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272 Mail-Right Show End of Year Review

Thursday, December 24th, 2020

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Our Christmas New-Year Special End of Year Podcast Where We Review Our Best Guest Interviews

Robert Newman: Welcome ladies and gentlemen to The Mail-Right Show today’s episode 272. Oh my God. Jonathan and I are going to be talking about the shows and the guests that we loved the most for the year 2020. So, without any further ado, I’d like to let my brilliant, awesome, amazing co-host, he’s really the host I’m really the co-host, but nonetheless, I’m going to call him my co-host since I’m doing the introduction and John, why don’t you share with people for those people who might be new to the show who exactly you are?

Johnathan Denwood: I’m the founder of Mail-Right. Mail-Right is a marketing platform specifically aimed to help real estate agents in their first, second, and third years. We use the power of Facebook, but also technology to get you quality leads.

Robert Newman: Lovely and my name is Robert Newman. For those of you that don’t know me, I am an SEO guy that focuses on residential real estate. I have been doing so for many, many, many years, which makes me an anomaly that I’ve done it for so long. And you can learn more about me and actually lots of stuff that might help you on my website, which is inboundrem.com. All right, without further ado, John, what we’re going to do today as we previously discussed, is we’re both going to take a look at the list of episodes that we had previously done.

And we’re each going to pick a few and we’re going to discuss what we loved about the guest, the episode, maybe the information that was shared. I’ve already got a few set up if you don’t, but I’m going to hand it off to you and say, Hey, why don’t you look through and find one? And if you don’t have one, I have a couple I could talk about right off the top of my head.

Johnathan Denwood: I’m going to cheat a little bit, but I just thought last week’s interview with Kyle Handy was just top quality. And Kyle I just thought he, I have got to publish it on the website. I’m a little bit behind, but I’ve got all the show notes and I’ll be doing that later on today, but the episode goes live today, I just have to email him. I just thought he did a fantastic job, really explaining what a real estate agent should do in those first two days and he explained it really coherently and clearly. And then when we broaden out the discussion, he just had a really good knack of explaining things in a very clear way didn’t he Robert?

Robert Newman: Yes, but for those who are tuning into the show, they’re not going to know who the last, like for the first time, they’re not going to know who the guest was So I will share that with them. Last week was Kyle Handy, who is a broker for EXP, and the show focused deeply on. Well, John and I were tossing him some questions. I agree with you that Kyle was a good guest. He was extremely polished. He was extremely driven. He was extremely excited. The show’s content was really deeply related to, and it was part of the way that we steered the conversation.

It was deeply focused on year one agents and talking a lot about EXP. Because we hadn’t had a chance to talk about that guest. And because of all those things even though Kyle was incredibly polished, I don’t know that he would make one of my top lists. I’m going to say it was a great show. I agree with you entirely. Most of our shows are pretty great, but to say that he’d make it as a top show for this year because 2020 has been an incredible year for us in the show. I don’t know that it would make that list for me personally.

Johnathan Denwood: Well, I have another one that I think kind of stuck out for me because it’s kind of really showed the power of video was our agent that resides in Montana.

Robert Newman: Will Friedner and that’s episode 263. For those of you who are just catching this episode, that’s Will. And I may be saying his name, right. It’s Friedner and Will is an agent in Montana as John was talking about. And I do agree with you. Will, would be one of my top shows for the entire year. I totally agree with you on this one.

Johnathan Denwood: Not being disparaging. Because he had an easy-going way with him, but he really understood precisely what he was doing. Not only with his videos, but with his Facebook groups. That’s why I rated it so highly because not only was he talking about two things, but he was actually getting results. And he was running a really very popular Facebook group about Montana, a local group aimed at businesses in his smearing interests. And then he was using video to attract people who were thinking of moving to Montana, out of state, and he was crushing it. And then he gave us some figures, didn’t he? he was crushing it in both ways, wasn’t he?

Robert Newman: He was. So, he had over a million views, his Facebook groups, which actually he had started running before he’d even started doing video were also generating a lot of leads. He created some of the very first attended Facebook groups, talking about basically the lifestyle in Montana, living in Montana. He effectively created groups like neighborhood groups on Facebook before anybody else did. So, he got out in front of an entire marketplace, not once, but more than once using different tools, which made him a Rockstar because he figured this out on his own.

He’s not. I agree with you, his presentation is easy going. He does not come off as some kind of super educated tech guru type. He is just a guy that likes to get his leads a different way and that’s from his own language. And so, he figured out ways. He’s like, how do I go to where the people are? So, he went to Facebook and he went to YouTube and he started to basically kind of engage with people and figure out what he could talk about. And he did.

Johnathan Denwood: They weren’t super slick videos, but they were up to a certain standard. Everything he does is up to a certain standard, but they’re just filled with the kind of information that you would want to know if you were moving from out of state to Montana, wasn’t it?

Robert Newman: Yup, so definitely for those of you tuning in just for this show tune in to that show. It was a good show. It was informative. The guest was easy going, easy to digest, nothing complicated, no huge, scary pedigree that makes you think that whatever he’s doing, you couldn’t possibly do yourself. I strongly recommend that you check that show out. Really one of my favorite shows of the year, if not my very favorite show of the year, because of the quality of the information that was being presented.

Johnathan Denwood: So, have you got one?

Robert Newman: I got a curveball because normally, this is not what I enjoy. Now, we did a show that was personality-based. Guy really didn’t share all the information. I actually discovered that he kind of directly hid some of his success from us. And that was Peter Lorimer from PLG Estates, which is a big brokerage here in California has a hundred, two hundred, three agents in Southern California. The guy just has this incredible personality.

Johnathan Denwood: He does and of course he’s fabulous because also he’s British.

Robert Newman: He’s British, he comes off like a Rock star, and he’s done business with Rockstars.

Johnathan Denwood: Well, he has, hasn’t he?

Robert Newman: Oh God, yeah, he has. So, I found out later, John, that actually part of what drives his lead generation success is he’s been partnered with Ylopo for a while. He’s one of their key accounts and they do a lot with him on his site. So actually, all of his, because remember we asked where’s your business coming from? We asked him if it was from TV. So, he did a reality TV show. Again, it’s just because of his personality. That’s why he did the show. That’s how he got put on camera. He just has this amazing personality, which would be insanely hard for most of our clients.

Johnathan Denwood: Have I got an amazing personality, Robert?

Robert Newman: That’s one way to put it. No, I’m just.

Johnathan Denwood: Alright. I take that as a compliment coming from Robert. Alright, there we go. Rob, high praise actually. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist it.

Robert Newman: It’s okay. So anyway, if you just want to see for those of you who might be Charisma-based salespeople and they exist, they’re not normal among us. But there are Charisma-based salespeople. There is Charisma-based businesspeople. This episode that we’re talking about is 257. Take what Peter says with a grain of salt because I really strongly think that a lot of what he does like is just so personality-based. Like he’s talking about being on social media a lot. And he talked about all his agents being on social media.

I doubt that he really directs them or teaches them what to do. So, I’m going to say that he is probably an enormously successful charisma persuasion-based salesperson. And because he stood out, I’m going to say he’s one of my top shows, not because of the informational content though, just because he’s different. And he was unusual

Johnathan Denwood: And to lead on to something an individual that’s the total opposite, but it’s a bit sad, this one is that John Geffen came back on the show and John had been on the show about three times and you informed me that unfortunately he recently has died. But he was one of the impersonal types, totally different from Peter, but a highly experienced broker agent, somebody that really had been very down to earth, wrote a book and put most of it on the internet. You could tell he really knew his business. Didn’t he?

Robert Newman: Yup. So that was John Geffen, unfortunately, passed from COVID for all of those listening to this show, Oh, please do yourself a favor honor this man, while you still can. And go check out, doyouhaveaminutebook.com. The guy is literally the exact opposite of Peter. He was all substance. And what I mean by that is that he produced a massive number of tangible tools that his salespeople and his team could go out and use. He literally built the fastest growing most prevalent real estate brand in Tennessee, he is the director of broker services for Benchmark or was previously.

