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Unlock real estate leads with the best podcasts! Discover strategies to leverage audio content for client engagement and growth.
Are you looking for innovative ways to generate more leads in real estate? This show dives into podcasts, showcasing top shows that provide valuable tips, industry news, and expert interviews. We’ll guide you on how to use these resources effectively in your marketing strategy. Elevate your game—tune in now and uncover how podcasts can supercharge your lead-generation efforts.
#1 – Understanding Your Target Audience
#2 – Planning Your Podcast Strategy
#3 – Audio Equipment
USB OR XLR
-a- RØDE – https://rode.com/en-us
-b – Shure – https://www.shure.com/en-US
-c- Audio-Techinica – https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/
#4 – How To Promote Your Podcast
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 447. Today, we are going to talk about one of the things that my esteemed colleague, who will be introducing himself- Esteemed, I’m getting worried there.
When he calls me esteemed, you’re going to get worried.
His esteemed colleague has been using podcasting to build not one, not two, but maybe even three businesses, depending on how you define a company.
Two podcasts are around the same business as this one.
Okay. This is something that he’s used consistently to build up authority to talk to industry experts, and the list of things he does around podcasting is significant. I want to acknowledge everybody, including my podcasting partner. While I knew it was something I wanted to get into vaguely, if a partner of John’s had yet to contact me, I wouldn’t be doing this podcast. If John hadn’t continued to do most of the heavy lifting for this podcast, I would not be doing a podcast, even though I understood the benefits. John has been instrumental in leveraging this strategy, even for me. I just want to say that he is an authority on this subject. I’m excited to be talking to him about him again. So now that I built you up a bit, John, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself, just in case anybody doesn’t happen to know who you are?
Oh, thanks, Rob. He’s looking better as well, audience. Last week, I had a bit of a China; he looks half-human there. He seems in a cheerful mood. And, of course, his cats are safe as well.
My cats are safe.
Yeah, they have yet to be hunted down and cooked. It’s the pets. Sorry, listeners of yours, I can’t get over it. It’s just cockled something in my heart. I flipped. But thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mail-Right. We’re a platform. We supply a CRM landing page, a great-looking website, and much more aimed at the real estate professional. Back over to you, Rob.
All right, beautiful. I’m just going to share my understanding, and we’re going to jump into the outline that John has provided. To give you all a synopsis. We will talk about target audiences, planning strategy, equipment you can use, and how to Promote Your Contact your show. Those are roughly going to be the things we will talk about. But I want to add some stuff that podcasting has done because this was a new strategy for me, and I’m a lifelong marketer. I wasn’t even a guy who really listened to podcasts before John and I started doing our thing, and now I listen to a few. Once again, that’s John’s influence on me. But here’s what I found: podcasting does. In the brief time that John and I have done this podcast, in the last couple of years, I’ve noticed that many doors have opened, even for me, and I already had a reasonable amount of doors I could step through inside the real estate industry. But it’s staggeringly surprising to me how many people drop everything to come to do a podcast when you say you have one, especially with John and I, who have a few hundred episodes together. He has many hundreds under his belt by himself.
This thing where we can talk to anybody has been amazing to me. I’ve spoken to quite a few of my heroes in the marketing industry, all under this podcast. While I don’t know that, it’s been a massive needle mover in directly producing my business. I know it’s been a gigantic needle-mover in my conversations with these other critical people in the industry. I get some of their shared credibility going when people hear me talking to them. It’s been crazy how instrumental that has been in notching up my credibility. That’s what podcasting has done for me. What has it done for you, John, before we get started?
I think it’s expanded the amount of people I know. In the WordPress space, I I tend to really downplay the amount of influence I’ve got in it. But I’ve noticed that if I say something and it’s taken the wrong way, there’s like a thousand twitters triggered, and it gets back to me that they’re not too happy with my little comment. I’m not really somebody that holds grudges, but there’s a couple, there’s a very small group of people that I I really dislike quite intensely. If I can cause them difficulties, I probably would. But it takes a lot of bad behavior to get really on my wrong side. I honestly do not hold a grudge. Probably I’m more forgiving than I should be. But there is a line. I am merciless in my English sarcasm, as you have probably noticed, Robert.
You know what the funny thing is, John? I have a lot of friends that are way worse than you, but that’s okay. I mean, I hang Out in a very sardonic group. That’s what podcasting roughly has done for us. Just to repeat that, what I heard John say, he has a pretty big megaphone, and Certainly in the WP tonic world, in the WordPress world, from an outside perspective, John has a huge microphone. There isn’t anybody that I know of that’s relevant in that space that John hasn’t taken meetings with. We joke on the show on air and off where he’s talked to some people I would die to talk to. Matt from the founder of Typepress, which is the- WordPress. WordPress, which is basically WordPress, and Ran Fishkin, who I would just probably give my left nut to have a conversation with. Like all these people John has had on WP Tarn because the show is really relevant inside that WordPress space. He’s an English bloke who’s just an entrepreneur here in the US who works out of Reno. Podcasting can really magnify your reputation inside whatever space you’re targeting, as long as you have, one, something to say, and failing that, and this is my opinion, not John’s, failing having something to say.
If you’re really well-organized and diligent and get other people on your show and they really have something to say, then you can still be relevant, even if you weren’t necessarily the expert that you managed to acquire on your show. People people still listen to it. That’s my opinion. Do you have anything you want to add to that, or can we go on to your outline? Let’s go. Okay. So understanding your target audience. Everybody listening to this show should be in real estate, really, most of you. There’s a few that aren’t. But all of those of you who are in real estate, how do you figure out who your target audience is? Because every single person that’s out there that’s listening to the show, because I get this all the time, John, I get this in keyword targeting, I get this in And audience modeling all the time. Who exactly is it that you’re targeting? Well, people buying and selling a home. For those of you that are targeting a certain part of your market where, for instance, you’ve got Homes that are at the upper 10, 20 or 30% of your marketing sphere, then you’re really targeting somebody that is specific.
So how would you target your audience? Well, number one, Facebook and Google have done a very, very good job of identifying people by age, income, and geography. You can target your audience by age, income, or geography fairly easily. It would take you a couple of just a little bit of research to figure out how to do that. I don’t think that’s what we do here, is it, John? We just post to all the platforms.
I think there’s two sides of it. The side you’re talking about is, I’m taking this from the startup world. There’s B2C, business to customer, and then there’s business to business. I think if you’re just aiming at individuals that might become a customer of yours, I would classify that as B2C. If you’re in a major city and you’re talking about a certain type of house, a certain area, that might work. I personally think you’re better off going what I call the B2B route. Basically, that is you interview shakers, movers, business owners in your community to increase your personal network. Now, if you can go to every Every business event, every free business event in your area, and talk to people, and you could email them and say, Love to have a coffee with you. But these people know you’re a real estate agent, so there is going to be some form of resistance. You might be a person that’s already got a very large personal network in your area. A lot of people don’t. If you want to find a really effective way that gets you in front of some of the most important local people in your area, do a podcast and invite them to come on the podcast for interviews.
It’s very unlikely they’re going to say no. Then if you gel with them, it’s very unlikely they won’t agree to have a meeting with you and you can build some relationship with that individual.
I agree with everything you said, and I would just like to add another layer to it. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody listening to the show, this isn’t the most popular opinion. I spent my entire life inside the marketing and sales world, and there are certain elements of it that are like politics. It’s like, all these businesses want you just to sell to everybody. All these businesses want you to do just run the numbers, get the revenue, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just decided a while back that I was going to be a mission guy because I was just tired of it. I became a mission guy, started my own thing. But here’s the thing about having a mission. For those of you who are in real estate, what would a mission be? Do you have anything interesting to say to anybody in your audience? I have realtors that are my clients, and one of the things that we occasionally do is talk to small business owners. Now, that’s a really good group of people to target inside a geographic specific area like your local restaurant owner. You want to create a relationship with businesses that are in your area and basically establish a strong reputation with other influencers inside a local market, a local lifestyle, put them on a podcast.
Talk about being a business owner in that area. If you’re passionate about it. Is there something that you’re passionate about? I’ve got somebody in my database, John, that used to be an accountant before they became a realtor. She’s really passionate about not numbers. She does a lot of numbers crunching for her clientele. I don’t know. She’s definitely not a charisma real estate agent, which is where most focus goes. Everybody’s like, Oh, you got to have a charisma. You got to do this. No, you don’t really. What you have to have is a valuable asset that you can offer your clients. Somebody who’s really going to sit down and really dig into the numbers, really read through your contracts, understand them and want to do that, maybe not the best person to talk to on on the phone, maybe dry and unemotional. But at the same time, if they’re going through your stuff page by page and are really into it, that’s a great realtor, in my opinion. That’s somebody that really has something to offer you. Who cares about charisma? You really need somebody making sure the contracts are right, that your offers are right, that the numbers are looking good, blah, blah, blah.
If she was to say to me, Robert, I want to do a podcast on talking to insurance folks inside the markets I target, I’d be like, That’s a brilliant idea for you, because she’d be really passionate and have a lot to discuss about the numbers, about the way the contracts can be manipulated. Maybe the subject matter is a little dry, but when people are looking For podcasts, they tend to pick a big, broad category. John and I sit with this podcast in real estate marketing, I think. That’s what our target is. Okay. All right. That’s our subject. We cover everything inside real estate marketing, generally with a spend on generating leads, because that’s what realtors really care about. That’s really what everybody wants to talk to us about. Find something that you’re passionate about and then worry about your audience, Because it will come to you if you have something to say. That’s the truth of it. If you have something to share that’s valuable, people will find you.
I think, yeah, that’s one way to approach it. The other way to approach it is to become what is called the digital mayor of your area. And one of the main tools that you can utilize to become this digital mayor is podcasting. It is inviting people that are community leaders, political leaders, business leaders, you start on the edges, and as you keep doing it, you will find that the type of people that you will attract to the podcast will increase. So in the end, you will end up with regional or people, some of the biggest individuals in your community, and that can only help your networking ability. We’re in the digital space, both me and Rob, but I think I’ve said it many times, I believe in the hybrid model. This is a person-to-person business, always will be. You use digital marketing to add gasoline to the fire, but you got to be able to build a personal network as well. And podcasting offers a great way of doing that, Rob.
I do agree. It’s a more personal conversation. It’s a way to get deep, deep, deep into the fabric of a subject, which is really going to make an impression. I’m sorry, John, but I believe that most of your digital marketing, I think it’s gone 99% to influence your style marketing where people want to know you. And if they do know you, they tend to want to do business with you. It’s not the slow, fast, sexy approach to marketing. It’s not producing a great commercial and having a thousand people call you to be a realtor. That’s the sexy stuff of myths at this point in this world that we live in right now. Most people, with all the digital information that we have at our fingertips, actually want a little bit more substance. In my opinion, just in my opinion. All right, planning your podcast strategy. You know what? Before we talk about this, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take a short break, and when we come back, we’re going to talk about how do you plan your strategy. I’m going to let John pick this one up as soon as the break is over, because there’s no doubt in my mind that as a guy that started two podcasts, and I’ve started zero, that he probably has some really great ideas about planning for a podcast.
That’s it. We’ll be right back. Hit that like button, hit that subscribe button wherever you’re watching or listening to this content. Make sure that you become friends with the distribution channel that you’re hearing us on, and we’ll talk to you in a second. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 447 of the MailRight podcast. Today, we’ve been talking about using podcasting to get more real estate leads. We’re going to talk about planning your podcast strategy. John’s going to pick it up. Take it away, John.
What I mean by strategy is the actual mechanics of how you’re going to do it and how you’re going to fit podcasting and consistently do it week in, week out. If you’re serious about this, I think you’re going to have to do a weekly podcast. You could do it every second week. If you’re looking at just doing it monthly, I question if that’s really going to work. So week to week or twice a month, that might work. And most podcasts, last last about three episodes, and then they fade out. There’s over a million podcasts now in the world, but the majority of them only last about three episodes, and then about another 50% only last about 25. We’re in the top 10%, because we’ve together probably done about 300 podcasts together. So we’re in the top 10, maybe the 5% of all podcasts. The other factor is it’s going to be tempting. I would not suggest, when you’re starting off, to go to other people’s offices. I would attempt to do the podcast testing through Zoom or another platform. There’s half a dozen platforms. We’re using one here called StreamYard. There’s another popular one called Riverside, or you can utilize Zoom as well.
I would do it remotely. You’re going to find the technical side to be much easier to cope with. The only thing is you’re going to be dealing with people on the other side might not have very good audio equipment. That has diminished because of COVID, because people were having to work from their home offices and that people tend now, Especially if there are businesses, shakers or movers in your local community, they tend to have a mic. They tend to do a lot of remote conference calls. So If you’re going to need to get a schedule, that isn’t quite a problem. It is nice to go to somebody’s office, and it is possible, but there is going to be a more technical baggage in doing that. Thirdly, get a scheduling. You book a particular time. I would suggest that it’s in the morning or you can do it in early evening. Then you can send a link to somebody that’s on your radar and they can book a day or time that you’re available to book the actual meeting. Then you can record the podcast. The other thing is you are going to have to have it edited.
There’s loads, you can attempt to do that yourself. I would not recommend that you do that. There’s loads of resources on Fiverr and similar platforms that can edit the audio for you at a reasonable cost, not ridiculous. Or there is, you can do it yourself, and it isn’t that complicated, but I would probably look at getting somebody from Fiverr or some other online resource and do the editing yourself. They do the editing for you.
Awesome. John is a master at this stuff. I do meetings with people, schedule through HubSpot links, calendar links, stuff like that. All this digital calendar stuff is one of the only really interesting innovations for me as an inbound marketer. I don’t have much to say about any of it, but online calendaring saves my life every single day. Having people have a link, be able to check my calendar, being able to refer people to that. As a salesperson, I’ve oftentimes spent no joke, hours of my day in conversations around scheduling. It’s always been one of the most frustrating things about being a salesperson is actually scheduling the appointments and then keeping the appointments, confirming the appointments, blah, blah, blah. Digital technology, people that really want to meet with you, in my experience, there are some people you can chase down, and you can definitely chase somebody down and then convince them or convert them or whatever the case Most of the time, that’s a lot of really hard work. Whereas just sending out somebody a link and letting them schedule with you, by the time they schedule with you and then confirm whatever your automated confirmation is, they usually really want to meet with you.
Just like they really want to do your podcast. We have a very low cancelation rate at Mailright. I’ve definitely noticed that. I have a very low cancelation rate in my personal appointment calendar because I don’t spend too much time trying to convince people to take calls with me. Because everything, the content, everything you’re saying in the podcast is already done, whatever convincing needs to be done. The people that are thinking about being on the show, once you’ve done a couple of episodes, I would say one thing. Actually, you know what? Now that I think about it, launching a business, generally speaking, to get some momentum going in the digital world, you need a plan when you launch, when you start it. Having a handful of guests lined ready to go, people that you’ve talked to physically and personally, will create a lot of the assets that you need to convince the rest of your audience. I would say make sure that you have a few people lined up when you get ready for the show to go. Get those people on the calendar, get that all set up, because by the time you’re in the momentum and you casually mention to somebody else, having a link to a show you’ve already done is a great persuasion tool.
All right, let’s go to- Give a quick tip. Do not book your… Do a couple of live dummy runs. Get a couple of interviews with friends or people. You have some close relationships because it’s The first episode is going to be a bit rough, and maybe the second one. So you don’t want to get your best guest on to launch. You want to do a couple and then bring your best guest in. That’s just a tip because it’s just a reality. The first one or two might be a bit rough.
Right. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to talk a little bit about audio equipment, which once again, I’m going to let John take this up. Everybody can see that I’m using a Plantronics headset. This is a company that I’ve used for 20 plus years when it comes to full-on call center headsets. I wear this one because it’s super comfortable. It’s got cushioning. It is not podcasting. I have an ICE microphone that long ago, John or somebody else recommended to me that I bought for the podcast. Then I used it for a prop in another show that I did and lost it. I don’t know where it is. Anyway, I’m not an audio equipment expert. I have people in my staff and in my circle of friends who buy all of my equipment for me, all of it, lighting, sound, video, everything. As a matter of fact, they’re setting up in another studio because I’m going to another show right after I do this one. John, what are your recommendations for audio equipment? You’ve done this many times. I remember you upgraded your own setup once in the years that we’ve been doing this.
Basically, when you’re starting out, folks, you want to keep it as simple as possible. The easiest way to do this is utilize a USB external mic. Basically, it’s mostly a USB-C now. And most computers, PCs or Macs will have a USB-C. And you plug the mic directly into your computer and it will show up. A USB mic has the electronics in the mic, and when you plug it in, it will show up as one of your sound card resources. Sometimes on the PC, you do have to download a driver, but that’s not so common there. It’s the easiest way to do it. Then you use something like Zoom or StreamYard or Riverside, and it will see the mic when you’re setting up your input and you connect it to earbud I wouldn’t utilize Bluetooth earbud. I would have a direct connection myself because the battery always runs out halfway through the conversation, so I wouldn’t do that. And a mic, there’s three manufacturers that I… There’s loads of them. There’s loads of Chinese manufacturers, but free. I think you can buy a reasonable USB mic between $50 to $70 now. The free I recommend is Road, their Australian company.
They’re Shore, which is a US-based company that’s got over 100 years. They’re based in Chicago. The one I consistently use, I’m on their second mic. I am this week doing a little bit of upgrade, but I’m still waiting for some of the equipment to come in. I’ve bought another mic from them, and that’s a company called Audio Technic. They’re a Japanese company. I’ve been really happy with the USB mics. Next week, if I’m happy with it, I’m going to upgrade. I’m going to move to what is called XLR, which basically you get a little bit better sounds. I haven’t gone crazy on it. I’ve bought equipment that will just upgrade the quality a little bit. The main difference with that is that you need an external sound center. You’re not plugging the mic directly into the PC or You’re plugging the mic into a sound system, and then the sound system is connected to the PC, and you have more direct control over the sound, volume, and quality by utilizing one of these external systems. But you don’t have to bother with that, really. I would recommend that you just buy a USB mic.
