Have you ever been frustrated with Facebook ads because you can’t quite figure out how to get an ad up and running that just works and you don’t really have to check it a lot?

Or do you feel like you should just be able to initiate a lead generation method or campaign or whatever and leave it to do it’s thing and move on to the next thing on your list? Like I did that, next, check, done?

Well, here’s the thing- you are not alone. But, you are looking at lead generation completely upside down and backwards, which is why today, I’m going to walk you through the four stages of successful Facebook lead generation and we can even take out the word Facebook, the four stages of successful lead generation for your real estate business.

Now, I put the word Facebook in there because that’s where we are right now and that’s where I am helping you but this is for your entire lead generation method or system.

No matter where you are joining me from, whether it’s Facebook, YouTube, IGTV, Twitch, wherever you are, would you do me a favor and answer me this……

When it comes to lead generation for your real estate business, what is your number one struggle or frustration with it?

So when it comes to lead generation, what is your number one struggle or number one frustration with it?

Some of you are saying “knowing what tools to use” and “high CPA costs” and “low conversion rates.” Keep going. 

Alright, so let’s do this. Today I’m going to walk you through the four stages of successful Facebook lead generation, successful lead generation for your real estate business.

Are you ready?

I was speaking with some of my Leads and Leverage members and they were sharing with me that they were frustrated. They felt like they had to “keep watch” over their lead generation, like they had to keep coming back and tweaking things to keep it working.

They expressed frustrations with Facebook specifically. They shared that they needed to get something set up and running so that they didn’t have to keep investing so much time in. They were exhausted. They felt like that’s all they were doing.

It was because of that conversation that I am here today walking you through the four steps of successful Facebook lead generation for your real estate business- because I would be willing to bet that most, if not all of you, feel the same way.

You feel like you just never get ahead or once you get it working, Facebook changes. Or you do something that gets it working, and something else changes, and you are like “ahhhh!”

Well, here’s the thing. The number one key that you must remember, this is the key to your business, to your success, to your growth, everything, here’s the key, are you ready?

The Number One Key

The key is- you are never done lead generating. There is never an end to lead generating. Lead generation is the lifeblood of your business. Do you really think it’s something that you can just “set it” and forget it?

It’s not.

This is so monumentally important that we understand in our minds and we understand and take action on that lead generation is the lifeblood. Without it, without it working, without you making sure it’s going through the shifts, without it, you don’t have a business. You don’t.

So I know we wish we could. We wish we could just run an ad and it brings in business.

We wish we could meet ready, willing and able buyers and sellers, meaning  just find the serious people and not mess with the rest. I totally get it!

Don’t you think I wish I could just find the people, the ones amongst you that know that they want me to help you and so I can easily coach you, get you to join Leads and Leverage and boom, just skip all the rest? There’s the underlying part of me that wishes that it would be easier.

But here’s where I know I can’t do that. I don’t know who is ready to take action now. Some of you are. Some of you aren’t. But I still want to help people. I still want to keep moving forward. I still want to help those people who really need my help, who want to have interconnection with me- those people will move forward. The rest won’t because they are not ready.

It’s the same thing with the people in your lead generation.

See, the thing is that lead generation is not like going from infant to toddler to adolescent to teenager to adult, so the five stages of human growth, right?

There are not clear cut stages that you reach, go through and come out the other side and then you are done doing that stage.

That’s not how it works.

You don’t successfully reach and finish each stage- yes, you get smarter, yes, you get more efficient, and yes, you get more automated but the reality is, you are never done with a specific stage. That’s the way it is.

You just learn how to constantly work all of the stages in the best relationship-building, most time-efficient way possible. That is how businesses grow.

This can be with yourself, with your tools, with the process. It doesn’t matter. Your number one struggle or frustration when it comes to lead generation.

Alright, so now that you know lead generation is your lifeblood, you can’t outsource it. There are things we can automate which includes outsourcing, but if you want to grow a business, you have to helm the lead generation. You are the rainmaker for the business and you have to understand where to apply your energies and where you can outsource.

Here’s the four stages

Audience Building

Let’s walk through them, the first stage, and I’m going to use the Facebook funnel, can you see it, or is it too blown out on the picture? I think it’s too blown out.

So the Facebook funnel, the first piece is strategy, That’s not what we are talking about today, but the first stage of lead generation is audience building. It’s right here. Audience building. Your audience is online, offline, wherever.

