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by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

So you didn’t respond to that incoming Facebook lead in 5 minutes. Here’s how to beat everyone at that ridiculous “fastest to respond wins the lead” teaching..


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


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Image courtesy of [Master isolated images] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I have a question for you!

First of all, here’s my first question for you. Have you heard that if you don’t respond to a lead within the first five minutes that you’ve lost the lead?

We are going to actually dive into that whole idea that if you don’t respond to a lead within the first five minutes that you’ve got like a hundred times less of a chance of actually capturing that lead or converting the lead, etc.

We are going to dive into the truth of that, the actual truth of that.

So today we are going to talk about have you heard that if you don’t respond to a lead within the first five minutes your chances of converting the lead drops by one hundred times?

I’m sure you have been told that it’s a real study, that it’s real data and we need to live by that. But we’re going to dive into the truth, the reality of this whole thing, alright? So while the data on the surface is factual, the reality is very, very, very different.

Alright, so the myth of the “fastest to respond wins the lead,” I need to talk to you about this, okay?

Here’s the thing – first of all, when we put out this expectation, when we keep telling people that if you don’t respond to the lead in the first five minutes your odds of converting it drop by a hundred times.

First of all, we continue to perpetuate this idea that creates unrealistic expectation.

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Unrealistic Expectations From The Public

They think we are a human trash can available 24/7. We are not. We are professionals.

At least I hope we are professionals, right? So we know what the ins and outs of the transactions.

We know the pitfalls.
We know the way things are.
We know legality.
We know how to negotiate.

I realize that some of us are much better at this than others but the more transactions that you get into, the more transactions you do, the higher, the more your knowledge is.

So in other words, by being a human trash can, available 24/7, we have created this ridiculous perception from the public right that we are always available, that you are a twenty-four hour Walmart or a twenty-four hour convenience store. No!

Here’s the next thing though. Here’s the biggest unrealistic expectation that we have created by perpetuating this idea that if we don’t respond to the lead within five minutes or less, we don’t get it. We’ve created unrealistic expectations from ourselves.

The reason that most agents don’t follow up with leads after the first five minutes is because they’re told you won’t get it unless you follow up within the first five minutes and so we are torn with this idea of “well, I don’t want to be tied to this guy 24/7 my phone all the time” but then how do I do this?

We are sold by vendors this “well, you should hire an ISA, an inside sales agent.” You should hire people to do that piece of the responding of the lead for you. In other words, you should pay more money, pay more of your commission, hire another service and create an even bigger barrier between you and that lead, which is a “oh, I’m just a lead. I’m not a human being.”

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How & When To Respond To A Lead

All of this is creating an issue so what I want to do is share with you exactly how and when you should be responding to your leads and I want to show you how, if you don’t respond in the first five minutes but you do what I am going to be teaching you today you’re going to be guaranteed to convert your leads.

Seriously, that’s what we are going to do today.

So, my big thing is that we’ve been told so many times that “the early bird gets the worm” so we give up. We think “well why bother. I won’t get it anyway.”

But the reality is, the reality is, the agent who creates a trail, a long trail that extends through the customer journey, the customer life journey, they are the ones who win in the end.

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Do You Know What Beats Speed?

Do you know what beats speed? Do you know beats that “five minute aspect of answering a lead? Do you know what beats that? Can you comment here? Do you know what beats the “respond in five minutes or less or you lose the lead?”

It is one thing, one thing only. Tell me what beats it if you know.

If you don’t know, guess. Just guess for me because this is a big deal. This is a big deal that we have people saying “you got to respond within five minutes and you got to do this and you got to do that.” And it’s a big deal because it’s a conflict with how we want to run our businesses.

It’s a conflict with, you know, what really is working, what’s really happening. It’s a conflict with the idea, with the concept that we actually need to be building relationships. I’ll tell you right now and I’ll tell you what it is but I want to know if you guys know what beats speed?  

 What beats the respond in five minutes or less or you lose the lead? 

If you know comment here or guess. I just want to see your guesses. Tell me your guesses below.

So there is one thing and one thing that beats speed.

IT’S CONSISTENCY!
Consistency beats speed.
Consistency trumps creativity.
Consistency beats speed every single time.

Long term relationship building beats speed. If you are consistent, if you contact them, I don’t care if it’s a day later you really should contact them within the first day, however, you should not compromise your family days and the days that you aren’t going to be working. You should not compromise those just to respond to a lead. Absolutely not. And most of you all are solo entrepreneurs, you are solo agents, maybe you have one team member. Most of you are solo agents and so it’s ridiculous to think that you should be available 24/7.

Now, should you hustle? Yes, you are building a business but not the hustle of “let’s throw everything else to the side and just do the business,” alright?

You need to be consistent so consistency beats speed. Long term relationship building beats speed so these two elements are exactly why very, very few agents have a “come list me” business.

Everyone else is always scrambling and yes, even the big guys. They are scrambling. They are trying to figure out how to convert more.  They are trying to figure out how to generate more. They are adding more team members. They are spending more money. They’re adding more lead generation. They think that they have to stay top of mind. They think they have to be constantly buying new tools etc., hiring ISA’s, doing all this stuff.

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Set Up Your Business To Provide Value

Could Your Facebook Page Name Be Killing Your Real Estate Lead Generation?If you set yourself up with a business in a way that provides value that when somebody reaches out to you, now this is just general, there are different levels of leads when I talk about this.

When you’ve got somebody who’s texting you directly or emailing you directly, this is a direct one. That is a hotter lead then all the others and you should respond. You should have something set up to respond to them so that they know so that you can engage with them, right?

Now, I’m talking about all of the leads where they opt-in to your home value ad or they opt-in to your IDX or they pick up a download that you’ve got where they opt-in to your email list.

Those leads are the ones where they’re saying “respond within five minutes, respond within five minutes.” Even a sign call. Sign calls are a little bit different but we’ve even got sign calls where we responded later that day or the next day. The way you do this is you create consistency. Your goal is to build a relationship and you are always thinking from the next step of the journey.

Now, when somebody is opting into your IDX and say they give you their phone number, you do not have to respond to them within the first five minutes.

You don’t. You don’t.

I have proven it. Four thousand transactions I’ve proven it. Not all four thousand transactions had IDX available because IDX was not available at the beginning of our real estate business but several thousand transactions did.

 You don’t need to respond within the first five minutes, at least not via the phone. You can set it up so that your email does it for you so you don’t need to buy into that “must respond within the first five minutes”. 

Again, if someone is calling you on a sign call, yeah, you probably should respond to them or set that phone number up to something that is going to respond right away.

If they are physically calling you or if they are physically texting you and it’s not a mass opt-in, those are different. You need to respond to those right away because those are typically conversions from other things that you are doing.

So hopefully I have got that clear enough for you. Do you understand the difference? Do you understand the different levels of the leads? These are real people behind that are behind the word “lead.” There are real people behind that content so if somebody actually calls you, if somebody manually texts you, then you need to respond as soon as possible.

Again if Sundays are your day off or if Wednesdays are your day off or whatever, whatever your day off is, if you have that as a day off, keep it.

Honor yourself. Honor your commitment.

Arrange for someone cover for you or if you don’t have anybody to cover  you, then arrange for a one hour period to answer those calls. Make sure it’s okay with your family, because that is the priority.  You are doing this for your family, okay? And none of this “oh, my family will understand” baloney. They do not understand when you take away the time that you said you would spend with them – they basically see you as a liar and someone who doesn’t keep their word.

If you say I’m going to spend that time with you but then you are on your phone answering it, this is a whole different rant of mine but I’m not going to go there today. But if you tell your family that you are going to spend with them and then you are on your phone, you are not honorable. You are not honoring your word and you are lying to them.

So set this up in away that will work for you. I am specifically talking today about the leads that are not those. I’m talking about all of the other leads we get. The ones that everybody brags about getting five hundred leads a month or a thousand leads a month or whatever and they don’t convert any of them- those. I’m talking about those.

They don’t convert them because they don’t flippin’ call every single one of them within five minutes apparently because that’s the rule, right?

