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Mar 8th, 2012

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Keynote Speeches

May 20, 2010 – 7:30pm to 8:30pm

FIRST HOME SELLER SEMINAR

You begin as a First Home Buyer, now you are a First Home Seller.

Coal Harbour Community Centre
480 Broughton Street
Vancouver, BC

Considering selling your home? Have a lot of questions and don’t know where to begin? Our “First Home Seller Seminar” is for you! Whether you are new to the selling process or a seasoned vet, this seminar will prove to be valuable when it comes time to sell your home.

*RSVP IS MANDATORY
*Only 15 seats left (Max 20 registrants)
*RSVP deadline Sunday May 19, 2010
*RSVP to ehsan@ehsanrealty.com or 604-626-5332
*We recommend on being on time as seminar will begin at 7:30 pm sharp

We look forward to you attending a night of education in a comfortable atmosphere.

CLICK HERE for more details (the Facebook invite)

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<<< PREVIOUS KEYNOTES >>>

April 8-9, 2010 – 10:45am to 4:30pm

BC Real Estate Convention 2010

Keynotes by Jessi & associates: First Home Info & First Investor Info

999 Canada Place Convention and Exhibition Centre

Ballroom A, B & C

Vancouver, BC

Wednesday 10:00am – 6:00pm

Thursday 10:00am – 5:00pm

http://www.bcrealestateconvention.com

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MARKETING IN 2010

January 27, 2010 – 7:00am to 8:00am (6:45am registration)

Langley Chamber of Commerce Event

Finding your niche and branding yourself are key when marketing your business but there are equally important topics requiring attention that many business owners forget. Working efficiently allows more time to market yourself and keep on the radar of your potential clients. Harnessing Social media, your database and properly using email campaigns will significantly add to your future success. Join me for an hour of interactive discussion on above topics.

Location: ABC Country Restaurant
5978 Glover Road, Langley
CLICK HERE for Google Maps

Book a seat by email: events@langleychamber.com
Book a seat by phone: 604-530-6656

Reservations and Pre-Payment Required
CLICK HERE to download a copy of the reservation form

www.langleychamber.com

Transcription:

Introduction

Okay. Good morning. You guys can hear okay me in the back? My name is Jessi. You can tell by the five times I mentioned it in the slide. My presentation is about 45 minutes to one hour. I prefer for my smaller presentations to be as interactive as possible so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate. I’m going to cover a lot of topics today and might go a little bit quickly. So please let me know if I’m going a little quick. It’s a pleasure to meet you all. Thank you to the Langley Chamber of Commerce for bringing me out.

My spiel today is essentially going to touch on various marketing proven strategies that have worked very well for me, catering to 2010. Happy New Year! It really helps when you’re cutting edge. I’m hoping to discuss a few things that would help you with that. I’m not the most conventional speaker. At times, I have been known to swear from time to time. If I do, I apologize. If you guys want to take notes, that’s great. But again, still keep your free hand up if you have any questions.

To be real quick about my background without boring you too much, when I was five years old, I hired my little sister to build me something in the sandbox. It was a great thing that she built. When I was done, I was very upset and pissed when my mom told me I actually owed her money. So the entire time as a child, I actually thought people would pay to work for you. The point here is you learn from experience. Now you all like hiring from Craigslist and LinkedIn which is very good, by the way. I actually started my first business at the age of six. It is a true story. What we together used to do – it was my idea, not hers – we would actually go through my mom’s fridge and take unopened products, anything we can get our hands on and sell it to our neighbors. We thought this was a great idea. How we were able to do this for so long, honestly, blows my mind. However, if I was approached by the neighbor who had this beautiful block of cheese for $15 that I was able to pick up for $2 or $3, I’d probably be in on the deal as well. My little sister was my private security. We had a little red wagon we carried around and she guarded the product. We’d split the profits which I would, unfortunately, create in my favor. I apologize. It was shut down within a month. Following that was the lemonade stand. The area we lived in was in White Rock and the traffic was very, very low. So I decided to branch out because I wasn’t making any money. I hired all the neighborhood kids – a whole bunch of them – and strategically located them on all corners which worked out great. At the end of the day, when there was product leftover, I actually had the audacity to take it off their pay. Needless to say, another thing you learn from experience I learned very quickly is how hard it is to keep staff. Following that, I used to throw concerts which were where a lot of my background from marketing came from. I had a power washing business for five years which was primarily focused in Vancouver. I had run an agency for teachers in Thailand. Now I do obviously real estate financing.