Copy you. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to offer the same advice that I’ve always offered about equipment, about everything whenever you’re starting a marketing effort, a business, anything. We all have to evaluate where we are at in our careers and what budget that we have for marketing. I’m still using relatively inexpensive equipment, and I was doing that for the first six years that inbound REN was in business. Then I invested $20,000 to $30,000 to convert one of the rooms into my house into a full studio, complete with a rig on the ceiling to do lighting, a board on the walls. I remodeled one of my rooms in the house. I did a lot. But the reason that I did it is at that particular time, I had an audience, about 30, 40,000 people that are realtors that pay attention to me. I thought that the upgrade in my content presentation might have an impact. It took me another year to get into the cycle of producing content using all of this equipment and this room. There’s pros and cons. It’s not an office building. It’s in my house, and my house is old, so occasionally we have power problems and other things that happen with an old house in the valley, San Fernando Valley, where I live.
Ultimately, it was an iffy investment. Probably will pay me off in the span of 5 or 10 years, for sure, I think. But that’s where you need to be when you start looking at equipment, in my opinion. It’s like you need to look at it from… I wait until it’s so freaking obvious that everybody in my team and everybody is pressuring me to make upgrades. Even then, I sometimes resist. I am going to buy a nice microphone like John’s saying, and I’m probably going to drop it from my ceiling, and it’s going to be better than the remote mix that I have on my studio set up. I might do another microphone inside my little office space, but I have forever really cherished a messy casual office environment. I don’t really like to clutter it up with lots of equipment. I really think that it’s important that everybody listening to this show takes into account what your resources are first. Please don’t go broke.
I think if you do a lot of YouTube watching, folks, you’re going to get a lot of people that’s going to recommend a or shore, but it’s going to be around $300. You don’t have to pay that, folks. I’m using audio Technica mic that cost me $70, and I’ve been using it for seven years. I’ve had people say the sounds pretty good. Those that are really into it, they buy shore, they buy road, or they buy upper-level audio technica. The mic that I’m replacing this one, it’s costing me $150. Hopefully, it will be a bit better and with the external sound deck, give me more control, but I wasn’t prepared to spend… You can spend thousands. But these are people that are professional musicians. They are either semi-pro or professional musicians. They’re looking to build a home studio. You’re looking to do a podcast. There’s a difference.
Yeah, no, there’s a huge difference. I’m just saying in general, I was just sharing my philosophy because I don’t have… You should be trying lots of different marketing things. You should keep the expenses down to the lowest amount of money. I’m a big believer in trying things until you find something that really fits. And that’s That’s what coaches and everybody else is going to say to you in a variety of languages. You find a marketing or sales strategy that works for you. You might try YouTubeing, you might try podcasting, you might try door knocking, you might try calling. You should find something that works for you and Each time you try something different, especially if you haven’t hit a real success, you should keep the cost zero. That’s my opinion. Zero, not low, zero. That way you are making Making sure… If you are going to invest in anything and you’re an early realtor, an early salesperson, an early business owner, my opinion is books and free YouTube videos. That’s it. That’s it. All right, in my opinion. All right, but number 4, how to promote your podcast. This is our bonus section, ladies and gentlemen.
We’re now 34 minutes into this episode. John and I separate out this show in 30 minutes of talking about a topic, and then sometimes we separate out a bonus and we say, Hey, the bonus is going to be on YouTube channel. And so this bonus is going to be talking about how to promote your podcast. I have some ideas about this, John, but why don’t you go ahead and share what has worked for you for all the… I mean, the WP Tonic show is what, 6,000 to 10,000 listeners a month now? Is that right?
No, it’s between 3,000 and 5,000. It varies between the episode, but I think I’m getting… Well, I think, got to be truthful, that’s per month. That’s the direct downloads. But the audience you get, as you know, with most marketing, if you can get both, this is great, but it’s really very difficult. You can get a lot of reach, a lot of watches, whatever matrix you’re using. But a lot of these people might not be actually will never become a customer of yours. Never purchase. Or you might have a smaller audience, but they’re more passionate, they’re more targeted. So there’s more chance that they would purchase. If you can get both at the same time, that’s fantastic, but that’s rare. So don’t get so fixated about how many downloads. It’s who downloading and how much influence you are having with to those people. To promote it, well, that’s one of the reasons why I think interviewing is a good idea, and then utilizing social media to promote the interview. If you’re using something like StreamYard, you could invite people to join you live and ask questions of the person if they’re up for it. That would mean that you also will have to do video as well.
Otherwise, Otherwise, you can just promote the person. If they’re well-known in the area, you can use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to promote the interview and promote the podcast. If you’re going to do a video, use a webcam. A 4K webcam will only cost you less than $100 now. I’m using more expensive equipment. Equipment I’m using, if you’re watching this, cost me about $1,000. But that’s the way. That’s a great way of promoting it is through the guests and utilizing their network, their name recognition in the local area, and that builds up your name recognition.
For For the record, everybody, the camera I’m using, which is terrible, it’s $35, the Logitech. But that’s for this, the podcast. When I’m doing it in my studio, the camera that my team had me buy there was $2,000, some Sony. It’s different. But I’m just going to say promoting this show, another really beautiful thing about podcasts is that they are what I call a compounding marketing system. And What that means is that by doing the podcast, everybody that participates in it has a vested interest in promoting the show. If you’re lucky enough to gather somebody who has a big audience, usually it’s audience specification is the number one way to promote podcasts. I will go ahead and get the podcast out in front of my audience. You go ahead and get the podcast out in front of your audience. And even if you did nothing else other than do the podcast, you will slowly but surely grow your reach just by making sure that you talk to your guests about promoting it to their audience, and you make sure that you also have the due diligence to promote it to your audience. Something that I am fifty-fifty on myself.
I put episodes of this show onto my website occasionally. When I do, those episodes tend to have high views on YouTube and things like that. But I select the episodes that I think are most interesting to the Then what I do additionally is I take the episodes where I really think it’s valuable. I have a private Facebook group with about 180 movers and shakers in the real estate industry. Those people get my favorite shows that John and I do, and all I got to do is do a link. I actually grab that off John’s Facebook page, generally speaking, and then push it into my private group. Here’s the thing. Whatever promotion I do is simply compounding the idea that you filmed the episode. It’s very low effort, extremely low effort. I spend five minutes, maybe, a month, and you can find somebody who will probably spend 10 minutes and they will be a guest, and they will get you out in front of a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand or 10,000 people, and then you’ll have a few additional listeners. That’s how you grow the audience. This show is slowly grown since John and I have been doing it.
Just over hundreds of episodes, pure diligence. When somebody finds something that you’re saying that they like, I don’t have many of these, but I do have the occasional person that reaches out and contacts me and goes, Oh, my God, I’ve listened to 50 of your podcasts. I’m just like? Oh, wow. They do occasionally do that. When they come through the door, they are customers, not some of the time, every time. That’s another interesting thing about producing digital content in the first place. If you cover enough subjects in enough detail, even though it could be very granular, you’ll eventually find one person where that’s a hop button, and you’re the only answer they can find. Podcasting is the same way. Talk about something that may be relevant to a minimal number of people, but John and I have done hundreds of these episodes. Eventually, Another thing is that sometimes somebody else’s reputation connects to your podcast. When you distribute it, it gets out there, and somebody sees, Oh, my God, you talk to whoever, somebody from Playster, whatever it is. We’ve had a couple of big guests, and one of those big guests, and somebody loves one of those prominent guests.
The minute that you talk to them, they already like you. Now, when you’re talking to them, they’re like, Oh, you’re my guy. Promotion takes care of itself. Now, if you want to do something more than that, or if you ever get a knockout Superstar Guest, Here’s one secret that John and I don’t talk about much because it requires that you have a budget. YouTube views acquired through paid advertising are the meager cost of acquisition. It’s especially if you end up talking about a broad subject that is not an expensive keyword, and you get a Rockstar Guest, and then you can target that guest’s name in your name and maybe some ancillary subjective searches. All of a sudden, you’ve got for 500 bucks, you can get out in front of 50,000 people. That is a meager cost for a very high impact. When you do that advertising, my last thing will be guys, gals, and everybody listening: John, you’re not looking for a conversion. You’re looking for audience acquisition, which could, over a considerable period, end up being conversion because the bigger your audience, the more parent authority that you have, and the more subscribers that you have on every channel that you’re on, the more likely people are going to look at you automatically and say, You must be credible.
There are many reasons one might build up an It’s something I have yet to engage in myself because we are usually maxed out for what I want to produce. But if I wanted to do more, I would throw a few hundred dollars into that paid advertising, grow my audience super fast, and the numbers would eventually happen. I don’t have anything to add. That was more than I thought I had to say on the subject. John, is there anything you’d like to close out with? Because we’re definitely at the end of our scheduled time.
No, we’ve covered the subject. If you have any questions, you can go over to the Mel-Right website and book a chat with me. And I’ll be more than happy to give you additional advice about podcasting. Back over to you, Rob.
Yeah, and for the love of God, everybody listening to the show today, John is the expert on this, not Robert. John, please call and reach out to him, whatever methods he has. If somebody is listening to this show for some reason and there’s an ancillary subject such as social media, SEO, or something like that, I’ve got a lot of resources on the inboundrem. com website. Please look at my service and contact forms and contact me there. You can also email me at robert@inboundrem. Com. John, is there any additional info you’d like to add as we close the show?
No, go over to the Mail-Right. c0m and you can book a chat with me. It’s right on the top navigation. Like I said, do you have any questions about podcasting? I’ll be more than happy to help. Cool.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for listening. We appreciate it so much. We will see you next week at the same time and on the same bat channel, and we’ll be able to have something cool to share with you about real estate marketing.
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Join EXP Realty in 2024. Discover the pros and cons to determine if this innovative brokerage suits your real estate career.
Are you curious if EXP Realty is the right fit for you in 2024? Join us as we explore both sides of the coin.
This informative video highlights essential aspects such as company culture, growth opportunities, and challenges agents may face within this brokerage model. You can give yourself valuable insights.
#1 – Successful And experienced realtors Would Be Successful At Any Brokerage.#2 – You Need To Break The mindset that Your Broker is Your Employer.
#3 – Priorities That You Need From Your Brokerage.
#4 – Comparing EXP Reality to The Main Comparators.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 446. John and I laugh because we talk about how I should explain my massive shiner. And John was suggesting that I go with the angry, jolted lover. It’s an irate customer kind of thing. The truth is, I was moving a piece of heavy equipment into my home office and let it slip. And the dolly and the thing I was moving smacked me in the face and gave me a massive shiner. So anyway.
That’s one hell of a shiner.
Oh my God. Yeah, it’s like half my face. It’s incredible.
It’s a beneficent shiner.
It’s like a Dalmatian, like. For those of you who don’t watch this on video, if you’re curious, please join us on video. You will now see me with half my face, black and white. All right, without any further ado, though, for those of you who might not be familiar with us, in today’s episode, we will talk about why you should or should not join EXp Realty in 2024. Mike, the fearless co-host, researched and came up with the subject in the first place. But some of you may not know him. So, John, without any further ado, please do us the favor of introducing yourself.
Oh, dear. Shock Orin. Nobody knows me. I’m the joint founder of Mel Riot.com. We’re a CRM email text platform that helps you get more leads. Plus, you get a nice-looking website. What more could you ask for, my beloved listeners? Back over to you, Robert.
All right, I’m Robert Newman, the founder of Inbound REM, a content-focused marketing company focused on the core principles of you owning stuff and search engine optimization. All right, without any further ado, though, we’re going to drop into.
I’m tempted to say it’s urgent care cent.
Oh my God. See, this is. This is every once in a while, John; I give you a lot of ammunition. This is one of those days per year that you get a ton. Because I could have called out, I did break my face, but no, I’m here letting you take some shots at me. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, to what you said, I am curious if exp is the right fit for you in 2024. All right, so we can talk briefly about why you selected this subject in the first place. Because we’ve discussed Exp before, this is the second time you brought them up as a subject, just looking.
At what other people were talking about. I thought it would differ slightly from video, Facebook, or Google local efforts. We have a guest next week. I think I’m right. We got a guest next week as well. But I thought it was good timing to have maybe come back. We’ve only discussed Exp once or twice, so I don’t think we’ve overkilled it, have we?
Okay, well, ladies and gentlemen, exp have some competitors. The primary among them is actual. It’s just one competitor that they have. The idea behind real is if they are actual Exp. Other companies like it are very similar to multilevel marketing, which has pros and cons. Before we jump into any of that, though, I will salt those pros and cons through the format of the show that Joe and John described as designed for us. I did take a heavy blow to my head recently, John, so understand when I’m mixing my words up, that could be part of the cause.
Oh, I do that. I don’t need a blow to do that.
So successful and experienced realtors would be successful at any brokerage. That is your number one. It’s kind of like what you put here. So, what did you mean by that? Like, get into that for us?
I think, you know if you haven’t built up a marketing engine, a marketing methodology, whatever techniques you’re going to utilize, you know, one-to-one marketing, more traditional type of marketing, where you just got a small group of people. Still, you’re tight with them, or you’re going to use more digital marketing, or you’re going to use a hybridization approach, which I think is the best. However, a lot of agents seem to struggle to combine both morphologies. They either go with the more traditional, build a small referral group in their community, or they go entirely online. But whatever, whatever your poison is, whatever is working, you gotta, if you’re successful. If you’ve built up that way of getting enough leads and turning those leads into commission checks, you will be successful. Whatever type of brokerage you go to, I don’t think I, apart from when you’re starting, you’ll not have a lot of experience if you’re beginning. , I don’t think any of these online brokerages are probably the right solution for you. Some people would say I’m not right, but finding an experienced agent to mentor you is perfect.
But apart from that, I think whatever type of brokerage, as long as you’ve got that marketing engine worked out, you will be somewhat successful.
I copy you. So I have a different take on this. Successful experience realtors is successful in any brokerage. That broad and general statement I completely and totally agree with. And I just want to say that at that point then for all of you listening to this show, especially for those of you, that rare few that really don’t sweat the details of your business, in other words, maybe you’re very successful at digital marketing of some kind. You really are already a profit engine. And now what you’re doing is trying to figure out how and where you’re going to see the most utilization for the business that you’re surrendering to a brokerage. Because that’s what you’re doing. You’re giving your business to somebody else for a set of services. When you are good enough at your business where the marketing, you’ve done the marketing you’ve created the deal, you manage the transaction, and all of that is seamless. Now you have this massive asset that you can turn over to a brokerage or not. Some agents turn it over for brokers that charge 0% or $4,000 a year for a seat. You all know who the 1% per like percent commission brokers are.
You should okay, all those people pretty much like process your transaction at no charge. So you can keep all of your money from the deal real and exp give you a percentage of their company as part of their end on the transaction. You end up paying about 20% on transactions. 20% of 1%. Okay, so they’re not the lowest and they’re not the highest on the transaction processing side. So you pay for this privilege. But part of what they do is they give you shares in the company, which is what makes their brokerage structure unique as part of your comp plan. Now here’s the interesting thing. They also are one of the very few people that allows you to treat their business like your business. That’s where it’s like multilevel marketing. And in that sense you get to, if you are a guy like Kyle Handy, who has a process that you can put online, that other people can copy and replicate, you could then make them essentially part of your downline, and then you can make a very small piece of their deal as well, and you can make some shares in EXP. Now all of this was much more appealing when the stock price was exploding in terms of stock price position of the shares.
And I am not a stockbroker, this is not financial advice. But in my opinion, you are looking at a better timeframe for real and other companies because Exp has stagnated on the share price for a while. But if for some reason you believe in their model, like a lot, and they’ve got a great model and they are doing really, really good at providing share value. So you need to look at this yourself and say, do I have the five to ten years? And if the answer is yes, in my opinion, Exp is definitely the established player that created the model that everybody else is following in the digital space. And they are the godfathers of it. They also have an incredibly attractive profit to earnings share ratio as opposed to every other provider out there. Now that’s not a guarantee of performance, so. And I don’t know that. Yeah, and it leads really well into what number two is on John’s list, which is you need to break the mindset that your broker is your employer. That’s what you said for number two. And I basically kind of like shared a thought that was very similar to that in that the person who controls the in business is actually in control.
But what do you think about how would you embellish on that? Or what would you say to that yourself, John?
Well, you’re in a partnership. It should be a partnership. The brokers should provide. Obviously, in some states, you know, a lot of states, you got, you got to have a broker or you’ve got to be the broker. It’s a requirement to be a real estate agent in Nevada. You’ve got to have, you got to be part of a brokerage and the broker has to qualify financially and also through additional testing and number of years in business to qualify, qualify as a broker. And they supervise their agents, but they should, they should bring things to the table. But you’ve got, you’ve also got to bring things to the table. You know, unlike there are some real estate brokerages that you are basically just the employee Redfin, but that they changed that model, haven’t they? But because it didn’t work. But you, you are self employed, you are working for yourself in partnership with your brokerage and you’ve got to do your own marketing and you got to do your own lead. Generate a, you know, some boutique power brokerages. They will provide so many leads to their agents. They have a full time digital manager. I think, you know, if you’re starting out, but normally they, they give the best of those leads to their experienced agents, don’t they?
In my experience, yours might be different, but that’s the mindset, you know, it’s a totally different mindset to be the employee, I feel.
