Dishin' Dirt on "How to Use Video Marketing (BETTER) in Real Estate" with Patrick O'Connor and Hannah Norman

Real estate listings with video receive more than 438% more inquiries than those without video. Patrick O'Connor and Hannah Norman of the Patrick O'Connor Team-Coldwell Banker are here to tell you how to get started in video and how in his first video he got over 47,000 views in the first two weeks. Also, Eddie Yandle of Executive Construction Homes will join me to tell us why wood is now like toilet paper was in this pandemic. Only in 2020! Of course, I will have another segment of Corona Crazy Closings and Gary's Good News Only!

Enjoy! And share with your friends.


* Gary serves on the South Carolina Real Estate Commission as a Commissioner. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions and are not necessarily the opinions of the SC Real Estate Commission. This podcast is not to be considered legal advice. Please consult an attorney in your jurisdiction for applicable legal advice germane to your issue.

Transcript

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Coming up on edition dirt with Gary Pickering. We are now weekly i know i know you can hardly contain your excitement. Believe me excitement is in the air and it's just palpable. But on this the third episode that's right the third episode of edition dark Coldwell Banker his very own number one agent in the Carolinas is going to be with us. Of course, we're talking about no other than the affable Patrick O'Connor, Patrick has brought along with him Blair's kato's on alarm, and Patrick buying agent Hannah Norman, and together today they're going to be dishing dirt on marketing through video. And these guys really know video some of the best in the industry at it. So stay tuned. And also on this episode, a new segment for new building a new construction. And one of my very best friends Eddie Anil from executive construction Homes is going to be here today to talk to you about the problems with wood. Yes, only in 2020. Could we actually have wood as an issue, but what's a big issue these days and I'll tell you why. Crazy Corona closing segment will also be here with Gary's good news where we only go over good news and the real estate market the economy and event with the Coronavirus. But before we get to our guest today, I want to take a second to thank all of you all for all the unwavering support. It's been rather tremendous these last three weeks. If you like us, please share light. Listen, and of course rate us five stars is always better than one or two. You can also check us out on YouTube by typing in Blair Cato in the YouTube search box. Lastly, if you want to follow me on Instagram, you can do so at Pickering. Gary, that's PRC, KRNGA Arwa. And now to the show. I know the anticipation has been killing you. So let's just get right to it. Alright, so today's guests with me today is Patrick O'Connor and Hannah Norman. And they are with the Patrick O'Connor team, which is, as I understand the number one team in the Carolinas for Coldwell Banker. That's right. Well, Patrick and I have been friends for a couple years, Hannah has worked with us at Blair Cato cast picnic castle on for about a year and a half before going to work with Patrick when she graduated University of South Carolina. So I wanted you guys to come in today. And let's talk about what in my opinion separates you from a lot of other agents. And that's your incredible use of video in your marketing. And what we know is that real estate listings with video receive 430% more inquiries than those that don't have video. And so I believe if you're a local agent trying to penetrate in our market is extremely crowded right now there's about 4000 agents. So I think if you're that agent, video production optimization through social media, which hand is phenomenal, that is the key to your growth. To start I wanted really because I think it's very important to kind of see that you don't have to have a marketing background. You don't have to have a sales background to become the number one person in the market. So Patrick, you got a very interesting story. Where did you how did you get in this business? Where do you start and before this, so I actually have a background in music education school administration, I was a orchestra conductor for a suburb High School outside of Chicago, although I'm from Lexington, I ended up in Chicago through school and college and my work there. And I did that for 10 years. And I got into investing and flipping. And then decided through investing in flipping that I wanted to go into real estate and residential sales come back to the area where I'm from and kind of start that was six years ago. So in six years, you went from working in Chicago not really being in real estate to now you're the number one agent the Carolinas for Coldwell Banker, what was it? How did it How would another agent look at you and say, How can I do that? I think the first thing I did is I went to my broker and I said, Okay, what do I need to do to be successful? And I said, Tell me what to do. And I'll do it. And she gave me a laundry list of things to do and said, you know, the thing about it is I tell every everyone this and one out of 100 or one out of 1000 will actually apply these techniques. So a lot of it was just the basic kind of groundwork for becoming a real estate agent. I got up every day early, I did it every day, all day, I spent every single moment of my day working on real estate related business