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#445- The Mail-Right Show: How To Close Multiple Deals Per Year From YouTube

Monday, September 2nd, 2024

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How To Close Multiple Deals Per Year From YouTube

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

Episode Full Show Notes

[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.

 

Posted in Podcast | Comments Off on #445- The Mail-Right Show: How To Close Multiple Deals Per Year From YouTube

#444- The Mail-Right Show: Best Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies For 2024?

Tuesday, August 27th, 2024

Best Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies For 2024?

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

Episode Full Show Notes

[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.

 

Posted in Podcast | Comments Off on #444- The Mail-Right Show: Best Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies For 2024?

#443- The Mail-Right Show: How To Dominate Social Media As A Real Estate Agent In 2024

Monday, August 19th, 2024

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How To Dominate Social Media As A Real Estate Agent In 2024

Dominate social media as a real estate agent in 2024! Discover strategies to boost your visibility, engage clients, and drive sales today.

Unlock the secrets to social media success in the real estate industry with our latest video, How To Dominate Social Media As A Real Estate Agent In 2024.

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.

Episode Full Show Notes

[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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#442- The Mail-Right Show: CINC A Full Review for 2024 The Good, The Bad & Ugly

Monday, August 12th, 2024

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CINC A Full Review for 2024 The Good, The Bad & Ugly

CINC Review 2024: The Good, the bad, and the ugly revealed! Find out if it’s right for you with our in-depth analysis.

In this comprehensive review of CINC for 2024, we dive deep into the platform’s features, examining its strengths and weaknesses. From user experience to functionality, we cover everything you need to know before deciding whether you’re considering CINC for your business or curious about its latest updates.

 

#1 – Introduction

#2 – Hyper-local lead generation and IDX websites (example – https://www.palmbeachflhomefinder.com/)

#3- Dedicated ad and platform account manager

#4 – Lead nurturing and seller lead capture

#5 – Platform geared toward teams and top performers

#6 – Alex, CINC’s AI Bot

#7 – Guaranteed Sales Program

#8 – Prices start at $899 for a single agent and $1,299 for teams per month.

Episode Full Show Notes

 

[00:00:29.430] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Today’s episode is 442 of the mail. Right, show. Today, my fearless co-host and I are going to talk about sync. For me, it’s, again, I’m going to talk about sync. I’ve talked about sync so much, but we’re going to speak of sync and all the things that have really not happened with them and a couple of things that have. Then, we will post this video and pray that some of you find it useful. Before we do any of that, though, I’d like to introduce you to my co-host. His name is Jonathan Dinwidd. He’s an English bloke, and he is an entrepreneur. He is dyslexic. He’s a pugilist. For those of you who don’t know what that is, look it up. You’ll be excited.

[00:01:26.930] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t even know what that means.

[00:01:29.810] – Robert Newman

It’s actually the English word for boxer. So you need to be more in touch. He’s, really, really good with WordPress. He’s developed a lot of time. He has one of the world’s most popular podcasts on the subject, WP-Tonic. He’s got another podcast on learning management systems, and he has another business that he runs that handles that. And last but not least, he also has created an excellent system for real estate agents that is an all in one system. And he has another company that does that, which is what he is here today acting as the figurehead for. So without any further ado, John, anything I have not covered, could you please cover yourself, and we’ll jump into sync?

[00:02:18.370] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Rob. Yeah, we are mail. Right. We’re an all-in-one lead generative system, but we also provide a really fantastic theme-based, semi-custom, or full-custom, great-looking WordPress website. And we’re one of the few providers that do that. Back over to you, Robert.

[00:02:42.640] – Robert Newman

Okay, so just jumping right into sync regarding what they have and have not done. And I guess I should be a little fair here, John, because I immediately jumped into the said, oh, they haven’t updated. Well, they have updated. They’ve slightly caught up with the rest of the world. And it only took them ten years of guys like you and me saying that they never update for them to update. But I have had no reports from clients on how this date works, which is essentially they have finally connected sync successfully to your cell phone. That’s what I read it as. So sync, for those of you who don’t know, is called short for Commissions Inc. Commissions Inc. Is an old-school all-in-one CRM lead system that’s been around for probably twelve or 13 years now. For a long time, they led the industry. They have dropped off significantly at this point, but they have a very sophisticated backend that still satisfies a very small number of very large teams that keep sync in business. And they’ve done a very good job at being very specific for a certain type of large brokerage that needs a really robust back end that connects to many different spokes of wheels such as transaction coordination connections banking connections Mortgage Company Connections Commission split connections Commission in case knows all of that.

 

[00:04:27.740] – Robert Newman

That’s my introduction to them. John, what would you like to say about them? I know you’ve reviewed them a number of times on your channel at this point, and you may have read some stuff that I still need to.

 

[00:04:37.570] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I don’t know them as well as you. I’ve done a couple of videos, and I’ve done a couple of posts, but it’s been based, I have not had login credentials and I have yet to deal with a customer that’s actively utilizing this. So my knowledge is based on general research. I agree with you think that was my impression that it is aimed at large brokerages, large regional or national brokerages and they can provide a custom solution that allows them to integrate into various third-party API systems. What shocked me were some of the industry’s reviews. There’s the fact that I’m not talking about the reviews that you’ve done, which I think have been normal. You can sometimes be a bit harsher than me, but sometimes I can be harsher. Um, but I think about this, you’ve been pretty fair but I’m talking about some other reviews which give the impression that this is a, could be a considered solution for the individual, the power couple, the small smaller boutique brokerage. And I don’t see it myself. Everything they provide I wouldn’t, I can’t say it’s terrible or indifferent. I see, I can’t really see why somebody wouldn’t use real geeks or maybe look at Melrite or look at one or two of the other solutions out there, why they would consider this platform, I really don’t know.