As you can see here in the next few minutes, I like Powerpoint. I like to push the buttons, according to my fiancée. So to give you a quick overview of all the points we’re going to be discussing here:

• Finding your niche – very important

• Marketing to your referral sources – we’re going to discuss that

• Branding yourself – you or your company.com

• SEO marketing

• Database and client retention

• Email campaigns – direct as opposed to indirect marketing

• Harnessing social media

• Viral marketing

• Working efficiently

• Conclusion

There’s a lot of stuff to cover here. I do have to move pretty quickly. I don’t want to keep you guys too long from your day. If you’re unsure of anything, please keep in mind that we’ll go through them quick.

Before we get into everything here with regards to finding your niche, you want to first figure out what your initial target market is. Position yourself as the expert and focus on that. If you cater towards one specific niche, you’re generally going to have a non-niche business that will fold. Can I get some examples? Does anybody have an existing niche that they focus on with their business right now? [Financial planners.] What’s your target group business? [Real estate integration.] What’s the company? [J. Berger.] Twenty years. [Creating referral systems specifically for professionals: doctors, lawyers, engineers.] Good. Anyone else? [I do racing car industry.] Racing, wow.

The point I’m saying here is it’s much easier to focus on one specific thing. Some examples: I target a lot of personal buyers just because I’m younger and it’s an easier market for me. However, I still get tons of refinance, investors, everything else. These are just random ideas. You can target weddings, religion, anything. My suggestion is find your niche and stick with it for now. One of the golden rules that I live by is the concept of staying on the radar. There are a number of strategies that I’ll show you in a little while that will allow you to do that better than the next person. For example, we’ll pick on Scott here for a second. For example, Precision Audio – you do not car audio but car audio repair, right? The concept of staying on the radar is that anytime anyone mentions car audio repair, they’re going to think of Precision. That’s kind of the whole thing. When they think of mortgages, okay Jessi Johnson – I hope. Hopefully, nothing bad comes after that.

So what is referral source? Referral source is anyone who’s willing to send you a deal, whether it’s your neighbor, whether it’s a family or friend. I love referral sources for making money. It’s very good. Depending on your business will dictate the type of referral source. First, you want to establish or create a list of potential referral sources. Obviously, it will coincide with your niche. Create a list and manage that referral database. Focus on this on a weekly basis. Keep on their radar. It’s a little bit different for me. What I would do for my referral sources is something that may or may not work for you. To give you an example, I send out a rate sheet. Is there a mortgage broker in the back? [Yes.] I better watch what I say now. What I do and this is for me, I’ve got my mortgage secrets, my rates, blah-blah-blah. I’ve got my branding which we’re going to discuss in a little bit. It’s on everything I touch – same color, same font, same everything. Do we have a realtor here? I think we do; there’s one. For you, there are so many different things you could do here. If someone owns a pet store, they can target dog breeders, dog trainers, dog walkers. Even in something like a pet store, you’d think “Who’s going to be my referral source?” There really are referral sources. I just need to think about it and focus on that.

Anyway, you guys awake yet? [Oh yeah.] I’m not. Branding – I cannot emphasize this enough. I find far too little people actually focus on branding. Your color, your logo, your picture, your font – it all has to be the same. Try to keep your branding at least for a couple of years. If you want to switch up, fine. I understand certain things don’t work. Find something that works and stick with it for a couple of years. If you’re going to switch, switch everything because it’s the consistency of being seen. People will recognize your brand and it’s going to help you in marketing.

This is something I use for branding. I highly recommend it but again, it’s up to you. Instead of sending a regular email, I use a third-party company called InboxFX, if you guys want to write that down. I send my actual email; I create the body. What it does is it puts it through a third-party source. I think this cost me $200 to set up the design and then $100-$150 a year or something. What it does is it puts it in the shell. So I’ve got my branding, my colors, my picture whatever, but this is all interactive. So if I send Tim here an email, he can click on any of that and it’s like having a portion of your website embedded in your email. The big thing about this is looks a little flashy but the kicker here is even if you’re sending an email to someone completely non-business-related, you’re consistently reminding them of what you’re doing. I use this as a funny example because I was ordering some CDs from this guy named Collin. I sent this email and he’s like “Oh, you’re a mortgage broker. I need a refinance on my mortgage.” I got me a couple of grand on that deal having this stupid little thing. This thing pays for itself in 10 years. It’s just an example of consistent branding. Did anybody have questions? [If that’s forwarded, does it work, too?] Yeah. It’s really cool how it works. [What was the company name again?] InboxFX.com. The guy’s name is Mike Blaney, I think. [Have you had any negative feedback from that jamming up people’s…] No and I know your comments. Microsoft and [? 11:02] are notorious for creating problems with HTML coding and never once did I have a problem. I do vigorous testing. I’ve got a full-time team for all of my design stuff and my website and they haven’t found any problem with this so it’s good. Some people might think seeing your branding really consistently might be a bit much; I had one person actually said that once. However, the other hundred people that like it and appreciate it and respect that and will give me business is obviously worth it. We got to roll with the punches once in awhile.

