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The Justin Landis Show: Helping Atlanta’s Top Realtors Build, Grow, and Scale
The Justin Landis Show is a real estate podcast about having honest conversations, building real relationships, and creating freedom through the work you do every day.
Hosted by Justin Landis, the show isn’t about hype or hacks. It’s about the people behind the business. Each episode is a conversation with agents, leaders, and partners who care about long-term growth, strong partnerships, and doing good work. We talk about what’s working, what’s not, and the decisions that actually matter.
If you’re building a team, growing your business, or just trying to find a better way to work, this is a place for real perspective and conversations worth your time.
The Justin Landis Show: Helping Atlanta’s Top Realtors Build, Grow, and Scale
Rebecca Tubbs: The Three Myths of Real Estate Marketing
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Rebecca Tubbs, Director of Marketing at JLG, joins Justin to bust the three biggest myths holding real estate agents back in their marketing. Rebecca explains why going viral is not the goal, why you do not need to be an influencer to build a real business, and why reviews matter more than social media content ever will. She shares how JLG built over 4,500 five-star reviews by asking clients to tell their story instead of just leaving a rating, why that approach is searchable gold in a world of AI search, and how the team walked away from Zillow lead dependency to build a stronger, more stable business. Plus, the story of how Rebecca and Justin first connected, over a loft condo that was not exactly built for twins.
Things are changing on the daily. They are. On the daily. So you have to make sure that you are just continuing to research how these things work. And sometimes you do have to play the game, and sometimes the game doesn't work, but we still have to try it. Yeah, you can't stop researching. Things are just changing way too fast.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Justin Landis Show, your real estate podcast about having conversations, building relationships, and creating freedom. And today I have a special guest with me, Rebecca Tubbs. Thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_00You know, trying to avoid this for like 10 years, trying to be behind the camera.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Rebecca, you're usually behind the camera. The reason he's a special, such a special guest, Rebecca is the director of marketing at JOG. And if you have ever searched Atlanta Real Estate Agent, you have seen that there has been a lot of marketing done over the last 10 years. And so we are in for a treat as Rebecca shares what she's learned with us. So, Rebecca, tell everybody how we actually first got connected. It wasn't through a resume or a job board.
SPEAKER_00No, no. So when Justin preaches community and relationships, that's how I connected with him. I basically was just like, we need to sell our condo. We had just had twins. Um, really trendy loft doesn't do well with loft and twins, tough combo. That wrought iron staircase was was about it.
SPEAKER_01Man, I will never forget Gil and Matt. Like, how are they doing this? They got to move.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think our last picture was them climbing up. And I was like, okay, we're good, we're good. So um connected with Justin. So Justin actually sold our condo. We had a Justin Linda sale, like, um, and it was great. And it was a time too when um people were nervous about buying condos. And so the belt line had just gone through. That's really dating myself, but um, it was great. We're able to sell more than we bought, which we were just like excited at that time because of that era. Um, and it was perfect, and it kind of just like evolved into this great like relationship, obviously. Yep. Now that I'm working here, but then with like our real estate journey, it's been amazing. Um, we're in the house we absolutely love now.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Several transactions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so you joined JOG and JOG has changed a lot since then. I mean, maybe tell a little bit of that before we get into the marketing specific stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So when I first joined, I kind of came on as um like a client concierge, like making sure that all the clients were, you know, getting treated really well. I think that was the thing that really shined with JLG, is always, you know, clients come first. Yep. Um, and it was fun being a client and coming into this space and getting to do lots of cool things. And uh and it was small. Our team was very small, a little tiny spot in Grant Park. And now it's evolved to this like mega team, basically, and now bolst. It's super exciting.
SPEAKER_01All right, so Rebecca, we worked together, selling the condo, moving to another house. What about do you remember how we started working together?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I originally um kind of came from like a sports management world. When I had twins, it was way too much going on. So kind of stepped back from that, and um finally the kids were getting back to school, and I was excited to re-enter the world. And because of relationships, um, you know, I think I just had a couple coffees with you, and you're like, I want to try this new thing. It's like this sounds fun, this sounds perfect, the timing was perfect, like kind of just coming back into the work world, and yeah, it all worked out.
