#301 Mail-Right Show Podcasting 101 For Real Estate Agents
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Why Is Podcasting An Excellent Marketing Idea For Real Estate Agents?
In this episode, we discuss why it’s such a good idea for a local real estate agent to do a local podcast about he/she’s two or city.
I’m a big fan of podcasting see I personally produce three podcasts per week! We look into the major reasons why it is such a good idea for a real estate agent. What are the best tactics to use to get local guests? Why it will help you and your local brand.
Robert Newman: Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to the Mail-Right show we’re super excited Today. We are at episode number 301. today’s episode. John is going to share with us the power of podcasting. So we’re basically going to talk to you about what we do in terms of being a podcast. I’m going to talk more from the like, knowledge side and John’s going to talk more like, in terms of having a vertical, that you have the knowledge and having something to want to talk about. John’s going to really help. He’s going to talk about that as well, but he’s also going to talk about producing the show, which he does by himself exclusively. So all the show production information is going to come from John. So having said that, John, why don’t you go ahead since I’ve already mentioned your name three times in 10 seconds why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself officially to anybody that might be new to the Mail-Right podcast
Johnathan Denwood: I’m the founder of Mail-Right we are a website provider aimed at real estate agents. We use the power of WordPress, the biggest website platform and we produce really nice-looking websites that you the agents own. Plus we’ve got a host of other elements to WordPress that helps you market online
Robert Newman: Lovely. My name is Robert Newman. before I tell you about who I am, let’s describe for you what the show does. So Mail-Right actually talks to real estate agents and brokers about helping them with their digital marketing. We focus exclusively or almost exclusively on digital marketing. And we cover wide sections of the real estate space. I am the founder of my own marketing company called inbound real estate marketing. And I focus on the power of storytelling and SEO, to, help real estate agents generate leads. But honestly, most of my strategy comes from educating, professionals with 5 to 10 years of experience or more when they’re trying to figure out what to do long-term with their real estate strategy. we do systems anyway, just check out the website. You won’t, you won’t be disappointed.
Having said all that John and I were talking about, what should we talk to you guys about that we haven’t really done before? Do you know what we haven’t done? We haven’t talked to you about podcasting and we are podcasting. And a lot of other people are podcasting. It’s probably one of the most popular strategies that everybody’s getting into. So John, why did you start? Cause this is John’s second podcast, he’s done hundreds and hundreds of episodes and he’s got not one, but two businesses. He’s building around the podcast. So why don’t you, if you would share with everybody why you decided to podcast in the first place?
Johnathan Denwood: Well, cause, as a child, you know, I’ve been quite public. I have dyslexia and one of the things that I kind of self-educated myself, I was a great listener of a British radio station called radio four, which is a kind of slightly, has [Inaudible 03:27] interviews, politics, the arts it’s a bit like public broadcasting in America, but being a little bit snobbish here a bit better. And, it’s kind of, I was a big listener to it as a child and it kind of, educated me and, helped me with my vocabulary, which obviously I wasn’t aware of the same time. So I’ve been influenced by radio quite a lot. And, podcasts really, its roots is really based on radio, in my opinion. The style, the vocabulary, the way podcasts are normally done, are highly influenced by radio. And, I from my early childhood was highly influenced by radio Robert.
Robert Newman: And that makes sense because, because I wasn’t as probably quite as influenced as you, but I definitely was. Radio was a deep part of my life, listening to something, gives somebody I believe so there’s a lot of studies have been done on the different types of learners. There’s kinaesthetic learners, those people that learn by doing, but there are also auditory learners and there are people who learn by reading and there are people who learn by all of those, you know, somewhere in between. but many of us actually have a preferred way of intaking information. And if I had to say anything about podcasting, it’s not so much like you’re going to go out and find the next best thing ever. What you are going to do is an appeal to a certain amount of people that only have time to listen to podcasts who might prefer an auditory way of digesting information.
