Start With A Win - Interview With James Schwartz

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

Our guest on this episode of the Start with a Win podcast is James Schwartz, Marketing Director of RE/MAX corporate. With 19+ years in the marketing and real estate industries, James has learned how to connect with consumers during many new waves of technology and he is using his expertise to serve RE/MAX and also speak to agents across North America about their marketing efforts. Referring to the current technological environment, James says that there are lots of tools and platforms available to anyone who will take the time to learn them, but it takes a bit of finesse to use them effectively. It is crucial to remain focused on the consumer’s wants and needs and meet them where they are. Just because you have something to say doesn’t mean that you should blast that message to all of your communication channels. Whereas the number of touchpoints prior to action before the digital age was 3-5, companies and agents now have to achieve 20-30 touchpoints before an action is taken. This emphasizes the importance of keeping the message consistent, catchy, and – of course – consumer-focused.The area of digital communications that really excites James right now is the capability of monitoring and remarketing to the consumer via their digital footprint. Consumers are skeptical of “data mining” until they encounter a company who uses their data ethically and anticipates their needs, which makes their lives easier in the end. For a real estate agent, a consumer’s data can be helpful because it would allow the agent to know when they have changed jobs, gotten married, had a baby, or may be considering downsizing their home. This provides the opportunity for the real estate agent to become part of the consumer’s “tribe” and a built-in lifelong relationship, rather than a one-and-done.Links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-schwartz-21798718 https://martechtoday.com/library/what-is-martech Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/adamcontosREMAXCEO/https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/

At top of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And hello, everybody. Adam Kantos here, top of the 12th floor at Remax World Headquarters with Start With a Win. Glad to have everybody here today. I have a very special guest joining us here today to talk about digital marketing and some amazing marketing ideas. We have the marketing director from Remax World Headquarters, James Schwartz. Welcome, James.

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Adam. Glad to have you here. Hey, James, you've been in the marketing world for a long, long time. I mean, you're actually a pretty young been in the marketing world for a long, long time. I mean, you're actually a pretty young guy in the marketing world. 18, 19 years. Yeah. Wow. I mean, you've seen a lot of changes in this.

Let's take a step back. Walk us through your history, where you come from, things like that, so that we can kind of get a foundation for your marketing knowledge. Because you've... I'm going to talk you up a little bit here, James. You travel around all over North America talking to REMAX brokers and agents. It's a privilege, yeah. And really other people in our space about this amazing technology and marketing and the things that are going on out there today.

And you just didn't go pick up a book the other day and read about that. You've developed this knowledge. Walk us through your history. How'd you get into this? So it started off back in the late 90s in real estate, actually. Very passionate about real estate and start off with the home builder, top 10 national home builder. Really started looking at how do we connect and get into the digital space before it was called digital. Back in the day, we called it interactive and And really started getting into lead generation, website development, but didn't know how to nurture a lead. On-site salespeople did not know what an email lead was.

They didn't see the white of someone's eyes. So fast forward a years later, got into land development. And then from there, taking a piece of ground through entitlements, selling off to real estate builders and developers as well, and then trying to figure out how to connect with the consumer. How does the neighborhood live? How does the home live? What does the builder have to offer? What's that product set that they need? Wow.

So it's been a lot of varied experience through that time. So you also started a company in that process, right? I did. So in 2009, I founded my own small business focusing on real estate initially, but got into the equestrian world, got into small business, the town of Castle Rock for a while, restaurants, really just kind of cutting my teeth on how do I connect with the consumer and how do I get them to want something they didn't know that they couldn't live without. So you were part of the boom in Castle Rock? Yep.

Right on. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. That's cool. Any major lessons learned in growing up through that? Yeah. Growing up, I always said I wanted to own my own business. I wanted to be my own boss. And when I first did that, I finally took that step when I was climbing that corporate ladder. It was amazing, but I kind of felt empty. And when I went out and started on my own,

I realized the big difference of self-employment versus owning a business. And you have to have processes, people, and tools in place because otherwise, as a self-employed person, and that's what you focus on, you are your own product, you don't have any downtime. When you take vacation, the business stops. So that was my biggest lesson back in 2009, 2010. You've been working with Remax in different capacities, consultants, speaker, trainer. I mean, you've done a lot of things in our organization and we're an entrepreneur-based organization. That was one of the big, what attracted me to the brand. How did you combine those two things together? Because I know you are truly an entrepreneur at heart, but you- I was a side hustle.

