Do you know, or how do you know, where you should be investing your lead generation budget for the rest of 2018? How do you know?

I’m going to be going through with you the top five places that you as a real estate agent should be putting your lead generation budget into and why.

They are the top five!!

This will allow you to completely ignore all of the shiny object vendors, all of the lead aggregators and everything else because you will know exactly where your money needs to go to get the biggest return and to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Today, I’m going to talk with you about the top five places that you should be investing your real estate budget, specifically your lead generation budget.

Now there are two different budget categories under “marketing.” One is actually lead generation and that’s what we are going to talk about today. But the other is the “branding,” or  “exposure” or the “name recognition.” Now I put quotes around all of those because, yeah, those are all kind of areas where we think we are spending money on marketing and we are not. We are actually throwing it away.

But, but, here’s the thing, that “branding, name recognition, exposure,” those are often things that you wouldn’t, like, almost like donations, where you raise money to support Little League or you would go and sponsor a humane society event or something like that.

Those are things that don’t really bring in lead generation. I categorize them as “good give-back.” And they do give you a little bit of community involvement recognition and those are things you should be doing anyways, absolutely, if you are involved in your community. You should be doing that. You absolutely should be doing that.

However, we are talking about lead generation today.

Now, let me be very, very clear about this. There are two subsets of your marketing budget.The first one is lead generation.

That’s the important one.

The second subset is, like I said, the branding, the name recognition, the exposure, etc. So yes, you need to be doing that. That’s your community involvement stuff, that is your name on the banners at baseball games, that’s your sponsoring park and rec, all that kind of stuff. And put that towards where your passions lie- if you have a passion for animals, if it’s for the homeless, put it towards homeless shelters, etc.

But that’s not what we are going to be talking about today, okay? That is separate. What I’m talking about today is lead generation, like, this is how you are going to grow it, how you will scale it, etc, so you can make more money and spend more time working on the passions you have.

I am assuming that that’s your goal, that your main goal, to make money for your family, clothe yourself, put a roof over your head? And you should be putting your money towards whatever passion you want to be, whether it’s for kids, for the arts. It doesn’t matter, but you have to make that money first!

What Are The Five Areas For Your Lead Generation Budget?

So, let’s go over these five areas- when we are talking about lead generation we are actually talking about building your list, okay.

I’ve talked about this a lot and I’m actually going to be doing a video every single day in the month of August. I realize that today is July 31st so I’ve kind of already started this today.

But I’m going to be doing this everyday in August and it’s going to be all about these things that you need, about lead generation, about email marketing, about all kinds of stuff because I want you to go into the second half this year and so that you don’t start getting sick to your stomach because we know that the busyness of the summer is not going to extend and so we need to ramp this up now.

That’s what we are going to work on.

So there are five areas where you need to putting your lead generation budget and I’m going to tell you right now that not a single one of them will be going to a real estate specific vendor. You will not be sending money to Zillow or any other lead aggregators. That is not putting money into your lead generation budget.

Here’s what I have seen….I realize that there are people who are getting business from paying for things like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com.  I realize there are agents that do that.

However, this is what I’ve seen behind the scenes of individual sole-preneurs and big teams. They dump money into these sources but they don’t ever convert them into leads. Like, they don’t. They don’t actually contact the leads.

What they are dumping money into and hoping for is, “Oh, hey, some one random lead is actually just going to call them and want to buy or sell real estate.” Almost just like a sign call; you put a sign out there, you get a call, boom you got a lead.

No, that is not the way that online lead generation works. We want it to but that’s not the way it works.

So we are going to talk about the things that you need so that you can number one capture leads, number two convert leads, number three close leads. Capture, convert and close. Those are the three things that you need to be focusing on.

Alright, so let’s talk about the five areas, the five places where you need to be putting your lead generation budget.

Facebook Budget (Social Media)

The very first place is a Facebook budget. I know, I know, you are probably like “what about Instagram? What about Pinterest? What about all this other stuff?” or “People say that I’m wasting time with Facebook. Other people say I should just pay a vendor to do Facebook stuff for me.”

No.

