Leads and Leverage — helping real estate agents capture, convert & close facebook leads

Stop making phone calls! Do these 4 things today that will double your real estate business this year (and quadruple it next year)

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

I wrote this training article for you because I read something in a Facebook group that triggered this soapbox.

I’ve given you very solid, tangible, takeaways that you can implement immediately, but I also know that you need to know why I’ve done this. So hold on to something — ’cause here I go.

In one of the plethora of Facebook groups that are popular with real estate agents, someone recently said (and I quote)

It takes about 300 calls per day to get a listing, but if you don’t do that you get no listings. In any case, the personal contact always is the best way to go.

I’ll have to admit, no matter how many times I hear agents talk like this, no matter how many times I see this kind of arrogance, no matter how many times I listen to this fixed mindset — I still feel shocked.

Shocked that someone actually believes what is coming out of their mouth.

Shocked that someone is spouting out this nonsense expecting others to adhere to it and yet, doesn’t adhere to it themselves (because let’s face it, this kind of advice always comes from agents who don’t have enough transactions under their belt to substantiate their belief, mindset or advice).

I just have to shake my head when real estate agents start spouting this nonsense. Nonsense they act like this is the only way to build your real estate business — the one way to get listings.

And the crazy part is, they fiercely protect this fixed mindset. Fiercely! They insist there is no other way to do it.

Tip #1

Get out of a fixed mindset and jump into a growth mindset. There are better ways to lead generate, despite what our industry is focused on teaching.

The kicker: They say these things as absolutes. Absolutely stating that it absolutely always works. That it’s absolutely the only way. They’ve created boxed-in ideas about how to get listings and what personal contact is.

Forget cold-calling; build personal relationships

The irony in this is that they think cold-calling is personal contact and that it builds know, like and trust relationships.

Let’s face it. They are delusional.

Cold calling for listings is not a personal contact.

This mindset is dangerous.

It’s dangerous because its singular goal is to make sure that no one else transcends beyond them, that no one else does something better, in a new way, in a more effective way.

It’s so hardcore, and its influence so strong, that our entire real estate industry is affected by it. This mindset shows people that we are the smarmy salespeople with crappy reputations that they already mostly believe.

Come on, a cold call is a personal contact? Cold calling is the only way to get listings?

I’ve never made a cold call in my life, and guess what — I’ve taken my unfair share of listings.

The thing about this mindset is that it’s not scalable (purposefully not scalable), and it’s simply not true.

You only have so much time, and you have to trade time for each phone call.

If you do 300 phone calls a week, that means you would potentially take 52 listings per year.

Unless you can invent more time, you’ll be stuck at taking 52 listings each year. You won’t ever grow beyond that.

Cold calling isn’t scaleable — unless you can invent more time.

And what are you going to do? Just go through the phone book making phone calls? Really? How are you going to reach the households that haven’t had a landline in more than 15 years?

Tip #2

Rethink what personal contact is, and isn’t, and leverage it to build your real estate business.

We haven’t had a landline in 15 years, and most of our circle of friends hasn’t, either. And we are in that group of buyers and sellers that most people want.

The move-up-to-their-largest-home group. The group that has both a sell and a buy — at a price point that is statistically double and triple the area average home price.

Are you willing to build your business on a fixed mindset that not only is a ridiculous one but is also quickly disappearing in its ability to be used?

Build a scalable business

Yes, I know real estate agents that do this. But they never reach leverage. They never build upon previous actions they take.

When they are calling 300 new people every single week, even if they repeat through their lists every quarter, they aren’t actually building any relationships.

Their one sole focus is: Are you ready to sell? That’s it. They have no connection with the prospects for any other reasons.

And, the prospects have zero connection with them, which means zero loyalty — which means they’ve still got to convert the prospect over and over again.

During each phone call, at each appointment, the prospect has zero reasons to trust them.

This means that every single month they start back at zero. They aren’t looking for stages of the homeownership journey; they are looking for the close. That’s it. That’s an awful lot of work that never ends.

Why on earth would you get into real estate with the potential freedom, flexibility and awesome financial future to treat it like a non-renewable resource? This isn’t building a business; it’s being controlled by the business.

Tip #3

Start your business with the end in mind. Think “scale” in the beginning before it becomes nearly impossible to actually scale.

