Search results for: “conversion”

  • Here Are The 4 Reasons You’re Not Getting The Real Estate Leads You Want Online

    Here Are The 4 Reasons You’re Not Getting The Real Estate Leads You Want Online

    2015.11.4-not-getting-the-leads-you-want-main

    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

    traffic to real estate investing website
    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?

    We focus on…

    1. SEO (ranking high in Google)
    2. Paid traffic like Google Ads (PPC marketing)
    3. Hustle marketing (Craigslist, social media, etc.)
    4. 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.

    get more real estate investing leads

    2. Low-Quality Traffic To Your Website

    high quality website prospects
    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.

    Use Facebook Marketing Carefully. I love Facebook marketing for buyers and tenants or as a high ROI retargeting tool… but not for highly motivated house sellers.

    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

    website credibility
    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.

    Fortunately, there are many ways that you can assure them of your credibility (and we help you with many strategies already built into the Carrot platform).

    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.

    trusted home buying companies
    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 how the 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…

    1. Are you getting at least 10 – 20 highly qualified visitors to your website each week
    2. 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!

    website conversion rate tips for real estate investors
    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 why more 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…

    4 Reasons Why You're Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online and How To Fix It

    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!

  • Carrot Websites Already In Your Market? 6 Ways To Stand Out

    Carrot Websites Already In Your Market? 6 Ways To Stand Out

    InvestorCarrot Sites

    Carrot websites now control more page 1 Google rankings for motivated seller and cash buyer search phrases that matter than any other real estate investor website platform. So, if Carrot members are already ranking well and pulling in leads in your market…

    … can you get the same (or better) results and tap into that flow of leads as well?

    seo rankings for InvestorCarrot websites
    InvestorCarrot members control 3 of the 4 top spots for this phase in California… But they’re all getting more leads than they would have been without InvestorCarrot. Read this article to see why… and how you can leverage Carrot for better results even if your market has Carrot members doing well.

    We’ll dive into the strategy that the most successful investors are implementing to go into markets that look “crowded” to most people… but end up being very profitable for those who choose to leverage Carrot and personalize it to stand out.

    The #1 Question You Want To First Ask Yourself

    So the #1 question you should ask yourself isn’t “Will InvestorCarrot still be effective for me if other people are using it?”…

    … it should be “If I don’t go with InvestorCarrot, what will I implement instead to generate leads online as effectively as my competitors using Carrot in my market?”

    Will your other options, even though they look different visually, perform as well and provide you the long-term return on investment that InvestorCarrot can provide? Some may. Most won’t.

    At Carrot we, of course, focus on performance as the #1 metric… and making it as easy as possible to tap into our proven framework… personalize it to build in your credibility elements… and launch your website quickly so you can start driving traffic to it.

    Which is why our members are pulling in so many leads and starting to dominate the online markets across the country… and not having to wait weeks or months and pay thousands of dollars to have a custom site built that you hope will perform well once it’s launched that still has ongoing maintenance costs and will have to be redesigned in 2 years again anyhow.

    Another way to look at it is if a platform and system are proven to work well in your market for your competitors… does that mean you shouldn’t also use that platform that is working well in your market?

    Consider the sport of automotive racing

    All of the competitors are in very fast cars…
    they often start with the same foundation.

    Phoenix_International_Raceway_1997_NASCAR_Photography_By_Darryl_Moran___Flickr_-_Photo_Sharing_

    They start with that same foundation because it’s been proven to work many times over.

    Then to edge out the other guys, they tweak it, improve it, and get better over time.

    There’s no long-term advantage for the car that has been winning in the past vs. the new one just entering the league. The guy entering the league today can dominate the circuit 8 months from now.

    It’s not an “all or nothing” game in car racing.

    The same goes for online marketing as a real estate investor. 

    If you start with a solid proven foundation, the small tweaks plus the driver’s skill and desire determine the outcome of a race.

    You wouldn’t show up to a Nascar race in a Mini Cooper just because everyone else is using “the same” looking Nascar race car, right?

    That’s what the InvestorCarrot platform is all about. 

    Building a proven and very effective foundation for you to build your business on so you can save time, save money, earn a higher ROI, and always be ahead of the technology curve.

    Then, you can leverage our training and experienced team to help you edge out your competition.

    Here are some things you can do today to separate yourself from other Carrot members in your market, so everyone wins (including you).

    6 Ways To Separate Yourself From Other Investors Leveraging InvestorCarrot Websites

    1. Use all the advantages you can get (lazy = fewer results)

    Time To Complete: 20 – 90 mins depending on the level of personalization. Or have us do it for you!

    If you want to start with a leg up on the majority of your competition, one of the best ways you can do that is by building your online presence on the Carrot platform.

    Yeah, we’re plugging ourselves, but for a good reason:

    We recognize that your focus should be on doing deals, which is why we focus on building a platform to send you leads and continually improving that platform every month to help you stay ahead of the technology curve.

    But don’t just launch your InvestorCarrot website, slap on a domain, and walk away if you expect to stand out from others using Carrot in your market.

    Leverage the tools built into your Carrot platform to personalize your branding, content, credibility, and even design.

    You can make your website look a LOT different and really separate yourself visually from the pack while still leveraging what makes InvestorCarrot so darn effective.

    Less Than 30 Minutes Of Personalization Work On An InvestorCarrot Site

    custom real estate investor website design
    See the transformation with a bit of professionalization? At your fingertips, you have the ability to make your website look quite a bit different. And these personalization are only the tip of the iceberg on what you can do.

    2. Adjust your content (especially if there are other Carrot members in the search results)

    Time To Complete: 30 mins – 2 hours depending on the level of content tweaks. Or have us do it all for you!

    custom real estate investing website content
    If you’re serious about your business long-term… Spend a little bit of time to put in more specific information about your market and your business on your pages. Or have us write custom content for you!

    Sometimes you will be competing in a market where there are already a ton of investors, and perhaps even several InvestorCarrot investors, too!

    How do you appear in search results if other folks are already rocking it? Adjust your content to add your flair.

    This will help you avoid duplicate content penalties in your market while retaining the Carrot platform’s ranking power.

    You don’t have to change the content a lot, but you should change it a bit (aim for changing about 30-50% of the content): make sure you keep the value of the content, and don’t forget to incorporate search engine optimization like appropriate keyword usage.

    And the beauty is, just use our current content as your framework for what to write where.

