Listen to the podcast below

Watch the live teaching below

Transcription (was completed by automated process. Please ignore any speech-to-text errors)

Beatty: [00:00:03] Welcome back, everyone. This is Beatty Carmichael, and this is the premiere episode of a series that I’m doing with my good friend Stuart Sutton. And we’re going to start an entire series on marketing, what we call marketing mastermind. And this is all about marketing for. For the real estate agent thing to do, real life application that you can put in place with your own marketing, whether it’s just sticking a sign in the yard or doing something more robust. So let me introduce my I don’t know if I’d call you a co host or co participant or coconspirator, but one of those, my co friend Stuart Sutton.

Stuart: [00:00:51] Hey, thank you so much for having me here. This is a great day to be here.

Beatty: [00:00:56] Yes, it is. It’s a very blessed day. So this is we’re going to bear with us as we kind of get our rhythm, because Stuart and I both have loved marketing in real estate. Stuart, how long have you been marketing in real estate? I hate to ask because it’s probably it might be more than I’ve done marketing professionally myself.

Stuart: [00:01:17] I’m going to break it down into two areas of my real estate life. So marketing started about 27 years ago. Before that, I was a hardcore cold caller.

Beatty: [00:01:31] I guess you could call hardcore cult color marketing based on the definition we were talking about getting someone to respond. But anyway, but, but really, that’s I’m going to call that hard marketing versus easy market. I’m not sure how to define it.

Stuart: [00:01:51] Well, you know, it’s I was talking to someone the other day who has actually helped real estate agents start marketing offline and on and when I explained to them, my entire business consisted of people who contact me to list their homes. Even he a professional marketer. Question, how could that be possible? So I still stand by the fact that when I got your post card, what was that 11 years ago? I looked at it and said, This guy knows how to market. And most marketing companies for realtors don’t really get it. And that’s not derogatory. It’s just kind of factual. But when when it comes to marketing, it goes well beyond what most people, most agents and even, let’s just say, other industries would be included because we’re not picking on real estate agents. But but marketing is in itself a process and a methodology based on consumer response. It’s not just, like you said earlier, sticking to sign in the yard and hoping people drive by.

Beatty: [00:02:58] Yeah. So let’s as we. So this particular episode, we’re going to be talking about what is marketing because everything we’re going to talk on in this whole series that we’re doing has to really understand what marketing is most agents. Stewart I don’t think really understand marketing. So I think there’s a big confusion between marketing and branding. But before we get to that topic, I want to just shoot. I’ll share one example. I know your example from when you changed your marketing change shirt, what you thought was marketing to actually using marketing, how quickly it grew for you. But let me just share it for our listeners out there when when you do it right. My first client professionally, so I did a lot of marketing for myself before I started my company in 1997. So that was almost when you started marketing, I think you’re 27 years ago and I was 25, right?

Stuart: [00:03:56] That’s my right.

Beatty: [00:03:56] So the. My first client, a large telecom sales organization, lots of independent sales reps in two years or two and a half years. We and our marketing specifically was responsible for increasing their monthly new sales by $5 Million a month $60 Million a year. And as we talk to the sales managers from across the country and all these different pockets, they all had the same message. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this one guy said this is the closest thing to resurrection of the dead that I’ve ever seen. And and their general comment was that they have sales agents that had not been producing that much, that now they are producing consistently every single month. And for the typical salesperson that was managing a sales team simply by the introduction of this marketing, they saw an average of 3 to 4 times increase in sales within or maybe it was a 2 to 3 times increase in sales within about four months. But it was a significant increase simply by changing the faucet. Does that make sense?

Stuart: [00:05:17] Yes, it does.

Beatty: [00:05:19] So from my perspective, that’s one benefit. Now that’s outside of real estate, but in my early state, early ages. But when you started marketing your real estate business, what happened with you? Can you tell that story?

Stuart: [00:05:33] Sure. I started in January and my challenge was to convert from a pure outbound business, meaning I chased leads, I closed to people for appointments, I coerced whatever.

Beatty: [00:05:50] Coerce is a good word. Yes.

Stuart: [00:05:52] So I went. My challenge was to go from that completely to an inbound where they were contacting me and saying, Would you please come talk to us? That took about six months. Now, understanding at that time I had a fairly significant team and did very, very high production. So to to do that for an individual seems like, well, that might be possible, but for the size and volume we were doing, that doesn’t seem like it’d be possible. But here’s and I’ve shared this many times don’t let me ramble by the way. Just interrupt me when you need to. I had many different income streams. One of those was expired listings. So what I would do was obviously I would do what all the old guys did and I would call expires first thing in the morning when they were barely awake and hard closing for an appointment for that evening. You know. Anyway, I didn’t change. Who the expired were. I changed the message that I sent, so I quit calling them. But I started sending a package that was changed to speak to them and my expired business tripled. And I was getting I was it was a pretty good income stream. I was getting three listings a month every single month from expired listings. Okay. It tripled more than tripled. It was between nine and ten that I was getting every month. I actually had to hire an additional assistant to handle what was coming in from that. And the only difference? Was how we worded the information going to the consumer. We changed it from what we typical real estate agents think of as marketing to true consumer based response marketing. That was the only difference, and that was just one income stream.

Beatty: [00:07:53] So how quickly did that?

