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In order to be successful in anything that we do, we have to leave what we were doing and old mental attitude, and go towards something else. Trevor Mauch
Good morning, good evening, or good afternoon, whatever time you are listening to this episode of The CarrotCast, and I’ve got a special treat for you.
I was down in Dallas, Texas, had a Mastermind just recently, it was the Investor Fuel Mastermind with Mike Hambright and a bunch of other amazing people. About half the room was Carrot customers, actually.
But these people were crushing it, and there were people doing 100, 150 deals a year. There were people that own 400, 500, 600, 700 rentals. There were people that own 1,000 doors on apartments. There were people that were doing some big, big stuff in business and life.
And what we did was we did an impromptu podcast with three of the Carrot customers after the Mastermind. We sat down at a table and literally put this cell phone in the middle of the table and the audio quality ended up way, way, way better than I thought it would. But we had a great conversation.
We’ll introduce you to those three Carrot members here in a bit.
The cool thing about it is they all are completely different backgrounds. They all are focusing on different parts of real estate. They all do a lot of different marketing stuff.
Blake McCreight is actually in Chicago, and he’s a non-techie, totally non-techie, 40 years old, closing a bunch of deals. In his past life, he was a turnkey guy, doing a bunch of turnkey stuff and he’s pretty much strictly just getting down and dirty and learning the real estate lead-gen side of things.
He did a bunch of wholesale deals. He’ll talk about how he did it.
Jamie Wooley. Jamie’s actually from Dallas, Texas, did 102 deals in her first full year as a real estate investor in one of the most competitive markets in the country, and she talks about how she’s doing it. And she’s really hitting things hard, and what her “why” is, because it’s not what a lot of other people think.
She’s not in this to be in it for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years. She said,
“I want to hit it hard for three or four years, really build a massive stockpile of cash and an asset, then stop and go hang out with family again.”
But she’s doing massive things, $50,000 a month in marketing. She didn’t start there, though. She walks up through how she did it.
And, then we have Rashad Sullivan out of California, young guy, 25 years old. And he’s crushing it, doing bunches of deals, did almost a half a million dollars in gross revenue in 2017, and he talks through how he did it.
But we talk about a lot of life stuff, too, so I think you’re gonna really enjoy this. One thing I want to toss at you is this: Every single week, I host a webinar. Just go to Carrot.com/webinar.
And this webinar actually is gonna dive into exactly how these market leaders are doing what they’re doing. It’s called the Market Leaders Revealed Training.
This Market Leaders Revealed call is gonna dive through the data, it’s gonna go into exactly what the big people in each market … even people who are just like the ones in this podcast you’re gonna listen to … what they’re doing to get most of their leads and deals in this market.
Without further adieu, we’re gonna dive into this episode of the CarrotCast.
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On this episode of the CarrotCast, learn how 3 real estate investors are crushing it using entirely different strategies.
1:30 – Quick intros. A little bit about Jamie, Rashad, and Blake. 7:10 – What type of marketing Blake is doing right now, why he was initially skeptical of online marketing, and how he pushed past that skepticism to close high double-digit deals in 2017. 9:50 – Snapshot of who Rashard Sullivan is and how he entered real estate. 13:15 – How Jamie got her start and some of her real estate investing failures and successes to build a 100+ deal per year business. 22:50 – Blake’s journey into real estate investing and some of his failures and successes. 27:25 – Examples of getting over your limiting beliefs. How these three real estate investors overcame their negative thoughts. 35:40 – For real estate investors, is age a limiting belief? Learn how Rashad has been able to overcome this thought. 40:00 – Within this specific state of the market, what are they doing for marketing?
Blake – Diving into SEO and PPC.
Rashad – Direct mail and driving for dollars.
Jamie – Equity lists and postcards.
54:30 – How to build a business that truly motivates you while balancing the moments that it is taking away from your life.
Rashad – Building a strategy around more passive income.
Blake – Having a different mindset:
Less is more.
Adrian Nez – The journey of outward giving and serving your family.
Jamie – Building a residual income for her family.
1:09:15 – Parting words about having a “leaving a legacy” mindset.
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I was confident like yeah I’m young but you can play tht in a positive way. I was like, yeah I’m young, I’m gonna hustle, I’m ambitious. You know I really need this so I’m going to work for you. And, it’s kind of how I played it and people respect that. You know I got a lot of “I what to help a young guy make it.” You know I think people root for that to, the bug. It’s bad in one sense but you can use it to your advantage.
Tim Oppelt
Tim Oppelt, from Opp Real Estate, has endured a lot. He’s worked one of the “worst” jobs possible, been laid off, and made some investing errors. But he’s a big believer in trying to do what you love and creating a new path for others. With that… He’s beginning to crush it!
He wants to change some negative perceptions about entrepreneurs into a perception that maybe you can do what you want in life and succeed because you love doing it.
Tim discusses spending hours and hours and dollars and dollars working on a website and online marketing but not getting a return. He found what wasn’t working and decided to join Carrot and dive into his online marketing head-on.
Now he is having online marketing success by scaling your business.
We dive into his strategy for phone leads, how he follows up with prospects, and the importance of creating amazing systems for his clients and marketing.
Listen to this episode and create a path to scale your real estate investing business.
1:45 – Why Tim is on the CarrotCast. Also, who he is and what his business looks like right now. 3:55 – What drives Tim? What his main passions are right now? 6:00 – His path to real estate investing after being laid off from a previous job. 8:15 – What was the first touch point in real estate and breaking down his direct mail strategy? 10:50 – Saying “Just do it” and leaving the perfection vs. progress attitude for a bit. 12:40 – Feeling that prospects are looking at you differently than others. How Tim got around the “your too young” mentality. 15:15 – When did he move to more of a web-based marketing strategy? And what percent of leads and deals are coming in via the web vs. direct mail right now? 18:40 – Why Tim joined Carrot.
I saw real estate investor and website and thought I’m an investor and need a website it made sense.
Tim Oppelt
20:40 – What was wrong with his first AdWords campaign structure and how he fixed it. 22:40 – There is more strategy than “implementing the thing”. How Tim’s marketing knowledge has upgraded his business and where he’s focusing most right now. 25:50 – Where and how to scale up your real estate investing business. 26:55 – Tim’s AdWords spending and how many deals he’s been pulling out. 29:05 – What his online deal mix looks like. 30:15 – Hiring his first assistant. Where he was in his business when he decided this would be the right move. 32:40 – Testing phone calls: live answer vs. voicemail. 36:15 – Hiring assistant number 2. Why he made this move and what tasks they are assigned. 37:50 – What are Tim’s dreams, how much he’s working right now, and how much does he want to be involved in the future? 40:30 – The biggest things he’s been able to pull from Carrot and implement into his business. 43:20 – The pivotal point after being laid off when he took the plunge into real estate investing. 44:25 – What book is he reading right now? 45:30 – Tim’s advice for someone with or looking for an investor website. Would he recommend Carrot?
What if you could read the mind of the motivated seller? Meaning, what if you could send the right message to the right person at the right time?
Unfortunately, the internet provides a threat to match its opportunity. While powerful, the internet’s power can easily be strangled by its formidable size. Quickly, it becomes a source of crowded destruction instead of open possibility.
The real estate market is increasingly competitive because it’s increasingly cluttered, making the dream of reading the house seller’s mind, at the least, difficult, and at the worst, debilitating.
But here at Carrot, we hate letting dreams die.
Every year, our clients pull in over 400,000 online leads, giving us a very special position to speak to what’s happening in the real estate market.
Even though the market is more crowded than ever before, by accepting this density and optimizing your customer experience for the motivated seller, that crowded room becomes a pleasant dinner party. And you’re the host.
So, how do you cater and attract a motivated house seller?
Well, you need to know what the motivated seller thinks, wants, and does. Lucky for you, we crunched some numbers, ran some tests, and stepped into their mind… using a significant and varying sample size, specific to all seller websites we host.
And we want to share what we learned.
So, before we finish wiping off brain matter, here’s how the motivated seller makes the decision on who they’re going to work with when selling their house… based on our years of research and understanding the “decision lifecyle” of the average motivated house seller.
Let’s Get Inside The Mind Of A Motivated House Seller On Their Path To Choosing A Company That Can Solve Their House Problem
Step 1: Problem Aware
The house seller knows they have a problem… but aren’t sure how to best solve it. This is where you come in…
At this stage the motivated house seller is thinking…
“I need to get this house sold, like soon.”
This is the birth of the motivated seller.
