How much should you invest in search engine marketing in 2016? This includes SEO and PPC. Well in this post we’ll dive into the 3 things I consider when I dive in to create an effective and high ROI SEM (search engine marketing) budget for myself and the clients that we work with in the real estate industry.
If you’re feeling beads of sweat drip down as you try to determine where to spend your marketing dollars to get more real estate deals for the highest ROI, don’t fret. I have three top tips to help you make smart decisions.
1. Dig Into The Long-Tail Keywords, Not Just The “Broad” Popular Ones Your Competitors Are Using
Long tail keywords are easier to leverage and often times bring a high quality visitor to your site.
Why?
They’re very specific – often three to six word – keyword phrases (also less competitive than more general keywords). Long-tail keywords became more important to online marketers with the advent of Google Hummingbird, Google’s major algorithm update in 2013, which gives preference to the long tail keyword.
With a recent surge in voice search via platforms such as Siri and Google Voice Search, there’s no question: long tail keywords are more important than ever.
People are searching just as they speak, so it’s time to pay even closer attention to real estate investor keyword phrases like, “How to sell my home fast?”vs. just “sell house.”
But even if you’ve mastered the art of conversational dialogue and are pretty certain you know how people might search, there’s a science to figuring out how to get ranked for the right long tail keywords with the least amount of effort / cost (relatively speaking). So working with a good SEO agency to ensure you have a solid long tail keyword strategy in place is definitely going to be vital to online marketing success in the coming year.
Here is an infographic that dives into the key differences of long-tail vs. short-tail (or broad) keyword phrases.
2. SEM Done Right Is Always a Worthwhile Investment
There are certain online marketing tactics that are a sure-bet for a long time to come, and SEM is one of them.
Overall, U.S. marketers will spend more than $103 billion on search, display, social media, and email marketing by 2019 — growing at a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) — but search will remain the largest share of interactive spend. (MediaPost).
Based on our experience, when doing SEO or PPC, businesses are likely to get at least three to four times their money back. That’s being conservative!
Having the right mindset is crucial when planning your marketing budget. Many real estate investors make the mistake of thinking in terms of costs rather than returns.
While costs are an important consideration, ultimately, your objective is to “move the needle” and get a return on your money.
Take a demo of Carrot today or reach out to us if you have questions about how to plan your 2016 Search Engine Marketing budget in the comments section below.
So, are you seeing your leads slow down right now versus the volume of cash buyer or motivated seller leads you saw in the summer? Well, you’re not alone. It’s a seasonal thing… and here’s what you can do about it to make up some of those lost leads with other types of marketing.
There’s an interesting phenomenon happening right now that some investors are noticing and I wanted to write a blog post about it to make you aware of it:
Some investors (maybe even you) are noticing fewer leads right now… have you noticed that? (It’s not happening to everyone but to some).
Maybe you’re seeing this happen and you’re wondering if something is broken on your website or if Google changed their algorithm again. So I’m writing this blog post to let you know: it’s actually very normal…
What’s happening is kind of like what happens with the stock market:
Look at a chart of the Dow Jones over a period of years and you’ll notice that it trends generally upward.
But look at a chart of the Dow Jones over a period of hours or days and you’ll notice that it has a lot of peaks and valleys.
The same thing is happening to investors: While Carrot users are noticing a steady increase in the number of leads they get online when you implement what we teach and stick with it, some are also noticing that there are peaks and valleys… and in the winter months leads for some types of prospects (like motivated house sellers) tend to take a bit of a dip.
Why?
Well, the simple answer can be summed up with a meme from the TV show Game Of Thrones…
Winter is coming! Well, actually it’s HERE in many parts of the country.
No, I’m not joking. The season and how cold it is outside can affect the number of people out hunting for someone to buy their house.
Let me ask you a question:
If you live in an area of the country where it snows, when do you think about a snow shovel?
Chances are, you probably don’t think about it at the height of summer, when you’re sitting on the beach and watching your kids play in the surf.
Chances are, you probably think about it when the forecast calls for snow… or (more likely) after you look out the window one morning and see the ground covered in snow. That’s when you think, “Oh, I hope I have a snow shovel!” and then you go searching for one in the garage.
The Home Depot knows this.
That’s why, during the summer, you probably won’t find a lot of snow shovels (you might find one tucked away in a discount bin somewhere), but during the winter, the snow shovels are front-and-center… probably the first thing you see when you walk in into the store.
There are seasonal fluctuations in many types of businesses (including here at Carrot) and smart businesses know this and they plan for it and deal with it.
The same is true for your real estate investing business
The exact same thought process that occurs with you and your snow shovel also occurs with the motivated seller and cash buyer leads who come into your business.
Here’s Why Real Estate Investing Lead Volumes Can Fluctuate During The Year
Motivated sellers might want to sell throughout the year, but there are months when they are more motivated to sell than other months.
Cash buyers might want to buy throughout the year, but there are months when they are more motivated to buy than other months.
Not surprisingly, lead generation trends correspond to the months of increased motivation, which corresponds to increased search activity.
In short: during some months, motivation to sell or to buy increased, which increased searches for related keywords, which increased leads generated.
We first reported to investors on this phenomenon in 2013, in the post Are There Less Real Estate Investor Leads In Holiday Months Than Summer Months? We showed that motivated seller leads tended to fluctuate through the year, with a noticeable spike in the summer and a noticeable decline in the winter. The same phenomenon holds up year-after-year!
The same is true for cash buyers as well. We showed that cash buyer leads tended to fluctuate through the year, with a noticeable spike in January.
Motivated sellers are looking to sell when it’s nice: the summer months; with July being an ideal time perhaps to get the kids settled in a new place before school starts. December tends to be a slower month because of the holidays and people in general just have so much to do in December that they often put their sale off until the new year.
Cash buyers are looking to buy when they’re thinking about their financial future. This often happens around January when we all think about New Year resolutions and the year ahead.
Some investors might get frustrated by this knowledge, and feel tempted to shut things down in the quiet months while they ramp things up in the busy months.
But I believe that investors have a massive opportunity to grow their business by ramping up their efforts in the quiet months!
Here Are 10 Things You Can Do This Month If You’re Seeing The “Winter Lead Slump” That Some Investors Experience
The solution to fewer leads is a two-pronged approach:
You should level up the amount of marketing that you do to increase your leads right now, plus you should put some pieces in place to ensure that your leads remain stable throughout the year.
If you’re seeing fewer leads right now, here are a few ideas to help you shore up those lead numbers and not settle for a dip in volume:
Each week we’ll share with you our very best strategies for building your online presence and generating more leads. Our focus is to help you get more leads.
Keep marketing!
There might be fewer cash buyers and motivated sellers taking action right now… but they’re still out there!
So keep marketing.
Don’t wind down your marketing efforts just because it’s the end of the year and you’re assuming that all of your cash buyers have flown south for the winter.
Integrate your offline marketing
One of the first things we teach our InvestorCarrot members in our Carrot Guide is to integrate your website with your offline marketing. Test your URL on your postcards/letters, radio ads, TV spots, etc.
Find ways to integrate marketing you’re already doing offline with your website.
Accelerate the timeline
Cash buyer leads tend to spike in January because that’s one of the times of the year when cash buyers are thinking about their financial future. So create marketing that gets them thinking about their financial future sooner than January!
Start the conversation right now about how to get a jump-start on the new year. You can do the same thing for motivated sellers. Remind them that now is still a great time to sell and they can get cash in hand before Christmas!
Launch a direct mail campaign that markets…
“Cash In your Hand Before Christmas!”
…and get them to start thinking about accelerating their timeline to sell.
Market more to motivated sellers who don’t need to move (2nd homes, inherited, etc.)
Winter might not be an ideal time to move but not all of your motivated sellers need to move when they sell to you. Out of state owners, probate/inheritance owners, landlords, etc. – these people are still motivated to sell and they are not at all impacted by the weather.
Those absentee owners may want that cash injection before Christmas and the new year and may want to go into the new year without that burdensome property. Use that to your advantage.
