Real estate Investing is a powerful tool to build wealth.
Through real estate we earn both immediate cash flow and begin to build a financial foundation for our families.
A very important determinant of a successful real estate investor will be their ability to locate and close on deeply discounted properties.
We talk about great deals a lot here but if you have the ability to find these deals (& lots of them) you will have a very good starting point for creating a profitable real estate investment firm (or being a sole investor).
If you are able to produce a backlog of deeply discounted properties, you will be exposed to many different avenues to profit in the real estate investing business.
By developing, testing and executing different marketing strategies, you will begin to learn which of these strategies work well in your local market and which ones do not.
This will allow you to push more money into the strategies that are doing well and eliminate the strategies that are not producing.
So how do we go about finding these deals?
The short answer to this question is through out marketing efforts. Our marketing efforts will consist of both inbound and outbound marketing techniques.
First, let me tell you that, finding these deeply discounted properties can be a challenge.
However, the more we test and figure out which strategies work well in our area, the more deals we will find and the more success we will have.
Before we begin our marketing efforts we need to understand who our marketing efforts will be pushed too.
This means that we have to develop different buyer persona's for each specific motivated seller we are targeting. This will allow us to create specific, targeted lead magnets towards this persona. The more information we know about our target market, the better odds we have of being successful with our marketing efforts.
"Nothing easy is worth while"
5 Real Estate Marketing Strategies To Get Us Started
1) Inbound Marketing / Building Online Presence - As you guys know, I am a big proponent of inbound marketing and this is where the majority of my deals come from.
Inbound marketing is a very effective strategy and one you need to consider seriously if you intend on building a business around your investing. This is a strategy that could produce your first deal but to be honest inbound marketing does take time to implement. Even though it will take time to implement, from day 1 we suggest you begin building your online presence and practicing these concepts.
So what does inbound marketing actually consist of?
This concept is fairly simple to understand. Instead of going to find customers or motivated sellers, you will now be bringing customers to you through different online strategies.
There are 4 inbound marketing actions that will help us reach our goals.
1A) Attract - You will be attracting customers to your site or driving highly targeted sellers to your web hub. We will do this through:
SEO - Optimizing your site and content around highly searched, low competitive keywords to draw targeted traffic. (We Buy Houses CITY, Sell My House Fast CITY)
Creating exceptional content in the form of blogs, videos, infographics, ebooks, white papers, slide shares.
Webpages - Set up around different buyer persona's or reason homeowners may be motivated. ex) home needs repairs, inheritted home, divorce, job loss, behind on taxes/mortgage, can't stand their neighbors (we have heard it all)
Social Media - Social Publishing
1B) Convert - Once we begin to bring a good amount of highly targeted traffic to our site, we now need to convert these visitors into leads. This means we will need to get certain information from them. So in order for our visitors to offer their information, they will expect something in return. This is where we will use ebooks, white papers, consultation or free tools in exchange for email addresses, names and phone numbers. This content will put these prospects into the top of our sales funnel. Now we will also have forms on our site like this:
These conversions create higher qualified leads since they are filling out a form to actually let you know that they are interested in selling you their home.
So some of the tools that we will use to help convert visitors into leads will be:
Forms - allow visitors to submit their information in return for your service or content
Calls To Actions - Buttons or links that encourage your customers to take a specific actions
Landing Pages - Pages customers will be directed to after they click a call to action. Specific page dedicated to that offer
Thank You Pages - Pages customers will be directed to after they finish signing up on your thank you page. You will offer more information on your service to move them farther down the sales cycle.
Contacts / CRM - Keep track of all of your leads (home sellers, cash buyers, wholesalers etc) in a marketing database.
use a site like this to attempt to create one for you.) I am not going to get in to that many details, since I have several posts on this topic. I would suggest that you start by reading this book. This book touches on several topics, such as content creation, website conversions, SEO, mediums to distribute content and much much more.
1C) Close Em - Now it is time to turn the leads we have generated into customers. Each lead that we will get will be at different points in the selling process. Some of the leads we get may just be inquiring about our service so they signed up for an ebook to learn more about selling to a real estate investor. Other leads are ready to sell and have filled out a form with all of the information that you need to follow up with a phone call.
Depending on how far a long our lead is in the sale process will depict what type of techniques we use to close them or move them farther along in the sales process.
Drip Marketing - A series of personal emails sent to a specific buyer persona with additional information to move them along the sales process
Immediate Phone Calls - If a lead fills out a form with all of the information you need to run an analysis, then run the analysis and call them ASAP
Marketing Automation - A series of automated messages delivered to leads depending on which lead magnet they signed up for on which topic.
1D) CCS (Continued Customer Service) - Inbound marketing is all about providing remarkable content to your prospects, leads and customers.
Just because you may have put a lead under contract does not mean that you should lose touch with this person. Most of your clients may still be suspicious about the process and are definitely unaware of the closing process.
