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Actual Estate Video Equipment: Microphones, Cameras, and Ai Software Guide. Please make sure to enhance your property marketing with Professional Tools.
Are you a real estate agent looking to up your video game? Look no further! Our comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know about essential video equipment for creating stunning property videos. We’ve protected you, from top-quality microphones and cameras to cutting-edge AI software. Don’t miss out on this valuable resource – watch our video now and take your real estate marketing to the next level!
-a- Your iPhone
-b- DSLR cameras and mirrorless cameras Sony or Canon
Canon M50 – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082DN8KR4?tag=pv0dbb-20&geniuslink=true
$499
Sony ZV-E10 Camera Review – https://www.rtings.com/camera/reviews/sony/zv-e10
$698
Sony ZV-E1 Camera Review – https://www.rtings.com/camera/reviews/sony/zv-e1
$2,000
Canon EOS R50 Camera Review – https://www.rtings.com/camera/reviews/canon/eos-r50
$899
Camera Review – https://www.rtings.com/camera/reviews/sony/zv-1
$636
Sigma 16mm – $399
Viltrox 13mm – $449
-a – Zhiyun Smooth 4 Gimbal Stabilize $89
-b- FeiyuTech $199
-c – FeiyuTech SCORP Mini $239
– a – Rode NT-USB mini $99
– b- Samson Meteor Mic $45
-c- Rode Wireless GO II Single Channel Wireless Microphone $182
DJI Mini 4 Pro (DJI RC-N2) $759
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
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#1 Short-form vertical video content, organic or paid ( Your face doesn’t need to be shown in this type of video).
-a- Inspiration quotations (6 to 8 seconds long)
-b- Testimonials (6 to 8 seconds long)
-c- Properties walkthroughs (pro tip avoid mirrors).
#2 – Business spotlights (promoting local business in your videos)
#3 – Monthly or quarterly market update videos.
#4 – Promote a listing of the week’s video
#5 – Educational (the basic information on the process of buying or selling a property).
Welcome back, folks, to The Mail-Right Show. This is episode 4:13, Lucky13. Rob Robert, my regular co-host, is on his vacation. He’s in England, my native homeland, folks. Yes, Rain in. When he told me he was going, He’s actually gone to Wells, Adam, in December. Lovely. That’s what I’ve got to say. The weather must be beautiful. That’s what I’ve got to say. I’ve got my co-host, my co-founder, I should say, of Mel Wright, Adam Brown. Adam, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners quickly?
Yeah, thanks for having me on again. We got a pretty exciting program today to share some good tips. But I am a co-founder, like Jonathan said, we’ve been working together 2-3 years and complement each other really well because he’s really good at certain things that I’m not quite as good at, and then I’m good at something that he’s not quite as good at. We learn off each other, but we also build into each other and each other’s strengths, which is excellent. It also makes for a lot of good information because you’re getting both sides of the equation there. Nomo Marketing at Seaside does a lot of videos, photos, some website stuff with Jonathan, logos, and things like that. I’m excited to get into this. How about you?
I’m Adam’s video expert, and he also does the Facebook adverts on the website, design, and development. We make a good mixture, folks. In this episode, we’re going to discuss the best type of Facebook YouTube videos for real estate agents in 2024. Video is essential. If you want to build your brand in 2024, it’s crucial. I think there’s a rush to quality. What I mean is that people who will be selling and buying homes next year will look at those with a great brand and show that they know what they’re doing. What do you reckon, Adam?
Yeah, and the video is just huge. Almost every podcast and video we make is about the importance of videos, along with a couple of other things that we share about. But we can’t overemphasize how important it is, so keep listening.
Yeah, let’s go for number one, short-form video. I’m talking about 10, 15-second videos. They can be utilized on multiple platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and YouTube Shorts. They’re getting more popular on YouTube. Google and YouTube really have been promoting its short format. These are vertical videos, not horizontal. Like I said, they’re fast. We can help you produce these as well. The other good news is you don’t have to be on them, basically. I’ve got three subcategories and ideas of content for these short videos. Also, there are AI platforms that can help you produce these, or we can create them for you. What are your views on this, Adam?
Yeah, all good information right there. 10-15 seconds is a trend right now. Who knows next week, right? What it’s going to be like. But those short static images that then people, especially on Instagram, so a sharp static image that you can then scroll to, so you’re getting people to stay on your post, engage with you. They’re touching the screen, and they’re interacting inside that platform. Those are pretty huge too. But yeah, if you can keep your videos to 7-15 seconds, that’s a good mark, a benchmark to set as a goal.
Yeah. Before I go into… Yes, the subcategories I got here are inspiration quotations. People love… We all fall for it. If you see a video, it’s moving, and there are various techniques that you can use to get in movement with the quotation that’s inspiring or interesting. You can rapidly produce them, and they do have of effect. Testimonials are really great. Just having the text and having a voice overhead read out with the text showing at the same time is very effective and quick. You can do walkthroughs, longer ones, and then you can cut them up using AI. As I said, we can help you with this. Basically, you can cut up a walkthrough. A walkthrough doesn’t have to be a home that you’re actually the agent for. It can be homes that your breakage is happy for you to show, or it can be quick videos of the outside of homes that are on the market. There are various ways of getting that content. Then you can do long-form, break it up into short form, and populate Instagram and the others. What do you reckon, Adam?
Yeah, all perfect ideas. Try to include captions on those. One, it’s suitable for the hearing impaired so that they can see as you’re talking if you’re on the video, or if somebody is on the video speaking, they can see the words that are coming out if they can’t hear them. And then also, it reaches more people. So the algorithms pick up on it. You’re also getting keywords that those algorithms also can read on the screen. And so that’s going to be good for SEO, which is Jonathan’s considerable strength. It is one of the big ones for him. So using captions that explain the words being shared, even if it’s a five-, six-, seven-second video, are really important. It’s constructive, and it’s also resourceful as well. So include those. And when you do it inside the platform, that’s typically going to give you a little bit more reach. But if you’re hosting multiple platforms, many of us will make them on a different app or program, and then we’ll import them into there and post from there. There are options, but I try to include those in your short and long videos, too, honestly.
Yeah. Funny enough, folks, especially with YouTube, YouTube seems to be pushing to ends of the video market or type of videos. You’ve got the short-form video that we just talked about, and then they seem to be promoting heavily long-form video, which are basically podcasts. They’re doing a big push to promote podcasting on YouTube, like hour-long YouTube podcast videos. They’ve got a whole section tab now on YouTube for podcasting. They’re really pushing their YouTube shorts and then they’re really long-form. It’s quite interesting. Where the classic is about 10, 15 minutes. When it comes to YouTube videos, I consume all sorts, so God help me. I watch too much YouTube, but it’s better than normal American television, isn’t it? There’s only so many weather channels and murders you can watch, isn’t it? Number two, business spotlights. This is a great way of building your brand through video and building your connections in the community. What do I mean by business spotlights? Well, basically, you video people in your local community and you interview them, do a quick interview, and it’s business owners and you spotlight restaurants, services, anything around property or any popular business. If you say you’re going to edit a video and you can give them the video and it’s cross-promotion, and most business owners, some will say no, but majority are going to be delighted.
It gives you the opportunity to also build a relationship with that business owner as well. It’s a win-win for everybody and it really… Because it’s hyper-local, you can put keywords in, you can use it on your website, you can use it on your Facebook, you can put it on YouTube. You can use it on multiple platforms and it’s hyper-local video, relevant content. It’s really a great idea. What’s your thoughts about this, Adam?
Yeah. Don’t forget, too, some of these you can add on to your Google Business profile if it’s appropriate. They’re a little more strict on that and not as much of a social media type of a platform as far as your Google Business profile. But definitely start looking into that if you’re not, because it is drastically underutilized. Just YouTube Shorts are really underutilized. And I guarantee on your phone, you have shots of where you live. Really, Jonathan and I, reenforces so much. But you need to be the digital mayor. If you’re in real estate, you need to be the digital mayor of the area, the city that you live in. Paying it forward and sharing about different businesses, they get so excited about that, most of them, I would say generally, and so sharing about them and the highlights, what makes it such a cool spot or a great environment to go grab a coffee or grab lunch or something like that? You can be super strategic. Like Jonathan said, it’s great for SEO too all around. We encourage you to start doing that if you’re not already. If you are doing it, just continue to improve what you’re doing.
Yeah, because what I was saying is combining these different formats, like the videos that we started off the short-form vertical that we can help you with, that you don’t need your head, your face to be. We’ve also got a calendar system, so we can help you produce these videos and then we can place them on a calendar for you and combining them with video that you are in and you are presenting. It’s really producing enough content that’s sustainable for you because consistency is important. But we’ve got to be realistic here. It’s feast of fun and normally in real estate, but it’s keeping that consistent with our help. Us, you may be setting out one or two hours each week to do some of the videos that we are suggesting, which is one of them doing a business spotlight, mixed with a couple of others that we’re going to talk about.
Really.
Works. What do you reckon, Adam?
Yeah. You’re going to have a little bit of editing time where you can send that off to get edited as well. There’s help there, or we can help you with that with one of our plans that we have. There was something I was going to share that one of the things I noticed when people were doing the business spotlights is the audio is really bad. If you have bad audio, it ruins the whole video. Even if you’re using your phone, which I have a $10,000 camera I normally use for these Zoom recordings and podcasts and stuff and for my business, but guess what I’m using? What am I using right now, Jonathan?
He doesn’t like it, but he’s been let down by the software of his camera. He’s using his iPhone, but I think it looks fantastic. But he’s not happy with it. But he’s a professional to talk if he got-.
But you know what? It’s working and it’s pretty appropriate because that’s probably what most of you are going to be using is iPhones. And so it works. We’re using it right now. We’re doing a long podcast, and it works. It looks good. I can’t really trick it out as much as I would like to with my good cameras, but hey, it works. So yeah, just back to the audio. You can get little road mics. They’re really not expensive, especially if you’re in it for the long run. I think Ceremonics is another good brand. Deity is another good brand. Look up those and their Bluetooth. You can get ones where you can hide. I don’t particularly like when people are wearing the big rectangle mic on their shirt. I think it looks pretty cheesy. So I like to hide them. If people are okay with that, you can let them install them in their shirt. But it makes such a difference to have good audio. So invest in that. You could probably, for around 100 bucks plus or minus, get a decent audio set up.
Don’t give them too much information because next week that’s what our topic can be there. Perfect. And also some AI video editing tools out there. We can have a mixture. I think it’s time for us to go for our mid-break, folks. We will be back with some other suggestions about video that can help you market yourself and build your brand in 2024. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Do you.
