Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Why is it so important for you to get more views on YouTube? Because YouTube is more of a search engine than a social media… That means that when someone searches for your type of content, they’re likely ready and willing to do business!
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right podcast show. We’re on episode number 372. And today, John and I are going to talk about our favorite and oftentimes dialog about the topic, YouTube strategies. And without telling John, I’m going to focus at least a little bit of this conversation on what different types of videos on YouTube can actually accomplish for you because I have been discovering in my recent consultations that that’s widely misunderstood. But before we get into that, we’re going to make sure that all of you beautiful, amazing, glorious people who are tuning into us know who we are. So, Jon, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail hyphen write. Com. We build beautiful semi-to-full custom websites on WordPress. Plus, we got a suite of fantastic digital tools which we can help you get some quality leads with. Back over to you, Rob.
My name is Robert Newman. For those of you that don’t know me, I’m the founder of Inbound rem. I am a long, long-time vet of the real estate marketing industry. I’ve been doing real estate marketing consultation and all sorts of things for 14 years. I’m super excited to get into today’s topic because I’ve been talking to Realtors about the video for probably 11 or 12 years now. When we first started talking about it, to give everybody a little bit of a history lesson, nobody thought that video on YouTube was going to move the needle for real estate. Nobody saw the potential to do any business. And it was through a few really enterprising clients like Christoff2 that they literally created the market for lead generation off YouTube. And it’s been a very long road. John and I have been talking about it for five or six years. And now in 2023, I really feel like we’re starting to watch the strategy become adopted. People are listening and people are doing YouTube videos, which raises the next question. All right, you’re out there, you’re doing video. What are these various videos supposed to do for you?
What are lead-generation videos versus traffic-generation videos, and brand-building videos? Because there are three categories of videos that I usually talk to my clients about. And they’re different. They accomplish different things. So, John, you know that I can pontificate on this subject for hours and days, and I actually do spend hours talking about it every single day. So before we dive into that, was there something that you wanted to like? Did you want to dial me in and get me focused in a certain direction as we launch into the topic, or did you just want me to give my head and let me run with it?
Yeah, just give a quick outline and then you can comment on it. First of all, I think you need to select your niche. What I mean by that is, concentrate on one particular type of YouTube video and get. And as you do more and more of them, you should get better. You will get better. And then when you get to a certain your channel gets known, you can then slightly mix it up with some other type of YouTube format content. But I think initially you want to decide on what show YouTube content you’re going to focus on, rather than trying to do various types of content, if that makes sense, Rob? And secondly, I think the great news is that 95 % of your competition in your region, city, town, or wherever you are, aren’t doing video, will never do video. And if you don’t get into video in 2023, you’re really missing a golden opportunity.
So I would definitely agree with the concept of missing a golden opportunity. So for those of you who don’t know, 80 % of the content that everybody in the US consumed last year was video. Video is the place that we’re going. We’re going to TikTok and Instagram and Reels. And we’ve talked about all those little things individually ad nauseam. I focus my clients efforts on YouTube because with a little bit of extra work, it’s easier for us to get a video found. Video can keep getting found, keep drawing eyeballs in for years, which is not true of Instagram or these other channels. So I focus on long term value and building that up on YouTube. So first of all, in terms of where to post video, I tend to advise, start with YouTube. And then the next thing that I advise is, as John said, what niche do you want to go into? Well, really big luxury agents tend to focus and spend a lot of money on listing videos, and they’re always calling me and talking to me and saying, video doesn’t work. I don’t get any calls. Well, guess what? You’re not going to get any calls off listing videos.
Listing videos there to brand to your client, the person who listed with you, especially on the luxury side. They expect and you should do a very nice video for a property that is in the top two % of the area that you represent. You want to make sure that you’re letting them know that you’re going to get their video out on all the big video platforms so that people who are interested in looking at this beautiful home can. But don’t think you’re going to get any calls off it. They’re very rare. I’m not saying they never happen, but they are very rare. Traffic building videos. These are my favorite kinds of videos to talk about. I also belong to a place called the Real Estate YouTube Mastermind. I noticed that the number one conversation that happens in the 10,000 people in there that share ideas about real estate video and YouTube is they are talking oftentimes about why their videos are not generating calls. Yet they have, let’s call it 300,000 views on their channel. The reason for that is they’re doing top… When you go out and you are trying to research video, all of you listening to this podcast, most likely you’re seeing all these very popular channels, many subscribers.
And what they’re doing is they’re doing the top 10 reasons people relocate to T uson. The 10 things I love to hate about T uson. You better know this before you move to City X. Is all that ringing true for you, John? You’ve seen lots of those videos? Yeah. He’s nodding, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll interpret John for everybody. Those videos, you will see them ad nauseam. T hey’re great interest attaching videos and they get that TikTok market, they get kids watching them, they get adults watching them because you might be able to cleverly string together a very well edited video that shows all the major highlights of an area. On a scale of 1 to 10, the likelihood that somebody is going to call you off one of these videos is about out of two. It’s a very low converting video and I’ll explain why. You’re not really necessarily on these videos. You’re engaging somebody, you’re proving that you’re an ambassador to the area. You might be giving them very good lifestyle information, and a lot of people are interested in that information. But you’re not necessarily looking for a house. You’re not necessarily ready to buy.
You’re not necessarily ready to list. The videos, and nobody has been more surprised by this, Jon, than me. But I’ve discovered that the videos that get some of the most calls of any video that we produced over 10 years of doing case studies with high end and low end agents alike, the videos that seem to get the most calls are neighborhood tour videos where you’re driving around a neighborhood and you’re talking about the inventory in that neighborhood, which number one, clearly identifies that you’re trying to sell that inventory or list that inventory. And number two, paints you as an expert in that person who might be watching that video’s exact area of interest. In other words, I live in Van Nes. If I’ve got video for Insino and Resida, that’s great. But am I going to get a ton of calls for Van Nes? No. And if somebody’s watching from Van Nes, who’s interested in Van Nes’ home and they see Insino and Resida, they’re not going to call me in Van Nes. Yet, if you produce a very specific video, you are branding yourself as a person that really knows the neighborhood. You’re showing somebody that you do business in that neighborhood.
And number three, and here’s the most incredible part. You have a chance to really strut your stuff. Like, if you’ve done a lot of business, if you’ve sold a lot of homes in a particular area, you can talk about the history of selling homes in that area. You can say, I’ve done, over the years, I’ve done about 20 transactions in man eyes, and I’ve noticed that the price point has gone up by 10, 20 %, 30 percentile points, 40 percentile points. So if you bought a home in 19… I moved into my home somewhere 20 years ago and it was worth $3.85. It’s worth about $800,000 or 900,000 today. So I could give that progression to people watching the video in Van Nes specifically, which now paints you as an expert, lets people know that you’re in and doing business in Van Nes. These neighborhood tour videos, John, they don’t get nearly as many calls or views or anything. So actually, I don’t see a ton of them happening online. They’re not the common video, the place that real estate agents go to, they also require a little bit of extra effort. You got to get in your car, you got to put your set up your camera correctly, you got to make sure people can hear you, and then you got to drive around.
That is a little bit of extra effort to produce this particular video, and they don’t get as many views. So people who are unfamiliar with YouTube or video in general are going to go, Why would I produce that video? I’ve seen a few of those. They only have 80 views. And then I saw this guy do one on the city, like the city top 10 reasons to live in Atlanta. And that one had 10,000 views. So why in the world would I produce the one that has 80 views? It doesn’t make any sense when you’re looking at the analytics. But it makes sense when you understand that somebody can watch five or six interest pieces, but they’re going to call off the video, which is you driving around talking about the houses. You with me, Jon?
Yeah, I think you’re making a really excellent point because I think you know and I know it’s linked to principles of SEO that there’s different content that appeals to people on a different stage of their purchasing journey. I think that’s the other factor. I think when it comes to the 10 things about Los Angeles or whatever city, you’re going to get people that might be visiting that town. But also those that are thinking of moving to city, they might be further out on their purchasing journey. Then another type of video, which you’ve just outlined, would appeal to somebody further along that journey, if that’s making sense, Robert.
Yep. The buyer journey, which I oftentimes refer to as intent to the people that are doing business with us, what the intent of the search is that drives somebody into a video in the first place is very important. Saying why live in city name is probably somebody who might be a year or two out and researching an area very casually to see if maybe it’s a place that they might want to move to. Whereas if a person who already has a neighborhood and they’re saying home in neighborhood name or neighborhood name Van Nes or Aliana, Texas, they’re moving deeper down the intent funnel. They now are not just researching a broader area such as Fort Bend, which is the entire county that Aliana is located in. As a matter of fact, Aliana, I think, is located in Richmond. So now you’re two levels down, two levels of research down. I already know I want to live in Richmond. It’s just a matter of which community inside Richmond I want to live in. Now I’m looking for specific information on a specific community. And I think the intent behind that search and that research is much deeper than the broader ones.
You might say there’s 10 times more likelihood that that person is close to or seriously considering buying a home in that area, which makes those 86 visitors probably more relevant to you than the 860 that you had on your broad area video. Now, I’m going to disagree with you slightly though, John, because when you’re creating a YouTube strategy and you say you want to get good at one thing, I don’t necessarily agree with that. If you’re going to make a decision to do video, you could say, I’m going to sit at my desk and do 20 of these and talk about every area. That’s a video type that’s sticking with the niche, and that’s what you and I are talking about. But if you wanted to get both traffic and calls to a new channel, it would make sense to do area interest videos broadly and then the specific videos. I know you said you want to work into that. And I do agree with that. Start someplace, any place. But I would also say the place to start would probably be broad with all the copyable content that’s everywhere, like that you could just see a million different examples on YouTube of the top 10 reasons to live in city name.
Do you follow what I’m saying? Because there’s so many good examples. There’s not as many good examples of neighborhood videos of people driving around and keeping up a good informative stream of information going out for five minutes while they’re driving around. It always surprises me, John, how few agents are equipped to actually just talk straight for five minutes on a single area and know their information. How many homes have sold in this neighborhood in the last 5 to 10 years? What’s the price range? Are there any contingencies or special master plan community fees? The list goes on.
I think I’m influenced about this stuff. Before I chose this subject, I’ve done a bit of a dive about other people on YouTube discussing this topic that are seen as fault leaders in this topic. And one of the videos he was talking to a Canadian broker based in Calgary, who’s come on my radar before. And he does home tours, but they’re around the million. They’re custom builds from new builds from custom builders, and they’re around the million dollar, and they’re a certain style of video and that channel. And I will have in the show notes, folks, I will have a short list of different agents doing different styles of videos. That will give you some encouragement about the different types of videos. I know you’ve got some agent, I forgot the gentleman and brother and sister, one of your clients, he does videos in Austin, is it?
Yes, that would be Houston properties. h Houston Local Guide is what their video is called, their channel together. They have a dual channel together. And then they also have individual channels, each of them, where they go and they produce. They focus in different parts of Texas. And then they each do neighborhood videos and deeper dives. They’ve done very well with it. They’re very, very well with video. I think that the Brett’s sister in her very first year in real estate made like $200,000 or $300,000, mostly using lead generation on video to drive that result.
Another type of video is linked to our concept that we’ve pushed together about becoming the digital Mayor of your city area town. And that’s about… There will be an example in the show notes, folks, of a rater that interviews local business s, and it’s not directly linked to real estate, but he builds goodwill. He gets referrals from these businesses because he’s actually helping this business by promoting them, by interviewing the owners of these businesses. And also these businesses promote his channel, so he gets more traffic to the YouTube channel. So that can be a beneficial way of approaching it. Agreed.
So we’re going to go to our break, ladies and gentlemen. When we come back, we’re going to start to riff a little bit. I’m going to assume that if you’ve done any research on video at all, some of this you’ve heard. But I’m going to drift a little bit deeper into ideas that you may not have heard about video. Video that does work, it works very well for lead generation. There’s a video that I promote consistently that maybe one person out of every 1,000 people doing real estate video is even doing. And they don’t realize how important it is or how much business it can generate them. So we’re going to talk about that when we come back from the break. Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail right. It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no question asked 30 day money back guarantee. So don’t delay, get started today. Go to mail. R ight.
Com. Welcome back from the break, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 372. You are listening to the Mail Right Real Estate Marketing podcast. Me and my co host, Jon, are talking about video, and we’re talking about real estate video and YouTube video specifically. Before the break, I mentioned that I was going to be discussing a video idea that very few people act on, but is a high, high profit driver. So, Jon, I’m going to use you as I oftentimes do as test case. And if I was going to say on my business, inbound rem, which you know that I’ve established 100 % through organic marketing methods. I’ve built it up entirely bootstrapping, no advertising budget, no paid advertising of any kind, even once. So if you had to guess what percentage of my clients had watched a 30 or 40 minute video, either on my company mission or on my about page, how many would you say would you guess?
I have no idea. Sorry, I honestly don’t.
Okay, so the answer is 30 to 40 %. These are 40 minute long videos doing nothing but either talking about myself or what the purpose or mission of my company is. O ftentimes, the deciding factor of that person to call me is based alone on the about video or the bio video. The reason for that, ladies and gentlemen, is I’m a 35 year sales vet and I’ve studied every sales trainer that has written a book, almost like thousands of books, thousands of pieces of knowledge. All of that boiled down into one simple idea. We buy stuff from people that we like. If we get the bonus of having a good value and a mission that goes along with somebody that we like, it becomes an almost tidal wave of momentum for somebody to reach out and connect with you. T hey like your value proposition, they like who you are, and they like what you’re doing. But how do we communicate that to them? Most salespeople and real estate salespeople wait until they’re face to face to try to build that momentum up. They share their mission, their unique selling proposition, and everything else for when they are talking to their client.
But guess what? You’re missing the opportunity to create the momentum for them to reach out to you in the first place. So one of the most important kinds of video, one of the things that really separates my clients who do really incredibly well on video versus ones who don’t, is sharing an about video that really dives deep into who you are as a person, what your history is, and what your mission is with whatever your business is. I’ll give everybody an example. I’ll give you an example, John. One of the most common things that I hear from my clients, once they understand that I am a mission driven dude, is they oftentimes start talking about how upset they get about how poorly people operate inside the real estate business in the area that they work in. This really goes 10 times when you start talking about a market in LA. I’ve had hundreds of my hours consumed by luxury real estate agents telling me how poorly they feel like some of their upper end clients are served because they very well know that they’re about ready to make 60, 80, 100 % of hundred thousand dollars in a single transaction, yet they feel like their competitors are offering very little service in comparison to what they’re about ready to earn.
You with me so far? Yes, I tell you. So their selling proposition is literally, these are the 30 things that I do for my client. I am the one that ushers in the staging crew. I’m at their doorstep setting everything up. I personally watch, manage and monitor all the teams that come in to set these kinds of properties up. Even normal markets, I get out my drone and take aerial shots, take in person shots. I do three different additional types of content to make sure that we post these things in three different places as opposed to one. That is a unique selling proposition and something for you to talk about inside the video that you do. Every time you’ve added a single element of service to your personal sales process, that is something that you would be talking about inside your about video. Why you’re passionate about doing this, you can do what is called a reverse review where you’re basically talking about the things n general, don’t ever name anybody specific, but just in general, what your marketplace is lacking. Another thing that I find oftentimes, John, is newer agents trying to compete against these established agents who, quite frankly, it sounds to me like many of them get lazy.
They have a lock on the market. They’ve been doing it forever, 20 years, word of mouth referral. And so they take the listing, they put a sign out in the front yard, and they send out an email to their existing clients and call it a day. Whereas a newer agent might say, I’ll do all that, plus this, plus that, plus.
I’ll pick the phone. I think it’s a combination of that. And also I think it’s a combination of burnout. That could be it, that.