When you are doing online lead generation and let’s face it, if you want your business to grow, it’s no longer an option- you must be building an online audience.

You must be on social media, building an audience. Not everywhere, not even on multiple platforms, but you gotta pick it, you have to do it, you have to build an audience. You must be focused on building an engaged and targeted audience.

Your audience includes your business page likes, targeted, of course but also people who have engaged with your Facebook business page, people who have engaged because of your ads or your posts to just the page itself.

It needs to include your page likes, people who have engaged with your page. It includes people who have visited your website, people who have opted-in to your email list, whether through a lead magnet or your IDX and now you have created an online audience of them. That is what your audience is.

This, right here, if you are not connected to #RIBBIT, my Messenger bot, if you are not a part of my email community, if you aren’t in one of my Facebook groups, you are a part of my online audience.

Here’s the thing. If you are a part of my email community, if you are on #RIBBIT’s list, if you are a part of my Facebook groups, you are still a part of my online audience!

So let’s keep going and remember, you may even be one of my top coaching clients, watching this (because I know they do!), and here’s the thing- you are still part of my online audience, because I’m going to teach  you again you never end the stage. There’s always that audience. You want to build that audience.

List Building

Alright, the next stage is list building. So we have audience building and now we have list building.

List building

Your list is your email list, first of all, specifically your list of people who have opted-in to your email community.

This is not your contacts in Outlook. This not all the people who have ever emailed you. It’s not even the people in your Top Producer or Wise Agent or Contactually or Follow Up Boss who have email addresses.

Your email list is very specifically a community of people who have opted-in to receive email from you. 

Your list building also includes your snail mail list, whether demographic or geographic, whether you have a demographic “farm” that you are mailing it to or it’s past clients.

You’ve got their addresses, maybe you’ve got some other people’s addresses, whatever, it includes your email list and your snail mail list.

You must be building both. You must be building your audience, your audience helps you build your list and then what do you need to do?

I want ask you, what are you doing to build a highly targeted and engaged audience? That’s my question for you. What are you doing to build a highly targeted and engaged list?  Both email and snail mail.

Nurture

Stage three- nurture! Nurture. This is actually where most agents fail. They think that nurture equals noise.

What do I mean?

They think that if they just “touch” their database every so often, that is nurturing. It’s not. It’s just not.

As I have taught in other videos you must nurture people. You must build relationships with people.

You must prove, prove, not state or say, but you must prove your value to them. You must make it into their “bubble,” so to speak. You must be so full of value and resources that you are in their inner circle of what they are willing to listen to, to open to, to talk to.

We get so much noise around us as real estate agents. You know this. There are so many vendors and coaches vying for your attention but who is it you are listening to?

Are you listening to the ones who are giving you webinars of where you get  five minutes of something and fifty-five minutes of sales? Are you listening to the emails and the cold-calls and stuff or are you listening to the people who are just giving you value?

My goal today is to help you understand the four stages of lead generation and to know that you don’t actually graduate from each stage.

You will be doing each stage, ongoing, but you have to be doing every single stage.

So you have to realize that you need to be focused on getting into that sphere, into that precious, precious space where people are going to listen to you.

And you do it by giving value. Not saying value, not disguised sales pitches but actually giving value.

So what are you doing to nurture your audience and to nurture your lists, to turn them into raving fans?

Clients

Stage four- those little guys right down here. Those are called clients, don’t laugh at my drawings! Those are called clients. So how many clients have you stayed in contact with?

And let me be specific here- how many of your clients are getting weekly emails from you and an every other week snail mail from you, both of which are resource and value driven, not sales-pitch driven?

How many? I’m really curious.

Who on here is actually doing weekly resource emails, not “Happy Grasshopper,” not Top Producer, not any of those pre-canned stuff; actual weekly resource emails not related to buying or selling but are related to living and lifestyle?

And they are getting with fail every other week snail mail from you that’s valuable, not what’s going on in the neighborhood as far as sales and stuff.

I’m willing to guess that not a single one of you is actually doing this.

Here’s why I can guess because the top teams that I’ve worked with and when I say “top teams,” I’m talking the minimum number of homes  that they sell is two-hundred and fifty a year, going up to a thousand a year, the top teams that I’ve worked with, they aren’t even doing this.