So here’s the thing. When you have those leads, you set yourself up, you set up an automated email for those leads initially and depending on the lead and how it comes in and then you nurture these people.

Call them if they give you a number. Call them the first next day when you do your calls. Email them your first next day you’re on doing emails. Text them your first next day that you are on doing text and then keep doing it.

Keep giving them value.

Don’t just keep texting them and calling them and say “do you want to see a house?  Do you want to schedule an appointment?”

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Always Think About The Customer Journey

Give them value! Think about where they might be in the customer journey.

Seriously!

The reason that the “big guys,” and everyone else too is struggling…the reason that 87% of agents are out of the business in five years or less is because they haven’t figured out how to build a business that doesn’t compete with other agents, that doesn’t compete with the ZRT’S, Zillow, Realtor.com and Trulia’s of the world, that doesn’t compete with the supposed tech disrupter.

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Reach Out To Your Community

Do you know the one thing that you have that will absolutely annihilate all of those from being even a smidgen of a competition in your business?

The one thing you have is a relationship.

You have the ability to be relational, to be real with people.
You have the ability to give them real value, to actually think through the process and go “oh, this might be their next step” and then reach out and say “hey, is this your next step? Here’s this.” Not like to the appointment but what do they need?
Like seriously, what do they need?
What do they need in value?
What are they struggling with?
What do they need to know about selling their house?

For example, I’m just going to say this. We are actually thinking about putting our house on the market because it’s appreciated so much over the last year but here’s the thing.

Maybe people who are thinking about that because the market has gone up this is something you can provide to your people.

Here’s the thing. If we do that, we would owe capital gains because we would sell it before our year is up, right, I mean, before two years is up, right?. We would owe capital gains.

Have you reached out, sent out and talked to your email community about if you sell your house in under two years what that means for them? Which capital gains do they pay? Do you know it’s a different capital gains number depending on their annual household income? Do you know how to help them reduce that capital gains number?

These are pieces in the process for people who are wanting to sell quickly, resell quickly.  

What are different things that it means? We’ve looked. We’re like could we buy another house? We don’t care. We’re thinking smaller now, see, I told you we wouldn’t stay in this house forever. There is no such thing as a forever home. There’s just not. But we are thinking “okay, if we do this, we want to go smaller.” What does smaller look like? How much do we want to spend?

So we are thing through all these things. That is a thought process that you could be helping people with through your emails.

There are people in different stages so my point to all of this is that if you want a business that does not have any competition, doesn’t have the market as competition, doesn’t have ZRT’s of the world as competition, doesn’t have tech disrupters as competition, doesn’t have other agents as competition, then you need to start revealing you being you and sharing the journey with people and bringing them into a relationship with you so that you get real, actual “hey, come list me” calls where you don’t have to beat that five minute deadline or whatever it is.

Because you know what? We fought with this, well, we didn’t fight with this all the time but I just laughed every time somebody talked about sharing their perfect “expired” system or their awesome “expired” system at all the conferences, etc.that I went too. I would listen to it and watch and I would just go “oh my gosh, I am not going to do that!”

Meaning, we already had a system in place, a super system. We converted a lot of expired listings. We already had a system in place and that system really worked for how we wanted to do business and converted for us.

But then I would go and I would listen to these people go “well you need to like the minute it goes you need to get on the expired list at 8 am every single day,” or 7 am, or whatever the heck it is and then you need to show up at their door or you need to be the first one to make a phone call.

That’s what all the things teach. I’m not going to say the names but that’s what all the things teach, that you got to be there and I’m like “yeah, so they can get fifty thousand phone calls and not even be interested in Realtors and know that we are a whole bunch of used car salesmen.”

 Hello! Hello! Cold calling is you chasing people. You want people to chase you. 

You want to actually be seen as valuable, not being an annoying pest that they don’t want to talk too. You can’t get, I mean, people who think that if you learn all this scripting stuff, that you are going to be able to build this relationship in thirty seconds or less or an elevator speech, thirty seconds or less.

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Why You Need Consistency

It is not speed that you need. It is consistency that you need. You need to be able to consistently give value. You need to be able to consistently be able to help people through their journey and not just the six months of them thinking of buying or selling.

The fact is if I was a part of someone’s real estate email community right now with the market going up, I would definitely, if I was running my own list right now, like I used too, I would definitely be addressing the different thoughts that are going through people’s heads in my emails because some people and I’m not even talking about people who have had a fast appreciation and want to sell right away or maybe want to try “time” the market.

I’m talking about the kind of people who are like

if I sell, can I buy?” I have listened and heard that out there – are you helping people with that? Are you helping them? Are you going “hey, if you are not sure what you want to do, etc.

We know we would want to downsize already like one year into this. We already knew we wanted to downsize and I’m like “okay, can we get a house for the price range that I want to do” because we are like “I want to downsize, we want to travel more again.” Chuck is going to be performing outside of the area more so we have different ideas of what we want to do but the general process is – could you answer those questions for people? Should you be? Absolutely.

So when people are opting in to your IDX or to your home-value and “you need to respond to your lead in five minutes or less,” are you actually giving them value or are you just hounding them with the first phone call?

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Are You Building Trust?

Because let’s be real too. We give up after the first or second contact. I’ve seen it over and over again. “I’ve sent an email or I sent two emails and they never responded. I’m waiting for them to respond.” What the heck are you waiting for?

Answer a question for them! And you’re like “but they never asked a question!” But you know what questions there are! If you have been in real estate for like three seconds you know the questions that people ask- answer them to say “XYZ had this question. Thought this might be valuable to you too!” Answer! Super easy to do that.

If you are not doing that and you don’t have that consistency of building a relationship- yep, they’re right.  You are not going to get the lead.

You are going to lose, You are not going to convert the lead but if you want to build a business that does not compete with the ZRT’s, the agents  the tech disrupters….I say the supposed “tech disrupters” or real estate agent industry disrupters because you have realized that for the last twenty-three years.

That’s all I’ve heard. “We are going to change the way real estate is done. We are going to let people just go make an offer direct. We are going to do this or do that or go do that” and yet through it all, all of this “disruption” through everything, it’s still about the same percentage of people who do it themselves and the same percentage of people who don’t, Right?

Because it’s emotional and there’s a lot to know. It is not just selling.

Do you know if you actually need title insurance even though “a lot of people don’t need it” but still, what kind of insurance do they need?

The amount of information that is needed to make sure you get it right most people just want to somebody to take care of it for them. Someone they trust. Have you built that trust? Are you someone they can trust?

Because I guarantee you that a thirty second call, getting them thirty seconds into it, it does not. That is why so many people, so many agents show up and show a property and they are always told “get a buyer’s agreement first.”

So many people show up and show properties and buyer’s use someone else or even when you get a buyer’s agreement, they use someone else. Are you really going to go sue someone? Some people have. Most people don’t.

So how do you even eliminate that? How do you eliminate that issue? You consistently, consistently, consistently build a relationship with them. You help them. You answer questions that they haven’t even voiced or “oh, I didn’t realize that was something I even needed to think about!”

Tell them what to look for, partner with a home inspector. Not a paid partner and ask them “what are some things if you were looking for a home that you would be looking for? That you would avoid like the plague?” You know, different things like that.

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Give Value|Build Relationships|Ask Questions

I came out with a video a week or two ago that talked about how to determine if a vendor was legit or not, like someone who is a real estate vendor. Someone who is trying to teach you a class or sell you a class or sell you a course or sell you a membership or sell you a tool. I gave you very clear ideas on how to determine if they were legit or if they don’t know what they are doing and just trying to get a piece of the pie. I did that. Are you doing that? How to know if the house you are buying is right for you and the different things to look for….inspector inside secrets.

Are you giving that value? Are you doing that? See, consistency, consistently giving value, consistently building relationships, consistently asking questions will beat, every single time, someone, people who try to get to the lead fast. Yep. Guaranteed. They do. I have over four thousand transactions to prove it. I have multiple members in Leads and Leverage that have done this and know this to prove it.