Yeah, exactly. I love it. I love it. And that's how I started in this company as well. I think it attracts us here, our type. And I love it. How did you combine those things? And how do you look at those things as a great opportunity for REMAX agents, brokers, people out there looking to improve in this space? What should they be thinking about before we start diving a little more into the mechanics? Yeah, I think the biggest challenge and opportunity is making it not about yourself. I think when you go out and you've got your

product, your service, it's about you and your own ethos and what's needed versus taking that moment to pause, step back and look at who's my customer? What do they need? How do I deliver that value? Okay, awesome. So not about you, it's about them. I love that because I think so many entrepreneurs, so many marketers lose track of that. They want to make it about themselves and their brand, which of course, to an extent, you have to introduce those things to the customer, but the customer wants to know what's in it for them, right? Yeah. I've got to make a relevant one-on-one connection with people today. I mean, I think about when I started my career, it was much easier to put out a message

and sell your product and service. Now, that consumer is very much in control. They dictate what I can and cannot do with them. So it's up to me to figure out how do I create that relevancy almost seeming like I know them. Wow. You also kind of are a self-proclaimed geek of sorts.

Yes, I am. So we're going to- Got the black glasses to prove it. We're going to nerd out here a little bit on the technology, kind of the, what do we call it, MarTech, things like that. So give us a little bit of your experiences in the MarTech space, kind of where we've gotten to know James a little bit here. Let's get to know MarTech.

Tell us about that. So I think the biggest opportunity there is, there's a lot of tools and technology out there, a ton of platforms you can select. It's not being afraid to try them, getting out there and identifying how do I connect to these different areas? How do I identify what the consumer's needs are, what my customer may or may not want, and really being able to provide that value. So what platforms are we talking about here? We're talking about providing value and connecting how? Yep. So thinking back to a lot of people now when they're looking for a product or service, they're jumping onto Google, right?

So how do I look for search terms? Whether it's, I broke something, I need to find something to fix. I need to find a plumber in my area. How do I start to show up and think about what my consumer behaviors are? Apps, that's a big one today, being able to tap into what are they looking for, but more importantly, our cell phones. We have these phones with us everywhere today. And how do I insert that into my overall marketing process? All right. We're talking about the consumer, but connecting to the consumer a little deeper here.

You've been all over talking to a lot of our agents and our brokers. A lot of them have some amazing marketing going on. You get to go out and look at this brain trust that we have in the Remax Network of all of these great people that have a variety of backgrounds. A lot of them have deep, deep technology backgrounds. A lot have deep, deep marketing, deep, deep sales backgrounds, things like that. In your experiences, what stands out to you with respect to your communication with these people? What's working for them? How are they making it work? Things like that and combining these different skills. They are experts. I mean,

it's amazing when I think about some of the video, the marketing content, their own websites, their own now getting into video and vlogging and voice as well. They know what they're doing, but the big kind of takeaway, and for me, that aha moment is connecting the dots. Thinking through, instead of all these siloed products, how do I, if I'm going to create a piece of content, instead of always reinventing the wheel, or they always think they need to,

they put out a piece or they put out a marketing campaign for a month and they don't think it works, so they want to change it again, consistency is really important. And when you kind of explain to them the minute maybe that marketing is getting boring to them, that's when it may be resonating with their customer. They come back and they tell me months later, you're right, I started working. Instead of me constantly evolving and reinventing the wheel, that consistency and adapting my message to those

different platforms, publications, websites, apps, it's really working for them. That is a huge point. And something that I've heard in kind of my geeking out marketing studies, I'm sure you've told me this before, you mentioned different ideas, different things for different platforms. Go a little deeper in that because we see, I want to go out and I want to put out a message to my customers, or I just want to say something and then broadcast it to everybody. Is that the right thing to do? Or is there a different way to talk to different people in different places? Yeah. So I think it's a way to be consistent. There's a buzzword, Omnichannel, being consistent across all platforms, all locations that you might engage with someone. And there's definitely relevancy in doing that, but it's really taking,

if I wanted someone to know that I have a marketing company, there's one thing to do, drip campaign emails. There's another to have a website that talks about it. There's another to go to a trade event, but how do I connect the dots between that? So if somebody comes to my website, now I actually create, think about, how am I going to retarget to that person?

