Stop Using AI for Real Estate Marketing Until You Watch This | Jarred Talmadge

Jarred Talmadge (00:00)
Okay, so get off AI. Stop using AI as the be all end all because here’s the thing. What AI does for you is it’s going to write something, it’s gonna look very great because it’s all of a gonna pop up that you’re gonna enter something, it’s gonna pop up and it’s gonna say, here, here’s what you do. But what it’s really doing is aggregating all the things that’s already found and turning it into something that it thinks works as kind of like the mid grades.

Michelle Kesil (01:53)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Jarred Talmadge, who is a marketing alignment specialist. So excited to have you here today, Jarred.

Jarred Talmadge (02:08)
Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (02:10)
Awesome, yeah, let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Jarred Talmadge (02:18)
Yes, so what I do is I do marketing alignment. So think of it this way. When you are working with your messaging, whether that is social media, email, marketing, newsletters, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. It’s all encompassing. But the idea is simply this. When you send out a message, you say, wow, this message is great. And then nobody responds. What you have is a situation where it looks great and doesn’t work.

That is my both my primary product and explains what I do.

I help you look at your marketing and say, wow, this isn’t working. Let’s talk about why it’s not working and how to fix it. And so I get into the nitty gritty details of saying, well, let’s look at the real message that you’re sending because a lot of times people get cluttered with their messaging because they’re too close to it. And so they’re more in a situation where they say, well, I sent out this thing and normally it gets all these likes or I get this reaction.

But the truth of the matter is that those reactions don’t pay the bills. You want people to actually land on your page and say, or land with your message and say, I want to work with that person. And if that’s not the reaction you’re getting, then you need somebody like me who can actually sit down and say, look, let me look at your messaging and tell you this is what’s wrong with it. This is how we fix it. And then once you do that, you send it back out into the world and it has a completely different result. And a lot of times it’s not because it’s not because it’s bad. It just isn’t the line.

as much as it could be.

Michelle Kesil (03:48)
Yeah, absolutely. And so what does the process look like to get the messaging on the most aligned path and help that person, you know, bring in their clients?

Jarred Talmadge (04:01)
So basically what I do ⁓ is I first I start with a diagnosis. And the reason we do that is because a lot of marketers will go out there and they’ll say, ⁓ here’s what your problem is. You have whatever problem they’ve decided you have. But imagine you’re building a house, right? And somebody says to you, well, we don’t have to worry about the land or surveying the land or leveling the pros. We’re just gonna build the house on top of it.

Okay, but what happens when anything happens? The house literally would collapse because there’s no foundation to it. So what I do is I start with a diagnostic and I say, look, this is how I kind of start, but this is not a requirement to say, you have to go through all these steps. You can simply say, look, I want to know what’s wrong. Well, great. Like anybody else, I’m going to sit down with you and say, okay, send me your messaging or give me your piece or your website address, whatever it is. And I will take a look at it.

and then I can diagnose it and say, I might tell you, you know what, it’s perfectly fine, it’s just a matter of you’re not doing something. That’s totally legit. But a lot of times what happens is the message is getting lost in the process. And somewhere along the lines, becomes, it goes from, well, I wanted to do this to I’m actually saying this and the client can’t even, they can’t even explain to you what’s wrong. They just go, I just don’t feel it. And then they move on.

and you’re left with, have a marketing message that I think is really great and it doesn’t work. And so my first thing is I sit down with them and say, right, let’s do a diagnosis. Let’s take a look at your message. can say, what’s wrong with it? And that way I can literally say, here’s what’s wrong with it. That’s step one. And the client is fully free to stop at that and say, you know what, great, that’s what I needed. I’m gonna go take it back to my team and do whatever. Great, I’m totally okay with that. My next step after that is I will actually blueprint the fix for you.

And that is the second part of the project. And I say, look, you can’t just go directly to a blueprint because if you don’t know what you’re dealing with, you have no way to go to the blueprint. say, okay, let’s do the diagnosis first. Then we go to blueprint and say, okay, if you want me to actually map out for you how to fix it, I’ll do a blueprint and I’ll literally give you a printed page and you’ll send it to you and I’ll say, this is what you should do. This is why it works. This is why it doesn’t work. And I’ll tell you everything that from my 30 years of marketing, it’ll tell you what’s wrong.

