Stop Chasing Leads, Start Creating Content with Sarah Noel Block

Real Estate Marketing Dude

What we're gonna be chatting about on today's episode, is what is content. Unfortunately, if you're not creating content, you're not going to have a business in the future. In my opinion, there is no more important marketing mechanism, activity or anything, than to create content. Because if you're trying to message anyone without creating content, all you're really doing is selling your shit and you're landing on deaf ears. Content Creation is how you remain relevant amongst your audience, your databases, and how you keep the conversation going.

Our guest today happens to be from Chicago, but certainly not all good content marketers come from Chicago ;). Her name is Mrs. Sarah Noel Block, and she has a company called Tiny Marketing. What she does is she focuses on content creation within the real estate space.

Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How to stop getting your clients stolen
• Creating content even with a small team
• Define what content it

Resources

Learn more about Sarah Noel Block

Real Estate Marketing Dude

The Listing Advocate (Earn more listings!)

REMD on YouTube

REMD on Instagram

Transcript:

So how do you track new business, you constantly don't have to chase it. Hi, I'm Mike Cuevas to real estate marketing. And this podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust and most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living. It's your job to remind them. Let's get started.

What's up ladies and gentlemen, welcome another episode of the real estate marketing dude, podcast, where we're talking about today is something near and dear to my heart. Basically, the whole reason why I started to create this show about six weeks ago, and I'll lay the context over what we're going to be covering are six weeks ago, I mean, six fucking years ago, not six weeks, six years ago. But I'm going to lay the coverage about when I actually came up with the name real estate marketing dude, I was actually at a conference for Copyblogger in Denver and Copyblogger. Back in the day is Brian Clark's company, you probably know who he is. Brian Clark is Copyblogger used to be the number one blogging content marketing company, I think in the world, he's from training, they're at the forefront number. And at that conference, I was sitting at this conference, and it was at that conference that I saw, I forget who was speaking on stage, but I'm like, You know what, I'm going to call my company. And I'm going to call my podcast, real estate marketing dude, because I was sold on content marketing, but I wasn't sold on what my brand or identity was, until I came back from that conference. So folks, what we're gonna be chatting about on today's episode, is what is content. And unfortunately, if you're not creating content, you're not going to have a business in the future. In my opinion, there is no more important marketing mechanism, activity or anything, then to create content. Because if you're trying to message anyone without creating content, all you're really doing is selling your shit. And you're landing on deaf ears. Content Creation is how you remain relevant amongst your audience, your databases, and how you keep the conversation going. Because when you disappear, you become a closet agent. And that's when they start cheating on you with guys like me and everybody else. And that's what is going to happen. The eye buyers today are are aiming for your clients. Big tech is aiming for your clients, and everyone is aiming for your clients except you. If you're not creating content, you're gonna lose touch, not stay in touch with them. And this is going to be a very good episode. So we're gonna go ahead and introduce our guest today. She happens to be from Chicago, but certainly not all good content marketers come from Chicago, if you don't know. But her name is Mrs. Sarah Noel block, and she has a company called tidy marketing. And what she does is she focuses on content creation within the real estate space. So Sarah, go ahead and say hello, tell us a little bit about yourself. And let's get into this.

Yeah, so I started working with real estate companies about 10 years ago to create their content. And I haven't looked back basically, I reached out to landlord ology, the because I was a real estate investor. And I said, Hey, do you guys need content? They did. So they hired me in it spun from there. I was working full time in marketing. And I built my business on the side as I was, as I was doing content for real estate service and SaaS companies. And now here I am two years later. Do you want to do it full time?

And you're mainly creating content for the real estate industry? Those that correct? Yes. Okay. So we're going to start this off really easy, guys, we're gonna first define what content is. If you guys ever listened to the show for a while, you guys, if you don't know what the hell we do, yet, we create video content for you. So that everybody knows who the hell you are in your local community. But video content is just one form of content. There's a lot of content to create. Everything you do is content. Like everything you do even when you go on showings, that's content. So once you to find in your terms, what the hell's content for the real estate people?

