All right. Welcome to the High Performance Agent Podcast. I'm Tina Beliveau and I am knee deep in magnet season, and I was I need to record an episode about this right now to motivate, inspire, and activate anyone who is trying to use the strategy or wants to. Let me just back up and explain myself.
This is one of my favorite. I feel there's two different ways to lead generate. There's the marathon and then there's the sprint. And for me, the marathon is my systems, it's my email marketing primarily. And my social media, that's just continuous. And then I have my sprints, which are these short term heavy but short bursts of promotion.
It is my online giveaways and contests this. My couple events per year and. Some other examples that are on top of mind right now. Basically last year, I have to give a shout out to our team's administrator, Melissa. She noticed that some realtor had posted in her local mom's Facebook group, a free fridge magnet of the local school.
District's calendar for the year and people wanted it, it was hotcakes. And she was Tina, we have to do this. She screenshot the calendar and then my incredible VA, who was brand new to me at the time, recreated the entire file super painstakingly in Canva. Come to find out, some people sell a different version on Etsy, but we made our own, we made it beautiful.
And I was I think this is gonna be a hit. I put it out there, in various forms on social media. And it was a hit. Last year, just to walk you through, I basically promoted it on various forms of organic social media, and the outcome was that I added several hundred people to my database for my marathon, the long term of all my nurture and relationship building.
I got one immediate listing from it, and maybe even other since then. The one thing about tracking in my business is things definitely stack on top of each other, but sometimes I'll work with people and notice there are multiple tags in my CRM, they entered this giveaway and then that giveaway, but then they came to the party and then they hired us and they DMed me on Instagram, but I really met them at the school, whatever.
At the end of the day, I feel the way to win in this business is to number one, focus on relationships. And not being transactional because relationships in your database can just take care of you forever if you take care of it. There's that to always focus on growing your database and not just letting it stagnate.
That's something that I've. Honestly struggled with now that I'm, I'm at year 20 in the industry in August this month, which is when this episode's gonna come out and let me tell you, 20 years is a marathon. I do not have the same verve to get out and network and meet new people and host open houses that I did in the first five, 10 years.
I've spent the last five years being much craftier because of COVID and I have my own small children. Things this that I can do online are massive. Last year this was really successful and you know, I've been coaching and providing templates and support and systems to agents for several years now.
Last year I actually turned around and immediately shared the Canva template. With my agent community. 'cause I was this is great. Everybody should be doing it. I had a lot of people use it to great success, but one of my favorite examples is one of my academy students, her name is Nicole, she took it to such a whole level, a different level.
When she did this last year, she posted in one group and it was popular that she decided to just go for it and she created three different magnets for three different school districts, all within her geographic area. She added over 600 people to her database. She took one listing immediately and I have an old email thread from her that I looked up the other day and at that time she was going on a listing appointment for another big listing.
This works and it definitely works if you get it to the right audience. And that's really what I'm gonna mostly talk about in this episode. Not the boring, how do you do this? 'cause I outline that in the email when you sign up for it.
The show notes with this episode, go find them. You can tap the link and request the template.
You will get a very detailed email that hits your inbox with not just the Canva template, but a lot of instructions on how to use it, where to order magnets. All the questions that people ask me. It's all in there. You wanna look for a subject line that says here's your fridge magnet. A lot of the time it's in your spam.
That's how to get going. Last year this was popular and I have to shout out Melissa again, my team admin in June. She was Tina, are you doing the magnets again? And I was oh my God, I didn't even have it on my calendar. You better believe I do now. I started promoting my magnet yesterday.
As of right now, a day and a half into the promotion, I have 183 entries slash new database editions inside that are three buyer leads. Three seller leads and six people who are curious for the market value of their home. And I'm not done. In fact, I have a ton of comments on Instagram that I haven't had time to reply to all day.
There is more good stuff coming my way.
Basically I wanna give you some tips to just help you get going. Mindset-wise, you don't have to give this out to hundreds and hundreds of people. Depends on your budget. But I just wanna stretch your thinking. If you're why would I spend money on a magnet for someone I don't know?
