Why I Stopped Buying Zillow Leads

Jeremy Hartmark: I probably spent $30,000 in Zillow leads, but made $100,000 gross. I was doing very well, but they changed their platform, started selling it to more and more people. The market, it tightened up. I don't know, I just wasn't impressed with it anymore.

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 joined today by Jeremy Hartmark. Jeremy is a realtor in the Sarasota, Florida area. Jeremy, welcome to the show. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Hey, thanks Tim. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. 

Tim Chermak: This is one of those crazy stories where I didn't realize that Jeremy's business was already this successful. I know Jeremy's been working with the Platform Marketing program for several years now. I think you got going with us in 2019? 

Jeremy Hartmark: I believe, yeah, end of 2019. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, so we're coming up on three and, eventually, even four years. Your business has actually grown from about $5 million sales volume to about $20 million. It's actually more than tripled, almost quadrupled. Honestly, I had no idea that your business had grown that much until we talked on the phone a couple of weeks ago. 

Jeremy Hartmark: I'm a pretty humble guy. I keep this is how I'm off. I'm happy where I'm at, but definitely it's grown a lot. I definitely feel very blessed and thankful. 

Tim Chermak: That's super cool. I'm in Naples, Florida, actually, where I live, so you're not too far away in the Sarasota area. I just had no idea that your business had grown that much. Obviously, I knew that you had been a client with us for three years. I knew that, obviously, you must've been pretty happy, but I had no idea that it had grown that much. That's super cool. 

Tim Chermak: Let's rewind and go back in time. One thing that makes your story, Jeremy, so interesting and so inspiring is that you weren't born and raised in Florida, you didn't have a huge sphere here. It's not like you had tons of family friends or high school buddies or anything like that. You actually lived in the Pacific Northwest for a long time and actually only recently moved to Florida. You started over a new life in Florida from scratch. Let's go back in time and tell me about what led up to you moving to Florida in the first place. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Absolutely. Listen, we vacation here a lot. We love Disney World, we would come all the time, Disneyland. We live in the Pacific Northwest, so California, Hawaii, Maui, love the islands, love the warmer climate, but we have family there, grandmas, grandparents, cousins. My wife actually ended up getting really sick. She contracted Lyme disease, gosh, over 10 years ago, anyway, and slowly started to decline. 

Jeremy Hartmark: When we came to Florida, when we were in the warmer climate, it was night and day. She would feel better, she would feel great, 1000% better. We'd have an amazing week plus here and then go back. Literally, as soon as the plane would come down into the clouds, it would start changing for her dramatically. We had to make a change. We had to do this. Obviously, health is number one, family's number one. We left our businesses behind, our family, our friends, everything, our dream home, and headed out east here. 

Tim Chermak: You had successful businesses back in the Seattle area, right? That's where you were?

Jeremy Hartmark: Correct. We were on the eastside of Seattle, but I did a lot of business in the Seattle downtown area. I was a general contractor. I did a lot of high end renovation work, remodel work, flips, investment homes, that kind of jazz. I had the business for probably about 15 years. It was growing. I was finally at that point where we're all referral base. You take care of people, they take care of you type of thing. I had a good name. It was really cranking. We had to leave it behind, but what do you do? Life goes on.

Tim Chermak: You had to completely start over from scratch in Florida. I think that's a really important preface to hearing his story about how he's grown his business as a realtor in Florida. I think one thing that most people will never raise this objection, but they might see some case studies or testimonials or success stories about Platform, and in the back of their mind, they're wondering, “Yeah, okay, but how much of that is actually attributable to the marketing that you're doing versus did you already have a huge sphere? Did you already have a ton of people that were referring business to you?” Really, that question that people are wondering is how much of the success is because of these Platform Marketing ideas versus did you already have a really strong sphere?