In other words, this is contrary to what most people are teaching in the industry but what is being taught in the industry is actually showing 87% of agents are out of the business in five years or less. Huh! I wonder if what we are being taught, what we are listening to and what we are trying to go for is exactly why so few agents make it to the five year mark.

And after the five year mark, do you know how much of that 13% are gone? 80%.

So in other words, these agents, even if they do get some short wins and success, they are not sustainable. They are not building a business. They don’t understand it and they don’t keep going. This is a big deal, big deal so do not fall under the rose colored glasses or whatever that you have to respond to your leads in five minutes or less.

Now again, let me clarify this,.I am not talking about a direct phone call. I’m not talking about a direct text. I am talking about your IDX sign ups maybe with a phone number, your home-value ad signups, maybe even again with a phone number.

Even when you do expired marketing you do not need to be the first on their doorstep. You know what we did? We had a mailing campaign. It had eight pieces of mail, direct mail because back the it was not a lot of email and even as we progressed, I’m not going email to them unless they opt-in but it was a direct mail campaign.

We carried no less than eighty listings at any given time. When we were in a slump, when we were in a slump, that’s what we carried. 90% of them were expired. That’s flat, plain and simple. That’s what our numbers were.

That’s what we did and all we did was a direct mail campaign. I did not call. I did not compete and over the course of that campaign we gave value. We educated, we taught, not like the baloney of “it’s your agent” or not like the baloney of “it’s their marketing.” Like seriously, we taught them, we taught them “here’s what you can do to improve the odds. Here’s what you can do to make sure you get this price. Here’s how you need to price, etc.” We taught them over the course of that mailing.

We educated consistently over time,and because they got to know us over the course of this mailing and then we continued on. Do you know how many expired listings we would get a year later from that campaign because we kept snail mailing them twice a month, every single month over time? And they got to know us?

Yes! That’s how over time you get the lead. That’s how you convert it. That’s how you get a phone call that says “okay, we are ready. We’ve been getting your mailings. We’ve been getting your emails or we’ve been getting whatever and we are ready to sell our house now.” That’s how you do it. It’s not about “speed the lead.” It’s about consistency. Absolutely, hands down that’s what it is.

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What Are You Going To Do Next?

What was most useful for you? I want to know what was most useful for you? What are you going to take from today and implement? If you can share that with me, what is the first thing that you are going to do? Are you going to think through something? Are you going to plan something? Are you going to do something?

Tell me in the comments here what that is for you today! I would love that if you would help me know how I can help you. I know, I get comments from you telling me and I’m like “yes, that needs to be another episode!” What can I do to help you today?

So let me know in the comments here and thank you very much.

Have an amazing day!    

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Featured Download

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


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Filed Under: Lead Conversion Tagged With: Done, real estate lead generation

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Do you use these 6 foolproof ways to capture real estate leads from Facebook? Don’t miss your chance to find out what they are today and start raking in the leads!

we’re building a list of people who

I’m spilling the 6 easiest and best ways right now – and giving you a ton of resources… FREE

Do you turn “likes” and “comments” into leads?  How do you run the right ads that actually get you leads? Today I am going to walk you through the 6 foolproof ways.

I mean they are easy, foolproof ways to capture real estate leads from Facebook. Are you ready?

Today I am doing the Vault, number three. I have actually walked you guys through number 1 and number 2.

It is a 5 part video series and today is the number 3 part. So we did strategy, we did audience and today we’re going to learn how to build our list. We’re going to walk through the 6  foolproof ways to capture real estate leads from Facebook.

If you’re here with me now I have a boat-load of resources to share with you. If you’re watching this in replay, again I have a boat-load of resources for you.

If you want the resources, all you have to do is type in SEND ME THE RESOURCES right in the comments of this video

I cannot believe it is the last Saturday of July. It was just dawning on me this week that “Oh my goodness, summer is almost over!” because in our area it just began, like really began. The hot weather began about two and a half weeks ago. And you know I was like we’re going to see leaves changing in the next 2 – 3 weeks, and it’s going so fast!

Does it feel like everything is going fast for you guys too? Do you feel a little bit nervous? We’re still busy but we’re starting to go into that “Oh crap, it’s fall, where is my Christmas money going to come from feeling?”

I am going to walk you through 6 foolproof, they’re pretty much foolproof, there are some things you can do to mess them up, but it’s kind of hard.

I have the resources for you that I am talking about today. Everything you need, just type in the comments SEND ME THE RESOURCES in the comments of this video. RIBBIT, our Messenger bot; now he is a bot, a robot and only does what we tell him to do and he gets confused easily.

He is going to send it to you via Facebook messenger.

Once you get that, you’ll get his little message, you actually have to reply, I can’t remember if it’s “download” or the word that he uses but you actually have to respond to him to get the resources.

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Ready to learn how to build our list?

Are we ready?

So how do you turn those likes into leads?

Well honestly, like I said there are a couple of ways. You have to understand the strategy of Facebook and social media in general and the strategy is that you have to build an audience first.

Before anything else, you have to build that audience. We’ve talked about that in number 2.

You can go back and watch that video, So we have to work on building an audience, that is first and foremost. And you know, you’ve probably seen a lot of people building audiences and not doing anything else or saying I built this audience and nothing is happening. Well there are one of two reasons.

Number one, they’ve built the wrong the audience, like it’s either a fake audience or one not related to what they’re doing so when they go to engage with that audience outside of the superficial stuff, the audience doesn’t respond. So you have to build the right audience and that is in video number 2.

Today, we’re going to talk about how to get these people in our list. A lot of real agents are, I admit I was there too, gosh, a lot of real estate agents are going for the low hanging fruit.

I mean we want the transaction, like now, today right? And we forget that building a “like, know and trust” relationship actually takes a little bit of time but we still want it now, we want it today.

So what we have to be doing today is thinking about all of these layers in our business process, in the lead generation process. All of these layers including building your audiences, building your list and nurturing, that is why we’re talking about all of these.

Next week, early next week I’ll talk about how to convert these people, but one of the things we need to be doing is building our  list.

We cannot think of leads that are not ready right now as junk leads or dead leads or I didn’t get any leads. The thing is 99% of the people you contact or come into contact with face to face are not ready right now to buy a house.

They are not, are they junk leads? Do you put them in your database? I hope you do. Do you send them stuff every 2 weeks? Probably not, but I hope you do because you need to build that relationship with people.

We think of relationships as this, some of us as this energy sucking, I have to put a lot of time into this thing and the beauty of email, the beauty of Facebook, the beauty of Instagram and all of this online stuff is we can create, grow and maintain a relationship with pretty minimal effort.

So we don’t have to see them every single week, every single month, actually see them face to face, one-on-one. We can nurture them in other ways, we can give value in other ways.

So how do you get people into your list? Remember, we’re building a list of people who may be interested in buying or selling. They are locals. If they’re not locals, they want to be locals. They are people who own homes in your area or want to own homes in your area. They are people who are thinking about it.

They may not do anything for 2, 3, 4 years or they may do something in 2 weeks but remember out of  the 4,000 leads that I’ve personally generated in my 20 years of real estate exactly 1 texted us from a Craigslist ad and 13 days later we closed on a property. Exactly one.

Most of them, the bulk, were between 9 and 18 months out, which is why you have to nurture them. Which is why we’re doing that in the next video, but I had some as long as 6 years and even now, I mean I have not be in active in real estate, selling real estate in 3 years and they’re still converting leads 8, 9, years later that have come into the list and have been maintained, nurtured.

So you have to think on this in the long term. You’re going to get short term stuff but if you only, if you only look at people who get on the phone with you right now, you’re going to fail. You are totally going to fail.

This is why it drives me nuts that the “gurus” tell you when you first get into real estate to only do open houses, to only do door knocking, only do cold calling, only work with the people who are “ready, able and willing” right now. They’re idiots. They’re idiots for telling you that because you know why?

You’re going to be pounding the pavement, pulling out your hair sweating constantly, stressed, feast and famine for many years in your real estate business and 87% of you are going to be dead in the business in less than 5 years. Those are the stats so how do you make sure you are not one of those stats?

You start building your business at the beginning.  Absolutely you should be pounding the pavement, you’re starting a business – you don’t have any income, you need to start going, pounding the pavement, doing every possible thing.