And Benchmark is absolutely one of the fastest-growing or fastest-growing real estate concerns in the state of Tennessee. I am personally convinced it’s a hundred percent because of John. If he worked there, I feel like you’re going to have a ton of support. Even experienced agents wouldn’t be able to get their hands-on assets like he was producing for his team. His Do You Have A Minute Book was actually aimed at educating his sales team. So, it was an incredible book. And then an incredible guy.

Johnathan Denwood: I liked him straight away. He was really down to earth but really knew his business. Another one that comes to mind that I really like, and she’s been on the show a couple of times is Dr. Lee Davenport, she’s based in Atlanta. She has been on the show twice, I’m going to have to ask her to come back. Also, a very unique type of personality, but she’s female, she’s a doctor, not a Doctor of Medicine, but she did a doctorate. She really knows her stuff and is ready with loads of information and insights, hasn’t she?

Robert Newman: That’s a good way to take this conversation change, John. Because like Dr. Lee actually combined that now that I think about it. She kind of combined Geffin and Peter, she has the personality. The girl has a million-volt personality like or the girl. What am I saying? The woman has a million-volt personality. And on top of that, she always brings deep knowledge that not even you and I are usually familiar with, she’s done it twice now, twice in a row, we’ve tried to throw her curveballs guys. And this is episode number 253, for those of you keeping track, this is our last meeting with Dr. Lee Davenport.

We ended 2019 with our first meeting with Dr. Lee Davenport. And she is amazing. She’s amazing. You should check out the shows. She always has something good to share.

Johnathan Denwood: She really did. And I’m going to put another one in front of you. I know it’s your turn, but it’s somebody that you know really, really well is Christophe Choo. You got him to come on the show and what I learned, Christophe, highly successful Hollywood based, multi-million-dollar real estate agent someone who has been in the business a long time, but what he kind of really has the charisma, but also really pointed out in the episode, the amount of hard work that you got to do to get where he has managed to get.

And I think he really kind of emphasized the amount of graft that he had to do to get into the position, which he is blessed to be in now based on his talent and his ability obviously, but also, he kept on emphasizing it, the manner of work involved, didn’t he?

Robert Newman: Yeah, no, that’s definitely part of Christophe’s brand is his work ethic. He does not necessarily carry some of the weird surface, shimmer, that some of these LA super luxury agents have. He’s definitely more of a substance guy, but one of those things that he does do, and I have been present for it. I’ve literally been in his office at seven o’clock in the morning, the guy works from seven to seven, six to seven days a week. Every day, he works hard.

Johnathan Denwood: He’s a machine.

Robert Newman: He just likes what he does. And he mixes a lot of stuff up with work, like, because he’s definitely going out and getting his pedicures and his facials during the day, he has long lunches with clients. So, it’s not like, yes, for sure. He’s a super hard worker, but one of the things I like about him is he mixes a lot of lifestyles up in those work hours. Like he’s definitely focused on something though that pertains to his career from seven to seven every day. Even if that’s a long lunch with somebody that he’s catching up with, you can be sure that one of those relationships that he’s nurturing is somebody who could propel him forward.

Johnathan Denwood: Can I do another one because it’s Ricky Carruth, talk about the opposite again. I can see why our numbers have gone up a lot because we’ve had some excellent guests, didn’t we? Ricky’s also a really hard worker. He’s very different from Choo really, personality, but he’s on the gold coast. Still sells a lot of property, got into coaching. If he decides to do something, he really means business, doesn’t. He doesn’t mess around, Ricky, does he. I think he stirred up the coaching business a bit and he’s not shy in saying what he thinks.

But and you could just say, well he’s just a blowhard, but he isn’t because not only has he gotten superb results in his own real estate career he’s really starting to get a lot of attention in the coaching area as well.

Robert Newman: He is. So, we’re going to go to our break folks. And when we come back, I’m going to share with you what the episode number was for Christoph Choo, because that is definitely one of my top 10. I’d probably put it at number three. I spent 10 years nurturing the relationship with Christophe to get him on the show in the first place. And so, there’s definitely something I want to say there. And I want to comment on Ricky too, but let’s go to our break and we’ll come back in a second.

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Robert Newman: Welcome back to the Mail-Right show its episode 272, Jonathan and I are doing a roundup of our favorite shows from 2020. And we were just discussing we’d actually moved off Christophe Choo, but I promised you the episode number since John did bring him up. The episode number was 250. For those of you interested. Christophe Choo is the top video influencer in all real estate in my opinion. If you want to learn something about doing video and being in real estate and selling real estate, that’s the guy to watch.

And this is the episode, episode number 250 is that is a great way to go. He’s got more content than Will, and he’s got a different take on it. And for those of you who are listening, who either already are in luxury or want to get in luxury Will won’t resonate with you, but Christophe will, he sold an estimated $300 million worth of real estate straight off video. And this is the episode where he talks about how he did it 250. So, go watch it. Now, to comment on your comments about Ricky Carruth. So, Ricky Carruth was episode number 246.

And I would put him at number four or five for me for the year. Not because he wasn’t incredible and an insanely great guest and he’s wildly influential. But because he still focused on strategies that are a little bit more old school. So, the value of the information itself is not necessarily as high in my opinion, as those who are trying to focus on digital because I do think that digital is the wave of the future. But however, for those of you that are out there that are looking for a down and dirty, how do I produce business tomorrow? Kind of skillset Ricky Carruth is the guy to check out.

He shows you how to get on the phone and start making calls. You could watch some of his videos. And if you had a little bit of chutzpah, you could literally get on the phone in a couple of days and start hammering out calls doing it the way that Ricky does and have a reasonably good chance of generating yourself some business. Would you agree with that, John?

Johnathan Denwood: Yes, totally. Everything you’ve said about that, I totally agree. Another one that’s totally different in personality than all the other guests. Well, maybe more like John. We had; I’m going to butcher his surname Chad Barczak from he’s the CEO of IDX. He’s the CEO founder of IDX Broker. You could tell a very experienced business individual, keeps a low profile to some extent but has built up some fabulous businesses and built up a fabulous business in the real estate industry.

Robert Newman: He really has. So, Chad, for those people listening is a guy, he’s the CEO of IDX Broker. Now, IDX Broker is a company that a lot of web developers like me and John used on our website services. I use them exclusively. He’s created an incredible service if you happen to be a developer, serving up properties and doing lots of different things, so from his relevance inside the real estate industry, he was one of our biggest gets all year long is definitely Chad because Chad is a huge name inside the real estate business.

And that was something that John pulled together. So, I’m going to take the reins though because you’ve been proffering up a long series of them and I’m going to go farther back. We’re coming in close to the beginning of the year now. So, I’d say that Chad for me was about number eight throughout the course of the year. And the episode number for Chad was 244. And you’re right. By the way, in why the traffic is growing we’ve been getting some amazing guests, just amazing guests. Now, one of those guys that flew under the radar that is so influential right now in real estate is Malcolm Lawson.

He runs a Facebook group of people doing nothing but real estate videos. That’s about 4,000 people deep. It’s on Facebook. And I would say that he’s personally responsible for helping people generate at least a few thousand transactions, which makes him one of the most helpful, influential humans that’s operating inside the real estate business because he did all of that for free. I don’t know if you know that John, but he doesn’t charge any money for that group.

Johnathan Denwood: I didn’t know that.

Robert Newman: So, Malcolm is, and I’m part of that group, which is how I know all this. I watch all the people in there and what he’s doing is he’s teaching people how to use, leverage YouTube, to get traffic and get leads. That’s what he’s doing. And he does a great job at it. Or else his group wouldn’t be so big. Now he does offer some coaching services, but I think I have literally never even seen him mention them. I just happen to know that. So, I got to put them up there for me. He’s episode number two like he’s really, he’s right below, maybe Will and some of those other guys, I like Will’s down to earth presentation.

Malcolm is a little more technical and a little harder to approach in terms of his personality or at least he was for us. I’ve seen him do some of his own shows. And I just think he was having an off day when he did our show. So he wasn’t, as you know.

