3 Must do Strategies to Consistently Get Clients from Social Media with Jess Lenouvel (Part II)

What's up Real Estate Business Builders Lars Hedinburg Founder, Real Estate B School here. This is part two of Jess lenovelle's Just had a kick butt on social media as the shift is pending and how to build your business to seven figures and beyond. If you missed part one, go back at least one episode. If you're new to the podcast, we're in the midst of sharing our content. The very best speakers from our Business Growth Digital Summit. We do these events twice a year and these are member only events so you guys are in for a treat. This is, this is part two of Jess Loden Bell Speak. Talk about social media and how to use it to grow your business. If you haven't grabbed a free copy of my book yet, go to ScaleOrDieBook.com that's ScaleOrDieBook.com I talk about my journey from never having really sold anything before, never having built a business before. But coming into real estate just as everything was hitting the fan, I mean it was bad. I got Into Real Estate 2007, handful of years later, sold 453 homes, completely leveraged, worked 42 days that year. I made all the mistakes you could possibly make. I detail them all in the book and the book is absolutely free. So go to ScaleOrDieBook.com and enjoy part two of Jess Lenovelle and how to crush it with Social media.

So all your marketing needs to have an audience. You want to be speaking to a specific group of people who have a human problem. So a niche. Guys, this is going to hurt some of you. A niche is not a type of property. It's not lux. Luxury is not a niche. I know, guys, I know. Luxury is not a niche because let's say luxury, basically what it means is like you're going after people with money and all kinds of different people have money, right? We've got people who won the lottery, we have people who inherited a bunch of money, we have people who are incredibly like proficient at tech. We've got business owners, we've got doctors, we've got all kinds of things and they do not have a specific human need, right? And so what we want to do instead is we want to niche down to a group of humans with a shared problem. Things that will we can target. Basically the life transformation, the life movement. So things like upsizer, downsizer, first time buyers, the LGBTQ community, dog owners living in condos, single professional women, young families, all of these examples are human based niches. The other thing that we don't do anymore And I is something that like I don't teach anymore is geotargeting or, or like location targeting. And it's because we had to do that before we had the Internet. It was the only way to be consistent and frequent was the only way because we had to be manual, we had to be able to door knock, we had to be able to cold call, we had to be able to flyer. And now we have this incredible ability to get in front of people through the interwebs and that actually gives us the ability to use proper human psychology and use proper psychologically driven marketing which we didn't have before. So we had to be vague and we had to geolocate and we had to do all of these things that we don't have to do anymore. So our targeting abilities are actually so much better. Most agents, not saying, you guys, I'm just saying I'm generalizing here, have absolutely no idea the real reason why people move, why what is actually driving their clients moves. Because we're not actually going far enough back from a psychological standpoint. We're only going after the low hanging fruit. So when we truly understand this, this is when the actual marketing becomes deeper and we're able to connect with people on a deeper level. You're actually able to build proper relation. When I talk about relationships at scale, it doesn't start when somebody makes the decision to move. It starts far before that. And so a lot of the time when we're looking for higher quality clients, we again, we have to go at this from a place of solving higher quality problems. Right? All businesses solve problems. So what's the solution? How do you actually generate any of this is interview, interview, interview, interview. Right. And I have a coach who I work with, I work with very in depth, in depthly, like from a personal standpoint. And his favorite line, and it drives me mental, guys, is say more. I'll say something and he'll be like, say more. And I'm like, but I just said it. But then of course there's more. And the more I actually allow myself to keep talking, the deeper we get. And it's the same thing when you're doing your market research interviews, things like, and I'm going to give you these interview questions so don't worry about it. I'm going to give them to Lars, Lars is going to give them to you. But again, there's always going to be something deeper. We always want to go like essentially seven layers deeper to get to the actual real stuff. So this is how to conduct an actually good market research interview. With the stuff that I'm going to give you, do it over zoom or on the phone. Never email. Never, never, never. If you send email questions, you're going to get the super one liner basic surface level stuff and your marketing's not going to work. So again, we want to probe further, ask follow up questions like tell me more about that or how did that show up for you? Or even just don't talk. And I know as agents it's very hard for us to not talk sometimes, but we