#408- Mail-Right Show: Local SEO: How To Get More Local Business Leads For Realtors in 2023

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Local SEO: How To Get More Local Business Leads For Realtors in 2023

Are you a realtor looking to gain an edge over your competition in 2023? Look no further. This show is packed with expert tips on leveraging local SEO to generate more business leads. From optimizing your website content with location-specific keywords to harnessing the power of customer reviews, we’ll show you step-by-step how to attract qualified clients right in your own neighborhood.

#1 – Introduction

#2 – Online Directories and Local Citations

#3 – Google Properties and Tools

#4 – Website Optimization

#5 – Create Local Focus Content

#6 – Encourage Customer Reviews

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:11.080] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 408 of The Mailright Show. We, John and I, are here. We are going to do this awesome, amazing show. Guess what we’re going to talk about? We’re talking about, Hi, for Local again. Yes, everybody gets excited. Why does it keep coming up over and over again? Why are John and I just going to keep hammering this home? How to get more local businesses for us in 2023? We should be saying that part of the hyperlocal equation that we’re focused on is connected to Google, my business profile. We should also be saying that John and I’s experience is that 80 or 90% of the inquiries that realtors get is for listings. Listings are now going to be the coin of the realm in terms of digital marketing, which makes this because of lawsuits are happening with NAR, concerns that are happening in real estate, and the fact that Google has been more and more time, and energy, and effort into their hyperlocal ranking between sending more and more searches into those profiles, between all of those things, it creates a perfect storm where you, our customers, are starting to really realize at a core level just how important this vertical really truly is for your business.

[00:01:19.680] – Robert Newman

We’re going to keep talking about it and trying to be helpful to all of you. Today’s subject, episode 408 of The Nailwright Show, is going to be how to get more leads. Now, we’ve talked about the profile. We talked about some basic ways to optimize it a few shows ago. If you didn’t see there or hear that show, please go back and check it out because it’s a good way to get you into the mindset of setting up your profile. This show is going to be talking about once your profile is set up, how might we get leads. John has also picked for us some more advanced strategies for getting ranking. I’m going to fill in my expertise here and explain how some things that connect to ranking also connect to lead conversion, which is exactly what everybody here wants. Everybody listening to this show, you want leads, you want phone calls. But before we dive into this incredibly important, relevant, super exciting topic, John is going to introduce himself. For those of you who may not know who he is, he’s going to share his wisdom, his expertise, and all the lovely things that he’s done over at his web development company for real estate agents.

[00:02:36.290] – Robert Newman

John?

[00:02:37.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks for that, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail-right. Com. We’re a paid agency. We’ve got our own technology suite based on WordPress, and we utilize Facebook and Google Local Adverts to get more leads for you. I’ve also got news of a special offer. If you sign up for one of our yearly plans, you will get six years of Facebook-managed adverts for free. We normally charge $250 a month for managing your Facebook campaign, but for the first six months, you will get that for free if you sign up for one of our yearly plans. Back over to you, Robert.

[00:03:28.920] – Robert Newman

Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who may not know me, my name is Robert Newman. I have been a real estate SEO expert in the real estate and residential real estate space for 15 years. I’ve worked for major notable companies like Agent Image and Forza. I’ve worked for Independent Incubators doing very, very large-scale custom web development jobs. Now, seven years ago, I founded my own company, InboundREM. Com, which focuses on SEO as a service for real estate agents. We do both very large-scale projects and huge custom web development projects. We also do very small, very focused projects, such as just working on your hyperlocal profiles. If you’d like to learn more about me or Inbound rem, just go to inboundrem. Com, look at my About Services page, and that should take care of you. We’ve also added a whole bunch of free resources to the website recently, including 300 tips that you can give away to your buyers on your website. It’s free. Go grab it at inboundrem. Com. You’ll get a beautiful e-book and a brochure, and you can add it to your website. All right, so without any further ado, we’re going to jump into today’s subject.

