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 There is a ton of information out there, and most of it is contradictory or outdated.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?
YouTube Real Estate Marketing doesn’t have to be tough, but if you want it to generate leads, you’d better optimize… we’ll show you how.
Want to get great results from your YouTube real estate marketing? Read these tips to find out how to get leads with videos!
Why use YouTube for real estate marketing?
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a YouTube real estate video is worth millions.
People can actually see you. They can hear you.
A video gives people a chance to build trust with you.
That trust is at the core of conversion strategy. Trust is what makes marketing work. People must have a certain amount of trust in order to make a purchase or fill out a form to get more info.
They have to believe in you.
That’s what makes video so great – it’s your chance to reach people, to connect with them, to inspire them to take action… to sell a house, to buy an investment… whatever you’ve got to offer, video can help you connect in a way that no other medium can do.
Think of it this way… a great sales video can keep selling for years, while you’re kicking back with your feet up.
So without further ado, here are the keys to getting great results from video marketing:
#1 – Do your keyword research.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to research your keywords.
You must make sure that you’re optimizing for keywords that are actually being searched in your market.
People search on YouTube differently than they do in regular Google search. They often use different terms and slightly different phrases. So don’t assume that the keyword research you did months ago when you were thinking about optimizing your site is going to be enough for a good video marketing campaign.
Unfortunately, Google shut off the tool that told us directly what was being searched on YouTube… best we can see now is what they provide in their Display AdWords Planner – you’ll need a free Google account to use the tool.
Here’s what the Display Tool looks like:
When you’re using Display Planner, make sure to target only your local market to see your *local* search traffic… you probably don’t want or need leads from areas across the world. :) Want some suggestions of terms? Keep reading.
#2 – Use no more than 2 keywords per video
For search marketing purposes, it’s way better to make a lot of small videos on YouTube targeting many keywords than to make one long one.
Think about it… people are searching a specific term, so you want your video to be directly related to that specific term. Sure, you can optimize a generic video a bunch of times with a lot of terms… but that technique won’t get good results.
Here are a few places where keywords might help:
Title
Tags
Description
Channel name
Playlist titles
Playlist description
Comment field
YouTube hashtags
Social media posts that link to YouTube
Website
Annotations
Captions
Content or script
Thumbnails
Graphics in video
Channel art
Channel icon
Custom Bitly links
Remember, Google is very smart. They work incredibly hard to make sure that good results climb to the top of their searches… so if you concentrate on making really high-quality content and optimizing it, you’ll get great results from it.
Don’t try to do too much with one video… make a plan to create new videos often.
#3 – Focus on making a great YouTube Real Estate Channel
Yeah, I know… you wanna just make one video, then call it quits.
But seriously, don’t bother. Trying to make one video will make you nuts. You can’t say everything you need to say in 90 seconds unless you’re super focused on just one or two keywords.
Either prepare to make video marketing a big part of your business, or don’t do it at all.
If you’re gonna do video marketing on YouTube, you’ll want to set up a really great YouTube channel.
That’s the goal… the top of the mountain you’ll want to climb. High credibility, high trust, high views… high revenue. :)
Videos that are on a great channel go to the top of the rankings.
Don’t stress about creating a great channel – it’s not something that will happen overnight. It’s the same offline and online – your focus should be on building high-quality, educational content that helps people in your local market.
That’s a long-term activity for major wealth-building, not a short-term, get-rich-quick trick.
So organize yourself in the way that makes the most sense for your working style.
Can you make one video per week? In a year you’ll have 52 videos… that’s a good amount for a channel.
Need help making your videos?
Organize it as a project instead… plan to make 20-30 videos at once. It takes less time and money than you’d think.
You can totally do it yourself, or hire some help.
You’ll need 3 people to help you:
A copywriter to help you script out your videos to make great content
A videographer to help you film and edit your videos
A search marketer to help you optimize your videos
That last piece is so important… there are so many examples of great quality videos that get no views, simply because they weren’t set up right from the beginning.
But like everything else, just optimizing on the video alone might not be enough to get it to the top of the search.
#4 – Surround Your Videos With Great Content
Here’s where you can really put your Carrot sites to use: embed your videos!
You might not want to put a video right on the top of your home page… we’ve found that those can lower your conversion rates. It’s important not to stuff videos any old spot… but to put them in the right places.
Put them into blog posts or pages that are optimized for the same keyword, and that will help Google (and the other search engines) realize the value of your video and serve it up to the right audience.