 

[00:06:53.510] – Robert Newman

I still, so there’s a handful of brokers and brokerages who are, have guys and gals that have developed a skill set in what could be considered the old school technology formats and if those people existed, complicated tools, Microsoft esque Excel sheets when it first came out, like I can go on and on something that has a thousand options for every single person out there lying the lion desk of CR of complicated CRMs. Sync probably suits them. But I gotta say, over the years sync has been dramatically priced out in terms of cost versus like what you’re buying for that cost. So on May 16, 2024, I missed this. John Jennifer O’Connell, the content brand manager for Sync, announced effectively that they were finally making many changes inside their CRM. So they were connecting it to their mobile phones. They noted that they’ve been receiving a lot of comments about pressure from their audience on what is effectively a very down market that matches what my commentary is to get the brand monitor. They don’t update their blog very often. Once a year maybe. Guys. So everybody knows. So this is absolutely staggering that they put something out there.

 

[00:08:24.820] – Robert Newman

The pressure on the business must be extreme for them to. And it was written stream consciousness, which surprises me. I didn’t find it all that clear as I just read through it. But anyway, that’s kind of indicative of sync. They provide a lot of value for a very defined personality and for everyone else they are way overpriced for what effectively you’re getting. They also require training classes to use the product in the first place. Depending on what state you’re in and what’s available, they oftentimes charge you for that training. Generally this system is good for somebody who actually has an operations manager and somebody that’s in there. And I have an update where I went into the platform and actually looked at it feature by feature. It took me 45 hours to research. That’s why I’m just like, I kind of never want to go into sync ever again.

 

[00:09:22.550] – Jonathan Denwood

But, but I, that was hot at the time. But would you find out the truth? You never, you never want that name or to be mentioned again, do you?

 

[00:09:34.960] – Robert Newman

Right. So just to stick along with what you’ve got. Duplicated dedicated atom platform manager. So hyperlocal lead generation inside examples. This is for sync. Okay, let’s take a look at Palm beach homefinder.com. the page that you, that we, that you actually linked in your show notes is actually incorrect. You put an extra thing there. All right. For those of you who are listening into the show, the sync website, in my opinion, if I was going to score something zero to ten sync sites at this point in the market 2024, I would give them a two or three at best. That’s my opinion. Take it or leave it. There’s very little that’s on these. It’s essentially a self generated AI based landing page that anybody could do. If sync hasn’t updated their systems to do this automated yet in like, let’s call it less than an hour, then they need to do some internal work on their systems and processes. But it’s very basic. That’s my opinion. John, what do you think?

 

[00:10:46.690] – Jonathan Denwood

I would give it a four to five because there are a lot of, you know, I don’t actually think much of KV core which is a, that’s in between, that’s marketed at individual and, but they’re, but they really have very, been very aggressive on their pricing deals through certain providers. But I, and you being quite frank about KV core and its performance problems, but the websites that they produce, they’re a little bit better than this. This is a lower between five and a lower four.

 

[00:11:31.740] – Robert Newman

So that everybody listening to the show and you, John, the way that these guys do lead generation, the way that most of these companies have is through all these quick searches that they do, you click a button and then it takes you to another page. Like I clicked a button for homes for sale and Loxa hot chain. Okay. And then I got four or five listings that are open houses on the left hand side of the screen. And then below that I got a whole bunch of quick searches that somebody programmed into this website. And this is where the work is. I’m not, from a design perspective, I stand by what I said.

 

[00:12:09.010] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes, branding in branding terms, it does nothing for you. Absolutely nothing. And I think lead generation through brand and also branding and content marketing or SEO if you want to go down that route. At Mailwright, we provide a good looking template and we can customize it, but we provide leads through Facebook mostly. I think combining branding with lead generation important. This doesn’t provide any, any branding ability really, does it?

 

[00:12:49.430] – Robert Newman

It does not. And it costs $1,000 a month. And even though I’m not a fan of this other company either, Lofty would be like some other similar companies where you could get almost as much value for anywhere from 50 to cents. So Melrite would be on that list. Real geese would be on that list. Pro agent websites would blow all these guys out of the doors give you a better website at $65 a month. I can go real geeks.

 

[00:13:18.010] – Jonathan Denwood

Before we go for our break at real geeks wants slightly under $300. But it’s not just to have the website, they don’t. At Mailwright, if you sign a six month deal, you get it at $149.

 

[00:13:36.040] – Robert Newman

There you go. And there’s a lot of other companies that provide a lot of value in different ways. Pro agent websites is not a system. It is simply a website with an IDX on it with a programmer who figure out how to do all of that. Took a lot of time to do it and provides a great value for the cost, but it’s really nothing more than a business card and everybody that listens to the show, John needs to start understanding what the difference is between a lead generation company and a branded website company, a search site and a content marketing site.

 

[00:14:09.800] – Jonathan Denwood

And because it’s all a bit complicated. But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Robert, to clarify? So I think you need to be off quick, don’t you? So, yeah, let’s go to break.

 

[00:14:21.740] – Robert Newman

All right, so, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to go to break. And when we, when we do, John’s going to post this video on the mail, right show. I might dump this into a couple of private Facebook groups. I run it. Listen, if you see this and you get some value from it, if you appreciate our commentary, either one of us, both of us, doesn’t matter. Like the video, leave us a little comment. If you have some questions, if you disagree with us, message me. Obviously, it’s probably going to be me because I’m tired and irritated and I’m more opinionated today than usual. So we’ll be right back. Thank you so much for tuning in. We’re going to go to break. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 442 of the mailwright show. Today we are talking about sync. We just finished reviewing their branding and I was starting to go into the difference of products. Sync is a lead generation website and the main value that they provide is quick searches and landing pages and then they charge you for a advertising campaign and they throw everything into the CRM.

