Are you using updated methods to scale your business? There are infinite ways to increase your leads and conversions using new creative video and social media strategies. In this episode, Lolita Sheriow shares just how you can do that. Lolita offers tips on generating leads and shares a proven model for automating your lead generation through Facebook. She also gives insight into using Instagram to dominate your local market. Plus, learn how to create high-converting video content on YouTube for long-term growth and exposure. Tune in for this jam-packed and informative episode.
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How to Scale Your Real Estate Business The New Way Using Creative Video and Social Media Strategies With Lolita Sheriow
We are going to talk about scaling your real estate the new way with better lead generation and becoming a client magnet on autopilot by using creative video social media strategies. In this training, I had mapped out a little introduction to what these strategies have done for myself and for our business. It’s a Facebook lead generation and how converting Facebook lead ads that we have used effective strategies that work, scaling to a six-figure-per-year income. Everybody wants to do six figures and beyond. We will talk a little bit about Instagram, the exact posts that we use, and how to make it easy to become top of mind in your market. Also, YouTube is probably my favorite. It’s being able to track clients in your market on autopilot 24/7 and how you can do that with your first video.
Who is this for? If you are a brand-new investor or an agent and struggling to gain traction, you have some experience, but you are looking to rapidly scale the business. If you are a top producer and you want to get your name and freedom back instead of doing everything, you are working hard and a lot of hours. Real estate assistant, if you are looking to generate more business for their team. If you are ready to work smarter and not harder, which is always the goal, and get more of your time back, which we all would like.
Think about this. Has this crossed your mind? How can I get tons of new sellers and buyers if I don’t have any deals or listings of my own? How can I get to the point where I don’t have to cold-call every day or put out signs anymore? How can I automate and systemize my business so I can generate leads 24/7 regardless of where I am? How can I become top of mind without having to spend thousands of dollars on bus benches or mailers?
How to Generate Leads Fast
Let’s talk about these four secrets to the new approach of making six figures. One, I will show you how to generate leads fast. We will talk about that. I will show you the proven model for automating your lead generation and exponentially increasing your conversion rate quickly, how to dominate your local market on Instagram in generating leads and creating high-converting video content on YouTube for long-term growth and exposure. If you are in it for the long haul and you want these videos to work for you 5, 10 or 15 years from now, then YouTube is the place you want to be.
Keep this in mind, “Action is the fundamental key to all success.” It’s one of my favorite quotes. Eighty-seven percent of realtors and real estate investors fail because they do not simply take action. Hopefully, what I’m sharing will motivate you to take some action and make some adjustments in your marketing. I talked a little bit in the beginning about who I am. I will skim through this and a few of some amazing clients that I have worked with, from realtors to real estate investors, and some of the things that they shared about me here. I’m going to leave this up too long. I wanted to share a few of those.
[bctt tweet=”The key to wealth is learning how to make money in your sleep. You have to have these systems, processes, and relationships in place in order to do that.”]
I’m huge on testimonials and I teach that because testimonials will continue to consistently generate leads for you over time. That’s zero marketing cost. The highest compliment is having a testimonial from happy clients and getting new business and referral business. When I first started in real estate, I was driving for dollars half or all day and a lot of gas in rental cars. Does this sound familiar to anybody? I did a lot of cold calling with multiple hang-ups and rejections. I got stressed.
I hated it, but I did it because, at that time, I was new and hungry in trying to get deals. I’m always chasing the next deal and working all the time burnt out. I have been there. I had very little time to sleep, take vacations or spend time doing things that I love. The key to wealth is to learn how to make money in your sleep. You have to have these systems and processes in place in relationships and additional income streams.
Let’s talk about this new way of doing real estate. A personal brand is video and social media marketing. It’s generating leads while you travel. Spend time with family, sleep, enjoy life and do whatever. It’s automating your leads and converting them effectively. It’s having your content attracting business around the clock. That’s probably one of the key things right there. One of the things that I had to get out of and my business partner is always chasing leads.
Cold calling is calling people to see if they are interested, but once I have got it and understood how to leverage social media and video marketing, I can now start attracting leads. What we found is that the leads are better. Typically, they are warmer. Let me give you an example before I move forward. On my YouTube channel, I have videos on there from several years. I have been on YouTube for many years. I still have videos where people will reach out, whether they will send me whatever the call to action is. They will call me or send me a message or email.
Whenever I talk to them, one of the things that I find, especially from YouTube, is they already know me. They are like, “I have watched ten of your videos.” They are asking me about my dogs. Periodically, I may involve my life, a little of my family and my animals. What that does is now I built the know, like and trust factor from those videos and it’s easier to convert them. I hope that makes sense. It leads to a fraction of the cost compared to real estate platforms like Zillow, BoldLeads, Trulia and others.
