Search results for: “conversion”

The #1 Skill Your Real Estate Marketing Should Include Right Now
Your real estate marketing plan should be based on a powerful story – like the ones told by Windell Campbell, a great teacher, and puppeteer. Our trainings can help you learn how. Don’t worry, you don’t need to like kids or puppets… we do, but it’s not a requirement. ;) You’ve just gotta be willing to learn with us.

Does your real estate marketing tell a story, or are you just advertising?

After all, stories are the most powerful tool of communication, in business and in life.

Humans communicate best through stories. How good are your storytelling skills?

Besides reading this post, what are you doing to develop those skills?

If you’re like most of our members, you’re constantly learning and developing your skills. Most of our members joined because they knew we’d give ’em a website that converted way higher than the typical real estate investor website, but they didn’t really understand our highest value: teaching skills.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful skills you can possess.

You already know that marketing is an insanely valuable skill. Marketing brings leads, and leads bring revenue. That’s obvious.

But here’s the thing that most people don’t get about marketing: it’s all about telling a great story.

STOP! Before going further, take some time to listen to how Max Maxwell Leverages Online Real Estate Marketing and Inspirational Storytelling to Close 1 in 4 Leads

Behind every great brand is a powerful story that most consumers never see. Companies like Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola didn’t become household names because of their relentless pursuit of quality or their fantastic products – although those factors were certainly critical to their success.

Companies become known for their stories. A great brand story is behind every powerful piece of marketing you’ve ever seen. Every great ad, every flawless logo, every iconic image was all carefully planned to contribute to the way that consumers view that brand.

A powerful story actually creates the company’s identity, building up like thin coats of plaster, brushed on slowly, layer by layer to form a wall.

Think about how many times you’ve heard of Nike, Apple, or Coca-Cola – way too many to count, right?

Every time you heard that company’s name mentioned, it contributed to the story in your mind about that company.

Your brand’s story can be that powerful.

Sure, I know – you don’t have Coca-Cola’s marketing budget. But a powerful story travels, and it takes on a life of its own. A truly powerful story is one that can transform the lives of the people who hear it.

But think about it…
- Doesn’t it transform someone’s life to get rid of a property that has been plaguing them with problems?
- What’s it like for someone to finally get the burden of a pending foreclosure off of their back?
- What’s it like for someone to finally get through probate?
It’s a huge relief. It’s a life-changing experience. It is transformative.

Tell that story. Make your story connect people with your business.

Sure, we’ve done a lot of the hard work for you. When you launch one of our sites for Motivated Sellers, Cash Buyers and Private Lenders, or Rent to Own Tenants, you’re fully loaded with a ton of key components that help you tell visitors to your site a great story about your business.

But if you want to tell a truly powerful story, you’ve gotta get personal.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when preparing to tell your most powerful story:
- What are the toughest problems facing people who are looking for help from my business?
- How can my business change people’s lives?
- How can my business impact my communities?
- Why am I the exact right person to help?
- What experience do I have that allows me to relate to the person I’m trying to reach?
Those are really tough questions, no doubt. We’ve wrestled with them ourselves while building this business.

There’s a whole lot of benefit to be had in crafting a true story-based content marketing strategy around your Carrot site.

We’re here to help you learn how to tell your best story. We have powerful tools and trainings that help you hone your skills and grow your business… like our weekly Live Coaching Call.

We weave in all kinds of powerful tricks, tips, and techniques into an interactive, lively discussion with some of the top real estate minds in the country.

Some of the top real estate investors in the country are Carrot members, too – they show up on those calls each week because they’re here with us to learn and improve – just like you.

Storytelling is the most important skill that you can learn with us. It’s one of those skills that is considered to be a “mastery” skill – like leadership, music, or golf. You never really “master” those skills – you just keep improving, practicing, and developing them.

Sports legends like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan (when he was still pro) never stopped working to improve their top skill. If you’re dead set on success in real estate, you need to tell great stories.

After all, every negotiation is kinda like a story, isn’t it?

Think about it… you’re trying to convince the person on the other side of the table to tip things in your favor, aren’t you?

You want to get the best possible price when you’re buying or selling, right?

That’s the story you’ve gotta know how to tell.

But that’s a little later in the process.

When someone is first visiting your website, they are trying to find reasons not to trust you.

You have to give them reasons to believe that you know what you’re doing, and that you can help them with their problem.

If they don’t see that you can solve their problem, they won’t turn into a lead. They’ll leave the page, and call your competitor.

Even if they are trying to solve the wrong problem, they have to see the solution they believe will work.

That’s the secret to our high conversion rates, folks… they establish credibility, and they build trust.

They tell a powerful story.

But if you want the best results out of your business, the skill you have to improve is your storytelling.

Use your Carrot real estate website as a platform to tell your most powerful story.

We’re here to help.

