Speaker 1: In today's video, I'm gonna teach you how to use Instagram sequence tools so you can take snippets of other popular reels as clips at the beginning of your own reels to serve as visual hooks so that viewers' eyes get glued to the screen that keep watching your videos and ultimately so that your Instagram reels perform better and maybe even go viral. Plus, there's a bunch of juicy marketing news we're gonna break it down for you involving Instagram and Google and other players at the table of marketing. And then last, I have a super special interview with a listing agent extraordinaire that you won't wanna miss. ♪ Hey, ♪ Welcome to This Week in Marketing. My name is Jason Pantana. I'm your host, and I'm so glad you're tuned in today, whether you're watching or listening, wherever you are. I hope I can hear from you in the comments. And if you're watching on YouTube and you're new to the channel, go ahead and if you haven't already, smash that big red subscribe button so that you can get alerted whenever new videos like this get published where on a weekly basis, I'm gonna break down the news, what's happening in marketing that relates to you. I'm gonna share with you a tactic or a technique to level up your marketing. And if you are watching on YouTube and you haven't already, it would mean the world to me and to Tom Ferry if you would hit that big red subscribe button so that you can be alerted whenever new episodes get published just like this one where on a weekly basis, we break down marketing news. I'll teach you techniques and tactics to level up your marketing. And then often, not always, I'll interview a rockstar agent to talk about their trade secrets in terms of what's moving the needle in their own business. Now today, we have a lot of ground to cover. There's a lot of news. So let's jump straight into news and updates that are affecting your marketing mix. As always, there's a lot happening in the world of marketing and I've got your news and updates beginning with the scam that's happening for Google Business Profiles. Search Engine Land put this article up. It says, the Google Maps pen scam, a new Google Business Profile threat. So what's happening is probably haters of businesses or competitors of businesses, this is fraudulent. This is so messed up and do not do this. But be on the lookout for people who might try to do it to you. What they're doing is they're looking up a business and then Google's whole system allows you to suggest an edit. And so they suggest an edit and they edit the map location and what they're doing is they're moving a map, a pinned map location someplace else on the map so that they can try to sabotage the location authority of that respective business in that set area. This is all about local SEO and it's about being found in that local proximity when people look for a business like yours. So the heads up is to be on the lookout for that. Make sure your pinned location has not been tampered with and if it has been, this article outlines what you can do which is the same thing the scammers did. You go in to suggest the edit button yourself or you get your fan club to kind of rally and come in and all suggest the edit to put the pin back where it goes and reinforce your location authority. So be on the lookout for that scam. It's been happening in the world of Google Business Profile drama. Next, in terms of news related to marketing, it would not be an episode of This Week in Marketing if I wasn't talking about some systemic change that Instagram has tinkered with and there's probably a dozen or more changes but one that caught my eye was an article published by Social Media Today that says Instagram tests making the messaging icon the main focus. Huh, the messaging icon. So you look down here at the screenshot on the article and they have replaced the plus icon where one would actually hit the plus to share new content. They'd be posting something. It's now this messaging icon which is what you generally see underneath the post if you wanna share it with a friend. And I'm sharing this with you not because it's going to happen per se. They're clearly testing it. You may see it in your feed. You may not see it in your feed. We may never one day see it be published across the app but they're testing. And the reason I'm bringing it up today in this episode is because it reinforces from Instagram's point of view how important messaging and DMs are on the platform. That is the stickiness, the secret sauce of Instagram because if you look at competing platforms like TikTok and I talk about this pretty often, TikTok does not have the same thriving social network happening in the messaging functionality of that platform like Instagram does. The competitive advantage of Instagram is in its DMs. And so Mazzari came out, the CEO of Instagram recently and said that the number one metric that determines the reach of your next post is what's called sends per reach. We talked about that before, sends per reach. How many people, if 1,000 people see your next post, a reel, a carousel, whatever it is, if 1,000 people see it, how many of those 1,000 send it to somebody else through the DMs by hitting that paper airplane icon, i.e. the messaging icon? That's what they're looking at most because that's their stickiness, that's their difference, the social network is inside of the DMs. And what's interesting here is it's almost as if this test would say to the user, if I was going to infer to the user that Instagram's more interested in me using their platform for messaging than it is for actually contributing content into the feeds. What do you think about that? And one last bit of juicy marketing gossip before we get onto the main show of the podcast comes courtesy of Google that they're going back on their word where they said they're gonna phase out cookies in order to protect the privacy of users on the internet. Now, cookies, we're not gonna go into a lot of details. Cookies are the way in which web browsers keep track of what you're doing on websites. What pages do you visit? For how long? What buttons do you click? What forms do you complete? So that from an advertising standpoint, advertisers can keep track of, hey, are people actually fulfilling my advertisement objectives or not? And so cookies have been the way we've done that, but cookies pose some level of privacy violation or concerns in terms of users of the internet. And so companies like Apple and Google have taken a stance to say, we're gonna actually find a new way to do the internet without cookies, but they haven't figured it out yet, not really. And so they basically went back on their word and said, we don't know how to do this yet. So this article from Marketing Dive says, and just like that, Google won't be deprecating cookies, what now? And so basically if you read the article, here's the current game plan. They don't really have a solution to replace cookies yet. And so what they're gonna do is inside of Chrome, they're gonna start giving users the option to allow or disallow cookies more readily. And so you're already seeing that on a lot of websites, allowing cookies or not allowing cookies or necessary cookies only. But it seems like this is going to be a challenge that we need to keep our eyes on in terms of your ability to monitor the performance of your ad campaigns and the traffic on your website. So no real solution here. This is more of a heads up, heads up that Google's not really gonna have a substitute for replacing cookies. And so they're gonna give users more flexibility and freedom in saying, I do or don't want cookies. And so this could start to tinker and lessen your ability to keep eyes on what's working for your campaigns. Again, I'm curious what you think about that. Let me know in the comments. That does it for our news and updates related to marketing. Next up, let's talk about that sequence tool on Instagram. Now, you've been using your imagination oh so well to envision what these videos actually look like using the sequence feature of Instagram. So the first time I saw it in use was through Chris Benyamin, who's one of our rockstar coaching clients out in Los Angeles. And I just, I love this video. It's such an inventive way to grab attention.