Another good trick when you’re setting up your email, when you give your description, I highly recommend not putting just your name; put your name in the company. What I do is I put my name and my cell phone. When you send an email, in Outlook you get a list of all incoming emails. The second they see my name, there’s also my phone number. So it’s incredibly easy to call me. He didn’t have to open this. He’s instantly on the phone. Just a little trick that I use a lot that people comment on since I’ve been using it for a number of years. “It’s so easy to phone you.” Anyway, if you tell Mike I sent you, you might get $50 off. [Or charge more.] Or charge more, very good point, yes.

First thing you want to do when you’re setting up your website is personalize, not just another boring site. I know there are a lot of cookie-cutter sites out there where you can spend $500 on. If that’s all you’re willing to do, that’s better than nothing. But by putting a little love into your website, people will definitely be able to see that and you’ll get a good return on your investment. Who here has a website? OK. Who here doesn’t? Nice! How many of you recently picked up a Yellow Pages and actually looked up a business? 1-2-3, three of about 30 people. The concept here is to get a website be found. It’s obviously bare minimum these days. You must have web presence. Most of you do so I’m not going to sell the concept of web presence because you all have a website. This has not happened to me before. The concept is the Yellow Pages is a thing of the past. It’s an archaic piece of history. It’s a great doorstopper. I’m short so it’s a good booster for me. The point is it’s useless. Is anyone here a Yellow Pages sales person? [They’re very persistent.] [The Yellow Pages are online.] They are online now, too, actually. [It cost me a lot of money.] I better watch what I say here. You’re super-smart. Anyway, the whole concept is just you definitely want to have a website. There are two major websites: you’ve got your supportive and you’ve got your lead-generating. I personally have one of each. Obviously, the supportive is just more basic information. It’s like your online profile, your online business card. Lead-generating is more specifically focused on a niche. You can toss in a niche in your supportive site, absolutely. Some people like to go above and beyond and do either a separate site or a really lead-generating site. Mine, if you care, my supportive site is jessijohnson.ca and firsthomeinfo.ca is my lead-generating site. For the lead-generating site, your most important keyword is going to be your URL. That’s the best possible search tool. So whatever’s in there – you probably all know this – is going to be your ultimate Google search option. If you guys wouldn’t mind, if you do take a peak at that, please give me feedback. I do listen and hear what people think, like and don’t like. If you want a high-quality site, is anyone a web designer here? No. I use a group called BallisticArts.com. I wouldn’t call them pricey. They’re middle-end but they’re very high-end for that stuff. I use them for all my branding design, web work. For hosting, I generally use RobsonInc.com. I’m actually not paid to say that, for the record. It’s really up to you on who you want to use but I do recommend finding one if you really want to put some love into your site. I have tried to save money before and used a lower-end hosting company and I lost emails. My site was down a couple of times. It’s not worth it for paying the extra couple of bucks.

I got a little camera. I’m recording myself over there. It’s actually in HD now, pretty cool. Does anybody do video blogs here? 1-2-3-4, getting there. [I was on one yesterday.] Oh, nice one. Let’s get your autograph. Video blogs are great for many reasons. Google is learning how to read video and convert it into text as content for your site. Google will also give you a higher ranking apparently for having video on your site because it’s new, cutting edge and people like it. I highly recommend video blogs. However, for some people, it can do a lot more damage than good. You should have seen my first episode. I do them myself but they’re great. It allows people to see who you are, understand how you click. I get clients who will call me. Sometimes, they’ve seen my blogs and they feel like they’ve known me before but obviously never seen me in person.

Video blogs are a great way to do indirect marketing as well. You post a blog on finance or whatever. There are so many things you can talk about relating to your specific niche. I just do mortgage secrets, real estate-related tricks, a little bit of marketing. I generally still try to focus it around mortgages but you can toe off the line a little bit. I’m not going too fast here? No? Okay.

I did an article called You.com. If you go to jessijohnson.ca in the media section, it breaks down for anyone wishing to develop their site a little further. It’s more for your first time when you’re starting your site which would apply to most people here. There are some tricks in there that I won’t get into here due to time restrictions. It might benefit you so check it out. For video blogs, it costs a couple of bucks. I do recommend having a branded intro and outro. Intro – keep it below 10 seconds. The concept is it’s your same brand, your logos, your fonts, your everything. In the outro, same thing: your website, all that jazz. I do recommend at the end, if you can, if you got a good editor, have one- or two-line bullet on the points you just discussed. Keep them around two minutes. You’re going to lose most of your viewers in 30 seconds. It’s actually less than that but the kicker is you want to capture attention the first 30 seconds and you have a better chance of making it till two minutes. Again, the whole concept is staying on the radar.

