218 Mail-Right Show Local Videos Leads To More Leads!

How To Use Video on YouTube & Your Website To Get More Leads

In this weeks. episode Robert and I talk about how by using video you can really increase the amount of traffic that your real estate website gets monthly which will lead to a lot more leads!

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail-Rights show. This is episode 218, and it’s going to be an internal discussion between me and my great co-host Robert Newman. We’re going to be discussing Google maps, Google local search, and using video to get really great results when it comes to local search. It’s going to be a fantastic show and I think it’s going to be really interesting for you, our beloved audience. So Robert, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to our new listeners and viewers? And I’d like to say this month is probably going to be a record month for new listeners and viewers, Robert.

Robert: It’s brilliant. Alright, so everybody, my name is Robert Newman. I am the founder of InboundREM. I am a proponent of what is commonly referred to as inbound marketing, which is getting people to come to you as opposed to you going to them. Most of what’s available for real estate is direct marketing and it’s not that, I don’t think there’s a place for that. I just think there are plenty of options for everybody in that category. So I’ve gone a different direction and I talk about a lot of tools to attract people such as creating content that’s really going to answer important questions that your audience is asking and thus, establish you as an expert, drive those people to your destination the destination that you want.

So do John and I a favor, sorry, John. Do John and I have favor by the way, please like this video and if any of you belong to any Facebook group, like marketing groups, team groups, things like that. I know that one of the reasons our audience is growing, I’m starting to get a lot of people saying that they’re sharing this show amongst people in their offices. John and I would really appreciate it if you did that. We work really hard on this and we appreciate all your help.

Jonathon: That’s a great point, thanks for saying that Robert. Then I’m the founder of Mail-Right, it’s a marketing platform and it’s on the opposite side to what Robert does. We attract people by direct marketing, paid through Facebook, and we offer a number of other in-built elements to the Mail-Right platform. So if that sounds interesting, it’s Mail-Right 2.0. We had a massive upgrade a few months ago; go to the website and maybe book a free demo. You’ll get me for a half-hour and I’ll quickly show you the power of Mail-Right. So, Robert, you’ve been off to see a client, you’ve been doing a load of video, you’ve put some of those videos up already and you’ve been getting some fantastic results. Tell us more Robert, about what you’ve been up to.

Robert: Just give me one sec. Okay, so for everybody that’s listening today and has turned us on in your car, what you’re going to want to do is you’re going to want to circle back around and go to the Mail-Right website, if any part of this talk appeals to you, because I’m going to get very specific. I’m going to share my screen, I’m going to do a few other things that we simply cannot do when you’re just listening to the podcast part, but today we’re going to cover two topics. So, a handful of you have recognized the fact that I am a marketer and that’s what I consider myself to be a marketer.

Most marketers are data scientists have of a sort. What we do is we comb through results, at various strategies. We look at the numbers and where we find something exciting; we apply it to our business. It’s a very scientific way of doing marketing. That’s how I do it at least. And so I’ve been seeing some really exciting data-driven results from case studies that I’ve tried. I’ve been trying case studies the entire time John and I had been doing this show together. And one of the biggest, the most amazing case studies seems to be connected to two Google tools, okay, tools that anybody can use. Everybody should be picking up a pen right now.

If you’re listening to this show, you’re going to want to bookmark it because I’m about ready to give you something I’ve spent $300,000 on and I’m going to give it to you for free. So everybody should buckle down and get ready. So we did a case study on YouTube, and John, I’m going to share my screen if you don’t mind. I’m just going to go through the numbers first and then show some examples. And the numbers, I’m pulling up the numbers right now, alright. So the numbers, what we did was we, so the case study was this, I flew out to a client in Salem, Oregon, which is a city of about 169,000 in the outer parts of Oregon. It’s about 60 miles outside of Portland.

And we did two to four-minute-long neighborhood videos and it’s not complicated. It’s basically buddy videos and here are the specifics that you need to write down and you need to remember. So Google, when you’re doing video on Google, there’s a trick to doing that video. You can close caption it, which just means that Google understands what it is you’re saying on the video. So you kind of want to hit about 20 seconds. If you’re doing a two-minute video, you want 10% of the video to be transactional or salesy, and you want the other 80 to 90% to be like entertaining if he can make it that way. So, my buddy and I; my client, we talked about the neighborhood and how his wife liked the trees and the driveways and the cars and the paint and everything else.