If you aren’t thinking scale now, when you first begin, you’ll struggle with scaling in the future. Seriously — most agents just think “Oh, I’ll hire someone from overseas as a virtual assistant to call all my leads and help me cherry-pick the ones most likely to take action right now.”

If you aren’t thinking scale when you first begin, you’ll struggle with scaling in the future.

Seriously? Don’t get caught up in the idea of using dialer services (or outsourcing to an overseas VA). You’ve still got to trade time for the phone calls, and it’s still focused on closing the immediate deal rather than on helping consumers through the journey and subsequently closing multiple deals.

I’d be willing to bet that the number of people who are turned off by the dialer services and broken English cold calls are infinitely more than the number of people who agree to an in-person appointment.

Again, a smarmy salesperson shines brightly in this case. Really? You care so little about the people you want to work with that you’ll toss aside any opportunity to build a tribe of people who are wild and crazy about you, just so that you can forever cold call. Forever? You will never truly scale this.

Let’s talk about that for a minute. When I say “scale” I don’t mean “just acquire more random leads and hire VAs to help convert them.” That is one type of scaling, not a particularly efficient type, but it’s still one type of scaling.

And really, it’s not scaling because you have to have a VA for every X amount of leads that come in.

Which means the more leads you have, the more VAs you have. And the more VAs you have, the more people you have to manage or pay others to manage. In other words, having more people does not equal scale; it just equals more people (and more money spent).

Don’t focus on vanity metrics

You know, the whole “my team is 24 people” bragaliciousness that we love to spout. If you can do double, triple, quadruple the business with a team one-quarter of the size and not be stressed and still have a lovely life, why would you focus on vanity metrics?

When I’m talking scale, I’m talking about the ability to scale your income producing time and efforts that create and build know, like and trust relationships.

Wouldn’t you rather bring on more buyer agents because every other phone call is a buyer that is ready and determined to work with you or your team?

Wouldn’t you rather bring on a listing coordinator (or three) because every other phone call is a seller who is asking you to come out and list their home? It would save you the time of multiple prospective listing appointments.

Don’t get caught up in the idea of using dialer services or outsourcing VA’s.

I know that I’d much rather outsource paperwork, signs, lockboxes, photography, etc., than outsource building relationships. And I also know that relationships are easily scalable, meaning, it’s just as easy and takes just as much time to create and build one relationship as it does to create and build 1,000 relationships when you know what you are doing.

It’s just as easy and takes just as much time to create and build one relationship as it does to create and build 1,000 relationships.

4 ways to create know, like and trust relationships

Guess what? Personal contact doesn’t just happen in face-to-face or phone-to-phone situations. In fact, personal contact happens in all mediums including:

1. Blog posts

Blog posts work well to create and build know, like and trust relationships. They are beautiful when it comes to creating a relationship in which the prospect simply connects with you and is ready to list their home.

They already know you. They already trust you.

However, putting up ghost-written, canned garbage isn’t going to help you. Not one bit. The consumer knows it’s ghost-written, canned garbage. They aren’t stupid. They know it’s monotone. They know it isn’t your voice. They know you aren’t having a conversation.

This is where we fail when it comes to blogging. We focus on keywords and SEO traffic, and that’s it. Flip that around and focus solely on solving the problems and giving value to your prospects.

You’ll build relationships and convert leads. You’ll also start driving the right, high-value traffic as opposed to every Tom, Dick or Harry doing searches for events in your area.

1. Email

Sending a real email, not the canned garbage we as real estate agents cling to so we don’t actually have to talk to anyone.

Not the canned garbage we use just to get the requisite number of touches in because, after all, a touch is all that’s needed, right? No!

You need to have a conversation. Again I say, stop touching your list and start having conversations with them.

Yes, you can scale this! Use an email marketing software, and have a conversation with your list at least once every week.

Twice a week is even better. And yes, these numbers are based on actual scientific evidence of billions of emails.

Yes, you can schedule these conversations. You don’t have to be sitting down at the computer every single week writing these emails, but you must be the one having the conversation.

You can not outsource relationship building. Don’t mix it up touches with building relationships.

3. Video

Yup, video. With the advent of live streaming on just about every major social media channel and people who are flocking to watch live streams, you have got to be doing video in some fashion. Live streaming makes it insanely easy.

But (there is always a but with me, isn’t there?), the thing is, it’s not about live streaming your open houses (though you can), and it’s not about live streaming marketing stats (though you can).