First of all, with marketing, there's no wrong way to do anything. My mindset is how do I grow my database? How do I grow my database without leaving my house? How do I grow my database without having to be out at night when I would rather be doing bedtime with my kids? Well, most of the time. But if I wanna be out at night, I wanna be having dinner with my girlfriends, not at a networking event or a party that I don't really wanna be at.
For me, growing my audience online has been my primary goal for the last five years, and my team is still cranking out 25 to 30 million dollars a year in volume, even though I leave my house not often. I mean, I sound a recluse, but I don't do any really in-person networking. I just try to be friendly at my son's preschool.
And beyond that, I'm doing everything on the internet. I am not in production. I have not actively really worked with buyers and sellers since 2016, but I've been overseeing my team that whole time. And we've done between 25 and 40 million dollars in volume a year for the last 12 years. And it's all from my database.
At the beginning of 2020, I had a longtime team member leave my team and it was not a great situation. She had been with me for, I think, five years, and basically I lost a big chunk of my database. Were they my relationships? Absolutely. Should she have kept working with them? No. But did that happen? Yes. In the last five years, I had this huge bite taken out of my database that I have had to rebuild and get back to the same volume I used to do.
I've managed to do that with these kinds of tactics and, quite frankly, being quite active on Instagram and Facebook—but organically. Not viral. Nothing amazing. Certainly a pretty high level of success if you compare me to most people. But I don't have 30,000 followers. I don't have reels going viral every day. I just post and I post in my stories.
Let me just give you a high level. Sometimes something this, it's a little bit techie. You've gotta make a form, you've gotta have someone do the Canva template. You could certainly delegate this if you have any admin resources at your fingertips. The email I gave you makes it very easy to let someone help you.
If you're getting stuck on the how-to, here's the big picture. You take the magnet template and fill in your own school calendar. It's pretty simple. You also need to make a form, a Google form. I use a platform called JotForm. If you're in the Academy, which is my comprehensive course for agents, I give you a JotForm that you can literally duplicate and use with three edits.
It doesn't matter where you make your form. You just need a place where people can give you their name, their email address. You need email so you can email them in the future and their home address 'cause you need to mail them the magnet. The other thing you want on your form is a dropdown or checkbox area where they can note that they wanna buy or sell.
I also have one that says, I just want the market value of my home. I use that as a lead generation conversation starter and an excuse to keep in touch, put them on my automated home value email software, and so on and so forth.
My mindset is, the thing I love about this—I used to do sports magnets and I'm not a sports girl, so it never really resonated. This is something that is actually useful and people aren't getting from anyone else. I feel that's one of the things about it that's super cool. Your face and your contact info is on their fridge for the next nine to twelve months. People thank me for this more than I… I love when people thank me for my marketing.
I've gotten so many comments in a couple Facebook groups. I'll tell you about that a little bit later in this episode. People are grateful. Someone PMed me yesterday saying, I'm on the PTA of such and such district. Can you just give me a tip or two? We wanna do our own magnet. Where can you do it?
I said, I'll do you one better. I'll give you my template and I'll give you everything that you need so you don't have to figure out anything. I'll tell you where to order it and you don't need to recreate the wheel. She wrote back, oh my gosh, thank you. Just so you know, whenever I need a realtor, I'll be calling you.
That's all just from some Facebook posting. Does all of that turn into business? No. But if you act that way long enough and put yourself out there long enough, such a snowball effect is possible. I've been building my snowball for a long time. It's not hard, but it does take a little bit of guts.
I will tell you yesterday as I started making the rounds and figuring out where to put or not put my form on Facebook and on the internet, I definitely felt a little uncomfortable. I looked in a certain Facebook group and I thought, Ooh, she's gonna see that. What are they gonna think? Ooh, there's some realtors in there. I had thoughts. It's not I never think about how things look, or is this gonna be annoying? Is this gonna be salesy? Is this gonna be cheesy? All those things concern me.
At the end of the day, I find that line and I don't really cross it for myself. I'm like, this is useful. Obviously, if you don't want it, keep scrolling. That's the beauty of the internet.
That's kind of the high level of how it works. But there's one supercharged thing that I did last year, but this year I changed that I really wanna point out to you.
JotForm again, that's a form software and you can get it for free. The first five forms are free. However, there's a limit. If you get more than a hundred entries, you have to pay for it. But what a great thing to pay for—pay ten bucks a month while you have hundreds of people fill out your magnet form, you know what I mean?
