Build an Audience with Personalization

Real Estate Marketing Dude

Today we are looking at how to stand out. There's a lot of ways but none of them work unless you have authenticity. How can you communicate with personalization and authenticity? Let's find out.

Jesse Stein is a experienced tech entrepreneur, having founded Audience.co, SportsMemorabilia.com, Triton Academy, DietSpotlight.com and more.

Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Learn how handwritten notes reach your audience.
• How do you get people's attention?
• Authenticity always works best.

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Transcript:

So how do you track new business, you constantly don't have to chase it. Hi, I'm Mike Cuevas to real estate marketing. And this podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust and most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living. It's your job to remind them. Let's get started.

What's up, ladies and gentlemen, welcome another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. That's what we're gonna be talking about today is standing out and being a little bit different. And our guest today, actually, I can pitch to be on the show all the time, like people are always gonna be on the show. Most people want to sell their shit. But this dude actually sent me an video specifically to me via email, which got my attention, which then we're talking now and we're on the show, because otherwise I wouldn't have looked at it. And it was how he was communicating with me that really got my attention. And I'm like, Oh, shit, this is great. But guess what, he did it on a video. A lot of people send pitches here all the time. And okay, we'll do it through text based email. And then it's the same thing. It's almost like you feel it. It's a regurgitated copy and paste email from some kind of podcast booking agency that always reaches out to me and says, Oh, I have a new guest for you, blah, blah, blah, I'm like, your This isn't authentic. It's Bs, and most of them I delete. But this dude gets a does a video, even trust me by first name, because Hey, Mike, I know, I really want to get on your podcast I've shown us he walked me through his product and all the stuff that he has in his place. And it was engaging. And because he did that, I was like, dude, let's do that show. Otherwise, we might not have done the show. So what we're gonna be chatting about today, is that how do you get people's attention that are trying to stick out? And how do you do that in marketing? How do you do that in real estate? Through digital through direct mail, personalized direct mail, but at the end of the day, here's what works guys. I don't care what the hell you're doing authenticity, authenticity, people feeling like you're one on one communication, people feeling like you're just the only one they're gonna get attention to. So that's exactly we're gonna chat about. So without further ado, I want to introduce the CEO of audience.co. Mr. Jesse Stein. How're you doing, buddy? Great. Thanks for having me. Mike. You want to tell everyone a little quick intro? Who are you? What do you do? What is audience and I got all kinds of questions for you. Yeah, so I started audience bout four years ago, we've been selling in earnest for two years we've got now 1000s of real estate agents on the platform. I started a company called sports memorabilia.com. I bought that as a raw domain in 2005. And with a team of people eminently smarter and more talented than me, which is a common theme in my career. We built it into the biggest autograph store on the internet, a top 500 internet retailer ended up selling it to fanatics. But one of the ways we grew it was through handwritten notes. And we sent handwritten notes to customers. And we realized that the clients that received notes, spent more money with us left better reviews, referred more business, they were easier to deal with. There's just a virtuous circle to sending handwritten notes. But there was no scale to the process, because we were having contractors, people in our warehouse assistants writing the notes, so there was no scale, the handwriting was often terracing. And there was no way to run campaigns, there was no way to really follow up and figure out, you know, when was the last time I sent to notes, a trigger note to and so forth. So I was kind of waiting for someone to do it. And all I kept getting in my physical mailbox, were notes that pretended to look handwritten, but really weren't. I'm sure all of us have received those notes. And I just noticed that the mail that was arriving into my physical mailbox was not making it to my kitchen counter consistently. So we went out, I hired a software engineering team. And we built this incredible software. And we have these amazing robots. And what we did was because of my backgrounds in digital marketing, I got started in digital marketing in 99. Actually, that's when I started my first online retailer, and learn how to build sales funnels and websites and learn how to buy online media and all that way back in the early 2000s. And have built that over time. So I always knew that audience would be a combination of handwritten notes with digital marketing follow up, because when you send the note, that's great. But now you need to follow the user journey, right? You need to follow that prospect on his or her journey from the note all the way through to online so from the mailbox to the inbox, and so what we've built