But you also need to start building your list. The long term game, the term long term process – you’re building a business, not just trying to get lunch for tomorrow. So that is what we’re talking about.

So 6 ways to capture leads from Facebook, remember I am sending you the resources because there’s couple of tools in here that I am going to rely heavily on, which we rely heavily on and I am going to teach you how to find the perfect tool to make this happen for you, okay?

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The 6 ways to capture real estate leads from Facebook

Run “Just Listed” Ads

The first way is to run “Just Listed” ads. Now, there are 2 different ways you can run a “Just Listed” ad. One way is to drive people to an IDX link which requires registration.

I’m going to get into some details here about this.

You put 2-4 pictures of the listing, the best ones, you put a little bit of teaser info, just enough so they want to see more, say click here to see more. You send them to the IDX link.

You make sure that IDX link requires registration, if you are of the attitude or the mindset or whatever that you don’t require registration on your IDX, go away.

I just mean, you’re not ever going to capture leads. There are places on your IDX where you do not require registration but when you run paid traffic to a resource and they’re asking for more information, that is considered a lead magnet.

You need to have registration on that IDX before they can even see anything. Give them 2-4 photos in the Facebook ad, give them a little teaser information and say more pictures, videos, whatever you have “Click Here” and go to that resource, that IDX link, okay?

You must, must, must require registration before they can actually get to that resource. The first way you can just send them right to the IDX link.

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Do a Lead Ad

The second way you could do that is you could do a “lead” ad so all of these can be done in multiple ways. You can actually do an actual  lead ad. The first way is a “traffic” ad the second one is a “lead” ad and a “lead” ad would ask for their email first and then you set it up it so it emails them the link to the listing.

You do not want to ask for their email on a “lead” ad and drive them right to the resource. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Because people fake email addresses. If they don’t give you a real address, they ain’t getting nothing.

You’re giving them something that they want. They need to give you something in exchange so you need to make sure you set it up that way.

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Drive Them to a Landing Page

The third way you can do it is to actually drive them to a landing page and then they put their email in there and you send them an email with the link to information on the listing. Do not require registration when they’ve already given you their email address.

Don’t do that, that’s just annoying.

So that’s 3 ways on just the “Just Listed” ad, So if you have listings you should be leveraging those. You should be running those as ads out to a pin-drop audience, multiple pin-drop audiences in your area.

Ideally, if you’re in a area where people tend to live here and they tend to move here, whether they move up or down you need to make sure if you have a listing in that area, you are targeting where people tend to move from, you need make sure of that, okay?

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Home Value Ads

The second way, the second way is, I know you’ve heard of it “Home Value” ads, but there is a caveat. Here’s the thing with “home value” ads. “Home value” ads are often done so poorly that people don’t get responses. You still have to be building, creating, not building. You’re creating a relationship with people.  

People know the drill. They know when you they what is your home worth?… blah, blah, blah, if they click the button and give you their email, they assume you’re going to, I don’t know, sell them and convince them to buy the Taj Mahal or something like out of their control.

People are weird about real agents. Weird, totally, because most of us don’t ever follow up after the first or second thing. I don’t know why most people are weird about it,

I guess because most agents don’t follow up and the few that do are sometimes so ridiculously annoying. They’re only sell, sell, sell, sell. They’re not actually giving value and helping people through the decision making process, etc.

So when you’re doing your “home value” ads, the key here, you can do it either using Leadpages like I said before or lead ads, I will give you the link and resources to all these, you can do it either way, but the key here is do not try to be all things to all people.

What do I mean?

Well, when somebody has a home to sell; one person may have a two-bedroom in a high-rise, another person may have 5-bedroom McMansion on 2-acres, another person may have a mobile home, another person may have a 3-bedroom, 2 bath track home.

Every single one of those people has a different desire or motivation to sell. Every single one.

You need to run ads that are focused on their desire or their motivation.

For example, if you want people who are “move-up buyers” and actually, that is the next ad, but if you want people who are “move-up” people and you want to sell their homes, then you need to actually say, “Hey are you running out of space?” or you need to focus on why they would move up.

It’s not just because they’re making more money. Maybe it’s because they have more toys. Maybe it’s because they have more kids, maybe because the in-laws are moving in or the parents are moving in. Maybe it’s because in my example they work from home, both spouses’ work from home and they both need great office space, maybe that’s why they want a nice big house.  

What is that, the person who is in the condo – where are they going? Are they getting married? I know you don’t know every single one, but what do they typically do? Are they getting married and want a house, move out to the suburbs? Or are they somebody who have a 2-bedroom and want to move out of the area? Are they moving into assisted living? What are they doing?

You need to run your ad, each ad so you’re going to have to run multiple ads. These are home-value ads but you have to run the ad that caters to their desire.

If you want to get seen in the news feed, if you don’t want to get scrolled past, if you want to stop that scroll you gotta stop saying “Hey, home values have gone up this much, what’s yours gone up?”

People ignore those. You need to start going “Hey, did you just get jet skies? Did you just buy an RV? Are you tired of that HOA telling you that you can’t park your RV there? Maybe you should sell and buy something else? Are you tired of all the noise that condos have? You know the neighbor noise. Are you sick of living 15 miles out because the drive is 2 hours long depending on whatever your drive is?”

You need to focus on what the desire is.

You can run a whole bunch of “home value” ads  just like “ listing” ads. You can run a whole bunch. You are not limited to who you work with, It’s just your ad needs to be very, very focused, very singularly focused on that single desire. Okay?

That’s why ads aren’t working because they’re not focused. They’re just general stuff.

Alight, Lisa said, “If we’re still building an audience should we be running ads?”

Yes, yes, you should, but different ads, we’ll talk about in a little, we’ll get to that.

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Move-up Ads

Alright the third way to capture real estate leads from Facebook is “Move-up” ads. Now I alluded to it in the home value ad but that’s a“home value” ad targeting someone who is selling to move up.

Here’s another way to target people who want to move-up. They’re called “move-up” ads so why do, instead of going for the home value “do you want to get your home value because you want to move”, go for the desires.

Maybe they need a 4-bedroom, maybe they need a home office, maybe they need more yard space so we’re talking move up buyers here. You run “move-up” buyers ads but these people, you want them to go check out what they could have.

So basically you are working on playing with their desires to change their lifestyle, their desires to maybe become a different family type or different person. Again, I can use myself as an example because that’s the one I know the best. When we we purchased our home, our current home a year ago, yes one of our desires was well guess what?

I run a company from the house. I needed a nice, big, office space. My husband is a performer. He needed a rehearsal studio. We needed space for the theater, the theaters that we are involved in for the props and for the costumes. We wanted a really big open inside home that spilled to the outside so we could entertain because Chuck does a lot of home performances here.

So we knew exactly that we needed that space and those things. Those are all desires that you can target people in ads and show them what they can get.

So for example you could think of someone who just loves the outdoors. They love to garden, they love to do whatever. Find homes that have space for them to garden and have that in there, all that kind of stuff or if they love to RV, find homes that have RV parking, that’s the list

You’re going to do exactly like I said in the first one. It’s an IDX list of properties. You can do it two ways.You can run the ads, tell people, show people a couple of little pictures, drive them to the IDX link, require registration or you could do it through Leadpages and email it to them.

Either way, that’s what you want to do. You want to spark those desires. You want to fan that flame. That’s what you want to do.

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Interest or Geographic Search List

Okay the fourth way, the fourth way to capture real estate leads from Facebook is based on their interest or a geographic search list.

So what do I mean by that?

One of our best ads was so simple, so crazy and Facebook didn’t actually have ads when we ran this on. We did it on Craigslist and it was literally, we live in a area so let me explain our area so you can understand this.

We live in an area where we have lot of lakes and lots of rivers but there’s one island, okay? One of the best ads that I ever run was “Do you want to live on an Island?”

That was the top part of the ad and it drove people to a list of the properties that were available on that little island. There was like I don’t know a hundred properties on this one island. There was usually about 4-8 houses available for sale; that very specific so that would be an interest or geographic location. You could do it by school district….”Do you want to live in school district whatever?”