Yes, for the real estate people, it is how you educate and build trust with your audience. Man, I would say I think it's like 70% of the sales process is done before they ever reach out to somebody in sales. And all of that is done through content marketing, because you're teaching them how to solve their problem. And you're building trust by showing them you know how to solve that problem. It pretty much feeds all of your marketing.

Can you go back and spend some time on this? 70 to 80% of people have already decided whether they're going to buy your shit, is that what you're saying?

I am saying they have at least decided between you and one other company on if they're going to buy your shit. And then they'll reach out to you and that'll be the deciding factor on who they go with.

So when a consumer is out there, just sort of I don't know just play in the real estate agents, agencies and say I'm going back into Chicago. I never sold real estate Chicago so I don't know any real estate agents in Chicago. And I'm thinking about moving back home to go closer to my parents. Let them watch the grandkids grow up. And I've sort of went on YouTube, I saw some one guy might like a little bit, I see another agent, I might like a little bit. What would I do next? As a consumer? Typically, they check out their websites and make a check out their YouTube channel, like what am I going to do?

Oh, you're gonna do a deep dive, you're gonna go to Google. And you're going to start researching that person. See what social media they're on? Are they active on it? See what what's going on on their website? Are they regularly updating it? Do they have new houses listed on there? What do they tell me about their process for buying and selling? And that's, that's where it's gonna go next. Just like everybody else in the world. They're gonna go to Google and see what you have.

Right, folks? Did you guys, let's get out of real estate for a second? I don't know. What's your favorite thing to do, Sarah? Like, what's your favorite thing to buy?

Oh, my favorite thing to buy? Yeah,

to buy or do and spend money on?

Yeah, probably. Buy hiking,

hiking before you go on. Alright, so let's just say that you came out to Southern California, you're going out the San Diego area. And there's a lot of really good hiking around here. What would you do first? Well, I

was actually there last summer. And I hiked up the federal volcano that you have over there.

I haven't been there yet. But I know you're talking about I even know the name of it. But I know you're talking about

hiking boots, I would make sure that I have the right hiking boots.

And did you research it a little bit? And did you course,

you know, I'm on Google trying to figure out like, when what are the best hiking boots for mountain climbing because I'm in the flatlands of Chicago? Oh, I know hiking is normally through a forest. So I need to know what the right hiking boots.

You know, we call you guys out here now or they call us back home? They call it they call you guys Flatlanders Oh, the

giant mountain

Flatlanders? No, she's, she's exactly right, you guys, like think about it, you're gonna be making one of the largest financial investments if you're buying and if you're selling, you're unloading one of your largest financial investments, you're not going to do that with John Doe, the stranger that you just met. At some, like randomly walking down the street, you're gonna do it someone you know, like and trust. But most importantly, I would say trust. What, walk me through, I'm sure you've done all kinds of research here. Do you have like a pattern that you've actually noticed or research of what consumers do specifically, when they're thinking about hiring a buyer's agent or a listing agent?

Yeah, they start, they start by looking at, like, the questions to the problems that they're having. Like, let's say they've worked with a realtor before. And they were actually I had a customer interview for one of my clients just this morning. So I'm gonna use their example. They were working with a realtor. And they were super aggressive towards their, towards the buyers lender, like mean to them. And this person was see seed on those emails and saw how it was and just didn't like it didn't like the vibe. So then he started doing some research for outside realtors. And the first thing he did was, you know, Google realtors in the area and what he wanted, what he did was he looked at their videos to see what kind of vibe they had. And you start to feel like you know, someone when you watched enough of their videos, yes, you get a feel for their personality. And that's, that's why he did and ended up a good experience, obviously, otherwise, I wouldn't have interviewed him for this particular thing.