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We’re coming back, folks. We’ve been talking about all formats of video that can promote yourself and promote your business that will lead to some really quality leads, I can guarantee it. Because if you’re just listening to this podcast and you’re just doing some of the things that I and Adam are suggesting, you’re just going to be probably in the top 20% of agents that are doing anything like this. Unfortunately, the majority aren’t, and they’re the ones that are going to struggle in the next couple of years. Because if you do listen to what we’re suggesting, you’re going to be in that top 20% of agents that are going to be okay or build their business in the next couple of years. That’s my little spill, but I believe it. Next one, monthly or quarterly market update videos. Well, it’s linked to your email. If you can do a weekly email, I think that’s best. If you can’t do a monthly one, we can help you with that. We have our standard plans and then we’ve got plans which can fit in to your particular requirements. If you’re looking for a particular mix, you can always book a call with us on the mel-right.
Com website and we can build a bespoke package for you that includes our standard technology stack, which is amazing. But mixing video with your newsletter and sending it out will increase the engagement of your eye. You take a frame. You don’t have to utilize something like Bon Bon. You can just take a screenshot of the video that you’ve uploaded to YouTube. You can place it, give a written introduction, and then they can click on that to watch the video and it just gets more engagement. What’s your thoughts? If you can do a weekly one, but either it has to be good content or do a monthly market update, or if you got to just do it quarterly, I think it’s best to do a monthly one at least and then do a bigger one quarterly. It’s got to be interesting. There is a lot of agents that do these and they’re pretty dry and they’re basically folks, they’re pretty boring. You’ve got to put yourself into the listener viewer or the consumer’s shoes. Would you really want to watch something that’s half-an-hour? Really, really boring? I don’t think so—so always try and put yourself in those shoes.
What do you reckon, Adam?
Yeah, agree. I think if you could do once a month, that would be great. Once a week might be hard for most. So you want to set goals you can reach and achieve, otherwise it just doesn’t feel good and you end up giving up and doing nothing. And also make sure that information is resourceful, but also entertaining, like Jonathan said. And if it’s too long, how many people are really going to have 30 minutes to what?
What I was thinking, Adam, is the weekly one. You just do the video and then you can use it on… And then you just do a paragraph for writing and you send it out to your list, and in monthly you do a longer one, a longer write-up, but you’d still keep the video to 10 minutes or less.
Yeah. And then you can use clips from that on your social media, write any of the highlights or key things that you maybe said and reuse that on other platforms, and you’re going to start reaching a lot more people.
Yeah, it’s just planning out. I would just blank it out, just planning out a bit, blank a couple of hours every week, make sure, unless it’s really something really, really urgent, like a really commission check, blank it out. If it is urgent, obviously you can adapt, but it’s best to blank out a specific period of time so you can do some of the things we’re suggesting and then mix it up with some of the AI tools that we’re going to talk about next week and you should get a result. Promote a listing of the week video, which could be part of your newsletter. The great strength, folks, is there’s whole TV channels about property, about flipping property, there’s whole channels. People love consuming walkthroughs. It’s a staple, but it still works. You need a certain degree of equipment to so you don’t… It’s not all shaky and that. But then you can cut those up as well and use for your shorts as well. People just love walkthroughs, don’t they? What do you reckon, Adam?
Yeah, walkthroughs are cool and try to focus on things that maybe also stand out. If it’s just a room and there’s no furniture in it, don’t spend five minutes in there. Show the room, move on if there’s a cool, updated bathroom or if the kitchen has updates, upgrades or the backyard, or there’s like, a water feature, swimming pool, or whatever it is that maybe has a little bit more wow factor that’s more entertaining and will keep people watching or get them to start to watch because of what you’re showing, that’s where you want to try to focus more of your time on that.
Yeah. And the truth is, your first two, three, four of these is going to be rough after that. You get better at it. The important thing is, like I say, try and do one once a week. Do it before people turn up. If you’ve got a property that you’re representing, do it before a client or possible buyers turn up. Plan it. Or if you haven’t got properties, ask your broker or do property tours of the outside. Keep doing it, folks, and don’t give up after the first few weeks. Make sure you can do one a week, and you will get results. Finally, education, well, that’s more YouTube. There’s a bit of overlap between the monthly quarter market. But educational videos, what I mean is that in the process of buying or selling a home, a lot of people don’t know the basics. It doesn’t have to be really high level. We go through the basic process of how to get a mortgage and a host of other things. What’s it like? Dealing with the HIE, the Homeowners Association, just going through the basic stuff, and also going through what we call Evergreen videos, which are about the actual area that you’re doing business in, the city, town, region, those types of videos.
They’re great for writing written content and placing it on your website. Once they’re set up correctly, they can get results for over a year or two years with a little bit of updating, but not too much. What do you reckon?
Yeah, I love the evergreen highlight that you just mentioned, too, because, as Jonathan said, it could be resourceful. Say, you want to share about different parks and neighborhoods. You don’t really need access inside anyone’s house, but you can also indeed show homes in the area as you’re going through there or riding a bike or whatever you’re doing, skateboard or whatnot, and show the houses, but then show where the park is. Or maybe there’s a beautiful canyon next to it where people like to walk, ride bikes, or do Frisbee golf. Those are all just perfect ideas. Granted, those aren’t necessarily educational, except if you’re educating them on all the different parks near you. So think of it that way as far as these educational videos go. Short and Sweet is good with these as well, and make sure you’re explaining the area and giving people the information that they would want and what they’re looking for.
As I said, we can help you with the non-facial content. We can help you with those types of videos and advise you about the equipment. Adam knows a ton about all this, and he can advise you. We can be your mentors and support network, and that can be part of one of our bestowed packages. We can give you ideas, help you on the technique side, and advise you about the equipment. Well, we’ve done that. We’re more than happy to do that. I think we’re going to wrap up this podcast. As I said, next week, we’re going to be talking about sound, cameras, and equipment, plus some AI tools that can help you with these short videos and some other aspects around graphics and video. You have the tools to produce this type of content in 2024. So, Adam, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
Yeah, they can go to Mail-Right. com. Is that what you mean? Or do you tell me personally?
Well, we’re following you on Twitter. Where can I find you? On Facebook?
Yeah, Explore Marketing, LLC. Most of them are on that, obviously, where the usernames weren’t available. You can check that out. Obviously, check out the Mailright accounts as well. Follow us, give us a like, share, and comment because we do like to hear your feedback, your experiences, things you’re trying, maybe things that have been successful, things that are more challenging. Include that even on our videos here. Anything else?
No, I think that’s great. We’ll see you next week, folks, where, like I said, we’ll be talking more about video. Give us feedback on how you’re finding these podcasts and some topics you’d like us to cover. It’s about giving you value. That’s what it’s all about. We’ll see you or you listen to us next week. And to you soon. Bye. Bye.
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
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#1 – Video ( Facebook, YouTube and Instagram)
#2 – Reviews
#3 – Facebook Advert
#4 – Email and text marketing
#5 – Google Local Service Ads
Welcome back, folks, to The Mail-Right show. This is episode 411. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about how you get high-quality real estate digital leads in 2024. 2023 is coming to an end. It’s gone quickly, isn’t it, folks? Plus, my regular co-host, Robert Newman, has gone away on vacation for the month. Taking his place is my co-founder of the Mail-Right show, Adam Brown. Adam, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners quickly?
Yeah. Jonathan and I have been working together for a past… Man, are we coming up on almost two years?
I’ll be free.
Oh, wow. I also have a marketing agency, so really familiar with videos, and photos, working with Jonathan, all the SEO, Google video reviews, and things like that as well as the program he’s got going. So thanks for having me on.
No problem, Adam. Adam, like I said, he really specializes in video and Facebook. He’s an idea, the website, and the SEO.
Good compliment.
Yes, I think so. Folks, in this episode, Adam’s going to be doing this show with me and probably a couple of shows in December. Then we’re going for a break over Christmas and the New Year, but we will be back, and hopefully, Robert will be back as well from his trip. As I said, in this episode, we’re going to be discussing how to get digital leads in 2024. Let’s start off the number one thing we have hammered away during the 2023 video. Video, in all the mediums that we have been talking about, will help you attract more leads and better quality leads through Facebook, advertisement, YouTube, Instagram, or, if you’re really up on the edge, TikTok. But we’re planning to discuss videos for Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. What are your thoughts about video and utilizing video to get better-quality leads, Adam?
Yeah, the video is huge. It’s pretty much the staple now online, even using static images on social media. It’s just not getting the reach that it used to, which is unfortunate for the photographers. I also do photography, but video is more my niche. It’s not a waste of time to do static images, but it is worth your time to start implementing video if you’re not already. Honestly, we should have been implementing video, not we, but everyone out there years ago, just because of how much more effective and captivating it is to reach people. Plus, it works better. It’s better for SEO. It’s just better all around. It’s so highly suggested, and it’s why we keep pounding on this with all the different workshops and stuff that we’re presenting.
Yeah, obviously, these are different platforms, folks, so different types of video work on them. The other thing is, most of you are either going to have a really great iPhone, or you’re going to have a good Android. Almost all modern phones now have a fabulous ability to take video. Actually, Adam had some technical problems, and he couldn’t utilize his new, average cameras. He’s recording this with me using his iPhone, and it looks like… And it looks fantastic because he’s got the lighting set up. What I mean by different types, in Facebook, we can… A lot of people don’t want to take videos of themselves, add and can develop and utilize a video library of pre-taken videos and slides. We can make some compelling videos without you being part of the video. But if you can take some video, which we can utilize the more, the better, but we can advise you. Facebook, if you’re going to utilize it for branding, it’s best if you can video yourself about the local market, about what properties, showing properties, walking through a new property, and promoting it. These are all excellent ideas. But when it comes to Facebook advertising and utilizing video, you don’t necessarily have to be in it.
When it comes to YouTube, that’s different because that’s more about education. Would you agree? Because I think, Adam, when it comes to YouTube, people want to know about different aspects of the area that you’re an active real estate agent in. They want to know about the schools, the parks, the immediateities in general, the market in general. It’s really very informational focus. Would you agree with that, Adam?
Yeah. And yet our household, my wife and kids, watch a lot of YouTube for entertainment purposes. We don’t have cable, for instance. We were trying to think of using it for entertainment reasons, which really if what we’re sharing on YouTube as real estate agents or whatever industry we’re in, if it’s not entertaining and it’s just spewing out all this information without having some fun, it’s just not going to be as effective either. Yes, totally agree. But also keep the fun aspect as you’re being resourceful and providing information to people.
Yes, absolutely. I see exactly where you’re coming from, Adam. You can’t be too dry and it doesn’t necessarily have to be too… Don’t end up like me, folks. But he doesn’t want to be too long either. But if you could do a monthly video about what the market is like in your area, show some of the properties, talk about the different areas, the different types of property. We’ve discussed finding the niche, if you can, that will help resonate your videos to the right target and offering a resource and talking about that resource during the video, having some lead magnet and having a landing page that they can go to to get that lead magnet, and having a link in the video, that’s important as well, folks. Now, when it comes to Instagram, what’s the situation? Because you’ve got the different type of reels and you’ve got the different types of advertisement on Instagram. What’s your thoughts about this, Adam?