[00:04:39.180] – Robert Newman

For those who may be new to the show, John produces the show, and I am the guy who shows up and is an online talent, especially when it comes to SEO subjects. We divide our efforts. John is the one who does all the groundwork for the outline of the show. John, you’ve done an incredible job this time. You added a tremendous amount of notes. You gave us six different bullet points that you wanted to cover. The first one is, why is Local SEO significant? I’d like to add to this after the fact because we’ve just done a new round of research in our brand and content team over here at InboundAREM, but I’d love to hear you intro this and give your thoughts, and then I might add a couple of my own after the fact.

[00:05:26.700] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think the reason why it’s important because it links hardware with software and that’s always the strongest sector. What I mean by that, folks, is before the mobile phone, before the iPhone and before Android, Local SEO was there. It was a thing. It was a sector that there were expertise in. But with the iPhone and with the Android, Local SEO is being put on steroids because fundamentally, if you’ve got a phone on you, a mobile phone on you, and almost all adult Americans do, and you’re searching on your phone for particular local services because you’re doing it on a mobile device, Google roughly knows where you are. Because they know you’re location, they can obtain the location information. Because you’re on a mobile device, they can feed you adverts and information based on where you are. Obviously, there’s privacy, there’s all sorts of other concerns about that, but we have to live in the age that we live in. Because of that basic fact, because of the mobile device and Google’s technology, that’s why it’s so powerful. That’s my own thought on it. What’s yours, Rob?

[00:07:05.600] – Robert Newman

First of all, this was my own basic math when I first got into this subject. For everybody listening to this show, I was saying a couple of shows ago that we felt like I’d seen about a three or four hundred % spike in the amount of traffic that Google was sending into Google profiles. I was using my own and about 10 or 15 of my clients’ profiles to measure that result. It wasn’t a huge case study, but it was a case study. Since then, the head of my brand and content team actually went out and spent 20, 30 hours researching the subject, doing actual proper deep analysis. Here’s some amazing facts that those of you should consider. 98% of the realtors in this country have not bothered to set up a Google business profile. 98%. Jesus. That means that when you walk into your office in the morning, guys, and you look around, understand that the vast majority of people that you’re putting your eyeballs on, they’re not even competing against you. They’re not even trying. First of all, in comparison to the amount of people that hold licenses, it’s a massive untapped audience. Number two, this is my own personal experience.

[00:08:22.510] – Robert Newman

Sean, when you and I start talking about the things you can do to optimize a profile, just setting it up correctly, I would say that of the 2% of agents that bothered to set up a profile, the ones who know how to optimize it or set it up correctly are literally maybe 10% of that, if even that. Now we’re down to 0.01% of the entire country. Might even know how to set up a profile correct. Now you add in to the subjects that we’re going to talk about today. Slightly advanced, there are entire services, LocalEasy, BrightLocal, WhiteSpark. These are companies that are massive marketing companies and all they do is essentially optimize these local profiles. That’s it. That’s all they do. There’s nothing else. That’s all they do. And they’re hundreds of millions of dollars big every single year. When you start looking at… And guess what? Real estate tends to be about 10 years behind all other service industries: plumbers, contractors. There’s so much money in those industries and one group of guys is usually like… I have an old client, the twins plumbing company. Their marketing budget every month, including for localists, $30,000 to $50,000 because they’re a plumbing company, they’ve got 15, 20 trucks running around Southern California generating millions and millions of dollars of revenue.

[00:09:53.040] – Robert Newman

Whoever gets these plumbing jobs, each plumbing job for them, it’s 50-100,000. Now, here’s the crazy thing, John. They’ve done the math and figured out that the local profile is worth $10,000 of their budget every month, like $10,000. The local real estate agent doesn’t realize that being ranked 1, 2, 3 in those search packs is probably going to equal out to be about $200, $300,000 in GCI. It’s just as much money to a realtor. Just the realtors don’t realize it. They don’t realize that being ranked there is going to get them calls for listings, going to be able to put listings under contract. Then the market that we’re in and are going to be in for the next 5-10 years, listings are gold. They are in almost every market. You get a listing on the contract. It is essentially a commission earned just over time. That’s it. You’re done. That’s all you need is the contract. That’s what these profiles deliver to you. Hyperlocal is absolutely one of the most underserved, most important, easiest to win marketing opportunities a real estate agent has. Full stop. How do you win it? We already went through the basics.