Stuart: [00:07:55] Once I made the transition.

Beatty: [00:07:57] So, so, so. You were calling. And then when you simply changed where you still calling in that time.

Stuart: [00:08:07] So what I would do is I would call is to say 17 experts came out this morning. I would call them. You don’t get hold of three or four, of course. Okay. But I would put a package in the mail at the same time. So the package was changed from what it said, the letter and the package and converted to a marketing, a true marketing informational package. And that was and then a series of postcards that went out. After that, the content was changed. So I still remember this baby in January when I started. That was my challenge. I thought I was going to take all year in July. I didn’t make a single call and I made more money in July than any month I’ve been in business.

Beatty: [00:08:53] I love it. So now, for those who have been listening in the past with Stewart, you’ve heard that many times I’ve shared. When I first met Stewart that he was doing 121 transactions a year. Stewart Is that right?

Stuart: [00:09:11] That’s all right. You always say that it was a 111, so.

Beatty: [00:09:14] 111 I always.

Stuart: [00:09:16] I don’t think that affects it that much.

Beatty: [00:09:17] I don’t affect it that much. Okay. So 111 and of 121.

Stuart: [00:09:21] That was a part time assistant.

Beatty: [00:09:24] Yeah. At 35 hours a week. Personal production. No weekends. No evenings, rarely. So. And now we start to learn the secret behind it. It has to do with marketing. So hopefully now that we’ve caught our listeners interest on that, this might actually be a topic that’s going to hold a lot of value for them. I wanted to start to peel back the onion, so to speak. Stewart And start to talk about what marketing really is versus branding and some of the high level things that we need to focus on, maybe some good application stuff, and then we’ll start to peel back this onion and more and more concepts, because I think for you as the agent is listening to this, if you truly understand how to get business, you’ll never have to go by business again. You never have to trade your hours being a telemarketer when really you should be a real estate agent. Right? And and so it really changes your life. I can’t tell you. I won’t tell you how my life is because I’m not a real estate agent. Right. But once you learn marketing it, it revolutionizes everything.

Stuart: [00:10:39] The hours in any business?

Beatty: [00:10:42] Yeah, in any business, the hours drop that you have to put in and the lifestyle increases. Because now you’re doing more of those things that you love to do and less of those things that you can’t stand to do. So does that make sense?

Stuart: [00:10:59] It does. And I you know, I’ve said this more times than I can count. I cold call 2 to 4 hours a day every day.

Beatty: [00:11:07] So that would burn me out.

Stuart: [00:11:09] My focus was I spend that time. Creating and putting out marketing. And it’s so much not spend 2 to 4 hours a day doing that anymore. But. It’s just so much more fun than calling people and getting rejected.

Beatty: [00:11:28] And I have to I have to share with everyone that the marketing that Stewart does. So we patterned a lot of our marketing when we came on board in the 2012 2013 timeframe. Learned a lot from Stewart. We actually did Stewart. If you recall, we did about two years of mastermind conference calls because they weren’t done by Zoom then. And and I was lifted a lot of ideas from you as we use those with our clients and our clients benefited tremendously. But Stewart has always outperformed me in real estate marketing. And it wasn’t until in recent times that I realized the reason is because he was using video included with the marketing, and I had totally missed that point. So if you are if you are looking for something, this is now the plug, right? So I’m just going to a real quick plug for me and Stewart. Stewart has an amazing niche with one acre plus properties. And Stewart, if I’m correct, you’re the top producer in your niche within the core of the group that you market to in that area and you do eight or 10 million a year just from that one vertical. Is that right?

Stuart: [00:12:51] Actually, it was closer to 15 million just from the niche.

Beatty: [00:12:55] 15 million just from the niche. And you’ve got the entire system locked down in terms of what the message is, how to communicate it, what the education is, and even how to be the expert and know what separates that niche from others. Right, Exactly. And so in.

Stuart: [00:13:13] The steps, the steps that you’re trying to define are very, very straightforward. And that is to build the expertise, build the branding, and then create and send the marketing. So those are the three big steps.

Beatty: [00:13:28] Expertise, branding and marketing. And so I shared this because if you like this and you start to say that Stewart probably understands what he’s doing, I mean, what, 15 million a year and is that 20 hours a week time consumption?

Stuart: [00:13:44] I forget, probably not quite so Obviously my other I still have other income streams, I’ve got the niche and I got the farm and I got the personal. And I still do some experience, but the the actual niche probably takes 8 to 10 hours a week.

Beatty: [00:14:00] So. So listen to this, guys. 8 to 10 hours a week, 15 million a year in production. And that’s his personal production. That’s not a team, just him and a part time assistant or something like that.

Stuart: [00:14:12] All right.

Beatty: [00:14:14] And the reason I share this is he’s licensing it out. So if you want to create a new income stream, a new vertical, reach out to Stewart. You’ll find his information at one acre plus niche. So that’s the numeral one, one acre plus niche. We actually do the back end side of it, the marketing part with the postcards and the videos. And if you’re not interested in a vertical niche, but you just want to do with your past clients and sphere of influence or geographic farm, check us out at Agent Dominator. You’ll see our video infused postcards. They actually get up to ten times or higher results than just standard postcard marketing because they’re just much more impactful. So with that is the quick plug. Let’s go back to marketing. So I’m I’m really intrigued. Stewart And your niche, you start first with expertise, then branding, then marketing. Most agents, I’ve got to tell you this story, okay? And this is going to be good for everyone listening because I think this starts to key up what we really want to talk about on today’s topic. I was talking with the team leader of a the the largest team in his national brand in the United States at this time. I think his team did. It was only like 1600 transactions a year.