Speaker 2: Here are three reasons why this is the flyest house on the market. Number one, the chef's kitchen. We have a vanishing down hood, five-top burner, exposed quartz countertops, farmhouse sink.

Speaker 1: And so you get the idea of he like throwing off the stretcher and then he rolls into the listing and it's just a seamless transition using that sequence tool. Now, the next example is another good one. This one comes courtesy of Trey Serrano, another rockstar down in San Antonio. And he's actually making use of that viral clip I talked about with the martial artist spin kicking the water bottle. And it's just such an effective way to wield attention. That's what influence is, is wielding attention. This one's by Trey. It's just a creative way to grab and hold attention and show some personality and how it's being done. And again, it's a use of the sequence tool inside of Instagram. All right, so on my phone, you're seeing a Gary Vaynerchuk video that I may wanna use for a video I'm making. So watch this right here. It's gonna say, how many people here now use an AI bot instead of Google to search for stuff? And maybe that's the little clip I want. Maybe I'm gonna do a video on, are you using chat GPT and generative AI tools to conduct research online versus the questions you used to research on Google? And the answer is a lot of people are doing that. So let's pretend for a use case, that's the talking head video I wanna make. And I'm going to use the sequence feature inside of Instagram to take that little clip of Gary Vaynerchuk asking the question that then parlays into my actual video as a strong visual opening hook. So what I would do is, I'm at the video again, right above the audio, below the paper airplane for sharing it, there's a little dot, dot, dot ellipses icon, which I'm gonna click. And then it's got an option in the top right for me to tap sequence. I'll tap sequence, which will automatically take me into the Reels editor. And it grabs the entire video down here of all of Gary V's video. And then I'm gonna just drag the little left and right sidebars in the timeline for the section I wanna grab. So just doing that, you get to watch with me. I'm gonna go right, let's see, right there, that little spinny spin. I wanna get it right at the spinny spin, right there's good. A little bit of spin for a little bit of animation for when that clip starts. I'm gonna drag the ending to search for stuff, search for stuff right at the end of that frame. There we go, boom. So that's gonna be my clip and you probably can't hear it, but it just says, how many of you are now using an AI bot to search for stuff? And then I'm gonna click next and it's gonna go straight to me here in my studio. And I've got a choice. I can either traditionally just hold that record button down or tap it once and record my video, or maybe I've already prerecorded the video, at which case I would just hit on the lower left, the icon to access my phone's camera roll, or maybe that actual prerecorded video is saved. And then I can stitch them together, or I can, as Instagram says, sequence them together. So it's clip and clip. Now I don't have a prerecorded video. So I'm going to wing it for you right now. Here we go with the way I'm gonna tap the record button really quick. It's a fair question because generative AI is changing the way we research topics online. For example, it used to be that you would ask Google stuff. You would ask long questions and scour the web and click through links looking for answers, but now that's all changing. Now Google's even changing, in fact. Google's got their search generative experience where it's synthesizing and summarizing contents in the results. Folks are using ChatGPT or Gemini or Clod or Perplexity or other AI chatbots to do research for them because it's just far more contextually useful to ask questions and dig in and research. So I'm wondering, how are you conducting research for your work and your life using generative AI? Let me know in the comments. All right, so I record something like that, and that was just a first attempt. And then if I'm happy with it, all I do is click Next, and then it puts them here together, and you can see what it looks like without doing any extra frills about it. And if I wanna add some other transitional elements, on the lower left, I will simply tap Edit Video. And then it gives me some tools. And you can see the timeline over here. There's a couple little markers that I can add transitions at the beginning and then in between the two videos. So I'm gonna tap right here on that little minus and choose a transition. And I think I wanna probably