What might they be looking for? What actions do they take? What maybe actions they're not taking? And start breaking up that message into different story bites and being able to deliver that value over a longer period of time. Because we're bombarded today. The three to five touch points doesn't work anymore. We need to now think about how do I cut through the noise, cut through the clutter and really make a meaningful connection with them. So audiences are different. Somebody who is more at your level, I've got a chain of command I need to get through and how I get to you versus maybe

an entry-level employee or an entry-level customer who's out there doing the research. There's just a lot of gating today that we need to think about and really digging in more. Okay. So we've talked on a few things here that we're starting to geek out with here. You talked about three to five touch points. We had three to five channels that we would actually touch people with back, we'll say, in the 90s before digital really started becoming prolific. And that was essentially TV, radio, and print. Then there's, of course, out of of home like billboards and things like that. We can't do things with three to five touch points anymore, right? Where are we at now? It takes about 20 to 30 before you get somebody to take action. There's a lot of different research that is around this, but when you think about it, I could put up a billboard. Well, now I can actually, what drives by that billboard every day, a human being, and what do they have in that car, a phone. Now, when I know that that device goes by a board, I can geofence that location. And if you don't know what that means, think of it like a borderless dog fence where you keep your dog within your yard.

We can do that now. And as somebody goes through and that device is in there and they jump onto social, they get onto Instagram, they start surfing the web, we can start to serve up messages based on what they're doing, where they've been, and that physical location. It allows us to really be more precise and more accurate, but also the challenge is it creates a lot of fragmentation. So this is like when I'm thinking something and then I start seeing it show up in my... Soon enough. Really?

Yep. Oh man, that's scary. Soon enough. I see all these different ai and what's coming we'll have these glasses on somehow have a chip on our head and one day we'll think about something and instead of amazon knowing what i was looking for they're going to serve it it's going to be interesting where it goes so if i want let's say pizza for dinner and i'm thinking pizza i got a good shot at getting that now But right now, if you start thinking about pizza and you jump online and

you go to pizzahut.com or you pull up your app, you're going to start getting stocked with pizza. Now, what about talking about these things? Because we've got Google Home, Google Voice, whatever it is. We have Alexa. We have the Apple Home. We've got our phones are always listening to us. I love where that's going. Where do you see that going? So I wonder if jingles will come back. I think about for us and our brand, the voice of Remax, the voice of Remax in every country, what might that sound like and that authenticity and how the brand connects with a demographic.

But I think about it, I did a test with this the other day. It's always listening. We've heard this stuff with Facebook app on your phone. If you say certain keywords, you might get flagged by the NSA or whatever, but literally go to your Google home or your Amazon and start saying shower cap over and over again. And you will start to see shower cap show up on your searches on your retargeting ads. It's pretty crazy. That's crazy. I love where it's going. I'm going to go sit in my kitchen tonight and say shower cap a bunch and see what happens. My wife's going to think I'm nuts. Or think about it, especially

with your wife. I'm sure there's things that she's looking at or searches she's making or programs she's watching. And then you get on your own phone, you get a sense of what she's looking at. Oh, there you go. There's a lot of interesting ways that this is going to evolve how we connect and how we build our brands. That's amazing. We talked from three to five touch points to 20 to 30. We talked some about the geofencing, serving things up, stuff happening just magically through Alexa, whatever it is. How else do you see us delivering?