generating activities until five or six o'clock at night and got up the next day. And again, I continue to do this until I generate a business. I think a lot of people they get going and they don't see that instant gratification that instant phone call or or that lead or that buyer or seller and they give up pretty quickly but I just would not give up and I did that for about five or six months until I started generating some business and luckily pretty pretty quickly I figured out that I needed to do something different to separate myself in the market. And that's when I came upon really utilizing video which at that time was was done in this market. It was kind of the beginning of video showing up in this market. But I definitely grabbed a hold of that and started running well I've always thought your videos are kind of cutting edge and you seem to be that your videos take it to that next level. So what is it about video that you found effective how this video helps you grow your business. I was really lucky when I started shooting video. I got results right away. So I said this. This is going to work my very My first property tour video was me standing up in front of the house talking about the house. Really, who cares. But that's what I did when I started. And a couple from DC bought the house sight unseen based on the video and the pictures. So I said, Absolutely, this is what I need to be doing. So I got lucky and I continued to do it, my videos started off, they were awful. And they got better and better. I I just kept after it and trying and making mistakes and doing it over and over. But I really tried to create videos that weren't just the general property videos that a lot of people do, but videos that are creative, and really help engagement and are interesting. Give me some example because I love your videos that you do on houses. They're not like you said, it's not just you walking around going, here's a bathroom, here's a bedroom, here's a kitchen. Yeah, so some different things you do in my first year I did a video which is not original idea. No other agents in other markets have done it with kids playing hide and go seek. And the way you see the property is through the kids kind of going through the house hiding. I did it with my own kids. And that video had 47,000 views in about two weeks. And it really went crazy in this market. The lady who bought the house said that, you know she had kids and she watched that video 100 times thinking about her kids she related to it, she related to it, it evoked emotion. So when I shoot a video, and I do a lot of different kinds of videos, but the the video that I've seen has, really I've gotten the most out of it, you know, for my clients for that property. And that's generating even more business. And you know, one reason I do videos to sell a house but another reason I do it is to generate more business and I get a lot of calls from people say, you know, I'm calling you because you're the video guy. We want you to do a video like that for our house. So the challenge then is to come up with creative ideas that fit the property, which is probably one of my favorite things, but one of the most challenging things I have to do so outside of doing the show me the property kind of videos, what other items or things we're using video for. Yeah, so I vlog I started vlogging I would say November of last year, I was really a little nervous about it. It was just really uncomfortable to vlog. But I had a lot of agents and other markets tell me that was something I needed to grab ahold of. And there aren't any agents in this market. I'm aware of doing it. I put out my first vlog right before my highest 20 year high school reunion and and I went to my reunion and you know, everybody looks different after 20 years I didn't recognize a lot of people. But what I found pretty quickly is a lot of people recognize me from the vlog so I feel like I've constantly got really lucky with video where I'll put out a video and then something will happen while go Okay, I need to be comfortable with this because it works. I'm now on vlog 29 is coming out this week. I really enjoy it I in your blog vlog aren't necessarily about real estate. They're about you as a person things you're doing things to end the team's Philly, you know, Philly's really popular and that my driver dailies his driver Yeah, it's not not to say he failed today's show go to you know to the restaurant or to Publix and people stop her she's getting more popular than me and I think what's cool about that is you really get if it helps me find my tribe you know you're either gonna like me or not you're gonna want to work with me or not. But this really helps to ensure that people who are like minded get to know me and not just the real estate me and it's really been helpful for me to in that first meeting with somebody if they follow me if they watch me and then they call me to sell their house we already feel like we have a connection which is which is great now on videos that's kind of a macro level I like to say I think videos good macro and micro macro trying to send it out to as many people and create that connection as you can but you're also using it on a micro level bom bom I believe is your platform that you still use yeah Bom Bom and so definitely so especially when the pandemic happened the quarantine I switched 100% to a virtual business spend most of my days on zoom talking to buyers and sellers when I could I would do a property tour with zoom and I