Do more of what you’re already doing (ramp it up!)
The majority of PPC campaigns by “do it yourselfers” that we see have glaring things that need to be fixed that would really increase the results from the campaign. And lots of people are being held back by a PPC ad budget that’s too low. Here are some tips on making your PPC marketing dollars go further.
Add more marketing channels
If you’ve been thinking of testing some new marketing channels, now is the time to add them so you have them refined and humming along when the spring and summer months kick in.
Craigslist continues to be a surprising source of cash buyers and a consistent stream of sellers for our members.
Many investors have been ignoring Craigslist for a few years because it’s old school and it’s gotten harder to market in the real estate sections. But we have a very powerful and effective Craigslist training that shows you how to still get leads from this source. And I believe that Facebook is an AMAZING source of cash buyer leads when done right.
So now is the time to start testing some Facebook efforts. And don’t stop there.
Motivated sellers are far less motivated to sell in the winter because they don’t want to move when it’s cold.
So how can you help them avoid that pain? Does it mean getting really creative by offering to cover a moving company? Some investors might scream at the potential cost… but consider this: it might make more sense to get SOME profit from a few deals than to get NO profit because you can’t find motivated sellers who are willing to move.
Also, you know all of those leads you generated in the past 4-6 months that didn’t turn into deals?
Well, send out a campaign to all of them to see if they were able to get their situation taken care of.
You could send an email that looks something like this…
“Hi [name], I hope your holiday season is going well!
If you remember, you and I connected a few months back when you let us know about your property at on our website.
I’m going through my notes and wanted to follow up to see if you were able to sell that house yet? If not, would it be worth chatting again to see if the timing is right for me to make you another offer? I’m buying 3 more houses before the end of the year yours is in the neighborhood we’re looking for.
I look forward to connecting with you!
– [your name]”
Plan ahead
Chances are, you’ll see a bump in cash buyer leads in the new year so use this time to build some extra capacity into your business (i.e. train a new acquisitions person or estimator), which will allow you to do even more when those cash buyers spike in January.
Also, if you’re still working to get your search engine rankings higher… the winter months are the PERFECT time to put in the SEO time (or hire it out) to grow your rankings so your website is ranked higher when the search volume picks back up.
Think long-term
Search engine optimization can take 3-5 months to really take effect(or sometimes longer in competitive markets) so if you level up your search engine optimization game now, you’ll help to position your site for even greater search engine result greatness! Don’t wait until March to try to rank well for a competitive phrase by the summer “traffic bump”… if you do you may not be giving yourself enough time for the SEO rankings to mature.
Seeing Your Leads Dip Unveils A Hidden OPPORTUNITY
Most investors will tell you that fewer leads is a frustration.
But I think it’s an opportunity: it’s an opportunity to build a more diversified and stable business by deploying new strategies that you might not normally have time to try out. And once you build these strategies into your marketing, they’ll continue working for you to drive more leads into your business and push that trend line even higher!
See our plans or take a demo… but above all, take this seasonal opportunity to get creative with your real estate marketing!
I’ve got a secret to tell you about the real estate investing business: It’s really a PEOPLE business. You find sellers who need to get rid of a property, and you match that property up with buyers who want to acquire it. But the critical point is that the people make the deal happen.
So the express lane to growth as a real estate investor is simple: Get more people of the RIGHT PEOPLE into your investor lead pipeline.
Specifically, get more people with properties and get more people with money to buy your properties to notice you.
If you’re struggling with getting enough leads from your website, this blog post can help you diagnose what’s holding you back and will reveal some step-by-step strategies to get you moving forward.
Ultimately, there are 4 main reasons why you may be struggling with getting leads online as a real estate investor or agent.
4 Reasons You’re Not Getting The Real Estate Investing Leads You Want Online & How To Fix Them
1. Low Traffic or No Website Traffic
Are people landing on your website? Not enough traffic to your website is the #1 cause of the “Low or No Lead” problem. See how to solve that below…
Your website traffic volume is the first place to start.
After all, if you aren’t actively getting qualified people to your website with your marketing, anything else you do on your site won’t matter.
The first step is to get eyeballs on your site.
I like setting an initial goal to get 10 – 20 people to your website each week. That’s not a large number… it’s achievable, and if you’re not getting 10 – 20 qualified prospects to your website per week with your marketing… it’s your first goal.
So how can you get more traffic (qualified prospects) to your website?
Integrating your website into offline marketing (Direct mail, email signature, etc.)
We’ve written posts on this blog about every one of these and have done several webinars on driving traffic… so dive into the resources at your fingertips and make that first goal of 10-20 qualified prospects per month!
Here are some resources on driving more traffic to your websites to dive into!
Many more free resources here on our site will also help you increase your traffic.
If you’re already a Carrot member… hop on the next weekly Carrot Coaching Call, and we’ll help craft a traffic plan for you right there on the call if you ask us :-)
As we’ve written, SEO is a long-term (and high ROI) strategy… so don’t expect 10-20 qualified prospects per week to come to your site from SEO alone right away. It takes time to build… but it’s worth it once it does!
Also, Youtube marketing is a way to get your brand to the front page of Google search results (even if your website isn’t there yet), plus it’s a great way to get even more eyeballs on your brand if your website is already on the front page.
2. Low-Quality Traffic To Your Website
Not all website traffic is created equal… Are the people landing on your website the right ones? Ones that will turn into leads and deals?
So you have at least 10 – 20 people landing on your website each week and still not getting the leads you want? They may not be the right people…
Eyeballs are good… but the right eyeballs on your website are better.
Once you’ve built website traffic-generating systems to get people landing on your website, it’s time to start refining those systems to ensure you get the highest quality traffic you can.
Is Your SEO Optimized For High-Quality Search Phrases? While it’s tempting to drive as much traffic as possible to your website, the first action you should be taking is looking at your search engine optimization. Are you choosing the right keywords for the right audience? Not all audiences are looking for the same thing. One motivated seller segment may be more responsive to a specific keyword than another. Ensure you’re reviewing the latest version of our SEO Bible, which reveals over 71 SEO keywords that are working for investors now. Avoid altering our “baked-in” SEO since it’s been tested and proven to work.
An example of traffic that may be low quality for the average real estate wholesaler…
… are people who came from a search phrase or Google PPC campaign like “sell my house” or “list my house.”
Yes, they’re looking to sell… but these keywords tend to be from people looking for retail. Focus on keywords that people you can help would be searching.
And make sure you are using location-specific SEO on your site. Review these 6 simple tips to master location-based SEO to make sure your site is fully optimized for where you’re doing deals.
So consider what audience you’re looking to attract and choose your marketing strategies wisely. We’ve talked with many investors who have thrown hundreds of dollars at Facebook ads for motivated sellers only to be discouraged and think it’s a website problem. It’s a traffic quality problem. Facebook ads are a lot harder for motivated sellers than cash buyers.
Don’t Rely on Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns Right Away Unless You Have a Budget of at Least $1k-3k: Pay-per-click campaigns can take a while to optimize. In the short term, they can certainly drive traffic to your site, but they might not drive the right types of prospects, and you could you run through your budget faster than you expect! (Check out these 20 tips to optimize a Google PPC campaign – and pay attention to the case study at the very beginning of the post!)
Pay-per-click is excellent, but make sure you’re using other methods to drive the right traffic to your site while you hone your PPC campaigns.
Build Valuable Content Everywhere! The most effective way to drive quality leads to your site is to provide valuable information your target audience wants. It’s not about stuffing the right keywords into the title of a Youtube video or website page, it’s really about understanding who your audience is and addressing the problems, concerns, and questions that they have about how to sell or buy a property and why you’re the right person to help them.
Make sure you’re being helpful in all your content – from offsite to onsite content.
In the end…
…don’t just focus on driving traffic. Focus on getting the right people to your website who you can help and who can turn into profitable deals for you.“
If retail house sellers aren’t your ideal prospect… don’t use keywords that will attract them.