Could be it, too. That could very well be it. And every single one of these things, ladies and gentlemen, is an opportunity for you to put inside a mission video what you see in terms of a challenge, what you’re doing in terms of addressing and fixing that challenge. If you can express that, figure out a way to articulate that clearly inside of a video, you’ll discover that your results on all the other videos that you produce will be miles ahead of anybody else. I have people call me up who have a million views on their channel, and my client, Brett, who has 60,000 views on his channel is absolutely making a ton more money than them, which is very frustrating for people who are calling me. Why have I spent all this time getting a million views, yet the case study you have on your website is more productive monetarily than my 1 million views? And the simple answer to that is most real estate agents don’t understand what videos they should be producing to get a lead. They don’t understand that there’s a difference, and they don’t understand the following, that along with all those videos, make sure that one of the main intro videos to your channel is explaining who you are, good, bad or indifferent.
Make sure that you give people an opportunity to connect because that is the power of video. We buy stuff from people that we like. That was my point like 10 minutes ago, we buy stuff from people that we like. That’s it. Rush away 30 years of sales knowledge. Would you agree with that, Jon?
Yeah. I think also the great benefit of video is you hear from a lot of people that the problem with a lot of digital lead generation is they always say, These leads, they’re not really leads. They’re low quality. I’m inundated with these internet leads, and they’re not real leads. And I do understand why they say that, but I think it’s also down to some degree a lack of education and knowing what they’re getting themselves involved in. But the beauty of video is that if somebody consumes a lot of your video content, they’re normally, and then they approach you, they’re normally a much higher quality digital lead.
That is definitely the case with our clients. V ideo is not the only strategy that we employ, but it is a strategy. It is what I like to call the close of the digital selling cycle. So you might have somebody read something, you might have somebody listen to something, you might have somebody appreciate some of your pictures. But the thing that’s going to give them the momentum to pick up the phone and call you or register with your site is going to be video that you’ve done, for sure. That’s 100 % the way that most of the internet is working. Kristen Maysure, every single big person that we’ve had on the show that’s breaking the averages in terms of results is using video. Even what companies like Wailo are trying to cycle video into their lead generation process. Travis Tom creates most of his revenue by doing videos that he drops on Facebook. The list of people goes on and on and on. But video is the way that we’re connecting. The close ratio for most of my clients is between 30 % to 50 %. So close ratio is where somebody calls you, and I know you know this, John, but then out of 10 people that call you, how many turn into clients?
So with most lead generation strategies online, that number could be one in 100 or one in 10 is usually incredibly good. Zillow is usually one in 10. So when I’m saying 30 to 50 %, I’m saying 3 to 5 out of 10 %. That’s insane.
Yeah, but especially if they’ve come from a more referral based lead generative system. They’re using what I call the Baffini, or they’re just using friends and family, or they’ve got a local personal referral network. And then they want to increase the business and they go into the digital, they think that a lot of these digital lead generative platforms or ways, that leads going to be like the quality of their personal referral. And this is why they get peeved because you’re dealing with a totally different beast. But I think when we’re talking about video, it’s a bridge between real personal referral and the quality digital lead that you get from other forms of digital marketing.
I definitely agree with everything that you just said. Now, one of the thing about video, because we talked about a lot about video type, let’s just say that you nail this all down. Let’s just say you’re doing three or four different types of video and you’re along that process. There’s one remaining bit about video that I find to be one of the more exciting elements of it. I have most of my video that I’ve recorded on my computer program that I use called Screencast Domatic. I’ve lately started to go through my Screencast Domatic and upload some of my old videos to Instagram. I’ve now managed to acquire, so far, I think maybe 500 to 1,000 new views on old videos that I’ve done in many years past. The total requirement for me is to upload them, tag the video, put the tags on Instagram to get some attention from people, and that’s it. So for the first time in forever, my Instagram channel is growing again in terms of audience. I haven’t really done anything new. I have certainly not created any new content for it. I’ve only leveraged the video that already have. You can do the same thing on LinkedIn, P intrest.
Everybody knows that video is where it’s at. So once you get used to putting everything up on YouTube, assuming that you kept the original video files, you actually have a tool that you can use to propel your business and keep your audiences engaged across every platform, Facebook, everywhere, just by repurposing those videos, which is an excellent task for virtual assistants and assistants if you have one. You just have them go through, give them access to your work computer. They go through it and they just upload those videos to wherever you want them uploaded to. And you just get a whole new series of views on something that you may have done quite a while ago. John’s looking, you’re Oh, okay, you’re listening. I thought I misinterpreted your look. Your raised eyebrow was not, I want to say something. It was you were listening to what I had to say.
I always tell you to look at it.
And then one last thing. So I’m going to give everybody, I’m going to end the call or in the subject with one remaining tip. There is one broad video that I’ve been told over and over again that does generate leads. It is a broad video. It’s the only one that I’ve consistently heard. Market to market seems to generate leads for real estate agents. I don’t personally focus on this video, so I can’t say that definitively. I don’t tell my clients to focus on this video. But I’ve heard that relocating to videos are ones that actually get calls. That’s my hack, my tip as we close down the show, because for everybody listening, I have between 500 to 2,000 calls with real estate agents every single year. I’ve been doing that for 14 years. I am talking to somebody for two hours per call, usually one to two hours. So you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of case study research for me to be able to come on the show and then directly communicate to all of you, Hey, this is something that I think is working. Do you have anything that you want to add, Jon?
No, I think we’ve given some good insight. I think the main thing is listen to this video, listen to some of our other videos, do a bit of dive, listen to some other channels. Like I say, I will have some links in the video notes and the show notes to accompany this podcast and the video version and do a bit of a dive. But do something. Can 2023 actually do some videos? Have a go at it.
Yeah, for sure. Listen, John and I have been saying since we started the show, two, three years ago, video is the place to be at. Every year we go, this is the year, this is the year. Same thing in 2023, this is the year. Couple more years, you’re going to probably miss the train in terms of it still being a bleeding edge tactic that you can still make a lot of money in in most markets because it’s not oversaturated. It’s getting that way. We’re starting to see so much movement in it, so many people making so much money at it. Eventually, all of you listening in whatever market you’re in, even places like Aspen, and Durango, and really lesser known marketplaces, you’re going to still hear about video. So do it. Do it now. That’s our advice in 2023. It’s also, by the way, a real good hedge against lead attrition, which we’ve talked about in other episodes too. So please go through our back catalog. John was the brilliant one who came up with the idea of understanding how lead attrition works, and we talk pretty extensively on that subject. So get involved in some of our old content and figure out what we’re talking about so that you can bulletproof your marketing strategies in 2023 against lead attrition.
All right, thank you for tuning in. John, how would you like people to reach out to you if they’re so inclined?
Yeah, thanks for that, Rob. We’d be doing, we’re looking for some evangelist agents, people that really want to get a result in 2023. And the deal is this, if you’re looking to get your own website, we will build you a nice semi custom solution, a custom homepage, and some of the key landing page. We will do that for free and we will host and support your website for one year for free. And what we want in return is that you utilize it. If you’re happy, you start talking about it and you start promoting it to your fellow agents. If that sounds interesting, go to the mail hyphen write. Com. Book a chat with me. He’s right on the top navigation and we can see if we’re a good fit and we’d love to have that discussion with you. Over to you, Robert.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. If you’d like to reach out or learn more about me, go to inboundrem. Com and click that About button or watch the video on the homepage. Either one will do the trick and let you know who I am because I follow my own advice. So proud of myself. All right, everybody, we really appreciate you tuning in. Check you out next time.
————————————–
The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show
Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman
jonathan@mail-right.com
https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa
————————————–
Robert Newman
InboundREM
https://inboundrem.com
————————————–
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Head Trainer + Co-Founder | Business Video School | We teach real estate agents how to use video in their businesses.
When it comes to real estate, Instagram is one of the best platforms to post photos and videos. It’s also a great way to show off your work, meet new clients, and create opportunities for yourself. In the past, we’ve shown you how to promote your Instagram real estate page with some Instagram marketing tips for real estate businesses.
Nick Niehaus
Head Trainer + Co-Founder | Business Video School | We teach real estate agents how to use video in their businesses.
https://www.bizvideoschool.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-niehaus/
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail Right podcast. We’re incredibly thrilled, excited, and happy to have Nick Nyhouse, who has a long track record of being an entrepreneur and founder of a lot of things. Currently, he’s head trainer. Actually, Nick, let me do this. You have a pretty robust profile, so instead of me trying to introduce you and list off all of the things that you’ve done or that you’re known for, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience, anybody that might not know you.
Sure. Yeah. I’m Nick Niehaus I’ve been in the, I would say, marketing space basically since I was a freshman in college, so almost 15 or so years now. I can kind of figure out how old I am based on that if you want to, but my background, I’ve been self-employed pretty much the whole time. I invented a product called the Case. Cooley. Keeps a case of beer cold for 10 hours out of ice. That was a lot of fun. I did that for a few years, but my primary focus has been video. So really, for the past seven years or so, I’ve been making videos. Making videos, and other people teaching people how to make videos. So for about three years now, I’ve been running we started a company called Business Video School. Not on purpose, in alignment with when the pandemic started, but it kind of worked out that way. So we pretty much launched right as everything got shut down, which was kind of good timing because it’s an online school. People were able to dive in right from the start. And, yeah, I worked with a couple of thousand real estate agents over the past three years or so, teaching them how to use video, so all kinds of stuff.
So I’m always happy to talk about video, whatever vein or topic you want to go on there.
Okay, cool. Well, I’ve got my pugnacious partner in crime for those that you don’t know him and you should. Boy, oh, boy, should you ever. John, just for the people that might not know you, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience?
Thank you so much, Robert, for that introduction. I’m the joint found of Mail Right mailhytheonright.com. We build beautiful websites and WordPress. Plus we got a number of great marketing widget add-ons to help you get digital leads through your website, and it’s just a great product. Back. Over to you, Robert.
And I’m Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound REM. I made my bones in the real estate marketing business by being known for real estate SEO. But I’ve expanded. I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve actually found a couple of businesses in this space. I sit on the board of advisors for a couple of digital back-ends, prop, tech, technology companies, and a whole bunch of stuff. Go, look at me@inboundrem.com and look at my about page. And you’ll get any story that you want from me. But today we’re going to talk to Nick, and I did the rare thing. Where do you want to hear a funny story, Nick?
Sure.
Okay. There’s a reason this show was created and founded by Jonathan.
It’s his show. Really?
Well, it’s our show now, but it was originally his show. It was his show 100%. And then we had this experience where he got on with a guest and he tried to pronounce their last name, and they just got really upset at him. And this is about a year and a half ago, and he’s just like, that’s it, Robert. You’re doing the hosting. And now I just massacred your last name. I’m so sorry. It’s nehouse. And I said, Nighhouse.
I almost consider that an acceptable alternative for how often that’s what I hear. So it’s not a big deal at all. I need to start putting since it’s the word knee and the word house, which are both very obvious English words, I should just spell it that way, you know what I mean? That would make it a lot more straightforward, obviously.
Perfect. Well, today, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to talk about a subject that’s really fun and it’s also really catching a lot of buzzwords lately, and that’s Reels. We’re going to talk specifically about Instagram Reels, but honestly, video content can really be repurposed for any place that hosts Reels, which is most services these days. Facebook does reels. Instagram does reels. A lot of people do Reels. YouTube does reels. Everybody’s getting into the short little clip business because everybody’s trying to compete against the phenomenon that is TikTok, and not very well, I might add. But be that as it may, Nick, while I would consider myself relatively adept at YouTube specifically, and I certainly am adept at the realm of storytelling, I am not adept at taking a long vision and turning it into a 32nd reel. So we’re going to lean on you pretty heavily, I feel like, in terms of this show, this particular subject. So if I want to do Reels for business and let’s say I’m a Real tour, would you immediately have any suggestions about how one might approach researching what kind of reel you want to do?
Yeah, that’s a great question. So when you’re first getting started with Reals, I guess the first thing I would suggest is it should not be the first place you start with video in general. So I think that this is an area that a lot of people get wrong, where they go straight to social media, they go straight to short form content. And I personally think that might be the hardest kind of video there is to make. I think people often look at, like, live video. It’s harder. And I’m like, well, you just go live and just talk whatever comes up off the cuff. That seems easier than trying to make, like you said, make that whole thing in a 20 seconds long, right? So I think you got to keep that in mind.
Right?
So if you don’t have any experience with video at all, you might want to start somewhere else for a little while first. Get some reps in, get comfortable and that’s going to help you learn how to be concise. And I think that’s really the first thing you got to remember with Real, that’s one thing you got to have some experience. Number two then is who are you trying to attract? You got to know who the audience is and one of the things that’s different about short form content versus a lot of other kinds of content is, and this is how TikTok works, is that it’s not necessarily that people are following you, right? Most social media is about you’ve got followers, you’re making content for them. The short form stuff is more about you’re making content for the people that follow those topics. Right? So it’s kind of more akin to like a TV channel sort of attitude as opposed to active followers. So when it comes to the real, that’s where you start. So who are you trying to attract? What is it that they care about? So if it’s a Realtor, I’m going to focus on their community.
Can I highlight things in town? Because that means I’m going to attract people who live in my area and as a real estate agent I need people who live in my area obviously. And then you can stop there if you want. You could just sort of make things about stuff that’s going on in town. I like to go a step further and ask how further can I narrow that audience? Are they young families? Are they people that care about sports? What do I know about my ideal customer? And try to come up with really I try to aim for three to five content pillars, three to five topics that you can come back to like clockwork. Right? So I’m talking about the same few things, not too many. In fact kind of less is better in most cases and then you got to just figure out what can you talk about in under 20 seconds? And obviously reels can be longer than that. But when you’re first getting started, anything you think is going to take 20 is probably going to take 40 or 50, you know. So you almost have to like aim for extremely short in order to get something that’s even reasonably short.
Right? So I think starting out I would, I would really dial into that and I think that I know that’s not necessarily easy. So that’s why again, I don’t necessarily say start first with reals, I would start with other kinds of video so that the video skills are out of the way. You kind of feel comfortable making something and then you can be targeted to that audience. And I think that to me, if you do that part, the number of views, all that kind of stuff is less important because you’re sort of guaranteeing you’re talking to people who are going to be a good fit for your business. And then, hey, if I get 500 views on a Real that was well targeted, that’s 500 people that could potentially hire me. That’s what I’m really looking for. I don’t care about going viral at that point. Right. So, yeah, just a couple of thoughts on kind of where to get started. Does that make any sense? Hopefully?
Well, certainly, but I want to let John has been masterminding these subjects lately, and I feel like he oftentimes has, like, a background action or thought in his head about how he wants these conversations to go. So, John, why don’t you jump in here on the Real conversation?
I’m sorry to blow that bubble. There’s very little that goes through my head, actually. Thank you for those kind words, Rob. I think when it comes to Instagram, Reals and how they’ve been trying to utilize Reals as a kind of competitor to TikTok has caused a bit of controversialism because a lot of people say, well, we come to Instagram and Reals doesn’t really fit in. I don’t know what your stance on that is. But secondly, through your course, you’ve trained a lot of real estate agents. Are there anybody that is in that’s come on your radar lately that you think have been utilized in these short it’s called short videos. I think that’s a better because they’re on YouTube, they’re on Instagram, they’re on TikTok. Are there any of your students or anybody that’s come on your radar that’s in your memory bank recently that you think has been doing a really good job about utilizing that short video? And maybe you could point out why you think they’re doing a good job.
I love that question.
Yeah, there’s kind of two questions there. I’ll start with the first half and then come back to the examples. I think. First of all, yeah, I think one of the problems that Instagram and Meta, which owns Instagram, are having right now is well, and this is my opinion, but it’s basically that they sort of screwed up social media. Social media is supposed to be, you know, people in real life. You connect to them through these platforms, and then you can build and maintain that relationship sort of through this digital medium. And obviously the pandemic made it even easier just to immediately connect with somebody on social media. And maybe you never met them in person.