Johnathan Denwood: It was probably me. I’ll tell you one that impressed me with his knowledge, Danny’s criticism, you could say is that some of his methodologies are a little bit old fashioned, why they’re not digital, but when it came to knowledge and smoothness or a person that really knew his stuff, and you could tell he’s been in the wars is Michael Hollenbeck.

Robert Newman: Hollenbeck. So now we’re back to one of the guys that made my top seven podcasts. The guy is a real estate legend, whether it’s in a zone creation or not, broken all sorts of records. But when you see the show, if you listen to the show and that one is episode. Let me see here. That was episode 236, right at the beginning of the year. We’re right at the beginning of the year now. This is how we kicked off 2020 John managed to secure some Rockstars, right at the beginning of the year, Michael Hellickson was one of them, in my opinion.

And John, what I liked about him was, I don’t think that you and I have ever seen somebody come onto the show, so prepared and ready to have a particular conversation. That’s how I felt about the show, like when he came on and started talking, I was like, dear God, man. Like he was, he felt like he was at the top of his game. Did you feel the same way about it?

Johnathan Denwood: Oh definitely. You can tell why he’s been really successful, and he had a good story as well about how he fell out with his state regulators and how they made his life a bit of a nightmare. And the mistakes he made, he realizes now that he got some bad legal advice and that cost him his brokerage and then the nightmare he had to go through, and he was so frank about it all really wasn’t he. But then as he talked about his coaching and his kind of come back to some extent you could tell there wasn’t a lot of bullshit. It all had the ring of truth to it to some degree.

Robert Newman: It really did. I think that we have to close out the roundup because I’m pretty sure that we’re at the very end.

Johnathan Denwood: Just one other one. I think it was still in 2020 and I’ll ask him back in the New Year. Because he’s been on the show a couple of times and I think you like him, he’s Zach Hammer.

Robert Newman: Zach Hammer. Yes, he’s always a solid guest. Don’t know that he would ever be in the top 10 for me. And like I said, this is one of those ways that we’re definitely going to that we’re going to differ. We’re going to swerve a little bit again.

Johnathan Denwood: So, who? Did you mention who your top one was?

Robert Newman: Yes, I did. I think we did at the very beginning of the episode, we both agreed on it. Maybe it was Will Friedner. In terms, I think it might be Will Friedner that show, with Will Friedner, even though it was more recent, so it’s fresher in my mind. I think that it was number one for me because he is the everyman and he presents himself as the everyman, I really think that in terms of content that we’ve done that is impactful and digestible, he’s one of the better shows that we’ve ever done, because he’s just approachable.

As you said, he doesn’t come off as saying it’s all that complicated. He talks about his $20 camera, and it was like he was talking to us except that we were a real estate agent in Montana. And he even talks about how grim the place is to live, like his honesty and his sense of truth was incredible. He’s like, I don’t know that many people that really want to live in Montana if they knew what it was like to live in Montana. And that was amazing. I think it was a great show.

Johnathan Denwood: I think just to wrap it up, I agree with you actually, because if you’ve.

Robert Newman: No, I’ve got one. You have got to, let me wrap up. Now, you say what you have to say, but let me do the wrap-ups.

Johnathan Denwood: Yeah, sure. Is that everything he did is total, he’s a smart cookie really knows, really driven, you don’t realize how driven he is. He’s got a really laid-back way, but you can tell he really thinks things out and looks at all the angles and he works it out, but everything he did, it’s totally possible for any other agent to do.

Robert Newman: He really did it. He did it with a simple set of tools and a simple philosophy. And that’s what I liked about the show. It was approachable. A lot of what I say to people, a lot of what I recommend is more about the approachability of the information approachability of the content. It’s not so much that we haven’t done other content or other people haven’t done more, Christophe sold 10 times more real estate than Will probably ever will, but he also makes it seem a little complicated. And he talks about doing six-hour photoshoots and just all the incredible stuff that he does.

So, if you’re looking at what Christophe does from the outside, you may find it to be a little bit unapproachable. You’re like, wow, that’s too difficult for me. I didn’t get that feeling from Will at all. That’s why I liked it so much. He kind of felt like, yeah, you got a camera, you can do this. That’s kind of like what I, that’s how I felt. I’m not saying he said that. I’m just saying, that’s how I felt about it. So, we’re going to wrap up with our, we go all, all, all the way back to the beginning of the year and John managed to get us this same guest.

He got us the CMO, the chief marketing officer of BombBomb, which is definitely one of the cutting-edge marketing companies. If you pay any attention whatsoever to real estate marketing stuff, you will have heard of BombBomb. And the CMO is this guy by the name of Stephen Pacinelli. And I’m going to put this one in at about number. I don’t know where I’ve numbered everything, but this is episode 232, and it’s somewhere, maybe five or six for me. I, again, used this episode in my legends of real estate podcasting. I also created a YouTube video around this episode.

Steve probably gave us one of the very best tips that anybody has ever given us on the show ever full stop, where he explained not just how to do video, but how to do a particular kind of video using tools that anybody has, but you wouldn’t think to use them.
And he gave us an example of somebody who sold $9 million worth of real estate using these tools. Now here we are almost 12 months later, John and I have my very first customer doing videos as he suggested. I finally found somebody who’s going to copy the strategy. So, I can’t tell you for sure what’s going to happen, but I really suspect that we’re going to watch these videos excel on YouTube and that they’re going to make my client a lot of money.

Johnathan Denwood: Oh, weren’t they enough I forgot his name just to finish off, then we had one of your clients, I’ve got his name the agent from Delaware.

Robert Newman: Ray Petkevis the number one performing real estate agent.

Johnathan Denwood: I like Ray. But he talked about the thing that stuck in my mind was the fire engine story. That was, talk about gorilla marketing to a slightly different level. But that’s a story.

Robert Newman: Yeah, his heart is broken that he doesn’t get to do the fire engine this year because of COVID like he is just crushed. Ray Petkevis in that episode is one of my clients. I’m very blessed to be able to call him a client. He is definitely somebody that shows something to tune into Ray’s success. Like the way that he does it, the way that he approaches it is a little bit hard to emulate. I don’t use him a lot in terms of my day-to-day conversations with people because of shit like the firetruck because he goes out and buys a firetruck and then drives around at Christmas and hands-off Christmas gifts off the back of it, which was incredibly successful.

I thought it would have been a joke in terms of a marketing strategy. And boy was I wrong. I have rarely called something so wrong as I call that marketing stunt. I mean, it was the middle of winter, and kids and parents were out in their robes, I was there for that one. And they were out in their robes on the street chasing around this firetruck. I cannot, I’ve never seen anything like it, he called his audience so much better than I ever could have. So yeah, kudos to Ray.

Johnathan Denwood: So, we need to wrap it up, but before we do, I just want to say, thank you so much, Robert, for being my co-host. I think we’ve had a fabulous year. We’ve had some great internal discussions and by this episode, we’ve actually had some fantastic guests. So, I want to thank them as well, but personally, I want to thank you for staying on the show and being my co-host.

Robert Newman: Thank you, John. I’m so glad that you inspired me to do this. I think I would, now that I understand what podcasting all is about, what the value is. I think I would continue on, but you’re the one who got me to participate in the first place. And I’m super grateful that you did, and I’ve stuck with it because I think it provides huge value. And for those of you listening to the show, I want to add my voice to John’s and say, God, we appreciate you so much for tuning in and giving us your time. We’re really grateful. And then if any of you ever have anything that you’d like to see us talk about, please let us know if any of you think you have a story.

Johnathan Denwood: That would be fabulous. If they gave us some people or ideas that they would like us to either interview or discuss, that would be fabulous. Wouldn’t it, Robert?

Robert Newman: It would be incredible. And yeah, that’s it. So, thanks for tuning in everybody. John, how can people find you if they want to?

Johnathan Denwood: Oh, the easiest way is to go to the Mail-Right website. It’s got a phone number on there. You can ring it up anytime, can discuss anything you want to, any kind of advice or anything. Just contact us through the website.