Beatty: [00:15:41] Okay. They’ve now grown. So I’ll call his name Tony. And I’m on the phone with Tony and he’s been marketing with postcards to about 2000 homes for six weeks, six months. And he’s concerned that he’s not getting many results. So he asked if I could help and I got on the phone with him and his assistant will call her name Cam and I and I was asking a couple of questions. They had about 200 listings came on the market within those six months, and he got about two listings. And as well, the obvious answer is you’re not well branded. And I use the wrong term because to his response Stuart this you’ll you’ll like this and it’ll blow your mind. Right. Tony is actually a smart businessman, but watch this. He said, that can’t be. And I said, Why not? He said, Because I’ve been spending $10,000 a month for the last 24 months. I’m on the radio, the newspaper. I’m in the bill part, the billboards, the park benches, the grocery stores, a 16 page printed newsletter four times a year. And I said all that to this area. He said, yes, From his perspective, that’s well branded. So I asked him a question. I said, Well, that’s not really what I’m talking about.

Beatty: [00:17:03] I said, But let me ask you a question if. 200 listings came on the market and you only got two of them. Why do you think they didn’t trust you enough to choose you? And especially after spending all that much money. He said he didn’t know. I said, Would you like to know the answer? He said, yes. And I started to explain to him, we’re going to talk about this later in another session. But it’s what we call outside perception versus inside reality. And this is, Stuart, what you’ve been doing for years. But I started to explaining to him that there’s a difference between branding and marketing. And there’s a difference between getting your name out, which is what most agents think of as branding and actually branding, right? So that’s where we’re going. I when I went through the example of what it was and said, if that happened, how many of those homeowners, those sellers do you think would have chosen you? And Kim piped up and she said, All of them. And so if you do it right, you can get up to all of the listings in that market if you’re well branded. So let’s talk real quickly, Stuart, between the difference between branding and marketing. So your.

Stuart: [00:18:15] Turn. I think that we all know some very well branded companies and we recognize them immediately. And we can take the same rules they use and we can put them into place in our little arena. So my market is minuscule compared to a big corporation. But we know that Coca Cola and Nike and Starbucks are all branded. And we understand that the consumer knows who they are and what they do. Well, let’s take a step back. Does the consumer know who I am and what I do? And that’s that’s branding in a nutshell. If my prospective clients who whom I earn a fee from, if they know who I am and what I do. Now I can say that I’m properly branded. So here’s the how.

Beatty: [00:19:17] Let me ask you a question, because I think what you do, you sell real estate. Is that what you’re talking about, what you do, or does it go deeper? Because most agents listening, they say, well, oh, yeah. So they say. Stuart Sutton sells real estate. So now you’re branded, is that it?

Stuart: [00:19:31] Well, I’m going to that next level. Okay, great. So we know that Coca Cola sells soft drinks, though. The ones. Of course not. So if someone knows who I am and what I do, there’s the first step. But you know what most real estate agents do? They all compete with each other. I mean, don’t they? Yeah. The ones that who spend the most money on exposure might have a better chance. But I think the example you gave just a while ago shows that that’s not necessarily the case. However, if the if the consumer knows that. I’m Stuart Sutton. I’m in real estate and I have an expertise in condos. Now, I’ve taken it a step farther. Now who am I competing with? Every other real estate agent? No, I’ve really taken that consumer’s perception of me as an agent to another level and created in their mind that I have an expertise above my competition. And that’s a simple explanation of let’s take and brand ourselves in a way that the consumer perceives what we can provide for them, but unique to other agents, because all the other agents out there provide kind of the same thing.

Beatty: [00:20:56] Yeah. So I think this is a key word. The word is perception. And as as I heard many years back. Sellers Homeowners choose you first on perception and they choose you second on understanding, right on reality. And so perception is the most important part. And you made a comment before we started the recording. In real estate, everything is marketing, everything is perception. And I think that’s so important. It’s the perception that is the branding. And the perception has to be something that differentiates you from everyone else. Because if you’re using the same terms, the same words and the same type of marketing as every other agent, there’s nothing to change their perception from you over everyone else. And that’s kind of I think that’s.

Stuart: [00:21:52] The competition is fierce. If everyone does the same thing, how do you make a choice?

Beatty: [00:21:58] That’s it. So how do you how do you start to, you know, you start to touch on it? And perception number one. So I sell I specialize in condos, let’s say. So now the perception shifts that that’s your specialty. Everyone else just sells residential homes. So now that starts to change perception for the condo owner to you. But take it a little. Take it further. There’s something you did. In fact, if we could go back to when you’re doing expires. I know we haven’t had many expired in the last several years, but they’re starting they’re going to come back on the market again, no pun intended. Right. They’re going to go back off the market again. When they go off, they’re on sort of like the kingdom. It’s an upside down. It’s the opposite kingdom. Right. To be greater, you have to be lesser. And so when they come off, they go on. So what? They expired. What were you doing and what did you change? So people can kind of get a grasp of what is the difference between just pushing something out there and actually doing marketing? Or branding or however you heard the question.

