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Jeff Wenberg is a marketing strategist with over 15 years of experience helping businesses grow fast, without burning everything down. He’s held key marketing roles at Leadpages, and led marketing at Zipify Apps and Salesmsg, where he helped scale customer acquisition and craft offers that consistently convert. Today, Jeff works with coaches and online entrepreneurs to address the real reason their sales stall: how they’re pitching what they do. He’s here to unpack what breaks when you try to scale a “proven” offer, and what to do when your audience stops buying.
Hi there, folks. It’s the Mail-Right Show here. It’s episode 478. You’ve just got me, folks. Robert has been experiencing some technical issues with the Internet, but we have a guest, folks. We’ve got Jeff Weinberg with us. He’s a well-known marketing expert. We’re going to discuss some essential information about landing pages, ads, and why funnels aren’t working. Jeff’s a real expert on this. It should be a great discussion. So, Jeff, would you like to give the audience a quick intro about yourself and your background?
Yeah, for sure. First, thank you for having me here. I’m super excited to be on the show. And I’m the most famous marketer you’ve never even heard of. So, I’ve been in digital marketing for about 15 years, doing everything from content creation to ads to emails – pretty much everything at some point in my career. I’ve had to do that. And through all these diverse jobs, I’ve gained some valuable experience in scaling marketing, both for teams and for generating leads, sales, and other key metrics. I got my start at a company called Lead Pages, where I was team member number 11. We grew to around 150 or 175 employees and had approximately 45,000 paying customers. So, really got to see what it took to develop a giant funnel like that and to generate multiple millions per month in revenue. And then moved to a company called Zipify Apps. It was within the Shopify ecosystem, where it was similar, but focused on e-commerce, and I really learned about paid ads and how to execute direct response campaigns, as well as influencer-style marketing.
And now I’m currently a director of Marketing at a company called Sales Message, where I’m doing the same thing, refining messaging, figuring out positioning and offers, and that stuff that works for more B2B businesses, and that stuff. As I mentioned earlier, throughout my career, I’ve had to do virtually everything. And the one thing that I found that I love focusing on is more around the offers you’re making and the messaging. I call them enrollment stories. When you craft an excellent enrollment story, it makes everything else work better. It makes your ads work better, your emails, your funnels, your sales, and everything else. And that’s the thing that most people overlook. So I’m looking forward to hopping into that today.
Oh, that’s fantastic, Jeff. As you know, Jeff, on this podcast, we’ve got an emphasis on real estate agents and realtors. Many of them struggle significantly with digital marketing, becoming frustrated with providers who fail to deliver real results. And I also think they struggle, Jeff, is the concept of what a CRM is. Some industry-based ones focus on contact information, providing general information CRMs, and they often bolt on some landing page functionality that doesn’t work particularly well. They run campaigns for agents, but they’re not very successful. So I was looking forward to our discussion because you have so much experience, Jeff. Yeah, for sure. So let’s move on. So Jeff, why do some great offers stall when you scale, even with the proper funnels and that? The agency or the individual, or you’ve studied it a bit yourself, and you’ve done a reasonable job, but you’re just not getting the results, really, Jeff. Yeah.
This is just based on my experience. This is not like, this is what happens for 100% of the time. Usually when I see people really struggling to scale, it’s they don’t have an offer and messaging that really resonates with cold audiences. So that’s people that don’t actually know who they are, and maybe they’re seeing them for the first time. They’re trying to sell to them like they have already built the authority, have already built the trust, when it’s like, well, I don’t even know who you are. So that’s the equivalent of walking into a bar and asking somebody to marry you when you first meet them. And that’s such a cliché example, but that’s essentially what it’s doing. And then when they try to scale, because a lot of times that works on warm traffic because you’re borrowing authority from a platform you’re on or maybe a partner you work with or something like that. You don’t have to have things as dialed in because you’re borrowing that authority and you come pre-screened. So that’s different. And so they think like, wow, that’s working. Let me scale this out. And they start using the same messaging to people that don’t know who they are and they don’t have that trust and authority with.
And then all of a sudden, they’re like, why is this not working? I have no idea. Must be my ads. So they start tinkering with ads, or it must be like, Oh, my funnel, my landing page, my emails, all of these things, when in reality, what I’ve seen, at least, is it’s usually how they’re communicating the value of what they offer. So there’s It’s usually speaking about stuff that is so far down the line from where the person they’re trying to attract is at, that the person they’re trying to attract is just like, I don’t think that’s for me. When at the end of the day, it’s like, usually those people can help. They just are not the greatest at communicating their value. Does that make sense?
It does. Can you give some examples?
Yeah. If you had an offer where it was… This is obviously going to be a made-up example, but if you had somebody that was walking through the desert, they’re dying of thirst, what most people do is they are going to be like, Hey, here is a golden cup with rubies, diamonds. It’s made out of pure solid gold. Would you like to buy it? It’s like, Well, no. First off, how are you out here in the desert? Where did you get the cup? But more importantly, I don’t even want the cup. I just want some water. What we really need to be doing to just start the conversation at the top of funnel without even selling anything with just our content is, Hey, would you like to find water in the next five minutes anywhere in the world? You know what I mean? Somebody that’s dying of thirst would be like, yes, I will. And then if you were like, this was an offer where you’re selling something, throw in, here’s a coffee can that you can drink it out of. So it’s like, you’re really just meeting them where they are, showing them what they need to know and what they’re actively looking for a solution to, and then maybe also offering a couple of extra little things to just push them over the edge.
Now, what most people do is it would be like This interview as an example, most of your audience has probably never even heard of me. If I came in here trying to sell whatever service or offering that I had, most of your audience would be like, Well, who is this guy? I mean, it sounds good, but also, I don’t know if I really trust him because I’ve never actually even talked to him before. Whereas if you had, let’s say, a guest on your podcast that had been around multiple episodes in your audience, every time that person’s on, they comment, all that stuff. That person is going to be able to sell to your audience like that. What I would need to do to sell is really connect with the struggles and the pain that your audience is having, and then talk about just that stuff on the interview, because then that would position me as a trusted authority, and I would be building trust and showing my authority by demonstrating my expertise. Does that make sense?
It does. If you decided to become a real estate, agent, and you were doing some cold, like Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, whatever the digital platform, and you were thinking of doing some campaigns. Got any tips or insights about what campaign you would run initially?
Yeah. I mean, for what I would do, and obviously I’m not a real estate agent, but what I would do is I would start with just video view campaigns to to start talking about the problems that your target buyers are actively searching for solutions to. So maybe it’s, man, I just can’t find any homes under 500K, or maybe it’s all the homes that I am able to afford are two bedrooms, and I need three bedrooms. Whatever it is that is currently running in their head, that is the story they’re telling themselves, that’s where I would meet them. And as a professional realtor, maybe I know down of the line like, well, actually, I can find you a three bedroom home for under 500K, but you got to do these five things. I actually wouldn’t start there. I would hone in on, doesn’t it suck that you can’t find a home that has more than two bedrooms and everything good is priced over 500K. You know what I mean? Just entering in the conversation they’re already having and then create content and educate them on how you could find deals outside of that framework that most people maybe don’t know about.
So then they could see that I actually know what I’m talking about and know how to get them results, which would be the house they’re after.
I see where you’re coming from because I think, and what I got from that example is you’re trying to become that recognized expert, that person that can relate to the audience problems and needs. And then the more you’re seen as an authentic result, the more that you then maybe will be able to get them on a male list or have that conversation because really, real estate agents are looking for people that are actively looking to buy or sell. Right.
And it’s a little bit more of a long-term strategy, but why I recommend it is because you want to be the person they think of when they are ready to buy. You can do this so cheaply that you can target both at the same time. You target just a top of funnel, more awareness building type campaign. And then you can also target buyers. But for me, I would do the same thing. I wouldn’t be like, Hey, I got some houses that are available over on Cherry Street. I wouldn’t go straight to the… I would focus just on the problems they’re having and finding houses that they like.
You know what I mean? Yes, I do understand, and it’s fantastic. So onto the next topic. So what is What is the hidden clarity gap that keeps your content ads and sell calls from converting? I found this because Jeff gave me some areas that he would like to discuss, and this intrigued me quite a bit, Jeff, this whole concept. So maybe you can give us some insights in this. I say that we’re in the middle break, so I think we go for a break and then we discuss this in the second half. So we’re going to go for a break, folks. We’ll be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a fantastic discussion with Jeff so far. He’s really explained some concepts really very well. So like I said, before we went for our break, I was just saying that was intrigued in this area that Jeff gave me a heads up that he wanted to discuss, and it was this hidden clarity gap. I’m really intrigued about this, Jeff, so maybe you can give us some insights about this topic.
Yeah, for sure. One of the biggest things is, especially in real estate, you have to stand out somehow, and there’s a thousand agents in any given city, and how are you going to find the one? One And one of the biggest things is differentiating yourself from people. And I’m not just talking like, hey, I’ve got clothes that I wear, but how I recommend people differentiate. And then this is just part of the Clarity Gap. I’ll get to And I’ll get a couple of other pieces. But how they differentiate is by the problems that they talk about and the problems they solve, verse just like, hey, I help sell four bedroom houses, four or two, whatever the numbers are. It’s all like, well, who cares? I don’t know. It’s like you specialize in something, and you focus it on the problems. So I mean, being a homeowner as an example, one of the problems that we had was I couldn’t find anybody to advise us. We felt pretty alone in the home buying process. We found the house, and basically, then we had to just give the realtor the commission for just being there at the signing.
And it was like, well, this sucks. My wife found the house. They couldn’t help us negotiate because of, I don’t know, something like they were part of the same company, but in different branches or something. And it was like, well, Cool. This is awesome. I feel totally alone here. So I could use that and find more people that are in that situation and talk through what that was like, how to solve that type of problem. And, oh, Well, also, if you do need help finding a house where you’re able to leverage my expertise and experience to negotiate, to know what to look for, and I can help you no matter what the other real estate agent’s firm is, just give me a call. Essentially, we’re building a foundation of trust so that people feel like, Man, I want to call that person, versus just like, Yeah, I sell four or two homes, or four or three homes, whatever the bedroom and bathroom count is. Does that make sense so far?
Oh, totally. And I think you explained it in a very interesting way. As you were explaining it, I think a lot of people, a lot of real estate agents or people in general will really struggle about Identifying these problems, though. They shouldn’t do, really, because they should write down conversations. But I think we all don’t because we’re all very busy. So you’re going to hear any insights It’s based on your experience about how people cover a few of these problems, which they can then talk about in their videos or their marketing, Jeff.
Yeah. So this is where AI is so good. You can literally just talk to ChatGPT after a conversation. Just say, Hey, I just talked with Rachel and Ben. They’re over at so and so. They’re looking for this house. And here’s what they told me. They told me that Hey, I’m just going to use myself. They told me that everybody, like Realtor, they’ve been talking to and using, they’ve been completely alone. They haven’t had any help in actually finding houses they want. They’ve had to do most of the legwork. And then when it came down to things, they just felt like the real estate agent didn’t actually help them do anything. So they were left wondering what they were paying the agent for. Okay, you compile all with ChatGPT or whatever AI tool you want, and then you ask it to give you a summary of what are the common problems between all these people and what are the things that they’re saying in their language. That’s a really key thing is we want to use their language. We don’t want to take what they’ve said and then summarize it through our brain. We want to just literally copy and paste their words, because if they’re saying it one way, it’s likely that other people are also experiencing that.
Yeah, that’s That’s fantastic. On to the next one. Why your cold audience isn’t buying how to fix it without rebuilding everything? I think this is a fantastic question as well. So give us some insights about this.
With real estate, it’s obviously a relationship business. So it’s all about networking and building relationships and that stuff. So that’s what we call a warm audience. And then we have cold audiences where, like we were mentioning earlier, they’ve never even heard of you. They don’t know anything about you. What we need to do is move people from that cold audience into that warm audience. And we do that through just focusing on the problems. And I know I keep coming back to problems, but in my marketing journey, that’s actually been the thing that’s had the biggest impact. It’s never the ads I’m running, it’s never the funnel, it’s never emails, it’s never anything other than, am I Am I leading with the problem of the people I want to attract? Am I actually really, really going deep on the things that they’re experiencing and then the things they’re doing to try and solve that problem? And I would imagine that goes pretty deep with real estate. Maybe they can’t get funding, maybe it’s hard to find an agent, maybe it’s-I think the funding, I think there’s a lot of people because the prices increases, and then the interest rates increasing.
A lot of people now can’t actually afford to buy the property that they’re looking at, and they’re very frustrated.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s all just like… I always say it’s like, instead of trying to convince somebody to come out of the river, they’re already floating going down and floating down. Hey, come over here to the shore so I can talk to you. Just jump in the river, float down with them so that they eventually just float off to the side, and then you can, Hey, I can help you find a house.
Yeah, I think that’s a great concept because what I’ve just outlined, one of the more successful methodologies that agents have been using to deal with that is that with new build, a lot of the major builders have offering fantastic packages, reducing initial interest by three points, and that for three, some of them have been offering five years on reduced level of interest. And a lot of agents have gone into that because it solves the problem that I’ve outlined, Jeff. So I think that’s really insightful. You’re making me think already about my own. Awesome. Let’s move on. So what are some of the AI tools and services that come on your radar recently that you might have been tempted to use or you think they’re good concepts? There seems to be a lot of AI tools, services out there. I have tried a few of them, and some of them I am using. Others haven’t been that impressive. It seems a very all over the place with a lot of these. Is there any tools or services that have come on your radar that you’ve been impressed with?