[00:11:03.560] – Robert Newman

John is moving into an advanced strategy now that will absolutely impact your hyperlocal profile. For that very small percentage of our audience who has a profile, this is where you really need to pay attention, tune in to this part of the show. John, I’m going to let you introduce bullet point number two and talk about this for a second.

[00:11:25.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s always been the section of local SEO that made it a bit different to city, large, metropolitan, regional, national, because you’ve got all these directory, local service directories, Yelp, Yellow Pages. When it comes to regional, national, or very highly competitive, metropolitan, like the Bay Area or New York, they’re not quite so important, but you could debate that, a metropolitan. But when it comes to most cities, most areas, it’s one of the factors that Google looks at. It’s looking to confirm that you’re a legit player, that you’re legit, that you’re doing business in the area that you’re stating when you set up your Google business local page. One of the factors they look strongly at, there are many factors, but what research I’ve done is they’re looking at these directories. Plus, if you’ve got your own website as well, but we’re going to touch that later on, but they’re looking at these directories. I think you mentioned you’ve got to utilize the same email, the same phone. They want to see the same details literally letter by letter, digit by digit on all these different directories. If they’re different, then the warning signs start to flicker at Google.

[00:13:15.130] – Jonathan Denwood

You’re not doing yourself any favors. Brack, over to you, Rob.

[00:13:20.670] – Robert Newman

Online directories are extremely important. I’ve had tons and tons of experimentation with this over the years, John, including on my own profile, which ranks for real estate marketing within about 80 miles of my office, which is my home. I played around with the profile. When I first started doing it, it was very similar to most of my philosophies. It’s like, If I’m going to be a marketing company, I should prove that I know what I’m doing. I’ll prove it first with me, with myself, because I compete against luxury presence, Ylopo, and Agent Image. They’re all within 30 miles of my location. I compete against all of them for the search term real estate marketing. When I constantly come up number one, that means I’m beating all these other guys that sell SEO as a service. I just wanted to do it to see if I could do it. But here’s how I found online directories and citations and things like that to impact the profile. Number one, if you have just a few, just a handful of directories that have a different address, because when I first started, I started off at a PO box that didn’t want to use my home address.

[00:14:28.920] – Robert Newman

Then I discovered through a series of experiments that somehow Google knew it was a PO address and I wasn’t getting any ranking whatsoever off that PO address. About a year into my business, I changed it over to my home address and no surprise, within 30 days, I was discovering that I was starting to rank in local searches. However, my rankings stagnated pretty quickly. I discovered as soon as I changed those PO box addresses and synonymous my personal address, my ranking shot up and have continued to shoot up ever since. Address and directories is incredibly important in terms of ranking. One of the things that most real estate agents are, here’s a few common things that relate to your address that I care about, online directories and addresses. First of all, what happens if your address is that the same as a broker’s? Like you work out of an office and you list yourself along with 100 other agents all out of the same address. Can you compete? Yes, it’s harder, but you can. Here’s where you will fucking epically fail, is if you set up your home address and then you list your business address in different places, you’ll never rank anywhere.

[00:15:43.680] – Robert Newman

You choose one or the other. You choose an address, and then what you do is you use services like WhiteSpark or Inbound IDM or somebody to clean up all your addresses, find them, analyze them, and then change them over so that they’re all the same address. This one thing that we’re mentioning right now from these online directories is incredibly important. All of you who are listening to this show already know what the 10 biggest directories are. I guarantee it. It’s Zillow, Realtor. Com, Bing, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, all the big fang companies, Yelp. All those are the most reputable directories. If you’ve heard of a directory, Yellow Pages to White Pages are fairly far down the list, surprisingly enough. You already know where the top 10 directories are. You just have to make sure that you have the same information listed in all of them. I could cover this subject forever, but we’re not going to. As a matter of fact, we’re going to go to our break right now. When we come back, we’re going to dig into some other media topics that relate to hyperlocal. We’re going to talk about website optimization, creating content that is aimed at your local profile, properties and tools, encourage customer reviews.

