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Master branding essentials for real estate agents in 2025. Learn proven strategies to build a strong, memorable brand and attract more clients.
In “Branding 101 for Real Estate Agents for 2025,” we delve into creating a powerful brand that stands out. This show provides practical tips on leveraging social media, building a personal narrative, and enhancing client engagement. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting, understanding branding is crucial for success. Tune in now to gain valuable insights and advance your real estate career.
#1 – Who is your target audience?
#2 – Person or Life Style Brand?
#3 – What Are Your Core Values?
#4 – What is Your Unique Offer?
#5 – Be Consistent!
#6 – Final Thoughts
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 464 of The Mailright Show today. We’re going to do Branding 101 for Real Estate Agents for 2025. We’re starting off with the basics. So discovering audiences, developing a message, that’s what we’re going to cover today. But before we get going, in case you are new or newish to this podcast, we want to make sure that you hear our names so many times that you get sick of hearing them. With no further ado, John, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to anybody that may be new to the show or just within the first few times of listening to the show.
Thanks, Rob. I’m Jonathan Denwood. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com, Mel-right. We’re a CRM lead generative website platform aimed at real estate agents. Go and have a look and book a consultancy with me. Back over to you, Rob.
All right. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of InboundREM. That’s the word InboundRE at rabbitedwardmichael. Com. Check me out if you are impressed with all this knowledge. I’m about ready to lay on you with my partner. All right, let’s get into it. Who, ladies and gentlemen, is your target audience, and how do you figure that out? John, do you want to start us off? Or do you want me to start us off?
No, you go off. Go on. You have a go. That’s it.
Okay. With real estate agents, it’s a very, very good to do a little bit of city, state, and local research on who lives in the area that you are trying to serve. So if you can’t figure out who your target audience is, if you don’t automatically know that it’s older immigrants or older Asians or anything in that category, what you’ll do is you’ll go to either the state or local registrar’s office, which is usually in your city buildings, and you will ask them for what publicly available city data can you take a look at. Sometimes they have books, sometimes they have demographic stuff. And failing that because it’s the second best source, usually the city is actually the best place to grab data for who actually lives there. Second best source would be a search like this. Vanuise, Demographic. I live in Vanuise, California. And then it’s Hispanic, 63%, white, 21%, Asian, 8%, and two other races. So then I can also do demographic and age. Then now I’m going to get 18 to 17-year-old is 99. 5%, 22 to 34 is 24%, 75 years or older, 3. 2 So now you know age, gender, and basic demographic.
Now, here’s the last piece of advice that I have. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t already, as your burgeoning career and figuring out what your brand is, you haven’t figured out a way to go out and meet the people that you intend to sell to or serve. That is probably the biggest mistake I see new salespeople make. Go to school meetings, PPA meetings, just as long as they’re in the city and the location you’re interested in servicing, and meet people, talk to them. Say, Are you ever going to buy a house? Did you buy a house? What are your primary concerns? Get to know your audience and get to know what they’re thinking. That is a very, very good way to understand what your first set of objections and your first set of concerns are going to be. All right, that’s it. Who’s your target audience? John, you go.
Yeah, I agree with what you outlined. I think also, if you look at Northern Nevada, which is Reno, Lake Tahoe, Truckee, a lot of the people that you’re going to be selling or dealing with are out of state. Northern Nevada really relies on California to Northern Nevada and Southern Nevada, Las Vegas. It really depends on the state people It’s really going to be the type of people that are attracted to the various different areas of Nevada that you’ve got to really understand their wants, needs, and you’ve got to really pitch yourself to what these possible clients require, and really understand why people sell, upgrade, or move out of the state, why people move. It’s really understanding and finding a niche, something that stands you out a little bit in a crowded market, basically. But it doesn’t have to be something enormous. It just needs something which you’re target audience actually cares about.
Copy you. We’re going to move on to number two, which I’ve always, ever since I’ve read books about branding, have struggled with the generality of this statement. It’s person or lifestyle brand. Are you a lifestyle brand? Do you surf? Do you ski? You know, stuff like that as a realtor. Person is like, what human are you? Are you really religious? Do you have some tried and true philosophies that you absolutely live your life by and run your business by? What person, lifestyle, brand, blah, blah, blah? I have put out a video called The Death of Real Estate Branding because I think that most branding is informational, and informational ends up being very specific to the human being imparting the information. Over the years that John and I have done this show, we’ve discovered that he’s dyslexic, seasoned entrepreneur, and I have so much data on myself out there. It’s not even worth trying to shake a stick at. I’ve got stuff about my personal life that most people wouldn’t put online, and I’ve got hundreds of clients from having put myself out there because the people that would normally just treat me like another real estate marketer connected deeply into certain parts of my message that have nothing to do with what I do for a living, like the fact that I’m sober as an example.
I think that that is an informational brand that goes beyond personal lifestyle, personally. I don’t think that one or the other really apply. I think it’s just a combination of everything. I do strongly recommend that if you feel comfortable with it, that That you put yourself out there, that you let people know who you are because it will become part of your brand. You can also have a little fun with it. Take your dog with you everywhere. I have two of my clients that make over a million dollars a year in real estate. They’ve become synonymous. Their branding is synonymous with their two little dogs that they take everywhere, including real estate appointments.
Do they do the negotiation for the agent?
I’m sorry?
Do the dogs do the negotiation for the agent?
No, but apparently, they provide great distraction and comfort.
All right, there you go.
And they’re not alone. Betsey Graham tells a story about how relating to a client dog got our $23 million sale. So it’s not even by themselves. All right, John, what’s your version of personal or lifestyle brand?
I think the other part of this with the research I did is a few of the people I was watching and reading, they were saying, You got to make… Some put the argument that they They thought it was a mistake that they went with a personal brand because they turned into a team, and they didn’t want so much to be the public face of the brand, and they felt that was a mistake. I see where they’re coming from, but I don’t see it as black And I’m not saying why. I think you can still be the public face of a regional local brand, but they say, and I think you’ve remarked that you struggled with this a little bit because sometimes you feel that you have to be available a little bit more than you would hope to be. But you are the public face of your brand, so people want to talk to you. So it can be a problem, can’t it? I don’t know if you’ve got any reflections about how you would have dealt with that a bit better or if it is a problem at all.
I mean, I’ve always… First of all, it is a challenge that I’ve mentioned that is true. It is your accurate from my perception to your statement. And at times, it’s very uncomfortable for me. There’s all sorts of boundaries. John, I just indicated when the podcast started how tired I am. Between the time we started the podcast in this very second, I closed my calendar off yesterday. Somebody booked another call with me, something to talk about, broadly enough, more like transitioning their business. Do I have to be more forward-facing than I would like? Yes, I do. But when I started this business, I had, I think, $15,000. I I don’t remember exactly anymore. That number, I may have said something different in different places. I had no advertising budget. None, zero. The way I intended to get my clients was blog on Active Rains and blog on a website, and I had some existing clients that were basically keeping the lights on. It was just a few thousand dollars a month is all I was making them. I mean, we’re talking just a very small handful of clients. I decided in that moment that I could advertise or I could put myself out there.
And I put myself out there, and it was successful, John. I crossed the the the the the bridge between complete unknown and I have a brand. And I got a lot of other people to hire me, like Guailopo and other companies like that. And I did it all with the power of video, so it was successful. Nine years into it now and 200 clients, do I regret my decision? No, because I don’t think I’d be here a day without it. Do I wish for certain things that they might be different? Yes, I do. I do wish that I had a little more of my time and a little more animinity. But in order to get that on another business I build, I need millions and millions of dollars like Elon Musk or somebody else has. It’s like, Give me $10 million and ask me if I do it the same way. Hell no, John. No way. I would not be the public face of anything. I’d let other people do it. I’d hire a CEO, whatever it was. I would not do that again. But do I have any problems with how I bootstrap the business?
Zero. I’m super grateful it worked at all because it was a gamble. Does that answer the question?
Yeah, it certainly does.
What are your core values? I love this one. You know I love this one. Do you want to go first or do you want me to?
Well, I’ll put a quick pennies in. I think a A lot of real estate advertising, obviously, this is a difficult one because you don’t really want to rub people really up the wrong way, so you can take this to the extreme. But on the other hand, a lot of real estate advertising promotion is very bland, very unmemorable. And I think you’ve got to identify some core values that’s relevant to your target audience that you actually believe in, and you need to really talk about those and promote those quite effectively.
And core values is one of those I use I use core values all the time in my marketing because real estate, holy cow, there is not a week that goes by that I don’t have just nightmare stories told to me by agents. If an agent is calling me, they tend to be a little bit driven and a little bit disciplined. The nutty thing is that I’d say from what I hear and everything I’ve heard on the phone for nine straight years, I feel like 70% of the profession are not those things. They’re not disciplined, they’re not driven, they don’t treat their business like a business. I was just on the phone, literally within the last day of taking calls, John, and an agent was telling me how they made a showing appointment with a seller’s agent. They were supposed to meet the seller at the client’s house. There was no lockbox on the door. They got into a car with a buyer from out of town, drove to the house on a Saturday. No agent. Call the agent. No response. Texted the agent. No response. A hundred % no for a viable client from out of town.
I was just like, you got to be kidding me. Any other profession, you no-show somebody potentially with money in their pocket? I mean, man, I can’t even… I can’t fathom, John. None of the sales careers I’ve been in, if I started no showing clients, are you joking me? I would have been fired so fast. It’s not even funny. So core values. What are your core values? And I’m so sorry, John, but it’s got to be more than fucking money. It’s just got to be. You got to have core values like, I don’t flake, I try hard. I’m late all the time, but I try hard not to flake on you, really hard. I move shit around in my calendar not to flake on this show, not because of anything related to a business transaction or finances, but because I have given you my word that I will be here at 2: 00. And so I try to be here at 2: 00 You have kept your commitment rock solid.
You hardly have ever missed anything. I gather from that that when you do commit to something, you’re totally focused on it because you’ve proven that.
That is the idea behind core values, ladies and gentlemen. What is it that you value which will allow people to understand what you expect? I value people, I value My opinions, my reviews are stellar. I treat everybody the same. Well, not 100% the same. Clients get certain allotments of both time and energy that other people don’t. But for the most part, I treat people basically the same. Certainly with the same set of core values. We’re going to go to break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about how to create a unique offer, what is a unique offer, being consistent. We’re going to wrap up with some final thoughts about brand that John Ron and I are going to share through the lens of two entrepreneurs who’ve done brands, both of us consulted with lots and lots of real estate agents. We’re going to come back and we’re going to share those thoughts with you. Stay tuned. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 464 of the Mailright Show. Today, we’re talking about branding, and we’re sticking with Branding 101, and we’re talking about it specifically for the year 2025.
This is not going to be an evergreen piece of We’re going to talk about branding from the perspective of today’s agent. Leading back in, I’m going to toss this first question coming back from the break to John. John, how would you go about crafting or how would you go about advising to craft a unique offer?
Well, it’s not easy in a very competitive, congested market. But on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be something enormous. It is quite linked to knowing your target audience, isn’t it? Number one, and some of the other points that we discussed in the first half of the show. If you understand your target audience and you understand and you dived in to the uniqueness of what those particular segment of the market requires, you’re probably going to then be able to identify an element that could be part of your unique offer. So it’s not jet science, is it? But on the other hand, with my other business, I’ve done it because we focus on membership learning management systems and community-focused website using the WordPress platform. But on the other hand, that entails quite a lot of subsets. So there’s associations, nonprofits, colleges that are using learning management systems. And then you’ve got the whole individual entrepreneur market where it’s individuals or a few people trying to build actual business in the e-learning space. So it encapsulates quite a few subsets. But I pitched it at that because it’s very difficult to identify which market I should have…
So it’s worked out for me. And that’s what you really got to think about when you’re a real estate agent, isn’t it?
And yeah, and you know what? It’s interesting because it’s funny. I ask this unique selling proposition question to agents all the time, What unique selling proposition? I’m going to negotiate. I’m a really good negotiator. Well, I do a list of services. Like I say, what list of services do real estate agents provide? John, would you take a crack at what the basic list is from the web? How many items do you think are on the list? 10, 20, 30, 10? Just 20, just right out of the gate. Okay. So home inspection, negotiating offers, negotiating with buyers on your behalf, marketing and advertising, showing properties, providing advice, education, educating people, communicating. There’s two different sides of real estate. There’s listing and buying agents. This thing says listing agent specific stuff and has other things. I opened up the listing agent-specific thing and I immediately find a blog post from Balz Mara Realty that says 184 things that real estate agents do. 184 four things. And I have just done a quick look at that list. It’s legit. So when you’re saying unique selling proposition, and there are people out there that are blogging that can figure out 184 different things that an agent does in the buying and selling process, please don’t tell me that there’s nothing in that 184 list that you can’t do better than other people.
If you You can’t look at a list of things and go, I’m pretty good at that. Like John and I have, John is pretty good at WordPress. He has experience in it. I am pretty good at marketing. I have experience in it. I could look at a list and go, I’m probably better than other people in this one little category. It’s not arrogance. It’s just, do you think you work out it harder than other people? If the answer is yes, you’re probably better. And it drives me nuts, John, that I can usually not get an agent who’s supposed to be a sales person to admit that they might be better out of one out of a couple of hundred things. It’s like, really? So figure out what your unique offer should reflect on your values, your skills, who you want to serve? What’s your unique offer to that person? In Beverly Hills right now, there’s this dearth, this proliferation of concierge agents. I will say this, of the concierge agents that I know the three that are wildly successful, 20, 30 years careers in real estate, all of them, they’re really never off. They don’t take time off.
Not really, because when they have a high enough value client come into town, since they’re only dealing with three or four transactions a year, max. They drop everything. And so they’re out all weekend. They’re taking people to parties. They’re going to movie premieres, selling somebody in the lifestyle and the experience of buying a property at the same time. But barring that, when it comes to what your unique offer is, and even that is not unique, any of the top four agents can do that with you. They all have that ability. You start to go, Well, what is the exception above and beyond that? Well, I’ll tell you what, one of the three, head and shoulders above the others, has a better support team around them, and I’m not going to say which. I’m just going to say they have four qualified people to help with the management of a very challenging client, and they’re all really good, world-class in their own way. So one could say the support system was their unique sales offer, and I think that they should. That would be the unique proposition I’m willing to give out some of the work to some of my subordinates because some of these agents are not.