If you’re in California, you absolutely are queuing up content for a couple of hours, just to have something to listen to on your drive time. There are certainly other states that are very similar. So podcasting has taken an interesting place in the world where, you know, if you’ve got interesting information to share with somebody, whether it be entertainment or actual lifestyle information, but there’s probably a section of people out there that have a block of time that they’d like to fill with something that is like expert learning category kind of stuff. And if you’re producing a podcast, you have a chance to slip yourself into that slot and grab some of their attention. Would you agree, John?
Johnathan Denwood: Yeah. And also, unlike the more established media platforms some of the most, successful podcasts, I’ve been known for have been over an hour, two hours, three hours. We keep ours at around half-hour. because that’s the kind of average commute in America. Then we provide bonus content, which I think is a good way of doing it. So if you’re really engrossed in an interview that we do, you can listen to some extra, you know, but there are some of the biggest podcasts that get millions of downloads are two three hours long aren’t they that kind of bolts the, other more traditional television where if a news story is more than two minutes long, it’s seen as too long, isn’t it?
Robert Newman: It really is. It really is. So here’s, here’s some interesting information. All right. So, guys, I’m going to just go to I’m regurgitating something that was done by captivating, which is just a marketing company that produces really cool, like statistic-based content. So here’s some stuff podcasting demographics in the United States. 75% of us population is familiar with the term podcasting. 50% of all US homes are podcast fans, 55% That’s 155 million of the US population has listened to a podcast. 37%, 104 million people listen to podcasts at least every month, 24%, 68 million listen to podcasts weekly. 16 million people in the US are avid podcast fans. 51% of podcast listeners are male, 49% female. The average age of the listeners, 12 to 34, 40 8% 35 to 54, 30 2% 55 plus 20%. 63% of podcast listeners are white 41% of monthly podcast listeners have household incomes of over $75,000, 25% of us podcast listeners have a four-year college degree.
So here’s why I just gave you all those statistics. If you’re a real estate agent and you were trying to think of an unusual way to promote your business, then podcasts are something that you might want to consider looking at. It is a very good way to communicate lifestyle for a particular community or city. It’s very shareable content. If you’re part of Facebook groups, if you have your own Facebook page, if you’re on Instagram, if you’re on any of these things, and you’re trying to figure out interesting content, that’s going to draw in an audience. That is why I agreed to do the podcast with John in the first place. That was my reason to get into it. I just wanted content to put in my social channels that were unique and felt personal to those channels, that people wouldn’t find anywhere else.
And I decided when John approached me about being his co-host, I said, yes. Even though at the time, I wasn’t really a firm believer like I wasn’t thinking of podcasting as a way to generate business. And honestly, this podcast has not generated me that much business, but what it has done for me is John has been brilliant about getting just in crazy, crazy industry influencers on the show. And then we both get a chance to meet them and basically increase our sphere of influence by becoming familiar with all these other guys like we’ve had, like, what was it, one of the top WordPress template developers in the world? Yeah.
Johnathan Denwood: Yea Brian Gardener, he’s a legend in the WordPress community.
Robert Newman: You’re a WordPress developer. So that was a big,
Johnathan Denwood: I was, I’m, just, a principal of an agency now, you know, but there we go.
Robert Newman: Right. But still, it was a cool person for you to be able to email and have them respond. Right?
Johnathan Denwood: Exactly we’ve had some big shakers and movers in the real estate industry. And I think that’s the great point because, you know, as a local agent, one of the main things that we’re trying to get across to our listeners and viewers is that if you want to be successful as a real estate agent in 2021, you can’t be the invisible agent. You have to get out there and market yourself and put yourself in front of a lot of other agents. That is the truth of the matter. If you want a really great career, you know, some people just want to be a part-time agent. But if you, if you really are after building a really successful career, in real estate, as a real estate agent, you can’t be the invisible agent.
Now to do that one of the main things is to be known by the shakers and movers of your community. Now, if you normally approach the top echelon of your local community and say, I’m a real estate agent, I want to have a coffee with you. Probably the answer you’re going to get in a lot of cases is no I’m too busy or you’re going to get no reply at all. Now, if you approach the same, I do a podcast about my local community and I want to interview you. And then we’re going to share that on Facebook and on iTunes and YouTube, you be able to get a lot of the people that know you to watch it. a lot of the time, instead of a no, or no reply, you’re going to get a yes. And that, even though it might be a small audience if it’s a locally focused regional podcast, it’s still going to be enormously beneficial for you as an agent. What do you think of that Robert?