And also… don’t forget that when you visit your website, that will show up on your website stats reports… so if you haven’t done any marketing yet and see 10 visits to your website this week… those visits may be you visiting your website. So go out and actively market to get the right people to your website.
3. Low Credibility On Your Website
What’s the first impression people get when they land on your website? If your website makes them feel like you’re a fly-by-night operation or a “dark and seedy” character (or worse, like you’re hiding behind the website), your best prospects could bail and go to your competition.
As they say, the first impression is lasting. What is your website saying about you, your company, and your ability to honestly and ethically help them solve their problem?
Your audience will seek reasons to trust you as your traffic grows and the quality improves. Like detectives, they’ll look for clues on your website that point to your trustworthiness (or lack thereof) to assure them that they’re in good hands by working with you.
Just look at the first page of this Carrot member website and you’ll see that it contains subtle credibility clues for the site visitor.
The typical Carrot website has over 10 credibility boosters already baked in. You can add more credibility like testimonials, info about your company, local pictures, and badges like BBB to boost your credibility even more.
Clean and trustworthy looking website and brand
Easy to find information and navigate the website
The company page informs the prospective lead that you are a legitimate organization.
The How It Works link assures the website visitor that you have a plan to help them.
Testimonials provide credibility from third-party “success stories.”
A guarantee, when appropriate, helps reduce a sense of risk
Further assurances such as “No hassles. No obligation.” tell a prospective lead that you’re easy to work with and you have their best interests at heart
Localize the website so they know you’re a local solution they can talk to
Make it easy to contact you (add your phone number, opt-in form, contact page, etc.)
This is just a start. There are many more ways to add credibility.
Here are a few:
Talk about how long you’ve been in business and your unique way of being able to help them
Fill your testimonials page with testimonials from folks who have done business with you
If you are accredited with the Better Business Bureau, add a BBB to your site
Include videos of you speaking to your audience
Emphasize a “risk reversal” (try to remove the sense of risk with working with you. Put the risk on yourself, not them)
Make sure your website is fully mobile optimized and looks great on mobile devices (test your website here)
Even other forms of marketing spread your name around your market, contributing to people seeing your name, recognizing you, and trusting you.
Credibility on your website is one of the most important things you can do to help make sure your website isn’t turning your prospects away. Carrot makes it easier and more effective than other platforms, or you are trying to build a website from scratch yourself.
If you find that you’re driving great quality traffic to your site and it’s not turning into leads… it’s either number #3 (Credibility) or #4 (Conversion) holding your website back.
4. Your Website Conversion Rate Is Dragging You Down
Not all websites are created equal… some perform much better than others as far as converting a qualified visitor into a lead. If you’re getting enough quality traffic and you’ve built in credibility elements into your website… it’s likely that your website isn’t set up to convert very well (a very common mistake).
We constantly harp that performance trumps all else here at Carrot. It is more important than looking different in the market… more important than a “pretty” and “fancy” site… and far more important than a fancy CRM. Why?
Simple.
If your website isn’t built based on scientific testing to tap into your website visitor’s subconscious behaviors to help guide the right people toward making it easy to engage in your website and work with you…
… you’re wasting your marketing dollars.
Time and time again… we have investors switch to Carrot (who are already driving quality traffic) because they are getting good Google rankings or putting good money into Google PPC marketing… but their website is underperforming.
Then they switch to our science-based lead generation websites with our Carrot Conversion Methodology built into them (so you don’t have to be a conversion rate expert), and they see an immediate increase in their leads.
“I was spending $100 a day on Google PPC driving to my other website I spent good money on to have built…and struggled to get leads. Once I switched to Carrot & just used what you’d already built and perfected, in 3 months I’ve been with Carrot I now spend $10 per day and have over 450 rent to own tenant buyer leads. The only thing I changed was my website.” – Jim Pellerin – Home Ownership Made Easy
The only change was howthe website was structured, and the elements (often they’re ones you can’t notice) that we’ve built into our websites boost the performance and the ROI for the investor.
So, if you…
Are you getting at least 10 – 20 highly qualified visitors to your website each week
Have built-in great credibility elements into your website
… and your website still isn’t converting at a bare minimum 3-5% of those visitors into leads.
(our average motivated seller website converts over 9% of visitors to a lead, cash buyer websites over 18%, and rent-to-own websites over 24% of visitors turn into leads. How does yours stack up? Learn more about conversion rates here)
You have likely had a conversion rate problem, my friend.
Again, once your audience trusts you, they’ll more likely be willing to act, but they’ll need some guidance and direction to get them to take the right action immediately. That’s where conversion elements come in.
This is where we specialize here at Carrot!
We are constantly testing and modifying our sites to find the best-converting strategies that work! Although you may choose to make adjustments on your Carrot site, we urge you to do so carefully so that you maintain the conversion elements that we’ve carefully placed.
For example, the first portion of the site that your website visitor sees is strategically designed to increase conversion. Everything from the words in the menu to the call to action to the simple form – even that scribbled orange arrow is there for a reason!
We have over 30 Carrot Conversion Method elements built into our websites… many of them you likely will never notice but they boost performance… without you having to be a conversion rate expert.
If you want to ensure that more people take action when they’re on your site, keep those Carrot conversion elements on your site.
For precise ways to increase the conversion rate on your website, check out these free resources:
Implement the things in those posts above, and your website will perform much better.
Look at your website conversion rate this way. It’ll hit home…
Lose just 1 deal every 2 years because of an underperforming website… and that costs you $10k+. That’s enough to pay for Carrot for over 10 years.
But you say… “Carrot is more per month than the other website guys in the market“.
Yes, we are… because we focus on providing you with the highest return on the investment platform. Our websites are the highest-performing websites in the industry, and almost every other website builder emulates our conversion methodology for their website designs.
So, you may be paying a bit more per month with Carrot… but you’re saving yourself from losing out on deals and leads because you’re using a low-performing website solution to “save a few bucks.” Take a tour of Carrot or connect with us for a call. We’d love to walk you through case study after case study of how Carrot has helped more high-achieving investors than any other company in the world to ramp up their ROI from their online marketing.
It’s whymore and more of the most active and largest investors (ones who understand ROI) are moving from their WordPress websites into Carrot… our focus on performance and ROI.
If You Fix These 4 “Low or No Lead” Reasons On Your Website… You’ll Stop Losing Out On The High-Quality Real Estate Investing Leads Coming Online In Your Market Each And Every Day…
Not generating the leads you want online as a real estate investor boils down to those 4 things discussed in this article.
Find your weak spot and start implementing the changes we suggest in this article and our other free resources.
If you look back in 3 months and still aren’t getting the results you want… there’s only 1 other reason. I call it the 5th “low lead” reason. It’s you :-)
So go out there and focus on growing your online traffic, getting more qualified prospects to your website, building that credibility, and using a high-performing website platform.
If you do that… you’ll be crushing it in no time. After all, our members are pulling in over 48,000 real estate investing leads per month right now… there’s no reason you can’t pull in your fair share too.
And if you feel that Carrot can help you grow your business as well… hop on over and take a demo or reach out to us anytime. We’re here for you!
What would you do if you found yourself with more cash buyer leads than you knew what to do with?
… I hope your answer would be that you’ll do more real estate deals!
For turn key real estate investors, wholesalers, and even house flippers…
… Cash Buyer Leads Are where Your Money Is
Whenever you need more money, go to your buyers list to curate demand!
Like the screenshot above from an actual InvestorCarrot members account for just 1 of his websites in a market on the East coast… he has well over 1,000 cash buyers (1,015of which took the next step and further qualified themselves with our “Step 2” lead qualification process built into all Carrot sites. Those are solid buyer leads.
One perpetually attractive source of buyer leads is Craigslist.
Are You Leveraging Craigslist To Build Your Active Cash Buyers List?
If you’re a real estate investor, Craigslist should be one of the sites you bookmark and visit daily to help you grow your business.