Well, that's what most people you sort of hit on the head, like folks are not hiring you because you have a license in your pocket that allows you to legally collect money on a house you sold. They're hiring you because they feel comfortable, or they personally like you, like birds of a feather flock together. Guys, and people end up working with people that are really just like them, or somehow they relate to them. Because those are the people who remain on top of mine, aren't they?

Yeah, and really, you just you want to spend time with people you like. So you're not going to hire somebody that you really just don't have a good vibe with.

If you're sitting on the treadmill or you're sitting on the peloton, right now, think about the last 10 clients that you've literally helped buy or sell real estate. And then I want you to look and realize that why you've become friends with all of them isn't because that's a coincidence. It's because we all tracked like people People are always like, why am I drink a beer with my client again? That's because that's what I attracted right? Why am I like partying with this guy? Like I just sold this guy millionaire house why are we like a club right now? Well, that because that's who you attract guys. What what is let's go through some other forms of content. We know video guys, we don't need to harp on video even though if you want to we will. I want this to be about you. Not me. But what other types

of content written right now? Um because they're all looking like my clients are all looking to get found in Google faster. So we're doing a lot of either the show notes to go along with the videos or full blogs and community pages, so that they can get found for those problems that they're trying to solve. So, using the example from this customer interview I had this morning, he found her initially because he wanted an expert in his location. He, he was a real estate investor, and he had never actually lived in this house that he wanted to sell. So he's looking for an expert in Sacramento. And that's how we ended up finding her is because she did a lot of blogs on Sacramento area and the community. So he was able to find her because of that SEO juice.

It was a long tailed. And can you explain what longtail means?

Yeah, long tailed means like it. You're not looking at Sacramento realtors, that's a short tailed keyword. longtail would be like a longer question like realtors that are experts in x x neighborhood in Sacramento. And then your content will show up because you're creating a community page for that particular neighborhood. For example,

when I was practicing in Chicago still and you guys could look at the website if you like it's it's botched now because I took down all my it's all messed up. But I still have content on there. It's called Chicago real estate dude. My number one performing piece that attracted a lot of clients was I'll give you I got ton of stories. One was Chicago closing costs, I ranked number one, I actually had the snippet back in the day. So I actually ranked where I got the snippet in Chicago closing costs, Buyer Closing costs, and Chicago seller closing costs. were my top three pieces of performing content. I had my blog up to 10,000 Organic hits a month, guys, 10,000. It's insane. I even ranked against realtor.com and homes.com and Zillow on neighborhood tours, terms like Buck town homes for sale and stuff like that. But it was because of how much content we were creating. And I knew how to SEO, the back end of them. But the thing that most people fail by is they think that if you're gonna go out and create a piece of content, like a blog, they're like, I want to get 100,000 hits. Sorry about that, is it?

No and vote one, it's not going to happen overnight. And no, it's not about that. It's about getting the right heads. So yeah, people obsess over traffic. And the traffic count doesn't matter if the wrong people are going to your website, what you want is the right traffic going to your website and the right people finding you. And part of that is creating content that might be let's call it controversial, not really controversial, but shows your voice and who you really are shows your personality. Because you want as we were talking about before attracting the right people attracting people you would be friends with, you also want to repel the wrong people. So by showing your personality in that content, you're already like pushing off the people that you wouldn't really vibe with anyway.

Yep, I do it every day on the show. Like people like you swear too much. Great. We're probably not gonna. Honestly, we're probably not gonna hang out anyway. So let's talk about a controversial topic. So we're doing a scripting class. If you guys were members and clients of ours, you guys would be on this class on Wednesday. But what it's going to be on there's relative content that's performing well on YouTube. And what she meant by controversial this is controversial. Is the San Diego real estate market headed for a crash? That's going to be the topic of conversation, because that's what's performing well on YouTube. Now real estate agents are gonna be like, Oh, my God, that's, you're gonna say the markets going for a crash? It's always supposed to go up. I thought. No, guys, you want controversial stuff? Because that's what people get pay attention to.

