How to Shift Your Marketing in a Shift

What's up business freedom Podcast listeners, if you listened to the last episode, you heard me discover the title for this episode and it is how to shift your marketing in a market shift. I chuckled when I sort of came up with the title. So when I look back on my journey, and again, I just spent a whole episode dissecting the journey. So you can figure out how to come up with your plan for the next two or three years to go from wherever you're at now to 10 times that. You know, I did 27 sides in my first 10 months, which I guess if you annualize that it would have been what, 10 months? 2.7. So five. So 32 sides in, yeah, less than five years. I was 10 times that. And so that's the opportunity that is in front of you right now. And I would say if other than just putting my head down and the willingness to just do what other agents weren't doing or weren't willing to do and ignoring the news and all of that and just, and just doing what I can control and new business development. The one thing, if I look back to that time, that 2008, 9, 10 time, it was the marketing I did that generated massive opportunity. And I studied a lot of Dan Kennedy stuff. He's a direct response marketer, so he's very much like anti. I've never heard him talk about the real estate industry. And if I did, I would imagine he would say, y' all have it totally wrong. This image, advertising and headshots and, you know, like, I'm a luxury agent and all of that crap just doesn't. There's, there's no benefit to it. And maybe, maybe when the market is just on fire and it's easy to sell real estate, you can kid yourself into thinking that that stuff actually matters. All my stuff back in those days was just as ugly as it could possibly be. I'm talking like black and yellow lettering on ads and just the most offensive eye catching stuff that you could possibly use. That's what I did. And I learned it from Dan Kennedy. So there's three points for this episode. The first point is the mindset shift required to go from what the industry teaches or expects from us to becoming a marketer. And when I say what the industry expect, well, I'll get into it in seconds. That's number one, the mindset shift. Number two is you're thinking around gold bricks, gold bricks for buyers. And number three is you need to go where the sellers are to go where the sellers are. So let's dig into number one, the mindset shift. When I say become a marketer. I even have this conversation with teams doing 3 to 5 million GCI and they've been in the industry and they've scaled from solo agent to running a larger team. When I asked them what sort of marketing they do, they tell me that they're spending $30,000 a month on Zillow. We only do 10,000amonth on realtor.com. you know, we just started up with this, you know, seller lead gen platform. It costs 2,000amonth plus a $25,000 referral fee. I'm signed up with all the referral fee seller sites. I'm like, that's your marketing. Like, just think about that. If you think about the definition of marketing is to do stuff in the business that attracts people to you, attracts people that are willing to pay you to you. None of that stuff is marketing. None of it. And so the industry has set us up to consume, you know, all the bottom feeders, the blood sucking and I, man, there are a lot of good folks that serve our industry. The folks that I cannot stand who are just preying upon real estate agents that are desperate to do a deal and they're taking as much money as they possibly can out of a commission check to do it. So to battle that and to actually win the game of real estate and become a true business owner, the only way to do it is to become a marketer. If you listen to anything on economic model, the last episode I talked about economic model, I said you had 10 to 12% of GCI to spend to generate leads. So on your lead gen, your marketing, your advertising, 10 to 12%. So let's say you sign up with a seller lead gen source and you're getting referrals that you need to pay 25% of your commission check. You are crazy out of alignment with your economic model and you just can't do it because you're not actually a marketer. As a marketer, the rule is I'm allowing you to spend 10% of a commission check to generate that opportunity. So if you're in a market where there's a $5,000 commission check available, you could spend $500 to generate that opportunity. In our market, we're blessed because we have a $10,000 commission check available. We can spend $1,000 to generate that opportunity. We're at about 6 to 7% and we're decreasing what we spend. Right now we run about a $3 million GCI team very profitably. And only about 11, 12ish team members or so. So the mindset shift. So that's the shift you need to figure out how to get in front of buyers and sellers in a way that compels them to take action and do it in a way where they actually want to do business with you. Right. So what are buyers and sellers going to be looking for? Or how can you position yourself as the viable option with buyers and sellers going forward? The mindset I had back in those days when I was new to real estate was that nobody gave a crap about me. They did not respect real estate agents. I knew that. And they certainly didn't care about me. They were thinking, what's in it for them? So you've heard the expression before. Well, really, anyone that we're looking to market to, they're always looking out for themselves. They're always listening to the radio station wifm. What's in it for me? And if you're not positioning your marketing, your advertising to appeal to that selfish nature, you're gonna miss the boat. So having a pretty headshot or you and your dog and your, like, it's just not going to work. Like, it's not going to work. It may, you may have been, you may have fooled yourself to think that it worked in when times were good. It's not going to work in the times that are coming. And so that's the mindset shift. So hopefully you kind of get, get that a little bit and just think of yourself as a marketer. As a small business owner, you are a marketer first and foremost. Always and forever, you are a marketer. And if you don't consider yourself a marketer, you're never going to scale your business. You, it's likely until you get to about 3 million GCI, you're the main driver for leads coming in the front door and all of the marketing stuff that happens, that's number one. So number two are, what are the gold bricks you're going to put out there for buyers? The shift is coming luckily right now, where interest rates are really low. I think they were low. Who knows back in 2008, what they were. Fundamentally, I don't think there's going to be a housing crisis, although the economy is going to be all jacked up because all sorts of people are losing their jobs and businesses that are closing now may never come back. And so there's just going to be some weird stuff. There's going to be people that have to sell their homes that maybe owe more than they're worth because prices. I mean it's a whole thing that's coming. I don't wish a crisis by any means. And I think it's just going to come. And so what are buyers going to be looking for? They're going to be looking for deals. And so the only folks that are going to sell in the market anyway in the next year or two, who knows how long this lasts, are going to be sellers that are actually motivated. So if you're marketing to buyers that you have the deals, then you're going to attract buyers to you. So instead of doing Google pay per