Stuart: [00:23:08] I think that that tactic was a very good one. Maybe to go back to that and say, okay, what was different? Well, here’s what was different. I basically knew. 52 closes. I knew sales in and out. Not that I don’t know it pretty well now, but then I was all about closing. But whose benefit was it for me to close them for an appointment? It was to my benefit. It was all about numbers. So all of my information was what I could do, what I was, how good I was, how great I was. And then one of the very first things that I did when I started learning marketing from a coach was I took the initial letter that went to the package and I took all of the eyes out of it. So how.

Beatty: [00:24:05] Many? How, how many? I said, because I remember your coach’s name was Rand. And he said, Yeah, count how many eyes you have. How many eyes did you have in your letter?

Stuart: [00:24:14] Well, it was appalling. I mean, it was it was so embarrassing when I stopped looking at it. So I turned it to a U letter R, and then we and then we took each of the aspects of marketing and we said, All right, and this is just such a good one.

Beatty: [00:24:34] Okay, can I pass you on that? I don’t mean to interrupt your flow, but keep that flow. But I want to make a comment for our listeners out there. This is so important. When you ask yourself what is the homeowner more interested in you or them? So when Stuart takes it from an AI letter to a new letter, all of a sudden he changes the perspective to what’s most important to them. Always remember that in your marketing they could care less about you. They want to know about them. So keep going.

Stuart: [00:25:04] And that is dramatic.

Beatty: [00:25:05] Yeah, it is.

Stuart: [00:25:06] So I can market about me. Till I’m blue in the face. When I start marketing about them, everything changes. Now what do you market about them? Well, you take the problem that they have, which was they failed to sell their home and you identify how to solve their problem. Not, Hey, I’m the solution because I’m so good. Wait a minute. Here’s the issue. Here’s the problem. Here’s how we solve it for you. We don’t solve it because I’m the number one agent and because I sell more than anybody else. And because I sell faster than anybody else, we solve it. Because this is the challenge you have. And these are the steps we take on your behalf. And it’s just a very different scenario.

Beatty: [00:25:59] So so this is interesting and I want to make this clarify this for our listeners. There are two types of marketing. If you I mean, there’s lots more, but if you want to look at what is the general focus, one is promotion. Me, me, me, me, me. The other is education. And what you’re talking about is going from a promotion marketing Stewart to an education marketing, where you, you stop talking about you and you focus on them. But not but in the focus on them, it’s about, Here’s why it didn’t sell. You know, when your home doesn’t sell, it’s always one of three or four reasons, right? And these are the only reasons. And you go through those reasons and they start to go, Yeah, I recognize this. This this is exactly what. And now you start to show them the problem. And when you show them the problem, then they get confidence that you know the solution. Does that make sense?

Stuart: [00:26:55] Yeah. And you said it solve problems. Solve problems. And that’s what any great company does. And everybody’s heard this. And this was I mean, this has been used since the day that Domino’s started. Well, we’re going to deliver you a hot pizza fast or it’s free. They solve three problems with that. What do they do? Well, consumers, their pizzas were late and that was real frustrating because they were late. They were also cold. And the worst thing is they had to pay for a cold pizza. So they solve those problems. That’s marketing. They solve the problems the consumer had. And overnight, they were number one and the most one of the most competitive industries in America.

Beatty: [00:27:39] You know, I’m laughing at this because this is something real interesting about branding. Branding stays with you, Stuart. You and I are the age that there’s probably a lot of people because I think the most people, most real estate agents who listen to podcasts are young compared to old, right? Because as part of the technology and I have a sneaky suspicion the most the agents listening to this don’t recall pizzas getting delivered cold and late because that was before their time. But yet you and I still remember it’s just yesterday.

Stuart: [00:28:10] Yeah.

Beatty: [00:28:11] When you absolutely eat so I did remember that. So that’s funny. But most of our most of our agents probably don’t remember those days. But for those who don’t, you would call a pizza and say, hey, let’s let’s do pizza tonight. You call them at 7:00 and you’re kind of getting hungry and the pizza doesn’t arrive until almost 8:00. It’s been off the shelf after four since 715 because they cooked it. They put it on the shelf. And by the time the driver comes back and picks it up, delivers all the other pizzas and you get yours, you’re now fuming and that thing is cold. And so they solve the problem. And when they solve the problem that says it’s delivered hot in 30 minutes or it’s free. What happened to the sales for Domino’s? Do you remember?

Stuart: [00:28:58] Stuart They was rude.

Beatty: [00:29:01] Yeah, because it solved the problem. Everyone said. That’s what I want because I can’t risk it with anyone else. And so.

Stuart: [00:29:10] When you markets your fell, when they when they quit keeping that commitment.

Beatty: [00:29:15] They did it went back to normal. When they stopped that commitment. And so this is what this is what branding is. So branding and marketing are closely related. But branding is when they have a perception of you that is exceptional compared to their perception of your competitors. With Domino’s, the branding was exceptional. You want it now and you want it hot. Call Domino’s. You just want it whenever it gets there and cold or not, call someone else. Okay. So shifted the market to Domino’s with you, Stuart, when you change your marketing to explain just back to the experts, when you started to focus on educating them why their home did not sell, and then also, conversely, how do you solve these issues? They started to look at you as the as the expert. And so their perception change. You know, we’re no longer an average agent that’s served average quality that they’re disgusted with. You now become the savior to their problem.

