The Ultimate Local Marketing Strategy: Position Yourself As An Expert In Your Community....Who Just Happens To Be A Real Estate Agent

Kim Ross: The community that I have built in the last 18 months is more so than all the other years I've lived in Georgia combined. It's life-changing. I knew that that's what it was doing for people and that's what I was looking for. I wanted to connect to my audience and build my sphere, not just by leads. 

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: Hey guys, it's Tim Chermak. Welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I'm here today with Kim Ross. Kim Ross is leading a team in Fayette County, Georgia, just south of Atlanta. Kim, welcome to the show. 

Kim Ross: Thank you so much, Tim. I'm happy to be here. 

Tim Chermak: I know that Kim has been at Platform for coming up on two years now. You signed up and joined the Platform marketing program in 2021. Since then, her business has doubled. She's also in the process right now of scaling out a team. I know that several years ago, it was basically just you. As of this recording, I didn't even realize this, but you have nine people on your team now. You're obviously gearing up, building that foundation to much larger numbers in the future now that the business isn't all about you. 

Kim Ross: Absolutely. That is right. 

Tim Chermak: How did you stumble upon Platform? Let's go back a couple of years, go back in time. How did you discover Platform? Did you click on one of our ads? Did a friend refer you to us? How did you find out about the Platform strategy? 

Kim Ross: I love this story actually. I'm sure most realtors know about Real Estate Mastermind. It's a Facebook group that it's a lot of people in there. I was at a point in my business where I was learning to do the back end of Facebook. I had won a coach's class to learn the back end. I was doing videos, I won a video contest. I was not enjoying it, but I knew I needed to go in that direction. 

Kim Ross: I was just randomly on a post and it said, I don't even remember what the question was, but it was obviously geared around like, “Who are you using? Who's helping you?” About two or three people had tagged Platform. I just popped on and looked over everything. I was like, “I think this is what I need. This is what I've been looking for.” I made the call and the rest is history. 

Tim Chermak: Cool. You basically just discovered us from some random post in a Facebook group of people saying, “Hey, who are you using for marketing?” A couple of people mentioned Platform and you're like, “Interesting. What's that?” You just looked us up and found us. 

Kim Ross: I did my research and I made calls. You guys have some wonderful agents, now I'm one of those agents, who can talk to somebody and say how life-changing this is. That just really sealed the deal for me once I talked to a few people. 

Tim Chermak: Again, let's go back in time to that moment. I'm assuming that when you were looking for a marketing service, you were looking for a new marketing strategy, if you will, that you were also looking at, “Maybe I buy more leads from Realtor.com. Maybe I buy more leads from Zillow.'' There's of course Curaytor and BoomTown and Sync and Ylopo and Opcity. There's all sorts of marketing programs out there that promise to sell leads or marketing to realtors. What was it when you just said just now that, “I think this is exactly what I'm looking for?” What was it that made you more interested in Platform than in all these other companies that do pay-per-click and leads for realtors? What was it that in your mind made Platform stand apart? 

Kim Ross: The Platform strategy, it helps you create a community. It solidifies your position as a market leader wherever you live. You get super niche into being involved in the businesses that are here and what listings are here and what people are doing. It shows you on the forefront of all of that. 

Kim Ross: The community that I have built in the last 18 months is more so than all the other years I've lived in Georgia combined. It's life–changing. I knew that that's what it was doing for people and that's what I was looking for. I wanted to connect to my audience and build my sphere, not just by leads. 

Tim Chermak: I think a really succinct way of saying that is that most marketing companies that sell marketing programs to realtors, everything they do is online. It's about online ads, like how many clicks are you getting, how many leads, how many video views on this YouTube video or Facebook video. Everything, it's digital marketing centric. 

Tim Chermak: I think what makes Platform unique is, of course, you're doing all that. It's about digital marketing. We're not a direct mail company. We are a digital marketing agency, but we see the bigger picture holistically about how online is best achieved with offline marketing as well. It's how those two interplay and how you can use live events and going into local businesses and highlighting physical mom-and-pop restaurants in your community and factoring that into your online marketing. 

Tim Chermak: Being a realtor is an offline business. You're out there meeting people in person, building relationships. Obviously, homes are a physical thing. It's not in the virtual world. If your marketing stays only virtual and only exists in the digital world, I think you're missing out on something huge being a local real estate agent because it's a profession that very much is physically rooted in the real world. That's what makes Platform unique. 

Kim Ross: It would be missing joy. It's a fun thing to do marketing the way we do marketing. It's joyous. You do connect to your sphere and other people, of course. It's not like video views don't matter, but then you start getting those direct phone calls from people who want to do business with you because you're authentically out there in the community. 

Tim Chermak: Let's just imagine someone, Kim. Let's just imagine that someone's listening to this podcast. They have no idea what you're talking about. They've never looked into Platform, but they're like, “Interesting. Offline, online, a holistic marketing strategy.” What does that actually mean? 

Tim Chermak: Let's get specific. What is a recent example that might illustrate what we're talking about in your life where you can point to something that happened in real life, like someone who stopped you or a phone call maybe you had, where they actually referenced one of your online ads and you can point to that as an illustration or an example of this Platform strategy working? Are there a couple examples that come to mind? 