actually had so much success I think the team sold around 80 homes or so during that couple of month process of quarantine the stay at home virtually which was great I know for sure I sold I think 35 listings virtually where I never stepped foot in the property I never met the the sellers never it didn't even seem like closing because everything was done virtually. I had so much success that Coble banker actually had me teaching agents across the country through zoom how they can run a virtual business we were lucky in our area we could still go out and still operate business but there are a lot of areas that were completely shut down right where they they were forced to but yeah bom bom to communicate with buyers and sellers to follow up with leads I find that at first when I started using bom bom the reaction you would get I know you're a big fan of all right. And a lot of it was a little odd at the beginning people go What is this video message a little bit like when people were Sending audio message handwrite you ever use those to speak to talk but I hated that because I just felt like I don't know I have an issue like everyone when they shoot a video like I don't like the sound of the video I'll listen back to this and go gosh I sound like that Really? But so I never grabbed a hold of that voice to text thing but i'd sent out video messages through bom bom people be like, this is kind of weird. What is this? Right? Well, let me tell you when everything happened and people switch to zoom for their meetings in their work in video became not just a method of communication but an expected method of communication. Bom Bom videos just for me, we're way more effective than sending an email or a text because that you know, they get to see you and connect with you. So I definitely and especially for dead leads or people I can't get in touch with and maybe reach out once how send them a bom bom video screenshare showing properties on MLS talk about the area's really ramble on for 510 minutes. And who knows if they're gonna watch it or not. But more times than not, they watch it, they appreciate it, they reach back out. But I think it's very clear to everybody that video is key. I think it is effective for boosting your lead generation booking meeting saving time, like we talked about with zoom meetings and not having to go to houses. For us teaching education on video was excellent, because agents didn't have to get dressed, come down here sit all day, and waste a whole day they could literally do it at home and get work done. I took your class and I sat out back on the back porch smoking a cigar listening to you teach a real estate course it was great. And I like it cuz I have a face for radio. So it works. Now the thing I think that people struggle with with video is you shoot these wonderful videos. But if three people look at it was a matter of like doing this podcast, so nobody listens to it, then what was it? What's the purpose? Luckily, we're getting a very good audience already. But if you don't have somebody looking at your videos, what does it matter? So what are you finding? And maybe there's a question for Hannah? How are you helping the team get that video message out? Well, Patrick boost a lot of his post, which I don't really boost yet. But I came into real estate already with a really big sphere of people on Facebook and Instagram. Well, 1000 fold, I have 12,000 followers, but a lot of them are from Columbia, they're my age, they're not really looking for real estate stuff. They will, they will. So it's like interesting trying to find like the perfect balance of real estate and my social life too. Because I don't want to completely turn all my followers off to my other life and then just do real estate. So I think it's really important to maintain a 5050 50% real estate on social media and then 50 50% of your family, they want to know you as a person as well. So I think like with the videos and the pictures, posting it on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, posting it on your stories, just trying to get a lot of engagement. And a lot of the numbers as they are important to have a bunch of followers. Those are just a number if you actually look at engagement and the amount of people who are commenting and liking your pictures sharing it. Those are how you get more people to engage with the posts of tricking, getting somebody to comment, I think for real estate videos asking a question like, what would you do if you were in this kitchen? Like what would you cook or something like that the buyers are picturing themselves in that kitchen, they're going to comment below, get more engaged, you'll be able to see who's commenting and then you reach them as well. And I've seen people ask what do you think this house is listed for and things like that. And the more so the more comments you get, the more the higher you'll stay on the I guess engagement for Facebook and Instagram more it'll be out there that kind of work more comments and more shares, you continue at the top of the feed. And then it doesn't have to just be real estate people commenting, they don't have to just be wanting to buy but the most comments you get the more you get, the more you stay top of mind. And what about hashtags, hashtag videos, hashtags, we don't even know it looks like a tic tac toe board I don't know where it is. So hashtags are really hard because everyone's trying to get the perfect hashtag so if you hashtag real estate, you're just a number on a million