10 Top Ways to Market in Real Estate Investing Business:
Hello everyone,
Since Marketing is the most important part of every business, I’d like to add to the previous post… and give you a few more methods.
Here’s my list, and I listed it in order with respect to your budget. So if your budget is small, you do the first few things on the list. When you have more money, then you add more strategies IN ADDITION to the ones you’re doing, in the following order:
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Calling Ads – For Rent, For Sale, MLS Expireds, Foreclosure Listings, Evicting Landlords, etc. You can find many on CraigsList, in your local paper, on your local FSBO websites, etc. You can get an agent to give you Expireds. Some of them will have phone numbers, and you could use one of append services to add phone numbers where needed. Same goes with Foreclosure listings.
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Voice Blasting – there are plenty of service providers on this one. Take the phone numbers and load them together with the brief recording and blast it. However, if you don’t have many, it’s a lot better to call yourself!!
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Door Knocking – get a list of foreclosures and go to their door and offer help. Use Microsoft Street & Trips to optimize routes so you don’t waste time driving around.
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Bandit Signs – “We Buy Houses” or “Sell Your House In 7 Days”
Put them on wood sticks and place as many as possible. Watch out for sign ordinances. -
Direct Mail - Expired Listings – get an agent to give you Expireds, Cancelleds, Withdrawn and mail them a letter or a postcard. You need to do this in 2-3 steps. Important is to mail to them AS SOON AS they expire, otherwise they will relist it and then won’t be interested.
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Direct Mail – Foreclosure Listings – subscribe to a list provider; some title companies or agents will give them to you for free. Filter to narrow down your list – that is CRUCIAL!
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Ads in Newspaper – under Houses For Sale, or Real Estate Services. Typical ads are “We buy houses”, “Cash for Houses Fast”, “Sell Your House in 7 Days”, etc.
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Direct Mail – Targeted Lists – this is where you totally eliminate competition, but it is more costly to mail than the above. You can target 30/60/90 days lates; saturation mailings (every route in a ZIP – postage gets very low); different type of loans out there; different type of equity positions; divorces, evictions, owners with different type of liens, etc. Your imaginations will produce an endless possibilities.
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Pay-Per-Click – Google, Bing, Facebook PPC advertising. Make sure you have a website with the squeeze page so you can capture them. Optimization is the key here.
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Social Media and Google+ – make sure you’re targeting local. Don’t buy properties out of town – too much hassles and the “diamond is in your back yard”.
IMPORTANT: the most important thing with marketing and with the above effort is… TRACKING!!! It’s a must, or you’re shooting blind!! You will never get good at this if you don’t know what’s working and what’s not!!
DIRECT MAIL is my favorite because it allows precise targeting – if you want houses in Foreclosure, then you get that list, if you want Free&Clear houses then you get that list, etc. It’s the only method that allows you precise targeting, but it needs the know how.
TRACKING again is the most important. So find out what marketing piece works best for you… is it a postcard, a letter, a check letter, a yellow letter, etc.
BE CREATIVE – get creative to increase the response. We mail check letter looking mailings, air mail envelopes, transparent envelopes, torn envelope in half w letter in it, lumpy mail with round-toit, alka selcer pills, million dollar bill, fridge magnet, etc. etc. One of my best responses was the letter in a ziplock bag – I mailed thousands of those.
RESPONSE – it really varies from city to city – in bigger cities where there is a lot of competition, generally it is around a few % or even lower. In my area, in So. California, there’s no way you will have 10% response – if I even show up with pizza at their door, it will not be that high
IT’S GOING DOWN – and your response will go down as the market is heating up – we’ve been seeing it in the last few months.
BUT… I’ve made a fortune on 0.02% – 1% response. The key is to get your few deals done, and after that you’ll be able to spend on marketing whatever you want. For example, would you spend $3000 to make $30,000, right? Any day of the week. So if you sent out 5,000 postcards, and got 10 – 50 calls, and ended up doing one deal with 30k profit, would it be worth it! Of course.
WHERE DO YOU START? You start by CALLING sellers. So even if you have money for marketing you need to start with calling first, unless you are already an experienced investor!! The reason is, that every method listed will cost money (bandit signs cost money, voice blasting cost money, etc.), so when the phone rings, there’s a $ cost associated with that ring. Therefore, you do not want to practice your phone form, and your phone skills on the calls that take money to generate. That’s waste of money. So my advice is, talk to min 100 sellers first before you start marketing. In addition to getting good on the phone, you may find a deal or more.
So my friends, get busy!! You will be glad you did!!
Read the “How To” articles, the Blog here, tune in the weekly newsletters you’re getting from this site, and talk to a lot of sellers! If you persist, you will change your life!!
Good luck!
Marko
P.S. don’t get discouraged if you don’t have money for marketing!! I was there myself and I, as many other successful investors started out of desperation. You’re only one deal away from a nice marketing budget!