Kim Ross: I have two just recently within the last few weeks. The first example is Christmas shopping with my mom. We were at our favorite local clothing boutique, mom-and-pop shop, and we love the owner. We were just having a great time shopping, and a woman just stopped me and said, “Are you Kim Ross?” I'm like, “Oh, yeah.” She didn't say anything specific in this instance, but she was like, “I see you on Facebook all the time.” It was just a really friendly way. She introduced herself and we were able to connect through Facebook and become friends. It was fun and it was nice to be recognized in a way that was for actually promoting other small businesses. That's what they remember. That's really what they remember. 

Kim Ross: I have another example of that. A team member, Glenys, just recently did a business spotlight for a Latin grocery store, wonderful video highlighting them. The very next day, she received a phone call from somebody in her sphere who owns a local business asking her if she would be willing to come and highlight her and come and do a video. They made this connection and it's really great. You're doing it online, but really, it's about what you're doing with the people.

Tim Chermak: It ends up creating relationships offline, like actual real people get to know you because of the online marketing campaigns. It's those real relationships in the real world that end up creating referrals and phone calls. That's what I think other marketing programs fail to account for when all they do is, “Hey, we're gonna run some SEO or pay-per-click campaigns. If someone is searching for, whatever, best agent in Fayette County, we want Kim Ross to own that keyword.”

Kim Ross: They're not getting to know you. 

Tim Chermak: Exactly. There's no actual relationships. There's no referrals that result from that. I think if you play a longer game and you think bigger picture about, “Hey, if I'm going to be rooted in this community,” because being a real estate agent is the definition of a local business. It's not about scale and volume and all these things you might associate with national brands. You are a local business. The more people you know locally and the more small businesses and organizations in your community know of you and think of you when they think of real estate or homes, obviously, the more successful business you're going to have. 

Tim Chermak: Yet when we look at how most agents spend their marketing, it's not aligned with that at all. They're just buying Zillow leads from a billion-dollar company based in Seattle, or they're running pay-per-click campaigns on Google just trying to get leads from keywords of people searching. It's almost like they're trying to ignore the fact that if you're going to be successful in this business, you have to build relationships with real local people in the real world. Your marketing should just be, I think, complimenting that. 

Kim Ross: I think that's the key. The reason why we're online is so that lots and lots of people can see us. I get it, okay, you're gonna buy leads so that you have people in your roster, “Okay, these are people I can call,” but when you do it in a way that's targeting your community and they're seeing you on a consistent basis and they just feel like they know you and it's so much more valuable for your business. A million times, I can name in the last year and a half where someone will say something about Kim Ross and they'll say, “Oh, yeah. I know that. I've seen that. I've heard that name.” They don't even know where sometimes, and that's okay too. 

Tim Chermak: When you were telling that story about the Latin grocery store that one of your team members did a business spotlight at and then it resulted in a phone call the next day, I wanna go back in time a second and just assume for a moment that, again, someone's listening to this podcast. They're like, “A business spotlight, what's that?” Talk us through the theory of when you say a business spotlight, what was that ad? Was it a photo, a video? Why would you do that? 

Tim Chermak: I'm going to play dumb for a second and play devil's advocate. If you do a video at a Latin grocery store, what the hell does that have to do with real estate and being a realtor? That's not a listing video or it's not a promotion for an open house coming up. What does that have to do with Kim Ross's marketing strategy at all? How does that help you grow your business over the long term? What is a business spotlight? Why are you doing that? 

Kim Ross: It's so funny because, now, to me, it's just this normal term that has become my most favorite part of doing this type of advertising. A business spotlight is when we, as a team, decide that there's a business that we truly love something about this business, something specific. We use these businesses. These aren't businesses that just we find randomly. We live, work, and play in these communities. We pick ones that are near and dear to our heart and that we actually think are interesting and people wanna learn about because they are, but we gotta get it out there. 

Kim Ross: It's a video. It's really short, a couple of minutes, and we get to go in and highlight these local businesses and owners in a really simple, non-intrusive way. We get in and get out of there. It's just a really wonderful opportunity for us to share a business that we use to our audience. That has come back tenfold for us in the last 18 months. 

Tim Chermak: Basically, it's a 60 to 90 second video that you're filming. It's like a promotional video for a random locally-owned business in your community. It's in no way about real estate or the Kim Ross team. It's all about the business. Basically, you're just trying to spread the word about a cool business in your community that you want people to know about that maybe enough people don't know about. It's all about highlighting them. There's really no call to action about real estate whatsoever. 

Kim Ross: There's none.

Tim Chermak: Again, playing devil's advocate. Why would you waste your time promoting other people's businesses in your community and not promoting your own business? 

Kim Ross: Well, when you promote other people's business, you build a relationship with those businesses and the people who also love that business. What happens is people start to share the video. Other customers share, people will go and try whatever it is we're recommending, and then they'll repost or tag that business. It becomes this spider web of a network that you can't even really see. I can't tell you how many businesses that we have built relationships with that are now clients or who have referred individuals or who now share our other posts for us in the same manner that we're trying to share and help them grow their businesses. 