Craigslist has long been a treasure trove of leads for real estate investors, from buyer leads to seller leads to rental tenants to contractors, and more.
It’s so good because there are always many people on Craigslist at any given time and you can be sure that the people who are visiting the real estate section have some interest in real estate… that is, they’re at least thinking about participating in some kind of transaction (even if they’re not ready today).
Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to that reality: there are a lot of people just like you – including agents and investors – who are hitting up Craigslist to find leads.
If you go to the real estate for sale section of Craigslist, you’ll be inundated with a list of properties, each title proclaiming in all caps:
“123 MAIN STREET!!! FIXER-UPPER” “3 BEDROOM 2 BATH” “COUNTRY CHARM!!!”
… There are a lot of all-caps and a lot of exclamation points. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd.
So, how do you master Craigslist to make it a key part of your buyer-lead-building strategy? And, how do you stand out from the crowd and attract more buyer leads?
Here Are 5 Strategies To Get More Craigslist Buyer Leads
Craigslist Marketing Buyer Leads Strategy #1. Put On YOUR Buyer Brain
Before you start posting your deals, you need to know who you are posting them for. So many properties in Craigslist miss out on a huge opportunity by creating mundane post titles like “3 bedroom, 2 bathroom!”
Is that the best information for your buyer?
Start by identifying who your buyer is. Do you sell to retail buyers? Rent-to-own tenants? Landlords? Flippers? Get as specific as possible. Maybe you are a turnkey wholesaler and your perfect buyer is an out-of-state owner. Maybe you flip properties and your perfect buyer is a rent-to-own tenant with bad credit but a good job.
Once you identify your buyer, you need to get into their brain and think about WHY they want to buy a property from you. No one cares about the address of your property until they are ready to visit. And not all buyers care about the number of bedrooms and bathrooms either.
Here are 3 simple but powerful tips to help get in the brain of your cash buyers with your Craigslist ads.
Your out-of-state investing buyers want to know the cash flow numbers
Your flipping buyers want an assessment of how much work is required to flip the property
Your rent-to-own tenant-buyers want to know that you’ll work with them on their unique financing situation
You need to figure out why your buyers are looking in the first place… then build that information into your ads.
Craigslist Marketing Buyer Strategy #2. Create a Compelling Post Title That Speaks To Your Buyer’s “Why”
Your buyers have a reason for buying properties and it has NOTHING to do with the property’s address (that most people post as the post title).
Create a title that speaks to your buyer’s key reason for buying.
To borrow from the examples above:
Your out-of-state investing buyers want to know the cash flow numbers so a post title that catches their attention…
Turnkey property cash flowing $500/month”
Your flipping buyers want an assessment of how much work is required to flip the property so a post title that catches their attention… …
“Easy-to-fix property 50% below market, requires only $10K for a fast flip”
Your rent-to-own customers want to know that you’ll work with them on their unique financing situation so a post title that says…
“Bad credit? No problem with this beautiful rent-to-own home”
Should you include exclamation points and ALL-CAPS?
Those might have worked when people were first posting but it seems like most people are using that strategy now so you might consider using regular sentence case to write your title since it will be unique against a list of ALL CAP POSTS.
You should test both a regular (sentence case) title and an ALL CAPS title and see what works in your market… but in general, I’m not a fan of all caps titles on Craigslist ads or email subject lines. It just feels like I’m being yelled at in a weird silent way ;-)
In the end, it’s not important whether you use CAPS, symbols in your ad title, arrows… whatever. The important thing is that your ad title stands out visually in the list of other ads.
Which Craigslist Real Estate Ads Stand Out To You Below?
Making your Craigslist ads stand out… Notice how small changes in your ad title can make it stand out from the other ads. You can use symbols, numbers, or even just making your ad title a different length than the other ads on the page can improve the results of your ads!
Craigslist Buyer Leads Strategy #3. Attach The Best Pictures For Your Prospects Goal
Pictures are a challenging part of the real estate investor’s Craigslist marketing strategy. The burning question is: Do pictures help?
Here’s our assessment:
If your buyer is a homeowner/retail buyer (that is: if they will be living in the property themselves) then pictures will help.
If your buyer is an investor (i.e. a flipper or they want to own rental property) then pictures probably won’t help as much as the numbers. (They might help but not to the same degree as someone who will live in the property).
Also, the quality of the picture should really vary based on the type of buyer you’re looking for.
Retail Buyers want to see very pretty and polished pictures. So post great pictures to catch their attention. When most retail buyers see a crummy picture that makes the house look bad, they immediately start thinking of all of the work they’ll have to do to make the house “pretty”.
Turnkey Investors want to see pictures that show the house is nice, is well kept, in a neighborhood that’ll attract the type of tenant they want, etc. So you don’t need the ultra polished pictures like you may post for a retail buyer, but make sure the house looks like it’s in great shape and well kept in the pictures to turnkey investors.
Cash Buyers / Flippers often want to see a house that is in rough shape in comparison to the others in the neighborhood. So don’t fret over trying to make your pictures fancy. In fact, fancy professional pictures could give the flipper / rehabber / cash buyer the impression that the house is too expensive and isn’t a deal. Show the flaws in the house, show what they’ll have to fix, but make sure to show the good parts of the deal as well.
Which Pictures Stand Out And Which Ones Don’t?
Craigslist has a “gallery” view now… that in many markets is the default view for looking at real estate. So are your ads standing out and helping grab your potential prospect? The pictures with orange arrows above don’t really show the property well and don’t grab your attention.
So again it comes back to knowing who your buyers are.
Many real estate posts have pictures in them and they aren’t great quality pictures.
One picture may show a room with windows; another picture may show a house with a tree in front of it. Clearly, all of the pictures were taken on a smartphone. If you are going to take pictures, take great pictures (vivid pictures with plenty of contrast) that show key parts of the property that will interest your buyer based on their “why”.
(Flippers should see the parts that are great and the parts that need fixing. Cash flow investors should see that a property is solid enough to attract and retain good tenants).
But here’s one more argument against images: Since many listings do have pictures, your listing might actually stand out if you don’t have pictures – especially when Craigslist is in the thumbnail or gallery mode. So you can use the lack of pictures to your advantage if you have a great ad title that draws the real estate buyer in.
The main thing you want to do is stand out in the sea of other Craigslist ads.
Try both ads with images and without.
And try ads with great images and ugly ones and see which produces the best result for you following our guidelines above.
Craigslist Buyer Leads Strategy #4. Deploy A Pricing Strategy That Makes Sense
Price your property right… Sometimes playing the “$1” pricing game or showing no price at all can backfire and prevent your property from showing up to the right buyers. Price your property right. Also, recognize that the
As you post your listing, you are prompted to enter a price.
Here are the four possible pricing options you have:
The right price
A price that is too low
A price that is too high
No price at all
Although people can sort with high prices first or low prices first, potential buyers will rarely search for high prices first (because serious buyers usually want to pay less).
And if they search by price at all, your no-price listing may not show up at all.
This reduces your choices to: the right price or a price that is eye-catchingly low.
If a price is too low ($1.00) you might show up at the top of the list when sorted by low price first but what will you gain? You may incur the wrath of someone who wants to flag you for mispricing your property. Ultimately it will depend on the kind of deals you do and who your buyers are.
The best rule of thumb is to always price the property for your best price upfront.
Craigslist Buyer Leads Strategy #5: Include A Call To Action
In the body of your listing, include relevant details that the buyer will find helpful. But most people stop there.
“2BR, nice community.”
While that might be true, people need to be told what to do next.
So create a clear call to action that entices them and reminds them of the urgency of the offer.
“Contact us today – this deal will go fast.”
You might also consider offering a bonus to leads who contact you. Make sure that the bonus is valuable, tied to your offer, and benefits your specific buyer (as identified in strategy #1).
Don’t get too aggressive on your free bonuses because they could cause people to flag your listing but if you take an authentic, measured approach that is targeted to a specific audience, you should find it helpful.