 

[00:15:34.570] – Robert Newman

And theoretically, the CRM is where the value is supposed to come from. These days, unless you are a very unusual real estate agent or running a large team, you can find any number of different places where the CRM is just as good. And you can spend dollar 69 or dollar 150 or dollar 250 or $500 with your interactive mail right follow up boss and lofty, all with just as good if not better of a CRM. So you are really handcuffing yourself into the most expensive system on the market for one of the least effective websites and least effective lead management system. The only exception to all that is if you’re a big team, in which case sync has to be a person you look at.

 

[00:16:23.370] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t want to just because I think they’re in a basket. I think legacy players, I think Boomtown, they sold up Boomtown. We’re in this KV core. I know they’ve updated it, but I place it in what we’re talking about. There’s a whole group of these players and unless you’ve got a big agency, you know, I dramatically disagree with the way KV corps market themselves and have. It’s been successful for them and they’re still one of the biggest players, aren’t they? But if I was a smaller agent or a small boutique brokerage, it’d be the last thing I would use in my opinion.

 

[00:17:16.050] – Robert Newman

Yeah, it’s. So I agree with all, everything that you just said. Here’s what everybody should know. Real estate marketing companies really kind of like real estate marketing companies rely on agents lack of knowledge about technology in general, about using CRMs real estate in comparison to how much trade skills that you need and versus how much money you can make, it’s a unique industry. You can, you can get very few trade skills and yet you can make a million dollars a year. And that would mean that theoretically, instead of having to go to school, let’s say, and learn a whole bunch of new software systems or learning digital technology as you update your license. Very little of that is required by NAR or anybody else. Your mls, I can go on and on. All the licenses pertain to the transaction side and how much you know about answering questions about real estate specifically. But it doesn’t deal with the ever widening field of technology and your real estate marketing providers take advantage of that in a very big way. Let’s talk for a second about number six because you know something here. What do I have not seen any documentation about sync’s AI bots, so why don’t you talk to us about that a little bit?

 

[00:18:38.310] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, it seemed very generic to be, like I say, I was just going with the most up to date reviews and there isn’t many reviews, there’s one or two. You’re one of them. But there was a. There’s been one or two reviews. I’m not going to name them because I just don’t think it would be appropriate. But the most latest detailed review from a source that has some credibility in the real estate industry. I found it to be on the verge of a place place advertisement I didn’t think it was quite disgusting in some ways because it was obviously just played placed advertisement it was. In my opinion, it was an honest review. It was extremely misleading. And the person that you, that doesn’t really know that much, that doesn’t listen to this podcast, would get a totally inappropriate impression of what this platform could really offer them. Robert it’s a bit sad, really.

 

[00:19:55.640] – Robert Newman

Sadly, the real, the close and a few other websites that are all very, very popular sometimes seem to partner a little too strongly with some of their advertising partners. They link, they basically. So for everybody listening, here’s one of those technology things you should know. A person that owns a website can make an agreement with another person that owns a website and take a commission if you sell their stuff. It’s called the affiliate arrangement. And the close is an affiliate based website company. They have a few of them. And the close is real estate focused. And so the close just talks about real estate and they make money through affiliate commissions. That means that everybody you see on their website, for the most part, is paying them. Which means that oftentimes I do not find the reviews completely transparent or honest because why, when they review a company, they are likely making a commission off them.

 

[00:20:49.380] – Jonathan Denwood

And that’s your opinion, not mine, isn’t it? Rob?

 

[00:20:52.290] – Robert Newman

Yes, this is my opinion.

 

[00:20:54.010] – Jonathan Denwood

I never mention. I’m not saying it’s that particular provider that you’ve just named. So if they, if they want to.

 

[00:21:02.490] – Robert Newman

Take umbrage, take it up with me. Everybody can’t theydeze Robert at inbound Rem okay, that’s, and it is absolutely 100% to be clear. That is my opinion, and it is only an opinion, it is not a de fact. Like I don’t know who they’ve got their commission agreements with. I can only tell you that they do. And they have that language on their own website. So if anybody, you can check me on that all they want and they can talk to me about that all they want, but they posted it themselves. Seven guaranteed sales program. Is this something that think is doing now?

 

[00:21:39.570] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, if you read the sources that say that the actual reality, it’s not lying. You have to utilize their platform to their requirements and then they will guarantee a result. But you’ve got to go through all their training and utilize it in the way that meets their requirements.

 

[00:22:12.480] – Robert Newman

Robert got you all right. Well, I uh, there were some notes that you left and I got to be honest with you John, I hadn’t scanned all the way down the page. So just so you know, I uh, I actually. So great, I dead brain that myself without looking at your notes.

 

[00:22:27.820] – Jonathan Denwood

So I wouldn’t say it’s misleading, but I wouldn’t say, say it’s totally transparent either, in my opinion.

 

[00:22:35.650] – Robert Newman

Robert, there appears to be some changes in pricing. Okay. So I haven’t talked to nor reviewed sync in a couple of years. Not seriously. Done a deep dive, talked to customers and done some of the background auditing that I do when I do review a company, John, and some other website sources that we’ve reviewed, which we are not saying correct, we’re just saying that we looked. That’s it. Okay. The prices are listed from 899 to 12.99 per month currently. Did I get that right, John? Because you’re the one who did the research.

 

[00:23:12.180] – Jonathan Denwood

900 to around 1300. Yeah.

 

[00:23:15.430] – Robert Newman

Okay. And there seems to be a new option for dollar 200 a month for AI. And I have to admit that the pressure for AI probably comes to sync from Gueloppo. It certainly doesn’t come from John or I in the sense that there’s lots of conversation around things like AI and stuff like that. And we’re not reading that, we’re discussing it.

 

[00:23:39.740] – Jonathan Denwood

And I’m starting, I’m a bit more upbeat about it than you, but I agree with you that the way some companies are utilizing it and marketing it to the undead knowing is extremely damaging. I feel in my opinion, Robert.