Agreed. So, ladies and gentlemen, this is the mindset that you need to break. The mindset that your broker is your employer. I couldn’t agree with that more. It hasn’t been true in a while, and it certainly isn’t true in the digital age. There’s a very small handful of exceptions which mostly exist in the hyper luxury space where Sotheby’s luxury or a few other brand names are still someplace where when you sign up for them, they’re going to be your employer because they built such a strong pedigree into the brand that you’re not going to be able to catch it on your own, in theory, but there aren’t that many of those left, and they almost always exist in a very specific kind of space. There’s also an ever growing number of players that focus on the, the smaller, higher volume mindset. There are quite a few players out there that are appealing to that marketplace and building brands along the idea of doing real estate transactions en masse and providing a reasonably good experience and a lot of training to get those things done. And there’s all sorts of small brokers who are doing that for ExP and others, but those guys have already figured out that the broker is not the employer.
The person that is the employer, the person that can make the demands is the person who controls the business. And in the digital world that we live in, business is more and more defined by process. So if you have a lot of processes, what you say at the opening of sale, close of sale, and you can record all that video or other formats and then test agents on it, and then you have digital formatting, so that when somebody is closing a deal, like a lot of their paperwork is on an iPad, as an example, people are signing documents. You’ve got easy to understand assets that explain the transaction, explain what somebody’s supposed to do, and you’re paying for those, or you paid for the knowledge in the first place, and you have all of that process set up. Most of the time, brokers are not doing that anymore. There’s not very many brokers that do a very good job. One of the few is real and another one of the few is exp. They both have a very large amount of digital knowledge online that you can learn from. You have to decide who’s better real has done a better job on the corporate side.
I think people that are actually connected to the core entity and Exp is doing a much better job at recruiting power agents who do an incredible job at doing it, such as Ricky Carruth and Kyle Handy. They’re pretty much scooping up all of the people that figured out the digital lead generation and digital education side of real estate. And all those guys are going over to Exp. Why? They’re already educating thousands of people. Might as well make a small override on it. All right. Signing them up under their extended downline and then educating everybody en masse is already what they do. Ricky Carwith was already doing that before he ever signed up with Exp. He probably changed zero in his business model and is just collecting shares of his broker’s company to do it with them. So it’s a smart decision past that point. If any of you listening to this show right now are digital creators or headed in that direction, or influencers or educators, and real estate is your space. Exp and real and companies like that are absolutely places for you to look at and measure the long term value of your investment.
There’s cons though, too, and I do want to. I’m going to cover the cons in number three, but we’re going to go to break really quick because we’re right there, we’re right on the money and we’ll be right back. John, I am sorry. Pause. John, I am going to really step up for 1 second. I will be right back in under 60 seconds. Okay, so true. Break. All right. Okay. I’m going to do my countdown then. All right. Okay. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Today we are talking. Today’s episode number is 446. We just got back from break and we are talking about the pros and cons or why you should or shouldn’t join EXP Realty in 2024. We stopped, we went to break when we covered a second subject, which is you need to break the mindset that your broker is your employer. We’re coming back and we’re going to talk about the priorities that we think might be a good idea for you to look at in 2024 from your brokerage. And this is just our opinion, and these are two guys that haven’t been realtors, but we both have a lot of digital experience and we’re applying that to this equation.
So John, why don’t you go first and run through what you think the priorities would be that you would need from a brokerage in 2024.
Well, I think the main priorities is money support charges. What the split is going to be. I think with Exp, I think they’re. I think their split is 2080, up to $16,000. And then there’s a cut off. I think I’m right about that. You covered the support, the training. You said that they do provide a lot of online training and they do like one or two of their main competitors provide good services when it comes to managing the transaction. Then you got the charges. You know how much they charge. I think by my research, which was at the beginning of 224, they were charging around $80 to $90 a month for their digital package. I think there’s a fourth one which all these are online players. It’s their weakest point is, and I would call it community, I think you can have community online, but I think it can’t compare to a traditional brokerage that has some form of community feel to it. But on the other hand, I’ve known, I’ve known a lot of the kind of bigger franchise brokerages. They don’t have much of a community feel, even though they’ve got a brick and mortar base.
So it just depends on the kind of tradition, what kind of brokerage, the more traditional model that you’re joining. What do you reckon?
So I think that this question is a little tricky because I think priorities that you need from your brokerage are going to depend on the kind of realtor that you are. I am the kind of guy that would really prefer a realtor, like a broker that I never ever, ever had to go into. If I never had to sit down for a real physical in person meeting, that would be the kind of broker that would appeal to me. I just don’t like it. I don’t like driving. Like, I don’t like going from place to place, which would probably make me a bad real estate agent to start with. But my processes would be built very much around getting as much done digitally as I could and then physically meeting only after I’d done a high level of communication qualification and then go show the home, show up an hour early, learn the home really quick before somebody came there themselves, and then walk somebody through the home. Now what does that mean in terms of support? That would mean that the broker that I would work with would have a lot of digital support, a lot of training online, a lot of like a really good internal IDX, really good internal brokerage tools.
Compass might be a selection for me. EXP probably wouldn’t be unless I was interested in creating a downline through like, ongoing education and so money priorities that you need from your brokerage. Now here’s an interesting subject for you. Like in terms of brokerages that invest the most into their agents, the brokerage that probably does the best job of this right now currently is one that nobody ever talks about, which is the agency re. Okay. Mauricio Mansky, who was an agent himself for many years, worked for Hilton and Highland. I do not know personally of any founder that is more dedicated to putting more money back into the brokerage than him. He has an internal marketing department. They send their team out with like, real high quality physical assets along with a fairly strong set of digital tools for the agents to use. So he’s got everything. He’s got physical handouts. He’s got like, they also spend money on the assessment side of properties, which is very rare for brokers. They most of the time hand that cost and that responsibility back over to the agents, not the agent cre. They have an internal marketing department that does all of that for you.
So in terms of a company actually providing physical support in an upper up scale market, the agency re, to me is like a hands down choice. If you happen to be one of those agents that’s like, listen, I’m a top notch professional, but all I really want to do is sell, and I want other people to supply me the marketing stuff. Well, one of the very few selections if you could get in would be the agent Cre, because they do provide so much support. They don’t hire agents willy nilly, which is crazy. They have nothing but super high qualified professionals at the top of their stack. Mauricio Mansky, to this very day, is one of the top producing real estate salespeople in the entire world. You cannot find a more qualified shop. So if that’s your kind of support that you’re looking for, and you already think that you’re an upper echelon guy and you’re willing to give up a bigger piece of your piece because all that shit that I just mentioned costs money. Like, it just does. So the agency re does absolutely take a bigger chunk of your deal than many of the people that John and I could talk about.
So are they really right for you? Who knows? You got to decide for yourself what kind of agent you are. And last but not least, charges. I would be the kind of agent that wouldn’t need any of that shit. I don’t want fancy glossy brochures. I’m going to do the entire sales process myself. I want you to charge me as little as possible. I can go learn my digital stuff by following people like Ricky and other people handy online. I absolutely. And then I’ll test it out with clients. I’ll test it myself. I do not need anybody to support me or tell me whether I’m doing a good or bad job, but I’ve got 30 years of sales experience, so I don’t need any that stuff. So the charges that somebody would have to bill me would be minimal, extremely minimal, John. And I would support like, if I wanted like a digital transaction tool or something like powered by Nile to support my transaction process, I would pay for that out of my own pocket and let that be part of my own internal charges to process the deal. I’d also hire a lot of Vas.
That would be how I would do it. My processes will include anything at all that I didn’t want to do, like posting stuff to social media, which should be done. I wouldn’t do it. I’d hire a va for $5 an hour out of the Philippines and call it a day. Let them post it, create the process once, let them do it. So when the broker or my real estate company came to me and said, oh, Robert, we support you socially, we do this and this and this, I’d probably laugh at them. There’s no way that a broker would be able to support me in a way that would be meaningful to me with my skill and my level of experience. No way. So you better not charge me for that stuff. And last but not least, when it comes to charges, John, I don’t know if you’re aware of this. I suspect very strongly that you are. But at the highest level with the biggest brokerages, some of their main recruitment tools are doing things like buying master licenses to boomtown and KBCor and other services. But that stuff is not free to the agent.
They pass along all the charges to the agent. I see. You want to say something? Join the.
Yeah, I don’t know if, am I right? That EXP KV core is still a main part of their digital package. I don’t think they insisted that use it. I know some of their biggest infant online training influences emphasize that that that’s one of the problems I have with it because I don’t think it’s a very good platform myself, but I would say that, wouldn’t I? But I do honestly believe that. I don’t think it’s particularly, I don’t think you’re you, you love it either.
So I don’t, I mean, it’s the it’s the McDonald’s of the real estate CRM industry. And, and for some people it will work. It’s slow, it’s clunky. It does do a lot of the key things that you needed to do. It’s on the cloud. It’s cheaper than most. Yeah. I think I’ve said this before publicly. I’ll say it again. No, I don’t. I am not in love with KVcore. What I love for KVCore with Exp specifically is that you guys got, you got guys like, like Kyle Handy who have produced very transparent and clear content that very specifically shows you how they are leveraging the platform and oftentimes they leverage it to profit. I love that it is a clear and transparent linear way for you to understand how other people are using it. But here’s the problem. Is it going to work for you the way it works for Kyle? Probably not. Probably not.
That area is this kind of boutique broker who is very good at marketing, that’s built a local, regional brand and you are gaining recognition by linking yourself to that region, that local, regional brand. I forgot your second name. Peter. I asked him back because I think he’s gone. You said he sold his brokerage in. He did, but I think he’s still active.
So he might be. I’m pretty sure. Sure he sold his brokerage to compass. Whether or not he’s active or not, I have no idea.
I still follow him. He, he’s very effective on his marketing. He, he knows what he’s doing or he has people that are working with him that really know what they’re doing.
So John, I would love it if for the audience that’s listening. Peter was a guest that we had that is a former record producer, somebody that a lot of us in LA know. He built up like a team, a real estate team in record time. Like two years, 150 agents. It was crazy. Incredibly successful. And so Peter came onto the show. John, if you remember, maybe you put that other episode in the show notes so that people can go back and reference that other show anyway, so that’s what, that’s what John was talking about. Peter was really cool, very effective social marketer. One of the very few guys that ever came on the show and just said to us all, like to John and I very transparently, hey, we don’t focus so much on CRM systems here. We focus on social marketing. And I just show my team how to do that. That was literally something he said. One of the very few brokers that’s ever come on the show with us and said something like that. To my recollection, do you?
Yeah, I think you’re right there. And he’s very outgoing. You know, he’s very persuasive. You could see that he would probably be very effective in running. And his wife was also a key part of running the business. So I think they run a pre. I got the impression, I don’t know precisely, but I just got the impression they probably run a really tight ship and they knew what they were doing.
Yeah, I did the background research for everybody that’s there. Peter and his wife actually did like 80% of the brokerages production, but they produced 180 million. Peter was already successful and famous off a show that he got onto. And so he pulled in a lot of leads off that show and they closed a lot of the business. But that doesn’t change the fact, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you listening that want to build a team, Peter and his wife, regardless of the team’s production, were some of the best people, builders and leaders that we met. Highly charismatic, moving in the direction of process, moving lightning fast in the real estate business. Got themselves a show, got popular, saw the writing on the wall in terms of how long it would take them to train people to produce as much as he and his wife produced and then sold the brokerage. Peter was very smart in my opinion, John. And since we’re talking to everybody here, our audience as human beings who are business owners, hey, listen, there’s another way to go about this. Not generally the way that John and I talk about, but there’s a way to build up a team, build up some buzz, and then sell everything fast.
And that’s what Peter did. You should listen to the episode because it was a world class get for us as two podcasters. Peter was amazing.
I think if you, if you’ve got a player in your local area, region that is doing that kind of social brand, building a brand, it’s something that you might benefit from joining. But a lot of national franchise brands and to some degree, local or regional, you know, brokerages are a bit stale, aren’t they? I don’t really think unless you’re starting off in your career, they’re offering that much.
Agreed. Keller Williams is. So here’s the recommendations I make. You’re year one. Like year zero through three. Keller Williams is a great place to start. Still have a lot of training material physically that they hand off to their marketing centers. They’re very good at it. They teach you process really well. They came up with a very clever way to basically organize a real estate business. And so it teaches you a lot about process. And then once you’re through year one through three. Personally, if it was me, I probably would look at one of these big digital virtual brokerages. And real, there’s another one, I think, called Realty one. There’s yet another one called Exp, which is what we’re talking about. But we’re going to compare some of these for you. We’re going to do bonus material. Now, we’re at the end of our primary show, so we’re going to do ten extra minutes where we’re going to talk about comparing exp realty to some of its main competitors. Some of the people that I just mentioned. We’re going to run through a small list and we’re going to do a comparison. The big buzz out there right now, John, which I don’t know how much you’ve heard about them, is real.
That’s where a lot of our agents, Matthew Lawson, other people are transferring their licenses to. Have you heard anything about these guys?
No, I’ve heard of them, but I didn’t do much research on them because I. You have mentioned them before, so I was assuming that you would have something to say about them.
Okay, so, yeah, real is, um. I. I have mentioned them before because once Matthew, who I still kind of like, follow digitally, he is the founder of a group. Well, he is a co founder of a group called a YouTube mastermind for real estate agents. At this point, the group has like 12,000 people. Matthew is officially, like, an influencer. I forget how many subscribers he has, but it’s a lot, like, at this point, like, he’s got all the awards and the YouTube gold records and all that shit. He’s become a thing. And in that thing, he also has become the number one recruiter for real. He has influenced more people to join real than any other person around. That is Matthew Lawson. So he’s officially become a truly important influencer for a brand new brand. Through Matthew, I decided to check real out. And what I discovered is that they have a stronger seeming mission. They seem to be wanting to fix some of the mistakes that ExP made. So as ExP grew and grew Willy nilly, they started to develop a lot of the same problems that every other multi level marketing company before them has developed, which is people that get in there to not so much create value around the buying and selling real estate, but basically create value around the idea of recruiting other people who are then going to go out and sell real estate.
I was approached with this very idea myself three different times by three XP people. They all wanted me to basically be an influencer without selling any real estate. I’ve been involved in a lot of multi level marketing things over the years. And while I did see a way that I could make some profit, probably make it easy and big, I learned a long time ago not to attach myself to a brand until I am really, truly integrated into its core philosophies.
Because, well, you know my feet, that because I’ve expressed it to you on the show before and because I come from England, these type of schemes are totally illegal in the UK. You can go to prison by running one of those type of schemes. So my cultural background I would never get involved with. And that’s why I wouldn’t get involved with ExP, not for that reason from my cultural upbringing. I just wouldn’t be comfortable in getting involved with it. Even though it’s totally legal here, isn’t it?
It is, and it’s. I want to be clear, I kind of. I kind of side with John. If John and I are both saying that we wouldn’t sign up for it and we’ve been approached, I think that probably says everything that we need to say as podcasters to you, the audience listening, you want to do what you like, you want to complete your research. I still say, okay, but I will say this. It is a rapidly maturing multilevel marketing model. And before you decide that you’re going to sign up for it, you should do some of your own research on what happens in rapidly maturing multilevel marketing models. There are not that many that are successful, and the only ones that really have, have become more like store owners that are run out of their houses, like Amway.
So, and I think you’re very intuitive in what you’ve just said, because that’s what I’ve heard. And I think what you’re saying about real is it’s attractive as long as it doesn’t become over. The main purpose is no longer selling property. The purpose is to get new recruits in.
Correct.
And that’s the problem. I’ve heard about them, and I think you were. I’ve interrupted you, but only to say you’re spot on. What you’re saying about real is that you feel they haven’t gone down that trap. Is that what?
They have yet to go down that trap. They’ve agreed that they want to grow slower. They have focused their recruiting efforts on particular people instead of just anyone. They are experiencing rapid growth and seem to have better processes and systems. But I say this is a guy who spent about 6 hours researching him and no more than that. And so I do not know that for sure. This should not be, and this should not be, as an endorsement. This should just be heard as. I was curious. I didn’t even; I’m not even a real estate agent. I was just curious because Matthew is so hot on him and, over the years, has been following him. He is a guy that influences me.
I like his content. He has always been really forthright about his successes and pitfalls as a real estate YouTuber. Like, you know, he posts his relationship statuses online; he has wins and failures. He’s one of those people that lets you into his life, John. And because he does let me into his life, wins and losses combined, I grew to trust him as a content producer, so I pay attention to what he’s talking about when it comes to real.
And so far, he has had nothing but good things to say about them, and I have no reason to believe that he would like, even if it was to his detriment, I believe he’d say, wow, this isn’t what I thought I signed up for. He would say that, but he hasn’t done that. It’s been years. Anyway, that’s a good enough point. There are other people to compare, like reality. But honestly, I have not done enough research. I don’t know that John has. So we’re going to leave the comparisons off there. We appreciate you listening to the show. As usual, we’d like to ask you to share thumbs-up comments. It helps the YouTube algorithm a lot. It helps with moral support for John and me. We’ve been doing this for years, and you probably think we will do it no matter what, but it makes our day when all of you comment.
Like sharing, sending love to Rob, and sending him a digital ice pack; he needs it. So send him some love, listeners, and viewers. He looks like he’s been in a prize.
All right, so John, not faithful. All true. John, how would you like him to do that if you wanted people to reach out to?
I’m such a piss artist, so I can’t help. It’s the Englishness; it just comes out, folks. I can’t help it. Thanks, Rob. The best way is to go to the male hyphen write.com website, look at what we offer, and then book a chat with me. I would love to discuss, show you some aspects of the mailrite system, and become part of the tribe. We’re a small platform. You get a lot of individual attention from us. Back over to you, Rob.
