KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Build a Digital Geographic Farm on Facebook

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Welcome back to the high-performance agent podcast. I'm your host, Tina Belivo, and I am here to talk with you today about one of my favorite tactics that I just can't stop telling people about. So we're going to get into it. And by it, I mean how to build a digital geographic farm on Facebook. Facebook came out when I was in college. So I'm like a Facebook native. And I have always had a very very healthy Facebook, like, friend network. And I even have a bunch of followers, too. And it's funny, I spent several years going hard on building my Instagram, which has been very fruitful. I've got like a really healthy follower count there. But it's just been so funny to realize that, like, my Facebook is really powerful. And I have underestimated its power when I get distracted or just creatively inspired by some of the newer platforms that are out there. It's not like Instagram's really new anymore, but it was. Now we have TikTok and whatever else is going to come out and all that kind of stuff. But I just want to say that if you're like me and you've been on Facebook for a while and you're

connected with a lot of people, specifically like your sphere, like in your market where you are doing business and want to be doing business and you haven't been paying any attention to your Facebook, this could just be a wake up call. I mean, there's so many different ways to utilize just your personal profile to be really effective. That would be a totally different topic than today. but my whole like awakening with groups very, very effective for business. And again, even though groups are old news and they've been around for a long time, like they're very, very effective. So let me just tell you a little bit about how my digital farm started. It started with me doing the traditional farming strategy of mail like I kicked off saying today back. We're going to take it

back. It was like 2014, 2015, when I had transitioned into building a team, I had hired a buyer's agent and what that had enabled me to do was a whole bunch of things. But one of them was to focus really hard on building my listing business. And then I was really excited about farming the area that I live in. I moved to the area I grew up in, like back to it from living in the city. It's a mouthful. It's called Lutherville Timonium. It doesn't really matter, but I might say it a few times.

So I moved back to Lutherville in 2012, bought sort of my like first family home here, great market to work in, strong average sale price, a lot of like variety and housing stock from like simple starter townhomes and condos to luxury and everything in between. Great schools, great resale value. All of those things, by the way, are like good things to think about with a farm. I was like really fired up about being like the Lutherville Tumonium expert. So I was selling homes in my area and then posting about that on Facebook and doing open houses and like really hustling to build my brand. So of course it made sense at the time to start doing a postcard-based campaign.

And at my peak, I was sending out postcards every month to 5,000 addresses. I was using every door direct mail. If anyone knows what I'm talking about. If not, don't worry about it. And it was a very effective strategy, but it was expensive. And it was sort of a time and energy drain because one thing about me is I don't like sending out crap that looks bad, that is poor branding or not. valuable or not really relevant like geographically. So I was designing or having someone design each of my

postcard pieces. So there was also like time and energy that went into the content creation. And then there's sort of waiting time with designing something and then printing it and then mailing it, which is just sort of like in the digital world, like you can get your just sold out today and it's not coming out two weeks later when it's not as relevant or just listed or open house, like things that are more timely. So that strategy worked for me and it was great until it just wasn't so sustainable for me. So I cut that out of my marketing plan in 2016 and just put it on pause. But about a year before I stopped, I did decide to launch a Facebook group for that same geographic niche. And at the time, I didn't have a clear plan or strategy for it at all. I just sort of dumped everyone I

knew that lived in that area into the group. And it sat there for years with one or two hundred people in it. And it didn't do much. I posted in it once in a great while. I did do a couple events. I like tied some events to my group. And then it just sat there. So the reason I love this story is you can start a group, abandon it and come back and have wild success because that's what happened with my group. Basically, fast forward to years later, 2020, two things happened. And number one, the first thing was the pandemic. And people just started joining all Facebook groups. And I think getting on next door and getting just sort of engaged with those resources since we were all like sheltering in place. So the group just started to organically slowly grow a little bit.