Yeah, so there’s obviously a ton of them, and it seems like there’s a new one coming out every day that does this specific thing. I’m still just a ChatGPT fan. I have a paid account because it gives you a little more access and stuff. But I think the thing that I like most about just AI in general is not like, Hey, create all this stuff for me and do these things for me. I like thinking of it more like a brainstorming partner. So it’s like whatever tool you decide to use, you talk to it like you’re brainstorming, like you and I, Jonathan, if we were brainstorming, I would talk to it the exact same way. You don’t have to act smarter than you feel or are. You It can be dumb and it won’t judge you.
That would be very difficult for me.
It’s really cool because it doesn’t judge you. It’ll just take what you say and summarize it in ways where it’s just like, Oh, my gosh, I never even would have thought of that, but that’s so awesome that it picked that out. The thing that the caveat that I always talk with my friends about in AI is you have to give it some raw material, and you still have to be the expert at just looking at its outputs and saying, That sucks, or, Wow, that’s really good, or maybe, Hey, just this part of it is really good. Redo the first part of it. You know what I mean? You still have to have a discerning eye, but it always works better if you give it some really good raw materials and then add your thinking and stuff on top of that and then tell it to synthesize everything into a new output, if that makes sense.
Yeah. I got a A quick follow for your question, and it’s also linked to some of the other things that we’ve discussed in this interview. I think a lot of people don’t… Because I understand that with a lot of copy, they say you want to reduce the reading age. Much lower than you think, because I know myself on websites, I just skim read. I’m just skim reading. And then I might look at some video on the website, or if it’s something I’m researching, then I will read more intently. So do you think that’s a general problem, that people tend to… It’s a bit too worthy in general. They need to reduce the readability. What’s your own thoughts about this?
Yes, that’s good. But the reason is that people try to be too clever and too cutesy with things when it’s just to keep it simple and get to the point. Tell me, what is this, and what will it do for me? I don’t want to hear your alliterations and your fun, cute little ways of saying something when it’s like, ‘ Tell me what this is that I’m looking at, and what the value is I’m going to get out of it. ‘ So, that’s why I think a standard copy rule is that it helps people be like, ‘ Okay, yeah, I have to simplify this and be very clear. ‘ But even with that, it still feels like most and a lot of people just make it too complicated and just hard to understand. And that’s one of the things we were discussing earlier, which also affects how you refine your offer and addresses the clarity gap. When you know the problem, but then fail to communicate it clearly and, it doesn’t land. And then people are like, Why aren’t people getting this? It’s like, Come on.
Well, look at how you’re communicating and what you’re communicating; you’re likely making it too complicated for someone to understand.
Oh, yeah, I agree with you there. So, let’s proceed to the final question. If you had your time machine, like H.G. Wells, or if you’re into Doctor Who, the TARDIS, if you had your own TARDIS, and you could go back to the beginning of your career, is there one or two little things you would love to be able to tell yourself? And the one thing you don’t know yourself, Jeff, is that you shouldn’t have come on this podcast. So that’s excluded, Jeff. But is there anything else you would like to go back in time for?
I would get super clear on what I want to do and what I do for other people. Marry those two so you’re in alignment and they’re in alignment. And that’s a huge deal that many people miss: they’re not in alignment with their offer. They’re just doing what they think people want. So, it is very clear what you want and what you want to do for other people that gives them value. Be very clear about that, and then simplify things.
Yeah, that’s the art. A key message in both your personal and professional life is to keep things simple.
Simplify, simplify, simplify, whenever possible.
It’s been fantastic, Jeff. So what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your insights, Jeff?
I’m at jeffwindberg. Com, J-E-F-F-W-E-N-B-E-R-G. And also, I am jeffwindberg on Instagram. Those are my two best spots.
Right. And that’s fantastic, Jeff. We’re going to wrap it up. Yeah, it sounds great. You’ve given some honest thoughts. You made me think. I’m thinking of it because I’ve acquired the Melright business, and I’ve also started another business. Although we initially took a hit in terms of traffic, we’ve managed to build it back up. However, the conversions have decreased slightly. However, I need to consider my homepage. I worked on it and worked on it, and I have slimmed it down. I need to think about it a bit more.
Yeah, for sure.
Based on the principles you so clearly have outlined in this interview.
Can you put it on how it goes? Yeah.
So we’re going to end it now, folks. Hopefully, next week, my partner in crime, Robert, will be able to join us. We’re either having an internal discussion or we have another great guest like Jeff. Hopefully, you’ve got some value from this episode. I have. It’s made me think a bit. Hopefully, it will make you feel the same way. We’ll be back next week, folks. Bye.
Thanks for having me.
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Discover proven open house marketing strategies for 2025 that attract qualified buyers and sell properties faster. Stay ahead of the competition.
In this insightful video, we explore innovative open-house marketing strategies poised to make waves in 2025. From leveraging social media platforms to utilizing cutting-edge technology, we break down effective tactics that can attract more buyers and create memorable experiences. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or new to the industry, these actionable tips will elevate your marketing game.
More quality leads from open houses
#1 – Promoting the open house using short-form video on social media
#2 – A more innovative way to nurture neighbors into sellers (door knocking) and promote the open house, remember you are in the business of having conversations
#3 – Educational content that positions you as the go-to expert that links to the open house that you share through social media
#4- Proven SEO and keyword research tips to increase exposure link to the social media you develop
#5 – Develop a detailed market and neighborhood guide video that will be sent to people who want to give their email to you.
#6 – Do post-open house neighborhood door-to-door outreach.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to The Mail Right Show. It’s episode number 477. You’ve got me, and you’ve got Jonathan Didwin, and I am thrilled to tell you that you’ve found the number 86-rated real estate podcast in the world. Congratulations. We’re going to discuss marketing today, as we do every day. A little pinky in the brain reference for some of you who may be like me and be animation nerds. But today’s episode 477, and we’re going to talk about open house marketing that works in, guess what? 2025. It’s useful that John and I are willing to speak with you about the things that work today. We should get a prize, I think. We already did. We got rated number 86 by you, our lovely listeners, in terms of being in the top 100 podcasts. If you’d like to check us out, visit millionpodcast.com and see that we’re currently ranked number 86; however, we’d like to be number one. Before we get started, if you’re a long-time listener and want to support the show, we’d appreciate it if you could leave a comment or give us a thumbs up.
It matters. These platforms track it. It doesn’t matter where you’re hearing it. It doesn’t matter where you found us. Just give us a little love.
All right. Give us love.
All you need is love. All right. Anyway, I am obviously… This is why I podcast and not sing, so that everybody knows. All right. John, as usual, for those of you that don’t know, Jonathan Denwood is a WordPress master. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He has more than one business. He is one of the top podcasters on WordPress. He has a real estate business that has built an all-in-one system called the MailRight system. It is inexpensive, reasonably priced, and he is highly competitive. Without any further ado, as a human being and as a business owner, Jon, why don’t you finish off your intro?
Oh, thanks, Rob. Yes, I’m the joint founder of Mail-Right. Com. We’re a platform that provides an easy-to-use CRM, a library of predesigned websites that can get you up and running, plus a host of other digital services and products bundled into one affordable package, starting at around $49 per month, if you’re paying month-to-month. What more could you ask for, my beloved real estate agents? Back over to you, Robert.
Exactly. So as we wind up for the show, the much-aligned maligned. The real estate market is getting more competitive. John and I constantly talk about and rehash ways for people to get leads. There’s a lot of things that are going to change really quickly. That’s just the truth of it. Ai is changing in a game on a daily basis, how people find things. It’s not the cataclysmic thing that I think people are describing, but voice search is becoming more relevant. And one of those searches that would be interesting for all of you at the show to hear about is a search called Open Houses Near Me is gaining in popularity. I don’t know that for sure. I haven’t looked up the numbers. But what I do know for a fact is that voice searches up by a ridiculous margin. That is absolutely a truth. And So it’s safe to say that almost all searches related to real estate are up. I can say it and know that I’m probably right. So one of those things that we are, as people are going open houses near me or real estate office near me, obviously, for all of you who’ve gotten used to never showing up to the office, never being at an open house, the game is going to change slightly.
You want to be there. You want to be there or you want an assistant there, depending on where you’re at in your career. Why? Because it’s still a place that people walk in personally and you can still collect their information. That is going to become rarer and rarer in terms of what your options are to market to consumers directly. Openhouses becomes a channel that’s more and more promising, not less promising. So having some open house strategies in place so that you can get in front of customers, potential customers, which is really hard to do in person, it’s really important. Please don’t breeze by this show. It’s a really important subject. With no further ado, John, as usual, he likes to say he’s done all the donkey work. John has done all the donkey work for the show, so we’re going to start him off with the first bullet point on our list of things that you can do to promote yourself at Open Houses in 2025.
Yeah, thanks, Rob. I think number one I had on the list was promoting the open house using short form video on social media. But before I give some thoughts on that, I think what should have been number one is having a plan, having a template, having structure. I’ve always liked open houses. A lot of agents don’t. They don’t see the worth in them. I’ve got to tell you the truth, my beloved audience, I find that a really bizarre attitude. I think a lot of real estate agents that have built up a really good book of business, and for understandable reasons, they no longer want to do open houses, that’s fine. Get a junior involved. It’s a great way that both of you can benefit. But I’ve always liked open houses, Rob. I think as a guerrilla tactic, if they’re running the right way, they can be very beneficial. But a lot of agents, like anything, Rob, if you just got a damn negative attitude about something, then You’re not going to get anything out of it, Rob. You got to change your attitude a bit. And you got to have a plan, a template, about how you’re going to market this open house.
And you’ve got to understand. And I hear this from, Well, we never get in any leads. We never get any real leads. Well, I know agents that do get really good leads from their open houses, and they also understand it’s a great way of meeting people, having discussions, and also building up their email list. And when I hear other agents say, Well, we don’t get anything from it. It’s a waste of my Saturday or my Sunday, ‘ whatever excuse they want to come out with. I just listened, and yeah, it is what it is, but I think it’s a great But you got to have a plan. And one of the plans is video on social media on all platforms is dominating. And I think using some of the AI tools that we’ve discussed, Robert, over the last few months, you can take some videos on your phone and you can reuse them by using AI. But it’s also linked to one of the other points is that You got to get these videos viewed. And the way to do it is to do some basic SEO research about what are people searching around property on these social media platforms, and then you tag, title tag, your open house around certain subjects, and that’s the clues for what the short video topics are going to be.
Hopefully that makes sense, Rob. What do you reckon?
I think that we’re going to say the same thing in a slightly different way. So if all of you tuned in and started to say, I would like to be found on voice search. All right, well, here’s the thing that most people don’t know, John. Large language models are now scraping local data, okay? Publiquely available local data that they were not going to get any trouble with people like Google. Now, what that means to all of you is that you can And post a video that says open house on 8, let’s see, like 6: 15, 2025. And Google will look at that data, and the large language models will, too. And then they’ll examine the description to see if you’ve got description information in there. And then when somebody does a voice search, they’re going to pull directly the title of the video and the description, which means that whatever you put in there as a human being, like as a is basically what people will hear a voice search. So promoting your local open house on, let’s say, your social profile is not Facebook because they’re very unfriendly to all people that want to call them, but probably Google.
And you’re going to absolutely positively list your open house there using a short form video, just like John said, but with the specific strategy that I just said. It could be a 30-second video saying, This is when doing it. This is where it is. Here’s the directions. Here’s my cell phone number to call me if you need additional information on how to find it. That’s it. It’s the house it is. Single family, two bedrooms, square footage, like price, and then you move on with your day. That right there can get you tagged in voice search. All right, using video. So same thing that John just said. All right, so I’m going to take number 2, which John has put down on our list, smarter ways to nurture your neighborhoods into sellers, door knocking and promote the open house, remember, you’re in the business of having conversations. So when I used to run Canvasing Cruise, John, the way that we would have done this strategy is absolutely as a public service. That’s how the door knock would go. You do the knock, you’ve got 15 seconds to make a positive impression. If you’re lucky enough for the homeowner to answer the door, these days, it’s a lot of ring conversations.
It’s a little camera on a door, and you say, Hey, this is just a public service. I just want to let you know. You have 15 It’s got to be fast. You barely even bother with your name. Oftentimes, you don’t. You just say, Hey, I’m Robert. I work for a local realtor. The property, five houses down from you is getting listed. We’re going to have an open house on blank, blank, eight at blank, blank time. We’re letting you know as a public courtesy, just in case you’d like to see how the Joneses live. And then you ask what the say yes question, if you’re being really assertive, Can I expect to see you there? Or, Will I expect to see you there? Or you can also just go, just want to let you know, and then walk away or and drop a flyer on the door. So you want to canvas neighborhoods close to the house, and you want to try to pique people’s curiosity by saying, Do you know how your neighbors live? And then get them to that. Listen, John, you’re an American now, buddy. We all want to know.
Oh, yeah, English people are just the same nosy as hell. Everybody wants to know everybody else’s business, and they don’t want to share theirs.
Exactly. So that’s my little comment. Do you have something to add?
Yeah, just a quick thing, Rob, is that I think, and we’ve discussed this before, Rob, a lot of people, either they want to go fully digital and they don’t want to meet somebody. They want paid Facebook adverts or Google paid adverts, and they really don’t… They go full digital in their lead generation. They don’t really want to meet people, or you get the other type of agent, that Poopoo’s social media paid advertising website. I don’t need that. I just build my book through face-to-face interaction. The key to this, folks, is combining both, is having proper planned strategies about how you’re going to market the open house on social media. But remember, I’m only saying what I would do, I would knock on people’s doors and promote it because this is a conversational business. It’s about talking to people. The thing about digital marketing, folks. It’s about getting you in front of people that want to have conversations about buying or selling property. It’s that simple, really, folks. There’s nothing The fundamentals aren’t that difficult. It’s actually doing it at a price and in a volume that can make a difference. But the fundamental of it is not a difficult concept, is it, Robert?
