My Top Takeaways From Social Media Marketing World

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey, listers, what's up, Jeff Zimper. Welcome to another episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Thank you for being here, thank you for tuning in, if this is your first time, welcome. If you are a long time listener, hey, I'd love to hear from you, reach out and email me anytime podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com. And if you've been listening for some time, this is just me here today, no interview today. I want to do a couple of things. One is you may or may not know that my brand new book is soon to be released as you're hearing this in the month of March, that is the release month. And I've got some cool stuff to offer you guys as my loyal listeners and followers. The book is Disruptor Die, How to Survive and Thrive the Digital Real Estate Shift. And the idea behind the book, of course, the intent, the genesis of it is that, you know, as I talk to many, many people across the country, both in real estate and mortgage, what I've discovered was that people are at various different places with the changes happening in the industry and the market, the digital shift, if you will. Some are excited and bracing it. That I would say is the minority ad, but many and most are uncertain, perhaps even unaware in some cases, frozen, not sure what to do, not sure what their place is, not sure how to adapt and pivot, not sure if like what they've been doing, you know, should they continue doing or not. So I wanted to collect a bunch of actual case studies, real world, what's working today, what's coming around the bend, how do we prepare ourselves for the shift and break it down, you know, into basically two different parts, which is number one, the five trends driving the digital real estate shift. And then number two, how do we pivot and become modern mortgage and real estate professionals with lots of actual use cases, stories of loan officers and agents who have made the pivot and are taking on a modern mortgage or real estate marketing mindset. And that's not to say that, you know, old school doesn't work. You know, I have a saying that principles don't change, but tactics do. And so I cover that in the book as well. But if you're interested in getting your copy of the book, your advanced copy, right? This is much like when your favorite band comes to town and you want to get on the pre-release, the early release list, so you can get the best seats at the best price. This is that for you. And we've got some extra bonuses in there for you guys who get on that pre-advanced notice list. How do you do that? How do you get disrupt or die calm yet disruptor die calm? And that's where you just can put your name in an email address. And as soon as the book is ready to go, you're going to get first dibs early release on that before it goes live on Amazon and some extra bonuses with it as well, such as a companion course that I'm working on right now, a companion course that goes along with the book, which is includes a bunch of video downloads and resources and things that help you walk step by step through the book to help go deeper along your journey and help you along the way. So get disruptor die calm. Okay, so today what I'm bringing to you is just a quick kind of riff, a rant, if you will, on I attended last week in San Diego, my new annual event that I have my second year in a row and I've already signed up for next year. And what this is is the social media marketing world event. And it's one of the biggest events of its kind, about 5,000 people attend from all over the world to come attend this event every single year and it features some of the best of the best and brightest when it comes to what's happening in the space of social media marketing. And so I wanted to just go through my notebook and flip through my phone here. This is, you know, not very well prepared. So I'm just going to riff and rant and look at, you know, my notes and kind of bring to you the highlights of what I've learned, the big, you know, kind of the best takeaways from this event and hopefully pass on to you that you can at least, you know, from a thought provoking standpoint, right? There's definitely a lot of tactical stuff that I learned that isn't appropriate for this format. You'll see that come out in different ways and means over the coming months. But ultimately, what are my top takeaways from social media marketing world? Okay, so let me break it down. Okay, first and foremost, and if you hear some pages flipping, yeah, that's because that's my notes. That's my old school, still using the old college rule composition notebook. If you're watching the video, you can see that right here. Okay, so let's see, first and foremost, guess what's in again, I'm going to take my glasses on and off so I can look at the camera and not see a blurry lens here. Okay, so what's in, what's hot again this year, believe it or not, video, that's right. Coming to a screen near you video, it's hot once again, video is important. Video isn't growing ever and more important. And if you aren't on video yet, if you haven't got started, yes, I know it's daunting. Yes, I know you don't