Part of why I love JotForm is it's way more functional than Google. It's way more mobile friendly, and you have tons of control over what happens when people fill it out. Two things happen once you submit the form: it automatically redirects to my Instagram URL, it literally opens Instagram on their phone. On my profile, I'm picking up Instagram followers who will now be seeing me on Instagram. My magnet's gonna be on their fridge, and now I have their email address and they're getting all of my systematic marketing.
Last year I had it redirect to my team Instagram, which is 2% as active as my own Instagram. This year I changed it to my own and I'm glad I thought to do that.
I will say I'm a little bit crazy. Everything that I do is this tightly planned closed loop to make sure that I am getting people in all the places. I want someone in my database, which—when I say my database, I essentially mean my CRM, which therefore means they're in my email marketing—but they're also hopefully following me on Instagram, and then I'm inviting them.
I tend to have at least one event a year where I invite my entire database, even if they've never transacted or referred. It becomes this stacking effect, and I just can't count how many people initiate doing business with me and my team by DM-ing me and basically saying, I'm ready. It's typically a combination of these things, but a lot of the time it's just the Instagram follow.
Even if someone signs up for my magnet, ends up on my email list and is, “Ugh, I don't wanna opt out,” but they still follow me on Instagram—I still have the opportunity over there. I do recommend JotForm for that reason. If you have an active Instagram presence, you could also have it redirect to your Facebook profile, which is great if you're a Facebook user.
The other thing you can do with JotForm is there's an email that you can turn on. It's a confirmation email. When someone fills the form out and hits submit, they immediately get an email. I have my confirmation email customized to again reiterate my Instagram and encourage them to follow.
It also has my website and says, these are the areas we serve, happy to help. And by the way, your magnet will be in the mail mid-August. Last year I had people blow me up, “When's it coming?”
Last year I did something a little above and beyond. I uploaded my magnet sign-ups to a specific segment in Flodesk—my email marketing platform, which is different from my CRM. I can tell you all about that in my email course. I feel strongly about having high-quality, tight email marketing systems.
I sent them an email saying, “Magnets are in the mail, you'll see it soon. Happy school year,” something that. It was just another touch. I got so many replies, and then I'm writing back. One of my… obsessions would be a strong word, but one of my obsessions is: how do I get people to come to me?
It's not that I need to be thanked, but I definitely don't wanna annoy people or turn them off. If I can find ways for them to be, “You did something for me. I'm gonna do something for you. I'm gonna keep you in mind. I might refer you. I might call you and at least interview you when the time comes.”
I am passionate about this. I feel this all can seem uncharted territory, but if you just get going, you can build on this and you can build on this over time. Maybe your database has not been in a good place, or you're not doing good email marketing—start here.
Collecting a bunch of new emails will probably motivate you to be like, “Okay, well now I'm gonna do something about that,” and I have a couple options for people who don't need my entire course but want to fix their email game. I have a low-ticket email template that you can buy from me for $19.
Basically, I send a monthly newsletter to my database. It's a quality, local-focused newsletter that I personally write. It's very easy for me to do and I send the same thing month after month—I just change the messaging. You can buy that for $19 and start using it. And if you wanna take your email game way further than that, message me on Instagram.
I have an entire email course beyond just one newsletter. But I will tell you—one newsletter every month, when you're not doing anything or when you're sending junk that people opt out of or don't look at anymore—it really is a game changer. Email is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to nurture our entire sphere, aside from social media.
But if your Instagram or Facebook account gets hacked tomorrow and you don't have an email list—God, it's stressful. And by the way, I definitely recommend being Meta Verified, especially when you're doing this stuff and putting forms out there. It's worth the investment.
That's kind of my brain dump for you on the mindset, the why, and the opportunity in front of you to start doing this and get comfortable with it and get better and better at it.
Now I wanna give you just a couple tips to get you going. Number one, you may be listening to this at the wrong time of year, but I'm just recording this assuming you're listening as I release it.
Time is of the essence. It's basically the beginning of August. Depending on where you live, school is starting super soon. Even if people get the magnet a week after school starts, it's fine. They'll use it the rest of the year. Everyone knows what day school is starting by now, so don't let perfection get in the way of any of this.