SPEAKER_01And that new thing was client concierge. We've tried a lot of new things together since since then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, tell a little bit about how JOG has changed and trying new things and what it's been like since we've been together.
SPEAKER_00I think that's what's really cool about our team is that we have tried a lot of things and we've figured out what works. And so because we've tried all these amazing things.
SPEAKER_01Well, not all were amazing. We tried all these things. Some were amazing.
SPEAKER_00Some were amazing. Um, but we've really like figured out okay, what works. And these systems, I just absolutely think are like why agents seek us out and want to be a part of our team.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. And so you have just taken ownership of the marketing. And today we're gonna talk about the three myths of real estate agent marketing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I am excited to see what you have here. So let's let's get into these. All right.
SPEAKER_00It's a little different.
SPEAKER_01I have myth number one from Rebecca Tubbs. Going viral is the goal. That is truth or myth. I should be trying to go viral with my social media.
SPEAKER_00Um, I want you to go viral with your social media. I'm gonna, I will, I will say that. But um for just like your everyday agent, I do not think that that is a requirement. I think that that um that agents have so much around them in their ecosphere, telling them they need to make content, content, content all the time, all the time. And they see what other realtors are doing and they want to copy that. And I think it gets a little overwhelming. Um, and a lot of times we'll get new people on our team or people just interviewing us basically to be on our team. And the sigh of relief that people get when I say, I don't want you to be viral. I want you to obviously create content. I want you to have a presence online. That's where people are going to look you up. But I'm never going to make you sit and work like two hours looking up trending songs, doing trending dances. I want you out in your community. I want you engaging with others.
SPEAKER_01So, what's the practical of that? I know there are people who are listening that they're also got a sigh of relief. Yeah. But then they're like, all right, so you, but you did say you want us to create some content. Yes. What do you want real estate agents to do from a content standpoint?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So in practice, obviously, people are going to, if they know you, they're going to look you up online. You need to have some sort of, I am in real estate. I am good at my job. I am telling a story about my clients. I'm telling a story about these listings that we have. So that needs to happen. You can't neglect that. What I don't want people to do is to spend hours editing a reel or a TikTok off of a trending song that only is going to get 10 likes. And you spend all that time because there could be like other ways that you could be putting back. And like my biggest prescription to the agents on our team is spend that that time that you would be editing that video, doing all the things, pouring back into other people's feeds. I think that is like the biggest thing that people are neglecting.
SPEAKER_01Pour back into other people's feeds.
SPEAKER_00Because that creates relationships. So think about it. When you're on Instagram and you're scrolling, you'll see, you know, one friend's post and then the next is an ad, the next is a sponsored content, the next is, oh, something you may like. You've lost all of your friends in your feed. So how do you get them back? You go and engage with your friends again. You go leave comments for them, you go into their stories, you like their stories, you create the conversations again, show back up in their algorithm. That time spent is going to go way further than a trending TikTok.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All right. I love that. Myth number two, you have to be an influencer to be successful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, we get agents in all the time who are like, I love this person on social media. I think they're doing all the things. And my favorite thing to do when agents come on our team and show me these like people who are like in front of Range Rovers and doing all the things. And I'm this person. I have them, I look them up. Like, let's look them up. Let's see what kind of business that they've done recently. And I can tell you right now, like, our most successful people on our team aren't aggressively being on social media like that. They are out in their communities, they are reversing the script. Um, and then you'll find that these people that are doing all these things aren't really doing much as far as business goes. So it's like, what do you want to be? Do you want to be a realtor or do you want to be a social media content creator?