An example might be for flippers: “Contact me about this property and I’ll even throw in a $250 coupon for Home Depot upon closing” Or this one for out-of-state investors: “Contact me about this property and we’ll even waive our first months property management fee!”
Start Getting More Craigslist Buyer Leads Right Now
Craigslist is a powerful source of leads no matter what you use it for. If you want buyers, follow these 5 simple strategies to take your buyer lead building to the next level!
Do you see your competition ranking their YouTube videos at the top of Google for the search terms you want to rank for?
Like This?…
This is a screenshot of a popular motivated house seller search where our InvestorCarrot customers control the top 3 positions in Google. The #1 position is a YouTube video. Learn how to boost your YouTube video marketing below!
In this post we’ll show you some YouTube SEO optimization tips that you can implement in your real estate investing or agent companies.
In our 90 Day Inbound Online Marketing Action Plan call we did recently we teach real estate investors and agents to have a short-term online lead generation plan and a long-term online lead generation plan.
The short-term things are actions you can take to get visitors to your website (cash buyers, motivated house sellers, tenants, private lenders, note sellers, etc.) within the first 30-60 days while your long-term SEO campaigns build.
One of the marketing tools we love the most for both our short-term and long-term lead generation for ourselves and our high achieving investor clients is YouTube marketing. We wrote a short post about it last year, this post is a more detailed followup on optimizing those YouTube videos.
Infographic: 7 YouTube SEO Optimization Tips To Implement On Your YouTube Videos This Week
The Biggest YouTube Video Marketing Mistakes Real Estate Agents And Investors Are Making Every Day
The reason YouTube videos can rank so darn fast is because of the “Domain Authority” of YouTube.com.
In Google’s eyes, YouTube has the highest possible authority and trust that a website can get.
This makes it so any video uploaded to YouTube automatically has a better chance of ranking quickly for search phrases that it may take you months and months to rank well for with your own website with SEO.
The ROI of YouTube marketing as a house flipper, investor, or agent can be pretty huge for the time you’ll invest. An average wholesale deal could net you approx $5k on the low end right? Would 3-4 hours of video work and “seo boosting” be worth it for that profit potential? The same for agents… what is your average listing worth?
But you only have a better chance if you implement what the graphic above shows and avoid these common mistakes we see investors making.
Avoid…
Not using your main keyword phrase in the video title: Most investors will throw a video on YouTube and not really think much about the title. If you want to rank well for “sell my house fast Madera CA“… your video should have those words in it toward the start of the title.
Not uploading enough videos to your channel: Every day we see people asking how to improve their YouTube video rankings… then we look at their YouTube channel and see only 1 or 2 videos in there. Google wants to see that a channel is active. So get at least 4-6 videos in there! Use this training video to help optimize your YouTube channel.
Not typing up a good long description in the description box: People forget that Google can only read what we give it to read. So use that description area to really talk about the content in the video. Include your keyword phrase and variations of it… and ideally get your keyword phrase toward the start of your description. Treat the description box like you’d treat the content on a page on your lead generation website. Get good quality content on there and optimize the content for the phrase you’re wanting to rank for.
Not linking to your website from your description with the full “http://www.yoursitehere.com”: A solid way to drive people to your website and get a link back to your website is to include a clickable link in your video description! It’s a no brainer and should be one of the first things you put on your description.
Thinking your work is over after you upload your video: If you’re in a competitive market where lots of other real estate investors, wholesalers, flippers, agents… etc. are competing for the same search phrases… you may need to add some SEO “boosters” to get your videos to rank higher. Get people to comment on your videos, share it on social media, link to the video, and post the video on your own website too. You’d be surprised how easy ranking a YouTube video can be with a few of the right steps.
If you’re an InvestorCarrot member, our 3 Lead Per Day Training (only available to active Carrot members) dives into YouTube video marketing really deeply and shows you how to make your videos step by step, upload them, optimize them, and “boost” them after they’re on YouTube.
Just check our marketplace to pick up that training course if you’re an InvestorCarrot member.
Or, if you’re not yet an InvestorCarrot member, what are you waiting for? :-)
Carrot Members Control More Page 1 And Top 5 Rankings In Google For Motivated Sellers and Cash Buyers (rent to own tenants too!)…
… than any other real estate investor website platform.
Our prices aren’t the lowest (and never will be)… but our members say the return on investment they get with their InvestorCarrot accounts is one of the best possible investments they could make with those marketing dollars vs. the alternative real estate investor website solutions.
Our members are currently pulling in well over 10,000 opt in leads per month at the time this article is published… plus thousands more phone call leads each month.
And a huge reason is because we focus on making your life easier as an investor or agent when it comes to online inbound marketing.
It’s a mix of…
Great software that launches websites that give you a head start with SEO (and are completely ready to convert leads for you on PPC or Craigslist from day 1)
Epic support when you need help (email, live chat, weekly live Carrot Coaching webinars with our team members on advanced lead gen topics and Q&A)
Industry best online marketing training
These combined have turned into pretty darn amazing results for our clients who trust the system, put it to action, and use the resources you have at your fingertips with Carrot.
If you’re curious about InvestorCarrot and how it can help you grow your real estate investing, house flipping, wholesaling, note buying, or real estate agency…head on over here to take the demo.
So much in fact that during any given week we’re setting up multiple tests on our Carrot customers’ websites based on our “data dives” that our team does into the data we’re tracking to help improve the effectiveness of our system each and every week.
We’ve have had our heads down the last couple months getting some big projects pushed through, and frankly, have a backlog of test data that we haven’t made blog posts on yet.
And, thanks to all of you who answered our Customer Survey a few weeks back and who said, “I want to see more test data on the blog!”… we’re going to start rolling out some results of our conversion tests here on the blog on a more consistent basis.
One Of The Most Important Parts Of A High Converting Real Estate Investor Website Is…
… the Call to Action area.
The Call to Action area is the part on your website that guides the reader of your website (a motivated house seller, cash buyer, note seller, agent, etc) to take a certain action that you want them to take.
This could be joining your Discount Property List… getting an offer on their house… or even just a free market report.
But there are 3 core elements to a great Call to Action form…
1. The “ask” headline:
This is the spot that grabs their attention and hopefully spells out in a few short words the benefit they’re going to get OR simply asks them a question to get them to mentally say, “Yes, that’s me. What do I do next?”.
2. The opt-in form:
This is the actual form that people put their information into. We’ve tested variations of forms, numbers of form fields, size of form fields, type of information we collect on form fields… and have found a pretty darn good structure that has increased the conversion rate on our members’ websites dramatically.
3. The action button (or “submit” button):
This is often overlooked by people. Lots of people just assume that a person on your website is either going to click that button or not if they’re a motivated seller.
But, that’s just not the case. We’ve tested variation after variation of different sizes, colors, positions, and words on the “submit” buttons and in many cases found dramatic differences in conversion rate.
The Submit Button Change That Boosted Conversions 49.5%
This isn’t the first time we’ve run this exact test… and won’t be the last.
But this latest round of tests on the submit button on the main opt-in form on a motivated seller website had some really interesting results.
The Hypothesis in this test:
Will changing the words on the submit button from a “descriptor” (“Click to Continue” or “Submit”) to a “mental commitment” increase conversions?
Every single time we’ve run this test on a real estate investor website we’ve seen an improvement in the conversion rate when we got rid of the “Submit” or “Click to Continue” buttons in place of something that said something like… “See Available Properties” or “Get My Fair Offer Today!”
Below are a few shots of the actual tests and heat maps showing the results.
Test #1: Motivated Seller Website – Making Button Copy More Relevant
We Added Value To The Button Copy… and made it more relevant with giving them what they want, a “fair cash offer today”… not to “continue”
This test is actually still an active test but is currently at a 95% statistical chance to produce a winner (which is pretty darn good. We shoot for at least 97% to call it 100% conclusive.)
But as you can see in the heat map image above, all we changed was the words inside that red button. All of the “hot spots” on the pictures are the places visitors to that website during the test were clicking on and interacting on.