Maybe they received a job in a new state, a family has fallen sick, foreclosure, inherited a house, going through a divorce, or just simply have a house that needs lots of repairs that they don’t want to deal with. Regardless of the reason, life circumstances spiked their curiosity in the selling process and they start exploring the possibility.
First and foremost, the seller wants to know how much they can likely sell their house for. They’ll likely visit Zillow, update their house information, and then check out their Zestimate.
But, while Zillow offers convenience, John Wake’s guess work, on Real Estate Decoded, estimates that Zestimate’s typical error is plus or minus 14,000 dollars.
And whether the motivated seller has run their own tests or not, their trust for this system is limited. It offers a curiosity-sating foundation, but not a real-time solution.
Which is good. Because you are the real-time solution they are looking for.
That takes us to the seller’s second dig: they contact someone who can answer their questions in greater depth.
Likely, this is someone the motivated seller’s acquainted with, whether it be a friend, a Facebook ad, or a Twitter feed. Whatever the case, they are looking to make phone calls and get answers.
It’s your job to (1) get them to call you, and (2) provide those answers.
Here’s how.
1. Get In Front Of Them Where They Search… Google
House sellers will hit Google to search things like “how to sell my house fast” or “selling a house in divorce in dallas” to find basic info about their options.
If you’re ranked high in Google with SEO or PPC and you deliver great content on your site that clearly shows them that you have a service that can solve their problem… you’ve just met them exactly where they are in the decision cycle.
2. Direct Mail
At this point, your prospect is also now receptive to marketing messages that look like they’ll solve their problem.
You dig through the mail. After tossing the credit card offers and ripping up the bills you’ll just pay online later, you come across a handwritten letter. Whoa! That’s unusual, you think. You quickly check your mental calendar to see if today is your birthday. Maybe your aunt has sent a card with $5 inside. Nope. What’s going on?
Maybe the letter is from the local movie theater, maybe it’s from a church, or maybe it’s from a local real estate investor.
Maybe it’s from you.
The point is that everyone gets a lot of mail, but if you make your letter stand out from the rest, people will feel that much more a part of your tribe.
Direct mail isn’t dead. In fact, since it is slower than nearly every other medium of communication, that snail-like pace has romanticized its effect. Like candlelight and bathtubs, the receiver feels like they’ve been transported back to better, more personal, times, and because of that, it has an intimate feel… if it’s done right.
12-point Direct Mail Checklist for Real Estate Investors and Agents
A checklist to ensure consistently remarkable mailers that generate leads, grow your business revenue and make your campaigns more sustainable.
3. Social Media Presence
Don’t break the bank for Facebook advertisements. But do maintain a social media presence — post on your account regularly — as a preemptive strike to the motivated seller’s subconscious.
When trying to decide who to contact with all of their questions, the seller thinks, “Hey, I remember seeing real estate investor, Joe the Pro’s [this is you], posts on Facebook. He seems like he knows what he’s doing. I’ll contact him!”
In fact, second, only to Direct traffic, Social Media wins when it comes to acquiring new sessions on your website.
Some ads that just let them know your service exists will be perfect for this phase. Like…
or…
Play with the endgame in mind. The more people who notice you on Social Media, the more people who’ll contact you when they decide to sell their house — which we all will at some point.
Marketing Tips For This Phase:
Do more broad marketing as targeted as possible
Focus on just letting them know you have a service that can solve their biggest needs (speed, convenience, no fees, no agents, etc.)
Bonus: Have your ads drag them to the next phase (Solution Aware and Vetting / Verifying) w/ testimonials in your ads
Step 2: Solution Aware
They know their basic options, agents vs. investors… they just need to research more to see what’s best for them.
At this phase the house seller is likely thinking…
Ok, cool… it looks like there’s options… but how are agents different vs. investors and which is best for me?
At this point, the motivated seller Google’s phrases such as, “Sell my house fast [insert their location],” “Agent vs. Investor,” or “Professional home buyers.” They’ve decided to sell their house, now they’re deciding the best way to go about it.
It’s critical that you get noticed.
Why?
Because our data shows that motivated sellers aren’t wasting any time. They make a decision on who to work with faster than you can paint a bedroom: 0-days fast.
You need to be prepared for this. When the motivated seller decides who to work with, if you’re not able to answer their questions, someone else is, and they’ll choose that someone else.
Here’s how to raise your hand first.
The One Mindset Difference Between Top-performing Real Estate Investors and Everyone Else
Learn the dead-simple difference between those who build thriving businesses and those who never fulfill their dreams or goals.
4. Content Structure That Pulls The Prospect To The Next Phase Effortlessly
Most websites and marketing don’t think through the order that their prospect thinks when making a decision. They don’t take into account what info the house seller needs to have before the next piece of info will be useful to them.
Take a look at this Carrot site as an example… from a client who has been a part of over 3,000 transactions.
This Content Flows The Way Sellers Make Decisions: Does Yours?
Notice the order of the navigation on the site. First we meet the seller at “problem aware” (hey, we can buy your house!), then educates them on the solution, then builds credibility and guides to the call to action. Bam.
Does your marketing skip phases and leave your prospect hanging with questions?
Or does your site only focus on making sure they know you can buy a house but not on pulling them through the next phases proactively?
5. Blogging
The sheer amount of blogs on the internet is debilitating. It seems like everyone and their pet blogs.
But, as you know, since everyone else is doing it, it’s hard to get noticed if you’re not.
The good news, though, is that even with the massive amount of online content, the motivated seller isn’t threatened. They still view blogs and spend an average duration of 1:05 looking.
Due to the increased visibility it creates, your blog is a great way to answer the motivated seller’s questions as they type them into Google, increasing traffic, forcing you to learn your stuff, and building relationships with the people who want to help you make money.
If you want to take up blogging — which you should — check out our post on how to do that, with actionable examples.
When the motivated seller searches, “Sell my house quick in Roseburg, Oregon,” you’ll be at the top. Because other real estate investors aren’t including “Roseburg, Oregon” in their content.
Unless, of course, they also work in Roseburg…
But it’s a whole lot easier to compete with a few local real estate investors than it is the whole nation. Since you’re not selling or buying properties in every state, don’t create content that competes nationwide. Create content that competes locally and you’ll be more visible to the people who matter.
7. Ads That Compare + Educate On The Options + Process
In this phase, you can’t keep on sending people ads and direct mail that just tells them that you can buy their house. They already know. So here’s where you need to retarget your prospects w/ ads that educate and compare… while at the same time adding credibility to pull them to the next phase.
Like…
… and one of our own (one of the highest performing ads we have, it drives to a blog post of ours)
Marketing Tips For This Phase:
Start to retarget your prospects on Facebook with a mix of ads that educate and compare. Comparing your USP to theirs is critical
Build your website and your marketing so it flows the way your prospects decide
Bonus: Again, if you can have a testimonial do the heavy work for you, educating your prospect for you… it automatically pulls the prospect past the next phase… building credibility for you in the process
Step 3: Vetting and Verifying
The seller recognizes their problem, they know the basics of the options… but who should they work with?
In this phase the seller knows they have a problem that they want to be solved fast, they basically know the options and how they work… but now their main question is…
Which company should I work with? Which is the most credible?
They’re asking if they want to work with you. Your job is to convince them that they do.
How?
The homepage is where the motivated seller often lands, and not just lands, but commits… or at least turns into a lead.
If they’re not ready to become a lead… they then explore the website to find answers to their questions or verify suspicions.
What Pages Do Most Most Leads Come From? [our data]
Notice that of the 16,000 seller leads in this data set over a period of time for Carrot clients, 5,000 of those leads weren’t ready to opt in on the home page. They searched for more info instead…
Since the homepage is playing such a significant role in determining your leads and, thus, your conversions, here’s a few things to think about when trying to attract motivated sellers.
Don’t just cater for those ready to opt in right now, include robust content that builds your expertise, credibility, and makes it easy for them to contact you
But how can you best build credibility and get an edge on your competition since your prospect already knows that you both can provide essentially the same service?
Let’s start here…
8. Easy Contact Options + Great About Page
The ease with which you create this page is not equal to the breadth of its importance.
Overall of the seller websites we host, the “contact us” page sports compelling numbers.
For an even faster transition from homepage to lead, provide the option to bypass the “Contact Us” page with a “Call Us: XXX-XXX-XXXX” CTA.
Notice The Interaction With The Easy Opt-In Form And Phone Number
As you can tell, a Christmas tree would have trouble competing with that red-hot dot. Consider putting your phone number on the homepage to reduce the number of clicks needed to go from viewer to lead. Fewer clicks mean more conversions.