Right.
And then you can still build that whole relationship there. So traditionally, that’s how we see social media. Right. Well, these platforms, they just have messed with it so much. We’re going to click for a while. Facebook started pushing news, and they started pushing group posts. It was stuff that kind of came before TikTok even, that started to turn people off. I said, Well, I’m here to talk to my friends and family. Like, what is all this other junk? Well, that’s kind of the backstory to that. Then you have TikTok starts to emerge, and TikTok is we would call this more of like a content discovery platform. It’s not as much about the people you follow. It’s not as much about having that relationship. I mean, you still build the relationship, still very much a parasocial relationship, but it’s much more akin to, like, TV channels. It’s much more like YouTube, right? And you hear people talk about YouTube as a social media, and it never made sense to me because they’re literally called channels. It’s like television, right? I think that’s where Instagram really messed up. They just kind of kept copying because that’s what Meta knows how to do, is copy other companies, right?
So they said, oh, here’s TikTok, and we got to copy this. And that’s what everybody that’s what the backlash was ultimately kind of about, right? It’s this idea of, well, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I want to connect with specific people. I want to see the pictures from my friends lives. And instead, you’re showing me random videos from random creators that might be engaging, might be interesting, might be exciting, but they’re not what I asked for. You know what I mean? That was the problem. I think that’s why you see Instagram kind of circle back. They’re deemphasizing video. Right? Now they’re leaning more into photos again. But it’s not about video versus photo. It’s more about, I want to see the people I chose to follow. Right. And that’s worth understanding, right? Because that means that currently these strategies work very similarly because Instagram copied TikTok. So if you take a TikTok strategy and you apply it to Instagram, it still works pretty well. Right. But I think we’re going to start to see that change because I think Instagram is pivoting back in this direction of you’re going to see reels from the people you follow.
At least that’s what they’re kind of saying, right? That’s kind of where we’re at there, right. So that being said to sort of answer that second question of who’s doing well with this, what I’ve seen is that there are several examples of people who are kind of doing this stuff well. And what’s interesting about it is they’re just influencers. It’s not like we talk about real estate and then we have these individuals. For instance, like Zach Faust, zack spouse has 1.5 million TikTok followers. At this point. He’s a real estate agent, and he’s just basically he’s a super animated guy. So, like, when he talks and obviously leans into it, but it’s just engaging. Right. And then he emphasizes it, but he’ll do this thing where he’ll zoom in and out on his face as he’s telling a story. And a lot of his videos are like, he’s just sitting in a car yelling. Basically he’s just telling the story. He’s so impassioned. And I’m like, if most other people told the same story, I probably wouldn’t watch that video, right? Because sometimes they’re really good stories, sometimes they’re just sort of average. But it’s how he tells it, right?
So that would be kind of one example. And I think that’s what in terms of a strategy, you have to look for that’s. What you have to remember is that this at this point, if you want to go in this direction of these short form videos, it’s less about the relationship you already have. It’s less about just checking in with people who already know you, which is what you would do on Facebook or Instagram. And it does work. And the truth is I think that’s better for most agents. I don’t think most agents need to have a very large audience. They need a small audience, a few hundred people, maybe a couple of thousand in their town that want to have a relationship with them and they need to maintain those versus the short form stuff is amazing for going viral. That’s kind of what it’s built for. It’s built for this idea of like if you make something that’s just really engaging, that’s really funny, that just gets somebody glued. It’s why things like the number of times it gets replayed, that’s an important stat on these short form platforms. Because they want to see content that keeps people even re watching the same thing a couple of times.
That is what works there, right? For the agents that it’s a little bit of a catch 22 in some ways because I feel like if you go all in on that, you might end up with a million followers, but most of those followers are not going to be in your area, right. They’re not going to be people that can do business with you. And so you’ve also seen some of that where you’ve got certain individuals that are in cities that are just exciting places to be, right? Like if there’s certain agents who are in, for instance, Las Vegas and they have hundreds of thousands of followers because Las Vegas is just full of really cool, interesting stuff to look at, right? So they go make these little community highlight videos, but they’re talking about stuff that doesn’t exist in most cities, right, versus you go to somebody who’s based in like I live in St. Louis, Missouri, right? There are some exciting things to talk about here, but we don’t tend to have as many of those type of influencers in St. Louis, right? So you do have to kind of consider where you are and then sort of match what you do to that.
If you think about it that way, you can find a strategy that does cater to your area. And I would actually say for a lot of agents, I think having a couple of thousand followers but they’re all in my town is more useful than having several hundred thousand and most of them can never hire me, right? Because I might get a lot of engagement. But let’s say I put a video on, I get 200 comments on it. Now I got to go back through and look at all those and I don’t know how many of those people could actually hire me versus if I have a smaller audience that’s more targeted, I know they’re all worth talking to.
So I think before we go back to Rob, what I think you’re trying to point out, and thank you. It’s been really insightful of what you’ve just outlined, but I think what you’re trying to say is some of these metrics when it comes to a real estate agent, could be a bit vanity metrics where the real business of really getting clients is a smaller but a more engaged audience.
100%. Yeah, I think we’ve always dealt with vanity metrics and social media but I think short form video has made that problem worse. Also like TikTok, for instance, a view which they actually call a play just means the video started moving at all. So on Facebook it’s 3 seconds. So if you get a view, you know that person spent at least 3 seconds with you. YouTube it’s 30 though, right? So if you can’t really compare those together and then you got short form like TikTok where it’s literally zero if it starts to show up at all accounts, I just really warn people about it’s. Great, you want to have lots of views, that’s all really exciting stuff but they don’t mean the same thing. I talk a lot about the idea of being active versus impactful. So is the thing you’re doing making you feel busy or is it actually accomplishing something for your business? And social media? And especially these video tools can be really impactful but they can also be a way to feel active. And I think a lot of times there’s so much psychological blockage when it comes to making video because they’re so nervous, they’re so uncomfortable with it, that you make one of these videos is 20 seconds long, you put it out and you get this huge sense of relief because you just did the video thing, right?
And that’s certainly true and by all means the first couple of videos you make you’re going to go through that. But what are you getting from it, right? Are you tracking those results? Are you tracking? How many people are actually reaching out to you about real estate? Or are you getting conversations that lead to business conversations? Or are you just getting comments that make you feel good because you got ten comments on your video. And this is obviously stuff that has become kind of a personal pet peeve of mine because I see people talking about engagement rates and all that stuff all the time. So I get it. I mean, it’s hard not to think about, but it’s very important, especially when you’re talking about social media, that you’re measuring the right things.
Okay, so, Nick, on that note, we’re going to take a break. We’re going to go to for our audience, it’s going to be a brief little break here. And for us, it’s going to be a few seconds, but when we come back, I’m going to share some thoughts about where I feel real are for real estate. John, I’m going to ask you to do the same, and then Nick can weigh in at the end. So without any further ado actually, you know what? Before we go to break, Nick, we’re going to do this twice. If somebody did want to reach out or do a little bit of research on you, I think that you’re savvy you’re talking about a lot of the same hot points that I talk about when it comes to video. So if somebody wanted to watch your videos and learn from you, where are they going to go?
Well, the two best places to go would be our YouTube channel. That’s going to be for our business. So you just want to look for business video school. I put a lot of our even full 1 hour trainings on there for free. And then, honestly, it’s a little old school, but I still like connecting with people on Facebook. So if you just look me up on looking for Nick Nihaus on Facebook, it’s Nickniehaus. And obviously you’re looking for the one that the guy who works in business video school. So just make sure you find that there are a couple of nickname houses out there I’ve found without many. So that’s probably the best way to find me.
Cool. All right, so, ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned. We will be right back. John and I will be giving you our contact information at the end of this podcast session. If you have seen us on any platform at all, that allows for ratings, reviews, or comments and you’ve appreciated the show, which I’ve been getting more and more comments lately, John, that people have been I think three people have mentioned the podcast so far this month to me, which is crazy. So do us a favor. Leave us comments on those platforms. It helps us a lot. All right, thank you so much. We’ll be right back.
Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail, right? It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no question asked 30 day money back guarantee. So don’t delay. Get started today. Go to mailwrite.com.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the podcast Mail Wright podcast. We are doing an interview with Nick Neehouse and we are talking about video. We’ve gone deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole for reels. And here is how I view reels. So I don’t do reels at all, ever. Okay? I experimented with reels when I first started my Instagram channel and I got thousands of views on them. And then because I was properly tagging and I’ve got about 3000 viewers and then I started getting leads. Everybody hold the phone, it sounds so exciting, right? But everybody was turning into a lead based on a 1 minute video. And that one minute’s worth of information was not nearly enough to take that person to the place I like them to be before they talk to me. It wasn’t even close to it. I was getting random questions like, do you own a marketing company? What kind of marketing do you do? I was like, well, here’s my website, go there. I don’t want to talk to any of you. So I stopped doing reels. I think though, that if I had an existing, strongly focused audience, I would do reels for them if I thought that there was a purpose.
I’ve watched Tom Ferry do reels. I’ve watched a few other people that I follow do Reals. And if you’re doing a very quick little inspirational thing to a very select, targeted group of people and you’re intending it as a value add to an existing audience, I love reels for that purpose. Give me 1 minute of like, let’s go and I’m going to be like, awesome. As long as that’s the only purpose you’re not really trying to give. You’re just trying to say, hey, it’s another day. It can be harder, it can be great, and you just make it whichever way you want it to go. But something like that. Like I watched Tom Robbins reels, there’s a few people cyguru. I watch the reels because they’re little injections of a message I’m already familiar with. That’s my opinion on real. So if you’re a real estate person and you have a huge audience and you’ve worked really hard on it, maybe save yourself some content production time and just do a little quick reel to keep that audience engaged with your channel. Jonathan?
Yeah, thank you. I agree with you there. Robert, what’s coming to mind? And I wonder if Nick agrees. If you’ve got a Pacific property and you want to promote it quickly to get it out there, that’s one way. I think real, especially if you’ve built up this tight knit social media that you were talking before a break. Nick, where you’ve got like 1000, 2000 people on Instagram or Facebook following you. If you’re utilizing reels on Instagram or Facebook, this short form video about Pacific property, I could see it being quite useful. What do you think, Nick?
Yeah, I agree with that. Sometimes the stuff a lot. This is about testing and just seeing what people respond to it. Blows my mind sometimes, the kind of house walk through videos that will get 100,000 views on these short form platforms because it’s nothing special, right? Somebody just kind of walks in each room, sticks their phone camera in it, and they speed it up so it goes through in 30, 40 seconds. But that’s the kind of stuff that works really well, right? So, yes, I think the short videos highlighting properties, I think that you need to have more than that. You need to be doing other types of stuff, too. But yes, if you have an audience and you can put something in front of them like that, realtors have that kind of nice built in advantage that people are naturally curious about what the inside of other people’s houses look like. Right? So you just lean into that, give them what they want, and they’ll respond well to it. And I do think back to what Rob was saying. I love that understanding of these short form videos, which, the way I would kind of come back to comment on that, is just that idea of whatever your thought is, what is the short but entertaining version of it, right?
Because you’re right, you’re not going to teach much. You’re not going to provide a ton of value in 20 seconds. Right? So whatever that highlight is, that little sound bite that is out of context but is still interesting to hear, that is, I think, a great sort of way of explaining what makes a good short form video, for sure.
Awesome. I’m going to move the target a little bit here, and I’m going to pull it back a bit and ask you some, like, higher level generalized questions. So John and I talk about video incessantly. We talk about it all the goddamn time. And finally, after I’ve been talking to Realtors about video for ten years, and for the first eight, I got ignored, no joke. Last couple of years, especially since the Pandemic hit, people have started to look at it with, like, a much higher degree of intent. And I have watched certain people come out of nowhere and make massive incomes from themselves, all using video as the primary strategy, the primary driver of said strategy. But with emerging adoption comes a need for more thought out strategies. The way that most of these people are making it in real estate. Nick, whether I don’t know if you’re familiar or not, but they’re doing like, top ten reasons to move to Dallas. Top ten reasons to live in Dallas. What I hate about Dallas, honestly, every single Realtor in the US is following the same template right now. They’re all making the same kind of content, whatever market they’re in.
All right? I do not advise my clients to do that. We do different content. But I’m curious, you’re a video expert. You understand that the challenges I’ve painted it. So what would you be telling you? Get a. Real estate person who’s called you? I’ve been doing video, it stopped working. It’s not working as well. Nine other people are doing the same videos in the same market. Nick. What do I do?
Well, yeah, it’s a great question. I think that the reality is right now, if you were an early mover, you’re probably not going to lose your advantage maybe ever, right? So you don’t really get those kinds of calls because that person is already better at video, right? They’re a better performer, they’re more compelling on camera, they understand lighting and audio and they’re just making a better video that’s easier to watch, which so good for that person, right? So that’s why this is the issue. A lot of agents, they see that person, they go, oh, they’re making these top ten list videos, I’ll make the same thing. And then they don’t get the same results, right? They’re not as good on camera, they don’t have the experience, et cetera. So it’s all about niching down. I think that in my sense, anything you get more experienced with, there’s sort of this theory that the more of an expert you become as something, the simpler it becomes in your mind because all the steps sort of blend together into just a few steps. And with this video stuff and with social media, it’s kind of for me, started to feel that way, where it’s like it’s just marketing fundamentals, right?
So a lot of people, they skip the marketing fundamentals. They don’t think about those questions that you should ask before you start any marketing effort. And so one thing that’s always confused me about those kinds of approaches is it seems like all the realtors with these YouTube channels are marketing to people who are transplanting to their city. Because I’m not going to search for a video of like, what are the top ten things, what’s traffic like in the city I already live in? Like I already know what that’s like, right, or the reasons to move to my city. Like I’m here, I’m just moving from one house to another. So that to me, I think is the next stage we’re going to start to see is people thinking first, okay, I’m here, I’m in this area. What’s the group of people in this area that I want to do business with and they’re not going to search for that kind of stuff. I mean, YouTube is a search engine. TikTok is a search engine. In fact, people under the age of 25 search more on TikTok than they do on Google in some cases now.
So that’s what you want to start with, right? So it’s so narrow further down. You’ve probably seen this stuff, right? So I would get into like, who’s the customer, who’s the avatar? I mean, this is the work that people want to skip because they want to just ask what the tactic or strategy is and implement it. But if you do the work once, you tend to have an advantage for years to come. So who’s that person? If I’m going to make a video about something in my town, what are the parts of what’s going in my town that that person cares about? So it’s not about moving to St. Louis now. It’s about what do I do? What’s something coming up this weekend that young families would be interested in? If that’s my target audience, right? How do I talk about those topics over and over again? And you should start to see everybody sort of develop their own strategy. So YouTube, and I think TikTok as well, was built on sort of a television model. They call them channels on YouTube. Well, what differentiates different channels on TV, right? They tend to have kind of themes.
You got news channels, you got ones that will show a bunch of reality TV shows, ones that are all about nature, et cetera, with social media, where this isn’t social media. Now we’re talking about these sort of content discovery platforms. It’s even more niche. Right? So how can you get into those smaller niches that people are probably searching for? So if you combine understanding your ideal client with the kinds of search terms they look for, which is that’s just fundamental SEO stuff, that’s where you’re going to find the gold moving forward, I would think.