That would be something I would look at in an actual Beverly Hills. Now, this is a favorite subject and one that John is a master at. I’m going to play you up and then I’m going to hand it off to you. I’ve dealt with a lot of people over time, and I think we should always look at each other and go, this is our honest opinion. Well, I’ll tell you one thing about John Denwood. He is one of the most consistent marketing partners I’ve ever had. He is consistent. He walks his talk. He also shows up. He also keeps pushing forward with his businesses. He consistently does not one podcast, but many. I mean, take everything else away and say, Is this person consistent and reliable? I’m going to say 100% in my experience so far, yes, no doubt about it. Consistency is a really great thing to have as part of your brand. Consistency, just one, John, a testimonial for me that doesn’t give out many, and I’ve given out a few for John over the years. It’s important that you deliver that what you want. You show up when people want you. If you say you’re going to show up, show up.
That’s my opinion about consistency. It’s just you have to… I also block hours out of my calendar, John, and I’m religious about not letting anybody get in them because I would go insane if I didn’t do that. That’s how I manage consistency. In the time that I have allotted, yes, I’m going to show up unless I’m in the hospital. What is your views on number five?
Well, it’s difficult in the real estate industry, especially when you’re starting out and you haven’t got the money to hire a team or have a good assistant. You got a lot of balls and you got to be available, fundamentally, you got to be available seven days a week. But if you can’t manage to be consistent as a real estate agent I think you’re going to have a hard job. A lot of people, it has a reputation, and you pointed out to earlier on in this episode, somebody that wasn’t very consistent. They did turn up and they ghosted a possible sell. Consistent of all the things we’ve talked about, if you want to be successful as a real estate agent, I think you got to be pretty consistent consistent.
Yeah. I think that part of the challenge, John, is the million dollar mindset idea, which is what I’m seeing is that right now, finally, after many years, by the way, we’re watching home prices go, sales are down. We’ve got a 9. 0 inventory availability inside the real estate market, which is higher than it’s been in a long-ass time. We’ve got all these factors that are… We have inventory, it’s just priced out of people’s price range right now. Agents are still having to work twice as hard for half as much. That’s where the million-dollar mindset comes in. Lots and lots of agents are just going, No, I’m not going to work that hard. They’re sitting on the income that they’ve earned over the last few years in what has absolutely been a cold market. They’ve made a lot more money than they could or they should. When they can make half as much and work harder, are they going to do it? The answer is a lot of real estate agents won’t, and the real pros will because they know that while they’re working harder, they’re also making market share that other people won’t make. We’re going to close out the show, ladies and gentlemen.
I’m going to have John share his final thoughts, or I’m going to ask John to share his final thoughts. And I’m going to say, I’m going to think through mine because I’m not 100 % sure how I want to close this episode down. So what are your final thoughts about branding?
Well, it’s a garage subject, isn’t it? Building a brand. But I think we’re given a good outline here and put some thoughts in people’s minds, because I think a lot of agents really fell on this, and it’s understandable because it’s vague. But if you can plan some strategy, and it doesn’t have to be I think complicated, but you got to use the steps that we’ve outlined in this episode, and then put a bit of thought into it, and then stick to it, and be consistent Which number five, which I think is not only consistent about turning up and doing the stuff that you got to do, but being consistent around the idea of building a brand, And on the other hand, there’s a lot of people out there that make it like it’s jet science, and it’s over complicated. You got to keep it simple because you haven’t got the budget and you haven’t got the bandwidth, and you got to keep it simple, but keep it consistent. That’s what I would say, Rob.
And I would say that branding is an overused subject. I’ve always felt this way, still feel this way. You’ll hear top agents or luxury agents, and I’ll talk about brand, brand, brand. Really, what most people are establishing these days is an informational brand. Like an informational subject brand. Occasionally, realtors have a glamorous lifestyle outside of being an agent. They go to big parties and things like that. Some of their customers are rich and famous in very rare cases, but it It does happen. And so they, by extension, become rich and famous to a degree. But most of the agents I know when you brush that away, it is a lot more… That is the marketing. That is the sizz, not the steak. The steak is showing up when you’ve taken on a listing before the team that you hired to even stage it shows up, being ready, walking the property, being there an hour earlier than anybody else, and making sure that you know the outs of everything so that when the staging team comes, you’ve got a lot of input from them. You’ve looked in every nook and every cranny, staying late after that team leaves.
I’ve seen Christoff like a sleep in a chair at a mansion that he was doing a little day in the life of thing a long time ago. It really impressed me because he was there long after everybody else was. It was probably an insanely long day, 14 or 15 hour day to make sure that you had three videos done, all when the client wanted to leave the property available, all when all the production teams could get there, and all with you managing every detail. Now, what is that? Is that skill? I would argue that that’s simply hard work and discipline. I would argue that that consistency, just like John said, is one of the big things because you only get good at doing something by doing it many times. You practice, drill and rehearse. You practice when there is no blood on the ground so that when there is, you still do the thing with a high degree of skill. I still take Take sales calls because I believe it’s important to still talk to customers. That’s really what it comes down to. It is important that you get in the trenches and actually bleed with the clients, at least every once in a while, so that you understand exactly what’s going on.
I cannot tell you how strongly I feel about that particular sentiment. As a founder or a business owner, you don’t have to do it often, I don’t think. I don’t think you have to do it four times a day like I do, but once or twice every single week, making that you’re talking to one of your actual customers, yes, I think that’s important. And that’s a discipline. That’s consistency. That’s building a brand. That’s an informational brand that leads to reviews. And when you brush everything away, somebody is attracted by the spark of some part of your offer. But nine times out of 10 these days in the market that we live in, they are pulling the trigger because of your reviews, case studies, deeper knowledge that you’ve given about your products and services, the amount of money that your clients They’re looking at the actual mechanics of what you do and making decisions based on more than just a service-facing brand. That’s what I’ve got. But No further ado. John, thank you for putting this together. As always, I’ve emailed you a link to the 184 thing most agents do. If you feel inclined, maybe put it in the show notes since I did mention it.
And if people want to find you, follow up with you, get a consultation from you, talk to you about the MailRight marketing system, how would they go about doing that?
I’ll just go to the mail-right. Com website and in the top navigation, you can book a chat with me.
Okay. And you could do the same with me at inboundrem. Com on the About or Services pages. You’ll find links to my calendar. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in to the show. John and I are so grateful that you give us a little bit of your time and your mind space. We really appreciate it. Until next time. We’re going to sign off.
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Looking for the top real estate agent CRM in 2025? Discover the ultimate tool to manage clients, automate marketing, and grow your success.
In this video, we explore the top real estate agent CRM software options for 2025. Discover the features that set these platforms apart, including automation, lead management, and integration capabilities. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting out, finding the right CRM can transform your business. Tune in to learn about the best tools available and how they can enhance your productivity and client relationships. Don’t miss it.
Best Real Estate Agent CRM Software in 2025
#1 – LionDesk Bought by Lone Wolf
New Price of $39 per month
#2 – Wise Agent
Prices $49 + per month
#3 – Realvolve
Prices $94 per month
#4 – Follow Up Boss
Prices $69 + per month
#5 – Top Producer
Prices $179 + per month
https://www.topproducer.com
#6 – Brian Buffini
Prices $49 +
https://win.buffini.com/company/pricing/
#7 – ClickUp
https://clickup.com/templates/real-estate-agent-t-4392666
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right podcast. We talk about real estate marketing and will talk precisely about that again today. We will talk about real estate CRMs, and John has created a fantastic list for all of you. And before I go off on one, for those of you who follow along, believe it or not, today’s episode number is 463 times. John has done this 463 times. I’ve done this about 200 times now, and some odd times. John, who are you? Who is the man who would do 463 podcasts, for crying out loud?
I’ve got another podcast I did this morning, and we were on 950.
Oh, my goodness gracious. Well, come on, man. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I don’t know. I’ve lost the plot. I don’t know. Do you know if I exist? No. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We’re CRM. We also use Facebook and Instagram, providing a great digital platform for real estate agents. Back over to you, Rob.
I will help you out a little bit, John. As you can probably tell, John is a transplant from England, but he’s been here a long time. He’s He’s an entrepreneur. He started more than one company. He owns more than one SAAS, Software as a Service Company. He’s an experienced WordPress developer, so much so that his other podcast, briefly mentioned, is one of WordPress’s most popular listen-to podcasts.
It’s one of the most notorious.
Well, I’ll say it my way, you say it your way. So he knows a lot about WordPress, and that’s what he built the platform for real estate agents on, is WordPress, and he’s got a good all-in-one system that is less expensive and still managed directly by a founder. And so obviously, when we do these podcasts, we’re hoping-That’s a sad statement.
I’m just waiting for Loan Wolf to buy me out, Robert.
Oh, my goodness. All right. Well, as I was going to say, we do this podcast, we are our own sponsors. Obviously, it’s to introduce ourselves. We’re going to be talking about a lot of products that are going to fit very well into John’s universe today. People that are looking for good deals on tools that do a lot should look at Mailright along with this list because he does have a CRM in it. But having said that, we’re going to dive into a list of real estate CRMs, most of which are fairly affordable, that you could theoretically use to power the contact part of your business. Do you agree with everything I just said there, John?
As always, it’s It’s only occasionally that I disagree, isn’t it?
All right. Well, number one on our list, because we were joking about it before we turned the camera on, is Loan Wolf. I remembered Loan Wolf being a website producer, and he’s like, Do you know Loan Wolf? I’m like, I don’t know that I know a Loan Wolf that’s going to be out there buying up CRM companies. But boy, was I wrong? The Loan Wolf that I remember building websites is indeed the Loan Wolf that’s out there buying up CRM. I guess they just didn’t like what they had or are going to roll this tool into one.
But anyway, I’m the people that bought Serentractive.
It might be. And what a shame for Serentractive. I just dropped a review, literally, from one of their best accounts that has said, ever since they sold it, services dropped through the floor. And I’m getting ready to drop that review, John. He actually was so dissatisfied. He actually got on camera while still a customer of theirs and did a review with me. All right, before we go off on yet another tangent, because there’s only been four for those who are trying to count along with us, we are going to talk about this Lion Desk and acquisition by Lone Wolf and what we generally think of Lion Desk. I’m going to go. I’m going to keep it short and simple. I always thought it was too complicated. I was never the biggest fan of Lion Desk. It’s extremely reasonably priced. With being acquisitioned by a company that has a history of acquisitioning companies without being able to properly integrate them into a workflow or support system would not be something I would look at unless you’re desperate. That’s my opinion. Jon, go.
Yeah. Well, they did have a two-price structure, a 25 and 83, until recently, which the 83 really didn’t make much sense to me. Well, since they got bought out by Loan Whorff, they seem to only have one price now, $39, which is in some ways makes more sense to me, right? Because definitely the ’83 didn’t make much sense to me for what you were getting compared to the competition. It’s got a reasonably okay interface. It’s pretty… It’s to my taste. The main thing they seem to plug is they have a video, mess messaging platform, which is a direct competitor to Bombom. And Bombom, if you’re into that marketing, folks, where in your database, you send individual to potential clients or keeping contact or re-energise a relationship. Bonbon is a great platform, but it’s I wouldn’t say expensive, but it’s not cheap, depending on what is your budget, your marketing budget. Well, Linedesk built a similar product. It’s not as featured rich as Bonbon, and it’s one of the main cause, and also in relation with robo-calling. I discussed that to some degree because I think the days are ringing for leads, in my opinion, because of smartphones like the iPhone is dying.
But other Other experts, other agents would highly disagree with me. It’s okay at $39, it’s probably okay, isn’t it, for what you get, for what you can do with And it’s one of the better ones compared to some of the other ones we’re going to be talking about.
I don’t disagree with that. Forgive my frustration, everyone. This features and functionality. You take a website that’s extremely basic, like most of the ones that KVCORE sell. Chime has a nicer-looking website, but still it’s a template and it’s basic. And guess what? They quote you monthlies of $500, $1,000 a month. Kvcore and Chime are both $500 a month. Now, when compared against that, John, this is a windfall because, my God, $470 a month difference for functionality Does Lion Desk deliver on that margin? Hell, yeah. Hell, yes, it does. Is it a great tool? No, you get $39 worth of a tool, in my opinion. It’s overly complicated. I’ve taken five seconds to refresh myself, and I’m already lost with this guy who’s showing all the pages. There’s a list of things on the left that’s nice and seamless, like contacts, communication tasks, campaigns. Then you You start getting to each task and there’s a hundred fields to fill out every time. Like my office, branch office, agent. There’s literally 20 drop-downs just to identify lead source. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s good. You might need that. But like I said from the gate, they built a one-size-fits-all tool.
It’s not like if you’re an agent or a broker, you get a different tool, you get this tool. Some people, it’s going to be overkill, and other people, it’s not. It’s like the three… It’s Goldilocks and the three bears. One, two, cold, one too hot, and somebody right in between. And if you are the right in between for $39 a month, is that a serviceable CRM? Hell, yes, for that one in between person. All right, let’s move on to the next on the list. I am maybe feeling a little punchy like you were last week. Number two is wise agent, certainly a popular one for sure. Why don’t you lead us off?
Do I have to?
Well, now for sure.
Well, it’s $49. That’s not good, ladies and gentlemen, when you open with, Well, It’s $49.
That’s terrible. Okay, go ahead, John.
Well, they do have a mobile app. I think it It does a lot of what Line Desk does without the video. I don’t think they got a video tool that directly competes. I notice when you go to features, their lead generation, their plugin, which is an extra. I really wouldn’t buy into their lead generation system. What I heard, it doesn’t… These are my opinions. No, they’re just my opinions, folks. Take them as what they are. They do real estate content. That’s on the top of their feature list. I would strongly advise you to not take either those. I think on the basic offering, which I said, is $49. I wouldn’t But if you’re just going to use their platform for the actual contact information, follow through, as a traditional CRM should be used. As long as you like the interface, I think you’re going to be okay. It’s just… And what we discussed last week with some of the three offerings out there, when I had my little rant, when I say it’s this confusion between lead generative platforms and traditional CRMs and the total confusion of mixing all this up and dealing with expectations and what you’re really going to get from the system and And long as you really understand what you’re going to get from Wise Agent, I think we’re going to be happy.
But if you’ve got certain expectations which I think the Wise Agent website, in my opinion, fosters, I think you could be very disappointed.