You can also send out videos as a part of a well-written press release, too – that will help increase your exposure and connect up your video with your keywords on many sites.
Just like a page, a video needs credibility coming from the outside… the more related places where your video appears, the better. It’s a great practice to embed your video on an optimized Carrot page, then focus on getting high-quality back links directly to that page… that will help increase your site’s ranking and reputation as well as your video at the same time.
#5 – Learn All You Can About Video Marketing
We’re gonna have a special guest for tomorrow’s Live MasterMind Call… and we’re gonna talk a bunch about video marketing, why real estate investors have been too shy to use it well, and what a huge set of opportunities there are gonna be coming up for investors who do the work of setting up a really great video marketing system for themselves.
Trying to decide if SEO is a good strategy for marketing your real estate business? This post will help you.
SEO for real estate marketing can be a great source for lead generation, but there are some situations where it’s a terrible waste of time and money.
5 Times When You Should NOT Use SEO for Real Estate Marketing
Here’s when NOT to use SEO for Real Estate Marketing…
1. When you’re starting a brand new business
There’s just too much high-priority work to be done, and you should NOT be focusing on search engine optimization.
When you’re new to the business or setting up a brand new website, you should focus on driving traffic to the site via methods like Craigslist, PPC, direct mail, bandit signs, flyers… anything that can reach folks right now to bring you a lead today.
2. When you need leads fast
It takes many months for a new site to rank high on Google, so don’t expect leads from local search to pay your bills anytime soon. If you’re trying to rank high for an ultra-competitive term, it can take lots of time, money and effort before you see a big pay off.
SEO is always a long-term investment. The return on investment can be huge, but it’s never a fast source of leads. The fastest and cheapest source of leads that we’ve found so far is Craigslist.
Right now, our members are getting insanely great results from the Craigslist training that we recently launched… so if you’re already a Carrot Member wanting fast leads, access that Craigslist training here (and if you’re not already a member, sign up here).
3. When you don’t have the budget
Good SEO efforts require time from people who know their stuff. It’s complicated work.
If you’ve got the time and the passion to become an expert on SEO, we are happy to help you learn.
We’ve helped lots of folks learn how to generate leads from SEO with our real estate training, but you’ve gotta be willing to put in the time and energy to learn those new skills.
SEO services can be relatively cheap – starting at $5,000 per year – just one deal can pay for the whole year. We know lots of SEO companies out there charge way more than that, and they don’t deliver results.
But don’t hire an SEO service if you’re not financially ready yet…. do a few deals from other sources, and add SEO to your long-term marketing strategies when you’re ready.
4. When you can spend the money better elsewhere
Don’t do SEO because it seems cool, sexy or everyone else is doing it. Those aren’t good reasons.
SEO should be a key part of your business strategy, but it’s not critical to your success.
In fact, if your market is under 200,000 people, SEO might not be able to produce much ROI for you. If the search traffic isn’t there, you won’t get any leads.
Doing SEO for a term that’s not getting any searches is like fishing on a dry creek – if you’re having fun, great… just don’t expect to catch anything.
You know it already, but I’ll say it again: There are lots of ways to get traffic to your site.
Sometimes a few hundred dollars worth of cheap signs can get quite a few leads into your business.
Sometimes a few Craigslist ads are enough to bring in the next deal.
Sometimes a good AdWords account is enough to bring in a consistent flow of leads.
Sometimes all it takes is a flyer hanging up at the local laundromat. After all, if folks can’t afford to fix their washer and dryer, they might be thinking about selling their property.
5. When you’re just not ready
Don’t stress about SEO.
It’s not going anywhere. In fact, I’ve read that real estate related searches are increasing at 15X per year.
Chances are good that it will be a good strategy for you in the future, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right fit for where you’re at today.
Carrot Members: Remember to join us for your weekly Coaching Calls… we’re looking forward to answering any questions you’ve got about real estate investing, lead generation, building traffic, inbound marketing, or any other topic that’s hurting you!
InvestorCarrot websites include some pretty cool Free Reports that will help you generate leads, plus you can create unlimited reports of your own to offer, too! Click the picture to sign up for Carrot right now, or keep reading to find out more about how to get great results from your Report Opt-Ins.
Real estate marketing: should it be based on data or stories?
The answer: Both.
Reports are a great example. A good report is full of credible data, but it also tells a story. A great report builds credibility that helps you get better results in your future negotiations.
So how do you use data to tell a great story that helps you improve your credibility?
Just keep reading. ;)
This post will tell you about the awesome Free Reports that are included with our sites to help you generate leads and conversions, plus I’ll let you know a few awesome tricks and tips to get even better results in your local market.