And then finally, step three is the implementation. If you don’t wanna do it yourself, and a lot of people don’t, I’ll do it for you. But most of the time, they get to the blueprint and they say, hey, we’re pretty good because we have a team doing this. We just didn’t know what the base problem was. And once they’ve defined it, it’s kind of like that aha moment. ⁓ that makes sense now. Okay, great. The reality of it is,

you look at that and say, well, I couldn’t have seen that because I was literally too close to the problem before.

Michelle Kesil (07:41)
Right. And so what does your role look like in helping someone shift their messaging? Are you asking someone to like share about their business or yeah, like how does it, how do you know like what their messaging would be about?

Jarred Talmadge (07:56)
Okay, so, yeah, so

I actually built a page because I’m in the process of building up the clientele. And so what I did was I have ⁓ two ways to go about this. The first way is I’ve kind of like a preview special going on right now. And the website address for that is simply looksfinedoesntwork.com.

and you can go in there and it’s got it basically explains to you how it works and you can have one one marketing piece whether that’s an email or a newsletter or a website front page whatever it is that you want you literally go onto that pay onto that site and it’ll you can say hit the diagnosis and it’ll ask you a bunch of questions and i’ll ask you what is it that you want to do what is it that you think you’re doing what is it that you’re actually doing and it takes about five minutes to fill out this this questionnaire you hit submit and it’ll send it to me and then basically

⁓ It goes through the process and says, okay, here, great. This is my little discounted thing, but it gives people a really good way to understand who I am and how it works. And they can get some really good insight for a really ⁓ respectable price. And then they can decide, hey, you know what? I want you to do this to all of my marketing. By all means, we can do that. Or they can say, you know what? This is great. This is the insight I wanted. And so that’s kind of how I get started.

If they’re looking for more insight and they’re saying, I’m listening to this and I definitely want it, then they want to go to my main website, which is authority-ink.com. And again, it’s the same thing. You just hit request the diagnostic and it’ll tell you the processes and the steps. It’ll explain to you what you get. But I believe at the end of the day,

when you can actually stare at what you’ve done and say, here’s why it’s not working, here’s how I can fix it. And then you can send that back out into the world and all of a sudden it starts working. That’s where the sweet spots happen. Because now you understand that what if you did that to every one of your marketing pieces after that, it would change everything. And…

for people in real estate, I came from a real estate background. I spent 30 years in the mortgage business ⁓ and I was a real estate agent. And so I understand that the messaging, everybody’s really tempted to do AI messaging, but AI will make you look like everybody else. That’s not how you win in this game. And obviously investors know this, you can’t win by looking like everybody else. You have to look different. And that’s what I help them do is make sure they look different.

Michelle Kesil (10:54)
Yeah, absolutely. Is there like a specific creative process that you guide people through to get better messaging? Yeah

Jarred Talmadge (11:02)
It’s not

necessarily that they need to go through the creative process. It’s more that’s just my creative process that I want to have a conversation with them and say, hey, how can I help you fix this problem? So if you came to let’s say, well, for example, your podcast, you come to me and say, hey, I have this podcast, but I want more reach. Great. Let’s look at all the things that you’re doing that gets you the reach. And then let’s look at how you can make that stronger. For a real estate person, I’d look at it and say, okay,

you’re doing real estate, maybe your marketing is not hitting the things that a client would hit. For example, I had somebody I was looking at the other day and they were on a plumbing company. And the plumbing company, their headline, well, they think it’s really great, but their headline didn’t hit the pain point that the client was gonna do for the client to go, you know what? That’s the person I want because that’s the person who understands me. And…

what I’m pitching to them now is you do realize that we don’t have to redo your entire website. We have to do that top line because the top line doesn’t make any sense to the client. If you just change that one line, all of a sudden you go from somebody who looks like, you got a really pretty website, but I don’t know if I want to work with you to, hey, they get me and I want to work with them. And when you plug that into somebody, then it starts to make sense because all of a sudden they go, well, I didn’t even think of that. Well, yeah, because again, too close.