Okay. My opinion about most of these platforms, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty simple. And I hate to say this because most of our audience, 2,000 or 3,000 of you that listen to our podcast, listen, real estate agents are not technical people. And unfortunately, I’ve never seen a profession that gets paid on more, except maybe auto shop owners than agents do. You are sold something from every human being under the sun, always promised that it’s going to be the best thing that you’ve ever purchased. Almost invariably what people are doing, like Wise Agent and every other CRM, for the most part, they’re not building anything that is unique or new. What they’re trying to do is build something that’s competent that you will not know whether it’s bleeding edge or not. And then you will simply decide for yourself by using it, in all these tools are a golden handcuffs situation. Why is agent… Once you’re in it, you’ve taken 20 of your hours to learn how to use it, and you’ve got all your data imported into it, how easy is it for you to switch? Because the answer is not, which is why best real estate CRM and best real estate CRM software are two of the most expensive searches in all of real estate marketing, $10.
52 and $8. 26 for those searches. And why is that? Because real estate agents who are looking to change want to change once. Nobody is a fool. For those of you who are listening to this show, unless you’re going to find a good partner. This is the one thing I’ll say about MailRight or any other system. And I’ve said this before, I’m going to say it again. I don’t know the system nearly well enough to actually show for John, and he gets very frustrated with me at times. But I will tell you something I’m extremely I’m extremely confident in. Having a partner who is still willing to talk to you as a customer, a partner that will address you personally, is worth all the bells and whistles that every system out there has in my opinion, 100 %. The fact that I still can interact with my clients, not as much anymore, but I still do it. John does it. You can get him on the phone, you can talk to him. The answering of these questions adds massively to the perceived value of a technical tool. Having somebody there, you agree with this?
Well, I think the support element and the training element is an important factor. I don’t think, to be fair to wise agent, they’ve never sold themselves as a direct competitor to real geek, or Sarah Interactive, or somebody of the other more lead generative platforms. I just pointed out, if you go to their feature page, they are pushing the lead generated elements of wise agent, which I haven’t reviewed it for over a year. When I last reviewed it, and I’m only going by my memory, they did have those elements, but they were pitching themselves as a more modern version of top producer. And I had no problem with that. And I still don’t have any problems with it, really, because it’s $49, right?
Right. And you can build a website out of it, too. It’s basically a Wix for 49 instead of eight, and you can build on top of Wise Agent. And if all of you were like the people listening to the show, if you’re a brand new agent, God, good Lord, yes, look at Wise Agent. Don’t Maybe you don’t even look at me or John. We’re probably too expensive for somebody who’s trying to, let’s say, start a business with the change in their pocket, which both of you and I have done, by the way.
I’m going to be truthful. I’m looking at doing a product. We have the IDX product, and we have the paid Facebook, and I’m going to keep those two options, but I’m looking at offering a solution at this price level. We have the other two, but the main one is this. Because you got to play in the reality of where you’re playing. Shall we go on to the next one?
Now, before we go to break. Ladies and gentlemen, John and I are going to take a break, share a smoke, talk about all the strippers that we hired this weekend, and come back to you. We’ll be right back. All right, ladies Ladies and gentlemen, we’re coming back to you after our long break discussing so many things, religion, all the meaning of life, whether or not we have a towel. And here we go. We’re going to talk more about CRMs because we know that ultimately that’s why you’re tuning into the show. It’s episode number 463, for those of you who are keeping track. For those of you who’ve been with us since the beginning of this particular episode, you’ll know that John has another show he’s done 900 episodes on. This is my only podcast. I’m not going to say that’s going to be true forever, but it’s currently my only podcast. We’ve managed to make it two down our list of six because John and I love to hear ourselves talk. We’re going to talk about reEvolve. Once again, my friend, I’m going to let you take this $94 a month monster and talk to people about it.
Go for it.
Well, in my opinion, I have no idea why somebody would use this for $94 on this.
There you go. All right, that’s it from John. Don’t use them. That’s it from me. All right, follow-up, boss, number four on the list. So now this is a beast, and I’m going to take up the torch here because I have a 45 minute long review with these guys. I could not be a stronger fan of the tool. And I used to be an unabashed fanboy of Followed Boss until they sold themselves to Zillow, which they did for half a billion dollars. So all the owners really came out of this massive winners.
But-lovely, gravy, gravy.
Right. So do I love this tool the same way? Straight up from just the ownership perspective, because it would require zero for these guys. To, forgive me, I was about ready to curse everybody. These guys to change the Julia and you won’t notice. They may have already done it. I haven’t read through their terms. Here’s the slight change that can happen. The data is secure, but we technically own the rights. That’s what the language will say in legalese. That means that effectively, Trulia and Zillow just went for a play for all of your data. No doubt about it, there’s no other reason for them to make the purchase. They said all All this glorious language about fucking making a better CRM for their agent.
He started to swear, folks.
It’s just baloney. It’s a smokescreen. Mark my words. They’re making a play for the data. And so does that make me a fan of follow-up it anymore, not to the same degree. So it’s still the best tool, in my opinion. Best real estate specific tool, not the best tool in general, but absolutely 100 %. And when you compare that you can get a better tool for than you can for 500 or a thousand. It’s better than Real Geeks. It’s better than Sierra Interactive. It’s better than Chime. It’s better-I would disagree with you there a little bit, in that your follow-up boss is a bit of a…
The bits that follow-up boss does is obviously you are correct. It’s just that the other three products that you’ve just mentioned, as based on our last week’s discussion, they are pitching themselves as a website CRM lead generative system. I around IDX website presence where follow-up doesn’t offer that. It is lead generative in how you use a CRM.
All right. Then I’ll change my comment, and I’ll say this, the differentiation about whether or not you collect a lead with an IDX tool on a subpar website, and all the websites at this point, including Sierra Interactive, are subpar for the day and time in which they’re launching their sites. I got that from a top account. I didn’t realize how far they’d fallen off, and they’ve fallen off. I’ve been a fanboy of Sierra Interactive also for a super long time, John. So it’s unlike me to say anything negative about one of the leading real estate website developers that’s out there. But they have not kept up with the times. He says his website does not work well on mobile at all, and that’s 69 % of his traffic. That’s not my friend.
That’s indefensible, really. But get back to follow up, boss. For $69, you are right. So do frame that. Rob’s right. Of everything we’re going to talk about, it is head above all the other products we have talked about or going to talk about in this episode is the clear leader. Would I suggest that you use it or recommend it to you? No. Because it’s owned by Zillow, end of story. In my opinion, there’s a lot of my opinions in this episode, isn’t it? Rumpa, it’s my opinion. I would not want to share my database, my hard-earned contacts, my blood and sweat and just give it to Zillow. No, thank you. It’s just sad. I don’t blame the founders of Follow Up Boss because it’s a fantastic I’ve come for them. I’ve got no criticism of them. We all live in the real world. We all want to do well. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re not a jerk and a con artist. But It’s now owned by Zillow, and I wouldn’t use it.
Yeah. Moving on. Next on our list is Top Producer, and I’m going to start us off because, John, there’s literally nothing you could say that’s going to be worse than what I say.
Okay? Sure, because I’ve got some right comments.
So Top Producer is one of the oldest CRMs on our list. They literally have been around for so long at the time that they launched, they were one of three top products. There’s 300 real estate CRMs now, to give everybody an understanding. Topreducer has not, really… They have done a few overhauls of their UI and their UX. But here’s one of the things they never did overhaul. Their prices are redonkulous. They have a dated tool and they charge you five times more for it than anybody else will. The level of insanity is- It’s focused off in it. Is beyond comprehension. The only reason that top producer is a business is because some agents are so loathe to learn new tools. They are literally limping along with this dinosaur paying whatever top producer does. Why? Because 20 years ago, top producer was the leading real estate CRM, or one of them, one of the top three for sure. And now they’re still around. Thankfully to all of you real estate professionals out there who would rather go to the dentist and learn a new CRM. John?
When I was checking it and I was reading posts and doing my research. There you go, Robert, research. It was coming up $120 start, and then I go to their website and their price starts at $179, Rob. Plus other packages. And it’s just unbelievable, isn’t it?
Their I have not kept up with the times. There’s so much competition coming up from the bottom up. John included, by the way, everybody. John included so much competition because more can be done with technology for less, from the development side, from everything. It doesn’t make it easier for John to spend 100 grand building out a tool. It’s not fun, it’s not pleasant, and it takes a lot of time. But at the same time, once the tool is done, technology is advanced in such a way as like, I don’t need as many servers. I don’t need as much as anything in terms of technical infrastructure to run an SAS as I did, let’s say, even 10 years ago. And now, but top producer doesn’t pay any attention to that. Why? They can’t lower the prices to their existing account base. You are taking on a pricing metric that made sense 20 years ago, it no longer does in any way, shape, or form. God, don’t do it. That’s it. Told you it wouldn’t be worse than me. Now, this next one is completely different from me. I am going to keep talking because I do want to say something.
I think that the Bafini method and their training program is one of the best things happening in real estate, in my opinion. I have met so many agents on the telephone that have gone through their coaching system and it has made a vast difference in their career. I have lost count. They might very well be the only real estate marketing and coaching company where I can say that definitively without question. They have a tool that goes along with their training, very similar to what Ricky Caruth has. My opinion about it is, heck, it may not be the best or the worst CRM, who the hell knows? I haven’t looked at it, but I will tell you this, if they’re going to train you on a tool, buy their tool. Buy their tool because you’ll be in a class. You’ll have many other people learning the tool. The learning through osmosis is a powerful thing when you’re using coaching systems. Go ahead, John. That’s my thing.
Yeah, the actual tool is not bad. If you’re just going to use it for a traditional sales-orientated CRM CRM that has terminology and flows that are Pacific for your industry, it’s certainly a damn lot better than Topproducer. And you can just use the tool. I’m going by their website for $49. The only thing, I don’t know if this is correct, I’m surmising this. The only problem is if you just try and buy the tool and start using it, they’re going to bombard you with sales calls, I would imagine. I would imagine they’re going to be over you like a load of flies on a dead bit of meat. But But also the other side of it is that I actually… My old co-host before you, he was a Bafini trained agent, and we interviewed the fact that Bafini himself and his brother. I know about their training methodologies, and I think they’re definitely more of the more respectable side of real estate agent training coaching companies. So that’s what I got What are you saying about it. So as long as you know, if you buy the tool, they’re going to send a lot of email, and they’re going to ring you up a few times and that.
And I’m not saying that. It’s totally bad to take some of their training But if you’re more experienced and you don’t feel you need their training, I actually think they’re tall. But it’s just about relationship-based and sales-based with a nice interface, and it’s not too It’s a bit complicated, and it’s actually compared to some of these others, I don’t actually… It’s a bit of a gem, really. A little bit of a gem, really. As long as you know what you’re buying. It’s not a website. It’s not an IDX website. It doesn’t provide canned campaigns for Facebook, and trying to manage a Facebook advertising account with no experience and blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t try and be those. In some ways, I think it’s a more honest platform. Does this making in any sense, Rob?
Yeah, it does. I love everything you have to say about it. I knew walking into this that you added them there because you and I have had a lot of positive experiences. People have been trained by them. The idea that they build their business off of is a solid sales mechanic. They oftentimes are very focused, don’t seem to pretend to be something that they’re not. As a result, they’ve got more positive outcomes of any coaching training company that I know of that I’ve dealt with, including Tom Ferry. Mike Ferry actually does have a very good track record, but only for a certain type of salesperson. Having said all that, we’re going to move on to the last on the list. John is going to take this up as well because he’s a user and he added them twice. So he really wants to talk about this company.
Clickup. Well, linked to our last show, I think if you follow up, boss, is a superb product. Well, it’s not perfect, but compared… And it’s just a shame, but I could never recommend it anymore. But if you’re not bothered that you’re, in my opinion, even though they would deny this, As long as you’re not worried that your data is going to be shared with Zillow, go ahead. It’s a great platform. But the others, apart from Brian Perfini’s platform. I think a lot of the others have the problem is that you could just use ClickUp and just use their free template, Design for Re-Estate Agents. You’re probably going to be quite happy. That’s why I’ve added it to the last thing, because they got a free product ClickUp. It integrates a lot better into a WordPress website and anything else you want. I see that as a problem for these other platforms.
Copy you. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to do a little bit of bonus content, and I’m going to catch John off guard because I’m going to give a little bit of a history lesson here, which is relevant to the conversations we’re having, our RE, follow up, it’s ownership, and Zillow. Here’s the history lesson, because most of us have a memory that is minutes old. I’m not even sure that John was around and focused on the Zillow. Big companies have a tendency to do stuff like Zillow just did. They just their CEO. The previous CEO was notorious for shifting his view so much. By the way, let me give everybody an example. Zillow and all the companies before them got their momentum an idea behind a service called Listing Syndication. And every person that was asking for MLS Listings was telling those MLS companies that they were not going to compete against the MLS, that all they were going to do was promote the agent’s listing for free. And indeed, they did that for 10 years. Zillow and Trulia and all those others, they came along and said the same thing, We will promote your listing for free.
That’s how they all got started. How else do you think they got these guys to send them their listings? Just out of goodness of their heart. Of course not. They said, Hey, we’re going to promote, we’re going to invest a billion dollars into a website, get the traffic that you can’t, and promote the listing for you for free. What fool would say no to that, right? But you can all see the punchline overwhelming. Then they started to advertise against those listings. Then what did they say? Because obviously, agents were outraged. They go, Hey, we don’t like you doing that. We don’t want to give you our listings anymore. They said, Oh, no, no, no, no. We’re We’re going to compete against you. This is for a different buyer, different person than what you’re trying to serve. These buyers just want to look online, and you’re still going to get all the appointments with boots on the ground. We’re not trying to compete against you. We’re just doing a little advertising thing over here and a couple of people They won the lawsuits because they were already a very big company, and we didn’t hear any more about it.