 

[00:24:05.180] – Robert Newman

And I agree with that because successfully applying large language models and various chat GPT scripts is tricky. Now, I am honestly starting to look at it much, much, much more seriously because we’re getting close to what chat GPT is referring to, Sam Altman is referring to, referring to as the third iteration of. They have five levels that they listed. I was never very interested in level one or two. I am very interested in level number three. And so we’re looking at, maybe we’re taking a deeper look at it. I’ve seen and started to see some impressive things, John, which came from chatgbt only recently.

 

[00:24:51.240] – Jonathan Denwood

I utilize a lot of AI tools, but I use them very conservatively, and I don’t jump into it. I do a lot of testing, and I get, I am conservative in the way I utilize it. But if I get the results that I’m looking for, and some I do, I’m using AI tools every day, Robert, but I don’t dive into it. And I certainly don’t make outrageous claims to clients of mine about the results they’re getting. And unfortunately, there are some providers in the real estate industry that I feel are making some outrageous claims.

 

[00:25:37.760] – Robert Newman

Robert indeed. So, in no particular order, ladies and gentlemen, we’re closing the show. And I’m just going to point out some things that I didn’t understand I haven’t researched. And frankly, if I get a client, any of you listening to the show, and you have a burning desire, you can talk to me [email protected]. and I’ll dig through it for you. I don’t need to do any of this on my own, but Sync’s long post has mentioned several products that I am not familiar with, all by name. There’s one called ETA, there’s another one called Launchpad, and they seem to be indicating, and they’ve done a, they have, for the first time in my memory, revealed some percentages on their blog, which shows you that they’re under pressure. Like they’ve actually talked about lead conversion rates, problems with the system, and where they’re seeing results, and they’ve never done that before. They have never talked about that. They’ve never revealed their stuff to clients, at least not that I remember. I say that as an opinion. I don’t recollect it. And then they’re saying that the transactions are coming more and more from property-specific stuff, that people are engaged with what they’re calling AI, but it’s a chatbot, and they’re calling that chatbot Aetna because Ylopo named theirs Rya.

 

[00:27:04.750] – Robert Newman

There’s no doubt that y Lopo was the first market with a named chatbot kind of system. And so there’s no doubt that sync is following in line with the path that y Lopo blazed. And as far as I can tell, they’re doing a couple of phone number verification things, and they’ve got a few things that you’re doing, QR codes and activations, and they’re doing all of that in the property base. I have yet to look at any of those things. I have looked through John’s example site in the product notes. I don’t see any of these things in the wild, so I don’t have any comments on them. If anybody wants to give me, if you’re an existing sync customer and you’re taking umbrage to anything I’ve said, or if you want me to check it, then call me, and I will log into your system with you, and we can walk through it and see where these features are. And especially if you think I’m getting any of this wrong, if you’re seeing a vast productivity spike out of one of these features that I am, nothing declaring is very exciting. Lord have mercy.

 

[00:28:08.360] – Robert Newman

Reach out to me, prove me wrong. I would love that. That’s all I got for this subject. If anybody wants to research me, it’s inboundram.com dot. You can go to the services or about pages. Both have different ways to get in touch with me and my team. John, how about you?

 

[00:28:25.910] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s going to the mail right.com. Have a look at what we’ve got to offer. We’re adding in the next month a whole library of fantastic looking WordPress based themes on Gutenberg that can be easily adapted by yourself. At the end of the year, we will be adding our mobile app to our product. So we’re still developing it and improving it and I think it’s fantastic. But I would say that. But, I honestly do believe it when I compare it to some of the established players out there. I’m amazed at what we built, but it took a long time, but we got there in the end, and it’s a fantastic platform. Back over to you, Rob.

 

[00:29:17.370] – Robert Newman

All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning into the show today. We always appreciate your time. Attention, your ears, all the things. We’ll catch you next time.

 

[00:29:31.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Sorry. There we go. Just give me a second.

 

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#441- The Mail-Right Show:Real Estate Agents Using Google My Business: How to Rank #1 on Google

Tuesday, August 6th, 2024

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Real Estate Agents Using Google My Business: How to Rank #1 on Google

Real Estate Agents, do you want to rank #1 on Google? Learn essential tips for optimizing your Google My Business profile and stand out in the market.

Unlock the insights to elevating your real estate business with our latest show on mastering Google My Business. Discover how to optimize your profile, engage with clients, and leverage local SEO strategies that propel you to the top of search results. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting, this guide is packed with actionable tips.

#1 Make sure you use the same Name, Address, and Phone.

#2 Provide business categories and subcategories.

#3 Mention the areas you serve.

#4 Increase your visibility with eye-catching visuals.

#5 Provide consistent and rich content with GMB posts.

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:30.030] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 441. In today’s episode, we will explain how you can rank number one on Google My Business. Now, we could use this language in a lot of different ways. The way we have it in the show title is ranked number one on Google. There is a section of Google that we can get you to rank in that is very relevant to real estate agents. We’re excited to talk to you about it today. But before we do, my fearless co-host, who gets on this show and does it every week with me, is to go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience, John.

[00:01:19.410] – Jonathan Denwood

I can tell Rob said a very busy week. He had a rough day by the sounds of things. He had a rough day yesterday. It shows it, I think. But I’m the joint founder of Mailright. We’re a platform that provides CRM lead generation landing pages, email, and text follow-through, all in one great value package, plus a beautiful website, and templates, or we can semi-customize or do full customization. It’s a great platform. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:01:57.830] – Robert Newman

All right. Just so everybody is familiar with this concept, John and I have been discussing it a lot, but I will explain this once again. About six years ago, seven years ago, Google started to shift how we all search for local businesses. Businesses. At first, they did that shift. As they were doing that shift behind the scenes, many of you may or may not remember this, but they had another service called Google Plus. Google Plus was really good for search engine optimization because Google could read this whole social engine platform. And what most people, myself included, were using that social engine for was businesses. So Google had yet to have a revolutionary idea. They said, Well, we want the Google Plus activity on the primary search platform. And all of a sudden, they started to really ramp up. They integrated their Google Map or search feature with the Google Plus business feature, and voila, Google business was born. It operated in much the same way that Google Plus had been operating for the previous X amount of years. We know how Google Plus has been operating for about a decade. It’s a very, very long-standing service that’s been integrated all into one so that you and I and John and everybody else can search for businesses and so that you can promote your business effectively.