    If a part of your home page talks about the different situations sellers may be going through… just rewrite that paragraph in your own words.

    This alone saves you dozens of hours and lost money and results vs. having to write all of the content for a custom website you build elsewhere.

    Overall, even with multiple Carrot members ranking crazy well on page 1 for the same keywords in the same market, we’re seeing that it’s a non-issue if people tweak their content a bit, follow our training, and leverage our help to get your rankings higher. There are many markets where Carrot members control 3+ of the first page results, and all of them are generating more leads than they ever were with their non-Carrot sites because they’re ranking higher with Carrot… and their website is converting more visitors into leads than their non-Carrot site.

    3. Adjust your SEO title to stand out in the Google search results

    Time To Complete: 3-5 mins per page.

    When your prospective leads search on Google, they will get a page of results. Like this…

    search-results-bham

    From that search result, they will decide to click on one site or to search for a different term.

    They will base this decision on what they see and what stands out to their eye: The title of your website, a brief two-line (approximately 125 characters) description, and your website URL.

    Did you know you can control what Google shows here?

    Yep, you can!

    So let’s use this flexibility that Google gives us and liven up that search listing to stand out from the others on the page and get more people to click through to your website.

    Check out this “Sell my Memphis home” search result in the picture below.

    Notice that the top spot is held by a Carrot customer. Not only do they have the top spot because of the SEO power of the Carrot platform, but they also have the most compelling and enticing title (“Get A Cash Offer Today”) – that’s the power of copywriting!  Their Google search listing stands out more than the rest and shows the searcher how they can help in clear terms.

    InvestorCarrot Websites-Memphis

    Even if they were slightly farther down in the list, their powerfully written title would still attract people to click them over their competition.

    Let’s adjust that search listing right now! 

    If you’re already a Carrot member, just head into your Page Editor, scroll down to the Carrot SEO Tool, and update your SEO Title and description to stand out and separate yourself from the crowd.

    Just Edit The SEO Title And Description To Change How Your Site Shows In Google’s Search Results!

    edit seo title for search results

    It’ll take you less than 5 minutes to get this done on InvestorCarrot! And reach out to us if you need any help or insights :-)

    4. Build in some credibility elements

    Time To Complete: 20 – 60 mins. Or have us do it for you!

    Credibility is key when a motivated house seller or cash investment property buyer is looking to make a big financial decision.  We’ve already given our InvestorCarrot websites a head start on building credibility with the way our websites are structured out of the box. But, from there you can boost that credibility by adding in your own flair.

    The main thing that you can use to separate yourself from others in your market is… well… YOU.

    Your personality.

    Your experience.

    Your credibility.

    How you can help them.

    You will want to personalize your site so people will see you as not only THE best solution for their problem… but also that they just plain connect with you and your company and feel that you’re the one they can trust to help them out.

    How can you do that? 

    Take These Small Credibility Tweaks As An Example…

    website credibility
    1. Update your “Hero Image”: The Hero is the big picture behind your opt-in form. We’ve found it’s helped to improve performance on our websites, especially when you add a picture that is unique to you and shows your local area.
    2. Add in credibility badges: BBB logos, awards, and even badges showing you’re a member of respected groups can help improve credibility and boost performance!
    3. Testimonials: Add in some customer testimonials. These could be things your clients have said about how you helped them… or if you’re just starting out… character-based testimonials from colleagues, your banker, etc that show you’re a trustworthy and competent person.
    4. Simple and clean branding: The first thing people usually see is the upper left side of your website. So make sure it looks inviting and trustworthy. You don’t have to have a fancy logo… but an ugly logo or bad company name could reduce your credibility.

    People have to feel like you can help them and trust that you can do what you say. Make them feel that comfort and connection on the site.

    Bottom line: Highlight how you can help your audience and show them how your services are best suited to solve their problem the best.

    5. Consider other keywords ignored by your competitors

    Time To Complete: 15-30 mins per week + we’re here for help!

    There are hundreds of phrases motivated house sellers in your market are typing into Google… go after some of those that are less crowded while you build your rankings on the competitive search phrases.

    The beauty with online marketing is there are so darn many keyword phrases that motivated sellers, cash buyers, note sellers, and rent to own tenants are typing into Google.

    We usually focus on the main handful of keyword phrases when we use examples… like your “sell my house fast” type keywords.

    But for motivated sellers, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of keyword phrases your prospects are typing into Google each month.

    If one keyword phrase is flooded and crazy competitive, go after other keyword phrases as well that your competition isn’t yet focusing on.

    As an example…

    Here Is A Report On The Number Of PPC Keywords This Particular Investor Is Advertising For In Google

    ppc keyword research

    Almost 900!

    Wow.

    I bet your competition is only going after 1 or 2 keywords when it comes to SEO.

    If they are, spin up some pages

    Cast a wider net and create content on your website that goes after those phrases your competitors are too lazy to go after.

    And while you’re doing that… keep working on ranking higher for those competitive phrases that your competitors are ranking for… and overtake them over the long-run because your website is more content rich.

    Bam, you win the internet :-)

    You might be wonder what types of keywords are the ones your competition likely isn’t focusing on?

    Well… phrases targeted to specific situations and specific areas is a good place to start.

    Selling a house in divorce [in your area]

    Selling a house in probate [in your area]

    Selling a house I inherited [in your area]

    Selling my house without a broker [in your area]

    [your area] cash home buyers

    You get the idea.

    Cast a wider net.

    That’s what the big boys do.

    There are literally hundreds of phrases you can go after with your SEO, PPC, and YouTube video marketing that your competitors likely aren’t paying much attention to.

    If “Sell my Columbus house” is too competitive, what about… “Sell my Columbus house quickly” or “avoiding real estate agent fees in Columbus“?

    The traffic to these may be less (it depends on the market) but when you start to rank well for a bunch of these less competitive phrases that your prospects are searching… over time those start to add up. Plus, these types of leads will be much more targeted and turn into deals at a much higher rate.

    6. Leverage other media too! Video and SlideShare

    Time To Complete: 30-60 mins per video.

    If there’s a ton of competition and you’re struggling to show up on the first page, or if you’re just starting out and want to get the first-page status fast, or if you really want to bump your online marketing up a notch or two, this is a very powerful strategy:

    YouTube is the second largest search engine the world (right after Google) and it’s owned by Google.

    Google pulls search results from YouTube and embeds those results inside their normal (text-based) results.