But then, Zillow said, because some people started to say, Wow, you’ve got 40 or 50% of all traffic related to home searches. What a bitch it would be if you decided to be a real estate company against us, the realtors, to which Zillow said, We will never compete against realtors directly. They fucking lied. They absolutely had that plan on the books. I know some people that worked over there, and they just said what they needed to say to calm everybody’s anger. And then, of course, they opened up another division owned by the same company, but it directly competed against agents. And then on top of all that, what loophole did they find next? They then looked around and said, hey, You know what? For all of those of you who are upset about us competing with you directly, we’re going to come out with a new plan. You’re going to love it. It’s going to be great. I’m channeling Trump here. It’s the best plan that’s ever been made. Here’s what it’s called, Zillowlex. You know what Zillowlex does? They still qualify the leads mostly the same way. But what they do with Zillowlex is when they send you the lead, they say, Hey, $100 a month, signs you up for Zillowlex.
Awesome, right? You don’t have to pay us $1,000 a month for advertising. But you do have to give us 30% of the deal when you close it. And that’s low. They’ve moved that deal, that percentage, up to 30 to 45% of the deal, and they’re aiming at a 50/50 split. That means effectively, ladies and gentlemen, 10% of the realtors in the US already work for Zillow right now. They are effectively competing. And what’s more, they make more money than your broker does. They make more money than everybody does. They’ve just done it better because whoever controls the lead flow controls the real estate business. Now, you would think, with all that I’ve just told you, that that would be enough, that over that 10 or 15 year history, that you would be, Okay, Robert, we get your point. But they did four other things, too, that were just insanely outside the margins of what they said they would do. Number one, they hired real estate agents. They hired top agents and brokers from all of the company and absolutely bribed them. They made them a Zillow board of trustees. They took influencers, people directly out of the industry, hired them on board their company, and then got people that were adamantly opposed to Zillow to come out and say, We’re no longer opposed.
I do not know what these people are getting paid, but it’s an extraordinary amount of money. I know that from hearing rumors about it, and now these voices for the real estate profession get up there and chill like lobbyists for Zillow. I’m not going to go into the other things. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you something that I hope you really hear because you heard it here first. There has never been a company that has acted so maliciously against the profession that it supposedly serves. They are not your friends. They are 100% your competitors. Every single one of you that’s listening to this show that’s buying a Zillow lead, you are funding your top competitor. You are telling them, not only compete against me, beat me. Please, here’s my money. And you justify it because it’s an easy lead to get. I get it. I understand the easy way is always a way that’s so appealing. But God, please, everybody, you are dancing with the devil under the pale sunlight, and the jig is going to stop. I promise you. There’s coming a time… They already have beat everybody in search. There’s coming a time in which they will simply put most of you out of business.
It wasn’t for Google being more significant because for all their dominance of the real estate trade, for Google, they’re still a tiny bear. They’re like fleas compared to Google. Google dominates local searches, and they dominate to a certain degree. But it wasn’t for them; it would have been fleeing for Google. It would have been, and they would have achieved what they wanted. But that’s the reality. I don’t know if you agree that the only problem for them is, yeah, they’re big, but for Google, they’re nothing.
Correct. That’s why we have opened up a whole local division, and I talk about locals incessantly. It is the way to traffic and eyeballs for the average realtor, and it does beat Zillow in many categories. Zillow locks up the home for-sale category. Regardless of what, Google would have to change its algorithm to get Zillow not to be dominant, and they have no desire to because, like every other major corporation out there, Zillow pays the green mail to… I mean, the budget for Zillow is millions upon millions of dollars a month to Google because they advertise against their own name. It’s always been a frustration for businesses, myself included. You can target inbound RM as a keyword and advertise against it. I would have to pay the same amount in the sponsor search results. It’s my company. It’s nuts. It doesn’t matter. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it. We’re out of time. John, I hope I think… I’m so sorry for the ramp. It’s been a great show. It allowed me to say something that worked with the content that we were doing.
This is our point about you handing your data over to Zillow. Follow-up, boss, is a necessary evil, but I would seek a reason to eliminate them immediately. I might even invest more a more complicated tool like HubSpot, which didn’t make John’s list, but I use HubSpot. It’s a good tool. It isn’t easy.
It’s not real- It’s just sad to say that. But it’s the reality.
Yeah, it is. And they paid a hefty penny, but it’s not hefty to them. Half a billion, okay, a fraction of their bottom line. They’re still losing money. They don’t care. Just like Amazon did, because they’re playing the same game that Amazon did, they’re acquiring, buying up everybody, making moves until they decide to say, Hey, we’ve officially taken over a vast majority of the real estate business; nobody can fight them. That’s exactly what Amazon did with the e-commerce and shipping business. They just kept losing money, kept losing money, kept losing money, and then all of a sudden, they’re making a trillion dollars a year. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to my rant. You can go to inbound if you’d like to hear more on my rant. Com. Look at my services or About page; you can listen to me rant as much as you want. I usually talk about SEO, marketing lead generation, how to market yourself, etc. And lots of that content is on my website for free. You will learn a lot. I guarantee it. Jon, how would you like people to reach out to you?
Shiva, thanks, Rob. Let’s go to mail-right.com, and you can sign up for a free chat with me. What could you ask for? I’d love to chat with you. Back over to you, Rob.
All right. John and I would like to thank the shows’ sponsors today, MailRight and InboundRAM. Com. We appreciate your patronage of the companies we both own and everybody listening to the show. Could you take us offline?
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
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Don’t miss out on the next big thing in social media for Realtors. Could you determine which platforms will dominate in 2025 and how to leverage them?
As the real estate market evolves, so does the social media landscape. In this video, we explore the new hot platforms that every realtor should be on in 2025. Learn about innovative features and audience engagement strategies tailored for real estate professionals. Equip yourself with the knowledge to harness these tools and elevate your marketing game. Click to watch and get ahead of the competition.
#1 – Bluesky
The Bluesky social network uses the AT Protocol, an open-source framework for building social apps. The AT Protocol creates a standard format for user identity, data, and follows. This allows users to move freely between apps that use the AT Protocol.
#2 – Pinterest
#3 – Mastodon
#4 – Reddit
#5 – Telegram (Groups)
#6 -Snapchat (Stories) live for 24 hours
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode 460 of the MailRight podcast. I’m here with the amazing, fantastic, and generally outstanding Jonathan Dinwood, and we are talking about what the… Well, okay. What are the best video content ideas for realtors in 2025, and what are the alternative hot social media platforms for 2025? Are we doing a dual subject today, John?
No, I just got the wrong thing. We’re doing the Hot Social Media platforms.
Awesome. Okay, so we’re doing incredible social media platforms. And let me tell you, everybody, this is very rare, but John was ready to go. He was so ready to go. He messaged me an hour ago and asked me where I was. Where were you, Rob? I was happy amid a team meeting, training some people on video stuff. Anyway, John, I have ribbed you a little bit, and we’ve introduced you vaguely, but why don’t you introduce yourself specifically to anybody who doesn’t know who you are or wants to hear who you are for about the thousandth time?
All right. Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mill-right.com. We’re a platform that allows you to advertise on Facebook and also provide a great-looking website. Back over to you, Rob.
All right. Well, for those who are new listeners, my name is Robert. I’m a founder of an inbound marketing company focusing on real estate and SEO. For those that are returning visitors, you already know who I am. I’m gently, lovingly reminding you that Inboundrm.com is a great place to learn how to do all the relevant things for your business in the digital marketing space in 2025. All right, today, we’re going to strut our stuff, John and I. We’ve got a beautiful topic prepared for you. It’s an alternative social media platform in 2025. We mainly cover the proliferation of people escaping the idea of Facebook, threads, and many other things. This is a, really, really, really I think we’ve seen this over the last couple of years, that on especially Facebook properties, meta properties, the main two are Facebook and Instagram, that if you don’t pay to play, you’re not going to get much reach.
We’ve also seen the last couple of years, not only on meta platforms but also on meta platforms such as LinkedIn. Since Mr. Musk bought Twitter, if you have links in your posts and content to drive traffic to your website, the reach of those posts has decreased considerably. So, the methodology used to drive traffic to your website has diminished quite a bit. That’s one of the beautiful things about YouTube: they don’t have that policy. So that’s another reason. So, there’s no point in producing great content for your website if you can’t get traffic because nobody can read it or do something you want them to do. So, people are looking at alternative social media platforms that don’t have these policies. That’s what our list is based on, Robert.
Got you. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t have a strong of opinion as John does about most of these subjects. That is because that as a content producer and a person, I built the vast majority of my audience on three channels, Google Local, YouTube, and Traditional Search, which are the same three things that my company focuses on. That doesn’t mean that these other channels aren’t viable, aren’t valid. The channel that I’ve done the best on personally, that just are organically, literally without much are focusing on it are Pinterest and LinkedIn. As to Mastodon and Threads and X and all those in the real moment, like microblogging sites, they’ve It has required too much time and energy to keep up with them for me to really be an expert of any kind. I have followers. I have thousands of followers on each of these platforms, but all I’m doing is sharing content from my website. So Anyway, I do like one of the ones in your list. I’m really excited about it. We’re going to talk about it when I get to it. But Blue Sky, I have literally no experience with this. I understand what it is, and I’ve seen it.
Have you used it, Jon?
I’ve done a bit of work with it. I’m going to be using it a lot more. I’m not going to give up on Twitter. I won’t call it X. I refuse to call it X. But I’m going to probably use both. Blue Sky, it was started by Jack Dorsey, who was the joint founder of Twitter. He invested quite a bit of money in it. He isn’t controlling it anymore, but I still think he’s invested in it. It’s very similar to Twitter, but Twitter before the present owner bought it, it It has a much more open API, so you can do more with the data that you get from it, which Twitter basically, they shut the door on using the data that you get from the platform. And it does have some really great elements to it. One thing that people got to understand, it is based on a open protocol. It’s based on a protocol that’s called AT. And why should you care? Well, it’s very similar to podcasting. Podcasting is based on another protocol called RSS Feeds. And this protocol that Blue Skye, and another one that we’re going to be talking about in this show, that means that if you ever want to leave Blue Skye and you build audience, and long as the other platform that you’re moving to is also based on this AT protocol, it’s going to be much easier to move from one platform to the other, which is quite attractive because that’s one of the problems of moving away from Twitter, people that are built quite a large audience, which is like me.
I’ve got about 7,000 people that follow me on Twitter. That’s a bit pragmatic. So it’s growing, I think they got about 30 million users now, which is quite good. It’s still much smaller than Twitter and some of the meta properties, but it’s growing quite considerably. But the main thing is when you post on Blue sky and you have a link to your website and you are investing time in writing content, you won’t be finalize having that link. You will have as many natural people that show interest in the post. And this used to be similar to Twitter or of 10 years ago, you could drive a lot more traffic through Twitter than you can now. So that’s the main thing that really, I think, is relevant here. It’s a great driver of traffic to your website.
So I have little opinion about Blue Sky, strong opinions about Jack Dorsey. The idea The idea of Jack in his many companies because he’s done Square, he’s done Cash App, he’s done Twitter, he’s done many things. Jack, I followed him. He’s a really unusual and extraordinary personality inside the tech space. One of those founders who really just does things for the sake of doing them is already wealthy beyond comprehension and doesn’t typically pay that much attention to it. He’s noted for his humble lifestyle, extreme and eating habits. He’s definitely got this idea, John, when I see him start stuff where the user is in control, like his point of sale stuff, his cash app, all the things that he has done have usually empowered users. Even what you’re talking about with Blue sky, where you can move your account history from one place to the other. It’s like the 1980s old school developers of old. He’s one of those guys. I used to call those guys Fuzzy audiologic people because my parents were one. They are people who are more focused on the idea of the internet as this great place that you can go and share ideas and share concepts and help each other, open-source conversations, things like that.
Jack is one of those guys, and I really love him for it. It doesn’t mean anything personal. In the sense of the businesses that he runs, I don’t use Cash App, I don’t use Blue Sky, I don’t use Square, okay? And he probably has some others as well. I barely use Twitter. His idea is that he has aren’t the ideas that I gravitated to. That does not mean they aren’t brilliant ideas and that he himself isn’t making interesting things. If any of you are looking for a place to go, I think that Blue Sky is really great place to look at based on the knowledge alone that Jack is behind it. Because number one, nobody’s going to buy this dude out. He sold a couple of things, and I think he’s learned to regret it. He sold Twitter. I think he regrets it because he’s starting a competitor. And he could have probably done this whenever he wanted, John. For him, building out a second app of the same type, probably not that complicated. All right, but let’s move on. Because now we’re talking about one that I do love, Pinterest. Okay, and then I have lots of experience with it.
I have 23,000 followers on my Pinterest account, something like that. I don’t actually know.
I’m going to look right now. Yeah, I’m going to do something with that this year because it’s the same. The fundamental thing is what is Pinterest? Well, basically, it’s visually based. You put images up, You can build, I forgot the terminology, categories of different images, and you can share your links again, and you’re not going to be penalized. So it’s another great platform, the driving traffic to your website. Because like I say, if you’re going to invest money on content and you haven’t got the money to utilize Facebook meta or Google ads. These alternative platforms you can use as a strategy to invest in content on your website and then drive traffic to it. So It’s another blue sky. You won’t get penalized for the links that you have when you pin something. And I think they are still slowly growing, and And they get enough traffic, so it makes a difference. Back over to you, Rob.
I have always loved Pinterest. I had an automated tool, which I’m trying to log in right now and realizing that it’s not letting me log in. So it would appear that my automated tool that I use for so long is probably defunct. It would appear that way. But what I’m going to say to you is that before it got defunct, that tool grew my audience from zero to 18,000 followers. Most likely the reason it’s defunct is eventually, Pinterest realized that automated AI tools were ruining their ecosystem and probably figured out a way to shut them down. But in the meantime, I It worked very well for me in terms of what I was ultimately trying to do, which was create a following and get people to go back to the inbound RM website. Because here’s an interesting thing about Pinterest, John. Still to this very day, one of the very, very… It’s now run by a Google executive taken directly from the Google C-suite team. And the reason he went to Pinterest in the first place is that Pinterest is the only social platform that is image-based, that is popular, that allows communication between the platform and the search engines.
What does that mean? That means that you can use Pinterest for SEO, for search engine optimization. Everything on here is readable, viewable. If you get an image that leads to a thousand people going to your website. That means that you’ve got backlinking and traffic from a high domain authority, or a high authority domain, which essentially means that without question, Pinterest What is the most valuable social media platform for SEO that is out there. Not even a close second.
I think you find that Blue sky is similar. It allows Google to track it.
We will find out. I haven’t seen anything I’m not thinking about it so far, but I hope that that’s the case. That it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case, but Twitter was never like that, John.
No, it wasn’t.