Agreed. And I would approach it much the same way, and I will just add a little to denim. You covered all that territory so well for us, Nick. I oftentimes have to throw in a little thought at the end. I don’t with you. I will say this. You want to use tools. The two tools that I use. The three tools that I use. No, the four tools that I use. So here’s my tools. I use Neil Patel’s ubersuggest. I use a reps for YouTube searches, and I use vidIQ for only YouTube. I think that Jonathan uses YouTube, buddy. But either way, you can use something for keyword research on YouTube specifically. And if you got a larger budget and you happen to be or some of you who are listening are CMOS marketing guys, operations guys for real estate brokerages, get them to get you an arrest account is about $99 a month. But you can search all the platforms all at once for keyword research. Everybody. Amazon, everybody.
I think the other thing, Rob, is, Nick, last week we had an internal show. We were talking about Google Local Guides and becoming a contributor. I think video for your blog content, for your website, for your content that you’re providing for Google. Using video is a great way of showing Google you got a lot more value to your audience. And I think a lot of people would devalue, but I think people I just sensed it. I don’t know if you agree, Rob, that people are realizing having your own website and utilizing these platforms to drive people to your website is the best long term way to go. Rather than just utilizing these platforms as a way of generating metrics that to some extent a vanity metrics. What do you reckon, Rob?
I think that most of real estate is vanity metrics, especially if we start to say, what are you looking at? What are you trying to do? That’s where my conversation happens much more frequently. A lot of people are trying YouTube, they’re trying video, and they’re getting it wrong. Like, bit deeply wrong. They’re doing commercials, or they’re trying to be too entertaining. It’s funny because some of the most successful agents I do like leads for actual leads. People calling them is still just a neighborhood where you get in a car, you drive through the neighborhood, and you do the who, what, when, where, why of that neighborhood where you just say, this is how many houses that were sold here last year? I’ve been selling houses here for ten years. A house like that used to go for 10,000. Now it goes for 50,000. I like the fact that there’s a Costco over here and a school over here. I’ve never been to the school, but I’ve heard that the kids that go there tend to be pretty happy and you’re just driving around. Believe it or not, that video still gets more leads than oftentimes.
Like a video that has 50,000 views, it talks about the ten top reasons, like you might want to live in Dallas. That’s not very specific to call me for about a house that is really come to my channel, become a follower of me. I am, generally speaking, like a tourist guide. I don’t think you really want to do that. If you wanted to do, every once in a while, drop a video that you know you’re aiming at a big audience so that you can increase your total user base into a channel. Sure. But I would personally ground that channel foundationally with really valuable, specific, deeply knowledgeable real estate information. That’s how I would do it. That’s how I’ve seen my clients be successful. My guy Brett has 60,000 views and makes about half as much as another channel in the same area that has 1.6 million views. Okay, that’s crazy numbers. And he’s not doing all the false calls, all the false stars as everybody else, because his channel is very goddamn specific. And for those of you who are doing the podcast, nick is just sitting here nodding. So I think that I’m used to.
Being on video, so I just not. But, yeah, they’re hearing us. They can’t hear me nod.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve kind of come to the end of our time. We gave everybody some bonus content. Usually we asked Nick, but we’re actually well over the time that we normally schedule. So we accidentally had you deliver a little bit of bonus content for us. That last little segment that wasn’t based on Instagram is probably how we’re going to divide this up and say that it was bonus content. But this is one more chance for people who might want to know you follow, you get to understand what kind of value you add. Keep in mind, our audience is 100% realtors or real estate professionals. That’s all we target this show at. And I know from personal experience we get a lot of brokers and people like that who listen to the show. So how would you like those people to reach out to you if they were interested in researching it?
Yeah. So this time I’ll give you my website, bizvideoschool.com. So www.bizvideoschool.com, that you’re going to be able to get a hold of us. There contact info, lots of guides, free stuff you can download and then really again, it’s Facebook. I mean, I know that’s for how old I am, that’s not really popular on my friends aren’t on Facebook, but most of our customers are. So that’s where I tend to spend a lot of time. So you find me, Nick Niehaus, on Facebook. N-I-E-H-A-U-S. That is a great place to connect and I accept all my friend requests unless they are suspiciously weird. So as long as you don’t have a weird sound and account, I will accept your friend request and be happy to connect to the connect there.
Awesome. So John, same question for you, but why don’t you tell people what you’ve got going on? I know that you’ve been looking for some beta testers. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that as we wrap up.
Yeah, we’re looking for mail. Right champions. If you become a male right champion, you’ll get a beautiful WordPress website free for one year and hosted and supported, and the only thing we ask you is that you utilize the platform and you have strong connections in your local community and your local real estate association and you become hopefully a real champion. If you’re not happy with us after the year, we will move your website somewhere else and you won’t lose it. It’s a great offer and we’ve had quite a bit of interest and we have a chat with me or Adam and we see if we are a good fit and then we get you on board. Back. Over to you, Robert. Beautiful.
If anybody would like to do some research for me, about me or at the company that I founded or anything else you want to start that inboundrem.com and either watch the video on the homepage or watch my about video. There’s two separate videos that will both do a deep dive into who I am, what the mission is, what the missions are that I have, and how you can engage either me or in one of my missions, if you so choose. So, having said that, everybody, ladies and gentlemen, Nick Jonathan. Listen I so very deeply appreciate that. Everybody that shares time with me has been a lot of fun. Nick, you’re deeply knowledgeable. If anybody is looking for some information on video and maybe some kind of coach or material, I’m going to give it my stamp of approval. Jonathan’s offer is amazing. For those of you who might be looking to make a change but don’t have a big budget, a beta test best offer is incredible. So take him up on it. Call him. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much, guys. Thank you so much. We’ll catch you the next time.
————————————–
The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show
Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman
jonathan@mail-right.com
https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa
————————————–
Robert Newman
InboundREM
https://inboundrem.com
————————————–
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
What are Google Local Guides? Well, anyone with or without a Google account can sign up, become a local guide, help visitors navigate your local neighborhood and experience well-hidden secrets that only a resident would know. But is there a hidden danger to businesses? This is a great opportunity for real estate agents to become what we call the “local digital mayor ” of your city, town, and region.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 370 of the Mailwrite podcast. John has given me an extra special surprise treat today, which hopefully you all will enjoy as well. Today we are going to talk about Google Local Guides and how you can work that into your real estate marketing strategy. It’s something we’ve never spoken of before. I’ve seen a couple of people selling courses on the subject at this point, and I was telling John I was actually part of the beta on this service. I go all the way back. I love the Local Guides feature, and I can easily extrapolate how I might see some value for you, the real estate agent. But before we dive deep, deep, deep down the Google rabbit hole today, john, for all those people that may not know who you are, will you do me a favor and introduce yourself to our audience?
Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mail Hyphen. Right. We build beautiful websites on WordPress, which you own, you don’t lease, and then we provide a suite of digital add-on services to get you more quality leads. Back. Over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. So, for those of you who may not know, there is this cool little feature that you’ve got that everybody who’s got a Gmail account has that suggests that once you’ve hit a restaurant or you’ve gone out, like, if you’re using Google Maps to get places, google Maps will say, hey, do you want to review this place you just visited? And most people don’t even notice it or say no. But what should happen if you should say yes? Well, behind the scenes. John, do you remember when Google was doing something with a feature called Google Authors?
It does trigger something in my memory banks, but my memory banks are getting a bit old, but it does. But like a lot of Google products and services, they come and go, do they not?
They do. But here’s a difference between this and every other service. So Google did something cool called Google local author profiles. And what that was is that they attached value to the content that you were producing under your name, using your Gmail and user behavior as metrics of how valuable the stuff was that you were posting. They mothballed it because it was connected strictly to Google Plus, which is a service they also mothballed a few years later. But guess what? Just because they mothballed it doesn’t mean that they actually got rid of it. Oftentimes with Google, it does mean that they’re really going to mothball, or they get rid of it like Google Plus is gone, never to come back. But the pieces of the functionality that they liked, they kept. And they told us at the time, we are not done with Google Author Profile. For the moment, we are stopping collecting signals, but we intend to reintegrate the feature in the future. That was it. Total announcement done? Well, they’re using Google Author in the background of their local services programming. What that means is that they’re paying attention to not only what you post, but what the quality of those posts is.
And they’re starting to measure how much value that you’re providing to your local audience. And when you provide a relatively high amount of value, every single time that you drop a review as a local services guide on any profile anywhere in the Google Ecosphere, you come up number one inside the reviews. Meaning that it’s pretty easy, if you know what you’re doing, to get a few hundred thousand people to be introduced to you personally. It is through the local services guide feature. But not only that, check out this bomb diggity bomb piece of information. I strongly believe that Google is starting to once again collect data and understand who their valuable local service commentators are. And I would expect them to mix those signals into your Google My Business profile. I do not think they’ve done that yet, but I got three years out ahead of this because I looked at it and said, god, it would make a lot of sense if they went back to the Google Author profile on what their new Google Plus business service is, which is Google My Business. And God, if they follow, if they’re true to their history, they’re going to reactivate the stuff that they liked on Google Plus all here on Google My Business.
And I think that’s exactly what they’re doing. John, you came up with this subject. I didn’t tee it up to you. You decided you wanted to talk about it. Tell the audience, if you would, how did this get on your radar?
Well, I was looking at some videos on the subject, and it kind of linked into I think two of the biggest trends in 2022 were that we were trying to communicate with people as one video, utilizing a lot more video. I think we’ve hammered away at that, and I think the other thing that we kind of regularly hammered away at was you should become what we I think we jointly I don’t know which one of us came up with the term, but I think we both liked it. As a real estate agent, you should be trying to become the digital mayor of your town city area region. Right. The go-to person. Well, this seems very a gorilla marketing technique that won’t take up too much time. You can do it on your phone when you’re moving around, it gives you more exposure. And it’s linked into this concept of the digital mirror that we have talked about. And the final thing I’ve got a question. I don’t think they’re doing this entirely for what I’m going to ask you. I think at best, it’s only a small percentage because they have had to ongoing I don’t have to classify this.
I wouldn’t say problem but it’s flared up with Yelp. I think Yelp has either attempted to sue Google or they’ve had a rocky relationship, haven’t they? Yet? An ongoing one. And it does seem to me, and I don’t be interested to have your faults. It does seem Google this is a kind of attempt to encroach or whatever terminology that you want to use on what Yelp the same time.
Get out of my head, dude. You literally like nobody’s going to believe this. So John’s talking about this. I did a video yesterday, and I swear John and I did not compare notes. And the title of my video is The Death of Yelp for Realtors. As a matter of fact, I’m finding this so astounding that you would just immediately leap over to the thing. You got to give me 1 second to just share my screen. I just want people to see that I’m really telling the absolute truth because I have the video up and I’m literally in the process of editing it. But look at the title. The Death of Yelp. For realtors. And I was commenting on this because and I’m going to stop presenting now for those of you who are going to catch our bonus notes, if you’re interested, we will post this to one or both of our websites in video form. But I will say this. I totally agree with that concept. Yelp should be pushing back a bit. But where Yelp is going to lose every single time, which is why I pointed it to in my video, is that ultimately they can sue Google as much as they want about positioning, about Google, competing with them.
And Google is doing all those things, make no mistake. But the reason they’re doing them is because Yelp has done a terrible, terrible, terrible job at anything related to providing additional value with market dominance. They’ve mostly sold people ineffective marketing campaigns with ineffective information. And that’s what my video focuses on. Not so much like, yes, they’re not getting positioned inside the Google algorithm. Google is going to be able to prove to any court that cares to listen to them that they don’t make these choices, that it’s an algorithm. Is the algorithm in favor of Google Search? Sure. Why? Because Google is properly instructing their clients. Like, that’s us. That’s everybody that has a Google profile, they’re properly pointing us in the direction of creating something that’s useful for the end user. They’re saying, we need pictures. We need video, we need reviews. Here’s how you do all that. They gamified it. They added gamification to it so that it’s fun to do it. They’re offering all sorts of other incentives for us to do it. Positioning, views, marketing advantage. So has Yelp done any of that? None. So they’ve just been out competed. And if Yelp was a brand new company and Google was the big bad guy with a hammer and smacking him on the head, I would feel bad about them, but they’re not.
Yelp has had a commanding position for over like a decade now and a.
Pretty crummy repetition as well with some of their business practices, haven’t they?
So whatever they get, I think that their business reputation has earned it. They didn’t stumble into this position. They’ve had dominance in the review space for many, many years. They have not leveraged that dominance very well. It is time for them to be gone, in my opinion. And I think that Google is doing the right thing by creating a better ecosystem for us to live in and play in that revolves around local services and reviews. I think I said something a little bit like fiery this time. I think it’s usually you.
It was a bit big too. Part of my reading of this subject. They gamify it a little bit by giving you points. It’s not totally clear what the benefit? I think it’s up to 10,000 points and you get various benefits. The benefits aren’t particularly that clear to me, but I think it’s probably linked to your comment that your perception that they’re probably going to link this to your local business profile or something linked to that. I might be totally wrong here, I suppose, but you did say anybody that’s got a Google account can participate in this views about how affected the gamers and any insights about how they might link that at all to Google business profiles.
So they’ve already linked it to business profiles. I did say it, but I’ll say it again because I think it’s split by you. When you leave a review for a business and you are a local guide, your review comes up first. They have made it so that when you are operating in the local profile space, if you’re a local guide, if somebody has 500 reviews but none of them are ranked in the local guides category, you’ll never read all 500 reviews. You might read five or ten. Google is telling us this local guide has had 50,000 reviews, 50 likes. People trust them as a reviewer, and because they trust them as a reviewer, we have put their review of this service at the top of all 500 other reviews. In other words, you gain positioning based upon your repute of using local services. And the more videos and the more things that you do, leaving a review for a business is a very tricky way to get in front of that business is traffic. So if you leave a great review for, let’s say Disneyland, a place that gets 30, 40,000 visitors a day, whatever it is, half a million per month or whatever the number is, I don’t know, but whatever the real number is.
But imagine if you left a review for Disneyland and that review was happened to be the number one review for Disneyland. It’s theoretically possible that over the span of a year you get a million views on that review.
Wow.
So if, let’s say you’re sitting here going part of your title of your local services profile is Robert Newman, online marketer extraordinaire. Right.
Supreme one.
Yeah. Guess what? You now have a little bit of an advertisement, plus you get what’s called the local services profile. So actually somebody can go review all your content. And here’s the tricky thing, ladies and gentlemen, this is what I love about this. You can leave a review for your own damn business and you can keep leaving reviews for your own damn business.
So that I thought you couldn’t leave a review for your own business.
Maybe I’m wrong. I thought you could. I did for mine long ago. But the rules may have changed, John.
When I do that with a very regular basis.
Well, we have to go to our break. So we’re going to come back and we’re going to keep our amazing dialogue going about this. I’m super excited that John brought it up. It is definitely something that I think could be leveraged for huge traffic and huge gains. We’re going to talk more about that when we come back from break. If you are liking what you’re hearing, give John and I some encouragement. Email us. John, what’s a good email for you. It’s Jonathan@mailhyphenrite.com and I’m Robert at inboundrem at the word inboundrabbit. Edwardmichael.com, thank you so much. We’ll be right back.
Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail, right? It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no question asked 30 day money back guarantee. So don’t delay, get started today, go to mailwrite.com.
Three, two, one. Welcome back to episode number 370. John and I were having this intense dialogue about local services. The new local services function, it’s not new, it’s years old, but google has been really pushing, as they have with everything with this local services. And John was in the middle of a comment when we went to break. So, John, why don’t you finish your thought?
Well, I’ve got another question actually. I think you’re the SEO expert, but Robert totally knows this. But I’m just going to lay it out. There were some major differences between local SEO and regional and national. And one of the main differences when it came to local was there’s still some vested dominance about utilizing directories and what directories were trade lists. You had various directory websites that would list product services and there were online services that you could pay an annual fee. Moss SEO, and I think they still have it, was one of the better valued ones. And you filled in a form on the moss SEO website or through their interface and it would push to all these local directories. Do you think, and almost all SEO people that knew about SEO knew about this and blah, blah, blah. So do you think that Google is trying to build this up so it gets better quality signals about local businesses and services so it helps them with their search? Or am I totally off there because I don’t even know if they’re utilizing directory placement. Got you. Or they plan to utilize this to give them a better signal strength.