And really, what does the consumer want us to deliver to them? Because we're not serving up shower caps all the time. How do we get to a good connection with the consumer through this? Obviously, they want value. What does that look like in your mind? You know, it's interesting. I think about GDPR, data compliance, a lot of the flack that Facebook has had recently. We all leave a digital footprint. Whether we like it or not, we've done this years ago. When we accept those terms of use to use a Facebook and create an account, this happens. What's cool about it is what we can do with that, as long as we remain ethical, as long as you're doing what's right for the customer,

and you're being a good steward to that data, protecting that PII, that personally identifying information, it allows us to create relevancy. When you're busy, time is the hard part. When you look at video advertising, it's such an effective form. A lot of people are resisting because even myself, the sound of my own voice, what I look like on that video screen, it was hard to really work through. But the attention span of our consumer is changing. The 30- second video is now the equivalent of a one hour infomercial on a mobile phone. The 15 seconds, the new thing is the six second bumper ad. Our attention span shorter. So by leveraging data, what we're doing, what we're looking at, the behaviors that we do online, I as a brand can now insert myself into

those moments and keep following them to try to create that relevancy and make that meaningful connection. So you mentioned the word moments. That's a big thing to you and you're targeting how you create this, this ecosphere of intelligence when it comes to delivering quality value, things like that to the customer. Talk to us about those moments. Cause I know I've, I've heard you mention some things about this and you discuss this so well. I'd love for our listeners to hear about that. Again, if you think about in the frame of an agent, they list and sell homes, they build and nurture relationships. That's their bread and butter. That's what our brands know for doing so well. But if you take a step back and think about not just the act of buying and selling, the research phase, and then into that, what are those moments that we can start to connect with?

Maybe it's a job transfer. It's a family formation. You're having a third child and you have a two-bedroom house. So when I start seeing that they're looking at things, downloading the Knot app or the Bump app or going to Target and starting to search for baby items or another nursery or what happens when I need a new home. It's those moments we can identify and connect with that allows us to create relevancy and start expanding your brand and really showing that brand ethos in a different light versus I am an agent who can help you buy and sell a house. How do I start inserting myself into what my customer may or may not be thinking about, what their needs are? How can I be that advisor and that person that they can reach

out to? And it goes all the way through the process down into the loyalty phase. Once I sell my home and I close on that deal, how do I stay in front of that customer for the 10 to 12 years in between? What are those needs? How do they winterize their home? What happens if seven years down the line, the kids go to school? Maybe now it's an empty nester. They're looking at colleges and there's just all these moments in this, again, this digital footprint that we leave behind that we can tap into today.

That's amazing. You're just not there when they initially look at something, when they think about something. You're there. That's the old school way. Okay. And the new school way is you're just,

you're kind of like this part of the fabric of old school way. Okay. And the new school way is you're just, you're kind of like this, this part of the fabric of their life now. Yep. How can we be around lifestyle as it relates to my product, my service? And you see this with not just real estate agents, but everything. Everything. I had a plumbing client for a while that he approached me and I'm like, ah, that's the stuff in my side hustle. I outsource. I'm not, I don't do plumbing, but he knew that I knew how to connect. And we really worked with him on, yes, you have a service. Your guys will go out and fix drains and clear drains as needed. But we worked with him to really start showcasing what is it that

maybe the stay at home mom who husband's out working, what does she need? How do we build confidence that she's going to feel comfortable with the guy from your office and your company that's going to show up to help her come into her personal space? That's the types of things that we now have to think about today is how do I connect with that customer and identify? Some people will call it find your tribe. How do we identify like-minded people that want what I have and that we have that meaningful connection?

That's amazing. So you're basically, you're waiting for that moment in people's lives and then you're there when they need it. And then you can keep following through that whole process. Yeah. So, I mean, how do you summarize that for everybody? You've got to put yourself at the right time, at the right moment, in those moments that matter. So must be present to win. Must be present to win. Must be present to win.

You've got to kick it. I love it. I love it. Some amazing information from James Schwartz today, marketing director, Marcom Digital. Traditional. Total geek. There you go.

I love it. This was like a ton of information all packed into one podcast. So James, thank you so much for being with us here today. Thank you for having me, Adam. We appreciate it. We look forward to all of the amazing things that you've been doing and continue to do for the REMAX agents and brokers out there and the real estate customer. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Everybody, we will catch you next time on Start With A Win. Thank you so much for joining us today. Make sure to head over to startwithawin.com to get more great content. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Adam on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And remember, Start With A Win. with a win.