Tim Chermak: At the end of the day, there's gonna be a certain percentage of people who saw that video or who saw these posts and they remember, “You know what? It was Kim Ross that recommended I go check out this business.” In the back of their mind, they remember that the Kim Ross team, she's a realtor and you guys are realtors. If they ever know someone thinking about buying or selling a house, they're gonna be like, “Well, you've gotta work with Kim Ross. I follow her for everything going on in the community.” It's a clever way of keeping yourself top of mind with everyone in the community without bragging about yourself, you're actually bragging about other businesses in the community so that it doesn't feel like an ad. 

Kim Ross: Exactly. They still see our real estate related posts as well. 

Tim Chermak: Right. They're on your retargeting list, so yep. 

Kim Ross: That's the other thing, is it's good to have a little bit of everything on there. It's helped us tremendously in our community. People know who we are. 

Tim Chermak: As people are seeing these small business videos, they see you in some of the videos. Sometimes, it's your team. Eventually, they're gonna want to reach out to you because they're thinking, “Okay, cool. Well, I actually was thinking about buying a house this year. This realtor seems like they're an expert on the community. I'm gonna go with them.” 

Tim Chermak: I think that's one of the really important long term benefits of doing these videos, is you're positioning yourself as an expert not only about real estate. It's like people expect you to be an expert on real estate if you're a realtor. Duh. That's why they're gonna pay you a commission, is because if you're a realtor, I would hope you're an expert on the local housing market or else you shouldn't be a realtor. 

Tim Chermak: What helps you stand out from all the other realtors who are gonna claim the same thing? Of course they're all gonna say, “I'm an expert on real estate.” What helps you actually stand out is, “Well, I'm actually an expert on the overall community itself, like the greater Fayette County area, and I just happen to also be a realtor.” That's a very different type of positioning than someone whose ads are all about them being a realtor. Leads just happen as a result of that. People are gonna call you. 

Kim Ross: It's actually one of our core values. One of our core values is community and that we match communities to families. I can't tell you how instrumental the entire strategy has been for me to just have a plan for what my team is gonna look like and what we're gonna do. It's everything. I couldn't see doing my business without supporting other local entrepreneurs. 

Tim Chermak: Kim, let me ask you a really direct question. Do you enjoy generating leads and calling leads and following up with leads, or would you rather have them call you? 

Kim Ross: Definitely number two there. I had one of the best phone calls I had this year, was late at night, maybe 8:15, pretty late for a lead to call direct. Awesome lady on the other end and we just ended up on the phone forever. I'm originally from New York and her family is from Long Island. Come to find out, she had been following me for over a year on Facebook and reached out because she is an investor and she owns 11 properties locally. Since then, we have sold two. It's a wonderful relationship to have been built because of what she sees me do on Facebook. 

Tim Chermak: I think the most important thing you just said there is that she called you, for starters. You didn't call her, she called you. She initiated the relationship because she said she had been following you on social media for a year. Think of how the positioning is different when someone's been basically following you for a year before they ever reach out to you. They've basically already decided, “I specifically want to work with Kim.”

Kim Ross: She did, had decided. She was unhappy with the relationship she had built with somebody else. It took her a long time to decide, but when she made the phone call, it was very evident. There was no interviewing. She had made the decision and was welcoming me into her little business and her life. 

Tim Chermak: That's a very, very different type of conversation than getting a lead from Zillow and quick calling them because they want to go on a showing. If someone's calling you and they've basically been stalking you for a year, they're already pre-sold on wanting to work with you. It's more like, “Hey, cool. When are we going to meet?”

Kim Ross: Exactly what it was. I will tell you, for anybody who's listening out there, we do have to remember this is social media. This woman has never liked any of my posts or my videos. She was watching me without interacting. 

Tim Chermak: There was no evidence or proof, so you had no idea that she was following you. 

Kim Ross: How do you quantify that? 

Tim Chermak: That's why at Platform, we basically had to invent this term of fuzzy ROI that if you get too granular in tracking everything, and some people love their Excel spreadsheets and, “What is the direct ROI of these campaigns I'm running?” you're gonna completely miss out on the overall value because a lot of these leads transcend attribution. 

Tim Chermak: What I mean by that is, in the marketing world right now, there's this huge controversy about attribution. How do you attribute a click or a lead to a certain campaign if they may have seen multiple campaigns? There's different models called like last click attribution where you might attribute all of the value of a closed lead to the final thing they clicked on in the funnel. There's blended average attribution where you factor it across different campaigns. It's difficult with iOS and Google eventually now going to do away with pixels on Chrome in the next couple years about if someone Googled you and then because of a Google search, they saw that you had a very lively Facebook page, and then they went on your Facebook page and they saw that you have tons of content videos, they looked at some of your posts, but then they went back to Google and they found your profile in Zillow or Realtor.com and that's how they called you. 

Tim Chermak: It's like, “That lead came from Realtor.com,” or “That lead came from Zillow,” let's say, that would be a completely incorrect attribution of what actually caused that lead to convert. It was probably all the content they saw on, let's say, YouTube or on Facebook that made them want to call you in the first place. If they got your phone number from a profile on Realtor.com, you might have given all the credit to Realtor.com or maybe Zillow. You're like, “I'm gonna spend more money on boosting my profile on Zillow or buying more impressions on Zillow,” when in reality, it was the content on Facebook or on YouTube. That's the reason they reached out. 