Join up on Wednesday for our weekly Live Coaching Call.

Or if you’re not already a member, get on board – join us now.
September 2, 2014
How to Create Custom Real Estate Reports for Lead Generation
InvestorCarrot websites include some pretty cool Free Reports that will help you generate leads, plus you can create unlimited reports of your own to offer, too! Click the picture to sign up for Carrot right now, or keep reading to find out more about how to get great results from your Report Opt-Ins.

Real estate marketing: should it be based on data or stories?

The answer: Both.

Reports are a great example. A good report is full of credible data, but it also tells a story. A great report builds credibility that helps you get better results in your future negotiations.

So how do you use data to tell a great story that helps you improve your credibility?

Just keep reading. ;)

This post will tell you about the awesome Free Reports that are included with our sites to help you generate leads and conversions, plus I’ll let you know a few awesome tricks and tips to get even better results in your local market.

First off, here’s what’s included in our sites:

Motivated Seller Free Reports In Your System
- Selling To A Real Estate Investor (already inside of our motivated seller websites)
- 5 Ways To Stop or Avoid Foreclosure (already inside of our motivated seller websites)
Free Investor Reports In Your System
- Passive Income Investing Report (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites)
- Private Lending Report (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites)
If you’re already an InvestorCarrot Member, you can:

Brand and Customize Your Free Reports

If you want to edit / brand these free reports you can click here to gain access to the Microsoft Word document versions of these reports.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: These reports are the property of Carrot and are only for the use of active / paying InvestorCarrot members. As long as you’re an active InvestorCarrot member you can use these all you want! If you’re not an active InvestorCarrot member and would like to use our free reports, see our pricing and plans and sign up for a plan that’s right for you. All Copyright violators will be pursued.

Once you brand them…
1. “Save As PDF” to save them as a pdf
2. Upload them to your website(s) via the Media tab in your website dashboard
3. Update the download link on the download page on your website to point to this new PDF file
4. Save, and you’re done!
If you need help just hit us up on support or LIVE chat! We’re here for ya!

If you’re looking for an innovative way to stand out in your market, you should:

Create High-Value Free Reports for Your Market

You don’t even have to write these reports yourself.

Most of the time you can find a decent blogger in your local marketplace who is willing to work for cheap… plus, they might even be a good partner to help you drive traffic and build your lists. You never know til you look, right?

But what kind of Free Reports should you create?

I’ll let you know a few ideas for content that will help you reach your target audience.

Start with the end in mind. Who are you trying to reach?

1. Motivated Sellers.

What types of situations can you help solve?

There are countless examples of reports out there on what folks facing foreclosure, divorce, probate can do… so create one that’s specific to your market!

Localize it… check out the rules and regs in your market. Interview a couple of brokers, attorneys, title company reps, folks from local non-profits… shoot, interview anyone who might be able to add a few great local tips and resources for folks with distressed properties and make sure to cite ’em as a source. It will help boost your credibility (and grow your referral network) to include other local experts as sources in your report.

What does someone in your area need to know about the difficulties of selling in your market? Show sellers what you do for them in a transaction. If you can eliminate their hassles, you’ll earn their business.

Make sure your report has a compelling title, like “What _______ Area Sellers MUST Know Before Selling Property in 2014” that reflects the value you’re offering within that report.

If your report has a lot of great value within it, you’ll just have to list out the contents on a Lead Page and you’ll get great conversions from it. Just focus on creating high value with information that Motivated Sellers in your market should know, and you’ll end up with a great Free Report that will generate good leads for your business when you market it (more on that in a second).

2. Real Estate Buyers, Investors, and Lenders.

Can you provide deep insight and analysis for folks in your market who are investing in real estate?

(Or can you hire a good writer and analyst?)

If you can compile local market data, broken down by property type, from a few sources and show the different rates of return that local investors and real estate owners have been able to earn, chances are good you’re well on the way to delivering a very valuable report for your local real estate market.

Investors love data – and a Free Report is a great way to judge a potential partner for future business. After all, opting into a form is a pretty low-risk proposition… so if you can deliver even a decent basic overview of the past 5 years within your market, and perhaps some quotes from local media, brokers, and other sources of information… you’ll have high-quality content to offer.

And that’s the big goal here, folks… it’s all about high-quality content.

Our sites deliver some great Free Reports that you can customize and brand with your information, plus easy-to-implement Lead Pages to accompany each report. That’s included with every plan we offer.

But the best part – you can create unlimited amounts of Free Reports and Lead Pages on each site.

So get out there and start writing!

Or get ready to hire someone who can help you deliver a great Local Market Report.

Use Great Data and Tell Powerful Stories

If you can use data and stories to show folks how you’ll solve their real estate problems, you will win.