people who are attached hashtag in real estate. So you want to try and get it down to your market so Columbia real estate so people who Google Columbia real estate your pictures are coming up or tagging the location or tagging the location on the pictures in the videos. One thing that has really helped me with and we were just working on this today, you know I do these market updates and we read from a script you know I have the my laptop set up I have another computer screen behind it. I'm looking right at the camera but I'm reading like a teleprompter. But one thing that has really got me down to is you look you've gotten tighten up that script you got to really make sure that you're getting out the the information you want as quickly as possible, because they're not looking for your information. They're not looking for market update, but you might be able to keep them longer, engaging and listening and watching Through The through play on Facebook boosts for an example, if you really tidy up and give just the the information right I had an agent from Greenville reach out on our first podcast. And she said, I like a lot of podcasts. But the reason I like your so much was there was none of this fluff of Hey, what's going on? How's life for you? It was literally let's jump right into the topic and talk making of that I think what would be really good to talk about because I love this opportunity to talk about video, but talking about like, really how you do it? Where are you in? You mentioned that, but where are you put these videos? I think, you know, I'm an open book, I share everything I do. And I think the more I think everyone should, should be shooting video because the reality is, if you don't, it's you're at risk for becoming irrelevant, because everything's moving to video, online marketers, you know, 87% of them as of a survey last year, use video as a method of marketing. But of course, you put on Facebook, Instagram, I've had a lot of business come from LinkedIn, not a lot of people sharing their real estate videos on LinkedIn. Also through the back end of the website, making sure that your videos attached to your listings, which is huge, but most of all, making sure that you're giving either creative, interesting, fun content for them to watch or really, really great information, you know, no fluff, no BS, just really great, solid information. Well, what I found mainly with my videos is when I walk into a closing somebody is like, I know you and I'm like you really don't know me. But when I watch movies with a rock on it, I feel like Dwayne Johnson, the rock and I our best friend, so I'm just gonna play I can talk to him all day, and he doesn't know who I am. Have you tried his tequila? Not yet. That's great. But But if I was to make it Margarita one day on Instagram, so because you see so many so that person so many times you get familiarity with them and almost feel like they're friends of yours. But a couple things before we faint finish his video, if you look, you look like you look and you sound like you sound. And when people listen to themselves. They're like, I don't like the way I sound. I don't like the way I look. Well, you look like that You sound like that. So just kind of get over yourself, in my opinion. Yeah. So in the last minute or so we have left? How do you recommend somebody get started in video. So I started with just my phone and my computer, I shoot a lot of just general market update videos, using my laptop with a computer screen behind it to read from it, you're looking right in the camera. I also have a video crew from my creative videos for properties. They also do just general property tours, I've got a separate crew for my vlogs I like to keep them separate because you know my property video guys great. He's a wedding videographer. And he does just beautiful, just really creative. He gets across what I want to in that. For the vlog, I'm looking for something different. So I never want the two to be similar. So I love that I use so an agent starting out on video, if they're going to do home tours of homes essentially like you they need to go out spend money and have a good videographer do that that's not something they need to try on their cell. So I spend about I don't mind sharing about 120 to $140,000 a year in pictures, high quality video sales nice thing because it sells the house. But I would say that no, you don't have to go like I have. I mean I've gone kind of nuts with it. My next. My next thing is to hire a full time videographer. I mean, I want somebody capturing everything I'm doing so I can when I have an idea of something want to shoot I can shoot it and have it out that day or or you know, really quickly and not be buried by doing all the work because it is a lot of work. I mean, I spent what Hannah, an hour and a half today like trying to shoot a video that I did not end up finishing. But I think it's also important. We're not movie stars, like you can mess up like I think it's good to have your personality. Yeah, even to say, um, and ha and scratch your head and things like yeah, just doing it, I would say if you want to start video, I think the first thing you should do is get on your laptop, use that camera, read from the script and give market updates. Here's what is happening in this area. Here's what's happening over here. I did a ton of that during quarantine. And I was getting come listening calls because I was to them the people that saw the market expert, the person that had a plan and a strategy