Tim Chermak: When we talk about this concept of fuzzy ROI, it's being aware of all those intangible type of variables that come into play and realizing that you can't really get that granular when you measure local marketing because there's so many variables that can influence why someone reached out. 

Tim Chermak: I think the only way you can honestly do it, and this is really frustrating for most realtors to hear, is look at where your business was at before you started something like Platform marketing, and then look where it's at a year or two later. If it's growing and you know that people are mentioning they're seeing your ads, that's all you need to know. It's gonna be really difficult to get more precise than that with something as holistic and big picture as local marketing. 

Tim Chermak: If you film a video, like you just said it, something as specific as like, “Hey, we filmed a highlight video at a Latin grocery store in our town,” let's say the owner refers a friend to you down the road, like six months from now or a year from now, but that friend never tells you that “I was referred to you by the owner of this Latin grocery store,” I think a majority of referrals happen that way. Someone told them and they're not lying to you. It's not that they're intentionally withholding the fact that “The reason I'm calling you is because my friend who owns this Latin grocery store loves you,” they honestly forgot. They forgot that was the first instance of how they ever discovered you. 

Tim Chermak: When you ask them, “Hey, how'd you hear about me?” They're like, “I don't know. I've just been seeing you online,” and they honestly can't remember. It becomes very difficult to measure the long-term effect of these things, which is why you just have to look at, “Well, is my business growing? Is it growing year over year?”

Kim Ross: I'm looking at my referrals. More than 70% of our transactions in 2022 are referrals. 

Tim Chermak: That's awesome. 

Kim Ross: If you think about it in a way where if you're meeting people and if you're a realtor and you're doing a job and you're meeting people every day out in public and then you friend request them and then you're creating content consistently on Facebook, they are eventually in your retargeting audience. That's how it happens for me. I literally just got a phone call the other day from a woman who I've met one time but she follows me on social media and she referred her sister to me for a $650,000 house. It's the best way to keep up with people that you normally would just completely lose track of. 

Tim Chermak: I'm looking up on my phone right now as you were talking there one of my favorite retargeting ads that you've ever run. This is just an example of staying top of mind with people in a creative way that doesn't feel like an ad. This is an ad that ran about a year ago on your page. At the time, you guys were homeschooling your kids. I'm not sure if you still are homeschooling or not. 

Kim Ross: Yes, one of them. 

Tim Chermak: You were homeschooling your kids and we ran this ad of you posing with your kids with a bunch of pizza boxes piled up and it was obvious that you had ordered pizza. What the ad says is, “So, we tried homeschooling this year. We just ordered nine pizzas to help teach my kids the names of the planets because, obviously, the kids will remember my very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.” That's an acronym, M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N-P, my very educated mother just served us nine pizzas. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. 

Tim Chermak: The ad, again, it's a photo of you with a bunch of pizza boxes stacked up with your kids. You ordered nine boxes of pizza for the nine planets. It says, “We had fun, ate a lot of pizza, probably too much pizza, most importantly, made a memory together. That's a win.” You ended it by saying, “Shout out to Anthony's Pizzeria in Fayetteville for making amazing pizza.” 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, you tagged this local business in the post where you ordered all that pizza from. They ended up sharing it. Anthony's Pizzeria shared this post from you, got a ton of engagement. I'm just looking at the engagement on this single ad you ran. Again, has nothing to do with real estate. It's a photo of you and your kids eating pizza, just sharing this personal moment, but it was running as a retargeting ad. It got a thousand likes, dozens of comments. It got 20 shares. 20 people shared this post because they thought it was so heartwarming or cool or interesting. In doing so, they're doing your advertising for you. Tell me about how this post came to be and if anyone ever mentioned to you in real life that they saw this post. 

Kim Ross: Yeah, that's definitely one of my favorite posts. I didn't even realize that has a thousand likes on it though. That's incredible. I do remember this post mostly because it was the night before our Mastermind last year that we posted that up and it blew up after that. I've had lots of people mention that post and there were a few other homeschool posts from last year. That tends to be a topic for whatever reason that people just really gravitate towards. On Anthony's though, I want to talk about that really quickly, they are somebody that we have business spotlighted twice now. On top of that, we've done two business spotlights there. 

Tim Chermak: This is a locally-owned pizzeria? Anthony's? 

Kim Ross: It is. Now, one of my team members' sons works there, so they're even more near and dear to us. We just did another business spotlight where, of course, they shared that. We decided that we would give away a couple of pizzas. Tomorrow night, we're giving away two pizzas to someone. They are actually getting picked in 15 minutes. We've got 96 people entered into this contest to win two pizzas tomorrow evening. 

Tim Chermak: That's awesome. Obviously, in doing so, you're promoting a local small business. 

Kim Ross: Correct. Absolutely. We continue to do so because we have now built a relationship with this pizza. 