It’s about being available and authentic — a bit raw, in fact. It’s about getting on and solving problems for people — for your prospects.

When you start showing your expertise, you become the expert. And most importantly, you become trusted, approachable and relied upon.

When you stop pitching you, your services and your listings and start helping, your results will be dramatic. Your tribe will become unstoppable.

<span style=”background-color: yellow; font-size: large;”><b>Live streaming makes creating video content insanely easy.</b></span>

4. Repurpose

And guess what the best part of all of this is? Each of these three things is repurposed. What do I mean?

Start with video. Do a live stream on a topic that is close to your prospects’ heart. Help them. Dive deep with them. Give them the answers and resources they need to overcome the obstacle.

Then, run that live stream replay as a Facebook ad to your page fans (remember, your page likes must be highly targeted, none of this ridiculous ask-everyone-on-planet-earth behavior that we tend to dwell on in our industry).

Then, get that live stream transcribed. Use a source such as SpeechPad.com to transcribe it. And then, edit that transcription and set it up as a written blog post and go deeper on what you might have missed in the live stream.

Then, talk to your list via email and share the topic with them.

Drive them to your blog post (where, of course, you are pixeling that traffic so you can later run Facebook ads to them) where you help them in the blog post and offer a “content upgrade” that allows them to download a checklist, template or something that congruent with what you just helped them with.

Then, run a Facebook ad to everyone who visited your blog post and share the live stream with them so they can get more information, via a different medium, on the topic.

Then, run Facebook ads to cold (but highly targeted) traffic driving them to that valuable blog post, where everything is repeated.

And, for an added boost, upload that Facebook live stream to YouTube and optimize it, so you drive traffic back to the epic blog post you created for them.

So in essence, while you are creating the content, you are simultaneously leveraging the content. When you do the live stream first, you set the ball into motion.

One more crucial note

Your lead generation foundation on Facebook must be built, and built well. This means that your Facebook page likes must be highly targeted page likes — they can not be colleagues from around the country.

They must be people in your area who are most likely to use your services, which means you have to build a solid Facebook page like tribe before you can truly leverage this.

Why? Because your Facebook live streams are pushed out to your page likes and bring them in to connect with you while you are live.

And, you must be continuously building that tribe. In other words, the first, most important Facebook ad you should be running — and never stopping — is your page-like audience ad. However, you don’t want to run Facebook page like ads until your page is set up for leverage.

Featured Download:

The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

If you want to leverage Facebook, discover the 7 quick & easy things real estate agents can do today to get more engagement on their Facebook business page

[SOUND IS OFF FOR FIRST 35 SECONDS] SORRY!!

Featured Download: The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

If you want to leverage Facebook, you have to play by Facebook’s rules, which means an active & engaged audience on your Facebook business page.

How do you keep your Facebook page engaged?

Today I am going to work with you and show you 7 quick and easy ways that you as a real estate agent can use to get more engagement on your Facebook business page.

You guys have been asking me “how do I get people to actually talk to me?” “how do I get people to engage with me?’ “how do I get people to respond to my post?”

There are a lot of different things you can do, but today we are going to talk about 7 very specific ones that work pretty much all the time.

Alight, so there are 7 quick and easy things you can do as a real estate agent that will get you more engagement on your Facebook business page.

SEVEN quick and easy ways!

When you have an active and thriving Facebook business page, you’re going to have an active and thriving real estate business.

It’s going to take time for that to happen, but let’s face it with the way everything is going with social media, you have to be not just ON social media, you have to be social on social media.

So I am going to give you some hacks, 7 ways you can use different things so you don’t have to constantly be creative and constantly coming up with things. Let’s start with the first one.

Caption This

Here is the first one, and this one works all the time, it works all the time. You need to find, and I will explain “find” in just a moment, or “take” or “snap” a funny picture and post it with the words “Caption This”.

See what people put on their, engage them as they respond to it, as everyone who captions or comments something make sure you respond to each one of them.

When I say “find” or “snap” a funny picture, take a picture, take a picture of your cat or your dog doing something funny, take a funny picture of a position your kid is in. One of my kids even now, I find him in positions as he is a various reader and he was always reading upside down, in a pretzel, in weird shapes, when he was reading.