There are things about Facebook that you can outsource- but you have to understand how you are going to make it work for you because just running ads doesn’t work.

Not over the long haul.

You need to have a budget to put into Facebook. If that means you’ve got one dollar per day to put into Facebook, then guess what? You’ve got one dollar a day!

It is harder and takes longer to start out like that but you can do it. You need to have a budget for your Facebook ads and when I say a budget I mean like something consistent. Not like “oh, I just had a closing so I’ve got $500 now. Let’s spend it all this week!”  No. No. You need to have a budget going over time.

If your only source of income is your real estate business and you do not have enough transactions to continue budgeting to keep building your real estate business, you need to go get a side hustle so that you can continue building your real estate business.

I know, I’m one of those, I’m like the antithesis of all the other people in the real estate industry who are like “you need to be in this full time, and you need to do this or that.” But guys, if you can’t afford the marketing budget that you need to have in this then you need to go find a way to get a side hustle. Go drive for Uber, do something to get a side hustle to help grow this business for you.

You can bootstrap it but you have to have income coming in to bootstrap.

So Facebook budget- you gotta have a Facebook budget. If you want to generate high quality, action taking leads, you must absolutely have that in there. Period.

Training

Number two, number two is training. You need to actually invest in training and I’m not talking about going to conferences that a whole bunch of “guru’s” or “top producers” get up there and  tell you fifty different things that you need to do for your business.

That just creates a big headache. It just creates confusion, it creates a nightmare. Let’s just face it.  Most of the teachers that are up there that haven’t been in real estate don’t understand the business, They’re just teaching based on I don’t know what, based on whatever their expertise is but it’s not being a real estate agent, living the life, growing their business that way.

Most of the teachers have never even had to start and launch or feed themselves from their own business.

They’re hired by training companies. So most of them that I know are on like platforms. This is not all…I know a lot of teachers are not like that but I just want to let you know that when you’ve got vendors that are teaching you stuff as far as like teaching you how to do stuff most of those people teaching it are teaching a pre-packaged stuff.

They aren’t teaching from experience. Just be aware of that.

I’m also not talking about the “top-producers,” and I put quotes around that because the definition of top producer is pretty loosy-goosy. So let me just say, that when top producers get up there and say “oh, I did this awesome, amazing, expired thing and you need to follow that,” and then someone else gets up there and says “I did this amazing open house thing” or “here’s what I did,” then another gets up there and says “here’s what I did for my customers, this awesome and amazing thing,” and pretty soon, you’ve got fifty of those.

And pretty soon you’ve got fifty different things you are doing, and let me tell you, you’ll fail because every single one of those top producers who got up there, they actually did one thing, focused on one thing really well and grew it and then added another layer and then grew that and then added another layer to it.

They did not go to a conference like this and try to implement every thing. No that is not the kind of training I am talking about.

I am talking about understanding the strategy behind everything that you are doing, the strategy behind the lead generation for your business, the strategy behind knowing the holes and the gaps in your business, and finding the pieces, not the band-aids, the pieces to plug in there.

It could be a person, a software, or just a task, it doesn’t matter what that is, you have got to understand all of that. Most of the time, in real estate, we are told that you need to spend time on money making activities and Facebook is not a money making activity or that email is not a money making activity.

And I will tell you right now, I will go head-to-head with any real estate “guru” who gets up there and NO..yes it is! Absolutely it is!  

That is how we did over four-thousand transactions in the less than eighteen years. I have the experience, I have the stuff  to prove it, and that’s why we were able to do hundreds of transactions while everyone else was dying in the recession.” Because I invested my time into our website, because I knew it was a money making activity, I invested my time in email marketing, because I knew it was a money making activity.

I did not outsource certain things, I learned the strategy, I learned how to leverage it. And then and only then, did I outsource the task of it.

If you are going to build know-like-trust relationships online you have to be involved. You can’t outsource it to a VA in the Philippines, in India or whatever, you have to do it. And absolutely understand the value of blogging, the value of email marketing, the value of Facebook, absolutely, because that’s literally how you build relationships online.

