Lately life hit me hard financially recently and it’s been a struggle to pull myself out of the attitude of wanting to give up. But I’m jumping back into this because I do want to build a community of marketers improving their skills together. This will be a documentary of my journey in learning and experimenting with marketing. Most of my short term work will be related to following up with people I’ve connected with in the past and posting on social platforms, not much on paid advertising. I want this community right now to be my own accountability and for anyone who wants to be a part of this to have their own accountability here as well. Please, post about your marketing efforts and your journey too. Thank you for being interested in this community and I’ll keep trying to improve things 😁

I want to share the results of a split test I did on different social media platforms for a home tour video. Here’s what I found. Let’s start with Instagram: I had two videos. One of me walking through the home with commentary and one with just music with speed changes to highlight key features and speed through walking sections. The video with music only and no commentary got 300 views in the first day while the commentary video (which by the way was more than double the length) got only 91 views the first day. But that’s not the only difference. The video with just music got no comments but the one with commentary did get comments. The video with music had 42 min of total watch time (10 second average watch time) while the video with commentary had 39 minutes of total watch time (33 second average watch time). The video with music also has a much higher view rate of people who don’t already follow me (78% non-followers vs 54% non-followers). I expected the video with just music to get more views, and it did. But what surprised me was the difference in the watch times because with less than 1/3 of the views, I got more than 3X the average watch time, just a little bit less total watch time meaning those who actually did see the second have built a stronger connection to me and real estate which I think would make them more likely to use my services in the future. TikTok: Same videos, here’s the stats. Video with music: 218 views, 31 min total play time, 7.8 sec avg watch time Video with commentary: 134 views, 1 hr 1 min of total play time, 23.2 sec avg watch time So there’s a significant difference in the average watch times and those who watched more of my video are more likely to know, like, and trust me if they watch more of my content. So the question now becomes, which is better for selling houses and generating leads from this content, more views or longer watch times? I’m leaning towards higher watch times personally but I will still need to execute this type of content more to be able to get enough proof to make a definitive decision on it.

I created two different formats of video tours and will be trying to test out which one gets more views and ultimately performs better. The two formats are: First is a video with just the walkthrough and a few text pop ups for different features of the house. There is background music and some of the video is sped up in places to make walking between rooms pass by quickly. Second is a video walkthrough with my own personal commentary of the home as I walk through. There are a few sped up spots as well between rooms. One of the major differences is the time of the videos, since I’m talking through most of the second one, it is much longer than the first format so it’ll be interesting to see if people scroll past the commentary video because it’s long. Also, I’m not using my own listing, I’m using the listing of an agent who isn’t local to this area so I asked him since he’s not local and I have a local social media presence if I could record some videos for social media. Worst case, he gets free advertising, and best case, I get a buyer for him. And that’s exactly how I pitched it and he seemed happy to let me do that. So even if you don’t have any brand new listings, you can still use this strategy to get more social content. Updates on how this does to come soon. 🤞

I just launched my first Deal Of The Week email and I'm super excited to see what happens. With my monthly newsletters, I'll be able to focus on market trends and with this deal of the week email I'll be able to connect with people every week using IDX feeds to send deals of the week without having to get a new listing every week. (Which is great for me right now because I don't yet have the skills and ad budget to land a new listing every week yet). I got the idea for this email from Sharran Srivatsaa who was the president of REAL and claims this was his best performing recurring email that he sent so it'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm trying to figure out if there is also a way to do this over social media without breaking MLS rules so I can do a deal of the week post on social platforms because I think it would do really well to build that local audience of potential buyers. Check back for updates on how this campaign goes! This is the email I sent: SUBJECT: Central Valley Deal of the Week! Hey %contact_first_name%! I wanted to start sharing amazing deals that I find and here's the first one! This week's deal of the week is a 2-Story home in Central Valley. Asking Price: $590,000 Key Characteristics: - Bedrooms: 4 - Bathrooms: 2.5 - 3,903 sqft - 2 car garage My Highlights - Amazing master bathroom with his and hers closets (and separate tub and shower) - Half an acre - 2 Story home with an unfinished basement - Separate workshop with electrical If you're interested, just reply "home" and I'll get you all the details. All the best, Trace PS - If you don't want to receive emails like this anymore, just reply STOP and I won't send you these emails anymore.

I sent my first newsletter this morning and it did not go as I had hoped. I sent the email at 10 AM, and as of the time of writing this, these are the stats: 265 emails sent 10 opens 1 click So we'll see if that changes with more time, but also this is keeping in mind that these are not people who directly opted in for a newsletter. These are people I've gained contact information from as leads from other sources, networking, etc. Because of this, I also posted to my social media platforms a quick snippet of the newsletter talking about which area here in the county is hot and selling higher priced homes quicker than the rest of the county. And through all the social platforms, I've been able to get 332 views across YT, TikTok, FB, IG to try and drive people into signing up for my newsletter. Now this is by no means a viral video. This is the start of the journey. And as I share my journey, I hope you can get better results faster, and that's why we're here sharing our journeys together. I'll share what doesn't work along with what I find that does work. And although this wasn't a booming success, it was progress.