Let’s talk about tip one. I will show you how to generate your first lead within the next 24 hours. Even if you are brand new to Facebook, this is the process. You have got your social media, Facebook leads, your ads, automation, follow-up and retargeting. Most realtors, investors and lead gen companies make one cold touch. That’s something that I had to learn early on in my career. You are not going to buy a list of 1,000 leads and touch them one time and expect to make six figures. You may get a deal out of it. In this day and time, it’s probably not.
If you are going to get a list, I would say 3,000 or more leads. You may get one or somebody ready to do something, but for the most part, you have to follow up and touch those leads. Typically, we like to touch leads at least seven times or until they say, “Delete or unsubscribe us. We are not interested in selling.” Most also do not provide any true value in their ads. For $5 or $10 a day, you can ensure you are never forgotten. That has probably increased a little bit now.
Retargeting can increase conversion up to 150%. That’s the key when you are talking about Facebook advertising. The magic happens in retargeting and learning how to do that. A good example for me would be getting one of those GEICO mailers in the mail for insurance. You see the commercials all the time. I don’t know if you guys get the mailers from them. Once a month or something, they send the advertisement. Think about it as being online.
When you are doing ads, you want to create a custom audience so that everybody that has looked at your ad or visited your Facebook page. If you are running ads to them, you can now retarget them with a new ad, so they continue to see whatever you have to offer. Over time, you will get those who have been following you that you have been retargeting that will take action and reach out to you.
How is converting an ad? Which ads are proven to convert the highest? When it comes to properties, the front exterior image of homes, area-specific custom list of homes with price points and features, short testimonial videos of past clients, buyers and sellers for sure will work very well. It’s virtual tours, walkthroughs, vacant, foreclosures and an example of a walkthrough because we are active in the business, so I just don’t teach.
There’s a little over 18 acres that I’m selling for a client of mine. It’s not far from where my family lives with my grandfather. I drove out there. I did a quick live on my personal page because a lot of followers on our personal page are from East Texas, the area where I’m from. I have got a ton of responses and a couple of people were interested in buying it. I was live for maybe two minutes.
[bctt tweet=”The magic happens in the retargeting and learning how to do that.”]
I simply shared, “It’s Lolita here. I’m out here in Mount Enterprise. My client has over 18 acres of property that he is looking to sell. It’s heavily wooded. There are no restrictions. For all of you hunters out there, if you are interested in more land for hunting, then this may be ideal for you.” Real quick, I have got a lot of responses. I’m doing videos like that, and I did not even boost it. This is just going live. That’s a whole other presentation in video marketing and going live.
What happens if I have no listings or deals for new agents and real estate investors? One, you can market other listings from your brokerage. Market another deal from a wholesaler if you are an investor, which is a great way. You can co-wholesale and find opportunities that way. Market buyer guides and seller guides if you are an agent. Market tips to sell your home fast to an investor. Market a custom list of homes or market short-seller video testimonials if you are an investor.
Let’s take a look at an example ad. Carla is my business partner. This particular ad was effective. It’s to generate buyer leads, but I kept the verbiage pretty simple and short. The main thing that we talked about is what most people are interested in. We had our call to action there. Here is another example. She is sharing a short story of how she met this client. This particular post, for which we created an ad, generated several buyer clients for us. The saying, “Facts tell, stories sell,” is 100% dead-on.
What she shared in this ad simply says, “I was heading home when I saw this family walking down the street. It was so hot outside. I felt led and moved to stop and ask if they needed a ride. They said yes, so I took them to their destination. We talked and I learned a little about them during the short trip. Before they got out, I gave them my business card. I could not believe the call I received in July 2012. Check out the video to hear the entire story and how I was able to help them buy a new custom home with a down payment of less than $10.”
In the video that they did, I went with her once they closed the house because she gave them flowers and balloons. I asked them if it was okay if I videotaped them and they said sure. I have got my phone and hit record. What happened was they were so happy and overjoyed. The husband gave a wonderful testimonial for Carla. They started singing. The song was in their language because I believe they are from Africa. They were clapping and their kids were there. It was so moving and I captured that. When I edited the video to add to this post, it went viral.
When we saw all of the engagement before we decided to put $100 in ad costs behind it, we were like, “This is pretty powerful.” I know that was long-winded, but I say you want to incorporate stories when you are on social media and when you are creating content to attract sellers and buyers. This particular ad that I created was super simple. It was that image there. I put, “Zero commission. Zero closing cost. Learn more to see how we can help you.” That was it. I ran this ad from our business page at Harrtstone Buys Houses Fast.
