Start With A Win - Using Video Content to Connect with Your Audience

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

James Schwartz is a returning guest on Start With A Win because his wisdom and knowledge cannot be contained in just one episode. He and Adam talk about the ways that real estate agents and any client-facing professionals interact with people and how those interactions can be enhanced to create deeper and more meaningful connections.James and his team have just completed the development of the Photofy app that is available to general consumers and to businesses and helps people overcome their fear of creating content. The app provides a simple platform for video creation and sharing that replaces the pressure of a high-production-value product with integrated branding and user-friendly features. They specifically identify their 3 types of clients: (1) custom content creators, (2) those who get a jumpstart with templates, and (3) people who like to reshare content that has already been created on their own platforms. This app is just one of the ways that you can set yourself up as a thought leader in your industry, being what people need and customizing your message to your audience. Along with this expertise, it is important that you communicate in a genuine and approachable way, being uniquely you in your delivery of the message your audience needs to hear. James also emphasizes staying relevant and discusses specific ways that you can maintain your online reputation.  Links:https://photofy.com/ Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. And coming to you live from producer Mark's studio today on Start With A Win, Adam Conto, CEO of Remax here. How are you doing, Mark? I am doing so good. All right.

This is like carpool karaoke here. It kind of feels like carpool karaoke. A little bit. We're in our little space here. Yeah, because all of our studio for Start With A Win at Remax World Headquarters is in Vegas. Yeah. I was going to say it's on a truck right now. It's on a truck, yeah.

Huh, hopefully it makes it there. It should. Oh, yeah, it'll get there. And worst case scenario, we'll just podcast from our phone. We'll wing it, yeah. Yeah, you can do anything from your phone. That's right, yeah. Awesome.

We have in your studio here with us today, basically our marketing guru, VP of Marketing and Media Strategies, good friend of ours, James Schwartz. How are you doing, buddy? Doing well. How are you guys? Awesome. You are a repeat member of this show. That's awesome. It's good to be back. You guys have a whole vibe going. I'm kind of like... Do you feel left out? Yeah. I'm like, oh, I thought I was part of it.

We're going to get t-shirts here soon. I love it. We'll give you one. Perfect. That's it. Yeah. We don't have many repeat guests. Well, it's like two people now, right? Yeah. So you're like in an elite club. We're going to give you a yellow jacket.

Not yellow. No, no, no. Wrong brand. Red and blue. Red and blue. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, red and blue jacket with some embroidery on it probably.

Yeah. Make it look fancy. A little bit dazzling. Win Nation Club. There you go. All right. So James Schwartz. James has been in 27 different apartments in the company.

You visited thousands of franchises and office locations. You speak at all these different events. James, you deliver a whole ton when it comes to the marketing atmosphere here at Remax. Everything from how do we optimize our marketing on, say, Google and Facebook and digital media, things like that, all the way to all sorts of secret government type stuff that we may be involved with in our marketing. This message will self-destruct. Yeah. Okay. You only have one chance to listen to this show and then it's gone. Things like geofencing.

You know, a billboard's more than a billboard now. How do we hit you with a satellite signal after you go near one of our billboards? Or how do we know what you're having for dinner on your IP address at home, the color socks you're wearing, whatever it might be? James knows those things. So let's get into kind of some of the fun things when it comes to marketing. Kind of take us through your journey a little bit, James. Where'd you come from? How'd you get to where you're at? And why the mad scientist in the marketing lab? What really gets you going on that? So I've been, like I said, last time I saw

you guys, been in real estate my whole life and really just try to figure out a way to connect with people in a different way. And it's that idea where I think today we're no longer thinking about demographics. It's more of like, who is a person, what makes them tick on a one-to-one basis. And even trying to figure out like, how do we take all of that digital footprint we leave behind and how do we figure out who they are, what they're about, what they're not doing, that type of stuff. It's fun. Cool. All right. So give us a glimpse into some of the projects you're working on right now. The one that we've recently been doing is I think we've noticed a lot of people are afraid to create content, especially video, and you are a huge fan of video. But they're just afraid of what they

look like, what they sound like, what they're doing. And they don't realize it's the same thing when they're walking around talking to anybody. So we've been working on some new applications, this new one called Photify, that we're going to be launching here soon is to help create content on the go. You don't have to be at your office. You don't have to be in front of your laptop. You can actually just create content on your phone and personalize and tailor, and then hit it out to the masses, text it, email it, whatever you want to do. So some of these tools that, you know, we're always talking about mobile, right? Mobile first. How do we get you to do business in the real estate space from,

call it your third in line at Starbucks. Can you put out a marketing piece real quick? Why are people afraid of doing marketing to begin with? I want to kind of take a step back. You caught my attention on that one. By the way, secret, we look the same on video that we do in person, right? Yep. Oh, we sound the same too, right? We do. Oh man, I hate that. Right? Because that's really what I look like. It's embarrassing. It is. Kayla, I'm done doing video. No. He's going to double down. Yeah. I'm doing another one. Do more. Do more. More video. I got to get used to it. By the way, Kayla's in the studio here, too. She's running around. Kayla's in the house.