Yeah. Clickable people are like, Well, is it click?

Yep. 100%. What other types of written content and blogs do you see? neighborhood? You mentioned? A couple of neighborhood pages?

Yeah. Yeah. And it depends on what type of buyer you're trying to attract. So if you're, I mean, I think in any industry, if you niche down, you're better off and you're, it's easier to attract people. So let's say your bread and butter is real estate investors, you'd want to write content all around real estate investing, and maybe how to automate being a landlord how to find properties. When you are a long distance landlord, items like that. Basically, you want to create, like a content cluster, where you have a specific content piece that's really long like a guide, and then a lot of little branches that come out from it that are subtopics from within there. And by connecting all of those, that's how you rank higher in Google.

So internal internally linking and all that.

Yeah, connecting the dots. their internal linking helps with SEO. And it also helps your customers that are on your website find the content that they need.

And why do you think more people don't? I know from the blogging, but why do you have more people that do it sounds easy.

Because it's not, it takes a lot of time. It's, it's time consuming. And at least my clients, they all have small teams, they either have a fractional team, where they have like a team of freelancers that will work with them, or they have one like one internal person that helps with their marketing, or it's just them. Yeah. And that's really hard. When you're creating content, it's time consuming, it takes about eight hours to create a blog post, that's going to rank and that's, that's where people struggle. But if you create systems to be able to consistently create your content, it becomes a lot easier. And it's kind of like a snowball effect, because you can play off of the other pieces.

So it's something that you do over time. And I think a lot of people just are instant gratification salespeople where they need to see something work right now. But they won't put the time into it's how much videos you guys. Like I tell people all the time video, always pencils, it always works. It always has an insane ROI. But just sometimes it might take six months for you to build that brand, especially if you're a newer agent. Or it might take one month, you just don't know. But it always works. As long as you do it and you stay consistent with it.

Consistency is key it when I was building my business, the first thing I thought is I need to build my personal brand beyond my corporate life. So I mean, it only took six months to create enough of a following that I had a full roster of clients. And it was just a combination of showing up regularly on social media with video and with written content and then PR being able to connect with like podcasts like this. There's a dog in my yard right now just walking by my window. That's not my dog.

Make sure make sure it's not a coyote first

confuse his Dog Mattis. Where was I? Oh, Pr Pr partnerships like being on podcast guest blogging and in publications that your audience is reading and answering questions on Haro help a report a Reporter Out. Those were the first things that I did when I was trying to build my brand. And then from there, I created like episodic content, where just kind of roles like a podcast, a live stream show. It's the easiest way to show up consistently because you have that routine down.

Yep. Well, most times, like I don't know what I was listening to this weekend, but I think it was a church to be honest with you. She said 21 wants to do something for 21 days, it becomes a habit. I've heard. Like I just literally had that happen in church, my son Okay, here. Yeah,

yeah. Okay. So that's why I'm muting myself.

So like 21 days you do something and becomes a habit. And I think what a lot of people don't realize or see, even today is that a lot of people don't realize that. This isn't hard. It's just new for most people. And where a lot of agents traditionally, would spend that one to three hours or four hours a month, prospecting or doing something to generate business. They just don't look at their business today, the same way or content creation around the same day content creation, you guys is modern day prospecting. It just doesn't come with immediate gratification.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't. But like, okay, let's say you set up a system where you're like, Okay, I commit to creating one, one video a month. And you start from there, repurpose that, start editing it down into micro videos, see if you can use it on social media, repurposing it on there, take that audio, make it a podcast, you could hire a freelance writer and have them write a blog post based off of the highlights of that video. You can really Snowball from just one piece of core content.

Let's go into multi purposing. Tell me how you typically do it. What do you how do you multipurpose content and walk us through that a little bit more?