During this beginning phase, the seller has a lot of questions. Your “Contact Us” page, or “Call Us” corner, gives them the opportunity to get in touch with you and inquire. You’ll be positioned like a pro and, more importantly, make a valuable connection.
Also, as the seller does their research… they’ll hit your about page.
A Heat Map Of A Carrot Clients Site: Our Company Is Hot
This is very common… actually we see this on almost every test we’ve ran over the past 4 years… and that’s a lot of tests. The Our Company page is where your prospects go to see who you are.
A Heat Map Of Our Site (previous version) Shows The Same
Yep, we use data for our own business just like we do to help you get better results in your business as a Carrot client :-)
Get faces on your About Page like Carrot clients CR Homes of Maryland.
Show them ads that build your credibility… seller testimonials are great for this.
On this website, our heatmap shows that testimonials are playing a critical role.
Notice the red spot over the “testimonials” link. Time and time again we see heavy engagement on testimonials on sites across our system.
Like…
Notice how this investor filmed a video of their client and put up a well formatted testimonial on their site. Turn this into a Facebook ad and you’re golden.
And make sure to use credibility badges where you can to add that 3rd party validation to your credibility profile.
And last, make sure to control your brand conversation online when people are verifying and vetting your brand through Google searches. Like…
Your Sellers Are Actively Searching For Reviews + Your Reputation… What Do They See?
Hopefully you’re controlling the conversation around your brand so your sellers don’t bail at the last moment in this phase. Control it like this…
Notice How Their BBB Profile, Facebook, And Carrot Site Control The Brand Convo
The biggest missing factor in your ads, your direct mail, and your online marketing strategy is credibility. Credibility trumps any marketing tactic out there.
If you’re offering the same service as the next guy, it’s going to come down to credibility and your offer. That’s it.
10. Clarity
Stumbling upon a cluttered website is an immediate no-go for the motivated seller. Where clarity communicates professionalism and ease of use, clutter communicates a lack thereof.
But what is clutter?
Clutter might translate into the too-much-stuff-on-one-page category, but not necessarily. Consider the apparent “clutter” of a top online store, Amazon.
What Is Clutter? It’s Not Clutter If It Get’s You What You Need…
Amazon is the world’s most optimized ecommerce website. It’s also one of the most “cluttered” according to people. Clutter is only cluttered if it doesn’t help the prospect find what they want.
As you can tell, there’s a lot going on. And this goings-on could easily be classified as clutter.
And yet, they’re winning.
Don’t think of clutter as having too much on a single web page, think of clutter as having too much that distracts from your CTA. Amazon wants you to get lost in the shopping experience, and thus it shows you a plethora of items you may or may not be interested in, much like browsing at the mall.
But you’re not trying to sell products ranging from laundry detergent to Harry Potter collectibles.
Your product is an easy and fast process for the house seller.
To sell that, you don’t want a lot of action items.
As a bad example, consider this website… for whom the brand name has been blocked out.
This website is a disaster. Most importantly, It has painfully positioned CTA’s…
With this many Call’s To Action, you can be sure that none deliver. This is clutter. Clutter means that when someone visits your website, they’re not sure what you offer, or where you want them to click.
In contrast, clean and clear as a windexed window, check out this example.
Full Of The RIGHT Information But Not Devoid Of The Info
Your Prospect Needs To Advance To The Next Phase
This homepage immediately communicates what it offers, whether or not I — the motivated seller — am in the right place, and what I should do if I am (fill out the information).
A website this clean will perform better simply because it communicates better. Get harsh on your own website and, if needed, ask for an opinion from a friend — a friend who’ll be honest.
Because having a mobile-friendly website is as important for visitors as having toilet paper for house-guests. It’s just expected.
Marketing Tips For This Phase:
After someone opts into your site, retarget them on Facebook with testimonial ads
Build a physical credibility packet and mail that to your prospects overnight, email it to them, and take it to your in-person meetings
Add at least 5-10 great testimonials formatted correctly to your site
Build reviews on 3rd party sites like the BBB, your Facebook page, and Google local.
Step 4: Making The Decision
Here, they’re ready to decide. Are you making it easy?
At this phase the motivated house seller is likely thinking…
Ok, lets get them to give me an offer… then I’ll pick the best fit.
Are you making it easy and are you reinforcing their decision to work with you EVEN AFTER THEY CALL YOU OR OPT IN?
The motivated seller has taken the first step, but still, they could abandon.
However, it is too early for you to give up.
There are two primary tools in your arsenal to make them comfortable, and they both focus on transparency: honesty about what you offer, what the seller should expect, how a price is decided, and who you are.
The two tools are (1) the How It Works page and (2) the About Us page.
12. A “How It Works” Page
The “how it works” page is clicked wildly, so don’t hesitate to make this a priority.
See This Part Of A Recent Heat Map On A Carrot Site
The “How It Works” page is very active… your sellers in the “Solution Aware” and “Verifying” phases are really looking for clarity on your process. How you make your offers, what the process looks like, etc.
But, be careful that you don’t over explain. The seller has questions, but they aren’t in regard to the nitty gritty of your job. Their questions are in regard to how you will benefit them and what they need to do to make it happen.
It can be hard to anticipate all of these questions, so here’s a list of the ones you must answer.
How long until you contact me?
What happens when you contact me?
How is a price decided?
After we agree on a price, when do I get my money?
They make it easy to understand, quick to read, and, most importantly, only answer the questions that the motivated seller is asking.
13. A Strong Hero Section
Like every great story, someone needs to save the day… or rather, something. And that something should be your product.
Your hero should sit at the top of the homepage and quickly tell the visitor that (1) they’re in the right place and (2) you’re here to solve their problems.
As you can tell on the below heatmap, the hero is viewed as often as the bat-signal is flicked.
Don’t get creative at the cost of clarity. Your hero should be similar to the above. Something regarding selling fast, since you’re marketing to the motivated seller, and location, because the motivated seller is searching for someone in their area.
Once the seller is convinced that you’re the hero they’re looking for, it’s time to swoop in and actually save the day.
14. A Clear CTA (Call To Action)
Everyone loves this part of the story. This is where the motivated seller takes the first leap, which is usually providing you with contact information.
This is your first CTA, and arguably, the most important.
If the motivated seller doesn’t give you permission to contact them, they aren’t serious about working with you.
Since your business goes nowhere without this first step, it’s important to make it simple, directly after the hero, and, ultimately, the focus of your homepage.
Consider how your eyes flow first to the hero of this snapshot, and then seamlessly to the CTA.
Also, consider this example, differing in setup, but equally effective in conversion.
Whatever the hero to CTA transition on your website, make sure it’s obvious and smooth. Since the motivated seller is in a hurry, your homepage should be too.
Heck, even put clear calls to action in your Facebooks ads at this phase, like…
15. Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up
Often times they’re just not ready to make a decision yet.
So make sure you’re putting your leads into an email, text, and possibly direct mail followup system.
We see clients pulling deals out 6+ months later after the lead initially came in.
The One Mindset Difference Between Top-performing Real Estate Investors and Everyone Else
Learn the dead-simple difference between those who build thriving businesses and those who never fulfill their dreams or goals.
Schedule The “8 Word Email” To Go Out In 6 Months
Don’t over complicate your follow up with a big pitch. Just ask them if they still need to sell. Your only goal is to engage them in a conversation.
Marketing Tips For This Phase:
Create a simple email sequence that goes out 6+ months. At month 4-6 hit them w/ the “8-word email”
Have Facebook ads that ask… “Still need to sell your house?”… then drive them to a testimonial on your site
Make it easy for people to get in touch with you… phone, text, opt-in online
Step 5: Turn Clients Into Testimonials Then Repeat The Above
At this point, you’ve got a client and closed deal! But the work doesn’t stop…
Right here your client is happy with the service, and this is the best time for you to ask for a testimonial or referral.
Adjust Your Marketing + Messaging To Pull Clients Through The Decision Lifecycle
Whew! That was a lot.
But this is the difference between the A Players in real estate marketing and the B or C players.
Most investors make all of their marketing focus on just one or two of the phases… and leave it open for their competitors to better connect with the prospect when the prospect needs it most.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
So… go out and find where you can better cater your marketing toward the phase of the decision lifecyle your motivated house sellers are in.