And then in 2020, I actually decided to start a Facebook group from my past clients. and my sphere. And that was sort of my like the beginning of my Facebook reawakening of being like, you know what, like this platform has a lot of power. It has a lot of really great things to it. So I didn't actually start working purposely on my digital geographic farm until like late 2021, early 2022. But those were the things that kind of got me going. And then in late 2021, I started to get some like organic random business from my digital geographic farm group. And then in 2022, I spent the year purposely refining a lead generation strategy for that group, testing things, trying new things, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't. And then I've really built like a system

out of that, which I'm going to walk you through today. So today, that group has over 6,600 members at my last check. We have about 250 people that join the group every month. So it is just a nonstop funnel of new relationships and new business opportunities. And I am loving it. Last year, we closed not a huge amount. We closed about $2 million in sales volume from the group. And that was kind of six to nine months into me putting strategies in place to actually capture leads and brand myself. And it's been a great strategy.

And we are continuing to see success in 2023 with it. We're growing. We have a lot of people in our pipeline from the group. We have, I can't even think right now, several transactions that have already closed, all like at or above our average sale price, homes that sell quickly on the listing side, and then buyers that are moving into our target area and are great future sellers in our database. And this really dovetails with all of my other strategies. So those are the results I'm getting, depending on where you are in your business. Like for me, $2 million in volume is not like a noticeable

amount. But what I see is the potential and the fact that this is like super scalable, really sustainable and it costs me next to nothing. I am making some minor investments in various things that I'll tell you about. So it's just a great strategy if you want to bootstrap and don't have the money to send postcards or don't feel like sending postcards. Even if you have the money, like I have the money to send postcards. I'm just not interested in doing that anymore. So that is what I'm up to with my group. And I just want to say there are a couple things about Facebook groups that are amazing. Number one, they're opt in. So when people are in a group, they actually have to have chosen to be there. There was a time in Facebook where you could just

dump someone in a group and they were just in it unless they left. It doesn't work that way anymore. So if someone's in your group, it's because they want to be there. And I feel like that creates a little bit of permission to converse with them and build a relationship. The second thing that I love about Facebook groups is that they give you an insane amount of data and insights that you will never get on a personal profile. They're actually like the group, in my opinion, is more powerful and functional than a profile or a page. Pages are my least favorite. People ask me this all the time. Facebook pages just don't get good reach and engagement most of the time. There are unicorns, but they're rare. So in my experience, people ask me all the time, should I have a page or a

profile? And I'm like, profile. Don't even bother with a page. Or if you do, don't put much on Don't spend time there because I'm just a big believer that like social media is a place for people to connect with other people, unless you're like a literal big brand. Like I don't know that people love following, but otherwise you're a person. And the best place to connect as a person is profile to profile or inside of a group. So I'm all about the profile over the page. But then groups are even more functional because you get all these tools that you would never get in your profile. You have insights. You can skis. schedule posts, which is another reason I love groups, you can see not just how many people have viewed your posts. You can see who looked at your post, but you can only do that in a group. You can't do that with a page or a profile. So they're just super, super powerful in this like very subtle, unsexy way. And I use the insights all the time to see what's getting an engagement and what

to duplicate and what to stop doing. And then my favorite reason that I love running groups is it's huge leverage for me. And I kind of already said this, but like in every day, dimension. It takes way less time to make content in a group, specifically because Facebook groups are a place where people go to get and give advice and exchange information. And what is powerful about that besides the fact that it's a place that people perceive value, which is where I want to be and what I want to be doing. But also, you don't need to design anything. You don't need to make a 60-second reel that you spent hours editing. You don't need to go in Canva and make a cute image and then download it and upload it and then realize it was like the wrong format or there's a typo on it.

