do you see what just happened? Like I got excited and because I’m in the moment, it’s something new. It’s something fresh. It’s something special. Now you have those people, they’re like, oh my gosh, look at this fireplace. Like can you imagine a sitting by this fireplace like that? That is where I think live fits in a couple of different places for specific like realtors and using that technology.

Jonathon: That is fantastic. How would you plan your videos then? Would you be looking at doing at least a couple a week?

George: Wow. You’re probably asking the wrong guy, because I do a couple a day. But if I was just going to do like normal and realize I have other work to do. I think you can do a couple different strategies. One, you could do a daily video. If I’m doing it daily video, its maybe two to five minutes and I might do something where it’s just here’s my ideas. I’m not going to do a lot of editing and I’m going to push it out there. It might go on my Facebook and might go on my LinkedIn. Cause by the way, if I’m a Realtor, I’m using LinkedIn video right now because that’s hot.

And also there’s going to be LinkedIn live coming out. It’s in Beta right now anyway. So I’m definitely going to do that. But there’s the other strategy of quality over quantity. And so maybe I have one video a week that I take some more time and I put some production value in. For instance, I already told you that we do Sprocket Talk videos. Those are daily updates or tutorials. But we have one video that we do one per week and it’s called what is. And it’s where we take a marketing, a sales or a service term, and we actually talk about what is it, why it is important to your company and three or four or five ways that you can implement it for your business.

So that’s more of like a, almost a little bit of a pillar piece of video because we’re answering multiple questions and giving tips on it. That’s going to take a little bit more production. So I might do one of those a week, so you can have kind of a mixed bag. But the biggest thing that I’ll say is that if I’m a Realtor and I’m watching this. And I’m worried about like what strategy am I going to use? The starting point is just do it? Like you can sit and concept the strategy for months and then you haven’t made any videos.

So here’s one thing I’ll say, don’t worry about perfection. Worry about publishing because if it’s not published, nobody can see it and it’s not getting any performance. And you’re not getting paid. That was a lot of p’s, but the idea is if you’re going to start this, pay attention to any question that you’ve ever been asked. Answer those questions on video and publish them. And the first one, it might stink. The fifth one might not be as bad. The 10th one might even still be a little bit cringey for you because you’re seeing yourself and hearing yourself the way that the world actually does. But by the time you get to the 20th the 50th or the hundredth, the 500th like you’re going to be a master at it. And people are going to be like, yeah, like Jim, he uses video everywhere. He’s amazing.

That’s the strategy. Just get going and focus on micro and macro content at the same time.

Jonathon: That’s great. George, we’re going to go for a break folks. We’d be back in a few moments.

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Jonathon: We are coming back. George B Thomas has been educating us on video. Before we go back into the interview part, I also want to tell you that you can try Mail Right my all in one marketing solution to get quality leads for $1 for 14 days. So if you go to the Mail Right website and go to the plans section and sign up. You can try the full power of Mail Right for $1 for 14 days. And you’ll also get our on boarding call with me personally to get you set up with Mail Right. That’s a fantastic offer. I would like to talk about some of the equipment and what do you, when it comes to equipment what do you think? If a real estate agent if they’re really going to get serious and really have a go at video. As one of the key marketing tools, what they’ve got a look at and what maybe you can give some tips and insights about equipment and software that they need.

George: Yeah. So the first thing is keep it simple. Don’t let, there’s two major things that people have hurdles with. Well, actually there are three major really, it’s budget, and it’s time. And then equipment falls in there because it’s part of the budget. But keep it simple. Use whatever you have. Like, look, most of us have cell phones, cell phones have cameras. You can literally put your cell phone on a tripod. Add a little mic to it. Be outside in the daylight and you could create a video that would be awesome and usable because it’s steady. There’s good lighting and there’s good audio. Now pass that everybody wants to kind of jump into the DSLR camera, which by the way, I’m using for this interview, but I’ve done hundreds of interviews with my Webcam, which is also sitting at my desk. And its fine because right now you can buy a Webcam that is like HD 1920 by 10 80 or you can even get something like the Logitech Breo, which is a four k camera.

And so like, it’s just amazing quality. So use what you have, no matter if it’s your cell phone, no matter if it’s a Webcam, no matter if you can afford a DSLR, use what you have. Now, some major things that I kind of dropped in there when it comes to equipment, you’re going to want to have some type of tripod because you’re going to want it to be steady and stable no matter what one of those cameras you’re going to use. If you’re going to make your videos outside that you don’t need lighting. Or if you happen to have a window that’s in your office and you could open the drapes or the blinds and you’ve got daylight, you don’t need lighting. But if there are other scenarios other than that, you’re going to need some lights. Don’t spend a bunch of money at first.