[00:03:37.820] – Robert Newman

In all of that, Google finally had the idea that they would give you search prominence in the primary search algorithm if you worked hard on this free tool that they give you, the Google My Business Profile. Anybody can get one. There’s no cost. It doesn’t cost you anything actually to start and operate the profile. Stuff. It just takes your time, and you have to have some faith in one of these big technology companies, which is always questionable, in my opinion. But nonetheless, there’s a lot of money to be made with a bit of effort on these Google business profiles because, and I want to see if John agrees, this is really one of the most relevant ways you can promote your business. Would you agree, John?

[00:04:26.940] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, being that it’s part of Google that controls Well, 90 plus % of all search traffic, and it’s offered by them. I view it in the same way I view YouTube. You’re not in search But you’re not going to damage yourself by putting stuff on YouTube and linking it to your website. And it’s the same attitude towards my business. It’s free, It won’t hurt, but it’s definitely research and indications that if you fill it in in the way we’re going to advise, you’ll benefit as a real estate agent. Even in 2024, I just want to see if you agree with this, Rob, I would say that the great majority of real estate agents still don’t claim their Google My Business page area, and they don’t really fill in the information manually. Would you agree with that?

[00:05:39.880] – Robert Newman

Yes, I agree with that. Yeah, I do. All right. So now that we talked a little bit about the Google business profile, we’re going to start to get into it a bit. As with most things related to Google, there is the very upfront and forward-facing activities that you can do with your profile. And then there are these advanced, trickier things to do for the profile. And the whole idea of being an SEO, and if there are any other SEOs that are listening to the show that really is relevant, it’s always whether or not you have a large enough active case study group of clients that you’re looking at because nobody really knows the weight of how Google measures things. We know what they’re looking at. Every SEO does. John does. We all do. We know what they’re looking at. But what we don’t know is exactly how impactful that particular thing is until you experiment with it for a long time. Then you base that experimentation on what you see, and now you start to get a really good understanding of how that particular tool operates. I’m sharing hundreds of case studies, and what I’ve seen with these Google business profiles.

[00:07:03.020] – Robert Newman

Some of it is very dull, and others, really, does that work? That thing. But without any further ado, John, why don’t you go ahead or if do me a favor and just do the primary thing, which is called the NAP? John is going to explain what the very first principle of a NAP is, which is name, address, and phone number.

[00:07:26.700] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, they want consistency. What I mean by that, folks, is they’re going to ask when you claim this area. One of the tricky things is quite regularly, they reconfigure this platform. Let’s call it a platform. They reconfigure it quite reasonably often. The essence of it, like what Rob has said, hasn’t fundamentally changed for quite a period of time, but they change the Claim quite regularly off the platform, too. They used to have a way of claiming. Therefore, how you access it a little bit, but the fundamentals are still the same. You go and claim your page. The only thing about claiming your page is that they send you a postcard with a serial number, and you’re in a number, or you go to the website and you’ve got to put this serial number in. So you’ve got to have a physical address, and it’s got to be somewhere that you can pick the card up from. That’s number one. And it’s not a good idea to choose an address just for this purpose because it probably ain’t going to match up with all the other things on the internet that have your address on because their technology is going to match or see that the details that you’ve put on a form to get your postcode, your postcard, matches up what they see on the internet.

 

[00:09:24.970] – Jonathan Denwood

And if it doesn’t, there’s a different address here, there’s a different address there, there’s a different address on your brokerage, there’s a different address on your own website. If it don’t all match up, you’re not going to get the benefits that we’re talking about. So everything’s got to match up to Google satisfaction. What do you reckon, Rob? Have you done a reasonable job there?

 

[00:09:55.480] – Robert Newman

Except for, yes, a few small changes. Google doesn’t do postcards anymore. They do video. So when you try to get a profile and they want to verify your business, they now require that you send a video to them of the location. They’re very specifically trying to weed out people that are using external locations that are not really their office as a location. For real estate agents, this The rule is very frustrating and unclear and murky because you’ve got some states that allow you as a real estate agent to work out of your your home address Other states that don’t. Google requires that if you are working out of your own address, you have a proper business license and that you are properly licensed as a realtor. They just took down my profile because they couldn’t see my incorporation information, which does list my location in California as a secondary location, and I have another location in another state. You have to be very careful because when you submit your information to Google, they will go through extraordinary efforts to clarify it. Now, this is the part that sucks. They don’t necessarily do it right when you set the profile up, John.

 

[00:11:26.380] – Robert Newman

They will let you set the profile up. They will oftentimes put up on Google. You could hire a guy like me. You could spend a few thousand dollars optimizing your profile, and all of a sudden, they can reach out to you and try to verify. Then if you invested and you didn’t have When you weren’t ready or prepared, didn’t have the right licenses as an example, it can really mess you up.

 

[00:11:50.650] – Jonathan Denwood

You can spend thousands. When did they do this video, then?

 

[00:11:55.070] – Robert Newman

Generally speaking, well, I don’t think that there’s a set time frame, but it’s probably anywhere from three to six months after you set the profile up.

 

[00:12:05.510] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. No, I mean, when did I get rid of the postcards?

 

[00:12:09.920] – Robert Newman

Postcards? I think I’ve been seeing this happen for the last six months, maybe since the beginning of the year.

 

[00:12:16.080] – Jonathan Denwood

What a pain in the posterior.