First off, here’s what’s included in our sites:
Motivated Seller Free Reports In Your System
Selling To A Real Estate Investor (already inside of our motivated seller websites)
5 Ways To Stop or Avoid Foreclosure (already inside of our motivated seller websites)
Free Investor Reports In Your System
Passive Income Investing Report (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites)
Private Lending Report (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites)
If you’re already an InvestorCarrot Member, you can:
Brand and Customize Your Free Reports
If you want to edit / brand these free reports you can click here to gain access to the Microsoft Word document versions of these reports.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: These reports are the property of Carrot and are only for the use of active / paying InvestorCarrot members. As long as you’re an active InvestorCarrot member you can use these all you want! If you’re not an active InvestorCarrot member and would like to use our free reports, see our pricing and plans and sign up for a plan that’s right for you. All Copyright violators will be pursued.
Once you brand them…
“Save As PDF” to save them as a pdf
Upload them to your website(s) via the Media tab in your website dashboard
Update the download link on the download page on your website to point to this new PDF file
Save, and you’re done!
If you need help just hit us up on support or LIVE chat! We’re here for ya!
If you’re looking for an innovative way to stand out in your market, you should:
Create High-Value Free Reports for Your Market
You don’t even have to write these reports yourself.
Most of the time you can find a decent blogger in your local marketplace who is willing to work for cheap… plus, they might even be a good partner to help you drive traffic and build your lists. You never know til you look, right?
But what kind of Free Reports should you create?
I’ll let you know a few ideas for content that will help you reach your target audience.
Start with the end in mind. Who are you trying to reach?
1. Motivated Sellers.
What types of situations can you help solve?
There are countless examples of reports out there on what folks facing foreclosure, divorce, probate can do… so create one that’s specific to your market!
Localize it… check out the rules and regs in your market. Interview a couple of brokers, attorneys, title company reps, folks from local non-profits… shoot, interview anyone who might be able to add a few great local tips and resources for folks with distressed properties and make sure to cite ’em as a source. It will help boost your credibility (and grow your referral network) to include other local experts as sources in your report.
What does someone in your area need to know about the difficulties of selling in your market? Show sellers what you do for them in a transaction. If you can eliminate their hassles, you’ll earn their business.
Make sure your report has a compelling title, like “What _______ Area Sellers MUST Know Before Selling Property in 2014” that reflects the value you’re offering within that report.
If your report has a lot of great value within it, you’ll just have to list out the contents on a Lead Page and you’ll get great conversions from it. Just focus on creating high value with information that Motivated Sellers in your market should know, and you’ll end up with a great Free Report that will generate good leads for your business when you market it (more on that in a second).
2. Real Estate Buyers, Investors, and Lenders.
Can you provide deep insight and analysis for folks in your market who are investing in real estate?
(Or can you hire a good writer and analyst?)
If you can compile local market data, broken down by property type, from a few sources and show the different rates of return that local investors and real estate owners have been able to earn, chances are good you’re well on the way to delivering a very valuable report for your local real estate market.
Investors love data – and a Free Report is a great way to judge a potential partner for future business. After all, opting into a form is a pretty low-risk proposition… so if you can deliver even a decent basic overview of the past 5 years within your market, and perhaps some quotes from local media, brokers, and other sources of information… you’ll have high-quality content to offer.
And that’s the big goal here, folks… it’s all about high-quality content.
Our sites deliver some great Free Reports that you can customize and brand with your information, plus easy-to-implement Lead Pages to accompany each report. That’s included with every plan we offer.
But the best part – you can create unlimited amounts of Free Reports and Lead Pages on each site.
So get out there and start writing!
Or get ready to hire someone who can help you deliver a great Local Market Report.
Use Great Data and Tell Powerful Stories
If you can use data and stories to show folks how you’ll solve their real estate problems, you will win.
In this week’s Coaching Call, I’m going to let you show you exactly how easy this is to do… plus, I’ll show you some easy and free sources of data on your local market that you can use to start building an awesome, totally unique Free Report for your market…. and you’ll get a ton of great ideas that you can start implementing for your business right away.
I’ll even tell you how to turn your reports into Press Releases that get picked up by the local media… I’ve done it before for clients, and it’s the same techniques that have gotten me and my clients interviewed on the radio, by newspaper reporters, and filmed on television.
There is simply no better advertisement for your business than getting covered by the local media… the best part is that it’s totally free!