We’ll see if he decides to fix that with Blue Sky. But one way or the other, and if he does decide to fix that with Blue Sky, I will tell you all right now that I’ll pay a hell of a lot more attention to it. Because when the search engines can read something, collecting data and understanding user behavior is the golden ticket in the information age, which is the age that we’re in right now. So these guys that are blocking down and locking out their platforms and not allowing data to be transferred are only interested in you being on that platform and basically thriving and surviving there. I hate that, mechanic John. Always have, always will. That somebody’s stealing all your information and not even bothering to give you all the value for it. They’re saying, We’re going to collect all that user data, but we’re keeping it on the platform. Nobody else gets to see it but us. And we’re going to use it directly to sell advertising back to you. So we’re going to take your interesting conversations and then monetize them effectively. If you give me something back, I don’t mind. Twitter does a little They can give you a lot back if you build an audience, but it requires so much work.
Whereas with Google, it doesn’t require nearly as much work. They proliferate your information everywhere, and they give you a big return on it, in my opinion. But moving on. Number three on the list is Mastodon. I’ve heard a lot about this. I have a lot of friends on it. I’ve done nothing with it.
How about you? I’ve chosen, it’s probably going to be Blue sky, Mastodon. So basically, Mastodon uses the same protocol, this IT protocol, but it’s more techy. You have to set up your own server. That doesn’t mean you need a server, actual physical box, because you got things like drop-its and cloud servers, but you do need to set it up. And funny enough, with Blue sky, you can set up your own server with Blue Sky, but they just made it… They provided a hosted form of Blue Sky that just makes it easier for non-techies to use it. Where Mastodon, you just got to go through more loops to get it set up. But it does mean that you really do have ownership, and you have to join different Mastodon feeds, and it’s just a a little bit more clunky. I think they’re based in Germany, the people, or Russian. I think the Eliphid is the… I think, I can’t pronounce his name, but I think the founder, one of the founders of it is Russian. I don’t think it’s growing like Blue Sky, but that might change. I think I added it because if you are trying to build an audience or group and you can use it, it’s the one that you have the most control over.
Okay. I don’t know much about Mastodon. Actually, I know next to nothing. And truth is, it’s very low on my list of apps or tools to explore currently. I would be more interested in Blue Sky for sure. But We’re going to go to break, and when we come back, we’ve got Reddit, Telegram, and Snapchat. We’re going to have conversations about each one of these. I have a lot to say about Telegram. I’ve used Telegram. It’s one of the few that I have, and I have various No specific opinions about Telegram, about what’s going on there. But we’ll cover all of that when we come back. All right? Stay tuned, everybody. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode My number 460, my absolutely fearless co-host and I are talking about what are the hot alternative, hot social media platforms for 2025. I think that if it was me, and I don’t generally comment on this shit, but I’m going to say that I would probably go with this slightly, what’s all the buzz about with social media platforms that aren’t Facebook or something like that. I would change the name of the title because the way that people talk to me about stuff is slightly different than the way the title is.
It’s more like… I don’t think the people, John, can really have a proper discussion about, let’s say, bailing on Facebook. I can’t just bail on Facebook.
No, I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying that I think, unless you’re going to, this is just my opinion, unless you’re going to put money into it, I think as a medium to build an audience and drive traffic to your website, unless you’re going to cough up some money, I think Meta ain’t going to play ball with you unless you’re prepared to set up a Facebook group and invest time in that. But then obviously, they’ve got a track record. They’re always changing how things work on Facebook.
So that’s They are changing how things work, but they did just come off their most profitable year ever. Nobody’s hurting. Facebook has complete control over a certain piece of the market, and I know why they do. You can’t just close. Once you’ve got 10 years of conversation on a thing, you can’t necessarily just close it down. It depends on who you are and what you’re doing. But even on my personal account, John, I’m really I don’t consider myself a social media guy, but I have generated on my personal account 1,700 followers who are not necessarily my friends. Now, it’s not a very big number, but my profile identifies me as a digital creator I’ve gone through the 1,700 people. I’ll give you an example. I have a very famous photographer that follows me, and I don’t know why. You must be interested in what I have to say. I’m not a photographer. I don’t take that many pictures. But And I think that he has similar social ideology thoughts as I do, and I’m not political on my thing, but I do talk about philosophy a lot, stuff like that. And so do I want to lose all those connections that could become something at some point?
Probably not. I’ve spent very casually 10 years building them. It would be crazy for me to stop being on Facebook.
I’m not suggesting that you should do that. I just think that you might be best to diversify a bit. But there we go. Shall we go on to the next one then?
If we must. Reddit.
Yeah.
So Reddit is a big one. I actually do use Reddit a lot, but I use it as an SEO tool. How do you use it, if at all?
Well, it’s like all these. I think who would believe in 2024 that a Quisar forum network would come boring back? But Google have decided, because of the world of AI, to promote Reddit content highly. And it’s a forum-based experience. It’s various topics. You can set up your own topics, and it just It’s a lot of… If I was trying to build influence in the area around real estate, like I say, I would look at Princis, I would look at Blue Sky, and I would definitely, in my quiver of social social media platforms, I definitely would try and build a group or be part of a group that talked about real estate in a particular city area and postcontent And you can also link content you got on your website. And it’s definitely something I would look at if I was trying to build influence as somebody that knew something about property in my local area.
I use Reddit for SEO exclusively. I every once in a while, I find myself on some Reddit threads because it’s a good microblogging platform and it’s still like a fairly… It’s like 4chan. It’s a fairly organic environment. You can still find some interesting people saying some interesting things. What I really love Reddit for, though, John, is become one of the best SEO platforms that is out there because the links carry a lot of value. It’s easy to get followers. If anything, so Google is looking at a lot of user behavior to add value to links and stuff like that. Now it’s getting harder and harder and harder and harder to fool the search engine. You don’t just have to have a link. It helps if the link has traffic coming through it. Now it’s like if you want to make a valuable post on another platform and then that goes viral and then they a whole bunch of traffic to your website. That is actually a great SEO tactic. Reddit is really good for that. So is Medium, but Reddit’s better. All right, let’s go on to Telegram.
Yes, Telegram. Yes, developed by a couple of Russians, or one Russian that became a French citizen. And I think he’s still facing charges by the French government. All that might have been dropped, but I think he’s got some with the French government. But it is very popular with a particular set. I’ve never used it. It has this group feature. And I just think in real estate, if you’re trying to build influence, and there’s a telegraph group talking about property in that, and it’s around your particular city. It could be something worthwhile joining. Once again, to build influence in it?
I have seen this used for investors. I have never seen it used on the residential real estate wholesale site. I’m just going out there and trying to be an agent. I’ve never really seen it for that. I’ve seen it in investor groups lots, crypto lots. It’s a secure place to have conversations, and for some reason it’s been embraced by the business community more than, let’s say, Discord and other tools that are similar in type. But Telegram is really been well used by certain business communities. And I love it for that. I do. It’s features very similar to… There’s another one out there that is also a… It’s a secure place to have conversations.
It’s encrypted, isn’t it? It’s supposed not to be broken. Who knows how true that is, but it’s supposed to be. There are things about using it that you got to understand to make it truly encrypted. But I think investor groups and certain people that are buying property, if you got that group and you can join it, it might be worth the effort.
I like Telegram. I’m going to agree with you. I’m going to say if you haven’t checked it out or if you haven’t checked out some of the conversations happening there, it might be worth a peruzal. The first way that I would get into using it would be to find some interesting groups and join them and just see how people are leveraging the platform and decide whether or not it’s for you or not. I didn’t think I would appreciate it, but security-minded, a surprising amount of people who are security-minded, who are actually credible, go on Telegram. You also have a lot of scam artists. So as with all these platforms, you have to be careful. Of course, no platform carries as many scam artists on it as WhatsApp right now, but that’s okay.
All right. Or Twitter, or the X, maybe.
Right. Snapchat.
Yeah. Well, it’s still pretty big. It’s the sleep Looking giant, really, of the two founders. They’ve done well out of it. It has this feature called Stories. It’s a bit like what you get on Instagram Instagram. They only last for 24 hours and then they disappear. But does it really matter? A lot of social media, you get the initial pop and it’s just gone, isn’t it? And I’m thinking it does have a quite a large user base. I haven’t used it myself, but I think it’s something if you’ve got content and I just think it’s really hard to get going on a platform like Instagram. I think you said, but you’ve had some examples that come on your radar where people have got a lot of success on Instagram. So maybe you can look at Instagram, but also look at Snapchat as well.
Well, the average demographic for Snapchat is between 13 and 34 years old. You name somebody in the US that’s between 13 and 34 that owns a It’s not really where I would go to find our users for residential real estate marketing. Now, having said that, India has the largest number of Snapchat users, followed by the United States. Snapchat is a interesting concept, and not to be dismissive, it shouldn’t be dismissed because newer, younger people become older and it’s not very focused on. I think that for me, the recommendation would be Hey, listen, if you are a bleeding edge technology user and you happen to just have gotten your real estate license and you’re new and you’re young and you’re looking for an edge over other people, I would say, why not try Snap? Because there’s very likely very, very, very few realtors trying to do anything on there. Just because I’m saying, Hey, I don’t get how the application would be. We had a TikTok guy on here a long-ass time ago, and he was already making money on TikTok. I I’m sure he’s probably made 50 to 100 sales off TikTok.
I agree with you, and I don’t agree with you. It depends on where you are. If you’re in LA and the type of person you described, it’s worth a punt. If you’re in Portland, if you’re in Seattle, if you’re in a major city, it might be worth looking at to see if you could get an audience. A group of people in LA are in their early 30s and have a lot of money. There are a lot of people in our way who have two heightlies to rub together. It just depends.
It just depends. And you’re not wrong about the demographic. And so we leave it up to you. I respect the opinion that Snap wouldn’t be the first place that I would go to most of the time. However, if I were in the circumstances I was describing to you and I was looking for an edge, I absolutely would look at Snap because of all the channels that we talk about at this point, because we and everybody else have been talking about them for so long, they’re established. Even on YouTube now, I’m noticing competitors in most cities. It didn’t used to be that way. It is that way now. Instagram is very saturated, and so is almost every platform we discuss. It’s not a new idea. Snap, that might be different.
I’m glad you put it on the list. It is certainly something I would like to think about. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll wrap it up. That’s our show for today. We sincerely appreciate you joining us. Before we go any further, I’m going to drop this idea in your hat if you’re listening to the show. Hey, listen. John and I both have free consultations. We want to sell you stuff, but only if you need it.
Take advantage of the fact that you can find some guys who know a reasonable amount about marketing. If you don’t remember a sensible amount, you should reach out to one or the other of us and ask a few questions. Marketing is one of those places where you make a mistake, and you could take your year, whereas a few more conversations may help steer you in the right direction. Having said that, John, if somebody did want to, let’s say, reach out to you, how would you like them to do that?
You need to go on Snapchat. No, I didn’t do that. Go to the mail-right.com website, and you can book a free chat with these right in the top navigation. Or you could use Telegram to get hold of me. I don’t know.
You could punt a little I have a message on Snapchat to John.
What about you? I suppose it’s Pinterest. For you, isn’t it? I know. I need to find your Reddit, don’t I?
I turned off my Pinterest notifications for messages so long ago. I can’t even remember when that was. No, no, no, Pinterest. All right, ladies and gentlemen, if you’d like to contact me, do so at robert@inboundrem. Com. You can also go to Inboundrem. That’s the word Inbound, rabbitedwardmichael.com. You can also look at the About Pages Services pages. Not only are there links to my calendar, but you can also find case studies and pricing of the services if you’re curious. If you’re not, if you want that free consultation, email me at robert@inbounderam. Com. I’ll happily set up a chat with you. Just mention the podcast, and I will do everything I can to help you. All right. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you, John. Take us offline.
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Discover the best video content ideas for realtors in 2025. Boost your real estate marketing with these engaging and effective strategies.
In the fast-paced world of real estate, staying ahead means embracing innovative video content strategies. This video dives into the top video content ideas specifically tailored for realtors in 2025. From virtual property tours to engaging client testimonials, discover how to effectively connect with your audience and showcase properties like never before. Don’t miss out on these essential tips—watch the video now to elevate your marketing game.
#1 – Short talking head videos
#2 – Long-form market update videos
#3 – New building and subdivision overviews
#4 – New Listings
#5 – Wondering what $_____will get your in (your city?)
#6 – (FAQ) Frequently ask question videos
#7 – Schools and other local information targeted at those who are moving from out-of-state
#8 – The latest interest rates and financial news
#9 – Pro and Con videos connected to your areas, town, and city
#10 – 7 things to consider before buying in your?
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 460 of the MailRight podcast. We are so excited to bring you something we’ve never done before. He says, Ironically, we are We’re going to talk about video. But it is the first time in 2025. That is that we’ve dedicated an episode. Before we jump into it, I am joined by my amazing co-host, the founder of The Mailright Show, the founder of many businesses, the founder of the WP Tonic podcast, the one, the only, Jonathan Dinwood. What would you like to say about yourself, sir?
Thank you so much, Robert. It’s a slightly It’s a slightly different show because we’ve discussed the importance of video quite a bit, but we’re just going to give a little bit of guidance around the different types of video you might consider doing in 2025. I think you’ll get some value from I saw a lot of value from it. Back over to you, Rob.
Okay, so ladies and gentlemen, those of you who like to take notes today, we’re going to give you basically 10 video making tips. Okay, that’s what this really Today’s video making tips. We’re going to start off with number one, and please, if you haven’t already done so, take a moment, take a break, save the podcast, save your notepad because you are going to want to write these down, especially with the subtext, or you’re going to want to save this podcast and come back to it over time. Before we jump into the subject, John, I’m going to add a little oomph to it. I’m going to say that this year, as I’ve started talking to my customers, which I do once a year at the beginning of the year, every year, all my existing customers, in addition to the prospects that I usually talk to. I am full of fresh data about the videos that have actually been producing deals. For those that don’t know, I run an SEO company. I’ve got about 150 very elite clients that are all doing all sorts of vertical, like all sorts of real estate. I am freshly off conversations with about 10 of those customers.
I know what’s working. I know it’s working for them and where it’s working, and we’re going to share it with you as we go along here. Number one, talking head videos. John, why is this on your list, sir?
Well, I think it’s really popular in short No, it’s just on video, stuff that you see on TikTok, shorts on YouTube, Instagram.