Robert Newman: And I’m going to say the same thing. It’s inboundrem.com, ladies, and gentlemen, and I have about 50 or so deep articles on various topics, real estate systems. I talk a lot about lead generation, so you can tune in there about lead generation. And my name is Robert Newman. And once again, John and I, happy holidays. Thanks for tuning in.

Jonathan Denwood: Bye.
Robert Newman: Bye.

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#233 Mail-Right Show With Special Dee Johnson From Cubi

Friday, March 20th, 2020

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Cubi The Revolutionary Floor Plan App

We are a company originating from Finland, to be more exact from the Northern parts of Finland, from the city of Oulu. Google for more information about Oulu if you wish but what is important in this context is that the city has a university with a long history in computer vision and machine learning. One could even say Oulu is the computer engineer’s city.

But as most of us know it is not only engineers that are needed in order to set up and grow business. So, from the early days, we’ve had a strong preference for sales and customer support; one could say (again) that those were the cornerstones when we first started back in 2014 (we’re officially established in December 2014).

As the third item in this vague background list, we want to emphasize that we have always tried to be as customer-focused as possible. Yes, it is true that sometimes the customer does not know what is best for her/him but even in those cases, we need to handle it with respect and gentle guidance. The absolute best part of being customer-focused is that they will tell you what you need to build and nurture.

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the mayor, right show. This is episode 233. We’ve got a special guest. And also I got my cohost as well. We’re going to be talking about Cubi. And we’ve got Dee Johnson with us. And she’s going to tell us all about this really interesting app. And then in the second half of the show we’re going to be talking about apps in general. And hopefully Dee has time to keep with us and we have a 10 minute discussion. So first of all, I’m going to let Dee introduce herself. D, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners?

Dee: Hi everyone. I’m Dee Johnson. I do a podcast called capture the world with D and I work for Cubi Casa. I’m the chief customer officer. And I work for QB Casa. That’s C U B I C A S A. If you want to check out our website, it’s cubi.casa. And we basically are the makers of a revolutionary app that allows you to scan a property using a mobile device. It takes about five minutes or less and in one business day you get a professional looking floor plan.

Jonathon: Amazing. And I got one great cohost, Robert. Robert, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

Robert: Hey Dee, did you catch that? Did you see how he said quickly when it came to me like at the time you’re shorting me out dude. What did I ever do to you? My name is Robert Newman and I’m the founder of Inboundrem.com. And since I’m supposed to go quickly. I will be done.

Jonathon: Yeah cause I listened to last week show and it was a bit windy there around. And I’m the founder of Mail Right, mail-right.com. And we get you quality leads if you are a real estate agent. On with the real content of the show, which I’m sure listeners and viewers you’re dying to hear. Cubi sounds like an amazing product. Can you go into a little bit more detail about how it works, how much it is and how long have the app been on the market?

Dee: Yeah, so Cubi CASA’s has been around for a few years now. If you don’t know already, we do the floor plans for Matterport. So when you do a Matterport scan and you order floorplan that comes through us. But last year, in the middle of the year, we did introduce this new app. It works on any mobile device. Primarily we started with the iOS, the iPhones. It works on an iPad 2017 or later. And we recently added support for some Android devices. And basically you sign up on our website cubi.casa for an account. Your first scan is always free.

Then what you do is you go to your mobile device, you download the app. It’s very straightforward. You just push, start a scan, enter the address or anything to identify that scan that property. And then you’re basically taking a video. So you’re walking through the property. Scanning basically the intersection between the wall and the floor. And you want to scan about three feet high on the wall, walk parallel to the wall. And just walk along the perimeter of each room, go to the next room and do the same thing. And if you do that, if you an average size house takes about three minutes. I move a little quicker so it takes me like two.

And we’ve had contests on who can scan faster winner anyway. And then you just upload it to our processing engine on the cloud. And after one business day, you get a professional looking floor plan. You can, it comes in several formats PNG, JPEG, and SVG. And it comes with or without dimensions. And the newest thing we added was this home report, which is a report that tells you information like how many bedrooms, how many doors, how many windows. And a little bit of information on sort of what’s local to that property. If you provide us the correct address when you upload.

Jonathon: Oh, nice. And then how much is the service of after your first free trial?

Dee: Retail price is 3490 per scan, which includes the entire property. So if you have three floors, it includes all three floors. If you are a professional photographer for real estate, you get a 30% discount.

Robert: How do you identify if somebody’s a professional?

Dee: So you apply for the program and we will vet you. Basically you have to have a website that shows that you’re a professional photographer.

Robert: Okay. What about professional real estate marketing companies that happened to have photography maybe as a small part of their services that they provide?

Dee: Yes. So as long as they can show that some of their employees do the photography, we will let them into that program.

Jonathon: Now you said it’s easy to do but it sounds really amazing. You said you can do one in your the quickest of the quick. Are there some real guidelines that you’ve got to follow and result and can you give us some?

Dee: Yeah, exactly. So scanning technique does matter. It will improve accuracy. So what we tell people to do is you start at the bottom floor. If you’ve got multiple floors, scan the entire floor, then go to the bottom of the stairs. Tip your device up so that you’re looking up the stairs, and then just walk up the stairs as you normally would. Be careful when you’re doing that because I’ve fallen because I’m trying to look at the screen on the device and I’m trying to climb stairs. So be careful. And then you just scan the next level and so on. What we’re looking for is to hold the camera at about chest height. Hold it down to down about 15 degrees. You’re looking to give us some type of contextual visual cues. So don’t face the wall and walk sideways, walk parallel to the wall and show us sort of what’s in front of you.

The sweet spot of the cameras between three to eight feet. So as you’re walking parallel, say, here’s my wall and I’m walking parallel to the wall. And here I reached the next wall. When you reach three to eight feet from that next wall and then you just turn. And you walk parallel. So that wall down that wall, sometimes there’s furniture. So you’ll have to go between the furniture and back out and scan around that. So if you have a bed for example, because a bed is typically longer than eight feet. You’ll want to walk down one side of the bed, back out, turn, go down to the other side of the bed, scan down that side of the bed and then back out. But we do have a training video, it’s called how to scan best practices. It’s 13 minutes roughly, and it’ll give you all the information that you need to know. It has been proven to work. So if you are interested in trying this out, please, please watch that video before you head out to scan.

Jonathon: What do you reckon Robert?

Robert: Well number one, I mean, I reckon that I’m extremely excited. I’m incredibly familiar with Matterport. I feel at some part of my career, I met one of the guys that was behind Matterport, but that’s another story entirely. And I don’t recollect like that clearly because I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. I shouldn’t have been, but I was like, man, you know, photography, I’m an SEO guy. Sounded like photography. It’s like blah, blah, blah. But boy, Oh boy, hindsight, let me tell you. So I guess I have a few questions for you. You identified yourself as the head of customer experience, is that right or, yes. Okay. So if you could for our end for me, would you define your role with Cubi Casa first?

Dee: Yeah. So we’re still in the startup phase, so we’re not that large, but I basically take care of all things customer related. So if you have a question and you call in, I’m there to help. I do, we do have a team of support agents as well. But I, I do as well customer success. So if a customer has any special needs or has any questions or is just finding it hard to figure out how to start I’ll help jump in and take care of that. I do some business development, I do sales, I go to trade shows and I started to wear a lot of hats. And that’s the one thing that really matches my personality cause I like to do a lot of different things and so that’s been really great and really fun.

Awesome. So I am going to ask you a couple of questions more about that, but before I do, I’m going to drop an Easter egg for John and for our audience. I already know a really cool way to leverage this tool to massive impact for SEO and lead conversion. I have to be honest with you, I am actually very familiar with Matterport. And I was super excited to take the call with Dee and do the show with you today. I did. It did a real, like, I think I read every single page that you guys produced on your website.

So I’m pretty sure that I’m familiar with the ins and outs, but I have a question for you that you can’t find on your website. So you’re the head of customer service. Can you give, I’m going to strongly recommend that people get in touch with you. So in preparation for that, I’m kind of curious about what are some of the big questions that you get from people that you’re talking to that might be using the service or talking about using the service. Can you run us through some of those things?