Much like our weekly Coaching calls… they’re free for our Members, at least.
So sign up for that call right now – I’m looking forward to telling you all about how to add some serious value to your business (and bottom line).
Video marketing can generate huge traffic and great conversions, or… it can suck the life right out of your message.
Welcome to another edition of the Carrot Test Kitchen… where we break down our recipes and show you how to create insanely great lead generation sites for your real estate business.
Today’s post will tell you how to set up a great, low-cost video marketing campaign that (if it’s done right) can really help move your business forward.
Fortunately, it’s really easy to add video to your InvestorCarrot site… and to get some great benefits from Google’s traffic at the same time.
In this post I’ll show you how to add video to your InvestorCarrot sites, plus give you a great example of a video to watch right now… and tell you what *not* to do.
First, why does video marketing matter to real estate investors?
Video marketing is particularly important for real estate investors, because when you use it properly, it can really help to grow your business.
Think of your video like an automated salesperson for your business… once you record that video, it can be played again and again to anyone who is looking for your services, day or night, on weekends and holidays… without the bother of an interrupting phone call, while eliminating the hassle of having to say the same thing again and again.
A great video is more than just a commercial for your business – it builds trust for a great beginning to your relationship with a new client.
A great YouTube marketing video sets the stage for negotiations by showing off your credibility and describing how you do business.
A truly great marketing video helps the viewer to trust you, like you, and want to do business with you.
On the flip side, a bad video can really turn people off.
If you’re showing your potential clients a cheesy video that’s heavily scripted with obvious sales language, loaded with stock photography and drowning in clip art, what are they supposed to think about you and your business?
To put it another way…
If you never show someone your own voice and use your own face, how are they supposed to trust you?
See, here’s where real estate investment is very different from a household product that’s advertised on the television.
If you’re selling something like shampoo or root beer, you don’t have to convince the consumer that you’re trustworthy or credible… just that the shampoo will bring you that silky, luxurious hair you’ve been wanting, or that this root beer will deliver more delicious flavor than any root beer they’ve ever had.
When you’re selling products, trust can really help… but it’s not essential.
But when you’re trying to convince someone to let you buy their property or sell them an investment, trust is utterly critical. It’s everything. Without trust, you don’t have a deal.
And yet I see so many real estate investment companies using these terrible little $5 videos they bought online, probably late at night after a few drinks… and now they’re probably wondering why no one is watching and why their business isn’t growing.
Would you want a $5 salesperson to represent your business?
In most big companies, the top salesperson is the second-highest-paid in the company… right after the CEO.
Sales is the life blood of businesses. Without sales, there is no revenue, and without revenue, your company will die.
Exactly why would you trust a $5 sales video with the life blood of your business?
Don’t get me wrong… I don’t think you need to spend a ton of money on making a video in order for it to be effective.
In fact, we’ve found that most real estate customers are turned off by flashy marketing loaded with gimmicks. They really are just looking for a credible, trustworthy person to help them take care of business.
You really don’t need to do more than just talk into a webcam to make a decent sales video.
These few things will help you to make a great video marketing piece:
High quality audio (i.e. a great microphone)
High quality video (i.e. a decent camera)
Good lighting
Nice setting
Clean editing
You can find someone in most cities who already has the equipment and pay them for a few hours of help… generally under $500 can get you a handful of pretty good short videos.
If you’ve got the budget you should definitely be hiring great people to make your videos even better.
Want to see an example of a decent low-cost marketing video?
Check this out:
They’ve got almost 10,000 views on that video, wow!
Their other video has a more reasonable view count – 352.
What I like about this couple is that they’re showing off themselves – sure, they’ve dressed up to film the video and put on their best smiles, but it’s genuine and authentic.
Side note – I checked out their site, and there are a lot of reasons their site won’t get very many conversions… it’s got good credibility, but it makes it hard for folks to sign up for the offer… those folks need to Watch the InvestorCarrot Demo and make the switch! Any of our affiliates know these folks and want to sign them up? :~)
But they did the smart thing of actually using the description on YouTube to pull traffic over to their site by using links and a lot of the most commonly used search terms. Since Google owns YouTube, the videos will show up at the top of the search (even if their site isn’t ranked that high), so this can be a great way to get traffic to your site
Plus, it looks like they got a few of their friends to comment and share the video (which helps to boost credibility/
Those are all really great video marketing practices!
Now let me show you how easy it is to add a video to your InvestorCarrot site from YouTube.
First, get the video up on YouTube and copy the link to the video.