I know some of you are going  “Can my IDX do that? You don’t drive people to just a generic IDX search or the ability to search. You have to set this up inside your IDX very specifically and for that I recommend IDX broker.

I have the link in the resources for you. You need to be able to drive people to the exact search that you’re talking to them about in the ad exactly. You don’t want them searching for anything else at all.

People are way too distracted, I mean guys we are worse than goldfish, we have like an 8 second or 7 second attention span and goldfish have a 8 or 9 second attention span. We can barely put food to our mouths or we forget to eat, we forget our kids at school, we’re like this is crazy guys.

So you have to make it like insanely simple for them and you have to give them exactly what they’re talking about as fast as possible like as fast as possible. So you would do interest or geographic search stuff like that. You can do it by neighborhood, by school district.

You could do it by…. I’m trying to think of different things you could do it by. You could do it by parks, if they like to swim, bike, run, iron man, if they want to be close to an area where they could just walk around or to a downtown area or sections.

All of these are different kinds of ads you can run, all of them.

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Leveraging the Lead Magnet

Alright, what’s number five?  Number five is leveraging lead magnets. Now let me explain what I mean by that.

First, what a lead magnet is. I think I alluded to it in one of the first ones of these when I talked about your IDX link on a listing can be a lead magnet. A lead magnet is typically like a checklist, template, eBook, download, infographic, something that gives somebody a valuable resource that they can tangibly use and access themselves.

Sometimes lead magnets are videos, trainings or whatever okay?  So let me just tell you right now when you comment with SEND THE RESOURCES in this link and you sign-up for RIBBIT I’m totally giving you stuff that in a sense is a lead magnet.

I am asking you to connect with me on Messenger so that I can then send this to you so that when we have video number 5, I can convert all of this and I can notify you.

That in sense is a lead magnet. I am bringing you into my list. Does this make sense?

So that’s what you want to do. Lead magnets can be all kinds of things. In fact if you are a Realtor, a member of The National Association of Realtors then you have access to some already completed lead magnets.

Some things that you can use for lead magnets…so all Realtors can access I think it’s Realtor.org and if you have your NRDS number then you can log in and they often have PDF downloads like booklets and stuff you can download and email to your prospects and your clients.

Things like “How to know if you have lead paint?” Let’s see what else… I can’t remember all of them but there is a whole bunch of resources on Realtor.org, okay?

Here’s the thing with that. You need to make sure that you find something in that resource list that  people actually want to know or you need to word it in a way that people want to know about.

If you live in an area that has a lot of older homes, a lot of historic homes then a lead paint brochure explaining what it is and what they can do to make sure it doesn’t become a problem in their listing, if they go to list or when they go to sell or with any type of financing, then that’s a great place to put it.

If you live in an are where pretty much the entire neighborhood is less than 20 years old, you’re not going to have lead paint issues so people aren’t going to be clicking on that. So you need to think about what issues you have.

If you live in a flood prone area talk to them about what it means to have flood insurance etc. If you live in an earthquake area give them a checklist or a template “how to find good insurance, how to do this or how to do that.”

Explain to people; it’s really interesting that people don’t realize that you can’t get insurance through anybody except FEMA. No matter where you live so explain that to them, teach them.

We got flood insurance on our home. We don’t live in a flood zone at all but we have a pool and if that pools cracks and floods we’re not covered. Well we are now but we weren’t because we didn’t have flood insurance before so explain that to people. If you have a lot of pool owners, is that a rider that’s included? Of course most pool owners that I’m thinking about are in Florida and they have flood insurance.

Those are just examples of things you can create and turn into lead magnets, that become a download that you can then say, “Hey, give me your email address and I will send this to you.” Those are the people you are putting on your list, okay? 

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Coming Soon Listings

Alright, way number six that you can use to capture real estate leads from Facebook. “Coming soon listings”, coming soon. You have to follow whatever rules that are in your jurisdictions as far as your associations and your real estate commission of course.

Coming soon listings, can be run the exact same ways as a “Just Listed” and if it’s not in the IDX yet, then do the lead page landing page option or the lead ad option I talked about with you in number one. If you’re not sure, go back to number one.

So all of these ways, “coming soon,” same way, tease people, let people know the way to find out about these coming soon listings is to subscribe to your page.The way people get notified that I am going live and doing a training is they’re on my page or they’re in my email list. That is how you guys know I am on here training and doing things,

So the six ways.  Just Listed ads, Home Value ads, Move-Up ads, Interest/Geographic search ads, Search List, Leveraging Lead Magnets, and Coming Soon Listings.

Those are the 6 ways. If you want these resources comment SEND THE RESOURCES here and for those who are like “Dude, can I just get inside your membership?” here’s the link to the Vault.

So if you want to know, we have the link. The membership is open throughout the Vault. We actually have a vault of trainings that we’re sending out for people who want to join. If you’re already a member, you already have everything so don’t send a message saying you want the vault. Just comment with SEND THE RESOURCES here and once you have confirmed with RIBBIT and he has sent you those other resources, you’ll another email that you can get into the membership.

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Q & A

Alright, so Julie says

What is the sweet spot number of listings you can allow them to view before requiring registration?

When you’re running an ad its zero, ZERO. No listings, when you’re running a “Just Listed” ad it is zero, none. When you’re running any type of ads you can let them see the list, but you cannot let them see anything about the listing. You want to show them what they’ll get, but if they click on it you require registration. This is for ads. If you’re paying money to drive traffic to this you’ve got to have that registration on. There are no freebies, there are no freebies there.

Tammy wants to know, “if you can get inside my head!”

There’s way to much, you would get inside my head Tammy, you’d get inside my heads, let’s be real about this and you’d be bald because my head is like a million miles an hour. I do a lot of yoga breathing and meditation to calm me down. It’s crazy in there, like it’s crazy. You’d go crazy, because it’s crazy in there.

Lisa said

If we’re still building an audience should we be running ads?

Yes, you should. You still gotta eat. You want to start with the audience, but you also need to be building the list. You also need to be nurturing so we’re doing all these layers. You start in order but you kind of keep doing them all at once. Always, always, thinking of the strategy and you’re always working on your audiences, always working on your list, and you’re always working on converting. That’s the next video.

Now here’s the thing about this. Once you get this built, a lot of this stuff we’re doing is going to work for all aspects. So you go from your strategy, to your audience, to your list, to your nurture, to clients, right?

Well when you’ve also got this you go to strategy to audience and you go audience to list. Well when people are on your list, they’re also going to come back here to your audience. They are going to kind of rotate through because you’re going to let your list know what’s going on out in audience,right?

So once they come down here to nurture, part of your nurture process is going to drive them back up to the audience things you’re doing and back up to your list things that you’re doing. So all of this is going to become one big, huge whirlpool. I’ve used that example before, it becomes one big whirlpool, and eventually, everybody’s going to be touched on all of these levels.

Alright, Julie says,

Two weeks, not weekly?

I know you’re referring to, your snail mail, this is physical mail you send in the mail should be every two weeks, without fail. This is not email, email should be absolutely, minimum one time a week, absolutely.

Alright let me keep looking at the thing, the questions.

Rick says,

How far out should a pin-drop be under just listed ads?

So where are the people buying from? So in our market when we were targeting, we couldn’t do this with Facebook back then so be that as it may but if I were actively doing it now with investors I knew the top five counties around the country that investors were buying from, they were buying in.

Our market from these five counties, this was like 14 years ago, Facebook didn’t exist so I couldn’t do this but we did do it via direct mail and we did do it via investors clubs so we connected at the time with investors clubs and we went and did presentations to these areas where we knew people were buying in our county right?

You can do that on Facebook now so if you know that people are buying, you’ve got 3-bedroom, 2-bath, you know a lot people buy 3-bedroom, 2-bath rent ready homes to rent out.

In our market it’s kind of crazy right now and people are buying again. It’s a little high for investors but they’re still buying again.

Here’s the thing, when you know where they’re buying from you can pin-drop that audience wherever they are. So one of the counties was King County in Seattle. That’s 5 hours away from us. Another was Ada County in Boise, another county was Orange County in California, another was San Diego and then Spokane County.