just sometimes need to use silence as a really great tool to get people to keep talking. Your strong messaging, once you've actually pulled this out of your market, will then allow you to create or present a solution. So now we've gotten clear on the pains, problems, fears and desires. The next piece is what is the solution? And this is again something that I feel very strongly about you cannot solve. Sell yourself as magic. If you are the product, your business is not scalable because eventually you will run out of time. So you have to have a product. And so you need to have a signature system that not only will become your unique value proposition or remove you from the pool of being just another agent, but will also become your product. And all businesses have products or services that solve people's problems. Your signature system becomes that service package or becomes that becomes that product becomes the thing that you actually sell. And I think so often people forget, people in real estate don't sell real estate. That's not your job. You don't sell real estate. You sell services and you consult on the sale of real estate. So if you don't have services and a proper service package and a proper product that you're selling, then you're setting your, you're not setting yourself up for success. And so a lot of this just again comes from everything starts with the market research, interviews and then everything gets built from that. So from there, what we want to be clear on is that when you create this messaging that makes people feel like you're in the back of their head, you become the only person who's really specifically speaking directly to those people and you become their only choice, right? No one is going to come to you and say, I've seen your stuff, I love it. You're the only person that I want to work with. I feel like you're inside my head. Will you list my house for 1%? It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. So the commission haggling goes away because the business is inbound and that is really something that shifts or changes. It changes the power dynamic of the relationship as well. Now, what is really good marketing, and it doesn't matter if it's digital marketing or a Super bowl commercial, really good marketing is being able to articulate or connect with something that's in the back of your ideal client's head better than they can. When you can do that, people will automatically credit you with a solution. So that solution then has to be your service package or your signature system. So then it creates a compound effect or a domino effect. Right? You have one happy ideal client who came to you, who feels like you were speaking directly to them, and then you have this incredible service package that is exactly what they needed and solved all of the. All of those problems. Then it leads to another and another and another. And honestly, this is how people get, you know, will end up not only with a ton of inbound business that is coming from social media, but also they start getting referrals from people they've never worked with because people feel that that element of trust or that innate trust, and that's really where a larger compound effect will happen. So this is Erica. This is a couple of examples. Um, you know, just grabbed a new listing. First thing the owner says, have we met? I watch all of your videos, so I feel like we have, but I actually don't think so. I didn't even have to pitch the business. I was hired as soon as I got out of the car. This is people letting their marketing do the work for them. I've been stopped several times by people I didn't even know follow me on social media to tell me they love my content. I'm not even through my first 30 pieces of content, and I have almost the same amount of business in my active pipeline through mid March that I closed all of last year. So again, people are getting to a point where they are essentially, like, quadrupling their business from just from actually showing up on social media, doing something that's actually relevant, sharing a win. Just left a listing, meeting. Wife says to me, I told my husband I didn't want to work with anyone but you. The videos you put out are like, you're totally inside my brain. Okay, so that's what good marketing is. It's. I feel like you're. I feel like you're in the back of my head. So the next part of it is the content. But before we actually go into the actual content itself, there's a lot of people who have a lot of good intentions, but Actually, what stops us from showing up, it's fear of judgment. And a lot of the time the stuff that's stops us is it's actually kind of irrational. But I used to have the same thing. The first. When I first started creating videos, I used to go on the rooftop of my building, and I would film them up there, and I would yell at my husband if he came anywhere near me, and he'd be like, you know, these are going on the Internet and lots more people than just me are going to see these, right? And I. It didn't matter to me. I was so uncomfortable, and I hated the video part of it so much, and I was so worried about the fear of judgment. But it's human nature. I came on this, and for the first five minutes, you guys were all thinking, does she know what she's talking about? Should I listen to her? It's. It's how we categorize people, right? Like, everybody is always judging everyone. I'm talking about everywhere, Diane. Like