AI Marketing Automation: What’s Hot & What’s Not | Tom Ferry Podcast Experience

So here's the thing. Entrepreneurs, leaders, salespeople, we all want to create consistent, repeatable, and scalable ways to grow our business and our income. And we want to do it better, faster, and more seamlessly. Why? So we can actually enjoy our lives, take vacations, and spend the quality time we want with the people that we love. How do we do all this without spending a fortune or running ourselves ragged? That's the big question. And this show is dedicated to the answer.

Hey, so welcome back to the show. I am really fired up today. We want to talk about what's hot, what's not in marketing, AI and automations. So as we sit here in the dog days of summer, I want to make sure that you are winning the business that you want and doing it the fastest, most effective way possible. So to help us do that, I brought in the the master row of marketing, aka Jimmy Macken, and of course, Mr. AI, also known as the professor, Jason Pantana.

So.

So, fellas, there's a lot to talk about right now in terms of what's hot and what's not. So I'm going to assume you guys know all of our listeners out there, like the person listening right now, like, they want to get better, they want to do it faster, they want to do it at a much deeper level. So why don't we just start with just broadly, Jason, what's hot, what's not to you right now in the world of AI?

Well, I don't know about what's not, but I certainly know about what's hot. There's a lot happening with AI now. Some of the trends I'm hoping we get into today is, I think, email marketing. There's a major opportunity to leverage AI in terms of scaling email marketing. Like we've never done it before. I think certainly we could get into the basics of. It's helping me write my ad copy, it's helping me manage different communications. That's. That's obvious. But I'll tell you what, some of the coolest trends I'm paying attention to right now are. The biggest trend is definitely agentic AI. You've heard the expression AI agents. I think in the real estate space, that scares us sometimes. We think, oh, is not a real estate agent, it's an agent, meaning it can autonomously perform marketing tasks while you're out showing properties, working with clients. And so I would love to be able to get into today. What are some ways that from a marketing standpoint, a systems and operations standpoint, you can put AI to work for you as if it's your employee and your business doing. Doing really effective marketing and best practices on the background for you. And then the other piece is just what's happening with video and voice. We're seeing. AI is really pushing the envelope in terms of not just making videos, but I mean, there's been some in the last week or so, there's been some massive pushes. Bytedance just put a huge generative video push out. Hey, Jen's pushing the envelope. Eleven Labs has massively improved their voice cloning ability. And I know I'm going fast for the listener right now. I'll just kind of capstone it at it's video and voice and it's cloning you, it's creating. It's just I've seen some amazingly creative Instagram reels where there are really strong opening hooks and it's completely AI generated video. So the opportunity right now in that space is huge.

Jimmy. This may be the only show, or at least when Jason's talking, that everybody goes to like 0.5 on YouTube. Everybody else, I'm always going to like 1.2515. So there's a lot to unpack there and I want to get into all of it, but I want to kick the same thing to Jimmy. Jimmy, what are you saying? That what's hot right now, what's not right now, just sort of broadly when it comes to all things marketing for agents and team leaders and lenders who want to generate more business.

Yeah. Well, I think what Jason just said, there's really important to recap. I think we're entering the phase right now where we're going from the kind of AI chatbot world to now the AI coworker world, where AI is now, like, we're starting to think of it as a part of our team that actually can run entire tasks that otherwise a human being has to do in the past. And we're at the very cusp of that where that. That's becoming a reality. What's. What's really interesting right now that I've been paying very close attention to is that if everybody on this podcast who listens to this podcast knows that marketing works, knows that if they do it more consistently, they're going to get more results. But if we uncover the reason why many of them don't do it, it's because it takes too much time and they've already got a thousand other things going on. So what's most interesting to me right now is how is AI saving marketers and people like me time when it comes to the process of researching ideas, creating ideas, testing ideas, and we're just seeing so much innovation in that space. So I think, I think this is the perfect time. I mean this is literally the perfect time when things are a little bit slower to sort of, let's, let's revisit some of the processes we have in place so we can accelerate through the fall.

You know, I was just jotting down the question which is, you know, how do we use automations to keep marketing going while we are launching three or four listings or have five or six or 10 listings active, or have two, three, four escrows going, which seems to be the most likely occurrence? You know, we, we talk about the sort of the, the vicious cycle of being poor, being rich, being poor, being rich. And we know that as I'm getting richer, right, and my funnel is starting to convert and I've got lots of things going on, that's when I marketing, that's when I stopped follow up. So Jason, I'm going to kick it to you and ask what automations exist today that could help me automate all of my marketing or at least some of my marketing to make sure that I don't have the rich poor experience, but the rich richer experience.

Yeah. So I think first to answer that question we should talk about what are the tools that are available to be used?