In this week’s Coaching Call, I’m going to let you show you exactly how easy this is to do… plus, I’ll show you some easy and free sources of data on your local market that you can use to start building an awesome, totally unique Free Report for your market…. and you’ll get a ton of great ideas that you can start implementing for your business right away.

I’ll even tell you how to turn your reports into Press Releases that get picked up by the local media… I’ve done it before for clients, and it’s the same techniques that have gotten me and my clients interviewed on the radio, by newspaper reporters, and filmed on television.

There is simply no better advertisement for your business than getting covered by the local media… the best part is that it’s totally free!

Much like our weekly Coaching calls… they’re free for our Members, at least.

So sign up for that call right now – I’m looking forward to telling you all about how to add some serious value to your business (and bottom line).

And if you’re not already a member… sign up now!
June 9, 2014
Video Marketing For Real Estate Investor Websites: Good Idea or Bad?
Video marketing can generate huge traffic and great conversions, or… it can suck the life right out of your message.

Welcome to another edition of the Carrot Test Kitchen… where we break down our recipes and show you how to create insanely great lead generation sites for your real estate business.

Today’s post will tell you how to set up a great, low-cost video marketing campaign that (if it’s done right) can really help move your business forward.

Fortunately, it’s really easy to add video to your InvestorCarrot site… and to get some great benefits from Google’s traffic at the same time.

In this post I’ll show you how to add video to your InvestorCarrot sites, plus give you a great example of a video to watch right now… and tell you what *not* to do.

First, why does video marketing matter to real estate investors?

Video marketing is particularly important for real estate investors, because when you use it properly, it can really help to grow your business.

Think of your video like an automated salesperson for your business… once you record that video, it can be played again and again to anyone who is looking for your services, day or night, on weekends and holidays… without the bother of an interrupting phone call, while eliminating the hassle of having to say the same thing again and again.

A great video is more than just a commercial for your business – it builds trust for a great beginning to your relationship with a new client.

A great YouTube marketing video sets the stage for negotiations by showing off your credibility and describing how you do business.

A truly great marketing video helps the viewer to trust you, like you, and want to do business with you.

On the flip side, a bad video can really turn people off.

If you’re showing your potential clients a cheesy video that’s heavily scripted with obvious sales language, loaded with stock photography and drowning in clip art, what are they supposed to think about you and your business?

To put it another way…

If you never show someone your own voice and use your own face, how are they supposed to trust you?

See, here’s where real estate investment is very different from a household product that’s advertised on the television.

If you’re selling something like shampoo or root beer, you don’t have to convince the consumer that you’re trustworthy or credible… just that the shampoo will bring you that silky, luxurious hair you’ve been wanting, or that this root beer will deliver more delicious flavor than any root beer they’ve ever had.

When you’re selling products, trust can really help… but it’s not essential.

But when you’re trying to convince someone to let you buy their property or sell them an investment, trust is utterly critical. It’s everything. Without trust, you don’t have a deal.

And yet I see so many real estate investment companies using these terrible little $5 videos they bought online, probably late at night after a few drinks… and now they’re probably wondering why no one is watching and why their business isn’t growing.

Would you want a $5 salesperson to represent your business?

In most big companies, the top salesperson is the second-highest-paid in the company… right after the CEO.

Sales is the life blood of businesses. Without sales, there is no revenue, and without revenue, your company will die.

Exactly why would you trust a $5 sales video with the life blood of your business?

Don’t get me wrong… I don’t think you need to spend a ton of money on making a video in order for it to be effective.

In fact, we’ve found that most real estate customers are turned off by flashy marketing loaded with gimmicks. They really are just looking for a credible, trustworthy person to help them take care of business.

You really don’t need to do more than just talk into a webcam to make a decent sales video.

These few things will help you to make a great video marketing piece:
- High quality audio (i.e. a great microphone)
- High quality video (i.e. a decent camera)
- Good lighting
- Nice setting
- Clean editing
You can find someone in most cities who already has the equipment and pay them for a few hours of help… generally under $500 can get you a handful of pretty good short videos.

If you’ve got the budget you should definitely be hiring great people to make your videos even better.

Want to see an example of a decent low-cost marketing video?

Check this out:

They’ve got almost 10,000 views on that video, wow!

Their other video has a more reasonable view count – 352.

What I like about this couple is that they’re showing off themselves – sure, they’ve dressed up to film the video and put on their best smiles, but it’s genuine and authentic.

Side note – I checked out their site, and there are a lot of reasons their site won’t get very many conversions… it’s got good credibility, but it makes it hard for folks to sign up for the offer… those folks need to Watch the InvestorCarrot Demo and make the switch! Any of our affiliates know these folks and want to sign them up? :~)

But they did the smart thing of actually using the description on YouTube to pull traffic over to their site by using links and a lot of the most commonly used search terms. Since Google owns YouTube, the videos will show up at the top of the search (even if their site isn’t ranked that high), so this can be a great way to get traffic to your site

Plus, it looks like they got a few of their friends to comment and share the video (which helps to boost credibility/

Those are all really great video marketing practices!