Out of that, we were able to get Mr. Enrique there. He sent me a message. He clicked on Learn More. He sent me a DM and stated that he was interested in selling his property. I went to closing. I asked him if I could get a video testimonial and I always ask. He said yes. This is on my YouTube channel. One of the questions I asked him was, “How did you find me?” He said, “I saw your ad on Facebook.” I said, “Awesome.” Out of that, it turned into a $15,000 assignment. My total ad spend was a little under $400 for this particular ad. I want to give you some examples of ads that have worked for us.
Proven Model for Automating Your Lead Generation
Tip two is to show the proven model for automating your lead generation exponentially and increasing your conversion rate within the next 24 hours. Have the best assistant that you could imagine responding for you for free. It sounds great. Cut the cold calling and door-knocking. We are talking about follow-up. The fortune is in the follow-up. Who is this assistant? Let’s talk about how to manage the leads. Not knowing when the lead comes in? Struggled to find your leads and ads manager? I have been there. Stop everything that you are doing to call them within the first five minutes. Pray that the contact information is right and hope they pick up. This is the old way.
Let’s discuss the new way. The new way to manage your leads is in the follow-up. One of the things that’s very effective on Facebook is a chatbot. I don’t know if you guys use your Messenger or chatbots. They are extremely effective. Zapier is a service where you can integrate different types of services to automate the process of lead generation. Let’s say you run an ad and you want leads to doing a call-to-action. Once they click on that button in their call-to-action, you have a nice follow-up sequence in Facebook Messenger in your chatbot. That’s going to communicate with that lead.
Once it comes through Zapier and you integrate it, you can integrate it into whatever CRM database that you use. For us, it’s kvCORE. I love kvCORE. I’m not going to say any database because there are a lot of the top well-known databases that you can integrate, but kvCORE is one. When those leads come in that chatbot message, the first message that hits them is, “Thank you for responding. If you are interested in talking with someone, click here. Click here if you like to schedule a call. Click here if you want to go and submit your information for our offer within 24 hours.”
Let’s say they don’t take action, but that lead has already been funneled through into our database now in kvCORE. We have set up in kvCORE campaigns that have pre-written emails that, when they go in, the system will automatically drip on them over the course of that campaign. If we have 250 pre-written emails that are loaded into that campaign and spread out to go out once a week, then we don’t touch it because they are going to be followed up with over a period of time in the length of that campaign. What we are doing is we are receiving calls or text messages from leads that have been in the system for however long. Now, they are ready to either buy a house or they are ready to sell.
[bctt tweet=”You have to mix a combination of entertainment, education, and journey. E + E + J = Influence.”]
This is the new way of how to manage your leads and your follow-up, leveraging social media and some additional technology. You still have to make calls and follow up because if they reach out, they say, “Me and my husband were talking about it. We have been in your database here and getting your emails for the last two months. I think we are about ready. We are not quite ready, but we want to call you and let you know we are getting your emails. What is the first step?” Based on that conversation, if they are not ready to pull the trigger, then you got to follow up with them. You can put them back on the calendar and ask them, “What is a good time for you to call them back?” You can follow up or outsource that process.
How to Dominate your Your Local Market On IG and Generate Leads
Tip number three is how to determine your local market on Instagram. I have started to use Instagram a little bit more. I have been dedicated to going live there once a week since the 1st of 2022. I have seen an uptick in my followers. I have gotten a few DMs too. Instagram is a great platform. Attract clients at scale by simply being yourself. Let me talk about that a little bit. This is one of the questions I get asked all the time, “How often do I need to post? I can’t post every day.” I understand that. Me neither.
If I don’t outsource it, I like to be there myself and post. On Instagram, I do a live once a week. Aside from that, I may post once or twice a week. What is effective is the Stories. You want to make sure that if you are posting on Instagram or Facebook, you want to also incorporate Stories. I can come back to that. You don’t have to post every day. I would say 2 or 3 times a week is good. Make sure that your posts are purposeful and they are doing what they need to do to attract the type of client you want to work with.
Become and remain top of mind with a few posts per week, farming and prospecting on the ground. Don’t turn your profile into a home and/or landing page. Let me explain. You don’t want every post to be of a new property that you are selling. You don’t want to do those types of posts. Instagram is more of documenting your journey and also maybe 20% of your personal life. What I mean by that is like, “Show me what you do in the mornings.” A lot of people like to see that. If you checked emails, got a new contract or flipped the property, you can share that.