Robert Newman: I really agree more. So I’m going to recap what I feel like John said. So if you’re trying to increase your sphere of influence, if you’re new or just maybe the first couple of years into your career, and you’re trying to think of something unusual, but a way to increase your influence, not necessarily having to knock on the door and say to established agents will you [Inaudible 12:57 ] one way to get net that introduction without seeming like you’re getting the introduction is to do a podcast because you wouldn’t believe the people that say yes to John and I just, because we have a podcast. now we’ve done 300 episodes and over the years, I think we’re one of the top real estate marketing-focused podcasts that exist on iTunes, but we didn’t start there. And we’ve been growing our audience consistently month over month, over time, you’ll do the same thing with your podcast. Should you have one?
It will be something that you grow in the meantime though, people don’t know that they don’t know what your numbers are. They don’t know so if you come up with a good name and you show a bit of professionalism about the way that you booked the show, which John has a huge amount of professionalism. So I’m going to talk about two things in the second half. We’re going to go to our break here in just a second, but here’s what you can expect in the second half of the show. We’re going to give you some ideas about what you can talk about. John is going to cover some of the mechanics if he would. I haven’t talked about this, but some of the mechanics of how he actually physically does things like outreach, the forms that he uses his thoughts behind them. Because I think that he has a great professional way of approaching people. And I’d like him to explain what that is. And we also have a great deal of success on people just coming to us. I think a filling out our form, is that, is that correct on you would do more of that than me. All right. So I got a lot of great stuff for you coming back after that, the break, all of it related to having your very own locally-focused real estate podcast, stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
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Robert Newman: Welcome back to the Mail-Right podcast, ladies and gentlemen, today, our topic as it relates to real estate marketing is podcasting doing a local podcast or maybe not a local podcast, maybe a national one, but if you’re a local real estate agent, and you’re trying to drum up either your sphere of influence or maybe some local business that we’re going to suggest that you do a local podcast, focused on lifestyle. But, before we get into any of that, that’s going to be at the very end of the show. John is going to share with us some of the mechanics of actually running a podcast. And what I mean, John is I’d like to know your thoughts on how exactly you decide what guests you’re going to approach, how you approach them. What do you use in terms of support material? In other words, you’ve got forms that they fill out. You’ve got things that you feel like you need to use. So explain how you actually do the mechanics of getting guests onto the show.
Johnathan Denwood: Well, it’s actually it’s one of the time-consuming elements, but you got to do it in a fun way, and, I tend to do it in batches, but I kind of, I just, with the moments that I’m switched off, I look at other people’s podcasts who they’ve had on as guests. I also utilize YouTube and do searches in YouTube and, and YouTube suggests people to me. And then I’ll watch then as I’m doing other stuff, I’m not watching it but I’m listening and see if there may be possibly good guests. Also, there are podcast agencies that do approach you as our podcast has got more popular and more numbers we are approached more often by podcast booking agencies, which is great, but you do have to check the guests out because, I tend to be the people they’re suggesting, I put them in YouTube and then see if they’ve done previous interviews. And then I listened to a couple of those.
They do tend to suggest a lot of, people that are experts on buying property and flipping property, which I don’t mind occasionally would that we delve into that particular area. But I don’t think it would be it’s enormously of interest to our target audience. they are involved in buying property for themselves or for clients, and then flipping those properties. So it probably has some interest to our target audience, but like you said in the intro our main focus, but not entirely is digital marketing aimed at the real estate professional. That’s our niche. And in general, we stick with it, but we do have a broad number of different guests don’t we, because if we kept talking about digital marketing all the time, I think there’s only so much that we can say about it. So I attempt to mix it up a bit, sometimes I’m surprised- I don’t think sometimes Robert understands where my logic is coming from, but in general, not always, but in general, it’s worked out as hasn’t it Robert?