like how you look on video, but I'm sorry, right? Video is the killer app. And that was definitely a key theme that was talked about at the kickoff at the keynote by Michael Stelzner, who did some research and shared with us, you know, for example, what's coming is 5G, 5G on your mobile device. That's more Wi-Fi, more power, more bandwidth than you have in your home on your Wi-Fi, right? So what that means is you're going to be able to get digital quality, right? High quality, like 1080, 4K, I don't know what it's going to be, but I know it's going to be high quality, full video on your mobile device, you'll be able to watch streaming on your phone, streaming from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Disney. Now you may have seen Disney came out with Disney Plus and what was shared with us is that the former CEO of Disney had said that Disney's number one focus moving forward across all Disney brands is Disney Plus. More important to them than Disney theme parks, right? More important to them than Marvel, right? And Star Wars, Disney Plus is their primary focus. It's called the streaming wars, and why? Well, because we know if we want access to entertainment on demand, whether that be in our living rooms, in our couches, in our big screen TVs, or on our mobile devices and tablets, and with the coming of 5G, that is now available. And we know that people would rather be entertained than educated. But if you can do both and combine both, this is a lesson for you, content creators, if you can combine both and combine both education with entertainment, well, then you've got a real winning combo. And so I want you to think about video and the overall conversation of, and this goes back to takeaways from my time. I want you to think about video and the overall concept of your content strategy and where does video play a role in your content strategy, right? Because another topic that was discussed at social media, marketing world by one of my favorite presenters and authors is Mark Schaffer, author of marketing rebellion and his tag line is the most human company wins and had Mark on my podcast as well. So if you want to go to the blog, you can look that up the Mark Schaffer episode. But you know, Mark had a session that was called the War for Attention and flipping through my notes here. The war for attention, unless his face it, guys, it is a battle for attention out there, right? Winning the war for attention. And here's a key point is that over time, every channel becomes saturated, right? And there's a funny old saying that marketers ruin everything, okay? But over time, every channel becomes saturated. And so you've got this to identify, like, how are you going to stand out? And video is still for people in our space, Morgan and real estate. It is underutilized, right? And in many cases, poorly utilized. So where is video going to play a role for you because I, I am telling you right now and I don't often like make definitive statements like this. But I am, I guarantee you that if the, over the next 12 to 24 months, you do nothing with video, you will be left behind. You will be what's called a fading winner. You will not maintain a position at top of mind awareness with your clients, past clients and future clients. Why? Because they're engaging with video. You've seen the stats enough, people want to watch video videos, the next best thing to being there. It builds trust. People build a personal connection to you. It differentiates you for now. More and more people are hopping on the video bandwagon. What are you doing about it? Okay? All right, so give me a second here while I scroll to grab a couple of extra nuggets of content. I want to share with you in regards to winning the war for attention. You know, what I love about Mark Schaefer is that, you know, he kind of breaks it down and, as you know, my line here is the Chief Truth Teller, right, at Morgan's Market and Radio. And I believe in telling the truth. And so Mark mentioned this concept, asking the audience a question, which is, are you guru led? Are you guru led? And so what that means is you see that, and this is true at social media marketing world, the example of TikTok, right? The concern is when you are guru led is that you follow what all the gurus tell you to do. I don't care if it's Gary Vee, I don't care if it's, you know, some other person you're looking to as a quote guru and whatever they say you take as gospel. If you look back at the history, right, people have said, it's Snapchat, man, every year there's like a thing, right? So it was Snapchat before and everybody piles on Snapchat. And then it's the year of video unlinked in and that's what everybody does. And then marketers and people flock to whatever's popular until they ruin it, right? And that's not a strategy. Winning the war for attention depends on non conformity, not conformity. And so we use the example of TikTok, right? I know TikTok's getting a lot of buzz right now and a lot of attention and I see some people in our industry focused on it and using it. And it was a big piece of the conversation at the conference I was just at, right? There seems to be a frenzy. Everybody's got to get on TikTok and Gary Vee and it's