Dee: Yeah, so we get a lot of inquiries on setting up the accounts, which is pretty basic. If you have a problem, you can contact us. Typically it’s an issue with a credit card or something like that. As far as scanning is concerned the biggest questions we get are how do you scan upstairs? How do I prepare the site? Like, do I have to turn on all the lights? And then sometimes we’ll give feedback. If we notice, if we take a look at the video that they’ve created the biggest mistake people make is they scan all the way up to the ceiling. So if I have a window and I want to show the software, there’s a window there, you only need to scan the bottom part of the window. We don’t need to see all the way up cause remember it’s a floor plan. And when you scan up and show the ceiling that will cause quality and accuracy issues. But the app is now we’re incorporating into the app. Something that if you tip your phone up too far, it’s going to tell you.

Robert: Okay. That’s pretty cool. John, I have more questions but.

Jonathon: We have got another four or five minutes before we have to go for a break.

Robert: Okay. So having said that, can you tell John and I, have you had a chance to see what your clients are actually using? Like how do they use the floor plans once they’ve created them? As anybody talking to you about that?

Dee: Yeah, that’s a good question. So we mainly target photographers for real estate companies or agents. And those floor plans are being used by agents when they want to put their house that they’re listing for sale. It shows the basic flow and outline of a house and shows how the different rooms are situated with respect to each other. For example, if I have a listing and I have a picture of a bathroom, typically I have no idea where that bathroom is in relationship to the bedrooms and in that house.

So it’s used for the flow and layout of a home. I’ve also seen people use it where they’ll put little hotspots on the actual floor plan and this is becoming way more popular. And what happens is when you click on one of those hotspots, it actually puts the picture on the screen. So a different way of being able to view the photos that you have for listing rather than putting it in the film strip at the bottom, which is the way it’s typically done.

Robert: Okay. And that’s so the film strip of the listing you said are you talking about the photo carousel?

Dee: Yeah, so typically when you have a listing, like on MLS, there’s a, there’s a film strip at the bottom and you can, you know, push the arrows and look, go through all of them. But instead of doing that, you can also incorporate on a floor plan the little hotspots. And so that tells you, Oh, I took a picture in the kitchen and if I click on that, here’s the picture of the kitchen. So you can’t do that directly on MLS, but you can use third party apps like cloud PANOW for example, and they allow you to set up the hotspots with photographs.

Robert: I got you. So there is a way to get these into MLS listings where they could essentially be viewing floor plans correctly.

Dee: So floor plan is just a picture. It doesn’t have to be hosted anywhere. Our clients can download them, keep them. It’s a picture, it’s an image. And so you can just upload that anywhere just like you would upload a normal photo.

Robert: Gotcha! Okay, I understand.

Robert: I think this is a very opportune moment for us to go for our break. Hopefully Dee’s going to stay on later. You seem to be enjoying it. And I think that was a very opportune moment, Robert understands. So we’re going to go for our break. We will come back in a few moments’ folks.

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Jonathon: I’m taking the Mickey out of Robert, but he’s used to it. He doesn’t care. We’ve been talking about this fantastic app and we can continue the discussion. Probably brought in there about some other apps as well. Back over to you, Robert. Okay.

Robert: I wasn’t expecting you to toss it back over to me, but I am good for it.

Jonathon: Well I did tease you so I thought I had to.

Robert: Okay. So I’m noticing something on your site that I didn’t understand. And so I’m hoping that you’ll explain it to me. It was like one of my deep use questions, but you have something on your called smart locks and can I didn’t understand what that was actually a smart blot. It’s literally under use cases and it says to smart homes, Oh, I’m sorry, Mark homes and one lot, what does that, what does that mean?

Dee: Smart IOT, internet of things.

Robert: Oh, IOT. Okay. So what is that?

Dee: So if you have smart devices in your home, you can use a floor plan to tell people where all the smart devices are and even to lay them out as you’re designing a how you’re going to lay them all out in your home.

Robert: So when you say smart devices, you’re talking about like I have Alexa and ring and echo and all that crap in my home. So you’re talking about that, right?

Dee: Yes. Internet of things. For example, you can have a thermostat that’s a smart thermostat. That you can control via your phones, run up garage door openers, you can have internet of things I’ve heard on your refrigerator. So as the world of internet of things grows, there is potentially a need for floor plans to show people either how to set that up or how it is set up in a home.

Jonathon: And then I have another question for you.

Jonathon: Next question. You kind of hand does that joy, you said you got this secret thing that could help with the ESCI.

Robert: I did. Do you want me to use it? Do you want me to reveal it?

Jonathon: I think that’s probably why a lot of people are listening to this.

Robert: Yeah. Okay. So guys here’s what the secret is, I’m going to, let me see here.

Jonathon: Drum roll.

Robert: John, do you mind if I’ve got to switch over to do this correctly. I’ve got to actually show everybody. Dee I may be showing you something.

Jonathon: You should listen to this, but you should go to the Mail Right website and watch it as well.

Robert: So you should, by the way, Joyce, you might want to start or like share this on your site. So I’m going to move this camera in a second. You right now you’re going to see us and then I’m going to move this off. And now what you’re looking at is you’re looking at a website. So what a lot of people don’t understand about SEO these days, is that literally 30 to 50% of your score with Google is what’s called user behavior. And what is the main thing that one of the main signals inside a real estate website that user behavior is dictated by. It’s actually clicks, interaction with the website.

How long are you staying? How many pages do you clicking on? So what does that mean? In my world, the world of an SEO guy. That means when I’m building a website experience, I am really deeply looking for something that is completely 100% unique to the site. Something that somebody’s going to have a hard time finding someplace else. Now usually when you’re talking about floor plans, you can actually, anybody that has access like through city planners or through builders, everybody can get access to those plans, to those four plans.

If you had an app that could let you go into community that maybe floor plans weren’t so easy to get a hold of, you can then build a page that is someone to this. And this is a guy that I’d just like to use that’s out here in my area. His website is wildly successful, so I’m actually showing you something that really does work with a guy that really works for, you can see this page that he’s built and then all wait for it. You see something that says Windward shores floor plans. Now this is something he grabbed from the builder, but you have a clickable button. You click on the button and it takes you to this crappy hand-drawn floor plan.

So imagine, and he may have drawn this himself, I don’t know, like he may have actually. And you note that there is no dimensions. It is a floor plan, but there’s no dimensions to the floor plan. It’s just a floor plan. So imagine for a moment, if you had an app that did give you dimensions that was drawn professionally on the same thing. If I was building a website against this guy, I would feel like I could do better because I’d have a better piece of content on the site.

And I already know from the fact that the business that I’m in, he does incredibly well, that this content is extremely well received. I’m not guessing here. So when we were meeting with [inaudible] and I saw what your app could do, I was immediately that I call Holy shit. I know things that you can do with this that are really important for SEO like I this, this is widely usable for me. And so I got very excited about which you can see. So anyway, that was it. That’s the secret, I’ve just revealed it all.

Jonathon: And the beauty of it is that it’s not that expensive. Like you say, you can use it for multiple purposes and lucky what you just said. It’s quite evergreen content, isn’t it, Robert?

Robert: Yeah, and what’s more guys, and sorry to keep the cost down because gee, we got to do this work all before we ever see any revenue coming from a site. So I have to give out this piece of advice. You don’t have to do a floor plan for every single home. What you need to do is take one representative home out of an area connected to a content page. And then the way that you monetize this is you go, would you like me to do a custom floor plan for you? It’s not something anybody else is going to do. Dee`s app is new. She’s telling everybody, all of our listeners that it’s new.

So if you get out ahead of where everybody else is at, you don’t have any competition. If they want something like this, they got to come to you. So you say, I will happily take a listing that you’re interested in and I will go do one of these floor plans for you. But the trick is you’ve got to get in touch with me. And that’s the hardest thing to do in today’s web world is get these people to reach out and have a conversation with you. And this is an amazing conversation starter. There you go.

Jonathon: It`s amazing.

Dee: Wait. So when are you coming to work with us?

Robert: You can go back and review our shows. I actually don’t usually get this excited about anything that we look at. I’ve been looking for a solution like this and I understood instinctively that there’s this very large opportunity for inbound marketers.