[00:17:03.830] – Robert Newman

Inside the optimization part and the local focus content, I’m going to give out a couple of tricks and hacks to make that content actually get you phone calls. So day two. Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail write. It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no-question-asked 30-day money-back guarantee. So don’t delay, get started today. Go to mail-right. Com. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We’re so glad if you decided to stick with us for the second half of The MailRight show. Today’s episode is number 408. We’re talking about local SEO, specifically how to get more local business leads for Realtor. We’re focused today’s show on what’s working in 2023. The next subject up that John has got down here for us is Google’s properties and tools. I didn’t really quite know what you meant by that. If you could dive into that, John, then that would be great.

[00:18:09.640] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think, because Google’s got a number of its own properties and it’s mostly the Google Business profile, making all the things we discussed in the first part of the show. There’s a fundamental bit of overlap, isn’t it? But I also think putting up images, the image search is a big thing and having the address. They’re number three overlaps number four, which is website ops as your website, because what I’ve read, and it’s self-serving, but it is what I’ve read, is a lot of agents make the mistake by not having their own website. My understanding, Rob, is part of this metrics of different factors that Google looks at, is if you’ve got your own website and it’s active and you’re doing things on the website and it matches the stuff that you’re putting on the website is about the area that you’ve claimed through the Google Business profile, it all matches. There’s as though they’re seeing a spider web view of your online presence and everything matches up. That’s how I globally see it, Rob.

[00:19:43.470] – Robert Newman

Now that I understand what you mean, I have a lot to say on the subject. Sorry about that, John, I didn’t really understand. Google does provide a whole massive toolkit much deeper than most people realize. You have a Google Maps profile, which is also more commonly referred to as a local search guide. You can be a local search guide.

[00:20:01.700] – Jonathan Denwood

You.

[00:20:02.340] – Robert Newman

Can also contribute reviews to other businesses. Here’s what most people don’t know, because we leverage this inbound, Miriam, a lot. You can also make custom maps using their tools and then share them. Just share them with the world at large. You set the map to public, and then you can take that link for that map that you’ve created and you can install it somewhere. One of inbound, Ariem’s favorite hacks is to use that map on a website. What we’re doing is we’re using the customer’s email address, creating a profile under them, creating a Google Maps profile for them, and jump-starting their local guide and Maps profile. When you’re saying Google tools, that’s one of the tools that nobody… As far as I know, in Boundary, I was the only company doing it. I don’t even know of anybody. I’ve never seen it anywhere else. I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist. I am absolutely saying I’ve never seen it, except for us. Then you have YouTube, which is another Google profile. You have your Google business profile, which is yet another Google profile. There’s probably an image library profile, which, to be honest, with everybody listening to the show, I don’t know.

[00:21:16.330] – Robert Newman

There’s also, and this is another one that we use that nobody else uses, there’s an author profile, which is a very old Google. They defunct it, but they said that they’re not cracking it anymore. Every single person like me who’s been an SEO for a long time is under the belief that they’re going to bring it back big time because for a very brief amount of time, Google was measuring the quality of your content, connecting it to an author profile, and then giving that profile a score so that your content, if you’re a guy like me, was automatically ranking. The reason they defuncted it is they started to notice that there were literally a few hundred people across the country that were dominating across all of Search. Neil Patel, Bryant Dean, just people that had massive audiences were publishing hundreds of articles, and those guys were dominant because their articles are way more widely read than anybody else’s on certain subjects. They said that they couldn’t measure it about… Basically, he said, Well, shit, we didn’t realize there would be such dominant players and we don’t know how to make this fair for the little guys, so we’re going to mothball it while we figure it out.

[00:22:31.570] – Robert Newman

They then tried it again when Google Plus was around and then once again defuncted it for much the same reason, but it’s still there. You have an author profile that measures the quality of your content. When you start saying Google properties and tools, yes, and there’s even… Nobody even remembers this anymore, but there’s BlogSpot?

[00:22:54.310] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, yeah.

[00:22:55.960] – Robert Newman

There’s nothing Google tool. In total, there’s probably or 15 or 20 different Google tools that you could theoretically set up. Google does see them and measure them all correctly. That, as I’ve said in other videos I’ve done about SEO, if you want to know what one of the secrets is to ranking, believe it or not, it’s just making sure that Google can read what you’re doing or understand what- What.