hot and you can learn things and things like that. And you know, research has shown that indeed there's a growing older audience on TikTok. But when you take a closer look at the data, 94% of the content created on TikTok is created by teenagers, right? So what does this imply? And it implies we have a lot of older people stalking teenagers on TikTok, right? As that occurred by the way on Snapchat before the older crowd dropped out, right? And again, you always need to ask the question first when it comes to strategy. Where is your audience? And yes, we want to get ahead of the curve to the degree we can and things like that. And I understand that you could potentially, you know, view content on TikTok to perhaps learn some things or creativity wise, right? I'm not here to debate that per se at least not right now. The thing I want to discuss more is what is your strategy, right? You need to be building an audience of 12 year olds for your business, right? In our space, I'm going to argue, no. And will you, are you going to be left behind if two years from now TikTok does continue to trend up and maintain an audience of people of home buying age, right? Okay, sure. Keep an eye on it and be aware of it, right? And I'm not against TikTok, right? What I'm just saying is think, think, don't be guru led, pause. Is this a good use of your time in resources? And more importantly, how you doing on the current platforms where the attention is and the success track record is doing to have content across those platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, do you have meaningful relevant videos? And if you haven't even gotten started yet on the other established platforms and you are burning time in cycles on TikTok, I'm not sure that's the best use of your time. Okay? To be effective today with your strategy for online, you can't be guru led and fall in line with the crowd, right? Like Mark Shaker, Shaker talked about, you've got to zig when everyone else is zagging. You've got to do what's different, right? What shows up differently. And one of the easiest ways to do that is through video content, by the way, with your own unique personality, with your own feature of content that you could do. This isn't a lesson today on that, we'll cover that on future episodes and some of the additional training we've got helps you with that, right? But be a non-conformist, right? Be more human, actually. So that was my biggest takeaway from Mark Shaker and I 100% agree with that. Stop being guru led, do what makes sense, don't just do something because it's new and it's hot and it's sexy and it's bright and shiny, right? Stop and think. The key is this human presence, right? An emotional connection and there's so many different ways you can do that. You can get personal with people and by the way, here's the thing, how do you do this? You don't make you the hero. Like the classic example with the real estate agent is like, look at me, look at all my great listings and look at my top producer award and all that kind of stuff and that's all well and good. But that's putting you in front and center, you making you the hero. And what we need to do to be more human, to create a better emotional connection is to make our clients the hero, to put our clients in front and center, to put stories about clients and working with them, to put stories about where you live and why you love where you live, front and center and your community, right? Maybe take us behind the scenes a day in the life of a mortgage originator. What happens? Show us some of the chaos, show us some of the fun, show us some, you know, people, that's what creates an emotional connection, right? And what unique value can you provide? Here's something you want to Google, Google, Walmart, Charlene, Walmart, Charlene, right? The first time I saw it was at the conference, I'm going to actually googling it right now as I typed this in here. So who is Walmart Charlene? This lady works at Walmart and she poses with its products for stores, local Facebook page and people have loved her sense of humor, Google it and look at the pictures. We got a picture and I'll put a link to this in a show notes. We got a picture of, and by the way, this woman, she looks to be, I don't know, respectfully, about 60, 70 years old. So here's a picture of her, crawled up in a crib at Walmart with, looks like some, some pitiolite and a binky and a little blanky over her head. Here's her cruising on her, you know, scooter cart with a teddy bear in one hand and a basket full of 50 shades of gray and some cool whip and other things in there. Here's her piled up in a basket full of Valentine's stuffed animals. Another picture of her laying on top of a palette full of bird seed, right? Her with some football sporting gear on, just doing these funny little poses. Here's her with a, in front of the milk, what do you call this, the refrigerator where they sell milk. She's holding up a gallon of milk in one hand, a box of Oreos in another and she's got a milk mustache painted across her face. This is creating engagement. This is obviously being funny. Like I said earlier, if you can entertain and educate at the same time, you've got a winner. But when you can, hey, I