If you are looking to purchase new properties or other properties in an area where you flipped the house or you bought a rental, you can jump on and talk about that, “I rented this beautiful property. I picked up this property. I’m getting ready to rent this beautiful property here on Lending Street. I’m looking for some other properties like this. If you live in this area or you know someone that’s thinking about selling, it does not matter the situation or what is going on. I would love to talk with them.” If you are a real estate investor or maybe not an agent, you can also share, “I pay referral fees.” That’s an example.
The secret formula is you can attract buyer and seller clients on the ground by being yourself. I will talk about that. There is a catch to this. I know I jumped a little bit. You have to mix a combination of entertainment, education and your journey. Think about that. To keep it simple, a little entertainment, a little education and a little bit of your journey. E plus E plus J equals influence. Hopefully, that’s a good formula to help you get an idea of maybe more of the purpose of Instagram because I know a lot of people are like, “I don’t know what to post on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.” They are not sure. This is a combination of what you can share.
Instagram tips. One, optimize hashtags proven to rank in your local market. If you are not familiar with hashtags, look at them like this. If someone is on Instagram and looking for a realtor or looking for a We Buy House business or company in Grand Prairie, Texas, they may type in the hashtag to see posts of those individuals who have that product or service to offer. Hashtags are important. Two is strategic tagging for a popular local search for farming and collaborations with targeted reach, maybe with other real estate investors or realtors. Stories are your best friend. I cannot stress that enough. A story sells. Show, don’t tell. Show some behind-the-scenes of what you do and what is going on.
Here is an example post. This is a coming soon property that Carla had in Allen, Texas. She simply put, “Coming soon in Allen, Texas,” and the address. If you notice there the hashtags, she hashtagged #AllenTexas, #TexasHomes, #TexasHomesForSale, #FollowMe and #FirstTimeHomeBuyer. Those hashtags need to be specific to who you want to attract. You just don’t want to post on Instagram. You want to make sure that your hashtags match what you do in the area and all that. Here is a quick post that she added to her Instagram Stories. She is showing that she is outside working with her dog there on the patio table. That would be an example.
How to Create High Converting Video Content on Youtube for Long Term Growth and Exposure
Tip four is to create high-converting video content. Video is the number one most consumed content on the planet. Everybody here needs to start doing videos if you are not doing them right now. It depends on your goals and what you want to accomplish. If you want to have better brand awareness and presence online and have that advantage over your competition, then a video is going to help you do and accomplish all of that. With YouTube, you have got your tags, titles, descriptions, or key formula things there that you need once you have your video created and posted. Let’s talk about it.
High-converting video content builds a deeper connection than other platforms. It’s easy to rank locally for highly-searched terms. It’s not as much competition, believe it or not. It’s scalable. It grows over time and a massive return on your time invested when you create videos. Videos have a longer shelf life. Think about it like what I shared. When we have people reach out to me from my YouTube channel, about 80% to 85% of the time, they become a client of some sort. If they are not selling or buying a house, it may be another agent or real estate investor that wants a strategy session with me or buying another product or something.
It’s long after if you have to take a break in which life happens. Life has been happening to all of us, especially with COVID. Sometimes you have to take a break, have a family or whatever. If you have videos on the YouTube channel that are optimized properly and that bring value, then those leads come in and they do. Even if you have to take a break in your business, you can leverage your YouTube channel and the videos you have created to consistently build a business. That’s one of our main goals for 2022. It’s to consistently create content on the YouTube channel because we know how effective it is.
[bctt tweet=”If you want to have a better brand awareness, a better presence online, and just have that advantage over your competition, video is definitely going to help you do that.”]
I have several colleagues of mine in the mastermind I’m a part of. They don’t pay for any advertising and marketing whatsoever. Every lead that comes through their business is from their YouTube channel and from referrals. That’s one of our goals and it can happen. Videos are extremely important. You see how much I like videos. There are a few secrets here. All you need to do to get started are cell phone and computer. There’s no fancy equipment. A lot of people get caught up, “I need to buy a camera and figure out how to use it.” Start with your cell phone, YouTube, the algorithm, and click-through rate. They rank that high. What does that mean? Watch time or post velocity? When you are creating videos, what is the watch time?
Watch time is probably the highest. I will talk more about that. You want people to watch your videos. The longer that they are on there, the better because YouTube is going to say, “People are interested in this content that she has created. Let’s go ahead, show her some more love and put it out there to a wider audience.” I’m not even talking about YouTube ads. This is if you have your videos optimized properly, meaning the right keywords, title, tags and description. What that does is it continues to open up more followers and people to follow you on YouTube. Another thing that you can create out of that is creating a whole other income stream from YouTube. There are a lot of benefits from leveraging videos, more specifically on YouTube.
