2024 Platform MASTERMIND: Max Rymer: How To Apply The "Lighthouse Strategy" To Google Marketing

Max Rymer:  And so, what we have done up to this point is we are offering to create and manage your local service advertising. That's something that we rolled out last year. And then for-- well, this past year, I should say. And then for organic advertising, and we'll get into-- organic content, and we'll get into this in a little bit here, but what we're doing on your Google My Business profile is we're actually duplicating content that you post to your Facebook page and publish that to the Google My Business profile. Now, that's important. I want you to hang on to that. Why would we publish content to the Google My Business profile? Well, it makes a difference. 

Tim Chermak: This is The Platform Marketing Show, where we interview the most creative and ambitious real estate agents in the country, dissect their local marketing strategy, and get the behind the scenes scoop on how they're generating listing leads and warm referrals. We'll dive into the specifics of what marketing campaigns are working for them, how much they're spending on those campaigns, and figure out how they have perfected what we call the Platform Marketing strategy. This is your host, Tim Chermak. I'm the founder and CEO of Platform. I love marketing and I talk too much, so let's dive in. 

Tim Chermak: All right, so to end the Mastermind today, it's really a part one and part two presentation on what you can be doing in the Google ecosystem. Obviously, if you've been around Platform for any more than five minutes, you know that we focus on social media, we focus on Facebook and Instagram, and we'll upload videos to YouTube, and we obviously recently started doing some things with Google that Max is going to get into here, but almost 95% of what we've done over the last 10 years has focused on social media ads, on Facebook ads. 

Tim Chermak: I wrote a book, High Hanging Fruit, and it's called High Hanging Fruit because the whole point of generating a social media lead is that it's top of funnel. You're getting to people 6 to 12 months ahead of time before they're ready to buy or sell. What we're going to talk about for the next hour here and part 1 and part 2 with Max and John's talk is bottom-of-funnel leads, so low hanging fruit, like the absolute opposite of what we do with the Facebook ads. 

Tim Chermak: Because rather than pushing all of your pipeline out into the future so your leads are 6 to 9 months out, sometimes it's nice to have a barbell strategy where it's weighted on both sides. The only way bench press works is that you have an equal amount of weight on the barbell so that when it goes up, it stays straight. I think the same thing is true of your business. It's good to have a pipeline that's nine months out. It's also nice to have a pipeline that's two weeks out. So that's what Google does for you. 

Tim Chermak: So, Max is going to share some case studies, some success stories and introduce not only what we're doing with Google, but what we're going to be doing with Google marketing going forward because it's changing. And then after that and kind of part two of the presentation, John's going to give you a bunch of ideas of how you can apply that to YouTube. Obviously, YouTube is owned by Google, so the same things Max is going to talk about, the same principles apply to YouTube, so John will finish up with a part two. So Max, if we have Max in here, let's welcome Max Rymer to the stage.      

Max Rymer: All right. All right. It's not cocktail hour yet. You guys got another hour and I'm really excited to talk to you all about what we can be doing on Google as real estate agents. So before I get into that, I know I've talked to so many of you, setting up your Google LSA profiles, your Google My Business profiles, so hey, I figure what I would do first is give you guys an introduction on who I am. 

Max Rymer: If I haven't talked to you before, my name is Max Rymer. I've been with Platform since the beginning of 2023. This is my family. And when Jerrid was talking, he had talked about there's always that one kid that just sticks in your craw a little bit. And this is me and my wife, Elsie. Elsie works at Platform on the Ads Team. My daughter, my youngest daughter, Lucy. Harvey is my oldest. He's in the blue shirt. And then there's that Jerrid-Sebesta-type kid, Tommy, the little one. And I wanted to tell you guys a story about Tommy because he's been that kid since the day he was born. 

Max Rymer: So, my wife in 2019, this is a fascinating story, she's always been a little bit crunchy. She has always wanted to do things the natural way and so we had planned that birth at a birth center in Minneapolis. And what they tell you is they say, "Hey, wait until you have so many contractions before you even contact us, before you even come in. Test your contractions." So we did that. 

Max Rymer: We got up in the morning and we went out to brunch and we left our son Harvey with a babysitter at the time. And at the time we were living in Bloomington, Minnesota, in a little townhome. So we came back and the contractions were intensifying, intensifying, intensifying. And we got home and it was time for Harvey to go down for a nap. We excused the babysitter. And Harvey went down for his nap and then contractions started to get really, really, really intense to the point where it was like, "All right, this might be getting real." 

Max Rymer: So not after about three minutes of putting Harvey down for his nap, I go into the other room and my wife is leaned over the bed and it's like full force. So I'm sitting here going, "Well, should I get the car?" And anyone on the Platform team knows my wife. She's a saint. She never says a foul word even at home and she goes, "Don't go to the car. This effing baby is coming out of me right now." So at that point I'm like, "Whoa, this is real." So I'm sitting here still deciding whether or not I should go to the car, should I listen to my totally rational wife in this moment, what should I do, and she says, "Take my effing pants off." We are in our bedroom at this point. I rip her pants off, her water breaks, and Tommy, that little guy, just flings out of there like a grenade. My wife, Elsie, who is my hero, caught her own baby. 