I would take his picture and post it to my personal profile, but you can actually do this on your business page and ask, “does anyone else have a kid that does this?” or “does anyone else have a cat that does this?” or “does anyone have a dog that does this?” or “anybody else seen this?” etc. That’s where the viral comes from.

When you share things like that. Say “Caption this” or “Can anyone else relate?”

So “find” or “take” a funny picture.

Now, when I say “find”, if you “find” a picture on Facebook or anywhere else it doesn’t matter where, if you didn’t take it – it is not your picture!

You would need to share that picture by using the share button or by copying and pasting the link from where you found it.

You CANNOT upload it yourself. So go out and take pictures, in fact our Leads and Leverage members, one of the big challenges we’re doing in our 21 day challenge is gathering a bunch of local photos so we can use them on our Facebook business page and our Instagram page.

Tagging Business Pages

Number two, get yourself in front of a new audience by tagging other business pages.

Now, there are parameters in all of this. One of the things you need to do if you’re going to tag another business page, make sure you have a legitimate reason to tag them.

Otherwise, you will be marked as a spam page and shut down by Facebook.

What do I mean by this? If you’re going to be taking pictures, like number one, at a business or around businesses or you go for coffee and there are other businesses around you that have Facebook business pages, tag them.

Just say, “I was here, I went to this store and this store and I did that!” Make sure when you are tagging it is legitimate. These aren’t people, these are business pages.

Every time you go somewhere, for example today is the first day of a large three-day street fair, Taste of Coeur d’Alene and Art on the Green, it’s huge here every single year.

As a real estate agent, if I currently had a local business page I was running for my business, I would absolutely be tagging as I was meeting new and different vendors on the street. I would be posting, tagging and sharing all the different activity on my business page.

I would be live streaming from this event on my business page. Get yourself in front of their audience by tagging their pages, whatever you’re doing, if you’re running to the bank, tag the bank page. If you are having coffee or at a restaurant tag those pages and be out there.

Tell Your Fans You Love & Appreciate Them

Number three, once in a while tell your fans you love and appreciate them.

In fact don’t just tell them, show them by getting gifts of appreciation when you hit new milestones on your page.

Do different things for them like livestreams, give them things that are helpful. You can do livestreams with other businesses.

You could do a giveaway, one of the things we always did, we would go to a local frozen yogurt shop and purchase free passes. We did it the coffee shop and other drive thrus and we would give those away.

It was awesome because we would give those away every time something happened or we wanted to show appreciation.

Tell your fans you love them and appreciate them, then show them!

Give them something, a fro-yo things, a coffee, an event, it could be an inside scoop on something cool and upcoming, share an event with, do something to show them you care!

Engage With Your Audience on a Personal Level

Number four, engage with your audience on a personal level.

This is not the place to separate personal from business, people buy from people. They do not want to buy from a company.

You need share a personal passion of yours, it builds social connection which builds trust, so what are you passionate about?

Are you someone who really like habitat for humanity?

Or the local humane society or the local food bank or are you apart of a church ministry you’d like to share about or you support an orphanage or you’re doing a fun run for MS, share these things.

Show it!

Connect with people on a personal level. It is really important that they know you personally.

A lot of you that we’ve adopted four boys, that we have traveled in our RV for a year and a half, a lot of you know that we like to support orphanages, we have adopted cats and dogs so you know things that are apart of me and they resonate with some of you guys.

You have to share your personal, you have to share especially stuff that is easy for people to get behind and can engage with.

Do Not Use Link Shorteners

Number five, do not use link shorteners anymore like Bitly on your post.

I know experts and gurus are out there telling you to track the stuff and get those in there, but here is the problem in that: People don’t know you, trust you or like you, yet.

You will get a higher, almost 100% higher click-thru rate if you reveal the entire link.

People like to be seen where the’re being taken. They’ve been taken to scam sites, fake news sites, so you need to show them the full link. If you’re going to use a link on a post on Facebook, you need to include the entire link.

DO NOT Bitly it or shorten it, do not TinyUrl it, you are working on building trust so be fully transparent. You can still get stats on the other end, it’s not worth the loss of click-thrus to see what people are doing in Bitly, it is not worth it.

It’s all not worth how Facebook looks at that, people aren’t clicking so they view the site as a page they shouldn’t trust and they don’t like Bitly, so please use your FULL URL!

Follow and Engage With Influence in Your Niche

Number six, follow and engage with influencers in your niche.