Now let me show you how easy it is to add a video to your InvestorCarrot site from YouTube.

First, get the video up on YouTube and copy the link to the video.

In another window, open up the post or page where you want to embed the video.

Then click the snazzy little “Embed Video” button.

This nifty little window will pop up, and just paste the YouTube (or Vimeo) link into the form.

That’s it! How simple was that?

If you’ve got any questions: A full tutorial is available for Carrot Members here.

And if you’re not already a Carrot Member, check out the reasons you should be! Watch our Demo Video right now!
April 21, 2014
Big Announcement: InvestorCarrot is now Rebranding to InvestorTurnip To Capture The Rising Trend Of Turnip Interest Online

NOTE: 4/2 – APRIL FOOLS! – Thanks for with us on our April Fools gag. It was a blast! Some people really loved the new “branding”… some thought we were off our rockers! But everyone had a blast with it. Of course Carrot is going NOWHERE and we’re excited at the future of InvestorCarrot and our customers :-) Now… 364 more days to plan next years April fools… ;-)

For the past year, our team over here at Carrot has been working hard to help you grow your real estate businesses… and have fun doing it. We’ve grown from zero customers to well over 500 active members now… and growing each and every week.

Yes, we’ve had some stumbles as we’ve grown and some growing pains… but we’re proud to say that we’re starting to make our little dent in the universe one Carrot member at a time. We literally get testimonials and stories from our members every single day talking about how Carrot has literally changed their businesses.

In fact, here’s another deal that one of our awesome customers closed this week because of leads she got from her InvestorCarrot websites (way to go Britt!!!!).

NOTE: See her comment in that post on where she says all of her leads come from. Online in her case = InvestorCarrot. We love it!

With All Of The Deals, Leads, Great Conversions, Fun Carrot Bud Shares… It’s Time For A Change.
Our Carrot staffer April Phouls doodling the heck outta our whiteboard to map out our bigger better future. See the full whiteboard here
Around the start of 2014 we really got to looking at things.

We looked at the future of Carrot as a company, a product, our customers needs and goals… and saw things in a bigger brighter future.

We mapped out our next “evolution” of Carrot as a brand… a product… and a force to help change the world… and in the end, decided that with a huge strategy shift… should come a fresh new brand identity to usher in this new era here at our company.

Announcing Our New Name: Turnip (InvestorTurnip). Yep, that’s right… let’s “Turn It Up With Turnip!“

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

First off, why?

Why turnip? Wasn’t Carrot just perfectly fine?

Well, we didn’t come to this decision lightly. We really loved (and still do) the Carrot name.

Our members have come to love the Carrot Bud (our mascot) sightings… getting a random Carrot gift in the mail when you do something cool with our company… and the all around great feeling you get when you see the color Orange all over the place.

We get it. We loved “InvestorCarrot”.

But we’re all about staying ahead of the curve.

Whether it’s keeping our technology at the cutting edge so you as our customer stay at the cutting edge… or continually providing epic training to help you stay sharp…

… and we did some research and noticed that the brand of carrots in general (the vegetable) has remained stagnant over recent years… while the brand of turnips has actually increased in popularity with Americans.

Since we’re all geeky with Google search data… we ran some reports and found that Google Trends shows that turnips have really grown in popularity over carrots in the past decade. See the chart below from Google Trends.

And we don’t want to have our brand attached to a “dying” vegetable.

Turnips are the future. And InvestorTurnip is your future.

The Growing Popularity of the Turnip: Are Carrots dying? We’re not going to wait around to find out.

Further Research That Helped Shape Our Rebranding Decision

When I initially came up with the “InvestorCarrot” brand back in late 2012… I really loved the ring of the name “Carrot”.

But I really didn’t do any “market research” on people’s perception of the Carrot.

Once I saw the startling data above (that Carrots are losing popularity to Turnips) I decided to actually do the right thing this time around… and put in some time in market research. As we all know, your brand can be HUGE in how people perceive you.

Name a shoe company “Slow Shoes”… and you’re dead in the water. But “Air Jordans”… and the sky is the limit.

So surprisingly, once I got out there and started asking around and doing “blind taste tests”… I started to see the same.

In fact, at my daughters pre-school we ran a taste test with a bunch of 3 – 5 year olds... kids who have grown up on “Go-Gurt” (is that even real yogurt? I’m still not sure… ) and baby carrots (kids these days don’t even know what a real carrot actually looks like! They think they all grow to be just “baby carrots”)… as you can see in the picture below…

Turnips beat out carrots by a wide margin in this taste test

Little Henry munching on a little turnip. Kid tested and kid approved!