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of doing that. So I have a live stream show every two weeks. And my process for that is I take that live stream. And I'll break it down. So it becomes a series. I'll interview an expert. And we have three learning objectives in that conversation during the interview. I'll break it down so then it's a three part series. So then I'm already creating this episodic content which is pretty bingeable Because If you're like, Okay, well what happens next click Next. And then from that series, I'll take that and convert the audio file from there into a podcast. So those are three extra podcast episodes. And then I'll take those learning objectives that I had in the initial interview. And I'll break that down into a longer form guide that's written. And then do the content cluster thing that I was talking about where we take the little sections of each of those guides and create a, a blog post from it. And then obviously, you have your social media from all of those pieces, that's like 12 pieces already, and an email for each of those pieces. So if you already like 20x Step,

there you go, well done. I think I see a lot of agents or even mortgage people that when they create a piece of content, they'll just sort of let it die in the newsfeed. They don't multipurpose it at all. And I'm like, What the hell is the point of that? Like, well, you don't you know, you could recycle. And here's the thing to like, love some people that don't have. Here's another good tip, guys, there's like, let's just say you're doing a video. And the videos you created six months ago, I could promise you that nobody has ever remembered about them. You can just repurpose them and just repost them they're gonna think it's brand new. Sure, brand new video, people overthink this stuff so much. It's about being present. Yes, it is. It's

about showing up in the feeds. And no, people are not going to remember social media has like a 24 hour lifecycle, so repost use, I, what I like to do is the first time I post something, I post it live and natively, and then I'll put it into my social media automation and just recycle it from there.

Yep, I agree. What do you I mean, if you were to pick different types of content for people in the real estate industry, what would you rank them? In? If they're like what type to create? Podcasts I get a lot of people say podcasts, podcasts or video or blogs or just sharing cool shit stories reels, tick tock, which is what do you see?

That is a good question. Um, do I have to pick like one that the top there's a couple, I would, I would say, showing that you can solve their problem is the most important thing. And they're going to find you probably you'll, you'll hit the most pieces of the no luck. Try the know, like trust factor with video first. So I would start there. Because they get to know who you are, and they get to learn something from you. And then I would go with written next because you'll get more SEO juice from it, you do get a decent amount from from video as long as you're doing like some good Show Notes Pages, some in depth descriptions on YouTube. But blogs are a good way to really get that impact from from those longtail SEO. So I'm gonna go with that next.

And then for longtail you like like the areas are like neighborhoods, areas, places community. What other types of long form content are you seeing? Yeah,

that does really well. And around your buyers specific issues. So I do a lot around landlords and acquiring new properties and processes for managing multiple properties when you're a real estate investor. So it depends who your target audiences. But if you're like direct to consumer, typical homebuyer, yeah, those community guides do really well. And any content that helps people understand the process of buying and selling a little bit better. Because that might be brand new, or they might not have sold a house and bought a new one in 20 years. And they need to relearn that process.

What about listings? Everyone's always like, what do I do for listings? What do I do for listings? I tell them, sir, hang around people who own houses. But what do I do? What kind of content am I going to pick up for listings?

Yeah, I always had a good luck with telling the stories with it that connect people. So so many times you'll read these listings, and it's just like four bedrooms, two baths, blah, blah, blah. But I would bring in stories like the basement used to be a speakeasy or some some interesting fact about the house or the neighborhood that draws people in. Like my house. Like 10 years ago, the basement was an ice cream shop in the 1950s. So when I was at Um, when I was renting it out, that was when like, I had a story about that. And there,

that's cool. So oh, well, a lot of times agents was like just listed just sold. I said this on the show recently, there's a meme going around, of how real estate agents market their business. And it's like if a if a doctor was a real estate agent, and it shows a doctor saying, holy and all these, like $100 bills, but I just perform heart surgery. And it's like, folks, people, like, you gotta have to HGTV your sales process, you don't need to like, tell me about how much money you made today. And said, Tell me about the story of the person you help. Like, it's so easy. It's right in front of us. Yes. But yet people like go the opposite way with it. I'm like, What are you guys doing?