Tim Chermak: I pulled up another ad, it's just one of your retargeting ads you've run that's one of my favorites because it doesn't really mention real estate. It's about you and your family, but it's helping people get to know you and the values of who you are and what you stand for. It doesn't look like an ad, because frankly, it's not really an ad. It doesn't mention being a realtor or real estate at all. It's just about a message you wanted to share with the community. 

Tim Chermak: The long-term strategy is, “If this vibes with you, if you agree with me, then maybe I'm a good realtor for you because we just share common life philosophy.” You're not actually saying that. You're just putting out a cool story into the world, and it'll attract like-minded people to you to want to work with you. 

Tim Chermak: Again, it's a photo. It's actually not even a video. It's a photo of your son, Hunter, and he's pushing a grocery cart back into the grocery cart return outside of a Publix. This ad is about raising the type of kids who have the responsibility to put the grocery cart back after you're done grocery shopping rather than being an a-hole who leaves it in the middle of the grocery store parking lot for someone else to have to pick up. 

Tim Chermak: I'm just gonna read this ad because this is also one of my favorite retargeting ads that you've run of all time. This ad has almost 500 likes, just so you know. It's running as a retargeting ad, it has nothing to do with real estate, but there's just tons of engagement on this post. It's a photo of your son, Hunter. How old was he when you took this picture, Kim? 

Kim Ross: He was five when I took it. 

Tim Chermak: He was five, okay. It's a photo of her son, Hunter, just pushing a grocery cart back into the cart return outside in a Publix parking lot. The photo says, “This is my son, Hunter. I'm so dang proud of him, here's why. I've always tried to teach my kids to be the type of person who brings their cart back to the cart return when shopping. It's not that this small act somehow changes the world. Let's be honest, it doesn't. Raising a kid who grows up with a sense of initiative does make the world a better place. Liberty requires responsibility. Raising kids who bring the cart back makes me a proud mama. I've tried to teach my kids to never wait for other people to do the right thing. The right thing is the right thing even when no one else does it. The world needs more leaders who do the right thing because it's the right thing, not because it's popular or easy. Sometimes, that lesson starts in a Publix parking lot.” 

Tim Chermak: It's just a photo of Hunter pushing the cart back, but it's got comments and comments and comments and shares and almost 500 people have liked it. I think this is just a perfect example of a retargeting ad. Once someone clicks on one of your actual real estate ads, like they're thinking about buying a house, they click on information about a new listing so that you know they're thinking about buying or selling, we want you to stay top of mind but we don't want you to be annoying. We don't want all the posts to be about real estate or how great of a realtor Kim is or how amazing the Kim Ross team is because that's just annoying. 

Tim Chermak: If someone is maybe eight or nine months away from actually being ready to go, the last thing that we wanna do is show them real estate sales-y posts for eight months in a row because that's just annoying. Instead, what the retargeting strategy becomes is, well, we do have to stay top of mind. It's not that being top of mind doesn't matter anymore. It's that we want to stay top of mind in an interesting, fun, creative way that doesn't feel like an ad, so that they do think of the Kim Ross team, they do think of Kim Ross, but they have a positive connotation with you. When they are ready to go, it's like, “Well, I'm gonna call Kim Ross because I like her, I like her values, I like the way she does business, and she's not annoying.” That gets people to reach out to you, not the other way around. You don't have to follow up with your leads as much because very literally, the leads are following up with you when they're ready to go. That's just an awesome ad that just really proves that point because it doesn't have anything to do with real estate. What was the reaction to that ad when you launched that out into the world? 

Kim Ross: I think the biggest thing about retargeting ads, like the ones that we just talked about, is it helps people not just get to know you, but it helps to attract the right people to my business. Most of the individuals, I want to say almost all, anybody who has directly called me has become a very good client or a referral partner or we've done business together. People get to know you. They get to trust you. They get to see that you're a person, not just a realtor. It just makes that connection between you so that when they are ready and they do call you, they feel like they already know you. 

Tim Chermak: I think that's one of the most underrated parts of marketing and lead generation that doesn't get talked about enough, is it's not how many leads you're generating.

Kim Ross: It's the quality.

Tim Chermak: What kind of leads are you generating? 

Kim Ross: Hundred percent, yeah.

Tim Chermak: Usually, when people talk about, “How are you converting your leads? What are your best follow up scripts for setting appointments?” or whatever, it's, well, that's assuming something really big that we're always talking about the same quality of lead. Usually, when someone is struggling about how to convert leads or what do I say, it's because they're talking about completely cold leads that could care less whether they work with you or any other realtor in the community. The type of marketing you do determines the type of leads you're going to attract. 

Tim Chermak: When you do this Platform-style marketing, you're actually almost filtering away the people that you wouldn't want to work with and you're attracting only the people who specifically want to work with you. They don't want to work with just any random realtor who can open a door and operate a lockbox. They specifically want to work with you because your content helps them feel like they're getting to know you. When they call you, they're not interviewing you and two or three other agents, they're calling Kim and they're like, “Hey, I want to list my house. What's the next step?” 

Kim Ross: I can name on one hand in the last two years when I knew that I was competing for a listing, maybe two or three times ever. That's just not how it works. People call me and I list their homes. 

Tim Chermak: Every other time that someone just say, “Hey, Kim. I've been following you on social media. I want to sell my house.” 