No. Now, number three on the list. Well, Hugo, you start us off. I mean, I obviously have a lot to say. This is my wheelhouse.
Yeah, I thought it would be. Well, we’ve had this discussion, being the digital mayor of your area, being the digital mayor of your town, the property mayor, I should say, the person that’s on social media sharing knowledge. And when you go to various social events in town, you’re recognized as the expert. You’ve proven your chops. And that’s what your social media content, it should be education helpful. And when you’re promoting If you do this, it’s going to be easier when you’re promoting your open houses, isn’t it? It all fits in, doesn’t it, Robert?
It does. There’s a lot of strategies that comes down to storytelling and education. Storytelling and education for lifestyle, which is exactly how we provide service to our clients, is encouraging them to do these things and then giving them help, tips, and advice, along with doing all the technical things that you need to do to rank for SEO. Educational content provides you… When you start saying educational, for those of you that are lucky enough to live in a second home market, which John is, Reno, as an example, and he just illuminated for me before the show started that he bought originally in Reno because he enjoys skiing, and it’s a prolific activity in that area. You get a small town feel, and it’s beautiful. So all great reasons. However, what you could do that would so easily generate you leads from all over the place is start to talk about the specifics of what slopes are your favorite, how do you get in? When do you go? What time of day? When’s best to go? How much past this cost? I can go on and on. What your favorite ski shop is. And then when you do all of that, as you’ve done one of those videos that educates or talks about lifestyle, at the end of it, you go, by the way, and we We don’t do wondering generalities in videos when we’re trying to sell stuff.
We do meaningful specifics. We go, we’re going to take that idea of skiing and all this stuff, and we’re going to go, by the way, I have a beautiful listing that is a mile away from all the things that I just talked about, and it’s listed at $500,000. So if for some reason you think you might want to move here, give me a ring and let’s talk about this listing. It’s a way that you turn a random educational video into a lead generation video. All right.
Shall we go for a break?
If we must, obviously, I wanted to talk through it. I was on one. All right, ladies and gentlemen, John is right. We need a break. We need a long coffee and a smoke, and we’re not going to tell any jokes today. We’ll be back in an hour. No, I’m just kidding. Today’s show has been sponsored by inboundrem. Com, your leader in SEO and educational services. Also, it’s been sponsored by mail-right. Com, one of the most reasonably all-in-one platforms anywhere that you can find in the whole entire real estate industry, run by one of the most greatest English folks that you’ve ever met in your life. If you haven’t done so already, please check out our sponsors. We greatly appreciate it, and we’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the MailRight Show. Today’s episode is number 477, and we’re going to move on in our conversation about things that you can do for open house marketing that might work for you in 2025. One of the things that John is mentioning, which is one of my favorites, and I’m going to take it, I’m going to start us off. I’m not going to take it.
I’m going to start us off on this one. Is proven SEO and keyword research tips to increase exposure. All right. A really great tip, always. One of the very few things that still has good value in terms of time. Seo is changing rapidly, but one thing that’s not changing is understanding what people are searching for. It doesn’t matter whether it’s ChatGPT. Prompts was a huge thing for 2 seconds where you could buy 15 magic prompts and AI would sped out the answer and you’d spend $15 for the 15 prompts, and then it was 150 prompts, and then it went away. Keyword research and understanding how people are searching for whatever it is that you’re doing is still incredibly relevant. Are they searching by the address of the property? Does it have enough buzz that that’s happening? Are people searching searching generalized keywords? Because you want to be able to tag your social media or mention these things in the world of large language models. You need to make sure that if you’re doing a post, large language models are more about context than specific keywords. You still need to know how people are searching so that you can contextually frame your message correctly to potentially get in front of those searches.
Chatgpt and tools like it are not magic. What you do is you say, you contextually lie out, I’ve got a Lakehouse in such and such a part of the state or city or neighborhood, and it’s listed in this general range, and it’s close to such and such and such and such a school district. It’s great for kids that like sports. Contextually, you lay out enough bullet points that the search engines understand all the different sides of the equation and the large language models as well. And then they serve up your piece of content. That’s what I perceived that you were saying in here. Is that right, Tom?
Yeah, a lot of it. But I think the other thing is, I just want to spell it out, is that you want to do a quick searching in Facebook, in Instagram, in YouTube, in TikTok, whatever it is, and just see What are the most popular terms around buying the property that you’re going to be showing, your open house? What are people around the subject of property? What are they looking for? And then you do your videos and you tag them with what they’re looking for. And then you write the content, you write the videos a little bit about the subject. By the way, We got this open house coming up, right? And that gets the video watched, and it gets across, you got the open house. That’s what I’m trying to explain to folks.
Copy that. All right, well, we’re going to, in good points all, we’re going to move on here. We’re going to talk about John’s next bullet point. I like this one a lot. It’s no longer generalities, it’s specific.
Well, I am Mr. General. I don’t like Robin.
One thing that I’ve educated, I try to educate my clients on, John, is The world has changed for good and for permanent in one major way. I don’t care if you’re old school or you door knock or whatever it is. It doesn’t matter what your approach to getting in front of people is. If it’s the oldest, if you’ve been doing the same thing for 35 years, there’s one that’s true even for you. People do expect there to be support. If you knock on their door, you may be making the sale 80% in person. You’re still going to have a customer You’re still going to have a customer that’s going to want to look at a website after you leave. You’re still going to have a customer that’s going to want to look at a video or a neighborhood. In the case that John is describing, he says, Let’s make some detailed neighborhood videos. I cannot stress to you, everybody listening at the beginning of the show, how important those tools are, not only from a search perspective, but from a sales support perspective. If I am talking to somebody, and let’s just say I am at a lake on vacation, I’m thinking of buying a second home, and then that person says to me, Great, go to our website.
Then I find that there’s nothing but a search tool there, no information on the area. Now I leave and I go back home. I’m now back in California, and I was at Lake Okoboji in Iowa. I’m I want to see the lake. I want to see the slip that we launched our little fishing boat off of, and I caught those two record-setting bass off of where all you’re doing is showing me properties. You don’t need that a lot of times in today’s world. You actually need the deeply detailed lifestyle guides in video format and things like that. Even if all of you who are listening to the show are not to do steady, consistent streams of media, but do maybe one weekend a year where you just set aside that weekend and created a whole bunch of guides, I would do that as a necessary part of my marketing strategy. A hundred % I would do that. John, I know that’s a little bit of a different take than what you put on here. How are you thinking of it when you added it to the list?
Yeah, sure. Well, we’ve talked about this on and off throughout as we’ve been doing this show. Evergreen pages, local guides, have videos, have a downloadable, a master guide for the whole town or the area of the city. And then you can cut that master guide into sub-guides and have some other evergreen landing pages. But How does this work in your strategy on the open house? Well, you want to… A lot of agents have a sign-up sheet, and they always say, Well, nobody signs up. And when they do sign up, it’s a Mickey Mouse email email address. Of course it is, because you’re not offering anything, and people don’t want to give their details because they’re worried that they’re going to be bombarded to death by you. So you’re going to have to offer them something, and what you say to them is you print out a couple of pages of the guide and say, If you want the full guide, I send it to you. And in the guide, it will have links to the website that will have full videos. And then maybe you combine it, you’re saying, that you’re doing a draw. And if you write the nonprofit or you say on the website, there might be a link that will take them and they can select which local nonprofit.
And And at the end, you’re telling them that you’re giving $50 or $100 to the most popular local nonprofit or charity in the area. Something that induces some goodwill. And you’re also offering this PDF, which you send to them if they give their name. And then, like you say, you will have links in it that will take them to landing pages that will have the video guides.
Beautiful. And ladies and gentlemen, I love every single one of those ideas. There’s one, Krista Mayshore is a big fan of using Charisma. Now, not everybody has Charisma, so a lot of you are listening to- Do I have Charisma, Robert? Of a type.
That’s the last thing he’s ever going to say about me.
Charisma is one of It’s one of those things that is subjective. It’s in the eye of the beholder. Let’s just make that clear.
Are you trying to say I’ve got a face that only my mother could love?
No, I am not saying that at all. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet you anything, John, that your vocal presentation is far more appealing to people on the show than mine is. But anyway, let’s move on. Using comedy or emotional strings. So John listed a couple of promotional things. Some people, when you’re meeting them, they are all about the finances and coupons, discounts, and specials, and draws. They work on that set of people. The other thing that works on people, though, that is Far more prolific is emotional tuning. So if you get a read on your person, they’re family-oriented, they’re this-oriented. If you have anything on your site that matches the personality type of the person, you mention it in your conversation with them. Like, Oh, by the way, my kid is on the boat on this lifestyle video. And You should check it out because she does something really cute. Somebody that is a mother and really in tune with the family, she’s almost for sure going to go to your website and then check out that video. A lot of this comes down to the fact, can you read people? Hopefully, most of you as real estate agents have some basic skills in that category because the business you’re in.
All right, so last but not least, and it’s my favorite on the whole entire list, I’ve used it my entire career. I’ve used it incredibly successfully inside door knocking. I’ve used it in almost all… I used to use it When I was a kid and we were selling security systems door to door. I did that for AT&T and ADT 20, 30, 40 years ago. Here’s the most successful tactic that you can ever do. You install an alarm in somebody’s house, and all the people whose doors you already knocked on that probably said no to the offer when you originally canvas the neighborhood, you go back and recanvast their doors. Why? John, Mary, Bob, whatever. I just want to let you know that we just installed an alarm a few doors down, and so if you should hear it go off, we’re going to be testing it over the next few days. You come up with a really solid reason that somebody can’t get angry at you for knocking on their door for. With home sales, it’s going to be something more along the I just want to let you know that we listed the home down the street for X amount of dollars, or we sold the home down the street for X amount of dollars.
It’s 10% above the asking price or 10% below the asking price. Either way, you create momentum in the conversation. So, this is a time, if you’re ever thinking about getting out from under your home or moving, this is the time to do it. Six months from now, it might be 10% less, or 10% might be the most we can get. You use wherever you’re at as the motivation.
But one way or the other, what You use either fear or greed, don’t you?
Yeah. Whatever you’ve got in front of you is literally… Let me tell you, peer pressure comes in a thousand different forms, and it works on everyone. There’s nobody immune to it. Not me, not John, not anybody. Suppose all of your neighbors are selling their houses, even if you’ve ignored every single call, every single sale, and every single flyer. In that case, I guarantee you, no matter how set you are on staying, you’re going to scratch your head and go, ‘These two neighbors out of 10 that I know just moved.’ I should investigate this and determine why they’re doing it. Am I wrong, John? Would you think the same thing?
No.
Yeah, because I’m not saying I. It may move, but it opens the door to looking into it. When somebody knocks on the door and says, Hey, we’ve got this listing. It’s sold in 30 days for a certain number of dollars. It appeals to curiosity, opens up your interest, and may prompt you to ask some questions. All of these things mean that you now have at least some room to go. By the way, my name is Mary. I’m your local realtor, and you may not be ready today. I get that. But if you allow me the honor of taking your information, I won’t sell it to anybody, and I’ll add you to our email list so that when you’re ready, you have a good place to go, or you can ask us more questions about the sale that just happened down the street. Please ensure that you always include relevant content in your presentation. All those things will yield A wildly valuable… You should be able to turn a sale into two every single time. Every single time. In my experience, that’s what happens. So, John, right on, dude. What made you add this last thing? What’s going to be going to be going to the list?
I’m conducting my research by watching videos and reading articles about this topic. I mishmash all the different resources into a list that I think sounds reasonably logical, because what we’re saying, guys and girls, is it’s going to be two, three, four hours of your life doing this open house. You’ve got to squeeze as much value out of this as you can. If you’ve got a land, a plan, and you keep to it, and you do all the things, you’re going to squeeze as much value out of these hours. That is humanly possible.
Agreed. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that’s been our show today. Once again, thank you for tuning in and giving some of your patronage to the number 86-rated podcast in the United States for real estate. We’re on that list with Tom Ferry and everybody else you’ve heard, and it’s because of you, our listeners, that we got there in the first place. We’re so grateful for you. We do not take at all for granted the fact that you give us some of your time. And thousands upon thousands of you do at this point. Last time, we looked at the numbers. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for trusting us with your earbuds and possibly some of your marketing strategies. I’ve been Robert Newman. You can find me inboundrem. Com. Please take a look at the About Our Services page. Suppose you’d like to book a meeting or a consultation with me and talk to me about marketing, SEO, or any other subject that you can think of, as long as it impacts your revenue and vaguely has something to do with marketing. In that case, you can go ahead and do that. Jon, how would you like people to find you?
I’ll visit the Mail-Right.com website, review the main features of our platform, and then schedule a brief demo and a quick chat with me. We’re happy to show you how it works and how it can benefit you. It’s a great platform. Back over to you, Rob.
Well, that’s it. That’s been our show, John. Could you take us offline? Once again, everybody, thank you.
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Lone Wolf’s LionDesk CRM platform is being discontinued. Discover your next best CRM solution before it’s gone. Act now for a seamless transition.
In this video, we delve into the powerful features of LionDesk CRM and Lone Wolf Technologies, two leading platforms designed to streamline your real estate business. We explore their unique functionalities, integration capabilities, and user experiences to help you determine which solution best meets your needs. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting, this discussion will equip you with valuable insights.