Correct.

And I think we have to look at what is the day in the life of a real estate professional. What is the never stop marketing, can't stop it has to do it, otherwise the lights aren't staying on. We got to pay. Correct. So to speak. So I think it's a twofold question. The first is what are the tools and tech that can enable automation? And I'm willing to take a stab in the dark and guess that a lot of the viewers and listeners are familiar with the tool called Zapier. Some call it Zapier, same difference. However you want to pronounce it, how you want to pronounce it. It's an automation tool that's been around for quite some time that allows you to effectively dais chain different apps. What makes it so remarkable is that it has connections to over 8,000 different apps anywhere from follow up boss to mailchimp to I mean you name it, you can search it. There's 8,000 different apps Monday, whatever, asana, whatever trello, whatever you're using in your systems operations, I'm willing to take a guess that it's probably available inside of Zapier. Well, the Challenge with Zapier has been creating these workflow automations is kind of tedious, takes a lot of time. They just rolled out a massive new feature that I believe is is the first step into the evolution of agentic AI. So we talked about agentic AI, that is AI agents, where if you've ever gone to the trouble of trying to create your own zap automation, something like when somebody, when I mark a deal as closed on my Monday board, then we send them this email from my Gmail, those kinds of triggers and actions between your different apps. It's tedious to set it up on Zapier, but if you use their new Zapier agents function, it's a beta or all you do is it gives you a blank text box where you just type whatever the heck you want it to do. I want when this happens, to do this and then this and then this and then this. And then instead of having to configure it manually, the AI behind it goes, okay. And so it converts your little wish into a strategic prompt, it engineers the prompt and then it automatically grabs which apps it thinks it needs. It asks you to log into those apps so that they're connected properly and then it performs all the configuration to make them do. Are they supposed to read an email or send an email? All of that happens automatically. And so your ability to go inside of Zapier and just say I want an automation for this or for this or for this is like it has never been these days now. So Zapier is really my recommendation. And some people are like, well, Zapier is a little expensive. Well, so is hiring and so is not doing marketing. I think to Jimmy's point earlier, the cost of not doing marketing is exponentially greater than the cost of a few tasks being run on Zapier. I think the second part of your question, Tom, is what are the most important aspects of marketing to be operationalized? I'm going to start with, and I want Jimmy's opinion too, but I'm going to start with anything that centers around how you promote your listings. I think in this kind of a marketplace you've got to promote your listings. That is in effect a large piece of why somebody hires you. And I know that the tendency in a marketplace where I know the markets are different around different areas, so to speak. But for the most part we're seeing a lot of folks say, I've got an increased days on market. And so I think a lot of agents mentality is sometimes, I don't mean I'm not wagging a finger, but I think there's a mentality of saying, ooh, it's going to take me a while to get my, my money back on this. And so they actually pull back the throttle on their marketing, where I think, no, this is the absolute best time in the world to put yourself on the stage that says, I can give you the spotlight for your listing. And so I think there's a massive opportunity to streamline and step up your listing marketing. And so I think that you can start looking at a tool like Zapier to figure out, well, how do we promote it on Meta, for instance, you can connect your meta ads.

Go ahead. I was just going to say so, so something crazy. I think you said this when we were in a Mastermind in Chattanooga. So I'm going to, I'll say this out loud and then you correct me. So you're saying is you're going to go to Zapier and you're going to say, go into sync or follow up boss or, you know, boomtown or whatever. You know, whatever your favorite CRM that's connected. Find every buyer that I'm currently in communication with.

Right.

Everyone that's been relatively responsive and you could, you could create whatever relatively is. I want you to extract that and all listings that I have in the mls, because Zapier is connected to the MLS in this price range that have been on the market now for up to X months. And, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, could I not say and take it one step further? Go to hey Gen, create a custom video where I say high name, fill in the name with, you know, whatever their contact information is. Hey, Jason. I was thinking about you guys the other day. Saw this new property, thought you might want to take a look at it. And technically, hey Jen. Would then create that video and send it along with the listings to the client. Yeah.

Now the one, the one clarification should be that when you're creating an automation in Zapier, there's typically a trigger and then an action. So some somebody would have to do something that trips the wire that sends the hey Gen video. But the truth is absolutely you can get.

Hold on.

And I just want, I just want to be clear. Did for my friend that's listening. Wherever you are right now, just stop and just go back through what I just said. You literally today can now go inside and say, take a look at every buyer that looks like this. Every old buyer that I want to send the magic nine words to. Have you given up on the opportunity to buy a home in 2025 and record a video of me saying that same exact thing and send it to every one of my clients to see what happens. And all of that can be done from a prompt inside Zapier effectively.