So we had 5 counties that we knew were buying in our area and we targeted heavily. Heavily, heavily Orange County and San Diego County. Those were the 2 counties we targeted the most and Seattle.

So these numbers, like all of that stuff I just told you totally different now. The way you find that out is by going onto the census bureau website and look at the migration patterns for that. So when Rick says, “How far out should a pin-drop be under a “Just Listed” ads, it should be where you think people are going to buy that property from or where do they tend to come from?

If they’re first time home buyers, you want to be in areas where people are mostly renting. If they are move-up, if you have a listing and it’s a “move-up” listing, so a first time buyer wouldn’t buy it but the next move-up they would then you need to target where those homes are that first-time buyers own okay? That’s what you always want to be doing.

Lisa said “So if I have a listing I can run an ad essentially even while building my audience” Absolutely.

Tammy are laughing at me because my head is crazy? Yeah, totally crazy.

Julie says,

Do you use Send Out Cards for the snail mail?

Yes – Abso-freakin-lutely. Yes or a newsletter type correspondence. We used to just individual newsletters or just individual things, but I switched it all over to Send Out Cards, because it was way stinking easier. And they were getting actual cards and things like that. Totally awesome!

Joe says, “What about 1st Time Home Buyer ads featuring $0 Down?”

‘You know that is a great thing, I think they don’t believe it. A lot of things, I wouldn’t even say $0 down. I would go more into like “Buy a house with no upfront cost, no down payment, no nothing.” I would talk about all the different things. Talk about their credit, people with FHA, buying though FHA, they could have a 580 credit score and buy FHA.

So a lot of people don’t realize they could have fairly poor credit and still buy a house. A lot of people don’t realize they could do like 3 and half percent down, or like I know our area has zero down.

Our area has what’s called…I can’t even remember what it’s called now but it is where there’s an organization that gives what’s called a soft second. They buy houses and refurbish them and sell them as new to very low-income people.

That’s a really great thing. It’s a really long, buying process and it can be very stressful, but it’s a really great thing. We did several of them when we’re doing them. Well Chuck did them or they would have driven me batty, not the people but the process.

So we had those, but you need to talk about those because people don’t realize that the limits have gone up on FHA. Maybe they don’t realize that.

It’s honestly better to focus on their desires not the statistics. I’m sorry, not the factual numbers. People don’t care that interest rates have gone up because they have no idea what that means.

They don’t believe our warnings that they’re going up because you know, they don’t believe us.

So you need to do more things that focus on their desires. If they’re like, “man if I buy a house right now I can barely get in, this is all I can afford.” Then you tell them well 3 weeks ago you could have afforded this because the interest rates have gone up so you could have afforded this.

Don’t hesitate but make sure the information is factual and timely. Do not try to use the whole scare mongering thing. That’s why people think real estate agents are worse than used car salesmen.Because they don’t believe us so do it in a way that they will believe us.

Tammy says “not to mention it sounds like stated income approvals are coming back.” I hope not, because, if you guys know, the California market right now is softening, it’s softening. And they lead the country, they lead us.

So I’ve been telling probably for the last four or five months, I’ve been telling everyone that we probably have about eighteen to twenty four more months in our upward progression in our market at least at the speed it’s going up. And, I’m thinking, we are either going to flatten out or go down and the minute that news came out about California I’m like “I called it” because it’s just history.  

Every eight to ten years this happens in California. Prices go crazy, then they crash, prices go crazy, then they crash. It doesn’t happen everywhere but our market is affected by the California market.

Now it was really bad in the recession, of course, because anybody could get any type of loan. Like all you had to do literally was write on this piece of paper with a Sharpie that I make 3 million dollars a year. Can I get  three million dollar in loans? People were getting that and it was ridiculous..

Hopefully they’ve fixed that so that’s not happening.  Now, I know you can’t do stated income right now, and the credit requirements haven’t loosened up so we’ll see,.I know costs are going up.

So these are all the different things you can do. The thing is you can use these…these are considered “scaremongering” to the buyer. They don’t believe what you tell them, because they don’t believe you. So if you want your ads to work, you have got to run your ads focused on their desires, focused on what they want, on what they believe to be true, on what they believe they should be able to have.

So that’s why, when I went through all six of these. I was very clear that it’s about them. Not about the interest rates, not about the zero down.

We keep thinking in the “sell this crap” mindset, when it’s in “how do we help them achieve the life that they want.” That’s the mindset that you need to be in, to be able to communicate with them so that they will listen to you so that they will stop the scroll. That is the key. It’s like completely separate mindsets.  

We’re used to like selling our products or peddling our wares when we actually need to be solving their problems and helping them through the journey. Same thing, but the perspective is completely different because by helping them through their journey, we are going to be utilizing the products that we have and what we know, right?

If people are like “I’m frustrated in this neighborhood, we’ve been renting, whatever you’re going to go “Oh okay I’ve got this zero down loan,” or “Oh okay I’ve got FHA” but they are not going to hear you when you say “zero down” or “FHA.” They are going to hear you when you say “oh, neighbors got you down? Are you tired of the noise? Sick of living with neighbors who smoke? Sick of living wall to wall?”

Whatever those things are for that person, that desire to buy their own house that’s what you need to use. That’s where you are going to have your success. That’s where you are going to stop the scroll and that’s where you are going to actually get results and get leads from Facebook.

So like I said, comment with SEND THE RESOURCES here or this is the link so if you want to get inside “The Vault,” you can. I’m doing something kind of crazy. I have taken some trainings that I’ve never sold before. They’ve been bonuses to courses that I’ve done in the past and they are the most popular ones and people have begged me to sell them and I’m like “no, no, no, no, no.”

So what I have done is I’ve put them in “The Vault.” So if you want to get into there, like this is crazy, the “Facebook Lead Generator” course in there that course is a $1,297 course. The Art of Nurture” course is in there, never sold it but I would have sold that for $497. There are fourteen other master classes in there but those two alone are over $1,700 but I’m selling the whole “The Vault,” for $297 and you get one month free inside Leads and Leverage.

In the meantime, early next week, I do not have the date yet, we have people coming to visit us and I need to make sure that I don’t schedule a live stream for when the entire house is crazy. So I’m going to be doing video number four for this training, for this Vault series and guess what we are going to be talking about?

Once you get people on your list how do you nurture them so that they turn into clients? We are going to talk about the nurture piece. And then number five is going to be the conversion piece.

So we are going to talk about how nurturing is actually converting, all next week. How do you get those people that are on your list to give you a ring-a-ling-ling, and say “hey, I want buy a house,” or “hey, I want to sell my house.” How do you do that? We are going to talk about that.

Kim says “this is great! Going to use the pin ad idea to run an ad to renters for a entry level condos!” Great! Perfect! Just make sure you focus on their desires. Make sure you focus on them.

So this is kind of like a “features” versus “benefits” thing. If you describe a house as a “three bedroom, two bath house, fully fenced, RV parking, etc, etc” those are just features.

But if you describe a house as a “room-to-grow kind, a backyard that every single dog would love, space to put to your RV so you can plan those trips,” if you talk about it through the benefits, like what it would actually look like and feel like, it will pull completely different responses.

People aren’t into the facts. They are into what it feels like. They’re into what it looks like for their life. That’s what they are into.

So features versus benefits. Everything. Facts versus desires. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you are an engineer, you buy based on emotion, period.

A lot of engineers or a lot of people who think they don’t buy based emotions, they are liars. They just don’t know themselves. Every single person, every single purchase you have ever made, I don’t care if you spread sheet it to Kingdom Come, your emotion drove the decision.

It totally did which is exactly why we all justify every single purchase that we make. We do it.

So if you want to reach buyers that want to buy something, you have got to reach their emotion. You have to. You have to reach that.  That’s their desire, their reason for buying or their reason for selling.

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Join Us Inside The Vault

Comment here with “SEND ME THE RESOURCES” if you want me to send those to you, and for those of you who are going to join us inside “The Vault,” and inside Leads and Leverage, I got some stuff for you!  