She's hiding. There she is. Hi, Kayla. So anyhow, unpack Photofy for us. Let's take a look at some of the – I mean, we've got some things we're even releasing here at the convention. We're not going to talk about today. But we can talk about Photofy. Yeah, we'll talk about Photofy and some other fun things going on. Tell me about Photofy. What does it do? So Photofy – first, I'll talk about photify. Yeah. We'll talk about photify and some other fun things going on.

Tell me about photify. What does it do? So photify, first I'll talk about why we did it. There's three kinds of users. I think there's a group of people that will create true custom content, but I don't think it's the majority of people. So what do you mean by content? A post on social media about a home you have, or maybe something if you want to promote yourself or your value or your service, or even something just to kind of get into the conversation. Maybe there's a trending topic and you want to put yourself into that, maybe debate something or capitalize on an opportunity. So create conversation, just conversation, creating engagements. So we've got a way for people to create truly custom content. But then I think

a majority of business and marketers are comfortable with templates think about what you want to do but i don't need to think about the structure of it i can swap out some photos swap out some texts and some headlines and take the fear out of like starting from scratch and then there's even another group that i don't even think will take that amount of effort but they'll take a piece of content and they want to create it post it as if they've done it on their own and so we have what's called reposts and then we also took it a step further with video which is really cool because when you think about people being afraid of what they look and sound like and then turning that camera on and being vulnerable they don't always have to

have that high Hollywood production value stuff that brand viva guy over here would be doing for folks but you can turn that camera on and just start talking to someone. And then we've applied basically like a wrapper around those videos so that they feel a little more branded. They can feel a little more high end. Um, and something that they can have some confidence to post and share and get out to the masses. So I don't have to look like an amateur anymore when I just turn on my phone, it actually puts it in a, in a branding situation a little bit more brand around, a little polish. Oh, nice. Yeah.

So that's Photofy. I mean, really, this is designed for, call it anybody, anybody who has a smartphone. Anyone who has a phone or a tablet and has the app can use it. Oh, okay. I'm going to carry my big tablet around then. Put the app on it. There he comes.

Yeah. That weird guy is filming me with his giant iPad again it plays into this GSD get stuff stuff done yeah

I was like oh I can't say that well let's talk about this for a second the whole GSD concept is there a repetition or something because a lot of people

are like I'm going to go do my marketing for the week and they go put a post up on social media give me your take on that I mean you see me I'm like throwing stuff up all over social media all over

all the time all the time so Gary Vaynerchuk's whole idea of okay anywhere from like seven to seventy pieces of content a day nobody cares because the algorithms not gonna like force feed your stuff down somebody's throat but the more you put out the more it's gonna learn from you and you'll be able to start taking advantage of those algorithms and how it's starting to connect. So really your content doesn't have to be like super polished or anything like that. You want it to be a good representation of you and authentic,

not like lazily throwing it out there, but yeah, you should don't be afraid that it has to be perfect. Okay. But you should just be documenting your day, right? Cause we're all unique individuals and we do things that create community that help us interact with our customer base, which home buying and selling public is the majority of the people out there. you're putting out. But then also thinking who, especially from an agent perspective, where do you work now that maybe you're an authority in? So if I'm talking about a certain part of town, I'm talking about the restaurants, the bars, the shopping, the community events, the parks, how it lives. It's not always just about myself. Start thinking about

who's an audience that I work with really well or that I want to start working with. And just start talking about that. So this is a lot easier than people make it out to be. Much easier. And it doesn't have to always be so branded, especially new agents or people that are kind of getting a start in their career. I mean, it works for veterans too. Don't talk about yourself if that's what makes you uncomfortable in the beginning. Go out there and think, all right, if I'm in Highlands Ranch, I'm going to go meet the new restaurant that's