The Control is the button that said “Click here to Continue <<<<“… which is what we call a descriptor. It just tells you want to do.
The Variation 1 button says “Get My Fair Cash Offer <<“… which is what we call a mental commitment. It meets the web visitor in the same mental mode that they’re in when they’re on that site… and mentally guides them toward the benefit they want (a fair cash offer on their house, today).
The Results: Out of 569 total sellers who landed on this InvestorCarrot motivated seller website, 59 converted as a lead (a 10.37% average).
The Variation with the mental commitment phrase… “Get My Fair Cash Offer <<” showed an improvement in 49.5% at a 12.55% conversion rate on SEO and PPC traffic… which is pretty darn solid for the home page of a website.
What Does That Mean? Out of every 100 visitors who land on your website, you’d get 12.5 leads rather than 8.3. Doesn’t sound like a huge deal.
But when those numbers add up it gets exciting. At 1,000 visitors to your website (assuming these numbers hold true) that would be 40 extra motivated seller leads.
If you close 1 out of every 20 leads into a deal (which is a low percentage for many of our customers) and you net on average $7.5k (which is much lower than many of our customers net per deal)… that’s $15,000 in extra revenue without having to generate any more traffic to your website. Free money assuming your close ratio per lead stays true.
Test #2: Rent to Own Website – Making Button Copy More Relevant
We Added Value To The Button Copy… and made it more relevant. It helps the person visualize what’s on the other side of the button.
This test was a very similar change to test #1. On this InvestorCarrot members rent to own website we simply changed the button copy from a basic descriptor, “Submit Here >” (which the customer changed the button to that text away from our default text of “Let Me See Available Homes >”… so we wanted to test it again just to prove why it was there in the first place ;-).
A rent to own real estate investing website is going to get a much higher conversion rate than a motivated seller website is just because of the nature of the type of lead.
But the concept still held up in this instance with a completely different type of website and type of lead.
Why? It’s baked into us as humans to want to take the easiest path… the one with the least amount of resistance. If I landed on this website because I did a Google search to find local rent to own homes… and this button reinforces exactly what I want… to see “available homes” right now, I can’t help but follow that path and make my brain happy.
This conversion psychology is built into all of our InvestorCarrot websites and we’re continually testing and improving every single month.
The Results: The variation that had the button copy that was more relevant to what the website visitor was thinking performed higher by 9.63%.
What Does This Mean? Out of every 100 visitors to your website you’d get 3 more “free” leads. Over 1,000 visitors to your website you’d get an extra 30 leads. If you were able to put just 1 out of every 30 qualified leads into a deal that made you $10k… that’s an extra $10,000 in profits per 1,000 visitors without adding any more traffic to your website. Free money.
We’ve run this exact same test on a number of other websites (both InvestorCarrot sites and non-Carrot sites) and results have been similar.
So make sure to update the call to action text on your submit buttons to add more value to your website visitor.
How To Change The Submit Button Text On Carrot Websites In Under 10 Seconds
If you’re an InvestorCarrot member reading this and have set up your website within the last 5 months, this change is already the default setting on all of your websites. Yay! As we find things that perform better, we automatically build them into the system… and in some cases make those changes across the board for our members.
But here’s how you can change your submit button text quickly if yours says “Continue” or “Submit”.
1. Go to the “Forms” tab and click the “Settings” button on the form you want to change.
2. Go to the “Form Button” section and update the “Button Text” box. Done!
Done!
3 Other Call To Action Button Conversion Boosting Ideas
This article is only walking through this one hypothesis… that changing from basic “descriptor” submit button copy to submit button copy that adds more value to the visitor and talks about the benefit they want to get, increases conversion rates and leads.
But, we’ve tested (and are currently testing) many many other elements of the opt-in box.
But here’s some things you may test if you want to get all geeky like us and work on improving the conversion rate of your websites (if you don’t want to fiddle with it and would rather have us do it, we include our conversion testing assistance for any InvestorCarrot customer who is generating at least 100 visitors to their website a month. Why? Simply because we’re dedicated to continually improving the effectiveness of our Inbound Online Marketing System and websites for real estate investors. We don’t just try to make pretty websites. Our members are pulling in over 13,000 leads a month because of the combination between our innovative websites and SEO benefits, our conversion optimization focus, our training, and our hands-on high-level strategy help. )
Change the “possessive” noun from 2nd person to 1st person: “Get Your Fair Cash Offer!” to “Get My Fair Cash Offer!” . We’ve shown this to improve conversions in many cases and has been shown to do the same in test after test in other industries.
Button Size And Position: I see too many real estate investors websites have their call to action button too small… or it blends in to the rest of the page. We’ve found choosing a button color that stands out on the page (contrasts ideally) and is as large as the form fields have improved conversion rates by a measurable amount. We’re running a button size test right now on the website of one of the largest investors in California… and it’s showing a 200%+ improvement so far (it’s early). And it’s no accident that the call to action button on InvestorCarrot websites is wide, large, and the same width as the form fields (we’ve tested it many many times).
Form Fields: Form fields can make one of the biggest differences in your call to action area. We’ve tested it and settled on about 3-4 form fields on your front end form (the form your visitors see first) is ideal for conversions. Then, feed them to an effective “step 2” to further qualify them (it works like gangbusters on InvestorCarrot websites). But don’t take our word for it, here, here, here, and here also tested the same thing and found the same results. It’s human psychology in action.
ImageCredit: Hubspot
So if you are making any of those mistakes or just want to test them on your own website, put that in your action plan this week and get to work!
We Think About Conversion So You Don’t Have To
60,000 Leads Per Month (2020) And Climbing – Gotta Love That
Here at Carrot we get emails and live chat messages every week from members who say that their Carrot website performs better than their old website.
Not just in the search rankings (which Carrot sites hold more page 1 rankings for search phrases that matter than any other website platform for investors) but also on the conversion rate.
Now, let us get real here for a second.
Do we have a magic potion that makes our websites convert more visitors into leads? Nope.
You can learn to do your own conversion testing just like we have over the past 7 years… testing millions of visitors to our pages and well over 1,000 individual tests over the years.
Over time you get good at figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
And when a customer emails us saying “I didn’t tweak hardly anything and my Carrot website converts 4x more visitors into leads than my other website”… that makes us giddy like a rabbit in a… well… carrot patch ;-)
So if you just want to focus on doing more of what makes your heart sing (the stuff you love to do in your business) and less of the techie and marketing stuff you don’t like or just flat out don’t have the time for… that’s why some of the top investors around the country work with us.
We’re not the cheapest monthly rate on the block… but like we showed in this post… we’re dedicated to making your real estate investing websites more effective to generate more real estate investing leads for motivated sellers, cash buyers, private lenders, rent to own tenant buyers, note sellers, and more.
And if you close only 1 extra deal because of our commitment to results over all else over the lifetime of your account with us… that alone will pay for 10-15 years of InvestorCarrot service in that extra “found” revenue.
And heck, if you liked this post, hit the Facebook “Share” button and Linkedin button on this page. I’d appreciate it a ton. It keeps us motivated to keep putting out great content like this you can’t get anywhere else in the real estate investment industry.
An article from the Harvard Business Review detailed the importance of response time when following up with a lead. According to the study,
“Companies that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving queries are nearly 7 times as likely to have meaningful conversations with key decision makers as firms that try to contact prospects even an hour later. Yet only 37% of companies respond to queries within an hour.”
That’s 7 times the chance of connecting with that motivated house seller, cash buyer, private lender, or tenant… just because you’re responding within the first hour.
If you’re responding within the first 10 minutes… can you imagine the impact that’ll have on the trust and rapport you’ll build with the seller?
This statistic is not surprising, considering how technology has increased expectations of how we communicate.
Motivated house sellers who call you up or submit info on your website have a lot of things to get done and want their problem with their house solved quickly… and hanging around for a callback isn’t something they want to do.