They still use citations? Yes. So they still use nap citations. These are all fancy names for exactly what you’re saying. Directories. Google has moved in the direction where they ignore all directories for the purposes of hyper local, except ones that are manually verified. That means there’s a real human being looking at your business submission, checking real quick to see if you’re an actual business. And most of the directories that do that are actually smaller directories. The only change in the big, weird thing that’s happened in the hyper local in terms of technical signals related to directories is that it used to be that the big directory, super pages, white pages, manta, those were great places to be. And there’s still good places to be for traditional SEO. As you said, regional, but not hyper local. Hyper local is all about those hyper local little directories that you know nothing about. Little mom and pop businesses that maintain like a list of businesses, but they manage the directory themselves. That’s more valuable in Google’s eyes these days because they know a human being looked at your submission, and when you verified it, that they’re assuming that that other human being said, oh, you’re a legitimate business in my area.
We’re going to add you to our directory.
Well, I suppose what they’re doing with this has the same taste, really, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it does. And I think we’re going to continue to see one of the things that I cannot emphasize enough is that all of the resources that Google used to throw towards Google Plus, they didn’t just fire all those people. The most recent round of layoffs, if you look through the departments that Google is laying off, you’ll discover, as I did when I read the footnotes, they’re not laying off anybody in their Google Maps division. This division continues to be well funded, have lots of extremely veteran software engineers involved in it, and they continue to make innovation after innovation after innovation inside hyper local. They have correctly surmised that all the growth that they want in terms of how do you lock businesses into a search engine. They figured it out, these hyper local profiles, which, by the way, people would say that Google Plus was a mistake. Google plus wasn’t a mistake. It was a learning experience. They learned that nobody really wanted to use Google as a social media company in the traditional sense, but they also learned that people associated Google with their business, and they were more than willing to put a business profile up on Google Plus and then start posting content ad nauseam.
So Google said, we need to combine all that activity into our primary platform. And thus Google my business was born. Now they continue to invest millions, billions of dollars every year into hyper local. It is the place that the most innovation is happening, that the most recognition is coming from Google. They are starting to get socially involved. And if you doubt that, just go to YouTube and look up Guiding Stars 2022. They are honoring in a big way, all the people that contribute heavily to Google. And by the way, I have some of the same ranking that some of the people are that they are honoring, and they’re honoring them from all over the world. It is an incredible effort that they’re making not only to have us be contributing, but they’re trying to create a community, John, which they’re trying to do social a slightly different way. They’re trying to say, this is a community ambassador. That’s what they’re angling at. And guess what? If you’re a business owner, imagine how valuable it could be to you, John, to have a title like Realtors are the number one people that should be pursuing this, because what person is supposed to be representing a lifestyle more than a real estate agent?
It’s supposed to be real estate agents. So more than plumbers, more than roofers, more than landscape artists, more than every other professional, realtors are supposed to be lifestyle experts. So imagine you’re a Realtor, and you go on and you leave a review and it says, Ambassador.
I tell you, R1 estate. Unfortunately, I forgot his name. It’s our friend from Montana, the video guy that also had the massive Facebook group. I bet he’s onto this like fly on ice cream. I have to outreach and ask him to come back because I’m sure he’s on. But if you’re not doing this or looking at this, and hopefully we’re giving you some ideas in this podcast, I will make the link available where you can sign up to become an ambassador. But you would be really missing opportunity if you’re not listening to this podcast. And B, not to do this because it’s totally free and spending a little bit of time on it.
Correct. And I’m going to give you some tips. Let’s say those people are out there. You’ve already got the profile. Maybe you left one review for somebody ever. All right, so here are some tips. Google is once again pushing hard for you to do video inside your reviews. It’s possible, and they want it. They are starting to reward extra points, extra upload points, extra everything for video attached to your view. Use it. It’s a way for you to catch up to more established reviewers like me pretty quickly, because I never did video. As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure you could upload video when I started using the service. So it’s something that people who are just getting used to using it now are going to be more comfortable with than me. I always just take a couple of pictures. My superpower is writing long, detailed reviews, which is the next thing you should do. You should really do the who, what, why, when, where of the place that you’re at. Why are you there, when were you there? What did you eat, do experience while you were there? How did you hear about the place?
To start with, tell a compelling story in your review, because part of what Google is looking at is how many views do you get, how long do people stay on your review? And the better that those numbers are, there is some way that they are likely to recognize your profile. By the way, John, I wouldn’t be so sure that Google between your Google business profile and all the reviews you get there, I strongly believe that when somebody has verified who they are, like, I’m Robert Newman, I proved it to you. Google. I think that Google is going to head in the direction of making sure you’re a verified human, you’re a verified business owner. We know it’s you.
Well, it’s kind of linked to the average launch, which we not last week, but the week before, around artificial intelligence, because to counter it a bit, they’re going to place more well, this is only my interpretation. I’ll be interested to hear what you think about what I’m just going to say is that I feel they’re going to really emphasize people that can prove that it’s actually a human giving the writing the content, or they’re going to if you can prove it’s actual person, a real person, that Google is going to give it a lot more emphasis. What do you reckon?
I reckon that they can already do that. I think it’s already done. They can verify the metadata. There’s timestamps, there’s location stamps, there’s device stamps, all off a cell phone. Since I use an Android device, it would just absolutely knock me on my ass if Google wasn’t 100% sure that when I was uploading the review that it was Robert Newman. Because I got to do a fingerprint to get into my device, and my device is a Google device. I think that’s how they’re going to win the device for long, long term. And keep in mind, Google is full of rocket scientists who do look at these problems from a very long term perception. When we win the business owners over, like in terms of this is now a marketing device, I can promote my business off it really efficiently and effectively, and I can do it for free. Then there’s an argument to be made about why you might migrate off an Apple device onto a Google.
Well, I can see where you’re coming, but they have some slight problems with the justice partner right there. However, I’m sure that’s going to go down a bundle, isn’t it? That’s going to go even more what I mean, listen to some views, if you’re not aware, is that the Justice Department is just taking as just declared that with a number of state justice departments, they’re taking Google to court as a monopolistic entity that needs to be taught some manners, that they are gunning for Google. Am I basically correct about that, Robert?
I haven’t kept up to date with that. There’s never a time that Google isn’t in court with a country, state, city or entity about some type of no, I’m not kidding, like monopolistic advice. And in many ways Google got a lock on certain pieces of search. And I think some of these lawsuits, in my own opinion, are warranted. But in some of these other ways that when people take Google to court, they lose because they don’t understand how Google works. And in certain things, like Google doesn’t yet have a monopoly on hyper local. They don’t okay, they are moving in.
That direction and they’ve struggled with it, haven’t they? They’ve consistently changed things, put new heads in head of departments. I think Melissa was head of it before she became head of Yahoo and finished a career to some extent. But now this particular one is on a different level. I think everything you said is correct, Robert, but the Justice Department, it was published yesterday, and they really mean business. And their focus is on the paid advertising side of Google. And they’re saying that they’ve got a total strangle hold on paid advertising and they’re not happy with it in digital spaces.
And that may very well be true. There’s also many things that since Google is reading the web, like they have stringleholds on analytics programs, browser programs, and they stay away from making those things too apparent because the way that Google works is they track most things through Chromium, which is our browser. 80% of the people in the world use Chromium, and when you count Opera and other systems, chromium operates in those browsers as well. So actually we’re probably talking like 92% of the world uses Chromium version browsers to the Web.
And I think I don’t know what you feel about this. I think this was linked to the actions of Apple around OS about blocking, which really has affected Facebook’s advertising model. But I also feel that this is also a tent to pay back Google because it’s rumored, and I think it’s true that Apple are going this year or actively going to publish their own advertising platform. And this is one of the reasons why they’ve increased the security on OS, because the data will only be available if you advertise on the Apple platform. I think that’s the overall plan. What do you think of what I’ve just said there?
Well, I haven’t heard about Apple’s plans to get into the advertising ecosphere. It would be shocking to me if they didn’t eventually consider it. I know for sure that I’ve read enough and followed him and some other people to understand that Google or the Apple is starting to see a more sunsetting environment for the device business. Obviously, they’re the world’s leader in this, but there’s all sorts of things that go into that. There are supply chain issues, which is Tim Cook’s master skill is he’s a supply chain maestro. So he’s managed to keep on top of basically the same device pool, growing in user base and all this different stuff. But there’s only so much of certain types of things in this world, some of which devices use. In the meantime, they’ve jumped into making equipment, like making TVs, making laptops, and I think that they’re going to combine all that into a content based ecosphere. And I would be shocked if they didn’t get into the advertising side of it. Ultimately, I haven’t looked into it too much.
Yeah, I think you’re totally right about that. I think on the device, the only thing that’s heavily rumored, to the extent that you can be pretty guaranteed that it’s true, is the glasses, the Apple glasses linked to either phone or watch. Apple Watch, which is virtual reality or augmented. Thank you for that. I always get the two terms intermingled. That seems to come this first half of this year. It’s strongly rumored, and I have no idea if that’s going to be a winner or not. I really can’t tell you. But I do agree with you. Apart from that it will be highly profitable, but it doesn’t seem to be any big extra revenue producer. That’s why they’re looking at the ad model, isn’t it?
Yes, but here’s, for all those people listening to the show, here’s my prediction. Listen, I really strongly believe that what John just mentioned, I think Apple is the best positioned company to make an augmented reality product happen. They have the brand recognition, they have enough people that would try it that maybe if Apple released something, it could get adoption. If it gets adoption and it’s good, that means it’s now going to become part of our common societal vernacular. Only Apple, of all the companies that we talk about, has the ability to just literally apply a sea change for everybody globally by doing something like that in the technology space. And I think that the time for augmented reality is here. I do not think that we’re here there for virtual reality. Maybe another five years. Yeah, I think augmented reality, yes. Today, give us something that works. I think that and and like I said, I think it’s Apple that’s going to do it. So my prediction is a couple of years from now, augmented reality and glasses as a device, if it’s like that’s their big move to something that could really, product wise, that can move, like really advance them, draw new people into.
The brand. Like if they make an augmented reality product that works, for the first time in my life, I might buy an Apple something or another. Never done it, never wanted to.
Yeah, I’m a real apple. Well, I’m quite cynical about Apple, but I do buy a lot of their stuff, but I’m a total fan buy. I’m very careful because obviously you are being taken to the cleaners to some extent, so I’m very careful. But no, I totally agree with you. If anybody is going to be able to do this, in my opinion, must be Apple, because they’ve got this compared to Facebook, they have a lot of people that got computer power in their pocket through their iPhone or through their watch, which they can piggy bank on to the glass device. So that’s enormously beneficial for Apple attempting to build something. So I totally agree. Well, I think it’s time to wrap it up. I think we’ve given people a bit of insight and I make sure the link there’s some links in the show notes, folks, go over to the Mail Hyphen website. So what do you reckon, Rob?
I reckon that I’ve enjoyed the show so much, I’d love it if you download the link and get it over to me. I don’t need you to do it every show, but this one I really want. I would like it. I’m going to publish this on my side, I think. John, get out of my head, man. I have been thinking about doing a video like this on my own channel, but you actually beat me to the punch, so I’m thrilled it’s such a good topic. It’s something that we’re probably going to talk about many additional times. You heard it here first. Great show. John, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and talk to you about a website, or just pick your brain about where you think the future of real estate marketing is going, how would they do that?
Yeah, thanks for that, but we got a great special offer which we’re going to be pursuing for most of this year. We are looking for city region Mail Right ambassadors, people that really want to move their real estate business on and that also are popular in their real estate community. And what do you get? You will get a beautiful Mail Right website which will be yours and we will help you semi customize it and we will host it free of charge for one year, plus maintain it for one year, free of charge. And that will give you a fantastic resource, get to know the product and hopefully you will become an embarrassed for us and talk about it. And if you’re not happy with it after a year, we will migrate it somewhere else for you so you won’t lose the website. So if that’s interesting, go over to the Mail Hyphen Rights.com website and book a demo discussion with either me and Adam and we’ll see if we are a good fit. Back. Over to you, Robert.
And if anybody would like to learn more about me, about my vision for Inbound marketing, about how I believe that you should be representing yourself in the Information age, which is the age we’re in right now, and everything we’re talking about plays into it, then you should go to Inboundrem.com. Click the about button or the Services button. Those would be the first two places I would start. They learned the most about me about what we do as a company. We produce a lot of content for free and we also have a service line, but it’s mostly for veteran agents looking to get off the cycle of systems they don’t own.
Robert, I would say, is the leading expert in SEO when it comes to real estate. So if that’s your bag, go over and talk to Robert.
Thank you so much, John. I really appreciate it. Everybody else, good God, we appreciate you. It’s 2023. Can you believe that? We’re so excited. Everybody joins the show. Do us a favor, leave us comments on either one of our channels. Call John. Leave a comment.
I think we produce some of the most unique down to earth content in the real estate podcast area. I truly do believe that.
I agree with you, too. And so I forgot to mention this, but I’ve had some incredible feedback. Finally, some people have listened to this and this thing that I’m doing right now, which is why I’m so enthusiastic about it. John, I’ve actually had a couple of people now call and thank us for the show that we’re doing. And it’s great. It’s great. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for tuning in.
————————————–
Mail-Right
Jonathan Denwood & Adam Brown
jonathan@mail-right.com
https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa
————————————–
InboundREM
Robert Newman
————————————–
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
#369 – Mail-Right Show: The Best Virtual Staging Software & Tips (DIY & Pro)
The Best Virtual Staging Software & Tips (DIY & Pro)
If you haven’t shopped for virtual staging software lately, you might be in for a bit of a shock. Many apps that used to offer Realtors an easy-to-use DIY virtual staging platform now just sell done-for-you professional virtual staging—usually with a higher price tag. While that’s great for teams and brokerages with big budgets, many agents still want to get their hands dirty and DIY their virtual staging.
DIY virtual staging:
You take photos or videos and then use your phone or tablet to edit them yourself. You can drop in 3D furniture or use filters to remove items, boost color and contrast, or even change the time of day. DIY virtual staging puts the power in your hands to stage the properties, but it means you need to learn the software yourself.
Professional staging:
You take photos or videos and then upload them to the company’s platform. You tell them what you want to be done with it, and they return it to you, usually within 24 to 48 hours. The advantage of such a service is that you don’t have to do anything; just send it in and forget about it.
#1 – Apply Design From $7 to $10 DIY Service Static Images and 3D 360 Tours
#2 – Spotless Agency $79, $99 &199 per image options Static Images Only
https://www.spotlessagency.com/
#3 – roOomy – $49 per image or virtual tours from $400 to $1,700 Static Images and 3D 360 Tours
#4 – BoxBrownie – $32 Static Images and 3D 360 Tours
#5 – Square Foot Productions – $29 Static Images Only
https://squarefootproductions.com/
#6 – Hasten – (Call for Pricing) High-end service for the luxury properties Static Images and 3D 360 Tours
#7 – Cedar Architect Subscription-based service. For $59 a month DIY Static Images Only.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Today we are doing episode number 369 of the Mail Right podcast. And today, we’re talking about virtual staging tools. I’m going to talk more about where these tools are positioned. And John, who’s had a chance to create list and research the list, is going to talk more, maybe about the specifics. Still, I’m going to try my best to add value to the conversation by explaining the few real-life situations where I know people are using these services and how they’re leveraging them and what I was overall thinking. So, John, without any further ado, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to people who may not know who you are and then take us away into this subject that you selected for the podcast today?