A wonderful trick for those of you who are using video blogs or contemplating it is TubeMogal. Now I can’t remember if this is a ‘u’ or an ‘a’. Those are actually two separate sites. What this is a free distribution system for your marketing – very, very cool. What you do is you open your TubeMogal account. Again, it doesn’t cost anything. It gives you a list of websites – YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, Viddler – all these websites that will showcase your product. It takes a little bit of time to get set up. You go to each one of the websites, take a look and see if your product will apply to this. Feel free to try a few you wouldn’t expect. There’s one called Metacafe. It’s all entertainment but for some reason, they love me. I don’t know what is going on but I get three times more hits than all the others combined; it’s crazy. If they don’t like you, they’ll kick you off. Who cares? But what you do is you save your username and save your password and you embed it in TubeMogal. So now when I do my video, I record my video on my little HD Flip Mino. I do my editing. I do my intro. I do my outro and I just report it as an mp4. It’s compressed at about 15MB. I dump it on TubeMogal. I’ve got my blog preprogrammed in TubeMogal. I flip a switch. It goes to like 10 or 15 websites, instantly uploads whatever little opening picture I bought, description, links – it’s awesome. So your distribution for your blogs is huge. It’s really good.

I’m sure a lot of you know but I’m going to guess not everybody. Can anyone tell me what that is? Yes, search engine optimization. A lot of people fail to give enough love to SEO. Having a beautiful website without SEO is like driving a Ferrari with only three wheels. It’s going to look cool but it’s not going to be as efficient as it could be. With proper SEO, you’re going to be found. SEO gets you found online. Does anyone here have an SEO company at all? I do a lot of my own SEO. I’m not going to lie. I’m not great at SEO. One of my goals for 2010 is to research that better. Some SEO companies will charge you up to $5,000. Other will charge you $500 and you do all the work on your own backend of websites. I do recommend it. Again, the concept is with proper SEO, you’re found on Google. If you type in “Vancouver mortgage broker” with proper SEO, you’ll pop up to the top. Again, creating the website is the first part. The second part, honestly, is SEO. SEO gets you found online. My goal personally is to have 10,000 views a month on my website. I think we’re sitting in about 2,500 or something right now. With proper SEO, I will be able to do that. Now that I’ve told you my goal, I ask you to help out.

Another wonderful trick to SEO for your website is by commenting on blogs of other people. Heck, go to your competition, to be totally honest with you. Figure out who’s your biggest competition. Spend some time on their website. Hopefully, they’ve got a good blog. I read the blogs of people that actually watch it. Comment on a few things and send links. Not only do the links help you and your website, it brings obviously more and more traffic. When you send a link, one of the tricks is to hyperlink whatever your keyword is. For me, I’d use “Vancouver mortgage broker”. I’ll use a hyperlink of my website but on the keyword – that’s another big trick these days. Are you guys familiar with the hyperlink? Everybody? You all know what hyperlink is? No? Okay, it gives me something to talk about. Hyperlink is when you write a sentence – like if I’m typing this in Word – you highlight it, right-click it and click hyperlink. What happens is you put in a URL of the website. When you are looking at the document down the road, you click on that and it takes you instantly to the website. The trick is whatever you highlight, you use that as a keyword and it will help your website. What a wonderful trick I learned. This is free SEO marketing. Free is very good.

Can everybody please raise one hand and keep it up? How many people have a solid database? Keep your hand up. If you don’t have a solid database, put your hand down. How many people keep track of all the birthdays of their clients? How many people know the average age of their clientele? Wow, I’m impressed. We got three. The answer, realistically, would have been “yes” to a majority of these. The big corporations focus on this stuff all the time, yet smaller guys like us who work on it harder, in my opinion, don’t focus on this a lot. It’s one thing to know your demographic but focusing on a demographic that is already buying your product is huge. Knowing the average age can help you out. For some reason, people 41 years of age love Jessi Johnson. I have no idea why but the age is 41. So what I do is I target a lot of my marketing towards that. For example, Facebook ad words allow you to pick the age of your target market. When you’re paying $5-$25 a day, which is actually cheap in comparison to Google where it can be upwards of $25 a hit, it is very important to know your demographic by age. If you already know your demographic by just looking at the database, I’m going to target 35-45. By doing that, I know I’m going to have more hits. So that’s just a suggestion for you there.