So how can you give yourself an edge with each motivated seller lead that comes through your website? Call them back immediately. And you can do this by ensuring you get your leads’ real-time notifications.
How can you do that?
Why Just Relying On Email Lead Notifications May Be Costing You Deals And Profits
If you’re like me, you get a lot of emails.
That’s a lot of distraction in the inbox competing for your attention… and if your only way of receiving a lead from your real estate investment website is via email… you may be at risk of missing the email… see it hours later… or it being filtered out as spam by an overzealous spam filter.
Since just 1 hour makes such a massive difference when talking to motivated sellers… how can we ensure that you know about every lead that comes in as soon as the seller submits it?
Use Our New “Instant SMS Notifications” Feature to Reduce Your Own Response Time Immediately
At Carrot, we constantly strive for incremental improvements in our software to deliver the best value to our members.
To help you as a real estate agent or investor reduce response time, we include a simple feature that can be activated on your existing Carrot website forms in seconds.
Instant SMS Notifications are a simple way to send real-time lead information directly to your cell phone as a text message.
Part of responding to leads quickly is having the right system in place.
This software feature goes one step beyond a basic tool to send texts and allows customization and smart information to be sent. In order to call a customer back and have a meaningful conversation, it is important to know relevant information… and have it right there at your fingertips when the lead comes in.
Why Do I Need A Text Message? Can’t I Just Check My Email?
Yep, you totally can! But what if you’re in an area where you don’t have access to wifi or your cell coverage in that area isn’t good enough to really pull up and load your email client quickly?
I’ve been in areas sometimes (even in the middle of big cities) where my Gmail app literally can’t pull up my emails because the data connection is so poor.
But… my phone can get text messages just fine.
That alone could be the difference between a 10-minute response time vs. a 3-hour response time and losing the deal to another agent or investor who called the prospect back more quickly.
When You’re On The Go… Relevant Information Is Key
When calling a lead back, knowing some basic info about them and their situation is essential.
Their time is valuable, and being unprepared with a quick call only fixes half of their problem.
So with our Instant SMS Notifications, we’ll give you the vital contact info of the new lead in an instant text… along with a quick “tap and go” link to access your Carrot account where the rest of the info they submitted is stored if you want to see the full data right away.
If you have their callback information, see their question, their email, and where they came from on your website, the conversation can proceed without time spent on minor details.
How To Set Up Your Automated Instant Text Notifications On Your Carrot Account Today
The following tutorial will assist you in setting up SMS Notifications on forms. From there, you will receive a text message with relevant information based on where the user opt-ins on your website and any other relevant data.
Looking for quality Real Estate SEO Tips to help you generate leads? Congrats, you’ve found the best Real Estate SEO Tips out there… at least we think so. :)
Search Engine Optimization can be super confusing. There is a ton of information out there, and most of it is contradictory or outdated.
This video will help you break down in less than 3 minutes SEO tips for real estate investors.
Real Estate SEO Tips (VIDEO):
Real Estate Investor SEO Tip #1:
Don’t rush! SEO isn’t a short term solution. It’s a long term investment in your business. So be patient… and make plans to get leads from other sources (we can show you how, no worries).
Real Estate SEO Tip #2:
Our biggest Real Estate SEO Tip is to Do Your Homework… you have got to know what keywords are being searched in your market and understand what it will take to beat your competition – otherwise you won’t get the results you want. Get your Free SEO Bible here.
Real Estate Investors SEO Tip #3:
Keep on truckin… doing a little bit of SEO work every day (or at least a couple hours a week) will pay off well over the course of a year – if you’re focused and stick to a good plan (we’ll help you learn exactly what you need to know).
Real Estate Investor SEO Tip #4:
Google has, like, the smartest people ever working on this stuff. If you wanna try and beat ’em, go for it… be prepared to suffer the consequences. We’d recommend sticking to a solid, proven content marketing strategy – not cheap tricks. Get a free real estate marketing plan template.
Real Estate SEO Tip #5:
Credibility matters more than almost anything else. Once you prove that you (and your website) have Authority with Google, you’ll find it way easier to get high rankings on additional terms (and generate more leads). A focus on building Credibility for your business will improve your conversions on your site – add testimonials for social proof, improve your bio, and share your site in as many places as possible!
Real Estate SEO Tip #6:
Don’t buy those crummy spammy “instant result” automated SEO services – we’ve seen investors waste thousands of dollars and loads of time, just to find out they need to spend a lot more money on cleaning up the messes that were left behind. Seller intent keywords such as sell my house fast Dallas have much more quality searches for you than say, “what’s the value on my home?” Focus on high quality and you’ll get high-quality results. Our trusted vendors can help – click now to get started.
Real Estate SEO Tip #7:
Make sure you’re driving traffic to your website with at least a few different methods. Think of it as diversifying your marketing portfolio – so if one method crashes (when Google changes their algorithm some sites drop their rankings like a bad stock when the market is tanking), you won’t be left high and dry.
Real Estate Investors SEO Tip #8:
If you’re an expert in SEO, congrats! You’ll find our platform will save you a ton of time. If you’re just starting out on your internet marketing journey, you will want to stick with a proven, tested platform that helps you generate leads… oh hey, that’s what we built! ;) Launching a website on our platform takes less time than you spent to read this blog post – click here to see how fast it is to get started.
Want to get started?
Get access to a free demo of the InvestorCarrot technology platform!
Want to learn more about content marketing, lead generation and SEO?
The majority of search traffic comes from page 1 – these terms are highly competitive, so it’s super-valuable to invest in good SEO in your local market. We can help you. Click to see Brittany’s story of going from zero online leads to multiple leads per day – and how she was able to quit her wage job to become a full-time investor working for herself.
Don’t make your real estate investor marketing tough on yourself! Just take it one step at a time. Today’s post will show you expected and unexpected strategies for real estate investor lead generation.
As the real estate market gets increasingly competitive, the search for quality inventory becomes tougher every day.
If you’re like most of our members, you’d prefer to have your phone ring… you don’t want to cold call people from a list, right? I’ve done quite a bit of cold calling over the years myself, and even though I’m pretty good at it, it’s way more work… it’s a whole lot easier to learn solid inbound marketing practices from others, then replicate them for yourself.
My goal here of this blog is to take the best practices from others who are some of the best at real estate investor lead generation and bring them to you. Like a butler carrying a silver tray…. I want to serve lead generation techniques to you with style. :)
We’ve shown you the not-so-secret formula for lead generation is simple: traffic & conversions.
One fun thing to remember: traffic can come from anywhere. If you have a creative, fun or clever way to generate leads: do it! Don’t get stuck in “paralysis by analysis” — trust yourself when you think “hey, this might work.”
Unique Strategies for Real Estate Investor Lead Generation
The Expected:
Google Search
Optimize Your Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Websites
Craigslist for Real Estate Investors
Bandit Signs and Bus Stops
Direct Mail
Bird Dogging
Develop Properties
The Unexpected:
Bing, Yahoo and “Off-Google” Search
Optimize Yelp, Facebook… Everything
Local Classifieds
Flyers at Laundromats and Non-Profits
Door Knocking with a “Down Payment”
Turn Your Vendors Into Business Partners
Develop Communities
Expected: Google Search
Carrot Members Ranking Organically on Google for We Buy Houses Los Angeles
Definitely one of our favorite places to generate leads!
A good chunk of our business comes from folks who search phrases like “real estate investor websites” online… then discover InvestorCarrot. They check us out, learn that we’ve got an awesome reputation… then start learning from us, launch a website, follow our training… and then get great results.
Lots of our members are beating their competitors on the top Google keywords in their markets using our sites. It’s super cool to see.
Carrot Members Ranking Organically on Bing for We Buy Houses Los Angeles
While Google gets about 66% of the traffic, they seem to get about 99% of the attention.
That leaves almost a third of the traffic out there without much competition. PPC costs are usually way lower on off-brand networks (although the conversion rates are often lower too, it still often ends up being cheaper than Google).
Expected: Optimize Your Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Websites
You know that you should be optimizing your website, right? Optimization is critical to getting found on search.