Yeah, that's the way. So again Zapier is going to be when they, if they do something that warrants sending them that message. Like you might say, hey, anybody who clicks on the email that we send out, then send them that hey Jen, follow up. There has to be a trigger, but connect effectively over 8,000 apps, anything you want. And so this is where I believe creativity comes into effect. But I would also say there was something really magical about what you just described that maybe folks are just sort of not really considering, which is in the past you use language that said hey, whenever somebody fits a basic description of a person who's into this and this and this and this and you just threw what I call the gray space AI where you told it to look for people who fit a certain description without actually telling it how to do it. Yeah. So it's ability to look at and infer oh well these people are on that list and they're tagged this inside a follow up boss, maybe they're a good fit and then do it for you just, just to maybe make this easier to grasp. One of the automations that a lot of our AI Marketing academy members are setting up right now is a support email. So it has the ability to write a prompt that says hey, whenever somebody emails this inbox, if you think they're a customer of mine looking to and they're currently selling their house, then I want you to reply based upon their and it can actually read the emails and then decide should I or shouldn't I proceed without you configuring anything? Because it used intelligence innately to figure out was this person a customer of mine? And that to me is the same as saying I'm going to hire a person to monitor my inbox. Their ability to then decide should I or shouldn't I apply common sense and then move to the next step. That to me is a wild game changer big time.

So, so Jimmy Jason said creativity is going to be the key to this. Where does your mind go in terms of these automations and how. Again that same question. If, if I'm a busy agent, I've got a lot going on and the one thing I don't have is a lot of time. But I know because I'm so busy with my listings and My open houses and you know, the four or five escrows and one deal's falling apart and it's summertime, my kids are now home. Ah, right. The first thing that I'm going to stop doing is all things follow up and all things sales and marketing. So what does that person do?

You shared a stat recently that everyone should know which is you gave a breakdown of how much money, how much available commission is there in real estate and you also broke down in that, in that, in that text where all that money's going. And we know that about between 15 to 20 billion dollars a year is spent on lead gen tools and advertising within real estate. Correct? So it's, it's in. So right now one of the best ways to get money back and time back is to get better at advertising. Being, being good at advertising is a cheat code. Now what, what has happened that everyone should know about is that there's tools that make advertising meaning like you running your own Google Ads, you running your own meta ads, not necessarily being so reliant on a portal. There are tools that can take you from being an amateur to an expert like that. And let me share my screen, I'll give you an example of this because I think this is gonna, this is gonna be so mind blowing from, from a marketing perspective because this what I'm about to show you used to take a professional hours a week to even get a little bit of the insight and now you can get it instantly. So there's a product called Motion App. You can go to motionapp.com and as you're running Google Ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ad, TikTok ads, it will actually be able to organize your ads based on which ones are performing the best and what they have added recently that everyone should be aware of. As you see here on the right hand side, here's my best performing ad last few weeks it says and here's all my AI tasks. Analyze this ad, give me a new hook, spark some ideas, right? Critique it. All these different kind of formulas if you will. And I'll give you an example of this. This is an ad I ran and I said here's my top performer, analyze it for me. Hey, simple screenshots really work well. Featuring the ROI makes a big difference. Having an interesting kind of, you know, contradiction actually has helped you improve your click through rate. It's doing the full blown analysis for me. So I now know, oh that ad that did well, here's why it did well and here's how I can use that information to create my next ad. Another example for you. This is just. Again, this stuff is. This stuff used to take forever to do and was only really available for experts. And it's breaking down for me, guys.

What?

My average return on ad spend is based on the length of my video. So it's now saying, hey, Jimmy, your videos under under 60 seconds actually have a, you know, six or seven times higher return than the videos that are under, let's say, 30 seconds or under 45 seconds. So this is super counterintuitive because saying. To be clear, it's saying your longer videos actually generate a higher ROI than your short, quick, punchy videos.

Hold on. I just have to acknowledge, Jason, long videos are now 60 seconds.

Somebody needs to call Joe Rogan and let him know that. I know, right?

But it's like, what's. What's fascinating about this is that I'm saying myself. 15 to 20 billion dollars a year spent on advertising in real estate. Advertising. Legion.

Yeah.

Today we know that. Let's say marketing every day requires some work, but you can essentially launch ads once a month, and those ads continue to pay dividends. The average agent who's watching this podcast may spend 500 bucks a month on advertising. A thousand bucks a month. You want that money to actually generate a return. So I'm. I'm particularly interested in two things. Number one, tools that can analyze and identify what ads are actually working and why. And number two, and Jason probably has some great examples of this, and tools that can help you ramp up your ad creative process. Meaning you take one concept and turn into 10 ads or 20 ads. So you can increase the amount of testing that you do. So I think those are two big areas that can buy you a lot of time back and give you some alpha in terms of your performance.