We’ve got a whole bunch of trainings coming, we’ve got a whole bunch of members who are rocking it and sharing their secrets, so very excited for all of this! It’s going to be an amazing last five months of 2018.

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Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: Done, facebook lead generation, real estate lead generation

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Discover the strategies, tactics and tools to organize your real estate lead generation so it gets done even when you’re insanely busy during peak season


If you want the resources from today’s show, just type “Keep Me Sane” in the comments of of the Facebook video above


When it’s busy, when you’re busy, when you’re overwhelmed, when you’re dealing with clients and you can’t even see straight – how do you organize your real estate lead generation so that it gets done even when you’re insanely busy?

How do you keep that momentum going so that you don’t suffer from or affected by the feast and famine mode, especially the famine mode.

So last week you guys asked me how I organize my contact creation, my lead generation so that I don’t get overwhelmed or get insane. That is what I am going to share with you today.

How to organize your lead generation, your real estate lead generation, especially the content piece of it, so that it gets done no matter what is going on in your life.

You should not be working 20 hours a day and only getting 4 hours a day, that should not be our lives.

We should not be on 7 days a week, we need to have a break, but often times what gets compromised when we take this break is our actual lead generation.

So today, we are going to walk through how I do it.

How I stay organized to keep that content creation going. You’ve seen me go live every week day in August and you’re seeing me live every day at 10 am.

How am I doing it?
How am getting this done?
How am I coming up with the topics?
How am I not overwhelmed?
How am I enabling myself to actual get it done and not come up with excuses to not get it done?

Does that make sense?

As always if you want the resources from today’s show, just type “Keep Me Sane” in the comments of of the Facebook video above.

If you’re watching this on YouTube I will give you the link to this Facebook video so you can get the resources as well!  

Let me first tell you a little bit about today.

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Strategies, tactics and tools

We are going to talk about strategies, tactics and tools.

Those are the 3 pieces we are going to talk about and this is all related to organizing your real estate lead generation, specifically the content.

For me, in my real estate business, in my Leads and Leverage business -my lead generation centers around my content.

What I mean by my content is the questions I can answer. That was the same thing when I was in real estate, same thing as a team leader, same thing in sales, as a broker, same thing here in Leads and Leverage and it’s going to be the same for our Cork Trek wine business.

It’s all about helping people solve a problem, that means that everything I am doing is helping people see their next step and helping along in their journey and I have talked about that a lot.

Strategies, tactics and tools those are the 3 things…..

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Strategies

First of all, when it comes to strategies all of everything I do, lead generation whether email, snail mail, Facebook post, open houses, phone calls etc. those all revolve around content.

I need to know what I am going to say, what I am going to do, how I am going to act, etc. This does not involve memorizing scripts at all.

This is not about script objectives, this is about helping, giving and serving. When you help people, you become conjoined with them, you become entwined with them when you’re helping them because you’re helping them on a mutual journey which is about them and that’s what this all is.

So when it comes to content creation the content you’re creating is the stuff that’s going to go into your emails, into your blog post, into your snail mail.

It’s going to go into your newsletters if you do newsletters.

It’s going to be apart of your phone calls.

It’s going to be a part of your open houses, a part of your door knocking.

It is apart of everything.

Instead of going out and trying to pitch your services, how about you go out and serve, actually serve.

Here is what you want to do.

 You need to know what do your prospects, your clients, what do they need? 

Here is what I mean by that. You need to always be on the watch. So this is what I would do. I would watch for questions I got directly from people while talking face to face, if someone is actually emailing me questions, especially in real estate, because they often email.

Yes, sometimes it’s what’s the price, what’s this, what’s that etc. What is the underlying question in “What’s the price?”

They want to know if they can afford it.
They want to know how they can afford it.

There are a whole lot of questions in there, just look beyond. But I look for questions whether I get them directly, via email, via text, or in person or I overhear.

I don’t know about you but if I work in a coffee shop or I am in line at the grocery store, I swear when I hear the words “selling a house, buying a house, real estate, etc.”

My radar goes crazy. I’m listening, but I don’t look like I am, but I so am.

You don’t have to interrupt their conversation. What I want you to do with this when you overhear that, start taking notes, use your phone and record the questions, write it down.

If it triggers something write it down, “Why are they listening to their neighbor when they need to talk to a Realtor?” “Why are they on Zillow?” all sorts of things.

I am always looking out for questions, whether they are directly or something I overhear, I am looking for questions in Facebook groups, local and different groups etc.

When you see or hear a question, how can you solve it?
You need to figure out how to solve it, and sometimes answering it directly isn’t what the consumer wants, they want you to answer it indirectly as well.

So what I mean by that is you need to solve it so that, for example:

You guys wanted to know what are things you could do to get more leads then I moved into how I organize myself, how I do this. I am going to be doing a lot of videos for you from that one question.

So when someone says, “I don’t know how I can afford XYZ” what are somethings you can do? Could you actually introduce them to Dave Ramsey or whichever financial person you follow?

Could you introduce them?
Could you teach them how to budget?
Could you give them resources?
If they need to repair their credit, can you give them resources to help them with that?

All of this stuff.

I have trained my brain to always be searching out questions, thoughts, statements, ideas that I can use for content, things that trigger responses from me, things that drive a passion in me.

I want to be able to help in areas that I feel are important that you need help with. It’s the same way as it was in real estate with things that are important.

I didn’t want to give the same answers in the same way, that everyone else was giving or give the same information that Associated Press was giving or that they find on Zillow or Forbes or whatever else boring crap that no one actually listens to.

They just repeat verbatim and hello have you actually listened to that advice? You need to actually need to give them something real, give them something real and help them.

 You need to train the brain to actually see the content everywhere to what is going on. 

Here is a simple thing in your own home. It’s coming upon fall, fall is coming and there is a lot of stuff people need to know or could do to prep their home for the upcoming winter.

You should start thinking about that now and that is a journey piece you can help them with.
Is it about the trees?
Do they even know who they could call about the trees?
Do they know what to do if they have to fertilize their lawn?
Can you find them a YouTube video?

Literally take them to point where you feel like they know nothing and give them the resources.

This is huge. Bring in people, talk to your local nursery and do a video interview of what can they do right now.  What are the top 3 things people can do to ready their yards for winter? You need to train your mind to always be searching for things, content people can use.

You have to train your brain to always see all of this content everywhere.

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Tactics and Tools

The next thing we need to talk about; I was going to talk about tactic than tools but I realized in the tactics I talk the tools so we are going to do tactic and tools together.

And again, if you want these resources and you’re watching on Facebook type “Keep Me Sane” in the comments of the video above.  

If you are watching this on YouTube, in the description box there will be a link to this original video so you can get the resources as well.

Alright the very first thing I use and I think it is the absolute best software, app, whatever you want to call it, however there is a piece to this you need to know.

I think it is the best one on the planet for this kind of thing.  

It is called Evernote and I know some of y’all are like I can just use Google Docs but here’s the thing with Evernote.

I can use it on my desktop. I can use the same app on my Laptop. I can use the same exact app on my iPhone. I can use the same exact app on my iPad.

I realize so far it’s like Google Docs and can do the same thing. I can use the same exact app on my Apple watch too.

Now, let me tell you something about this. With Evernote, every piece of it is searchable.

I know Google Docs is too, however when you’re out on the web or you’re watching something or you’re reading something you can get plugins from Evernote to save the entire thing to your Evernote.

You can do all sorts of things you cannot do in Google Docs for this piece. It’s great for gathering research and it’s easier than Google Docs.

There are many different ways to use Evernote. You grab whole pages, snippets all real easily.

Like I said, there are a million and one ways you can leverage it. I use the Snippet tool on Chrome. I have it on my desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPad and watch.

Here is where I find it very, very, very, very handy as a real estate agent and I am betting you will too.

Before I would use my phone and make sure the Evernote app was on there and I would say, “Hey Siri open Evernote” and I would use the record option. I would have it record it for me and I didn’t have to touch anything. Now I can do that from my watch. Love that! Boom, boom and I am done!