In another window, open up the post or page where you want to embed the video.
Then click the snazzy little “Embed Video” button.
This nifty little window will pop up, and just paste the YouTube (or Vimeo) link into the form.
We’re getting ready to launch our Market Domination Plan, so in today’s post we want to share a few of the strategies already being used by top investors around the country to get the majority of Motivated Seller leads in their local markets to them (instead of their competitors).
Of course, these strategies can be used to get leads for Cash Buyers, Private Lenders, Rent-to-Own Tenants, or other target audiences, but Motivated Sellers are the hardest – at least right now.
As you probably know, inventory is a big challenge around the country. Most investors I talk to are having a pretty easy time growing their lists… as long as they have inventory. The ones who don’t have properties to sell are struggling to catch up.
Why is it so tough to get inventory?
In most markets, it’s not too hard to sell a property. There are tons of investors and retail buyers competing for a limited amount of homes.
Pure and simple: in lots of US markets, demand is high and supply is low.
But don’t get me wrong – there is still an incredible amount of opportunity out there. It’s just getting tougher every day to capture it in some of the biggest markets.
That’s why we came up with the Market Domination Plan – to help those investors who are already succeeding and are ready for growth.
Market domination starts with capturing organic search traffic.
Like it shows in the chart below, 91.5% of search traffic comes from page 1.
SEO for real estate investors is really important for your business! We can help you out. If you’re looking to move up in your rankings, we can help – just click the image above to find out more about our SEO service.
Now, keep in mind that the data is from thousands of websites, not just real estate ones… we’ve found there’s actually some great traffic that comes in off of positions 2 and 3, not just #1 – but really, when we’re taking on SEO clients our goal is to get within the top 5 positions for our targeted keywords.
We only start with 3 keywords, because it doesn’t make sense to over-optimize a site for too many keywords – plus it just takes too long to see results when you’re diluting your efforts all over the place.
“We have 2 new ones under contract probably 5 waiting in seller signatures. Doing ppc under our carrot site and your SEO do we should continue to get more and more leads.” Guillermo Coronado
Most investors don’t achieve any big share of the market because they’re diluting their efforts all over the place… great marketing really requires not only a strategic plan, but a great deal of focus and commitment to implement the plan.
Most folks give up on a method before it even has a chance to work… or they fail to do the right research before they start implementing. Either mistake can crush the ROI right out of a great campaign.
But let’s assume that you’ve already ranked your site high on all the major terms… is that enough to crush out the competition?
Nope, sorry…. you’ve got to occupy the prime real estate from more than just one site if you’re going to dominate that market – and shut out other investors from grabbing the leads.
Here’s what that looks like:
Cyndy is generating hundreds of leads with her Carrot sites… click that image to go see Trevor’s deep-dive Case Study to learn what she’s doing to dominate her market
As you can see from that image above, on one of Cyndy’s search terms in her market, she’s ranked in 4 out of the 5 top slots.
Two of those are YouTube videos she’s made and ranked, and another one is a Facebook page.
Plus she’s also operating 8 other websites that are ranking well in her market.
(Sidenote: Cyndy’s converting those over to InvestorCarrot now, because she tests everything… and she found out that her InvestorCarrot site was converting much better than all the other sites she’d spent a ton of time on…. if you don’t have an InvestorCarrot site yet, you can launch a new site in just a few minutes <– go see for yourself right now).
How did this successful real estate investor swarm her market?
Cyndy was smart and she implemented a ton of great strategies to capture online traffic from lots of sources, including Google, YouTube, Facebook and more.
We tell you all you need to know to get great results in our powerful real estate lead generation training program, and in our new Craigslist training program we’ve included great info (along with ads and much more) about the Market Swarm Strategy that Cyndy designed and has been using so well to get results in her market.
Cyndy also uses other methods, like direct mail and signs… as a smart investor, she’s working on nurturing her leads from a lot of different directions, and doing a lot of great marketing.
Great real estate marketing like this takes a lot of time, energy and commitment.
I really admire Cyndy for taking such a strategic approach – and her willingness to share with other investors to help them learn!
How Real Estate Investors Can Dominate Local Search in 3 Steps
Step 1:
Get signed up for InvestorCarrot, launch a Motivated Seller site, learn all about SEO, and rank high.
Step 2:
Drive traffic to your site by posting good content on YouTube, Facebook, Craigslist and other sites.
Step 3:
Create awesome stories and reports to get media attention along with great links.
(Sorry folks, I didn’t say it was gonna be easy… just that it was gonna be 3 steps to Market Domination).