You can go on Amazon and you can look for what is called newer lights. NEWERR I do believe. They’re like 25 to 50 bucks depending on which one you want to get. And you can get two or three lights. One for your right, one for your left, one for behind you depending on how you want to light the room. And so now it looks presentable. There’s good color, always kind of tried to do daylight lighting as well. You’re going to want to have a good mic. In this case I’m talking on an ATR 2100. It’s like 50 bucks. So again, not spending a bunch of money or you could get something like this, which is the road Mike up here. That’s a couple hundred but again it comes to having great audio, great lighting. And then the video is just going to be great because everything at this point does 10 80.

The one other piece of this that I will say that you should pay attention to. Well actually I’ll do a couple, cause I just love adding a ton of value is the background in which you’re going to be doing your videos on. Even if it’s a blank wall right now, do something to make it a little bit creative. Maybe it’s putting pictures on the wall, maybe it’s having a bookcase, and maybe some stuffed animals or Avengers or whatever you’re into. Bringing some of your personality or your brand into play with it as well. So maybe you’re in your office space, but can you make your office space look a certain way behind you? So that adds to the element of the video. Also, if you’re a Realtor, you’re always on the go. So when I say tripod, you might be like, well, I’m not looking all this crap around with me.

So if I’m a realtor, I’m going to go with something like maybe even a GoPro and I’m going to get a little like Joby Gorilla pod. And I’m going to get a little tiny road Mike. And there’s a kit that you can put together. And it automatically stabilizes itself. So if I’m a Realtor on the go. I can easily pull out my GoPro and I can start to do a video and I know it’s not going to look all shaky. And what’s cool is with some of the latest versions of the GoPro`s, you can actually go right to like a Facebook live if you want it. So go back to the fact of now we want to do something, we’re on the move and we want to have the element of being able to go live quickly. So as you can see, there’s a ton of ways that you can go with your gear. It’s really figuring out what budget you have. And then fitting the main elements, audio, lighting and video into that budget. But again, I go back to just do it, erase any hurdles, get the stuff and start recording.

Jonathon: What do you think about using IPhone or android? Because most agents live on their phone. It’s the thing that’s with them. And can you get, I’m pretty sure you can get stabilizers or grips and use your IPhone. But what kind of standard of video can you get from them now?

George: Oh, it’s great. Like it’s amazing. Here’s the thing, I’ve done videos with my cell phone. I’ve done videos with my webcam. I’ve done videos with my DSLR. You know what I’ve never heard from anybody who watches my videos. Oh Man. That phone video just didn’t really look good. Or that Web cam video, man, I could just tell like nobody knows. I could shoot three video, the same video three different times and people would be like, yeah, it’s a video. What they care more about is the quality of the conversation coming out of your mouth. The value that you’re giving. The answering their questions. The being a happy, helpful human. That’s what they care about. So when it comes to cell phone I’m actually a big cell phone, video nerd. There’s a company, couple of companies, one’s called Beast Grip www.beastgrip.com.

You can get a case for your phone. You can get a attachments from Mike’s for your phone lights, for your phone, tripods, for your phone rigging like an actual rig for your phone. They’ve got a thing called a DOF adapter, which is depth of field adapter. You can put on this kit and then use like Canon lenses with your phone. Like you could get super nerdy with some of this stuff that you can do with cell phones. And there’s even a gentleman, his name is Dean Nimmons on YouTube that talks about all of this stuff that you can do with smartphones and creating video. And look, if you got zero budget, that’s immediately one of the roads that I would journey down because nobody is ever going to look at you as long as it’s stable and as long as you use good lighting. And with a cell phone that’s really important because cell phones and bad lighting, it gets all like pixelated and grainy. So have really great lighting and great audio. Nobody’s going to even know that it was your phone. Here’s a bonus pro tip. If you download an APP called filmic pro, (https://www.filmicpro.com/) it actually allows you to use your phone to shoot at two and four K as well.

Jonathon: Obviously you are going to need the upper versions of the IPhone or android for storage. Aren`t you?

George: Well, so there’s a hack around that too. So yes you’re going to need some storage space but you’re not going to be shooting like a two hour documentary. So any five, seven, 10 12 minute video, it’s going to go ahead and hold that. But there is a thing called I expand and what I expand does is it plugs into, let’s just use iPhone for this example. It plugs into your iPhone and it actually lets you back up your photos and videos on one side of it as the lightning port, the other side of is a USB so I can easily plug it in, take all the files that I just recorded back them up, remove them from my iPhone, go and put them on my computer. And now instead of using my phone like the typical user does, where they fill it up with 10,000 pictures of their baby, the pizza, the burger they had last Tuesday, a tile of a floor that they liked.