Is this company where we've optimized every facet of the note itself. So it's on a fixed stock card, it's a bifold. Note, what we do is we create a beautiful graphic for the front of the note, we have a whole graphics team all unique graphics, what we do is optimize for the chances that people will keep and display the note because that homeowner probably isn't interested in listing his role right then and there. But when they are your top of mind, and the key is to get them to keep it that's why we do a bifold. Note, every character of every note we do is written with a real pen by our handwriting robots that use the same pressure slant and flow as a human. They write in 15 Different fonts, they're super cool to look at. They vary up the left and right margins, they even do synonym replacement. So two neighbors in a building or block can hold up notes they got from us. And they look totally different. We do totally different graphics. So what happens is, and we even do a QR code sticker directly on the note. So what happens is it's all trackable. So people reflexively, because of COVID menus, they reflexively take up their phones, and they scan the QR code. And they don't even need to reach out to you. And it can go to a landing page of your of your choice. But what happens is, you the client, the real estate agent get pinged automatically when they scan it. And then what we do this is magic, we find all the accurate email addresses and social handles of everyone we send notes to, and then directly inside our app, it's as easy as clicking and you follow up by email, you follow up and connect with them on LinkedIn, and Instagram and everyone where else everyone knows marketing in 2023 is integrated multichannel. So you can't just do stuff in a vacuum. And so I saw our competitors out there, before I started the company, I saw that they were just doing the notes. And you know, they were naming the company is really old school things that had to do with, you know, handwriting and addresses and stuff. And I never saw it that way. I just see this as an outbound marketing platform. That's why we named it audience. And we also have beautiful maps feature where you can go right in, you can put an address in, and then you can do circle prospecting. And so we automatically detect, when you list or sell a home, we trigger an email to you click, and then you can find all the properties right around this home. So right now I just happen to be on the maps feature. And we found 309 properties around this property and Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and it's as easy as clicking twice. And then you trigger just listed just sold mailers in the form of handwritten notes to everybody around the property you just listed or sold. So we're about two and a half times the cost of printed direct mail. But we're about eight times the response just in the first 30 days. And then the half life on the ROI is really long, because people keep a display and what I mean by that is the agent will get we've worked with so many agents now and there's no no wonder that folks like Chris Heller are investors, Tom ferries an investor, we have all these super happy clients, you can go to audience.co Check out all the all the testimonials. But it's really you know, you talked about it earlier, Mike, it's about being consistently useful and adding value and developing expertise, authority and trust. So a lot of the note templates, we will hold template library, because we've sent millions and millions of notes. They're all about building expertise, offering offering analysis about the market. It's not our notes are not sell, sell, sell. It's delayed gratification. We're working with top agents who are not dabbling in real estate. They're not tau dippers, it's not a hobby. We're working with folks for whom real estate is a career. And so it's all about building that incredible foundation using the notes. And then the digital handshake of crossing over into digital. And it works like a charm. I love it. Suppose we talked about direct mail, my blog last week was about direct mail. So let's unpack this really quick. And let me tell you why it works. First off is i No one's in the mailbox anymore. That's why I want to be there. And he's talking about this from a cold lead generation perspective, which is great when I see it as as a warm, nurturing perspective, too. Because anytime you go handwritten, people know you went out of your way to go with it. Even if it's a machine do it. They don't know that but we do know the fake machines with the fake blue ink. And people know that that cats out of the bag now. So it's about it's no differently when you guys are on the show. And I tell you about video. No one listens to the content that comes out of the video, but they remember how you did the video. And this is the same exact concept, right? So you could get all kinds of different notes but only one of them are handwritten. So it's about sticking out

but more. So I like to personalization quite a lot, quite a bit.

