Today’s REI Classroom Lesson
In the classroom today, Duncan Wierman explains how to add your business to local searches, and in turn, get you more leads.
REI Classroom Summary
Learn where to add your business so that your leads are higher each month, and how it can all be done online.
Listen to this REI Classroom Lesson
Real Estate Investing Classroom Show Transcripts:
Mike: Welcome back to the FlipNerd.com REI classroom where experts from across the real estate investing industry teach you quick lessons to take your business to the next level. And now, let’s meet today’s expert host.
Duncan: Welcome, everybody, this is Duncan Wierman. I’m going to be your host today for REI Classroom. We’re going to continue on our series of lead generation, how to get lots of leads and do more deals and do it faster.
Mike: This REI Classroom Real Estate lesson is sponsored by VirtualStaffNow.com.
Duncan: I, myself, am an Internet guy. I love to get leads and hundreds of them per month. Working with the Internet versus doing things the old-fashioned way, and one of the things I recommend you to do after you’ve . . . the last month we’ve talked about branding your businesses, now we need to start getting the word out there. That means let’s get into the local search engine, the local search results. These are what Google and Bing and Yahoo serve up when people are searching using keywords to find answers to their problems.
I’m going to give you a really good one to start off with in. We’re going to start off with Google because it is the biggest search engine out there, but I do want you to do this exercise also with Bing and Yahoo. There are probably 20 other sites you can do this at serve up maps when people are doing their searches for their problem houses.
But I’d like you to all, if you don’t have one already, get a Gmail account and I want you to go to Google.com/places. Just like going to places, Google.com/places and you’ll find the link that says “Add your business.” Okay. Now, they’re expecting this to be a brick and mortar type of business, but if you want to list your home you can do that, or you can say you work from, let’s say, a UPS store. Anywhere that you can utilize a physical presence as a street address. So a post office box is not going to work for this.
I have heard the post offices is now allowing you to say your post office box number as sort of like a street address, but I have not found that to be true anywhere myself. So what I like to do is go into an area that I like to target to get leads from locally. Then I’ll open up a UPS box, the smallest one possible, for a month to three months just to make that [inaudible 00:02:53] into that address for a period of time that Google can verify it.
With that in mind, you’re going to add your business. They’re going to present you with a wizard. This wizard, the better you complete it, the higher the results you’re going to get in the local search. Again, that little map that pops up when you search for something and you want to be on that map because that’s what appears first most times now.
You need to have your name of your company, you want to have your physical address, your telephone number and all that. But they are going to be asking you for other information that you do want to complete. This is information such as, “How many parking spaces do you have? What types of credit cards do you take? Do you take cash? What are your hours?” They ask you all these continuing questions and the better you fill it out the higher you’re going to appear on the map.
So when it comes time to uploading a video or pictures, don’t skip that step because they’re going to say, “Do you have any pictures of your business? Do you have any videos of your business?” What I suggest is you could go to a service such as a photo stock company and purchase for five bucks a picture of a happy person in front of a sold sign. For a video, if you don’t want to get one created, you could sit in front of your video camera and just tell them, “Hey, this is what you do. This is my little infomercial.” and upload that.
After you go through this wizard, it’s very important, is that they’re going to verify this information. That means they’re going to send you a postcard to the address that you put on file. It’s going to take two to three weeks to get that postcard, but once you do you’re going to come back to Google Places and log in again and [inaudible 00:05:04] for that code. Your ads now will start appearing within 15 minutes on that local map and literally you’ll get hundreds of leads per month just doing that one tactic because you’ve tweaked your map to appear on top.
That is a great tip to do so please do that one and we’ll be continuing on in our series of REI Classroom lead generation tips, guys. And that’s Duncan Wierman, that’s it for this little chat. Hope you enjoy it and actually go out and do it.
Mike: VirtualStaffNow.com is now the leading virtual assistant provider for real estate investors. As busy real estate investors, there is nothing more valuable than our time. VirtualStaffNow.com not only helps you find the right real estate virtual assistant for your business, they train them on an ongoing basis, manage them daily to make sure they’re staying productive and effective and in the event they’re not the right fit or need to be replaced, they handle that for you too. Whether you need one or 100 virtual assistants for your team, start the process right now at VirtualStaffNow.com.
Please note the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of FlipNerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investments or tax decisions, as real estate investing can be risky.
Are you a member yet of FlipNerd.com, the hottest real estate investing social community online? If not, you can join for free in less than 30 seconds and get access to hundreds of off-market deals, vendors in your market to help you in your business and you can start networking with thousands of other investors just like you. Get your free account now at FlipNerd.com.