Kim Ross: Or “I just have a referral for you,” or “Someone mentioned you and said I should call you,” or whatever it is, but I very rarely am competing in the traditional sense for something. 

Tim Chermak: How long, Kim, did it take you to really feel like this Platform marketing strategy was working? One common thing we talk about at Masterminds, and we always try to be upfront with our clients when they're thinking about signing up, is that Platform is not something that's gonna change your life in 30 days. It's also not something that's gonna change your life in 90 days. It is about building that long-term brand in your community to where people get to know you over time. That doesn't happen in two weeks. Did it take you a year? Did it take you 18 months? Did it take you six months? How long was it before you really felt like you could look your husband in the eye and say, “Hey, honey. I think we made the right decision here. This Platform thing really is working?” 

Kim Ross: Probably a year. I definitely got closings before that. There were a few, maybe four or five months in, I got a direct call that led to a listing right away, which is pretty good. It was a year. It was probably a year. I would say the last three or four months when the team has been growing and now my vision is growing, now, it's like sky is the limit. My eyes are wide open. Now, I really can see everything that we're gonna be doing with this strategy. It took a year. It takes time. People don't just wake up one day and know your name in the community. You have to be consistent. Hindsight 2020, I would have been doing way more content in the beginning and I would have gotten over myself faster. 

Tim Chermak: That's always a question I end up asking on these podcast interviews, is “What would you change if you could go back in time?” but you already answered it for me. 

Kim Ross: I would have done way more content. As much content as I'm doing now, I would have done it from the beginning and I probably would be “further along.” Maybe, yeah. 

Tim Chermak: I'm gonna share a story that I didn't ask your permission to share before we started recording. Maybe afterwards, I might have to edit this out, but I'm gonna share it anyways. I think it'll be really inspirational to people listening to this if they're at a point in their business where they're struggling or frustrated or feeling anxious. 

Tim Chermak: We're interviewing right now, you, Kim, obviously, because you're a success story, you've seen the results of Platform, your business is growing, you're really happy with the long-term results of this marketing, but I remember a year ago, it wasn't necessarily that way in your business. The reason I remember it is because you work with Jordan as your account manager and almost exactly a year ago, I happened to be in Alabama, actually, where Jordan lives. I was staying at her house because I had some meetings in Birmingham that were unrelated, I guess, to Platform and she found out. She was like, “Well, you can just stay at me and John's house. That way you don't have to get a hotel.” I was like, “Cool.” 

Tim Chermak: When all this was happening, she was just telling me over dinner one night that, “I'm really worried about Kim Ross. I think she might be thinking about quitting. She just seems really frustrated. It's the slow time of year, obviously January. She's worried. I think she's stressing out. She might be quitting Platform.” I remember that because we had this conversation in Jordan's living room. “Oh, man. We're about to lose Kim Ross. This really sucks.” Now, look at us a year later. You're this case study success story of someone who stuck with Platform and seen the results and everything. I just think that really gives proof to what you were saying that, “Yeah, it takes time. You're not gonna be a crazy success story in 90 days.” You know what I mean? 

Kim Ross: No, and I started in February of 2021. If we were talking about January, I hadn't even been into the year. We were gonna be coming up on two years in February. A lot of things have changed in my business in the last 12 months. No, I definitely didn't know I was gonna be a team of nine and that would not be without Platform. That's the thing. I have this opportunity now to lead this amazing team in the upcoming years. We have this wonderful plan and I wouldn't have that opportunity if it wasn't for Platform. My last two agents joined my team specifically because of my marketing strategy. 

Tim Chermak: Really? 

Kim Ross: Both of them. 

Tim Chermak: All right. Well, for the sound editor who's going to be editing this podcast in the future, that's the sound bite we want to use at the beginning of the episode, is that you had people joining your team because they specifically said they love your marketing strategy, which, obviously, Platform’s managing.

Kim Ross: They've been watching me on social media and one of them had been an inside salesperson for about a year with the team and got her license and was just really feeling beat down by this team where you're just calling all day long, call, text, email. I had put up an ad that I was looking for a realtor. She said when she saw it on Indeed, she couldn't believe it because she had been watching me on Facebook for a few months and so she applied. 

Tim Chermak: Which is by the way an example of that fuzzy ROI that I'm talking about, is let's say that she had never told you that the reason she's reaching out is because she's been seeing you all over Facebook. You would have credited that to, “Well, I ran an ad on Indeed.” 

Kim Ross: Correct. If she hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known. She was on Indeed. She was looking for a different opportunity. From there, one of the major agents on that particular team, we had been friends on Facebook for about a year and a half, don't quite know how, just locally know on Facebook, and we chatted and she since joined. It's huge. 

Tim Chermak: When you have this positive momentum in your marketing, people in the community can sense that just like you can. Who wouldn't want to be a part of a company or an organization or a team that's growing like that and has interesting marketing compared to a team that doesn't have that? 

Kim Ross: It's a vibe. You’re actually putting yourself on your Facebook business page. It's your personality in the video tours, in the listing tours. It's your personality in the business spotlight. It's your personality when you're sharing personal moments about your life, your business, your family. It's a vibe that you're putting out and people feel that whether or not it's online or not. I know that sounds strange, but that's the world we live in. You can get a snapshot picture of somebody from the way they do their marketing. 