Content creation is awesome, but it is exhausting. And Facebook groups, in my opinion, are the antidote to that. Like, I can write a one sentence question such as, where are all the Easter egg hunts this month? Like, that was like, there was like a lot going on at Easter where I was like just asking simple community based and event-based questions and getting tons of engagement. I can't even tell you what time and energy leverage that is compared to like traditional content creation as the way that a lot of us think about it. So it saves me time. It saves me energy. It's free. And I can do it from anywhere at any time. Specifically, you can schedule posts on Facebook groups up to two months in advance. And like Facebook groups are similar to that where you can batch

schedule posts for days, weeks, and even two months out. So you can sit and do all of your like content. And when I say content, you can't see me doing air quotes. But you can do your quote content in a 30 minute session, sit down and schedule one post a week for the next two months. And then all you do from there is monitor your group and maybe respond to comments, approve new members. There's definitely some other work involved. But it is such a great way to front load and not be in the like, I think, What's so exhausting about real estate lead generation is anything that you have to do every single day consistently forever and ever. Don't get me wrong. It's good to be consistent. It's good to have habits. You should have a CRM. You should put your leads in your pipeline. But the more I'll speak for myself,

the more I can limit things that I have to do every day and do them in batches or systematize them so that I can pay someone a reasonable amount of money to just take it off my plate and do it for me in a batch. It frees up my time and energy. And then, like, I just think about opportunity costs all the time. What else could I be doing with my time and energy if I wasn't on a treadmill? And there's so many treadmills that you can get on in business. This is a way to get ahead of it in one way. So that's why I love groups. And I just think it's important to set the stage because it is some work to create your group and build it and get people into it. That's something that people ask me about all the time. So like anything, it's a project. But it's worth it. And it's worth it. And

because of everything in my opinion that I just said. And the other thing is I'm a mom now. I've been a mom for almost two years. Plus, like, COVID changed my lifestyle so much. And one of the impacts of that is, I don't meet near, I'm like in that like weird phase before like your kid isn't even in school yet. Like I am meeting less people, new people than I ever did. Like my circle has almost like contracted because I've been like pregnant, nursing, sleep deprived. Like, I'm not going to networking events. I don't do nearly as many like lunches and things that I used to do because I don't have the time and energy.

So anything that I can do from my house at any time leveraging technology is massively valuable. And whether you're a mom or not, like you might just want that leverage and to reclaim time maybe that you're spending at traditional networking events or just doing stuff out in the world that once you calculate like your commute time and the energy output of being out somewhere versus just relying on a digital means, it's really, really different. So with all of that said, that is the why that I think you should examine something with Facebook groups with lead gen. It may be digital farming. It may be other strategies. There are other ways you can leverage groups.

But I'm going to stick with a digital geographic farm because I feel like it's so powerful for us as agents to say, this is the kind of home I want to be selling. I want to be a listing focused agent. I want to be working in this specific area. I like this area or it's close to where I live or I love the price point or these houses are amazing. And then to be able to actually manifest that is so, so awesome. And that's where I want you to start is define where do you want this farm to be and who is your target audience. And basically it should be an area. And it can be anything. from as small as a little neighborhood to an entire metro area or a city or a suburb. There's no wrong way to do it, but I just want you to think about it and not just do something without

any strategy behind it. The area that I am focusing on is sort of a, it's a suburban niche inside a much bigger sort of Baltimore metro area. And it just, it checks all the boxes for me. it's a big enough area that there's tons of business to get. So I think one thing I would say is to avoid the pitfall of starting a group for a tiny group of houses because you just, you won't get a lot of transactions. If you're trying to market to a neighborhood of 100 homes and only three homes are selling per year in that neighborhood, which would kind of be like a strong turnover rate in today's market, that's a lot of work to get those couple transactions. There might be an easier way. Or like maybe you start with that, but know that you're also going to have a bigger group. So basically think about

the size of the market that you're trying to get into. One of the things that's been successful about the area that I target is there was no other group for it. It's sort of this like in-between place of much smaller of an area than like our entire county or school zone, but not, but not so small that it doesn't have like really good business potential. So basically, you want to pick an area that makes sense and it fits with your strategies and hopefully you're passionate about it because you're going to be spending a lot of time like nurturing it. And I think it's, it really makes a lot of sense to farm where you live if there's alignment of like you're going to live there a while and you like it there and you know, you want to connect with people there and all that kind of stuff.