Here’s a recap…
And what to do about it…
SEO and PPC for problem aware people looking for solutions
Canvas direct mail to those likely to be problem aware
Engage on social (broad ads)
Structure content to pull people to the next phase
Blog (show your expertise)
Local content
Ads that compare + educate
Great about page and clear contact info
Build your credibility
Clearly, relay the message of how you can help them
Focus on mobile
Great How It Works page
Strong hero section on your website
Clear call to action
Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up
Don’t hesitate. Don’t procrastinate.
Go crush it like the mind-reading real estate guru you are.
According to the U.S. Small Business Association, only 56% of small businesses with 50 or fewer employees have a marketing plan. Almost half of smaller businesses are missing out on leads and sales.
Here are four other reasons why a marketing plan is essential for your real estate agent or investor business.
It forces you to think about where you’re going with your real estate business. Creating a common goal to drive towards.
It ensures that you’re aligned with your company values.
It serves as a foundation for your marketing activities. If you build a house, you start with a solid foundation. Same thing with your marketing plan.
Possibly the most important – it gives you a process. Without a process, you won’t have the direction you need and will likely either be going off course or starting to feel confused about your marketing efforts. The process can also act as a measure of your failures and successes.
Sample Real Estate Marketing Plan
At its basic level, a real estate marketing plan answers a series of questions that helps you define your ideal targets and craft your business’s most compelling offers into a cohesive story. It uses good distribution channels to reach your ideal targets.
Here are the questions you need to ask when making a good real estate marketing plan:
What are your goals?
What impact do you want to have on your communities?
Is your market saturated with similar offers, or is it ripe with opportunity?
How tough is your competition?
Who is your ideal target?
What are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats?
What are your compelling offers?
How will you reach your target audience?
What is your marketing budget?
What keywords are the best opportunities in your market?
First things first: you need to set your goals and objectives.
Clearly, state what you want to accomplish for yourself in your real estate business. If you’re an investor, it could be buying 50 properties this year. As a real estate agent, you might consider closing 100 listings.
Or, in both situations, you could want to get your brand or name out more for recognition. It could be that 50 percent of your target market knows who you are. Set goals that you can quantify to record and track your accomplishments.
Develop a 10,000-foot vision for your business, such as…
Become the top producer in your area
Retire in 10 years
Control particular niches of buyers and sellers
Then quantify that vision with measurable goals. Measurable goals might include:
Obtaining 50 listings in the next year
Close 10 deals in your target market area in 12 months
Earn referrals from 50 percent of your past customers
Purchase 10 single-family rental properties in the next 48 months
What Impact Do You Want to Have in Your Communities?
You want your real estate business to be sustainable and build a good relationship with your community. How you approach and treat your clients has a tremendous impact on how your business is viewed within your market.
Your clients directly affect your business reputation, lead, and deal volume. But it’s not just your direct clients. Anyone that you interact with can be considered an indirect client. Residents, Facebook friends, your website host, employees, contractors, partners, and suppliers.
You must constantly assess your behaviors and their impact on your local community and the broader audience.
Then you can assess and find your niche within. What events to attend and who to build relationships with. Your community approach will also help you create your immediate and long-term business needs.
Is Your Market Saturated with Similar Offers?
You want to build strong relationships with your customer base. As you’re maintaining a high value and positive service for your customers, they’re more likely to spread the word among their peers.
If you’re in a competitive market and find it hard to make your marketing stand about your competition, then be sure to make your service and client experience stand out.
Marketing Strategies for Real Estate: How Tough is Your Competition?
First, you need to identify your competitors. Take into account your potential or future competitors too.
There are a couple of methods you can use to do this.
1. Look at them from a customer’s point of view
If you can look at your competitors from a customer’s point of view, you’ll be able to spot some of their larger strengths and weaknesses.
It’s a fun yet challenging activity to think like a customer. Why would a customer want to use them as a real estate service? Is it because they can offer more and faster payment turnaround time, or do they have top-tier customer service? These could all be strengths for your competition.
Become your ideal client and put yourself in their shoes. Wonder why you would be more likely to deal with them instead of using your company to accomplish their real estate needs.
2. Look at them from their point of view
Next, take a look at their point of view. This can help you understand their strategy, culture, and attitude toward the market. Take a look at what assets they bring to the field and how you would use them if they were yours. Take a look at what you interpret as their weaknesses.
How could you commit to making those weaknesses into your strengths?
Ask and answer these questions before your analysis:
Before you dive into your real estate marketing competitor analysis, be sure you’re asking the right questions. Here are some common questions to get you started:
Who are your competitors?
What types of services are they using?
How much market share do they have?
What have been some of their past strategies?
Are they using the same strategy?
Are they aggressive with their real estate marketing?
How competitive are they in the market?
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Are they a threat to you? If so, how big of an impact can they have?
Does their marketing strategy affect yours or how you do business?
Who is Your Ideal Target Audience?
Create a simple paragraph profiling your ideal real estate target audience. Create a customer avatar regarding these demographics: sex, age, family, earnings, lifestyle, and geographic location.
Ask yourself questions about your customers, such as:
Are they followers or leaders?
Are they timid or aggressive?
Are they introverts or extroverts?
How often are they likely to move?
Are they traditional and bear more of a connection to the community?
No matter your real estate market, you’ll need to define them in this section narrowly. It is an important step that will guide you as you plan your media and public relations campaigns.
What are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats?
Performing a SWOT Analysis is a crucial step when creating your real estate marketing strategy.
The term “SWOT Analysis” sounds like a daunting task. But, it can be simple.
It’s broken down into two categories:
Your internal issues: Strengths and weaknesses
Your external issues: Opportunities and threats
This analysis will allow you to see what factors will help you achieve your objectives due to your strengths and opportunities.
It will also highlight what obstacles you must hurdle before achieving your real estate goals due to your weaknesses and/or threats.
Overall, the SWOT analysis assesses your real estate company’s strengths, weaknesses, market opportunities, and potential threats to give you insight into the possible issues that can impact your success.
The number 1 goal of a SWOT analysis aims to determine and assign all important factors that could positively or negatively impact the success of one of the categories, giving you an in-depth view of your real estate business.
Four Categories Of SWOT:
Strengths:
What are the advantages of your real estate business?
What can you do better than your competition?
What exclusive resources can you use that others can’t?
How does your market see your strengths?
What factors into you closing the deal?
What is your company’s Unique Selling Proposition?
When considering your strengths, look at your internal employees and external customers/market.
Weaknesses:
What might you be able to improve on?
What locations and markets should you avoid?
What potential clients within your market might see as your weaknesses?
What factors cause you to lose the deal?
Again, account for your internal and external clients. Do your clients see weaknesses that you haven’t seen? What are your competitors doing better than you right now?
Weaknesses can be a gut check. But stick with it and be as realistic as you can.
Opportunities:
What positive opportunities are available to you?
Are there trends that you need to know?
Some of the positive opportunities you can take advantage of are:
Changes in real estate technology. For example, recording a video testimonial and uploading it to Facebook as soon as you record it.
Changes within the real estate field. Are more real estate agents becoming investors or vice versa?
Changes in the economic status and population profile within your market.
Are there any local events you can help organize or lead within the real estate niche?
Take a look at your strengths and weaknesses as you approach your opportunities. They can provide invaluable information on what you can work harder to improve upon.
Threats:
What obstacles do you need to hurdle in your market?
What are your competitors doing?
Are there any technical issues that are threatening your market position?
Do you have cash-flow problems that you need to address?
Do you have any weaknesses that are threatening your business?
Once you have chosen your real estate business values within the four SWOT categories, you can develop a more strategic plan.
For example, once you’ve identified your weaknesses and potential threats, you can create a plan to eliminate or at the least minimize them while continuing to improve upon strategies that will make you a more robust business.
To create your compelling offers, ask yourself the following questions:
Who do you sell or buy real estate to or from? Be highly specific.
What are the problems that you help them solve?
How do you solve their problems?
Why are you better at solving their problems?
Now create your compelling pitch like this:
How [insert who your ideal client is] can [insert verb] [insert the problem] through [insert solution].
How Will You Reach Your Target Audience?
Getting your audience to engage with your content is essential for connecting with your target market online. The online real estate market is increasingly growing and vying for client attention.
But, even the investor or agent with a small budget can succeed with the right strategies.
Start by narrowing it to a highly targeted audience.
If you offer buyer and seller services, your target currently includes more people in your local market.
For example, focus on only one section of zip codes within your market city. Then expand your area as your finances and business grow.
So, choose a specific area of your market and focus efforts there. Then expand.