Tim Chermak: When you look back on all the various ads you've run over the years, what are maybe your top favorite one or two retargeting ads? I listed a couple of my favorites that you've run. What are your favorite retargeting ads, whether their videos, photos, that you feel just got the most engagement with people in your community? Not necessarily because from an analytics perspective they got the most clicks and the most views, but because the most people in real life specifically mentioned, “I love that ad you did,” or “I love that video,” or whatever. Are there one or two that just really stand out in your mind of your favorite Platform marketing campaigns? 

Kim Ross: Actually, it's one of the first videos I did. It was God Made a Small Business Owner. That was good for me because it got me into a couple of different businesses in the very beginning of my Platform journey. All of those businesses, I still have a very good relationship with. One of them as a client, another has referred, and I'm friends with most of them on Facebook. People loved it. I think that was the first video that I did that was really highlighting our local community. The words, it really got people to think about local entrepreneurs and small mom-and-pop shops. That's by far my favorite video that I've done. 

Tim Chermak: What do you think is the most important part of the Platform marketing strategy that you have to do well to be successful with this? One very important distinction between the Platform strategy versus, let's say, just buying leads on Zillow, is that buying leads on Zillow is just you click a button and that's the entirety of your marketing strategy. When leads come in, you call them and follow up, and that's about all there is to it. It's so tempting because it's so simple. “Cool. I just pay Zillow a bunch of money every month and leads come in and then I call them.” 

Tim Chermak: Platform is a lot more involved than that. It's a lot deeper. There's a lot more required of you when you do Platform. You can't be lazy when you sign up because your contribution is just as important to making this work as Platform's contribution is of what we do for you. What would you say, in your opinion, is the most important part, your most important contribution of what's necessary from the realtor to have this be successful? 

Kim Ross: Okay, first, I do want to just premise this by saying I've never done Zillow. I don't really know. I can imagine, but since the get go of starting my business in 2018, I knew that wasn't a strategy for me. Really, the only option for me was to be consistent. That's what it takes to be successful with any strategy, but definitely the Platform strategy because you are building a brand and you're starting from scratch. 

Kim Ross: It's like rolling a snowball. You gotta keep rolling it and it starts to collect the snow. It gets bigger and bigger and then there's more surface area, your luck surface gets bigger and bigger. If you just do a video once a month and a couple of photos, it's just not enough. You gotta be consistent. You have to put yourself on a schedule. You have to grow yourself so that you can grow your business. If you do that, you'll be successful. 

Tim Chermak: Kim, I know you were recently at the Platform Mastermind where almost all of our clients from across the country got together in person. There was nearly 200 people there and we just Masterminded, shared ideas, advice with each other, had some keynote speakers, and just learned from each other on how to take our businesses to the next level in 2023. What were your big one or two takeaways from the recent Platform Mastermind? What is one or two things you learned or that you just got re-inspired about that you're gonna take action on next year? 

Kim Ross: We already have. You said the word. The word is action. That's what I took from the entire weekend, was just do it, get up and do it, document, document the community, and continually do the content. Also, I would say it really solidified the relationship part of what we're doing. 

Kim Ross: A lot of the speakers this time spoke about ways to connect deeply with the community and how to use your business as a platform, really. Not to use your word, Tim, but it's just an amazing thing to solidify yourself into a community and into a town. That's what we're doing with this marketing strategy. From there, the referrals are just never ending. 

Tim Chermak: I think one of the messages that I'm hearing in this conversation that's present in everything you've said so far is that we're just trying to build a trusted brand in the community that people know us and like us, and oh, by the way, we happen to be real estate agents. It's not we're promoting ourselves as the expert or the top real estate agent or whatever, we're just promoting a brand, the Kim Ross team, that people trust the Kim Ross team, and oh, by the way, almost just on the side, we happen to also be real estate agents. They first and foremost view you as experts on the community, and then, oh, by the way, if you know anyone thinking about buying or selling, what we actually do for a living when we're not filming these videos is we're real estate agents. That's what gets people to trust you. 

Kim Ross: Half of my phone calls during the day and half of my texts are people asking for recommendations because they know that I'll have the answer or I'll know someone who has the answer. That comes from being deeply ingrained in your community. When people know the silliest things you might think of, and I'll get a text and they'll say, “I feel like you'll know this answer or you'll have someone,” and nine out of 10 times, I have it or I find it. 

Tim Chermak: That's what we talked about with the lighthouse effect or the lighthouse strategy, is that when you are a point of reference for people, the way that a lighthouse is a point of reference for where the land is relative to the rocks, relative to the ocean, even if they don't need you to buy or sell a house in that moment, if you position yourself as a lighthouse in the community of, “Hey, come to me and I'll help you, whether you need a good recommendation for a plumber or an electrician or a handyman or a lawn care landscaping service, or you need recommendation for a great insurance agent,” whatever, even if they don't need your services, that's how you win in this game over the long term, is when people think of you for anything that's even remotely related to real estate. It's just a done deal at that point, when they do need a realtor, of course they're going to work with you. 