Your job is to make them comfortable with the proceeding steps after you have them under contract. This means keeping them up to date with when you will close, making them aware of what documents will be needed and explaining to them how the closing process works.
You can do this through email, text, or phone. Just keep your new customer up to date with exactly with what is going on so they feel comfortable throughout the whole process.
2) Craigslist - I know everyone and the mother is on craigslist, posting - WE BUY HOUSES ads - listen I get it. But it is a free platform to get your ad out there and when your first starting out, free is great.
There are ways to differentiate your ads from the competition and make them stand out. Craigslist allows you to implement simple HTML code into their ads - this allows you to make your ads standout from the crowd. Craigslist is not the best source to find deals, but when starting out and looking for your first deal - Craigslist is a great platform.
Just as you can post ads that you purchase homes, you can also use this platform to look for deeply discounted properties. Several homeowners use this platform to sell their homes. When searching craigslist to find motivated sellers, you need to focus on a some specific keywords. The keywords you need to focus on are:
Handyman special
Motivated seller
As Is
Fire damage
Water damage
Cash buyers
Must sell
Fixer upper
Investor Property
So instead of searching through craigslist everyday, there is a way to automate this process, so that ads using these keywords will be sent directly to your email inbox.
Head over to IFTTT and we will be setting up these queries.
Here are the steps:
1) Sign up and create an account.
2) Create a Recipe
3) Choose a Trigger Channel
4) Complete Trigger Fields - This step will require to go to craigslist. Go to the search box and put in one of your keywords. For this example we used handy man special. You will then copy the URL and paste it into the Search results URL - see below.
5) Choose Action Channel - Here you will choose your email provider. For this example we chose to choose gmail.
6) Complete Action Fields - Type in your required email information so the software knows where to send the information.
You will repeat these steps for all of the keywords that you would like automated. This will save you hours and hours of searching through craigslist for deals.
3) Wholesalers - It is very hard to find investors who are good at wholesaling. This is the case because typically new real estate investors choose this niche to begin their investing careers. So the majority of wholesalers you will speak with probably have never completed a deal in their lives.
95% of these wholesalers have no deals, don't know what a good deal is or have never done a deal. Ok rant over. Now if you have find a good wholesaler (just 1) that can bring you leads that work for all parties involved, you have found gold.
Here's what you need to do connect with them.
Option #1 - Go to craigslist - search for We Buy Houses
Call every single one of these folks and ask them if they are wholesalers
Tell them you are new to real estate and that you are very serious and have the funds to purchase an investment property
Ask them if they have any properties under contract or any potential deals
Take down there contact information and store in CRM.
Option #2 - Call every sign (bandit sign) you see locally that says We Buy Houses
95% of these folks are wholesalers that may have a deal for you (follow the same pitch for the craigslist ads)
Now if your area is anything like my area, you should have contacted 30-50 potential wholesalers that could possibly bring you your first deal.
4) HudHomestore.com - This is the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is a listing site for REO properties that are available for you to purchase. There is a lot of competition on these sites and there are some rules in regards to how you can buy, how to bid etc.
How it works is you type in your city/county that you are looking to buy in. They will show you a current list of all the properties they have available. The only issue with bidding on these properties, is if you are not a registered real estate agent, you will have to find one to place the bids for you. These websites do offer some opportunity, just educate yourself on how they work and what they expect from you.
5) Bandit Signs - I am not a fan of bandit signs but it is how I got my first deal. Bandit signs are a good outbound marketing technique to use to generate some phone calls which could turn into some leads. The reason I mention this technique here is because it is also an inexpensive outbound marketing strategy.
Post 50 - 100 bandit signs around your local farm area with your designated phone number for your real estate business. You can either purchase your bandit signs or you can make them on your own.
Will These 5 Real Estate Marketing Strategies Get Me A Deal?
Like I said in the beginning of this post, that hardest part of this business is finding great deals and finding great deals can take time. However if you use these 5 steps you will increase your exposure and increase your odds of getting a sale. I have heard several stories of people getting there first deal within a couple weeks of implementing these strategies.
To be honest, you have to increase your exposure through these marketing channels and get lucky. Your first deal has a lot to do with luck, regardless of what any guru has to say. As you begin to build your business and utilize and test different marketing channels, you will create a better marketing strategy that is scalable and offers an ROI that is beneficial to your business.
Getting great deals will not happen over night. You have to be resilient, document and test all of your channels. Every market is different and motivated sellers will react to marketing techniques differently in these markets. So start off using these techniques, take this seriously, treat this like a business, begin building your online presence, educate yourself and I promise if you keep at it, you will come up with a great deal!
If you have any questions in regards to different types of marketing techniques, leave a question in the comment section below.
Also, tell us about the different marketing channels you have had success with in your local markets.
We would love to hear about them!
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