A second option will be to focus on the seller or buyer market if you’re a real estate investor. There are specific factors to consider, but marketing towards the seller’s market is most likely the one to go after.
Your marketing costs within major cities will likely be expensive, so media such as Google Ads might be too high unless you can target slightly out of the city.
If you don’t have the budget, take advantage of pricing within the suburban markets.
The other thing you need to do is get your website organized to target your audience. If that requires creating city-specific pages, then you need to do that.
Also, get one of the most overlooked pages, your “About” or company page optimized. Be sure it includes your city or area, how you conduct your business, and your process. Spell out your strengths and why they should choose you over the competition.
What is Your Marketing Budget?
Having a solid marketing budget is integral to being realistic and will help you improve your revenue over time.
You can overspend on marketing costs if you don’t know your budget. Therefore causing an unwanted and bad experience.
Here are a few steps to help you organize your budget and determine where to spend your marketing dollars strategically.
Your first step needs to be organizing your current financial positions. You MUST be specific. If you’re too loose and choose to estimate, it creates an unrealistic budget.
This starts with getting in order your revenue information. You’ll need to know how much revenue your real estate business makes every month. Even though your income varies throughout the year, you must have a number based on reliable revenue (the minimum amount of money you make each month.)
You’ll also need to minus business expenses. Rent, materials, the cost of VA’s, etc.
Any business expense must be subtracted from your revenue before nailing down your marketing budget. Setting a realistic budget is one that focuses on income that exceeds expenses.
After you find your available disposable income, you’ll need to determine what that money will be. Although marketing is a major area to focus on, don’t forget to set aside a budget for unexpected circumstances and growth.
Separate your money based on your goals. You will invest more money in online marketing if your primary goal is attracting leads.
But, if your goal is to hire more VA’s or full-time assistants, you’ll want to put more income into your company’s growth and set aside less for marketing until you’ve been able to close more deals.
2. Determine where you want to allocate your funds
Once you have calculated what is available to spend on marketing, your next step is organizing and prioritizing your money.
There are three main elements to how you spend your marketing dollars:
Budget size
Your past experiences
Reaching the optimum target audience
Start by organizing how to spend the budget based on the amount. If you have a small, more limited marketing budget, you should probably consider Craigslist ads, Facebook ads, local citations, social media posting, and email advertising to attract new clients.
A heavier marketing budget would provide the opportunity to include direct mail, bandit signs, and Google Ads to attract an expanded range of clients.
Apart from any budget limits, don’t forget to consider and implement what strategies have worked for you in the past. You might have noticed postcards helped bring in more clients during a specific time.
Then do that same strategy again, even if you still have more budget for more expensive marketing methods.
Also, don’t overlook the marketing channels that will help you target and reach your optimum audience. For example, Facebook advertising is an effective channel for targeting motivated sellers, but you still need to create the right audiences to filter out potential buyer leads.
Facebook Ads Audience for Real Estate
Create and document very detailed customer avatars. Then, think about which media they’re more likely to consume. That is the spot where you need to be advertising.
If you’re considering testing a new marketing channel, allocate some funds for that test. Start with a small budget since you don’t know how effective the new channel will be.
For example, if you enter the Google Ads marketing channel, start with a small campaign with highly targeted keywords and a budget.
Only allocate more budget after you gain enough data to determine if it’s working for you. If it works, pull more funds into the new marketing channel.
What Real Estate Keywords Are the Best in Your Market?
How do you use real estate keywords? If you are only using them to optimize your website for search rankings, you could be missing out on other ways to gain visibility within your target market.
Get into the mindset to use your keywords in your online and offline marketing.
Here are some platforms where you can utilize your real estate keywords more:
Real estate website optimization (homepage, landing pages)
Real estate social media profile optimization (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook)
Offline marketing (postcards, bandits signs, direct mail)
Using real estate keywords should not be limited to your digital marketing efforts.
Find different ways to plug them into your offline practices as well.
For example, are you sending out flyers or postcards that take advantage of some keywords?
Are you placing bandit signs around your target market with specific messages and a phone number in case they’re sitting in a parking lot and want to write your number down to contact you later?
If you’re using this kind of marketing and not some keywords, it’s time to readjust your strategy.
Keywords hold a lot of power in online marketing but can be effective offline too. Just be careful that you’re not infringing on trademarks. If you question a keyword phrase, check it out first.
This plan assumes that you’ve got a website that has been proven to convert leads.
If you’re trying to scrape together a bunch of tips to save a few bucks on building your website, you’re doing it wrong. It will cost you much more than the monthly membership price to build what we’ve built.
There are a few things you should do first to get that website up and running, and these only take a few minutes:
Get your testimonials on the site because social proof and credibility are essential to conversions.
Make sure the copy on the site reflects your business and is in line with local laws (for example, if you or your team have a real estate license, you’ll need to change the copy to make sure you’re correctly disclosing your license… but you should make that into a benefit since a license gives you more options for sellers than someone operating without one).
Okay, so that last one might be complicated if you’re new to the business… but you need to be making sure you’re aware of the laws around you since being ignorant isn’t an excuse if you’re trying to get out of a five-figure fine for operating without a license (in some states)…
This reminds me that I need to mention we’re not attorneys or financial advisors; all of this stuff is just general advice. You need specific, professional advice on your real estate investment business…
Having a competent lawyer ensures you’re not offering something illegal without knowing it is a good idea.
There are a couple of ways to use these questions…just cut and paste them into a document and start answering them if you’re ready.
Want our help in making your real estate marketing plan?
So you’re getting ready to launch your online marketing campaign, but you’re probably thinking “Man, what type of website am I going to build?”
At Carrot, we have general credibility websites and we have targeted websites. Where the targeted websites are specific to a certain type of lead. It could be a motivated house seller. It could be a cash buyer. It could be a retail buyer. There could be a note seller or buyer. You get the idea. Those are very, very targeted towards a certain type of lead.
We get a lot of our clients asking us, “Why can’t I focus it all into one general credibility site?”
Or, “Is a general credibility site going to work well or perform as well as a targeted site specific for, as an example, motivated house sellers?”
Well, this video and post are going to walk you through the data and what the actual results are and what you should do depending on the type of lead you’re looking for.
So, first of all, we’ve got the general credibility site. A general credibility website is mainly focused on, just that, building general credibility for your company.
So, it could be trying to get people there to show them who you are. What types of things you’re doing. What types of things you’re doing in real estate. And it could be multiple things.
Saym, we’ve got this real estate fund and we’re flipping houses, so we buy houses. But we also sell houses and oh, by the way, did you also know that we do rent a home?” So it’s kind of “here’s who we are as a company”, and build that credibility.
You could be looking for private lenders on that website. You could be building a cash buyer list on there and selling properties. That works really well on a main company credibility website.
But it’s a lot of general stuff. It’s not really focused in on any one particular message. And it’s a split message.
Your home page might say, “Hey, we are a real estate investment solutions firm. We buy, sell and rent houses.” But you’re going to be talking about all of that stuff if you’re on the homepage.
So there’s no one focused message if you’re doing direct marketing toward that.
If you’re driving a house seller there, they’re then going to get distracted by other messages. They’re going to get distracted by the message about investments. They’re going to get distracted by the message about looking for cash buyers and private lenders.
If you’re doing direct marketing and paying money to drive people there, you don’t want to distract the message.
But the general credibility website serves a very specific purpose.
If you’re networking at your local chamber of commerce or rotary, you’re probably going to hand them the business card that drives them here. This website is then going to drive people toward your other specific target websites if you’re doing multiple things in your business.
So you might have a link that says, “Sell your house.” And it’s gonna drive to your house seller specific website, ideally. That’s what the data shows works the best.
General Credibility Website
Real Estate Website Design: Targeted Credibility Sites
On the other side, you have the targeted website. So, when we suggest that you focus on using a targeted website, it’s any time you’re actually going to be actively driving people to that website to convert as a lead.
These websites are set up for conversion.
The general credibility websites are not particularly set up for conversion. They’re going to be great on mobile and there will be landing pages on there that are set up for conversions.
But the overall path is not set up to convert at a high, high rate. It’s set up to build credibility for you.
These targeted websites are set up to convert at a high rate for one particular type of lead.
You can see the eye directors on our Carrot websites, the big buttons. The very, very focused message. If you land on a motivated house seller website with Carrot, or if you’re building one, it should be very focused on that motivated house seller. Not on cash buyers, and then rent-to-own tenants and private lenders.
Your entire website should be focusing on how you can help that seller. And that’s what will perform the best for you. It doesn’t distract them away from your messaging.