If I am driving along and I have a thought or I see a sign or something triggers an idea or a content piece, I can record it into my Evernote and I love that. So when I am driving and I think of something or I am out I use Evernote from my watch or my phone to record it and talk to it.

I am constantly throwing ideas into “notebooks” in Evernote so I will grab entire articles to read or if I see a headline, then I will put my own notes as to why or how it inspired me because that is the piece I want to write about, what it did to me or whether I agree or disagree.

If I feel there much more to it then what the article writer shared or they didn’t go enough into this or if it’s another one that says use a Realtor, how lame and stupid is that, I would actually write about that stuff.

 You need to share. You need to be out there and you need to basically tell them the truth instead of just trying to get the sale. 

When I watch videos especially on YouTube, I am always throwing links and notes about the video and links to the videos into Evernote. It’s like my gathering place for everything.

Then what I do once a month. I go through my Evernote, my big compilation of stuff  and I pull exact thoughts that would be good for articles, emails, snail mail, whatever.

I will pull that and put it into Google Drive as a spreadsheet. On that spreadsheet, I put that sentence or headline in there as well as 3 to 4 bullet points about that content.

What about this do I agree or disagree with?
What about this do I think they need more of?

So once a month, or you can do once a week, go through and you can pull questions and 3 -4 bullet points with it.

I make sure I have at least 20-30 different topics or questions in there each time I do it. What I find when I pull a topic, often the topic is bigger than an 10 – 15 minute training, video or email, so I end up splitting it up. This video is an example, okay?

The other day in “How to Keep Your Facebook Page Happy and Active while Running Your Real Estate Business at the Same Time” I walked you through and you asked me more questions about that topic and one of those questions was, “How do I organize it all and make it happen?”

Thus today’s video talking about organizing. Another question you asked me about was batching so I will be doing a video on that, another question was time blocking, we’re going to be doing a video on that, so I’m going to be walking you through every single one of these.  

That is the same thing that is going to happen to you.

You’re going to see a topic and realize I actually need to go deeper into this piece. You can do a overview then go into the piece so that is going to happen with question.

If someone ask, “How do I know if I qualify?” and your answer is “I don’t know. Go talk to a lender.” That doesn’t help anybody. They already know that is an option but they haven’t done it for whatever reason. Why?

Because they don’t want to waste the lender’s time or they don’t think they’ll qualify or they don’t want to be embarrassed.

Why not give them key things that will help them?

One thing I noticed which is super interesting.

I was watching a video on YouTube. I am fascinated with people who sell everything and buy a boat and live on the boat and travel the world. Now, we’re not going to do that, not interested in doing, but I am very fascinated.

We’ve already done our RV travel, so I am done with that but I am fascinated by why they choose to do it, the work involved, etc. so I was watching a channel last night, watching one person’s video and it was called “What You Should Know About Boat Loans” and I am like I will never need a boat loan, but this video was really great. He was explaining insider stuff, he was explaining the difference in loans,etc. Not the verbatim crap we usually hear about loans. It was really interesting and I could relate.

This video was triggering thoughts about real estate and I was like if people talked about the little nuances and actually taught them why if you’re going to apply for a mortgage why not apply for this credit or this credit or whatever, not just tell them but show them. It was really great how he did that. I thought this is great, this is a really good video.

When I am organizing myself and my questions and my bullet points in the spreadsheet, this help me see at a glance how much content I have and they give me options each day just incase on a particular day I am not feeling a certain topic, I’ve got twenty to choose from.

You know me and my soap boxes, when I am really passionate about something or it’s got me, that’s the topic I want to talk about that day. It’s usually because one of you guys have either said something or come to me and asked a question or I see you struggling with it in other groups so that is why I love having that spreadsheet.

Not only that, it’s just like, I know you’ve heard the phrase “That if you really want to exercise in the morning, you need to make sure you set yourself up for success.”  You create your environment, right? So when you create that environment, your gym clothes are there, your shoes are there, your water bottle is there, basically you don’t give yourself an excuse to go back to sleep.

It’s all there, you don’t have to go gather anything, it’s there for you. It’s the same thing here, and I will go into detail on this the batching video I will teach you.

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Set Yourself Up For Success

Here’s the thing, you need to set yourself up for success. You need have a variety of options and answers for you.

Evernote. Google Docs. Google Spreadsheets, specifically. It’s free and it’s easily accessible.

You can always use IFTT and connect your Evernote to your Google Spreadsheets which is kind of cool.

The third thing I use is Google Calendar. I use Google Calendar and the dreaded phrase here, time blocking. I time block. Once a week I have 1 hour a week scheduled for my content  batching.

What do I mean by that? I schedule every single Friday after my live ends that I do with you guys. I schedule for one hour to plan out for the next week so I know exactly what I am going to say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I plan it out, I pick my topics from the spreadsheet so the work is already done. I just pick it out.

When I talk to you about the process I go through to create my content, to organize, batching and the checklist, the process I go through to repurpose content – I am going to talk through some of the checklist I have created myself that help me know the pieces.

I actually have this on my live stream checklist that I go through so I know all the pieces are getting done, all the pieces I need to do, that all the pieces are all there so when I sit down to actually batch at the end of the week, and I am batching next week stuff.  My content’s already done. I am just picking the 5 things I am going to talk about next week, that’s it.

That’s what makes it so easy. You have everything in Evernote and it’s going, all your content, you have your spreadsheet going and you’ve been putting your bullet points down so you already know what you kinda want to say.

Then you have your calendar and you time block.

So I outline my topics for the following week and I do live streams every weekday, that’s right now in August.

I may keep going because this is really fun! If I have more time in that hour, I keep moving ahead, at least laying out the topics for the next week. I time block my content creation after my 10 am live with you guys, it’s time blocked on my calendar.

I even have the pre-live stuff blocked so I know, I need 30 minutes to put together, to make sure my outline is correct, make sure all is in place, and it’s ready to go. I just need 30 minutes to get my head into the space with you guys.

I time block my content re-purposing. In other words, I time block and I stick to it. I know without a doubt the number one thing I need to do every single day. If all else fails, I need to be on here with you at 10:00 am, Monday through Friday. That’s what I know because that is my domino for all the rest of my business day, all the rest.

The courses I create inside Leads and Leverage, all the stuff, this is my domino. I know that I made it that way.

I will do a video on re-purposing, on how to re-purpose your content because if you do a video for Facebook you should be able to that on YouTube, in your email. You can use it in a blog post, in a snail mail or newsletter.

In other words, you are creating something once and using it multiple times and I will walk you through that in the next few videos.

I want to make sure I covered everything.

If you want the resources I’ve talked about and as a little bonus I’m giving you the notes from today, type “Keep Me Sane” in the comments of the video above if you are on Facebook.

Again, if you’re on YouTube or IGTV, I will put the link inside the description for you, so that you come over to the original video and get these resources.

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What Was Most Useful For You?

Please make sure you ask me your questions. Let me know. I need this feedback from you guys.

I need to know, What was most useful for you??

What was most useful for you today? This is really helping me know what to do next for you in the videos.

What do you need from me? I won’t know unless you tell me, so make sure you comment below, what was most useful for you?

And if you want me to go deeper on how to do some of this stuff, tell me that too, say “Hey I really would like for you to go deeper on managing your calendar, how you’re setting up your calendar or time blocking or whatever it is you want me to go deep on for you.”

Put it in the comments, if you’re watching on Facebook, YouTube, IGTV – put it in the comments.  Let me know because that is the only way I can know how to help you.

In the next couple of days we’re going to be talking about how to create content once and re-purpose it and what’s the process I go through to create my content.

How do I organize it. I already told you but how do I batch it, and what checklist I use. We’re going to walk through those in the next week or so.

Thank you so much and if you want me to continue doing this every single day at 10:00 am, comment each time and tell me.

If you are in Replay or Live, it doesn’t matter comment and let me know! Comment, Like, Share, it really helps!

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Featured Download

If you want the resources from today’s show, just type “Keep Me Sane” in the comments of of the Facebook video above


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Filed Under: Lead Generation Tagged With: Done, lead generation, real estate lead generation, real estate marketing

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