Kim Ross: That's right, and all sorts of random things. I have people ask me what hairdresser I use. I specialize in homesteads, so I sell a lot of unique properties. I have people contacting me for farriers, veterinarians, and where to find hay locally. The list is endless, and it still relates back to real estate. 

Tim Chermak: Let's just do some live consulting on this call. One retargeting ad you should do that just came to me off the top of my head is you should run an ad that's just a photo ad and you list out, “Here's the 10 most random reasons people in the community have called me asking for advice.”

Kim Ross: I love that. 

Tim Chermak: You just list out, “One person asked me, ‘Where do I find hay in Fayette County?’ Another person asked me, ‘Where's a good farrier?’ Another person asked me, ‘Where do you get your hair done? Which salon do you go to?’” Basically, we can end it by saying, “I view the realtor's most important job is just being a source of information for the community, and then when I can help you buying and selling a home, I'm happy to do that. My real full-time job is just being a valuable source of information in the meantime.” Let's be honest, the average person only moves every seven to eight years. What causes your success in real estate is what you're doing the other six years and 11 months. How are you adding value to people's lives? That'd actually be a funny retargeting ad.

Kim Ross: I love that. That loops back to what you were just saying. Wait, what were you just saying? Sorry, I just lost my train of thought now. 

Tim Chermak: I was saying the lighthouse strategy of being a point of reference. If someone only buys and sells a home every seven years on average, what are you doing the other six years and 11 months when they're not actively buying and selling? That's what determines how much business you're going to get, is how much value you provide when they don't actively, right now, need a realtor. Do you have the recommendations for the animal veterinarians and where to find hay and all these random questions that frankly have nothing to do with real estate or being a realtor? Exactly, but you're just an expert on the community in general. 

Kim Ross: It's like customer service. At the end of the day, it's having excellent customer service to be the community leader. Yes, I'm a community market leader, but I know how to help people get the information they need to live here successfully and thrive here. I've learned that through my time and experience here. In the last 18 months, I've grown exponentially in my life, in my career, and in my community. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, it's being an expert on the community who just happens to be a real estate agent. That's a very important distinction in your marketing versus trying to promote yourself as the top real estate agent in your community. Those are two very, very different ways of doing marketing. 

Kim Ross: They learn that on the top. Once they hire me and we actually do a transaction, then that's where the customer service part comes in. They learn that. You don't have to be flashy and be like, “I'm the best.” They'll learn that, but if they get to just know you and know that you're there to help and provide value. I have a vendor list and I will provide that to any and all. You do not need to be a client of mine to receive my vendor list. I have people reaching out to me all the time and I give that to them. 

Tim Chermak: Let me ask you, this is kind of a change of topic here, but the final question I wanted to ask was, when you look at the overall PlatFam community right now, all the various agents across the country who work with Platform marketing, is there one person or maybe one or two people that you look at as just like they're almost your role models? It's like, “Hey, this person, I really admire the way they do their marketing, how they've grown their business or Platform. I wanna be them when I grow up.” Is there one person that stands out of, “I'm really inspired by just seeing this person's retargeting content. I think they do great ads,” or was there someone you met at the Mastermind recently that you really enjoyed a conversation with them that you just learned something from? 

Kim Ross: Well, I'm gonna not go with the content part, but I'm gonna go with Karen, Karen Hall. The reason is because last year, I learned about her VIP program. I implemented it and I have gifted for, we're going on 13 months, every month. It has completely changed not just my business, but I have six people who have been consistently doing this. It's been just absolutely amazing. It all ties back into the marketing content because there's all those people are seeing that. Plus, they're getting gifts from us. I definitely look up to Karen. I look up to her a lot. 

Tim Chermak: For those listening, we actually did a podcast episode with Karen Hall that you can search for, where she lays out all the specifics of her VIP gifting program and how she makes that work with the Platform marketing strategy to create retargeting content and drive more business and drive more referrals. I think Karen has something like quadrupled her business since she joined. 

Kim Ross: That'll be me in a few years. We're already on track. We're gonna double next year again. 

Tim Chermak: It's really cool seeing people's businesses scale like that. If you grow your business by, whatever, 10%, 20%, that's nice, but it's not necessarily gonna change your family's life if your income grows by 10% or 20%. When your income grows by 300% or 400%, that's the point where it's actually generational life-changing income for your family. Now, you can afford to pay cash for your kid's college, you can buy investment properties.

Kim Ross: We're so blessed. Without Platform, we wouldn't have a lot of things. We're sending our daughter to private school. We've been doing homeschooling for two years and we think we just found the school. That's life-changing in itself. Platform helps you get there faster. Why wouldn't you wanna go there faster? There's lots of people who can become community market leaders, but how many years have they been doing it? 20? 25? I've been in this community 10 years, a realtor here, doing this for four. I would say that's pretty amazing results where we're at so far. 

Tim Chermak: All right. Awesome, Kim. Thank you for your time. This was a really, really great interview. I love the focus that you put on just being involved in your community and that's goal number one, and then you just use marketing to highlight all the ways that you're involved in your community. That is a winning recipe to build a brand in your area for the long term. Thank you guys for joining us. We'll see you on the next episode of The Platform Marketing Show.