this, this. This framework that I'm teaching you here will work on every platform. Now, the actual. Whether it's. If it's Facebook or Instagram, it's going to be shorter form than it is, than if it's YouTube or if you're doing YouTube shorts, then again, it'll be shorter form, but the content mixes the same. Because human psychology doesn't change. The platforms that we use are a little bit different, but again, human psychology doesn't change. These are immutable principles that will work no matter what. And these are the things that I believe are missing when people are only focused on, you know, what ratio should the size of my video be? Or, you know, they're not really building the foundational pieces or that, again, stranger to client psychology, to give people what it is that they need in order to actually create results. The results don't come from whether you have a videographer or not. The results come from the psychology that's built into your marketing. And whether or not your marketing is hitting. Is hitting the right pain points and you're providing a relevant solution and people are seeing you at the right frequency. Like, those are the things that actually create. Create results. There's people who have really, really raw, just handheld camera, handheld phone videos that, that. That are doing $200 million a year in real estate. And they're doing it because they're consistent and because their messaging is correct. It's not be. It's not about, you know, being the fanciest or being the flashiest. So coming Back to this. Whether you're posting about your dog, your family, your food, your business, your beliefs, whatever it is, everyone is still judging, everyone is still categorizing. It's how the human brain works. But if someone is trolling you guys, I get all kinds of them. I have. I get all kinds of fun trolls, but we actually have a great time with them. But if you are concerned about being trolled, you do not know what someone else is going through. And comments that people leave on ads or on social media or whatever, they're just a mirror. But at the end of the day, you need two, two different types of people. You need two sets of people on social media, and you need your shoppers and you need your sharers. So your sharers are going to be the people who like and engage and share your stuff. They're going to get your message out there on a larger scale. And then you have your shoppers, Your shoppers will never like and engage or share anything. They will be completely lurking, and then they'll show up in your inbox unannounced with, I'm ready. It's always the way. And so if you're, if you're worried, so many people get so hung up on engagement and things like that. And I always say, like, it doesn't actually matter as much as you think, because the real people who really, really want to work with you, they're not engaging, they're waiting. They're biding their time. And they'll let you know when they're ready because they're going to show up in your inbox. So just a reminder again, you've got a bunch of deals sitting in your warm social media network. Now let's get into content. So what do we post? Have you tried these? I'm being snarky now, just in case you hadn't noticed. Just listed, just sold, asking for referrals, memes posting content from other people. Market, market updates. And when I say market updates, I mean infographics, photos of staircases. We've all done it, but they don't work because they're not targeted to anyone. And like I mentioned earlier, your ideal clients don't care about anything that doesn't pertain to them. We're all super, super selfish on social. So what do we actually want to do? We want to go deep on content. This is Norm. Norm's a really great example. He has had a great, like, he's been in the business for a really long time, has a great repeat referral base, but he wanted to he really wanted to start shifting things online. We worked on his, on his stuff. Eight clients in 60 days. Norm was a bit of a straggler. He actually started creating content that worked. But this is how we did it. We got crystal clear on who his ideal people were. We identified the biggest problems that person had. We identified his personal Facebook page as his main source of how he would generate leads based on who he was targeting. So whatever platform it's not about, you know, so often people will ask me, what platform should I be on? Well, my answer to that question is, I don't know. Who are you targeting? Because certain demographics, certain, like certain groups of people are on different platforms more consistently. So you go to them as opposed to thinking that they're just going to come to you. So again, eight clients in 60 days. And they weren't like, oh, you know, we're interviewing a hundred people. We'll see if you, we'll see if you're, if you can be on the list. They were messages like, hey Norm, my husband and I have been pre approved for a mortgage of 400,000. We're ready to start seriously shopping. Will you be our realtor? Right. They're inbound. Really, really high quality leads. So these are your buckets. Should we have different target audiences for each platform? Um, what I would suggest that you do is only focus on the platforms that your target audience is on. I think that realistically, if you're going to do it really, really well and you don't have a big marketing, like an, a big in house marketing team, then I would suggest two to three