In all seriousness, it’s a ton of work to implement a great content marketing strategy.
But the payoff is huge.
I’ve been doing a ton of research into the search traffic, competition, and PPC costs around the country on behalf of our clients… plus I’ve created a really cool report comparing the top 150+ metro regions around the country.
In fact, I created a unique way to measure each market called the CarrotScore… and I’ve also found the Top 20 Most Overlooked Markets (according to huge amounts of Google’s data that I extracted and crunched across 170 spreadsheets – this report took me weeks of hard work).
I can tell you firsthand that most of the major markets in the US are extremely competitive… people are investing loads of money to get the leads that are coming in from local search.
Some of our clients (like Cyndy) are totally into doing all the hard work to create this stuff from scratch, and we love it… being able to offer up her strategies and Craigslist program has already helped a bunch of our customers generate lots of leads:
“We put up 3 or 4 Craigslist ads right after we got the first part of the P2P program, and we’ve been slammed! We’ve gotten so many leads this week – 15 rent-to-own, 36 new buyers, and a bunch of motivated sellers too!” – Michael Mackay
But some of the best real estate coaches out there will tell you that you shouldn’t be doing so much of your own marketing work… that you need to be focusing on honing your negotiation and acquisition skills, not spending your time implementing your SEO.
We’d love to help you dominate your market… so get started with our SEO program now!
If you’re a Carrot member, join us for our weekly webinar – we’re gonna dive in deep to the Market Domination Strategy, and I’ll show you a special sneak peek at the in-depth research I’ve been doing.
This article is the first in our Carrot Test Kitchen series – it’s a series of posts that help you to dissect the secret recipes we use to generate thousands of leads for real estate agents and investors across thousands of websites around the USA.
Ever heard of “real estate heat maps”? We’ll show you how motivated sellers interact with your website and how to make your website more effective…
Are you putting lots of effort into building a high-converting real estate website to pull in buyers, sellers or investors… but not getting the results you want?
There are two main problems that we often see on real estate sites:
1) The site is getting no visitors, and
2) The site’s visitors aren’t submitting their information.
The first problem is usually solved with SEO content when:
1) The site doesn’t have good content,
2) The content is not optimized to reach the search terms that people in the local market are actually using, or
3) The site’s competitors are ranking higher in a search.
There are quite a lot of other tricks to boost traffic to your site, and we’ll be talking about that again real soon…. But today, I want to help you out with the second main problem we see:
What are people doing on your real estate website?
It’s critical that the design of your site is set up to actually convert visitors to leads.
Although it’s utterly crucial, conversions are often overlooked when average people are putting together their websites. Too often they hire designers who are obsessed with aesthetics… rather than results.
Those folks need to quit calling themselves marketing experts… because they’re artists. Most art doesn’t sell. It hangs there, looking pretty… but it’s not selling your business.
Are you trying to create art, or are you trying to get real estate leads?
Listen, I get in this argument with designers a lot… so please don’t send me a bunch of angry emails about how design matters… I know it matters. It’s just that it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty… it matters if it works. Like with my accountant – I don’t care if my accountant is pretty, I care about what happens if I get audited.
When you’re setting up your real estate site, it’s not how it looks… it’s how it works.
That’s the really cool thing about real estate heat maps – one of the many tools that we use at Carrot to test out our theories of web design… because we don’t even trust ourselves – we want to know that our system is built on proven data about what works before we commit your hard-earned cash – and more importantly before you shift the marketing of your business to our system. We know your business is super important to you… just like ours is to us.
So what’s a real estate heat map anyway, and how can you use it to generate more leads online???
Back to the point, thanks… in this context, a heat map is a generated picture of where visitors to the website move their mouse and where they click on the page.
Below I’m gonna put a few examples of a heat map that we generated for a user’s site, and give you a few key points on what works so well on this design.
Brittany sent us a quick email after watching one of our webinars, asking for help getting more leads… we were able to double her conversion rate with just a couple of simple changes that I’ll get to soon.
Check out these heat maps (the site is greyed out, with little points of light showing where people have lingered with their mouse or clicked – the “hotter” the click spot, the more often it’s clicked).
What did you notice on that heatmap?
See all of the bright spots? The Orange and Yellow spots are where a lot of people click… indicating things that the motivated sellers felt were really important.
…94% of clicks happen on the top of the page…
First off, 94% of clicks happen on the top of the page. The vast majority of web visitors to any given site don’t bother to scroll down – in fact, they make the decision to stay or go on to another site within 2.3 seconds.