Makes a lot of sense. Now, people do save direct mail guys, I used to put my cartoon logo on my direct mail and the old people always save that, which is how we used to chase distressed properties. Back in the day, we used to chase development ops, and I put my little cartoon character at the top and everyone knows like, there's some suit different about this thing. I'm like, I know what the fuck it is. It's my cartoons. Everyone else has been professional. I'm sticking out with a cartoon character. And there's got to be that one thing that makes a difference. Sometimes it's the way you do things that people react to them, not what you do. All right? Personalization. This is no different than than being funny on video. Well, you're being authentic on direct mail. It's direct mail super effective. We have a whole suite of it in referral suite for that reason. But let's get into this. I liked the combo, but I want to unpack the direct mail first. So from a lead generation perspective, and when you're sending letters out to cold people you don't know, right? And if direct mail farming still works today, guys, yes, it takes a lot longer to use. But if you were to personalize your direct mail farming, my guess would be that you would increase your ROI quite a bit, because you're gonna get a lot more reaction to it. Is that basically what you're saying? Yeah, the handwritten notes? And how many do I have to send as a next question? Yeah, great question. So let me unpack that. So with respect to farming versus leaving, versus sphere nurture, so we do a lot of both. So agents all the time send over their sphere. And then we create a whole sphere nurture sequence. And we've even taught the handwriting robots, how to create beautiful, original line drawings. And so on the birthday, for example, I'm holding up a card right now a beautiful line drawing, we can create birthday gifts for folks in your sphere, we can create closing gifts, of course that are much more special than sending that candle or that bottle of champagne. Or the gift card. The gift card is the worst closing gift ever give you never give someone a gift that they could spend and forget about you give them a gift that they'll remember and put in their house every time they pass by it, they subliminally think of your name. Don't buy any more gift cards. Yeah, we automatically trigger on Line Draw original line drawings of the house that they just purchased. That's, that goes to them, for example. So we do a lot of sphere nurture. And we do a lot of geographic farming in terms of average notes per month, clients send roughly 300 notes a month, and they hit each household every other month. Now here's the key. Before we trigger a single note on behalf of clients, we laser target the leads. So we have a proprietary targeting database as well with 200 Plus filters. And so clients come in either just stunned because they come in and they just assume that they're all households are created equal, not at all for us, we take out a scalpel and get totally surgical with the lead generation. So they might say, You know what, I like this golf club course, but club that I only want properties on the course itself, owner age 50 plus equity level 30% Plus, want it so the COO was issued at least seven years ago. So we maximize the chances that that thing is going to be listed. And by the way, our platform is all around driving listings, of course, buyers result too. But everyone knows that he or she that lists persists. So this is all about listings. And then so we said it's kind of like three legs of the stool, you've got the targeting database. So we laser target the leads, and then you have the notes. And then you have the digital marketing follow up. And we've added a fourth leg, which is super cool. And so inside of the app that all of our clients get, you've got all that real time QR code alerts are in there. But also we've added something called Marketing growth engine, which is basically my 25 years of digital marketing background, the distilled reduction sauce of that. And what is it, it's a bunch of original content that is written specifically in the age of chat GPT because everybody can create anyone can create AI based content. These days, we've been using AI to create 10s of 1000s of articles across multiple websites for years now for two years, actually. And so we are able to create, let's say your real estate agent in San Diego, we populate your account with incredible articles with original photos and all you do is copy you click on the link we even include SEO attributes such as meta title, meta description, we even include answers on popular question and answer websites like Quora. So someone might be asking, What should I know before moving to San Diego? Well, you need to be the person to answer that. And so all you do is you go into our app, you copy

If you click on a link, it takes you directly to Quora, you click on respond, you paste and you post. It's as easy as that. And so and then we even include training. And this all comes with the product. And so we've got tons of training. For example, we did a whole objection handling masterclass with Chris Heller, who was, as many people know, the former CEO of Keller Williams, he was their number one agent worldwide. And he won the national objection handling contest. Well, nobody's ever captured content with Chris, at this level, there's drips and drabs of, you know, wonderful podcasts with people like you might, but no one's ever broken it down this way. And so we do that we have amazing content with top agents. And then I reveal all my hacks, anything you didn't know about skyrocketing growth on tick tock or SEO or email marketing, or how to drive more reviews, it's all in there. We also have a private Facebook group, and I do multiple webinars. So it's an integrated marketing platform. So let's get into the digital. You guys heard about the product, if you're interested in you can look them up after this. But I'm more interested in seeing how the digital ties in with the direct mail in this pace. And then I got a couple of other questions before that.

So why does

the

compare it to, to me I would like to see like seller distress data in here. So we have a mutual friend named Dustin my business partner before we got on the show here. And you know, he's all about distressed data, right? That's what we do we create seller distressed leads to and

I know these guys want to hear you said, Why would I send? I would go after like I look at this a seller lead gen 100% direct mail. There's a reason why investors still use direct mail because it works. The reason Realtors don't do is because it's expensive. But the reality is, is that people save these and people do save them in direct mail touch on the first instance is a great touch to break in the door of a distressed seller. So

why is that though?