Kids are our future… and if this company wants to stay relevant and “on the cutting edge”… we feel that by getting on the turnip bandwagon before the majority of American’s realize there’s even a band wagon to get on… we’ll be setting a trend and get a lot of early adopters who just like to be the “first” to do the new cool thing

We feel that turnips are iN…

… and Carrots are on the way out.

We found some interesting facts about the turnip that we really loved too… check them out on the Turnip Wikipedia page. I think you’ll find them pretty darn awesome too.

How Does This Affect You As A Carrot / Turnip Member?

First off, if you’re already an InvestorTurnip member (all members have been migrated to our new InvestorTurnip platform effective today) you don’t have to do anything.

Just toss out the Carrot Bud doll if you were lucky enough to get one (or save it as a collectors item and sell it on ebay someday)… and we’ll soon be coming out with our new “Terry the Turnip” mascot dolls… and our new Turnip t-shirts that are almost done with production. More on that soon.

There are a couple things you’ll need to do though before your Carrot account is fully operational on our new InvestorTurnip account.

Follow the quick steps below today and lets usher in the new era and welcome in our new brand identity of InvestorTurnip!

Step 1: Post a quick comment below (and “like” this post) and let us know about your excitement for the new branding! Research shows you’re bound to love it! But we’d love to hear. Comment below!

Step 2: Just so you’re up on the “latest” turnip factoids (and the surprising but true meaning of the word “turnip”… head over to the wikipedia turnip page << Check it out

Step 3: We haven’t 100% committed to the whole “InvestorTurnip” brand yet, our lawyers (dontcha love ’em?) are looking into any possible trademark infringements or other legalities that may prevent us from going all “turnip” on ya. So keep a look out for future announcements.

March 31, 2014
REVEALED: Your Real Estate Website is NOT Responsive? You’re Losing Up To 40% Of Your Leads

This is a Carrot Test Kitchen post – that’s where we break down the secrets of lead generation (building traffic & converting) to help YOU grow your real estate investment business.

UPDATED 2/24/14 with thanks to Chris Clothier from memphisinvest.com and new screenshots.

Is your real estate investor website mobile responsive? Having a responsive real estate investor website is important because of the types of devices users now have access to. If your website is not responsive then you need to find a template that is…quick.

In other words… Does your real estate investing website automatically adapt for the screen on the device that your customer is using to look great to the customer so they engage in your website more easily? Responsive optimized real estate investing websites are critical.

(Try our free test to instantly see how your website looks on mobile devices <— Click here)

Every year the % of searches online with mobile devices (cell phones, ipads, etc.) is growing… which means more and more of your website visitors are viewing your website on their phone! Is your website setup *correctly* to handle that? See how below…

Even though a huge amount of internet use is taking place on tablets, mobiles and other devices, a frightening amount of real estate investor websites aren’t responsive for mobile users.

Smartphone visits account for a huge share of the growth of the internet.

People are using their mobile devices more frequently for local search – and that matters a lot for real estate investors.

Google says that 40% of mobile searches are local in nature, which seems obvious once you think about it. People are using their phones to access information while they’re out and about. That trend is going to continue rising, and fast.

If your real estate website is set up to convert well, it can easily capture leads from someone who is searching while stuck in their car, waiting in line, or killing a few spare minutes before a meeting.

Plus, more and more people ditch getting a full on computer for their house and just use their cell phone to browse the internet and check their email.

Too many real estate investor websites are losing huge amounts of conversions just by not being ready for them.

So back to the main question…

If you’re not, you should be checking out the InvestorCarrot demo video right now.

But don’t worry… you’re not alone on optimizing for a responsive real estate investing websites.

I’ll use an example from a really smart and successful investor now – just to show that even great real estate investors aren’t optimized for mobile.

This guy has already been named to Inc’s 500 list and is one of Tennessee’s fastest growing businesses, so he’s doing a lot of things right. He’s working really hard to build an awesome business, and it shows.

((My thanks to Chris Clothier from memphisinvest.com – I just spoke to him about using his site as an example… and he’s right, it would have been more polite for me to ask permission first… I have never been good at asking first, but I’m trying to get better, so here’s my apologies along with my thanks to him for being a good sport.))

His site’s template isn’t responsive… it doesn’t automatically adjust the layout to make it easier for mobile phone users, which may or may not (depending on their device) be able to play the video on his home page.

His site’s menus will be very difficult to use on a touch screen, and chances are good that he’ll lose any mobile users who may have been interested in his products and services.

Just to be fair, Chris does have a nice looking website – here’s a desktop photo below.

There’s a few things I’d change to make it convert better, make it mobile optimized (obviously) and things like adding a first-step opt-in form to capture email addresses right on the front page before going to a longer form (that’s a feature we’ve used to get huge conversion rates on our cash buyer sites, but I’ll save that for another post).