SPEAKER_01All right. So we've talked about we don't have to go viral. We don't have to get, you know, 100,000 impressions on every single post. And now we're talking about being an influencer. And I'll break that down a little bit because when I think influencer, it's like they're always online, they're living their life online. Do agents, even if they're not trying to go viral with their own database, if they're trying to do it relational, do they need to be online all the time in order to do that? Do you think?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't want them to be. I don't want them to spend that much time there because I think our reality is, you know, we got to get back out into the community. So we gotta like put the phone down. We gotta, we have uh, you know, a lot of AI content. You have all day long, people are just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. You see a lot of fatigue nowadays, too, especially. So it's like, let's take advantage of this current trend, this current wave of fatigue of social media. So, like, let's get back into the coffee shop, let's get back and hanging out with our friends, joining a sports league.
SPEAKER_01Yep. I think one of the things you've really helped the agents of JOG do is take some of the marketing pressure off of their plate because they want to put out good content, good marketing, and and they need to, yeah, but they don't want to have to spend all day like an influencer doing it. So maybe give a little plug, even if it's not JOG, but just we're working with a team or working with somebody that can help you do it. How do you how do you feel like that's played out?
SPEAKER_00I think that is a big problem that agents have is like they don't really know what to post. And so what I love about Bulls, and then at JLG, we kind of do it for you. But Bulls has this huge, huge library of content that you can use, great advice on types of posts that you can do. I think that's a huge, huge value asset. Like you can grab this stuff. But sometimes too, agents get to the point where they're like, oh man, okay, here's the content, but how am I gonna do it? How am I gonna get it out? So a lot of times on our team, we will personalize everything for you, we'll get it to you, we'll help you get it out. And so that is like a really big value. When I first joined the team, a lot of the content that we did and do create right now is because our agents didn't want to post anything at all. They were like, this is not for me. Um, and so if that is your situation, then we're gonna help you out. We're gonna do these kind of things for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. I think that's made a big difference for the agents. I do see a generational change. And we were talking about this recently. We've had a lot more agents come in the last year or two that they are used to putting out content. And so we're trying to help them optimize so they're not spending too much time on it. It's the content that matters. We can help them um do things. But yeah, it's funny to think about in the past. We were like, hey, please, you let just let us do it. You got to get something out there, you know. So that has definitely changed. And I've loved how you've adapted with um with that. All right, number three, and man, this I can't wait to get into this one. Here's myth number three from Rebecca Social media content matters more than reviews.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, when it comes to searching, obviously, like this is gonna be the nerd marketer side of me. So not only do the agent marketing, but I do JLG marketing as well. And so where a lot of my background comes from is like SEO and search and now AI search. So we have to really like optimize what we're doing. Um, social media content is great. It is a little harder as far as the searchable route goes. So when it comes to reviews and things like that, that is something where we took it on. I want to say what, about like six, seven years ago, we said this is going to be a project for us. And we took it on. We probably started with about like 50 Google reviews, and then we've just been able to explode. And it was because we created a process, we created a system around it, and also our agents were like scared to ask for reviews, right? So we do that for them. Again, it's another service that JLG provides, and now they just come in naturally. And the reason that they are so good is that we are imploring our clients to not only just give us a five-star review, we're we're imploring them to share a story with us. And so we have people writing novels for us, and that is that's free. That's free, that is searchable. That is when people go to Google or Chat GPT, they're finding us immediately because of the sheer volume.
SPEAKER_01Speaking of the volume, how many five-star reviews has JOG gotten since you've started?
SPEAKER_00I mean, we lumped them together, obviously. So, like we our major sources are Google and Yelp and Zillow, and we're at over 4,500 five-star reviews. 45 star reviews.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, that is powerful. And there are stories, and I'll never forget when you told me the first time, because I was amazed we're getting all these, like, how are people writing such long reviews about this? And you're like, we're not asking them to leave us a review, we're asking to tell their story. And I was like, oh, that little, that little scripting right there is gold, absolute gold. And so everybody, you can take that when you ask your clients to review you, say, hey, tell your story. Don't give not as opposed to give me a five-star review. Because people, when they have a great experience, they'll tell the story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The consumer wants to see themselves in in these reviews, right? So when the the client is actually sharing a really personal story about either being a first-time home buyer, someone who's downsizing, they want to see themselves in these reviews.