Jonathon: Yeah, that’s great. So Dee, what have been some of the problems getting you adapted? Is it just getting over that first hump of the first couple? Like with anything new, you know, we get a bit concerned about, you know, new technology. Is it really just using it a couple of times and then people then can see the real benefit. Is that the main hurdle for you?

Dee: So currently we’ve been targeting mostly professional photography companies coming soon. Because we’ve partnered with a company called FBS, which is the makers of flex MLS. So if your version of MLS is run through flex, then in hopefully in the summer or sometime this year, you’ll be able to order floorplans directly through the MLS. The benefit of that so that we’ll then talk to the agents more than to photographers. And you’ll have a choice of either scanning the property yourself, which you should be able to do because it’s so easy to or get the homeowner to scan if they want. Or you can hire a photographer, we’ll give you like a link. But the cost, if you order a floor plan through flex, MLS will be $12.

Jonathon: Am I correct? The company was originally based in Finland?

Dee: Yes. So Cubi Casa has headquarters in a city called Olu, which is in Northern Finland. And it’s the home of one of the best universities there. So we draw from some pretty good talent.

Robert: So I’m talking to you because you’ve been this entire show. You’ve been talking about photographers, photographers, photographers. And I just talked about realtors, realtors, realtors. And obviously as you know, because you’ve been so clearly delineating it. I’m curious to know, because this is again, directly related to my idea, my concept. I intend to get off the phone. This call, I intend to heavily promote this podcast episode. I intend to tell my very significant list of real estate people that they should be doing this is. Am I running going to run into like a problem with your app? Because realtors have 80 70% of all realtors have an Apple iPhone. So we’re good there. I know they have the equipment, but what I don’t know is if, you know, a lot of realtors have no photography experience. So is this a problem? Am I setting myself up?

Dee: So you don’t need photography experience cause trust me, I don’t. So when I watch this photography like lectures and they pull up the picture and everybody’s like, Ooh, that’s a horrible photo. I’m like, I like that photo. What’s wrong with it? So I am like, I have no photography background. You don’t need that. You’re not scanning to get a visual representation. You’re scanning so that we can see the layout of the home. So our software, which uses AI can determine, you know, what all the measurements are and what’s in that space.

Robert: Okay. So your ultimate gut take on me saying I’m going to reach out to 10,000 realtors and tell them to use this on their website is your gut take is that won’t be a problem?

Dee: Correct.

Robert: Okay. And then then just to repeat something we’ve already repeated, but since we got a like a second longer, what they would do is they would go to cubi.casa.com or no?

Dee: No, just cubi.casa.

Robert: Okay. So cubi.casa. So it’s an unusual URL and then you go there and you do sign up and create a free account and then do your first scan for free. If I’m understand you correctly. The second scan for a non-photographer, let’s just assume the worse is going to be $34.90 cents is that correct?

Dee: That is correct.

Robert: Okay, and I’m going to say right now to all the people listening, even though for my clients or people that are building websites through me, that’s going to be to do it throughout the site, it’s going to be $300, $400 or $500. I think that to get unique content on the site that nobody has, that it’s wildly worth it and I’m going to put a strong recommend on doing it. Assuming that the tech works, I haven’t tried it yet. I will have to try it when we end the podcast, assuming that I can do it because I’m an idiot with this stuff. Then we’re going to be golden.

Jonathon: I watched the video. It looked pretty easy to use there. I think after a couple of times you’d be fine listeners and viewers. So Dee, how can people find out more about you and your podcast and Cubi?

Dee: So Cubi Casa again is cubi.casa. You can go to that website to sign up for an account or to just find out more information. We have a great help center and again, the video, which is about 13 minutes, is how to scan best practices. So check that out if you have any questions and definitely watch the video. My podcast is again called capture the world with Dee. It comes on live on YouTube every Tuesday morning at 9:00 AM Pacific time.

I had Jonathan actually on there couple of weeks ago and it was one of the best podcasts. So if you want to learn about websites and all that, it had some really great information.

Jonathon: It was great because I used Robert`s content.

Dee: And I’m there going, wow, this guy really knows a lot.

Jonathon: We did a good series. Robert how can people find out about you?

Robert: Hey, do you want to Nick my content? Like Tom? Yes, my content. Here’s how you do it. Go to inboundrem.com and you’ll find all of my apparently brilliant advice. And if you’re looking to learn how more about real estate marketing, trust me, I do have a lot of good stuff and I’m super excited about this tip today. We also had an amazing tip last show, which you should also tune into that maybe in a row where I genuinely think that John and I have hit it out of the fricking park. So John over to you and John is amazing. He has got an amazing thing. You should book an appointment and talk to him.

Jonathon: Yeah, I think bonbon and his product are quite unique. Cause I would recommend both of them and they’re not enormously expensive. And they really feel in need. Thanks Dee for coming on the show. It’s been a blast. And if you were interested in Mail Right, you can go to the Mail Right website, have a look at what we’re offering, which I think is amazing value. And you can also book a free consultation with me and work together. We will produce a one page online marketing campaign for your business. For your real estate business in 2020 something you can actually use. But another thing that’s great and I look forward to you booking with us and having that chat. We will be back next week with an internal discussion between me and Rob, or another great guest like Dee. Bye.

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#166 Mail-Right Show Your Purpose For Being A Real Estate Agent?

Saturday, October 13th, 2018

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My great co-host Robert Newman wanted us to discuss this subject “PURPOSE.” See In truth most people if asked in first grade what they wanted to be when when they grow-up aren’t really going to say I’m going to be a real estate agent.

So we got to honest here most people become a real estate agent for these three main reasons listed below

1 – I dream of making a lot of money for myself and my family.

2 – It fits well into the my own live stye choices at the present moment.

3 – A mixture of the two started above reasons.

These are great reason however there normally a deeper reason why you have become an agent which I call your “deep purpose!”

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#165 Mail-Right Show We Discuss the Power of Facebook Advertisement Platform

Friday, October 5th, 2018

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#165 Mail-Right Show With Special Guest Mojca Zove: We Discuss the Power of Facebook Advertisement Platform

Mojca Zove (previously Mars) is the owner of Super Spicy Media and a Facebook Ads Expert that helps +7-figure companies generate leads and increase profits with Facebook Ads.

She’s the author of The Facebook Ads Manual, a book that helped hundreds of people launch their first successful Facebook Advertising campaign. She recently launched her online video course The Science of Facebook Ads.

She’s an international speaker. She appeared on MicroConf, Double Your Freelancing Conference, Seanwes Conf, BaconBiz and others.

Mojca Has Given Us Two Special Deals For Our Listeners & Viewers: See Links Below

Professional Package —> https://enroll.thescienceoffacebookads.com/the-science-of-facebook-ads-professional?coupon=MAILRIGHT

Master Package —> https://enroll.thescienceoffacebookads.com/the-science-of-facebook-ads-master?coupon=MAILRIGHT

Jonathan: Welcome back folks to the Mail-Right Show. It’s episode 165. I haven’t got my co-host with me in this episode. He’s away on a business trip. But I’ve also got a fantastic special guest. She’s a real friend of the show and that’s Mojca Zove and I probably destroyed her Christian name which I do with regularity, don’t I dear, but you seem to cope with it well. Would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers first and we will delve into our great subject.

Mojca: Yeah, absolutely. So, I own a Boutique Facebook ads agency called Super Spicy Media and I actually started with Facebook ads after I got fired from my previous job which was, I was a copywriter at an advertising agency and since the people at the advertising agency weren’t really interested in Facebook ads and I really pushed for it, they basically fired me and I ended up going my own and I’ve grown my agency from scratch pretty much. But now, I consult to seven-plus figure companies on how to use Facebook ads. I implement Facebook advertising strategies for them, I design the visuals, I write the copy for them and I also have a book, I have a video course and that’s how I pretty much got started and how I came to where I am today.