Motivated Seller Targeted Website
The website is specifically set up to convert one type of lead ideally.
So, if a motivated house seller website speaks to the seller, it’s going to convert them.
If you want to list properties for sale, then you set up another website for that to speak toward that. “Hey, we have discount properties. Join our list or see our properties here.”
Or, you can fit that into the main company site too. You can kind of pull double duty with the main company and cash buyer if you want to.
Buyers Lead Website
Pay-Per-Click Traffic
Lastly, your targeted websites are where you’re going to send all of your paid traffic.
Please do not send paid traffic to the main company website. It’s unfocused. It’s untargeted. It’s building good credibility. But then it has all these rabbit holes that your prospects can dive around and they might go down the wrong rabbit hole and not become a lead of yours.
So, they’re focused on conversion, specifically set up to focus on one type of lead. A very focused message on one type of prospect and how you can help them.
They’re sites that are optimal for paid marketing. If you’re driving paid marketing to a main company credibility website, unless you vastly adjusted it, you’re probably wasting some money.
Ending The Debate Of Credibility Sites Vs. Targeted Sites
So that’s what we would do. That kind of hopefully ends the debate, credibility site versus a targeted website and what you use in certain circumstances. Ideally, if you’ve got your main credibility website and you’re looking to generate any leads online, you’ve also got at least one targeted website for your actual marketing activities.
Join us on our other episodes of the Carrot strategy sketch because we have a lot of other topics to dive into and most are under 10 minutes. They’re going to help you get light years ahead of your competition and shave off months, if not years, on your learning curve.
Also, be sure to check out the CarrotCast, which is our weekly podcast. Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can see all of our videos before anyone else can. So, check us out and be sure to hit us up with comments and questions.
During times when the real estate marketing is going good, don’t lose your focus on the business fundamentals. Feasting and blindly following a business path can lead to destruction. Trevor Mauch
From cluttered markets to video advertising, here are some real estate lead generation challenges we think you should know in 2017.
2016 flew by and lots of changes happened in the online marketing landscape for real estate investors. Google made some big SEO updates, AdWords updates, mobile continues to climb in importance… and the real estate market is shifting.
What are our CEO, Trevor Mauch’s, predictions for 2017 and how real estate investors and agents will HAVE TO SHIFT in order to crack through the clutter of competition in your area?
Listen in for Trevor’s 4 real estate lead generation predictions that could help you gain an advantage in your marketplace online.
3:50 – Prediction 1: Shifting in the market. Follow business fundamentals. 9:20 – The shift from investors to agents. 10:22 – Prediction 2: The market will get cluttered in 2017. How do you stand out from your competition? 11:25 – Riding the mobile wave. In 2016, 56% of all online leads on the Carrot platform came in via mobile/tablet. Two years ago, that number was in the mid-40% and 2015 teetering right around 50%. Where will it be in 2017? 15:30 – Prediction 3: Mobile. Why having a mobile-friendly site just isn’t good enough anymore. Your website must be optimized for lead generation. 16:45 – The 2016 AdWords updates and the indication of where Google is going in 2017. 17:50 – Focusing 100% on setting up a mobile website advantage. Especially on Facebook. 22:00 – Prediction 4: Marketplace competition bottleneck.How to cut through your market clutter. Especially utilizing video marketing. Using video to sell your listings, generate more leads, and attract new clients. 34:35 – What you should be doing with video, Facebook, and YouTube. 36:30 – Nailing your niche real estate content. 38:14 – How to put yourself in the “Content Always” mindset. 39:25 – What is going to happen with motivated house sellers? 40:15 – Adjusting your marketing message to suit the current market state.
Need a little help planning out your year? Listen to our annual planning call and get Trevor’s exact process to plan and crush the year ahead. Visit:oncarrot.com/epic/replay
This has to STOP… Obviously, you want more traffic and leads, right? We’ve all struggled to increase website traffic, and every lead guru has a big bag of tricks they’re eager for you to try. But… it’s a heck of a lot simpler than that.
All you need to do is fix these 4 common reasons that are often neglected by real estate website owners either because they don’t understand their importance or because they are not sure how to approach them.
Hey guys and girls, Trevor here coming at you with another whiteboard strategy sketch and these are getting really, really fun.
I don’t know how many we have done so far but we have a lot more in store for you guys and keep the questions coming because the way that we come up with these things right here is from questions directly from you guys. Send them to us at support@oncarrot.com, through the comments section below or go to oncarrot.com and check us out.
On this particular video, we’re going to address one of the most common “problem” questions that we get…
“Why am I not getting the real estate leads online that I want or I’m NOT getting any leads?”
Because in order for you guys to get value out of leveraging the web with your marketing, you got to be getting leads in some way whether it’s phone calls, whether it is people submitting forms, whatever it is. Leads have to be had, otherwise, you are not getting the value out of it.
We boiled it down to just four reasons that you are not getting the number of leads you want. As you are going through this particular strategy sketch, make sure that you are identifying which one or ones of these you need to tap on next.
Okay?
If you are not getting leads you want, you need to be doing one of these things better or more.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online Reason #1: Traffic
The first thing you want to look at is your traffic. That’s the most obvious thing, right? Because you can’t get a lead if you are not getting people to land on your website.
How do we get more people to land on your website?
The first thing we’d like to see is that you are getting at least 25 visitors to your website per month and we are saying at a minimum because on average let’s say it’s a motivated house seller website… you might be converting three, five, six, seven, eight percent,10% if you are doing really well, into a lead.
If you are converting at 10%, which is a really high conversion rate in this type of market, you are only going to be getting about two to two and a half leads per month. Now that is not a lot of leads so that is your issue.
If you are getting less than 25 people to your website a month, then that’s probably the first thing you need to focus on.
If you are getting 50, 60, 70, people to your website a month and you are still not getting very many leads, let’s say it’s converting at less than 1%, we are going to move on to the next thing.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online Reason #2: Quality of Traffic
The next thing is the quality of your traffic. First off, if you have traffic coming in and you are getting 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 people to your website a month but you are still not getting very many leads, you are getting less than 5% or less than 3% of them becoming a lead, it could be a quality issue.
You need to ask yourself some questions. It could be, where are these people coming from? Are they coming from good marketing channels? What is the message that you are delivering to them to get them to your website?
Often times we’ll see people using Google pay-per-click or Facebook ads or something and they are getting a lot of traffic from Facebook for motivated house sellers but the problem is, those people are not very targeted. So you don’t want to be driving motivated house sellers from a random Facebook campaign to websites and expect to really have a conversion rate.
The quality of those visitors is going to be lower. The quality of the Craigslist visitors will be probably a little bit lower, the quality of an SEO lead is going to be way higher. If you are not getting very many leads but you have a lot of traffic, see where your traffic is coming from. Is it coming from a high-quality source where they are very targeted and you can help them specifically? What message do they see before they land on your website?
Did your ads say, “Sell your house.”? Then your website now says, “Sell your houses quickly, we buy houses.”. They are just looking for a real estate agent and you are offering a completely different service. Look and see what your ads and your message says.
If you got the traffic nailed, the quality is perfect and that’s nailed, and you got a lot of traffic coming in and you are still not getting the leads you are looking for, what do we look at next? We look at performance next.
If you would like for your website to convert more leads, then this webinar replay might be for you. It is a long call but packed full of valuable information. Give the webinar a view and then download our 16-point real estate investor conversion checklist.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Reason #3: Website Performance
We talk a lot about performance here at InvestorCarrot where performance is one of the things we specialize in.
It’s helping your websites perform at a higher level which means convert more of your visitors, more of your quality traffic into a lead. The performance side is your website. Have you gone through some tutorials on this website? Have you gone through our other whiteboard strategy sketches to see how you need to structure your forms? Have you gone through some of our mastermind calls, things like that? Make sure your website is built to be high performing.
If you are a Carrot member already, you got this one nailed. You don’t have to do anything there unless you jerked up the design that we have given you. Make sure you are sticking with the design, then just personalize it with your own content, tweaks, you personalize it with your branding and credibility.
If you are not a Carrot member, make sure you are really focusing on the design of your website so it’s performing at a high level and like I said we have a lot of resources you can check out. Go to oncarrot.com/resources and we have an entire video and an entire checklist on how to create a high performing website.
If you’ve got your high performing website set up, you got quality traffic coming into it, and you’re still not getting enough leads, what we want to do is look into credibility.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online Reason #4: Credibility
You can have the best website in the world that is set up with all the cool things to get someone to convert into a lead, but maybe you haven’t built credibility on the website. Maybe people aren’t believing that you can truly help them.