Time is on your side there. This is back-to-school time, people are gonna jump on this. First step: make your form and start posting it. Even if you don't have the magnet design ready, or you get stuck on Canva—don’t even worry about it. You can remove the magnet image from your form and just have people sign up and call it a day.
Again, make sure your form collects a name, email, home address, and has a box to check about buying, selling, or getting a market analysis.
Another tip—people worry about money, understandably. I order my magnets from Magnets USA. A couple things to make it cheaper:
Number one, I paid a college student last year to basically stuff and mail them for me because it costs a lot less per magnet than paying Magnets USA to provide that service. That’s one thing to save you money—just do the assembly yourself. Find some person to do it for fifteen bucks an hour. It’s probably a two to three hour task. Done.
The other thing is, remember that if you use Google Form or JotForm or probably any other form out there, you can close it and shut it off when you’ve hit your budget for magnets. Or, if you hit your budget but you're “Oh my gosh, there's so much demand for this,” maybe you keep going—but just know you're not gonna be stuck sending magnets you don’t want to send.
Those are just some tips to get you going.
Now, the other piece that I want to talk with you about here is how you're going to use this for lead generation. There are three buckets that I think about with this type of strategy—and really anything online lead capture.
The first bucket is nurturing your existing sphere. They're probably already in your database, but this is a way to make a touch and, by the way, the kind of thing that is again… on their fridge for the next nine months.
The second bucket is turning social followers or Facebook friends into database entries. I talk with a lot of agents who—well, we all roll our eyes. I always say, “Is everyone you know in your database?” And they're like, “Well, not really… but I'm friends on Facebook…” I'm huge on using giveaways to get people who you actually know in real life—but you've never gotten their email, or it's way out of date, or you don't have their home address—and you're missing the opportunity to do very specific kinds of email marketing that have to do with where they live.
That’s what I call pulling them from social into your database. There’s so much benefit in that.
The third bucket is straight-up new leads, new database additions—tapping into completely new, untapped markets. Groups of people who probably have never heard of you, or if they have, they're not even following you yet and they're only lightly aware of you.
I'm going to talk the most about that, but to back up—talking about nurturing your existing sphere: if you're “Oh man, it's been a while, I haven’t had an event, I’ve been too busy, spring market got the best of me, I need to love on my sphere”—a couple ways you can do this:
Number one, I think this is the easiest way—email your whole sphere and offer them an opt-in. Basically say, “Click here if you want the magnet,” and then they go to your form. That way you're not sending it to people who don’t need it.
You could also just send it to people. You could go through your sphere—if you only have 50 people, it doesn’t take that long. You could just mail it to the people who you know would want it. But I like the email because it's a touch, and I love offering things to people and then they can say yes or no.
Second, if you have a Facebook group that all of your clients are in—not everyone has this—I do this. I started a group for my past clients in 2020. It's my go-to for an additional way to nurture without marketing. I do not market in there. I just help people, serve them, give advice, contractor referrals, stuff that.
If you wish you had a Facebook group for your clients, that’s another reason you might want to look into my course—the Academy. There's information in the show notes. You can just click and read about the Academy, and if it speaks to you, you can fill out a short application and then you and I will have a phone call and talk about if it's really the right fit for you.
If you have a group, put it there. The other thing is just going one-to-one. You can call people, text them, DM them, or even just use that—there are certain people you want to touch base with but you don't want to manufacture some dumb reason: “Hey, I was thinking about you.” Although sometimes that works.
If there's people you've been meaning to connect with and it's a short list of high-value relationships or people you really enjoy, maybe you do a little bit of one-on-one, but you also email.
Those are my tips on nurturing your existing sphere. I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but I would just say a mass email to everybody is a really good place to start.
The second bucket is turning your social followers and friends and getting them into your database.
The easiest way to do that is just post on your Facebook and on your Instagram and invite people to do it. That way it's more open. The only downside is that you might have people opt into the magnet who you don’t want to send it to. Quite frankly, just delete them. You don’t have to say anything. Once in a while, I get wild cards when I put stuff out there, but generally I get quality and I get opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
The important thing—and a lot of people miss this, so I hope you're still listening—you need to think about putting it somewhere that people can click or tap. That means not your Instagram caption. Facebook is great because Facebook allows clickable links everywhere. If you make a post, you can put the link in the post or in the comments—or both. If you make a Facebook story, you can add a link.