They will hire a vendor to send out a monthly “newsletter” that nobody likes to touch because it is dirty, like newsprint and it’s canned crap. It’s actually not stuff that is really giving them value and giving them “top of mind.”

I know this because they don’t have a consistent email follow-up system. They are sending out canned crap from their snail mail database or whatever database that they’re using that doesn’t actually help build relationships. It doesn’t do anything except make noise.

So I’m willing to guess not a single one of you is doing this because of my experiences with agents all over the world.

And it’s much, much easier to get business from people you’ve already done business with than to start and grow brand new relationships. I’m telling ya- if someone has already been through a transaction with you, then they already know, like and trust you I hope!

So why on earth wouldn’t you keep that going? Why wouldn’t you keep that feeling going? Why wouldn’t you keep that value going? You need to keep giving value beyond closing. You need to get them so into a raving fan status that they are referring every single person they know to you.

Do you realize and I’ve seen the stats out there, I don’t have them in front of me so I can’t quote them with accuracy but if you get one person that you buy or sell with, that’s one or two transactions but all of their family members and everything, you could get seven to ten transactions or more out of one person over a ten year period? That’s basically a transaction a year over one raving fan.

Well, how many transactions a year do you need to be comfortable to be happy, to be successful?

Is that ten?
Is that fifty?
Is that a hundred?

Then you need ten, fifty or a hundred raving fans. That’s it. That’s why we keep building to find those people and get them there.

So how do you do that? You make sure they are in your nurture process.

So what are you doing to keep nurturing your clients after the close?

And I just saw Reuben’s comment come up …

"that’s a lot of work."

It’s not. It’s not a lot of work. It seems like a lot of work because we’re like “I got to do all of this.” You can batch it and again, I’m going to show you in future videos here how to batch stuff.

Not only that, through your email, snail mail, everything, not only that, here’s the beauty about that. For the most part, you can repeat it every year.

You just have to do some minor tweaks so the initial set-up seems like a lot of work but let me ask you this- would you rather be pounding the pavement going door-knocking trying to find that one transaction right now or would you like to invest that time into getting the people who have already connected with you or people who are connecting with you to actually take action and move forward?

It’s easier and less expensive and less work to take people who come into your sphere, who come into your circle and help them turn into clients and into transactions.

Let’s Recap The Four Stages

So let’s recap this- the four stages of successful Facebook lead generation for your real estate business is audience building, list building, nurture and clients.

Let me go ahead and hold this up- when you have a strategy and you build your audience, you use your audience to build your list, you’ll use your list to nurture because you are going to nurture your audience and your list and  your nurturing will turn them into clients. That’s how that works!

And it sounds like it’s complicated but it’s not. This is where once you set it up and you have your voice in there, this is where it becomes easy. Because you’ve got you in there. It’s your relationship.

How do you think I do it? How do you think I did it? I mean we were closing in our peak year, we did 648 transactions, our low year we did 152.

We averaged a little over 200 transaction a year and they are still using the database we built and the clients that we built and they are just feeding off of them. They no longer have to feed the database. They just nurture it. It’s way easier than you think. It’s all set up. They just keep duplicating everything.

That’s what I’m doing in Leads and Leverage. That’s what I did when I had an organizing business. That’s what I’m doing with our wine business- it’s all the same thing. There’s minor tweaks but it’s all the same thing.

You set it up to work for you and there are pieces you can outsource but you can’t outsource the actual conversation. You cannot outsource your voice to someone else, which is what we want to do. We just want to think we have to “touch” them because we hear 33-touch, 8 x 8.

You have to give value. You have to give value.

So you need to be focusing on the four stages, audience building, list building, nurturing and clients. Those four stages and remember, lead generation isn’t one and done. You build, you tweak, you build, you tweak, it’s wash, rinse, repeat. Ever-evolving, ever-growing, ever-changing.

Now I ask this for every single video. I really, really wanted to make sure that you share with me because this is key for me. This is key for me to help you. I want to know, what was the most useful for you? What was the most useful for you in this specific video?

So I’d really like to know. What was most useful for you? What do you struggle with? What are your number one struggles and frustrations with lead generation?

Thank you so much for joining me. You are amazing. You are awesome. You keep me energized and I love it. I love your engagement.

Thank you for being present. Thank you for sharing with me your struggles.

Thank you for sharing with me what was the most useful for you and what your successes were.

Thank you! Have an amazing day.