I gotta, I gotta jump in on this too. I love the tool you shared, Jimmy. That's a really. I especially love that it can find the. And highlight the aspects of your ad that caused it to perform so well or so poorly. That's really interesting. I think a simpler option as well for those who are using ChatGPT is if you turn on ChatGPT's O3 model, which is currently their most advanced reasoning model. I was looking at an ad from Meta and I just screenshot it on my phone. Just the little analytics of that. As simple as that. And then I just loaded it into a chat and said, what would you do to make this chat that make this ad better? And I just gave it a couple of screenshots and the level of analysis it gave me literally made me think I was, I was like, how did I not see that? I mean it was absolutely brilliant. The insights it followed through links, it read things, it looked at things and it, I think AI as an analysis tool to improve your ability to advertise is a spot on recommendation Jimmy, and it is a super skill that every agent of the future needs to develop is the ability to be self reliant when it becomes from an advertising standpoint. I would also go back to Tom, your earlier question about what are some marketing automations that we should all have in place. One I am prepared to share. I'm sharing this one today. I'm doing a lab session with our AI Marketing Academy members this afternoon and we're talking about agentic AI and automations. And to me a simple no brainer zap you should have running in the background. You can use the Zapier agents that I talked about earlier is whenever you get somebody added to your CRM, it could be a new contact, it could be a lead, it could be anybody, it could be an open house registration. My assumption is that if you're, if you're, if you're wired in your business, everything funnels into your CRM. And so I want you to imagine this. Whenever somebody gets added to your CRM, that automatically triggers your automation through the Zapier agents function that will send that person over to your meta custom audiences. Now meta custom audiences may be a new term for you, but I want you to imagine this. What would it look like if you had a never ending, forever running ad that positioned you and your services for hire, positioning you as a listing agent, as a buyer's agent, it was your, your brand promise, so to speak. And what happens if that ad is running all the time on a low budget? Now something to be aware of is Meta has been working tirelessly on the back end to add AI to the way they run their ads. And so they are optimizing their ads to perform and getting smarter and better and smarter and better all the time. And so a mistake a lot of advertisers make is they run their ad and then they, they're done like a week later, they stop the ad from running. When if you let your ads run for very long periods of time and you keep an eye on it so you avoid what's called ad fatigue, it can actually get smarter over time. And so I want you to imagine you have this custom audience that contains your entire CRM data set. And so whenever you get a Leader of contact in your CRM, Zapier automatically adds them into the custom audience so they automatically start seeing your commercial, so to speak, all the time. And then you're reinforcing your brand in front of them all the time. And it happens instantly. The ad is always running, the CRM is always synced. All you got to do is fill the bowl with more leads and contacts and the rest happens for you. I hope that made sense. That was sort of a big visual to explain.

This coming year will be my 17th success summit. To me, it's the absolute best education I can get in the world of real estate. After attending Summit, we had our best year ever. More top line and more bottom line revenue for our business. It was like a rock concert for real estate really, just to get in there the energy to be around so.

Many people, connections, fun referrals. The summit always gets me back on my feet.

Each time I go, I take away so many new contacts.

And the referral business has just been incredible.

If I can promise you anything is that these three days in Dallas will change everything.

I think it made a ton of sense. I would just counter it with someone right now is going to say, okay, so what, what should that ad be like? Is there a recommended strategy? Is there a recommended video? Is there a prompt I could use to have that, you know, that perfect video created for me? So, Jason, Jimmy, whoever wants to fire.

Away, I got a shop. You want to go first, Jimmy?

Yeah, I think when it comes to ads, you know, there, there's a really good framework you can look at when it comes to creating great ads, which is this idea of understanding if they're, if they're problem aware yet. Like, I'll actually see if I can pull up a video of this right now because this is, this will be very, very helpful to understand when you're developing any type of ad creative. So I'll just share this, share my screen real quickly so people can see this, which is this, this concept of you have people who are basically at these different stages, right? Let's call this, let's see if we can get the visual. There we go. People who are kind of unaware, right, that they have a problem, people who are aware that they have a problem. People who are now aware they have problem, looking for solution. People who are now, let's say looking for. They know who you are and now they actually are ready to make a decision. So I think when it comes to advertising, you, you can ask, okay, what, at what stage of the process am I advertising to so as an example, if I'm a. If I'm advertising to, let's say, people who have a 3% interest rate who aren't thinking about maybe selling, they are kind of in the unaware stage. They're not even really sure if they should be thinking about selling their house. So my ad targeting might be like, I might run an ad says, why did 325 people this past month sell their home even though they had an interest rate below 4%? Learn more here. And so I'm taking this kind of the stage they're at in the process to then determine the ad copy or the ad creative. But most simply put, Jason, I think we know that in this industry, I think we just have to get the ads. The ads that I see do the best. In my opinion. The ones that we analyze at listing leads are the ones that are actually more content. Content specific. Like, they, like, they'll give, like, what's the name of the company that does this really well. I'm gonna pull up here in a second, guys. But there's a company that actually advertises, like, basically help articles. And it's a really creative way. Instead of like, what's your home value? Or find a home right here, they advertise like 11 mistakes to avoid when selling your house.