Stuart: [00:30:23] Exactly. And when you address those, they see you differently. So that was actually my first niche was expired. I specialized and expired. I knew. So here’s some of the things that I knew. Let’s just talk about building expertise. I knew how much longer it would take them to sell and how much less they would get for their home if they expired a second time. So they could either list their home with me with a guarantee to sell, or they could list it with someone else and risk expiring again and seeing a drop in value. That was quite significant. But I probably I may not be the only one who knew that, but I knew something that nobody else knew because I was a specialist in that area of the real estate market. There were five objections expired sellers would give, and I knew all of those. And once you put yourself in a position of having the credibility that exceeds your competition, now you’re in a position where people want and need to do business with you. They’ve had a failure and they just can’t risk another failure.

Beatty: [00:31:39] So that is branding. You brought up another thing that’s really interesting, because this is one of the keys for dominoes. You took the risk upon yourself. It’s called risk reversal.

Stuart: [00:31:50] Exactly.

Beatty: [00:31:51] You shown statistically, if they list again and and do not sell, they’re going to lose even more money. But then you reverse the risk and said, I guarantee to sell it.

Stuart: [00:32:03] Right. And in the consumer love site. I mean, think about the things you buy without a warranty. Now, if you’re like me, I kind of pooh pooh warranties, but but there’s a warranty on just about anything you buy. And if you have a plumber come out and do a 2000 plumbing job. Guess what? You’re not going to sign or you’re not going to have them come out unless they guarantee their work. I mean, you’re just not going to same with your roofer or your auto mechanic or whoever the case is.

Beatty: [00:32:32] Very interesting. So so let’s summarize. I’m going to let you summarize this so far where we are and the difference we really haven’t. We’re talking on branding. We’ve introduced marketing because they’re so closely related for like faith and belief, it’s hard to separate. But for listeners, how would you define branding separate from marketing? Can we put some labels on it that makes.

Stuart: [00:32:58] Clear I’m I’m certainly not going to give you the the definition you might get if you were in getting an MBA, but branding is simply the consumer knowing. Who you are, what you do, and they know the difference. And the value you can offer them versus your competition. So when someone calls me who owns a home on small acreage, they are calling me because they know that I’m Stewart Sutton, a real estate broker, and I have an expertise in homes like theirs. They the call they made to me was because of branding and marketing. But the branding part, they wouldn’t respond to the marketing if the branding hadn’t worked. In other words, they believe that I’m an expert. The marketing is, Hey, here’s something you should respond to, and they respond to it. But. The branding is what gets them. Is what compels them to call me instead of somebody else, because if they just needed to list their house, they could call anybody. If they need to list their house on 1.7 acres and they want an expert to handle it. They’re going to call me. Did I muddle that up or.

Beatty: [00:34:19] No, no, no. You really good. And as you were saying this, I’m going to modify branding a little bit differently is hitting the same point, trying to use different words. Branding is why to choose you marketing prompts them to call you in a very simple and so and the Y to choose you goes deeper than what most people think. Well, you need to choose me because I sell on one acre plus properties and I’ve been selling for 40 years and I’m a top producer. No, those are no reasons to chase you. If you get down to it, the psychology in that homeowner’s mind is this. I would be a fool to choose anyone else besides Stuart. That’s branding when you can convince them to that level that all the things that they know about you, your expertise, your drive, your what you do and all of the all that package together, their perception of you that makes them go. If I’m going to sell my home on this 1.6 acres, I would be a fool to call anyone else besides Stewart. That is why to choose you. That’s the branding. And then they get this marketing and they go, Yeah, we’re thinking about selling. Here’s Stewart’s card. It’s got his phone number. Let me pick up the phone and call you. That’s basically the difference between the branding and the marketing. But your marketing creates the branding. Does that make.

Stuart: [00:35:50] Sense? Basically, we’re marketing the brand.

Beatty: [00:35:52] We’re marketing the brand.

Stuart: [00:35:53] Creating a brand, and then we’re marketing the brand.

Beatty: [00:35:56] Yeah. And and how does your marketing create the brand? What are the what is the marketing doing that’s doing that’s creating the brand?

Stuart: [00:36:04] So everything we send out the door sends them to a video without fail.

Beatty: [00:36:11] Some video infused postcards. We’ll tag that term.

Stuart: [00:36:15] So I have and I’ll just sometimes I’ll go buy a domain for a specific marketing campaign I’m doing. And it might be. So when it comes to expertise, which we talked about earlier. There is there are certain nuances and factors revolving pricing, a home on acreage versus pricing, a regular home and a subdivision. And the owner of that home on 1.6 acres knows this. They just don’t know how it works. They have this feeling doesn’t seem like they should price my home using price per square foot like like they do the houses in subdivisions, but they don’t quite understand how their home should be priced. So part of what we do is get information into their hands with the brand, but the marketing compels them to respond and that response takes them to a video who says, Here’s the three things that you need to be aware about the valuation of your home on an acre or more. It can be wildly wrong unless you pay attention to these three things. Now they’re going. He’s branded his expert and he’s supporting his credibility as an expert because we have this information. Does that make sense?