Michelle Kesil (12:25)
Yeah, absolutely. What are like some of the biggest mistakes that your clients make?

Jarred Talmadge (12:31)
So the biggest thing is they’re all trying to look like whatever version of professional they think they’re supposed to be. And in this day and age, social media, ⁓ everybody is persuading and yet nobody’s actually persuading anybody because they’re all following up with the same messaging.

And they say, well, what they do is, for example, let’s say there’s a company and they say, well, this other company kind of has our image that we want. And so what they do is they go copy that image and they go copy everything about that image. And they say, but now mine will work because this person over here is very successful. Well, yeah, but you’re only seeing the surface part of their success. You don’t know what they’re actually doing. And until you get into really breaking that down, just copying somebody else’s stuff doesn’t work.

And so that’s where I tell people, it’s like, look, you can’t, there’s not a magic solution to everything. It’s not like I can say, well, I’m gonna just change the words on your website and all of a sudden you’re be better. But the goal in that is to basically be more of yourself.

because when you’re more of yourself, you’re not like everybody else. And when you do that, you’ll actually stand out in a market as opposed to just being like everybody else. And in a lot of times, we strive for that sense of, we have to be like everybody else. Well, the people that have been most successful in the world are the people that went, you know what, I don’t care if I’m like everybody else, I wanna be like me. And they forced the world to adapt to them instead of the other way around. And that’s basically what I helped them do.

Michelle Kesil (13:57)
Yeah, amazing. And so what are some tips you would give to real estate professionals?

Jarred Talmadge (14:02)
Okay, so get off AI. Stop using AI as the be all end all because here’s the thing. What AI does for you is it’s going to write something, it’s gonna look very great because it’s all of a gonna pop up that you’re gonna enter something, it’s gonna pop up and it’s gonna say, here, here’s what you do. But what it’s really doing is aggregating all the things that’s already found and turning it into something that it thinks works as kind of like the mid grades.

If you think about it.

It’s like going to school and saying, I’m satisfied with getting a C instead of going for a B or an A because what you’re doing is you’re saying, you know what, I’m just gonna go for mediocre. And the thing is, if you don’t think people know you’re using AI, then you absolutely are getting conned by it. And so stop using AI for everything. Get somebody who understands the process. The other thing I tell people is when it comes to real estate investing or even,

any part of that, okay, this is going back to that same premise that there’s always a buyer for whatever it is you’re selling. The thing is, if you come with a more generalized message that’s trying to reach everybody in the market,

An example would be if you’re working with a multi-property investor who’s got multiple apartment units, that message is gonna be different than somebody who’s trying to, say, rent a one bedroom or a small one bedroom, one bath condo versus somebody who’s trying to rent a house. All those messages are different, but the thing is AI doesn’t understand context and it can’t think for you. So if you do that,

all you’re doing is getting the base lowest possible model. Well, that also means you’re going to get the lowest base model response. And nobody wants that.

Michelle Kesil (16:22)
Yeah, 100%. It’s quite obvious when something is AI. mean, think ChatGPT at least I can tell right away.

Jarred Talmadge (16:25)
You

Michelle Kesil (16:31)
Do you ever use AI to your advantage or no?

Jarred Talmadge (16:35)
Nope, no, I’m a writer by trade. My first job was a journalist. I’ve written 13 books, 14 books. I can’t remember anymore. I’ve ghostwritten another dozen or so more books. And ultimately at the end of the day, like I said, it comes down to judgment. I can spot an AI written document. I’m now spotting AI written books, which really scares me because you’re in a situation there where if somebody knows what to look for the cues,

Michelle Kesil (16:37)
Yep.

Jarred Talmadge (16:59)
they know it’s written. Visually you can almost tell when something is AI generated it has a specific signature style to it, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not, if you want to stand out, it’s not going to help you that much.

Michelle Kesil (17:11)
Yeah, definitely. What is the most helpful way that someone would stand out in their messaging?