And then I recommend once you know what area you want to target to just do a little bit of research, sit down on Facebook on your computer and just research. Are there any other groups that exist right now that serve that area, go join them. And don't be turned off by competitor groups. They might be dormant or full of spam, full of just like ads and like junk or like weird posts. There may be no competitor groups, which is also like a sign that there's probably a gap in the market that you can easily fill. And then maybe there's a competitor group that's really successful and thriving. How can you maybe just take a little bit of a different angle from that group to distinguish it and maybe still have a lot of the same people in your group, but it's your group. It's not someone else's

group. I will say one of my high-performance agent academy students last year did something genius. She was a member of a geographic group just up the road from the area I focus on, and she approached the person who admin to that group and just said if the, like, asked the person if they would sell it to her or at least let her become a co-admin on the group. And that person let her just take over an existing group. So that might even be an opportunity. for you to think about. So basically, decide where you want to focus and have good reasons why. And then do some market research. And I'm talking about a half hour, not like a crazy project. Look around, join some groups, maybe passively watch them for a week, see what's going on in there,

and let that kind of inform your strategy and what your next steps are. And then from there, you want to launch your group. Couple important things with launching your group. Number one, the name is everything. The name needs to be something that people would actually search for. and find. My group is called Living in Lutherville, Timonium. And by the way, don't bother joining. I do not allow any other realtors in my group ever. So I get realtor requests to join my group all the time. That's actually one of my like hard and fast rules is I just don't allow other realtors in there because A, it's my funnel. And B, I don't want to have people from all over the place in there. Like I am very like focused that my group is like full of people who live and work in the area I focus on.

Anyway, the group, like the naming process that I recommend most for your group is living in blank. And I think that works really well because it appeals to people who live in that area and want to live in that area. You could also go with anything else that floats your boat, but you want to have the geographic area in the name, assuming that's like an area that people would actually search for. If you think about like a relocating buyer who's coming to this area from another city or state and they're like putting stuff in the same. the Facebook search engine. You want it to make sense where if they would find it, that they would join your group because one of the best funnels with these groups is to find relocating buyers. In addition to nurturing people that live in the area on an existing level and want to become sellers. And what's kind of nice about the strategy is you get both, whereas with mail,

you're just hitting the people that already live there and you're not really tapping into the buyer pool. And buyers become sellers. So name it something smart and appropriate that makes sense and is search engine optimized. And then you want to set your group up, name the group, put up a cover photo, create a group description. You probably want to put some membership questions in place, calls to action, and rules, the skeleton of your group to have just all the core components so that when someone surfs to it, it looks like a complete active group and then they're more likely to join it. And then from there, there are several tasks ahead of you. One of them is building membership. it. So that's number one. Number two is creating some content and engagement and just basically

like things that actually happen and get posted in the group. And then the third thing is, which makes sense to trail once you've checked off items one and two, is to start capturing leads and building your database from the group into your CRM and your email platform. So on building the group, I get a lot of questions about how to build the group. That requires a plan. You can't just create a group and then have it grow. There is like this magic in the Facebook algorithm of once your group starts to grow and Facebook starts to understand who it's for, it will absolutely start to suggest the group to similar people. So you've got to get a critical mass of people into the group first. I would recommend inviting all the people you know that live in that area and just add them. And then

they can either accept the request or ignore it or decline it. And then if they want to be in it, they're in it. Then I would incentivize all of them to invite the people that they know and basically push organic growth. The third thing I would say is post about it publicly on your profile. And if you do have a page, put it there. And then anyone else that you know that might be willing to post about it to get the word out. And post about it more than once. Marketing is all about consistency. So you basically want to stand the group up by like manually adding people, having other people manually add people, marketed on Facebook. Facebook is the place to grow the group the most easily. Yes, you can mention it on your Instagram, but in Facebook, you can join a group with one click. You're not switching platforms,