On Instagram, I suggest you put it in your story. People can't click from captions. People just forget that. You can also do the whole “comment CALENDAR and I'll message you,” and that is great—it’s just a little more work. If you're feeling lazy, just put it in your story every other day for a week and keep reminding people to sign up and encouraging them.
That's the really simple way to just get more people in your database. Some people who are already in your database will enter too, and great—now you've got everyone who wants it and you're serving different sections of the same broader group of people.
The third bucket is new leads and new database additions.
There are countless ways to do this. I'm going to give you a menu—a buffet. Take what you like and leave the rest. Pick one thing that feels doable and do that. Oftentimes when I get a little momentum, then I'm like, “Oh, I’ll do this, I’ll do that.” That’s what happened to me yesterday. I was everywhere.
I’m close to 200 people. If I refresh my Slack right now, I could probably tell you—yep, I've gotten more people entering while I'm recording this episode. It's working.
There’s something about Facebook groups that is so powerful. One of the things about it is that they are resources. They’re places where people help each other and genuinely share helpful information and seek helpful information and recommendations from each other.
Things this—magnets—dovetail really well in groups specifically.
Your first thing is: if you have access to any Facebook group that is for your school or a school that you want to be capturing business in that area… a school district, the PTA for a school… and if it's a group that you're allowed to post in where you aren't gonna be kicked out and removed from it—because groups have rules—go read the rules before you post. That’s what I spent some time on yesterday.
Start there.
Number one: any school-oriented group. That is obviously the people who would definitely want the magnet.
Second item on the buffet: any moms group that is dovetailed with the right geographic area. Now, I will tell you—the moms group in my area, the big one—they don't allow any promotion. That one's just off the table. I looked at it yesterday and I don’t wanna be kicked out of that group because it's a very valuable resource to me. The post would’ve been removed immediately anyway. That wasn’t an option for me.
Then I started searching. Are there other groups I haven’t looked at or seen since last year, when I last did this? There was another moms group that’s smaller. I didn’t know the admin and thought, “I should probably connect with her… but let me just focus on other places where I can post.” And that’s what I did.
Number three: any geographic-focused Facebook groups that aren't necessarily about moms or schools but just have to do with the area that you want to be doing business in. That obviously aligns with the school district. If they allow it, that is a great place for it. There are so many geographically focused groups on Facebook. Many are open, many are unmoderated, many allow all kinds of postings. Definitely search around for that.
I will say I have an incredible benefit at my fingertips—I started a geographically focused group 10 years ago, in 2015. There are now just shy of 10,000 people in it. It is an amazing lead source for me every month, every week.
Since I’m in charge, I can post whatever I want—and I’m also careful. I don’t promote much, but when I do, I do something awesome and people thank me for it. Generally.
If you want to start your own Facebook group that’s geographically focused (I call it a digital farm), that’s also an incredible way to start growing your business. That’s one of the things I’ve done in the last five years to rebuild my database and my business.
I have a whole other course and resources on that. I have a free starter kit to do that. If you’re “Ooh, I want to do that,” obviously it doesn’t make sense to launch a group right now—but that might be something you want to do long term. Message me on Instagram. You’ll see it on my Instagram profile, @highperformanceagent. It’s in my little freebies carousel—request it and my little robot will send you the link.
Number four (a subcategory of number three): I didn’t do this last year and I’m so glad I did this year. There are several Buy Nothing groups for my area. I read the rules carefully and looked at some of the posts and thought, “I think this will be fine. I don’t think anyone will mind.”
I posted in two Buy Nothing groups that are in my super niche—where I like to be. I got so many entries from them because I could see when everything would pop as I posted. I got so many thank-you comments—“Oh my gosh, thank you!”
In my geographic group that I run, someone commented: “You’re on my fridge right now. I’m so glad you’re doing this again.” It’s amazing what means something to people.
The Buy Nothing groups are a little less ruled with an iron fist. I definitely recommend that.
Now let’s take it past Facebook.