Jarred Talmadge (17:17)
So if you think about their messaging and you say, you want to stand out? The question is, a lot of people use themselves as an example to say, well, would I buy this? You’re not the market, okay? You’re not the market. You want to stand out, go find the people who actually have bought your stuff and ask them, hey, why did you buy this from me? What was it that I did that got you to buy this? And they’ll tell you, or most of them will.

And so if they tell you that you say, wow, that’s like not what I was messaging on. Well, that should tell you something because you may have accidentally got lucky and sold that person even though you weren’t trying to message them correctly. Imagine what you could do if your message was a line.

Michelle Kesil (18:01)
Right. And so what does aligned messaging make someone feel?

Jarred Talmadge (18:07)
So that entirely depends on what you want them to say. Here’s the thing. If you think about it, okay, and this is advertising 101, you will never see a car ad that doesn’t tell you to go to the dealership and look at the car next, okay?

If you think about it, pick any car manufacturer and it says literally, go visit your local blah, blah, dealership for more information or they’ll call it a sales center or they’ll call it something else. It doesn’t matter what they call it. Ultimately, it’s the same thing. It’s because advertising and marketing has one distinct thing, which is they never allow the client to go, what should I do next? And so if you ask yourself, when you’re looking at your marketing, you say,

Well, am I telling them what to do next? How do they get in touch with me? How do they access what I’m doing? What information do I give them? How do they take the next step? Most advertising, the professionals know how to do it and it becomes seamless and you don’t even think about it. But when you’re talking about somebody who says, I’m advertising something real estate related, they basically tell you, it’s great, we have this, we have this, we have this, we have this, we this. And it talks about all the great things you get from it, but almost never do they tell you what to do next.

And the thing is, when you tell them what to do next, you’ve taken that thought process out of that person’s head and they go, ⁓ I’m supposed to do this. And now they go do it. You know Coca-Cola is the master of doing this, right? Go to the store, buy a Coke because you’ll feel better. You can share it with your friends. You can do whatever, whatever it is. They do it.

car dealerships do it, beer ads do it, drug companies are notorious for doing it, you always hear the thing. Talk to your doctor about such and such a drug that might be able to help you. Why? Because they’re telling you exactly what they want you to do. And so if you’re advertising or your marketing is not aligned, it’s not telling them what to do next. They’re just looking at it going, oh, well, I don’t know why it didn’t work. Well, did you tell them to call you? No. Did you tell them to reach out? No.

Do you tell them to go to your website and ask for something? No, most of the time they don’t. It’s because it’s not naturally part of the process. It comes off as salesy and we don’t like feeling salesy. We don’t like being sold to, but the thing is at the same time where the true sweet spot is is when they think they’ve made the decision because you’ve made it for them. They just don’t realize it. And that’s the power of what I do.

Michelle Kesil (20:35)
Yeah, that is awesome. And so like the marketing is what allows the client to then make that informed decision, right?

Jarred Talmadge (20:44)
Think of it this way, Marketing and marketing alignment is nothing more than happiness. How would you define happiness? Happiness is when reality exceeds expectation, okay? So if you say, I’m selling such a product and they say, have this, whatever their expectation coming into it is, they say, well, I have this expectation and then you exceed it, client’s happy. It’s literally that easy and that complicated at the same time, so.

Michelle Kesil (20:50)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, amazing. Thank you for sharing all that.

Well, before we begin to wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect and learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?

Jarred Talmadge (21:23)
So the easiest thing to do is if they want to try me out, find out what I’m all about, find out what we do for reasonable cost, check out looksfinedoesntwork.com.

It’s all one word, no spaces, no punctuation, just looksfinedoesntwork.com. And that is my intro marketing analysis page. Or if they want full more, more full of marketing analysis, want to learn more about me, my website is authority-ink.com.

Michelle Kesil (21:52)
Perfect. We’ll appreciate your time and your perspective. Thank you for being here.

Jarred Talmadge (21:57)
Thank you, I appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (21:58)
Of course. And for those tuning into our show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Jarred, who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.