 

[00:12:18.970] – Robert Newman

It is a pain in the posterior. Now, there’s one other thing that goes along with name, address, phone number stuff, which is also a pain in the posterior. This is also another place that That agents of all kinds, veteran, new, they really get screwed here, John, because when you change your address, there are very large data providers that most of you have never heard of. They have scooped up your data without ever talking to you. Then what they do with that data is they distribute it to other people. Oftentimes, you do not know this. You are not focused on this, but your data has been distributed, In many, many, many, many places. Strangely enough, Rupert Murdoch probably owns a lot of your data, both on the real estate transaction side and on the distribution side to other services. Now, why do I say all this? Well, for those of you who’ve moved your office in the last 10 years or switched an address between, let’s say, your broker’s physical address and your own personal physical address, then you have screwed yourself in terms of ranking unless you have done one of two things. You’ve either hired a professional data company, of which there are many that focus on local, like Localizy or InboundREM, and we have to go all a bright local, White Spark.

 

[00:14:02.360] – Robert Newman

We have to go out there and change all of your data so that it matches a single physical address because Google views this local stuff as an expertise, experience, authority, and trust metric. They’re very logical. They say, If you’re a legitimate business, would you not, Mr. Business Owner, want to make sure that your address is everywhere that lists these businesses. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? They don’t understand the idea behind real estate agents who have no clue where they’re listed.

 

[00:14:43.470] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, they were spent the It must get even more trickier with the popularity of digital virtual brokerages. It probably gets even more tricky, doesn’t it?

 

[00:15:00.050] – Robert Newman

It does. In other words, I don’t think, John, that ranking profiles is hard at all. In the general idea that when you physically do this stuff inside, and if you’re a real estate agent, it is shocking how much progress that you can make as a real estate agent when you focus on these very basic things. But the focusing on these very basic things goes beyond what you need to do on your own profile. You actually do need to hire a service or subscribe to one yourself or spend a little bit of money on a platform like Bright Local, something.

 

[00:15:42.250] – Jonathan Denwood

It was around the concept of these local directories, which on region, these are like the yellow pages. Nobody uses yellow pages, but they still have a presence. And there’s other directories list services. You got to make sure that the address on these services match up the address that you’re putting. Because what you seem to be suggesting, and based on your experience, is that Google looks at all these different digital resources to determine the legitimacy of you.

 

[00:16:20.810] – Robert Newman

Correct. It’s still citations or naps, which is what Google calls them, because they can’t ever leave anything simple. They must confuse it, always. They must use their scientist brains and go, We’re going to make this as complicated for you to understand as we humanly can, and they do it on purpose. Okay?

 

[00:16:44.150] – Jonathan Denwood

Is We’re having all those PhDs working for you, isn’t it?

 

[00:16:48.620] – Robert Newman

Right. So we’re going to go to a break, and when we come back, we’re going to recover the four things, and I’m going to have a couple of last little tips for people on the name, address, phone number, because believe it or not, this basic stuff is incredibly, incredibly important. I would say being able to verify your business, its location, and information like that is probably 30 to 40 % of your score as it relates to your Google business profile. All right, with no further ado, like where you’ve seen the show, share the show, leave us a comment, message John incessantly, give his number to all… No, I’m just kidding. I’m But seriously, share the show, like the show. We work really hard for you. I’ll be right. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 441 of the Mailright Show, we are talking about the most exciting thing that you will ever hear of in your real estate business, your Google business profile. Though I was over-exaggerating a lot, it is the most exciting It’s an exciting thing that you can talk about, focus on, do for your business that is new.

 

[00:18:03.800] – Robert Newman

It’s still only a couple of years old in terms of how prolific it is. It’s like Google is still making changes dramatically, rapidly as early as this year. Oh, my God! There’s so much going on with Google. They stopped the Infinity scroll, John. They’re changing the way that these local search packs look. There’s so much going on with Google. All of it’s good for real estate agents. Number two How on your list, provide a business category and subcategory. John, why don’t you walk us through that?

 

[00:18:36.640] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s important. You got to select the main category, and then There’s some resources that are studied that say the selection of subcategories is important as well. They do give you a list and selecting some resources say, yes, other resources say it could actually not be beneficial. So it’d be interesting to get your thoughts on that. But selecting the main right category, and I personally, from the research I did, I think it is important to select some subcategories. They got to be the right ones. They got to relate in what you’re actually doing. I think one of the frustrating things is you get this day They give you a list of categories to select. Sometimes I don’t think if you’re a real estate agent, it’s going to be much of a problem. But the services I’m offering, what they The options they give you aren’t always match precisely what you’re doing, if that makes sense. Over to you, Rob.

 

[00:19:53.050] – Robert Newman

All right. We’re I’m going to take up the torture first. So number two and three is provide business categories and subcategories and mention the areas you serve. Ladies and gentlemen, Google business profiles are similar to all things that relate to Google. They are always looking in more than one way to have incontrovertible evidence about what you do. And like every single other thing that Google does for you for free, real estate agents and every other business owner just mercilessely take advantage of this. You look at all these subcategories, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve never done a probate sale in your entire life or a divorce sale in your entire life. What you do is you put down every single subcategory in your business profile because it’s an option. It’s there, and you think to yourself, Oh, my goodness, I could do this if my back was up against a wall. And guess what? All of you, sorry, hate to say this, but you’re polluting the Google ecosystem when you do that. You’re making it harder for Google to understand what it is that you truly do or what your business is or what you specialize in.

 

[00:21:16.140] – Robert Newman

So what Google does to combat everything I just told you is they heavily lean on verification through your website and Google Maps, and your reviews and the sections on your business profile that you are not paying much attention to, most likely. That means that in order to get these categories and subcategories, which is a very straightforward process on your Google business profile, you actually need to back that up with website content, reviews, things being mentioned in order for Google to even recognize the basics. If John was doing a thing for All right. John wanted to say, We build real estate websites and we do real estate marketing, as an example, in Reno, let’s just pretend, because these profiles are actually mostly focused on local searches. Well, he did also have to have landing pages connected off his website, and he’d have to have the two, the website link to the profile, the profile link to the website, so on, so forth. They have to be interconnected, and the landing pages have to be really easy to understand and read. So much so that we as a company have built out a local only product that focuses on just this mechanic because I have discovered that it is absolutely one of the biggest mechanics there is.