Side note: That statistic is valid across websites in general – on our investment sites, we tend to get about 8 seconds per page on average – 4 times more engagement than average, but still a lightning-fast choice to stay or go. You only have microseconds to reach your target audience – just another reason that your content and design matter so much.
There are a few great lessons to learn right away from this click map….
1) People are clicking in many spots. The clicks aren’t just happening in one spot… visitors to this real estate website are clicking through to find information that answers their questions. The site is designed to appeal to a specific audience (sellers), so it’s validating to know that different visitors to the site are finding what they’re looking for on the site – and then submitting their information.
2) Titles matter a lot. Check out the title of the top menus – these titles are designed to appeal directly to people who need to sell. “We buy houses in Baltimore”, “Get A Cash Offer”, “Sell My House Fast” and a contact form right on the front page that asks people to put in their address, phone, and email first thing.
3) Customers want to know about the company before they submit their info. Check out how red the spot over the testimonials is – not only are people clicking a lot on that page, but they’re thumbing through the testimonial mini-display on the bottom right of the page. Testimonials are a huge way to create credibility for your business… more on that in a minute.
Where is your credibility on your own real estate website?
It’s a really common problem that hurts a ton of great real estate agents and investors… when people get to the site they need to have a compelling reason to give over their personal information. Think about it… real estate is the largest investment most people ever make in their lives. There’s no piece of real estate more intimate than someone’s home.
And yet…
So many real estate sites don’t build trust or credibility.
In fact, there are 3 key factors that I wanna mention that are critical to successfully designing a site that converts – and I’ll tell you how we’ve used them to design the Carrot sites like this example that are generating great leads.
Credibility, Content, and Contact
Check out this graphic – I’ve broken down the links on the page into numbers, so you can see the percentage of page visitors that clicked on each link or form.
Even more great lessons here…
As you can see, 33% of the clicks are for Credibility, 24% is on the Content (which is written to develop trust and credibility while reducing the fear and anxiety that most people who need to sell now are feeling), and 43% of the clicks on the home page are actually converting – they’re contacting members using the forms.
Now, keep in mind that the percentages are recording just clicks on the home page – a lot of other conversions happen on the lead pages that we’ve optimized for the local market. That means that people are most often giving their info over to get a free report or another valuable tool… 43% of the clicks on the home page isn’t always the main source of leads. It just depends on how the site is being promoted, and where the majority of traffic is directed.
I really want to emphasize that the mix of those 3 factors is critical to a successful lead generation site.
Content pulls people through search engine traffic, but it has to create Credibility once people arrive… or they just won’t Contact you.
BONUS: 1 Minute Tweak That Doubled The Conversion Rate To Leads
One more thing… I promised that I’d tell you the simple fix that we did on this page that doubled conversions… it’s so crazy simple that we were totally surprised that it worked so well.
We increased the size of the bar that says “Click to Continue” on the opt-in form and changed the color to Orange.
Yup, that’s it.
When this Carrot member got in touch, her site was converting well… but she’d made the size of the Continue button pretty small and black… so we ran a split test – half of the visitors to the site saw the small button, and the other half saw the larger button (we also changed the color to yellow).
In just one month of running the test, visitors to the large-button site submitted their info twice as much as those who saw the small button. Wow!
Even after doing this stuff for years, it’s crazy to see what a big difference such a small change can make.
That’s why we’re constantly testing different sites. We love to learn the nitty-gritty details that make all the difference… we don’t rely upon assumptions, and we certainly don’t make our websites to be pretty – although we do think they look nice. Most important – we design them to be effective.
For marketing folks who love data, real estate heat maps are a fantastic tool.
This Is All Built Into Your Carrot Websites Already!
The beauty with everything we walked through in this post is that everything is already baked right into your Carrot websites. We’re constantly running tests with our members and making tweaks to improve how well our system works for you.
We get paid up to $6,000/mo by large companies to do this same kind of work for them… but you get this as part of your Carrot membership for no extra cost. Why? Simply because we believe in results over anything else and are continually improving our system to help you get better results.
Keep An Eye Out For More Articles Like This!
We’ll be posting lots more info on the tips, tricks, and techniques we use to improve SEO, conversions, and get great results for Carrot customers… so if you’re not already getting our emails, make sure you sign up now! And if you want a website that truly generates leads for your business, go check out our different member plans to join Carrot and leverage our marketing knowledge and testing to generate more leads for your own real estate investing company.