    So with the right optimization, you can put your video on YouTube and have them show up in Google results even if your website doesn’t yet show up there! That’s exactly what’s happening when you look at a search like “Sell my Phoenix house”…

    InvestorCarrot Websites PHX

    Notice that the videos are in the top position… above the websites!

    Google is always tweaking this; sometimes the videos appear below the first, second, or third website result, but still very high in search results.

    If you’re not sure how to do this, check out our post here on tips to optimize your YouTube videos. Also, for Carrot members check out our 3LeadPerDay training for a full in-depth training on the entire process.

    Focus On Your Results And Stop Worrying About Your Competition

    Competition… it’s part of the biz! You have a choice: you can avoid the competition altogether, or, you can put in a ton of hours and work to try to compete on your own, or, you can get into the race with Carrot’s version of a Nascar race car and use these 6 strategies to help you refine your online presence and raise your website even in competitive search terms.

    Take a demo today!

  • [Compare] Carrot vs. Cheap & Low Cost Mass Website Builders

    [Compare] Carrot vs. Cheap & Low Cost Mass Website Builders

    There are a ton of options when it comes to launching a website for your real estate investing business. From cheap and low-cost mass template builders like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, GoDaddy, LeadPages, and others… to high-end custom websites that may run $6,000 or more.

    So, what are the differences between the different website types and what we offer here at Carrot? Well, I shot a video to answer that very question!

    Before you dive into the video, I want to introduce the four main things you should consider when launching a website for your real estate investing (house flipping, wholesaling, rent-to-own, note buying, anything). They’re right under the video.

    Check out those 4 crazy important things to consider before you launch your website… then I’ll expand on that a bit and show examples in the video below.

    Low-Cost Generic Website Builders vs. Specialized Website Solutions Like Carrot

    Wholesaling Websites: Carrot vs. Wix vs. WordPress, Etc. | Real Estate Sites for Agents & Investors

    The 4 Most Important Things You Need To Look At With Your Real Estate Website

    The first is… your website’s #1 priority should be performance.

    Not how fancy it looks. Not whether you think it looks pretty. Not how fancy the CRM is. And not whether you think it looks different from others in your market. It’s…

    “If I send 100 qualified people to this website with SEO, PPC, Craigslist, or direct mail… is it going to convert as many of those into qualified leads so my website isn’t a leaky bucket?”

    Because every lost lead is a lost potential at a deal.

    And as we always like to say…

    If you lose 1 deal that would have netted you $10,000 because you were trying to reinvent the wheel or save a few bucks a month and your website isn’t performing like it should… that $10,000 is real money lost out of your pocket.

    Before you go out to build a real estate investing website on Wix, Weebly, or Godaddy… focus on making sure what you build your website with is focused on performance (conversion rate optimization) as its main priority because a high performing website means more visitors converted into qualified leads (and in turn, more deals closed).

    The second is… ease of use.

    There’s got to be some way to ensure you’re using the system well.

    We’ve taken 80% of that off your lap and built it into our platform.

    Many of our Carrot members don’t even use our system. They hire us to do some of the build-outs through our services, or they might hire some other people or they have their friend use the system, and they just go be the agent or be the investor. So you get to choose how much of the system you will use yourself versus just wanting to pay people to do that for you, so you can do the parts you enjoy and love.

    The third is… aesthetic

    We want to make sure that number one, you should be proud of the website that represents your business.

    Aesthetic is number three in my eyes because aesthetics only matters to you from that perspective. The aesthetic is what you think about your website. Performance is what your prospects think about your website.

    The aesthetic is “I think it looks pretty.” Performance is your prospects say it solved their problem and got them to opt-in and become a lead.

    So that’s why aesthetic is number three. Many agents and investors put aesthetics as number one. They lower performance and end up having so many lost leads and deals because they think prettiness and aesthetics are more important than performance.

    Fourth is… cost.

    And then last here is cost. I put the cost as last, where many of you guys might be thinking, “Oh my gosh, the cost is number one for me. I don’t have a big budget.” Because a lot of us look at cost differently than we should. Many of us look at the cost as what’s the monthly payment that I will be paying for that tool, or how much am I going to have to pay my buddy down the street to develop my website for me.

    But the actual ultimate cost is not the monthly payment you will pay. The ultimate cost is how much money this website makes or does not make for you. So if you use a website like Wix and it’s going to be low cost, but let’s say it loses you one or two deals every year because it’s not set up for performance. It’s not set up to convert well, for page speed, or to rank well in Google. And if you lose one deal every year, let’s say your average profit per deal is $10,000. That cheap website just costs you $10,000 bucks.

    It’s often easy to go with the website solution that looks at the lowest cost monthly.

    After all, a $10/mo website with one of those low-cost generic website builders is only $120/yr versus what our average investors pay of $99/mo (for 3 websites, our weekly Coaching Calls, our content marketing system, and high-performance built-in).

    But when you look at the return, you get for those dollars and your time… the story changes drastically.

    1 extra (or 1 lost) deal because of website performance is a big deal when dealing with real estate.

    1 extra deal pays for a Carrot membership for 10+ years.

    So focus on performance and the return on investment your real estate investing website system can provide you over the long run.

    Ongoing expert guidance and help from those who have done what you want to do.

    An often forgotten thing critical to your success in generating consistent leads online today and next year (over the long-term) is the support team behind you.

    If you go with one of those low-cost website builders, you can better believe that their pricing model doesn’t allow them to invest a lot into building the team and support structure to make your life easier and more successful over the years.

    If you’re paying $6/mo for hosting… you may be able to reach out to them for help with basic technical things… but most of the time, the questions that you need to be answered most are the strategy-related questions that can take you from no or mediocre results… to crushing it.

    With Carrot, we have amazing support (just ask around)… industry-leading training to show you exactly what our most successful members are doing to drive leads… and our full-time staff is among the industry’s most experienced online lead generation experts (specific to real estate investors). So if you have questions about your strategy… or your PPC marketing isn’t getting the results you need… or you’re ranked at the top of page 2 for your #1 keyword… who are you going to turn to at those cheap and low-cost website builders for the strategy help to get you over that hump?

    Weekly Live Coaching Calls, 1 on 1 Strategy Sessions, Industry Leading Training, We’re Here For You

    With Carrot, our weekly LIVE Carrot Coaching Calls, complimentary 1-on-1 Strategy Sessions with us, and fast strategy help are all included as a Content Pro member.