I love that Mail-Right is high-touch. That’s very important for some of you, especially. Less experience should equal a higher touch vendor you need in your corner. Okay. Inbound Rem does the same thing, but at a different time; we’re targeting a different client. We’re targeting content producers who are retiring long-term thinkers. We’re targeting, and our website has massive content, like reviews and deep analysis for local, traditional SEO, pay-per-click, and even Facebook marketing. However, though I recommend John’s content, which is probably a little more than ours, we have some. So it’s a one-stop-fits informational place to arrive at these days. Anyway, I so much appreciate everybody. John, I understand you. And he’s not wrong. If you want to amuse yourselves, you should look at me. I’m pretty beat up. All right, without any further ado, 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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Maximize your earnings by closing multiple deals on YouTube! Learn practical techniques to turn views into valuable business opportunities.
Unlock the secrets to closing multiple deals each year using YouTube as your powerful marketing tool! This video will guide you through proven strategies to attract clients and convert views into valuable contracts. Learn how to optimize your content, engage with your audience effectively, and leverage partnerships for maximum profit. Don’t miss out on transforming your channel into a deal-closing machine.
#1 – Finding Your Target Audience
#2 – YouTube SEO (search engine optimization)
#3 – Strong Call For Actions
#4 – Quality & Consistency ( 6 to 12 month commitment to YouTube)
#5 – Start Now RIGHT AFTER LISTENING TO THIS PODCAST!
#6 – General Finishing remarks
[00:00:04.890] – Robert Newman
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode 445 of The Mail-Right Show. We’re so excited to talk to you today. We’re going to talk about the thing that we never, ever, ever, ever have discussed before. He says very untruthfully, Okay, we are talking about YouTube. Today, we will talk about how to close multiple deals per year from YouTube. I’m just going to read this off. We will cover finding target audiences, search engine optimization, straw calls into action, and consistency. We will discuss the elegant potatoes of a strategy built to generate leads off YouTube. I’m super excited about today’s topic, and of course, it is that guy who does the donkey work that is behind the scenes and often in my face. This is Jonathan Dinwood, the show. And for those who don’t know him, John, why don’t you take a second to explain who you are?
[00:01:23.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, thank you for that, Rob. I’m the donkey of the show, folks. Robert feeds me a carrot. I’m the joint founder of Mai-Right. We are an all-in-one marketing digital platform for real estate agents. You get a CRM, email, SMS, text messaging, and many other elements. Plus, you get a beautiful WordPress-built website. Plus, coming up soon a library of really modern themes so you can choose the look you like. That’s what Mel Wright is about. Over to you, Robert.
[00:02:09.450] – Robert Newman
All right, beautiful. I’m excited about those design changes on your platform, John. That’s cool to hear. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we will talk about finding your target audience first. This is one of my favorite subjects. It’s one of the most accessible subjects. It’s also one of the subjects that I provide the most value in the shortest amount of time when I do consultations, and it’s pretty easy. One of the best searches for you to do is start with a market. You start with the place you want a market, such as Vanuys. Then you search Vanuys Homes. That’s what you do on Google for those. You do it in Google. For those, like you do the name of the city, you do Vanuys Homes, and then you click Enter, and then you scroll down until you see a drop-down list that says at the top, People also ask. That list is your targeted list of things you can talk about for YouTube inside a city. That’s your audience. Because if you’re working in a town, this is what people looking at that city ask.
[00:03:14.540] – Robert Newman
In this case, when I did that search, it was, is Vanhij an excellent city to live in? What is the average income in Vanhij? Why is Vanhij famous? And what is the ethnicity of Vanhij? If you click the drop-down, more questions will open up. Why is Van Nijs famous? What is the black population in Van Nijs? These are all the questions that people are legitimately asking. People don’t realize that Google is just running an AI analytics method. They’re just telling you what people are asking in the order of priority that people are asking it. You don’t need to do any keyword research. You don’t need tools like I’ve got them. You can go to this list, look at it, and understand it’s popular. The only thing you have to do is sometimes get creative about the title of the video versus the search people are doing. You won’t make a video about the average income in the NIs. You could, but it could be more compelling. Instead, you might say something like, What do you need? How can you make to own a home in beautiful venues?
[00:04:18.090] – Robert Newman
Something like that. Anyway, John, take it away. What do you think about targeting an audience?
[00:04:22.300] – Jonathan Denwood
You covered the key things there, folks, because there is a tendency for real estate professionals to make videos for other real estate professionals. And that’s different from your audience. Your audience is people buying homes in a particular area. And let’s just keep it to geo to one specific area. It keeps it simple.
[00:04:50.740] – Robert Newman
Yeah. You raise a really good point, John. I didn’t realize that. No, no, no. God, sorry. Finish what you’re saying.
[00:04:59.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Oh, No, I forgive you because I butt in to you all the time, don’t I? But there we go. I’ll admit it. I know my thoughts. I’ll be cutting back, though, Rob. Don’t make videos about what award you’ve won or how many sales you’ve made that particular quarter. It has a place, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think this particular marketing Realizing channel really wants to hear that. They might want to hear it at the end to confirm that you might be the person that they should work with. But that’s not the bulk of what your videos should be about. You do see a lot of this happening, don’t you, Rob?
[00:05:53.040] – Robert Newman
You do. You also see people chasing vanity metrics. Vanity metrics for a real estate agent is, for instance, how many views you have on a video. If you do a really good video on what income you need to move into the city that you represent, and you’re honest, let’s say some of you are representing a luxury city and you’re like, Why in the world, Robert, would I tell people that they need to make $400, $500, $1,000 a year to live here? The answer is simple. The people who are making that much money want to know exactly what the income bracket might be that they need, and they also want to qualify other people to understand, Am I living people who are in my circumstance? Because that’s what they want. There may only be 10 of those people, and they may only watch your videos once or twice, which means your videos may only have 10 or 15 views. That doesn’t sound logical to a lot of people because they’ve been trained the wrong way about YouTube. Youtube, if you want to use it for lead generation, you do not care how many views a particular video gets, especially if you know that you’ve made a video for a very small and specific audience.
[00:06:53.150] – Robert Newman
If you know for sure, you made a video… For John and I, it would be like, We’re going to make a video for large team brokers who are independent. Well, that’s probably like 0.05% of the real estate market, like realtors. I may only have 40 views in that video, maybe. I’d be very, very happy if I got them because I probably am appealing to very, very large brokers who are not affiliated with some of the big brokerage brands. I don’t know why I’d make that video, but if I did, that’s who I’d want watching it, which It means that there aren’t going to be very many vanity metrics to pursue, and that particular audience is not as likely to subscribe to my channel, and they’re not as likely to leave me a thumbs up, and they’re not as likely to comment on the video. It’s all the things that we look for that YouTube encourages us just to get. But honestly, when you’re making content, you should have the theory that you’re only making it for the audience. That’s it. The rest of these things that go along with it with YouTube come over Over time, if you just focus on the audience.
[00:08:02.280] – Robert Newman
You will get subscribers, you will get comments, you will. But it’s like building anything else, in my opinion, John. A lot of realtors I know make these incredible videos, sometimes spend thousands of dollars on things like the 10 best reasons to move into Vanhies. There’s a good reason to do that, but they usually make a video that’s so broad and so general. They’re no longer even talking to homeowners, and they do a really cool video. It’s a good way to get an audience, not necessarily an audience you want, but you’ll get an audience. Anyway, let’s move on. Thank you for that, Jon. That was a really good point. Number 2, YouTube SEO, Search Engine Optimization.
[00:08:44.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s a bit different. It’s a bit different. Well, it’s the same principles, but what I found is a… But it’s linked, I say that it’s very linked to your previous statement, so it overlaps. What I mean is if you’re making a more broader video that’s not really focused at a specific target audience, and you’d be best to aim at a target audience. But let’s say you are making a broader video, which I don’t recommend. I agree with Rob, but there could be a middle road as well. And use any of the YouTube tools that recommend particular video topics that are not too competitive, but still getting a good traffic. That doesn’t mean if you do a video, if you do an article on the same using the same title, that is a totally separate ball game, because even if you write a good article, It probably won’t get a lot of traffic, the actual article, because there I found the two search engines, to some degree, are a bit divorced. Where it will work is if you write an article and then you make a video, then Google will look at it. Is that making any sense, Robert?
[00:10:21.450] – Robert Newman
Yeah. So Google right now currently has a mechanism inside their actual search engine algorithm that favors pages that have video. The recent hack proves that. They’re going to have to change and alter their actual core engineering in order to change that back. There are sites out there like Christoff, too, who are doing updated market reports on pretty traditional SEO pages and are now starting to rank for searches like Bel Air Homes For Sale, something that Christoff did many, many years ago but hasn’t had a chance to compete against Zillow or Trulia in almost a decade. So video SEO is changing the game, and you can also improve your odds of ranking in the YouTube algorithm by doing a lot of brute force grunt work on a video because they give you the option, like they do with content, to give them further explanation about what you made on that video. They do that through video tagging, the option to manually type, to close caption your own video, to Create titles, descriptions, video indexes, signature trails. On average, John, for our clients, we spend three hours per video per five minute video on video optimization. It is by far and away the heaviest lift that we do for success.
[00:11:49.860] – Robert Newman
But all of that optimization, once you link that video to a page on a website as an example, Google looks at it and absolutely counts it as an extra hidden page of content, especially when you manually closed caption your video. So video SEO is probably the most relevant thing that we do as an SEO company at Inbound R. E. M. It is absolutely where we spend the most of our money, our time, our energy, our consultation, talking to clients. It is the one proofable thing that I’ve seen over and over again, regardless of website quality. Like John’s pages are set up pretty good, but not great. It’s an agent image website. They’re okay. They don’t have any other notable feature on them except sold properties and the fact that he’s got videos that he updates month to month in a market report way. And so that update of that video counts in Google’s eyes as a refreshing of the content on the page, which is what propels this ranking. Now, it took him two years. So everybody here is listening to this show Don’t go run out and do this tomorrow. Then call me and say, why didn’t this work?
[00:13:04.510] – Robert Newman
It took two years to see that ranking change. But this is the only SEO strategy that was being followed. There was nothing else, no link building, no content, no additional development, nothing. It’s just a video SEO strategy, and it works, which is why John and I keep talking to you about this. It works. It’s just not necessarily easy. If you want video SEO done, there’s no doubt that for real estate, inbound RM is light years ahead of all other providers. Give us a call on this one. I never push our company or my name like this. John will hopefully attest. But in the very small category of video SEO, very few people understand how it’s working on real estate websites, and that can make the difference between doing a video and having it really propel your marketing strategy or just getting mediocre results off it. Yeah.
[00:14:08.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Another resource that you could look at, I was quite impressed with it actually, is I’ve recently been using the Pro version of VidIQ. They’ve actually got a lot of training materials, a lot of training videos, and they’ve spent a lot of money and time on You could tell they’re serious about the training, and I’ve been absorbing gradually and applying some of the things, and I’ve been working with their tool. It’s not ridiculous it’s the expensive folks compared to other SEO, more traditional SEO, professional quasar professional tools. And I’ve been quite impressed with the training material. I’ve been gradually absorbing it, Robert.
[00:14:59.550] – Robert Newman
Vidiq was one of the places that I originally started to refine our video optimization process. They were massive in it for me, John. So glad that you’re getting some use out of it. I did for sure as a business owner, Many of the things that I tried came from VidIQ. Many. There’s only a couple of hacks that I pulled from my brother and other professional. One of the most competitive areas in YouTube optimization is actually game commentary. These kids that get on there and they talk about games. Some of these kids have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. It’s crazy. It’s a remarkably competitive small little segment of YouTube with people that really understand the platform because they’re younger.
[00:15:46.700] – Jonathan Denwood
I think the other thing that you got to be a bit cautious about, folks, is that Robert’s totally legit. I think Vid IQ is pretty legit, and there’s other But there’s a lot of YouTube resources about optimization of YouTube video channels, and a lot of these people aren’t particularly legit, and they’re looking for the affiliate marketers, and I’ve got nothing against that. It’s just that you find a lot of out-of-date and incorrect advice around there. Would you agree with that, Robert?
[00:16:33.650] – Robert Newman
100%. You need to qualify your resources. My limited range is at a minimum, you can start with people that specialize in the field that you’re looking at. That’s not a guarantee in real estate. There’s a lot of shysters or people that know a lot less than they pretend to know, which is another thing I’ve discovered in real estate. It’s not like they’re trying to rip you off. It’s just they don’t actually know very much, but they make it sound like they do. John is also a great place to go look, the MailRight channel, the InboundREM YouTube channel, or all the options. It’s all really great places for us, for you to look.
[00:17:11.950] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been getting more professional about the the right YouTube channel. But I’ve also done a lot more on my other business. Over the last six months, I must have produced about 300 videos, and I’m getting much more serious about tagging tagging them. The tagging seemingly doesn’t matter anymore. It’s the title. And they’re having a really good description and other things. But I have consistently over the last six months been up in my game.
[00:17:42.530] – Robert Newman
Keyword relevancy under the tagging still matters. It doesn’t matter for ranking, which is where everybody’s getting confused. But do not be a mistaken, John. It is still a category descriptor for SEO for YouTube. It’s just not a ranking factor, which is where people get lost. It is, however, a It’s like a, I want to understand the video better thing.
[00:18:05.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Thank God, I didn’t give up on it, even though they were… I think that’s my only slight criticism of Vid, IQ, they need to explain that a bit more coherent. But I was doing it anyway, and I decided it wasn’t taking me that long, so I kept on doing it. So thank God. Shall we go on to the next one?
[00:18:28.960] – Robert Newman
No, we shall go to We’ll go for a break, and then we will go on to the next one. All right, ladies and gentlemen, John and I are going to take a 30-second break. We’re going to reset, we’re going to count down, we’re going to come back, and when we do, we’re going to talk to you about calls of action, quality and consistency. And guess what? For those of you who are following along the show, who are driving, listening at your desk, we are really today, we’re going to light a fire under you. We’re going to say, We want you to start right now. Stop putting this off. Okay? That’s That’s the last part of the last two subjects that we’re going to talk about. Then we have a surprise subject at the very end, which we’ll make up when we get there. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned, stay glued. We’ll talk to you in a second. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 445 of the MailRight podcast. We are now talking about one of the One of the subjects that we love the most because we feel like it can make the biggest difference in your real estate business, and that is YouTube.
[00:19:37.470] – Robert Newman
We’re talking very specifically today about one of my favorite subjects, which is how you get to close multiple deals from you to. In other words, not just using it, but using it as a conversion tool that’s going to drive revenue for your real estate business. It is incredibly powerful. It is the tool that I’ve seen change more people’s businesses, more consistently than any other social platform, any other platform out there, full stop, not even close. It’s more effective, more consistently than all the systems that I’ve heard about. It’s more effective, more consistently than door knocking and cold calling. It just takes a different mindset and a true commitment, and that’s what throws people off. Having said that, let’s just move straight into The subject of quality and… I’m sorry, my bad. Calls of action. Actually, you know what, John? Let’s make this slightly different. Let’s just scoot number four up, and then we’ll do number three instead. We’ll juxtaposition them. So let’s talk about quality and consistency for a second. When you think about, you just mentioned at when we were going to break that you’ve done 300 videos for your business in the first, what is it, eight months of this year.
[00:20:59.970] – Robert Newman
How did you do that, John?
[00:21:01.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, every post, I develop about four to five posts a week for the past eight months. I’ve doubled the traffic to the WP Tonic website, but I’ve been producing about five articles per week, and I produce a video for every article, so do the math.
[00:21:24.620] – Robert Newman
Now be honest with me and the audience. So all that work, all that work, and you are telling me that you doubled. Now, listen, I don’t know. I legitimately don’t know what that means to WP tonic. I know that you’re saying double. It could be you’re doubling 100 people. It could be doubling a thousand people.
[00:21:42.820] – Jonathan Denwood
The keywords using Href and the actual search console, the actual traffic. But of course, a lot of that traffic isn’t actually people. You don’t know how many of those were real people and how much of that is bots.
[00:21:59.550] – Robert Newman
Is it worth it? John, that’s the direction I was driving with that question. Do you feel like it’s worth it?
[00:22:05.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it comes in waves, actually. Last couple of weeks have been a bit quiet, but August 10th, last year, August went really quiet. And then when September, I get… But over the last eight months, I’ve had a lot more people signing up for WP Tonic, and I’ve had more people sign up for Mill, right? As As you know, Rob, it’s a bit different because you’re a full service agency. I’m a more… It’s a product with the Millright, with services bolted on. It’s getting people to actually utilize the tool and actually… Because a lot of the people we are are attempting to do it as DIY, and we get some people that want us to do campaigns for them, but a lot of them want to do it themselves. And a lot of people are very enthusiastic, and then they just don’t act on things. And you get that, don’t you, Rob? You get people that are very enthusiastic, they sign up, and they just don’t give you the materials, and you have to keep on them all the time, don’t you?
[00:23:19.950] – Robert Newman
Yeah, it’s over half our clients. And that’s an increase because we’ve gotten much better at servicing our clients. But 50% basically come on board, and even with Like a coach and somebody on the phone and somebody following up consistently and me following up consistently with them, with all that in place, half of them still flake up.
[00:23:40.490] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I used to take it really hard and used to think it was something me. And they’re onboarding on both Melriott and WP tonic has improved enormously, and our processes have improved enormously. But There’s only so much you can do, isn’t there? Yeah.