Tim Chermak: You are a really great example where you were truly starting from scratch. You didn't move here because you had a ton of friends here or because you went to college here and this is where all your network was from those days or something. You were truly starting over from scratch in Florida and in about three years, when you hired Platform, you said about 2019, your business has grown from $5 million in sales volume, which is honestly a pretty respectable real estate business right there. 

Tim Chermak: If you're selling $5 million a year, you're already ahead of most agents. You've gone from $5 million to $20 million, again, in a market that you don't have a sphere of influence. It's not like you have tons of friends and family here or anything like that. You were building your life over, essentially, from scratch in the Sarasota, Florida area. Jeremy, I want to ask you a question that I don't actually know the answer to. How did you first hear about Platform? How did you first get connected with us? 

Jeremy Hartmark: Honestly, so I saw one of your ads from another agent in a neighboring market. I liked it and inquired about it. I actually knew a lender who was friends with them, who told me what they were using. We were just chatting because I was doing some ads with him, some Facebook stuff, and we were getting some leads, and so obviously just wondering what everybody else is doing, what other people are doing out there. Obviously, lenders talk to agents all day long, so they have the inside scoop. They told me about you guys, or he did per se. I just started doing some research and my market was actually taken at that time. My initial calls were like, “Sorry.” You obviously only have one agent in each market. It was taken for Sarasota. I just put it on the back burner and then you guys reached out to me eventually, I believe, if I followed up or if you followed up, but then I just started the conversations. 

Tim Chermak: You've been with us now for, like you said, over three years, coming up on the fourth year actually. What marketing were you doing before that? Were you buying Zillow leads or doing open houses? What did your marketing plan look like before Platform? 

Jeremy Hartmark: All of the above, honestly. Moving here with no sphere, my thought process was to buy leads. Listen, I gotta put myself out there. I'd rather get ahead of the game, start getting some business under my belt and not wait a year for stuff to come in, not annoying anybody. Yeah, I definitely started with Realtor.com leads, Zillow leads, started trying to make a presence in my local area. Once you have a few closed sales under your belt, it definitely helps and also just to get that momentum and the knowledge base going.

Jeremy Hartmark: It's tough when you're new in the industry. That's what people want to know, how many homes have you sold, how much business have you done, how long you been in the industry. It's tough being a new agent. Obviously, being an older guy, more mature, I think helped me, plus also my experience in construction, which really help people with sales, whether it's new construction or resales, buying and selling, that was an avenue that I went with. Definitely, I did Realtor.com, Zillow, and then I started dabbling in the Facebook stuff with the mortgage lender guy. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, and that was actually gonna lead me up to my next question, is being you had a background as a general contractor, has that helped you as a realtor in Florida? Just that knowledge and skill sets you have of being able to give your clients advice and wisdom around should you buy new or, “Hey, here's this issue with this house,” “As a GC, here's my opinion on this.” Has that helped you? 

Jeremy Hartmark: I feel like it has. Listen, you have to use all of your attributes. I feel like it sets me apart. If you have an agent, your realtor that is a general contractor, knows the rules and regulations, codes, can really help you determine, A, buying a house, is it worth even going to contract over? What do I see that they don't see? New construction, it was huge. I'm in the Sarasota Lakewood Ranch area, but there's a lot of new construction here. There's a 10-month build process. A lot of people don't understand the build process, so walking them through the whole build process for the 10 months, but also inspecting the home along the way and really making sure that the builder is not trying to pull one over on my buyers. 

Tim Chermak: That's something I can imagine your buyers probably are really happy that the agent representing them has been a builder, has been a GC yourself, because you know exactly what to look for that maybe a less experienced realtor wouldn't even really notice. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Absolutely. People wouldn't really have a clue. Honestly, a lot of agents I talk to, they tell me they bring people into the sales offices, they sign a contract, and they're gone. “See you at closing.” Sorry. 

Tim Chermak: I'm actually really curious about this now. If you could list two or three things that builders often cut corners on that they're just hoping the buyers don't notice, is there two or three specific things maybe you always look for or the most common things you have to point out to your buyers? 