    It’s like having the most experienced lead generation expert on call… and it’s included in your Carrot membership at only $99/mo.

    The difference between amazing and no results is often the strategy help and expert guidance.

    If you want to try to save a few bucks and go it alone… how much extra time and money will you invest? For only $99/mo, it’s a no-brainer for high-level investors who recognize the value of their time and expert guidance.

    Getting The Right Tools In Place To Grow Your Real Estate Business (and have less hassle with tech issues)

    These days your website is one of those tools that is a really important part of your credibility, lead generation efforts, and the future of your marketing.

    More and more people are going online to find solutions to their problems (especially on cell phones)… so getting your web presence right is a pretty darn important thing these days.

    Just like you get the right direct mail before you spend that money to send out those letters… take the time to make sure your website is dialed in and will convert a high percentage of your visitors you’re working so hard to get… into qualified leads.

    We can help you here with Carrot, and we’d love to review your website and give you honest, candid feedback on what you can improve with your current site if it’s at one of those low-cost generic website builders.

    Just leave your website URL in the comments section below and we’ll shoot quick videos walking through changes you can make to your current site to make them more effective.

    And as always, we’re here if you feel Carrot is a great fit. Just take a demo or check out our pricing and plans.

  • Does The Bounce Rate On Your Website Really Matter?

    Does The Bounce Rate On Your Website Really Matter?

    At least a half dozen times a week I get emails from our customers and Carrot newsletter subscribers asking a question like…

    “I see my bounce rate is 72% and that seems high. Is it? And does the bounce rate on your website really matter?”

    First off… you may be wondering what a “bounce rate” for a real estate investor website is… why your bounce rate matters (and why it may not matter much at all)… and whether yours is even high in the first place (because it may not be).

    A few things to think about before I dive in… so you know whether this post is for you.

    • Do you value ranking high in Google for phrases your motivated seller, buyers, tenants, private lenders, etc. are searching?
    • Do you want to increase the number of leads you’re getting online?

    If so, you’ll want to read this post :-)

    First…

    Does The Bounce Rate On Your Website Really Matter?

    What Is A Bounce Rate Anyway?
    (in simple terms)

    As far as Google is concerned, in their own words, a bounce rate on a website is… “The percentage of single-page sessions on your website”. In simpler terms… the number of visitors to your website who land on your site… then don’t click anything else and visit any other pages on your site.

    Now, that’s the technical term.

    But keep in mind… since your real estate investor websites should focus on generating leads… and a certain % of your visitors will just pick up the phone and call you (especially motivated sellers with our InvestorCarrot websites) without clicking on other pages on your website, those visitors will be considered a “bounced” visitor as far as Google is concerned.

    So for a lead generation focused website that has a clear call to action for the visitor to pick up the phone and call you, your actual bounce rate may be a tad lower than your Google Analytics bounce report is showing you.

    In addition, I’ve been asked hundreds of times… “What is a good bounce rate?”.

    Really that’s a tough question.

    It really depends on where your traffic is coming from and what the purpose of your website is.

    If you run a news website and you have a bounce rate of 75%… that may not be a bad thing because people tend to read 1 article and then leave.

    If you run an online store selling cool gadgets… and your have a 75% bounce rate… that means people aren’t engaging on your site, checking out other items, or placing things in the shopping cart. In that case 75% isn’t a good thing at all.

    Last, if your website is geared primarily as a lead generation tool (especially for motivated real estate sellers)… you shouldn’t really expect a bounce rate below 40%. Heck, you likely shouldn’t expect a bounce rate much below 60% on a page specifically geared to get a motivated seller to sell you their house (unless you use one strategy that we’re testing right now that is yielding lower bounce rates but sellers that aren’t as highly motivated in general… but the jury is still out).

    As a great basis of comparison… below is a screenshot of the traffic stats from our Carrot customers for this past 7 days.

    Actual Traffic Stats From Our Members Websites In The Past 7 Days

    bounce rate for real estate investors websites
    Thousands Of Leads… have been generated by Carrot members and top search engine rankings for tons of competitive phrases have been grabbed or held in this past week. The AVERAGE bounce rate is 66.54%… is that good? See below…

    Why Can Your Bounce Rate Sometimes Be A Big Deal (and when you should not pay much attention to it)?

    Before you check your Google Analytics account and freak out because your bounce rate is 75%… just know that your bounce rate isn’t anything to really sweat over unless you’re really focusing hard on SEO and the conversation rate of your website and are in a place where you’re starting to ramp up your traffic to your website.

    If you’re just now getting rolling with your website… or haven’t really started to focus on generating SEO traffic much… skip the rest of this post and go out there and focus on generating traffic to your website first.

    NOTE: If you’re an InvestorCarrot member, you can have access to our 3 Lead Per Day training for just $99 that walks through in simple steps how to generate traffic to your websites, rank better, and cut the learning curve. If you’re not generating more than 100 visitors a month to your site yet… don’t worry about your bounce rate! Worry about getting more people to your website first, bounce rate later.

    Bounce rate is something we’ve focused on with the way we’ve built our InvestorCarrot websites… so you don’t have to worry about that stuff if you’re a Carrot member.

    If you have a website you’ve built yourself, on another system, or had a web guy build one for you who isn’t an expert in real estate investing lead generation… and you’re ready to ramp your leads up… your bounce rate is something you should have an eye on.

    Here are a couple of the main reasons you should keep an eye on your bounce rate as a real estate investor.

    Bounce Rate Can Affect Your SEO Rankings

    It’s been long known that Google looks at hundreds of factors when deciding where your website should rank.

    Several of those factors are what are called “user signals”… which are things that the actual website visitor does based on the quality of your website.

    According to a recent report put out by SearchMetrics, both Time on Site and Bounce Rate show a positive correlation… that websites that rank in the top 10 in Google tend to have good bounce rates and a longer than average time on site.

    sdf
    There is a slight positive correlation... to having a low bounce rate and longer than average “time on site” by the visitor… as seen by Search Metrics in this recent report. This picture above is just one part of the full report of all SEO ranking correlations.

    Your bounce rate isn’t one of the first things I’d tell an investor to focus on to increase your rankings… but if you’re struggling to crack into page 1 or rise up page 1 for a search term like “sell house fast DC” or something… take a look and see if your bounce rate is 70% +… or your time on site is less than about 100 seconds.

    If it is — you should do something about it for sure.

    With InvestorCarrot, to give you a basis of comparison on the “time on site” metric, below are 2 snapshots from our own Google Analytics account.