Max Rymer: The story doesn't end there. I gotta keep going with this. The story doesn't end there. So then, what we do is I call 911. We have a doula at the time. I'm like, "What the hell do I do with this?" And the doula's like, "Call 911. Call anyone." Harvey, this is a miracle from God, Harvey went to bed three minutes before that and stayed asleep. He didn't come in and see the absolute murder scene that was happening. 

Max Rymer: So anyway, the paramedics come. You got these two kind of, you know. Both paramedics, and nothing against you Tom, both paramedics looked like you, okay? And I just want to show you– this thing's gotta work better. Can you switch it for me? I'll go back to that one. One more. So, this is what it looked like. On the other side of that camera is my wife laying in, let's just say we had to use a lot of chemicals to get everything out after that day happened, but they took us in different ambulances because my wife had lost a lot of blood. And we went over and we had planned to do it at the birth center in Minneapolis. It's downtown. Her ambulance took her. My ambulance took me and our newborn baby, Tommy, just because they wanted to make sure that she was okay and that I had skin-to-skin and everything was good.

Max Rymer: Well, on the way over, two things. Tommy pooped on me twice. Just straight up, I'm shirt off, pooped on me twice, and then her ambulance could find the birth center, mine could not. So they have admitting privileges to the hospital next door, right? The Mother Baby Center and then the Birth Center. Birth Center Holistic, Mother Baby Center Hospital. They bring me to the Mother Baby Center and this is downtown Minneapolis on Chicago Avenue at 2PM and we're at the wrong place, but we're right across the road from the right place. So this driver has no idea what to do and I'm like, "Just get me out of here." And sure enough, baby in hand, poop all over me, rush hour in Minneapolis across the busiest street in downtown Minneapolis, I pop out of this ambulance and I'm running across the street and I'm like-- I got the baby on me, poop on me. I'm just running like a little goblin. And I swear to you, looking at the faces of everybody in the cars that were waiting, they thought they were watching an episode of Jackass unfolding in front of them. 

Max Rymer: So this is, if I can go back here-- hey, where should I point this thing? Right there. That's the aftermath photo when everyone was finally settled and I was coming out of the ambulance. That has nothing to do with marketing, but I wanted to mention it because Jerrid mentioned the kid that gives you problems and Tommy's been that way since day one. In fact, he tries to get away with things now. He lies and then he'll catch himself lying and then he'll be like, "Not supposed to do that," punches himself in the head. I didn't teach him that. 

Max Rymer: So real quick, I'm going to talk a little bit about marketing today. Why should you listen to what I say? Why should you care? Prior to coming onto Platform, I owned a marketing agency myself, started it in 2015. We were what would be considered a generalist digital marketing agency. So we worked with all sorts of clients, doing all sorts of tactics and strategies, and trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.

Max Rymer: Some of the verticals that we worked on were in the legal sphere, some in the home services, roofers, garage doors, things of that nature, and then the non-profit and political space. And it's really interesting because when I listen to some of the Girls With Grit girls and talking about their 5-mile strategy, their 5-mile famous, one thing that I think is interesting is the crossover for those of you who are involved in the community and then if you're running for office to almost have this contained network that you work, that you have get to know you, and it's more similar than you might think. But a lot of the services that we provide were a little bit more complex. We did some app development, we did social media marketing, and about, I would say 70% of our business was in the SEO search engine marketing space. That's a little bit about my background and where I'm coming from.

Max Rymer: And then just a few more things, I've been involved in politics in Minnesota. This is myself, I ran. One of my last clients was Dr. Scott Jensen, who ran for governor of Minnesota. I'm a thespian. I don't know if you can tell, but I used to do theater a lot in college. And I'm so thankful to be in business with Mitch Broderick because we share the same love for karaoke and you're all invited tonight.

Max Rymer: And then lastly, I think this is a photo that needs some acknowledgement. This is when I think the magic started to happen between Tim and I. Tim and I had been Facebook friends for a long time and I think we had a mutual admiration for what the other one had done in the marketing space, in business, that kind of thing. Tim drove-- I was part of the Republican National Committee, and Tim drove about five hours to come meet me for dinner one night. And I'm not going to get political on you, but I think it is worth mentioning that the night that he visited me was January 6th of 2021 as a Republican at a party that was supposed to celebrate all things Republican. So Tim walked into a funeral environment and we ate a lot of steak together. I think it was at that moment where it was like, there's going to be a partnership here one day and it materialized not too long after that. 