Treat me like I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry, that’s the wrong way to say that. Not an idiot. Just pretend I zero about digital. What’s a talking head video?
I do quite a few of them for my other channel where I just look straight into the camera. Okay. And we see those beautiful blue eyes.
Yeah, exactly.
The stunning personality just comes over the camera, doesn’t it? You look straight into the camera and you talk about a subject, minimum editing. It can be for a couple of minutes, like I say, short form will be 30 seconds, and you just got one quick observation, one quick tip. It’s like you’re reporting on the road. If I was doing it as a real estate agent, it’d be just talking about things that happened during the day, things I’ve observed about the local market. But it should be quick, one point, right to the point you looking at the camera.
Okay. What camera would you do this at your desk or using a mobile camera on a gimbal or something? How would you specifically do it?
Both. You can use a webcam, but probably I’d just be using my phone and just looking straight in it. Like we’ve discussed, the main thing is get the sound decent. That’s the main thing that will stop people from watching it is if the sounds rubbish. That’s about the rest of it. Just keep it simple. But obviously, just one topic and get it over in this short form video.
All right. So ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to add a little bit to that talking head videos do a good job. They keep your audience updated. So for those of you who already have an audience or an email marketing list, I might consider doing a talking head video to entertain them. I would absolutely do a talking head video to update my reels. For those of who are a little bit more advanced into social media and you probably are wondering what is the differences or advantage of doing this type of content. I love talking head content. When I have two minutes, I have something important to say that I’ve thought of because I’m ADHD, and I will throw it onto a Talking Head video, I will send it over to my editing team and say, This is a reel, and forget about it. The next thing I know, about a week later, I’m seeing 10, 20, 50 extra views on my channel from what was literally two minutes worth of work for me. They have their place, talking head videos. You can also do long form talking head videos. I only recommend these in the rare case that you are truly an expert in a very defined niche, and you have something extremely important to communicate to your audience, at which point a talking head video becomes low effort, low cost, and high impact.
All right, moving on to number two on John John’s list because John is the producer of the show. He produces the questions. But this does happen to be a subject that I have a lot to contribute with. So long-form market update videos. Oh, boy, do I have a lot to say about this? Let’s let you go first.
Yeah, It’s the opposite, really, of the short form, really detailed, orientated, probably once a month or once a quarter, going into what is really happening in the local market, what What property is selling, what isn’t, what are the market trends? What are the new developers? What are going on in the mortgage market. Just generally where the market is, what type of property is selling, what aren’t, everything thrown in, but long form, 30 minutes plus. Just a load of information. You can also use it to help you formulate your monthly newsletter and throw it in. It all works together. Over to you, Rob.
So some of the greatest realtors in the country by production and some of the best realtors in Canada by production, use this type of update. Ryan Surhont uses this type of update. Tom Ferry uses this type of update. Please do not underestimate the value of your particular voice at like, sent to your clients once a month, a well thought out market update. And when I say well thought out, John hit a whole bunch of really good points about well thought out. You So what type of inventory is moving? Here in California, who is impacted the worst by the fires and how has that impacted how people are communicating with you and what they are asking about? One, people are fascinated. Two, they may be in the same position and may just not have called you. Giving out the solutions you’ve created for others is an incredibly potent market update, and it also does something for you. It allows people the opportunity to create a relationship with you and tune in over and over again, because there’s many people who do only buy a home every 5 or 10 years, if not most. That does not necessarily mean they don’t want to occasionally tune into what like a qualified professional’s opinion is.
That’s where these market updates make beautiful email marketing strategies. You can update them. You can also, as part of your marketing strategy, connect long-form updates with email campaigns to say, subscribe to my YouTube channel. So you’re automatically updated. You can connect social media along with email in terms of campaigns and use long-form videos video updates as the core reason that everybody wants to do this. Just depends on how much time and energy you’re spending and how good at it you’re willing to get. Now, here’s one that’s fire. Okay, FHIR. I have a great story, and I’m going to share it after. John, why don’t you start us off?
Yeah, you’re talking about number 3, new building and subdivision Overall?
I am.
That’s what I’m talking about. Well, got a very static market. It depends on what region you’re doing business in. Obviously, Florida and some other markets are seeing some large changes as we speak. Other areas are seeing prices going up still. Other areas, just static market, not really much activity, but where the activity is, is in new building, new subdivision. Because the big housing builders are offering a lot of inducements to new buyers in basically subsidizing interest for a couple of years and other packages, they have been very aggressive over the last 18 months because they got a lot of housing. They’ve got move, and they’ve got the resources, the financial resources, so they can offer these inducements. So it’s something you should be talking about in your videos. Over to you, Rob.
So Ladies and gentlemen, there are a new and burgeoning type of real estate marketing expert. This expert type is creating landing pages and ideas surrounding only one principle, which is working with and targeting new development. Now, I have been hearing about this for the last couple of years, ever since inventory started to get tight. And I had a client call me and ask me about this type of idea. We talked about it for a while, and it turned out that there was a brand new development with just a sign on the side of a field, and it was 20, 30 miles from his house. And he’s like, What do you think, Robert? You think I should go out there this early on? There’s nothing there. They haven’t even created the brochures, but it was an established developer with a history. So I’m like, yeah, why don’t we find out what will happen? Go out there with a camera and take a picture of the fields and paint a picture. Get creative. Say, based on these past developments, here’s what I would expect and how this would turn out. So he went out there with his sister, and it’s just him in front of a freaking farm field, John, and a sign and a camera.
That’s it. There’s nothing. I mean, there is not It was a pre-development work happening. Nothing. A field. And we threw it on his site. And here’s what we were thinking. All the developer done has put up a sign next to a freeway. That’s it. That’s all they said. New development coming in, whatever, 2026, right? Some years away. No other advertising, no other conversation around it. So the thought was, well, let’s see how hot real estate really is for new development because it’s just a Really, that’s the whole thing. So we threw it up on his website. And I’m not joking, John. This is a guy I’ve been doing business with for four years. We have already doubled the traffic on his website from this strategy, from the single page. He has hundreds of pages on the site. I’ve never seen a home run like this ever. There’s no ancillary support work. There’s no TV commercials, there’s no radio, there’s no anything. There is a sign on a freeway and him. That’s it. And yet we’ve got 3-500 people per month coming in to his website. Why? Might all of you ask? The developer hasn’t even bothered to put up a page on their own website.
So everybody’s thinking that he knows something that the developer themselves does not. And needless to say, he doesn’t. But here’s what he’s doing. He is getting out there and establishing a relationship with everybody before there’s any other marketing, before there’s any competition. He’s the first voice to market, and he did a great job on painting a picture based on his opinions about past developers. Now he’s in front of everybody, and it’s going to be like 20,000 home. It’s a staggering It’s a fairly large development, but it’s also long, long, long plan. It’s like a 10-year plan. He’s out there in front of everybody in this 10-year plan. It is very possible, John, that this one little move is making the rest of his career. Maybe it could. Worked right. Do not underestimate the power of some of these ideas that we’re giving you. Application and how you apply it is everything. New Listings is number four on our list. So, John, help us out.
Well, it’s the old favorite. That’s the great thing of being a real estate agent or is people can’t get enough information about property. They just can’t get enough of it. And people can’t get enough about new listings in the up market, down market. They still watch stuff. They still want to know what’s new on the market. Talking about new listings, showing is the price, if it’s a listing listing that you’re representing, or it could be listings that you’re not representing. You can still talk about them. It’s probably easier to be brutally honest when you’re talking about other people’s listings. Over to you, Robert.
Well, you know what? As long as you can get creative, listing data is always one of the greatest lead opportunities that you’ll ever have, and it doesn’t have to be your listing. That’s the beautiful part It’s not about being a real estate agent. If you have a license in somebody’s house is up for sale, generally speaking, you’ve got permission to go and market the hell out of it. You can do whatever you want with it, just like Zillow does. Everybody is creating a lot of leads off listings. Here’s It’s a big thing, though. A lot of what’s been done has been done, and people don’t pay attention to it. It is just another tree falling in the forest and nobody hears it. You’ve got to get a little creative. I’ve talked a lot of times on this podcast about a creative 19-year-old that I met that made about $300,000 his first year in real estate, doing nothing but taking other people’s listings and marketing them. What did he do? He took his phone, he went to a listing somebody else’s. He just started to pick and choose places in the MLS that he liked. Then he drove there with his car and he filmed the fast forward video.
He just used an app on his phone so you go like he’s doing cops, all all the way through the house, real fast. Then he posted it to Instagram and tagged it. Nobody else was doing it. I still think nobody else is doing it. It just looked interesting. It’s the same listing. You can see the pictures online. He didn’t do anything different. As a matter of fact, one could argue he did it worse. He just had an interesting approach to it. I talked to him, he had done 19 transactions He’s using that as his only lead source. Nothing else. Crazy, John. All right, number five.
Should we go for a break first?
Should we? You’re probably right. Yeah, we should. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be right back, and we’re going to somehow blaze through number 6 because John and I suck at doing this stuff fast. But we’re going to try. And so when we come back, what you’ve got ahead of you is FAQs in school. Actually, you know what? You’ve got five more ideas. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining the show. Today’s show is sponsored by MailRight and InboundREM. We’re thrilled to have you. Welcome back. Today’s remaining subjects, we’re going to talk about six more ideas about how to create really great video content for realtors in 2025. So I’m wondering what X amount of budget will get in your city. I love this idea. I actually don’t know anybody who’s applying it. Did you capture this from somebody specific?
Yeah, I can’t remember who it was. I did it, looking at other people’s content and that. And I just think it’s a great idea because everybody’s got a budget. And if you can give them some examples of what a certain budget can get you in the market at the present moment, that’s really watchable. Over to you, Rob.
And I love listening from a sales perspective I would think that this idea is a high conversion idea. Giving somebody a specific answers to what 500,000 will get them, touring and then editing a video. I think this type of video would probably require a little bit of editing because a really well done one is going to be jumping into a couple of house types that you could buy for about seven. Here in LA, it would be 800,000 minimum. But whatever the number is median where you’re at, that would be what you would do a few different examples of what it could buy you and maybe even go so far as to get a couple of styles of houses such as Mediterranean, Spanish. We have all that in LA, in California, John. I don’t know if that would work for every single market. But if it does work, then you want to say you can buy a cabin for 500,000, you can buy a condo for 500,000. It’s a great idea. If it was me, I would have a channel that would have everything. Eventually, I would have a video that would cover the entire budget range that I typically sold, from 500,000 all the way up to 1.
5 million. I’m doing a $100,000 increments. All right, FAQs, Frequently Asked Questions. I love these because they’re so easy, and I’m going to jump We’ll jump right into it. Ladies and gentlemen, a little known hack when it comes to everything is you can always find what the most commonly asked questions are, especially in today’s world of AI. All you need to do is enter a search. An example would be questions people ask about buying a condo in Margaritaville. I’m picking a community in Florida that I’m familiar with, but obviously, it’s very far away from me, and I don’t know the answer to these. What we get immediately is a whole bunch of drop-downs. Are Margaritaville Homes a Good Investment? That’s the number one than people ask, because what you see is Google puts a thing there that says people also ask, and then you get a couple of blog posts, and then you get Reddit. Then all the questions right now are, are Margaritaville Homes a good investment? There’s three or four of them. So obviously, the number one thing that people talk about is, are Margarita Homes a good investment? You can make a video around that.
So easy to do FAQs and start with the number one question. All right, John, over to you.
Now, I got to have you in the same. Shall we go on to the next one?
Oh, yeah. Schools and other local information targeted those who are moving out of state. Well, I obviously took up the microphone for a while, so why don’t you start us off?
Yeah, to keep it short. It’s another natural, isn’t it? If people are thinking of moving into area, either they’re moving state in state or they’re normally moving out from outside the state, or they’re moving into the city or whatever. They want to know the schools, they want to know about the local employers, the local facilities, I want to know about the area. It’s just a natural for a real estate agent, isn’t it? Over to you, Robert.
All right, so schools and other information. So once again, I did this a long time ago with a guy by the name of Raymond Petkevis, and what we did is we went to a school called the Applicutimic School district. We grabbed the camera, we managed to make an appointment with the assistant principal because you had to have permission to come on the campus. We sat down and talked for a film of video. Six years later, it’s still one of the most searched videos for Applicutimic. Yeah, no joke. We just sat there, talked to her for 20, 30 minutes, and it’s still ranking and ranking his website. This is a great idea, especially for tight communities. Number eight, the latest interest rates and financial news. Yeah.
Well, you just had that yesterday with the Fed. People can’t get enough of it. And in a market where people are very sensitive for interest rates, talking about this is a natural. Over to you, Rob.
You could have a podcast to all the mortgage brokers that are part of my social groups and such. I mean, dude, they’re online almost every other day. There’s so much news related to interest rates, not the least of which is interest rates come down and loans go up. There’s so much dialog around what’s going on in this particular vertical. I would have to say that if you are even slightly numerically inclined, it would be the easiest thing in the world to create a couple of videos of the talking head format or sitting at your desk and just making some commentary about these notes. And by the way, if you decide to do that, please explain to me how the prime rate can go down and everybody’s rates can go up. I’d love to hear 10 different versions of that answer. All right, number eight. What?
It’s number nine, actually.
Oh, number nine. My bad. Pro and con videos connected to your area, town, and city. All right, Tom.
Yeah, Well, it’s another favorite, isn’t it? People love to hear the pros and cons of a particular area. They just love it. There’s a few of those about Northern Nevada, and I just I don’t think people can get enough of them back over to you, Rob.
I agree. Pros and cons is one of my favorite video formats. It’s neutral, so you’re never really tinking anybody. I use pros and cons formats when I go Traveling, I wrote a review on The Devil’s Pulpit, and it’s got 25, 30,000 people that have read that review so far. It’s a feature in Wales of all places, John. Strangely, I did pros and cons. That made it the most read review that there was because the pros were an unbelievable scenery, but the cons were you were traipsing through people’s cow fields that were actually more bog than field. So the getting to the spot was insanely complicated. And it didn’t say that when we was like, Oh, it’s a short walk through some fields. I’m like, Okay. And That’s why you do pros and cons. All right, number 10. Seven things to consider before buying in your question mark.