for dealing with COVID. So I would say that's a great place to start. And you know, I don't mind sharing kind of my tactics with people because my circles different from another agent. And I really hope that all the other agents in the market reach out to their people through video, I think you can engage with them. It's a cheap thing to do, you throw it up on your page, and it's super effective. So the key here is start small. Don't try to do 15 different types of videos, start with one thing, master it move on to the next and if you're going to do house videos, you got to spend the money there. You can't use your cell phone. Well cool, guys. I really appreciate you all being here today. I think a lot of great information and hope you guys will come back and do another podcast with us. Thank you. Thank you. So we have a new segment for you guys called playing and dirt with builders and today is our very special first gas is award winning former president of the building industry of Central South Carolina. Eddie Andel of executive construction homes now, Eddie is a certified master builder in South Carolina and his company ecdh build custom designer elite homes, Villa homes from the 200 1000s all the way up to $2 million in the Columbia area on your lot or in their numerous communities. And he's not only one of my very best friends, but he also built my house and we absolutely love it. So Eddie, you're here today to talk to us about wood and only in 2020 would would be something we'd have to talk about. Thanks for having me, Gary. Well, Edie I really do appreciate you coming today so what in the world is going on with wood and where wood now is like toilet paper was when the pandemic began essentially two things we have price and availability availability got two sectors working at the same time. So it's kind of weird. So what the world's going on well, price of wood price of wood had a huge fight due to several several OSB plants having to shut down due to COVID regulations, which you know, they were full capacity when they shut down but yet demand was still there. So that central disk drives the price straight up because you know, if you can't produce it, you got it on the on the yard and it's worth that much more. What kind of price increase are we talking about, say a sub$300,000 house and then more expensive house? overall total over price on the sub 300 houses wrong enough in a major neighborhood at $500? Well, how about the more expensive present our customers that you do so well? Anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 just for the lumber so that's adding to the price of the house without any additional profit to the builder that's just to build the house. That is correct. You know, and of course the they can't go up in price that fast so the majority of it right now we're we're taking a hit on these because I just don't believe appraisals will come up that quickly with them. Wow. So you were talking to me earlier today about OSB boards like give an example just that one board of how it went from like I think he said like $8 just to 20 something he essentially went from in in May we went from essentially $9 a board to right now we're paying $23.50 cent aboard. Well, so that definitely is going to add to the cost of anybody buying new construction here. Do we see any relief in sight at all? Yeah, according to the the chart that I follow, and everybody follows on the commodity chart, we reached our spike about two weeks ago, which should bleed down to possibly mid you know mid December where the relief will come back to us to close to where we were before but we're not gonna say immediate decrease in the price of housing because it's a lot of the houses that are already under construction already have the more expensive wood in it correct? Yeah, they took it and also all the lumber yards are full of that expensive wood right now they have to move that would add you know, some type of profit or very close to to power what they paid for it. Everybody that bought the boat at the peaks got to move it and not and not go broke doing it. So it looks like it's gonna be a while before pricing can stabilize on that. So what about the availability, it truly seems like toilet paper, I still never figure out why toilet paper got hoarded during the pandemic, but it seems like the availability now of wood windows, things of that nature trucks are really a problem. The Woods not as much a factor as the windows and trusses are even though it is a factor. I think your your wood availability is based on your history with the lumber yards. In my particular instance, we have a really good history with our yard. So they keep a certain amount for us. They know how much we're going to be doing. So of course they don't want to run out of it. That's how they purchased is based on past history. Windows a different story. Prior to this, we were you know, for instance, we were building your house or any house up until the last six months, two to three weeks max on window Lee Tom now we're, I mean, if I could get them in 12 weeks, I'd be jumping for joy. They will guarantee me that at this point in time. And so a lot of builders, they build their schedule about when they get certain items. And if they get these windows in at the very beginning they can either get stolen or broken so it can really delay some builders getting their product done when they have scheduled to get it done. Certainly, for the first time in since I've been building houses I'm scheduling mass actually scheduling my storage around when on my windows and trusses will drop. I'm actually ordering windows and trusses prior to even pulling permits and many in many instances. Well Wow. 2020 is crazy that Windows tries price of lumber is going up whoever would have thought is just another craziness of this year. No doubt about it. I really do appreciate you coming today. I hope that you'll come back again in the future and keep us up to date on what's going on with builders. I certainly will just let me know what you need. