How to Build Hyper-Local Facebook Groups for Consistent Real Estate Lead Generation

0:00Welcome to the High Performance Agent podcast. I'm your host Tina Beliveau and I'm an expert in real estate marketing, social media, technology and systems. I'm here to teach you how to build a sustainable and consistent business that supports your dream life. Through my repeat, referral and relationship-driven systems, I've built a team that sold nearly 2,000 homes over my 20 years in the industry. In this podcast, I keep it real and share exactly what I do and more importantly, how you can do it too. If you're ready to scale faster, work smarter and generate more leads from your sphere, please check out High Performance Agent Academy. My 12-month course packed with plug-in-place systems done for you marketing and step-by-step strategies. You get my entire business in a box, plus coaching and personalized support for me every step of the way. Get all the details at TinaBelovo.com slash Academy. Welcome back to the High Performance Agent podcast. I am pumped to be back with you. It has been a good bit since I recorded a new episode. I have been a busy little B

1:07and what I've been busy with is what the kind of the whole topic of today's episode is about. So if you haven't seen it already, I feel like I'm marketing it so much, but I know I have to because this is just such a marketing lesson for all of us. We need to talk about things so many more times than we think is necessary. You can feel like you're annoying, you can feel like you're repetitive, you can feel like people have already heard me talk about this, but marketing just takes so much repetition for people to notice, pay attention, and then ultimately take action. So that's me right now. I decided to do something I've never done before, which is host a live three day bootcamp to help agents launch their own locally focused Facebook group so that they can generate leads in their ideal market, their ideal area, neighborhood zip code, increase your average sale price, and most importantly, just do business where you really want to be doing it. I've never done a bootcamp

2:07before. As of this recording, I have 125 agents signed up. I'm so excited. This is one of the biggest things I've done in a while. Part of why I've been intrigued by doing an action oriented training like this is I'm so much more passionate about implementation than I am about ideas. I love a good idea, but implementation is where progress happens. It's where change happens. It's where growth happens. It's where the business comes. It's where we learn so much and stay like stimulated if you've been doing this for a while. So that is where I'm aiming with all of this. And you know, what I want to talk about is this thing occurred to me, and I say this to people with marketing all the time. Like sometimes there are things to do to grow your business or sustain your business systems you need. Things that we need for our business in various dimensions where you know it's the right thing. It's just not the right time. And that's because whether like I'm in a busy season

3:11or I just don't have the bandwidth or I just don't have the interest and passion and I just trust that like when the right time comes, I will know. And then what it helps is to know in the back of my mind, things that I know really make sense for me, but it's just waiting, being patient for the timing and not rushing, not overdoing, not trying to do everything all at once because I just know that that doesn't work for me. And I'm at a point where like overwork and overdoing it. I'm just I'm not having it. I'm not allowing it in my life. So it's been in the back of my mind for a long time to start a new Facebook group for moms in my area. And it just hit me that I was ready. And I was like, oh my gosh, how fun would this be to create my own brand new group leading into my boot camp. Show people how it can be done, how far you can get in just a couple weeks with some focused effort. And also like keep me a little fresh and humble on what it is like to build something from scratch like this where like there are like these thoughts and feelings and concerns that do

4:15come up. So in this episode, I'm going to just explain to you what I'm doing, what's happening with it, how it's working, some of the lessons and takeaways. And this is just like a great prelude if you are coming to the boot camp or thinking about creating a Facebook group and maybe enrolling in the boot camp and just to get a sense of this is something that could fit for you. So tiny bit of backstory. I have a main group. It's called Living in and then the area name. I have a whole other podcast about launching I call it like a geographic farm, a digital geographic farm. There's like an episode on kind of like the starter on the concept of that. I'm going to link that in the show notes. But just to give you like the high level, I've had $20 million in closings since 2021 that all track back to leads I got in the group or referrals from people in the group or referrals from people in the group who hired me and then referred me. So it's been a huge lead generator for my business. It's also been very easy like so much easier than a lot of the other things that I do.