[00:24:04.320] – Robert Newman
So ladies and gentlemen, I’m not going to talk too much about this subject because I have very high quality and very low consistency. So I can’t really speak to this. I tend to do content based on where I’m mentally and emotionally at with my business. That’s how I do it. That’s not the right way to do it. And no, very few people are going to be like me. I have a skill set that is pretty much It’s unique to me. That means when I do content, it’s well received, and most of my content does generate me leads. So when I want leads and when I want my business to grow, I do some content. Now, that’s very rare. As a matter of fact, I’m one of the only people that I know that can do it quite that way. So most of the time, the method is you pick a date and you do it consistently. And I’ve been doing that in August. I’ve started to step it up, John, I feel like we are seeing the end of the major shifts in the realtor part of our industry. Right now, a lot of my viewers and usage dropped down to next to nothing.
[00:25:13.000] – Robert Newman
I was just like, I don’t feel like doing the mouse turning the butter thing. But now we’re currently in the process of receiving… My channel is 100% better than it has been in terms of hours watched than the last six months previous. It’s absolutely changing right before our eyes. Now I’m getting really consistent about content creation. The reason I view quality and consistency as an individual subject, for me, it’s about when and where and how I can serve my audience. That’s another part of the subject. I still don’t want to do content, if I’m honest with you, John. The reason I’m stepping out into it right now is because my users are showing me through user metrics.
[00:25:56.730] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t Well, the podcast goes up as a YouTube video, and seemingly, some of the people that I do listen say long form. It seems to be really short or long form. Those 200 videos I’ve done, they’re between 6 and 10 minutes long. And we do edit them. There is an intro and there is a bit of editing, but I don’t spend I look in the camera and I talk about the subject, and they’re around 6 to 10 minutes max, and that’s what I’m doing. But I have been producing some longer form, but they’re specifically to get traffic from YouTube, where I’m spending a bit more time on editing on those. So it’s a mixture, Rob.
[00:26:53.180] – Robert Newman
All right. So ladies and gentlemen, quality and consistency. John’s last little bit here in the show notes is 6-12 months. I do. It’s one of the very few times I’m ever going to disagree with John. If you commit to YouTube, I’m going to say 12 months is a minimum, 18 months is more common. And what I look at, John, is I don’t look at the metrics to get traffic to videos. You can get that in under 30 days, you can get comments in under 60. You’ll start to get an audience built in six months for sure. That number is correct. But conversion, that’s getting a call off YouTube that you can make a sale off of. Average over the last 5-6 years across all of my clients, it’s more like a year to a a year and a half of people following you consistency before you get the highly qualified call from somebody who will convert almost immediately off YouTube. And that is what most real estate agents are looking for. That’s what they want. So set the timeline for yourself at 18 months of consistency, and you’ll probably have at least one if you’re doing a consistent video every single week and you’re researching topics like we suggested at the top of the All right, so let’s talk about urgency and getting off the bench.
[00:28:11.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, shall we talk about strong calls for actions?
[00:28:15.320] – Robert Newman
Oh, we didn’t talk about that?
[00:28:18.360] – Jonathan Denwood
You swapped it, didn’t you?
[00:28:20.260] – Robert Newman
Oh, calls for actions. John, lead us off.
[00:28:23.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s something I was lacking, but it’s a bit like if you look at Rob’s posts and if you look at mine, I’ve got some call and actions in my posts. Rob’s got calls for action. It’s the same thing with video. In the video, you’ve got to give them a call for action. We’re offering this free resource, or if you give me a call, it could be various things, the calls of action folk. And you don’t want multiple calls. You just want one main call, one main ask. That’s what the expert seems to suggest. I think keeping it simple is always preferable. So have one call, but you want to ask them to do something in the video or something. Just don’t make the video without a call action. That’s how I would explain it. What’s your thoughts, Rob?
[00:29:17.640] – Robert Newman
I’m going to say that calls to action are very important, especially when you can make a call to action match the theme of the video and match an end user’s desire. An example would be, I don’t do too many calls to action because I’m a true inbound marketer. I let the value speak for itself and I say, I don’t even oftentimes call out the fact that I’ve got contact forms in the bottom of my videos. My response rate is a little lower than most people’s, but then again, I understand real clearly what I’m looking for, John. I’m looking for by the time that somebody gets on the phone with me, it needs to be the highest of all high-quality leads. Everybody needs to be serious. They need to want a consultation.
[00:29:57.930] – Jonathan Denwood
I also think there’s another factor, and I’ll be interested to see, especially with your content, is that a lot of the people that are contacting you are long term salespeople. That’s what they’re, real estate agents. And this is a broad statement. They tend to be a bit cynical, especially about marketing to themselves, because they get bombarded by a lot of marketing. So it’s best that you lay off it a bit and let them come to you, because they’re exposed to a lot of marketing and a lot of them are just… It’s a strange mixture, because also those people tend have a tendency to be influenced by the latest trend, the latest all-embracing thing that will make It’s not a big difference. It’s a strange concoction I’ve observed in the real estate industry. It doesn’t apply so much to my other business to some degree. I say that, but they’re also influenced by a lot of YouTube influencers, let’s say, building a membership or community online business. You can just do it in a couple of months. If you spend $3,000 on our course plus. So yeah, there probably is more similarities.
[00:31:39.670] – Robert Newman
So calls to action Is it direction that you’re giving somebody that is like a signpost on a stream of traffic? That’s how you should think of it. You can say, You can get off the freeway here. If you do get off the freeway here, here’s where you’re going. That’s a call to action. A call to action, mine or gentle, and oftentimes are going to be directing people gently to a place that there is a solution. And you’re right, John. I market to marketers. I market to veterans and professionals. That’s who my messages are for. I understand that. Sixteen years of doing the same thing has taught me a lot. And one of the things it’s taught me is that I speak best to people who’ve already been through the first few years of their career. They don’t need… I don’t want to have to tell somebody, Hey, bud, all you need to do is make a few more phone calls. I’m just not in that place in my career anymore. I just don’t want to have that conversation one more time with somebody where it’s fairly basic. It’s like, What’s your marketing plan? A veteran agent probably is I tried 20 different things to market themselves, and we get to talk about those things, and that still interests me and still fascinates me.
[00:32:51.550] – Robert Newman
So my sign posts are like, If you have a need for this solution, Schedule a consultation with me. I’ve already outlined the solution in the video. So calls to action can be important, but they should be crafted according to who you are and what your skill level is in marketing. If you’re very unskilled and you’re very new to YouTube marketing, you might just stick with the call to action of like the video, comment on the video, and let the comments on the video be treated as leads because that’s what they are. Everybody who’s interacting with your video is somebody who’s deeply, deeply engaged because 90% of all people won’t interact with your video. They’re already compelled by you if they’re leaving you comments. It’s really important that people realize that comments on videos and things like that are wild and open ways to get dialog going and close deals. I don’t know why agents… Agents are used to other platforms like Facebook, John, where the comments and the quality of the interaction with the audience is very low. The quality of the interaction with My audience on YouTube is very high. I’ve probably closed about between 5 and 10% of people that have been leaving comments on my videos have turned into customers for me because of the way I engaged in the comments with them.
[00:34:11.510] – Robert Newman
That opens their door. It basically lets them know this guy’s really legit. Then they go to my website, schedule on my normal contact forms on my calendar, and the next thing you know, this person I was talking to on YouTube is a consultation and then a client. All right, let’s talk about what I started to talk about because I really, really desperately wanted to skip number 3, apparently on our list. Start now. All right, every good coach For those of you who are listening, if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s likely that either you just found it or that you’re a veteran agent and have known about me and John for a while now because we’ve been doing this for a few hundred episodes at this point. Let me tell you, there is no time like the tomorrow except when it comes to making good changes in your business, because then the answer is there’s no time like today. And John and I are constantly talking about what needs to be done. Guys, I couldn’t agree with this is probably the strongest close to show that John has ever put on our list. Okay? Don’t sit on this.
[00:35:24.510] – Robert Newman
Go into your mirror and film yourself right now saying, Robert and John told me to do a video, and then get up and do a video. Just turn on the fucking camera and do it today, right now. When you get home, when you get done listening to the show, do it now. That’s all I got. John?
[00:35:49.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, do it now. I’m not going to mimic Rob because I’m English, folks, so it’s not so exciting, is it? But yeah, don’t Don’t leave it to next week. Don’t, Oh, well, I’ll get some time. I’m really committed to this. I might do it in a month’s time, blah, blah, blah. Do it now. You got a camera. Most people got a fantastic camera in their phone. You just need some basic sound equipment, and off you go, and start making some videos. It’s free to make a YouTube channel. You can use Canva to make the art for you. It’s nowhere as difficult now. And just do it, folks. Look, just do it after. Plan to do it tomorrow or the day after you listen to this video, this YouTube, or this podcast. I’m getting my platforms mixed up there. But just do it, folks. Just do it.
[00:37:00.220] – Robert Newman
It was John that put the just do it on the list. I have always been very good at fire, that’s communicating with enthusiasm, developing, because I’ve taught call center stuff for so long. With us in that industry, it’s always about trying to manufacture enthusiasm for what you’re saying in the immediacy. I’ve had 30 years, but John is the person that put this on the list, and he couldn’t have been more right. Do it now. I don’t really have much to wrap up this subject with John. If you have some general finishing remarks that you had in mind, please share them with both me and the audience. We’d love to hear it.
[00:37:41.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, over the last two years, we’ve done several podcasts and videos about producing video, about the equipment, and about strategy. Rob has a lot of experience, but we have several podcasts. So search, have a listen. It’ll give you all the information you want about equipment, even in more detail. Could you just listen and then do it? Just do it.
[00:38:19.220] – Robert Newman
Agreed. So, John, if people wanted to find some of these videos of yours that might talk about these subjects or see you in general or set up a 20 or 30-minute call with you and try to get some information about your system, how would they do any of that?
[00:38:35.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, go over to the Mail-Right.com, mail-right. You can go ahead and book a Zoom with me if you like. It’s free. Would you happen to have any questions about the video? I’d be more than happy to answer them based on my experience. I made a lot of videos there. I’ll be more than happy to give you any advice or give Rob a to Rob’s website and give him a chat. But do it, folks. You can just plan to do it. It will, in the end, make a big difference to your business. Back over to you, Rob.
[00:39:14.340] – Robert Newman
I’m Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound R. E. M. If you would like to, my website has published hundreds of articles, a lot, though, in this category area. YouTube SEO is one of those things that we talk about incessantly. On my website on my channel, we hammer two themes. We’ve been hammering for years.
[00:39:37.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Your website is the leading online resource using YouTube and SEO. It’s the leading resource.
[00:39:48.300] – Robert Newman
Wow. It’s high praise, John. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So go to inboundrem.com, and you can look under Video. We’ve got sections because there’s a lot of content there. But I have a video section that you can look at under there. Then, you’ll find numerous innumerable videos about teaching and training, specifics, our top hacks, and everything else you might have questions about. It’s a great learning resource, and I suggest you use it to learn first. Now, for some reason, some of you want to talk to me directly. I am still doing in-person consultations. You can look under the services page at inboundrem.com and schedule a call with me directly. This is a limited-time thing because I have been trying to get myself off the phone and into a leadership role strictly for years. I’ve been very blessed. The company has grown, but I have not been so blessed in finding somebody to replace me on the phone.
[00:40:42.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, there is only one Robert Newman.
[00:40:49.300] – Robert Newman
You’re great. All right. Listen, everyone, thank you so much, John. Thank you for doing this and putting up with me. Thank you to the audience for listening to John and me and putting up with us collectively. We appreciate it. If all of you are not inclined to go anywhere or do anything further, we still appreciate you listening to the show. We’ve had growing traffic for years on this show. I am so grateful for it, and I think John is, too. Thank you for giving us a listen. We appreciate it.
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Real estate lead generation strategies for 2024 are revealed! Unlock powerful tips to elevate your business and connect with potential buyers now.
Are you ready to supercharge your real estate business in 2024? This insightful show delves into proven lead-generation strategies tailored to today’s competitive landscape. Learn how to harness social media, leverage data analytics, and implement effective networking practices that can significantly boost your client base. Equip yourself with the knowledge you need—tune in now and transform your approach today.
#1 – Social Marketing
#2 – Sphere of Influence
#3 – Online Content Marketing
#4 – Hustling
#5 – Paid Leads
#6 – In Personal Networking
[00:00:04.410] – Robert Newman
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. This episode is number 444. John has done this 444 times, and I have done this. Let’s see, it was 182 when I joined. Somebody who’s watching or listening to the show do the math.
[00:00:22.090] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re a beginner.
[00:00:24.280] – Robert Newman
I’ve been here a few hundred times. Today, we will look at what John and I think are some solid real estate lead-generation strategies for 2024. 2024 sounds similar to 2023, 2022, or 2021. However, we’ll still have our take on what these things are, what you might do, how you might do it. I am going to focus my side of the show on talking a little bit about the differentiation in where you are at with your career as it relates to these particular marketing strategies because that’s been a hot button with me as people have been calling me to either, one, double down on the marketing that we do at Inbound R-E-M, or two, basically give me notice that they’re quitting the business. It’s been a weird year, which happens every once in a while in real estate. I’m excited about this topic because it’s been an odd year. So without any further ado, John, you’re the brilliant mofo who comes up with all the subjects, does all the work, reviews, researches, and does so many different things for the show.
[00:01:42.900] – Robert Newman
Suppose you can do us two things. One, introduce yourself to everybody. But number two, I’d love to hear you say why you decided to do a refresher on this subject for the MailRight show.
[00:01:54.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I do research. Well, first of all, I’m the joint founder of mailright. Com, mail-right. Com. We’re a WordPress-based platform, CRM, social media calendar, email, text messaging, and landing pages. We give you everything you want in one place to do your digital marketing at an affordable price. So go to Melright and look at that because it’s a great platform. And secondly, why this? I do some general research every week about the subject, and I delved into this and I thought we could give some value to our listeners. It’s that simple, Robert.
[00:02:47.490] – Robert Newman
Okay. So value, buckle up, everybody. It’s value. We’re doing a value show today. You’re getting your grocery shopping and real estate marketing done, and today, you’re in the value bin. So we’re just going to open this up. We’re going to break your mind.
[00:03:11.130] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to be in a funny mood today. He was pretty nice. He’s been very nice to be today on this episode. I’m getting worried, listeners of yours. I’m getting worried. He’s been too nice to be.
[00:03:25.990] – Robert Newman
We’re going to change your life. All right, we’re going to. So, let’s start off by talking about social marketing. So first of all, John, for those who may not be 100% sure what we’re putting under that bucket, maybe a small handful of people need to learn what that is. What is social marketing?
[00:03:43.310] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, we covered it last week. So if you want a bit more in-depth on this, go and have a listen to last week’s episode, folks. And we were dealing with all the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, well, X formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, the Big Daddy, when it comes to effective social media. I would say the three that I think most real estate agents could get some leads are YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. Facebook, I really do think you need to throw some money at it if you’re going to get some real results. But they’re the three main platforms. And like I said, listen to last week’s episode where we go into some depth about how you can use those in 2024 to get some leads.
[00:04:43.320] – Robert Newman
I agree. For For those of you who are not following along entirely on your brain side, that would be 443 would be the episode number. And we did cover a lot of cool stuff. And I’m going to take my comments on that show a step further. I’m going to say this, skip all the platformic stuff. It just confuses the issue. I have a question for everybody, you included, John. It is simple to me. I am not a social marketer. I’m not even really an SEO guy. I break it down to the simplest level. I am a storyteller, and once I’ve learned something I like to teach about what I’ve learned, it’s been something that has been true of me since I’ve been 11 years old. Always been that way. So it’s my wiring. Do consider that you have storytelling wiring, or is it something different with you, John?
[00:05:36.640] – Jonathan Denwood
I have to think about that. There’s part of me that would say I am a bit of a story. I like to work things out. I like to think about things and work them out. And what I like about business is the money, obviously, because that gives me some degree of freedom. But I like solving puzzles and businesses. Running a business is a big puzzle, isn’t it?
[00:06:07.750] – Robert Newman
It is indeed. So what I heard you say is that independence is your core motivator. Yeah, it is. Independence and freedom is your core motivator, and the complexities of business are satisfying to you, and storytelling is more minor for you. If I was consulting with you, John, I would not necessarily drive you. If I was going to drive you any place, I’d drive you in the direction of Google. Why would I do that? Because you can do less storytelling less frequently. You don’t have to always be talking to your audience on Google. When people are talking to us about social marketing, and John and I did a really good job of explaining the platforms last week and which ones do what and why you might want to focus on them. But instead of looking at it like that, I like telling stories. Once a camera is on, I don’t really care is the truth of it. I’m just the story that I want to tell that day and trying to educate people and help them on a subject that I feel deeply well-versed in. For me personally, I’m obsessive about what the level of expertise needs to be when you say I’m going to teach you something.
[00:07:16.790] – Robert Newman
That’s why I still feel like I learn new things, John, about real estate marketing. I’ve been doing it for 16 years. I’ve taken six deep dives into sync at this point, and I’m going to take a seven. I need to know for sure that I understand the platform, backwards and forwards, before I have the audacity to say that I’m going to teach you something about it. What other people are wired for should be how it determines the rest of this, a lot of these subjects that we’re going to talk about. Social marketing, sphere of influence, online content marketing. These are the subjects today, hustling, paid leads, in-personal networking with social marketing, ladies and gentlemen. Can you tell a story? Do you want to update everybody your life every single day? And some of you are like that. Some of you are extroverts, and it’s easier for you to do five minutes of an update than think about a content piece that’s going to resonate or educate. I run across those people all the time, John. And if that’s the case, social marketing is for you. Go ahead.