Robert Newman: Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, hey one of those things that it, so let’s talk for a moment about partnerships. So, John, I think I’d like to, so you’re talking about outreach and you’re talking about topicality, and those are great topics. I’m going to talk about co-hosts for a second because John and I are very opposite in many ways and the same in others. And one of those things that we’ve now done, I think 160 episodes of this show together-
Johnathan Denwood: And we’ve never physically met, have we?
No, we never physically met. We’ve only been doing these online shows. And I think that if you wanted to co-host, there’s a lot of really cool things about riffing with somebody. And if you’re going to as we do disagree on topicality, I could talk about real estate marketing all day, every day and I oftentimes do, but, and I feel like it’s a very big topic. However, it doesn’t really make a difference to me as a partner on a podcast. Because for me personally, this has got to be inside my schedule, a thing where I just show up and I’ve got 5 or 10 minutes that I put into my prep for the show. And then I show up as a person that speaks as a subject matter expert on certain topics. Most of them focused on real estate marketing, and we’ve had a great deal of success with us talking to other subject matter experts that focus on deep, real estate marketing issues.
I connect very deeply with them, but I’m not a WordPress developer. I’m not a generalist in terms of my interests. I don’t have a lot of interest in real estate investing. John does, John has actually been involved in some of these industries, as a consumer, as a person who has done some of these things. So it carries a lot more expertise inside the subject matter than I do. And oftentimes has some really insightful questions to ask these guests. So when you’re talking about your co-hosts, you know, try to make sure that you complement each other in some way or another, if you decide that you’re going to do a co-host husband and wife, teams are great, just make sure that you don’t have.
Johnathan Denwood: Yeah. And it’s a difficult one because we are very different in personalities. We have similarities, like you said, we both are entrepreneurs we both are not from the kind of traditional background of what is seen as an entrepreneur. We do it to make money, but also a lifestyle as well but other parts of our personality are very different, but I think it has worked very successfully because of those factors.
Robert Newman: Correct. I also think that that is true as well. And we have occasionally run across very small personality quirks that may cause a little bit of rockiness every now and again, but I would say it’s pretty small, John and I both being business people, have the understanding that this, you know, business relationships sometimes are not perfect. As a matter of fact, most of them aren’t just like most marriages have their challenges.
Johnathan Denwood: I don’t think you’ve done anything. Oh, I would have told you in, you would have told me there’s nothing that we have done that merits a big discussion. I don’t think we’ve had a big come to Jesus meeting since we’ve been doing the show, we’ve had the old thing that’s turned up, but we never had to have a big, meeting on zoom to see if we could solve our major problem have we?
Robert Newman: No, that’s true. That is very, very true.
Johnathan Denwood: The factor that I’ve had to learn which I made mistakes with my other podcast, which you have benefited from, but you’re probably not aware of is that I at the beginning of my other podcast, which I’ve done over 600 episodes and I’ve been doing for almost seven years, this particular one I’ve been doing for about three years but seven 3 or 3 1/2 years. But the other one is up to almost seven years. I use to have co-hosts and I used to kind of also bully them, but I would want them to do a lot more in providing guests and ideas and helping me with the content. and it didn’t work because fundamentally if they wanted to do that, they would run their own podcast.
The main reason why they’re interested and one of the reasons why you’ve kept with me and I think you now enjoy it. And you can now see why it was such a good idea. I’ll give you your [inaudible 23:59] that you were prepared to try something new, even though you weren’t too sure about either me or doing podcasts in general. But you had the [Inaudible 24:12] and the courage to try something new, which a lot of people don’t. is that you’ve got to accept, you know, why it suits a co-host. So now I have another co-host who’s part of my other show and, we’ve become quite close friends, and he does a fair bit of work for me. but it’s the same arrangement he just turns up. He just turns up and helps me. And if, for some reason, a guest, the other great benefit of having a co-host, is that I find it quite hard. And I find it quite unnatural to talk to the audience for 30 minutes, on my own I find it better to have a discussion.
And the benefit of having a co-host is if a guest doesn’t turn up, it’s not disastrous and stuff does happen. And so, like this show, we were supposed to have a guest. unfortunately, she’s had to reschedule, but we’re just having an internal show now, and it’s not a big deal is it? that’s one of the benefits, but I did try and get the co-host to do a lot more. And it just didn’t work because like I say, if they were wanting to do that, they would run their own show, Robert.