Most important takeaway for sites like Chris’: make an offer on the front page with a short form to capture basic info. If someone only has a few moments to access your site, make it very simple and clear. Chris is primarily targeting investors, so access to investment properties or a free report would probably convert well right on that main site.

Here’s an example of one of our mobile optimized real estate investor sites that’s converting really well with a clear call to action:

As you can see, the call to action is clear and they’re taking some basic contact info on the main page… once a buyer opts in, that person will be taken to a second page that collects just a little more information on the buyer… that’s a opportunity to qualify accredited investors who are willing to “raise their hands” during that second step of the process.

Now let’s see how that translates to the mobile optimized screen:

As you can see above, the page has automatically changed its layout… because the site is mobile optimized, like all InvestorCarrot sites. There is a clear call to action at the top that is easily legible and clickable: “Join our Hot Properties List Here”, plus a “navigation” menu and the ability to keep scrolling.

Here’s what the navigation menu looks like when clicked:

As you can see, the choices fill the screen so it’s easy for a mobile user to click the options (instead of having to pull-zoom and click really small links, which usually ends up in a frustrated user… and frustrated users don’t opt-in, they leave.

And if a visitor to the site scrolls down past the navigation menu, they’ll get to an easy form to get access to the properties:

As you can see, the Call to Action at the bottom is clear and it fills up the screen, plus the form is short – only 4 choices, easy to fill out on a mobile device. This website will help convert mobile visitors into actual customers and leads… not bounce them away in frustration.

Want to see how your site looks on mobile devices?

Ready to take your business to the next level?

Get a mobile responsive lead generation machine launched in just minutes:

Sign up for InvestorCarrot ← Watch the demo now!

February 24, 2014
[Real Estate Heat Map Results] Where Are Sellers Clicking On Your Real Estate Website

This article is the first in our Carrot Test Kitchen series – it’s a series of posts that help you to dissect the secret recipes we use to generate thousands of leads for real estate agents and investors across thousands of websites around the USA.

Ever heard of “real estate heat maps”? We’ll show you how motivated sellers interact with your website and how to make your website more effective…

Are you putting lots of effort into building a high-converting real estate website to pull in buyers, sellers or investors… but not getting the results you want?

There are two main problems that we often see on real estate sites:

1)   The site is getting no visitors, and

2)   The site’s visitors aren’t submitting their information.

The first problem is usually solved with SEO content when:

1)   The site doesn’t have good content,

2)   The content is not optimized to reach the search terms that people in the local market are actually using, or

3)   The site’s competitors are ranking higher in a search.

There are quite a lot of other tricks to boost traffic to your site, and we’ll be talking about that again real soon…. But today, I want to help you out with the second main problem we see:

What are people doing on your real estate website?

It’s critical that the design of your site is set up to actually convert visitors to leads.

Although it’s utterly crucial, conversions are often overlooked when average people are putting together their websites. Too often they hire designers who are obsessed with aesthetics… rather than results.

Those folks need to quit calling themselves marketing experts… because they’re artists. Most art doesn’t sell. It hangs there, looking pretty… but it’s not selling your business.

Are you trying to create art, or are you trying to get real estate leads?

Listen, I get in this argument with designers a lot… so please don’t send me a bunch of angry emails about how design matters… I know it matters. It’s just that it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty… it matters if it works. Like with my accountant – I don’t care if my accountant is pretty, I care about what happens if I get audited.

When you’re setting up your real estate site, it’s not how it looks… it’s how it works.

That’s the really cool thing about real estate heat maps – one of the many tools that we use at Carrot to test out our theories of web design… because we don’t even trust ourselves – we want to know that our system is built on proven data about what works before we commit your hard-earned cash – and more importantly before you shift the marketing of your business to our system. We know your business is super important to you… just like ours is to us.

So what’s a real estate heat map anyway, and how can you use it to generate more leads online???

Back to the point, thanks… in this context, a heat map is a generated picture of where visitors to the website move their mouse and where they click on the page.

Below I’m gonna put a few examples of a heat map that we generated for a user’s site, and give you a few key points on what works so well on this design.

Brittany sent us a quick email after watching one of our webinars, asking for help getting more leads… we were able to double her conversion rate with just a couple of simple changes that I’ll get to soon.

Check out these heat maps (the site is greyed out, with little points of light showing where people have lingered with their mouse or clicked – the “hotter” the click spot, the more often it’s clicked).

What did you notice on that heatmap?

See all of the bright spots? The Orange and Yellow spots are where a lot of people click… indicating things that the motivated sellers felt were really important.

…94% of clicks happen on the top of the page…

First off, 94% of clicks happen on the top of the page. The vast majority of web visitors to any given site don’t bother to scroll down – in fact, they make the decision to stay or go on to another site within 2.3 seconds.

Side note: That statistic is valid across websites in general – on our investment sites, we tend to get about 8 seconds per page on average – 4 times more engagement than average, but still a lightning-fast choice to stay or go. You only have microseconds to reach your target audience – just another reason that your content and design matter so much.