 

[00:22:44.120] – Robert Newman

Now, this is very controversial, John, what I’m going to say, because Whitespark and Darren Shah have come out and said that they don’t think this is true. I’ve experienced something else. I’ve experienced something else. I create Google Maps on a site, mostly for For information verification purposes, I’m not saying that standing alone by themselves, they’re a huge ranking factor. I am saying that in connection to a Google business profile, and let’s say that you’re trying to say as a real estate agent that you service a large geography, like all of Fort Bend County and Houston as an example. And we’re looking at that, it’s like, well, okay, we’re I want to say that I believe strongly that as long as you create the maps off your own email address, your Gmail address, so in other words, we create these maps using a client’s Gmail address, then those maps connect into what you do, where you serve, and I see massive correlation in it.

 

[00:23:57.230] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s not that surprising because their whole thing with this whole journey they’ve had, it’s an important part. Wasn’t it Melissa? What was her second name? She went to Yahoo. She was head of Google’s local search, wasn’t she? Melissa.

 

[00:24:16.740] – Robert Newman

Marissa Meyer.

 

[00:24:17.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, and she went off to Yahoo, and that didn’t work out. But this is a big, big importance. They make some really good money from all this, but they’ve They’ve always had, I want to say, problems. They’ve always been working on this, and it’s been around the issues that you’ve outlined, isn’t it? And dealing with those issues, isn’t it?

 

[00:24:43.720] – Robert Newman

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is always tricky and challenging, but you know what? For the average agent, there’s so much room here to actually be dominant. So much room, because most So these are the things I just explained, John, in terms of, are people doing this or not? Are they using anything on their website? Are they creating landing pages and making sure that they connect them to their Google business profile? The answer is no.

 

[00:25:12.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Universally, no. It’s linked to the whole importance of having your own website and not relying on your brokerage or just relying on social media, isn’t it?

 

[00:25:22.900] – Robert Newman

It is. So number four, which is very interesting that John listed this, increase your visibility with eye-catching visuals. That finally seems like you on your own put in something that I’ve been talking about for a while, which is user behavior as it relates to this service. I agree with you with this in a large amount. But what were you thinking when you made this number four on the show notes?

 

[00:25:52.810] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think uploading images to this area, uploading video, Especially if it comes from your mobile device, because in your mobile device, it’s really linked to the other things. It has two benefits, having updated content that appeals to your target audience. It also, if it’s uploaded on your phone, it will be geo-tagged, and Google can read those tags, video and static image And it tells Google that you were actually there where you took the picture or took the video, you uploaded it. So it tells them that it’s pure, they’re not being manipulated. So it has a couple of clear benefits. Agreed.

 

[00:26:52.620] – Robert Newman

All the way across the board. Okay, latitude, longitude, data that connects into location. It It is my strong belief that I put onto almost all my videos that this is a signal that Google is looking at in order to verify your location, especially with location-based professions, of which there are very few that are more relevant than real estate. Real estate is extremely location-focused, and it should be, and Google is trying to make it that way. They’re trying to segment out agents and all of you that are in the business so that you’re not trying to sell a home all over Southern California, that you’re trying to sell it in a handful of cities. It makes it easier for Google to understand. It makes it easier for the consumer to understand. Everybody is looking for these businesses to be more hyper-specific, which in turn you’re seeing roll out into your Google business profile. Last but not least, ladies and gentlemen, the last element on our list, minutes away from when the show should end. John, number 5 that you got on the list, provide consistent and rich content with GMB posts. So Why don’t you talk about that for a second?

 

[00:28:01.380] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, they allow you to do what I call micro posts on their platform. I think if you got some… I was going to say a content post strategy, but That’s a bit higher. If you’re posting on other platforms, I think it’s worthwhile to post on their platform with the same content. Unless you’re investing in an agency like Roberts and they do it for you, I personally don’t think it’s probably worth the effort to write specifically for their platform. I’m not sure it will push it, but you might have a totally different view on this, Rob, so I’ll be interested in that. But it’s definitely worth, in my opinion, if you’re posting content on other platforms and it’s suitable for this platform, you should It’ll be bothered to post that particular content on your GM, BEEB platform as well. It’s not going to do you any harm. It gives the right signal to Google, and it also gives the right signals to your possible clients.

 

[00:29:23.670] – Robert Newman

I’ll throw in my two cents. Here’s what I feel like I’ve figured out. Google My business is… Yeah, you can update it. You should have and you should share content as long as you think it’s relevant to a local audience doing searches on their phone, trying to find your business. There are certain types of contents that real estate agents can put on here that probably wouldn’t be relevant. Some of the content that real estate agents can put on here that are surprisingly relevant are things like listing data. Listing data is really great on a Google business profile because oftentimes when people are looking at the profile, they’re looking for listings. They’re looking on your Google business profile, which has nothing to do with an IDX or any of the other tools that you use. In order to get them onto your Google business profile, you’d probably have to list them manually. But if you already have an Instagram strategy or other strategies where you’re doing basically your content upload package is the same, and then I agree with you 100%, it should on your Google business profile. User behavior is a big signal across all Google tools, full stop.

 

[00:30:36.450] – Robert Newman

People click, stay, read, watch. It’s going to increase your ranking a lot. A lot. When you’re looking at your profiles and you should be following along with what do you think is useful to your audience? What do you think is going to be helpful to them? Here’s a thing that I say constantly in my reviews and my digital content, it’s the who, what, why, when, where of everything. You do, where is the property? How much does it go for? Who’s listing it? Why are they listing it? These are basically the pieces of content that you put on your site. But why Because you’re a real estate agent. Why are people looking at real estate agents? To buy or sell property in 85 to 90% of all cases. For the 5% to 10% that is not, you answer a couple of questions. You vary up the content on your your profile. Every once in a while listing something that might be just very broadly and generally educational about your profession. And that’s what I would do with this whole provide consistent and rich content with GMB posts. As far as content based on other platforms, sure, it just depends on what platforms we’re talking about and how good of a job you’re doing with them.