Jeremy Hartmark: A lot of it's cosmetic stuff. People see new homes and they think it's pretty just because it's new and they don't see the little cosmetic stuff, but the behind the scenes stuff, for sure, firewall issues. I found major structural issues, trying to run dock work where it's not supposed to and then trying to cover it up and frame it and shoot rocket in, stuff like that that will really be an issue down the road for people. I couldn't even tell you all the stuff I've caught. 

Jeremy Hartmark: The builders, honestly, sometimes don't like me. They know. The field managers, they know me now. When I show up with the buyers, I see them and they even tell my people, “You're not working with Jeremy, are you?” It's not a good thing for them. I'm going to call them out on their stuff. Listen, do your job and we have no problems. It's a good thing for my buyers for sure. 

Tim Chermak: That's awesome. You had mentioned you dabbled with Realtor.com leads, Zillow leads, so you had that background. Obviously, you had a successful career as a general contractor in the Seattle area. I'm sure that, obviously, you tried some marketing out there as well with that business. With all of that context, what is different about the Platform Marketing strategy versus what you were doing before? What is the biggest thing that makes Platform different from other types of marketing out there for realtors? 

Jeremy Hartmark: Honestly, all the other things are just leads, straight leads. They come in, you call them. The first one to call them, you get the lead. You qualify, hopefully, they're a decently qualified lead. You take them out, you show them a house, and then that's that. It's done. It's the same revolving door over and over and over again. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Platform is almost like a build-your-brand, build-your-business, in my opinion. It's not just about getting one lead, it's about building myself, Jeremy Hartmark, so people know me, they know my personality, they know my family, they know what I look like, maybe they know my history. They feel comfortable with me right out of the gate before we even meet. It creates that comfort level, but I really feel like it builds you as a person as opposed to I could just dump $10,000 a month into Zillow and it's never going to end. It's going to be a constant I'm-going-to-have-to-keep-doing-that, otherwise it'll dry up, which is actually what happened to me with Zillow. 

Jeremy Hartmark: I was actually doing pretty good my first year. I probably spent $30,000 in Zillow leads, but made $100,000 gross. I was doing very well, but they changed their platform, started selling it to more and more people. The market, it tightened up. I don't know, I just wasn't impressed with it anymore. It wasn't producing like it was, for me anyway. They admitted it. I talked to plenty of people on the phone about it. They made a big mistake, but it is what it is. 

Tim Chermak: That's what led you to start researching other alternatives and it eventually led you to Platform. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Absolutely, yeah. 100%. 

Tim Chermak: Jeremy, do you consider yourself a sales-y person or are you more introverted? How would you describe your personal style? 

Jeremy Hartmark: That's funny. Honestly, no, I'm not the used car salesman type, sales-y guy. I'm definitely little introverted per se. I'm not pushy at all. Listen, I feel like timing's right. When it's right for my people, and when it feels right, it'll happen. I'm not gonna force anything on anybody. I've had clients that I've been working with for years that haven't bought a house. Florida's a little different. You get a lot of retirees, you get a lot of snowbirds, you get a lot of people that come down, they're just looking around, window shopping, they don't know anything about the area. There's a lot of time involved in showing people the area, neighborhoods, and then figuring out what home works for them. It's a process. It's not like it's gonna happen overnight, but if you keep taking care of these people and keep touching them over and over and staying in contact, eventually, it works out. You become friends. That's when referrals and the business really starts going well. You build a relationship with your clients. 

Tim Chermak: The reason I ask on do you consider yourself fairly introverted or do you consider yourself to be really outgoing and sales-y, is that I never really noticed this before until very recently with the PlatFam. I think we've attracted a lot of people into the PlatFam that if you ask them, they would actually tell you, “Oh, yeah. I'm not sales-y at all. I'm actually pretty introverted. I'm never gonna start making cold calls. That's not my style.” I think we attract those people into the PlatFam community precisely because they know that the style of marketing that we do and what we preach is that you should put content out there and then the right people will come to you. 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, you have to do the basic with follow-up. You can't just not follow up with your leads, but you don't have to be cold calling people, door knocking. Put content out there and the right people will raise their hands and they will come to you over time. It's just a trend I've been noticing that I just never really realized that before that actually describes a lot of our clients. 