Beatty: [00:37:33] Yeah, it does. And as I listen to you, all of your marketing and this is the whole this is the this is a huge part of video infused postcards because you can only communicate so much in a written word. Right. Like for our video watchers. So here’s an example of a video infused postcard, but it’s infused only because it’s got a QR code that goes to video. Otherwise, it’s just a postcard. And all you have is words. But here’s the interesting thing. Ucla did a study and they found that out of 100% of communication impact, the words is only 7%. Once you add the voice inflection and the video, the live movement in the body language, you now add another 93% for 100. So by changing words only to work to video, you’ve actually increase your communication impact by 15 times. And so when you’re talking about branding and trying to convince someone, educate them on how good you are. You’re not talking about you. You’re talking about your knowledge that they need to know and understand so they get the most money for their home. Then by you educating them, whoever educates the consumer is the one that that consumer perceives as the expert, and that’s the building of the brand.

Stuart: [00:39:00] There you go.

Beatty: [00:39:02] I’m pretty smart on that one night.

Stuart: [00:39:05] I think you explained that quite well. So with the with the brand. Even if they’re never going to sell their home. They understand what I do and who I am and what my expertise is. And that’s why this is something you and I have talked about before. I’ll get a call and they’ll say, Would you come out and talk to us about listing our home now? Two things happen here. One, I’m usually the only agent they call. In two. Sometimes they were referred to me by someone I don’t know.

Beatty: [00:39:39] That’s interesting.

Stuart: [00:39:40] Reason for that is because of the brand. I want you to think about this for a second if you want to. And this isn’t going to work specifically for you on this example. But if you went to Google and you said, I’m thinking about selling my home, I’ve got 2.4 acres, so I want to find someone who sells homes on acreage. So you do a Google search, you’re going to see Zillow and Realtor.com. Of course, anything having to do with real estate, you’ll see them. You may see some real estate companies. You may see Bob Johnson. You may see Marie Jefferson, and then you see one acre plus homes. Who are you most likely to click on a branded? Company that looks like they fit your particular home or real estate agent Generic name. Yeah, that makes sense.

Beatty: [00:40:35] Yeah, that that does. So that whole branding is. What is very specific to them. It starts to move. And I love you made another comment. We’ll talk about this at another time. More detail. But a lot of little things add up to something big. And that’s kind of what you’re talking about, is just the the web. The Web name one acre plus homes. If my home is on one acre or more, then I’m naturally going to be gravitate toward to that link as opposed to Zillow or John Smith. Okay.

Stuart: [00:41:11] Exactly. And it seems like a small thing, but it has impact. As John Stewart at one acre plus dot com. My website is one acre plus dot com. So the branding. Is it extensive in too small areas that we don’t usually think about? We see and we’ve seen this in corporations and we see this with small companies when they try to outreach. And you know who I’m talking about. One of the most brilliant branding and marketing guys in America, he calls it line extension. He says when a brand tries to extend their line, it nearly always fails. So an example of that is Toyota. Well, could Toyota build an expensive car to compete with Mercedes? Well, they couldn’t, because who wants to say, well, I own a really expensive Toyota? I mean, that doesn’t work on a mercedes or on a Lexus. Lexus is a brand separate from Toyota. So when Stuart Sutton wanted to start one acre plus homes, if I’d have tried to use Stewart Sutton, my name on real estate by Stewart and just say, hey, I also sell homes on an acre or more. It just wouldn’t have worked as well. But when I created a brand for one acre plus homes, now we have a very different scenario, kind of like Toyota and Lexus. Now, they’re probably a little better than mine.

Beatty: [00:42:49] Yeah, but that’s a really, really key point when you’re in a niche and that niche is known by those homeowners as they are in a niche, you’re on one acre or more property or you live on the lake and not the house across the street from the lake, or you are on the beach and not the house across the street from the beach. Any time you’re in that specialized category that the homeowner clearly understands, their home is different than all of your branding, all of your contact, who you are needs to be all centered around that for it to really make that impact, that perception.

Stuart: [00:43:32] Exactly.

Beatty: [00:43:35] Let’s say one other thing before we wrap up. Real estate marketing is. Let me let me go back to one other thing, because you mentioned Alaris. This is the thing I want to talk on. So Al Rais and his partner, I forget his partner’s name. Do you remember? They usually wrote things together. I don’t.

Stuart: [00:43:58] I don’t remember off the top of my head.

Beatty: [00:43:59] Yeah, I don’t either. So. All right. So by the way, branding. Al got the branding his partner didn’t, Right? So because we can’t remember this partner’s name, but they wrote a book called Positioning, and it was back before most of the agents on this podcast podcast are probably were born because it was written in the 1980s. And this is what we’re talking about. Positioning is branding. And what they made a really interesting comment out of a lot of consumer research and studies and surveys, and they said that the typical consumer can only remember two to maximum of about three different brands. So so, Stuart, I want to test this and I want to test this with everyone listening to this. So you all answered this question as well. I want you to think of toothpaste brands and Stuart Colgate and Crest, two brands. How many brands are out there, do you know?

Stuart: [00:44:57] Probably 100.