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. I'm good that many of you who do closings at Blair Cato know Ashton, our marketing coordinator in our Lexington office now asked him before becoming marketing coordinator was a marketing intern for us while she finished up at the University of South Carolina. And if you know Ashe and one thing you'll know about her, she's very conscientious about what she does. But when the Coronavirus started back in March and we were doing closings in the parking lot. Some of our clients were very concerned about being near other people. And so we had this one particular client who was extremely concerned about closing in when we went out to give her the document she literally would roll the window down about a quarter of an inch and make you slide everything through the slot and she of course had the gloves on Got the glasses, the mask, and Ashley needed to get her driver's license because they're required to get a copy of the driver's license? Well, this lady did not want to hand her the license. So Ashley said, Well, how about put it up against the windshield at the window, and I'll take a picture of it through the window with my cell phone. So the lady puts it on the rubber gasket part between the door and the driver side window. And of course, it drops into the door, and the lady cannot get it out. As she was completely horrified. The lady thankfully was very, very nice about it said it didn't wasn't her fault. And but I understand the lady had to go to the dealer to have the door panel taken off so she could get her driver's license taken out of the door. So yeah, another example of your crazy Corona closings. And now to our final segment Gary's good news only. National Public Radio has a great article out today that talks about two studies that point to a big drop in COVID-19 death rates. The article says two new peer review studies are showing a sharp drop in mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drop is seen in all groups, including older patients and those with underlying condition, suggesting that physicians are getting better at helping physicians survive their illness, patients in the study had a 25.6 chance of dying at the start, they now have a 7.6% chance the second of the two study says I would classify this as a silver lining to what has been quite a hard time for many people. This is byla met and a data scientist fellow at the Alan Turing Institute in the United Kingdom, who conducted research on 21,000 hospitalized cases in England and also found similarly a sharp drop in the death rate. He says the drops are clearly across all ages, underlying condition and racial groups. So what are the death numbers in the United States? Well, let's look at two age groups. If you are under the age of 25, in the United States, there are 103,258,000 of you. And if you're under 25, only 448 people in your age group have died with COVID, not from COVID. But with COVID. And when you try to figure out what percentage that is of the 103 million, nah, calculator doesn't work that way, it adds a bunch of letters like ease at the end. So it's so small that basically, as the scientists say you have a basically 0% chance of dying from COVID if you're under the age of 25. Now if you're under the age of 65, they're 274,181,260 of you in the United States, and of that 43,043 have died with COVID. That death rate is 0.01% of the population. So putting that a little bit in perspective, for certain age groups, it seems like things are much better. Now on the last piece of news that I think is just fantastic. Many of you have probably heard of the company, Purdue pharma. They're the makers of oxy cotton, which is probably the worst drug ever created. Well, that company today pled guilty to criminal charges for knowingly and intentionally conspiring, integrated with others to aid and abet the dispensing of medicine from doctors without a legitimate medical purpose. And outside the usual course of professional practice, and their plea bargain with the United States. They have pled guilty to federal charges and a settlement of more than $8 billion with the Sackler family losing control of the company. Congratulations to the United States Department of Justice for hopefully bringing some of this to an end with oxy cotton. So that's our show for the day. I like to once again thank Patrick O'Connor and Hannah Norman, for all their great information. Next week is going to be an incredible episode as well. It will come out Thursday morning, and it's going to be with the number four agent for Keller Williams in the entire world. Steven Cooley and Steven Cooley Real Estate Group will be with us. And we will be talking about when and how And should you build a team. So y'all Join us next week. You can search for us on any podcast platform where you go to Google type in Gary Pickering podcast, please like us share us, but most importantly, come back and listen to us again. Thanks, guys. Have a great week.