Yeah, well, it also depends on the piece like, it's gonna get open, if it has an envelope like ours with real handwriting and a real 62 cent first class postage stamp. So people, homeowners have antenna behind antenna, they pick up on when something feels spammy. And so even if it's a pre canceled stamp, or they can tell the handwriting is not quite right, or the envelopes too big, we've optimized everything, because I come from a world of digital marketing. So everything's an AV test. So we've opted, so if that distressed seller is receiving a bunch of mail, because of course, I mean, that distressed seller is known throughout the during direct mail world, and is going to get tons and tons deluge of mail, the one that's going to stand out is going to be the envelope, and then they're going to open. So that'll make it to the kitchen counter. But when you open it, it's got to be a fixed stock card, it's got to have a graphic on the front that they want to keep. And the mistake that a lot of direct mailers make is they don't make the piece a keepsake. And you have to be very thoughtful about the user experience. And so once that piece makes it from the physical mailbox into their kitchen counter, how do you optimize for the chances that they'll keep a display? Well, the experience has to be fixed doc note and then never put an image of yourself or a logo on the actual comma. What about a business card? A business card feat it can be good but it can feel salesy. Yeah, in our experience AB testing that it actually performs a little bit worse to put a business card for any type of insert. The Insert vibe is that this is mass produced. And so you want to add a logo, nobody wants a logo or a photo of a stranger on their kitchen counter on their home office desk or on their mantel or on their fridge. And so the name of the game is getting them to keep it because that distressed seller otherwise will chuck it in the trash and forget about you. So what we've done is we've created these beautiful graphics, we have these huge, incredible digital presses that print in high definition, these gorgeous graphics. That's what people keep and display and it feels less salesy. The vibe is that they went out and they bought the you know, they went to a little art store and they bought a little card and then went to a Starbucks and ordered a you know, a venti peppermint tea and wrote a bunch of notes. Then what you need to do, the mistake a lot of direct mailers make is they don't create a piece that is easy to display. And so it might just be a single card or whatnot. We do a bifold note and it's exactly the size where it invites you to keep and display it. The thing ends up on the

that you encounter, you end up being top of mind, no matter what. And so we've really that distressed seller and in the name of the game, of course, is working with someone that has a robust real time database of all those distressed sellers, you can target anything you can target pre foreclosures, foreclosures, or rental leads that are ready to cash out fizz bows, whatever you want, and our targeting database allows you to do that. So let me unpack that really quick for you guys. The

your envelope is just like your subject line on an email is a good analogy. I guess. If you have real estate market update, I'm unsubscribing from your bullshit. If you have, you know, something like, Hey, your house lost value, I'm opening that up, like the subject line on an email is 40% of the battle on an email. So the subject line, the lettering and the envelope of your direct mail is exactly the same equivalent. Because he's right as like, what's happens is you get all the credit, the credit card companies are perfect example of this, I get offers every day, and I never even opened up the envelope I tear them off, because I know it's a credit card offer. So if your envelopes aren't getting open, people can't see the handwriting. But when you make it feel authentic, I'm always like, is this an invite someone getting married is Who's this from like someone saying thank you like, you're gonna get the attention, right. And you got to remember what direct mail guys, you get a 100% receivership rate that's unlike any other channel, you if you post on Facebook, you're only getting about a 15 18% reach organically. When you post out on emails, you only get a 13% open rate or organically traditionally on emails. But when you do direct mail, you get a 100% Unless you have the wrong address, which you'll know because it'll get returned to you. So

this is your opportunity to get 100% in front of 100% of people you're trying to reach. And that's why you only get one impression like so you got to think of it from you're going on a first date, you're not going to show up in your pajamas, you're going to dress up right. So it's the exact same concept here, you got to get your foot in the door before you can sell your shit. And the first way you do that is subliminally my guess is what's happening here with these people who receive these mailers like, oh shit, this guy actually went went out of their way to do this for me. So let me take this a little bit more seriously, is that accurate? I absolutely. And let me just add to that if I could. So there can't be any bait and switch of any sort along the way it has to be, you have to deliver on the prompt just like a subject line or a thumbnail on a YouTube video, it has to deliver on that promise. So when they open it, you need to deliver something of value. And so you can a lot of our clients, what they do is create a landing page, a YouTube video, it could be often where they will talk about the market, they'll say thank you for scanning my note, my name is such and such. And I live in your neighborhood and I'm third generation Carolina in or whatever. And so it's like really personalizing it, making sure you add value. And then here's a little secret. I'm not actually about the handwritten note on the QR code on the QR code.