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#1 – Introduction
#2 – Who Are Lone Wolf Technologies?
#3 – The Main Alternatives For 2025
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#4 – Final Thoughts
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We are so excited to bring you episode number 474. Now, today, we should have a little image of John and I with swords in our hands and pictures of the Swords Cross, because we are absolutely taking on some subjects that we both have a lot of comparing and contrasting opinions on. We’ve gone different ways. Today’s subject sounds innocuous. We’re going to discuss the fact that the planned, or rather, the unplanned obsolescence of the Lion Desk CRM, including mothballing and complete shutdown, has just been announced by Lone Wolf Technology. This company acquired them a couple of years ago. This is one of my hot buttons in real estate tech. It always has been. It is egregious. Why is it such a hot button? John was asking me this question before I took an industry where it’s difficult for agents to find the time, energy, and discipline to understand and learn tech in the first place. Then you add the fact that these tech companies are creating technology, selling it to someone else who then mothballs it.
It’s happened with Postlets. It’s happened with more companies than I can count, which makes the problem with agents even more In other words, why should I learn another tool? It’s just going to sell itself and be gone because it happens. John was giving me his side of this story, but I’m telling him, the second you get successful, you sell yourself. Bold leads, it took less than three years. Gone. It happened so much. It’s not even worth discussing. Like real estate webmasters, if the guy just weren’t such a control freak, he would have sold out on Dragon’s Den years ago for $75 million. So, John, we’re going to talk about why you chose this subject today. So why don’t we discuss why you look at this and say, We should do a podcast on it.
Well, I’m one of the competitors to Linedesk. I’ve chosen to reposition, and I made this decision over eight months ago. We’ve always been one of the more affordable options, but I was really… For a couple of years, I oscillated from being a competitor to Lion Desk and a wise agent, to being a competitor to Real Geeks, and I could never make up my mind. What I’ve done is split Melright into its various components.
We offer great value and a do-it-yourself technology stack. And then we’ve these additional services, where we can provide you with something more like Real Geeks, and you can choose what you want, right? So I’ve decided on that pathway, and it’s the right way to go for Melright. And obviously, a lot of people are looking at Lying Desk CRM, and then they’ve sold to these lone wolf people. And I didn’t know much about them, but you’re dealing with more brokers. I’ve got a couple I’m dealing with, but you’ve got a lot more experience. And when I conducted my research for this show about Loan Wolf, I could understand why they’re grandfathering out Linedes, because it’s apparent that the product didn’t integrate well with their other products, as they’re aimed at brokerages. Linedesk is designed for real estate agents, individuals, small teams, or small brokerages.
And it’s obvious, they bought the company for access to the client base. And they bought it… I don’t recall if they bought it a year or 18 months ago, but it’s been pretty brutal. They’ve only given, I think, about three months’ notice. And I didn’t know much about Loan Wolf until I did some research. They started in 1989 and have grown, offering a range of back-office services. And there are a few players in the back office. And what I found, which doesn’t only apply to the real estate industry, but also to many other industries, is that you have something that deals with record-keeping, financials, and HR. Then they bolt on top, market the website, and focus on lead generation, making it attractive to the customer base because they offer a single price and solution. But it never works out in my experience. What you end up with is a very mediocre product in the end. It doesn’t do anything that great. And because you’re so reliant on that software and it’s doing everything for your company, even though the system is mediocre and it’s not matching your needs, and the price every year is going up, usually, you’re so embedded with it and you can’t get away from it.
The pain of ditching them would be so much to your business, to your brokerage, that you’re on track with them. I did some research, and hopefully, you know more about them than I do, because I’ve been in it for about six years, but you’ve had 15 years plus. Hopefully, you now know a bit more about Loan Wolf. So I only did online research. And to be truthful, Rob, and this is my opinion, you’ve got to be careful here, Rob, they haven’t got an outstanding reputation. When you do some research online, it’s pretty brutal what’s said about them. I thought it would be a good idea. What’s your target to talk about, Rob.
Well, it is a good subject. We haven’t talked about it in a while. So Loanwell CEO is Jim Kelly. Jim Kelly and guys like him are people that I have talked about on my own time and podcast with other people, with other professionals, a lot. Jim Kelly is not a real estate guy. He has a Bachelor of Science He has a military background from the University of AM, Texas. Then he was selling other software services. He’s a software CEO, and he took over Lone Wolf and is treating Lone Wolf like any SAAS product, and he’s making the same moves that companies like Activision made in the gaming industry and ruined it, ruined the gaming industry quite a bit. Took all these independent studios, bought them up from owners that were anxious to sell, and then completely changed the product so that the players, the people who are using the product, we all suffered. Our games are not as good, and we’ve got 5,000 versions right now of Call of Duty because that’s all Activision does. It’s tell all of it, the people that it took over, it’s to make all the versions of the same game it already created.
And guess what? Lone Wolf is that exact thing, John, in the real estate space. Jim bought a product with 165,000 users. Most of them are the agents that you and I won’t talk to. Why? Because most of the people that use Lone Wolf at its $30 per month Were people that were part-time agents.
They wanted a real estate- You’re talking about Line Desk, there.
Line Desk, yes. They were part-time agents. That 165,000 person customer base that you just referenced was bought because it bought access to 165,000 real estate agents, except it was 165,000 of the… I don’t know what the right word is, but certainly not the top-flight agents who spend money on real estate technology tools every single day of the year. It was more like casual part-timers. When they bought this, after four years… And by the way, I have so many different issues with this. It’s not even funny. David Anderson, who got a golden parachute when he sold Liondesk, he was the CEO at the time, he took a payment from these guys and he told his team and everybody else that this would be a good collaboration. It was never going to be a good collaboration. Lone Wolf wasn’t even targeting the same audience. You only had one or two choices. Either they’re going to let them run as an autonomous independent company or they’re going to close everything down. An idiot would be able to see that. There was no way that they were going to be able to wrap, like you’ve already said, an agent product into a broker product and somehow make them one product.
You’re a software developer, you know what that would take. You’re building two tools into one. It doesn’t even make sense for the most part. Not to mention it certainly doesn’t make sense from a development side. Having said all that, I believe very strongly that Lone Wolf bought a line desk for the sole reason of getting access to its clients, forcing them into upgrading, and then mothballing the company. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. And now there’s a huge thing worth mentioning here. Not Not only does the Long Wolf have a bad reputation for making moves like this, you’re 100 % correct. But on, additionally, they’re now making the same move that real estate webmasters makes, which is too bad. The product that you had either doesn’t work or we won’t support it. I’m so sorry. By the way, if you’d like another product, we have a good one over here. It’s five times more expensive than the one you were buying previously. But we promise it will be better, which is nonsense. For those of you who are listening- What’s your knowledge around…
Apart from the Lion Desk question, which he’s getting very passionate, listeners. And if you’re watching the video, he’s getting very elevated about this. What is Lion Wolf’s brokerage products like? Have you got any knowledge of what they…
Do they actually work? I’ve got a few clients The brands that use it, it’s nothing revolutionary or amazing. It’s just a CRM like any other, a little more expensive. They do for all that I’ve just complained, the people that I know that use Lone Wolf that are brokers, that are the right size and the right product seem to like them. I think there are ways to get into this product and basically have it be useful to you and get good service off it. I do not I think that the average real estate agent would experience that. Certainly, whether I think it or not, their reviews say the same thing.
They seem to be aiming at the same brokerage that we use in Boomtown, or that that’s the brokerage, the competitor. When I was doing my research, Robin, I want to confirm this because I did some research for this episode, is that Boomtown and Loan Wolf came up a lot in the research I was doing about that they compete or were competing with one another. Is that about right?
Yeah, it’s about right. Here’s So everybody who’s listening to this show, Loan Wolf and I are philosophically in a different place. Loan Wolf is creating the kinds of products that as a call center manager, I hated. We always had to monitor agents, John, as a call center manager. It was necessary to prevent credit card fraud. It was my least favorite part of the job, listening in on agents, stuff like that. But it’s part of it. But then people would start to use these monitoring calls to tell agents how to do their job instead of teaching them in classes, which is where I thought it should be done. Some of the time, we’d even egregiously break in on an in-progress call, interrupt it in the middle, and basically do something different than what the agent was doing. I just thought that was all dehumanizing. Now, the latest innovation from Loader Wolf Technologies is tracking your agent’s movement. What do you think that reminds me of?
We live in strange times, don’t we, Robert? We really are living in strange times, aren’t we?
Exactly. So for those listening to this show, there are a handful of you that may have a 5,000 person Salesforce that you feel like you need to know where they are at all times. And if so, Lone Wolf might be the product for you. I understand they cannot be a company without having a certain number of people that they serve. I would never be one of those people. Full stop. Philosophically, I’m vehemently opposed to everything they stand for. So there you go. We’re going to go to a break, and when we come back, John is going to do what the rest of the show is. The latter half of the show is the latter half of the show, we’re going to actually discuss alternatives. For those of you who may be listening who’ve just been notified that whether you like it or not, your CRM is gone, and your replacement is five times more and designed for broker is agents. Hey, we’ll tell you what, we’ll give you some alternatives that will be a better option. For sure. All right, stay tuned. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It is the MailRight podcast.
You have two co-hosts on the show, Jonathan Dinwood, the English Pugilist with the most information that you’ve ever gotten on WordPress, and Robert Newman, an SEO guy with weird-colored hair. We are here to entertain you and guide you along your journey as you get frustrated and throw your phones, computers, and every other piece of off equipment out the window as you try to figure out how to market yourself in the digital age. We’re going to help you. Today’s show, we’re talking about the actual forced obsolescence and complete discontinuation of Liondesk, the most popular real estate CRM on the planet. All right? It was this little engineering feat was accomplished by Lone Wolf. If you are curious to know what we have to say about them, please listen to the first half of the show. We don’t want to start this again. I will not shut up. The second half of the show, we’re going to get into something that I feel like John is a little bit more qualified than I am because he researches all of these guys more than I do. We’re going to talk about alternatives, alternatives for your CRM business. On the list today to discuss is DotLoop, Broker Kit, Wise Agent, Follow Up Boss, Top Producer, Real Geeks, and Mailright, which is the company that John founded in transparency.
So without any further ado, John, why don’t you start us off by saying something about. Lu?
Well, I think we start with the company that’s positioned the most probably to benefit from what’s happened about Nine Desk, and that’s Wise Agent, isn’t it? Now, we have actually had the founder and the CEO of Wise Agent on. And nice guy, but he spent the whole show. Obviously, he came on the show to talk about Wise Agent. All guests come on the show to discuss something that they’re selling. But I did remark that he was, how to put this, diplomatically. He was very focused about selling the benefits of Wise Agent on our show, Robert. Shall we put it that way? I think you were even impressed on his focus, wasn’t you? It starts at $49 monthly or annually, 449. It It hasn’t got everything that Linedesk had, but it’s got a lot of the features that Linedesk did. It hasn’t got the video elements that Linedesk were trying to be a competitor to Bonbon. I always thought Bonbon was a better solution, really. I still do. But they did have that, and they had their mass ring phone ring system. I don’t think Wise Agent has that, but it’s got landing pages. It doesn’t provide a website, thank God.
It does provide landing pages. It does provide the mechanism to run your own Facebook campaigns, and it’s got the email and SMS text messaging functionality. The SMS, you got to buy one of the higher plans to get that. I think I’m correct in saying that. They’ve been around a long time and a lot of people use it. Because obviously, I pitch Millright in their playground, so I’ve got to be a bit balanced. But that’s really what I’ve got to say about it. What do you reckon, Robert?
I I don’t remember this interview, which probably just means that for me-I think you fell asleep halfway through it, actually, Robert. I may have. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t remember the interview. I do remember the product, thank God. The product is one of those ones that is at least they’ve embraced a modern UX UI system. They also decided not to do an all-in-one. So you’re right, there There’s a lot that is better about Wise Agent than other services of the same type like the Liondust. Mind everybody, I am not saying that Liondust itself as a product should have necessarily been propagated forward forever. What frustrates me and always has frustrated me is how poorly real estate clients are treated. It always frustrates me. It’s not like anybody’s asking any of you whether or not you to update. You should update. If you ask me the question, should you get out of Linedesk as a CRM? I would have said, Absolutely, you should. That doesn’t mean I’m going to buy it and force you to do that. I would have recommended John CRM. I would have recommended any number of CRMs over and above and beyond, lying desk, honestly.
So that’s not where I’m upset. I’m upset that everybody just thinks it’s good business practice to buy the damn company and close it down because there’s about 60,000 agents if I had to take to stab at it that will be without a serum for years now because they don’t have the time, the energy or the will to learn a new product.
I’ve got a slightly different philosophy around there. Businesses get bought, businesses get sold. Everybody’s got the right to sell their brokerage. You got the right to sell your company. I’ve got the right to sell mine. You can get verbal or some written guarantees about how the company for a period of time. But then after some period, it’s up to the new owners, and it is what it is. It’s basically there’s nothing That can be done about it, but that’s my opinion, Rob. On to the next one. And that’s another one that you really love and I love as well. It’s KVCORE. But there, what’s going on with KVCORE? Because they’ll be rebranded as Old Trail. Old Trail. What’s going on with these people?