Jonathan: Oh, that’s great. So, we discussed before the show our audience are mostly Real Estate Agents, but I wanted you to come on this particular show because you’re a real expert on Facebook advertisement. How do you feel that Real Estate Agents, what are they missing out by not really understanding about the power of Facebook advertising and how they could use it to really help their business Mojca?

Mojca: So, one thing is location targeting. I know a couple of good Real Estate Agents that implement fantastic Facebook advertising strategies and they work really well. But there are a lot of Real Estate Agents and Real Estate Agencies that just want to play around with Facebook ads a little bit, but they don’t know exactly how to implement and who to target. So, the number one thing that they’re getting wrong most of the time is location targeting and they’re targeting these big audiences of half a million people that are basically not their target audience. So, the first thing that they need to do is pretty much define who their target audience actually is, how old are they, where did they live, what’s their income, are they currently in the market for buying a new house, new home and that’s where you get started. So, first is just defining your target audience and then basically doing location targeting. The whole of the United States is definitely not a good target audience. It’s too big. But just narrowing that down with interest and behaviors is a good way to get started.

Jonathan: Yeah. I totally agree. But on the other hand, you don’t want the audience to be too small because then, Facebook, am I correct, you’re the expert, I have people help me with my company with this. On the other hand, if the audience is too small, it’s basically Facebook’s technology can’t really help you, I’m looking for the right word here, optimize the advert. So, would you agree that you need a balance between too small and too large, really?
Mojca: Yes, absolutely. So, if you have a target pool of 1,000 people, it’s definitely too small. But if you’re launching a campaign and your potential audience is let’s say, 10 million people or even 5 million people strong, that is definitely too broad so we need to narrow that down. You have to look for that sweet spot and you can find that sweet spot through experimentation and A/B testing and trying new things basically.

Jonathan: Yeah. Obviously, if you’re in a large city, a large urban area, let’s say, for example, Dallas, finding the right balance isn’t probably going to be a problem. Your problem’s probably going to be cost per lead really. But let’s say you’re in an average medium, large to small city that say, got a population of 250,000 with maybe suburbs, with some surrounding suburbs. So, you might be looking at a total population of half a million in total. How do you deal with that scenario?

Mojca: So, I would start by doing some inquiries in terms of who your current audience is and just asking a little bit about their interests and where they come from and those locations that you get through those interviews are the locations that you can target as you move forward. I would also, if you’re a Real Estate Agent listening to this or looking at this, you might also be interested in looking into Lookalike audiences because that’s a good way to get started. So Lookalike audiences is basically creating a brand new audience based off of your existing audience such as your website visitors or your existing leads or your customers. So, what you can do is you can upload that list of people to Facebook, create a Lookalike audience out of it and that Lookalike audience is going to be a lot bigger than if, for example, if you live in a smaller city or suburbs or something like that.

Jonathan: Yeah. Especially if, am I correct? I’m just going to make this statement and then I want to put a couple other questions about Lookalike audience to you. I’m just going to say to the audience. This isn’t actually that, it sounds a bit techy here but it’s actually not that difficult. You’ve just got to do it a few times. First of all, when you import that list, am I correct in saying that the email, you can either use phone number or email, but you can’t mix both. You can either choose the email address or the phone number. And secondly, they’ve got to match up with either a phone number or the email that the individual utilized to sign up for their Facebook account. Am I right about those two things?

Mojca: Kind of. So, right now, the more information you have on your email list of people that you already have, so that’s email and a phone number and country where they live in and email and last name. The more information you have, the better your list is going to be. The more information you have, the better can Facebook basically match those people on your email list to actual Facebook profiles. For example, you have an email that’s maybe a work email, but then, you have a phone number, you have a first and last name, you have a country, Facebook is going to have a much easier job of matching that first name, last name to an actual profile than if you wouldn’t have a correct phone number, for example, if you know what I’m saying. So, the more information you have, the better it is. Now, when you create those lists of people on Facebook, you can do all of it. So, you can do first name, last name, country, you can do phone number, email, all of that all together. So, it’s not this or that, but you can upload everything and Facebook is going to create a custom audience based on that information.

Jonathan: So the more info you can give them on these people, the more that Facebook is going to, you’re going to have more of that list being imported into your Lookalike list basically.

Mojca: Absolutely. And with Real Estate Agents and Real Estate Agencies, they collect a lot of information, so you definitely have phone numbers and country of residence and so on. So, absolutely. The more you have, the better it is.

Jonathan: That’s cleared that one up. Then you import the list and then it gives the option, but this is a changing scenario because obviously, Facebook is changing this all the time. At one stage, they didn’t offer you, when you could select a Lookalike audience, they didn’t give you a lot of options around what that Lookalike audience was going to be. Am I correct that really, for their technology to work, that you really need a list of 1,000 plus?

Mojca: Oh, no. Oh, no. You need at least 100 people. The more people you have on your list, the better it is because you have a larger sample of people that Facebook can analyze. But if you have even 100 email leads and if you upload that to Facebook and create a Lookalike audience out of that, it’s going to work. So, you need at least 100 people, but with 100 people, you can definitely make it work.

Jonathan: Oh, thanks for clearing that up because I was listening to other people and they saying the list, but I will go with you because I know that you know what you’re talking about. So, I’ll go with your statements. So, that’s great. So, with a small list, it will still work. The bigger the list, it’s better, but it will still work with 100 persons as well. Thanks for that. So, on to the other thing. Can you zero in to this Lookalike audience? Can you select a specific city, a specific area? What are some of the things or do you just get a broad selection and you’ve just got to let Facebook work it out basically?

Mojca: So, you can do countries, that’s for sure and you can do broader areas such as European Economic Area, for example, and you can do countries as well. But in terms of location, you have limited possibilities. For example, if you do location targeting the traditional way, you can basically drop a pin and Facebook is going to create an audience within a radius of that pin. But with Lookalike audiences, it’s a little bit more limiting because Facebook does want to create a Lookalike audience of people that are actually going to be interested in what you have to sell and what you have to offer. If people were able to really pinpoint the location down, Facebook wouldn’t be actually successful at doing that. So, it’s a bit broader, but everything is for your purpose basically to achieve your goal. But what you can is if you create a Lookalike audience from the whole of the United States, once you start creating a campaign, you can still narrow that audience down to a specific city and you can basically solve that.

Jonathan: Yeah. So, don’t get intimidated. The reason why I bring that up is I knew the answer anyway, but I wanted you to confirm because you’re the expert. Because a lot of people stop at that because they get intimidated. They don’t realize that as soon as they import it in Facebook, they can narrow it down a bit more.

Mojca: Oh, yeah.

Jonathan: And also, it’s really about the quality of your list really, isn’t it, that you’ve imported in, isn’t it?

Mojca: Yeah, it’s true. So, when I work with clients, we mostly create Lookalike audiences out of existing customers because that’s the qualified list and definitely our email subscribers. It’s a much bigger pool of people that we have, but not all of them are qualified to become our paying customers. But if we upload a list of paying customers to Facebook and then create a Lookalike audience out of that list, that Lookalike audience is definitely going to be far more qualified than a Lookalike audience created out of just general email subscribers.

Jonathan: Right. We’re going to go for our break. We’ll be back in a few moments folks. We’re going to delving some more into custom lists, Facebook advertising, anything to do with that. We’ll be back in a few moments folks.

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Jonathan: We’ve been having a fascinating conversation with Mojca. So, the other factor about this custom list business is that, let’s get back to my example, Dallas, a very large metropolitan city. I think the population is between 3 and 5 million. There’ll be a lot of competition to purchase space on Facebook, won’t there? So a custom audience, can it have an effect on the cost of the advert and the cost of purchasing a quality lead basically?

Mojca: Definitely. So, the more advertisers you have advertising to that specific area, the costier your ad might be. But if you are good at Facebook Advertising and if you know where to start and if you have some sort of strategy, you have a really good chance of your costs being quite low. It’s definitely still a lot lower than any other advertising channels, so it speak. But I wouldn’t have that discourage you from advertising because there are a lot of advertisers who are not doing a good enough of a job, even if they’re targeting Dallas. But if you’re the one that has a strategy, that’s doing a good job, your ad might be cheaper than other advertisers targeting the same area.