 

[00:31:55.690] – Robert Newman

If you already use Instagram, Instagram, and Google My are probably the fastest and easiest conversions. You can probably in the same sitting, do Instagram and GMB, and it will take you an extra five minutes if you’re already doing it. It’s so easy, and it’s so easy for your virtual assistant. I think my question, John, would be, why wouldn’t you do it? That’s nutty to me if you’re doing one but not the other. All right. I think we’ve done a good… John, I don’t know.

[00:32:30.300] – Jonathan Denwood

I think the only question I would have to wrap up is, what’s your advice to agents that are working from home and for security, especially the female real estate agent patients that listen to us? They might have some real legitimate concerns about it. Also, Mel, if they’ve got a young family, they don’t want to utilize their home address for legitimate reasons. What’s your advice on this?

[00:33:11.240] – Robert Newman

Well, you’ve got two or three options. None of them are great. Because this violates Google’s rules of service. You’ve got the option to go and find yourself a broker, a legitimate broker that you hang your license with, and you use your broker’s address. That’s number one. It’s perfectly acceptable, and it doesn’t break any rules. Okay, that’s number one. However, some people want to use something other than their broker’s address because Google My Business is location-based. That means that wherever your broker is located, that’s where you rank. There’s no trick around that. It would take you years to build a Google business profile to live 20 miles away from the office you’re listing but rank where you live. That’s the number one challenge that people talk about. You can try to rent a sublet. There are There are some pop-up offices that deal with this specific thing. They allow you to lease a very small section of their office, sometimes as small as a mailbox, but it’s not a PO box place. It’s a legitimate office building. And what they do is for a very small amount of money, they let you lease a space in their office building.

[00:34:19.540] – Robert Newman

I’m not sure if that’s going to get around the new video requirements or not. I have yet to try it, so I don’t know. I wonder if that’s acceptable by Google standards. My guess is that it probably isn’t. Does that mean you shouldn’t try it? It just depends on how extreme your circumstances are, John, in relationship to what you’re talking about, like a physical location, how important it is to you, where you serve versus where you live. If it’s important to your business because I want everybody to understand something. You may have the desire to sell Beverly Hills. You may live in Santa Monica. It’s 30 miles away. You may never want to live or afford Beverly Hills. Google wants you to be something other than a top-ranking sales service person because the truth is that people who live and work in the city are probably slightly more knowledgeable than you, even if you’ve been selling in the town for 30 years. Living there is going to be different. So Google is going always to have a preference for that. So you’ve got to look at that as you develop your strategy and develop solutions.

[00:35:29.500] – Robert Newman

But there is another hack that you could do, too, which depends on where you have your power of attorney with, if you are the very rare case, let’s say, has a power of attorney with somebody, in some small legal circumstances, you can list a business someplace else, legally and legitimately, or someplace else. If that’s you or you can make that happen, you can list whatever address somebody has your power of attorney at. But there are a lot of steps to take to make this happen. But it is legal, which means that it’s legitimate, but you probably will get caught up in Google’s customer service mechanic and then have to explain yourself at some point. That’s what I got.

[00:36:19.850] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, thanks for that. I thought it was a legit question to ask you because I could feel that people listening to this would be screaming out. And thanks for that. I think it’s time to wrap it up, Rob.

[00:36:31.530] – Robert Newman

All right. As usual, everybody, I would like to take a moment to thank my co-host. John is the one who does, as he always says it, the donkey work for the shows. He’s got six different things that he researched for this show. I’m still determining if they will make it into the show notes, but he does a lot of work to make this happen for everybody. He does a tremendous amount of research at times. It depends on the show and He did a lot of research for this one. He has to deal with me. I had to move the show. That doesn’t happen often, but I had to. You don’t usually do that, do you? No.

[00:37:13.860] – Jonathan Denwood

I always try to be flexible with Rob because he has yet to do that often. When he does, there’s a legitimate reason why he does. So John does all those things to make sure that you all get your 30 minutes to an hour’s worth of real estate marketing advice from both of us in our various areas of expertise.

[00:37:44.010] – Robert Newman

We hope it’s useful to you. Again, thank you, John. I very much appreciate you. Why don’t you go ahead and tell everybody with all of that build-up how they could find you, reach you, why they might want to do that, and so on? Yeah, go over to the mel-right.

[00:38:03.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Com. We’ve got the CRM, we’ve got the landing pages, got the email, text messaging, and a few other excellent services, all bundled in an easy-to-use interface. Plus, we build really lovely-looking WordPress website based on our template, which we’re expanding in the next couple of weeks. We will be offering a library of starter websites. Plus, we can semi-customise them or do full custom designs if you wish. So it’s a great platform. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:38:44.110] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, listen, if you’d like to find me, reach out to me, and if you’d like to help me out, InboundR EM has just redesigned our main landing page for all of you. If you go to inboundrem.com and then look, there’s a big button that says Services. We changed the way that that page looked. We’ve published our prices online. We’ve made our case studies easier to find and easier to understand. You can click one button and do a whole bunch of research on pricing and all this different stuff without talking to anybody. If you want to talk to me, we change how that works, too. I would love it if some of you would go check it out. If anybody has any comments, you can leave them in the comment section or leave them on the comment section of the website, all of which usually have robust communication happening and advantages for you if you do me this favor. I will let your comment link be a do-follow if you mention you heard it on the podcast. All right, that’s it. And three of our 5,000 people who listened to this show understood me, John.

[00:39:55.810] – Robert Newman

By the way, I know that. All right. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. John, if you would do us a favor and take us offline.

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