Customer service should be a priority. However, people get busy and forget the importance of this. Hotels kill themselves to get you $89-$200 of satisfaction. You say you do the same for your clients. To be honest, recently, I couldn’t. I know my customer service is not bad; it’s good. But there are steps that I could be taking further. One of my big things this year is I want my clients to think of me as five-star. It’s something I need to keep in mind. This will cause a word-of-mouth, a wave of marketing for your service and skills. Each time I get a client, for example, what I do is I just send a thank-you letter and a gift certificate – $5 Starbucks – everybody knows Starbucks. However, $5 these days doesn’t really get you a coffee anymore, isn’t it? I’m not suggesting everybody go ahead and slap a gift certificate in a card for all your clients. For me, I’ve got less clients for more money. I’m not as volume-driven so I can afford this $5 gift certificate. There are a few treats that I get with that. Not only does it get my client’s attention and really impress clients but for me, let’s be honest, it actually reduces people shopping for rates. I use the guilt factor; it works wonderfully. Another thing I do each time I complete a sale, I also add the client on a birthday card list. Every time on their birthday card within a couple of days, there’s a birthday card and also a gift certificate. Again, you’re staying on the radar and you’re touching base further. I try to call my clients every six months. It’s going to be hard when you get busy but it’s amazing what happens when you spend an hour or two on the phone; you get business.

Can anybody tell me what that is? [Contact Relationship Management] Excellent. Contact Relationship Management. You need to find out what works best for you. Having a database – a list of name and number – is one thing, but organizing it through CRM tool is very important. You need to find a tool that works best for you. Whether it’s a simple Microsoft Excel sheet with name, address, phone number or there are advanced CRM tools out there. I’m not going to lie. I’ve yet to find one that I’m actually satisfied with. [Just so you know, Jessi, I’m going to make your day. Robert right here just developed a CRM that I’m using and is phenomenal. It’s ContactLogix.] Really? ContactLogix? I’m going to have to write that down. I appreciate that. ContactLogix – I’ll Google that after. Up until potentially this, I’ve yet to find one. I’ve tried many, many, many tools. To be honest, I actually default. I use Excel. I’ve yet to find something that actually works. However, my Excel is very organized and pre-programmed. Anyway, the concept here is to find what works for you to keep yourself organized.

So you have your database in your CRM tool or your Excel sheet if you’re Jessi, and you’re going to have your email campaign. These are two completely separate systems. If you actually have a CRM tool that has proper email campaigning – again, I have yet to see one that comes close to having the best of both worlds – then great, you can have it all together. How many people here are using email campaigns right now? Pretty good actually, let’s say almost half. Does anybody here have no idea what an email campaign is? One. Okay. Email campaign essentially is generally these days, it’s a website where you’re going to upload your database. Generally email addresses, mainly first and last name, maybe a phone number and exception for notes – that’s it. The concept is you have this wonderful database online or through a program and you create a newsletter or a marketing piece and you send it through this email campaigner. What it does is the campaigner tracks who opens your email. It goes through them one by one. It avoids spam. It allows you to embed HTML which Outlook does not. You can have a huge HTML newsletter – which I’ll show you an example in a second – that normally would take 10MB of pictures. It stores all the files online somewhere else. It’s really cook. The email campaigner is what you use to send this out. You can track subscribes, unsubscribes, blah-blah-blah. Don’t use Hotmail, Yahoo or Outlook; these programs are not proper for sending mass emails. One or two emails at a time, fine. The second you start hiding things in blind carbon copy, the systems know that; you’re just going to get sent to spam.

Use a proper email campaigner – self-explanatory; I’ve just discussed this. I use these two. It’s really up to you to use whatever you like. I have tried so many of these email campaigners, it’s not even funny. MailChimp is hands-down by a landslide the best. The upside is they’re very user-friendly and they’re a great tool, but they’re very anal when it comes to where you got your lists from. If you have 1% unsubscribe rate and you get that consistently, they’ll threaten to shut you down. I get threatened every week. But I do things like this where I do presentations all the time. You update your database, contact everybody and put them on. The problem is not everyone is going to like what you send and they’re going to check you as junk. Distant Measures is the newest one I’m using. Eventually, I’ll probably switch over there. They’re much more user-friendly. Not more user-friendly, they’re much more easy-going. They understand the concept of leads prior to clients a lot better than MailChimp. Plus, I might have to because MailChimp will probably kick me off real soon. But they’re good. [What kind of problems did you run into with other ones?] Bad reporting, a really old old-school system that wasn’t user-friendly, not properly tracking unsubscribes, not being able to distinguish a duplicate email. I got like a Christmas invitation. I got a client that had 15 properties and they get 15 of these things. Are you kidding me? You can’t do that. You learn the hard way once, maybe twice and then you figure out what’s a better program to use.