play into his spin effect a little bit. So I'll do the spin feature there, done. Tap the next transitional moment, and maybe I'll do, I don't know, let's do a quick little zoom into me, done, something like that. And then you can add audio or text or things like that down here that I'm not gonna get into today because that's not my main purpose. You can add other clips and stickers and all kinds of fun stuff. I can modify volume and do voiceovers, but none of that is necessary to show you the sequencing tool. So I'll click on Play, and then it spins in. It does this little question about, are you using it to search for stuff? And then it jumps to my talking head video. And what I've effectively done is made a much more interesting viral video hook using a very known figure, Gary Vaynerchuk, at the beginning of the video to ask the same question that I wanna proceed to give more context or more information around. So assuming I'm happy with the editing, I just click on the little blue Next arrow at the top, and then I can add a cover image, I can add a caption, I can decide am I gonna share it over to Facebook as well and do all the normal stuff. I'm gonna just save it as draft, and then that's that. That sequencing tool, to me, is an absolute no-brainer. It allows you to tap into somebody else's pre-established virality, which means more views for you, and it just creates more interesting opening hooks, visually speaking, to really hook attention out of the gate with your next video on Instagram. A lot of people may be wondering right now, they're like, well, hey, where do I find out the clips to use? Is there a tool for doing that? And the answer is, not really. Some people do some research using the search tool or the meta AI built-in to viral video transitions and stuff like that. Meh, they're okay. If you talk to the Chris Benjamins, the Move Me to Texas, the top creators on Instagram in the real estate space, what they're all gonna tell you is they simply start seeing these because they started using them. What does that mean? When I click to make a sequence out of that Gary Vaynerchuk video, the algorithm's gonna figure out what I did and start showing me more of those types of clips. So when Chris Benjamin finds that person rolling out of the stretcher and then uses that, the algorithm keeps feeding him more of those types of videos because it sees what he's utilizing and it basically starts serving him up more and more and more and more options. So the answer is, in terms of finding video clips, start using the ones you see and it will start showing you more and it kind of just, it's almost like breadcrumbs that it just brings you along on the journey of more and more of these clips for strong opening hooks for your next Instagram reel. I love this feature. You should use it to go viral on your next listing video or whatever video you wanna create using the sequence feature on Instagram. And please let me know how it goes for you. One last segment for you. I saved the best for last. It's an interview with Rockstar listing agent, Felicia Lewis, who's absolutely crushing it in Carmel Valley, just outside of San Diego. And she is a listing agent extraordinaire. In fact, I would say that she is the seller's quote unquote, dream agent, because of the way she creates demand for her services. And in this short interview, she's gonna give you some scripting and dialogue and language that's going to be an absolute game changer in terms of how do you create a sense of demand for your services with sellers where they think, oh, I gotta work with you. I gotta list and sell with you, especially if you're in a competitive marketplace where other agents are taking those listing opportunities that are so critical, this kind of language and this approach could make a massive difference. So let's jump to the interview with Felicia Lewis. Felicia, I'm so excited to talk to you today about the way you're being innovative in terms of reaching out to prospective sellers, to past clients and using listings. I think you and I both know that you got a list to last and that whoever controls the inventory controls the marketplace. And ultimately, that if you're leveraging your listings intelligently, every listing should lead to more listings. And so I'm super grateful that you've been willing to come on the show today and talk about just a couple of the small maneuvers that you put in place in your business that have huge returns in terms of using your listings to get more listings. And I wonder if you'd be so kind as to share with the audience what you were telling me about some of your strategies with your new listings.