Tim Chermak: What are some of your favorite ads you've run, Jeremy? If you could pick, I don't know, one or two of the ads you've run in the last couple years that seem to have gotten the most engagements or people in real life telling you that, “Hey, I love this video,” or “I love this post,” because who really cares how many clicks an ad gets? I think the most important metric is, are people in real life telling you, “Hey, I love that post you did,” because then you know that the right people are seeing it if they're actually telling it to your face. Is there a couple of ads that stand out to you? 

Jeremy Hartmark: Honestly, recently, because the market changed a little bit, I think a lot of the ads that are explaining the market and breaking it down and trying to let people know, “Hey, this is a good time to buy.” I feel like there's a lot of unknown right now and people are scared and there's a lot of speculation, but really just breaking down the market in general. Those have been great lately. The history ads, the ads that just give a lot of history, I get a lot of feedback from those. People love those. Those have been huge as well. I got a lot of comments, a lot of engagement, and people that I see out and about, they love those, stuff that gives you something to chew on.

Tim Chermak: Sure. How active are you personally on social media? On your personal profile, not your realtor page, are you regularly posting on Instagram or Facebook every day? How much do you use social media just in your personal life? 

Jeremy Hartmark: I'm pretty regular, I guess. Listen, because of my business too though, you have to be. I don't say that I'm the type of person that's gonna post everywhere I go or everything I have for lunch or look at my dog, look at my kids, this and that. I will post when I'm at events, when I'm out with my family, when we're doing stuff, but I'm trying to get better at it for sure, learning along the way too and seeing what works and what doesn't work. Yeah, I'm trying to post more on my personal page, my business page, and of course, Instagram. I've slacked on Instagram for a while. 

Tim Chermak: I know you've attended several Platform Masterminds now. You've gotten to meet a bunch of people in the PlatFam community. What is maybe one thing that you've learned about marketing from Platform in the last couple of years that maybe you didn't know before, maybe you even disagreed with before? Is there anything that you've learned about how to run your business or how to market over the last couple years that maybe you weren't doing before? 

Jeremy Hartmark: Honestly, the biggest takeaway was just this last Mastermind that you just had, just hearing how successful other people were by just posting and content, doing a lot of content, and constantly putting stuff out there of value. It was great to see the success that everyone was having doing that. I think I've had the opportunity to do it. Have I fully committed? You get busy and it goes on the back burner, but really, to learn that if you want to be successful and you want to grow your business, you have to make it a priority. You have to schedule it. You have to get it done. There's always an excuse. Time passes and then you don't and you miss out. I think just being active in it has been the biggest takeaway lately. 

Tim Chermak: How much are you typically spending on ads in a given month? You know what your ad spend budget is? 

Jeremy Hartmark: $900. Roughly just under $1,000, but I just increased it. 

Tim Chermak: Okay. In other words, you've scaled your business from $5 million to $20 million and all your ads budget is about $1,000 a month. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Correct. I wasn't really spending a lot. I don't know what everyone else spends, but mine was pretty minor. 

Tim Chermak: I'd say the average in Platform is probably right around $1,000 a month. I think for people listening to this podcast, maybe you're checking out the Platform Marketing podcast for the first time and you hear that, “Wow, this dude grew his business from $5 million to $20 million and he only was spending $1,000 a month on the actual ads?” I think people hear that and they're like, “Oh, geez. Was he spending $5,000 a month on the ads?” To have that rapid of business growth, if you were doing something like Zillow leads, you're not gonna grow your business from $5 million to $20 million by spending $1,000 a month on Zillow leads. That's not gonna happen. 