What do I mean? Connect with locals and local pages that are active on Facebook. There are local groups that are active on Facebook, in our area there are a lot of Shop and Swap, Buy and Sell groups. There is a group called Crazy Love where they help people.

There’s a North Idaho foodies group where people share all the different places they’ve eaten, recommend, etc. There are all kinds of groups, there are tons of theater groups, audition groups, there are photography pages, our chamber of commerce is active, our fire stations and police districts are all active on Facebook, so follow and engage with them in your area.

That means if they have something that is relevant to your people share it and tag them.

If you have something that would be relevant to their people and it’s not a sales pitch, share it to them.

We have a page in our area we have created. It’s all the different things to do in North Idaho and we just share constantly to that page. We have people who are constantly like “We’re doing this fundraiser for this, can you share it?”

Absolutely.

Engage with people. Engage with influencers. Engage with people who are active on Facebook. Use those. Engage with those. Interact with them.

Post Funny Meme, Pictures, Jokes & Videos

Number seven, is kind of easy and really fun, but you have to do it the right way!

Post funny memes, pictures, jokes and videos because sometimes humor gets the most attention. It just does. Use it. Leverage it.

Here’s how you do it. If you can’t create something of your own then you need to go and find funny sources and pages that have funny things and click that share button and share it to your page.

You’re going to get traction from these. It’s called a viral post, If they’re funny and engaging people are going to respond to them and you get the benefit from that.

Yes, you are sharing it from another page and yes, they get the benefit from the share, but you get the benefit from the likes, the comments and the shares from your page and you want that.

Why would you want engagement? Why does it matter? Because that is the key factor Facebook looks at to know whether your page is legit and your ads.

If your page isn’t considered legit and engaging by Facebook, guess what?

Your ads are going to cost you more money. Flat out, plain and simple. It’s harder for you to get out in the algorithm if Facebook thinks your page is not up to snuff.

How many pages are up to snuff? Let me tell you when I look at the pages to watch in my Facebook analytics compared to my pages. I follow 15-20 pages similar to mine that are in my demographic or in my network.

I am sure my engagement is light years beyond their engagement. Why? Because I get free traffic, cheap ads, free relevant page likes, and so Facebook keeps pushing things out.

You need to be using these things by using funny pictures, tagging other pages, appreciating your fans, engaging on a person level, not using link shorteners, following and engaging with influencers in your local area, posting funny pictures, memes and jokes.

You need to be doing all 7 of these things, not all at once, but set up a schedule that every Monday, I am going to do number one, Tuesday I will do this, set that up.

Then reuse your content, not to soon but every few months because it is new stuff and not everyone sees it.

Plus, it really is a great way to leverage your time, your focus and your energy.

Featured Download:

The Facebook Page Setup Checklist – specifically for real estate agents – get your Facebook page setup to capture real estate leads.

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Position yourself NOW with hyper-connections. Learn the 5 immediate steps you can take today in your lead generation to pen a real estate blog that prospects actually care about

Featured Download: I created a template for you. It’ll get you solidly on the right track on creating your avatar. Download it. Print it. Work on It. Use it to change your blogging results.

If you read Entrepreneur Magazine or Forbes, Inc, you are going to see this phrase repeated incessantly by the most successful business owners…

“If you sell to everyone you sell to no one”

I’m going to show you how providing valuable content for your readers and customers, to the point where you become valued, trusted, and synonymous with being useful… so that when the time comes to make a purchase, you are the ob

Today I’m going to show you how to never have to sell again because…

Sell something and you make a customer today. Help someone and you create a customer for life. Jay Baer, President, Convince & Convert

Here’s the reality...

We tend to throw blogging under the “things-I-hate-to-do-and-avoid-but-I-keep-hearing-about-it-and-I-don’t-have-time-to-sit-down-and-mess-with-it” category of our business.

But why do we do that?

I submit that it’s because we have no idea how blogging can actually help us.

How it can shape our business.

How can it change our real estate business?

How it can move us from constantly fretting about the next deal to having a continuous pipeline of prospects who are not only ready, willing, and able… but they know, like, and trust us… before we’ve even had the first appointment with them.

So… how do we “blog for prospects?”

Well… it all starts with….