[00:23:19.380] – Jonathan Denwood

About the website? About having your own website? What do you think about that?

[00:23:24.350] – Robert Newman

Well, websites, I agree with website. Search engines use a website to understand what your business does. I’m reading the notes you put in location pages to help search engines understand the areas they serve. That’s 100% correct. As long as with WordPress or whatever you’re using to set up your website, you use the same email address. Essentially, imagine it’s a profile card. Your profile is connected to your email address. I started my business under a standard Gmail email called inboundrem@gmail. Com. I’ve never moved away from using it because when you switch your emails up, let’s say you decide to customize your email, like I have a robber@inboundrem. Com email obviously now, seven years later, but it doesn’t help you to change that information off all the profiles that you set up. Since I set them up using inboundarien@gmail. Com, they’re all still set up that way. When you’re setting up your website, make sure that you set it up using… Don’t use a Yahoo email address to set up your WordPress website when you’re hoping that the WordPress website is going to be found through Google. Use your Google Gmail address. Same thing applies to your YouTube channel, your BlogSpot account, your Google Maps account, all the same email address.

[00:24:41.620] – Robert Newman

When Google knows it’s you, Jonathan Dynwood, Jonathan Dynwood’s doing all these things and they can see everything, including your website, which is what the question was you asked me, that’s when websites become really powerful.

[00:24:56.680] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, good words. Sorry. The way I’ve dealt with this, Rob, is we’re both with my two businesses. My main domain, my main email is with Google Workspaces, but I’ve also bought a secondary domain that’s very similar to the main domains. They’re a service where I can have multiple inboxes at a very low price. Because the problem with Google workspaces is fine with just one inbox, but if you have a mobile team and you have multiple inboxes. I’m not talking about A-listes. I’m talking about actual physical inboxes. It’s $6 a pot, so it can soon build up in cost. But the way I’ve dealt with it is I use on other service for a very similar domain where I can have multiple inboxes without the $6 a charge. Is that making sense, Rob? Yep.

[00:25:56.370] – Robert Newman

I know that we’re drifting out a little bit, but everybody who’s listening to this show, listen, I pride myself on being a transparency guy. When you understand what SEO is and how you do it properly, really, it just comes down to a lot of work and effort. That’s what Inboundar does. We do a lot of that work and effort. We try to do it at a low cost and high quality just because you don’t want to do it yourself. You wouldn’t really understand how this all works. However, I try to tell you how it works upfront. I’m going to tell you something that websites are incredibly good for a job. When you have a YouTube channel under your email address and when you’re doing a Google Maps profile like I’ve described, where websites become an almost unstoppable force in hyperlocal SEO is when you’re linking your local YouTube videos to a neighborhood page. The neighborhood page is talking about this specific area. Then you’ve got the YouTube video with the latitude and longitude, then you’ve got images that you’ve attached to that page with the latitude and longitude. Now it becomes an unmistakable signal to Google.

[00:27:00.120] – Robert Newman

I’m here, boots on the ground, this area, you know it. I’ve got pictures, I’ve got video, I’ve got writing, and it’s all interconnected into the website. That’s where websites really start to get you power, because now you’re getting the traditional search volumes into your page. You’re getting the YouTube search volumes into your YouTube channel, you’re getting the image-like search volumes into your image library. Between all three of those platforms, you’re capturing a lot of the attention that focuses on that neighborhood. Your branding is synonymous, however people are doing searches. When it connects into a website where you can direct people to certain pages like your profile page, which has a deep bio and all your social proof, that’s when you start to create a lot of marketing momentum to prove to somebody, I am a local expert.

[00:27:51.400] – Jonathan Denwood

Can I ask, how do you deal with the public? I’ve been asked this a couple of times and I’ve never really fossilitated. This is a tricky one. How do you deal with your relationship with your broker? Because your broker is going to want you to utilize a rubber act, whatever the brokerage is, or they’re going to want you… They’re going to offer you, or they’re going to insist that you pay a monthly fee for a digital marketing pack. Aren’t they? A lot of the national franchise do that. But I think you should have your own website always and keep your own email and don’t use the brokerage. How was your advice on all that? There was no.