That’s how you literally, I’ve been saying “literally”  a lot because we are talking about the real meaning of that, and I’m around my kids who say it all the time, but the thing is…Oh and I just lost my train of thought with that. Boop!!

Sorry about that, you need to actually be understanding how to extend relationships and grow them, so that you get “come list me” calls! So that you are building relationships on a one to many scale, so that you are not constantly having to go door knocking for each sale- that’s the kind of training that I’m talking about.

Training on how to actually grow a business, not training on how to use a software, not training on how to use a vendor’s tool, not training on how to hire a lead aggregator not training on “here, I’m this girl, and I did this and that.” I’m talking about knowing and understanding how to grow a a real estate business, and how to move it forward online.  

Number three, so I am kind of a rant here too gosh because I’ve been hearing that a lot of people are outsourcing the health of their business, the growth of their business, the very essence of their business, and they wonder why they are failing. Like they are literally outsourcing it to somebody who they think knows how to do Facebook marketing because they think “oh, they are a millenial.

They are on Facebook and Instagram all the time, I’ve hired my twenty-four year old”, or whatever, to do my Facebook because they’re on it all the time.” Well, being on it and snapping and chit chatting with influencers is not the same thing as lead generating to sell a $500,000 house. Not the same thing. Not even close.

So if you are outsourcing your Facebook because you don’t want to learn it, you either need to get out of the business, or rethink your mindset and go, “okay, alright, this is the new world. I need to at least understand the strategy.” You don’t have to know all the tech, but you do need to understand the strategy of how it will be used, right? Okay, that’s number one and two.

Landing Page Software

Number three, landing page software. You need to invest in landing page software, specifically, Ontraport. Specifically, Ontraport. No, there is not a real estate specific landing page software that does a better job that Ontraport, you need Ontraport, flat out. That’s what you need. You cannot drag people to your website, not for this, you are not going to capture leads and do your list building. You need to invest in landing page software.

Website

Number four, you need a website. However, you need a website that is mobile responsive, you need a website that is lead-capture optimized, you need a website that is content marketing focused, you need a website built on WordPress, not customized, you need a website that you own that is not on a proprietary software.

A lot of the real estate vendors they’re on proprietary softwares, you don’t want to do that, you want to be on WordPress and you want to be able to add, edit, etc whenever you need too, and you want to own as much of that website as you can on your own.

Email Marketing Software

Number five, this is a specific one. You need email marketing software. I am not talking about Top Producer, Realvolve Contactually, Lion Desk, Followup Boss. I’m not talking about those, those are your database, those are your CRM’s.

I am talking about email marketing software like MailerLite, or Ontraport, very specifically, you can even use Active Campaign or Convertkit, or anyone one of those. Email specific software, email marketing software, or “EMS,”very specifically.

Their focus as a company is to make sure that your emails get into the user inbox. Statistically 30% of all email that is sent is not received by the end user.

30%!

That means that three out of every ten emails sent out is not received by the end user, for a number of reasons, like it could be on the send in. It could be after you send something it goes out through your gateway to get out but your gateway could be blocking it.

The other way their ISP could be blocking it. It could be Gmail blocking it. It could be Hotmail blocking it. It could just be random stuff that happens. 3 out of 10 emails do not reach the end user.

The whole way that you are going to grow your business is to have an email list that you can engage with, and if they can’t get your emails because you’re using something like Top Producer.

Top Producer actually has their standards, their specific standards unrelated to the CAN-SPAM Act unrelated to everything else.They have their standards that they apply. They only allow so many emails to go out. If your email has specific wording it in they won’t let it go out.

You do not want to use a company that is not an expert in email marketing. MailerLite is free, so I recommend you use MailerLite. It’s free for you to start. That’s where you want to go.

So you have to know, if you want a strong, consistent and stable real estate business, you have to be both capturing short term and nurturing long term leads. And that’s what all these things do, from your email, to your website, to your landing page software, to the training you need to have and your Facebook budget.

All These Pieces Work Interchangeably

All of those pieces work together interchangeably. When you go door knocking, when you’re first starting out you are going to put people into your email software. You are going to send them stuff.  