I mean, come on, man. They just bought Boomtown. They’ve got to separate out their products. They’ve got to create new branding for themselves. Kvcore itself, like I said, now all the people like me got to go out and re-review the product, but it’s a lipstick on a pig. I’m not saying that it’s bad. It’s not a bad pig. Kvcore is also a very popular CRM, but I am so glad to say that there’s a lot of pressure on these all-on-one systems for pricing at this moment in time in history. So the first time since I’ve been in this industry, people are going, do I really want to spend $500 on a subpar website and a subpar CRM.
That’s what you’re getting, isn’t it, with kvCore, isn’t it?
Yes, you’re getting a slow system that does a lot of cool things that is in the cloud that they’ve installed a lot of people on. But I do believe that they are getting outclassed in many different categories at this point. Would you use kvCore? Yes. I’ve still got clients that use KVCore for various things. You know why they use it, John? Every single client I have, you know why? The one reason that I cannot argue with that they use it. It is because their broker has bought it for them and they get it for free, so they use it. It is a hard thing for me to argue with agencies that are saying, I’m just going to use the CRM that I’m being given.
That’s a terrible reason to use any bit of software because you’re getting it free. That’s a terrible reason.
It should be efficiency and productivity, but That’s the level of attention that most real estate agents pay to their CRMs. The most successful agents I know barely touch CRMs, barely. It is people running large teams that touch CRMs, and that’s where lone wolf comes in. That’s where loan comes in, that’s where they should have just left Lion Desk alone because it’s completely different philosophies, right? These guys are busy tracking their agents and trying to figure out their every move.
Well, let’s move on and be even more Controversial, shall we? Let’s go up to… Oh, Follow Up Boss. What are we going to say about Follow Up Boss?
You say something about them.
Well, fantastic system. One of the best UX, I think with a bit of training, an individual agent can use it, and also a middle-sized team and even a large team. It’s one of the few CRMs with a It’s not simple, but with a bit of research and a bit of training and a bit of dedication, an average person of average intelligence could get something out of it. It doesn’t provide a website, thank God, but it provided everything else. I would never use it. I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole because they got bought out by the devil, didn’t they? In my opinion. And I don’t care what the devil says. The devil can say whatever they like. It goes in one ear and it goes out the next, as I’m concerned, and the devil is illo. So they They’ve disappeared, as far as I’m concerned. They are unusable, in my opinion.
I still think that they’re the best in class. I agree with everything you said. You’re running the Risk for those people. But the only thing that makes FollowUp Boston easier to process risk, in my opinion, is the fact that you could probably spend an hour and basically learn how to use a CRM. When the investment of your time is an hour, now, this is not customizing systems, creating workflows, creating reminders, using AI automation, none of that. Just basically learning how to use it takes an hour. That time investment is very low. But like all these tools, especially the best ones in class, when you start to spend all this time, you can spend hundreds of hours easy customizing workflows, customizing emails, getting them all set up in your CRM, your automatic responses, your automatic email drips. So when you start saying, John, Oh, and then they’re going to close it down.
I don’t think Zillow is going to close down follow-up, boss, anytime soon. And the pricing, it starts at 69. I think that’s a single agent, and the pro is 499. The next one up, so it starts at $1,000, but that’s for large teams. It’s priced fairly, in my opinion, for what you get, and it’s so much superior than KVCORE. It’s so much better. But unfortunately, like I said, I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole if I was an agent. As far as I’m concerned, it’s gone.
You may be right there. Let’s move on. I’ve got a massive review on Follow Up Boss. Go to inboundrem. Com and search Follow Up Boss, and you can see hours worth of me about what I say about Follow Up Boss.
On to a real dog, in my opinion. A dog that should have been put down a long time ago. That’s Top Producer. Oh, God. They’re still around? Pardon? They’re still around? Yeah, I think they probably got tens of thousands of users, Rob, paying, starting, I might if the price is wrong, but starting the pro at $179 a month. What a dog of a platform, in my opinion, Robert.
And in their opening video is why does an agent need to use a CRM? So we know who they’re aiming their product at. If you are a brand new agent, you probably, who has no knowledge of how to market yourself, handle a client base or anything else, then you probably already know who top producer is. That’s it. And real estate top producers, they rank number one for that term, which is hilarious because I don’t know a single real estate top producer that’s ever used them as a CRM. They do have a rank number six for software for realtors, and that’s impressive.
On to one that you don’t… I don’t think you dislike it, but you don’t give it as much credit as I do. But that’s Real Geeks. But I think of a batch, what Real Geeks offers for the price. Unfortunately, when I was doing my research, I put their pricing, but I think this month they’re putting their pricing up quite a bit. I don’t know if they’ve gone fully public. So I’ve got the old pricing here, and I haven’t had time because they were saying in June, and we’re in June, that they were going to be putting their pricing up quite a bit. But I think for what you get, the website, the CRM, I think it was one of the more plausible better. I see Real Geeks with FollowUpBoss. They’re very different because Real Geeks is really a website lead generation, where FollowUpBoss is more of a CRM, email, follow-up system. But I saw them as two of the more credible solutions in the real estate market because I’m just not a fan of KVCore. But what’s your views on Real Geeks, my beloved Robert?
Real Geeks still… Listen, it was founded by an agent who knew what he was doing, and That makes all the difference in the world. An actual agent, the CRM is easy to use. The website is easy to use and is designed as a PPC landing page-based search site, and it still, to this very day, works for that purpose. That’s crazy because it was created 10 years ago. So it still works. So we’ve got a really cool website that does an okay job of generating response and even does an okay job of ranking for SEO if you know what you’re doing, and then has a very simple and very straightforward CRM on the back-end that does tie in to the front-end fairly well. I mean, of everybody on the list, if you add in all the factors I think that so far, they come out towards the lead because they were bought by another company, but that company so far is a mortgage company and hasn’t closed down any of the four technology companies it’s already bought. But they’re not innovating anymore either. So there’s pros and cons.
And then we got the blessed Melroy. That’s you, brother.
You’re hoping to be the fifth company that gets bought by the real estate technology company?
I That’s why I’m sticking in it. That’s why I haven’t given up, because I’m tenacious. Tenacious, Robert. I have many thoughts, but I’m not a giver up. Our system starts at $49. It gives you a basic CRM. And like what Tom Ferry says, the secret of all CRMs is one that you can use, you use regularly. And we also provide you a nice WordPress-powered website. It doesn’t offer IDX integration. You can do it yourself. They are designed for IDX. You can do it yourself or you could hire us and we host it and we use IDX Broker. But we provide a basic non-IDX website plus landing pages email campaigns, SMS campaigns, social media calendar. And also we got an element that does digital surveys for you. So I think it’s a great valued product, but I would say that, wouldn’t I, Robert? But I do believe it. And we start at $49 month to month or $39 if you pay annually, so it It won’t bust the bank. Beautiful. What do you reckon, Robert?
I reckon that you’re a good guy with a good product. I will say the same thing about you. Like you said at the beginning of the show when we weren’t recording, it takes a while to get to know me. I am more of a… That I know of, I’m really the only mission-based, not money-based guy working in the real estate tech space. The people I love, great entrepreneurs, all you included, are working for the Almighty dollar. That is their primary focus. That means that every single person, including Ylopo and every other company out there, you guys got to be careful when you make these purchases because you got to ask the question, how long do you want the tool to work for? And is durability important to you? How much time do you have? But if you want a little help and somebody who’s going to pay a lot of attention to you, then I’ve always said this, John, I think that you’re a great person to call. Everybody should call you. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a long term alternative with a guy that doesn’t have any plans at all to ever sell his company, you can also look at inboundrem.
Com and lets you own the websites, which John does too, to be fair. But Robert-We agree on that.
If the two are fair in terms You turned up and said, Here’s half a million dollars, Robert, for your company. Are you really saying that you wouldn’t take the money, Robert?
I absolutely am. The number would have to be closer to half a billion, and nobody’s going to offer me half a billion.
Nobody’s doing that.
Like Half a million, no. The number… I’ll tell you what, John, I’ll do this experiment with you because I’ve thought about it. The number would have to be 10 million plus, and then maybe. And I would split it with my team, the people that help me with the company, and I would not, absolutely not sell it. If somebody came to me today and said, Here’s a million dollars, I’ll be like, No.
Fair enough. Nobody’s going to be offering me any money soon, folks. I’m in for the long run. I’ve been doing this for six years. It’s been a winding road, but Melright is an excellent product. We’ve always offered great value. But realistically, Rob, I think of everything we talked about, if you’re looking for… You can either look at Melriott, Wise Agent, or Real Geeks, but your attitude around ‘Fuller Up’ boss, and I understand it entirely because I might be… I have to think about my attitude towards… Because he is a great product, isn’t he? It’s just really… When the news came out that Zillow was buying it, I thought… I won’t say what I thought, but it was SH saying. It was a great moment for them, but a sad one for the industry.
I agree with you. I agree with you, and it was an independent product that was making lots of money, just with an incredibly dedicated, driven team that wasn’t trying to sell you a website that was operating in the best interest of the agent. I love the team, I love the product, and it was the only CRM in the market where every single component was right. I will say this for them. In all fairness, Follow Up had made statements like, We’re not going to sell. We don’t want to. We like building the product. We enjoy working on the product. And they stayed with that for a long time. Then they did so, but they sold for a God awful crap ton of money. The number they made is incredible. I respect them for that alone, John. If you’re going to do it, I can’t fault it. It was half a billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen.
Half a billion. We need to wrap this up, but I’d like to add something extra. Well, that’s the problem. The money they got. The idea that Zillow won’t use that data after investing an enormous amount of money in the founders of Follow Up Boss is ridiculous. These are my opinions, folks. That they would give that amount of money and not utilize every bit of data, and then follow up, boss, about your business, your business. They’re not going to suck it up. And then use that data to sell leads to other agents, I think you need some therapy, my dear listeners. But that’s just my opinion, Robert.
We’re not going to degenerate. Well, we did a little bit. We’re not going to degenerate anymore into conspiracy theories, John and I, but you can tell everybody listens to show that we have some strong opinions. And since you, our beloved listeners, have made us the number 86 best show for real estate agents in the country, we are as voted on millionpodcasts. Com. We are incredibly grateful. Mail-Right has sponsored today’s show. Com. We’re lucky enough to have the founder of MailRight right here with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, the founder of the show, the sponsor of today’s show as well. Jon, why don’t you tell the ladies and gentlemen how they can find you or reach you if they should need to?
Oh, thanks, Rob. Just go to mail-right.com and take a look at what we’ve to offer. Then you can book a free demo and schedule a chat with me or a member of my team. If you’re looking for a top agency that can do all your real estate marketing and is a real expert on SEO, have a look at what Rob’s company has to offer.
Thank you, John. My name is Robert Newman. I’ve been the other co-host of the show. I have a company that focuses on SEO, including video SEO, traditional SEO, and hyperlocal SEO. If anything related to getting you found on a search engine, anywhere on a search engine, we are a good place to start. I am still taking those calls personally, and I would love to talk to you and discuss your business, especially if you’re interested in owning your platform, achieving high ROI, and have a little time to dedicate to it. It’s always for us to pursue achievement for a lot less money. So check out inboundram. Com, About, or Services pages, and you can learn everything you need to know. Feel free to book a call with me if you’d like. That’s been our show, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, John and I appreciate your time. If you stayed through our plugs, we appreciate you even more. And what we’d love from you is calling us aside, like or commenting in the place where you’ve heard the show. It does, as it turns out, matter, which shocked both John and I.
Neither one of us knew, to be honest with you. I had no idea that we were being voted on in various places as the best show. Now that I know, as I already told John, I’m like, I am not going to let this go. We’re better than number 86. We need to be way up that list. So help us, please. All right.
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Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
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Discover how Google’s new AI Mode transforms realtors’ workflows. Learn what this means for real estate pros today.
This week’s show delves into Google’s groundbreaking ‘AI Mode’ and its implications for the real estate industry. Discover how this innovative technology can transform the way realtors market properties, engage with clients, and streamline their workflows. We break down key features of AI Mode and provide insights on how realtors can leverage these advancements to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
#1 – What is Google AI Mode?
#2 – How does AI Mode impact SEO?
Traffic
Expect Even Fewer Clicks
Visibility
Analytics
#3 – If You Don’t Shape the Narrative, AI Will Do It for You
#4 – Becoming Super Local Become Super Important!
#5 – Paid Placement Is Coming
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 475. Today, we’re going to discuss the new Google AI mode and explore what we think it might mean for you, the Realtor, or those in real estate-related fields. Before we get into that, though, my tremendous, fantastic, pugilistic co host, I love calling him that because he used to be a boxster a million years ago, is as always, responsible for the choice, the selection, the notes, the thought that goes behind the production of the show. And I, as usual, show up and word vomit into your ear. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, let me introduce you to Jonathan Denwood. John, please take a moment to share a word or two about yourself. Yourself.
Oh, thank you so much, Robert. I’m the joint founder of mel-right.com. We’re an easy-to-use CRM with a range of lead-generating functionality included at a competitive price, starting at $49 per month, month-to-month. What more could you ask for? Back over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. And in case you don’t already know, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inboundrem.com, or Inbound Real Estate Marketing. And generally speaking, I am one of the top real estate SEO guys in the country, if not the top guy. So without any further ado, we’re going to talk about. We’re not going to talk about SEO today, though. We’re going to discuss AIO, which stands for Artificial Intelligence Optimization. So get used to hearing the term aio. It’s all that you’re going to be hearing for the next few years. Google unleashes AI Mode. What does this mean for realtors? John, why don’t you kick us off? What do you think it means? Discover how. Like, I don’t know you, you have a thing. I’m curious to know, though. Literally, what do you think it means?
