Re: I want a good ad to do lease options. - Posted by B.L.Renfrow
Posted by B.L.Renfrow on October 21, 2000 at 22:47:33:
“I buy houses” may be old, but there’s a reason for that…it WORKS!
My print advertising is exclusively in the local Pennysaver. I usually run one of those ads for 2-3 weeks of every month. Every time I change the wording, or try another type of ad, the calls go down.
I do not use the word “cash” in my ads…because when I did, that’s all the callers wanted to talk about. But “I buy houses” pretty much covers everything: subject-to, lease options, and the occasional cash deal.
I keep my ad simple. It reads “I BUY HOUSES. Any price/condition. Call Brian today at 123-4567.” Costs me $9 per week, with a bold first line. If you’re not getting calls, look not only at your ads, but your medium. You don’t mention where you’re running your ads - and it does depend on your market - but in my town, the sellers I want to reach read the Pennysaver, not the larger regional daily paper based 50 miles away.
And, after experimenting with about a dozen different ways of receiving the calls, I now put my cell phone number in those ads and most of the time talk directly with the sellers when they call. I have tried 800 numbers, answering machines, voice mail with multiple mailboxes (in which I foolishly tried to explain my criteria for purchasing).
There is no substitute for speaking with the callers directly, the first time they call. Even though people SHOULD be comfortable with technology, many of them just aren’t. I discovered I was getting more hang-ups than messages when I was not taking the seller calls directly. Yes, it’s a pain to talk to all those “unmotivated” tire kickers, but with practice it doesn’t take long to discover whether they’re motivated early on. Now, I save the voice mail for the ads where I’m selling or renting. I want to connect - live and in person - with each and every potential seller who picks up the phone after seeing my ad.
In my market there is only one other guy running a remotely similar ad…and he’s run the same ad every week for at least 5 years, that I know of. His ad: “CASH FOR YOUR HOUSE. Close in 5 days or less. Call Joe Blow at…” And this guy DOES pay cash…he typically offers 50% of FMV. I know this because more than one seller has called my ad after calling his. And that brings up a final point. It doesn’t matter how many similar ads appear in your area…seems as if people often call all of them. Just find a better way to solve their problems than everyone else, and you’ll have more calls than you know what to do with.
Brian (NY)