Do you know what the best in the business are doing to get even better?

Training events are the best place to find out. The key is to pick the right events. The events where top producers are going and the people teaching you actually know what they are talking about.

Get Better at Your Job

Attending training events will help you get better at what you do, at every level. When picking an event, it’s important to look at where you struggle. Are you struggling with generating leads? Go to an event that talks about online lead generation. Are you struggling with conversion? Go to one that helps you with your sales skills.

Hint: For most people, it’s a lead conversion struggle, not a lead generation one.

Learn from the best and shorten your path to success. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel in real estate. The industry is relatively simple once you know what to do. The true work is in implementing it. By attending the right training events, you can shorten the path. Learn what others learned from experience. They may have made 1,000 calls to prospects and learned what works. Now you can learn what they did before you even make a call! That 1,000 calls just got shortened by 900+ (you’ll still want to practice what they teach you after all.)

Network like a Boss

Our personal favourite reason for going to conferences? The networking. You can learn so much, sometimes even more than from the conference itself, by networking. Talk about how others run their business, learn from them, and build relationships. The right speakers are amazing to learn from but what you learn over a drink at the hotel bar can be just as valuable.

On top of learning from other agents, you get to build the relationships for referrals. If you work the agent to agent referral side of the business, you can do very well for yourself. I know many agents who do six figure commissions just by going to events, networking with other agents, and building those relationships. You need a plan, you need to stay in touch, and you need to be consistent (which is true of any business-building method). Do this and you can build a business based on referrals.

See the World

Keeping all that in mind when looking at events, where are the top producers going? Which event is hosted by someone or an organization that knows what they’re doing? Where is the event located? Some locations will draw more than others. That would be one of the reasons Inman Connect is held in New York City and San Francisco every year. Who doesn’t want to visit those cities?

We’re always working on clearing some space in our schedules to head to events. To see if we can pick up some techniques which we can leverage for our clients.

What other conferences are worth going to? Let us know in the comments!

Hosted a webinar with Katie Lance today to talk about How to Hone Your Social Media Strategy.

A lot of great tips, Katie is one of the best in the industry. Check out the replay below.

Resources Mentioned

Content Grid

Rev.com

Get a copy of the #GetSocialSmart book!

Want to generate 20+ buyer leads for every listing without exhausting your wallet?

It’s a lot simpler than you think, thanks to the many improvements made to Facebook Lead Ads over the years. These lead ads negate the need for a high converting website – it means people are converted into leads before even getting to your website.

However, Facebook Lead Ads haven’t always been so successful. We tested them when they first launched on Facebook. We found that the results were of very low quality and no different than other types of ads we ran.

But what about now? The platform has evolved into an incredible tool. We run lead ads almost exclusively for our clients’ listings. We procure leads for listings ranging from $0.75 to $5.00 on average. Rarely do we get leads with a cost per result higher than $10.

These low averages mean you can generate a high quantity of leads with a low budget for every listing; but there’s a method to this madness.

The trick is to combine some of the best practices for building other ads with lead ads.

To begin, don’t give away every detail of the listing in the ad. Include the basics – number of bedrooms and bathrooms, finished basement, in-ground pool, hardwood floors, etc. – and then finish it off with a call to action so the view knows how to get more information.

It doesn’t need to be complicated; something basic works just fine, such as “Click on Learn More below for more information .” This accomplishes two things: you get their contact information, and you don’t needlessly clutter up the post. The cliche “less is more” is very relevant here.

From a visual standpoint, it’s critical that your ad stands out in order to draw people in. Don’t make your ad look like every other post scrolling through Facebook. The most important thing is the image, as that’s the first thing people see.

High quality and high contrast is an important element. With this in mind, it’s a smart business decision to have professional photos taken – with a real camera and a real photographer, not you and your iPhone. If you decide to use a video instead of images, keep it short, concise, and always include subtitles.

We’ve also seen a significant increase in results since we started including emojis. Use with caution, however; choose your emojis wisely based on who you’re targeting. Keep it professional and organized, and definitely don’t overdo it. It’s a good practice to experiment with emojis and learn which ones work for you and your ad. Here are some emojis that we have used to great success: 📍👇🏡💰🗝🎯

This is an example of an ad that has worked well for us. It generated a name, email, and phone number for every $1.10 spent. How many ads have you run with a cost per lead that low?