5:18Less work than events, less work than like daily social media, less work than even just like writing an email because it's just like Facebook content creation is so simple and straightforward. And when I my group started to spit off like a little bit of not even business but just like engagement and traffic and it was in 2021 at some point I think it was you know late that year where I was like you know what like I really want to I'm going to really go for it with this and I'm going to figure out how to get more engagement how to brand myself better how to be how to capture business from the group without being cheesy or annoying or violating my my own rules of like not constantly marketing. So I tested and tried so many things to create engagement and also capture leads. I've learned what works and what doesn't I've figured out how to grow the group and I've also just been the beneficiary of like when you get a group like this up and running it does become its own machine with a lot of its own steam like people ask me how do you grow your

6:18group now and I'm like the algorithm does like the algorithm knows what that group is for it's for people in a certain area and it shows it to them and people just join and they search and find the group when they're moving to the area which is a great lead source for me. People invite their friends their neighbors I have 10,500 people in that group right now and if you look at like this census for that zip code there's only like 15 or 20,000 people like I've captured such an insane proportion of people in this immediate area and that that's kind of I think part of why I felt ready to start a secondary group was I've reached a saturation point where I mean this group has so much more potential but it just felt like it might be time to do something new. So this is what I'm going to be teaching you how to do in the bootcamp so helping you decide what area are you going to do in niche for like moms or some other special interests or just generally people who live in that area what are you going to name your group how are you going to position yourself against any

7:19like competing groups that maybe you perceive to be like similar or some sense of competition I'm going to teach you how to grow and attract members there are things you can do besides just waiting on the algorithm I'm just at this point where I can kind of be lazy with my group which I love and then what content to create and what not to bother creating. I mentioned this on Tuesday at a training I was doing and like everyone immediately in the chat box is like but what do you put in your group and I was like oh my gosh it's not like a one second answer but it's so doable it's so easy and I'm going to talk a little bit about that today at the bootcamp I'm also going to just give some tips on running your group effectively because there are some common pitfalls like a common question I always get is should I allow other realtors you'll have to come to the bootcamp to hear my answer and most importantly like how to brand yourself and capture leads from your group in a way that's like really sustainable and consistent and not annoying right not like a turn off to your members so check the podcast show notes if you want to hear a little bit more about the big picture

8:20but I just want to tell you about what I'm doing with my new group and give you this like ground level insight so I decided to go with this title moms of and then the name of the area I actually ran this by a friend who's like a great marketing brain and I was like is it area name moms or moms of I was like I feel like moms of has this like identity connotation that feels like more like yeah like that's me like I'm a mom of that area and she was like yep hard agree so like went with that name I have 467 members as of this recording started the group I think 10 or 11 days ago um so here's what I did in the big on day one I created the group I named it I added the location I wrote a very short about section that basically oh I don't have it pulled up in front of me but it basically just says like this is a group to connect um welcome it's like a really short here I've got it here I said this group is for any mom who resides in blank area the goal of this group is to help each other share resources and ideas build community and facilitate meetups and

9:22new friendships welcome with a friendly exclamation point and then I put three rules on my group they're actually rules that I have on my other groups I was able to copy and paste the first one is be kind and courteous that's a huge aspect of my group philosophy um what makes a group valuable is not having it be toxic and not tolerating people being rude and nasty that's a hard no it's a remove in a block um two no items for sale it's just not the vibe of the kind of groups I like to be and three um it says all posts are moderated I actually haven't turned post moderation on I probably will up until now it's going fine with that um you know what I need I need to add no business advertising to my rules now that I'm looking at it because people are kind of getting around it by introducing themselves but only talking about like what they do for a living so it's you know whatever everyone's an entrepreneur I respect it um but yeah when I also have a