And then what we did was we spent 10 minutes talking about the price of the properties 10 years ago and the price of the properties today. That’s the case study and that’s what we did. And now what I’m going to show you, what I’m going to share with you, is the results of that when we added it to his website. Now, here’s the thing guys; I know a lot of you, most of you listening to the show or not anything even remotely close to SEO experts, but all I’ve done for this customer is, I built him a website and I’ve done no SEO work, none. There are a lot of things you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to do big social media campaigns. You’re supposed to do something called back-linking and I’ve done none of that on this site.

This site is acting as if it’s been live for six months, okay, it’s not, it’s been live for five weeks and the client went on vacation. As soon as we finished the site, we shot the videos and the guy goes on vacation. And already we have 142 keywords, we’ve got traffic, we’ve gotten leads all in under 30 days and that; just trust me guys, when I’m talking, when I’m telling you about the strategies that I do, which is creating really amazing content, putting them on sites. The one main downside of my strategies is they take a long time. It’s always the biggest con. Every strategy has its ups and downs, something that John is doing for you, like he can maybe get you a result in under 30-days that you turn something on with direct marketing and you drive that traffic, and as long as you have a website it’s converting, and it is super-fast.

That’s the brilliant part about direct marketing and why there’s always going to be a big space for it. SEO or inbound marketing oftentimes can take months or even years to kick in, and once it does though, it tends to be permanent and it tends to drive a much more high-quality result. So when I’m showing you stuff that I’ve done on a website and what you’re looking at over here on the right for those of you who can see my screen, is positions on Google. Everything one through 10 is on the first page. So these neighborhoods that you’re seeing, a number seven, the only thing I’ve done to them is built a good page and put a video on it. And the only thing that’s different about this website then all the other websites I build, which never get results this fast, is the fact that I put a video on the website.

That’s what’s happening with these sites; a video and I tried a new tool for the very first time, which is a Google snippets tool, which is what you’re looking at right here, okay. It is a tool for putting a map on the page. Alright, so something like this. These two things are sending signals directly to two separate parts of Google’s algorithm and I strongly believe the addition of these two elements into my strategies is yielding very very strong results. But before I move on, what I’m going to do now is, so I’m showing you for those who can see, I’m showing you results but you probably can’t see, so I’ll verbally go over this. Not only are we seeing 300, 400 views in the first five or six weeks on YouTube itself from the videos that we produced for this client, which is pretty impressive.

But in addition, we’re seeing positioning on the website like we’re seeing; we created 50 pages and normally those 50 pages would take six months to 12 months to start getting them onto the first page of Google, which drives traffic to my client, which then gives them a chance to make some money off the website. We’re seeing those kinds of results in 30 days, not 12 months, okay, which is a massive difference. And I do believe that once we get the rest of the work done on the site, the difference is going to be even more impressive. Like it’s going to be even bigger. And the only thing that we’ve done so here’s a video, John can see it. It’s just us in a car. There’s no editing, we did one continuous shot. The video is a total of two minutes. It is not complicated.

To me, talking to the client, you could see the closed captioning. If you’re looking at the screen, I’ll open it up, can’t hear it. Those trees are gorgeous, talking about a neighborhood, this is his wife’s favorite street, and I’m talking about as a Californian, how beautiful. I find this all is. There are just all these beautiful trees and that’s not what we have here. There’s nothing complicated on this video, nothing. We feature the realtor for about 10 seconds. The only thing that we’ve done as an organization is we’ve optimized the video and I will cover very quickly what that means. We added manual, closed captioning; we made sure that the location of the video, which is, by the way, recorded automatically on the phone. So as long as you upload the video, shoot the video in the area that you’re targeting and then upload it to YouTube, it’s automatic.

Google automatically records this cool little location tag. We then did what’s called a video index, which is a description of the video. It’s about 30 or 150 words long. And John, I suggest, I’m going to send you a link right here. I suggest in the show notes, you put a link to the video so that those people interested in like seeing this, can get a link and just go to the video and everybody can copy this. It’s a perfectly done description of a video. I’m not going to get into all the reasons why the podcast because we get really technical, but we have created this amazing example for you, our audience that will show you exactly what you should do in terms of optimizing the video once it’s produced.