Yes, yes.

You know that that's the type of. That's the type of content that I would actually, I would be advertising long way, me saying, tom, I'd be advertising content that's valuable versus maybe just straight direct response because they're already getting flooded with that.

So, Jason, you and I both know what we love about that is AI search loves structured content, top 10 list, top 7 mistakes to avoid. So that actually, that actually has a lot of different other benefits. So for our friends out there, by the way, by the end of the show, I will ask Jason, what is the adjustment you should make to your bio to become more searchable and maybe dig a little bit on the structured content. But back to the question, Jason. So, so Jimmy is saying, you know, hey, you should run an ad acknowledging where they are in the funnel right now. I think, actually, I think it's a brilliant strategy. I think, though, we're looking for something different. Like it's. It's. Why choose me versus, you know, every Tom, Dick and Harry, if you will, that sells houses. And maybe I'm. Maybe I'm incorrect in that. Jason, what are your thoughts?

Well, so fundamentally, I agree with Jimmy from a marketing standpoint. You got to. You got to meet them where they Are.

Yep.

We talk about this a lot at our events, Tom. We talk about that the what you sell to a buyer or a seller as a real estate professional is your expertise. And so when you do what Jimmy just described and you give information and insight, you are effectively demonstrating why they should hire you. Every single video, every single piece of content you create.

Yeah.

From an automation standpoint, if I was going to look for maybe. Well, this increases complexity would be which actually, Jimmy, you got my wheels turning on. We teach another strategy we call meta multipliers. This is a sidebar for those who are listening really quick where you post your content organically to Instagram, Facebook, wherever you want to post it and then you repurpose it inside of ad campaigns that they either retarget your audience or you target your local market. Because the way you should look at it is your organic content is already designed to be useful to your prospective clientele. Why not pay to put it in front of your people on a regular basis? But now my brain's like, how could I do that automatically? And to some degree you can, I will acknowledge for the, for the savvy person listening or watching, they may say, well, we know that Instagram does have some limitations when it comes to their zapier connections. Sure. They want you to be in their app. They want. So I respect that. But Jimmy, I want to say my brain is turning on. How could I, how could I automate that system? But I think to Tom's point, just a more general ad, you know, the one that's been crushing is. And I'll just, I'll share my screen real fast here inside of the Google Ads. Transparency. This is Dave Archuleta from the Archuleta team out in Orange county. And y' all can search it yourselves if you want to just add transparency.google.com and you just search for the Archuleta team and you can watch these ads and I won't play the whole ad, but it's. Let me try to zoom in here a little bit on that for us. Our proven five step process to sell your home. And this was for Ladera Ranch and this one's for south Orange county and he's targeting different areas. Now this is a YouTube ad that would work just as effectively and a meta placement whereby it's effectively his. It's what he's known for, it's his shtick, it's his promise, it's his brand. And it's like in a 60 second commercial. Now Dave is generating come list me calls in massive brand awareness for an incredibly low cost with these ads on YouTube. And so if it were me, I would repurpose the same kind of content. You can go watch it, Just look it up in the ad transparency center to watch the video if you're listening or watching. But I would just think through what is my value proposition to if I want sellers, sellers. And then that ad is just running again on a low cost. I would spend as low as Meta would let you spend in order to get, you know, the most bang for your buck. It's a longevity ad, but what happens is whenever you get a new contact in your CRM, boom, the zap fires. They're now synced over to your meta custom audience. And I want you to think about this. Your ad on Meta is, is running in real time. Think about being on an airplane and you're literally changing the engines while it's flying. So you're adding new people into the audience you're targeting while the ad is running. To me, I think that. And it's. It sounds complicated, but really what are we talking about? Make a video that demonstrates your value proposition and then put it in an ad on Meta. And then, and I think this goes to Jimmy's points about being an expert advertiser. And then, hey, set up a zap agent for whenever you add people to your CRM, boom, they fire over. And maybe, maybe just one. If that's too complicated. Maybe one more way to answer the question, what should the ad be? Is if you really don't know, just go grab your 20 most recent reviews off of Google or Zillow, drop them into a document, load it into ChatGPT, and say, Hey, I need you to work backwards with me. Reverse engineer who my ideal customer is and what they need to know or hear from me in an ad based upon the feedback they report positively about me. And then let it guide you into what could be the angle of that ad if you're really lacking ideas.