Did you know that investors are using pages on other platforms to crowd out their competition in search, too?
I’ve seen pages on Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, Zillow, blog sites, and other big platforms used to dominate top keywords in busy markets.
This is a really smart strategy because sites like Yelp and Facebook already have a ton of authority, so it’s way easier to rank your business’s page on their high-credibility site than on your brand new domain name.
I’d love to see more of our members dominating their local search by ranking different websites on the same keywords… and crowding out their competition.
Already a Carrot Member? Check Out Carrot’s Facebook Leads Masterclass
Unexpected: Geebo, Reachoo, and Other Local Classifieds
The same techniques that work so well on Craigslist also work for other local classified sites. I know one real estate investor who has had the same tiny little ad running for years in his local paper… I think he said it costs him about $80 per month to keep it there, and he makes about $25,000 per year off of the transactions that ad generates.
If you’ve got a local newspaper that doesn’t charge a ton, it’s probably a good idea to run a tiny ad with your phone number, especially if your competitor *isn’t* doing it.
It’s also not a bad idea to post ads on a lot of the free online sites that imitate Craigslist. On some of those sites, you might even get some SEO benefit when you link back to your site from your profile.
Lots of investors have tried putting up signs or buying bus stop ads.
They work, although paid ads are expensive and bandit signs are illegal in many areas (that’s why they got called “bandit” signs… cause they’re breaking the law).
Unexpected: Flyers at Laundromats and Non-Profits
If someone can’t afford to fix their washer, they might need to sell their house, right?
Most laundromats have a bulletin board where you can hang a flyer. Better yet, buy the laundromat. People pump quarters into those things all day long. ;)
Seriously though, make some quality fliers (or if you don’t have graphic design skills, hire someone)… and find the places where people go when they’re down-and-out.
Talk to folks at non-profit agencies who help with foreclosure and probate assistance, and see if they need a partner who buys houses or helps with short sales (depending on your specialties). You may be able to give them a donation from every transaction, depending on referral laws in your state. Check with a good attorney to be sure.
If you can build trust with the right agencies, you’ll have an ongoing deal pipeline for a long time. There are some insanely smart community development organizations who build housing and are solid real estate professionals. Don’t underestimate them.
If you can provide a great service for the same population they serve, they’ll be a great business alliance.
Plus, the partnership that you establish with them is great for press and building future credibility.
Expected: Direct Mail
Direct mail is still a viable real estate investor lead generation option, and it’s easy to replicate. There are a lot of systems for sale out there. It’s pretty expensive, and everyone’s doing it… if you’re in a busy market and using a popular system, you’re probably sending the same stuff as your competitors.
It’s still better than doing nothing. Direct mail campaigns tend to have about a 2-3% success rate, on average… so you’re definitely playing a numbers game.
Unexpected: Door Knocking with a “Down Payment”
I know this real estate investor lead generation method sounds crazy! But I know investors who do really well just walking up to houses and knocking on the door.
Of course, they know who they are targeting… after signs of disrepair, utility notices, etc., they walk up to the door… and if the owner is home, they give that person a $5 bill along with a business card… and let the homeowner know that it’s just a “down payment” when that seller is ready to sell. It’s pretty easy to get their contact info – shoot, let ’em know you wanna send ’em another $5 on their birthday.
I love that strategy… it’s a powerful psychological trigger to take money from someone.
And if you’re thinking “whoa, that’s a fast way to lose $5” – then you’ve probably never run a pay-per-click campaign on Google. If you’re not planning to spend some time and/or money on lead acquisition, you’re not making a serious plan.
Developing a list of people who have taken your “$5 down payment” and actually staying in touch with those people is a great way to get access to properties before anyone else in your market. You don’t want to go around giving away money… but if you can set yourself up to buy houses before anyone else, you’re winning.
Expected: Bird Dogging
Lots of real estate investors team up with “bird dogs” to send them leads. These are folks who (hopefully) do the work of finding potential off-market property sellers and then send you the leads. Depending on the bird dog and the strength of the lead, this might average out to a cost of $50-$1,500 per transaction.
Unexpected: Turn Your Vendors Into Business Partners
Often the people you already know are your key to growing your business… you might just not see the opportunity.
If you know an ambitious person… might be a sibling or a cousin, could be a virtual assistant, a student or a partially retired friend… even your spouse.
If you find someone who isn’t afraid to knock on doors and talk to people, that person could be a great potential partner for your real estate business. Or maybe you’re the type of person who loves to talk but hates technical details — then you might want to find someone who can help you crush it with online marketing.
Depending on the laws in your state, it might even make sense for you to help that person buy property under his or her name – or even together under a new LLC.
There are a lot of creative ways to structure deals.
As many industry veterans will tell you, often the price doesn’t matter as much as the terms.
When you’re calculating your profit from a transaction, what’s important isn’t just the price you paid… it’s the money you made.
If your subcontractor, virtual assistant, and your family are all working to help your business grow – if they have incentives, motivation and a clear path – you’ll have a
So don’t be afraid to partner up with other people who can help you generate leads…. and don’t be afraid to publish in unexpected places!
Expected: Develop Properties
As a real estate investor, you should always be looking for easy ways to add value to properties. If you could spend $5,000 to improve the landscaping and increase your sale price by $50,000 – that would be a no-brainer of a decision, right?
I like to think of my investments on a timeline… where can I add value today that I can pull out for the highest return later?
In other words, if I can get my hands on a fully-rented apartment building with crummy apartments and slowly rehab each one for pennies on the dollar by keeping a few decent workers busy, I’ll make a lot more money by never having to lose my cash flow.
If I build a 30-unit building from scratch, I’d have to have the money to wait until the building is mostly finished before I even take in any money… that means I’d have to take out a lot of loans, which all cut into my profit.
So generally speaking, I look for properties that are already occupied, but not making the kind of cash flow they could be making if they were cleaned up, improved and well-managed.
But either way, it comes down to the money… I like to find properties that need mostly cosmetic improvements because those are the cheapest ways to develop.
Great investors know how to add value to the properties they own to get exponential rates of return.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with some truly great investors along the way, and I’m looking forward to sharing more of what I learned from them… and what I’m still learning today from our awesome Carrot members – we’re lucky to have some of the nation’s top investors as our members, and we’re growing every day.
Unexpected: Develop Communities
As some of you know, I spent a decade in Chicago real estate… actually more when you count the years I spent as a kid getting dragged around to open houses by my mother, who loved to keep tabs on all the neighborhood real estate activity.
I got involved with over $1 billion worth of real estate during my time in Chicago… most of it when I was the managing broker of a really busy real estate brokerage that helped to develop one of the coolest communities – the Wicker Park / Bucktown / Logan Square areas on the city’s Northwest side.
My boss then was a tiger, and I’m sure she still is today. She built an amazing business from the ground up out of sheer will and determination.
She represented some of the top developers on the Near Northside – guys who would buy millions of dollars worth of properties each week, as inventory became available. My boss sold the condos and buildings. I managed the office, training leasing and sales agents. We sold over $100M in sales volume and leased out hundreds of apartments each year. It was the glory days of a booming economy.
But together, we sold a story. It was a story about the neighborhood, about the community… about the histories and cultures of the people who lived there.
After years and years of working in those communities, we saw incredible growth. Now, that wasn’t just from our efforts, or those of our developers… there were huge economic forces in a city like Chicago much larger than anything we were doing.
As successful brokers, we knew how to own the story of the neighborhood.
We sold it to our clients: buyers, sellers, investors, developers, and tenants.
Everyone wanted to participate in something larger than themselves… that’s that feeling of community that feels so good. When you’re really helping others, it shows… and people want to be a part of it.
Your Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Efforts…
should be centered on your community.
We do the same with Carrot: we think of our members first. We want to help you do the best possible marketing for your real estate investment business.
What’s working for you? Any unexpected techniques or tricks we should try? What’s got you stuck? What can we help you improve or understand better?