Beatty: [00:44:58] At least a hundred in your market. So here’s the point. Most people come up with two brands, and whenever I’m on a conference call, a Zoom conference call and have everyone type it in their chat box, it’s two, two, two, one, one, two, three, two, two, two. Right. This is what happens with the sellers when they think of a real estate agent, which is a brand. There may be 100 agents competing in that same neighborhood, but they only think of two. True. Or maybe one. And why they think of it. If you can understand how to get into that person’s psychology so they think of you that the perception is I’d be a fool to choose anyone else besides you. Then that’s when you start winning the game.

Stuart: [00:45:44] There you go.

Beatty: [00:45:45] Yeah. And I’ll make one last statement, and then we’re going to start to wrap up the. If you want to understand how well branded you truly are, all you have to do is to a simple mathematical calculation. How many listings in the market that I market to came on and market in the last 12 months? And how many of those did I get? And you divide your how many you got versus those that came on and that’s the degree to which you’ve been branded. And most people are not branded, right.

Stuart: [00:46:19] Well, you may remember this baby when when I first got your post card and I called you and we started marketing. We particularly chose an area that I was not known in because we didn’t want to I didn’t want to test with people that might have called me anyway. So that was the true test, in my opinion, of the legitimacy and the effectiveness of the marketing strategies we were using. We were mailing into areas I’ve never marketed to before, and the results showed that that marketing work, that those postcards were effective. If I just went into an area and I know people already knew me anyway, it would be very difficult to ascertain what kind of effect it had because someone would call me.

Beatty: [00:47:07] Anyway, right? Do you remember? So your home size, your farm size was right around 1000 homes, if I recall.

Stuart: [00:47:17] 800. It was about 1400.

Beatty: [00:47:19] Okay. About 1400. You remember how much how much GCI you earned from that home to your first 12 months from that?

Stuart: [00:47:24] Yes. Six figures. The first first year, Yeah.

Beatty: [00:47:27] Yeah. And I remember you sharing and I’m sharing this, guys, because this is back before video infuser before video infusion came on the market with us. Okay, so this is the marketing before our new video infused postcards. You were sharing with me, Stuart, that this is about six months or seven months into using us. And you said, Baby, I, I entered this program expecting and thinking I would be thrilled to have five or six listings in my first year. You said I’ve had five or six listings in my first six months. Mm hmm. Yeah. So.

Stuart: [00:48:08] That’s correct. And it’s I think it’s a myth that people think that’s going to take a long time to get. Matter of fact, I had this conversation with someone yesterday that it’s going to take a long time to get a farm up and running for a long time to get a niche up and running. Yeah. If you follow the steps, if you have the expertise, you gain the expertise, you brand properly and you market properly, you can start pulling in quality listings and earn fees within 90 days, maybe six months, but it certainly doesn’t have to take a year.

Beatty: [00:48:42] Yeah, I remember one of the clients that is with us is works on a on a big lake, actually two lakes, I think it is. And she sells lakefront property. And so we created her cards specific to her niche. She had tried multiple different marketing services, just total failure with every single one because they didn’t know how to market on the lake and she didn’t know what to expect with us. She’s marketing over just over 1500, 1800 homes, something like that. In her first mailing she gets I think it’s two seven figure listings. Right. And she was just blown away. I mean, she’s made so much money from this marketing because it simply works. And, you know, she was expecting she told me that, you know, I was hoping that I would break even by the end of the year, she said. I broke even in the whole year, my first month and my first mailing. And so now everything is just huge profit. And she’s excited.

Stuart: [00:49:46] It definitely works. I had a guy who told me he’s been working expired for 15 years with just enough sex, barely enough success just to not not quit doing it right, but just never really anything substantial. He says he said the expired package out that I gave him, he received a call the day after the mail hit for an appointment to come to their house. And it’s just a different when sellers call you and say, Would you please come talk to me rather than you trying to close them for an appointment? It’s just just a wonderful way to do business.

Beatty: [00:50:28] Let me tell one other story. So you shared with us years back, as we call it, the about May packet. And so for clients who come on board with us, it’s a packet you send to someone that has indicated they’re likely thinking about selling. So it’s a standard part of what we still use today. And one of our clients that has become a friend of mine, his name is Ed out in Washington, he had just signed up with with us on the service. We just give him the packet to customize to him. And a friend called him up and said, hey, this lady is selling her home. There’s a $700,000 home and you probably ought to call her and see if you can get the listing. So Ed calls her up. She says, Hey, thanks for calling, Ed. I’ve already chosen another agent. He said, Well, have you sign a contract? No, he’s coming over day after tomorrow and we’re going to sign it. He said, Well, can I at least email you some information about me? She said, Sure. So she took that about me packet, which is all marketing, right? It’s all branding. It’s all Why should you choose me? And he updated it and he emailed it to her. He gets a phone call from the next day. Stuart And you said she called me back. You said she said, Ed, I read your packet. I want you to list my home. I’ve canceled with the other agent. Can you be at my house tomorrow at two? And the impact is, is like night and day. Once you understand what causes someone to choose you over others and you’d simply talk to them in that in that degree.