Jeremy Hartmark: No, not a chance. No, I really think the  listing video ads, those were what I tried to focus on. That was my main thing. I felt like doing those really helped show people another angle of how to present a listing. I think it took off, I feel like. Not that I could say a seller called me and said, “I love your video. I want to hire you because of that” necessarily, but I got a lot of good feedback from all of my videos. I can bring some of it back and give credit to Platform for that. Just the fact that you push me to do it, it's a little accountability too from the marketing team.

Tim Chermak: You work with Jackie, right? 

Jeremy Hartmark: I do, yes. 

Tim Chermak: How does that coaching relationship, having a personal account manager, affect things? I think that's a pretty underappreciated part of the Platform recipe, is that we don't just fire up some ads, put it on autopilot, and then say, “See you later, Jeremy.” That's what most marketing companies do, is they just create a bunch of campaigns and then it's on autopilot. We're actually giving you a call almost every week and we're talking regularly. 

Tim Chermak: You have Jackie, who's your dedicated marketing account manager at Platform, and you're talking to her regularly. You have her cell phone number and she's the one you're masterminding with on which campaign are we gonna do next or which is the next video or ad that we're going to run. To my knowledge, there's really no other marketing companies that do that with realtors, that you actually have a dedicated account manager working with you. How has that helped you just from an accountability perspective? 

Jeremy Hartmark: No, it's great. It goes a long way. Accountability, for me, is big time. Having somebody that you're going to talk to you regularly, that's gonna ask you what you did, obviously, hold you accountable. It's nice, also, bounce ideas back and forth. “What do you think of this? What do you think of that?” I do like having her cell phone too or shoot her a picture. “What do you think? You think this will work?” Just having that feedback too that you guys approve, that she likes it, that she thinks it's gonna work great, that's huge. 

Jeremy Hartmark: The constant follow up with me, just giving me new content and knowing what content that I personally like to put out to, knowing me a little bit because not everybody's the same, knowing what will work for me and if I only have a short amount of time, I have a crazy week. “Hey, here's a couple ads I think that you can pump out relatively easy, the kind that you like. We can get them out there and have them out there.” The ones that are a little more involved, work on those over time. Really, giving me different options anyway depending on my time frame. 

Tim Chermak: There's a lot of agents I've heard like, “I have a marketing assistant,” and often it's a kid in college or someone who just graduated college with a marketing degree, has never worked with realtors before, doesn't know really anything about real estate, and they're like, “Hey, I have a marketing assistant. I pay him $600 a month,” or “I pay him $1,000 a month,” or whatever. That's not at all the same thing as your Platform Marketing manager. 

Tim Chermak: I think one of the advantages of the marketing model we have is that your Platform account manager is working with 20 other realtors probably besides you. They already understand real estate, they understand the best ads that work well for realtors. They're an expert in that. In other words, you aren't their learning curve. When you hire some random kid to help you locally with social media ads or marketing, you are their learning curve because they've never done ads for realtors before. They don't really know what works. Our Platform team is working with agents across the country, so we have a pretty big perspective in terms of sample size, of we know what works. Again, it's not just some random person overseeing your ads, it's someone who actually specializes in realtor ads.

Tim Chermak: You mentioned when you first signed up, your market was taken because we have this policy of Platform working with one agent per market. Is that something that's important to you? How has that factored into your success with Platform? That's something that I think a lot of people bring up, is “The reason I was initially attracted to this is because you guys have boundaries and integrity around this policy of one client per market.” Again, Zillow doesn't do that. 

Jeremy Hartmark: No, not at all. I think it's really important because a lot of the stuff, you want it to feel like it's personal too, it's coming from me. You don't want to have 10 other agents in your market doing the same stuff. I feel like then, I don't know, it doesn't have as much value to people. It's not as creative, so that is nice. That's huge. I love that about Platform, obviously. When I wanted to get on board, you guys didn't have a spot for me. Listen, that holds a lot of weight too. I respect that, obviously. If somebody's in that market, then maybe it's working. Lucky for me, it opened up. It is what it is.