    Avg. Time On Site For The Past 12 Months Across Hundreds Of Investor Websites

    average time on site
    Avg. Time On Site… for InvestorCarrot websites the past 12 months. This takes into consideration the seasonally slower and less responsive winter months for buyers and sellers.

    Avg. Time On Site For The Busy Warm Months In 2014 Across Hundreds Of Investor Websites

    asfd
    As a comparison… the average time on site and bounce rate in the “busy” warm months for seller leads

    If you see your bounce rate more than what you see above or your time on site less than what you see above (especially if your average visitor stays less than 100 seconds on site)… check out InvestorCarrot.

    Those rates are the average rates across our platform… so some members websites are doing MUCH better because they’re driving more highly targeted and quality traffic… while others are driving lower quality traffic that may “bounce” much more quickly.

    In the end, your bounce rate and time on site are factors that can affect your search engine rankings… but don’t spend a lot of time on them if you haven’t even focused on the higher leverage activities you can do to rank better first.

    Bounce Rate Is An Indicator On Whether Your Site Is Converting Well Or Not

    Another thing that the bounce rate is a leading indicator for… is how well your website is performing.

    If your website is geared to convert visitors to leads and you have a bounce rate over 80% lets say, you can bet that the website likely isn’t performing very well on the conversion side of things.

    But, does a bounce rate of 70% mean that your website isn’t converting well?

    Not necessarily.

    In some markets with PPC marketing, a 9-14% conversion rate is a solid conversion rate for motivated sellers. You could conceivably have a website with a 70% bounce rate and still have a respectable conversion rate of a lead.

    What To Do About Your Website Bounce Rate And Let’s Eliminate The Bounce Rate Fear Today…

    If you’re not generating much traffic or leads yet… you shouldn’t even be worrying about bounce rate at all. You should be focusing on the higher leverage things to get traffic to your site. Bounce rate is priority number 1,004 on your list of things to worry about at this point.

    As an InvestorCarrot member, go through our SEO tools and training… our Craigslist Marketing Course, etc. And heck, our system already has a very good bounce rate and among the best time on site stats in the industry.

    If you’re not a Carrot member, no sweat. There are lots of things you can do to start ranking better in Google and getting more leads. In fact, we have free resources here on this website that’ll help you do that.

    If you are on page 1 or close… and are having a tough time getting that #1 ranking and you have a bounce rate over 70%… you may want to see what you can do to improve your bounce rate and time on site… it could help give you an edge in Google’s eyes.

    Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

    1. Join InvestorCarrot so your website loads faster, is mobile optimized, has better and more engaging content that keeps people on your website longer, and has the conversion elements built into the website to convert higher than the average real estate investing website.
    2. If you’re not on InvestorCarrot, if you’re using just a squeeze page… stop! Use a full lead generation website to ramp up your time on site and lower your bounce rate (and increase your leads).
    3. Write better and more powerful content that engages the person on your site.
    4. Stop using videos that auto play when someone lands on your site (that’s a bounce rate killer).
    5. Make the first impression of your website be a good one. It should feel credible, inviting, and make a connection with the visitor.

    In the end, don’t fret about bounce rate if you haven’t started to generate more than 100 visitors a month through your SEO or PPC so far.

    And if you have a bounce rate over 70% but are still getting great leads… don’t sweat it! Focus on the big things that will help you drive more traffic and improve conversions… and if you keep doing the right things and keep building your website to provide value to your web visitors your bounce rate may just take care of itself.

  • Our 7 Biggest Wins And 3 Biggest “Failures”… Our First Full Year In Business

    Our 7 Biggest Wins And 3 Biggest “Failures”… Our First Full Year In Business

    2015.01.01-year-in-review

    I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing… but it’s been insane how darn fast 2014 flew by. It seems like just last week I was sitting at a local coffee shop I like to hang out at on “non office days” writing up my 2014 goals… and getting with our team and jotting down how we’d rule the world in 2014.

    And the funny / scary thing is… the years only get faster.

    Before we know it we’ll be looking back on 2015 reviewing how the year went… and asking ourselves if we did what we wanted to do the previous 12 months.

    That to me is a huge motivator. Knowing that time is going to pass whether I get focused, excited, and make stuff happen or not. So we might as well give it all we’ve got… ignore the naysayers… and crush it in life and business.

    So… with the end of our first full year in business here at InvestorCarrot… providing what high achieving real estate investors all over the country are calling “the best real estate investor websites I’ve seen” again and again (we’re attracting more top notch investors in each market than any other website system for real estate investors)… I want to dive into some of the things the InvestorCarrot community was able to achieve in 2014… some of our biggest wins and failures as a young company… and what you’re in store for in 2015 as an InvestorCarrot community member (whether you’re an active customer of ours or not… you’ll benefit BIG TIME in 2015).

    7 Things We’re Insanely Proud Of For 2014

    2014 was a great year for us as a company and for our customers… here’s 7 things we’re proud as heck of for 2014.

    1. Tons Of Customer Love And RESULTS (Leads and Deals) In Our Thread Of Awesomeness

    Around the start of 2014 we started something we call the “Thread of Awesomeness” here at InvestorCarrot as an internal team tool to help us all keep our eye on why we do what we do. Each week… when any member of our team interacts with a customer who has an AWESOME result or experience… we throw it into this chat thread that we use internally as a team… called The Thread of Awesomeness.

    I wish I could show you all of the hundreds of awesome comments customers sent us in 2014 (we averaged 7 per week!)… but this snapshot below from just 1 week in December is a pretty good representation of the types of “AWESOMENESS” happening for our Carrot members using our system.

    That stuff keeps us motivated to do what we do… and our team

    investor carrot reviews awesomeness
    Our Thread Of Awesomeness: A snapshot of just a few things our customers sent to us in 1 week of December on the results they’re getting with their InvestorCarrot websites! That’s AWESOME right there!

    2. Nearly 500% Increase In Traffic and Leads For Our Customers!

    This kind of speaks for itself. Almost a 500% increase in traffic to our customers websites.

    traffic-growth-investor-carrot

    A few cool stats for the year…

    • 2,052,930 page views
    • 656,736 visitors
    • Nearly 1 million visits
    • An average visit time of almost 2 and a half minutes (average… our most successful members are seeing a time on site of over 3 minutes!)
    • And this winter our customers generated nearly 10,000 leads per month to their websites (and growing)

     

    3. Spreading Carrot Delight To Our Customers With Crazy Great Support!

    One thing I said I wouldn’t compromise going into launching InvestorCarrot was on support. In fact… “delivering wow” to our customers is one of our Carrot Core Values (which we both live by and work by). To us here at InvestorCarrot great customer experiences is a heck of a lot more fun than crappy customer experiences. It makes it fun coming into work when the customers you work with really like ya.