[00:28:43.060] – Robert Newman

Clean answer to that, John. You’re right. That is a tricky question and that I’m going to be straight with you. Here’s the answer I generally give, and it’s a shitty, arrogant answer. In my 15 years of doing this, it’s been at least 5 or 10 since I’ve run across any CTO, CMO that understands SEO at the level that I do. When an agent or a broker calls me that’s working for a brand, I’m immediately telling them in no uncertain terms, you need to set up your own email address with, like Google works as an example, if you need to do an entire team, but we need to be in control of your email addresses. If your brokerage is issued one, great. You can continue to use that for all the broker-required profiles that you need to have. If you’re paying me out of your own pocket, no brokerage is used. There is almost no brokerage out there that’s saying that you can’t market yourself. They’re saying you can’t. I’m delivering the bad news that you have to spend extra money. That’s not an easy conversation because you have to spend extra money for something that you already have.

[00:29:49.670] – Robert Newman

But you absolutely have to do that, is my answer, John. Like I said, you are correct. It’s a sticky subject. It’s a shitty subject. And especially when I get forced into the position of saying, Listen, I get what you’re telling me, Mr. Realtor, but I know a lot more about this than your brokerage does, and they’ve got it wrong.

[00:30:10.140] – Jonathan Denwood

Because a lot of these nationals, some of the regionals and nationals, want 100, 150, 200 a month for their digital marketing package, don’t they?

[00:30:22.250] – Robert Newman

Yeah. All right, so we’re going to move on. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re now deep into bonus content. Bonus content today is going to be the content and the reviews. Both these next subjects are ones that have to do with lead conversion, getting somebody to be a peruser to somebody who’s going to be a phone caller. The big subjects it’s great bonus content. It’s almost like we timed it this way. We’re exactly at the 30-minute mark. John usually does 10 extra minutes on the Mail-right YouTube channel. I occasionally get around to requesting the files and getting it up on the inbound rem channels, but John always does it. Check out the mail-right-YouTube channels to YouTube, and you’ll see the show, the 10 extra minutes of bonus content. Without further ado, create local focus content. What John has written here is local content can help you target local keywords, provide valuable information to your local audiences, and consider blog post videos or other content relevant to this area. We’ve talked a little bit about that. A restaurant might create a blog post about, best places to eat. Every single thing that you wrote here is spot on. Why did you add any thoughts that you have and all add money?

[00:31:36.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, the reason why it’s spot on is I didn’t write it. I’ve just lifted it off other resources for these show notes to be truthful about it. But I did read it, and I did agree with it. It’s basically, the content needs to have a high element of local knowledge to it, value to it. I value it. If Google’s technology reads it. It matches up with all the other elements that we’ve outlined in this podcast.

[00:32:12.700] – Robert Newman

When it comes to local content, ladies and gentlemen, here are your conversion tricks because I promised and promised and promised them. How do you get the conversion? How do you get calls?. I’m not going to give a thousand conversion tricks. How do you get calls without force and registration? It is a subject that comes up in 30 to 40% of my calls. All right, so here you go. Conversion happens with social proof, ladies and gentlemen. When you’re doing hyper-local information, if you’ve done a good job on your local page, done everything that John just did: local properties, restaurant, great blog post, sold properties that connect into that specific neighborhood, that is the place that you start with your social proof if you have it to offer. If you’re an experienced agent who’s done business in this area, prove it by showing the sold properties. That gets people a lot closer to wanting to call you, especially if they identify something that looks similar to a property that they’re thinking of listing or a property they’re thinking of buying. That’s number one. Number two is to make sure that you connect that to your local reviews. You can either have them on the same page under that neighborhood.

[00:33:25.650] – Robert Newman

If you’re super organized, which most of my clients are, but not to this degree, a review for somebody who did a specific piece of business inside that neighborhood with you is the number one way to go. But failing that, a single place on your website where you have all your reviews collected is preferably a plugin or link to an external profile. Why? People don’t trust the information that you published on your website yourself because too many people have ruined it for all of you, where they put fake information or reviews that are 20 years old. They took an old letter, screenshot it, or retyped it out, and put it on their website. So when somebody calls you and goes, Oh, this Scott and Dorothy Kimmel review looks great. You go, Oh, yeah, that client was two decades ago. Nobody looks at that and goes, Well, that’s relevant in 2023 or market that in the early 2000s? No, it’s only relevant to the history that you have in the area. It’s good to say that you got a review from 20 years ago, for sure. But is it really going to compel somebody to call you today?