[00:08:17.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, there’s a good resource. I was listening to another podcast, The Truptical MBA, and the two people on that podcast, one of them has built up multiple audience over the past 4-5 years. I think it’s got over 400,000 ex-followers, and I think he’s got a very big podcast The Tropical MBA. And the last episode, he went through eight things he wish somebody had advised him on his own journey around social media. So if you wanted, I thought it was quite good, the hint he was giving. So folks, if you want another resource, go over and listen to that podcast, The Tropical MBA, the last episode, and I think you get something from it.
[00:09:15.960] – Robert Newman
The Tropical MBA, for those of you who might not have followed along without, well, that’s excellent. Number two on our list, and probably the next subject before we go to our break in about seven minutes, Sphere of influence. A Sphere of Influence, I feel. Have you ever, John, I’ll bet you anything in the world that you’ve never heard of a steak company that sell, like a knife company that sells strictly through Sphere of Influence, and they’ve been doing it that way for 60 years. Have you ever heard of Cutco?
[00:09:50.280] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I haven’t.
[00:09:51.480] – Robert Newman
Okay. So some of the world’s best knives are made by a company called Cutco. Cutco only sells through college students who do a networking sales process that Cutco introduces to you. Effectively, if you start off with a list of 50 people, they give you a script that is something like, I’m a brand new college student. I’m trying to put myself through school. And Cutco So hits two or three notes that a college student who isn’t a professional in sales isn’t going to understand our notes. It’s the help me note, okay, you can assist me, the youth note, the age of the people that are selling their product for them. Then last but not least, the overall desire to be altruistic in general. So they do a very good job of that. They do such a good job. It’s one of the biggest knife companies in the US, and it’s sold strictly through Sphere of Influence. My wife worked for them for a while, my ex-wife of many years ago. This is like 25, 30 years ago, guys, everybody. She worked for them for a while. It was a fascinating sales structure because she never stopped having leads, John, ever.
[00:11:03.220] – Robert Newman
My wife never ran out of leads. She was always incredibly good because when somebody says, I don’t want to buy your knives, she has a recap, there’s lots of sales words for it, but she has a thing that she says that says, Well, I understand you’re not going to buy any knives for me, but you know what? I am a college student. I’m struggling. I’m hungry. You got to At the very least, can you think of 10 people similar to you that might be willing to hear me out or might be willing to talk to me briefly about whatever the knives? It’s not said like that. Essentially, their end pitch, their letting go of the sales situation is, Can you give me 10 other people? And then she, my wife, would get them into their phonebook when we still had those things in your address book and just say, Give me 10 names. And they did. And then she called and would say, I was referred to you by so and so. And it was a never-ending cycle, ever. It was always… The pitches were good enough that they had always at least three people that said yes out of every 10.
[00:12:17.620] – Robert Newman
Those three people, at least one would give you another 10. And so the cycle continues, sphere of influence, on ad nauseam. So when you’re thinking Speaking sphere of influence, John, do you have an example of how you may have pulled in a lead or something like that through sphere of influence?
[00:12:38.340] – Jonathan Denwood
No, but I’ve got an example where my ego has been damaged today.
[00:12:43.300] – Robert Newman
Okay.
[00:12:45.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Automatic, who run, who’s the parent company behind WordPress, who’s doing a lot more outreach to WordPress influencers. And they had a call, seemingly they had a special Zoom yesterday or the day before, where they contacted all the major influencers in the WordPress space to discuss what they’re doing, and they wanted to be more open, more touchy feely to the WordPress influencer community. And guess who never got invited to this? Who’s got the second biggest WordPress podcast in that area, but never got invited to this special Zoom to be touched and filled a bit more, Robert. Guess who never got invited.
[00:13:43.440] – Robert Newman
Wow. You, John.
[00:13:45.530] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I never got invited. My ego is a little bit bruised. That little bit of green inside us all.
[00:13:57.870] – Robert Newman
Well, that deeply sucks. I’m so Sorry.
[00:14:00.300] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s painful, isn’t it? I know my place now.
[00:14:05.050] – Robert Newman
Well, sphere of influence, ladies and gentlemen, is widely misunderstood. So I’m going to give everybody a piece of advice. I’m going to assume that every single person listening to this podcast understands what the idea of contacting your friends and family is like. And let me tell you, as a lifetime storyteller, the secret… I’ve done every multi-level marketing thing that there is, and selling to your friends and family is stressful. What’s not stressful is developing a story about the things that you do for a living and making it clear that the light post is on for them to contact you should they ever need your services in your particular area. I do have quite a few clients that are through my sphere of influence. It is because I am not in anybody’s face about what I do. Half my friends don’t know, and the other half are always surprised. Everybody assumes I’m a starving artist because of the way I look, because of the way I talk, because of the way I am when I’m I focus very heavily on the idea when I am asked of saying I am… I really give it a little sizzle.
[00:15:11.780] – Robert Newman
I’m probably one of the best real estate SEO guys in the country. And then I go, well, it’s a very small field, and I really consider myself more of a storyteller. But that’s what I do. I build real estate websites, drive traffic, and I get leads. You keep it simple. Have an elevator pitch for your sphere of influence, everybody. It needs to be under 10 to 20 seconds. You cannot think. If somebody’s interested, they’ll ask you a follow-up question. That’s it. So that’s number one. Number two, if you’re really going to work your sphere, I’m going to go back to something John and I have said to you constantly. I have noticed, John, that a lot of real estate agents do not follow any particular sales strategy. They don’t hire sales coaches or anything. And while I am long past the days in which I would have a basic sales coach, I write scripts and I am deep in that now. I had my time in which I was hiring everybody. I had tons of coaches, tons of books I read, tons of things that I did. I had corporate coaches, I had sales language coaches, I had psychology coaches.
[00:16:21.990] – Robert Newman
I really think that you all need to have a good script. Just like I told you about Cutco, ‘Do you need to have a good reason to call, it needs to be concise, and then you just need to say, ‘Hey, ‘ and you need to make sure that when you end the call, that you leave the door open to other people. I was a bit against this, but I think having coaching about how to deal with objections is quite important.
[00:16:47.630] – Jonathan Denwood
I had a call two weeks ago and she booked it through Zoom. The whole thing was dealing with your objections. She hasn’t bought anything from me, but I was still quite happy how it went because she must have asked me every question in that half hour. It was a constant challenge questions that were, Here’s my objection, what’s your answer to it? It wasn’t one or two, it went on for half hour. And normally you start sweating, don’t you? I do, but I was quite carbon, and I just answered it. I was quite proud because it proved that I had fought, and with some experience now, I had the answers to the objections?
[00:17:48.080] – Robert Newman
Used to. I used to. But you do tens of thousands of door knocks, tens of thousands of calls. And those are the situations that make you sweat. Taking something from cold to warm, you’re going to get a It’s a lot of objections. But it’s a very pugilistic way to learn sales. You’re always fighting with the person to get their attention in their interest. But the greatest salespeople in the world are door knockers and people that sell shit in parking lots. Really. Seriously. I’m not kidding. Those are the greatest salespeople in the world. They will take you from zero to sale when you didn’t even think you were going to buy something.
[00:18:25.810] – Jonathan Denwood
I used to be. The other thing is I used to be really bad because I wasn’t… I don’t know if you agree with this because you got a lot more experience than me on sales, is feeling that you got to feel the silences. It’s counterintuitive, folks. Don’t artificially fill in the silences. If There’s a natural break. Let the person ask the next question. Don’t jump in. Give the person space. Don’t artificially fill it in because that can come across as a bit desperate. Does that make any sense, Robert?
[00:19:19.770] – Robert Newman
It is indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve definitely hit a point where we should take a break, and we’re going to do that right now. When we come back, we’re going to talk about online content marketing, which is absolutely in my core area of We’re going to talk about hustling that probably means something different to John and I, we’ll see. Then we’re going to talk about in-person networking, which is not that far off sphere of influence, in my opinion. All right, so Ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned. John, stay with me, and we’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to This is episode number 444 of the MailRight podcast. Today, we’re talking about some good lead generation strategies. We’re going to say best because that’s better for the algorithms. But I’m going to say good. Like, secretly inside the podcast, I’m going to say good, real estate lead generation strategies for 2024. We’re on to online content marketing. All right? That is such a-You don’t know nothing about that, do you, Rob? It’s such a broad term, ladies and gentlemen, like online content marketing. That could mean video, it could mean the written word, it could mean pictures, it could mean so many different things.
[00:20:39.010] – Robert Newman
What does it mean to you, John?
[00:20:41.220] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s basically some form of content that is online, that actually people see, that can influence them to actually contact you for your services or products.
[00:20:59.090] – Robert Newman
Yeah, there’s like a A new tool coming out called HelloVivo or something like that that the guys over at Ylopo are really deeply looking into to integrate into the core stack. And this is just a toolkit. It’s a toolkit, online toolkit. It’s like, what’s your home worth and forms and information capture and stuff like that. And that toolkit is a type of content marketing, but not really. Content is generally like a story or something of substance. That would be automation marketing, where you’re automating something inside a process, and then you’re expecting that to get you leads. Idx broker is automation marketing, technically. We couch it in content. It’s content surrounded by automation, which then generates your leads. Here’s the problem, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve lost 80% of you. I think I’ve lost John. Everybody falls asleep when you say all of this stuff. I get it. Here’s a better way for me to say content marketing. Can you tell a story or answer questions for people in a way that connects with humans? Break it down to the simplest level. It really comes down to that. Some people tell these stories well, some people don’t.
[00:22:19.610] – Robert Newman
I’m going to give you everybody an analogy, including you, John. My current favorite case study for Inbound RUM, and we have a couple of hundred clients now, so we’ve got a lot of clients to look at, is in ’78, I think she is, English woman, just like you, in New Jersey, which is one of the most conservative marketing spots that you can go to for real estate. It’s mostly nepotism there. And it took me three years to close a very small local marketing package deal. I say close, it’s old sales language, but three years of talking to this lady before she pulled the trigger on the smallest thing that we offer as an agency. And here’s the crazy thing, John. We’re getting her to go viral, which is nuts to me. Nuts. And the way that The way that we’re doing it, the videos of hers that go viral, the ones that don’t do good, she isn’t doing very well on the relocation subjects and things like that. But for some reason, effectively, when she goes, this is what- Can I guess? Go ahead, guess.
[00:23:30.120] – Jonathan Denwood
She does breakdancing?
[00:23:32.670] – Robert Newman
No.
[00:23:33.380] – Jonathan Denwood
She’s not into breakdancing? No. I can see that going, a 70-year-old New Jersey granny going breakdancing.
[00:23:42.440] – Robert Newman
No.
[00:23:43.260] – Jonathan Denwood
No, she’s not into breakdancing. That’s English flippancy in its pure- Oh, no, you know what?
[00:23:48.090] – Robert Newman
This is English for you. All right. What goes really well is basically what I hate about your house.
[00:23:54.740] – Jonathan Denwood
I can see that working, actually.
[00:23:57.360] – Robert Newman
I can see that working.
[00:23:58.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Is she still very English.
[00:24:02.040] – Robert Newman
Very. More so than you.
[00:24:04.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I can see that be delicious. It is.
[00:24:09.370] – Robert Newman
She’s getting thousands of views. She has actually gotten a listing because she does She is your English grandmother, and boy, oh, boy, does she have some things to say about what you’re doing wrong when you try to list your house, and stuff like that, things she doesn’t like. They’re going really Richter because she’s detailed, she’s into it. And I am telling all of you, including you, John, this is a much older lady. So you’re sitting here going, I don’t know if this is going to work. And it works gangbuster. She even gets calls. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.
[00:24:49.230] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s a certain group of American friends or acquaintances that I know that like me, being really awful to them. My sarcasm. They can’t get enough of my sarcasm. But there’s another group of Americans that think I’m a total asshole. But there is a percentage of Americans that just lap it up. They just want more and more of the sarcasm.
[00:25:19.020] – Robert Newman
Well, that is a note for all of you. In terms of what strategy you’re going to pursue, online content marketing is It’s about creating something online. It could be a blog post, it could be a YouTube video, it could be a TikTok. You could be really into hanging out with your kids. As long as you can connect that in the thinest of ways to your real estate career, like what are the best schools or what are the parks that I like in this neighborhood? And by the way, I rep homes here.
[00:25:53.510] – Jonathan Denwood
I was wondering why our ratings are getting higher for this. It’s starting to go back up again. Do you remember that old TV series, The Persuaders?
[00:26:05.330] – Robert Newman
Yeah, I do actually.
[00:26:07.100] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re Tony Curtis and I’m Roger Moore.
[00:26:11.030] – Robert Newman
That’s fair. I’m glad that our ratings are going back up. Listen, if you guys have lots of questions about content marketing, it’s far too big of a subject to break out into a little podcast. For content marketing, I’m an incredible resource. I know it’s horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible to toot your own horn, but we’ve just done a really good job with it, especially when you’re focused on real estate. People that have done a good job in general would be Neil Patal and Brian Deane. But if you are not looking for that, if you’re looking for something specific to real estate agents, then InboundRM, in my opinion, is one of the better resources to go look at. For content suggestions, strategies, ideas, thoughts, that’s what I’m I’m calling everybody to go check out. Hustling. John, you are one of my favorite hustlers. So explain hustling to the audience.
[00:27:11.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, in the context, I got a sublist here that I didn’t give you, but I door knocking, open houses, expires, meet up, cinemas, investors, the classical stuff. I dig this off another website, by the way, folks. And they had door knocking. I’m not The only thing with door knocking, I live in Northern Nevada, folks, and it’s not quite, but it’s a bit like Orange County in California. If you knocked on quite a few doors, it’s a good job. You’re going to get your head blown off. So I don’t think that’s the brightest of ideas, because there is a certain subset that would probably shoot you if they didn’t know you and you knocked on their door. Open houses, I think they despise, but I never understood it, because I think it could be a great source of hustle leads. I think it expides. It’s a classic one, isn’t it? I think it works if you want to go down that road. Meetup, cinemas. Yeah, I think meetups, great. And the investors, obviously, if the market turns the professional investor class that have their money saved, we went to the market to scoop up the offers, weren’t I?
[00:28:37.320] – Robert Newman
I’m going to give you a rebuttal to something you just said from the days in which I used to run Campusing Cruise for ADT, which was a home security company. We knocked on a lot of doors. Well, one of the days, there was a territory the ADT had marked off all of their canvassing maps, and that was Lake Elizabeth, which is near Bakersfield, California. The reason they marked it off is that Elizabeth has the highest percentage of alcoholics, retired alcohol cops in the entire country. Right.
[00:29:08.600] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s amazing.
[00:29:10.450] – Robert Newman
So they were like, Don’t go there.
[00:29:12.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I bet go and buy a place, and I’ll fit in, wouldn’t I?
[00:29:16.710] – Robert Newman
So we went there. No, you don’t want to. We went there because these retired cops were mostly people that run the prisons. Anybody in California would know that there’s three prisons, Oilsdale, Delano. They put them all out there way far away from everybody. And so these cops were all the retired guards, just sad and happy men and women. And indeed, they answered the door because I, of course, took my crews there, and they didn’t answer the door with more guns. But because number one, they hadn’t had a lot of door knocking, and number two, they were concerned about security. We also sold a lot of security systems, which was shocking to everybody.
[00:29:53.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it would fit in, wouldn’t it?
[00:29:56.210] – Robert Newman
Yeah, it would because they were just like, It’s just like anything else that we’re talking about. Here’s where a professional salesperson comes in, because of course, every single one of those guys that answers the door with their gun-Do you think the knives would work as well? The knives?
[00:30:13.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Your ex-wife, the knife selling.
[00:30:16.990] – Robert Newman
Oh, no.
[00:30:19.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they’re into guns security. I would have thought they were being into knives.
[00:30:24.950] – Robert Newman
I loved when they answered the door with the gun. To me, the sale was halfway made because that That show that they had a deep interest in the core thing that we tried to provide, which is the idea of security. Truthfully, alarm systems are selling fear, which I don’t like anymore, but I used to.
[00:30:39.880] – Jonathan Denwood
And so when-I know somebody that’s selling a lot of fear right now, but they seem to be doing reasonably well. Right.
[00:30:48.180] – Robert Newman
You can sell a lot of shit with fear. It’s a great, great tool if you want to use it. Anyway, we sold a lot of security systems there. Here’s the thing about hustling. Oftentimes, Hustling is just the idea of being bold, of making sure that your message is locked down pat. If you want a hustler, if you want to be a hustler, I have this strangest recommendation for everybody. Hustle to me is just being on top of your game, focusing on it, waking up, eating, breathing it. When we were canvassing, hustling was getting out there at eight o’clock in the morning and being the first knock on somebody’s door. It was always just sticking to the plan and getting better at the mechanics of the plan, and it worked. Every time. If you can generate that enthusiasm for what you’re doing, it’s going to work. Take any of the things that John said, and it’s going to work. Hustling is really more about being energized and motivated. You can do open houses. Two young men who I shall not name, shocked me because they came on board as new customers for Inbound R. E. M. And John, I’ve done this for 16 years.
[00:31:55.100] – Robert Newman
These young men had figured out a way to leverage garage sales to collect leads and make sales, and they were making a lot of them. Go figure. But here’s what was different about them. They hustled. They’re like, one way or the other, when we wake up and our eyes open, we’re talking to people about real estate. However that is, going to garage sales, whatever it is, we’re just going to go, we’re going to show up and talk to people about real estate.
[00:32:24.050] – Jonathan Denwood
And of course- It’s not totally necessary, but I think if you’re going to sustain yourself. Obviously, it’s about the money. But I do know some people, they actually do like property. They’re really into it, and they do it for the money, but they also like property. They like knowing about property, all the mechanics. They can’t get enough of it.