Yeah.

Let me just share one thing here, Tom, super quick. So within listing leads, we, we build this ad library so we actually aggregate all these. And one thing I'll kind of point out here is if you look at Open Door, Open Door, in my opinion, is kind of the gold center of our advertising because they have essentially the vast majority of their contacts or their, their business comes from advertising. So what they're doing, what I've seen them shift towards recently is in the past, opendoor emphasized, you know, without fail, speed, convenience, certainty. Now I'm seeing them shift towards advertising about this idea of the pain of having your home on the market, and what's interesting about that is that if you are selling houses, to Jason's point, faster than the competition, if you've got a plan to help them avoid two or three price reductions, if you've got some evidence and proof that you've done this before and you can help where others have failed, like, like they're using a, a banana that's past its due date, right, to sort of visually just catch your eye with that. But I think if you. What we're talking about right now is what is the biggest fear or barrier a consumer might have that's preventing them from listing their house with you or with somebody else? And I think the home just sitting there is probably one of those big fears. So how can you lean into that? And Open Door does a great job with that.

So, so let's, let's switch gears. And if I said to you rapid fire, what are the obvious hidden gem opportunities for winning business today? And I'm just gonna say I think it's deal of the week. I think it's AI search, I think it's email marketing, I think it's expired listings. I think it's going deeper with your database and not just sort of like surface level vanilla marketing. But what say you? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to Jimmy first on this. I think I see what we're doing with expired listings. It's an enormous opportunity, but maybe that's not yours. What do you think is the obvious hidden gem, something that maybe the, the average person isn't thinking about today or maybe they've thought about but haven't executed on?

Yeah, well, I think we have to go with expired listings, Tom, because the fact is, is that if you're looking for now business, there is no greater source than expired listings. I was just on a call with Curtis from Red X. We're going to have. In the last 12 months, we've had 2.3 million million listings expire. Now about 40% of those have relisted. So we do the math on that. Call that 1.3 million homes that have basically expired and relisted. That's nearly 30% or 25% of the overall market. So you've got this massive cohort of customers in expired listings. Yet if the three of us were to ask a group of 100 agents and ask them to raise their hands if they're doing expired marketing, I bet you fewer than 10 hands would go up. Because I think if you're right. Even if that. And the reason is, is because the perception that in terms of how to do expired marketing is all about you've got a dial for dollars. Yes. And so that, and by the way, the people who do expired marketing, they push that narrative because they don't want people doing it because it's like so good. Right? It's like, yeah, that's, it's awful. You guys shouldn't do is such an opportunity hiding in plain sight. So what I would suggest doing if you're going to do expired marketing is 25% of the market right now. You don't have to dial for dollars. You can, it can amplify the results you get, but it's not a requirement if you are going to do expired marketing. You just have to have a plan in place where you have fall like, you know, call it six to seven weeks of letters that go out and campaigns because, and this is the reason, because we know that on average someone whose home expires is relisting within 40 days as of today.

Yes.

So, so you can't just have one letter goes out. You gotta have five to seven letters that go out over the course of the first five to six weeks. Get that out the door. So my, my opportunity hiding in plain sight, especially in the summer because we've seen a, a, I think a 14 increase in expires month over month. It's well up like a hundred percent year over year. Like right. You gotta have a plan for expires this summer if you want to get some now business.

And I would just add, I mean obviously the seven letters are bananas. And I'm, you know, I think about how many videos we've seen of clients that are like I didn't know about this, I sent the first letter and like I got two listings. We're like, hello. So, so I would take it one step further because there's going to be a point where there's saturation that enough people are sending the right letters. And then how do you create that degree of separation? I go back to how many clients I had that over the summer would say to their, you know, their 17 year old nephew, hey, you want to make a few bucks? Here's what I want you to do. You're going to drive at this house and at 8 o' clock in the morning you're going to knock on their door wearing one of my jerseys and the person's going to answer you and you go, hold on, here's my uncle. And literally that may sound crazy. To you. But if you're in a hyper competitive marketplace. And again, what we want today is a degree of separation. We want to do something that's drastically different from everybody else. So that. Or, Jason, the other one I love is you. You hang balloons on their door. And maybe now the balloons. Right, hung up on their door. The expired listing also has an envelope in it with the first letter. And again, maybe it sounds crazy to you, but I just think right now, if you go back to the data around, like how. How expired listings feel, everyone says the same thing. They're frustrated, they're angry. No, they're. They experienced that because 22 real estate agents called them with the same exact script that my brother Matthew and I wrote in 1991. I'm sure you figured out that your home came back on a computer's expired listing. And I was calling to see, right, like if. If I got that 23 times in a row, I would be frustrated. What they actually experience is embarrassment. Embarrassed that, like, they told all their friends, oh, my God, like, you know, we're moving and we're so excited. And then it didn't work and their home didn't sell. So you're saying letters. I'm saying add some balloons, do something visual, you know, a physical something at their house. Jason, what would you say?