Tim Chermak: Since then, you've added about $15 million to your sales volume. There's agents out there that would be happy if $15 million was the total sales volume they ever had and you've grown $15 million, which is phenomenal. That's really impressive. Jeremy, being you've been with Platform now for three years, what would you tell someone who's thinking about signing up or maybe they recently joined the Platform, but they're still in that valley where they haven't seen the results kick in yet? They've been doing some ads, they've spent some money, maybe they're three or four months in, or maybe even they're six or seven months in, but they haven't really seen a ton of traction yet. What would you tell them based on your experience looking back now that you have a three-year perspective on what's changed in your business over a three-year time horizon? 

Jeremy Hartmark: Honestly, you have to stay consistent. I was the worst at it. I had my doubts as well because I couldn't pinpoint. The whole fuzzy ROI thing, I think, is the biggest thing. You were pretty huge on that right away when I first started talking to you guys. Fuzzy ROI, that's all I heard, but it's true. I feel like a lot of the clients that I get, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where they came from because I do other stuff as well. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Once you've put out enough content, once you're in the game long enough and people consistently see your stuff, then it'll just start coming in, that fuzzy stuff comes in left and right. I know people see my stuff and I know they like it. Other agents as well, they'll reach out saying they love my content. You know other people are seeing it, but it definitely takes time for sure. You have to be consistent though. You have to stay in the game, be consistent, and be in it for the long haul really for it to be successful, I think. 

Tim Chermak: Again, if you've grown your business from $5 million to $20 million, the consistency is worth it. For most realtors in most situations, obviously every scenario is gonna be different because of the differences between brokers and commission splits and all that, but $15 million of increase in sales volume is, let's see, what is that? Probably $250,000, $300,000, something like that. Probably $400,000 almost. 

Jeremy Hartmark: I think a lot of it go back to the listing videos, really. I worked with all buyers. When you're with Zillow, you're all buyers. That's it. You're not getting any listing leads. Maybe you might have a buyer, I'll have a buyer that wants to sell their house to you. You get a double. Right when I started getting listings, I started working with Platform. Just having those videos, I think that was huge. That helped transform my business because I really like listings. Listings, I think, are the way to go in the industry personally. Obviously, buyers are great, but listings are a little easier. You can manage more of them at the same time rather than running around with buyers. Once I started doing the videos, the walkthrough videos, some of the creative stuff for the listing videos and listing ads, I feel like that helped my business a lot. 

Tim Chermak: I think that's something just inherent to marketing, is that the more marketing you do, what's gonna happen over time is your business does shift where you'll have a higher percentage of sellers. If you think about it, most buyers, if you're just buying a house, especially if you're a first time home buyer, they really don't do a ton of research on which agent they wanna work with. They wanna look at a specific house and they might inquire on Zillow or they might even call the number on the sign and then they end up working with the same agent who's representing the seller. 

Tim Chermak: Buyers don't really care which agent they work with. They're not gonna do research and interview multiple agents to be their buyer's agent the same way that a seller might. Just because you're doing marketing, because you're putting content out there, marketing inherently attracts sellers because sellers are the type of people who are actually doing research on which agent they want to work with. It's probably not surprising that your business now has a lot more listings than it did before you started the Platform Marketing program. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Absolutely, yeah. Literally, Platform pretty much, I don't know, helped me a ton with listings. I feel like it catapulted me with listings. Just getting one listing and then just doing an awesome video and getting it out there, it goes a long way. You're right, sellers do a lot more research. Absolutely. If they see your stuff and they like what you're doing and no one else is doing it, then they want you because that's what they want for their house. They don't want just the standard stuff. Everybody can do the standard stuff. That's the easy part. The hard part is doing something creative out there. 