Please check out the FlipNerd family of Real Estate Investing Shows where you can access hundreds of expert interviews, quick tips and lessons from leaders across the real estate investing industry. They’re available at FlipNerd.com/shows or simply search for FlipNerd in the iTunes store.
Duncan: Welcome, everybody, this is Duncan Wierman. I’m going to be your host today for REI Classroom. We’re going to continue on our series of lead generation, how to get lots of leads and do more deals and do it faster.
Mike: This REI Classroom Real Estate lesson is sponsored by VirtualStaffNow.com.
Duncan: I, myself, am an Internet guy. I love to get leads and hundreds of them per month. Working with the Internet versus doing things the old-fashioned way, and one of the things I recommend you to do after you’ve . . . the last month we’ve talked about branding your businesses, now we need to start getting the word out there. That means let’s get into the local search engine, the local search results. These are what Google and Bing and Yahoo serve up when people are searching using keywords to find answers to their problems.
I’m going to give you a really good one to start off with in. We’re going to start off with Google because it is the biggest search engine out there, but I do want you to do this exercise also with Bing and Yahoo. There are probably 20 other sites you can do this at serve up maps when people are doing their searches for their problem houses.
But I’d like you to all, if you don’t have one already, get a Gmail account and I want you to go to Google.com/places. Just like going to places, Google.com/places and you’ll find the link that says “Add your business.” Okay. Now, they’re expecting this to be a brick and mortar type of business, but if you want to list your home you can do that, or you can say you work from, let’s say, a UPS store. Anywhere that you can utilize a physical presence as a street address. So a post office box is not going to work for this.
I have heard the post offices is now allowing you to say your post office box number as sort of like a street address, but I have not found that to be true anywhere myself. So what I like to do is go into an area that I like to target to get leads from locally. Then I’ll open up a UPS box, the smallest one possible, for a month to three months just to make that [inaudible 00:02:53] into that address for a period of time that Google can verify it.
With that in mind, you’re going to add your business. They’re going to present you with a wizard. This wizard, the better you complete it, the higher the results you’re going to get in the local search. Again, that little map that pops up when you search for something and you want to be on that map because that’s what appears first most times now.
You need to have your name of your company, you want to have your physical address, your telephone number and all that. But they are going to be asking you for other information that you do want to complete. This is information such as, “How many parking spaces do you have? What types of credit cards do you take? Do you take cash? What are your hours?” They ask you all these continuing questions and the better you fill it out the higher you’re going to appear on the map.
So when it comes time to uploading a video or pictures, don’t skip that step because they’re going to say, “Do you have any pictures of your business? Do you have any videos of your business?” What I suggest is you could go to a service such as a photo stock company and purchase for five bucks a picture of a happy person in front of a sold sign. For a video, if you don’t want to get one created, you could sit in front of your video camera and just tell them, “Hey, this is what you do. This is my little infomercial.” and upload that.
After you go through this wizard, it’s very important, is that they’re going to verify this information. That means they’re going to send you a postcard to the address that you put on file. It’s going to take two to three weeks to get that postcard, but once you do you’re going to come back to Google Places and log in again and [inaudible 00:05:04] for that code. Your ads now will start appearing within 15 minutes on that local map and literally you’ll get hundreds of leads per month just doing that one tactic because you’ve tweaked your map to appear on top.
That is a great tip to do so please do that one and we’ll be continuing on in our series of REI Classroom lead generation tips, guys. And that’s Duncan Wierman, that’s it for this little chat. Hope you enjoy it and actually go out and do it.
Mike: VirtualStaffNow.com is now the leading virtual assistant provider for real estate investors. As busy real estate investors, there is nothing more valuable than our time. VirtualStaffNow.com not only helps you find the right real estate virtual assistant for your business, they train them on an ongoing basis, manage them daily to make sure they’re staying productive and effective and in the event they’re not the right fit or need to be replaced, they handle that for you too. Whether you need one or 100 virtual assistants for your team, start the process right now at VirtualStaffNow.com.
Please note the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of FlipNerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investments or tax decisions, as real estate investing can be risky.
Are you a member yet of FlipNerd.com, the hottest real estate investing social community online? If not, you can join for free in less than 30 seconds and get access to hundreds of off-market deals, vendors in your market to help you in your business and you can start networking with thousands of other investors just like you. Get your free account now at FlipNerd.com.
Please check out the FlipNerd family of Real Estate Investing Shows where you can access hundreds of expert interviews, quick tips and lessons from leaders across the real estate investing industry. They’re available at FlipNerd.com/shows or simply search for FlipNerd in the iTunes store.