[00:34:29.210] – Robert Newman

No. More recent reviews and things that you’ve done right now or what compel people to call you. That’s why external systems like Google Reviews, Zillow, and Facebook, have dates and more information on it where you can see how recent those reviews were. There’s a certain amount of trust. Not so much with Facebook, certainly with Google and, to a degree, Zillow. Zillow is in the middle, and Yelp is at the very bottom of the stack. Very few people trust Yelp so that you know.

[00:34:59.340] – Jonathan Denwood

I think many people trust Zillow and Evel to be close.

[00:35:03.440] – Robert Newman

Not consumers do, John. Consumers trust Zillow. It is big enough and branded enough that they trust Zillow. I don’t know that they should, but they do. All right. So create local folks going. Now, last but not least, ladies and gentlemen, I’m just going to continue on my tears and let you add your thoughts at the end of my tears here. Here is the number one conversion factor that you are in control of. Reviews. Okay, boy, old boy, I learned this trick a long time ago, and I probably learned it from Ziggler or Tom Hopkins or somebody like that. God, it’s made me so much money throughout my career. You know what the funny thing is about reviews, John? Is that human beings are fundamentally lazy. We’re lazy. When you request a review, the worst possible thing that you can do is say, John, will you please go to my Google reviews channel and leave me a review? Then we leave it at that. When you call a client and say, Will you please do this? That’s exactly. You have maybe a one-in-100 chance that they’ll remember to do it, and they’ll go do it.

[00:36:18.930] – Robert Newman

If, however, you type out a letter or email and say, Dear so and so, this is the experience that we had. This is the home we had. I just want to say how much I enjoyed serving you. All these three areas were my favorite parts of the transaction. By the way, if you could do me a small favor, reviews really helped my business grow. If you feel like I gave you outstanding service, I would really appreciate it if you give me a review and then a link to the profile that you want the review on. But you don’t stop there. You then go, I don’t want you to copy what I’m about ready to tell you, but I would really love it if you covered the fact that we did a transaction in Van Ies, that it was for a single-family home, that it was roughly in the neighborhood of $400, $500,000, and that we spent six months looking for the home, that we got in the car 50 different times, and then we finally found you a perfect home. If you can illustrate that customer journey for me, that is what would help my business the most.

[00:37:23.870] – Robert Newman

Now, here, after doing this myself for 20 years in my sales career, is what amazes me. Despite the fact that you always ask people not to copy what you said, they always copy what you said. If you want to control what your profile says, you just write it for them. For the most part, even if they don’t copy it word for word, they usually summarize what you said and then throw it directly on your profile for you. That’s the number one hack I have. Now, why does that matter so much? Who, what, when, where, why, and how is always the reasons that we’re looking for when we want to make a decision. That’s it. Conversion. If you give somebody that, like I bought a home in Van Is, it was $500,000 to $600,000. This guy went out with me for six months. We took it 50 times. That tells you so much about the realtor right there. That tells you so much about the experience. By the time you’re done reading that, 99% of anybody who’s even vaguely thinking, Maybe I want to call a realtor, they’re going to go, Oh, shit, I got to call this guy.

[00:38:29.850] – Robert Newman

I got to call him right now because he’s going to be patient. He’s sold the home. My price range, he’s familiar with my area. This other human loved them. They sound like a much more complicated client than I’m going to be like, Oh, yeah, this is my human. That’s how you get a conversion. You control your reviews. You respond to every single one to push it forward even more. 80% of all people who are making decisions about using you are doing so through social proof. Why in the world would you not control the messaging inside this space? It’s never made any sense to me, and it’s how I get more sales and anything else that we do.

[00:39:11.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, you’ve made me very joyous here, Robert, because in the Mail-Right system, we have a section, part of our platform, that is built, and it does exactly what you have just outlined. You’ve made me extremely happy, Robop.