    Customers can rate their experience with us when they connect with us through support and over this past 12 months 90% of our customers rated us as having GREAT service, 8% rated our support Okay and 2% poor (can’t make everyone happy eh :-)… that’s on 3,233 tickets we resolved for our customers in 2014! 

    InvestorCarrot-customer-rating
    How Our Customers Rated Our Customer Service In 2014: 90% rated us as “GREAT”, 8% rated us Good… the other 2%… can’t make everyone happy :-)

    Another cool metric we’re proud as heck of… that 98% of InvestorCarrot member support requests were replied to within 24 hours… 89% in under 6 hours… and most in under 1 hour during work hours! Try us and see :-) 

    98% Of Support
    98% Of Your Support Requests were replied to within less than 24 hours during work hours… 89% in under 6 hours. Most under 1 hour!!! That’s fast and the best in the industry.

    4. Our Carrot Team Grew Stronger

    sdfa
    The Core Of InvestorCarrot: Here’s a pic of part of our team here at InvestorCarrot in a recent “in-office” day when the team was working from our headquarters in Roseburg, Oregon. Not all of our team lives in Roseburg… so we have bi-weekly “in-office” days so we can work in person!

    Going into 2014 we had a full-time team of 5. With a couple team adjustments and shifts over 2014… we re-focused on the core of what we’re great at… and brought aboard a kick butt new team member in November… and strengthened our relationships with a few key partners to help in areas where we’re not ready to build in-house teams quite yet.

    5. Releasing Dozens And Dozens Of Software Updates, Trainings, And Complete New Features
    (like sms alerts and more!)

    During 2014 we held 50+ LIVE weekly Carrot Coaching Calls (which are included in all Content Pro plans at no additional cost), simplified the software over the way it was to end 2013, added additional features like sms / text message lead alerts, more integrations like Zapier, simplified YouTube video embeds, Content Pro content marketing system, and more!

    We’re releasing updates to the software on an almost daily basis… and plan to ramp that effort up in 2015 to really focus on a few big game changers for our customers to help you generate more traffic and leads. Keep an eye out :-)

    6. Restarting Our Carrot Blog With Great, Useful Content To Help You Grow

    new-investor-carrot-blog

     

    In November we launched the new design of this blog and renewed our commitment to bringing you behind the scenes content that will help you move the needle in your business each week to generate more leads, rank your websites better, increase your website conversion, and improve your happiness as an entreprenuer.

    Keep an eye out for our weekly posts in your inbox and join in the conversation each week!

    In fact, what do you want us to write about more in 2015? Let me know in the comments below :-)

    7. Growing A Profitable, Fun, And Effective Business Starting With Just Our Sweat, Focus, And Hard Work

    Too many companies try to hide the “sensitive” parts of their business from their customers… like revenues and profits… but really there’s no need to hide your successes or failures from your clients.

    In fact, by growing a profitable company it’s actually a great thing for customers. That means more cash for innovation, more cash for building an even stronger support team (which we’re looking to hire another Customer Success Hero in early 2015!), more cash to move faster to keep YOU… our customers ahead of the curve from your competition.

    So we’re proud as heck that we’ve grown a company this past year and a half that is very profitable, without outside funding, with a small team 100% based here in Oregon, that is doing great things for (and with) our customers. Without this big win… the other “wins” above honestly wouldn’t matter… and we’ll continue to grow and manage this company to ensure stability and innovation for our customers and our own families in 2015 and beyond.

    3 Biggest “Failures” And How We’ll Improve Them In 2015

    With the great year we had… also came some bumps and bruises that we survived. Most of them were self inflicted and totally avoidable… but lessons we had to learn in order to grow stronger to the point we are today.

    1. Losing Focus Of Who Our Core Customer Is

    This is a biggie. At times during the year we lost our way and created things in our software and marketing efforts that focused on the wrong customer. Our ideal customer is a high achieving investor. Someone who is motivated, who isn’t using real estate as a new business “opportunity”… but rather a serious career, and who is ready and willing to invest time, money, or both to accelerate their results online.

    You’ll see a tighter focus on this type of person in 2015 which will dramatically improve your results.

    2. Not Building The Business WE Wanted To Build

    It’s really easy to listen to outsiders and let their opinions influence the way you live life and grow your real estate investing business. We did that a bit too much at times this past year as well… growing InvestorCarrot at times in directions that really didn’t resonate with me at my core on the reason we created this company in the first place.

    Now with a renewed focus on our vision, why we exist as a company, our ideal customer that we can help the most, and the life we want to live… we’re already on an exciting and more focused track to crushing it in 2015… the way WE WANT TO DO IT.

    3. Lack Of Organization And Focus At Times Led Us In Wrong Directions

    This one is honestly directed mainly at me as the CEO of the company.

    This has always been a weakness of mine and something I’m continually working to improve. me personally… not being as organized as the leader of the company as I need to be. Which led to things like announcing releases in the software and training and not hitting many of the dates I put out there, etc.

    So the last 2 months I’ve personally had to make a renewed commitment to being more organized. My team has helped with this a lot and we’re now relying better on systems to track our projects, communicate better as a team, and be more focused and clear on our goals and objectives each month and week.

    I’ll write a post in 2015 walking through what we’ve done to really start the transformation to working more focused, organized, and be less busy on a daily basis.

    Some Things To Expect From InvestorCarrot In 2015

    As great of a year it was in 2014… it won’t compare to the year we have planned out for 2015.

    Yes, we’ll be continuing to build out the best inbound online marketing platform for real estate investors with additions to help you rank your websites better and easier, track your rankings instantly, increase the conversions on your websites even further, get more leads, manage those leads more easily with systems (like Podio, coming soon), and more!

    But what we’re going to really focus on in 2015 is not just features… but finding better ways to help you get personalized guidance to get you the results you want in your business and your life.