Don’t use your primary email address. Can anybody here guess why? [Any reply-backs that didn’t go through, bounce-backs is all going to jam your box.] Interesting point. I wouldn’t be too concerned about that. I’ve got a database of a couple of thousand I send out. I get about 15 or 20; that’s not a big deal. It won’t jam up your box. What happens is I guarantee some “freak” out there is going to see your beautiful newsletter and mark it as spam or junk. Guaranteed someone will eventually. When you send it out, it’s going to happen. The problem is if you use for primary email address, if I use jessi@jessijohnson.ca, what happens is the domain, your email address gets flagged. The next time you’re sending single emails to Yahoo or Hotmail, it recognizes you as someone who has sent spam before and you will end up in junk mail. What I recommend is you set up like newsletter. I use newsletter@jessijohnson.ca now after learning the hard way and I just forward that. Each time I get a reply, it gets forwarded to one of my other email addresses. So just getting that out there so you don’t make the same mistake that I already have done. Here is what I send out. The rate sheet I use is from my referral sources. This was all from my database. You’re all going to get this next month, by the way. Please don’t mark this as spam. This is an HTML newsletter. It is packed. These are all links, online calculators. We got seminars, keynote speeches, blah-blah-blah-blah and all these little pictures. They take up space but they’re all stored on the website. So when it lands on your inbox, it’s a very, very small email but it’s interactive. MailChimp even tells me when I print a report, it will highlight what percentages of the newsletter were hit the most. It shows you these stats. It’s intense how much you can do. I might use the color red here and color yellow over there. I even might even split two campaigns; you can also do that as well. If certain color codes work better for your viewers, obviously use those. You can really get in-depth with MailChimp. Make sure your content is your own, ideally. If you must use someone else’s, obviously, give them credit. I suggest you put a personal touch on your newsletter. [Who designs your newsletter?] BallisticArts.com. I can’t remember what I paid for. They do a lot of my stuff. They’re incredible. I prefer to have one source do everything for me. If you want to learn a wonderful trick to get work done like design work or branding – if you want to write this down – it’s called Elance.com. Have you used it before? [I have for databases.] You can find anything online. [You have to be very careful with Elance.] Yeah, I know. I think India’s pretty bad. It’s notorious for people trying to – [You get what you pay for.] Yes and no. I’ve used Elance before. It’s all stored on escrow though. You might get a good product but the problem is the person is going to drop off the planet and you might never see them again. You are right. There absolutely is a risk with Elance. You might get a beautiful website for $500 but when you need help updating in 6 months, it’s probably not going to happen. But you also paid $500 for a website, which is incredibly cheap. I learned about my Distant Measures guys from an advanced strategy. I’ve been working for a year and a half. They were the only ones who could do it. I spent a year on my network and I found it on Elance. The guy’s unbelievable. I’ve had good and bad experiences. I’ve also had the same circumstance where you can’t find somebody either. Good point.

I’ve already discussed this. I suggest waiting a couple of weeks. Some people are incredibly slow checking emails, especially newsletters. They might push it off a little bit when they’ve got time to sit down and actually pay attention. Give it at least a week before you pull the reports and see who’s looking. Notice who’s paying attention. Again, in MailChimp you can actually see physically who opened your email, where they went and you can even tie it to Google Analytics and see where on your site people go from the newsletter. If someone is reading every single one of my newsletters – one of my clients -, they obviously like something I’m saying. It’s nice to have someone pay attention. So I’m going to call them, give them extra love because they obviously like something.

Direct is obviously directly selling a product, direct advertising to the consumer. Indirect – using your head and creatively selling this product indirectly. I’m essentially indirectly selling you on my ability to be a mortgage broker right now. If the whole concept is to educate and market yourself, educate people as opposed to selling to them directly.

There are lots of different ways of indirect marketing. Those little email signatures I showed you? Beautiful indirect marketing. You’re just reminding people without telling them what you do. You’re reminding them, showing them without directly saying anything. I’d say 60%-70% of my marketing is indirect and it works great. The last thing you want to be is some guy where people cringe when they hear your name. Like I said, I market that and share that with my friends and family and they don’t even realize it yet. It’s a nice way of easing in there without directly selling yourself too much.