Well, so I would say from the expired standpoint, just a soft little addition to that. We've trained on a video technique that we call hidden CTAs. CTA is a call to action, where one of our rockstar coaching members, Shannon Gillette, she's really, really good. Let's go follow her on Instagram. You'll hear her do a video. And what a hidden CTA does is. It is a. It is a share in your video that only a lead can hear. Everybody else will just chalk it up as part of the storyline. It's just part of the video. So she'll say something like, last week I went on a listing appointment with a home that recently expired on the marketplace, and when I walked in, here's the first three things I noticed about what causes a home to sit down and linger. Or something like that. Yeah. So what she does is she opens up for the prospective lead, she works with expired listings, and so start feeding it into your storylines. Sort of embedded, just a detail. Last week, I was talking to a home that was thinking about making a swap with agents, blah, blah, blah. You're not listening. You're not asking. You're just saying what you did, and then that can be understood. By your audience. And so what we're seeing for folks who do that in their videos, not ad nauseam, but they do it from time to time is oh, they start sharing it with my mother in law needs to see this and so they share it with her. And then it starts getting sent to the people because your street team, so to speak, starts to watch the video, send it out to those who are in market. And it's, it's not a way to guarantee an influx of leads, but it's a way to do some marketing that has the ability to attract and sort of see those opportunities. But I would say, Tom, to your broader question, what's the big opportunity right now? I think you already said it.

From an AI standpoint, it is AI search, which, which I'm sad. I came up with the term so SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. I came up with answer Engine optimization, which I really liked. But the term that is emerging beyond me is geo, which stands for Generative Engine Optimization. And I think my term's cooler, I'm just going to say that. But it is the same difference. It is the shift we're seeing where more and more folks are taking their questions to an AI like ChatGPT or 100% versus asking their questions on, on Google. And here's why I think this is so mission critical for every agent to be optimized to be recommended in AI search. It is because if you look at the data. So Zillow did a report a year ish ago and they said one out of three sellers listed with an agent they found online. Now that's broad. That means reviews, transaction history, SEO, all of it. 10,000 watt did a study about a year ago also. Or they analyzed how did you find your listing agent? And what the data revealed is we'd expect that the vast majority of sellers. Not the vast, that's an overstatement. The slim majority of sellers found their agent through referral, repeat relationships. But what surprised everybody was just how many sellers found their listing agent through online search, reading reviews, transaction history, even relying on, on structured platforms like Fast Expert or My Agent, where it's a top 10 lister or it's a referral type of opportunity. It was 43% of all sellers. And so when I think about, okay, we already know search matters and now we're seeing this shift from traditional Google search to AI search. The question I would pose to everybody is what are you doing to be ready to ensure that you're the one who gets recommended when a buyer or seller says who's the best agent who specializes in luxury in Sylvan Park, Nashville neighborhood, or something to that effect. How are you going to own your turf in AI search? Right?

So, Jason, what's interesting about this, you had, you had shared this with us when we were in Chattanooga to mastermind with a bunch of rock stars. And so of course I immediately went to, I think I, I think I went on Perplexity and I said, write me a prompt so I can help real estate professionals make sure that their bios on all the major platforms, including their website, their Google business profile, you know, every major platform that they would then show up because of AI search, they'd be optimized. And it, and it wrote like a, I want to say like a 300 word bio with some fill in the blanks here and here. I've been sharing that at events and you know, you all know because you guys get it all the time. Like, this is what I see. Oh my God. Click. I need that because most people, and I would just, Jimmy, I would just grab like three or four people's phones and I would read their bio and it's like, you know, I love real estate and helping buyers and trust me, my friends, if that's what your bio says, it does not show up in the search under any. And it was, you know, it was great. And it wasn't, I wasn't razzing the person's, you know, the people that I was reading their bios, but clearly they hadn't looked at it from the standpoint of how do I make sure that this bio is optimized? So when someone's doing an AI search, starting with my website, my Google business profile, your Zillow page, your Realtor page, your fast agent, like, like fast expert, every page, the bio needs to change. Am I accurate with that?