What is the Have you seen any difference in response rate to the older generation like people 65? Plus, do they get QR codes? Do they understand how to use them and all that? Previous to COVID? No. But because of COVID Everyone got used to QR code and interesting. That'd be my friend. Everyone has everyone. Everyone has a smartphone. I mean, everyone has a smartphone no matter what generation now. And they just everyone knows how to open up a camera. So it works. It works really well. And here's a little secret is the handwritten note is awesome. It works great on its own. It performs that eight times we've done a lot of AV testing the handwritten note and the way we engineer it, in particular performance beat times better than printed direct mail. But to really get maximum ROI, you use the note as a Trojan horse. So now it's all about evoking reciprocity, right? Where if you've read books on persuasion, it's not the need for human to give back if they've received something is actually irrationally high. So by sending that note, you can sit really high in the saddle, as a real estate agent. And this is the secret is you can you've taken that audience and you've warmed it up now, which is a marketer's Holy Grail. And that's why I named the company audience. It's about taking a cold audience and warming up that audience. Once you have a warm audience, then when you send a cold email, for example, and we supply all the email addresses, not only the primary owners, but if there's a secondary owner we find that email address to then you follow up there's a 12% response rate, on average, not not open rate response rate on a cold email because we do a magic subject line which says Did you receive

If my handwritten No, then we use AI to create a long email, it's personalized. And it even mentions their address in there, it mentions their neighbors addresses in the email. So that gets a crazy high response rate, then we give you the social handles. So you connect by social. So what what our platform does and what a lot of real estate agents tell us is, it opened the door for them to easily and automatically get good, really good at follow up in digital market. And the note with the door opener, in fact, there are agents that tell us that they were they really dislike door knocking a lot of agents just like door knocking. I don't I don't

blame them in the slightest. Once you send the note though, the door knocking is so much easier they answer. And then it's never about selling. It's about hey, I sent I've sent you a couple of handwritten notes, I fear I'm sending them to the wrong address just confirming that you receive them. So that works like a charm. And for so once you send your direct mail, you have a list and now you're targeting the same people on social are you doing this through the cell phone and email address custom audiences uploads, like on Facebook? And what kind of digital activities are we doing here? Yeah, so always be aware of any company that is supplying phone numbers to you at scale, because in this climate of privacy, they should not be doing that. And they could get you in a lot of trouble. If you then load those up into a dialer and go nuts on calling home cold homeowners. And it also depends on your state. Obviously certainly don't don't text a cold homeowner, you can get into big trouble that last year a cash buyer you have to be the principal in the transaction then you could solicit but what he's saying you could get in a lot of trouble realtors that are cold calling or whatnot, cold calling or tax, you cannot interact unless you're a direct principal, you cannot represent anyone unless you're direct principal. But if you're the cash buyer yourself, and you're legit, you could cold call them. But that's a you can't do it regularly. So this is a good way around that. But further to your question, Mike about creating custom audiences in Facebook, for example. So what we do then, is we I do these webinars, and we have this training videos that teach you exactly how to eat all the meat of the marketing bones in a very easy way requires very little effort. So we give you all the emails I was mentioning of the primary and secondary owners, you take those. And for example, we have integrations with folks like follow up boss and others that you can literally export them directly out of our app. And then you can use those to create custom audiences inside of Facebook. And then all of a sudden, we train you on how to even go to sites like upwork.com and hire someone to create your Facebook ads and go to Facebook ad library and kind of take a look at your competitors. Very easy stuff. What's the ad is a video.

It's like the retargeting ad like I would I would probably put up picking, like I put my face on it 100% For sure, for sure. So it's an introduction video, and then they're like, it should be the same video that you just did for the landing page off of the QR code off of your notes. So it's all consistent. So now look what's happening, the homeowners that were ice cold before audience, they're getting your notes consistently. And you want to make sure you send a note every two months. And you want to be very, very consistent in that you stop. I mean, we know that out of the 1000 or so households that we're hitting with audience notes that there will be people who list we don't know who's going to list. So therefore you have to stay top of mind consistently. And the worst feeling for an agent is when someone from their database lists with one of their top competitors. I mean, it's the silliest so with audience, you need to be consistent. And that consistency allows you to then follow up, then you take all those email addresses and guess what, import them directly into your newsletter marketing platform. So if you use MailChimp or your brokerage platform or Active Campaign or Constant Contact or whatever, upload them and then there's starting to get your email newsletters, it's all about consistency and familiarity, which breed trust. So it's never about just one thing. It's never about just the note or the email marketing or the Facebook. It's everything we all know it takes multiple multiple touches. Jay, kinder, you know, I was chatting with him. He's incredible. And I asked him, I said, Scott, what do you do so well, Jamie's one of the top agents in the country raising raising coach and everything else. And he said, Well, I like to think of myself as the Incredible Hulk stomping around in a puddle. I said, Okay, great, great image. What does that mean? And he said, people cannot miss me because I'm everywhere. I'm on bus benches. I'm an email. I send your handwritten notes. I do everything and so that's that's kind of the whole point with this integrated marketing