Robert Newman: So, what do you say inside the emails that you send out to people? So let’s just say you’ve [Inaudible 25:49] YouTube channel. You like what that person has to say. You think you might want to interview the person on one of your two podcasts. What do you say to them?
Johnathan Denwood: It Depends on how, how big, an individual and we do live in a hierarchal, society, and we, to the- I personally find it nauseating in a way, but we are animalistic animals. Most animals, societies are hierarchical and so is ours. So to be honest it really depends on, how big a star or big an audience individual I feel they are. And, I normally, if I haven’t got an email address, I tend to use LinkedIn and you’d be surprised how many people do reply to a message through LinkedIn. And then, the amount of research and time, if you’re approaching a bigger individual in the industry that you outreach and the more research you do and point out and map out that you have listened to some of their previous interviews. And this is the idea of the interview, and this is what I hope that we could discuss that’s a bit different, and this is our audience, and this is how it could benefit you. The more, the more you frame it as beneficial to the person coming on the show, the more chance there is that they’re going to agree.
Now, if it’s a, like, on our level where they are trying to build up a book of business and we’re helping them promote, I still try and individualize it by showing that I have actually watched one of their- listen to one of their recent podcasts looked at one of their videos I know something that’s why I’m asking them. but I spend a bit less time and it’s just the reality. And then we have the people that approach us, which I check them over. And then it’s just, yeah, I send them a booking link to a specific calendar, online calendar system.
And we record this at the same time. It’s very occasionally that I’ll move, the recording time, to be honest, it has happened occasionally, but they really do have to be [Inaudible28:32].
They really have to be a really big hitter, for me to move it because then it becomes a bit painful having to move when we record this show and that, and then they can choose a date. I keep the booking calendars so they can’t book any further out than 90 days because I find I’ve found based on experience that if you allow people to book for more than eight or nine weeks out, they tend to endlessly reschedule. So, that’s why- and then if they agree, I get them to fill in a form, which is important because that gives me what things they want to talk about. Give us an up to date, a headshot that we can use. And also they give permission, which is proven to be important they give permission that we have every right to use the show in any way form that we choose to use it. And so they have as well.
We have joint copyright ownership, and, that’s really If somebody comes on and they totally refuse to fill in the form, I probably wouldn’t let them on the show now because I’ve had the- and it’s only happened very occasionally in all the podcasts that I’ve done. I’ve had people try and come after me for copyright infringement, and by getting them to tick that box and agree, they can’t do it basically, they’ve done a deal with the devil basically. I really haven’t got much time for these people that come on. And then when it’s not convenient, they want to come after you. I think they’re the scum of podcasting really, but it’s only, it happened occasionally Robert we’re at the 30-minute mark. I think we need to wrap it up and we can then discuss this for another 10 minutes how does that sound Rob on the YouTube Channel.
Robert Newman: So ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show. We’re going to produce 10 minutes of extra special bonus content. For those of you who are big YouTube fans, we’re going to ask that when you consume this content, because it will be something fascinating, interesting, and awesome that you then, like, and comment on the Mail-Right YouTube channel. and, yeah, we’re really looking forward to talking to you. And I am thinking that John and I will recap, some of our favorite podcasting moments. That’s going to be the bonus content
Johnathan Denwood: I would like to go into the mechanics of how you, you know, what equipment and some of the mechanics in the bonus. And I think that in the coming weeks we return to this because it was amazing how the half-hour disappeared, wasn’t it, Robert
? And I think we need to delve into this, but in the bonus content, shall we look at some of the mechanics? I’ll give some advice about how what equipment, and what processes you need. If I was a real estate agent looking, I think that would be really helpful, which they can watch on the YouTube channel can’t they Robert.
Robert Newman: Yep. Absolutely. All right. No further do, we’re going to wrap it up. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Once again, you can find John at mail hyphen, right.com. You can find robertNewman@inboundram.com. We appreciate you listening to the show today. Have a great day