Tim Chermak: If you're selling a pretty standard $500,000 house in the Sarasota area and you're looking at paying a 3% commission to the listing agent, that means that listing agent's gonna make obviously $15,000 when they sell. If you're a homeowner, you wanna make sure that the agent that you're about to write that $15,000 check to on top of paying the buyer's agent, that you're getting great marketing from that agent. That's a lot of money to make if all you're doing is plopping a sign in the yard and taking some photos that you probably paid the photographer $200 or $300 for. Sellers want to feel like the agent that's marketing their home, frankly, is actually marketing it, that you're not just uploading it to the MLS. 

Tim Chermak: All the things we do at Platform, specifically around marketing listings, the videos, the retargeting strategy where you can tell your sellers, “Hey, I'm not just uploading this video, crossing my fingers, and then hoping it gets 12 views. I have a whole retargeting strategy where I'm gonna show this video to the thousands of people who have recently been clicking on my ads, so we're showing it to people that are in the market right now,” that's a huge advantage over other agents who might come over with a fancy brochure, but essentially, they're listing pitches. “I'll put it on the MLS, I'll take some pretty pictures, we'll put a sign in the yard, and wait.”

Jeremy Hartmark: Absolutely. I actually bring and show people. I tell people, for one, that I have a marketing team. They like to hear that, and that I spend thousands of dollars. “Listen, the commission's not all coming in my pocket.” Obviously, a broker's [] do. I market the listing and I will show them the actual traction and the views and what I got on other videos as proof that this is what I'm doing and this is actually working. I feel like it's all about exposure. You get the listing out in front of the most people possible. Obviously, that will help in the long run to get the best offer. 

Tim Chermak: It gives the seller confidence that they're working with the right person. It puts you in a great position of psychological leverage in that listing appointment in that conversation. If they were thinking about trying to negotiate you down on commission like, “Hey, maybe he'll list for 5% versus 6%,” or “Maybe we can get him down to 4.5% instead of 5%,” whatever, if they're trying to get you to lower your commission, they don't really have a lot of bargaining leverage if you just finished giving them a presentation on how much more you do than other realtors and how you're actually going to get their home a ton of exposure. They're like, “This guy's actually worth it. He's earning every dollar of his commission.” All of a sudden, they're probably not gonna try to negotiate you down. 

Tim Chermak: I think that's another angle of the long-term effect of the Platform strategy especially in the crazy seller's market we were in the last couple of years when so many agents were offering discounts on commission because sellers knew the home's gonna sell anyways. It's not the agent that's making the home sell. You put a sign in the yard, it sells within 24 hours with 10 offers over list price. Sellers were seriously thinking about, “Why am I paying an agent all this money?” You probably were able to avoid a lot of those conversations because they look at everything you did for your listings. It's like, “Jeremy's actually earning it. Look at the marketing he's actually doing.” 

Tim Chermak: The marketing that you do also leads to more referrals. If you think about it, if you do the standard offering that most agents do where I get a listing, I put a sign in the art, I take some professional photos, maybe on some weekend if the seller really busts my balls over and I'll do an open house and put out some signs and balloons, you're pretty much doing the bare minimum. You upload to the MLS and your strategy is essentially you wait for another agent to bring a buyer. 

Tim Chermak: If you look at what most agents do, that's not really going to inspire a lot of referrals. We've said this before on the show, referrals are a derivative of passion. No one refers people to someone they just feel okay about. People refer when they feel like you've gone above and beyond. “Wow, he's way better than other agents. I need to tell my friends about this guy.” I'm not saying that you do a bad job, but if you just did your job, no one's gonna refer people to you because it's like, “That's what I paid you for. I'm not gonna enthusiastically refer you when you just did what I paid you for.” 

Tim Chermak: It's not like if I go to McDonald's and I order a burger and it's $2 or whatever, and then they hand it to me, I'm like, “Wow, I need to tell my friends about this transaction. I gave them $2 and they gave me the burger.” No, that's what you were paying for, but you might tell your friends about a local restaurant if they went way above and beyond with the service level. Maybe they surprised you with a free dessert or a free order of fries, or I have no idea. They went above and beyond somehow. 