Yeah. Like you said, you have the Reels, which is more of that vertical portrait way of holding your camera, your phone, for instance, and their stories, which is going to use the same format for that placement. And then you could do posts still. Facebook, for instance, when you do a post, it’s turning it into a reel. So if they’re owned by the same company, so that makes sense. And just as a little pro tip too, YouTube has the YouTube shorts. So if you’re already doing the portrait format up and down with your phone and it’s quality enough and it’s resourceful enough and it’s entertaining, if you can make it short and sweet and make it look pretty decent with your phone, which I think you can, I know you can actually, you can also post those onto YouTube as well. So you’re getting more bang for your buck with the time and effort you’re putting into creating these videos. So definitely check that out too.
Yeah, it’s really important, folks, that you just have a plan of action where you have one or two hours a week and you knock up a few of these videos and you keep at it. Because for branding purposes, the more you get in front of your target audience, the more trust and an management you will build up, which will make your other paid advertisement or your other attempts to get good quality leads a lot more easier. On to the next video, reviews. Now, I think reviews in general, getting really good reviews, get them on your website, utilize them on your Google Local Business Area page, getting them on your Zillow, the free Zillow resource that they offer you. But just generally getting reviews is one area that a lot of real estate agents fell on. I think it’s one of the key factors that really will determine how effective your digital lead generation is compared to other people, your ability to have a system and get reviews. What’s your views on this, Adam?
Yeah, I feel like you and I hammer out reviews and try to reinforce that because it’s super important. It’s really good for SEO. Google loves it. Like Jonathan said, dito to all of that and integrating it into your website as well. It’s huge. It’s necessary. Reviews are basically today’s word of mouth without talking to somebody. When we buy stuff, whether it’s a home or some electronic device, we are looking for reviews. What are people saying about it? I don’t know about you, but when I see it’s got four to five stars, that’s when I start to look a little bit more versus if it’s a little less expensive and doesn’t have four stars, I probably won’t look at that one just because of the reviews. They’re powerful and they’re really important.
Having them linked to a social media platform and then utilize them on your landing page or your paid advertisement is really going to increase the effectiveness of your paid advertisement. We specialize in Facebook and Google, local adverts platform, and having reviews and having those reviews generated by a social media platform and then utilizing them is really important. Just writing a review, getting a written review and putting it on your website helps. But a lot of people will dismiss it as well. If it’s linked to actual social media platform, gives it more credence and it will really make a difference to how effective your outreach, especially through paid advertisement, and it just makes a big difference. Now, with Mailright, I just want to plug the Mailright platform, it’s a CRM, it’s a social media platform, and we’ve got a really easy, usable CRM in build. Plus, it does text messaging and email and text strip campaigns. But we also got a really fantastic in Build review platform that you can send out a request asking for reviews in batches, and that really saves time. We’ve known people utilize it and it makes the whole process of getting these reviews and getting it more systematic, a lot easier.
I think it’s one of the gems of our Mailwright system, really. Would you agree with that, Adam?
Yeah, I think it’s such a great way and it’s user-friendly and it’s got a little bit of a… What would you call it? So if reviews come in that are under a seven or something, right? They go through a process so they’re not immediately posted onto the website, right?
We ask for a mini survey from people and you can see it. It’s like 1-10. It just asks them… Obviously, if you ask for them to write out a full review straight away, you’re going to get a lot of resistance. It just seems quickly, they click it and then they ask, Can you give a rating of 1-10 stars about your experience? You can set it at five or whatever limit. If it only gives you five or below, it will take them to the screen asking, Can we have a chat? Can you give me more feedback? If it’s five or above, depending where you set it to, it will then ask for a quick review and then it will take them to either Google or Facebook and they can leave a quick review there, then we find this system just really helps agents get a lot more reviews. We’ve got some more great points to tell you about and point out to you, but we’re going to go for our break now, folks. We’ll be back in a few moments.
Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail write. It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no-question-asked, 30-day, money-back guarantee. So don’t delay, get started today. Go to mail-right. Com.
Welcome back, folks. It’s strange to do this without Adam, but I think, Roblox, I should say. But Adam’s doing a sterling job. Let’s talk about Facebook adverts. I think about almost a year ago, Facebook was facing a challenge because they were dealing with the new position that Apple had brought out, and they made it much harder for Facebook to get the information they need that enables them to make their efforts really effective. But the good news is, folks, that basically using artificial intelligence, Facebook threw an army of their developers and a load of money, basically, because they had to deal with this because it was affecting the results people were getting from Facebook. Now they’re getting better results than ever, the reports I’m getting, and Facebook has just come back. I think for a real estate agent, combining video, which we mentioned in the first part of the show, is really important. What’s your feelings about this, Adam?
Yeah, I think with Facebook in particular, it’s good to run some test ads and do different formats of the video, and also do carousels and static images. That way you can test and make sure the money is going into the placements that are the most effective, and so you’re not losing as much money, but also gaining more quality leads through being more strategic with your advertising on there.
Yeah, it’s really important, though, because with the mail write system, you’ve got two choices: you’ve got the DIY element of WordPress where you get a fantastic website which you can brand and that’s yours, and IDX integration as well, plus the suite of all the tools, the CRM, the Drip, email, the text messaging, that all comes in a DIY package at one of the best prices out there. But if you don’t, you can then do your own Facebook adverts and run your own campaigns. But we also offer a concierge service where Adam and our team can manage the campaigns for you. So you’ve got options with us. That’s the basic choice. Our platform is really powerful because most people go wrong, and I want to see if you agree with this, Adam, is they run their campaigns a bit too short and also they don’t have the consistent follow-through because with Facebook adverts, people are at different journeys on their house purchasing or selling journey, and it’s a disruption platform. So videos, they think, I want that information or I want to know about that property. Then you send them to the landing page, you get their name, email, and phone number, and then our system will email them over a month and text message them.
Then after the month, it puts them on another list, which then they will be sent a monthly type newsletter. It just keeps them in your sphere of influence because they’re all at different stages of, like I said, the buying or selling journey, aren’t they? What do you reckon, Adam?
Yeah, I think you nailed it. So obviously, test them to create different placement formats and sizes. I think people don’t spend enough money on it. I would definitely put at least $50 if you’re trying to get any significant results and you want their AI and algorithms to really try to pull what you’re trying to do. When you put five or ten bucks, it’s just not really going to be super effective. So you will get into it what you’re putting into it, which is good and bad depending on your budget and what you want to spend. The other thing is people don’t run it long enough, and so you can’t run it for two days and be done. Although I have had clients say, stop, wehave enough people. We’re good, which is always a great problem when you spend eight bucks if that’s the case. That just doesn’t happen too often. Run it for a good week, maybe even two weeks, once you know which are performing better from the tests that you’re doing. That’s a couple of quick tips. We could really spend hours talking about this.
Next week, Sean would probably do a deeper dive about Facebook. The main thing is a lot of people give too much information on their Facebook effort. You need to be in what I call with Facebook, the go delox area. You give enough information to intrigue them, so to click on the effort and go to the landing page. If you give them too little, there’s no reason for them to click the effort. But on the other end, if you give them too much information, they won’t click either because they got everything they wanted. That’s why. Now, if you do want us to run your Facebook effort, we got a great concierge service and it’s $250 a month, so it’s not outrageous, folks. Then we recommend that most areas you need a 250 budget to start off with, so that’s 500 bucks. We run one or two campaigns a month for you. You do have to sign up for six months, though, because it does take their upfront cost. We have to interview you, find out. It’s a customized service to some extent. We’ve got a library of different campaigns that work, but we do customize for each clientele.
We need you to sign up for six months, but it’s not an outrageous amount of money. We find that people get fabulous results from it. Or if you want to, you can sign up for the MailRide platform on its own, which starts at around $150 or slightly underneath. You can do all this on our platform yourself, so you’ve got great choices. Email and text marketing. I think the money is in the list, as they say. It comes from a lot of the leading individuals that started talking about digital marketing, is that building up your email list and then emailing those people and keeping your email list, your database up to date and relevant, text messaging is powerful, but we suggest that when you run a campaign, you can text people, but you do it like you send two email and you send one text message, and you do that for the first 30 days, and then you just put them on the email list afterwards. That’s what we recommend. I think email has been proven. When social media ads came out, and it’s great social media, but a lot of so-called guru was saying the email was finished.
That’s turned out to be totally untrue, hasn’t it?
Yeah, it’s still effective. It’s still necessary. If you’re saying faxes, maybe that’s true, it’s faxing. But email is fax. I thought it was a fax. Yeah, right? What is a fax, though? And so-.
I bet when you say that to your family, they just look blank at you.
I could- I know, I’m sorry. -like, I wouldn’t even know what that is.
We don’t even know in what fact what you’re talking about.
Yeah, a facsimile. And the good thing is if you aren’t good at following up the mail-write program with the email text strip campaigns, basically really helps you out with that. So it’s always good. I mean, the sooner you can follow up, the better. But it is set up in a way that there’s multiple, multiple touches through that first week. So you’re top of mind, tip of tongue, and you’re going to find out if they’re interested or can you put them in the pipeline inside the CRM? So it’s great because you could put notes on there and things like that, that of the process and conversations and things just to keep you fresh next time you go in there.
Yeah.
We can.
Like I said, we’ve got a full… You can build a full email text campaign, 30 days or plus. Plus, we’ve got a landing page builder that’s really easy, but it’s flexible and you can build great landing pages. Plus, we provide some digital lead magnet resources, or you can upload your own, plus the review platform plus the social media, Canada. Because a lot of people, one of the key things, folks, is to get a result on social media, you’ve really got to publish a lot of social media content. And most agents, it’s feast or famine, either you’ve got no time at all. The other key to social media is every month posts a lot of content. Well, you can pre-populate and we help you there. We supply to all our clients a calendar worth of one post a day to Facebook and other platforms. We provide that for you charge and you can add to it. It just puts your social media on steroids, basically. The last thing, before we wrap this up, Adam, is Google Local Service Ads. We want to point out, if you go to the MailRoy YouTube channel, we’ve got about four or five really great videos about Google Local Service Ads.
Do you want to tell the listeners quickly what they are, basically?
Yeah. There are ads on Google that hit your immediate area, and it’s created through your business account and the information you provide on your profile. So it’s super important that you fill that out correctly. Like Jonathan said, we have several videos that can explain and walk you through that, or you could just get a hold of us through the website. They’re good leads, they’re good leads. They’re not inexpensive. But again, you’re getting what you’re paying for. I think, Jonathan, I would say they’re better than Zillow leads, right?