10:22rule that this is not a crime and safety watchdog group that's a little bit of like a bunny trail but I just want to say topics like crime and safety tend to start toxic conversations for a variety of reasons so I just don't allow them in the groups because I learn the hard way what happens when you allow them and it's not cool so I made my group I made the about I made the rules um I add the location this is critical you can add a specific location for your group and that tells Facebook where the group is and then it's way more likely to suggest it to people in the right area and then it's like okay let me oh and I made like a um like a cover image for the group which I'm going to give that template to people in the bootcamp so I was like okay this looks cute I know oh and I put like one post at the I posted one thing before I added anybody um and then I like pinned it to the top and it just says something like you know welcome so glad you're here please introduce yourself in the comments and then you can yeah you can do something called pinning which means it's like they're at the top and and is saved there so it's kind of the first thing that people see when

11:23they scroll at least some of the time so then I just went and added like a few friends who are top of mind that are just moms in that area and then I was like okay great so I'm lucky okay I have um I have something on my side which is I have this other other group for the same area so I did get an immediate influx of members by posting it in another group that I own an admin but there is no reason you can't promote your group in other local groups some groups allow promotion of other groups some don't so there might be ones where you can't but there are plenty that do allow it so the best way to get your group off the ground is to do three things one invite people directly who you know would be a fit to post it on your main profile um and just say hey I started a group for this demographic like please come join and then three promoting it in other groups that are the same area because I mean we're just assuming this is all about the area for anyone listening to this so I posted it in my like my bigger group I got like over 300 member requests in the first 24

12:28hours but since then things were just happening organically members are adding friends people are finding it and the algorithm is showing people the group so it's just getting it to a point where the algorithm just understands who's in the group and who's likely to join it right like obviously we know Facebook has so much data on people um I also started stirring up some conversation right away which I'm gonna say a little bit more about the content but I just want to say two really cool things happened so there are two amazing women that helped me moderate my main group which again 10,000 members it's very busy there are I don't even know hundreds of posts per week that are approved and then hundreds that are not because it's always people trying to market and breaking the group rules they immediately were like hey if you need help moderating like we'd love to help and I'm at a point where I've learned like accept all help um they don't have group ownership they can't like delete the group or unadmin me they're like have moderator status um so they're now in there able to help me so like people will help you can recruit someone to help you run your group if

13:31at any point you feel like you need it there are usually you know it's like a certain personality type it's like people like me people who like join the PTA people who like involve themselves like you and I both know there are so many people who are like that and you're probably one of them if this kind of concept appeals to you to like help others and like step up and create community so I you know accept all help as if it's helped from people that you know you want to be like affiliated with and communicating with um the other thing that happened somebody who joined the group I didn't know her at all PMed me and was like would it be okay if I post in the group and like ask if people have other kids my age and I was like of course and she was kind of like asking if I should post it for her so this is just like a little random tidbit from that conversation I said to her yes absolutely and I said I'm happy to post about that but just so you know like it really helps the algorithm when other people post in a grant grant in a brand new group aside from the moderator so if you can post that would be awesome and she was like absolutely so she did someone

14:33else who I do know I just met her through my main group I had a networking event she came to it she's like a home baker and makes like Mexican breads and sweets and donuts she's like such a wonderful person I already did a giveaway with her in the main groups like we've already collaborated and I've like helped this woman who you know like gave her my platform happily and so she came to me in the PMs and was like I would love she basically was like can I have a leadership role in the group I would love to help with something with like meetups like similar to the other person you know like certain people are just really hungry to like get together and meet other moms and like get out of their little isolated shell and I was like absolutely I would love for you to take the lead and run with it I've learned is like a leader a leader type and someone who is like very type A like I can just do things myself but it's like so powerful to empower people and be very like clear of like you can run with this like you don't have to like I'm I will help you and I want to but like you