platform here at audience sounding familiar, folks, we chat about this every week on the show you there is no one thing as a one channel

person anymore. You got to be mom omnipresent. You got to be everywhere.

And people, it's a busy world. You know, at the end of the day, this is people given to the one that gives you the most and for real estate, over 80% of people will close with the first person they meet with, you increase your chances of that happening, the more they see you, right. And the reason why this, like what he's seen here is like just direct mail farming, it still works today. It's been around since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. But generally, if you're just taking regular postcard campaign, year one, you'd hit one to three listings, your two is three to five, year three is five to seven. That's a traditional farming campaign, but it's if you take a break at all during those 36 months, you just screwed up the whole campaign. Okay? You cannot. It's almost like, like, you can't leave in the middle of a dinner on a first date. That's the same fucking concept, right? You can't just submit Oh, I gotta go art by Alright, sorry, you don't get a second date. There's, there's no difference with this. Like, if you don't plan on being consistent in anything, it's not going to work. And I would even put this more in the marketing versus advertising category. This is all attraction based like something like this, you could see the ROI is going to come but you don't know when it's going to come. Right but when I'm buying Zillow leads realtor.com Either make money or I don't make money in that term, or in that timeframe of that I have that lead account. So this is definitely the long game. You have to be doing it consistently all the time. I love the digital marketing approach on top of this is how we're doing with all of our brands. We create organic content and we overlay that Reatta contact with our ads and then that's what's working the best real it's like we give value in the people who consume our content. Another way to look at content marketing I like to explain it as the Think of the play action in football for all you dudes out there. We're watch the Super Bowl this weekend right? You hand off you hand off you hand off only to set up to pass right otherwise the play action is not even a thing is it well it's so differently in here you add value you got direct mail every two months direct mail direct mail oh there isn't social. Oh, he's gonna email Oh shit. Fuck this motherfuckers everywhere. Where the flux is guy coming from he must be the best. That's positioning and authority with content that's how powerful that can be. And even if you do this, and you've never sold a house before the people on the receiving end of this content think you're fucking Rockstar.

Yeah, that's the difference is like with brand authority, personalization content putting yourself out there. I can make you think I'm a chef. If I want seven days seven videos, watch them You think I'm a chef. That's how powerful branding and positioning can be guys. I love the omnipresent makes sense. makes common sense to me and unfortunately, we've lost a lot of that in the real estate industry.

Dude, this is relationship building 101 Is this I'm looking at this as the dating process. I think people understand this when when I walked through the analogy is that note is my like, that's my swipe right?

If that's even how that works, right? Oh, fuck. Who is this person? Yeah. Oh, then the emails are my, my my Tapper. Like, I don't know, I don't know how the DD analogies work or the platforms but it's like that's the same concept guys. The problem everybody has is that we're like hey, do you want to go buy and sell your house that's usually how an agent circle prospects they go hey, I'm a real estate agent with a big block Realty and what we're gonna be doing or sorry Hey, I'm a real estate big block Realty and I really like your house. I have a buyer. No you don't you're lying out of your ass who may be interested in buying your house. That should is tired guys. It's so old school.

I don't know why the Guru's still teach it but I'm pretty sure it's it's all they know. Things have changed. And you do have to earn business today. And people have options. Fortunately, most of them think real estate's a commodity business. And for the most part, it is the one who stands out as the one who wins in whichever way that is direct mail video.