I’m going to rip through this pretty quick. We’re close to being done. Anyone ever heard of Twitter? Whether you like it or not, you probably should be on Twitter. When I first heard about this whole tweeting thing, this is not going to work for me. However, there are many alternatives to Twitter. Having live updates as to what’s going on is very good. Does anybody know what an RSS feed is? You want to answer that? [No, go ahead.] An RSS feed essentially how this would apply to with Twitter is I can plug in a sentence. I use RSS feeds for this. There are Twitter search feeds out there. I can type in “Who knows a good mortgage broker?” “Who knows a Vancouver mortgage broker?” “I need a mortgage broker in Langley.” Using an RSS feed, I see anytime someone writes that; I see it. I actually have it tied to my Google home page. So each time I go to my Google and search, I have all my RSS feeds plugged in from Twitter. So if you sell like financial services or whatever, you want to find relevant question that people are going to be asking. It does live updates; really cool.

Another thing Twitter is wonderful you can see what people are saying about your product. Facebook you can see status updates. Yes, you can see people’s status updates if they update them and if you’re their friend. However on Twitter, you can see what’s going on from millions and millions of people. If you’ve got a company that you have to care about what people are saying about you type and you should, you can use Twitter. Type in your company name or your name and see what people are saying about you. It’s cool. There are a lot of neat things about Twitter people don’t keep in mind. [Tweetdeck does the same thing. Post your Twitter thing and you can choose who’s following you and who you want to follow. It’s all in one little - ] I use something very similar – Tweetsuite. [Same thing. It’s the same idea but Tweetdeck is actually nicer to look at.] Tweetdeck? I’ll check it out. Another thing is you always want to watch for comments. If you’re too busy for Twitter, I understand that. You get busy. It’s hard to remember to actually go online and tweet five times a day. You can actually hire ghost writers for Twitter now. Is that what you do? [That’s what I do.] That’s awesome. I was hoping I could find someone. What’s your website? [Laura@virtualsolutions] Give me a card afterwards. I could probably send a lot your way. A lot of people aren’t on Twitter but you really should be on it. Sorry. You probably should at some point. If you could get someone like Laura here to help you out… May I ask how much you charge? [No. I have a package.] Oh you do. OK. [I have a full social media package depending upon whether you’re using Twitter, Facebook but I specialize in content marketing through press releases, articles and blogs.] Gotcha, cool. So keep it in mind. It’s not just for celebrities; there are ghost writers out there.

Facebook: I’m going to guess majority of the people are on Facebook here, whether you like it or not. The average age I can’t remember, actually. It’s in one of the articles that I did. I think it’s around 50. It’s very high. You would think it would be your kids typing away; no, it’s you. My suggestion with Facebook is don’t create – I’m sorry if someone has this I don’t want to anger or upset someone here – don’t create a stupid fan page. Who, seriously, would want to be a fan of a mortgage broker? Come on. [Hey, I have fans.] You have fans? What I do instead is I use Facebook as a marketing tool. I’ve got 1,500 people on there. I’m slowly adding to it. My goal is to hit 5,000. They actually max out at 5,000, if anyone is curious. What I do is I tie my Twitter updates directly to my Facebook. Every time I Twitter or do a blog or LinkedIn, they’re all connected through a thing called an API. [Tweetdeck will do that for you, too. Post in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.] There you go. You can tie your blog into it as well. The second you do a blog, it instantly goes into everything. The whole concept is being efficient here. The more time you have for the other stuff, the better. What I do is maybe 25% of the time I would suggest something real estate-related on my Facebook. I get comments, interactive communication. I get tons of business from Facebook. Seriously, I really do. First thing you got to remember: remove those incriminating pictures. Pictures of you running around in your underwear with a bong – not a good idea. [How do you know that?] [Laughter] I can tell, I guess. I’m already a fan. If you’re going to use Facebook as your primary page, you should be a little more cautious of what’s out there.

LinkedIn: Definitely for business professionals, not for the younger crowd. LinkedIn is wonderful for recruiting. I’m putting up a broker company where we’re taking brokers. We do a lot of that on LinkedIn. Hiring and recruiting, I find that useful. I use Craigslist as well. The thing about LinkedIn is it’s a lot harder to add people. However, it’s really 100% focused on our business so take a look. I did an article for CMP (Canadian Mortgage Professionals) called Social Media Entourage. It actually breaks down the four bigger ones, like the three I just mentioned and Tumblr. If you want to take a look at that as well, it’s in the Media section.

I’m not going to discuss this because I definitely do not have time. This is where your creative marketing spreads like a virus. It’s obviously a good virus. Viral marketing has been embedded in pop culture for many, many years. It’s becoming ever so popular in daily marketing. For example, do you remember Janet Jackson’s nipple showing on her shirt where it said “wardrobe malfunction”? No. That was 100% planned, well-orchestrated. People are still talking about it. That’s just an example of things they do all the time in pop culture to get people to talk. I’m launching a viral marketing this year. The concept is have fun with your marketing. Be creative, even go overboard. You’ll be surprised it works.