    This includes…

    1. Our New Marketplace – Soon you’ll be able more easily find the tools, resources, training, and help to get you even better results. Look out for this in January 2015
    2. More Industry Best Training Opportunities– Our Carrot members have come to know and love our weekly LIVE Coaching Calls with me and our other team members… but we want to spread the love in 2015. Starting in January everyone in our Carrot community can come to a new monthly training call open to all subscribers to our email list.
    3. More Personal Guidance – Our customers have asked, and we’re making it easier for you to get more personalized help as you need it as a Carrot member. This means more ways to connect with people who can help you implement your SEO, PPC, and lead gen strategy… more ways to get tailored action plans to what you need to do to get results in your market.
    4. Honing Our Inbound Lead Generation Tools Within Carrot – We’re proud of what InvestorCarrot has grown to become. But we have a greater vision for how we can make your life easier and more profitable in 2015 with better tools to help you rank your website, generate more leads more easily, and spend less time customizing things on your websites… and more time doing what you love to do.

    We’re really excited about 2015 and are thankful for a great community of investors who are really supporting what we’re doing here at InvestorCarrot to help transform the way high achieving real estate investors use the internet to grow their real estate business.

    How Was Your 2014 And Where Do You Want To Improve In 2015?
    Let’s continue the convo in the comments below!

  • The Surprising Correlation Between Google +1’s And Your Real Estate Investor Website Ranking

    The Surprising Correlation Between Google +1’s And Your Real Estate Investor Website Ranking

    google +1 matter for seo rankings for real estate investors

    Now more and more getting those high rankings in Google for top search phrases as a real estate investor (wholesaler, flipper, rental property owner, note buyer/seller, turn key investment property seller, etc.) can be a HUGE reward… but it isn’t like it used to be to get your real estate investing company’s website ranked high.

    How SEO Used To Be For Real Estate Investors

    When I started getting really good at SEO (back in 2007) ranking my own websites high in Google because I didn’t have the money to pay for ads or to pay an SEO firm… it seemed kind of like everyone was gaming the system.

    All you had to do was stuff a page with the keyword phrase you wanted to rank for (“sell my house fast Portland”, as an example)… go buy a bunch of backlinks from bogus websites pointing to your website… and get your title tag right… and you were on your way to a better ranking.

    But over the years Google has been making updates to the way they rank our websites in their search results. The most recent big update came in October… that focused on websites building “spammy” backlinks.

    What these Google updates are doing is making people… including you real estate investors… go back to the basics and really focus on putting together great websites that the visitors actually want to go to and browse around… with great content (not sites with barely any content)… solid credibility… get good quality “votes” from other websites (backlinks) and bumps from social media (Facebook “likes”, Google +1’s, etc.).

    With that said… since our members generate over 100,000 visits to their websites per month now… and many of our customers have top rankings in some crazy competitive markets using our tools and training… we’ve seen some major correlation to ranking your real estate investing website high in Google to…

    Correlation Between Google +1 – Why It Matters So Much In Your Google Search Rankings and SEO

    We first started to see this strong correlation in many of the most competitive markets in the country for highly motivated sellers during our weekly LIVE Coaching Calls with our Pro and Content Pro members (these calls are FREE to Content Pro and Pro members).

    When a member would send through their website URL during the Coaching Calls and the search phrases they were going for… I’d do a quick “competitive analysis” there on the call and come up with a quick action plan for them to rank well based on what the websites in the top 5 for those phrases tended to have.

    And more and more this year… the number of Google +1’s a website has (or even just the fact that they had some) has been showing up as a strong signal in the websites that were ranking in the first 5 results in a Google result for sellers, buyers, tenants, etc.

    As an example… here is one of the top markets for motivated sellers and the top 3 rankings on page 1 vs. the top 3 rankings on page 2 and the Google +1’s they have.

    Note that since there are hundreds of ranking factors that Google uses… no single factor is the main differentiator. So you’ll see some of the ones ranked high have lots of Google + action… some have low Google + action… but the thing in common is all of the websites in the top 3 in almost every market we’ve searched has some Google + action happening.

    Top Results Houston, Texas – “we buy houses Houston”

    #1 – 410 Google +1’s

    We_Buy_Houses_in_Houston_Fast___Inherited_or_With_Liens_Any_Condition

    #2 –  9 Google +1’s

    Sell_Your_Houston_House_Fast__We_Buy_Houses

    #3 – 16 Google +1’s

    We_Buy_Houses_Houston_-_Fast_Cash_Offers

    Collectively in this example… the top 3 ranked pages have a total of 435 Google +1’s.

    And a hat tip to Carrot member Guillermo for his #3 ranking (and climbing) in one of the most competitive search phrases in the country for motivated sellers… with his InvestorCarrot website and our SEO service help.

    Now the top 3 for the 2nd page in Google…

    #11 – 13 Google +1’s (but there are other reasons this site isn’t ranking on page 1 we can go into on another blog post)

    Houston_House_Buyers_-_Any_Condition_-_Cash_Offer_Within_24_Hours

    #12 – 0 Google +1’s 

    We_Buy_Houses_Houston___Locations___We_Buy_Ugly_Houses

    #13 – 0 Google +1’s

    123_Homes_Houston___We_buy_houses_in_Houston

    #14 – 0 Google +1’s

    Sell_my_Houston_Texas_home_or_house_today_for_fast_cash__I_buy_Houston_TX_homes

    In this example… collectively in the 11-14 positions for the same search phrase… they have 13 Google +1’s.

    I can show in many many other top rankings in other markets across the country as well that the…

     …top ranked sites on average have more Google + and Facebook activity than the sites ranking on page 2 and below. 

    This Is Just One Example, Does It Mean There Is Really A Correlation Of Google +1 Activity to Ranking Well In Google For Real Estate Investors?

    Even though we have access to probably the best data in the entire real estate investor website industry because of the 10k+ leads per month our members generate and the many many many top search rankings they have with their InvestorCarrot websites…

    … we wanted to make sure there was actually a correlation.

    Recently a report put out by a top SEO firm, showed its own data on the ranking factors that Google is showing right now in their search results. Notice how high the correlation of social media (including Google +) activity they’re finding in the top-ranked websites across the web.

    Correlation Between Google rankings seo ranking factors for real estate investors - searchmetrics
    Surprising Google +1 Correlation: As part of a well-optimized website, Google +1’s are showing up more and more in top websites according to this report by SearchMetrics. But, don’t let this blind you from the other important factors that are just as important on your website.

    You’ll also notice that just in this one graphic there are many many more things that also are showing up in websites that rank high… so don’t take this article as telling you to go out and buy 100 Google +1’s from Fiverr and your website will rank well.