Area, town, city. It’s another can’t go wrong, really. A list of the things. People love lists, generally, don’t they? If you can knock through seven to consider before buying, especially aimed at the new buyer, the very inexperienced buyer, I think they can get value from that. And it’s just a natural, isn’t it, Rob?
It is indeed. And I agree. Listicles at one point, there’s a joke on some show that I watched, America Dad or something like that. It was basically saying, oh, my God, all the internet marketing is anymore is listicles. That’s it. That’s the full scope of what we do. And they’re not wrong. I’ve got five blog posts that have reached 500 elements because every time And like my blogging team looks around, they go, well, somebody beat us. They have 200 slogans or 200 this or 200 memes. And so we’re going to do 500. And I’m like, oh, my God, this is not I can, but okay. All right, list, but they work. That’s the thing. They work. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a fast podcast today. I think we’re going to wrap it up. For those of you who have the interest in some new ideas and would like some expert advice, I’m going to recommend that you talk to me or John. So, John, if you’d like somebody to touch base with you, how would you like them to do that?
Yeah, just quickly before, if anybody says that they got no idea to make a video on, you just need to listen to this video. There’s plenty of ideas out there on the subjects of making your video. That isn’t the problem. And if you want the easiest way, just go to the mel-right. Com website. Have a look what we got offer. And if you want to chat about anything, you can book a quick chat with me, and it’s totally free. Back over to you, Rob.
All right, beautiful. I also have lots of resources on the inboundrem. Com, and if you’d like to check those out or schedule a call, and I will be happy to spend some time and walk you through what I feel is best based upon wherever you’re at with your marketing strategy. You can do that at inboundrem. Com/aboutabout, A-B-O-U-T, and you’ll find a way to touch base with me and learn more about me and my company. Thank you, everybody, for tuning into the show. I’m so excited and happy and thankful. It’s been a hell of a week for me. I’ve been getting my butt kicked, which means that I get more grateful every day for the things that I’ve got. I hope your days are great. I hope all of you are doing well. John, I really wish that for you. Whenever you’re ready, take us offline, sir.
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Are you ready to supercharge your real estate business in 2025? This show reveals innovative techniques to generate many monthly leads using online platforms. We’ll dive into effective marketing strategies, essential tools, and best practices that can set you apart from the competition. Stay ahead of the game and elevate your lead generation efforts—tune in to watch the full video.
#1 – The truth about real estate lead generation and why only 2% of leads are hot immediately.
#2 – How to structure your CRM for efficient lead management.
#3 – The importance of building relationships, asking the right questions, and establishing your brand as a trusted adviser.
#4 – How to work with your sphere of influence and past clients for quicker conversions.
#5 – Steps to convert cold prospects through genuine, helpful outreach.
#6 – The power of a high-touch, value-packed weekly newsletter.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 459. Today’s title is We do these titles to get your attention. It’s how to generate loads of monthly real estate leads online in 2025. Ultimately, we’re having this conversation and giving you the title of this email because if your lead generation hasn’t changed over the last year, then you’re one of maybe 1% of realtors who haven’t taken a complete smack in the face regarding lead generation. We’re going to give you some ideas about how to ramp up in areas that you hadn’t thought of or maybe this will be a reminder that this does work, always works, and should work for you. All right, without any further ado, John, could you please introduce yourself? You are the master of all things related to this podcast. He is the guy that puts the subjects together. I usually rift based on 35 years of sales experience and some about 16, 17 years’ worth of SEO experience.
But this is definitely something that John has been extremely passionate about since the very moment that we met, which is CRMs and CRM efficiency. Why don’t you both introduce yourself and explain why you’ve been so passionate on this subject since as long as I’ve known you.
All right. Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of mail-write. Com, MailRight, and we produce leads through Facebook advertising with an integrated system, a website, easy to use CRM, and a load of other digital functionality that you get in one great package, one great price. And to find more, all you have to do is go over to the Melright website, and you can book a free trip with me. Back over to you, Robert.
You didn’t explain why you’re so passionate about CRMs.
I’m not sure I’m passionate. I think people are in interested, and I think it’s important. But it won’t, having a great CRM won’t generate leads. Just having it is using it the right way. And that’s one of the things we’re going to be talking about, aren’t we, Robert? Yep.
So first on this list is the truth about real estate lead generation. I’m just reading on John’s list here, ladies and gentlemen, the truth about real estate lead generation while in 2% of leads are hot right away. And this is a subject that I could talk all day on, and I have on my YouTube channel and other places online because the idea… But I also feel like any professional salesperson knows this, John. Like anybody who’s been in sales for a while knows this. The people that don’t know this are people that haven’t been in sales for very long. Because if you’re in sales for a long time, especially if you’re an incredibly good salesperson, you know that you can be the best salesperson in the entire But if the person that you’re talking to is simply not ready to make the decision, especially in real estate, which is a huge decision and requires many steps to become somebody that’s ready to move, ready to go. So the 2% of people ready right away, I think, refers to the idea in lead generation that you get a lead and they’re like, I am 30 days away from moving and I’ve got an approved loan and this is my budget.
Let’s go. Is that how you perceive that question? You probably took it from somewhere, but is that how you recognize that question?
Kind of, and I see why you’ve given that outline, but I had more of a focus around digital lead generation I think we’ve discussed this before, the misconceptions of what is a lead. I think some of that misunderstanding has been generated by those that are often lead generative platforms intentionally. But I also think in the real estate industry, those that are utilizing these type of platforms think that somebody filling in a form, downloading a lead magnet, that everybody that does that or signs up on your website is going to be a hot lead that’s going to straight away generate a possible sell or buy or generate some form of commission. And that just isn’t the truth, Robert.
No, it’s not. It’s not the truth. It’s not even close to the truth. And these are very, very, very, very good points. I’ve sold a lot of stuff over a long period of time, and in the last 20 to 30 years of my career, I’ve been somewhere towards number one or two at any sales organization that I’ve been part of. My philosophy is not complicated. You get on the phone, you find people who have the general qualifications of what a customer looks like to you. Then you build relationships, and relationships are what bear fruit. The same thing would hold true even if you’re doing hammering out calls, if you’re an opener for a real estate agent, a closer for a real estate agent, it doesn’t matter. You’re looking for people that you connect with, and then you keep track of those people. Then you build a schedule for yourself every single day, where on the phone for a few hours a day, filled with people that you know are qualified, that you’ve had conversations with before, that you know there’s a relationship and there’s some movement towards them making a move. Then you start to follow up, and you use the follow up not as an excuse to try to make a sale, but as an excuse to try to generate a better relationship, because that will absolutely lead to the sale every single time.
There’s a guy out there by the name of Harvey McKay, Jonathan, who is one of my favorite, favorite authors of all time, because he doesn’t teach tactics. He’s more similar to Dale Carnegie in how to win friends and influence people. And his methods are so simple and so human affirming people would have a hard time understanding them as sales tactics. Because what he does is he memorizes things about the people that he means, such as what’s their alma mater, when’s their birthday. He used to develop a file around people that he was speaking to. Now, he made sure that the decision makers he was tracking all this information for were extremely relevant to him. So he thought big, aimed high. But at the same time, he knew the secretary’s name, her birthday. Does she have a picture of a shitsu on her desk? Because this is back in the days in which you went to somebody’s house. But these days, you could do the same thing using social media. You find out a lot about somebody, you find the areas that are mutual areas of interest, and then you open up dialogs and relate to them on those fronts, and you focus on areas of synchronicity, not opposition, and you build a strong relationship.
And if you have enough strong relationships, you’re going to have a strong sales portfolio. You’re going to have a lot of sales. That is where I think this This is the whole conversation. Here’s how to generate loads of leads. Because you’re not wrong, man. I know clients, I know real estate agents that are doing incredibly well, but that’s because really experienced talented salespeople like Ricky Karruth do incredibly well in down markets. Why? They’re still getting on the phone and doing the same thing they always do. The people are less inclined to respond to digital advertising. They’re sitting on the fence. So what happens when you reach out to them directly? You have a chance to get them off the fence. That’s what Ricky does, and he’s losing less people to impulse decisions. So he’s got the people out there just sitting on the fence, raring and waiting for somebody to tell them what to do in a topsy-turvy market. It’s a fucking brilliant opportunity. Sorry for the language. You go ahead and read number two on the list. My screen isn’t moving, so I’m actually asking it because I can’t see that. Sure.
How to structure your CRM for efficient lead management. I would say, Keep it simple. Unless you’re doing a lot of digital paid advertisement and you got somebody in an organization that’s either spending half their time or is a full-time digital advertisement online manager, I think, and you got a central person that’s farming the leads out to various individuals in your boutique brokerage. If you’re doing this individually or you’ve got a virtual assistant or some form of an assistant, keeping the CRM system as simple as possible. And I think it doesn’t matter what terminology you use, but I would keep it to a free stage level. Those that are going to buy in the next three months, those that might buy or sell in the next 6-12 months, and those that aren’t going to buy or sell in a 12-month period. And you might add a fourth, which our previous clients. But I’ll leave that to your feedback, Robert.
All of that sounds great. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve used tons of CRMs, massive amounts of them. And generally speaking, I have a strikingly simple way to manage my contacts. I learned a long time ago that my brain works better when I have everybody I’m I was to call on a single screen. No reminders, no pop-ups, none of that bullshit. So what I generally do is I go to… Well, let’s see here. I’m trying to see if I could share and do this, but I may not be able to figure out how to find the right page. Hubspot reorganized itself, and it’s not as simple as it once was. They think it is, but I hate I fucking hate these CRMs when they go through and they reorganize everything after you’ve got all this ages and ages of experience working with a certain UX, and then all of a sudden they change it and go, It’s going to be more efficient. You’re like, Oh, great. Thank you. Because now that only takes me a year to realize your efficiency. Ladies and gentlemen, and that’s my main thought about all of this, John, using CRMs, it’s like HubSpot is the best CRM out there, but you guys all just heard my frustration with it.
They’ve changed the UX, and I still don’t know where everything is. They think they simplified it, but I got used to it the other way. I had years and years of using it the other way, so they just upended my user experience. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted my user experience changed. And so I didn’t. I don’t. Once I learned something, I don’t want it changed. So what I generally use is I actually use Google Calendar or Outlook, and I create just a list of people, like I throw it into a calendar and just port them day to day and just take them, throw them into another calendar. It’s CRMs and everything. If you’re a really, really great salesperson, mostly overcomplicate a very simple process. Give me a list of people to call. That’s it. That’s it. Other CRM efficiencies such as email management, managing messages. If you’re a really good salesperson, you don’t want most of this stuff, John. I don’t want a machine sending out template emails to people I have just busted my ass building a personal relationship with because one bad pro forma templated email can destroy the sense of importance that that person feels with their connection with you.
And the very second you make them feel like a number is the very second you lose the opportunity.
I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t quite agree with you because obviously, MailRight, we have a landing page system that works with Facebook. Either we run the Facebook adverts for you. If you want to, you can do it yourself. You get a landing page system, and then it will automatically send out text messages or emails, and you can customize all the ones that we provide and put your own system in. So I stand in the middle road, but I do understand where you’re coming from, where people, there are providers that say, we’ve got this follow through system and you don’t have to customize it at all, and it will get the results and it’s all been scientifically tested and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I don’t really believe that. These are only tools, and they can be abused. And I think with AI, which I really love, it’s made a difference to me personally, but I also see it being totally abused as well. So that’s my two pennies.
Okay.
He’s writing this down, folks, I think.
Yeah.
He’s going to hold it against me forever, folks.
I just realized that we came up with another subject for a video, and I’ve also realized that when I come up with these ideas, if I don’tif I don’t write them down in the moment, send them to somebody on my team, that they won’t ever happen. And this was a good one because I’ve realized in the answering to this question, John, in my experience, while realtors tend to be very hard workers, they don’t work hard in the digital arena. What they do is if you and I create a template system for them and say, This is an outline, I’m a framework, but you need to fill it in with your own information to customize it, to personalize it. Well, they generally don’t. Almost 98% don’t. They say, Oh, it’s not worth the time. It’s not this, not that. Or people say funnels work. I’ve never… Whatever, whatever, whatever. More people fall towards the antiquated form of real estate salesperson that I’m describing to you than a digital marketer, which is why we talk about it and why we have a podcast. It’s worth talking about. People can listen to 100 of these shows before they’re willing to spend 10 hours learning how to customize Facebook follow-up systems or CRMs or whatever else it is that we’re talking about.
Which leads very nicely into number three, which we’re going to cover in a second here. But before we do, number three, we’re going to dig a little bit more into the value of building relationships because digital tools are only as good as the relationship that they surround, that they support. That’s it. At the best, at the very, very highest level, digital tools and digital marketing can open a door for you into a communication with somebody. But there’s this misconception that the digital is going to build the entire relationship for you. And while it can, it takes a very long time for that to happen. I know I’m an inbound marketer. It’s exactly what I do, but it’s not fast. It takes a long time to build a strong relationship without ever having to talk to somebody. We’re going to cover some of those interesting points when we come back. Stay tuned, everybody. Thanks for tuning in in the first place. We really appreciate it. Go ahead and do us a favor and thumbs up wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Yeah. All right. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
We’re coming back to episode number 459 of the Mailright Show. We’re talking about how to generate loads of real estate leads today. And we’re certainly trying to give you a wake up call to do stuff that you probably know you should be doing, but you’re not. Number three on our list here was the importance of building relationships, asking great questions, and establishing your brand as a trusted advisor. So, John, what do you think… When you’re asking somebody the right questions, how did you learn how to… Let’s say for another one of the businesses that you own, the learning- Two.
Two. Two businesses.
One could argue that all the podcasts you own are also businesses.
Yeah, The first one was started, it’s my biggest, but it started as a, well, accident. I had no commercial intent at the time. I just thought, if I built influence, it could be useful, and it has That’s been useful. The second one, this one, because I built Melright, and the number three, which is the Membership Machine Show, was done very intentionally because it generated hopeful, like this show, some interest in my target audience for my other business. But to get to this point three, I think digitally, I think the fin, and we’ve touched this on numerous times, and it has, and probably still is, one of the biggest lead generation tools for you has been video. Because the person who recommended you to me, and I watched your videos and I thought, Oh, I’ll just ask him if he would want to be a co-host on my podcast and just see if he was interested not, and you considered, and then you were gracious enough to say yes, was that I watched your videos and you were a bit edgy. You obviously knew what you were talking about. I thought you might instinctively, I thought you might be up for being my podcast co-host.