platforms at the most. And a lot of this content can be repurposed on multiple platforms if you're, if you're creating it following these three buckets. So here are your three buckets. We've got authority content, personal content, and social proof. So authority content is content that shows that you're an expert. It's the credibility side of things. Diane. No, ideally you don't want to because again, the more you vague out your messaging, the less it's actually going to work. So, you know, I always say if you don't need more than an extra 2,000 deals a year, which I guess most people are probably not aiming that high at this point. You should probably just niche down into one area, into one demographic, because you'd be absolutely shocked. Like we have people in our programs that have one target demographic that are doing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in production coming from their social media. And it's because their messaging is actually resonating and it's actually breaking through the noise. So authority content, credibility content. A lot of this is going to be helping your client understand a part of your signature system which we talked about earlier. Overcoming an objection or a myth. Objection handling in content is incredibly important. So a lot of the objections that we're getting today are market objections. And so, you know, if you're answering the question once, why wouldn't you answer the question on social? Why wouldn't like every single question that you're being asked from your clients right now is authority content? It's a lot of people are like, oh, I don't know what to talk about or I don't know what content to put out there. Well, if you're answering the question for one person on a showing or in a listing consultation, then chances are if you take that same question and you answer it in a video or in a piece of content, it's going to perform really well because that question is clearly there. Authority content is your teaching content, it's your show, it's your value content, it's your delivery content. And you can see that, like you don't have to again, you know, a good, a good light for a bright window and a phone is all you need. And not all of it has to be video. I think I'm a really big believer in a 50, 50 split, 50% video, 50% written content I think performs really well. We do still have people who don't, don't watch videos, but we also have a lot of people who don't read long form content. So you want to be able to have a really good mix. The la. The second one is personal content. This is probably the one that's missing for most people because a lot of people think, oh, I'm a business. People don't. It's not professional for me to have personal content. Well, we've all heard the cliche of with your marketing, you want to build, know like and trust. That's like the cornerstone. How can someone know you, like you and trust you if they don't know anything about you? Impossible. So personal content is the emotional side of it. People make decisions emotionally before they make them logically. I said that before. It's super important. The emotional side of it is actually the beginning of a decision. So personal content should reveal a piece of who you are, share something that's happened in your life, give your opinion or philosophy on life or business or anything like that, share with you who you are outside of the job. So it can be extremely vulnerable and incredibly deep, but it also doesn't have to be so Entrepreneur magazine as an example. This is just an example of a mix between PR and personal content. I think it was in 2019, maybe did. Did an article on me and the title of it was. The title of it was how I. What was it? How I Escaped Domestic Violence, Build a. Built a Seven Figure Empire and Found Love along the Way. Like, it was heavy, was heavy stuff and it was a big long article. And I got more business from that article than pretty much anything else I've ever put out there. And it was because there was a human element to it. There was a human side of it that people actually, whether they related to it or not, they saw me in a different light and they saw me as a human being who could be trusted as opposed to a real estate robot. So there's a lot of different forms of personal content, right? So it can be funny. If you're funny, be funny. If you're not funny, don't try to be funny. I think a lot of it just comes down to authenticity and being yourself and talking about your personal beliefs, your personal philosophy, your personal story. No, Anthony, I wouldn't go back and move anything. Just like what I would do is just like start from today and make a commitment to just do better in the future if you want to. After you have like a critical mass of new content, then you could go back and you could, you know, get rid of some stuff from before. But you don't really have to. Eventually it'll get buried at the bottom of your feed. Okay, social proof. This is some of my favorite. So social proof is third party bias. You saying I am so fantastic and I am so awesome and I should be your realtor and look at my awards is very different than someone else talking about how awesome you are. So this is really the. This is really the. Like, how. How do we do client reviews? How do we do the. The. What you're trying to get across with like a just listed or just sold, but in a better, more humble, more effective way. Well, case studies, testimonials