Well, basically, Google is competing with Zillow. Basically, when you do a search for a local service in Google, folks, you will see the top three, and they will be linked to a MacPAC, as this is the SEO term they call it. And those free placements, not all the time. It depends if they’ve got anybody advertising on the platform, but in most areas, they’re paid placement. And you want to be one of those… Basically, it’s very similar to Zillow Premier in the way it works. They have a bid. If you’re the highest bid, your advert will show. They match searches when people are doing a search in Google, and they know, especially when somebody’s using a mobile device where they are located, so they match the search. These typically cost between $50 to $70 per lead. The great thing is that if you think the quality of the lead is totally rubbish, you can actually make a claim, and you can claim that money back off Google. Zillow doesn’t do that very well. We find they’re much higher quality. But the key to this is you do have to pick up the phone. If Google senses that you’re not, they will back off sending these leads to you.
And second, you’ve got to set up your Google business profile, claim it, and fill it in. We do have a service where we can assist you to do this. If you do sign up for the mail right for the year, we’ll set it up for you for free. If you don’t want to sign up, there is a charge, but we will help you set it all up for you and advise you. But it’s more expensive than Facebook advertising folks, but the quality of the lead, they’re much further on their journey, their buying or selling journey, than what a Facebook lead is. But you can be lucky with a Facebook lead, you can show up at the right moment. But in general, they’ve got a much broader intent of either purchasing or selling. With the Google Local Service Ads, they tend to be much further on their buying or selling journey. Their intent is much later on in the process. That’s why you have to pay that price to get them. It’s very similar to Zillow. But as we all know, the quality of Zillow premium efforts, unless you pay for their screening services, which is an extra cost, i.
E, they get a virtual, they get offshore VC actually to rent out the prospect. That’s all the extra cost that Zillow charges you. It gets very expensive very quickly. I think Google Local Service Ads is much better than you. You need a little bit of help. The brutal truth, folks, is almost 80% of real estate agents don’t set up their Google Local page correctly or don’t claim it at all. It’s just bonkers, basically. It’s time to wrap it up. We’re at the half-hour mark. We’ll be back next week, and we’ll probably talk about Facebook in a bit more depth or use video equipment. For the next two weeks, if Adam’s up for it, we could do two shows before the Christmas and New Year break. In one of them, we talk about Facebook advertising in a bit more detail. In the second, before we went for a break, we talked about video equipment because Adam knows everything about that. What do you reckon, Adam? Do you think it’s been a good show?
It’s been a great show, and I guess what? If all you have is an iPhone, I just recorded on my own iPhone, so you could do it.
I’m going to tell you, Adam.
It doesn’t look too bad, huh?
Well, you’ve got all the lights in, Adam.
Lighting helps, and onthe honestly, you could spend like 30 bucks and have enough lighting. Let’s talk about that, too, right? There are some more just for you to maximize your reach and make it look good for pretty inexpensive.
Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed it, give us some feedback, folks. We’d love you to go to the Mailwright, leave a comment on the Mailwright YouTube channel, and give us some feedback. We will be back next week with another, giving you some real value and insights. See you soon, folks. Bye.
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Uncover the truth about Redfin in this thought-provoking show that delves into whether it is a devil incarnate or a saintly enterprise. Gain valuable knowledge about how Redfin operates and its impact on real estate markets, then decide for yourself which side of the debate you stand on. Don’t miss out—now, to gain a deeper understanding of this contentious topic.
We discuss the similarities Betwen WeWork – Adam Neumann | Redfin CEO and Founder – Glenn Kelman business models.
#1 – Redfin has existed for 20 years. It has yet to be a profitable enterprise.
#2 – Even during 2021, the most extraordinary of boom years, the company lost $109.6 million.
#3 – Making payroll every two weeks for over 2,000 agents is a sobering reality. And while Redfin has referred out the business to “partner agents” for years and recently announced a goal to send 50% of its leads to such non-Redfin agents, a path to profitability has remained hard to discern.
#4 – Redfin CEO and Founder – Glenn Kelman
The estimated Net Worth of Glenn Kelman is at least $41.6 Million dollars as of 9 November 2023. Mr. Kelman owns over 211,111 units of Redfin Corp stock worth over $7,496,727, and over the last 5 years, he sold RDFN stock worth over $33,022,650. In addition, he makes $1,082,280 as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director at Redfin Corp.
#5 – The future of Redfin?
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 410 of The Mail-Right Podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about one of Mr. Donwood’s favorite subjects in the whole wide world, which is Redfin. If you tuned into our show last week, he’s looking all confused. But of our last 10 shows, Redfin has been brought up at least two or three of them. Oh, I didn’t know. He probably just doesn’t realize it. The title of today’s show is Redfin, Devil Incarnate or Saintly enterprise, which is a very English way of phrasing it, all that anyway. In case you did not know, I’m going to allow my co-host a moment to speak and introduce himself, and you’ll figure out pretty quickly. He’s an English bloke. Hold on. John, take it away.
Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail-right. Com. We are a CRM lead generative platform that also provides a great website solution. Back over to you, Rob.
All right, so today we are going to dive into Redfin, which has been making the news, as it oftentimes does. One of the reasons it makes the news so frequently is that in case you did not know, Redfin does not follow traditional model. Number one, they charge their customers like a flat 1% commission rate. So they have a lower commission structure. They put their agents on salary, which sounds lovely. All of this sounds lovely. Pay, customers pay less, the agents get a salary, what could possibly go wrong? Well, truth is that the point that John has put down that was number one, which I do happen to know. I am not the Redfin expert that John is, but Redfin has yet to be profitable. It’s existed for 20 years. John, why don’t you kick off the conversation there? You’re the one who created that title, so I’m sure you have something to say about it. Let’s hear what your thoughts are about that.
Thanks, Rob. Well, it’s linked to last week’s chat we had. Folks, you definitely want to listen to last week’s show, because obviously Redfin decided to leave the NAR before the lawsuits really hit the public media in some ways. I think the Redfin founder, Glenn, has always had a very—I’m looking for the right word, Rob. I’m struggling relationship with the NAR. But before we go into the business side, because I’m just fascinated to get your view on it, how would you classify their technology, their web technology specifically? Do you think there’s anything particularly special or that differentializes their web presence than some of the leading national franchise players and even some of the brokerage or clientele that you represent?
Well, they’ve definitely had a unique spin on lead flow and lead assignment from the very beginning. Redfin had used to—this is not true anymore, used to have a much better job at landing pages and hyperlocal presence. I think that one of the challenges that Redfin has done is that from the very beginning, John, they focused on the small, long tail searches, and stayed away from competing against the major, like homes for sale in city name. That was always the top searches. Redfin understood that Trulia and Zillow had those locked up, and I don’t think they put as many of their resources in them, and they did instead, neighborhood searches, subdivision searches, things like that. And they’ve done a very good job. But what happened, though, is competition changed, and now Redfin has become more known for its commission model. They also lost the fight in producing anything unique inside the website space. In other words, their website looks and operates very similar to the way that Trulia does. It’s not that much different in terms of page design. I’m looking at when they’re landing pages right now, it’s identical to truly a landing page. The data points presented on the page are slightly different.
Redfin does a slightly better job at doing the details, and then it, of course, points you in the direction of Redfin, Real Estate Agents, which is its interpretation in the digital age of what Century 21 did back in the ’70s and the ’80s. Do I think that they did a really good job with this? No, I think they fell short. I think they fell short through no fault of their own, because whoever started the company ran the company. They just couldn’t keep up with all the technological advances on the website side. That’s my opinion.
Yeah, I think that’s very astute. I think Glenn Carman background, he had a successful start-up at the start of his career, which was bought. Then he started Redfin and he still goes on a lot of startup podcasts and talks to the startup VC community probably as much as he talks to the traditional real estate industry. I think that… Would you agree that’s what surprises me? That is, in my opinion, that Redfin and the founder have been dealing with a broken business model for a very long time, but that’s just my opinion. But I think because of what we discussed last week, I think he blames or hints that it was the monopoly, in his opinion, the monopoly practices of the NAR and the more traditional national franchise brokerages that contributed to his broken business model. How would you respond to that, Robert?
I would say that there’s probably some truth to that. I’d say that Glenn probably gave up the ghost on competing, and I think he’s given it 20 good years. From what I can see, the one thing that I’ve learned from being an investor is that you like, there’s a lot of companies that do nothing but track how much stock are the leaders of the company keeping, selling, stuff like that. Glenn has been selling his for a while, like a long time. He’s been selling and selling and selling and not rebuying. I think that tells you everything you need to know about Redfin. That’s the CEO of the company divesting himself of his stock, of which, by the way, he sold the largest percentage that he’s ever sold on November second of this year.
Yeah, that’s very insightful. Thanks for that. I didn’t realize that, Rob. What is the problem with Redfin? Obviously, discounting has been around a long time. Paying your agents directly, the research I did, he’s got over 2,000, they’ve been backing away from that model and increasingly, more of their agents are paid on the more traditional model of commission. Was that one of the leading factors? Because I think we both agree that we feel that there’s some fundamental weaknesses in the business model of Redfin. Was it that one of the key problems paying agents directly a salary rather than then a commission-based structure?
If you were going to pay agents a salary, then there’s no doubt that you have to have an aggressive bonus compensation. There’s definitely a lot of… It’s a good thought to say that you’re going to pay somebody a good wage. In a very tight… I know of one broker that does that successfully, and he is a retired military guy who lives in a military city in Florida and hires only ex-military people, and he runs his operation like a military operation. It works in that environment that I’m mentioning, it works very well. He’s a very highly rated brokerage and agency and with very high success numbers coming in from their clients. But in every other environment that I’ve ever seen people try to do this, it fails. And the reason it generally fails is pretty simple. You take an agent who you’re paying 1% to, and it doesn’t simplify the real estate process. In many cases, and I’m sorry to my audience, real estate agents are overpaid for the effort that they deliver. But the reason that there is such a high compensation, John, is that every once in a great while you have a real estate client that you have to work for weeks or months on, as if it’s your only job.
An old lady with health problems, and you all of a sudden have to move her, replace her carpet, and the list goes on and on. Basically, your life becomes moving this human out of their home. In those rare circumstances, like where you take a Redfin agent and say if they want a good review, do they have to work any less hard than a fully commissioned agent? The answer is no. They do all the same work and get paid literally a third of what somebody else would get paid. So any good agent providing a high level of service is going to look at that eventually and go, I’m making literally a third less, and in these problematic circumstances where I have these really high energy clients, I am just getting compensated so much less than what I should be compensated. I think that’s a problem. How does Redfin keep really high quality people when that becomes a reality?