[00:39:28.780] – Robert Newman

Good. Then you should… If I were you, John, if you haven’t already done this, for me, a case study for mail write is this. Just walk your first couple of clients through using it. Make them use it, get them to use it, call them as many times as it takes for you to use it because I will make you a bet right now, John. You get somebody doing it using that bit of your platform. They’re going to make money. From then on in, you are going to be able to have front and center all your media going, This tool that John made for me is the best tool I’ve ever used in my entire career. You would be a fool not to call him today.

[00:40:13.960] – Jonathan Denwood

Okay. But it’s not easy. But Robert’s CRO reviews and… But it is just to finish off, Robert. If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re listening to Robert and myself, and if you just do a couple of the things we’ve outlined in the past three weeks, you’ll be 90% in front of 90% of your competition. It’s really that simple, really, Robert, isn’t it?

[00:40:42.420] – Robert Newman

It really is. I’m going to do what I’ve done the last couple of shows, which I rarely do, but InboundREM is beta testing a service that does a lot of this for you. For those of you people, John also has a platform that does some of this for you as well, we both have systems in place that will do a lot of this work for you. You can either contact me at inboundrem. Com or email me at Robert@inboundrem.com and go to my services page to schedule a call. For this particular service, you will not necessarily get me. I’ve now got a staff taking these calls for the hyper-local service line that we’ve got out. If you make a special request, do you think you have an exceptionally difficult problem to solve, you can potentially get me on the phone. John, how would you like people to reach out to you if they also would like to talk to you about the same subject?

[00:41:34.670] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, just go to the mill-right. Com website and book a demo, book a chat, and you get me. We chat here is this area is the only area that we really fundamentally over that because, like I said last week, folks, we don’t really deal with SEO. We are paid advertising on Facebook and Google, setting up your business profile and the platform. It’s paid traffic is what we’re aimed at, where Robert and his team are content marketing and SEO. That’s why we can do the show together because, honestly, we dabble a little bit in it, but we don’t take long-term SEO clients. We send them to Robert because we’re in Facebook paid traffic. That’s what 70, 80% of what we do with about 20-30% Google.

[00:42:36.410] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. Okay, a couple of last plugs for all of you listening to the show. The value proposition for what John does is just skyrocketed. Why? We’re going to do a full show on it next week, but I’m going to give everybody here the cliff notes. Follow-ups just sold themselves to Zillow. This is a big deal. John has a CRM, maybe not as robust as the Follow-Up boss, but he has one that is still within his and your control, not your main competitor. There is something to be said for that. In my opinion, humble as it is, the SA, software-as-a-service guys like John, and in particular, John, who’ve taken the time to build an independent tool, now that the number one independent tool has just basically exited the independent part. That means that there should be a lot of people calling John and people like him, just exploring your options. I’m not saying bail out a follow-up boss or that there’s a reason to. I am saying that a lot of people are going to want to do that regardless of what I say. And if that’s the case, this is a good time to talk to John.

[00:43:45.180] – Robert Newman

Now, we’re going to dive deep into this subject next week. We’re going to talk about this sale of the follow-up boss to Zillow. We’re going to share our thoughts on it. We’re really going to dig deep into it. John and I both independently have various times to talk about FollowUp Boss. I recommend FollowUp Boss. My clients use Followup Boss. I’m deeply immersed in this follow-up boss world.

[00:44:06.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Like the product, isn’t it? It was a great product. Yeah.

[00:44:12.960] – Robert Newman

I don’t know that I’d believe that it’s not a great product. No, it’s pretty good. There are now things that you have to consider that you didn’t previously have to consider. Just no doubt about it. You just have to. Anyway, everybody, thank you so much for tuning into the show. John and I really appreciate it. I think that today is one of the big payouts for those dedicated listeners, those loyal listeners. Please do us a favor. If you have teams, if you have people that you’re working with, this is a show you want to share with them. If, for some reason, you’re a team guy or team gal, then make sure, 100% for sure, that you’re working on your hyperlocal profile. Until next time, John and I would sign us off.

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The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show

Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman

https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa

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Robert Newman

InboundREM