Now you’re using your phone because you are creating video as almost a usable storage area that can get removed and backed up onto your computer. And so all of those photos, all those videos, everything actually lives in the cloud or on a larger device and your phone can stay cleaner. I will say you can still leave your baby photos on there and the picture of your burger because you could only back up those videos and then delete them off your phone and kind of reuse that space. But yes, if you have an iPhone four or three at first of all, it might be time to upgrade anyway. But yes, having a seven, seven plus or above is really going to be helpful if you’re going to do that smartphone video.

Jonathon: So when it comes to editing, what would you recommend somebody starting out and you say when it comes to the free minute videos that you might be doing every day. You don’t have to worry so much, but when it comes to longer, what would you recommend around editing?

George: Yeah, so there’s about three or four different levels that I’ll talk at here. First of all, if you’re doing smart phone video and you’re going with this whole mobile video thing. If you have an iPod or an android tablet that goes with your phone and they sync together. You could get a piece of software or an APP. I guess I should call it, because we’re talking mobile, called Luma Fusion. And you can actually edit the videos right on your phone or right on your tablet. So that’s one. If you have low budget, you should just do a Google search for free video editors. And there are free video editors that you download. By the way, if you Google that, you’re probably going to come across a gentleman called Justin Brown from Primo Video and he always is redoing these videos on like Davinci resolve. And some other free editors that you can get.

Now, for me personally, I try to remove all hurdles. So when I think about editors, I think about simplicity. So one of my favorite editors she used day in day out is called Camtasia. And it’s like a hundred bucks or 150 bucks. And it’s really about knowing the 30% of what I need that editor to do to make a video pop. We get it out and just get it published. But if I’m going for something that’s very high production and I’ve got time for the learning curve and it just has to be amazing, then I’m going to go into Adobe Premiere. But there’s no reason to do that for every video. If it’s going to slow your production time down. Find something that streamlines your process. Like literally one of the things that I played with for about a six month period was using a live technology called Ecam live.

It’s for Mac. It allows you to have scenes in your broadcast almost like OBS, which is open broadcast system. But Ecam allows you to have scenes in your recording. And what I would do is I would use my webcam. I would have a scene that would be an intro, a scene that would be an outro. A scene that would show me full face and a scene that would have me next to like a browser window where I might be doing work. And I’d literally hit record and I’d hit my intro and then I’d hit me and I do my video.

And then I’d be like, let’s look at the portal. And I hit the next scene and I do my work inside of the actual hubspot portal I was working in. I’d go back to the scene of just me. And I’m like, so here’s what we learned today. And I hit the outro and then when I would hit finish, I would literally have a video that was already edited. And so I just had to clip the front clip the end and I could upload it and publish it. And nobody knew that it never hit an editor because I was literally editing it as I went through with these scenes in Ecam live. So there’s a bunch of different ways that you can rethink what video has always been and make it what it video needs to be for you and your process.

Jonathon: I think that`s fantastic. The main reason I brought you on the show because I knew you are a real nerd when it comes to video. And you are real passionate about the subject. But you’re normally passionate because I do watch your Facebook videos. So it’s been fantastic. We’re going to wrap up now the podcast. So George, what is the best way for people to find out more about you? Your knowledge and what you are up?

George: Yeah, definitely. So first of all, if you want to see what we’re doing, if you want to watch videos, if you want to learn about sales marketing service. Head over to YouTube, just do a search for Sprocket Talk. You’ll find me and my crazy hair and typically me wearing my glasses. And talking about all things sales, marketing and service. If you have specifically like a question that you want to ask me, you can find me George B. Thomas on LinkedIn or George B. Thomas on Twitter. And then if you want to connect it like a very human level you can find me on the book of Faces or Facebook. And there’s really at marketing speaker is my page. But if you look for Mr. George B. Thomas, that’s my just profile. And so if you want the more human side, go Mr. George B. Thomas. If you want the more speaker MC side, then go at marketing speaker on Facebook. Any of those is going to get you to me and just know that I am the type of guy that if you ask me a question, I’ll give you an answer. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll learn the answer and then I’ll give you the answer. Because that’s what it’s all about, is being a catalyst for others to be their best selves.

Jonathon: That’s great George. And you have to come back on the broadcast. Because I really enjoyed the conversation. And like I said my cohost Robert, we’ll be back next week. And also to remember if you’re looking for quality leads. Go to the Mail Right website. See what we’ve got to offer. And if you want to try one of our plans, you can try one of our plans for $1 for 14 days. And also you can your own boarding personal session with me showing you all the power of Mail Right. We will be back next week folks with another great guest or another conversation between me and Robert. About using technology to build your real estate business. We will be back next week folks. Bye.