Thanks, Rob. I’m Jonathan Denwood. I’m the joint founder of Mailhyphenwright.com. We build beautiful semi or full-custom websites and WordPress for real estate agents. And we’ve also got a CRM and a plateau of digital marketing apps and tools to help you get more leads in 2023.
Back.
Over to you, Rob.
Well, no, we’re serving it up to you, so actually, never mind. You know what? I’ll tee it up for you. Number one on a list today is Spotless Agency. Now, here’s the description of Spotless agency. It’s a new virtual staging service where you can do one staged photo at $29. Okay? But what they’re doing is they’re basically doing virtual or AI design work, sending the photo back to you, and you’re taking a picture of a space, and then they’re going ahead and staging that photo for you. They’re Photoshopping it so it looks, however, like the design instructions that you might want them to do. So, John, now take it away.
Yeah, sorry about that, Rob. Yeah, it seems like a pretty good service. It starts at 79. They’ve got a kind of token-based system. You buy tokens and one token for one static image. They only do static images, and depending on how quickly you want the image back, the more it will cost you. I think it will take about three to four days; it’s 79 per image, 2040. 8 hours, it’s 99. And if you want the next day, it’s 199. Seem pretty good. I think the elephant I like about the opportunity is there seem to be three levels of services that these providers provide. Basically, they are static images. Staging. In static images, you got the image it’s a bear room, and you want, as you know, to show bare rooms on your website or send them to a prospective buyer isn’t the greatest idea because it’s better to stage them. But to stage a room or property physically is expensive and time-consuming. Doing static images is much cheaper. And there are three levels. The static images, there are 3D images that are more realistic, but the person that’s viewing them has to have glasses and Goggles to view the 3D image. And then there are 360 Tours, which it’s like a virtual tour of a property; you need special camera technology to take the actual images.
But I think now there are apps for your iPhone and your Android that can assist you in doing that. So I think that’s moved on to a certain level. But for those that make the 360 Tour offering, I think you have to get individual advice from them about which technology, what cameras, and what setups they require if they are going to process those virtual tools for you.
Sure. So when you start talking about high-volume providers for images or clever digital presentations on the site, my pros and cons remain almost the same. Generally speaking, doing virtual stage photos if you’re doing condos model homes, if there’s a certain design style or a standard that’s prevalent throughout a large volume or a large amount of the same spaces, I think that these kinds of services can be extremely useful in creating case studies for how many different ways the same shape space can look in the same building, which makes an investment like this a no brainer for creating a unique and special website experience. When you start talking about somebody that’s in the luxury space, like a very nice size home, anything middle to the upper end of the market, you’re never going to consider any of these services. They’re just not going to deliver the customized value that your clients are expecting. The designers on the other end of the spectrum are usually not going to deliver the kind of unique finishing touches that people on the middle to upper levels of luxury expect. Like, I’m looking at these designs, and they’re all good enough, I suppose, but nothing really eye-popping.
Even though some of these designs seem to be presented in $5 million plus New York apartments, I don’t know anybody who will design their homes this way. So that’s what I’m talking about. Specifically, I’ve had opinions from Top Realtors that have kind of echoed what I’m saying to you. But if you’re in certain markets, these services can be neat, is how I’m going to go with it. There are people that will figure out how to leverage this. In the meantime, specialized customer requests. It is good that everybody on the show, John, knows that these services exist. If you’re listening to the show and didn’t know that you could do virtual staging photos, guess what? You can. And for some clients who may have a very extra high level of service requirements expected of you, this is a line item that you can put in your listing contract that’s going to really add sizzle to a listing contract presentation but be something that you rarely have to execute on. And so saying that you’re familiar with the entire 3D photo arena so that you can give somebody a whole bunch of designs, ideas, maybe sit them down with the design consultant.
And right now, John, I’m speaking to literally 1% of our audience, but that 1% you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re sitting in front of somebody, you’re talking to them about selling a $10 million unit, which means that your commission on it is going to be 300,000 plus dollars. They have $300,000 worth of like listing expectations of you. They’re going to tell you there’s no way in the world that you’re worth as much money unless you’re going to spend hard dollars to advertise our property. And at which point you can pull out little pieces of sizzle like this and say, we’re completely adept at talking to the right buyer about how they’re going to design, develop and appreciate this home. And in those very rare cases, that’s when services like this become actual, have value, list value. And then for those of you who are ultra luxury, as you also well know, this is the kind of thing that you assign to your personal assistant, your real estate assistant, your transaction coordinator. You don’t do this yourself. You go on your review spotless agency and you send them there because you listen to the podcast and you send your assistant there and they go do the research for you.
And now you can add it on to your line item for your contract.
Yeah, the only thing that was going through your mind and I just wanted to see what you thought about it because what it looks like, what the market is going to be like in 2023 and to some extent in 2024, I think there’s going to be more empty properties out there. And because of COVID and people to some extent they’re going back to the office or being made to go to back to the office, but I don’t think the market is ever going to go back to what it was precluded. I think the acceptance of people moving away from where they are based to another state and I think people’s acceptance to look at property before they get a short list of properties that they’re going to look at physically. I think the markets changed a bit and people viewing property and going further along the sales process online has moved on to some extent where these possible services have more relevance than maybe they did before pre covert. But I’m really interested in your view of what I’ve just outlined. I might totally off track there.
I think that eventually everybody in real estate is going to be dealing with an almost completely digital toolkit, the same way every other industry has been changed. So yes, at a very high level and yes, I think this is part of the digital revolution. I think this is along a lot more people’s radars. Major metro market people like Houston, Dallas, California, most of Florida, most of any place where you’re driving 30 or 40 minutes to show home. Ladies and gentlemen, any tool that makes that unnecessary, such as the old idea of staging a home physically, everybody knows how much effort goes into that. You got to call the person, have a vendor on hand, get the homeowner to let you in the house. Do that staging. unstage it at some point. It’s a very extensive process, whereas these virtual tools allow you to stage and unstage a home in a matter of days with no coordination with the homeowner. So do I think that there’s a place for this? Oh, hell yeah. Just depends on where you are and what kind of business that you’re building for yourself. I strongly recommend that people be building a digital business, but I’ve been saying that forever.
And only now after COVID, are people starting to listen. They’re seeing the days and the time in which all people want to essentially it’s going to be a ten step process, and the last step is going to be to walk through the home. You’re going to have schedule the person, come out to appraise the home. You’re going to walk the home, see the home, but everything else would have been done by that time. You’re not going to go back to the same home and show the same home 3456 separate times, which really happens, John. People like Realtors get forced to drive out to the same property many different times so that a buyer can keep walking that home over and over again. At a minimum, digital tools like this prevent you needing to do that. No longer does it like, hey, what happens if I put a couch in the corner there? Remember that one room? I don’t remember it. Can we go back in and get just like, let me look at that room or measure that room? No, here we’ll do it virtually.
Yeah, obviously state in the office, but also if you’re in one of the coastal cities or areas that’s on the radar for international buyers, I would imagine these tools become much more relevant to you.
Yes, I do have clients that are already doing complete virtual. Okay. One of the things that’s made that popular second home market is a big market for doing completely virtual transactions. So they’re leading the way in these tools because people can’t travel as easily to a second home destination like Cabo San Lucas, Big Bear, Lake, Arrowhead, the list goes on. They want to do that. They’re going to do all of that or as much of that as possible virtually. So yeah, I think there’s a huge market for this, but let’s move on. Let’s go to the next one. The next one on the list is Hasten is what it’s called. It’s a 3D interior visualization tool. So talk to me about this a little bit, John.
Which one was it?
Sorry, it sends you to Hasten.
Yeah, Hasten. Well, the research I did, it looked like they were aiming for the higher market side of it, the luxury market. The reason why I say that is some of the reviews that I read, they all said that’s what they were pitching at the luxury side. And to get a price, you got to call them. So that always suggests that they’re going to be in the higher end. They do all 3D, all three main services, static image, three D, and three hundred and sixty tools for you. But you got to get a price by bringing them up.
Basically cool guys, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, even though it’s run by some crazy freaking Swiss folk, three D and Matterport, which ultimately is CubiCasa and a number of other ancillary products, they still own the 3D space, ultimately. Do I think 3D can be useful? I just saw a $4 million property that was done in Venice, John, and I was looking at it legitimately. Like, I’m looking at it as the consumer because I was idly considering like a really high end work slash living space and splitting the space with somebody and like like upgrading my my work living game. Right. So I’m looking at it for reals, and I found that I was incredibly frustrated with the 3D walkthrough, which I think was a matter for a 3D walkthrough. I just wanted somebody to take the darn phone and just do a video walk through. It’s so frustrating for me. So I don’t think that I speak for everybody, by the way. I’m sure that I don’t. And I’m sure there’s process things that are problematic for real estate agents. Like maybe it’s easier to do these 3D things. I don’t know. But John, am I really all that impressed with this 3D?
No, I’m afraid of that. I’m not.
I think it maybe just utilizes a marking initial, have it on the website to get them to call, and then if they can’t come, they’re too far away. You would arrange to do a walk through with them, or you probably have to walk through already as part. Well, if it’s that type of property, you think you would do a video walk through, but if you’re technically not up to it, I think maybe getting one of these services or getting somebody to do it for you and then uploading it to one of these companies, it’s better than nothing, isn’t it? I think it varies.
It does vary. It’s better than nothing. I don’t disagree with those things. Everybody that’s listening to show you a gimbal and your cell phone ten times better in my opinion. Ten times better in terms of how you market it. Ten times better about where you post it. But if you’re really stuck virtual staging, 3D, virtual, it can be okay. I’m not a big fan. That’s just the truth, John. Sorry.
No. Shall we go for a break?
Sure, let’s do that. So, ladies and gentlemen, my name has been Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound REM. You can find out lots of information about me on Inboundrem.com. We are pretty much the leader, maybe the only inbound marketing company out there doing real estate, SEO and stuff like that at a very high level. But I appreciate you turning into the show. So does John. If you could do us a favor, wherever you’ve seen us, heard us, leave us a comment, do us a thumbs up. It all matters. We do this show out of mostly goodwill. Little bit of like, hey, we’re really good at what we do. Pay attention to us. But a lot out of, how can we be of service to you? So thank you for tuning in. We’ll be right back.
Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail, right? It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no question asked, 30 day money back guarantee. So don’t delay. Get started today. Go to mailwrite.com.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 368. Is it eight or nine, John?
It’s 69. Three, six, nine. You’ve already got another thought yet before your sentence is finished, Robert?
Okay, 369. It’s a really lucky number. Three, six and nine. So if you’re into numerology, today’s show is lucky. And we’re going to talk about we’ve been talking about virtual staging. We’re moving on to another company that John has selected for us called Square Foot Productions. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about this, John?
Yes, good price, static image only. Don’t offer a DIY. Some of these companies, not many of them also offer a DIY app or service, but they don’t. But of those that you got to get them to do it, it’s not a bad price, but it’s only static images, and it’s $29 for image. I don’t know what the time, how much time they require, because I looked at the website and I couldn’t find it that particular. I’m sure it’s probably there, but the price seems pretty good.
Okay, assuming that this so I have a surprise here, John. Assuming that they can do what they say that they do at a high level of quality, I’m a huge fan of Square Foot Productions, okay? The simple video editing of taking a cluttered room and uncluttering it without you having to clean it up from your client means that you can walk through your assistant can walk through a home, take all the same series of pictures inside your home selling process, hand it over to Square Foot Productions for visual editing. They will declutter, basically create a perfect environment so you don’t have to have the client professionally clean their house, professionally stage the house. They do aerial, spotlight, photos. They do all sorts of really cool things. Now, I want to emphasize that neither John nor I have actually used this company, picked it out of a hat. So the reviews are good. What we can see looks good. The service is what we’re talking about, the idea of the service. And we’re not promoting these guys. We don’t know them. We’re just saying that the service they provide, if it’s provided as advertised, it’s pretty damn cool for very reasonable price.
Like turning a daytime to nighttime photo. Your photographer takes a kind of weird shot of it with a house that has a lot of shadows in it. These guys edit the shadows out and make a nice sunset photo for you. It’s really your house. They used your core image. It’s a beautiful service. Doesn’t break any copyright laws, just alters the edit existing thing. Makes the photos far more appealing. It’s such a low cost that it’s easy for most agents to work it into like a cost versus sales structure. I like it. That’s my overall input.
Okay. Box Brownie yeah, like what they got to offer. They do static images, three D, three hundred and sixty. They do the whole spectrum. And it starts at the static images at $32. The free D tours, I think that started at around $600, and depending on what kind of tour you got or need, it goes up from there. But they had some nice training tutorials on their YouTube channel. I did watch a couple of them and they seem to know the initial impression I got. They seem to know in the price for the static image isn’t outrageous.
So once again, this is just a clever photo editing like tool, things like that. And it can be cool. These guys that are doing a very specific thing where they’re essentially doing a very pricey thing for a reasonable cost. 360 renders are cool. Interior renders are cool. Exterior renders are kind of cool. The interior renders are going to be the thing that you really want to pay attention to. They can help move the needle. Do I really think that this is worth the $280 or $400 an image? Not usually, but then again, they’re very cleverly doing these renders for commercial spaces. Commercial spaces which commercial real estate, while John and I don’t talk about it very much, is definitely something where these services retain extra value because professional business people have higher degrees of expectation about how they can perceive a space can be altered. And you’re only signing a lease. Like oftentimes a building which is leasing a space might not have to lease it except once every ten years, which means that there’s a very high level of cost associated with it. But there’s also a high level of reward, which means that customizing the space using these virtual tools, in my opinion, for commercial at the prices that we’re talking about with Box Brownie makes a lot more sense than residential.
You’d have to have pretty gosh darn nice property that you’re representing to make it worth it. John.
Yeah, I agree. On to the next one.
Roomie.com. Hit me with it.
Love the name. $49 does the full spectrum static images. Three D, three sixty for the free. The virtual tours. It’s from 400 to 1700. Okay, so to give with Brownie, they only have a starter price, which is around 600. They start for 400, but they give you from 400 to 1700. Because I’m not a photographer expert, I can only give you my initial impression of the website, the verbiage, the offering. I just went with Box Brownie a bit little more. But you just got to do a dive, talk to them and find one of these players that has the Pacific offering at the Pacific price that’s attractive to you.
True. So Rumi does a little bit of a better job in simplifying the idea than Box Brownie. But I agree with John. The actual demos on Box Brownie appear to be much more robust. Rumi seems to be focused on a more sparse presentation style on their website. That’s all that John and I at least that’s all I am basing my opinions on.
Just the sign.
So there’s some interesting visualizations with roomy that are a little bit more complete than the ones I saw with Box Brownie. Gives you an understanding of how these 3D room like visualization and staging products would really work. We had a friend of mine on a long time ago Robert, that does this kind of work. John this kind of 3D. So I believe in it as the future of the business, as I said then. But I do think that in terms of what power you served right now, currently, we’re served very well with video. There’s one feature that Rumi has that I am now going to retract, which is called a measurement feature, which allows you to measure between elements in a room, which you don’t even get to do when you’re physical, when we catch up with functionality like this. Ladies and gentlemen, when digital can do this, measure a space, give us inches and square feet, and then allow you to replace furniture inside this virtual space that you’re building. That’s the day that people are going to prefer to do digital walk throughs than personal walk throughs. And we’re approaching that day. John are we there yet with any of these tools that we’re looking at?
No. Are we getting there? Yes.
We’ve sky in there and AI. We’re all going to be replaced. Robert.
Oh, God. John, stop. All right, we’re going to go on to the next one. Aptly design IO. I have enough of those kinds of AI conspiracy here inside my circle of friends. I don’t need you to start up on it.