Do you think it’s also linked? Because as you know, Robert, I’ve seen it in Northern Nevada, and obviously I’m sure you’ve seen it, that a lot of the regional large brokerages and also the national franchise brokerages, a lot of their model depends on having a very large group of agents. A lot of them are part-time, a lot of them might only sell three or four houses a year at the most. But the percentage that the brokerage takes from those sales is extremely high compared to the deals that they have to do with high-producing agents that part of their brokerage. I think that model in a buoyant market works, but it doesn’t work that well in a more settled market or a semi-declining market. What’s your thoughts about that?
Can you rephrase that question for me?
Well, this whole business model, which I think a lot of brokerage is not exclusively, but I’ve noticed in Northern Nevada where they have a vast group of part-time agents.
And a.
Lot of those agents only sell two, three, four houses a year.
I.
Don’t think agent handling that level of transactions can really have a feel for the market, and this is just my opinion, but it’s very beneficial to the brokerage in profitability. What do you think is going to happen to that model? Do you agree that is a model?
That lot going on? Well, there is absolutely no question whatsoever. So if Redfin has 2,000 agents, then check this out. Keller Williams has 187,000. Exp has like 30,000. So the largest brokerage by age account is Keller Williams, and I think that Keller Williams has done an incredible job at creating value in the recruitment process. They’ve also got enough training material so that most new agents drift in the direction of working with, like a Keller Williams. But that model that you described, do I think they seek it out? Hell, yeah. Why wouldn’t they? Because when you have a model that can get 100,000 of anything, and that 100,000 people, let’s say, produce like two deals a person, that’s still like 200,000 deals a year with… There’s always complications, John, just like any other industry. The highest level, highest producing agents are going to make the brokerage operate at the narrowest margin, because they’re going to negotiate for their own salaries aggressively, and you’re going to have a very hard time turning them down, or because there’s so many no commission agencies, and by the time an agent is able to sell 20 or 30 properties a year.
They’re probably doing their own marketing. They absolutely understand how to do the transaction coordination. You have to work pretty hard to provide them a service they can’t do themselves. So do companies like Keller Williams seek out these part-time agents? Absolutely. Is it a model that I see being sustained in a shaky economy? Not as much would be my answer.
It’s also linked, this is why I wanted to bring, because I think you were a little bit, I wouldn’t say puzzled, but you had some slightly puzzled why I brought this red thing in. Because I saw it very linked to our conversation last week, Robert, about obviously what happened with the lawsuit, which we only touched very little bit in the second half of last week’s show, we mostly talked about follow-up boss. But obviously, what has happened to the NAR, it might take years for that legally to go through all the processes. But you can, to some extent, see the writing on the wall with the 6% really, because I agreed with what you said last week that if you take a common sense position, that is a lot of money for what the average time needed for the average transaction. So can you see why? Because hopefully you can see where I was coming from in this discussion here a little bit.
I mean, yes and no, I’ve never really considered Redfin to be a major player. They’re two thousands of agents comparatively to… Zillow has more agents than Redfin does at this point. They are so many, they’re one of the smallest brokerages by age and count that exists, and they have a very unique model, and I think that it’s dying on the vine, so I don’t pay too much attention to them. Is it worthy of a discussion, though, in and of itself, of course. I mean, Redfin is, Zillow is, Realtor. Com is every single one of these companies, and if you want to take this as a nod to their disconnection from the NAR, and/or Glenn trying to say that NAR is anti-competitive. Well, hell, yes, they are. Yes, they are. They are anti-competitive. Nar has been egregiously trying to maintain control over an industry that would absolutely, probably at this point, better be served by a more flexible or adaptable organization being at the forefront. Nar is 10, 20 years behind everybody in everything all the time. And is that serving the real estate industry as a whole? No, it’s really not. And is Redfin indicative of that?
Sure. Is it a great indicator? Probably not. I think that Glenn Wishes it was, like the EXP is more of an indicator now, I think. Let’s go to a break, though, and discuss your response when we come back. Also, allow me a chance to try to fix my camera. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to go to a break when we come back. We’re going to talk a little bit more about Glenn, we’re going to talk about payroll, we’re going to talk about the financial situation of Redfin and some other points that John has brought up here. John, I will be right back as I try to do this one more time, okay? Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail right. It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no-question-asked 30-day money-back guarantee. So don’t delay, get started today. Go to mail-right. Com. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mailright show. Today’s episode is number 410.
My fearless co-host and I are talking… We’re doing a trail on… We’re doing a completion subject that came up for John when we were doing episode number 409, which I agree with John. It was a really good episode. So for those of you listening to the show right now, if you’re trying to figure out why we’re talking about RevPen and where does that connect in, we were talking about the lawsuits that NAR had lost and how that might affect real estate commission and a few other things that were all really great topics in episode number 409. So, John, we left off. You mentioned a few different things about the profitability, and you said, I think let’s pick up from number three. I don’t know that we really talked about that. So right now, Redfin is a little bit in trouble because even in the best year that they’ve ever had, they’ve lost $109 million. Part of what you… The reason for that is they’re making payroll for 2,000 agents in a slowing real estate industry, so most likely they’re going to be hemorrhaging Red Ink. I don’t even know where they’re going to come with the money.
That’s a lot of money to come up with. So what was the thing that you wanted to talk about surrounding that idea?
Well, I think first of all, I’m going to make a quite controversial statement, but it’s my opinion. I think Glenn is very media savvy and I think Silicon Valley love him. Obviously, they’re sharks, they just go by the money, but his ability just to keep having access to more and more capital. To me, he’s very similar to Adam Newman. I think he’s the Adam Newman of the real estate industry, basically. If you don’t know who Adam Newman is, listeners, he was the co-founder of WeWork. To me, Glenn obviously is different, but they are similarities. The whole business model of Redfin from top to bottom is broken as far as I’m concerned. I’ve just been amazed how this dog has just kept on going. But what interests me, and I thought why I would bring it up this show, is where do you think the industry is going in the next 2-3 years? I’m just interested in… Because I think in some ways the national chain are going to have their problems. You can never say no, but I just cannot see how Redfin can keep on going. But I think there’s going to be for smaller agile boutique, brokerages, power teams, solutions.
I just see the market being very disrupted. What’s your own views, Robert?
I agree with that. I think all the national companies are in trouble, except for the ones like RealT One and eXp that are going to virtual models. I think that we’re going to see fewer and fewer real estate offices with physical locations. I think we’re going to see more more of a branching out, more hyper local brands becoming more and more relevant inside the real estate industry. I think that the big brands have gotten a bit out of touch with what? What is needed to maintain a strong foothold in local places? There are exceptions, but it usually is office-to-office and centers around a very small handful of agents that have been with the same brokerage for a long period of time that do add a certain prestige. The Coldwell Banker office in Beverly Hills is an incredibly strong example of a very traditional brand that is falling out of step in many places, but maintains like a lock on Beverly Hills because the agents that work out of that office, like they’ve been there for 20 or 30 years. So you still go to them regardless of where what the shingle is outside the door.
But other than that, you’ve got Beverly Hills Realty, which has really been on the upswing and is competing quite handily against Tilton and Highland. Same thing with the Agency RE doing the same thing. I’ve been watching that happen more and more in different marketplaces, and I don’t think it bodes well for the big brands. I think it bodes very poorly, and if they happen to lose a major lawsuit, the people that are targeted in that lawsuit are the big brands, not the little local companies. So I perceive that it’s going to be a difficult environment for big brands over the next three years, and I think that we’re going to continue to see a proliferation of low cost, high digital services companies spring up that emulate the eXp model. That’s what I think.
Yeah. I think that’s… Yes, I agree with you there. Where I see, and I might be totally wrong about Redfin, because of the ability of Glenn to get more capital and to pivot Redfin or… He’s a great storyteller and he’s ability. But I just feel that the runway is shortening quite a lot. But the other thing is I also think this other business model, which we touched on in the first half of the show, of the national franchise chains and the large regional, there’s two in Northern Nevada you got Chase International and you got Dixon in this part of Northern Nevada. They both, in my opinion, utilize the model of having 400-500 agents. Many of them only sell two, three houses. I really see those regional brokerages and the national chain being really hit hard. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I would agree with that. I would also say that part of what you linked to us was an article talking about the shift to traditional commission splits, and that is a reality of the cyclical nature of real estate that Redfin definitely doesn’t take into account. It is a retarded model when you look at the way that real estate works in the US, because it goes white hot for its own reasons, and then it does have periods of rapid decline. What are you supposed to do? Keep 2,000 people on staff? No, it is better to disperse that risk in a pay-for-play compensation structure. If you sell stuff, John, I will pay you. What you should be doing is making it a no-brainer for agents to want to pay you that split. Right now, the only coin of the realm for most agents is, Can you give me qualified leads? That’s going to be very difficult moving into a down market. I think that right now, just commenting on this article and really giving it a little bit of thought, wow, is that an upside-down model? It was always upside-down. They’ve never made money. But now to say, Oh, we’re going to give you a discount and we’re paying our team a salary.
No, it’s idiotic.
It truly is, isn’t it? But to finish off, what do you think are some of the skills that agent is going to need to build up and foster in the next-three, in the next 2-3, maybe four years to be successful? Because I still think with the right skills, our agent can build and be really successful, even in this environment. What are some of those skills that you think they need, Robert?
Like.
Agents? Yeah.
I think that agents are going to have to be more and more digitally savvy. So skills is going to be learning rapidly, keeping up with a rapidly shifting digital landscape. Now, just to be clear with you, John, because you and I talk about the marketing side, and I think that for the nature of this show, we’ve said that ad nauseam. What we haven’t talked a lot about is that also changing at the same time as the way real estate agents are marketing, it’s the way they actually process their deals once they have them. That is changing rapidly too. The way that commissions are dispersed, the way that transactions are coordinating, more and more that is becoming digital. So these agents that are super established have oftentimes two or three assistants to keep up with all of that for them, but let’s say you’re not in the position to hire two or three assistants. Being a fast learner, being willing to embrace digital technology in general, being forward thinking, these are all skills that I think are going to become more and more relevant to being an agent, John, and I don’t think that we cover that, a lot of that.
Are you forward thinking? Are you looking to embrace digital? I’m not telling everybody to go do this, but if I was an agent, I would be carefully and closely examining little bits of AI to see if there was something that was mundane that I could cure with autonomous learning or autonomous intelligence, which is really not what it is. But I would be looking to see if I could shorten my process up using AI, and if I could, I would use it.
I think we’ve got our topic for next week actually, ain’t we? Is it Thanksgiving? I’m losing track of Thanksgiving is all a weakness if we are having a show.
But I think next week’s show should be this. Let’s talk about what a bleeding edge new Millennium agent looks like, because we don’t address that too often. What does that look like? Who is that? What would you and I say that that agent looks like? If we could construct a perfect real estate agent in our heads, what would that person look like?