Jonathan: Yeah. I think that’s a great point you’re making here because obviously they’re there to make money and they’re doing quite a good of that, but they want the people that they advertise to, to be relevant to the audience.

Mojca: Yeah.

Jonathan: They want signs of engagement, that the actual adverts to the target audience are relevant and they’re getting engagement and those that can show that, they will give a reduced rate compared to other people.

Mojca: Yes.
Jonathan: So it’s not just an auction that the highest buyer will get. Is that correct, isn’t it

Mojca: It’s absolutely correct. So, the more relevant your ad is and you can see the relevancy score yourself in Facebook analytics and the more relevant your ad is, the cheaper it’s going to be for you to advertise to those people because naturally what Facebook wants to do is, Facebook wants its users to stay on Facebook for a longer period of time and the consequence of that is they want to show the right ads to the right people. Because if they see the right ads, if they see the ads that are relevant to them, if they engage with those ads, they’re going to stay on Facebook for a longer period of time and that’s Facebook’s goal. So, you made a great point. The more relevant your ad is, the more engaging it is, the cheaper it’s going to be for you to advertise to those people and to that location in particular.

Jonathan: What are some of the factors that you’ve found with the high-end? You’ve done a lot of Facebook advertising for people, haven’t you?

Mojca: Yeah.

Jonathan: Obviously, video has increasingly become popular, but also, if you’re going to utilize image, is the image still very important in the success of the advert? Also, what’s the balance between long-form copy in the advert and shorter copy in the advert? Is it too many variables or are you finding long-form copy more effective?

Mojca: That is a great question because I have done so many experiments with long-form copy versus short-form copy and I’ve been doing those experiments ever since I started just seeing people using very long-form copy on Facebook ads and whenever I check the engagement rate, it was quite high. What if I start using that for my clients? What will happen? So, what we did multiple times is we had like three to five different visuals and then we had one short-form copy and one long-form copy. And whatever we did, whatever we promoted, long-form copy always performed better than short-form copy. And like I said, I’ve literally done hundreds of experiments like that, but long-form copy always outperformed the short-form one. So, what I would really encourage all the listeners to do is do the same thing.

So, even if you have one image or two images, when you’re launching your next campaign, create two sets of copy, one being a very short one, let’s say up to three sentences, that’s it, maybe five and the second on being a very long one. So, multiple paragraphs, just break it down. Don’t just write one long paragraph, but break that down into multiple paragraphs and run that ad copy. It can be very salesy. So, with my clients, whenever we promote their services or whenever we promote their products, our copy is very salesy. It’s sales page like. It’s a long, long-form, but it works really, really well. Make sure to include a strong call to action at the bottom.

Literally, say to them what you want your users, your audience to do and I assure you that is going to perform a lot better than a short-form one. But in terms of visuals, so your question before we started talking about the copy, what I would really recommend, especially to Real Estate Agents, is just to start using video. You don’t need a lot. All you need to do that successfully is your mobile phone which has a camera. And what I would do is when you’re promoting a new house or a new home or a new apartment, just go there, take a short video, walk through the apartment, walk through the house and then advertise that. It’s going to be a lot more engaging than a traditional image or a traditional design with, I don’t know, let’s a house or something like that on the image because people will literally watch that video and kind of feel themselves be right there in that apartment, in that house. So that’s one thing that I definitely recommend trying.

Jonathan: And also, I’m going to expand on that because I think you’re totally correct on that. Placing that video, is it real sign to Facebook that it’s a possibility that’s an advert that’s going to get some real engagement so the actual cost in the auction is going down by just the fact that you’ve got a video?

Mojca: Oh, yeah. Videos tend to outperform images in every single way. Whenever we, again, we did hundreds of experiments and video outperformed every single time. It’s the content that Facebook also wants to promote a little bit more because they do want to compete with YouTube and they do want to become a video platform and they’re doing everything in their power in order to become that. So now, just recently, they introduced this feature called Watchlist. It’s similar to YouTube. So whenever you see a video that you want to watch but you don’t have the time to watch right there and then, you just click Save to Watchlist and you have a Watchlist full of videos that you can watch. They have a separate video page nowadays where you can browse through different videos on Facebook and choose what you want to watch in that moment. So, Facebook is promoting that content a lot more. It is cheaper to use a video in your ads than to use an image.

Jonathan: Just a quick scenario. Let’s say you’re a Real Estate and you’ve got a property for sale that’s really in your target niche. Either that niche is controlled by are or by the type of person that’s selling the property. So you’re representing them. So you do a quick video and then you say set up a landing page and you have a lead magnet that, let’s say, gives you the 10 Tips for Preparing Your House if you’re thinking of selling. Is that a good set up? So, you’ve got that quick video, you’ve got some text and then you’ve got that landing page with that lead magnet. Is that something you would recommend still to people?

Mojca: Yeah. That’s a great point. So lead magnets will work very, very well on Facebook, especially when using an objective called Lead Ads and that a special objective where Facebook doesn’t need to visit. You don’t even need a landing page to collect a lead. But all they need to do is they click sign up in their Newsfeed and kind of confirm their email, that’s already automatically collected by Facebook through the email they signed with on Facebook. So they just make a couple of clicks and you automatically collect lead even if you don’t have a landing page. So you don’t need a landing page to do that. And I would definitely recommend using that approach themselves because it’s really easy to set up and it’s really, really effective. You can get leads like up to $4, if it’s a good campaign or even less than that if it’s really, really, if you used really good targeting and good ad copy and so on. So, absolutely I would recommend that approach.

Jonathan: Well, actually, if you’re up to staying with us for another 10 minutes, I’d like to delve into that specific area after we finish the podcast part of the show, which listeners and viewers, you’ll be able to see it on the Mail-Right website, the whole interview. But for now, because you’re offering, you’ve got a great offer for the listeners and viewers and also, I want to give you the opportunity because you’ve got some great new courses around. Everything we’ve just discussed that you’re offering and I highly recommend that you take one of Mojca’s courses because she really knows her stuff. So, did you want to give us some info about what your, latest course and what you’re offing to the Mail-Right listeners?

Mojca: Yeah, absolutely. So recently, I launched a course called The Science of Facebook Ads because everything that we talked about today is basically Science. All the targeting aspect and location targeting and audiences and custom audiences is all just pretty much Scientific things that we are talking about and everything that we talked today is included in the course as well. So everything to setting up a lead ad to setting up Lookalike audiences and how to effectively do that, how to effectively design your ad, how to edit the videos for your ad and so on. And I’m offering all of the listeners 50 percent off for my email course and you can find my, not email course, video course. And you can find that video course on thescienceoffacebookads.com. The coupon code is Mail-Right and I’m going to actually send you, after we do this, I’m going to send you the specific links to that discount as well so you can include them in the show notes. So, if you want to check that out too after the podcast, that would be great.

Jonathan: That’s a great offer and I highly recommend it to my listeners and viewers. That’s very generous of you. I really appreciate you doing that. So, if people want to find out more about you, in general, what’s the best ways of doing that basically?

Mojca: Absolutely. What I would encourage every single listener to do if they had any questions, if they’re in need of advice, if they don’t know if they set custom audiences up right or Lookalike audiences, they can email me at mojca, so that’s M – O – J – C – A@superspicemedia.com or they can visit superspicemedia.com and read any of my articles that I have there or reach out to me on Twitter @mojcamars, so that’s M – O – J – C – A – M – A – R – S. I’m replying to each and every email that comes into my inbox. Sometimes it takes me a few days to reply, but I definitely get back to every single person.

Jonathan: Thanks for that Mojca. You’ve been a champ with my terrible pronunciation of your Christian name. You’re used to it now.

Mojca: I’m having a lot of fun listening to that actually.

Jonathan: So, we’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show, but we’re going to continue the discussion afterward for about 10 minutes. We’ll be back next week. Hopefully, we’re going to be talking to an experienced Real Estate Agent about what’s been successful for them on their online marketing campaigns and hopefully, my co-host Robert will be back and we’ll be having a great discussion. And we’ll see you next week folks. Thanks a lot. Bye.

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