15:38don't have to run it by me like I trust you like go with it like that can yield like such a beautiful amazing things when you just empower people so that's basically what I said to her and then she just PMed me this proposal of a post she wanted to do and she just basically wanted my opinion and she just said here's a draft I wanted to put a poll in the group I want to check with you first and then she said hi everyone Tina and I are excited to start a monthly mom's meetup starting in March we want to pick a day that works best for everyone do prefer Saturday or Sunday please vote below and comment if you have a preferred time it's simple but like when other people start stepping up it gives other people implicit permission to step up and co-create and respond and and build their own things and that is what is so powerful about groups like that's obvious like I think I'm just really really passionate about this and on a personal note part of why this group feels like the right thing at the right time for me is I had a couple networking events for

16:39business owners from my main group and like I enjoyed them but I'm just in my mom of young kids era like one of my ongoing problems to solve is like what are we going to do this weekend to burn off the energy so like the idea of like meetups and exploring different like local playgrounds and just inviting people to meet us is so much more my speed it's like I'm already doing it but I might as well like socialize and make new friends who are like cool and like minded and basically like I know that building new relationships does eventually lead to new business and that has been one of my challenges like I built a lot of relationships probably compared to most but before kids and before COVID the number one thing that really drove my business well there's a lot that drove my my business growth at its like peak of like most rapid growth but I was really big on growing my database by like 10 to 20 people a week and that isn't necessary like there's a lot there's

17:40like a quality argument versus quantity but my point is for my life like post COVID and kids I'm out way less I'm on the internet way more which is like really great but also like kind of mentally fatiguing I'm sure you know exactly what I mean and I'm like doing more content creation and I'm just noticing that like it just changes how like I feel and my energy so I'm just at a point where I am hungry to get out there I'm looking to make new friends and just like build my mom community so this is just where I want to be so that's why this felt like the right thing at the right time to just take on and then here's the honest thing like Facebook groups aren't that heavy if six months from now I just am not feeling it anymore I can just take a step back like a group gets quiet like nobody cares so I'm not saying like oh build a new lead pillar and then give up on it but like this isn't something you're you're committing some time to launch it but I just always tell people

18:42with Facebook groups like you don't need to worry about perfection or if the engagement is at the best or what people think because no one's paying that much attention so just experiment learn I find that when I get into action my my answers become clear from being in the process versus like sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the clarity like once in a while I do sometimes I just need to rest and not take action it's like such a paradox I'm sure you know what I mean but sometimes I do just need to try things and then a path becomes clear later and the wild thing about relationship is like you and I could meet someone we could meet today and then there's going to be an opportunity that's going to come around that makes sense for the two of us to be involved in together five years from now and you and I could never predict what it's going to be never that's just how relationships are so it is like a frustrating thing I think about building like a relationship and referral based business is it's not as predictable as like

19:44I buy paper click leads on Google and I get 20 leads a month and I convert five of them into transactions like it would be so nice if relationships were that mathematically predictable they aren't there's it's like a softer art and I think the more of a giver you are the more exponential the results can be in your life and the lives of others I think the more of a good realtor you are obviously like that impacts exponentially the kind of results and referrals you get so like there are a lot of different things that go into it but like at the core like if you are a great realtor and I'm sure you are and and you want to give more like this is such a good forum to do it in so when I close out with what I'm doing for content in my group just to give you some ideas I've been doing this long enough that things can just kind of come to me as an intuitive hit and I don't need to be like super systematic you should be more systematic than me but I started my group and I wasn't even sure exactly what my content plan was going to be I just knew I would

20:47figure it out so that was like last Monday today's a Friday like the week after and yeah week one I was just getting people in there and replying to the comments on the intro post and replying to and commenting on anything anyone put up and there were some you know post right away like was very clear this group filled like a little bit of a void there's another moms of Lutherville area group but like it's not super active I noticed some like advertising in it so again there's just always space for a good group so then um yeah I guess like two days ago it hit me what I wanted to do from I was like I've got people in here like what can I do and then I was like oh there had been a really good post the first day or two where someone was asking for a good pediatrician they were like new to the area needed to switch to a local pediatrician so it hit me that I need to go back to like old faithful one of the things I learned in my main group is post where people ask for referrals to anything whether it's like a new restaurant a doctor a contractor