Well, it’s not going to be next week because it’s Thanksgiving Day, but the following week, the 30th, that’s all because I doubt if we’re going to do a show on Thanksgiving, but the show on the 30th before we have our break, I think that’d be a great ending show, weren’t it?
I think it would. I think that’s the last show of 2023 for us, and I think I can’t think of a better subject for us.
Right. I think it’s time for us to end this show, Rob.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. We really appreciate it. If you’d like to learn more about me, you may do so at Inbound, R-I-M. That’s the word, Inbound, rabbitedwardmichael. Com. I have training courses currently up there, which I will be taking down soon enough and charging $99. I have stuff that’s equivalent to what Levi does, Krista Mayshore. I’ve got it up there for free. Just look under my recent blog post. I will teach you and train you how to do video. I will teach and train you how to do hyperlocal. I would do it all for free. Check it out at inboundirm. Com. John, how would you like people to reach out to you?
I’ll just go to the mail-right. Com. We’ve got a load of resources on the site. We are a CRM, lead-generative CRM. We provide the tools to not only manage your clientele, but help you get digital leads. I love the opportunity to have a chat with you and show you how the MailRite system can help you. So just book a free demo. I normally take most of the demos. You have the pleasure of having a chat with me. Back over to you, Rob.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, John, take us offline. I’ve got nothing else to add. We’ll see you at the next show. We’re looking forward to it. We’ll wrap up 2023 strong.
The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show
Jonathan Denwood
https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa
————————————–
Robert Newman
InboundREM
https://inboundrem.com
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
Agents need to do more than blogging to get results in 2016. We discuss this during this show with our two Read more
Greg McDaniel literally began his career at his father’s knee. It would not be an exaggeration to say he has Read more
Personal agent photography is really important but usually semi-forgotten. We have a great guest "Preston Zeller" on the show who recently Read more
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Are you a realtor looking to gain an edge over your competition in 2023? Look no further. This show is packed with expert tips on leveraging local SEO to generate more business leads. From optimizing your website content with location-specific keywords to harnessing the power of customer reviews, we’ll show you step-by-step how to attract qualified clients right in your own neighborhood.
#1 – Introduction
#2 – Online Directories and Local Citations
#3 – Google Properties and Tools
#4 – Website Optimization
#5 – Create Local Focus Content
#6 – Encourage Customer Reviews
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 408 of The Mailright Show. We, John and I, are here. We are going to do this awesome, amazing show. Guess what we’re going to talk about? We’re talking about, Hi, for Local again. Yes, everybody gets excited. Why does it keep coming up over and over again? Why are John and I just going to keep hammering this home? How to get more local businesses for us in 2023? We should be saying that part of the hyperlocal equation that we’re focused on is connected to Google, my business profile. We should also be saying that John and I’s experience is that 80 or 90% of the inquiries that realtors get is for listings. Listings are now going to be the coin of the realm in terms of digital marketing, which makes this because of lawsuits are happening with NAR, concerns that are happening in real estate, and the fact that Google has been more and more time, and energy, and effort into their hyperlocal ranking between sending more and more searches into those profiles, between all of those things, it creates a perfect storm where you, our customers, are starting to really realize at a core level just how important this vertical really truly is for your business.
We’re going to keep talking about it and trying to be helpful to all of you. Today’s subject, episode 408 of The Nailwright Show, is going to be how to get more leads. Now, we’ve talked about the profile. We talked about some basic ways to optimize it a few shows ago. If you didn’t see there or hear that show, please go back and check it out because it’s a good way to get you into the mindset of setting up your profile. This show is going to be talking about once your profile is set up, how might we get leads. John has also picked for us some more advanced strategies for getting ranking. I’m going to fill in my expertise here and explain how some things that connect to ranking also connect to lead conversion, which is exactly what everybody here wants. Everybody listening to this show, you want leads, you want phone calls. But before we dive into this incredibly important, relevant, super exciting topic, John is going to introduce himself. For those of you who may not know who he is, he’s going to share his wisdom, his expertise, and all the lovely things that he’s done over at his web development company for real estate agents.
John?
Thanks for that, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail-right. Com. We’re a paid agency. We’ve got our own technology suite based on WordPress, and we utilize Facebook and Google Local Adverts to get more leads for you. I’ve also got news of a special offer. If you sign up for one of our yearly plans, you will get six years of Facebook-managed adverts for free. We normally charge $250 a month for managing your Facebook campaign, but for the first six months, you will get that for free if you sign up for one of our yearly plans. Back over to you, Robert.
Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who may not know me, my name is Robert Newman. I have been a real estate SEO expert in the real estate and residential real estate space for 15 years. I’ve worked for major notable companies like Agent Image and Forza. I’ve worked for Independent Incubators doing very, very large-scale custom web development jobs. Now, seven years ago, I founded my own company, InboundREM. Com, which focuses on SEO as a service for real estate agents. We do both very large-scale projects and huge custom web development projects. We also do very small, very focused projects, such as just working on your hyperlocal profiles. If you’d like to learn more about me or Inbound rem, just go to inboundrem. Com, look at my About Services page, and that should take care of you. We’ve also added a whole bunch of free resources to the website recently, including 300 tips that you can give away to your buyers on your website. It’s free. Go grab it at inboundrem. Com. You’ll get a beautiful e-book and a brochure, and you can add it to your website. All right, so without any further ado, we’re going to jump into today’s subject.
For those who may be new to the show, John produces the show, and I am the guy who shows up and is an online talent, especially when it comes to SEO subjects. We divide our efforts. John is the one who does all the groundwork for the outline of the show. John, you’ve done an incredible job this time. You added a tremendous amount of notes. You gave us six different bullet points that you wanted to cover. The first one is, why is Local SEO significant? I’d like to add to this after the fact because we’ve just done a new round of research in our brand and content team over here at InboundAREM, but I’d love to hear you intro this and give your thoughts, and then I might add a couple of my own after the fact.
Yeah, I think the reason why it’s important because it links hardware with software and that’s always the strongest sector. What I mean by that, folks, is before the mobile phone, before the iPhone and before Android, Local SEO was there. It was a thing. It was a sector that there were expertise in. But with the iPhone and with the Android, Local SEO is being put on steroids because fundamentally, if you’ve got a phone on you, a mobile phone on you, and almost all adult Americans do, and you’re searching on your phone for particular local services because you’re doing it on a mobile device, Google roughly knows where you are. Because they know you’re location, they can obtain the location information. Because you’re on a mobile device, they can feed you adverts and information based on where you are. Obviously, there’s privacy, there’s all sorts of other concerns about that, but we have to live in the age that we live in. Because of that basic fact, because of the mobile device and Google’s technology, that’s why it’s so powerful. That’s my own thought on it. What’s yours, Rob?
First of all, this was my own basic math when I first got into this subject. For everybody listening to this show, I was saying a couple of shows ago that we felt like I’d seen about a three or four hundred % spike in the amount of traffic that Google was sending into Google profiles. I was using my own and about 10 or 15 of my clients’ profiles to measure that result. It wasn’t a huge case study, but it was a case study. Since then, the head of my brand and content team actually went out and spent 20, 30 hours researching the subject, doing actual proper deep analysis. Here’s some amazing facts that those of you should consider. 98% of the realtors in this country have not bothered to set up a Google business profile. 98%. Jesus. That means that when you walk into your office in the morning, guys, and you look around, understand that the vast majority of people that you’re putting your eyeballs on, they’re not even competing against you. They’re not even trying. First of all, in comparison to the amount of people that hold licenses, it’s a massive untapped audience. Number two, this is my own personal experience.
Sean, when you and I start talking about the things you can do to optimize a profile, just setting it up correctly, I would say that of the 2% of agents that bothered to set up a profile, the ones who know how to optimize it or set it up correctly are literally maybe 10% of that, if even that. Now we’re down to 0.01% of the entire country. Might even know how to set up a profile correct. Now you add in to the subjects that we’re going to talk about today. Slightly advanced, there are entire services, LocalEasy, BrightLocal, WhiteSpark. These are companies that are massive marketing companies and all they do is essentially optimize these local profiles. That’s it. That’s all they do. There’s nothing else. That’s all they do. And they’re hundreds of millions of dollars big every single year. When you start looking at… And guess what? Real estate tends to be about 10 years behind all other service industries: plumbers, contractors. There’s so much money in those industries and one group of guys is usually like… I have an old client, the twins plumbing company. Their marketing budget every month, including for localists, $30,000 to $50,000 because they’re a plumbing company, they’ve got 15, 20 trucks running around Southern California generating millions and millions of dollars of revenue.
Whoever gets these plumbing jobs, each plumbing job for them, it’s 50-100,000. Now, here’s the crazy thing, John. They’ve done the math and figured out that the local profile is worth $10,000 of their budget every month, like $10,000. The local real estate agent doesn’t realize that being ranked 1, 2, 3 in those search packs is probably going to equal out to be about $200, $300,000 in GCI. It’s just as much money to a realtor. Just the realtors don’t realize it. They don’t realize that being ranked there is going to get them calls for listings, going to be able to put listings under contract. Then the market that we’re in and are going to be in for the next 5-10 years, listings are gold. They are in almost every market. You get a listing on the contract. It is essentially a commission earned just over time. That’s it. You’re done. That’s all you need is the contract. That’s what these profiles deliver to you. Hyperlocal is absolutely one of the most underserved, most important, easiest to win marketing opportunities a real estate agent has. Full stop. How do you win it? We already went through the basics.
John is moving into an advanced strategy now that will absolutely impact your hyperlocal profile. For that very small percentage of our audience who has a profile, this is where you really need to pay attention, tune in to this part of the show. John, I’m going to let you introduce bullet point number two and talk about this for a second.
Well, it’s always been the section of local SEO that made it a bit different to city, large, metropolitan, regional, national, because you’ve got all these directory, local service directories, Yelp, Yellow Pages. When it comes to regional, national, or very highly competitive, metropolitan, like the Bay Area or New York, they’re not quite so important, but you could debate that, a metropolitan. But when it comes to most cities, most areas, it’s one of the factors that Google looks at. It’s looking to confirm that you’re a legit player, that you’re legit, that you’re doing business in the area that you’re stating when you set up your Google business local page. One of the factors they look strongly at, there are many factors, but what research I’ve done is they’re looking at these directories. Plus, if you’ve got your own website as well, but we’re going to touch that later on, but they’re looking at these directories. I think you mentioned you’ve got to utilize the same email, the same phone. They want to see the same details literally letter by letter, digit by digit on all these different directories. If they’re different, then the warning signs start to flicker at Google.
You’re not doing yourself any favors. Brack, over to you, Rob.