It means in practical terms you’re going to get fewer clicks to your website, but those clicks if, if it’s done in the right way, should have more relevance. A significant portion of the website’s traffic was generated in bulk, or, depending on the type of SEO or the content on the website, it could be pretty shallow. What I mean is, it wasn’t going to do anything even if it got to your website, where you know, only the top five results are probably going to show in AI mode for Google. So it’s becoming even more winner-takes-all. But in reality, the top three got over 70% of all traffic anyway, so. But that’s the main thing. And these language models are becoming increasingly sophisticated, producing results that are more accurate. And Google’s in a tricky spot. But they’ve got the money and they’ve got the technology and they’ve got the data. So they’re still in a powerful position.
Interesting. So there’s two separate sides to this. When you, when you wrote the title of the article, John, I gotta tell you, I, I actually misunderstood what you meant and I usually get what you mean. So, ladies and gentlemen, who are listening, that’s unusual. That’s not common at all. What I misunderstood is I thought you wanted to talk about Gemini and it turned out that you didn’t want to talk about Gemini, that what you wanted to talk about is the new feature where you can sign up. For those that didn’t know, because I didn’t know and I specializes in this stuff. John, I’m going to take a moment and say, for those of you who didn’t know, there is an actual AI mode and you can click try it. And then the actual search experience that you’re having changes. Now. I clicked try it so long ago, I didn’t remember. And so I’m getting these AI results the whole entire time thinking that it was a standard search thing because I forgot the steps that I took to do it. But it turns out that it’s not standard. You can click it. And when you do click it, what Google is doing is they’re offering six or seven interesting AI features, but because they’re Google, they’re giving you a link to the source.
So like I did Google AI mode as a search, my AI overview has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, like 10 links in it that take you back the content. But each link is only taking you back to a single piece of content that had the best answer for detailed responses. Interactive search. It’s really fascinating the way that it’s changing. And I do not disagree with, with your summation, John, that it’s going to be less traffic but higher quality. But I do want everybody to understand why it’s going to be higher quality if you happen to be lucky enough to be one of the eight links in an AI search result that Google has presented. Google is literally saying that you’re actually the top resource for that subsection of the overall response. No longer is 1 through 10. No longer do you have to figure out who Google thinks is top. They’re telling you, I think that’s groundbreaking, personally. So AI mode Again, because number one on our list to explain here is what is it? It’s a different search experience. It’s a search experience based on artificial intelligence where you’re not going to get a list of 10 websites or you are and it’s going to be below the AI result.
So Google has just extended their search page once again, but AI gives you the option to deeply change the way that you’re consuming search. And frankly, even though this does not play out in my favor, I love it. John, what about you?
I think the elephant, I totally agree with what you just said. I think the elephant is that the the response is back is going to be much. It’s going to be customized depending on what Google knows about you and what your searches have been before. So every person is going to have a much more customized search environment and response to their searches.
And this leads to the question that you posed, which is a fascinating question. Well, how does this affect people like me who have careers or lives or websites all dedicated to SEO search engine optimization? Well, so far what we’ve seen is you’ve seen about 10 or 15% drop in traffic and I’m a leader, so that’s a big number. We do expect fewer clicks and the visibility has dropped and my analytics look not as good as they used to. So these are all ways AI has impacted my SEO. Now here’s what we’re not talking about a lot though, that and I need everybody, including you, John, to understand that I am easily one of the top 10 real estate news based, kind of like content based sites in the world at this point. Like no doubt. So when I say the following, understand that most people couldn’t replicate it. While all of the things I told all of you are true, I would say that of my last 10 leads, fully six of them were generated by AI. And what do I mean by that? My last 10 leads, when I asked people where they found me, four of them hands down were chatgpt.
The other two were questionable gray area. I’m going to assume they’re like Gemini or something similar like another type of artificial intelligence. And when I asked the question John did okay, did you do any further research? Like did you call somebody? They’re like, no. It is crazy to me how many people are just saying choppy. GPT gives you one answer, but because they’re presenting it as the best, like this is the top person, this is the best SEO guy in the country. This is the best real estate website, whatever it is, right? They just go, they’re not Questioning it at all or doing any further shopping, which is blowing my mind. Blowing my mind. So I suspect strongly that AI is going to AIO and is going to impact SEO in a very big way. I don’t think it’s like I’m not a doom person. I don’t think, John, it’s going to take us out of business or me out of business specifically. I think there’s still a big spot for SEO inside everybody’s marketing strategies. However, is that spot going to be the same size that it is now? No way. No way AIO is going to take that over.
And as a matter of fact it probably should be. Like you should immediately do 50 AIO. 50 SEO, like immediately in my opinion. What do you think?
I don’t break the two up really. I really see, I, I really see if you, you, if you’re producing some decent content and it’s bit slightly more in depth and Google actually thinks you actually know what you’re talking about and you’re producing quite a bit because I, I kind of hit it with WP Tonic, my other company. I’m terrific. You know, I’m doing two podcasts. I’ve got a channel that’s got over 10, 000 subscribers. We’re getting close to it. I’m producing content every week. I do a fair bit with the mail. Right. As well. I’ve increased what I’m doing there a bit. So hopefully I’m giving the signals to Google that. Actually, no, it’s probably Google, probably. And that’s what I think you got to do. You know, like I put on as number three, if you don’t shape the narrative, the AI will do it for you. So, so we’re gonna have a, we’re.
Gonna have a show. John, remember this and bookmark this show because, because the. There is enough data out there now that we’re starting to understand how chat, GPT and other things like at work, it’s not even remotely related to SEO. And so we should have a conversation about generative, like generative language inside your content in order to rank for artificial intelligence. Now me and my guys got very lucky in that I have so much content and so much public commentary surrounding my content that that is the reason I’m doing so well in AI models is that I had, and what’s more, I’ve had that out there for years, which meant that whenever those models were built they picked up that stuff. And I’m getting a surprise gift in the form of AI results currently. So let’s Talk a little. Let’s just officially move into. If you don’t shape the narrative, AI will do it for you. Now I think I know what you meant, but why don’t you just go ahead and illuminate it for all of us. What is your fear? What is your concern around that? John? Like what, what is your concern that AI is going to do if you don’t do it yourself?
Well, it’s getting, it’s a large language model, it’s a pattern recognization technology using very well, this is my take on it. I’m not expert but I have, I’m interested in the subject and I know a couple of people who are AI scientists and basically it’s using very sophisticated forms of mathematics and pattern recognition and a lot of data is the recognization of patterns and this is on a different league. Its ability and language is a pattern much more than we’re probably aware of. And it’s, and I think Google was, you know, you, I don’t know what your response is going to be that they were utilizing this technology in the background about two, three years ago to actually index the content that they were showing people that, you know, and my understanding is that AI and that large language models have been around since the 1950s, but it had become a kind of looking for the right term. You know, there were people still in that area, but it wasn’t a particularly very dynamic, well funded part of science. But that changed after 9, 11 because the government had enormous amounts of data. You know, it wanted to monitor people’s phone calls, email zooms and it built, and it has built a group of very large data centers where all this information is stored.
And it needed a technology that could filter through this enormous amount of data and highlight words, sentences, conversations which it feels are a danger to society and you know, terrorism. So it invested enormous amount of money in this form of science. And it, I don’t think people are aware of that actually. Robert but that because like the Internet itself, the Internet was developed by enormous government investment.
True, but my understanding like definitely the government Internet are all historical fact. So the my, my comment or thoughts to what you just said was this is one of those rare occasions in which government has actually influenced tech. Instead of tech influencing government, it’s usually the opposite way around. I agree with that, I agree with the history of it. What I can add to that conversation is the comment on Google introduced a form of a logarithm that everybody’s been copying and I am absolutely friggin Gobsmacked that of all the things that Google was doing, this is the thing that people copied. So part of the first delving into kind of like a large language model, including in front of their Gemini efforts and all their AI efforts four years ago, they’ve now gone on documentation and said the first thing that they did to say, I wonder if we can sort the relevance of somebody’s brand mentions into the actual ranking algorithm. That was their original thing, but like you just said, that required a massive, huge data filter because they’re like, we’re gonna read the Internet. All of the Internet go. How many times somebody mentioned Melrite, like all the Internet that we can get get our hands on.
When you think about that, that’s trillions upon trillions of pieces of information bytes.
It’s terabytes.
Yeah, it’s a crazy statement. When I read it originally I thought they were fucking nuts. But it turns out that no, it was Robert that was just not thinking big enough. They’ve gotten to the point where they can do that. And that is, that was the basis of like you’re saying, large language models. And it was the first application that Google applied and then they started building beyond that. They just didn’t hit mark though. They just didn’t get to market first. ChatGPT did. And ChatGPT used the data that they could find about all the development without breaking massive laws. And they basically said, okay, we know that Google’s doing X, Y and Z with brand mention, so let’s just use that inside Chat gbt. So of the large language models which, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, all work differently. The Chat GPT and Gemini are both based heavily in, in terms of their ranking, based heavily on brand mentions, not links. So major difference, John, major difference. We’re gonna go to break. When we come back, we’re gonna continue forward our conversation. We’re gonna start off with basically we’re gonna give you some moats, some things that you can do and some ways that you can, you can protect yourself and your business against the storm of AI.
Or maybe if you’re forward thinking, you can pivot to try to get in front of it. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in. Wherever you’re at and however you’re doing, we would really, really, really, really if you would click that like or comment button. By doing so. Our previous audience members have made us the number 86 show in the world for real estate agents. Thank you very much, we really appreciate it. And let’s keep the Momentum going like and share. Like and share. Like and share. Thank you so much. We’ll be right back. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 475 of the Mailwright Show. You have found the number 86 show. Today’s show is sponsored by mail-right.com and inboundrem.com if you are a sponsor and you would like to give John and I loads of money to have us mention you on the show, I have to tell you we are receptive to that idea. Moving on to the. At least I assume we are. I’ve never talked to John about it, but he’s never actually refused the idea of loads of money as long as it’s ethical.
So here we are, we’re going to talk about becoming super local to become really super important. Now. I have so much to say on this. So let’s start with you, John.
Yeah. Because it’s kind of linked. I don’t think I really, I gave some history but didn’t really answer the question of free but question three and four kind of linked and it’s about being active on social media. It’s about actually posting content that has value to people that’s actually looking for property in the niche. You know, we’re constantly talked about finding a niche if you can and then utilizing video. It’s giving and you mentioned brand and you know, having you on social media doing video writing content, giving those signals and then you’ve got the map placement which I think they’re also changing as part of AI mode. I didn’t delve into that you all that but I think they’re going to be changing that to some degree. But you know, being super local and is the way that as agent or a small brokerage can really compete with the big guys and it’s giving those signals. So when people are doing localized search that your content comes up in the AI snippet, isn’t it?
Yeah. So what John is saying is right. More and more and more and more focus for rank for all the things that we have traditionally come to understand such as, oh, I want to, I want to rank for SEO. Okay, great. Well now more and more and more your reputation as a realtor in your local space impacts ranking across the board. Already does with Google in traditional and has for 10 years. It just was not a massive metric. It was a small metric. But now we’re talking about AI and AI. There’s no question AI is looking at your reviews, your published online reviews. They look at them. I can verify that they do. They also look at your brand mentions. They look at both. That’s crazy. That means that your Zillow profile has added value, your Google profile has added value. Your website has added value. Every place that you house. How’s reviews? And as I have always said, the authority lies with the bigger portals. So most likely, even though you would like to think that posting your. Your, your reviews to your to directly to your website is the smarter, best idea, I’m here to tell you it’s absolutely not.
You want your reviews on, and I don’t like this website, but you want your reviews on Yelp, you want your reviews on Google, you want your reviews on Zillow, you want your reviews on realtor.com before you want them on your profile. So you pick some places or all those places, and you get your clients to post reviews about you there. Because guess what? Not only does it count for your traditional SEO results, it counts for your local SEO results now. And that’s not even counting the idea of how people are buying and selling services these days. It’s no longer like, John, I still have people call into me and say, I’ll go anywhere in California and sell a house. It’s like, dude, what year are you living in? Starting to sound antiquated to me. It’s like, number one, the person that lives in Pacoima is not calling a Los Angeles realtor. The only circumstance in which that makes sense is like, John, if you’re my cousin and you’re like, Robert, can you do me a massive, huge favor? Get licensed out here in Reno and. And then come out here and just help me with my real estate stuff?
Because I’ve just had all these terrible experiences with realtors. I’d really appreciate it. Other than that extraordinarily extreme scenario, I do not see where the logic lies in trying to get a realtor, because everybody knows John. If you had to guess, how many licensed realtors do you think there are within 10 miles of where you’re located?
Where I am? Oh, I have no idea. Basically a couple hundred at least. Yes, I would say so.
Okay. And that’s. That’s in a much smaller city. I’m In Los Angeles, 10 miles radius square from me right now. A couple thousand. Yes. Best guess, maybe more. So, couple thousand realtors, you. You think to yourself, like, within 10 miles of my house, I should be able to find one that can do a little short drive over here and do all the real estate work. Does that make sense to you? John, because it sure does make sense to me.
Yeah.
So that’s what we’re talking about when we say about local. Now I really want to get into these final subjects because they’re great and I don’t have a lot of time left. So I’m just. If John, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to fast forward into the next thing that you put on here, which is paid placement is coming. What makes you say that? I mean, I don’t disagree. I’m just curious.