Max Rymer: So what I want to talk about today is you guys have obviously heard Tim talk about high hanging fruit, how to be patient with your ad strategy, how to let content percolate in the minds of your sphere. When we do ads, when we do content, we're doing it in such a way that we're playing the long game. We're hoping that people get to know us and trust us before they're even ready to make a decision about us. When I joined Platform, in my call to join Platform, and what Tim and I had talked about when I joined Platform was becoming more than that, was becoming almost a one-stop marketing solution for real estate agents. So every initiative that we've taken on over the last two years has been in an effort to not only do the thing that we're good at, our core competency, but expand into other arenas like Google. You'll hear about YouTube in a little bit as well. And so that philosophy, the difference of fruit here is that high hanging fruit, that's stuff you got to work for, and then also capitalizing on some of that low hanging fruit.

Max Rymer: You heard Leslie Remy talk earlier today about just how much activity she's getting from Google. And when you think about it, when somebody is searching for real estate agent in McKinney, real estate agent in Minneapolis, they are already down that funnel. So I want to talk today tactically about things that we're doing and things that I think you need to pay attention to coming out of this talk.

Max Rymer: So, first and foremost, I just think it's an important distinction to talk about search. What is a Google search, how to appear in Google searches, and generally speaking, you're going to see if it's LSA or pay-per-click advertising. The top of most every search is a paid section. It's hard to get that top real estate without being willing to spend money. And then there's a few different other sections that you don't pay for. I'm going to categorize those today as organic, meaning you can't pay any money to be in those positions, but there are things you can do. And for the purpose of this talk today, that organic section is both the maps section and then everything subsequent to that.

Max Rymer: So with the paid section up top, what Google is looking at, especially when it comes to local service ads, which we'll get into what those are in a little bit here, we're looking at budget, what are you willing to spend to get that top position, what is the quality of reviews that you have, and then what kind of content are you adding. And then for the organic section, gaining an advantage in organic looks a few different ways, especially if we're talking about your website ranking or your Google My Business page ranking. But generally speaking, it's the content of your website pages, the ongoing content that you're producing, as in blog posts and other things that you're putting out into the ether, and then signals to your business, which just means links from other websites to your website, and I'll just get into that in here in depth in a little bit. 

Max Rymer: So we'll just go through this real quick, just the timeline of Google. I won't spend too much time on this slide, but you can see here that over time since the founding of Google, Google has found new ways to monetize their platform. 1998, it was founded. 2000, they introduced adwords. 2002 was pay-per-click advertising. They actually developed the model of paying per click. The part that I really wanted to focus on and the part that we're going to talk a little bit today about is if you see down there at 2019, the full rollout of Google local service ads and that's what a lot of you have engaged with and that's actually, I think, up to this point, we've built about 70 Google local service ads accounts for Platform clients. So it's something that I've gotten this rapid experience in, but it's a new program, even still. Some of you had very early success early on and then the market did what the market does and it slowed down a little bit, but when you consider that this program is about five years old, it's still a relatively new program that is still somewhat fertile in opportunity.

Max Rymer: So how we've addressed Google for realtors up to this point, we did roll out a plus program where we were building third party websites. We were building links to those websites. We're still doing that a little bit, but what Tim and I had talked about was simplifying our process, being a real partner for the things that actually matter when it comes to appearing in searches. And so, what we have done up to this point is we are offering to create and manage your local service advertising. That's something that we rolled out last year. And then for-- well, this past year, I should say. And then for organic advertising, and we'll get into-- organic content, and we'll get into this in a little bit here, but what we're doing on your Google My Business profile is we're actually duplicating content that you post to your Facebook page and publish that to the Google My Business profile. Now, that's important. I want you to hang on to that. Why would we publish content to the Google My Business profile? Well, it makes a difference. 

Max Rymer: Getting back to Google local service ads here. This is what they look like, for those of you who don't know. Whenever you do a search, and this happens to be Tanya Gilmore, who is one of our clients that we run local service ads for, I've just done a really general search. She's in the Ukiah, California market. So I did "Ukiah, California realtor," something logical that your client might search for, and then at the very top, remember that paid section I talked about? This is what it is for a service provider like a real estate agent. There's a Google screened badge, a very simple click-to-call button, and then it pulls reviews from your Google My Business page. 

Max Rymer: And the beautiful part about these ads is you get to track all the calls that come through, you get to listen to all the calls that come through, and you actually have the opportunity to dispute leads that are not legitimate. Maybe it's a renter, maybe it's a solicitor, maybe it's somebody who wants to investigate foreclosures and you don't do foreclosures. It gives you the opportunity to actually listen to the call and not be charged for it. And it is not a cost-per-click platform, it is a cost-per-call platform, so you're only charged on phone calls that are legit. That's what they look like. That's fundamentally how they operate when you do a search. 

Max Rymer: Factors to get calls, there's a few factors on how to get above your competition. That verification status is first and foremost, getting that screen badge, which requires you having your real estate license, E&O insurance from your brokerage, and a couple of other factors. Some markets require you to do a background check as well. 

Max Rymer: That bid amount section, that's really important as well. One of the factors in ranking higher is making sure that you're telling Google that you are willing to bid far and above what your competition is. You're never going to hit that number, but you will put that number at some ungodly high number.

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