show the lighter side of things, whether that's you, somebody you interview, somebody who's on your team, have fun, okay? All right. I'm going to turn a couple more pages here. I mentioned hero stories, right? By the way, how about you highlight for mortgage originators listening? How about you highlight one of your agents? What if you, after a successful close of a transaction, identified one of your agents who went above and beyond the call of duty, really helped her clients, his or her clients, win their home, right? In this market, competitive market, and if we're working together, collaborating with agents to help get our clients offers accepted, I know there's things agents are doing, right? Here's an idea for you. You know, of a loan officer, there should be more who do this, you know, you've heard of the old buyer letter, right? Let's have a buyer write a letter to the seller in a multi-bit offer, so we help that buyer's offer be accepted. Well, I know of a loan officer who actually does a video, right? Sits down with the family, grabs his mobile phone and takes a quick video of the family. Basically, he says, hey, what's up? This is Jeff at ABC Mortgage here, I am with the Smith family and we're about to submit an offer on your home, Mr. Mrs. Celler at 1, 2, 3 Main Street, and I just wanted you to see how, you know, who this family is and how much they love your home and they would really love to have their offer accepted and be able to, right, start the new chapter in their next life and create some amazing memories in their home. Then boom, pan around, hey, Susie, hey, little Johnny, right, all that stuff, and then you send that video off to the listing agent to share that with the home seller, right? That's today's modern version of the buyer letter. Okay, real quick, a couple other things here. We talked a lot about personal branding. That's for sure, personal branding being a big theme because that's the one differentiating thing that we do have, right, and of course, one of the things that was the question posed was, you know, personal brand. What is a personal brand? What do people think about when they think about you? What do people think about when they think about you? And if people don't know about you, they can't do business with you. Are you the best kept secret in the industry and ask yourself this question, what problem do you solve? I'm just flipping my notes here to try and find the right section in this thing. What problem do you solve? Like when you think about somebody entering a home transaction, somebody acquiring, getting a mortgage, what emotions do they have? This may change based on who they are and their experience in buying a home, but think about this. Do people trying to qualify for a mortgage and purchase a home? Do they have fear? Do they lack certain confidence? Do they have uncertainty? Do they have doubt? Are they lacking information? Here's a key point. Solve the problem as much as provide the solution. Become an ambassador of the problem. Do you solve the problem as much as the solution and become an ambassador of the problem? What problem do you solve? Because what people buy is solutions to problems. So I'm entering in a market. I'm a first time home buyer. I've got some fear. I'm not 100% confident. Right? Hey, you go with us. Here's what we do. Replace it with confidence and certainty. Right? We're going to take you along the journey and help you win the home of your dreams. This is just off the cuff. Top of my head here, people. And think about how you can help quell a dress, how you can help position and demonstrate yourself as an ambassador of the problem through your knowledge, yes, but through the sharing and articulation of your knowledge through the delivering content that addresses the problem. What would that look like? I don't know. It could be a video. Hey, this is Jeff at ABC Mortgage and in today's market, I know it's hyper competitive and you are looking for the right choice for your mortgage needs. And I can tell you one of the things I love about working with clients, particularly first time home buyers, if they've never bought before, is I know there's probably a fair amount of fear and uncertainty in the home buying process and all the moving parts. And one of the things that we pride ourselves on here at ABC Mortgage Company is helping to build confidence with you in that you're going to make the best decision for you and choosing your mortgage to help you feel confident that you can indeed buy a home in today's market and start creating memories for life. So folks, that was completely off the top of my head and you've got to spend some time crafting and articulating that. But imagine a video like that that goes on your insta, your Facebook, whatever YouTube channel, right? Love that concept, sell the problem, sell the problem and that you're solving that problem, okay? All right. We've glanced at a couple of more things here. You guys like in this stuff? I would love to hear your feedback on this, jump on the Facebook page or leave us a review wherever you're listening to this podcast, we'd love your feedback on that. And last point I guess about branding is find your