However, maybe, but whatever it is, you gotta be consistent. Otherwise, it doesn't work. Yeah, and it works especially well in this market. So people ask us, Well, you know, how is the current climate of rising interest rates and

slowing real estate market and in many areas, how's that affected us? And we say well actually have the opposite effect, because it's gotten rid of a lot of the riffraff so there's a lot of the agents that were just dabbling, or just toe dippers. They've pulled back on their marketing

agents, we work with that plot a plot 180 degree role when everyone else is pulling back, like you know, eight 910. They just stomp on the accelerator harder. You take market share, in a reckless way. They invest on they don't they're careful about expenses, but audience is not an expense. It's an investment. And so it's about digging your well before you're thirsty. And then what happens just like an O H just look at these market cycles.

is once you the ones that invested and applied the 180 degree rule, they come out way stronger than it already. I just did this earlier today on a training, it happened twice in the last two years. It happened right after COVID Most of the agents went MIA. And that's why so many social media celebrities were born. they've doubled down on marketing. I called it at the time, I said, Look, whoever's gonna be super loud here is gonna fucking be a millionaire. It happened. And then it happened again, when the rates change. Last April, everyone went, everyone stopped. Like I tell you guys, I just said, I just had this like I have, we lost half of our video clients. And both of those situations. And the ones that we kept fucking dominated. The ones that dropped honestly, like, a lot of them are still struggling. We had a transaction coordinator, tied to one of my trainings today. I've known her for a couple years, but um, I bring her on and I asked her a question. She goes, Hey, Mike, oh, my God. She's associate he's a transaction coordinator. So she gets business from real estate agents. And she had some life situations happen husband, and she like that. She went quiet for three months. All right, no one's seen her for three months, and all sudden, she just started creating again. And when she wouldn't cry it she gets up today. And she goes, Hey, Mike. Yeah, business just got crushed in the last three months. But it wasn't until I started getting back doing videos consistently doing this again. And now I just picked up six more agents. When you're out of sight out of mind, you cannot afford to not you cannot afford to run a business and be out of sight. And in this recessionary environment, we'll see what happens if it comes back or not. This is where you got to take market share, man. Yes, it sucks. It's scary. But dude, he just told you the exact same thing I've been telling you for last eight months on this show. And we've never even met before. And I'm telling you case, study after case study after case study after case study after case study. When shit goes bad, you double down? Not disappear. Yeah, yeah, we think exactly the same. And, yeah, I mean, there's, here's what happens when you pause, like you mentioned with that with that woman, when you pause your marketing, and you just decide, okay, I'm gonna see what happens. Let's see where the chips fall based on all this marketing I've done today, you actually send the opposite signal. So you send a signal that either you're not interested to sellers, for example, you send a signal that you're not interested in their neighborhood, you're not interested in their business, or worse that you've gotten out of the business altogether. Like you say, you're out of sight out of mind, you're now a tree falling in the forest that no one ever hears. And in fact, it's even worse, because guess what happens? You've pumped up the bicycle tire, so another agent can take a ride. So now another agent can come in there with similar marketing and people get homeowners get confused. Was it that agent? Was it the other agent? I don't know? And then on to say, was it the guy wearing the tie? Or was it the guy wearing the tie? I don't know which one it was, I gotta go with the guy wearing the tie. Air. Here's how a lot of you are going to be like, hey, what if I'm being annoying? I don't want I don't want to annoy people listen to if you believe you're the right person for the job, it becomes your obligation to let the world know for it anything less. You're a shady dude.

If you're not the right person for the job, and you're in the wrong fucking business, go get a new job. Like that's what it comes down to. So when people tell us that same thing, like with video, I'm being annoying. No, what's annoying is when those people start cheating on you with another real estate agent. And it's not their fault that they forgot you're in real estate. It's your fault. You didn't remind them. And it's a big difference, like consistency. And marketing is the only thing that works. It always works over time. Yeah, you can make tweaks and all that. But look at the concept that he's talking about. Look at the concept. I talked about every frickin week on the show. And it's the same thing guys. Like, don't overthink, this isn't rocket science. People give in to the one they see the most whether that's direct mail, video, email, whatever it is the person who's all out there billboards and all that. There's a reason why those people are always the top agents in those markets like you don't, they don't it's not an accident. You're like, oh, is video gonna work for me? Well, have you ever seen an hour work for anyone? I don't know anyone who had video that consistently that isn't like successful. I don't know anyone's doing direct mail consistently that isn't successful. I don't know anyone that's working out consistently that isn't in shape.

Like, dude, don't overthink this stuff. Guys. You're running a damn business. You're not a salesperson chasing a check. Your broker ain't gonna make you money, you're gonna make money. Your broker is just going to collect extra money that you make on them. Worst thing you could do firms make more money.