SPEAKER_01And I feel like that goes so much further than and I think it's more powerful for the other consumer because it's a third party saying it versus on social media. If I'm talking into the camera, I can say anything I want. You know, I mean, who knows? And so to get a third-party verified, you know, review, I feel like that's a lot more powerful than content that I could put out myself. Absolutely. Cool. Another thing about the reviews is with the change in search. So so many people now using Chat TBT and Claude, um, you know, Meta just does not have an API that's open that allows them to search there. And so the content you're putting on Facebook and Instagram, the AI models are going to like Reddit and Google and LinkedIn and the things that are open to get it, which I think, even though maybe Google searching is going to come down and we have a lot of Google reviews, yeah, it might actually be more powerful in the world of AI.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And what's been really cool too is that we have been able to, you know, through some technology of our own, we have every single review that we have on our website. So even though we're across multiple platforms, we've got everything there. So everything is searchable, which is really good. So it kind of, you know, takes out that layer of when these big tech companies don't want to talk to each other.
SPEAKER_01And we own those reviews, and so we're not at risk of them being taken down or anything happening to them. Yeah. Yes.
SPEAKER_00I do recommend, you know, having some sort of software in the back end so you don't lose these because you never know where these tech companies are going to go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think that's one of the another thing from a marketing of real estate agent standpoint. We have obviously been on other platforms. Like we're on Zillow, we're on Yelp, we're on Google, but you've worked really hard to control what we can control and have people in the Justin Landis group ecosystem. Yeah. And I think there's something agents could learn from that, is it is risky to be dependent upon a third party who changes their algorithm, who changes how their pay structure works. And so the more that your database and the people you're marketing to can come to you, the more stable it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, that is kind of like where our marketing department started, right? Zillow changed how they were going to hand out leads. And we never wanted to be dependent on that anymore. And so what we did is really focused on all these different systems. And so that now that like the lead flow that comes to JLG, it also is like a big breath of fresh air for our agents. They don't have to depend on being viral and doing so many things out there because our team lead flow is so strong. So there's like there also is, you know, some stability in that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, to give Rebecca big kudos for this, she kind of mentioned it. Um, JLG used to do a lot of Zillow leads back a while back. And I mean, I think our peak maybe closed like 125 transactions in one year. That's obviously a lot. And then Zillow changed how their lead flow worked, and we could see this was coming. Luckily, we saw it a year, year and a half in advance. And so we were like, oh no, we do not want to be dependent upon this. We need to generate our own business. And you started to work to do that through that's when we did the reviews and Google and all sorts of um of other things. And now JOG doesn't do Zillow. So, you know, the 550 transactions last year were not doing Zillow. You're generating, I think it was what, roughly 45% of the business comes through team leads. Um, so that's obviously hundreds and hundreds of sales that transitioned out by being intentional about the marketing, getting those reviews, doing things that are optimal. Um, what would you say has you've been your biggest learning over these last like six or seven years as we've worked to um, you know, be in more control of what we're doing?
SPEAKER_00Um, evolving. I mean, you really like things are changing on the daily, right? They are on the daily. Um, so you have to make sure that you are just continuing to research how these things work. And sometimes you do have to play the game, and sometimes the game doesn't work, but we still have to try it. Yeah, you can't stop researching. Things are just changing way too fast.
SPEAKER_01Or be on a team where Rebecca's doing it for you.
SPEAKER_00That too.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. All right, I think I'll actually end it on that, and maybe we'll just call with a call to action plug here. Hey, if you want help with your marketing, you want to work with somebody like Rebecca who's generating business for the team, who's helping agents build their own social media and their own uh marketing plan. We would love to have a conversation with you. Click on the link below and we'll connect with you. For everybody else, thanks for listening. Make sure you like or subscribe, and we will see you again next week.