Was it applied Design that we’re talking about?
Apply design?
Yeah. Well, they’re one of the few that’s got a DIY product, and I watched some of their videos and I was quite impressed. It’s a token system. You buy a token one tokens for a static image. They provide all three services static free D 360. I don’t know if their DIY product can do all three or it’s just static images. I didn’t do a deep enough dive on that particular subject, but I did look at some of their own videos and other people’s review and the interface, the library of objects. It was quite impressive. If you’re just looking, there’s a real need. You’ve got a really nice property or a reasonable property, and it’s bare and you just want to do a couple of the rooms and you want to do it yourself or get your assistant to have a guy that’s it and not cost a lot of money. Have a look at what they’re offering. I was recently impressed. Robert?
Sounds good. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are on to our last wait. That was our last well, I’ve got.
One more that I added after I sent the list to you, and that’s a company called Cedar Architect. And they only do static images. They do have a DIY product, but the interesting thing is it’s a subscription model. It’s the only one. All the others, you pay by the image or whatever you want. This Cedar Architect, they do a subscription and it’s $59 a month. And I’ve got the impression you can do as many static images as you like.
Seems more like a design CAD software, right?
Well, they seem to do the static images as well. Yeah.
Okay.
I was just interested in the subscription model.
I think this kind of software is going to be for people that have some type of preexisting design experience coming out of school, in which case this is going to be really exciting. If anything else, I’m on the site. It is overwhelmingly complex, so just keep that in mind, everybody. It’s very similar to it’s like an AutoCAD for those of you who are familiar with it. Okay. It’s chief architect interior design. Like, we’ve occasionally looked at coral, coral, kad, CAD. I’ve looked at some of these things as I’ve tried to design wireframes for websites. So 3D modeling on websites and basically wireframes is just as relevant as it is for normal blueprints. Like, it’s the same thing. People don’t understand how well, like, traditional design concepts play into web concepts. Really the same thing. So you use some of the same programs like you can theoretically, I’ve tried oftentimes. It doesn’t work. Usually you need people dumbing down the technology. Because I am not an architect. I didn’t go to school for years or spend any time using all the tools that architects use. Having said that, this is a very unique tool. I would agree with John’s assessment.
It’s unique in this space. And if some of you are looking for both a different payment model and a different level of tool, maybe one with a slightly higher end like conceptual application, I would agree with you.
Great.
Well, John, ladies and gentlemen, we are right there. At the time limit. And today I have a missing animal, unfortunately, in my house and I have to rejoin the search ASAP. I took all the time to make sure I was still present, but I’m like, I’ve been checking my phone, looking for messages. Got six people in the neighborhood right now, all looking around. Thank you so much for tuning in. I’m going to ask John in a second here how you may find him, if you’d like to. John is a wealth, a whole deep well of knowledge on various ideas about how to market your real estate business. Plus his agency builds really cool real estate websites that you can check out and should check out. So, John, without any further ado, how would people check you out if they indeed wanted to?
Yeah, thanks for that, Rob. We’re looking for some regional and city champions, real estate agents that want to be a male right champion. And if that’s enough interest, what do you get? You’ll get your website for a year for free and all the digital tools for a year for free, and we host your website. And after a year, if you’re not happy with us, we will move your website to another hosting provider. But hopefully that gives you the confidence to try out the system and then become a Mail right champion in your area. If that sounds interesting, go over to the Mail Hyphen right website and book a chat with either me and Adam and we love you to consider being a male right champion.
Back.
Over to you, Robert.
Beautiful. That’s a hell of an offer. And if anybody wants to learn more about me, you can go to inboundrem.com and I would love to have conversations with people inbound marketing about SEO, things like that. And if you don’t know what those things are, just look up the acronyms and the acronyms interest you. I’m the only guy that does these things in the US at the level that I do them. So if you haven’t heard of them, I’m not surprised. Thank you so much for tuning into the show. I think that’s John appreciates this. I sure as hell know that I do. I appreciate every second, every minute that you guys spend with me and John. We do not take it for granted and we do hope that you’ll come back. Bye.
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
#1 – PostcardMania
https://www.postcardmania.com/
#2 – Promo
A – produce marketing video advert quickly and painlessly
B – 3,000 Templates
C – $25 per month paid yearly 36 Premium Clips per year
#3 – Canva
A – Great free account
B – thousands of great templates
C – Only $119 per year
#4 – Jasper
A – Helps you produce great copy for your website, and Facebook adverts, plus a lot more
B- Easy-to-use interface
C – $40 per month
#5 – Tailwind
A – posts automatically to Pinterest and Instagram accounts and Facebook page
B – Ghostwriter AI writing service
C – Starting at $12.99 per month, paid yearly
#6 – SurferSEO
Price $49 per month
Welcome back to the mail. Right, Podcasts? Ladies and gentlemen, today’s episode is number 368. Woof. We’ve done a lot of these. John and I are going to talk to you today about we’re going to have a little bit of back and forth in this because John was saying best Real Estate lead Marketing Tools for 2023, and I didn’t really have a chance to get back to them and say maybe we should just say some unusual ideas for lead marketing tools for 2023 on the list. I’ve tried five of these six tools so I know how most of them operate, which is probably why I didn’t communicate back to you super fast. I was like, oh, I know all these tools except for one. So without any further ado, though, I think this is going to be a really fun podcast, especially if you like to hear me and John go back and forth about things. So let’s introduce John though for those of you that may not know him. And then, I’ll introduce myself. Go ahead.
Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint found of mail, right? We build beautiful websites on WordPress for real estate agents, and a host of marketing digital tools will be part of the package. It’s a great value package. Go over and have a look at it.
Back.
Over to you, Rob.
My name is Robert Newman. I am essentially the only inbound marketer that focuses on real estate, which is a whole bunch of things all wrapped into one storytelling, SEO many, many different things. But you can go to my site inboundrem.com and learn everything that you need to know about all of those subjects. Without any further ado though, let’s go on to talk about the set of tools. Now I want to give a summary, so everybody knows what we’re going to be talking about. We’re going to be talking about Promo.com, canva.com, Jasper, AI, tailwind surfer, SEO; those are the list of tools that we have up to discuss today. They’re a good list of tools. Maybe postcard mania, or did I pull that from someplace else? Yeah, postcard one.
Number one is postcard mania.
Okay, so let’s start there, then. Without any further ado, why don’t you discuss with me why did you put postcard mania on this list, John?
Well, I think a lot of people, if they had regularly listened to this podcast, would get the impression that we are all about digital marketing, and to some extent, that’s true. But I think both of us have made it really clear that we are not against more traditional forms of marketing. And when it comes to action postcodes and other printed outreach, I think it really can be part of your marketing quiver and can be really quite effective and cost-effective. And I think you have mentioned that some of your clients do utilize print media quite successfully. And this particular company they don’t totally specialize in real estate, but they have parts that do, and they can send out you can get postcards and other printed materials at very reasonable prices, and they have a very good reputation. What do you reckon, Robert?
So I reckon that postcard strategies can be and oftentimes are incredibly effective. I currently have in my list of clients for Inbound Ram, one of the people that has made the most waves of anybody that I’ve ever met using postcard marketing. And her strategy is to partner with local artists, get original pieces of artwork that focus on the communities that she services and then translate those onto a postcard and send it to her clients. Send it to people. Now, I don’t think she does handwritten notes because she farms the entirety of two full communities. It’s probably 25,000 cards if I had to guess. So I doubt she’s going to be doing 25,000 handwritten notes, but she may have a single note that gets printed on the back of these cards and perhaps she signs them because that is the kind of person that she is. Everything is about the personal, the thought out, the details matter a tremendous amount to her. So somewhere on the back of these cards there’s a little note that says and by the way, I hope you enjoy these beautiful pieces of art that local artists have produced. So the card actually promotes the artist more than it promotes herself.
And when all of that is done, she mentions this was ultimately sent to you by Sharon Steele. So anybody is curious, you can just Google Sharon Steele and you’ll be able to see her strategy. She talks about it on our website a lot and it makes her a lot of money. 50% of her business probably comes from this postcard strategy that I’ve just described and she is one of those real estate agents that is in the enviable position of being in the top 2% of income earners inside the profession. So it is definitely in the right place, in the right hands. Postcards can be devastatingly effective.
Yeah, I might be wrong here, but when I did my research on them, I think they do integrate with a certain number of CRMs. I’m not sure if any of them are the Pacific leaders in the real estate sector, line desk or follow up boss, but I think there’s some that they do. So definitely have a look at them. Shall we go on to the next one?
We should just give me 1 second here. I have written about this, but unfortunately I am not in the top ten or 20 results on the Google search results, which is pretty rare. But anyway, if you go to my site, I’ve done a full post with expanded thoughts on how I feel about postcards. So number two, Promo.com. The only video maker that you need join millions of business creating videos in minutes. The unlimited media from iSock and Getty Images. All right, so John, you you go first.
Yeah, well, we’ve been hammered for the past two years, and especially in 2022, we hammered away about video. You know, you got a powerful tool in your pocket, your iPhone or your Android phone. But making videos or getting over the hurdle is difficult. That’s why you should be doing it, because a lot of people won’t to make videos for Facebook, for social media, and having an editor. Promo provides it all. It provides a web based editor and app editor for your phone. It provides a library, extensive library of video templates with royalty free music video, videos in a library, and you cannot pre made ones. And it starts at $25 a month, paid yearly. You get so much of the library is what they call free videos, and then they have what they call premier clips at the starter plan, like I say, which is $25 a month. You get 36 of these premium clips, as they call them. I haven’t personally used it, but I gave the website a good look over and it looks a pretty cool service to get you going into producing more video. What do you reckon, Rob?
Well, I think a toolkit like this, something that makes it video easier, is definitely something to look at. I get ad nauseam big websites that produce video trying to talk to me and do something called getting backlinks, like they want to post blogs. Video IO is one. There’s just so many there’s so many of them, and I’ve never really dived too deeply into any of them, including Promo.com. So, unfortunately, in this subject, while I can agree with John 100% that if this is a toolkit that is going to increase your ability to make an efficient video, then you should do that. My only additional piece of commentary is to take us back, because there is an easy way to get a feedback from people who are doing lots of video on their website. You can very much get into people get input from people who are actively doing what you’re doing on Facebook. It would be the Real Estate YouTube Mastermind, which are done by friends of the show. We’ve had both the founders of this group on the show in the past, Matthew, and I am not remembering as clearly his partner, but if you just simply look on Facebook, you go and you search the group real Estate YouTube Mastermind.
This is the place where I would go and drop a comment about, what does everybody think about Promo.com and see if anybody is using it and just basically get your own internal reviews from people who are real estate agents. And I think that that would be brilliant if you took the time and did that. Blissfully john, this is the only tool of the ones that you listed that I can honestly say I just don’t know that much about, but everything else I’ve used or used currently. So thankfully, I will be able to speak to them with a high degree more of expertise.
Yeah, you don’t have to buy the yearly, you just get the cheaper price. You can go month to month. I think the month to month is around 45, 55, so you can try it for a month. I think you can sign up for a free plan, which you can try out. You can’t export anything out of it, but you can sign up for a free account and play around with the back end. I think do that and then just pay them for a month and try it out. It’s not a ridiculous price and they look pretty feature rich. And they do have a library of templates designed for real estate. So I think anything that can get you making video and utilizing video in 2023 is worth a go at maybe, but I think what you’ve said is also fantastic. Onto the next one. Canva? Well, you can have a free account. The free account is useful on its own. It’s not crippled. It has a lot of value. The Free Account or Canberra. But to get the real power canva, you want the Premier, which is about for a personal account. It’s 119 a year, so it’s not ridiculous.
I know all these subscriptions do add up. If you’re producing images, producing flyers, it’s got a lot of value. I use Photoshop, but I also use Canva and I pay for the Premier for the 119 a year and I find it well worth the money. What do you reckon, Robert?
So me and the team here use Canva. We are building most of our infographics off Canva, so I can’t really say, as with most design type products, my eye for them is the ease of use, the price and the execution. But I’m coming at this from like an agency leader standpoint, not from an I’m using them personally standpoint. Here’s what I can tell everybody about the feedback that I get from my team. They say these guys are the hand down leader. There’s lots of templates that you can choose from. There’s almost every type of content that we want to produce. That’s a graphic that already has a template, so we can just go and remove or change elements. Since we’re in the real estate space, as everybody listening to the show, there isn’t actually a very high bar for custom graphics that you might put into a blog post, put into a flyer, put into something hard copy. The bar is very low, making canva for us in the real estate business an incredibly valuable tool. John just said the premium I don’t even know what the premium price is. If I’m paying $119 a year for canva, then it’s got to be one of the best values that we have for a production based tool.
So I think very highly of it, john and I think that everybody should, if anybody is interested in graphics, they should look at it. But it is one of those things where it doesn’t make any sense unless actually I’m probably using canvas for teams now that I look at the options. The idea here is that you’re producing graphics to go along with your business. And if you are, if anybody here is listening to the show, is spending a lot of money on custom graphics, this might be something to look at to cut your costs down and increase your productivity.
Yeah, I think like I say, that they have a free version. The free version, they have a certain amount of their library which you can have access, they have a stock imaging, imaging, which so much of it’s available with a free plan. I think if you start using it, I think for anybody that can’t afford to hire a graphic designer to help them, I think it’s invaluable tool to keep all the time plates they provide. So it will help you produce flyers, graphics, thumbnails at a certain standard that won’t look amateurish. So I think it’s invaluable and it’s something if you’re not looking at, if you’re doing a lot of this work yourself, which a lot of real estate agents are, I think it’s invaluable. Shall we go for a break, Rock?
Sure. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, while John and I do promote our businesses on here, our first interest in the show is making sure that we’re giving you valuable information mostly on the subject of marketing for your real estate business. That’s it. We don’t know if we do a good job or a bad job. Our user count grows, our repeat listeners keeps growing. So we presume that we’re doing a great job, but the number one piece of feedback that we look for, that we hope for, that we wish for is something like comments or written form feedback. You can email me at robert inbound REM. But more probably a better bet would be to email Jonathan or John at mailrightmail. Is it malhefen right? Even on the email?
It’s Jonathan@mailhyphenright.com.
Okay, Jonathan@malhefenwright.com. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in one way or the other. And we’re going to give you a small break and we’re going to be right back.
Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail. Right? It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no question asked 30 day money back guarantee. So don’t delay, get started today, go to mailwight.com.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 367, I think, 68 and we are doing a show on good real estate marketing tools for 2023. And the reason I keep hesitating is the next tool up on our list is Jasper AI. And this is literally the reason that I will not be using the words best real Estate lead marketing tools for 2023, which will give John a clue as to how I feel about Jasper AI. But before we jump into that, John, have you used Jasper AI?
I use alternatives. Jasper is one of the leading, obviously utilizing AI for copyrighting and that has become a very big topic. I’ve been using WordPress equivalent, which we offer on all our websites, which is Bertha that uses AI technology. OpenAI is the company that is the leader in providing the background technology that all these type of products like Jasper is built upon. And Jasper is one of the leading SaaS providers people, and I’m sure Rob is going to I’m guessing what Rob’s going to be saying, which is dangerous because I could never work out what Rob’s going to say. I don’t even attempt to work out how his mind is working. That’s a good one, Rob. You should green. It basically helps you write content and it can be abused, but a lot of people really suffer in getting going. It’s a bit like video. It’s a bit like promo that we discussed in the first half for the cost. I really see it as a tool to help you get more video. I see Jasper as a tool in helping you produce some content for your website and getting you over the hump. I see it’s an aid.
But a lot of people I think there’s a balance here. I think it can be overplayed overstated what it can do, but I also think it’s useful. Over to you, Robert.