Tim Chermak: As a realtor, the marketing you do over the long term is what's gonna attract more referrals. If you do a video, let's say, of one of your listings and that video gets 12,000 views, that's 12,000 more video views than any other agent is getting their listings because most people don't do a video like that. The seller then has something specific they can tell their friends. It's not just these generic, ambiguous statements like, “I worked with Jeremy. He was great,” or “He was nice,” or “He was professional,” or all these just, again, generic statements of, “Jeremy was good to work with,” that you're actually giving them something very concrete, very specific. “Hey, Jeremy did a video for our house. It got over 12,000 video views.” Giving something specific to tell their friends that you actually did is what makes them a lot more likely to refer. Now, they actually have some substance in that referral of why they're referring. Here's what makes Jeremy different.

Tim Chermak: We see that with Platform too. If we were just some generic marketing program that just got people leads, there's not a whole lot to refer. “Hey, check out Platform. I guess they can get you leads.” Well, cool. Realtors can get leads from a hundred different websites. Usually, when we get referrals, it's because someone told a friend who's an agent in another town that, “Hey, Platform only works with one realtor per market. Here's a couple examples of the ads I've done, but they only work with one person per market.” That's so different. It's something different we do from other companies that that's what they mentioned in the referral, is here's what makes Platform different from other marketing programs out there. 

Tim Chermak: It's the same thing with your business as a realtor. If you're not doing things that are actually different, you're not really giving your clients a lot of ammunition to tell their friends about you. Again, it just comes back to these generic statements about, “He was very professional. We liked working with Jeremy.” Whenever I see those reviews, whether it's a Google review, Zillow, whatever, that could be fake. Who knows if that's fake? It sounds like AI wrote it when it's so general. 

Jeremy Hartmark: No, for sure. Absolutely. Platform sets you apart, bottom line. It helps you with buyers, obviously helps you with sellers. Referrals are huge. Marketing yourself and referrals are the two main components of the business to stay alive. You take care of people, but you also have the marketing team and your partner that's helping you get those referrals by putting out good content. It's massive, I feel like, in the end game. 

Tim Chermak: Jeremy, I'm super excited for you because I know that you've grown your business, you've more than tripled. You've almost quadrupled your business over a time period of a couple of years that were probably one of the hardest years ever for realtors to grow their business during all the lockdowns and everything, the economy going crazy with interest rates over the last couple of years. All of that has been happening and you've still over tripled your business in that time. 

Tim Chermak: I'm really excited for you, dude, to see what happens to your business in 2023 and 2024 because the economy is stabilizing right now. It's normalizing. Interest rates are stabilizing. This year is gonna be a lot more normal of a real estate market than the last couple of years and your business is gonna grow even more because of that. It'll be cool to see where you are a year from now because of how far you've already come even in a turbulent market. As things stabilize, you're gonna do even bigger and better things. I'm super excited for you. Thank you for joining us on the show today. Jeremy, would you mind sharing your cell phone number quick just in case anyone wants to shoot you a text or give you a call and ask you about Platform or how your business is going? 

Jeremy Hartmark: Yeah, absolutely. It's (941) 807-0740. Just one thing that came to mind, Tim, while we were talking, I think 2023, listen, some people might fall off. I think a little bit of this downturn is negative, but it's also positive. I'm looking to throw it into the next gear, put the pedal to the metal, and go all in on my business and pick up the slack for where other people right now are falling off. I think that anybody who really wants to be successful and wants to take their business to the next level, this is the time to do it. Like you said, 2023 is going to be great. 2024, I think, is going to be phenomenal for those who do it the right way and go all in on it. 

Tim Chermak: Absolutely. Jeremy, thank you for your time today. Guys, we'll see you on the next episode of The Platform Marketing Show. 

Jeremy Hartmark: Awesome. Thanks, Tim.