There are a few great lessons to learn right away from this click map….

1)   People are clicking in many spots. The clicks aren’t just happening in one spot… visitors to this real estate website are clicking through to find information that answers their questions. The site is designed to appeal to a specific audience (sellers), so it’s validating to know that different visitors to the site are finding what they’re looking for on the site – and then submitting their information.

2)   Titles matter a lot. Check out the title of the top menus – these titles are designed to appeal directly to people who need to sell. “We buy houses in Baltimore”, “Get A Cash Offer”, “Sell My House Fast” and a contact form right on the front page that asks people to put in their address, phone, and email first thing.

3)   Customers want to know about the company before they submit their info. Check out how red the spot over the testimonials is – not only are people clicking a lot on that page, but they’re thumbing through the testimonial mini-display on the bottom right of the page. Testimonials are a huge way to create credibility for your business… more on that in a minute.

Where is your credibility on your own real estate website?

It’s a really common problem that hurts a ton of great real estate agents and investors… when people get to the site they need to have a compelling reason to give over their personal information. Think about it… real estate is the largest investment most people ever make in their lives. There’s no piece of real estate more intimate than someone’s home.

And yet…

So many real estate sites don’t build trust or credibility.

In fact, there are 3 key factors that I wanna mention that are critical to successfully designing a site that converts – and I’ll tell you how we’ve used them to design the Carrot sites like this example that are generating great leads.

Credibility, Content, and Contact

Check out this graphic – I’ve broken down the links on the page into numbers, so you can see the percentage of page visitors that clicked on each link or form.

Even more great lessons here…

As you can see, 33% of the clicks are for Credibility, 24% is on the Content (which is written to develop trust and credibility while reducing the fear and anxiety that most people who need to sell now are feeling), and 43% of the clicks on the home page are actually converting – they’re contacting members using the forms.

Now, keep in mind that the percentages are recording just clicks on the home page – a lot of other conversions happen on the lead pages that we’ve optimized for the local market. That means that people are most often giving their info over to get a free report or another valuable tool… 43% of the clicks on the home page isn’t always the main source of leads. It just depends on how the site is being promoted, and where the majority of traffic is directed.

I really want to emphasize that the mix of those 3 factors is critical to a successful lead generation site.

Content pulls people through search engine traffic, but it has to create Credibility once people arrive… or they just won’t Contact you.

BONUS: 1 Minute Tweak That Doubled The Conversion Rate To Leads

One more thing… I promised that I’d tell you the simple fix that we did on this page that doubled conversions… it’s so crazy simple that we were totally surprised that it worked so well.

We increased the size of the bar that says “Click to Continue” on the opt-in form and changed the color to Orange.

Yup, that’s it.

When this Carrot member got in touch, her site was converting well… but she’d made the size of the Continue button pretty small and black… so we ran a split test – half of the visitors to the site saw the small button, and the other half saw the larger button (we also changed the color to yellow).

In just one month of running the test, visitors to the large-button site submitted their info twice as much as those who saw the small button. Wow!

Even after doing this stuff for years, it’s crazy to see what a big difference such a small change can make.

That’s why we’re constantly testing different sites. We love to learn the nitty-gritty details that make all the difference… we don’t rely upon assumptions, and we certainly don’t make our websites to be pretty – although we do think they look nice. Most important – we design them to be effective.

For marketing folks who love data, real estate heat maps are a fantastic tool.

This Is All Built Into Your Carrot Websites Already!

The beauty with everything we walked through in this post is that everything is already baked right into your Carrot websites. We’re constantly running tests with our members and making tweaks to improve how well our system works for you.

We get paid up to $6,000/mo by large companies to do this same kind of work for them… but you get this as part of your Carrot membership for no extra cost. Why? Simply because we believe in results over anything else and are continually improving our system to help you get better results.

Keep An Eye Out For More Articles Like This!

We’ll be posting lots more info on the tips, tricks, and techniques we use to improve SEO, conversions, and get great results for Carrot customers… so if you’re not already getting our emails, make sure you sign up now! And if you want a website that truly generates leads for your business, go check out our different member plans to join Carrot and leverage our marketing knowledge and testing to generate more leads for your own real estate investing company.

Not An Carrot Member? Take A Tour Of Our System >>

January 20, 2014
9 Ways to Boost Your Real Estate Investing Website Credibility
In a field with low entry barriers and many unethical operators, a credibility-focused real estate investing website is essential for standing out and convincing motivated sellers, cash buyers, and private lenders to choose your company over competitors.