It’s been 2 years in the making… over 350 beta tester real estate investors later… and we’re officially releasing REIthemereal estate investor websites to the whole world (at least… the whole real estate investor world ;-).
The Story
The story of how we came to be over the last 2 years is really pretty simple. We ourselves are real estate investors and own rental properties still today. In addition, we’ve worked with thousands of real estate investors around the country through our free tools and content at our sister site thereibrain.com. Through working with our subscribers and students there was one common need that they all voiced…
“I need a simple but effective website to use. Do you have a recommendation?”
We got that question over and over… so in 2010 we decided to create the first version of the REItheme sites just for those initial members. That group was our “beta” group which is over 350 members strong now. Giving us feedback, testing the sites, using them for their own real estate investing businesses… the whole shibang.
Then, finally… after enough procrastinating and delaying (because we’ve been so darn busy growing our other companies)… we decided to finish out REItheme so the entire real estate investor community can have access to the website system we’ve developed over the last 2 years.
Why We’re Different
The real estate investor website market has been a pretty stale market over the past 5 years. No real innovations, no one really deciding to take the leadership role in the market, and no one really focusing on what is best for the customer for running their real estate investor websites.
Above all… here are the main reasons why we’re excited about REItheme (and so are our customers):
Customization: No two real estate investing businesses are the same, so why should you use the exact same website as 1,000+ other investors? That’s not the recipe for success in any business. You have to differentiate your company from the rest. With REItheme we’ve worked hard to make it so you can easily customize virtually every aspect of your website. From the branding, colors, and look/feel of your website… to the content… lead capture forms… properties… and more. You can put your own personal touch on your real estate investor website so it’s not like thousands of others… and you take control over every aspect of your website and no longer have to rely on a web guy or someone else to update your content for you.
Stellar Member Experiences: Over the past several years our team has built multiple successful companies, combined reaching into the 7 figures… and a huge thing we’ve learned is that the better we’re able to create great customer experiences… the more our customers love us… and the more people flock to our services. So, we’re not just about amassing as many customers as we can… we’re about making using REItheme the best possible experience for you… from the signup to using your website day in and day out.
Leveraging Social Media and the Search Engines: A HUGE drawback of most other real estate investor website templates on the market is that they look like they were built in 1987 and haven’t been built with the new technologies in mind. We’ve been able to generate over 30,000 real estate related leads directly from the search engines by ranking our pages and sites high for competitive search terms. Most website systems today in the real estate investor world never crack the top few pages of search results mainly because they weren’t built from the ground up with search engine optimization in mind. The same goes for social media. We want to make it easy for you to get the benefits of social media sites like Facebook… right from your own website.
Credibility: Credibility is a big thing in any business… especially as a real estate investor. So, it’s very important what your website looks like and what it says when your prospects and clients find their way to your site. Our top notch design and copywriting team has put together great looking and professional websites that give a great first impression… and we’ve added in credibility elements that’ll help you relay the right message to people you want to work with. Easily add in testimonials, tell your story about your company on your about page, and more.
Continual Improvements: We have a dedicated team focused on continually making REItheme the best website system for real estate investors today… and in the future. As new technologies come and go… we’ll continually update the system so you get those benefits without having to hire a web guy every time things change. Also, we’re continually testing our websites and finding new ways to make them rank higher in search engines, generate more leads, and be easier for you to use… and we always push those results down to your websites automatically. With REItheme you won’t have to worry about being left behind the technology curve… we’ll help you stay ahead of it.
The Future
We’ve got big plans for REItheme and the growth of this company and the growth of our customers businesses. We have no intentions of building REItheme into a “one stop shop” for real estate investor tools. There are already great systems out there that will calculate your offers on properties, manage your deals, run comps, and other great things.
That’s not our focus.
Our focus is to be the single best system for managing your web presence for your real estate investing business… with the features that help generate more traffic and leads as the main focus… and keeping the system simple and not packed with features 95% of investors don’t need.
Getting Started
So, if you’re a real estate investor and are looking for a better way to manage your online presence, generate leads, and regain control over your websites… check out REItheme to see if its a fit for you.
Also, if you know other investors who could use a website system like REItheme… check out our referral Partner program where you can earn 25% commissions on ever new REItheme member you refer (for the life of their account).
![[Real Estate Heat Map Results] Where Are Sellers Clicking On Your Real Estate Website](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/heatmap.png)
The real estate investor website market has been a pretty stale market over the past 5 years. No real innovations, no one really deciding to take the leadership role in the market, and no one really focusing on what is best for the customer for running their real estate investor websites.