Step 1 Knowing your avatar

Wait. What? What’s an “avatar?” Well, an avatar is a single representation of your ideal client. In essence, you “paint a picture” of your ideal client and you give it a persona… otherwise known as an avatar.

What we tend to do, is think in terms of our “target market,” which means we are thinking in general terms, not specific terms. Your avatar is not “home buyers” or “home sellers.” That’s way to general.

Think about it this way, let’s just look at home buyers. There is a wide variety of home buyers… first time home buyers, single buyers, family buyers, condo buyers, move-up buyers, empty nester buyers, vacation home buyers…. are you getting the idea that “home buyers” is not specific enough?

Like I said earlier, you need to paint a picture of your ideal client. Who are they? What is their life like? What are their hobbies? In truth, you can’t go too deep with this. Without knowing the individual, you can’t have a conversation with them and truly help them.

If you can’t have a conversation with them, your blog posts will be shallow and useless.

They’ll be posts that someone can get just about anywhere. Monotone, no authority, and no way to begin to build a know, like, and trust relationship.

Knowing your avatar is 99% of the battle… it makes everything else a breeze. From prospecting, to blogging, to ad writing, to close. Everything is affected when you intimately know your avatar.

Knowing your avatar, will change your business. This is probably the single most powerful “business planning activity” anyone can do, and it’s the one thing no one in our industry does.

Oh yes, I know some are teaching “avatars and buyer personas” but I’m telling you, they are teaching a superficial, 35,000 foot view of the concept. It’s not deep enough to make a difference and agents aren’t seeing a difference in their business… so what they are teaching is a waste of our time, because it isn’t making an impact. It isn’t changing anything.

If you want to change your business, you have to change how you approach your business, how you approach your lead generation. This starts by building an avatar.

The next thing you’ve got to do is…

Step 2 Give your all

I can’t tell you the number of agents I’ve run in to, who actually have a website and do some semblance of blogging, that throw up a 500 word document and call it a blog post.

If they are answering a question in that blog post, their answer is so antiseptic and bland, they really shouldn’t have taken the time to write it. Why bother?

Give your all. If you are going to answer your avatar’s questions, answer their questions. If it takes 3000 words to do it, do it in 3000 words. Seriously. Give them the full and complete answer. Don’t hold anything back.

Don’t live with a scarcity mindset. Live in an abundance frame of mind. You really can’t give too much. It’s simply not possible. There is zero chance that they will be able to inhabit your body and accumulate all of your life experience.

Here’s the other aspect to this… always remember the 80/20 rule. Pareto’s Principal. In reality, it’s more like 99/1. Out of the 100 people who will read what you write, or listen to what you talk about, one or fewer than one, will actually take that information and run with it.

Meaning, no matter how much you teach, no matter how much you share, 99% of the people you reach, will simply absorb and then use you when they are ready for your services. The other 1% may try to “do it themselves” but the reality is… that’s not likely.

Service is where your value as a real estate agent begins

You need to give your all. You are creating a “virtual” you and that virtual you needs to have a good reputation. You want to build relationships before you even talk to anyone. You want to be seen as serving them.

And regurgitating local content is not valuable to your avatar. On the surface it seems to help with SEO, but it really doesn’t (more on that later in this article). When you regurgitate area history, area stories, area facts… you enforce the belief that “real estate agents are useless.” Our reputations are built on what we do, not what we say. Don’t be a regurgitator.

I don’t know about you but I prefer prospects who call me and ask me to come list their home because they know I’m the perfect person for the job… rather than trying to convert a sign call or a website visitor, someone who doesn’t know me at all.

Quality trumps quantity. Have a conversation and help your avatar. This isn’t about getting 500 short, useless blog posts out there (just to get traffic that will bounce right off your site). This is about building relationships, providing value, and capturing and keeping nearly 100% of the traffic you’ve brought through the value you are giving.

This next thing… you must stop. You have got to…

Step 3 Solve their problems

Here’s a hint. Their problems are NOT finding homes for sale or even getting their home value… and yet those are the ads we run expecting to reap awesome results from those ads. In fact, these are the posts we are constantly pushing out on social media: new listing, new home value tool, new app… none of these are problems that your avatar has.

Think about it… how hard is it to find listings? How are is it to find a home value? How hard is it to find real estate apps? The key here is… it’s not hard for the consumer to find these things. They do not consider these problems in their lives, which is why they don’t respond to us pushing them out to them.