Let’s talk about this video. This is a video I created back in September of 2011. It was a short three-minute video where I was talking about Spokeo for skip tracing. I was showing how I used Spokeo. I did a quick little walkthrough of how to use it. One of the questions back then, I might have been working with a client that asked me and I decided, “Let me go ahead, do a video, put it on my YouTube channel and share this particular skip tracing site.” It probably has more views now. When I did this screenshot because I wanted to show how many views, it has gotten over 117,000 views since 2011. That’s what long shelf life means.
In addition to that, I also shared an affiliate link in the video for folks that wanted to take action and use Spokeo. They offer an affiliate program and affiliate commissions. I have made money from folks taking action on that over time. Here is another YouTube channel. This is my business partner. She is living in North Fort Worth. That is her target market area. She does not do videos every week. She tries, but the goal is for her to do a weekly video. When clients look her up or if anybody is looking to move to the North Fort Worth area and there are several cities within that area, we have it set up to where her video will come up within the search. That’s another example. There is nothing more powerful and effective than video marketing for conversion and lead generation.
I will repurpose some more secrets here. You can repurpose your videos for every social media platform. You can nurture your past, current, and potential clients. It’s a massive authority and credibility builder. There’s no quicker way other than door-knocking and meeting with folks, but a lot of folks are not doing that. They are not comfortable doing that anymore. What do you do? You create a video. Share some information about you, your background, history, what you do, and who you have helped. That will help you build that know, like, and trust factor much quicker than your competition or the agents or investors that are not leveraging video. A properly run YouTube channel can result in multiple leads per week. This means zero marketing is spent to generate leads.
Important Links
- YouTube – Lo Sheriow – Real Estate Coach
- Harrtstone Buys Houses Fast – Facebook
- Zapier
- kvCORE
- Video – How To Find Anybody, Ultimate Skip Tracing Site
- Spokeo
- YouTube – Carla Johnson
- http://FreeGuide.VEUniversity.net/
- https://www.Facebook.com/groups/videomarketingforrealestate
- https://www.REI-USA.com/Lolita-Sheriow/
- REI USA
- http://www.rei-usa.com/membership/
- http://www.REI-USA.com/trainings/
- http://www.REI-USA.com/ teachers-spotlight/
- http://www.rei-usa.com/free-template/
- https://www.instagram.com/reiusa_/
- Free Online Jumpstart Course for Real Estate Investing: https://bit.ly/3IrDji9
- REI USA Youtube: https://bit.ly/36QPoQl
- How to Get Started Investing in Real Estate: https://bit.ly/3pIxB4r
- Talk to Kristi, Our Community Manager, for a FREE 10 Minute Website Demo: https://bit.ly/3pIxB4r
About Lolita Sheriow
Who is Lolita Sheriow “aka” Lo? Lo is the change agent that will motivate and inspire you to take action in your own life. Her journey, wasn’t easy but nothing worth it is. Growing up, her family instilled in her the importance of faith and perseverance which plays a huge role in her life today.
Lo is a best-selling author of “TAKE ACTION: 21 Steps on How to Take Action and Get Results in Real Estate; the co-founder of a Real Estate Company and Digital Marketing Agency, a panelist at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Expo in Atlanta, GA; several guests appearances for podcasts and numerous speaking engagements as well as highly sought-after mentor and coach for up and coming entrepreneurs. Lo created the Take Action with Lo Show podcast and she teams up with other successful entrepreneurs to inspire you to greatness. A fun fact about Lo, she is a Veteran, served in the Army Reserves. She was a professional singer, performed at the historic Apollo Theater at Showtime at the Apollo in front of millions of people and charted on Billboard as an artist!
There was a time Lo felt like she “settled” for just enough. She was working for a Fortune 500 real estate company, enjoying work but knew that there was more. As “luck” would have it, she was a part of a layoff and from that moment forward, knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur. She calls it “luck” because it was that nudge that gave her the courage needed to launch her real estate business and podcast.
This courage is what she wants to share with the world, her goal is to help the masses by motivating and inspiring them (with her story) to take action, to do different and become BETTER! Better entrepreneurs and most important a BETTER version of themselves. Her proven blueprint consists of the 5 F’s to help you get your Mojo back and create an Extraordinary Life! Faith, Family/Friends, Fitness, Funny and Forgive/Focus!
Get Lo’s Free Virtual Real Estate Guide for Realtors and Wholesalers at http://freeguide.veuniversity.net/