Maybe you’re not really building that connection with them enough to where they are like, “Man, these people seem like real people and I want to work with them.” You need to nail the credibility.
What do you do to really build great credibility for any business?
It could be business selling microphones or a business selling whatever it is. You need to be building credibility and you do it the same way. You have a really good about page.
We found in our data, the number three most visited page, sometimes the number two most popular page across all of our thousands of InvestorCarrot members websites including our own sales websites is always the about page because people are looking to prove or disprove the preconceptions in their mind on why they should or should not work with you.
If they go to your about page and it’s basic, it’s generic, it doesn’t have anything about you, they aren’t building that connection with you. They are probably going to bounce out of there and possibly go and look at your competitors. The ones that they connect with more, are going to be the ones they choose to work with.
Make sure your about page has a little bit about you. Kind of tells about why you want to help people, your mission, and list maybe some of your team members in there. Don’t be afraid to put your face on the website because your face is going to have to go in front of your client eventually.
Number two is social proof.
Do you have things on your website that show that other people have worked with you before them that you helped that have been in similar situations?
It could be a testimonial, it could be videos, it could be case studies on deals you have worked with, it could be people who you’ve sold properties to who have gotten great returns now and they had a better experience working with you. It could also be the Better Business Bureau badge.
Things like that help to build social proof, reviews on your Facebook channel, things like that. You just want to show other people have worked with you in the past or attest to your character, that you are the type of person that they would want to work with.
The last thing is clear and honest branding.
We found so many websites that nail the about page, nail the social proof, they got the traffic coming in but their logo up top looks like it’s been made in Microsoft Paint in 1998. It’s pixelated. The words are hard to see, and the very first things we often times look at on a website is the upper left of that website which happens to be where logos often times are or at least the top of the website.
So make sure you have very clear honest branding.
I didn’t say you have to have a fancy logo, that’s a completely different thing. Some of the best websites that we have found that generate the most leads, had the simplest logos out there. They didn’t spend a bunch of money on them.
Reasons You’re Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online
If you nail these four things; nail your traffic, the traffic is high quality coming from great sources with a very clear and defined message that matches your website, the website is set up for performance and not just a couple of things but set up everywhere on every single page to perform at a high level, follow what we do and model it.
Don’t copy what we do, but follow and model what we do or if you are a Carrot member that’s already been done for you.
On the credibility side, have a great about page. Look at our about page and see how much you connect with us. We have our core values that we tell about our start-up story, we tell about our team, and you get a chance to connect with us at a better level. It becomes real people then, and it’s easier to work with people than work with a kind of an ominous company.
Get your social proof nailed, get clear on honest branding and if you still don’t have a stream of leads coming in from there, I would highly suggest then you go back up to number one and ramp up your traffic using other methods.
Go out there and get your leads flowing upwards, get your leads flowing in and make them consistent and predictable so your business can grow.
That is why we are all doing this so we can have a consistent, predictable business that really fuels our lifestyle and helps a lot of people.
If you are not on our YouTube channel, but you are on our website, subscribe to our blog or check out the webinar that we have going and you can probably find someone inside or on the website somewhere and see how we can help you grow your leads and leverage the web better.
SEO for real estate investors often feels like one part uber-advanced technical “hacks” and two parts dark magic.
Listening to the advice of SEO gurus could easily leave you feeling overwhelmed … and incredibly disheartened.
It’s not. And you shouldn’t be.
SEO for real estate investors comes down to optimizing around 10 on-page elements. And that’s incredibly good news.
Why? Because traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. And for real estate investors what you need isn’t just any old traffic — not just visitors for the sake of visitors — but high-quality, lead-worthy, traffic you can count on month in and month out.
This post will guide you in how to get more traffic to your website by teaching you what’s important to search engines (i.e., ranking factors) and what you yourself can do to get your real estate investor site to rank exactly where you need it to.
If you’re already familiar with SEO, then CLICK HERE to jump down to the meat of this post: a step-by-step checklist of HOW to optimize your on-page SEO for real estate investors.
Your position among those 72-million-plus results dramatically determines how many people visit your site. Data from May of 2016 indicates that while the average clickthrough rate (CTR) of position one websites on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) is 23%, position ten is 2%.
And you don’t even want to know what happens to a clickthrough rate when you fall outside of positions one through ten. As the old adage goes, “The best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google.”
All this to say, it’s vital to understand exactly what factors Google takes into account when prioritizing their search results.
According to Open Umbrella’s analysis of 182 websites, there are at least 12 vital factors:
That can sound like a lot … but it’s nothing compared to SEO genius Brian Dean’s Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List. (Full disclosure: the list actually contains 205 ranking factors. Geez.)
But here’s the thing … you don’t have to become an SEO genius to get your real estate investor site to rank. And — even better — you don’t have to get to page one.
Instead, SEO for real estate investors falls into three big buckets: (1) technical SEO, (2) off-page SEO, and (3) on-page SEO.
[cta offer=”seobible” color=”red”]
Technical SEO
Naturally, technical SEO involves a host of behind the scene elements, some of which include …
Indexable: can Google access and catalog all your pages?
Speed: how fast does your website load?
Responsiveness: does it appear correctly on mobile, tablet and desktop devices?
The good thing about being an Investor Carrot member is that all these factors are taken care of for you. Big sigh of relief.
If you’re not a member, have a look at the health of your website by using a tool like HubSpot’s website grader.
Off-Page SEO for Real Estate Investors
Off-page SEO is really all about the links from other websites to yours.
And when I say “all about” … I mean all about. Backlinks are the number one ranking factor all search engines use to prioritize their results.
They’re also the side of SEO you have the least control over.
That’s why — for now — we’re going to forego link building strategies and instead focus on the side of SEO you can control.
On-Page SEO for Real Estate Investors
On-page SEO for real estate investors focuses on your (1) content and your (2) keywords.
Everybody wants to “hack” Google with the second approach. And of course, optimizing your keywords is vital. But before we go through our checklist on that process, do not ignore …
SEO for Real Estate Investors: Content Matters
Sadly, one of the most neglected areas in SEO, specifically by small businesses and entrepreneurs like real estate investors, is the continuous development of quality, value-add content.
Many real estate investors who take their business online are under the false impression that adding content — any content — with the right keywords placed in the right keyword positions will do.
Easy, because valuable, and fresh content is the only kind of content that other people will link to. And remember, other people’s links are the number one factor in SEO.
3. We discovered that content rated as “topically relevant” (via MarketMuse), significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in-depth. Therefore, publishing focused content that covers a single topic may help with rankings.
4. Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.
Do not make the mistake of putting “content quantity over content quality.”
Instead, invest in long-form content — roughly 2,000 words — that valuable and relevant. If you’re looking for ideas, check out our 101 Blog Post Ideas For Real Estate. If you’re looking for a comprehensive crash course that covers the entire process, jump over to our Content Marketing Roadmap. Both are free resources … even if you’re not a Carrot Member.
Our Content Marketing Roadmap will walk you through the exact content creation process Carrot Members are using to pull in over 55,000 lead per month.
But this isn’t a post about content marketing. This is a post about SEO … so let’s turn our attention to the real meat: keywords.
SEO for Real Estate Investors: Keywords
Keywords are what help search engines match the content on your website to online searches. It’s essential that you master the art of keyword research in order to maximize your results.
The easiest way to find your own most popular keywords is by using a free tool called Ubersuggest. Simply type in a target phrase like “sell my house”:
Ubersuggest will then automatically generate a massive list of possible long-tail keyword phrases related to that general phrase.
You can also use Google’s auto-complete feature as well, especially to narrow down the most popular long-tail phrases.
For an even more detailed examination of the keywords you should target, Google AdWord’s free Keyword Planner tool is phenomenal. Just be sure to enter the area you want results for under “Targeting”:
Google will then give you a list of possible long-tail keyword phrases to choose from based on the location you selected:
Whatever tool you use, simply select the long-tail keyword most relevant to what you’re offering. In this example case “sell my house fast in Denver” is hands down the winner.
Before we proceed to the next section, you should know that Investor Carrot websites come with guidance as to how to add on-page SEO to your content, but if you’re not a member, the next part should bring clarity.
SEO for Real Estate Investors: On-Page Checklist
After you’ve created your content and selected your targeted keyword, it’s time to get to work on SEO. What follows are the ten most valuable on-page elements that should include your keyword phrase.