getting to some weird login screen when you're in the middle of doing other things. So that is the easiest way to grow the group. And then if you do have other resources at your disposal to grow it, like maybe you are sending postcards to an area. Or you're going to be at an event in that area where you can have a QR code for the group. Or maybe you do print marketing, like in a magazine, like there's a lot of ways to promote the group if that audience is accessible to you in other ways. But I would get some people in there and then you want to start building content and engagement. This is where you can get really detailed with a lot of different things. I've experimented with so many different things in my group.

In my playbook that you can download, I give you a lot of different ideas. I just want to tell you about my top two or three right now. The number one one that I would recommend if you just want to steal my strategy, it's called trade Tuesday. And basically what I did was I decided to start crowdsourcing in the group because my crowdsourcing posts do really, really well. And basically, I scheduled posts out every single Tuesday for the first six months of the year. So I did like several schedule them for two months at a time. And every Tuesday, I just said, who is your favorite blank? And I filled in a different contractor, painter, lawnmower, handyman, general contractor, kitchen renovator, you name it. Like we could come up with a

hundred trades that people need. Some are specialty. Some are constant. Everyone always needs chimney people in my group, which cracks me up. So definitely include the chimney person. But the point is, every Tuesday, I asked, who's your favorite blank? Each post would get tons of comments. It built engagement. And it just built my brand. And people started hearing from me all the time. I made sure that my posts actually did have a cute image. I used the same image every week with my logo and my colors and my font. So I really started to build some brand awareness, but did it from a place of contribution as opposed to a place of, hey, I'm a realtor. Call me. Like, ew, like, why would anyone, what does that do to build the no-trust factor? It's fine. It's just not effective. So I really

focused on creating resources, asking good questions, and building content archives. And what I actually did is I ended up with so many Trade Tuesday posts that I collated all of them into a guide. and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, Google, what is a guide in a Facebook group? And it will explain it. So now all of my Trade Tuesday posts are compiled in one mega guide. And I basically spent a year creating all this value. And now it's just sort of like a permanent reference item for everybody in the group, which is awesome. A couple other content things I've done that are really simple and really effective.

We do small business Saturday on the third Saturday of every month. So one of the things to make my group valuable, I do not. allow it to be an advertising free-for-all. And you will see tons of people join these groups because they own such and such business, everything from a hair salon to the local power washing guy and everything in between. And they all just want to spam the group with their agenda. So one of the ways I've made my group a place where people love to hang out as a member is we don't allow any advertising and we just on the third Saturday of every month, which I made up, you can do whatever you want. It's Small Business Saturday, and that is the one free-for-all day.

People can comment on my Small Business Saturday post or submit a post about their business and promote whatever they want, and then it's over for the month. And the rest of the time, the group is just, like, clean, value-driven information that isn't advertising motivated, including my own. And, like, I follow my own rules and respect my members. And I think that people really appreciate that. So that Small Business Saturday is a content thing, but also, like, you can hear that, I moderate and approve the post because I feel strongly that if you don't, the group will just

become a place where there's either no value or you could end up with a lot of what I call next door energy, which is when people are like just nasty and negative and all of that. So we've found it helpful to cultivate some group rules of just basic civility. And we remove people from the group who are nasty because I have found if they're nasty once, they're always nasty again. So our group is just moderated and that's why people love it. I really believe that. In fact, they tell me that all the time.

My third content strategy is really simple. On the first of every month, I just say, what events are coming up in the area? And then people can just promote or bring awareness to anything that's going on, whether it's like a thing at a restaurant or something for families or a craft market, like you name it, school fundraisers. And that is, again, just a way to crowdsource and share information. with each other. So I told you you, you need to build the group and then engage the group. And then the last thing is to capture leads. And I'm going to give you the quick tips on how to capture leads like a ninja.