If we aren’t solving their problems, they view us as useless… leaving you fighting to get them under contract, fighting to justify your commission, fighting to get some semblance of loyalty out of them.

So what are their problems?

Their problems. are their life experiences throughout their journey of owning a home. If they’ve never owned a home before, what are their problems in the years (not just the months) leading up to buying their first home?

We’re not talking “just” real estate here. We are talking hopes and dreams. Life problems they encounter, drawbacks, job and family changes. This is about their journey.

When we are able to connect with our avatar in meaningful and helpful ways, we no longer need to “convert” them. They are already converted. In fact, they become our tribe, before we’ve even had an appointment with them.

The next thing you need to do is to…

Step 4 Stop chasing SEO

I have a feeling I could go on for thousands of words on this one topic.

When you focus your business on what it really is, serving others, you know that you do not have to focus on chasing “search engine optimization” within your blog posts. In reality, you pretty much never have to chase SEO when you are serving your avatar.

Here’s why… because when you serve your avatar, that means you are helping them. That means you are identifying their problems and solving their problems for them. That means that when you write your blog posts or record your video’s identifying and solving their problem… and you keep doing this over and over again, the “content” you put on your blog will be insanely valuable. In other words, your avatar will find you though search because they’ll find you by googling their problems.

Your goal is to create know, like, and trust relationships before they call, text, or email you. BEFORE. You can easily do this by “selling with service” and serving your avatar and not chasing SEO.

Fighting against the algorithm is such a waste of your time. The battle is futile and it’s unnecessary. Now, of course, our resident “SEO Experts” are going to get up in arms about this. They are going to come out of the woodwork and tell me how wrong I am. The proof is in the reality. When you chase the algorithm, you must always chase the algorithm. When you serve your clients, you never have to chase the algorithm.

“But what about driving keyword traffic to my site?” What about it? It’s pointless. Doh! I just ticked someone else off.

Yes guys, keyword traffic is a waste of your time. If you keep focusing on the wrong thing, it means working more and getting fewer results. the right traffic changes everything.

Traffic is NOT the answer to your lead generation problem. The wrong traffic actually HURTS your site rankings. Have you heard about something called “Bounce Rate?” Bounce rate is the percentage of people who come to a single page on your site and then leave your site from that same page. In other words, they didn’t go deeper.

So according to “real estate website experts” a “good” bounce rate for real estate websites sits at 55-65%. I literally shook my head in disgust when I kept finding this quoted stat in my research.

Um, yet again, I present to you the case for stepping outside of the real estate industry and looking at the reality for the rest of the world. Google (yes, the search engine itself) shared their idea of good, average, and horrible bounce rates and that 55-65% quoted above, falls in the “horrible” category according to Google.

What's a good bounce rate?

A bounce rate under 20% is considered very good (according to Google). A bounce rate of 20-40% is considered average. A bounce rate over 40% is something to be concerned about. In other words, if your bounce rate is “fine” at the industry average of 55-65% your website sucks… and it’s likely that the traffic you are driving to your site also sucks.

Google also said that a bounce rate under 3% is insanely fabulous and very few websites get there. So I’m going to brag on my LeadsAndLeverage.com site just a bit here… I have a bounce rate under 1%. UNDER ONE PERCENT.

My entire history (from the day I published the site until today, just under 3 years) bounce rate hovers at 2%. Why? Because I focused solely on figuring out what my avatar’s problems were (and are) and I provide solutions to those problems.

Ok… so why did I go on and on about bounce rate? Because your bounce rate shows you two things about your site…

First, it shows you how valuable and how relevant your website is to the traffic that is coming to it. Is it so full of solutions that your avatar is getting lost in it (and therefore not bouncing off your site) or is it so superficial, so shallow, so focused on SEO that they come, see that it’s just another real estate website, and then leave immediately.

Second, it shows you how untargeted your traffic is. When your bounce rate is high, you’ve done a poor job of understanding your avatar. You aren’t focusing on their problems and giving them solutions.

You haven’t done a good job of identifying their needs. If you keep focusing on “your city real estate” or whatever SEO keywords you are excited about today, you’ll never find your avatar… or rather, your avatar will never find you.

When we focus on “hyper local” without any context, we get a high bounce rate. Let’s face the music guys… providing “hyper local” content without context in hopes that people will “keep coming back” because you are “the source” for all things “your neighborhood” is a pipe dream.