Well, you know that’s, that’s like generates 80% of Google’s income or, or very, very to that level. So this has been one of their problems, isn’t it? So, but it’s coming, you know, that’s how open AI is coming, going to generate more income that they’ve been the first to get people to sign up for different paid plans. But is the main way Google plans to monetize this and keep the company one of the most profitable businesses in North America is that when it does AI snippet search, you can. I don’t know how this is going to work out with the regulators. I have no idea because it’s a bad enough situation as it is. But this is going to put it on steroids. But they’re, they’re. Some of those snippet recommendations are going to be paid for.
It’s an interesting. Yeah, I guess. I mean anytime a business monetizes, that’s going to be true. Google is currently monetizing these results the same way they always have, which is there. If you go to the higher or lower parts of the page, there’s still their traditional sponsored results. They have a page. But you are right in the sense that other people are not doing that. That gives Google a chance to potentially move in behind them and do exactly what you said. Exactly. I hadn’t even thought of it. It’s so egregiously commercial. I hadn’t even thought of it. Which is embarrassing because I think you’re right. I think, I actually think that that’s a very, very solid point that you’re probably right. Like, like wherever money can be made is generally where, where it’s going to get made. Now the AI responses that Google is doing, they allow you to save to overviews and then copy and paste to like a sheet. Currently, because of all the rules and regulations dominating Google, they’re not nearly ahead of the game as other tools are when it comes to exporting transporting information. Okay, but they are. Gemini has proven that Google has the, has the tech, they’ve got the ability to do it.
You just have to sign up for it and pay a subscription. Whereas ChatGPT does all sorts of fascinating things where it just allows you to Download, you know, PDFs and stuff like that and just like crazy what you can do. And why do I say that? Because Chappie GPT, as far as I can tell, is the biggest company at just begging for a lawsuit. A hundred of them. I don’t know how they’re not just at full stop in court. Like, I seriously don’t know. Nobody asked me or anybody that I know if they could use our information now that, now, in theory, that we put it out onto the web because we allow it to be read but not used. It’s curious they’re saying they’re reading it anyway. It’s, it’s. I agree with you, what you said, and actually I agree with you in the thing that I think is fascinating is where are we going to go with the law as it relates to all this stuff?
Because I do think, I know you’ve got to be off in a minute. Still, I believe they will have to back off a little bit, because what I mean by that is that if you’re taking people’s content and generating answers. There’s no benefit for the people who create the content; in the end, the content will dry up because I’m not getting into general intelligence. And this is about the super mind, because the. I want us to concentrate on these large language models because they’re fantastic technology, but it is only pattern recognition at an impressive scale. But if people put things behind pay walls and do not produce, because there’s no reason for them, because they’re not going to get any traffic, no benefit from it, so people will stop making it. I think they need to motivate content generation in some way. And I might be wrong about this, but it will be interesting to see how all this works out.
Robert, I couldn’t agree with you more. Motivation, like, listen, you take away all my drive, all the possibility of ranking everything. I would happily keep what I’ve got up on the Internet, but I’m going to save myself the $60,000 to $100,000 a year I spend on content. No doubt about it, no doubt about it. Starting tomorrow. And with a sigh of relief, to some degree, even though it’s my business, I love helping and producing it. But there is always the piece of my mind, John, that looks at it and goes. At least in theory, I’m breaking even on the effort. Like, I’m not just spending money to educate everybody altruistically. Like, there’s a reason you know your business. Yeah. So if you take away that. That element. Oh, I’m out, man. I’m out tomorrow. Good point. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I’m so sorry, John. I’m so sorry. Audience. I’ve had a hard day in and out today, and I apologize to everybody. It’s a real brief show. Well, it’s just no bonus content today. It’s the same length as always. My name is Robert Newman. You can find me at inboundram.com and do us a favor.
Remember that you are listening to the number 86 show in the world for real estate. We’re so grateful. If you do us a favor and hit the like button or comment button, we’d appreciate it. It does make a huge difference in our ranking. And. And it costs you nothing. Zero. Nada. John, how would you prefer people to contact you?
Yeah. You know, if you want to support the show, go to Robert’s YouTube channel, inbound marketing, and subscribe, and also go to the Mail-Right YouTube channel and subscribe to that channel. That’s the best way that you could show your support for both of us. Go to those two channels and subscribe, and that’s the best way. If you would like to contact me, please visit the Melright website and explore what we have to offer. You’re going to be blown away by the value that we’re offering. And back over to you, Rob.
And don’t remember, it’s mail hyphen. Right. When you go to John’s website, Mail-Right.com. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for giving us a little bit of your time, and I hope we provoke some thoughtful discussion amongst yourselves today. It was. I love the subject. John, keep them company. Coming. It’s on a lot of people’s minds. I hope we found that it was on our audience. Goodbye, everybody.
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Are you a struggling real estate broker owner in 2025? Discover proven strategies to boost your business and thrive in today’s market.
Are you a broker owner feeling overwhelmed in the competitive landscape of 2025? This insightful video delves deeply into the challenges that struggling broker owners face today. From navigating market changes to implementing effective strategies, we explore practical solutions to help you thrive. Join us as we uncover the keys to turning your brokerage around and achieving success.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 474. And yes, that’s right. You have found the 86th most popular real estate podcast in the country. Congratulations. We’re so excited to have you today. So, before I go off on some rant, I would love to introduce you to the guy, the founder of The Myth, The Legend. He has founded numerous innovative digital programs, plans, podcasts, and businesses. I can go on and on. He has a myth in his mind. Where did you jump in? I would like to say hello to you. Thanks for that, Robert. Please feel free just to sing if you’re paying attention.
God, Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mel Wright. We’re an easy-to-use CRM with a focus on lead generation. We offer a user-friendly CRM and a range of other tools at a competitive price point of slightly under $50 per month. If you pay month to month, you want to find more. Go over to Mail-Right.com, and we would love you to come on board. Back over, Hello to you, Rob.
Speaking of which, today’s show is going to talk, we’re going to be talking about broker owners who might be struggling in 2025 and some ideas to make that struggle a little easier. One of those ideas is to scrutinize your budgets and start investing a little more time in areas where you might have let money do the talking for you. Then a circumstance might be using a new tool like John’s that’s inexpensive, and where you can get some handholding. And get better results than someplace that you’ve been spending two, three, or four times as much. So this is an option. Now, it’s always unpleasant learning new things. Always. John’s tools, my tools, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. I understand it isn’t easy. But right now in this season that we’re in, if ever there’s going to be a time that you’re going to take on new stuff with the intent of trying to embrace lower costs, this is the time. So, without any further ado, are you overwhelmed in this market we’re in? A lot of people that we’re talking to, I don’t know about John, but I am indeed talking to a lot of overwhelmed people.
And the circumstances, John, that we’re talking about, I’m watching people do some shocking things, break contracts with companies that they’ve made a lot of money off of for a long time. I’m taking on some clients. I’m taking on some clients because I know this is going to be shocking to you. News flash, everyone, I’m far more expensive than John is in terms of the marketing services my company provides. However, there are many people out there who are more expensive than I am. A lot of the people that I’m talking to, John, they’re breaking big contracts with people that have PPC budgets and looking for more guerrilla ways to market themselves. I’m taking on a lot of really cool, interesting new agreements that I’ve never taken on. I’m working on a Wix site, specifically a luxury gift site, for the first time. A lot of really… I know—a lot of really unusual Wix. And everybody, I’m going to say that John did something interesting, but you’re going to have to watch the video to see it. So, go to the YouTube channel. What are you going to say, John?
Did you have to swear Wix?
Oh, my John, I’m going to say that… I’m going to toss this over to you, but you said that you thought this would be an interesting subject and that I’d have some advice. I surely do. I surely do. But why did you choose this topic for today?
I watched a couple of videos on other people’s YouTube channels, and one of them addressed this subject. It would be an interesting subject to talk about because obviously, the market is in a tough spot at the present moment. It’s been like this for over a year. None of us knows where it’s going. It’s very regionalized. There are certain areas where I’ve observed a significant decline in activity, but in other places, prices are still increasing. Can’t believe there’s more of them. It’s a very diverse landscape. But a lot of independent brokers, brokers that aren’t part of major regional and national franchises, feel they’re under attack in multiple ways that are affecting their bottom line. The amount of business out there has declined quite a lot, but it’s even more than that. It’s as if they’re being attacked from multiple vectors, from various points. I’ve spoken to a few, as most of our clientele are independent agents, and many of them are part of a brokerage or smaller boutique brokerages we assist. They feel attacked. Similarly, this is the intro, but number two is competing with eXp or Reel in terms of keeping and attracting top talent.
From the couple of videos I watched and a few conversations I’ve had, this is one of the issues that many independent, smaller boutique brokerages have been facing. I’d like your thoughts on how a brokerage, a boutique, or a smaller brokerage can retain their top producers who are attracted to eXp and the real estate industry. I’ve got strong opinions on these companies. However, I’d like to offer some advice and then share my views.
John, listen, building sales teams, keeping people employed, and retaining staff have been one of my top challenges throughout my entire career, spanning all four years. Keeping large call centers full of people on the phones is way more difficult than people realize it’s a shit job that very few people want to do. You have to get creative about keeping people in seats. And so you’ve got the standard ways that all of you’ve heard of, but I’m going to go through a couple of them: prizes, vacations, dinner with the boss, things like that. Providing personal attention to your team members promptly will foster better personal relationships. Don’t just do Zoom meetings. Take people out to lunch, and walk your dogs with your team members. Create personal relationships in a world that is drifting away from them. These are all standard tactics when you talk about management and leadership. And obviously, the Pareto principle applies. You start with your top 20% of your producers and work your way down. You just go down and create relationships. Now, that’s the easy stuff, and all of you should already be doing that. If you’re not, come on, man, do the basics.
Spend more time with people. Be a good leader. But the other bit of it is, and this is not so common, is you have to get out in front of the messaging that everybody is receiving in the world today, John, whether you want to or not. It’s a crap proposition. I am reluctantly becoming really, really versed in AI in its current state. I’m about ready. I’ve got beta tests into numerous high flotuten AI things, and I’m going to sign up for Gemini, and I can go on and on. But why am I doing it? Do I think it’s any place different than anything you and I have talked about? Not really. It’s still not going to be my business model. But I’ll tell you what has to happen. Everybody, the noise has gotten so large everywhere that you must give a nod to it and participate so that people think that they’re not being left behind by staying with you. That’s it. That’s the whole point. You have to make other people believe that you know what’s going on so that they don’t think or get attracted to something shiny somewhere else that says, We’re using AI in all of our business.
It’s going to change your life. It’s not, but your people won’t listen to you. So get involved in some AI stuff. Look at AI, some AI agents. Pay attention to what’s going on. Look at Phonely. That’s been the big one for real estate agents that I’ve been hearing about a lot lately. Look at Phonely. That’ll keep people in tune with your business. So what were you going to say, John? You said you had something to add here.
If you’re a smaller independent brokerage, and I think you should have somebody in the organization that’s a digital manager, and you should be generating leads to your agents. But your agents are subcontractors, and you I wouldn’t be upset that they do their own activities. They have their own website, and they’re doing their own marketing. But I do think as part of the brokerage, let’s say you got 10 to 20 agents, and let’s say five of them are top performers, you should have a digital platform yourself that’s generating decent leads. Needs, and they should be distributed amongst the company. I think this was also ticked off by somebody that I respect in the industry, and it’s been on the show one or two times. A while ago, So that’s Jimmy Burgess. He’s publicly said he’s become part of the real team, and he’s marketing for them and really pushing. I don’t want to fall out with Jimmy because I do respect him. I was saddened to hear of that decision. But I’ve explained this before, haven’t I, Robert? I’m English. I consider eXp and real to be glorified MLMs, which is a polite way of saying that they’re a pyramid.
They’re involved in my opinion, in a pyramid scheme, which is totally illegal in the UK, in England. If you are found guilty of being in a pyramid scheme or MLM, you go to prison in the UK. It’s straight to jail, monopoly. You go straight to jail. There’s no messing around, Robert. I don’t want anything to do with them. If I was a real estate agent, I think their focus is not about real estate. Their focus is about getting other agents to be part of the MLM.
I definitely disagree with you. I think Jimmy is one of the sharpest guys that you and I have ever had on the show inside the real estate space. I think that he understands, and the rules, what eXp is doing and real are doing are different. I think that eXp does come dangerously close to being an MLM, and I don’t think that real does. But that’s not a conversation for another… That’s a conversation for another day. If you’re listening to this show and you’re a broker owner and you’re losing people to real in guys like Jimmy, my answer to you is, of course you are, I would probably be going over to real. And the reason is so, so, so simple. Jimmy and Ricky Caruth and Kyle Handy, if you go over, they have done all the hard work that you have not done in order to learn digital marketing, and they will teach you how to successfully digital market inside your business. And that’s as simple as it gets. Jimmy is great at it. And Jimmy carries the added weight that he is really good at traditional marketing as well, and he’s not a bad salesperson.
I mean, the guy is a triple threat. I would be in terror knowing that he might be in charge of recruiting for real because he’s very good. He’s very talented. He built up a massive audience out of nothing on Inman. He did a great job at it, and he’s probably just going to a place where he can have a bigger impact, recruit more people, and make a little more money in the process.
That’s I’m not saying you’re right or wrong. I’m just explaining because of my background, my cultural background. Anything, anything to do with… But it doesn’t bother my American friends. I’ve known many people, it doesn’t bother them being part or looking at MLM. I want nothing to do with it. Which is fair.