The drive along part is so incredibly simple, anybody can do it. There’s no reason why you can’t, and anybody with any budget could do it as well. So that’s the video elements, okay. So that’s, and I’m going to stop sharing the screen for a second. And John, I’m going to ask if you’ve got any questions.

Jonathon: No, just put the link into chat Robert and I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes. There we go.

Robert: Okay, so the second thing I want to cover with our audience today, and I know that I’m going a little deep, but the reason I’m going so deep is that this is the first strategy that I have found that I’ve been able to prove. Not that I’ve heard about or somebody else has done, but I’ve been able to prove myself with an average realtor, not some rock star that’s an actor or something and just does this amazing job. This is just an average guy, even looks average. Like he’s just an average realtor, he’s nothing top or bottom of the stack.

So the next thing is, and we’re getting a result. He’s gotten two phone calls. So he’s literally leveraged video to the point that he has a chance to make money and he has a chance to do that five or six weeks. And his website is taking off in terms of ranking. So we have two separate areas of performance and he’s got 300 or 400 views on his YouTube channel, which all makes this incredibly, that we established for him. So five, six weeks ago, zero views now, four or 500 pretty incredible results for a brand new channel, on a brand new website. The other element though, there’s a second piece of secret sauce that I’m going to share with the audience today. Again, it’s a little complicated in terms of an average.

Jonathon: Can we, sorry to interrupt but just go for a break and you can tell them the secret source; the second part of the secret source in part two. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks.

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Jonathon: Robert has been concocting his spells, his SEO concoctions. His spells, he’s beginning some fantastic results, for his local videos and he’s got some more impressive results and things to tell us in the second part. Sorry, Robert, I interrupted you a little abruptly in the first half.

Robert: That’s okay.

Jonathon: Go on, and tell us some more.

Robert: So guys, audience and everybody, I know that some of the time that John and I get a little bit deep in terms of some of the things we talk about. We have to in order to try to bring you to a place where you can make money off our tips, where you can get to a point that you really understand the topic. And so I have to give you a little bit of background before I give you this next tip. But trust me, the payout is worth it. So a lot of people, maybe even John, I don’t know have understood that Google introduced an AI into their search algorithm about two years ago. But not very many people keep up with all the updates from Google to understand how RankBrain is impacting search.

So, when they first released it two years ago, they clearly said that it was going to be impacting about 10% of search and they were looking at using it only on long-tail searches, which is just very long search queries and RankBrain was supposed to be interpreting what those queries meant. And now Google has been getting vaguer and vaguer and vaguer about how RankBrain is impacting the algorithm. My belief and a lot of other search guys who focus a lot on how Google is working are thinking that it’s because it’s taken over a huge percentage of the search algorithm. And I’m going to submit as a thought not, I’m not declaring that I know this for sure, but I am going to say that I’ve been watching Google do some incredible things in terms of recognizing behavior online.

Like they’ve gotten so good at interpreting user behavior on websites that I believe that a lot of the other signals that they used to use to rank sites are diminishing. And the number one thing that you as a website owner should be paying attention to now is making your website usable. It’s not about backlinks anymore. It’s not about necessarily promoting things socially. It’s about making sure that when people arrive at your site, you have an incredibly useful site so that people hang on the page for a while and they click many other pages that are putting it down at its simplest level, which is why video is so important, to gets people to hang on the site, okay, so it gets a little extra time.

What RankBrain is doing, is measuring that time against other people of the same topic and it’s doing it instantaneously, which means that user behavior is becoming the absolute holy grail of SEO and inbound marketing. And what is usability on a real estate website? Everybody always asks me that. I’m going to show you. So I’m going to share my screen again. And for those that aren’t able to see, I found an inbound marketer, real estate agent that is local to me in a city called Thousand Oaks. And he has done some incredible usability things using tools that anybody can use. As a matter of fact, he did these tools himself. He’s ranking for his top searches, and I mean top searches, he’s ranking for the name of the city itself, Thousand Oaks.

He’s ranking for Lake Sherwood, which is another term; he’s on the second page for one of the richest cities in the Conejo Valley, which is called Westlake village. How is he doing all of that? You might ask how he is getting all of that ranking, which by the way is driving 6,500 people into the site, six to 10,000 people per month.

Jonathon: Wow.