Okay. AI is a hot topic. I follow like two people on Twitter and one of those two people who is Rand Fishkin, who many of you may not know, but Rand Fishkin is a pioneer, an incredible dude that had previously built one of the most relevant SEO companies that existed called Maas.com. And I just like the way that he approaches everything. He’s a very well researched guy. He always talks from a deeply, like, educated perspective. And his comments to AI were that he tweeted today. So interesting that John brought that to my attention. And I’m going to ask that you bear with me here. Just give me 1 second worth of patience.
Well, I got no worry about that. You were patient with me last week because I was late. I had a flat tire. I was in a bit of a mess when I arrived late for the show.
Here’s what Rand said, and it echoes what I feel. Here’s my favorite take so far on the Chat GPT and AI content. Hype train. I hate the hype around chat GPT Whenever the topic of AI writing tools comes up, I’ve noticed that the proponents of AI tend to group everything else into two camps haters and technology ludites, and fellow fans and avid users. I don’t fit into either group. I’ve been enthusiastically playing with every AI tool I can get my hands on. Jasper copy AI, chat, GPT, stable diffusion dollar e canvas, existing AI image generator. On the other hand, I don’t agree that these tools will change the world of professional work anywhere close to the scale that most coverage describes. I would love to take these tools on the repetitive marketing task I currently find mind bogglingly boring. But we aren’t there yet. I have used Jasper AI extensively. I was hoping that the tool would eliminate some of the guest blog posting responsibilities that we still handwrite. I have a team that writes over 300 guest blog posts each and every single month. I was really wanting and hoping that this tool would either take some of the weight off or all of the weight off that team.
I have discovered that Jasper AI isn’t even remotely close to being there yet. It does not write anything that’s engaging on a human level. It does repeat itself, even though, theoretically, they say it’s not supposed to. It does. I’m telling you, not from the perspective of this is not an opinion. I use the tool on similar subjects in similar areas because that’s what we do. I wasn’t trying to trick the tool. I was trying to experiment with it for workflow, and it did not work. I cannot be more clear about that. Did not work. It regurgitated large segments of the same content, slightly different, but not enough, unfortunately, to make it past Google, which is what is just flabbergasting me, is that these tools are literally advertising, including Jasper AI. On its home page, on the scroll, it’s saying, use this tool to produce SEO content. Holy meatballs. Everybody that’s listening to the show, do not do that. You will get yourself penalized into the ground. Google has been very vocal on the subject of AI and using AI to produce content. And I’ll summarize it, don’t you dare do it, is what they say.
That is literally what they say. And if they catch you doing it, and they catch you doing it in Plentitude, you are just asking to have your website blacklisted. Because if AI could write all the content on the site, number one, that would defeat the purpose of what Google is supposed to be about. But here’s the most important thing. Google is filled with rocket scientists. They’re very smart people. We all wish that machines would produce content at a level that a smart human being could learn something from the machine. None of them are there yet, including Rank Bring. The AI that Google uses. They’re just not there yet. No machine learning has learned enough yet to educate us on a subject, which means that human writers and human content producers and human thinkers need to be behind something if you’re going to really try to provide valuable to a searcher. And guess what? Google’s core business is providing value to searchers which means that AI runs directly contrary to Google at this exact moment. Which means if you try to use it for SEO, you are guaranteeing it. So here’s the problem. You might get away with it for a little while because maybe you wrote a piece of content or two that nobody else had written yet.
But you really think that everybody in the real estate game is not going to get in there, or that they’re not I mean, there’s like 1.6 million pages on Van Ice. I live in a podunk town in the middle of, like it’s just not a very exciting place, and yet there’s 1,600,000 people have written about it. So what do you think is going to happen with your little towns and your little cities? It’s going to happen. And when it happens, the website that once ranked well is going to go get its ranking dropped into the ground, and you will not be able to figure out why that happened. I’ve seen this type of shit hit the marketplace in the past, john, I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I think you need to stay off this train. And I don’t even know that you’re ever going to be able to get on the train because Google currently and I see John’s frowning. But here’s the thing that most people say I’m frowning.
It’s just dickens. Sorry, I interrupt.
That’s okay. I just think people don’t understand the way that Google is, like, reviewing even what are supposed to be standard content pages. Like, you’re going to catch a penalty. You get penalized if you use a big provider. Like, let’s just say somebody’s producing 10,000 websites like Agent Image, and they have the same buy sell page that they put buy, sell real estate. Sell real estate. And in the past, it was always very exciting for all of us to say that some of your website content was going to be written for you and then you didn’t have to worry about it. Guess what? Replicative duplicated pages even like that, even ones that are no followed, impact your SEO ranking. So there’s a way to get Google not to read those pages. There is no way to ignore the user behavior that comes off highly repetitive websites, which is very bad. Okay? If you produce a site that looks similar and acts similar as a competitor right down the street, and you’re thinking that you’re going to get great user behavior, which is in turn going to yield you good SEO rankings, I’m here to tell you you are wrong.
You are wrong, wrong, wrong. Go ahead and write your own pages. Even put down a sentence. Put down a link someplace else, but make it original. That’s what Google rewards in terms of rankings and anything else, you’re either taking a penalty or you’re hitting the neutral button, the neutral gear button on your site. Now, having said that, the place that I think the AI is kind of exciting, John. And that could find a use for everybody right now is some of the use cases on it I do agree with. So the use cases of writing emails I do not agree with. Writing sales copy. I do, however, agree with writing certain customer service copy, certain business mechanics copy, post process copy. But here’s the thing that everybody I think is forgetting. You do have to go and proof the copy. You have to read it because it’s not producing perfect copy. It doesn’t matter. I’ve never seen an AI, I’ve not personally tested an AI, John, that’s producing perfect copy. If you have, then you have got an experience. I have not, no, I think the.
Majority of what you said I would agree with. I just see it as a tool to some extent, but a limited tool. And I think if you see it and they’re promoting it like you say, but they’re bound to, aren’t they? Also, Google is going to have no love for this because Microsoft was one of the largest investors in OpenAI. They have invested about 50 million. Open AI is an open source, but it’s a nonprofit company and Microsoft has never liked open source or nonprofit companies. So I was a bit puzzled why they were one of the major investors. Because they came on my radar about a year ago. But then we found out the past couple of months, it’s become very obvious why Google Microsoft is because they’re planning to invest I think they publicly have state they’re going to invest a billion dollars into open AI.
They already have. I just watched the CEO talk about this the other day on a program in India and they’ve got an Azure backbone there. They’ve invested most of the designers, developers and engineers for the core programming came out of India. And this is Microsoft stab at probably defeating Google’s monopoly. They hope the AI gets good enough to be able to write content autonomously. This is a competition between two massively sized technology companies.
Yes, fundamentally, I just see it’s overplay tool overhyped to some extent, but I do think it’s a legitimate tool. But you can get into some hot water if you don’t really know what you’re dealing with. So let’s go on to the next tool, which has as part of its sales pitch, AI writing tool element, that’s tailwind and tailwind. I want to point out that Mail Wright has a similar functionality than this. But basically it provides a library of content that you can set up in a calendar scheduler for Print, Pinterest and Instagram. And for Facebook, it has a library that’s specifically aimed at real estate agents. It’s also included what it calls a ghost writer, which seemingly works with Pinterest API and write some reasonable stuff for your images that you’re going to place on Instagram. And the price starts at 1299. I haven’t used it for what the price level if it helps you post more to these platforms, I think it might be worth a look at. I’m not indulcing it. I’m just saying, have a look at it. What do you reckon?
So Tailwind is I use it. I’ve used it for years. Do not use the AI feature so that everybody knows, we manually write our Pin descriptions. Okay? We manually write those Pin descriptions on the actual images because Pinterest will import the image into Pinterest, and then you will get the description that’s located inside the image into Pinterest, which is what makes, like, the way that we have done SEO optimization. We add a layer of value for the handful of people that actually post images off their site, because, honestly, the captions are already done for you. You just post the caption. It comes complete with the writing into wherever you’re sending it to, whether that’s Instagram or Pinterest. Pinterest has always been one of the most valuable SEO tools that we use. There is definitely a social component to the way that Google ranks sites. There’s a branding logarithm that Google uses to rank sites making anything that you consider related to Pinterest interesting. Instagram can’t be read by Google. So if you’re thinking about SEO, there’s no value on Instagram for that except for the transfer traffic from that platform to your platform. John, you’re off screen.
Oh, sorry.
So I apologize for the interruption and for that. John. So, guys, I strongly think that Tailwind has value. It’s a cool tool. It automatically adds value. There’s other tools that are interesting in this space. I think that here’s a secret. I do use automated or behavioral marketing in certain elements of my marketing, which is how I know what does and does not work. Audience I test. It exhaustively trying to find the places that we can hack like Google or Social without breaking any big rules and still getting strong results for our clients. I’ve probably tested 50 or 100 tools so far. I will keep testing them, by the way. I’m not going to back away from testing them. I’ve only found one that I can use out of all that testing. I’m not going to name it. I worked way too hard to find it. But I’ll tell you what it does. It automatically posts to a number of social platforms simultaneously leaving comments on people’s profiles, liking and disliking stuff, and building audiences. I’ve used this tool to build my audience on Pinterest, which currently stands at 17,000, and I have done very little to do that.
So to say to everybody here that’s listening to the show that there’s not a place that there can’t be a place for tools like Tailwind and other tools that automate really arduous processes. Now, why do I have a tool that automates something? Well, I’m already creating unique graphics and design elements and unique content on my site. I spend a bucket ton of money doing it all. I want is to promote it in social places. That’s all I want to do is take actual, real, deeply valuable information that I have produced that is original, and I want to promote it on other platforms. That’s where you get complicated. It gets complicated. I found a tool that kind of does that. Okay. It does it well enough. So Tailwind does make that process easier for a single user trying to post stuff off a website. If you have a personal assistant, if you have a social media marketer in the Philippines, if you have anybody that’s helping you, then I think Tailwind is brilliant. If you don’t have anybody that’s helping you, I think it’s too manual. That’s my opinion.
Yes. On to the last one. Server SEO. It’s a pacific SEO tool. It uses some of the elements of artificial intelligence. It starts at $49 a month. It’s a quasar professional level SEO tool. Robert is an expert on SEO. He might disagree with that statement.
We use it. John, I’ll cut you off the past. I currently use it, and I use it on every single article that we publish on inbound REM. But I have a very specific thing out of the toolkit that they’ve done very well for $50 a month that automates this one thing extremely efficiently. But I don’t use the rest of the toolkit.
I think I use one of its competitors.
Why wouldn’t you put the competitor down here?
Well, I think somebody trying. I think it’s a good tool. I’m a cheap skate. I’m using something I got a better deal on as polish new design terms as it does the job. Maybe you can explain what surfer SEO does for the audience, Rob.
Well, it does a lot of things, but what I use it for is the semantic keyword recognition component of it. So what we do is we feed a title of an article in there and we feed like a written article into it. And usually we’ve got about 1001, 500 words, 3000 words. When you are pretty convinced that you’re going to write a blog post that is going to rank in the search engines here’s, where most people, myself included, lose a lot of value on that article, your article can rank for either 100 keywords or 1000, depending upon the semantic value of the article. Now, semantic value is really mostly in the headers, the headers that you’re using inside your content. That’s mostly what Google is examining. And then they’re comparing it to the title and seeing how well those things add up. Now, what surfer SEO does in an instant is measure all of your subheaders, not the title of the article. There’s plenty of tools out there that do that for you. What’s a good title? Keyword research. There are not that many tools that do a really good job at looking at your subheaders and saying, oh, you should change this to this or that, and then.
So you go down the content and you change your headers up, and you sometimes can increase the reach of the same article. You’re not really rewriting the article. You’re just kind of changing around the headers and such. And you oftentimes double the reach, increase the reach by 10% surfer. SEO for that one task is pretty cool.
I use it because the articles rewritten takes a few months for Google to assess them, and then I use other tools to keep an eye on it. And then I use a similar tool to give me insight about how Google seen it, how I might be able to improve the article if it’s not ranking as well as I hoped. And I just use it as a method to help me improve existing articles, and I found it useful for that myself. And it has worked. But you got to know a bit about SEO, and you got to be motivated to consistently utilize it. Like all these I see, all the things that we’ve outlined, maybe even canva everything we’ve outlined, none of it’s ridiculously priced. And they’re just tools, basically. They and if you’re at a certain stage where you can’t afford to also have people helping you, that might help you improve your digital marketing as a real estate agent. That’s why I thought it was a reasonable list. What’s your thoughts, Robert?
My thoughts are you added a thing at the end, which I agree with, but I’m going to add just a contrary thought. So John has listed a whole series of tools that all pretty much fall under the sub, $100 a month. And if any of you are brand new agents with very limited budget, selling one or two homes per year, making $30,000 to $60,000, whatever the number is, this is a great list if you happen to be in $100,000 range anywhere in the US. I’m going to add one tool to this list that I feel dominates all the tools, and that is a virtual assistant that comes out of one of the countries where you can pay them a reasonable living for somewhere between three and $6 an hour, which is mostly parts of India, Pakistan, and Philippines. Now, Philippines is where I go. It’s where I suggest you go. But if you get stuck, you can look at these other countries as well. So a personal assistant can if you’ve created any processes around these tools, you can use a personal assistant for that. Actually, one last thing on the list. It’s not so much a tool.
It’s fiverr.com. Fiver.com, if any of you haven’t heard of this service. For between five and $20, you can get a lot of marketing tasks done for you for the amount of money that you spend, as long as you spend a little bit of time making sure that you’re shopping for a good vendor for the task. A lot of things done. Thumbnails on graphics. The same graphics that I spend my money on in canva. You can actually have somebody do them for you on fiverr, no problem. Like that’s one thing you can get done all day long, video is a little bit more expensive on fiverr, but you can get it done there. Content copywriting, you can get that done there. So basically every single thing that we’ve listed, you can get done, including sharing images on social media, it can all be done on fiverr. So it’s a one size fits all recommendation. These are the additional thoughts. But ultimately, when John is listing these tools and I’m looking at them, he is absolutely correct. Each one of these single tools does an important thing to install inside your marketing process. But the most important thing for all of you, everybody, including John, listening to the show is create a process that other people run and take yourself out of it.
And then focus on improving the process so that it gets you more people to call, more people to do what you really do, which is sell real estate or keep in touch with people. But a process with fiverr as part of it, or a virtual assistant, even more important, even if that person was working for you one or two days a week at 8 hours a day, $24 a day, you could get them for $116, which is really not that much different than the rest of these services. Go ahead.
Yeah. Or you can try it out and then get somebody to do it for you, either using the service or doing it themselves. There’s a host of ways to approach this. I think it’s time to wrap it up. Rob, what do you reckon?
I reckon that you are correct, sir. So let’s do this thing the way that we always do, except I’m going to switch it up. My name has been Robert Newman. I am a real estate online marketing consultant. I’m an SEO guy. I’m an inbound marketer. I’ve been doing it for 14 years. I have founded a company called Inbound REM. We build websites, we do SEO campaigns. We’re really meant the service is designed for the veteran agent, the veteran broker who’s looking to own everything that they do, all the content, the website, all of it, and take themselves off systems. So if you want to learn more about that, go to inboundrem.com. John, how would people look you up?
Just go to the Mail hyphen right.com website. And if you want to book a chat with me or add them, you can book it on the website and we are always happy to have a quick discussion with you and see if we can help you.
Back.
Over to you, Rob.
All right, brilliant. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. We’re excited to continue to serve up incredible content in 2023 and we hope that you’ll be along on the ride with us. All right. Have a great day. Bye, you.
————————————–
The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show
Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman
jonathan@mail-right.com
775-372-6322
https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa
————————————–
Robert Newman
InboundREM
https://inboundrem.com
————————————–
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more