And honestly, since the purpose of this show, which we’re going to cover a little bit more when we get back. The purpose of the show is not to scare you guys white. It’s to give you some tools and tactics to compete. So we’re going to give you a moment to chew on that. We’re going to come back and we are going to give you some tactics to compete. But I am afraid, I’m just going to be honest with everybody, this is more like it is now time to take the big ugly vitamin that you don’t like to take. That’s what you’re going to get. I usually try to really throw some sizzle out there. Today, it’s all about the… We used to have a word for it. There used to be this terrible syrup that all parents made you drink. It was God awful. I can’t remember it anymore. It’s got a weird name. You know what I’m talking That’s what we’re talking about, though. All right, anyway, when we come back- Am I the Syrup? No, the information is the Syrup in this case. Normally, yes, you are, but not this time. All right, everybody, we’re going to come back.
When we come back, wherever you’re at, this message that I used to send out, it is because of all of you that you have made the show what it is. Today’s show has been sponsored by InboundREM and Mail-Right. Check them out. Inboundrem. Com is a leader in SEO services. Mail-right is an incredibly affordable all-in-one system. Go to those websites and check them out. When we come back from break, after you’ve liked the show because we know we’re super fantastic, then we’re going to cover some more plans for some small broker owners to succeed in their businesses. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 474. We’re talking today about being a broker and owner in today’s world, competing against companies very specifically like eXp and Real. Exp and Real are taking over the digital space Because what’s happened is those models are very conducive to people like me who really know how to market because you can build large teams virtually and those teams can go out and sell real estate on their own. So it takes a few things into account. It assumes that you can already sell real estate.
It assumes that you might be weak in the digital world. And if those things are true, then real in the exp and you have somebody that’s seeking slightly higher compensation, better like an actual investment inside the company, and better return on their time in terms of learning and digital information, that’s when you might lose them to real or eXp. As I’m sure you guys can realize, based on the list I just gave you, that’s a real threat. Better compensation, better learning, more flexibility, and coaches. That’s what those models provide. It’s really dangerous to a traditional small broker owner. Real hard to compete with. How do I suggest that broker owners compete, John? Well, there’s three or four different ways. The biggest, easiest way, always, John, always, always. The way that small broker and owners can compete and trounce these systems, you know what these systems don’t do? They require you to learn stuff and do stuff on your own. Here’s where you can keep somebody locked in. Always be providing leads, good, bad, or different. Always be handing leads off to your people. All right? Always. If you have to settle for low-quality leads that they may have to work a little harder on, fine.
Yet used to being a hard ass about how your people work your leads, because let me tell you, as difficult as it is to conceive, having some lead to call, even a low-quality one, is better in like 80% of salespeople’s minds than having zero leads. They will take bad. They will argue with you and debate with you and tell you to waste of their time. I’ve heard it my entire career. They will also not leave because to them, the only thing that’s worse than having a bad lead is having no leads and having the cold call. So whatever you’re all doing, Facebook marketing, websites, capture something, give them something. Give them a plan. People want structure. They want a process and they want a system. That’s the next thing. The days in which you can just say, Oh, come work for me. I’m going to give you a desk and a phone, and I’m going to take a quarter to 1% of your commission for that. Those days are gone, ladies and gentlemen. Most people work out of their home. It’s not a good offer anymore as a broker. You can’t do it. You can give somebody a process where they get texted these bad leads, like through Five Street or any number of the good lead routing systems that are out there.
Just make it seamless Just send them something. Every day when they open up their email, give them a couple of bad leads. It’s so much better and you’ll keep your sales force. Not always, but some of the time. You’ll keep your sales force. So For those listening to this show, here’s your bad medicine, your bad juju. You’re going to have to get your bone up on your processes like you really are. You got to have processes in place. And if all of you are out there going, Well, that’s okay, Robert. I don’t need a process. I’m paying all my money to Zillow, and they send leads straight to my salespeople, and they sign us up for follow-up boss. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the reason that Zillow is owning the process and just spent $500 million on follow-up boss is because they desperately want you to put your salespeople into their tools so that they own the entire lead generation process, including the actual nurturing and working of the leads. Because once they own your people’s understanding of process, they own your business. Full stop. They will take whatever percentage they want, and they are already doing that.
So if all of you are really determined to be in business with a marketing partner that is not consistent, then by all means, go with Zillow.
Can we quickly go get your feet, get your insight about what’s working with your own smaller brokerages that you work with? What’s the mixture that’s still getting some results? I know it’s very dependent on every local market. If the local market is totally overpriced and people, investors or the local population, can’t afford to buy the property and the investors, the outside, out-of-state investors have dried up, it is what it is. What we’re seeing in Florida and some of the cities in Texas seems to be following it. But what is the mixture of giving these leads? Is it the website and a mix of Google local adverts? What is the balance you’re finding that gets the best return?
Well, you’re right. It does depend on area. We’ve had to spend a lot more time communicating with individual clients to figure out what the secret sauce is in their specific area. But I focus on three areas, and there’s definitely an area that shines above all others right now, which is local, which is why I’m focused all my energy and time on selling local-based services. I’ve dropped my website pricing by 75 %, John, taken a massive cut. But the reason I took a massive cut was because what I’m seeing working consistently across most markets, let’s call it 85 % of them, is still ranking in Google profiles. Not only are they doing well, many of those markets are seeing increases. The way that people are, lead generation is changing. Where people are responding is changing. And so my belief is that some of the portals are losing traction, and the person that’s picking it up is Google Local Service Profiles, and I strongly believe that. And so both paid LSA ads, the hyper local, I’m seeing How about this? I think I’m pretty sure that of every 10 clients I sign up for that service, eight see positive ROI.
I mean, it’s a staggeringly large number, considering the market that we’re in, taking that into account. But what else am I seeing work? Video still works. A combination of video with local is my favorite go to, like pop one video on, edit the video, do stuff like that, because then we’re seeing the ability for somebody to get some traction on YouTube, and now we’re also talking about local. So we’re seeing a lot of traction from inbound and local. We’re seeing some benefit. There are people that I do business with that still manage larger marketing contracts. And what What I’m seeing more and more of, John, is the people that do video and stuff, they’re sending that money to more and more to video editing and SEO teams like us. I’m getting a lot more of that business. Every time I do an SEO contract these days, it includes a lot of video editing and a lot of video optimization stuff inside of it. The only reason for that, John, the only reason that makes any sense is that all those people are seeing returns, calls, inquiries, comments, There’s stuff coming in from either existing or new clients.
Last but not least, we’re seeing a shift, a huge, massive shift in that a lot of the good business that’s out there to be had is more listings than buyers, which is a weird place for me to be in because for fucking years now, it’s been nothing but let’s get in front of buyers, let’s get in front of buyers, let’s get in front of buyers. Now, I understand, and everything you said was true, John, but I got to tell you, I really feel like you have a couple of where the hot air is still escaping, and LA is one of them. But 90% of the people I’m talking to, not a smaller number, 90% are dealing with really wildly depressed markets. There’s only one consistent exception in every marketplace. If you’re lucky to have it, everybody grab a notepad. There’s two big strategies that are getting tossed around, John, amongst my and chat groups and stuff like that. One, which I believe in, is new development. Brett and other clients I have are literally raking it in, making record profits because they immediately pivoted and adapted. This is where long term clients that you’ve consulted with for years comes into play.
I’m sure you understand it and could visualize it. It’s like, I have a guy who has a well ranking site. We drifted away from buyer stuff and started talking about new developments. And now his website is three times more traffic, tons of calls, everything that we want. And we changed one major thing. We focused on builders, and we focused on builders that were building in this area. And all of a sudden, even though many of the developments we’re talking about are just like 20, 30 homes, it doesn’t matter. He’s getting all the traffic and all the calls. So if he wants to send them somewhere else or try to sell them into something else, it’s his to do. That’s one area. Now, the other area, which I’m also seeing a lot of, I got to hate it, but it’s so popular, is I’m watching agents cut their commission. There’s this program that’s out there that all of you have probably heard of that has some good case studies from advertising that they’re going to cut the buyer side commission, and they are doing well with it. Going with 2% is what I’ve seen a lot of.
And I don’t know, John. Okay, this is my multi-level marketing moment. I’ve always been a high-end commission-only salesperson. And I got to tell you, you always lose when you start cutting your commission. Always. That’s my experience. That’s my whole career’s worth of experience. The second you start making exceptions to your commission is the second that not only do you start losing money, but you have to start cutting service. Full stop. You’re a business person Just like everybody else. If you take away your money, you lose your validation for some of the things you might be doing as a salesperson to provide service to a client. Those are my thoughts.
Yeah, I think they’re very insightful. I agreed with all of them. I think our diversions in the first half of the show around real, and I think there’s more alignment when it to eXp between you and me. I’ve explained it. It’s me. It’s my cultural background. I was in England until I was 42. For television program after television program, radio program, stridently anti-MLM schemes. In In the end, it became the law in England, and it become a crinimal. It’s not civil law, it’s a crinimal law that if they can prove that you’re engaging in these business models, you go to prison, and I can’t get over that. But it doesn’t bother because it’s a totally different culture, a totally different legal situation, isn’t it, Robert?
It is indeed. So ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to lay some wisdom on all of you that says building a successful team and providing website training or providing valuable training. So I’m going to give you guys all the tips that I used to use to build teams. I have built so many top performing teams. I don’t even have words for it. Adt, MCI, AT&T, that’s been my skill the entire time, and here’s how I Get them young, get them dumb, train them in classes, train them in masses, kick them in the asses. I’ve used that analogy for my whole career, and it has never failed. You get people before they know anything, and then you teach them something. Have something to teach them. Have a process, a training program, believe in it. If you don’t know how you are successful, in my humble opinion, you probably shouldn’t be a business owner or leader. You should really retool and get to a place where you can understand how you’ve done what you’ve done. For those of you, your referral sales people who’ve just been at it for 20 years, focus on how you build relationships and then turn that into a process.
Do you call everybody? Are you a Southern Bell and never really thought about it? I’m sorry, but you guys have to think about what you do and how you do it. I’m not saying most of you, if you’re successful, you have a process, just like John does. You’re overly humble, in my opinion, John. You’ve gotten many different businesses up and off the ground. Maybe your main skill has been perseverance. I don’t know. But you do have a process. How do you persevere? I get up early in the morning. I work hard all day long. I just plug away. I read other people. That’s a process. If you guys have a process because you don’t know something, you wake up, you read a blog, that somebody that theoretically knows what they’re doing. Well, guys, get up, do that, find a couple of people that know what they’re doing, then turn that into a process for your young, dumb, but excitable trainees, and then give them those places because people never forget the ones that taught them how to fish. If you actually mentor people, you want to know it builds more loyalty than anything else, John, that I’ve ever found more than money.
Teach people a skill for the first time in their lives. Make them independent. Please provide them with the tools to add value in the marketplace. And as long as you don’t treat them like complete and utter garbage, they tend to be loyal. By waste, I mean paying them 30% less than anybody else will pay them. Once somebody is learning something from you, they tend to stay loyal to you. It’s crazy how opening the gateways of somebody’s mind changes the paradigm of the relationship between them and you. That’s why getting them young is so relevant. That’s why having a process in place, such as a training program, is essential. Suppose you need to buy somebody else’s and put your name on it, great. But my only criterion for that is to make sure that you’ve made it yours. Make sure you understand it, that you went through it, that you’ve absorbed it, that you’ve used it, and that you know it. And so when you communicate it, the belief will come through in your voice. And now, when you’re teaching somebody else something, they buy it. That’s my closing to building a successful team. And guys, if you don’t know how to find them young, go to any college.
And failing that, go to high school. Go to any place that has unemployed people. Go to your EDD office. Go to… And physically go there. You want to impress people. Show up as an employer. Go to job fairs. They still work. They’ve never failed. They never will fail. Why? Because students are already on campus, they’re not looking online. That’s one of the very few things that’s never going to change. They’re going to school, they see a job fair in progress, so they drop by to boost their chances. They’re already there. They have to be there until the day changes when school is no longer taught on a campus. This is going to be successful. We use it in the Philippines, by the way. The University of Cebu is my favorite partner there.
You go, and it works everywhere. It works all the time. You have to have the patience to meet a lot of young, enthusiastic humans who want to tell you how to do your job, most of the time. Then you find the ones who want to learn something that are excited, and you hire them. Then you train them in large groups, teach them in classes, and then show them a little discipline, and then see what they can do.
That’s my advice, John.
It’s fantastic. Would you like us to wrap it up now?
We shall. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, who should not be listening to this show because I curse like a sailor, we appreciate your earbuds today. We do. You have been a part of episode number 474 of the 86th top-rated podcast in the country for real estate agents. Congratulations. Pat yourself on the back. We appreciate it. If you’d like to learn more about SEO or how to implement specific marketing strategies, you can visit inboundrem for more information. Com. We also provide services, websites, and many, many other things that will change your real estate re-generation game if you’re willing to learn a thing or two. Without any further ado, let me turn it over to my cohort, who also has an incredible, excellent, it’s the very best agency in He’s in the country doing a low cost, price it as you want, pretty much, service, and you can still get him on the phone. John, how would you like people to reach out to you if they want to? You can go to the Mail-Right.com website.
Please have a look at the features that we are offering. I think you’ll be blown away. We also have a well-designed library of WordPress themes, which enables you to create a professional-looking website quickly. That can also be IDX-enabled and customized. We also offer that service, but it’s a nice package. Back over to you, Robert.
Beautiful. Once again, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of inboundrem.com, a lifelong marketer, and one of the country’s top real estate SEO experts. I’m teaching myself to be one of the country’s best real estate AI guys. If the subjects interest you, if they can help your business grow, you know where to find me. All right, everybody, thank you so much. John, take us offline.
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