Speaker 3: Absolutely, thanks for having me, Jason. I'm really excited to be here. I think listings are your gold and you need to use them to get more business with. So we, with our listings, what we do is we work really hard to get them ready to go on the market. We make sure they're very clean. We do as much updating as we can work with our clients to let us do. We have the windows clean. We have fresh flowers put in. We really use it to highlight kind of the best of our abilities. And then it's like game on. We take that listing and we use it to get more business with. We reach out to the neighbors, the community. We do invitations. We do our open house as an event. We invite everybody. We walk those invitations as actual invitations and put them on their door. Hopefully we'll meet some of the neighbors and have an opportunity. You know, if they're getting their groceries out, please come by. We'd love to see you. We'd love for you to see what we did to the house. And then that is great. That's, you know, the community part and the neighbors and the neighborhood. And oftentimes the neighbors have friends that want to move in. They just didn't know house was coming on the market. And we get huge compliments from how we've transformed the house. They get so excited about it. They get to visit with their other neighbors. It's like, we've had a little party. They didn't have to do any cleanup, any dress up. They could just show up and it's all about, you know, our event and it's completely branded. So they know where they are. They know they're at a listing. It's branded everywhere. We make sure that everything looks good, looks nice. It's a representation of how we do business. And then I think another thing that we do really well is we call around our listing and we invite people in addition to. So if they maybe didn't get the invitation for whatever reason, forgot about it, we call them and we invite them like it's a party. And I call my past clients, my sphere. I let them know, hey, we have a new listing. It's really close to you. I'd love for you to come by and see it. And I would just love to see you. On the way home from the grocery store, on the way to pick somebody up from soccer, whatever it is, please just come by, say hi. I'd love to see you. I'd love for you to see the house. I think you'll enjoy walking through it. And it gives me an opportunity to bring them into kind of my fold again, naturally.

Speaker 1: I love the pride of ownership in terms of getting a listing and really dressing it to the nines and being proud of putting it on the market. I didn't tell you this, but we're casually looking at houses. And so I went to go look at a house yesterday and I was opening the door and I could see that the window had a giant hole in it that was like from a baseball. And I was like, oh no, somebody, and I walked in and there's just this note that said, it was just like a folded piece of paper. It just said new window ordered, like just scribbled on there with pencil. And I gotta tell you, there was no pride in representing that property. It was just like on the market and they didn't really go to a lot of effort to make it just this gem of a presentation. And so I think that what you're doing is worthy of comment because you're getting a property so ready for the market that the neighbors are proud of it. Your past clients are proud of it. The sellers are proud of it. And there's just the pride of ownership that I think reflects positively on a brand like yours. So I just, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I wanted to mention how special I think that is in what you're doing.