I’m almost done here. Let’s be honest here. How many people actually ask for referrals after they close a transaction with their client? 1. OK. 2. Are you lying? If you’re services are up to snuff, you have to remind yourself you’ve earned that right to ask for a referral. Referrals are hard; I’m not going to lie. I’ve been in the industry for quite sometime in many industries and I still have a problem asking for referrals. The trick is to find what works for you. What can you say that’s going to ease you in there? What are your little one-liners that work that allow you to ask for referrals because each time you ask for referrals, it builds your business. Why everybody doesn’t do that, I don’t know. It’s something you need to implement into your daily schedule. Focusing more on working efficiently. Knowing where your client is coming from – we’ve already discussed that as key. I track personally my referrals from my referral sources generally over three months. It’s very time-consuming to do more than that. 80% of your business is going to come from 20% of your referrals. You probably heard that a million times; it is true. If you know where your business is coming from, then focus on the people that are sending you majority of your business. Me as a broker, I’ve got lots of referral sources. I might have one client and he might send me 100 clients in one year. However, if I only close two of them, that is a very bad referral source. By tracking this, it allows you to work more efficiently. Invest your time wisely. I generally suggest 4 to10 hours a week of forcing yourself to market. That is, sitting down on the phone doing something. The phone is probably the best thing you can possibly do. However, it’s the most challenging as well. Consider running a paperless office. Who runs a paperless office here? What? Really? Come on, guys. Does anyone own a printing company here? OK, then. I use a myfax.com. Me being a broker, there’s a lot of paperwork. You see an abundance of paperwork. However, luckily everybody these days uses a scanner and email. Instead of a fax machine, I use myfax.com. What this does is it converts all incoming pages into PDF. So I use my Blackberry or your iPhone and you can forward these PDFs instantly without having to go home, without having to deal with resending these faxes. It’s a wonderful thing. Also now, everything is neatly organized. I don’t even have a filing cabinet. My files now are this thick. I just physically have it so it’s tangible and I have something to look at and write a couple of notes on. Before, I had a room, an entire wall of files, completely useless. So that’s one of my major points: work efficiently. I have converted to a paperless office. I could not be happier. It allows you obviously to keep your office clean and well-organized. Clutter will definitely stress you out.

Obviously you’re all on internet; everybody’s here. Cable TV itself is going to be a thing of the past. Everything is going to be online: your favorite movies, sitcoms, HD porn, your telephone, fax line, whatever – it’s going to be online. The concept here is have a presence. Be found.

I also have a wonderful seminar series coming up in Vancouver. We teach the concept of owning your life financially and just give proven strategies the wealthy are already using and the average person should be implementing. I’ll keep you guys posted about that.

If you can all grab your cell phones and hold them up. Punch in a number for me. Come on. 604-716-6474 and then push <Send>. Then save my number – Jessi Johnson, your favorite mortgage broker. I’ve got my cards here. If you got any questions, please don’t hesitate to call.

Have passion for your career. You will do very well. You can potentially make a lot of money if you enjoy what you like. Thank you very much.

[END OF VIDEO]

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September 22nd, 2009 – 3:45 – 4:45

MBABC Applied Information Course

Keynotes on Marketing and Social Media

Suite 404, 999 Canada Place    Vancouver, BC V6C 3E2

http://www.mbabc.ca/pages/appliedinformationcourse

_____________________________________________________________________

Sunday, March 22, 2009 – 11:00am to 6:00pm

“BUYING YOUR FIRST HOME & FEMALE REAL ESTATE STATS”

WEST COAST WOMENS LIFESTYLE SHOW

(604) 538-2147

womens_venture@yahoo.ca

http://www.reecebur.com/westcoastwomen.html

Pacific Inn Resort: 1160 King George Hwy, White Rock, B.C.

Cost to attend: $2

_____________________________________________________________________

(Post-poned)

“LIVELY LANGLEY HIGH OUTPUT NETWORKING”

Newlands Golf and Country Club

21025 48th Avenue, Langley, B.C.

Contact: Kristina Berg

778-808-7756

kristinaberg@origingroup.ca

www.highoutputnetworking.com

Cost to attend: free (I think)

_____________________________________________________________________

Saturday, October 2008 1:00 – 2:00 pm

“GETTING STARTED AS A MORTGAGE BROKER”

Real Smart

Real Estate Tutorial Service Inc.

Sandy Brown – President

(604)  597-8925

Cost to attend: must be student with Real Smart

#106 – 16055 Fraser Hwy. Surrey, B.C.

http://www.realestatetutorials.com