What would you lose? You’d only try it out, and if you didn’t like it, you just say, Sorry, it’s not my cup of tea. I wouldn’t hold it against I’ve used you forever. But you were introduced by your videos, and that’s why I think video, when it comes to digital marketing, is pretty important.
I agree. I mean, I agree, but what questions… And that, by the way, asking the right questions and establishing your brand as a trusted advisor. Establishing your brand as a trusted advisor, that bit right there. Establishing your brand as a trusted advisor. Man, oh, man, John. I think that for the individual salesperson getting his career started, nothing is more important than simply meeting a lot of people and talking about your business. That’s it. Face to face, one to one, that’s it. But when you start talking about, okay, I’m not doing that anymore. I’ve spent seven or eight years in the trenches. I’m a pretty decent salesperson. I know how to do that. Now it’s about building a brand, and it doesn’t matter. Personal brand, like your brand as a salesperson, doesn’t make a difference. Re/max or whoever you’re working with Believe me, they’re not going to support your career forever, even though that’s what they want you to believe. You want to create a brand where you can move it around wherever you go, whether it’s for yourself or other people, and have it mean something, that your name is connected to a certain level of service and it has nothing to do with the bigger brand that you supposedly represent.
There’s no more effective way, John, in my opinion, than video. I’m glad you mentioned everything you mentioned about me because it’s like, I am different and edgy, and I not at all. When you are talking about, do I appeal in my Tom Ferry? Hell no. I never will be. I never will be. I don’t want to be. It’s fine. I don’t want to be. But when you’re sitting here going, but do I want a brand? Do I want a business? The answer is absolutely 100 %, yes, I do. I just want to find people that are going to gel with me. And video, you’re right. Video has done that for me. You’re not the only one that vetted whether or not they wanted to work with me or talk to me through video. Big, huge guys at real estate marketing companies have done that. And they already know before they talk to me, can we handle Robert’s brand of edginess? And I suspect strongly I probably lose way more business than I gained, John.
Who knows?
Yeah, but at the same time, I’m not sacrificing any piece of my soul or heart to do it. So it makes me pretty happy.
I just want one thing that I don’t agree with what you’ve said, but I agree with most what you say, is, and this might be a little bit controversial, is I don’t think being a really good real estate agent is being a good salesperson. And what I mean by that is these… Obviously, the element I think is really important to study is dealing with objections. Because I think unless you educate about the element of being an effective salesperson around dealing with objections, I think you’re going to flap around a lot. It’s going to quicken your ability to be successful. But the other bits of traditional sales education I think have diminished a bit, really, because it’s going to be interesting how all this plays out in the next few years because of AI. But I think the traditional model, when it comes to real estate, I think it’s more about competence. It’s more about being seen as a trusted advisor. It’s more about, do you know your local market and can you demonstrate that? These are the key things that I think people are looking for. And then dealing with objections is the more pure self-practice and training side and having some structure to the madness and keeping the structure.
But that’s my view.
Strongly disagree, but I appreciate your view. I think that the art of negotiation and and subtle manipulation, there is no career or profession where it’s more necessary than a real estate agent. A real estate agent sales process, John, can be two to five years. And so that requires a massive amount of both sales and relationship building. And I think what you’re talking about is the old idea that sales is just about a single instance in which your salesperson is in front of a prospect and they close five times, overcome objections, so on and so forth. Whereas a real estate salesperson has overcome about 100 objections over time, all the way from, why can’t I paint my wall screen because I like it and who the fuck cares about these new buyers and blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, right? All the way to, which some people could argue is relationship building. But I think that’s all part of the professional modern salesperson’s skill kit and package. You have to be all of these things. I have a client who probably wouldn’t phrase himself as a great salesperson, Derek Vawn. He just posted a video not too long ago where he managed to get a 35% bump over asking on a teardown, on a teardown.
It wasn’t just like some fancy home that he got people into a bidding war. He actually got investors to get into a bidding war for the home, which is harder to do. He explained how he did it. It was really a lot of just rolling up your sleeves and doing some old-school perseverance and discipline. He contacted 17 different people that expressed interest and basically, through his own diligence, created enough of a relationship with the teardown through his sales skill and practice, basically explaining how good the market was in South Pasadena. So he didn’t sell one person. He sold 17. And creating an idea of urgency and limited market availability and all the things that you need to do in order to create momentum so that at the end of the day, of these 17 people, two of them bought into his marketing, you might say, and that yielded 35% more revenue for his customer. It’s just old-school persevue Perseverance. The idea of sales is really about tenacity, perseverance, and overcoming. I think that all those three things are no more important in real estate than any other profession. I think they top the list. But if you’re going to say the old-school idea of a person coming into a single conversation, overcoming objections, the only time that’s relevant in real estate and a lot of other sales is when you’re initiating, like you’re trying to create a lead.
You overcome somebody’s objections about why they don’t want to get into the market or buy the widget or talk about the widget at this exact second. That requires a lot of like actual traditional sales skills, overcoming objections, things like that. Let’s talk about number four on your list, how to work with your sphere of influence and past clients for quicker conversions. So did you come up with an answer to that?
Well, I think it’s being aware that most of us, and we’ve We’ve talked about this quite a bit, which we’re bound to, aren’t we? Is that when you look at statistics, unless people are bought into very specific cells, morphologies, that are out there in the real estate industry that really aim at keeping close to a tight group of people. When you look at most of the statistics, really most agents are terrible about keeping in contact with previous clientele, previous people that they’ve had some interaction with. They are awful at it. When you look at the statistics. And I think they’re about right, but I’m interested in your views on it.
I think that you’re right. I think that I’ve designed my marketing company shooting for the lowest possible load-bearing system to keep in touch with people. That’s why I think inbound… That’s why I established inbound marketing, the idea is because the only thing that I’m overcoming is that realtors think it takes longer to see fruit, but it’s less work over time. But the reason it’s less work is that maintaining of your sphere of influence, I produce one good piece of content content per month. My only follow up to every single person in my database is trying to get that content in front of me. The quality of the message may not be one that they want to engage with. But when it is something that they want to engage with, I want to make sure I created something worthy of their attention. That keeps you top of mind. If they want to call you, they’re going to call you. That’s my opinion. I teach my clients the same concept. With most of my clients, a really strong piece of local content they do, John, to keep their sphere of influence warm, is talking about their local marketplace, like a market update once a month.
Depending on how good you are at tuning in to what the people who either live or are thinking of living in your area care about is how effective that market update is going to be at warming your sphere and keeping them engaged and then reaching out to you. I will tell you this, though, John, my handful of clients that follow the monthly updates prescription produce about 20 to 30% more sales consistently than the clients that don’t. The thing that is frustrating for most people who are really great salespeople is that there is no rhyme or reason to it. You’re not controlling the flow of the relationship. Whereas if you were calling them, you could control when and how and where you’re going to follow up. You’re essentially adding pressure to the client to make a decision within the time from, maybe one that they committed to. But still, people’s minds change, whereas the email system and updating them, it allows lots of variants, lots of mind changing. But the difference in thought processes is the reason the inbound leads are so strong is somebody may have thought they wanted to call you 50 different times, and they never did.
But by the time they do, they’re really ready. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Also, I think So I forgot. Excuse me, but utilizing something like Bombom and having in your database, in your CRM, a previous people you’ve done some business with, and then producing something of value about their property and then send in a Bombom video with the report or some content. I think in a quiet period, that is something that you should investigate doing, which is very different to optimization and other digital processes where you’re using Facebook or you’re using organic SEO and inbound marketing techniques So, yeah, that’s what I was thinking about.
I got you. And I don’t disagree with that. All right, steps number five, to convert cold prospects. So, ladies and gentlemen, we’re now in a bonus territory. You’ve officially sat with us for 30 minutes, and if you’re going to sit with us for a few more, what you’ve got, what you’re sitting here for is we’re going to talk about how to convert old prospects. We’re going to talk about some of the ideas or the value propositions in a high touch follow-up process. These are definitely 100% things for those of you that are mentally, emotionally geared for them. There’s no doubt that the following two things we’re going to talk about will generate you more business. There’s no doubt that in a tough market, the passive way is not for everybody, which is me. If you have any aggression in you whatsoever, any concern about your income, you’re really going to want to listen to these bonus subjects. So number 5, John, steps to convert cold prospects through genuine helpful outreach. Now, we covered a form of genuine helpful outreach from my perspective. What do you consider a form, a single form? Just give us one example of genuine helpful outreach.
Yeah, sorry. I did touch that. I should have left it at this step, but I thought I didn’t know we were going to do the bonus content, which is I outlaid it, which is utilizing Bombon.
Oh, got you. Okay. That’s fair.
But I think you can do it generally in sending out more customized email to that particular list with more customer, higher value reports or value content that’s really tailored because you’ve already had that relationship with that person. So it’s probably worth your while or somebody in your team to customize more content for that particular individual.
Yeah, a really powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful structure for content is a mix of in-person and digital strategies combined, connected together, strung together. Here’s an example that I’m pulling from my actual account base from a top performing team in LBI, Long Beach Island. High-end luxury oceanfront real estate in New Jersey. What the client did, and we collaborate on, is we create some really focused lifestyle blog posts. We just did a big one on pickleball. It’s just pickleball is big on the island. It’s not big everywhere, John. It’s just big on LBI. They’ve got big pickleball courts and things, and it’s not a big island. So to say that there’s multiple places you can play pickleball is pretty impressive. So they dialog not only about pickleball, but they followed it up because there was like, pickleball, amateur national championships and things like that on the island.
Do you think it’s going to be a series, The Wives of Pickable?
Probably. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, this is what I think is genius, and it has generated a lot of interest from them. Not only did they talk about it, but it’s a family that’s running this project with me. And one of the family members went to the court during some of the games, the group championships. They put face to their informational brand and probably added some additional content. I don’t remember if they did or did not take some pictures and add it to their blog post, but I think that they did. And the end result is that not only do we have a top-ranking blog post for pickleball in this particular location, but we have involvement from the team inside the actual group activity. You connect these dots and you get an ever-increasing momentum-based reason to have high touch with the people that follow your blog, because not only did we talk about it, did we start to see some ranking on it, but now we showed up, created more content from showing up, pictures and video and stuff like that. Then we’re able to say, Congratulations to the winners. These are the winners.
Then we’re able to send that out to our entire list. Every single person on our entire list now that is really deeply involved in pickleball, whether as an entertainment in a sport or as a actual serious pursuit, they all are like, Oh, God damn, these guys are the guys. It’s like being a soccer player and having a realtor who used to be a professional soccer player. If Pele was a freaking real estate salesperson, everybody in the pro league would buy their home from them. I guarantee it. Do you see what I’m saying? So Anyway. All right. The power of a high touch, value-packed weekly newsletter. John, I’ve never been great at weekly. I’m great at monthly. I’m terrible at weekly. So are you good at weekly?
Yeah, I do send a weekly on my other business. And what’s helped is what I’m doing now is I’m talking to the camera and just spewing my thoughts it out and I’ll put it into AI and then it gives me… And I put in a prompt that I specifically copied from somebody else and adapted it. And it goes through the video and it gives me copy, and then I’ll go in and give it a little edit, and boom, that’s a more customizable, more content opinion piece for my weekly newsletter.
I think it’s a great idea, ladies and gentlemen. I think when it comes to AI shortcuts, we’ve already done some shows, but, John, you need to keep dropping that information. I’m so sorry, but you put this business on the street enough times that I feel comfortable sharing your business, which is John is dyslexic, which is why I am the voice of the show. This show is founded by John. It’s not founded by me. He has let me host it because at certain times, his dyslexia has caused issues, most when we had guests, not really when it’s just the two of us. But because of that, he asked me to be the voice of the show. But I got to say, your application for AI has been legitimately inspiring to me because I think that you’re working… I think the AI for people that might be challenged, such as like you, is going to be a freaking game changer, like a game changer. Imagine how much time your saving over trying to struggle through both the research, which people don’t understand. We do a lot of research to create content. So John has to read and stuff, and I have to write.
I’m terrible at writing. I’m ADHD. So writing is my problem, but reading is not and comprehension is not. I consume knowledge at an incredible rate, but I can’t regurgitate it in anywhere near the same speed or clip. So I think it’s an inspiring way to use it, and I’m really glad that you mentioned it. In terms of high touch, like value-packed weekly newsletters, while I could easily recommend them to everybody, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t do it myself. I think in the digital realm- Well, monthly.
I think one of the services that you provide to your clients, you’re a prominent provider of templates and content to your clients for producing a monthly report, aren’t you? Because I’ve seen some of them, you and your team spend a lot of time on it, don’t you?
Yep, absolutely. We spend a tremendous amount of time. So, like many, a few hundred hours each month. But we’re teaching and training. So, we spend a ton of time on our content most of the time. Every once in a while, we cut corners, but most of the time, we don’t. Because my driving force, like John, I’ll spend money on the value of a message. I am good with it. I want things to be valuable to the people consuming it, and I overspend on all content-related items. But having said that, if you’re going to be like me and focus, quality is essential to you, and you’re very anal about your informational brand, it’s probably one of the only things I am anal about.
Ladies and gentlemen, a monthly is going to work great for you because it works great for me, John. As long as the value is there, people do tune in. I learned that from Neil Patel, by the way. As long as the value is there, people will tune in. If you ever do deep research pieces where you spent years gathering data and then you put a lovely spreadsheet, little like Maaz, Neil Patel, and everybody ever who’s created SEO has been wildly successful.
The problem is, of course, that it takes a long time. But All right. That’s a good place to stop. We have added… We are strictly about 10 minutes past the bonus content. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the show. I’ve been Robert Newman. I’ve been leading the… Well, my voice has been the one guiding the podcast. John is the one who produces the podcast. But if you’d like to talk to me about anything online marketing, digital marketing, or SEO related, you can still reach out and get a free consultation from me at inboundrem. Com. I hope that you’ll do that. John, how would you like people to reach out to you?
I’ll go to the mail-right. com website, look at some of our services, and you can book a free chat with me. I chat about anything, and I’ll try to help you. Back over to you, Rob.
Lovely. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been Robert and Jonathan. We are collectively the MailRight Show. We appreciate you tuning in, listening, and giving us some of your time. We respect and value your ears. If there’s anything we can do to help you, let one of us know. That’s it.
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