However, there’s one problem with Facebook Lead Ads; you don’t get notified when a new lead comes in. Getting notifications is important if you want a reasonable chance of converting your leads as fast action is necessary. In order to accomplish this, a third party tool is needed that will bridge the gap between Facebook and your email or CRM.

Our top recommendation is Leadsbridge. It’s the easiest and most effective tool we’ve tested on the market to date. What makes Leadsbridge great is that you can set it up to integrate with many different platforms and CRMs, or even just simply emails you the lead.

Here are some of the integrations with which it’s comparable:

• Boomtown
• Fivestreet
• Follow Up Boss
• Real Estate Webmasters
• Realvolve
• Reality Juggler
• Top Producer
• Hubspot
• Infusionsoft
• Insightly
• Pipedrive
• Podio
• Realgeeks
• Streak
• Zoho
• Active Campaign
• Weber
• Constant Contact
• Drip
• Mailchimp
• Google Sheets
• Slack
• Twilio

…and still a lot more.

Get Leadsbridge here if you want to try it out and let us know in the comments how your results turn out!

There isn’t a lot of complications that go into building a successful listing campaign with Facebook Lead Ads. Try out our recommendations, make some adjustments yourself, experiment, and find out what works best for you.

We’re excited to announce we’re launching the 1st Annual Blue Mountain Real Estate Conference!

Support a great cause, network with your peers, and come learn a ton about the real estate industry!

100% of Proceeds from this event will go to support My Friends House, a local shelter to help families recoup and restart their lives free from abuse. (via Six Hours of Gibraltar).

Come learn from some of the best and brightest in the industry on how to grow your business, service your clients, and so much more.

On top of that, Tim Hudak, CEO of OREA, will be joining for a live Q&A.

Speakers & Panelists include Andrew Fogliato, Danny Wood, Barry Lebow, Tim Hudak, Paul Hannan, Tony Iacoviello, Jordan Walker Lin, Sandra Kirkland, John-Ross Parks and more to be confirmed later!

Doors open at 9:00am but it won’t start until 10:00am. Tickets are $50

Topics Include:

Panel: How to Grow your Business Through Agent to Agent Referrals. Panelists include Paul Hannan, Jordan Walker Lin, and Tony Iacoviello. Moderated by John-Ross Parks.

How to Leverage Paid Online Advertising to Grow your Business with Andrew Fogliato

Panel: Top Producing Agents Share Their Secrets to Success

Selling the Haunted House with Barry Lebow

Live Q&A and Update on OREA with Tim Hudak

Panel: What Works and Doesn’t Work in Digital Marketing. Panelists include Andrew Fogliato, Danny Wood, and Amanda Robinson.

More to be announced soon!

Yesterday, in our Group The Wheel House, we interviewed an expert on branding; Seth Price.

In the interview we talked about a strategy to build a brand from scratch when you don’t have a database to work from.

The key is to build your relationships with key people in the town. Then do whatever you can to help then build their business! Start by going into the shops and interviewing the owner and showcasing the business. Do it on video if you can. Then when you’re done, make sure you share it with the owners of the establishment.

They’ll share it with their network, garnering you more exposure with local people. This hyper-local attention is exactly what you need.

As you move through the community you can start getting to know the local businesses. You’ll have a database on your site better than anyone else in the area. This will start establishing you as the expert while building your database. It will take work. By putting your effort into promoting others you’ll build connections that no one else has.

With every piece of content you create around the community, mention someone local. If you speak to

You’ll also want to intersperse educational/how-to content to showcase your expertise. Do this with stories. Don’t explain how things work, use examples that people can relate to.

Always focus on providing value and then use Facebook to promote your content. Tag their pages, make it easy for them to share the content as well. Start building your community. In no time at all you’ll be able to build a network like no else. What may take others years to build, you can do in months with a targeted approach.

One important thing to note, attend as much as possible in town. Social events, networking meet ups, political events, and anything else thats happening. Get out there and meet as many people as possible!

That was one of the things talked about with Seth Price during our interview. Be sure to to watch the interview in its entirety below! You may even have the opportunity to win a copy of his book if they haven’t all spoken for yet.