Jason, you are 100. But like, check this out, Tom. I'm sure my screen really quick. So I just typed into chat GPT who's the best realtor in downtown Boston area, the North End in particular. Did I do that right, Jimmy? Is that right? Looks good.

Yeah, you should have north swear words in there, but that's fine.

That'd be Boston. Yes.

Who's. Who's wicked.

Good. Yeah. Where can I park the car?

All right, so I'm going to search it and I'm super zoomed in at.

The moment right now.

Let me just. So searching the web and you want to pay attention to what are the platforms it looks to. So here, here it lists Tony and the Goodrich team and then it always cites its sources.

So today, of course, Tony's number one there. There you go, Tony.

Let's go.

So, and it's pulling his Zillow as his primary source.

Yep.

If you look down here, this one pulled Zillow plus five more, you can click through Yelp, Compass, Reddit again, then it's Mario. But if you look at the very bottom of the results, it will tell you all of its sources and you can click them open and you can see the order at which it prioritized sources.

Bingo. Bingo.

To really optimize for AI search, and I'm going to get back to the bio piece that you shared in a moment, Tom, is you should run the search you think that your clients might run. And you don't have to be like exact. These are large language models. They understand the context of what you mean. It's, it's not going to be like, I didn't you, I used Realtor instead of real estate agent. You don't have to split hairs like that because it's, it's going to infer context. But you put yourself in the position of clients and the searches they might be running and then pay attention to what are the websites that it is sourcing in terms of providing those answers. And then you start asking it questions. Now, one note is you can ask ChatGPT, you can ask perplexity, why did you rank this person and not that person? And it will tell you why it did or didn't do what it did. Whereas Google would never give you that kind of a feedback loop ever. We just had to try to figure it out through reverse osmosis. You're going to see the same sites over and over again. You're going to keep seeing Yelp, you're going to keep seeing Fast Expert, you're going to keep seeing Zillow. But I want you to be very mindful of what you're not going to see. You're not going to see any actual reviews ever. And this is the hack I want to share with you. It may say something like, Jane Doe has 13 reviews on Google. And Jane Doe, the Realtor might say, I have 122 reviews on Google. What is ChatGPT talking about? And if you ask ChatGPT, it will say something like this back to you. Well, I can't actually see any of Jane Doe's actual reviews because reviews on Google, on Yelp, on Zillow, they're considered what's called dynamic content, meaning we can navigate to a website and we see them. But if you were actually looking at the code of the page, which is what the AI sees, they're hidden behind a little firewall that it can't access. And so what it said is, I found a blog on some random website from six years ago that said Jane Doe had 13 reviews on Google. And so I ran with it. And so the hack you should consider is knowing how much emphasis AI places on authoritativeness, which is oftentimes presented through. How many reviews do you have? How many sales do you have? Your bio should absolutely give numbers. Top, top 1% agents in my market in 2025, we've sold this many homes year to date. We have this many listings, Our average price point is bingo. We have 282 reviews across Google, Fast Expert and Yelp. It should be written verbatim in your bio so that not just on one website, on all of them, on your website, on your Zillow profile, on your Realtor profile, on your Redfin Pro, wherever you got profiles, it should be literally everywhere. So that AI sees it and grabs at it and then thinks, oh, this agent Jane Doe is an absolute rock star. We're going to recommend Jane first because you're giving one of the. There's a principle called E E A T. It stands for expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness and experience. I went out of order. Expertise, experience, trustworthiness. Well, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, I think you're getting it. And it's the principle that Google came up with and that's how they determine what they're going to rank. Well, all the AI search is following the same protocol. They're still placing the same weights on those bits of information. The difference is what they can and can't see. So you got to feed them where you feed them in your bio. Yeah, yeah.

So fellas, we got to wrap this on this, but that was a mic drop opportunity for my friend that's listening right now. I really hope you're paying attention to this. So if we were to recap, it's expired listings is the opportunity. It is making sure that your bio is set up for proper search. It is clearly going deeper with your own database. And then you've got to take a look at Zapier. Right? And I thought you'd say Claude, but certainly zapier because of 8000 versus Claude's 1100.

But basically, times are changing and the only thing that matters for you, my friend, is are you changing? Are you leaning in? Well, of course you're listening to my show, so I know you are. So, hey, let us know in the comments. What did you like? What do you want to know more about? But I got to go jump to a coaching session, fellas, so I gotta bounce. So for my friend out there listening, I appreciate you always. And hey, come back for the next one. It's gonna be fun. More of this good stuff for you. Keeping you ahead of the curve, fellas. Appreciate your time.

If you want more information about this episode, including my show, notes, mentions, links and everything else, make sure you visit tomferry.com podcast that's tomferry.com podcast. Thanks again and talk to you soon.