People do not come back to our sites because we post Christmas lights tours, or local events. They don’t bookmark our site and keep returning to it. That NEVER happened, although we kept feeding that thought monster.

We have to focus on “hyper connections” not “hyper local.” If your content isn’t in context to their needs in real estate in some way, there is no context for them.

Instead of sharing a list of Christmas lights tours, how about sharing an interview of one of the homeowners that “decks the halls” every year… what are they like, what’s their neighborhood like, if someone else wants to be part of that community, what does that lifestyle look like?

Put things into the context of living a lifestyle and you’ll knock it out of the park.

Most people focus on increasing their traffic but what they really need to be focusing on is increasing their value.

I can not tell you how many times I get emails from agents that say “I got lost in the labyrinth of your website.” My goal is to provide so much information that an agent could come along and implement something I teach on my site and see immediate results. THAT is my goal.

That needs to be your goal. That buyers or sellers could come along and implement what you are teaching them and see results. That they can know that the remodeling project they are about to embark on is going to bring value to them. That they avoided a serious financial mistake by learning from you. You need to be the trusted resource for them.

I hear that all the time… “I want to be the trusted resource” or “do this so you are the trusted resource.” Well, I’m here to tell you that the ONLY way to be a trusted resource is to actually help and serve your avatar, without “expectation” of reward.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t also focus on capturing your avatar into your database, so don’t go there. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that in order to build relationships before the capture, you have to give before you take. As Gary Vaynerchuk says… Jab Jab Jab Right Hook.

If you want to be impervious to the constant SEO changes… and completely ignore when Google does another algorithm update… then stop chasing and start serving.

And finally, doing everything I just taught you is…

Step 5 Building a resource

A resource for your avatar. A resource for you. A resource for your clients. A resource for your team.

What do I mean?

I bet you get hit with a lot of the same, repeat questions. I do (and did). Everyday I’d get emails from prospects asking me questions. When you have a resource that answers those questions, it’s incredibly wonderful to send those inquiries, right to the already created answer.

When you build a resource, you integrate multiplicity. In other words, you get to the point that you are working while you sleep. Literally. People find you (your site) and get to know you (through your site) while you are deep in slumber. This is a good thing. It’s on their terms. They don’t feel threatened.

Not only that, but you can re-purpose your valuable content.

But wait!!! Let’s talk just a bit about what re-purposing is, and what it isn’t.

Re-purposing is NOT pushing out “new blog post + the link” to every social media platform you are on as soon as you publish said blog post. That’s just noise and no one cares.

Re-purposing IS sharing your blog post in a way that is congruent with your avatar on each platform. SHARE it, don’t push it. When you share something you also share a thought, a comment, a question about the thing you are sharing.

Now, go and do it again, pointing out a different thought, comment, or question. Keep repeating. About once every 14 days (not closer together) you should be sharing your awesome solutions with your avatar on your social media channels.

Bonus: Quick Start Tips

Not sure where, or how, to start? Start by creating your avatar. Start by imagining your perfect client. What does it feel like to work with them? How does the entire process go?

Now, who is that person? If you’ve had transactions before and one was amazingly awesome, what made it awesome? What about your client made them a joy to work with? Start building your avatar by pulling from your past experiences with clients.

You’ve never had a transaction close? Then do this… think about your friends and family. Who do you enjoy spending time with? Who lets you speak into their lives? Take that person and start building your avatar from them.

Once you’ve got a good idea of who your avatar is, now go look for the questions they ask. Start by checking your email, your voicemail, remember your conversations… what questions about real estate have you been asked? Start answering them… on your blog!

Just starting out? Check out some real estate specific Facebook groups and find the posts where agents are sharing what their clients are asking. Refocus those questions specific to your own avatar and then go answer those questions… on your blog!

Always remember…

Your value, your worth, is not in your listings. It’s not in connecting buyers to listings. It’s not in getting sellers homes listed. You are not a commodity.

Your value, your worth, is in your knowledge and sharing that knowledge to and with your avatar. You are a service, not a commodity. Don’t devalue yourself by continuing to focus on the “things” when it’s about the relationships and the journey.

Featured Download

And as always, I created a template for you. It’ll get you solidly on the right track on creating your avatar. Download it. Print it. Work on It. Use it to change your blogging results.

You can click here to download the template.