Stuart: [00:52:02] It really is. It’s amazing. I just I hate to just continue with worst stories. Why don’t I tell you one more? I was to leave town and my assistant got a call and she said this lady would lie. And I said, Well, you know, I’m leaving today. Set it for when I get back. And she said, okay, I’m going to go ahead and take her because we hand-deliver the packages. So she took it out to her About the time she hit the office back, she got a call and said, When Stuart’s flight, I want him to come out and list my house before he leaves town. And so I use that to tell people, not only do people call wanting you to list, sometimes they demand it. And I don’t mean that derogatorily. I just mean she once she understood what we did on a compare to basis to other agents, she was nearly just insistent that we list her house before before I left town. And that’s I mean, it sounds like the same type of thing that happened and.

Beatty: [00:53:02] Type of thing. Yeah.

Stuart: [00:53:03] So it’s amazing. It’s not those aren’t unique stories. They happen all the time.

Beatty: [00:53:07] They’re not. So we started to hear a consistent trend and not to tell another war story. But I’ll tell you one more and the point I want you to you guys listening to this is not that we’re bragging, okay? I want you to understand one clear message. It’s the same level of effort, totally different responses, whether you’re talking about you or talking about them. And marketing and branding, when done right, have immediate, tremendous results that can double and triple your business without any extra money expended and without any extra time. In fact, they’ll take less time because they come to you. So we started using that about me packet and just having people drop it off. The other thing that happened with it, because this is what you taught us, right? Stuart Drop it off with a tin of butter butter cookies from Costco. I think it was. So we started hearing reports back in the field from our clients that when they would do that, two things happen. They had fewer competitive interviews and by the time they got there, rather than having a two or two and a half hour listing appointment. It was 30 or 45 minutes because they’d already chosen to use that agent. So it’s just like, let’s take the order. I mean, it’s totally different. And marketing can revolutionize your life.

Stuart: [00:54:27] Absolutely.

Beatty: [00:54:29] So with that, hopefully you guys have enjoyed this. Stewart If they have interest in creating a second income stream in the one acre plus niche, what do they do and what requirements? Because I know it’s a licensing program. It’s not you actually you have some specifications.

Stuart: [00:54:51] Yeah, it’s very it’s pretty straightforward. But in order to get involved, what we’re going to do is really provide you every single thing you need to go down that path. And that includes all the marketing material, actually write the content. Hand it to you if you want to edit it or change it, you can. But we do. We do find that agents who have some experience and have some production under their belt are typically a lot more likely to follow through and and get this in place. And it’s not a hard number, but we find that people who who have produced around 8 million or more tend to grab onto this and run with it. Now, if you produce 7.7, don’t think you can’t call me, but the licensing thing sounds kind of highfalutin. All it really boils down to is if you go through the program and like what we’re doing, you just continue and and we provide the material and we provide the education and we provide the support for you to keep going with that, with that niche. It’s it’s really a cool program. And bottom line is it truly will double your income if you already have a nice income and you’re able to get it up and running, then managing it. And I think I might have already said this on this call or maybe before, but getting something up and running is usually a little more challenging than running it. So once you’ve gotten it up and running, it’s kind of smooth sailing from there.

Beatty: [00:56:19] Yeah. And on the back end, one of the things that we do, by the way, we do the video infused postcards and all the video post editing that goes along both with one acre plus niche and also with just any geographic form that you want to do or your personal past clients and sphere of influence. But we do the back end for Stuart’s marketing, and once you get everything set up from the marketing side, from this side of the marketing, it’s a set it and forget it. You know, Stuart, one of the things that I’ve been really impressed with Stuart is he knows his stuff. And so getting up to speed and being that domain expert in that area is pretty simple. And I love the fact, Stuart, that it only takes you eight or 10 hours a week on average to produce 15 million a year in volume. That’s just mind boggling.

Stuart: [00:57:15] So thank you. It’s we’ve been very blessed and it didn’t happen overnight. But it I mean it just one overnight.

Beatty: [00:57:24] It was about two or three months now for just.

Stuart: [00:57:27] I just I wish every agent who went into a licensing school would not be pounded with. You have to work weekends and evenings and sacrifice your family time to to make a good living because you don’t have to. I wish every new agent would understand what creating an expertise and in brand marketing that expertise would do for their career instead of struggling year after year after year until they finally maybe have enough sphere people in their sphere to to get by. But but yeah, it’s a great way to do business. And the support you guys give us is is unbelievable. I tell people all the time when we started that you’re the only person that ever listened to me and I’m not kidding. I mean other marketing companies, Well, this is the way we do it. Sorry. Well, you didn’t say this is the way we do it. You said, Well, that sounds great. Let’s make the changes for you. And that’s one of the big reasons that we’ve we’ve gotten along so well over the years is obviously our friendship and our and our faith and in our both of our passion for marketing.

Beatty: [00:58:35] Very much so. So so we’re wrapping up. So if you want more info about one acre plus niche, this was not a promotion call for that, but you might as well do it if you want to make more money. Just go to one acre plus niche niche is in HD and one is the numeral one, so one acre plus niche. And if you just want to make more money in general real estate marketing and you want to do the video infused postcards as well, just go to Agent Dominator dot com and you’ll see all about us there. So you’ll have.

Stuart: [00:59:08] You could make a better decision.

Beatty: [00:59:11] Thank you. No you can’t growing your business on less time is all about doing great marketing. So y’all y’all have a very blessed day. Stuart, thank you for joining us co host on our two person hosts at call and we will be back on the next marketing mastermind the next time it comes out.

Stuart: [00:59:32] All right. See you then.

P151