Speaker 3: Thank you. And I really do genuinely feel that way. I feel proud to be here. I feel proud to represent the product. And I think that's great for other agents to think about is when you're representing a product, a home, a lifestyle, you need to connect really well. So many times people ask me, they say, is this your home? Because I know everything in the neighborhood. I know everything that's going on. I know who lives down the street. I know all about the school. I know all those things. And so when they come here, it's almost like welcoming them to my home, right? I have such pride of, I want to welcome you, come into our world. This is what it's like to work with us, to be a part of what we do. Use your listings in that way. It's the greatest tool you have. It's as if you're inviting them in your home, but they're not really coming in your home. I love that. So, and the other thing I want to say too, is that when I go on a listing appointment, oftentimes I will share with the seller that they have two ways of doing it. They can leave their home just as it is. We're honored and happy to represent it. We will do the best we can. And this is about what I think their sale price will look like. Or they can do it as I call the Felicia Lewis group way, where we come in and kind of take over and redo the house. And then this is what their expected sale price will be. Now you have to know what the client's goal is and make sure that that matches before you make that offer. But when it's somebody that I don't know, they've called me up, they're interviewing me because they've seen other houses I've sold, or they know me from marketing or the market, I invite them to my listings. I say, you know what? I actually have a house that I'm working on right now, or I'm just about to put on the market next week. Please, I would love for you to come over and see what we do and how we present a home. I'd love to walk through it with you. I'd love for you to see what the process looks like. I'm going to give you the timelines. I want to show you the finishes, the colors, all of that. And that I think is huge. If you have a house that you have pride in, that you're putting on the market very nicely, I think inviting them over is a game changer compared to the other agents. Other agents are not doing that.

Speaker 1: Well, I think seeing is believing goes a long way. I also imagine a few things seem to strike me. One, you're bringing that prospective seller onto your turf. Instead of being in their house, they're now in your house, or at least in your listing. They're also getting the chance to see how you do things differently than others. And so it's proof of your ability to market and sell homes. It invites this sense of, well, other people are using Felicia. She must be good at what she does. There's so much about that technique. I just, I think it's brilliant, especially to your point. I want to echo what you said when you're competing against other agents. And there's a sense of, we're going to go with this agent or that agent, of being able to say, well, would it benefit you? Or would it help if we could walk through one of my properties I have coming to the market right now? I think that's just so genius, Felicia. I think it's genius. Anything last comments to share?

Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I just think if you just, if you use your listings as your leverage, right? You take on a listing, all the work that you do, you're proud to do it, and you use it as an experience, what it's like to work with you. And I think you're absolutely right. When they see that other people have chosen to work with us, when they see how comfortable, when they walk through and they see how comfortable we are, how we present the home, it gives them a very different perspective than when you're either in their house interviewing for the job or down the street, putting your signs out or something like that. It's like, you're right. You're bringing them on your turf and it gives them an opportunity to kind of get a little taste for free of what it would be like to work with you.

Speaker 1: Felicia, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for sharing about what you're doing that's super innovative and smart to leverage your listings. I'm grateful for you.

Speaker 3: Thank you, Jason.

Speaker 1: All right, we came so unconquered this week. We talked about Instagram and Google. We talked about the sequence tool for going viral with videos. And we talked about different language techniques and offers you can make in terms of why you're reaching out to prospective sellers that set you apart from competitors. It was a lot, and I wanna hear from you in the comments. What stands out? What did you take away from today's episode that's gonna make a difference in your business? What are you testing? What are you trying? What do you want to hear more about in future episodes? Until next week, this is This Week In Money. You