click and paying Google to put a generic whatever in front of a buyer, figure out how to come up with something a little bit more clever. Like if you could be the guy that has this proprietary list of, you know, distressed sale properties or builder closeouts or off market properties. That's the first script I Learned Back in 2007, I was in Craig Proctor. I still know that script and I will still use those three terms to appeal to buyers in the market that's coming. That's all you need to know. And if you're on the phone with somebody, that's a form of marketing, it's telemarketing, it's following up with a forced registration, buyer, home search lead. It's not a real lead. You know, you have to tell a market market verbally over the phone to that buyer. And if you say, hey listen, would it be helpful if I sent you builder closeouts, off market properties and distress sales, you know, short sale, short sales and foreclosures, would that be helpful? They say yes. And then it's game on. We use different scripts now. We actually don't even use that script, but that part of the script is something that we all need to use going forward. So I don't claim to have written it by any means whatsoever. You have to have these gold bricks. Another gold bricks is instant access to homes as soon as they come on the market and ask them the question when you're on the phone or in an email or over text. Did you know that most sites don't have updated information anywhere from one to seven days? It's updated. Our system gives you instant access. You can beat out other buyers, but also most agents. And the best deals are going to go quickly. Interest rates are low. The best deals are going quickly, right? I mean that's the game you need to play. So what are your gold bricks for buyers? And just think of them. Write them out and create your own script. How you would say it give your. What do we call our buyer? Instant buyer notification system. We call it the IBN S. Have you heard about our instant buyer notification system? I haven't heard about it. Stuff that we take for granted, you know, even Zillow is not real time and the information is not accurate. Right. So you need to play the game. You need to get in there and use words. Marketing is just using words to compel someone to take action. Alright. Number three is to go where the sellers are. This last year I think we did about 700,000 or so GCI from expireds and FSBOs. And it's a combination of a slick little piece of technology, direct mail and telephone calls. And that's it. Super low cost, super high return. You need to go where the sellers are. Sellers are going to go to FSBOs may do its own thing where they probably see a whole lot more value in an agent in a shifting market. Expires and withdrawns. Right. If you're not, if you don't have a system in place, we teach a very specific system. You need to figure out how to put a system in place that will compel someone who's expired, withdrawn or for sale by owner to take action. And it's not complicated technology and it really works powerfully. And our direct mail gets an awesome response. And the scripts we use over the phone, it's kind of like this force multiplier between all three of them. And so I fully expect to go from 700 to maybe even a million GCI and we're in a bigger market. I think our metro like a million people in Charlotte, North Carolina. I think the metro is like 2 million or so. Two point. So it's a larger market. The opportunity is still going to be there. And that 700,000 last year was in a really strong seller's market. So there wasn't a lot of fizz bos. There wasn't a lot of expireds or withdrawns. So you need to go where the sellers are and hit them with messaging that is going to compel them to make a call to you to pick up the phone or respond to a text or respond to an email. Again, there's some slick technology out there that helps you do that. It's part of the system that we teach. But they're going to be compelled to take action and pick up the phone and respond to something that you're trying to get them to do. And that is how you win the game going forward. Gold bricks go where their sellers are and you've got to make the mindset shift first that you first and foremost as a business owner, you are a marketer, then you're a salesperson, then you're a then your operations. Unfortunately, you've got to figure out one before you figure out the other. You've got to generate opportunity, got to learn how to get them face to face, get them to become a loyal client and then hopefully get them into a property or sell their property. Do it in a way where they don't hate you at the end of it and they'll say kind words and you use those kind words back in your marketing. I did a four part series I think on the podcast about just marketing and messaging and how the industry teaches you to do it their way and to pay referral fees and to pay Zillow and it's just complete bull crap and it doesn't work and it's not going to keep you in line with the model you need to be at. So if you're at the point where you've already achieved traditional success and you really don't know what to do now that the market's shifting or you're running a small team or a large team, anywhere from three to 500,000 GCI as a solo agent with an administrator all the way up to we have members that are in the five plus six million dollar range. You've got to reach out to us. We have a very intentional plan and process that we follow. A roadmap, a blueprint that will help you get the growth you're looking for so you can live a bigger life, a life of freedom where you're not working every evening or weekend, where you can make that shift from busy real estate agent or even if you're running a team, but you still have to sell homes because you set the whole thing up wrong, that's not a business owner. You're delusional if you think you know, I know some people that aren't even making their GCI and they're running a team and it's just the most convoluted thing that you could possibly have set up. So if that's you and you don't know where to go and you, you know, we say that we pick up where most other coaching programs leave off and we provide business coaching training implementation to folks that are looking to make the shift to business ownership. If that's you go to real estate B school. There's a bunch of resources on the website, podcast episodes and just some giveaways, some reports and all that fun stuff. But the next step is to just apply for a strategy session. Simple questionnaire. I think there's six questions on there. Just to see if where you're at is a good fit for us to have a conversation. And. And then it's just a conversation about where you're at, where you want to go and what's holding you back. If a fit with real estate B school is there, we'll definitely have a conversation about it. And I have so much passion around, you know, what's going on right now in real estate, because I've been there. If you're feeling nervous or fearful, you've got to figure out a way to get out of that state so we can focus on what's possible and what you can control. You can absolutely go from 30 to 50 sides to 300 plus sides in the next four or five years because of what's coming. And I don't have a crystal ball and I can't say exactly what's coming. I just know that stuff is happening that's going to really jack up our economy and you need to be ahead of it. And so go to realestatebschool.com have so much love and respect for everyone that's willing to fight this fight and we'll talk soon.