    That’s not the case.

    Google +1’s Aren’t The Only Answer Though…

    Yes, one of the first things we have our members do now on their websites is share their website with their friends and family to get some Google +1’s on their websites… which we make really easy with our built-in social media buttons that you can easily turn on or turn off.

    But we do that just to cover our bases.

    Your website still has to be built to… 

    • Have great content on the whole site that is optimized well for the search phrases sellers, buyers, tenants are typing into Google (which our system makes easier for you)
    • Engage the visitor to stay on your website and click around (which Google looks at as a ranking factor)
    • Have the elements in the actual website code that Google is looking for (which Carrot sites are built to be liked by Google from the ground up)
    • Have solid backlinks pointing to your website (which we have training showing you how to do this)

    All this to say… that there’s a lot that goes into getting your website ranked well in Google for search phrases motivated sellers, cash buyers, private lenders, tenants are typing into Google to find what you offer.

    Google +1 action is just one of the latest things we’re seeing the top-ranked websites have in common versus the websites that are ranked lower.

    So, How Can You Get More Google +1’s For Your Website?

    Again, don’t look at this as a quick “SEO fix”. It’s not.

    Getting some good social media “likes” is just one part of the puzzle to outrank your competition in Google for your real estate investing business.

    But here are some quick easy ways to get some more Google +1 action on your website to give it a better chance of ranking well in your market (if your site is built and optimized with the other SEO factors in mind. If not, take a look at InvestorCarrot to save yourself time and money). 

    1. Setup Facebook and Google + sharing buttons on your website (just put them on your homepage and your blog post pages).We_Buy_Houses_Houston-social shares
      You can have your web guy do this for you… or if you’re using WordPress and you want to keep hacking your own site together… grab a plugin and configure it.  This is all built into your InvestorCarrot websites and pre-configured so you don’t have to do anything at all.
    2. Create your own Google + account and go to your website, and click the “G+1” icon and while you’re there… hit the Facebook “Like” too
    3. Share your website with your friends and family via email and Facebook with the quick message below:”Hey [name], we’re starting to really grow our real estate investing business and have been working on our website [insert your URL here]. Can you check out my website and give me feedback? It would help a ton!- [your name] PS – While you’re there… can you scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Facebook Like” and “Google +1” buttons too?! It’ll help us out a ton. I’ll love ya forever! “Simple eh?
    4. Do the same thing with your colleagues at your local REIA, your workplace, etc. Get as many people in your network to G +1 your website

    That’s it.

    That should get you at least 10-20 likes and +1’s… and give you a great head start.

    What’s Next For You As A Real Estate Investor Trying To Rank Well In Google?

    First, keep an eye out for new changes from Google.

    It seems they come out monthly now.

    Make sure you’re subscribed to our blog for weekly updates just like this to help you get better results with your real estate investor websites… and by better results… we mean ranking better, converting higher, and getting more leads and deals.

    We send out weekly online marketing updates for real estate investors that’ll help you stay ahead of the competition.

    Last, focus on quality and focus on what you do best. 

    If you’re not a web guy, not an expert on SEO, and not an expert on conversion rate optimization… leave that up to someone else… or another system that makes it easier (or does it for you) like InvestorCarrot.

    The reason so many real estate investors are seeing such awesome success with Carrot is because we’re the experts in building websites that make it easier to attract high-quality visitors… and once the visitors get there, our websites convert higher than the average real estate investing website.

    Whatever you choose… get out there and focus on getting your website ranked higher whether it’s leveraging our tools or your own time and energy.  We have members generating dozens and dozens of leads per month and turning those into multiple deals per month… just from SEO.

    Search Engine Optimization has some of the highest return on investment around… it just takes some time and commitment to do the right things on your website to get yourself ranked higher.

    Hit me with your questions or just comments on what you’ve seen SEO wise in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!!!

  • Real Estate SEO Tips: Everything Investors Need to Know in Under 3 Minutes

    Real Estate SEO Tips: Everything Investors Need to Know in Under 3 Minutes

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes_key

    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 SEO Tips: What Investors Need to Know About SEO in Under 3 minutes

    Real Estate Investor SEO Tip #1:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.002
    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:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.003
    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:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.004
    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:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.005
    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:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.006
    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:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.007
    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:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.008
    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:

    real-estate-seo-tips-in-under-3-minutes.009
    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!

    Sign up now!
    Pssst… Carrot Members, don’t forget to register for this week’s Live Coaching Call <— click to sign up now

    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.

  • 14 Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Strategies

    14 Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Strategies

    real estate investor lead generation strategies

    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

    google organic we buy houses la rankings
    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.

    Our sites are written around some of the most frequently-searched keywords that generate >80% of the leads in most markets. We teach content marketing to real estate investors — so not only do you learn the top real estate investor keywords we use for our sites, our training teaches you how to generate leads from Google.

    Unexpected: Bing, Yahoo and “Off-Google” Search

    Carrot Members Ranking in Bing
    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.

    Fortunately, it’s super easy to optimize your Carrot site… we have the tools built right in, and we can help you rank high in your market.

    Unexpected: Optimize Yelp, Facebook… Everything

    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

    Learn how to drive leads to your site and build an audience with Facebook marketing.

    Expected: Craigslist for Real Estate Investors

    I love Craigslist, and I’ve gotten lots of real estate business from it. There are lots of investors crowding all over it in busy markets, often running very similar ads… and it’s still a great source of leads. It’s also free. Here’s tips on how to get Motivated Sellers from Craigslist, plus access to our Craigslist Posts-to-Profits training.

    [cta offer=”craigslist” color=”orange”]

    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.

    Expected: Bandit Signs and Bus Stops

    unexpected lead generation
    Source: BiggerPockets

    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.

    direct mail for real estate

    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”

    real estate investor lead generation door knocking

    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?

    Let us know… hit us up in the comments section below — and don’t forget to sign up for this weeks Live Coaching Call!

  • YouTube Real Estate Marketing Tricks: Video Optimization To Get Leads

    YouTube Real Estate Marketing Tricks: Video Optimization To Get Leads

    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!
    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:

    youtube-real-estate-marketing
    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.

    So make sure you sign up and register here!

    If you’re not already a member, sign up now to join Carrot… you’ll be glad you did.

    Let us know if that helps… we’d love to answer any questions you’ve got. Happy Marketing! :)

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