[00:32:51.770] – Robert Newman
Yes, correct. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to close out. The bonus content for today, we’re 33 minutes into this particular episode, and the bonus content today It’s going to be about in-person networking. In California, it’s funny because 85% of the agents around do not do very well with this. But the 15% that do also tend to be some of the best agents in the entire world by sales volume. Because here in California, where I’m at, Beverly Hills, places like that, you cannot call up Jay Z and Beyoncé and try to talk to them about their house. Flat out. If you know them, you met them someplace, or you met their business manager, or you met their personal assistant, or you met their fitness trainer. In-person marketing is its own genius when it comes to how and where. Christoff, too, has an incredible story about how he made his first sales. It was he bought a cruise he couldn’t afford, went on a cruise with rich people, talked to everybody on the boat, and walked away with a whole bunch of business and in the luxury real estate market. John, in-person marketing is its own very special brand of networking, charisma, being willing to talk to people they don’t know, generally speaking, understanding the divide between getting to know you and then mentioning something about what you do for a living.
[00:34:23.480] – Robert Newman
What did you mean when you wrote this down on the list? It’s the last and final subject of the day.
[00:34:28.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m thinking about what I’m an introvert. I’m not fantastic at this. I say that if I’m in my tribe, I’m more up for it. And my tribe is WordPress, my tribe is bootstrap startup. Rob Rollins online, and he has personal conferences, and I’ve attended. So bootstrap entrepreneurs, WordPress people, that. Other I used to do a lot in Northern Nevada, and I still know quite a few people because my ex-wife was pretty big in the Republican Party in Northern Nevada, and she knew a lot of people. And I used to tag along. And I used to get a lot of business from all the people that she knew, but I cut that out. But I still know quite a few people. But I’m an introvert. I’m quite happy on my own. I like people, but being on my own, I’m okay with it. It doesn’t bother me. So I think I think… I don’t know where I’m going with this. Can you save me, Rob? Because I saw- Sure.
[00:35:54.830] – Robert Newman
I think that in-person networking, which is also… It’s taking me a lot of years to be able to say that I’m competent. I am not… When you would put me in front of… I’ve had the good fortune of meeting some of the best in-person networkers. As a matter of fact, I think I’ve met the top three in real estate: Jade Mills, Joyce Ray, and Ryan Sirehan. They’re all absolutely incredible at in-person. They actually all present much better in-person than they do online or with interviews or anything. When you meet them and they’re dialed into you, every single one of them has these skills that come to play that make you understand how they’re going to get a relationship with a billionaire.
[00:36:40.390] – Jonathan Denwood
The funny thing is, Rob, I like speaking in front of people. I’ve been told I’m pretty good at it. I get a buzz out of that, but I’m not one of these that generally likes going around strange people. But when you see somebody that’s really good at it, it is art, isn’t it?
[00:37:02.080] – Robert Newman
It is really an art. It’s really art because it’s an art between expressing yourself and making the other person feel seen and heard. And there’s a lot of different ways to do that. Betty Graham, who is publicly one of Tom… For all of you listening to this show, there is a master who is now coaching for Tom Ferry. She has taught most, including some of the names I just mentioned. She’s taught most of these people their skillset. She’s just not quite as well known. She’s a master networker, a master attention getter, and she’s a legend in the real estate industry. Her name is Betty Graham. She has trained 30% of the movers and shakers in Coldwell Banker that drive their luxury brand. And she’s currently coaching for Tom Ferry. And the thing about her, John, she is like your super detail-oriented, friendly grandmother type at this point. She just remembers every detail about every person. That’s And she also focuses… She has a great story about how she basically sold a $20 million property based on a relationship with a Pomeranian. True story. So what gets you the deal is really more about creating a relationship with the client.
[00:38:18.160] – Robert Newman
And that can look like a lot of different things. It can look like being an animal lover, or so much goes into it. So, in person, networking is really about understanding people. I’d recommend a lot of psychology books if that’s what you’re going to do, and I’d suggest that you follow along with Betty, Jade, and Joyce and watch how these ladies do interviews and how they communicate. If you can get around them in person because they all do public events, watch their body language and how they naturally smile and greet everybody. Here’s another thing about in-person networking. I hate to break it to everybody listening to the show. But if you think you’re automatically going to know a billionaire or somebody else with a high net worth when they walk up to you, you are currently wrong. A lot of people who have wealth play down appearance these days. They walk around in tennis shoes and stuff that you’re like, I could get those for $10 online. And yeah, they’re cozy. Do you think there’s a difference between the East Coast and the West Coast when it comes? Probably.
[00:39:32.650] – Robert Newman
I spent a lot more time in the West Coast than the East, but I have spent time there, and there is- Well, I haven’t been on the East Coast, but I spent a fair bit of time in London. That’s a whole other thing.
[00:39:43.360] – Jonathan Denwood
And you could tell The wealthy, they dress the accessories. So I imagine, I’m only surmising this, that the East Coast is a bit like London. But I’ve noticed on the West Coast that you’re right. You don’t know. I’ve spoken to people who are VCs at startup events, and you would never guess how much money you’re talking to.
[00:40:13.000] – Robert Newman
Yeah. Some of these guys do not advertise, which makes it more difficult because they want to avoid attention. It’s a new and brave world that we’re in, meaning you have to be dialed in for everyone who walks up to you. That’s another thing about these master networkers: You’ll discover they have a way of inviting everybody in and focusing their time on the people who propel their careers forward. They do it all without insulting anybody. It’s brilliant and a definite, very refined skill set. So, without any further ado, it’s been a great show. We’re 40 minutes on the nose. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, listen, as John and I are both, when we do these podcasts, we’re essentially content marketers. My general idea is that we’re trying to educate you. However, we’re also trying to open the door to another possibility for your business. And John has a great one. John has built the system from the ground up, from soup to nuts, where it’s a website, CRM, and text messaging.
[00:41:17.070] – Robert Newman
It’s got a lot of functionality and a price point equivalent to most of the other lesser-cost but still efficient marketing systems out there. Plus, you get a guy who’s dedicated to the idea of building his business and service and things like that. If anybody is interested in any of that, you can still book a 30-minute call with John, which, personally, John, is a little low on the time frame for real estate agents, but whatever, that’s on you: 30 minutes.
[00:41:47.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they tend to go on a bit longer. Surprise, surprise.
[00:41:54.890] – Robert Newman
Surprise, surprise.
[00:41:56.550] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re terse conversations. I’ve had a couple of 15 minutes lately, and they just said, Oh, I’m not interested. I must have done something. Or they tend to go on forever, but you know that, and I know that, don’t you?
[00:42:12.500] – Robert Newman
Yeah. So, how specifically have I directed people to mail-right? Com. How specifically would you like them to get in touch?
[00:42:20.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Does it read some things? Can you book a chat with me? It’s very similar to the clients that you attract. Some of them are a good fit, and some of them need to be more. It’s a bit the same with real estate, folks. When you’re beginning, you have to hustle and take anything. As you grow, you learn that there are some clients you need to refer somewhere else and some clients that are a perfect fit for you.
[00:42:54.340] – Robert Newman
John’s call to action on his website is Book a Call. It’s on the top of his website over the right, connecting him to a calendar. He’s doing three or four calls daily and seems to be available four or five days, most weeks, not every week, but most weeks. That’s how you get a hold of John. If, for some reason, some of you found me appealing, or you’re deeper into your real estate career, or you are interested in content strategies or social strategies, I am not as easy to find my call button, but you still can find it. You can look under my services page, and there are numerous ways to do it. We have a lot of different little buttons that say, Book a call, call Robert, schedule Robert. Anyway, you can go there. It’s inboundrem.com and then services. I’ve been Robert Newman. John?
[00:43:43.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Jonathan Damewood.
[00:43:44.790] – Robert Newman
All right. Thank you, everybody, for tuning into this show. Thanks for making us an increasingly popular destination. We so very much appreciate it. Take us offline, John.
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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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Dominate social media as a real estate agent in 2024! Discover strategies to boost your visibility, engage clients, and drive sales today.
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Discover cutting-edge strategies, practical content creation tips, and engagement techniques designed specifically for real estate professionals. Stay ahead of your competition and elevate your online presence.
#1 – Make Your Posts Visually Appealing
#2 – Write Social Media Posts Professionally
#3 – Optimize Your Posts With Hashtags.
#4 – Start Using Video in All Your Real Estate Social Media Marketing.
[00:00:46.790] – Robert Newman
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 443. Today’s show should have been the preamble. I really should have. But Anyway, I’m here with my fantastic co-host, Jonathan Denwood, who just told me he’s essentially London trailer trash. We’re classifying accents. But that’s not what we will talk to all of you amazing people today about. What we’re going to talk about is Dominating Social Media. The actual title of the show will come out as How to Dominate Social Media as a Real Estate Agent in 2024. This is a very interesting and very big subject, and we will keep it broad because the strategies are different for every platform. But before we get into this subject, John, for that very small handful, that kernel of people that might be listening to us that don’t know you yet, why don’t you explain who you are?
[00:01:49.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, I brightened his day with my Trader Trash, my English Trader Trash. He’s been having a busy day. It’s his creation day, and he looked a bit tense, but I brought a smile with my trailer trash comment, didn’t I, Robert? You did. I was bringing a smile. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We’re a lead generation platform. We provide a CRM landing page, email text, and beautiful websites built on WordPress. What more could you ask for, my beloved tribe that listened to this podcast? There’s not much more, is there, Rob, that you could ask for?
[00:02:34.520] – Robert Newman
I don’t know. I don’t know. You know what? Probably not. You’ve got a Swiss Army knife of a tool over there, and you’ve got the heart of You’ve got a great heart to back it up, which is something I talk a lot about on my show, not on my show, on my channel, on my social media channel. I often talk about who the founders are and where their minds and hearts are because it always rolls out and affects the product or service. And many people have commented to me for some reason lately, a lot. I think as times get tighter and people’s belts tighten, they’re actually paying more attention to something I’ve been talking about for years. So John is one of the good ones, is a very long preamble into that. John is one of the good ones. He’s a good guy with a good heart. Like all of us entrepreneurs, sometimes a little finicky. So am I, though. Just to be fair.
[00:03:31.240] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m pretty bonkers.
[00:03:33.410] – Robert Newman
I know I am.
[00:03:36.980] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not all bad. It’s when you don’t know that you’re a bit bonkers.
[00:03:42.360] – Robert Newman
Yeah. But if you’re looking for a WordPress partner, if you’re looking for somebody to jumpstart your marketing, if you’re looking for somebody that is a little more reliable than the average guy and certainly more accessible, John is the guy. All right. If anybody doesn’t know who I am, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of InboundREM. It is a company focusing on SEO and attraction marketing strategies as opposed to the wide variety of other methods you could pursue. We’re unique in the space, and I’ve been doing it for a long time. If anybody’s interested in learning more about me, go to inboundrem.com, and you can look at the About or Services pages and figure out who I am quickly because I have lots of info there. All right, without any further ado, I think we should go ahead and jump into this topic. John, these notes that you left, are all things you wanted to keep. Are they making it into the show notes?
[00:04:43.410] – Jonathan Denwood
No, not the resources, just the four points. They’re just general four points that I laid out to give it some scaffolding to the conversation.
[00:04:55.010] – Robert Newman
I want to make this a little bit… I’m going to get a smid It’s tricky on you.
[00:05:01.690] – Jonathan Denwood
You only do that in some shows.
[00:05:04.570] – Robert Newman
I know you’re going to test me.
[00:05:10.670] – Jonathan Denwood
God, what’s he going to go ahead next week?
[00:05:14.290] – Robert Newman
Well, You’ve done a fantastic job this year of leading us down the path of many different applications. I do not intend to do this intentionally, but I don’t remember many of them. But the number one on our list to we’re going to talk about today is making your post visually appealing. The funny thing is that when I read this subject, my mind led to the many apps we’ve reviewed, and there’s got to be more than a small handful that falls into the category of make your posts pretty. If by any chance you remember any of those, I figured when you answer what you would do for this, you might drop a couple.
[00:05:55.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the main one is If you’re looking, the free Canva is pretty powerful. But if you can’t cough up the $100, $120 a year for Canva, I think any real estate agent that’s serious about getting leads online and using social media should be coughing up for Canva Pro.
[00:06:26.310] – Robert Newman
Copy you. I think that all of that’s true. I also think that one of the greatest free resources for everybody listening to the show are some of the handful of apps that have taken the time to build out content libraries that are free. I personally found that when it comes to learning Optimizing YouTube videos as an example, well, VidIQ has been not the best, but one of the better resources that I use, and their videos are free. I’ve changed.
[00:06:59.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Listen, I I was using you, Tubeuddy, but I switched a couple of weeks to VidIQ, and it is a much better tool.
[00:07:09.220] – Robert Newman
Oh, wow. I haven’t really compared the two. It surprised me to hear you say that. I just got used to VidIQ. I knew there was two choices, and I just chose VidIQ, and I’ve been very happy with them, and it’s not very expensive. Because of those two things, it’s like, I’m not going to change. It’s $10 a month. I mean, it’s not worth the hassle. But the thing that has impressed me the most, though, is that I’ve been able to leverage VidIQ’s video library, John, and actually help have it supplement my own in the training of my people because their content, I’m not saying it’s the best in the world, but it’s good enough. Posting thumbnails and things like that, they’re really good about giving you not examples and people who are doing it right, and they have a bit of data analysis behind it. It’s awesome. Sorry, go ahead, my bad.
[00:08:07.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Sorry, I interrupted you. I didn’t mean to. I thought you were ending.
[00:08:11.180] – Robert Newman
No, I’m done. I can be done.
[00:08:13.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think the visualization, but I think the other thing I want to put forward to people is you’re going to be more successful on a platform that you’re actually enjoying using losing yourself to consume on. So if you’re on Facebook a lot or Instagram, the problem with Facebook and Instagram, Instagram is losing some traffic. Facebook and Instagram, they’re Meta properties. But if you’re on there a lot, I would put my material on there, but I feel you’re going to have to add some money to it as well and boost and give Meta some money because the reach isn’t going to be that great. But if you’re on there, Like I say, if you’re using a particular social media platform and you’re on there and you’re consuming, that’s where you should start on your journey because you’re going to find it easier to utilize a platform that you’re using on a daily basis rather than something you don’t use at all. I also think video… I think YouTube is a great resource because it’s the second largest search engine, but we’ve hammered away at that, haven’t we, Rob? I think we must have bored our listeners that have stayed with us a few years, but it’s the honest truth, and especially I’ve increased my presence on YouTube with Mailright and my other business.
[00:10:11.530] – Jonathan Denwood
I must, over the past six months, produced over 300 videos on YouTube.
[00:10:22.710] – Robert Newman
What has that done for your business, John?
[00:10:25.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think it’s really helped. Almost every person that’s booked a consultation with me has talked about the videos that I produce. A lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them have mentioned them in the conversation, Rob.
[00:10:45.630] – Robert Newman
On top of that, it’s a very strong signal for your website. I haven’t checked your website out in quite a while, but I’d be absolutely stunned if you weren’t getting more overall traffic to it, the Melright site.
[00:10:58.120] – Jonathan Denwood
The Melright and the WP The WP tonic, I’ve tripled the traffic to it.
[00:11:04.780] – Robert Newman
Wp Tonic is a beast. It’s just like inbound REN in the sense that you’ve been working it so consistently, steadily. You have a strong audience, a strong name brand recognition now, all those different things to go along with it. Eventually, that work pays off. Even in SEO, which takes a long-ass time, even there, that work pays off. So I would be shocked if you told me that WP Tonic wasn’t experiencing growth.
[00:11:35.740] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve tripled the amount of content that we have produced, Rob, over the past year. I think another one, I’ll be interested in your thoughts. Another one that I think is growing is TikTok. I don’t use it at all, but I know some real estate agents, and especially trainers and influencers in the real estate space that are also active real estate agents, and they’re saying they’re getting good results from TikTok, but it’s a younger audience. So I think a lot of other agents would say interesting, but my particular audience isn’t on there. What’s your own thoughts about that, Robert?
[00:12:28.840] – Robert Newman
I haven’t seen any proof that says specifically, the first movers in TikTok, which we interviewed one a few years ago, and I’ve talked to a few on my own, too. The first movers are going to make a lot of money in TikTok because there are going to be a small handful of younger people in California that could afford a home. You could buy them. In terms of adults, I’ve got adults. I’ve got friends of mine that are on TikTok, but they’re They’re on there with their kids. There’s deeper penetration to an older audience than I think we realize. However, I don’t know anybody in my circle that isn’t on TikTok for amusement’s sake. You’re backing into real estate stuff or whatever you’re going to do. Any platform where there’s a lot of people, I think that there’s the opportunity to market yourself. You just have to crack the metric for the tone of that place along with with the direction or result that you’re trying to get. Here’s where I’ve always thought that there’s a great synergy with real estate. There is a growing trend, which I hope I’m partially responsible for, where real estate agents are moving in the direction of being lifestyle ambassadors.
[00:13:50.710] – Robert Newman
If you’re trying to approach something on TikTok to be confusing or educational about a place that you live and all things related to generation or second, lifestyle ambassador first. I do think that there’s a big opportunity to brand yourself to an area. I think that if you’re on TikTok and you’re looking for a large audience and you have a clever way of approaching being a lifestyle ambassador, I’ve seen lots of people grow huge audiences very fast. I think as long as you’re invested in it for fun and leave the rest at the door, you might very well be surprised by the ancillary results. If you get a few hundred thousand or a few million followers on TikTok, you’re going to make some money off it. It just shouldn’t be your primary. I wouldn’t ever point anybody at TikTok and go, That’s your lead generation right there. Brand recognition, maybe. A little bit of fun, absolutely. A little bit of creative thinking applied to something, yes. But TikTok videos and YouTube videos and other videos, you’d have to work pretty hard to a reel that would work on all platforms consecutively, with TikTok being the standout exception, because to me, it’s an entertainment space.