opened up, talk to the owner. Why did they start the restaurant? Who are they doing? What specials do they have? All of a sudden, you'd be kind of that authority for your local community that you serve, and it'll draw people in. So we talk about these, you know, we have like video boot camp and the video, whatever big meetings and stuff like that at our convention, which coming up here real

quick. And they, they do kind of these 30 and 30 challenges where you do 30 videos in 30 days. Is that hard to do? It's not hard to do if you do it, but I think it's kind of like stuff you talk about is people getting into that point of taking action. Cause it's easy to keep overthinking it and put a calendar and you keep massaging that calendar but just literally take the phone turn it around and just start doing and posting so psychologically it's hard to convince yourself to do it physically it's like when people go oh it's hard to jump out of an airplane but it's actually only one step you know one of our owners in Panama I saw him two days ago and he was talking about some of his concerns he's

like I hear what all of you guys say. And he loves this stuff you're doing on Start With A Win, the content coming out. And he's like, but I just can't get there. So as I'm talking, we've got a bottle of wine in one hand. I've got the phone and the Photify app up at the other. He's literally using my thumbs. He's watching us create content.

We took a video through the wrapper around it. He was shocked. He's like, that's all it takes. Like, just use it and go. So what would happen if we had, I mean, let's call it, let's say we have five to 10% of our agents doing this, right? I would say it's even less overall of the real estate industry because our people want to market, but they're afraid of putting their faces out there. So we have a huge opportunity right now, right?

Huge, big. And I think if you think about the industry as a whole, general real estate advertising is uninspiring. It's just the sea of sameness and it's always at the beginning of the transaction or the end of the transaction and we're forgetting about that middle part. And then as real estate agents

and as industry professionals, we tend to project all of our own bedrooms, bathrooms, just listed, just sold stuff that in consumer doesn't necessarily always want to see from you. They can jump online and get that. They want to know that you're going to, how do you connect? How do you get them through the process? Are you an expert in certain parts? Like who are you as a person? And that's the stuff that we can enable them to do. It's interesting you say that because you kind of struck a chord with me. You're right. When you see most marketing in our space, and it's probably the same in just about every other space where you get people that just get stuck in their way, we talk about beds, bath, and square footage. And it's like going to a restaurant,

and all I have is a burger, a cheeseburger, and a chicken sandwich. And you go, I'm sick of eating that every day. I think the consumer gets that way, don't they? It gets to be noise. Remember the teacher in Charlie Brown, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. We don't want to be that way, right? No, we don't. So how do you get a little more creative? I mean, what words should people be using in their marketing? Is there something in particular that really, that you and your expertise,

because you kind of notice these things, and you've been in the business of buying and selling a lot of properties. What gets people's attention? Is there anything in particular? When it feels authentic to them, almost if it's been personalized to them for them? So if, um, the stay at home mom, and it's talking about safety and family and security and access to parks or whatever that those are going to be things that she cares about.

Whereas a guy might be more into garages and access to the golf course in the gym, right? So it's just taking the, our own ethos. We have to take ourselves out of the equation and not make it about ourselves and think about who's the audience I'm talking to. And in that translation, make sure we're taking out the industry talk, the industry speak, right? Like iBuyers is a perfect example. I talked to people about it and they're like, oh, so I buy a home with an iBuyer. I'm like, actually it's for sellers, right? So it's that confusing. We know what it means. Most consumers don't. So just making sure we kind of think through what their needs are. So using their words instead of our industry lingo.

And an easy way to do it is if you're not sure, jump onto Google and start typing into Google. It'll start pre-populating a dropdown of phrases and keywords. And that's a good way to kind of know what people are using and what they're searching for. That's a good idea. Okay. So what tip do you have for agents and brokers to stay relevant in marketing themselves? I think we've touched on a lot of things. I mean, you get up in front of people all the time and you speak from the stage and you hear their challenges. What comes to mind when, if you were to kind of do a mic drop for them and say, go do this, boom, drop the mic and walk off stage, what would you be telling them? Last week I did this and I told them as much as I love everybody in this room, it's not about you. So stop making it about yourselves and

your marketing. Go after and start making it about your audience. And it's not customers and prospects. It's different types of people. You've got to start making it. And it doesn't take a lot. You've got to tailor the message and it could be subtle tweaks. You take all this time putting together your thought, your message, your value, whatever that is, and then just swapping out photography, swapping out a headline, changing a call to action to different types of people and testing it. And does it work? Do they resonate? Are they engaging with it? And if they're not, you keep trying, you keep testing until you get to a point that you get the result you want. So is it the technology that makes it effective or is it what you're saying?