No one's gonna save you in this business. You have to save yourself and your face, whether you like it or not. You're that's the brand, your body, your shirt, whatever the hell it is. And if that's not front center, and being the center of all conversation, you're missing the point.

That's a great point. A quick anecdote related to what you just said. So there's an agent named David citizens here in Miami in South Florida. He's one of the top agents nationwide. You can look him up. I think he's ranked number 96. Now nationwide, he did $600 million in volume last year. He would be forgiven for not

door knocking and for not you hustling to an extreme. Well, a couple days ago, I was on the phone with him. And I've heard him outside. He's a very, very happy audience Klein. In fact, he's even an audience investor. And I said, Dude, what are you doing? Are you going for a walk? And he said, No, I'm actually going door to door and hand delivering brownies with a beautiful ribbon, and my wife tied on it with the Davidsons logo on it. I said the only two people that you know, he goes, No, no cold homeowners. So here's a guy, you can calculate his GCI and get a sense for how much money he made last year talk about somebody not resting on his laurels. So exactly what Mike said about consistent, persistent, that wins the day. Yep. Just podcast, you guys. We got 1.5 million downloads. I never advertised it. I never marketed it. You guys come here. We're doing 30 35,000 downloads a month. Thank you guys, please keep sharing it out. But it's because I was consistent. Right? So we're practicing what we preach here, you guys, you have to just focus on one thing, and no, it's not going to happen overnight.

No, you're not going to get rich in six months. But what you will do is you start to build a stream of consistency. And when the consistency occurs, the peaks and valleys goes away. And all of a sudden, this stressful business that you once dreamed of becomes fun again, don't overthink it, I just want you to give him some closing thoughts on where they can find you. And we'll get this wrap.

Yeah,

I mean, just one thing that I'd like to leave on is this sort of zooming out a little bit, and to make sure that you never, ever build your business on rented land. And let me at this is echoing a lot of what Mike talks about in his podcast. But a lot of agents will just develop out the page on their brokers website without creating their own website with original content, much less a podcast like Mike has done, you want to make sure that you are building a business that is completely independent of your brokerage. And by the way, your brokers love this because Keller, whomever, they love ambitious agents who are creating hundreds of articles, and podcasting, and you know, just all over the place speaking at events, and networking, and so forth. But also, this allows you to have a lot more autonomy and freedom, longer term. And if you are making this career, make sure you don't build your business on rented land. Same thing in digital marketing, right? digital marketers know that you cannot build your business around the big Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, use those platforms, absolutely play to their strengths. But build your own website, build your own content, testimonials, build all your wonderful reviews across Google My Business, learn digital marketing, develop a toolkit, you know, all the misfires I've ever had in my career, because I didn't have the right skills and tools to go out. And that's why inside of audience, you get a ton of training. So in terms of like where you can go to learn more, and it's a low pressure sale, you go to audience dot CEO, you book a demo. And the way that we approach things is we present our solution, we deliver a bunch of value, we get you some ebooks that you can take as a gameplan for doing the notes on your own if you need to, or doing digital marketing on your own. And if there's a fit, we move forward. We don't even do contracts because it works so well. And yeah, audience.co Well, man, appreciate it cool product. And thank you folks for listening to another one of our episodes. Remember what he said, you can't ever rely on a business or a cat. Don't ever put 100% of your business on a lead source you don't control. I've seen countless teams get their ass kicked. Once the market shifts, it just happened again. But whether you're relying on Zillow realtor.com, you'd be surprised at how many of these top performing teams don't really have a profit margin. They're losing or breaking even every single month. And it's not because it's just ego guys like so. If you don't have something you control, you're always at the risk of the next shift. Because what'll happen is that the second that lead source changes, so do the interactions with it. So when the market changed, Zillow leads weren't performing what they were before. Therefore, you can never rely on them. When you create your own brand, you can always rely on it because it's your system. So hope you got a lot out of today. Feel free to go ahead and visit our site, visit my software referral suite, you want to stay in front of your database you like what you see here. Well, we'll make content creation very easily through video, email, direct mail, and social media. And if you need the video editing and all that distribution on top of that, we could do that too. So appreciate

You guys have a great, great weekend and stay tuned next week peace

Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing dude.com We make branding video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training, and then schedule time to speak with a dude and get you rolling in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcast. We'll see you next time.

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