Yes, that's another thing that I meant to bring up is you can build trust by bringing in your customer stories into into the conversation. Like one of my clients, I wrote a story about how the customer had, he was a first time home buyer and a veteran. So like the story that went along with that, because it was it complicated the process. And it was really interesting, we got a lot of engagement on that. But bringing in stories and customer perspectives, testimonials are always great.

Another one you guys can try is like say what the market conditions the way they are. Tell the success story of the sale. So be like this seller, this house, like we had a house in our neighborhood sold a million dollars over list price, like what the fuck who does that million dollars, over a million over list last. And like that I would I would have wrote, I would have wrote a story of something along the lines like this property literally sold. And that's not every day that a property sells a million dollars over list price, but this one did. And if you guys circulate the people who are going to be reading that are potential people who might be selling, they're excited to learn that their house is worth more than what it really is today. So showing case studies of properties have sold, I also seen the flip side work well of I need a buyer but tell you the story of the buyer who's searching for a house in the area, that there's just nothing available for but both of them have a story in common guys, is what I'm getting at story content.

Yeah, if you think about it, like as a story, the customer, they always think of themselves as the hero of the story. So you need to make sure that they are front and center in that content and can picture themselves in that place. Like, oh, shit, that was that was me. I had, like, I'll talk about an example one of my clients had from a couple years ago, when real estate was a little bit harder. It was it was less about like you couldn't sell a house. And he had an offer and and it flopped just didn't go through at the end. And how the real estate agent had backup offers ready because she knew that it was likely going to happen. And she got them to match the original offer stories like that, because you're like, I was there if that happened to me. And that sucked. And but she was able to solve it and get the same amount of money. Yep. Yep.

I mean, that's what it's all about you guys at the end of the day is demonstrating your involvement in the transaction through the form of story. More people will follow it. But demonstration of what you do not a brag reel of what you do, there's nothing more bigger return off than somebody being like I've made a bunch of money today, at least in today's world, people don't like that anymore. That's just the way it is guys. Any other closing thoughts here that you want to mention anything with content, that closing words of advice for some of these people? Yeah.

If you just start with one thing that you're willing to commit to, on a regular basis, it will work out if you just set that routine, even if it's a small routine. And just like my business, a tiny, tiny little habit that you have in creating content, it will add up over time and it will be helpful even if you feel like it's not moving the needle now it will

I agree. Why don't you tell them where they can find you website in case you guys need help with your content creation services? I'm sure you can help understand what you do.

Yes, so I work with real estate service and Sass companies in creating their content marketing. And you can find me at Sarah Noel block.com and anywhere on social Sarah Noel block.

Appreciate it, Sarah. Excellent show. And thank you guys for listening to this episode of the real estate marketing podcast what you guys have to realize if you get anything out of this show today, just realize everything you're doing this content. At the very bare minimum you should be taking pictures of cool kitchens, views, baths, bedrooms, kitchens, the bare minimum because every time you do you're reminding everyone what you do for a living, so don't overthink this thing, but if you want to step it up, once you start doing things on video, what happens is you get more eyeballs and with more eyeballs because more conversations with more conversations comes more clients and business down the road. So it doesn't happen overnight. But it does happen and it does happen every time unless people don't like you. Sara, would you agree that's the only time this thing doesn't work.

That's true, people might not like you. And there's nothing that either Ross can help you with that folks,

you might be in the wrong damn business. But as long as you're still listening to show chances are that's very seldom. So what I want you to do next is go to real estate marketing do.com and schedule a demo with me if you do want to talk about getting this content on video, we script we edit, we distribute and we put you on the map in your area. We do everything all I need from you is two to four hours a month, and the rest will be done for you. That's www dot real estate marketing.com Thanks for listening other episode and make sure you subscribe to our show channel, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and we appreciate you guys listening. See you guys next week. Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing dude.com We make branding and video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training and then schedule time to speak with a dude and get you rollin in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcast. We'll see you next time.