Are you leaving money on the table?
Leads. Are. Everything.
They are what makes the world turn in the real estate investing industry.
From obtaining a lead to the initial contact to nurturing it with follow-ups, your tactics have to be spot on in order to achieve maximum profit.
When you’re marketing to potential sellers, you want to use your marketing budget efficiently. Regardless if your budget is $100 or $10,000 a month, you need to be smart with your marketing.
Overall, using targeted marketing with consistent follow-up is what needs to be done. We’ll go over some smart marketing strategies for you to consider when you’re trying to find motivated sellers. This includes online marketing and direct mail.
Targeted Audience and Follow-Ups
This might be the most important part of marketing to sellers. We all have a budget, like mentioned above. If you’re wasting half of your budget each month on non-motivated sellers, you’re prohibiting yourself from growing and becoming more successful. Sellers to look for and target include:
-Out of state owners
-Those delinquent on their taxes
-Homes that are for-sale-by-owner
-Distressed or vacant properties (from driving by)
-Properties with liens or code violations (contact county)
Consider all the extra follow-up you can provide when you focus in on a more defined audience. Be specific with who you are marketing to and have follow-ups scheduled so your dollars are more productive.
When planning follow-ups, you should have different campaigns for sellers who have shown interest in selling, or better yet, have set up an appointment with you. These sellers are either ready or close to being ready to sell. You’ll want to follow-up with them with a long-term approach. Keep your information in front of them, which can be done through letters, email, postcards, etc.
Yellow Letters for Cold Leads
Cold leads aren’t dead leads!
You just have to be more patient with them.
Yellow letters work great for this. They stand out from normal mail and people are trained to know what they are. You never know if they’ll be ready to sell in 6 months or in 6 years but for a relatively low cost, you can keep your information in front of them.
We’ve made deals on 4-year-old leads and as far as time and effort went, it was pretty much on autopilot for the letters that were periodically sent to them.
Social Media and Networking
Pretty much everyone uses it, but most don’t realize how to properly use it for advertising. Social media platforms are constantly changing their algorithms and apps become outdated just as you figure them out. That being said, social media marketing can bring in an entirely new set of leads for you.
You can run ads on Facebook that targets people in your area who have searched keywords such as ‘distressed’, ‘behind on taxes’, ‘cash now’, etc. and use an easy to read image that will pop up on people’s news feed.
With Facebook (currently), make sure to follow their advertising guidelines so that your ad is most visible. Having too much text can hinder your results by Facebook not promoting it as much.
Social media, especially Facebook, is a great platform for letting your friends know in a casual manner what you do so that if they know of anyone who is looking/needing to sell, they can refer them to you. Many investors provide a referral fee, which is a great incentive for your friends to put in a little effort and send leads your way.
In person, you can always mention what you do to your friends. Even if they don’t know of any motivated sellers at the moment, there might come a time when they hear about someone who might be a good lead for you.
Search Engines
Know the keywords that people most commonly search and make sure to have used them with all of your ads and your website.
Words such as below are good to keep in mind:
-Cash Now
-Cash Fast
-Behind on Taxes
-Delinquent on Taxes
-Distressed
-Repair Needed
-Lien
-Probate
-Buy As-Is
Other keywords to include are the cities you invest in.
By using these keywords in your advertising as it makes sense, you’re more likely to be seen by motivated sellers. Many investors pay for advertising with Google Ads or other search engines to stay near the top of the search results as well.
Marketing strategies are forever evolving. Watch out for new ways to market to your leads and figure out what works best for you. By being smart with your marketing, you’re able to grow your list and your business to higher levels of success.
Put the effort in and you’ll reap the rewards.