Online directories are extremely important. I’ve had tons and tons of experimentation with this over the years, John, including on my own profile, which ranks for real estate marketing within about 80 miles of my office, which is my home. I played around with the profile. When I first started doing it, it was very similar to most of my philosophies. It’s like, If I’m going to be a marketing company, I should prove that I know what I’m doing. I’ll prove it first with me, with myself, because I compete against luxury presence, Ylopo, and Agent Image. They’re all within 30 miles of my location. I compete against all of them for the search term real estate marketing. When I constantly come up number one, that means I’m beating all these other guys that sell SEO as a service. I just wanted to do it to see if I could do it. But here’s how I found online directories and citations and things like that to impact the profile. Number one, if you have just a few, just a handful of directories that have a different address, because when I first started, I started off at a PO box that didn’t want to use my home address.
Then I discovered through a series of experiments that somehow Google knew it was a PO address and I wasn’t getting any ranking whatsoever off that PO address. About a year into my business, I changed it over to my home address and no surprise, within 30 days, I was discovering that I was starting to rank in local searches. However, my rankings stagnated pretty quickly. I discovered as soon as I changed those PO box addresses and synonymous my personal address, my ranking shot up and have continued to shoot up ever since. Address and directories is incredibly important in terms of ranking. One of the things that most real estate agents are, here’s a few common things that relate to your address that I care about, online directories and addresses. First of all, what happens if your address is that the same as a broker’s? Like you work out of an office and you list yourself along with 100 other agents all out of the same address. Can you compete? Yes, it’s harder, but you can. Here’s where you will fucking epically fail, is if you set up your home address and then you list your business address in different places, you’ll never rank anywhere.
You choose one or the other. You choose an address, and then what you do is you use services like WhiteSpark or Inbound IDM or somebody to clean up all your addresses, find them, analyze them, and then change them over so that they’re all the same address. This one thing that we’re mentioning right now from these online directories is incredibly important. All of you who are listening to this show already know what the 10 biggest directories are. I guarantee it. It’s Zillow, Realtor. Com, Bing, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, all the big fang companies, Yelp. All those are the most reputable directories. If you’ve heard of a directory, Yellow Pages to White Pages are fairly far down the list, surprisingly enough. You already know where the top 10 directories are. You just have to make sure that you have the same information listed in all of them. I could cover this subject forever, but we’re not going to. As a matter of fact, we’re going to go to our break right now. When we come back, we’re going to dig into some other media topics that relate to hyperlocal. We’re going to talk about website optimization, creating content that is aimed at your local profile, properties and tools, encourage customer reviews.
Inside the optimization part and the local focus content, I’m going to give out a couple of tricks and hacks to make that content actually get you phone calls. So day two. Do you want quality leads from homeowners and buyers right in your own neighborhood? Then you need mail write. It is a powerful but easy to use online marketing system that uses Facebook to generate real estate leads at a fraction of the cost you’d pay from our competition. We stand behind our work with a no-question-asked 30-day money-back guarantee. So don’t delay, get started today. Go to mail-right. Com. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We’re so glad if you decided to stick with us for the second half of The MailRight show. Today’s episode is number 408. We’re talking about local SEO, specifically how to get more local business leads for Realtor. We’re focused today’s show on what’s working in 2023. The next subject up that John has got down here for us is Google’s properties and tools. I didn’t really quite know what you meant by that. If you could dive into that, John, then that would be great.
Well, I think, because Google’s got a number of its own properties and it’s mostly the Google Business profile, making all the things we discussed in the first part of the show. There’s a fundamental bit of overlap, isn’t it? But I also think putting up images, the image search is a big thing and having the address. They’re number three overlaps number four, which is website ops as your website, because what I’ve read, and it’s self-serving, but it is what I’ve read, is a lot of agents make the mistake by not having their own website. My understanding, Rob, is part of this metrics of different factors that Google looks at, is if you’ve got your own website and it’s active and you’re doing things on the website and it matches the stuff that you’re putting on the website is about the area that you’ve claimed through the Google Business profile, it all matches. There’s as though they’re seeing a spider web view of your online presence and everything matches up. That’s how I globally see it, Rob.
Now that I understand what you mean, I have a lot to say on the subject. Sorry about that, John, I didn’t really understand. Google does provide a whole massive toolkit much deeper than most people realize. You have a Google Maps profile, which is also more commonly referred to as a local search guide. You can be a local search guide.
You.
Can also contribute reviews to other businesses. Here’s what most people don’t know, because we leverage this inbound, Miriam, a lot. You can also make custom maps using their tools and then share them. Just share them with the world at large. You set the map to public, and then you can take that link for that map that you’ve created and you can install it somewhere. One of inbound, Ariem’s favorite hacks is to use that map on a website. What we’re doing is we’re using the customer’s email address, creating a profile under them, creating a Google Maps profile for them, and jump-starting their local guide and Maps profile. When you’re saying Google tools, that’s one of the tools that nobody… As far as I know, in Boundary, I was the only company doing it. I don’t even know of anybody. I’ve never seen it anywhere else. I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist. I am absolutely saying I’ve never seen it, except for us. Then you have YouTube, which is another Google profile. You have your Google business profile, which is yet another Google profile. There’s probably an image library profile, which, to be honest, with everybody listening to the show, I don’t know.
There’s also, and this is another one that we use that nobody else uses, there’s an author profile, which is a very old Google. They defunct it, but they said that they’re not cracking it anymore. Every single person like me who’s been an SEO for a long time is under the belief that they’re going to bring it back big time because for a very brief amount of time, Google was measuring the quality of your content, connecting it to an author profile, and then giving that profile a score so that your content, if you’re a guy like me, was automatically ranking. The reason they defuncted it is they started to notice that there were literally a few hundred people across the country that were dominating across all of Search. Neil Patel, Bryant Dean, just people that had massive audiences were publishing hundreds of articles, and those guys were dominant because their articles are way more widely read than anybody else’s on certain subjects. They said that they couldn’t measure it about… Basically, he said, Well, shit, we didn’t realize there would be such dominant players and we don’t know how to make this fair for the little guys, so we’re going to mothball it while we figure it out.
They then tried it again when Google Plus was around and then once again defuncted it for much the same reason, but it’s still there. You have an author profile that measures the quality of your content. When you start saying Google properties and tools, yes, and there’s even… Nobody even remembers this anymore, but there’s BlogSpot?
Oh, yeah.
There’s nothing Google tool. In total, there’s probably or 15 or 20 different Google tools that you could theoretically set up. Google does see them and measure them all correctly. That, as I’ve said in other videos I’ve done about SEO, if you want to know what one of the secrets is to ranking, believe it or not, it’s just making sure that Google can read what you’re doing or understand what- What.
About the website? About having your own website? What do you think about that?
Well, websites, I agree with website. Search engines use a website to understand what your business does. I’m reading the notes you put in location pages to help search engines understand the areas they serve. That’s 100% correct. As long as with WordPress or whatever you’re using to set up your website, you use the same email address. Essentially, imagine it’s a profile card. Your profile is connected to your email address. I started my business under a standard Gmail email called inboundrem@gmail. Com. I’ve never moved away from using it because when you switch your emails up, let’s say you decide to customize your email, like I have a robber@inboundrem. Com email obviously now, seven years later, but it doesn’t help you to change that information off all the profiles that you set up. Since I set them up using inboundarien@gmail. Com, they’re all still set up that way. When you’re setting up your website, make sure that you set it up using… Don’t use a Yahoo email address to set up your WordPress website when you’re hoping that the WordPress website is going to be found through Google. Use your Google Gmail address. Same thing applies to your YouTube channel, your BlogSpot account, your Google Maps account, all the same email address.
When Google knows it’s you, Jonathan Dynwood, Jonathan Dynwood’s doing all these things and they can see everything, including your website, which is what the question was you asked me, that’s when websites become really powerful.
Yeah, good words. Sorry. The way I’ve dealt with this, Rob, is we’re both with my two businesses. My main domain, my main email is with Google Workspaces, but I’ve also bought a secondary domain that’s very similar to the main domains. They’re a service where I can have multiple inboxes at a very low price. Because the problem with Google workspaces is fine with just one inbox, but if you have a mobile team and you have multiple inboxes. I’m not talking about A-listes. I’m talking about actual physical inboxes. It’s $6 a pot, so it can soon build up in cost. But the way I’ve dealt with it is I use on other service for a very similar domain where I can have multiple inboxes without the $6 a charge. Is that making sense, Rob? Yep.
I know that we’re drifting out a little bit, but everybody who’s listening to this show, listen, I pride myself on being a transparency guy. When you understand what SEO is and how you do it properly, really, it just comes down to a lot of work and effort. That’s what Inboundar does. We do a lot of that work and effort. We try to do it at a low cost and high quality just because you don’t want to do it yourself. You wouldn’t really understand how this all works. However, I try to tell you how it works upfront. I’m going to tell you something that websites are incredibly good for a job. When you have a YouTube channel under your email address and when you’re doing a Google Maps profile like I’ve described, where websites become an almost unstoppable force in hyperlocal SEO is when you’re linking your local YouTube videos to a neighborhood page. The neighborhood page is talking about this specific area. Then you’ve got the YouTube video with the latitude and longitude, then you’ve got images that you’ve attached to that page with the latitude and longitude. Now it becomes an unmistakable signal to Google.
I’m here, boots on the ground, this area, you know it. I’ve got pictures, I’ve got video, I’ve got writing, and it’s all interconnected into the website. That’s where websites really start to get you power, because now you’re getting the traditional search volumes into your page. You’re getting the YouTube search volumes into your YouTube channel, you’re getting the image-like search volumes into your image library. Between all three of those platforms, you’re capturing a lot of the attention that focuses on that neighborhood. Your branding is synonymous, however people are doing searches. When it connects into a website where you can direct people to certain pages like your profile page, which has a deep bio and all your social proof, that’s when you start to create a lot of marketing momentum to prove to somebody, I am a local expert.
Can I ask, how do you deal with the public? I’ve been asked this a couple of times and I’ve never really fossilitated. This is a tricky one. How do you deal with your relationship with your broker? Because your broker is going to want you to utilize a rubber act, whatever the brokerage is, or they’re going to want you… They’re going to offer you, or they’re going to insist that you pay a monthly fee for a digital marketing pack. Aren’t they? A lot of the national franchise do that. But I think you should have your own website always and keep your own email and don’t use the brokerage. How was your advice on all that? There was no.
Clean answer to that, John. You’re right. That is a tricky question and that I’m going to be straight with you. Here’s the answer I generally give, and it’s a shitty, arrogant answer. In my 15 years of doing this, it’s been at least 5 or 10 since I’ve run across any CTO, CMO that understands SEO at the level that I do. When an agent or a broker calls me that’s working for a brand, I’m immediately telling them in no uncertain terms, you need to set up your own email address with, like Google works as an example, if you need to do an entire team, but we need to be in control of your email addresses. If your brokerage is issued one, great. You can continue to use that for all the broker-required profiles that you need to have. If you’re paying me out of your own pocket, no brokerage is used. There is almost no brokerage out there that’s saying that you can’t market yourself. They’re saying you can’t. I’m delivering the bad news that you have to spend extra money. That’s not an easy conversation because you have to spend extra money for something that you already have.