Robert: Yes, and I won’t reveal this on the show, but I did check the MLS, and all I will say is that his revenue tripled in the last year, which is also when he redesigned the site and made it more usable. So all the things I’m showing you are recent changes and his commission matches the traffic and the usability of the site. So in other words, he’s making money and a relatively large amount of it. So we come here to the site, and guys, one of the things that all of this is kind of who cares; is home page is okay, it’s not anything special. But that’s not the page that’s ranking–

Jonathon: I’m actually not seeing the page; I’m just seeing the Mail-Right Facebook page.

Robert: Hold on a second here. Okay.

Jonathon: I think you need to select your desktop.

Robert: Yes.

Jonathon: If you go to share and then select desktop.

Robert: I have to re-share it, alright. Can you see?

Jonathon: I’m seeing the results from [inaudible 20:04].

Robert: Yes, okay. That’s exactly what we want to be seeing. So we go to his top pages, we look at the pages that are driving his traffic down. For those that don’t know, Google has really gotten quite good at measuring every single page on your website for its own intrinsic value. In other words, these days in which we put like garbage filler contents on our website because we think we should, is gone. We should do the best that we can to make sure that every single page has value on the site because Google measures behavior overall. This particular page, which is awesome because it has what’s to love and what’s not to love, which is a really clever element on the page, it’s great, but what drives all the activity on the page? The rest of the page is pretty common.

This right here, believe it or not, is a Google tool that’s out of Google maps that anybody can do. You can create what’s called a Google maps snippet. It sounds; you can install on the page with the link just like you do a YouTube video and then it works amazingly, and it pops up on the Google maps search results. So if you do something super cool like this, where every time you’re clicking on one of these highlighted elements, you’re seeing a description of a city with a link to his page. And by the way, if he’s ever shot a video, he puts the video link in here too. So basically off this map, you can access every single content page.

You can click on it, you get a price range, you get YouTube video access, and this is what is making this page rank, this map. I’m virtually guaranteeing everybody that’s listening to this. This page is more useful than any other page that is talking about Thousand Oaks, which is why he’s on the first page of Google for the search term Thousand Oaks. Additionally, he’s going to rank really, really well in the hyper-local version of Google, which is really incredibly important for real estate. That’s a major part of your business; it is people on their phones doing searches. So the name of the site for those that are just listening, conejovalleyguy that’s spelled C, O N E J O V A L L E Y G U Y.com.

The page that I’m using as an example, it says Thousand Oaks neighborhoods, okay, and you can access it through; you click on his neighborhoods tab, which is clearly on the homepage, and then you’ll see a whole bunch of neighborhoods. I clicking West Lake village neighborhoods or Thousand Oak Neighborhoods is the pages that are ranking. But he’s done these interactive maps on every single one of these pages. My guess is, he probably spent about six hours producing this, and the return is six to 10,000 people per month. There’s obviously a lot of other things that he’s done and he probably spent a lot of money redesigning his site, because he redesigned the site with a company, a local company out here called artifact, which is a big custom real estate shop.

And he spent; I know what they charge so he spent a fair amount of money on it. But guys, those are my two tips, John. That’s what I’ve got for the audience today. I strongly suggested I could keep going on and on about this, but I’m watching these two things make major differences on websites and fast, not slow. I think that Google has created a hole in the algorithm for their own tools that maybe if we produce a website using YouTube and these Google maps that possibly we don’t even need to worry as much. I mean about link building and social, we probably can still do those things but maybe we can wait or not do them as much and still see major results super-fast.

Jonathon: Well, I’m not that surprised in a way because the problem with back-links is that they are looking for quality, aren’t they? But to get a real quality domain to backlink to you is not easy, is it? Most of the links, especially in real estate you are going to get; are going to be medium to lower quality. You’re going to get a lot of lower, medium to low-quality backlinks in reality. And that’s not precisely what Google’s looking for, but usability and staying on the website and how long you stay on the website, and how many pages you actually search on that particular website is something that’s not that easy for somebody to manipulate. And it’s in some ways a much clearer guide of the use of [inaudible 25:23] of that particular website. Is it not?

Robert: It is.

Jonathon: I think the great thing that we’ve pointed out over the weeks is that you can do this on your own website. It’s a fantastic idea, but you can get some really great results also by using the Google business page. But then linking it all sites are really decent website that you control is also a great idea, if you haven’t got the money to do that or the time, or a bit of both, you can still get some results by concentrating on your Google business page, can’t you?