When people are on Facebook you are going to drive them to your website. When people are in your email you are going to drive them to your website. From your website you’re going to drive them to your email. From your website you’re going to drive them to Facebook.

You are going to have this huge, circular chaotic, seemingly, web going on because you will want to catch them in your web.

These five places are very, very important that you are spending your money, and seriously, the most important of all of these is your training.

You need to get training that exposes the gaps, the real gaps in your business. Not training that tries to convince you to use a different CRM than you are already using or a different photo source than you are already using, or a different whatever.

You need training that fills in the gaps. So you are not wasting your time buying products from vendors for whatever reason because you think “yeah I need this lead” but instead of looking at it like “yeah I need leads” you are look at it and where are my gaps?”

That’s why it’s really easy for me to not even go to the expos or go to any of the vendors and stuff. I skip past all of them because I don’t have a gap outside of me in my activities, I don’t have a gap in my business currently.

I do know that there is a point, I’m sending out so many emails now, that there is a point where I am going to have to have my own private IP address. I know that’s my next step but I already know my solution for that.

So for you, if you are not sending out emails on a consistent basis, and you don’t have an email marketing software, that’s a gap in your business. So you only look at the places where you have gaps.

So How Do you Know Where The Gaps In Your Business Are?

You know the gaps from the training you get. You know there are gaps when you know there’s a holdup. Are you holding something up because you aren’t doing a certain task? Can you hire someone to help you with that task? And I’m not talking about your relationships, I’m talking about tasks.

And what I mean by that is you need to be the voice on everything that you do. You need to be the voice on your Facebook posts, on your email marketing, etc. But someone else could put all of the pieces together for you and send it out as long as you are the voice that’s in it.

You are the one actually doing the writing of the post, but they could be putting all the stuff together for it. You don’t have to be the one putting all the links in it and all that stuff. You just show up and do your thing.

Does that make sense? Hopefully that makes sense for you guys.

Recap of The Top Five

Alright, so the top five, Facebook budget, training, landing page software, Ontraport specifically, website and email marketing software, all five of those.

That’s what you will need if you are going use online lead generation and let’s face it, if you want to be a successful real estate agent in 2019, 2020 or 2021 or beyond you have to be running your business with online lead generation as a very strong foundational piece to your business.

Face-to-face, alone, not going to work anymore.

You have to have it combined with online lead generation, period. That’s how you are going to grow. Because that’s where people are getting in front of you, because of this.

So that’s the goal for this. That is the purpose of all the training videos I’m going to be doing this month. I really want you to dominate, so we’re going to work on this.

Guess what’s hitting the fan right now?

I don’t know. Most of you should have heard about this, as real estate agents if you use Back At You Media or Real Estate Agent Directory or any of those auto posting real estate information services and you have been posting to your personal profile, starting tomorrow, August 1st, you will not be able to use those services to post to your personal profile.

You will have to use them only for your Facebook business page,and I know there are a lot of disappointed agents out there because they feel like they only get business from their personal profile.

They don’t feel like they get any business from their business page. So we are going to talk about that new rule,because it is a feature that Facebook has turned off finally and I’m going to talk to you about how to get your Facebook page set up so that you can actually generate leads from it.

That’s the point right of it right to generate leads from this to get that Facebook page working because our profiles, people already know us, but our page, people don’t know us. So how do we get to people to know us, like us and trust us,and engage with us? That’s all on tomorrow.

You guys are awesome. I so enjoying doing this. You guys energize me beyond belief and I get fired up when I see people “mistreating” you, I guess and leading you astray. And I realize that everyone has businesses they need to run but I just don’t want you wrongly spending your money.

I really want you in control of your business. I don’t want a broker controlling you or a franchise controlling you or a vendor controlling you. I want you in control of your business.

This is your business. It’s no one else’s. Don’t let anybody else make you think that you have to have these things. Everything that I recommend is something that you need to own separate from your brokerage, separate from your franchise, so that you actually own it so that you can control it because this is your business, and you are building a business, and I don’t want you to be a part of the 87% who fail.