and pr. So testimonials. I'll start with testimonials should always be a screenshot. If you have fantastic reviews or you get beautiful messages from a client, just save them, take a quick screenshot of them. When you move them into a program like Canva or some sort of a design studio, you actually make them less effective because the more designed they are, the more chance that they are faked. And unfortunately, we live in a world where people fake reviews. So a lot of the time what we need to do is make them ugly and raw and super super and just super trustworthy. Video testimonials are even better, but some people struggle with getting them or asking for them. But video testimonials are always going to be better. But a mixture, again, is always a good thing. So if you have written testimonials, screenshot them, if you have video testimonials, awesome. Just keep them short, because sometimes clients, when they love you, will go on and on and on and on. So we want them essentially to be less than a minute. Case studies. Case studies are basically one of the most powerful things that you can do in marketing, period. So case studies are the stories of your clients from start to finish. Where were they before they started working with you? What process did you take them through? Where were they a year after they worked with you? HGTV is a really great example. So HGTV is an entire network of case studies, and we have all been drawn in to an HGTV show at some point. Before I moved to the Bahamas, I watched every episode of Bahamas Life that has ever been created. And then I moved on to all kinds of other countries because I was like, I was basically living vicariously through the people in these shows that were inspiring me to make this decision. And I actually, when I bought my house in the Bahamas, I used an agent that was on Bahamas Life. I understood her process, I understood her personality. I built whatever sort of strange real estate relationship that I had through the television. And so a lot of it works the same way. Like the case study, the case studies of your clients, every single deal that you have ever done, you could do a case study on. So it's not like you have a lack of content there. So go back, look at them, you know, tell the story. And stories are 22 times more memorable than facts. So when we, when we're talking about memorable content, people aren't going to remember some, some. Some infographic of market stats that you put in front of them. But, well, what they will remember is they will remember a story of someone who they related to of, you know, Sally and James who, you know, bought their house. You know, we're looking for a fixer upper, but, you know, I don't know, whatever, whatever that story is, someone is going to relate to it. So this is an example here in the middle. Stephanie. A lot of my clients are in a similar situation as Jim and Laura. They need more space after their first son They've been looking for the right house at the right price to make, but with room in the budget to make home improvements. So this is what she did. She, she framed this really well. And then she gets to now talk about her process in a way that's not super braggy. She's highlighting the client, she's taking them through their journey with her. And it's very clear that she is the reason why all of these wonderful things happened without her being that salesy real estate side of things. The last part of it is pr, and this is really underused. PR is just media. And a lot of the time we sit back and we wait for a journalist and we think, you know, wouldn't it be cool if one day I got invited too? When journalists are just content creators and they're always looking for content. So what if you just called someone up and said, hey, I would love to be available to you when you need commentary on whatever this is, or I have this really great story, or there's a, there's a website called Help a Reporter Out Harrow and you can literally go on there every single day. And there are hundreds of real estate articles that are needed comments, and that's how you get yourself featured in stuff. And then you take that content and you get to be in front of that audience and you also get to put that content or that article or that video or that interview in front of your audience to create more credibility. So all of this just kind of works in conjunction, right? Again, this is showing people that you know what you're doing and that you can be trusted. So when we break it down, this is really what we're looking at. We're looking at your optimized profile funnel, your client centric messaging, your captivating and convincing content, and then consistency. So, yeah, it's just consistency. And I know, I just wanted to give you some, an option here. So to go through some of these. If you decide that you want to have a chat with me or you have any questions you can fill out this, we'll do a, we'll do like essentially a, like a, like a free session with you. But again, if you just want to, if you have questions or there's anything that you want to ask me about, it's just jess@thelistingslab.com I just wanted to give you guys an option if, if you guys have, have further questions about any of this. I know I talk quickly. That is a thing I do. So if you missed, you missed any of it or you need clarity about anything or, you know, whatever you need. I'm a. I'm. I'm an open book and I'm available.