You can easily use this as a checklist, but we’ve also built a Carrot SEO tool especially for real estate websites. Our SEO goal for this page is to rank for the phrase “SEO for real-estate investors.” So this is what the tool looks like when we plug that phrase in:
Now let’s walk through the ten most important elements.
1. Title Tags
Title tags are the headings of the pages on your website. In search results, they are the main headings.
2. URLs
If you’re adding keywords to titles, and your permalinks are set up correctly, the URL will automatically include the title.
Often, however, your title will be longer than the keywords you want to rank for. That’s why you should simplify it in the URL and limit the actual web address to your targeted keywords alone.
As much as possible, try to avoid using numbers in your URL, whether that’s dates or even numbers associated with the title of your article. Why? Because if you ever want to go back and update your post, changing the URL will essentially void any SEO power the original pages had.
3. Meta Descriptions
And when you compile the meta description, make it compelling in order to attract attention. Consider it the advertisement for a page’s content. This is what the meta description looks like in searches:
4. Headline Tags
Headlines and subheadings divide your on-page content into scannable chunks making it far easier to read.
But at the same time, they also tell search engines what the content is about, and what’s most important.
Pretty self-explanatory, but make sure you add keywords naturally and don’t “stuff” your content with them. A good rule of thumb is to add the keyword phrase in the first 100 words — preferably in the very first sentence — as well as after every 150 or so words.
6. Bolded Words
Adding bolded words for SEO is debatable, but it can’t hurt if you don’t over-bolden. When you add this technique, focus on using bold text only to make a point to the reader. In other words, focus on reader experience.
We’ve covered off-page SEO for real estate investors and the importance of links from other websites to yours.
What I mean by inserting links to keywords (otherwise known as anchor text), is that when you link to a good website from a keyword, it signals to search engines what both your content and theirs is about. But there is a certain art to it and it shouldn’t be obsessed over.
While external links dramatically improve both types of authority [domain and page], linking between pages on your own site — namely, linking from high page authority URLs to low page authority URLs — pass the SEO value of the first page onto the second.
Here’s the bottom line: do not include your targeted keywords in the anchor text to other sites. Do include your targeted keywords in the anchor text to your own site.
8-9. Images
Search engines use the images on your site to further help them decipher relevancy (how relevant your content is to user searches).
First, before you upload images to your website, they should be compressed so that they don’t slow down your site. You can use a tool like Optimizilla for this.
Second, for every image you add, include your keywords in two places. Let’s take this post’s header image as an example:
(1) Image name
Instead of using a generically titled image name, get specific. Rather than “blog-post-header-image-1.jpg” or even “seoforrealestateinvestors.jpg” … use “SEO-for-real-estate-investors.jpg”
(2) Alt tags
Alt tags are the default text a browser displays if images are turned off. This time, write your alt tag with your keywords, but write them to be read: “SEO for Real Estate Investors.”
10. Local Keywords
In no other industry does location matter quite as much as it does in the real estate investor SEO realm. Since your competitors are likely not fully up to speed with the location element in SEO, you could get way ahead of them with a little bit of additional work.
Local search is a lot different to international search, and the intentions are often very different too.
For example, if you wanted to order pizza for dinner tonight, Google is going to assume you want local buying options. By default, instead of serving up global results, Google will offer you local results you can actually use to order pizza.
People searching for “real estate investors” want to know about a career as a real estate investor or find someone to sell their property too. But if they were to add an area — which most do — their intention is to find a real estate investor in that area. Big difference, right?
Have a look at this: for the search term “real estate,” there are a phenomenal amount of searches every month — 3,350,000 to be exact — and there’s not much competition for the phrase.
But the term is also not relevant for real people because real people who are searching for what you provide will add an area. Now watch what happens when you add an area:
The search amounts drop to 49,500 per month. Although the search amount is lower, the good news is that “Utah real estate” represents the people most interested in doing business with someone in Utah.
You can even get hyper-local in your SEO for real estate investors.
Remember Google AdWords Keyword Planner? They have the option to add nearby locations:
Of course, you probably know your area even better than Google. So if you’re creating landing pages to target specific locations within your larger geography, in those specific locations as well.
However, don’t stuff all your hyper-local keywords into one page. Instead, create 5-10 copies of your original landing page, each with the hyper-location featured in all the on-page elements mentioned above.
Buy My House Company — For example, is one of many Carrot members who highlight location elements on their homepage:
But, if you hover over the “Sell Your Home” button in the header navigation, something of SEO-brilliance occurs:
They’ve essentially created cloned versions of their homepage with hyper-local keywords for each of the areas they serve.
Another local keyword area you have control over — although it’s not technically part of on-page SEO — are business listings. When your website is submitted on business listings like Google Business Pages, Yahoo’s Aabaco small business listings, Bing places for business, etc., it tells search engines that your website is valid and dramatically increases your ranking when someone searches for a keyword associated with your side.
Moreover, search engines would rather list a website that’s registered as a local business, than one that is not. Be sure that the format of your NAP (name of the business, address, and phone number) is consistent throughout the Internet.
[BONUS] 11. SEO for Real Estate Investors: Reviews
How relevant your website content is according to what people are searching for in your niche.
Where the business is situated, also for the purpose of “area relevance.”
How prominent your business is and it’s objective reputation.
Pushing for reviews is one substantial SEO technique to use to beat competitors in the world of real estate investment. Have a look at a Google search I did for “real estate Utah.” This is what was on the first results page, immediately under the ads, which means it gets the ultimate place of prominence:
Can you see how every single one of these websites has reviews? None of the other results below these contained reviews.
SEO for Real Estate Investors Isn’t Dark Magic
We’ve covered a lot of information in this post.
But don’t get overwhelmed.
Instead of getting obsessed with backlinks, focus on what you can control: your on-page keywords. Select the right keywords and add them — like a human — to each of these ten areas:
Title tags
URLs
Meta descriptions
Headline tags
The first 100 words
Bolded words
Links
Image Names
Image Alt Tags
Local keywords
SEO for real estate investors may seem daunting at first, but it’s what will set you apart from your competition who won’t bother learning the ropes.
And if you want to make life a lot easier, you may want to consider becoming an Investor Carrot member, so that most of the hard work is already done for you or to get help as you go.
“What I’ll do is schedule a time for my handyman to come through and bid out the house for me. That way I have a good idea of what repairs I need to do.” Adam Justiniano – CEO of Quick Home Offers in California and InvestorCarrot customers for the past 3 years.
How To Build A Virtual Wholesaling Strategy And Get Those Motivated Seller Leads Closed
Can you really run a successful real estate business with virtual wholesaling? Adam and Josh Justiniano can tell you, it’s not a myth.
These two, young, investors coming out of Southern California are currently killing it using virtual wholesaling in different Central California markets.
Since 2013, they have been able to close over 50 deals and are continuing to expand their reach.
In this full-length CarrotCast video, Josh and Adam discuss their virtual wholesaling strategy. From hiring a handyman to scout the property – to how they get the contracts finalize with their clients.
We had a chance to sit down with Adam and Josh recently and have a CarrotCast conversation with them about…
The type of deals that are currently driving their wholesaling business.
Why they started their company and some goals moving forward in 2016.
What they look for in the type of population before entering a market.
How they use virtual wholesaling to enter different markets.
Watch the Video Version
Start – 6:47 – Josh and Adam open up about getting their first deal in November 2013 and being able to close on over 50 transactions since. 6:47 – 10:04 – How they determine what cities they focus to virtual wholesale in. 10:05 – 15:37 – How the Justiniano brothers wholesale or flip without visiting the client in person. 15:39 – 18:36– Their approach to making the offering and putting it under contract as virtual wholesalers.
Blake McCreight is actually in Chicago, and he’s a non-techie, totally non-techie, 40 years old, closing a bunch of deals. In his past life, he was a turnkey guy, doing a bunch of turnkey stuff and he’s pretty much strictly just getting down and dirty and learning the real estate lead-gen side of things.
Jamie Wooley. Jamie’s actually from Dallas, Texas, did 102 deals in her first full year as a real estate investor in one of the most competitive markets in the country, and she talks about how she’s doing it. And she’s really hitting things hard, and what her “why” is, because it’s not what a lot of other people think.
And, then we have Rashad Sullivan out of California, young guy, 25 years old. And he’s crushing it, doing bunches of deals, did almost a half a million dollars in gross revenue in 2017, and he talks through how he did it.
![How to Attract a Motivated House Seller Like a Mind Reader [Original Data]](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/Featured-Image-7.png)
