If you asked every real estate investor in the nation what their most significant challenge is, the vast majority would likely tell you they struggle the most to find new deals.
It truly is the name of the game. Real estate investors have a common saying: “You make your money when you buy.” There is a lot of truth to that. However, it takes a lot of effort to locate the deals that can be purchased and turned for a profit.
There are several options, and it can be overwhelming at first. But this article breaks down the most common marketing methods among house buying companies, along with keys for success.
Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail marketing involves sending a piece of mail, typically a postcard or letter, to homeowners that might want to sell their house.
This is one of the most common marketing methods for real estate investors. It can be started very quickly, and many markets respond well to these campaigns.
When beginning a direct mail marketing campaign, the first thing you must decide is who you will be reaching out to. You will need to develop a list of targeted homeowners. The best candidates to reach out to are landlords, people behind on payments, and owners of vacant houses.
Lists of these types of homeowners can be generated using services such as ListSource. Once you have your list, you will need to have the mail pieces printed and mailed. Some real estate investing softwares such as REIPro provide everything you need, from generating lists to printing and mailing postcards.
Cold Calling & Text Message Blasting
A marketing method that is becoming increasingly popular among real estate investors is cold calling and sending out text message blasts. These strategies go hand in hand because they are both directed at homeowners’ phones.
Like direct mail marketing, you will need a list of homeowners to contact with this strategy. However, you will need to go a step further and skip trace each contact to obtain a phone number.
Multiple CRM platforms are specifically designed for real estate investors. They allow you to automate your sequences by scheduling follow-up messages and ending campaigns when contacts respond.
If you are looking to scale up your lead generation, hiring a virtual assistant to manage all of your outreach campaigns might be helpful. Cold calling is a numbers game, so large portions of time must be spent to achieve your desired results. Hiring a virtual assistant allows you to be calling people all week without taking up all of your time.
Before getting into cold calling, you must know that it requires thick skin. Many people you contact will not be happy you called them, and they will certainly tell you that. However, many real estate investors have a great deal of success using this strategy.
Driving For Dollars
The term “driving for dollars” has been coined by real estate investors and involves driving your target neighborhoods in search of distressed properties.
This tactic allows you to find properties that no one else can find online since houses can begin to have issues rather quickly sometimes. The best approach when driving for dollars is to choose areas that you would like to buy a house in and slowly weave your way through them, taking note of any properties that appear distressed or unkempt.
Once you generate a sizeable list, you can use one of the options listed above to reach out to the homeowners to see if they would be interested in selling.
Search Engine Optimization
Imagine for a moment that your home has an issue – say the HVAC unit goes out. What is the first thing you would do? If you’re like most people, you would do a Google search to find a reputable HVAC service company in your area.
The companies at the top of your search have likely put significant effort toward search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves optimizing your website to rank on Google for search terms your potential customers and clients search for. For real estate investors, these terms would include phrases like “sell my house” and “we buy houses.”
From a very high level, SEO can be boiled down to two main components – on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO entails building a website that talks about all of the terms you are trying to rank for and designing it to convert traffic into leads. One thing that Google takes into account when deciding which website to rank at the top is user experience. If your traffic spends lots of time on your site, it is a good sign that your website meets their search intent, and you will rank higher because of that. However, if people quickly bounce from your site often, you will likely see a drop in rankings.
Off-page SEO involves building backlinks, which is when another site links to yours. Backlinks essentially serve as “votes” in Google’s eyes that your website is credible and that you know what you’re talking about. However, not all backlinks are created equal. Not only does a link from Forbes increase your rankings more than a link from a tiny website, but there are also many spammy sites out there. Too many links from sites like these can result in a penalty from Google. It is best to develop a strategy to build legitimate backlinks.
Once your website begins ranking in your area, you will start to see an influx of leads. The best part of SEO is that once you get to the top of the rankings, the leads are essentially free – no more buying lists or paying for postcards. Also, these leads are generally very high quality because they’re actually seeking you out instead of you badgering them about selling their house.
It’s Time To Start Marketing!
Successful lead generation is crucial for every real estate investor. Whether you are flipping houses or buying rentals, your business will stagnate without new deals coming in consistently. The key factors for success when marketing for real estate deals are consistency and taking action.
You must find the marketing strategy that works best for you. What works in one market may not be near as successful in another. Also, different methods require different skill sets, so you should choose the ones that fit you best. The only way to determine which strategies will generate the most leads is by trying them out. Before long, you will be able to hone your skills and systems and create a deal machine!