uniqueness, find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. Very wing it, said that. And some of you may not think you have uniqueness and I'm here to tell you you do. For some it's more obvious than others and yeah, maybe you've got to do a little bit of digging and maybe you've got to break yourself out of that trap that you quit being the right and fees jockey, right? You've heard me say it before, advice over price. So it's not just advice over price but it's back to what we just said, problem versus solution. I've got the best rates in town, great, that's a solution, that's not a problem, okay? It's not a problem for people to get an interest rate quote. What is a problem? Well, I've got a little bit of a challenge credit or I've never bought a home before or gosh, we're pushing it a little bit in our price zone or it's hyper competitive. How am I going to be sure that I get, you know, that my offer gets accepted? Or I don't know if it's the right time to buy now. I mean, you know, rates are down, yes, but prices are up and the future market's a little bit uncertain, I'm not sure what problem are you solving, okay? And then how are you becoming known through what channels of distribution, okay? Are you sharing content to become known for a specific problem that you solve? And lastly, let me close it out with this, right? We are on a journey to become, to move from, we've got two categories, if you will, imagine you had a sheet of paper, right, right here, got a sheet of paper, and down the middle, on the left hand side of the top, you write unknown, line down the middle, on the right side, you write down known. So and the line down the middle, by the way, is the wall. The wall for attention that we must break through. And how do you move, how do you cross over, right? Well, there's lots of different activities to do, right? We've touched on some of those, your personal brand content, right? Coming up with specific topics, your products can help you break through, you know, how do you show up online when people look you up? But you know, all those different things, content, but the real way to cross over from unknown to known, to cross that barrier in that wall, is to become the person on one thing, often on one channel. This comes down to you, you know, call it niche, if you will, you've heard it said, which is our enriches. And so many people never implement this, right, in a very specific way, because you think you're going to lose out on the other, it's more standard business. I'm here to tell you you're not. And I've got examples of this in our book Disruptor Die. So if you haven't yet thought about getting on the advanced copy list for that, go to get DisruptorDie.com, that'll be coming out in the month of March. But we go, we have lots of use cases and examples in that book of how people have broken through the wall from unknown to known by becoming the person on one thing, often on one channel, because you can't be great on 12 different social media channels unless you have a team. But I will tell you that it all comes down to this to really cross the barrier from unknown to known and have people talking about you because today, the marketing department is your clients, your customers, they are your marketing team, getting them to talk about you on social media, what do they say? Both on the social platforms and online reviews in their local communities, in their homes and neighborhoods, what do people say about you? What do people think about you when they think about you? Don't just differentiate on knowledge, here's the key, differentiate, untrust, right? That's how you break through the wall from unknown to known is you don't differentiate unknowledge. Yes, that's relevant part of the equation, but you really differentiate untrust who you are. That's really what you're marketing with your content is trust. Are you leveling up the trust? Is the content and conversations that you're creating, both online and off, is that leading with focus on trust before focus on sales, right? What's your reputation because reputation comes before revenue? And if you ever were confused about what to market, what to say, how to content to create, put it all through the filter first and foremost, is does this help demonstrate you as a trust worthy individual in the mortgage and real estate space? That's it. That's all I've got for you on this episode, we're going to get back to our interviews in the coming weeks and other really more special surprise bonus content coming your way as we change it up ourselves here in 2020. So I hope that you've gotten some value out of this. Check the show notes for links to additional resources. If you're watching this on our YouTube channel, thank you for me just so you know, I'm doubling down on YouTube this year. I'm going to do a separate episode on what is the ideal platform, social platform for you in the real estate space. That's all I've got for now. Again, the book Get Disruptor Diagon.com, go check it out, appreciate you guys, we'll see you on the next episode, go out there, feel some trust. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing, get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. 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