But you absolutely have to do that, is my answer, John. Like I said, you are correct. It’s a sticky subject. It’s a shitty subject. And especially when I get forced into the position of saying, Listen, I get what you’re telling me, Mr. Realtor, but I know a lot more about this than your brokerage does, and they’ve got it wrong.
Because a lot of these nationals, some of the regionals and nationals, want 100, 150, 200 a month for their digital marketing package, don’t they?
Yeah. All right, so we’re going to move on. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re now deep into bonus content. Bonus content today is going to be the content and the reviews. Both these next subjects are ones that have to do with lead conversion, getting somebody to be a peruser to somebody who’s going to be a phone caller. The big subjects it’s great bonus content. It’s almost like we timed it this way. We’re exactly at the 30-minute mark. John usually does 10 extra minutes on the Mail-right YouTube channel. I occasionally get around to requesting the files and getting it up on the inbound rem channels, but John always does it. Check out the mail-right-YouTube channels to YouTube, and you’ll see the show, the 10 extra minutes of bonus content. Without further ado, create local focus content. What John has written here is local content can help you target local keywords, provide valuable information to your local audiences, and consider blog post videos or other content relevant to this area. We’ve talked a little bit about that. A restaurant might create a blog post about, best places to eat. Every single thing that you wrote here is spot on. Why did you add any thoughts that you have and all add money?
Well, the reason why it’s spot on is I didn’t write it. I’ve just lifted it off other resources for these show notes to be truthful about it. But I did read it, and I did agree with it. It’s basically, the content needs to have a high element of local knowledge to it, value to it. I value it. If Google’s technology reads it. It matches up with all the other elements that we’ve outlined in this podcast.
When it comes to local content, ladies and gentlemen, here are your conversion tricks because I promised and promised and promised them. How do you get the conversion? How do you get calls?. I’m not going to give a thousand conversion tricks. How do you get calls without force and registration? It is a subject that comes up in 30 to 40% of my calls. All right, so here you go. Conversion happens with social proof, ladies and gentlemen. When you’re doing hyper-local information, if you’ve done a good job on your local page, done everything that John just did: local properties, restaurant, great blog post, sold properties that connect into that specific neighborhood, that is the place that you start with your social proof if you have it to offer. If you’re an experienced agent who’s done business in this area, prove it by showing the sold properties. That gets people a lot closer to wanting to call you, especially if they identify something that looks similar to a property that they’re thinking of listing or a property they’re thinking of buying. That’s number one. Number two is to make sure that you connect that to your local reviews. You can either have them on the same page under that neighborhood.
If you’re super organized, which most of my clients are, but not to this degree, a review for somebody who did a specific piece of business inside that neighborhood with you is the number one way to go. But failing that, a single place on your website where you have all your reviews collected is preferably a plugin or link to an external profile. Why? People don’t trust the information that you published on your website yourself because too many people have ruined it for all of you, where they put fake information or reviews that are 20 years old. They took an old letter, screenshot it, or retyped it out, and put it on their website. So when somebody calls you and goes, Oh, this Scott and Dorothy Kimmel review looks great. You go, Oh, yeah, that client was two decades ago. Nobody looks at that and goes, Well, that’s relevant in 2023 or market that in the early 2000s? No, it’s only relevant to the history that you have in the area. It’s good to say that you got a review from 20 years ago, for sure. But is it really going to compel somebody to call you today?
No. More recent reviews and things that you’ve done right now or what compel people to call you. That’s why external systems like Google Reviews, Zillow, and Facebook, have dates and more information on it where you can see how recent those reviews were. There’s a certain amount of trust. Not so much with Facebook, certainly with Google and, to a degree, Zillow. Zillow is in the middle, and Yelp is at the very bottom of the stack. Very few people trust Yelp so that you know.
I think many people trust Zillow and Evel to be close.
Not consumers do, John. Consumers trust Zillow. It is big enough and branded enough that they trust Zillow. I don’t know that they should, but they do. All right. So create local folks going. Now, last but not least, ladies and gentlemen, I’m just going to continue on my tears and let you add your thoughts at the end of my tears here. Here is the number one conversion factor that you are in control of. Reviews. Okay, boy, old boy, I learned this trick a long time ago, and I probably learned it from Ziggler or Tom Hopkins or somebody like that. God, it’s made me so much money throughout my career. You know what the funny thing is about reviews, John? Is that human beings are fundamentally lazy. We’re lazy. When you request a review, the worst possible thing that you can do is say, John, will you please go to my Google reviews channel and leave me a review? Then we leave it at that. When you call a client and say, Will you please do this? That’s exactly. You have maybe a one-in-100 chance that they’ll remember to do it, and they’ll go do it.
If, however, you type out a letter or email and say, Dear so and so, this is the experience that we had. This is the home we had. I just want to say how much I enjoyed serving you. All these three areas were my favorite parts of the transaction. By the way, if you could do me a small favor, reviews really helped my business grow. If you feel like I gave you outstanding service, I would really appreciate it if you give me a review and then a link to the profile that you want the review on. But you don’t stop there. You then go, I don’t want you to copy what I’m about ready to tell you, but I would really love it if you covered the fact that we did a transaction in Van Ies, that it was for a single-family home, that it was roughly in the neighborhood of $400, $500,000, and that we spent six months looking for the home, that we got in the car 50 different times, and then we finally found you a perfect home. If you can illustrate that customer journey for me, that is what would help my business the most.
Now, here, after doing this myself for 20 years in my sales career, is what amazes me. Despite the fact that you always ask people not to copy what you said, they always copy what you said. If you want to control what your profile says, you just write it for them. For the most part, even if they don’t copy it word for word, they usually summarize what you said and then throw it directly on your profile for you. That’s the number one hack I have. Now, why does that matter so much? Who, what, when, where, why, and how is always the reasons that we’re looking for when we want to make a decision. That’s it. Conversion. If you give somebody that, like I bought a home in Van Is, it was $500,000 to $600,000. This guy went out with me for six months. We took it 50 times. That tells you so much about the realtor right there. That tells you so much about the experience. By the time you’re done reading that, 99% of anybody who’s even vaguely thinking, Maybe I want to call a realtor, they’re going to go, Oh, shit, I got to call this guy.
I got to call him right now because he’s going to be patient. He’s sold the home. My price range, he’s familiar with my area. This other human loved them. They sound like a much more complicated client than I’m going to be like, Oh, yeah, this is my human. That’s how you get a conversion. You control your reviews. You respond to every single one to push it forward even more. 80% of all people who are making decisions about using you are doing so through social proof. Why in the world would you not control the messaging inside this space? It’s never made any sense to me, and it’s how I get more sales and anything else that we do.
Well, you’ve made me very joyous here, Robert, because in the Mail-Right system, we have a section, part of our platform, that is built, and it does exactly what you have just outlined. You’ve made me extremely happy, Robop.
Good. Then you should… If I were you, John, if you haven’t already done this, for me, a case study for mail write is this. Just walk your first couple of clients through using it. Make them use it, get them to use it, call them as many times as it takes for you to use it because I will make you a bet right now, John. You get somebody doing it using that bit of your platform. They’re going to make money. From then on in, you are going to be able to have front and center all your media going, This tool that John made for me is the best tool I’ve ever used in my entire career. You would be a fool not to call him today.
Okay. But it’s not easy. But Robert’s CRO reviews and… But it is just to finish off, Robert. If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re listening to Robert and myself, and if you just do a couple of the things we’ve outlined in the past three weeks, you’ll be 90% in front of 90% of your competition. It’s really that simple, really, Robert, isn’t it?
It really is. I’m going to do what I’ve done the last couple of shows, which I rarely do, but InboundREM is beta testing a service that does a lot of this for you. For those of you people, John also has a platform that does some of this for you as well, we both have systems in place that will do a lot of this work for you. You can either contact me at inboundrem. Com or email me at Robert@inboundrem.com and go to my services page to schedule a call. For this particular service, you will not necessarily get me. I’ve now got a staff taking these calls for the hyper-local service line that we’ve got out. If you make a special request, do you think you have an exceptionally difficult problem to solve, you can potentially get me on the phone. John, how would you like people to reach out to you if they also would like to talk to you about the same subject?
Yeah, just go to the mill-right. Com website and book a demo, book a chat, and you get me. We chat here is this area is the only area that we really fundamentally over that because, like I said last week, folks, we don’t really deal with SEO. We are paid advertising on Facebook and Google, setting up your business profile and the platform. It’s paid traffic is what we’re aimed at, where Robert and his team are content marketing and SEO. That’s why we can do the show together because, honestly, we dabble a little bit in it, but we don’t take long-term SEO clients. We send them to Robert because we’re in Facebook paid traffic. That’s what 70, 80% of what we do with about 20-30% Google.
Beautiful. Okay, a couple of last plugs for all of you listening to the show. The value proposition for what John does is just skyrocketed. Why? We’re going to do a full show on it next week, but I’m going to give everybody here the cliff notes. Follow-ups just sold themselves to Zillow. This is a big deal. John has a CRM, maybe not as robust as the Follow-Up boss, but he has one that is still within his and your control, not your main competitor. There is something to be said for that. In my opinion, humble as it is, the SA, software-as-a-service guys like John, and in particular, John, who’ve taken the time to build an independent tool, now that the number one independent tool has just basically exited the independent part. That means that there should be a lot of people calling John and people like him, just exploring your options. I’m not saying bail out a follow-up boss or that there’s a reason to. I am saying that a lot of people are going to want to do that regardless of what I say. And if that’s the case, this is a good time to talk to John.
Now, we’re going to dive deep into this subject next week. We’re going to talk about this sale of the follow-up boss to Zillow. We’re going to share our thoughts on it. We’re really going to dig deep into it. John and I both independently have various times to talk about FollowUp Boss. I recommend FollowUp Boss. My clients use Followup Boss. I’m deeply immersed in this follow-up boss world.
Like the product, isn’t it? It was a great product. Yeah.
I don’t know that I’d believe that it’s not a great product. No, it’s pretty good. There are now things that you have to consider that you didn’t previously have to consider. Just no doubt about it. You just have to. Anyway, everybody, thank you so much for tuning into the show. John and I really appreciate it. I think that today is one of the big payouts for those dedicated listeners, those loyal listeners. Please do us a favor. If you have teams, if you have people that you’re working with, this is a show you want to share with them. If, for some reason, you’re a team guy or team gal, then make sure, 100% for sure, that you’re working on your hyperlocal profile. Until next time, John and I would sign us off.
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The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show
Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman
https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa
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Robert Newman
InboundREM
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