Awesome. So we have you for a few.

More minutes if you're able.

What questions do you guys have? This was unbelievable. Just awesome from a marketing standpoint, to hear all this. And I would say your Facebook group is.

My Facebook group.

Yeah. Really, really good. I'm so, like, jealous of your engagement and what you got going on in your Facebook group. So I would say everyone get over to the Facebook group listings. Yeah, for sure.

Here, let me drop the Facebook group link in here if you guys want to.

Yeah, really, really pop in there.

Let's see.

There was a couple questions, but I think you got most of them as you were going along. There was one. Yeah, we've all done the.

Is it possible to schedule a post on your personal page? No. There are a couple of apps that are starting to work on it. They're not consistent. You can schedule everyone everywhere except your personal business page. Sorry, your personal Facebook page, which is annoying. So that's the only place that you're really going to have to be. Manual.

Yeah, that's sort of a selfish question that I have. How much of this stuff is, like, you need to be the person versus getting a little bit of leverage with the BA or some technology or.

Yeah, I mean, as long as it looks like you and it sounds like you. That's the most important part. I always say that, like, everything has to be customized to you, to your market and the demographic that you want to work with. The content comes from you, but the posting and scheduling and organization. And if you want to cut up longer videos, all of that can be done by a va. Um, I actually own a VA or I own part of a VA company that does that for, like, real estate agents. So there's a lot of. There's a lot of that that can be outsourced. The thing that I would not outsource is the actual content creation or the messaging.

Awesome.

Um, okay. What is the minimum posting frequency? Um, whatever you could be consistent with. I would say, like, five times a week would be a minimum. Um, I post less than that on my personal page, but it's because I post every day, seven days a week in my Facebook group. So I tend to prioritize my Facebook group over my personal page just because I only have room for 5,000 people on my personal page and I have over 30,000 people in my Facebook group. So. But again, the way that you want to look at it is Your personal profile is 500 leads. You can nurture 500 leads for free. Sorry, 5,000 leads for free on that platform and you can get a lot out of that. What do you recommend for social proof of our current clients are not our ideal clients? Okay, so I, first of all, I would say we want to get really, really clear on who your ideal clients are. Your ideal is high value listings. That's not really a niche. So we want to get clear on like what is the actual niche that you want to go after? Is it in your market? Is it upsizers? Is it young families who are going to sell something and buy something else that at a higher price point? We just want to like, get, get really, really clear on who is it that we're targeting. And then from there you can, you know, you can start working towards that if you don't have a lot of social proof that fits what you're trying to do. In the future, we use myth busting content as a filler. In the meantime, myth busting is, is basically what it sounds like. It's busting a myth in the real estate industry. It creates a lot of credibility and a lot of trust. So things like the truth behind open houses or what does sold over asking really mean? Things like that you're kind of pulling the curtain back and you're showing people the truth behind all of this fluff that happens in the industry. Do you recommend posting to your personal page instead of posting to your business page? No. Don't share between platforms. So that's also something that I think is really important to remember. You want to organically post everything. Even if you're posting the same thing on your personal page in your business page, which is fine. You don't want to share from one to the other. It looks spammy and it actually hurts your engagement. So you can use the same thing. You just, just post it again. It'll take you two minutes and, and it'll actually create a lot more, just a lot more visibility with it. What's the VA company, Jennifer? If you have a question about the VA company, just send me an email. I am 1000% more than happy to make a connection. It's called Agent Freedom, but they have, there's a couple of different packages and I want to make sure that you get taken care of. So just send me, send me a quick email@Jessistingslab.com and I'll, I'll connect you. Are stories important or valuable? I'm not sure exactly what you mean. If you mean personal Stories then. Yes, absolutely. All stories for the most part. That, that's really what social media is intended to be. It's a storytelling. They're storytelling platforms. Whether they're, you know, past stories or current stories or funny stories or valuable stories, stories are always going to be a really, really important part of it. What's the difference between your Facebook group and your. So my Facebook group is all 100% real estate agents and we throw value and trainings in there every single day. So it is my, it's basically my primary place on social media other than my Instagram that I create for on a daily basis. So there's tons and tons of trainings in there. There's a lot of value in there. We give a lot of free stuff away in there and we answer a lot of questions so that my, my personal Facebook profile is full. I think I would have to like unfriend people to refriend people. And I'm a lot more active in the Facebook group. Um, even if it's IG straight to Facebook. I think you're asking about sharing and yes, the answer is the same. Don't share across platforms.

And let's, let's end with the last question from Amanda. So time suck. Where does it drift over into like, okay, you're, you're, you're really probably not being productive. Where, how do you draw that line?

So I spend 10 minutes a day on social media. Um, and I think that like, from a creation standpoint, you really don't need. Once you get in the flow of things, you don't need more than an hour or an hour and a half a week max. And if, let's say that you're generating, you triple your business, I think that's a good hour and a half to use. I think that a lot of people will spend a tremendous amount of time scrolling on social media and that's not going to be an effective use of your time. So I would say focus on creation rather than consumption.

Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other agents who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. And make sure you visit ScaleOrDiebook.com to get a free copy of my book. It's a nuts and bolts guide to building a real estate business that gives you true time and money for freedom so that you can live your life without regrets. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.