And that is to do giveaways. So giveaways are a way to mass grab contact info in one fell swoop and grow your database and your email list. I discovered this at the beginning of last year when the group started to grow and grow. And I think when we hit 2,000 members, I was like, oh, I should give away something to acknowledge. And I've done, all my giveaways are like low cost, usually like $100 or less. And I'm now at a point where I have so many business owners in the group, they volunteer items to give away. So we have a spa that's given away massage gift cards. At Thanksgiving, there's a local baker that gave away a Thanksgiving pie. I'm not even spending money. I just kind of coordinate or sometimes like I'll ask people that I know would probably.

be happy to do it when I know it's something that people would want. And then basically I put a form up and say, we're having a giveaway just as an appreciation for members of this group. If you want to win blank, just fill out this form. And then they fill out a form and they give me their contact info and they check off a box if they want to buy or sell or if they have a referral for me. And then I add everyone to my database. I follow up with all my leads. And then I draw a winner. And I just rinse and repeat that strategy over and over again. And I have built my email list. I have a segment in my email platform of almost 1,000 people now that are just from that Facebook group. So I've successfully captured one out of 6,000 emails through the giveaway strategy just by being consistent and definitely

testing and seeing what works and doesn't work and why. So that is the way to get relationships from your group into your CRM where you can nurture them long, long term. And even if you drop your group someday or Facebook shuts you down or the algorithm suddenly doesn't favor you, you've really built something that you can keep for the long haul. And now I send local content every month by email to that list. So they're hearing from me in so many different ways. And that's the beauty of long tail marketing is I know that I'm going to see so much business from that over the next three, five, and ten years.

I just have to keep it going. and I've learned to be consistent, it's my best friend. I will say, after people listen to this content, they usually have 8 billion questions for me. So I will just kind of wrap up by saying a few things. If you want more detail, use the link in my show notes to sign up for the video training. And then you will also get this big playbook afterwards. And then a lot of people want me to like answer their specific questions and mentor them. And that is really what high performance agent academy is for.

For example, like this is one mini module inside of my Facebook lessons. Like I have a whole bunch of Facebook things that I teach people. This is just one of them. So if you were to do my academy, you get my templates, my tech recommendations, my list of giveaways, tactics, how tos, screen shares, and then personal guidance on the, what should I name it? And all that kind of stuff. So if you're like, whoa, I want to tap into Tina's brain.

That's the way to do it. Join the wait list. if you want to know more about the academy. It's at Tinabelo.com slash academy. The link is definitely in the notes with this podcast. I'm going to be bringing the academy back this fall. And this is one of the many things that I teach that people really, really like to tap into me. Regardless, you don't need me to do this, right? Like you can take what I just told you, run, figure it out. Figure out what works for you. Like my personality, my sensibilities is going to be a little bit different than yours, which is a beautiful thing. That's why there's so much business out there for all of us,

because we are all beautiful, distinct, unique snowflakes in the industry. So you may take all of this and apply it to something that isn't even geographic or have a total different twist where you're focusing on moms in an area or dog lovers or gardening officionados. There are a lot of ways to tap into niches that you're passionate about and then also turn it into a business funnel in a way that is like friendly and authentic and value driven. So that is really what I want you to get from today. So I hope that you heard that. Download all of my stuff if you feel like you want some extra resources.

Then just sort of on an unrelated but related note of geography, if you're listening to this podcast and you are outside of Maryland, please keep me in my team in mind. If you need anything in like the Baltimore area or really, you know, Maryland overall for your buyers or sellers, we would love to serve your referrals. You can reach out to me on Instagram. I'm at Tina Belivo. Or you can grab my contact info from the show notes. to just keep in touch and continue to build my agent database. So thanks for listening. I hope you are inspired today and I look forward to chatting again with you very soon.