What you're saying? The technology is a way to track it and enhance your, the time you put into it. Got it. So it makes you just more efficient when you're delivering. Gotcha. I love this because we're really kind of unpacking this. Let's talk briefly about online reputation. Super important. So especially, we've got people that project some of their opinions about things. And then

you also have some people that you can hear them labeled every now and then as trolls or whatever. People just want to attack other people, be judgmental, things like that. What advice do you have for people who have trouble managing their emotions online? Or what are they doing to their business as opposed to feeling like they've checked the box of, all right, I made my point. Is that bad? Yeah. Don't do it. It's kind of like if you're at a party, right? If you were walking around networking at a house party, you're not going to start spewing all of this stuff that for some reason under the cloak of anonymity, even though it's very much you on the social channel, people get a little more forward on some of their points. You wouldn't say that at a party, walking around, shaking hands and getting all

aggressive about your point of view all the time. So you think a positive sentiment all the time, always stay above board. Gotcha. And then in terms of managing online reputation though, it's about asking for reviews, making, and then always responding, right? So good or bad, cause you're never going to be perfect. We're human beings. We're going to make mistakes, but just showing people that you care, responding to it, trying to even take the conversation offline. Those are just some simple tricks you can do. But it's kind of one of those things where if somebody asked for the review, and they respond,

I kind of equate it to when you're walking to the party, you go to reach to shake someone's hand, and they just turn around and walk away from you. Right? That would be rude. That's the same kind of digital handshake that we have online that we've got to remember. Oh, I like that. So recognize reviews. Don't just receive them. Don't just ask for them and post them. Then engage with them. Thank them. Okay. Wonderful to have. I'm glad you enjoyed the experience. Hey, I'm sorry you didn't have a good experience. I'd like to, I care about my business. Let's have a conversation offline.

I want to make it right. Send them a video or something like that. Thank you make it personal. Gotcha. Cool. Awesome. You, you know, you travel a lot. You, you work some unusual hours. And you're not just involved in marketing. I mean, you also rebuild houses and things of that nature. You're an investor. What keeps you motivated, James? I mean, what keeps you going? Because you got a lot of irons in the fire, man. You know what's fun is for me, it's just, I think it's just, I've got this fire in my belly.

I've always had it. But for me, it's the perspective as I'm getting older to look at the impact of what I'm doing for other people. And it truly is satisfying to see that aha moment when you give them a piece of advice. And it could have been the same thing they've heard 40 times over and they've read from all these gurus, but some reason that connected with them. And then you see them and they come back and say, it worked. My business is better. I'm now creating video. I'm posting on a social channel that I didn't even know how to log into a couple months ago, but now I'm starting to get into it. It's just, it's fun to see that. And for me, it's that servant approach to leadership that I, it's starting to come into my own as I'm now 40 and starting to kind of see how that works. It's fun.

You also maintain very close contact to some very influential people at some of the major technology providers. Where do you learn about some of this cutting edge technology? If you're to give a piece of advice to our listeners, do you have any particular websites you go to or anything like that or podcasts or anything that you would recommend people go to learn about this cutting edge stuff that you're so interested in? Yeah, I like going to conferences. Podcasts and websites like Search Engine Land and all that, those are great? Yeah, I like going to conferences, um, podcasts and websites like search engine land and all that. Those are great resources, but I like getting into tech. Like there's one on data.

You can get some into security. You can get them into, um, programmatic. There's different ways to start getting from other people that are using it outside of my space. So I love looking at how are they using technology, marketing and media media for consumer goods or just something non-real estate specific. So one question I always ask guests on the show, James, you do a lot, man. I know you're up all the time, always working. How do you define starting your day with a win? So for me, I wake up and my OCD sets in and I love to turn my house so that when I leave,

it looks like a model home when I come back. And then it's that serene environment welcoming me home after a very long day. I love that. That's very concise as well. Walk in, put a smile on your face. Yep. Feel like you're at home.

It's awesome. Awesome. James Schwartz, VP of Marketing and Media Strategies, our digital marketing guru at REMAX World Headquarters. You do so much for us. You travel around. I mean, we were just talking earlier.

You've already got like 20-some trips in the can this year and a ton of miles and nights at the hotel. So we thank you for all you do, ladies and gentlemen, especially those in the REMAX network. Be looking for James at the next event, wherever that may be in your region or at the Remax Convention, talking about digital marketing and how to improve yourself there. We are cutting edge in what James does. James, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win.

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