Number five: If you live in the area you’re trying to market to and you have Nextdoor, you can post and share it with your neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods. I did that. Every social network has a different tone. It’s easy to get stuck on what to say. If you’re using ChatGPT, ask it to reformat your post for a Nextdoor audience. It gave me something more concise and I posted it.
Number six: I didn’t do this one yet this year because I did so many other things yesterday—I lost steam—but you could find a local Reddit, a subreddit for your area or for parents. I’m sure there’s a good “Parents in Baltimore” group or something. That’s such an untapped market for networking, meeting people, being a resource, building name recognition, and putting stuff out there.
If that speaks to you, go try that.
Number seven: You could probably do something like this on LinkedIn too, depending on your audience or groups you have access to. LinkedIn just isn’t my place, but it might work for you.
Two other things I did this year—one is a repeat and one is new.
The repeat: leveraging busybodies. I say that in the most loving way possible. These are people who love to get in other people’s business and help you. Think about who could get your form link out to the right people.
That could be:
* A friend with a big social following who will do it.
* Someone who works at a school or is on the PTA and can post in their group as a resource.
* Someone who can forward it to an email list or parent listserv.
I have several friends that work in the school district or are just my besties who will do me a favor—and they put it out there in their groups. It’s a two-minute favor, and your real advocates will gladly do that for you.
The new thing I did this year: I decided to be more purposeful with Instagram. I usually just do Stories—but I thought, let me make a Reel. I had magnets from last year, so I filmed a quick video of me shuffling them. It was eye-catching. I used ChatGPT to write a caption optimized for moms in Baltimore County, and I posted it.
Then I remembered this “@baltimorecountymoms” account that I had paid for a post with about a year and a half ago. I messaged them and asked if I could add them as a collaborator on the Reel—they said yes and offered to do it for free. They reshared it to their story, too. I got so much traffic from that.
Then I searched for other Baltimore mom accounts and found another one that’s newer. I messaged her and said, “Would you be open to getting the word out?” She said yes and reshared my Story. I shared something from her account to give back.
It was a win-win.
This is a lot—but I want you to hear me say: this is a buffet. Pick one little thread and just get started.
To recap:
* Any school-focused Facebook group
* Moms Facebook groups
* Geographic Facebook groups
* Buy Nothing groups
* Nextdoor
* Reddit
* Use your busybodies
* Collaborate on Instagram
I’ll wrap up with this: I’ve had agents ask me, “Where do I hand these out?” And I’m like—OK, you can hand them out, but my priority is the lead capture, the database growth, the list building. One to two big sprints like this per year is my jam. I cannot keep up what I just described to you consistently—no way. But I can do it for a couple days, no problem—especially because I know the end is in sight.
That’s the whole point of a sprint.
If you order a bunch and have extras, hand them out at back-to-school night or at a local restaurant where your target audience goes. If you have a friend who works in the school, maybe they’ll place a small stack out somewhere appropriate.
Do that with your extras—but this is a list-building opportunity.
That’s what I want to leave you with.
I do other giveaways throughout the year in my geographically focused group with 10,000 members, and I regularly have contests there to grow my database.
Those are my main online lead capture strategies.
There are lots of realtors doing the “Comment GUIDE for my relocation list” thing—that’s great. It just doesn’t speak to me personally. I’m a contest girly.
But you can’t go wrong with any of this.
It’s just: how do I grow my list? Am I using a CRM that’s functional? Am I email marketing?
If not… I should probably talk to Tina.
There are so many ways to do this. You can’t go wrong. The only mistake is getting overwhelmed and letting the chance pass you by instead of asking for help.
If you have a question, shoot me a message on Instagram. If you have a win, shoot me a message or tag me—I want to hear about it. My account is @highperformanceagent.
I just started a new Instagram account for agents only. I’m having so much fun there just talking shop.
If you’re loving my vibe and the way I lead generate and market, you’ll love my course—High Performance Agent Academy.
Check the show notes. There’s a link where you can read all about it. If it speaks to you, apply. We’ll hop on a call. Or just DM me if you’re unsure and want to connect.
I wish you all the best getting your magnet out there.
And if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast—make sure you do that so you don’t miss future episodes.
Thanks for listening.