21:52they get amazing engagement because that's like what groups are there for right it's like for people to help each other and connect so I was like oh I'm gonna do exactly what I did in that group where I started to curate conversations I'm just gonna do everything mom's mom specific so I'm doing a little series and then I'm gonna bundle all of that into what's called a guide so I'm doing a school series I asked on Wednesday um I just started a thread called preschools and just said for anyone who's shopping for preschools like please comment on this thread with where what what preschool you've done um anything that would be good for people to know nuances insights and this can be a resource and you know like 12 people commented with like different local preschools like and then people are like starting comments you know back and forth to each other and someone's like can I PM you have been curious about that place I'm like oh this is all happening so I'm doing um next week I'm gonna post for daycares and then I'm gonna do local private schools and then yeah and then the public schools they just are what they are so I don't

22:54know I don't really see I've been thinking like should I do something with that but I think it more just is what it is so I'm just gonna fill the need for people who need to like shop around for schools essentially so when you have posts on a similar topic you can create this thing called a guide in the group and then basically like link all the posts that have to do with that to the guide so I'm gonna have a schools guide it's gonna have all those posts linked once my schools guide is done I'm gonna decide on the next thing I'm kind of thinking pediatric doctors of like all the specialties like we just realized we want to get our daughter's vision tested and like like I want to have like the pediatric ophthalmologist thread I want to have the pediatrician thread I want to have the like couple other things that come up all the time um who to see for the tongue ties like you know it all if you're a mom so um I'm definitely gonna do like a medical directory um and then I'm gonna do one for playgrounds for sure and yeah so that's my content plan for right now and it's just gonna put me at the center of the group people are gonna just get to know me get to know my personality my style kind of building that know like interest factor and then I just know

23:59that that's eventually going to lead to business I am taking a pretty light touch with the way I'm handling the group right now with it just being smaller and newer I'm not pushing my real estate business at all I have found there was a time with my Lutherville group when it felt like it was time and that I could kind of do certain things in certain ways and I've gotten really systematic with my main group and now I'm very very very branded in my main group and I trust that I will find my own way with my mom's group to do that as well so I think a lot of people come to me with concerns about that and I think it's definitely something you can kind of work your way towards so I'm gonna stop there because I could just talk forever and ever and ever um I'm really excited about the group I'm even more excited about the bootcamp I have a lot in store for the bootcamp members I'm actually going to do a pop up Facebook group just for everyone doing the bootcamp so that we can all like communicate throughout that week and like provide some extra support outside of the live trainings and then I'm really upping my Instagram game this year I have I've grown my

25:03profile by like 20% in followership over the last week I'm so excited I've been doing a lot of trial reels and I have one that's done really well bringing in the exact audience um that I want to be targeting so I'm just I just feel like I'm having a lot of momentum with social media right now so I've been doing a lot with Instagram and I started a Facebook Diaries series so I'm basically kind of documenting the process of starting my new mom's group so if you want to hear more and like follow along with the process I'm gonna link the first reel in the series so that you can um you know follow along with that if you're interested so I think that's everything I hope you join the bootcamp if this sounds like something you want to be doing I'll have all the links in the show notes and if you're just curious about working with me on a more comprehensive level getting my systems maybe coaching with me one-on-one book a call with me the link is in the show notes for that as well there are two ways to work with me right now you can buy the academy which is like my entire course

26:07it's my business in a box and or you can join my small group mastermind where I give one-on-one coaching as well as small group coaching and support to higher level producers so just throwing that out there that's everything I'm working on right now having a ball love helping agents thank you for listening to me and if you have any questions or comments on this topic please like shoot me a DM on Instagram I would love to talk with you at high performance agent and have a great day talk to you next time thank you for listening to the high performance agent podcast make sure to subscribe or follow so you don't miss the next one and check the show notes for links to all of my resources including my course high performance agent academy and please come say hi on instagram you can find me at high performance agent talk to you soon