[00:15:11.170] – Robert Newman
It’s not even a place where reels work quite the same way that they do on other platforms.
[00:15:16.530] – Jonathan Denwood
I think you want to choose one platform and concentrate that and then be omnipresent, but repurpose the content. But based on my experience, there’s There’s going to be one platform, one social… If you’re going to treat this serious to get leads, folks, there’s going to be one particular social media vector that will generate the bulk of the leads. For you, I’ve heard YouTube, Facebook, Google Adverts, don’t know what it is, but it’s going to be… Because you’ve got to be aware, each social media platform has a requires different content and has a different culture to it and a different audience. You got to be aware of that.
[00:16:13.080] – Robert Newman
With that, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to go to break because I’m going to come back and I’m going to respond to some of what John said. He brought up a lot of really good things. I’m going to talk about platform-specific stuff from my perspective. I should surprise nobody listening to the show that John and I both are leaned heavily into YouTube. It is my primary platform I focus on. It’s also the primary platform that has driven me results. But we’ll get into a little bit of that after we come back from We’re going to break. Stay tuned. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the episode 443 of the Mailright Show. Today This episode is how to dominate social media as a real estate agent. Really, I think this is really broad. I don’t think we’re going to really let you know everything to dominate. We’re just going to give you some ideas. One of those ideas that John just mentioned before we went to break was focusing on a platform. John, I agree with you, man. I think you need to pick something. For me, I picked two verticals, one accidentally and one with intent.
[00:17:28.160] – Robert Newman
The one I picked with intent from the The very beginning of founding Inbound R. E. M. Was YouTube. I always knew I wanted to go on to YouTube and start talking about real estate marketing-related stuff. I don’t dominate. I still only have a few 2,500 subscribers. I’m not really great about consistent video posting, but I am very good at consistently creating evergreen content that delivers me lots and lots of communication over the compound interest of yours. One of those things that I think that when you start to say dominate, guys, ladies and gentlemen, John, everybody, it’s like, I think that John really touched on what I would probably call the biggest secret of this episode. You have to have the courage and the faith to understand, do all the work up front in terms of your research, figure out where you be. Linkedin is a reasonable place for real estate agents. We don’t talk about it much, but you could easily build a following and get involved in a lot of groups. Facebook is also an excellent place. We’ve had a couple of people on the show that have done massive lead generation off Facebook groups.
[00:18:47.600] – Robert Newman
I would love that for everybody listening to the show. It’s just not my jam. That’s just not what I decided for myself. I post videos to my Facebook Facebook group, but I don’t want to be doing the daily stuff that I’ve seen so many Facebook experts that we have come on the show. I just don’t want to do it. There’s nothing wrong with it, though. If you’re more of a daily blogger or thinker and Facebook is your place that you like to go and be anyway, heck, make a Facebook group.
[00:19:18.300] – Jonathan Denwood
When it comes to LinkedIn with my other business, I have a very distinct audience, which I’m aiming at, which is more business to business, which is associations and nonprofits. I also write and make videos for YouTube and write content for that target audience. But I specifically post content, specifically developed for LinkedIn for that target audience, which is a subaudience. So I aim at that subaudience. I think the other thing when it comes to social media, Rob, and we’ve hammered away about this as well, is you’re going to find it much easier with social media to get success. If you whatever platform you choose is find this niche. Don’t find a niche that you’re speaking to through that platform. If it’s a certain type of individual, a certain individual, a bit linked to what you said about lifestyle. It doesn’t have to be geo-based, but it can be. When I was doing this research, I found a couple of agents, one agent that’s doing really well on YouTube, and he’s based in Atlanta in Georgia. And I didn’t add to that list, actually. I gave you that I was doing some extra research today, Rob. And I think that’s important because the reason why I’m saying this, Rob, is the truth is a lot of agents’ social media content is crap.
[00:21:28.360] – Jonathan Denwood
It really is bad, most It’s unfocused. It’s more about bragging a bit, or it’s more… You get a lot of agents complain online about, and it is a tough business, don’t get me wrong. But your audience isn’t interested in that, are they, Rob? I would imagine you’re going to agree with me. So you need to plan it out. And that’s what you do at in your agency, don’t you? You offer some strategy and some planning, don’t you?
[00:22:05.310] – Robert Newman
Lots. It’s measure once, cut for two years. I usually consult with people, and then the direction that we put them on, we stick with for years. It’s important to have an understanding of what your mission is and who you’re trying to talk to and what try to… My belief about marketing for the most part, and it’s not that you can’t do other things. I’m just so of one-liners and tag lines that lead you to something that is low value or not as represented. I mean, it’s 80 to 90% of everything you can buy, find, see, watch, read. Social media in many ways is a blight upon society, but we can make it different. The way that I teach my clients to make it different is honesty, ethics, good storytelling, and making sure that you have a clear and understandable mission. Like That mission can simply be providing the best, most ethical representation inside a very small space. Then you just talk about the details of what that means to you, like contract reviews and really boring stuff. I’m going to go out and sit in a class that talks about all the changes on the contracts because of NAR.
[00:23:20.140] – Robert Newman
I’ve done a few podcasts lately talking about that subject. That’s just a way for you to be on social media, providing value, providing transparency, providing ethical content that drives people to a place. Number three in the list, which I’m going to segue into here, but just for people who are following along and trying to read the show notes, I’m going to let you know that number three is hashtags. And so once you’ve got your messaging down, like John said, and you’ve figured out who you’re talking to and what the value is that you have to offer, then it becomes the mechanics of the individual platforms. And I always found to be harder than most other concepts because different platforms do have different mechanics. So you look at the platform and you go, how can I get some reach off my posts, like with Instagram or Facebook or wherever you’re interested in expanding first? The answer is, in many cases, hashtags, not in the case of YouTube. Youtube is time consuming to optimize to optimize content properly. Worth it, but time consuming. Facebook, less time consuming, but also much more momentary. Not very many people are using hashtags in their search bar, Facebook failed at competing with Google for informational relevancy, which is what originally Zuckerberg had that idea.
[00:24:58.470] – Robert Newman
It’s just that people aren’t using platform that way. So searching on it is not going to… You’re not going to create a lot of value for yourself through hashtags. A little bit, yes, for sure on Facebook. A lot of value on Instagram. Tremendous amounts. It’s a secret strategy there. 30 hashtags per post is what’s possible. And depending on what you’re trying to do and the level of determination that you have, you should actually have researched hashtags on your Instagram, and you need to keep hammering away at them because there’s lots of search there.
[00:25:35.270] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t use Instagram. My partner with Mel Wright, he’s big into Instagram. He loves it. I’ve never been here. My four are podcasting, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter. I don’t use Twitter for a male, right? Because I don’t think a lot of real estate agents on Twitter. My other business, I Twitter a lot, and I put a lot of content on Twitter. I do a lot of content on LinkedIn, and I do a lot of podcasting, and I make a lot of podcasting, and I make a lot of videos. So I am very active on those particular four platforms, Robert.
[00:26:30.330] – Robert Newman
And generally speaking, do you acquire customers? I know you acquire an audience. Yeah.
[00:26:38.430] – Jonathan Denwood
I think the problem with the original podcast for my other business, it really wasn’t up aimed at my target audience because I started that before I started to find my own niche. When I started my original podcast, Rob, I was just a general developer, and I worked for a couple of regional agencies as a developer, and I wanted to get more just freelance clients, right? Or agency clients, right? But then I developed WP tonic into a niche. But I started about over a year ago, I started another podcast called the Membership Machine Show, which is really focused at my target audience from my business, Robert. And that does attract clientele. And the videos do as well. And the LinkedIn, because I’m aimed at associations and nonprofits, I get about one call a month, but they can turn into very large customers, Rob. Very large customers.
[00:27:56.840] – Robert Newman
And I don’t really focus and build… I’ve I’m always focused on my mission first and everything related second. I’ve been very blessed in that while inbound RIM is taking it on the chin as the real estate market has slowed down, we’re doing a lot better than most other marketing companies from what I can tell. Clients have remained more static, more steady. Here’s the funny thing. Once my business was established, I’m noticing that my existing clients are more and more leveraging my content, which is how I tell them they should use the service. My Our team is starting to promote our content on our social channels when they service the clients. I am discovering a massive amount of resiliency and an additional layer of profitability from a service perspective. It’s making me much more committed to the route, like the Facebook route, the YouTube route. It’s taken years to get my clients used to going and accessing those places. But now that they are, it’s really worth it. It’s It’s really worth it to do the content because they’re now going back and referencing answers and old videos that I have. I make sure that I post about every third show that you and I do into my private Facebook group, something like that.
[00:29:12.020] – Robert Newman
I just keep doing those things to try to provide value, which in turn, once people are used to leveraging it, provides valuable to me in the social media realm. Now, the hashtag Hashtags and such, guys, ladies and gentlemen, John, everybody, I got to be honest. I build processes around them and then forget it. I cannot stand the mechanics of doing the work myself. I always just build the process and then hand it off to other people and forget about it because I’m not trying to be wildly successful on all the platforms that really leverage like hashtags. John listed his. Ladies and gentlemen, I have three channels channels. One is not social. I leverage email a lot. It’s an important channel for me. It generates the vast majority of my leads actually is the email. Number two is YouTube. And I focus on YouTube. And then my blog and then Google my business, which shockingly, John, has actually started a general… This year, I think for the first time, it’s been about six years since I’ve been dominant in my area. I think this year has been a year where I honestly think I’ve acquired three or four clients through local, which is just stupidly impressive since I’ve only had 16 to 20 clients this year.
[00:30:48.940] – Robert Newman
So 25 % have come from Local. It’s crazy to me. I’m sorry, what were you going to say? My bad.
[00:30:56.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I think with the tag, you see LinkedIn about A year ago, LinkedIn got rid of tags. It got rid of it, which was surprising. I do tag the Facebook stuff that I post. And I think with YouTube, using something like VidIQ or YouTubeuddy does help with that process a lot, makes it less painful. And I always tag on Twitter because it is the main way that people find you. And I’m not really into Instagram. That’s really Adam’s, the video editing and the Facebook and Instagram. I do all the WordPress stuff and the website stuff. But the main thing is I’ve got a very small email list with my other business. It’s not something we developed on Mailright. So So you got to… But to get anything from this episode, folks, is I think we’re all big in video, but Choose the platform, choose one platform, multi-purpose it, and don’t produce all the… Go to Rob’s website, have a look at all his advice he’s got on it, and we got some on the Melright website. And think about it and work out what stuff you’re going to post. But most agents stuff is pretty dire, isn’t it?
[00:32:44.310] – Jonathan Denwood
So if you up your gain a bit, you’re going to get some good results, I think.
[00:32:50.200] – Robert Newman
We’re obviously going to wrap up the show. We’re a minute 32 or so into it. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to say that the next two, three minutes of me in my is going to be the bonus content from my perspective, not from John’s. Here we go. I’m going to give you all a couple of just hard and fast tips. Pinterest is actually not great for lead generation, but it’s extremely good for Number one, for search engine optimization. If you have a website that you’re trying to promote, Pinterest is the only major social media platform that allows you to read it and throw links and content and direct traffic. I still get over a thousand people to my website per month from Pinterest. It’s been the most successful transferral program that I have ever done. So we don’t talk about it much. Just understand Pinterest is viable, though it’s probably more of a place to build an audience. The other place is Twitter. Twitter has always been, in my opinion, a shit show of opinions and things like that. However, it’s a place that if you have a more authentic voice that I feel like you would go.
[00:33:58.410] – Robert Newman
I do not have an authentic voice for that forum. I don’t want to participate in conversations about politics or any of the vast majority of stuff that’s there. I do have a Twitter profile. I’ve got a few thousand people that follow me. I just literally just link the same content that I link everywhere else, and half the time I have somebody do it for me. With Instagram, now here’s the big one, the big boy in the sandbox for most real estate agents. I have without question, undoubtedly no second guessing. You want to know where the most leads come from about any platform except YouTube? Instagram is number two on that list. So many agents I know. Here’s the crazy thing, John. I know agents in the extreme highest ends of luxury, and they’re pulling 25, 35, 45, 55 million leads off Instagram. Instagram is the place to be at almost every level of your business. It’s also a great branding tool. We integrate so many Instagram profiles into our client websites. It is an incredible place to be as a lead as a real estate agent for both branding and lead capture. It’s that mid-range, younger to mid-range, because Instagram is an old platform now, John, used to be for kids.
[00:35:26.910] – Robert Newman
It’s not for kids anymore. It’s for young A young adult and hip middle-aged people, like everybody in tech that I know is on Instagram and prefer it. This is a very profitable audience to be talking to. Instagram. If everybody’s looking for a cheat code, I’m giving it to you. Youtube, for those of you who are story-based teachers like me and John, and for those of you who may be a little bit more fashion, image-conscious, Instagram is just a hands-down recommendation that I would make for you. Then the last but not least is, don’t worry about… Despite the fact that John and I are sitting here talking about this, worry about the big, broad stuff first. That’s how to dominate social media is do what John said, pick your place, pick your storytelling style, decide it in advance, and then go out and learn what you need to learn about that platform, about that storytelling style. John is correct. We’re both resources. I probably got a little bit deeper content on Inbound R-E-M, but we are both resources. John is a resource to look at, in my opinion, when you’re looking for a guy who is out there as a small business owner and making everything happen on all these different platforms for three different businesses.
[00:36:48.000] – Robert Newman
So if some of you have multiple businesses, John would be the person to look at. I have one focused interest, which is Inbound R-E-M. I have other things I do, but they’re all for fun. John, how do you want to close out the show? What’s your tip? What burning would you tell somebody?
[00:37:09.050] – Jonathan Denwood
I think you choose the platform and try and produce video and content for that particular. And by this conversation, the two are either Instagram or YouTube, right? For me, it will be YouTube because I’ve got a load of equipment, and I know how to produce them. If you do that, though, you want to go to Rob’s website or mine and look at some of the stuff. Join the Mel Wright podcast, listen to our advice, and get at it. There’s no excuse, but you will get leads if you take it, and concentrate either on Instagram or YouTube. I think you’ll get some leads from it, won’t you?
[00:38:07.280] – Robert Newman
I do. I do. But I’m going to give some free consultation to everybody who’s listening to me. The first thing that all of you should do, the first thing every single person should do, is answer the question for yourself, how you be helpful to the people out there? Lead generation comes second. It is harder to do tricky things online where you’re trying to sneak in a contact form or sneak in a squeeze page. Or, everywhere I look, Jean, the successful people, there are two channels, and I only do one of these two. But there are some people who have become wildly successful through being creative and amusing. In other words, they entertain and they become wildly successful for things like lead generation because they’re making you laugh for engaging you or you’re watching them. Krista Mayshore is a big believer in that. Then, the second group, which is to be helpful and educational, is 100% following that group. We’ll figure out what you need and how we can help with our knowledge, and then we’ll help you. And then, if we did a good job, maybe check out these other things we do.
[00:39:26.750] – Robert Newman
That school of philosophy drives most of your leads. After that, if you get that down, helping, being helpful, all that shit, what you have left is how do you get that help to be seen the most or asking your audiences for favor in the form of, Can you share this with other people? It’s going to help. If it helped them, it’s such an honest request, that they do it. If you’re trying to help, they will oftentimes say, You know what? You’re right. Every person in my office should see this video, and I will share it with them. That’s been my experience, at least. We’re at the end, John. This is 10 minutes on the dot. Is there anything else that you wanted to… Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll wrap it up. Wherever you’ve seen us, I will do exactly what we just said. If you think that this subject could be helpful to younger and newer, this is focused on either old agents getting into social media for the first time, like more established agents, or brand new agents that have never considered that they would have to have a social media presence as they got their career started.
[00:40:33.730] – Robert Newman
For those people, if we’ve helped you and you have other people in the office who are in the same situation that you’re in, do us both a favor, please. Share this with them. It is there to help. We’re trying to be helpful. If we haven’t met that standard, comment wherever you see this post. If you see it on a MailRight YouTube channel, you see it on a MailRight Facebook page, comment. John or his partner will respond. If you see it on InboundR EM stuff, comment. Just so you know- I will respond. If you’d like to contact me and learn more about InboundR EM or social media, learn about all the hundreds… I have so much information on my site about how to do this, specifically. Go to inboundrem. com and look at the social media section and then break it out by platform. We have something on there for everything. How about you, John? How would you like people to reach you?
[00:41:29.290] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll go to the mail-right. Website. Have a look at what we got. We have a fantastic platform. It’s competitively priced. You get individual care and assistance from us. We will update the platform in the next couple of months to offer even more value. I think it’s honestly a fab platform. Back over to you, Rob.
[00:41:56.030] – Robert Newman
Beautiful. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this has been episode John, and I have been doing this for hundreds of episodes now. It’s been a joy and a pleasure. John, I will sign off the show with just a little footnote. We mentioned at the beginning of the show what I was excited about for myself is that today marks 18 years of continuous sobriety for me. You can cut this out of the show if you want, John. I’m fine with it. But anyway, it’s a big personal day for me. I’m so grateful to you, John. I’m so thankful to the audience, and I’m so grateful to everybody who tunes into the show. Without sobriety, none of this would happen. I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be co-hosting with you. I wouldn’t have a business for you to care if it was partnered with. Anyway, thank you, everybody. Thank you, John, as always, for everything that you do to make this happen. Until next time, we will look forward to, hopefully, having you tune in to the next show. Take us offline.
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