Robert: You certainly can.

Jonathon: But so many agents aren’t doing it, are they?

Robert: No, there are very few agents who are using the tools that Google is offering for free. And the more that I have the chance because I’ve been building a piece of technology for a while that slowed me down in terms of looking at case studies that really make a difference. And the more I’m getting into these case studies, the more I’ve got to keep saying this over and over to everybody that’s listening, we can blow the doors of Zillow and Trulia using just a little bit of elbow grease or failing that. Finding some guys like John and I who have come across strategies that we’re leveraging. If I have to spend less time doing this for you, I charge you less. I don’t need to charge you 10 grand a month.

If I can make some changes to Google my business page, and do some strategies for you, you’re essentially paying me a much smaller rate. So once again, we’re getting back to the era of real estate, where there are some options for guerrilla marketing, that anybody can apply and they can actually get leads. And we haven’t seen that in a long time people, not in a long time. So I’m getting really excited and pumped up that we can do; that you guys can do some videos and apply them the right way and start making some money and that’s all you’re doing, is those videos and that’s really exciting to me personally.

Jonathon: Yes, just to wrap up folks. I think the key thing you got to understand is that 2020 is going to be the year of the video, video, video. And really super-local neighborhood, plenty of videos around open houses, houses that you represent and then buyers, sellers. It really doesn’t matter. And with newfound technology, you just get fantastic results. They don’t have to be super slick, but just pumping those videos out, getting them on your website, tagging them properly, and get them on your Google business page. You’re going to get guaranteed of some great results. We’re going to finish off this podcast. Robert’s been having some technical problems, but he struggled to come on the show much appreciate it, Robert. So Robert, how can people find out more about you and what you’re up to?

Well, listen, everybody, John is always driving the show and doing such a great job of it. About once every 10 or 15 episodes, I like to stop pause minute. John is a great guy, we met doing this podcast. He had me on as a guest and then I was incredibly flattered and he asked me to come back and be a part of the show. And over the years I was [inaudible 28:50] doing this out of the good because I want to educate. And it’s been interesting because I’ve actually started to have some people call me off the show, which has been a trend that’s been increasing over the last few months.

Like I’ve had like six calls of people, off the show, but John is an amazing technologist himself. He’s been building a tool, a CRM tool. He’s been really like; he’s been deep in the weeds with this for a long time. These things, they take time. They take energy. I strongly recommend that those of you that might be looking for a CRM solution; give him a call. I don’t know if it’s the right fit for all of you. I am going to say that John will do his best to talk to you about the options that he does know a lot, that he will spend his time educating you where he can. And I think that time spent with him, would be well-spent.

In terms of me, if you want to get in touch with me, you can do so at inboundrem.com. It’s my website. I pulled down a lot of my big content because I’ve been slowing down the intake of new clients as I finished case studies. But I think we’re there and now we’re really doing some incredible things and I’m going to–

Jonathon: Thanks for this kind words but the other thing I just want to point out to our listeners and viewers, is that there is one solution out there that can meet all the requirements of real estate agents, professionals at different times of their career; it’s is impossible. Where Mail-Right is aimed at, is at the more newer agent may be the first year, second entering the third year. I feel Robert’s services complement somebody that started in their third year fourth, fifth, that’s looking to get even better results and that has the budget to do that. And if you’re looking for a real [inaudible 30:50] solution, from a company or from an individual that really knows what they’re talking about, Robert’s your person to speak to.

I just want to quickly point out; there is not one solution that can fit all agents at different times of their career. That’s a misconception and that’s why a lot of agents can choose the wrong product for them at that particular moment in their career. And I think that’s also something that we are trying to educate agents about, isn’t it Robert?

Robert: Oh God, yes. Please listen to John, he’s saying, words are golden wisdom is spilling out of his mouth right now.

Jonathon: So there you go. Dispels the concoctions, we’re going to end the show now; we’ll be back next week. Robert might be joining us, so he might be on a plane flying out to the Far East. If he isn’t, he’d probably join us, but he also got a great guest, so hopefully, Robert will be able to join us and we’ll see you, next week Folks. Have a great Halloween, do spells as you can.

Robert: Happy Halloween, that’s right, happy Halloween.

Jonathon: See you later, bye.