Key Takeaways
- Show real people behind your company through photos, names, and bios, as hiding personal information damages credibility and reduces conversion rates.
- Highlight your expertise and make it easy for prospects to contact you through the “big three” contact methods: phone number, email, and mailing address.
- Borrow credibility from respected sources by showcasing testimonials from established companies, logos of organizations you’ve worked with, and featuring any media mentions.
Implementing at least seven of the nine credibility-building website elements will put you ahead of 90% of your competition and significantly increase prospect trust, leading to more closed deals and business growth.

Table of Contents
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So, how do you boost your real estate investing website credibility?

Real estate investing is one of those professions where the entry barriers for new investors are so low… there are lots of unethical investment companies out there giving real estate investors a bad name.

So, how do you stand out above the crowd… and make it so that when a motivated seller, cash buyer, or private lender finds your website… they feel compelled to work with you?

First…

Importance Of Building Credibility (and how to do it with your website)

It goes without saying… that today consumers have more options than ever. If you’re a motivated seller going into foreclosure… or a private lender doing your research… one of the first things you’ll look at after you hear of a company is THEIR WEBSITE to see if they are real.

Our society is an internet society now. Just look at the phone book and newspapers… those businesses are in decline… while internet news sources and directories are on the rise. People go to the internet to research companies they’re getting ready to work with.

So, what will a private lender prospect or motivated seller see when they search for you online? Will they even visit a website? If not, people immediately think, “They don’t have a site… are they a real company?”.

If you have a website that doesn’t have the 9 elements below... that could be even worse. Is your website harming your credibility (if I had to guess, I’d say probably 60%+ are).

If people don’t feel comfortable that they want to work with you within the first 2 minutes of being on your website… odds are you’ll lose that business.

So, here are 9 ways to boost your real estate investing website credibility.

See How Carrot Works How many deals are you losing to your competitor’s website?
See How Carrot Works

9 Ways to Boost Your Real Estate Investing Website Credibility

Stanford University did a study called the “Web Credibility Research” project. Stanford compiled 10 elements that your website should address that can either make or break your credibility as an investor… we’ve consolidated them into 9 elements that, without them… your credibility (and profits) are likely suffering. See how many of these your real estate investing company website is doing well:
1. Show that you’re real people behind your company – Most investors we work with to help them build their online presence for their real estate business are hesitant to put too much personal information on their site. They don’t want their name, picture, bio… anything… on the site. If this is you too… it’s hurting your credibility and results. Ask yourself this… do you like it when you’re on a website, and you can see the actual faces of the people behind the company? Yes, we all do. It increases conversions and leads.
2. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site – A lot like #1, your website visitors land on your website with their scam detector running in full force. They want to know that they can trust you to help them solve their problem (save them from foreclosure or get better returns, etc.). How do you do that? A short bio on your site, again… a picture of you and your team (we teach our members ways to build credibility even if you haven’t done deals or don’t have a team), testimonials are a biggie, etc.
3. Highlight the expertise your company has – Over half of the investors, we work with feel that they don’t have enough “experience” in real estate to put on their site. But, once we dig… they usually have a lot more experience that makes them qualified to provide great solutions to buyers, sellers, and investors than they think. Anything that you feel helps you in your real estate business qualifies. One gal had never done a real estate deal herself… but she was an executive assistant to a mega investor in New York for years, was a certified Draftsman, and had managed rehabs for another investor for a couple of years… that’s an experience that should be on your website. Or, heck… even if you’re just getting started… leverage the knowledge you’ve gained in your education or your mentors’ experience for now. Bottom line… if you don’t feel you have enough experience related to being able to help your clients reach their goals… then you should rethink your decision to be an investor (or go out and get that experience).
4. Make it easy for people to contact you – Simple. Obvious. But overlooked. Have the “BIG THREE.” Phone number, email, and mailing address on your site. It gives people a feeling that you’re not a fly-by-night operation… and easy to get in touch with if they have a question or problem. You can get a free phone number from Google Voice, and a professional mailing address from your local mailbox store if you don’t have one.
5. Design your site so it looks professional and clean – Who likes to land on a website that looks like a 12-year-old made it in 1998? Find a nice clean design with lots of whitespace on the site… with crisp, clean graphics. It doesn’t have to be fancy… or flashy. In fact, flashy isn’t a good thing.
6. Make your site easy to use and useful – Easy to use = not too many links on your site. Give people a few options… don’t confuse them. Useful = providing great content on your website that helps your visitor solve their problem. Your motivated seller site targeted at assisting people in stopping foreclosure could have a FAQ on the foreclosure process, free guides on helping them to stop foreclosure, information on how your company works with homeowners, etc. Give them great information… it builds massive trust.
7. Update your website content often – Have you ever gone to a website and seen somewhere on the site where it said the last blog post was done ten months ago? Or when you read the site, and it references old, outdated information? This is a credibility killer. Update your site regularly. We teach our Carrot members our process for creating great blog posts, optimizing those posts for Google rankings, and making it so easy that you never have to think about what to write about next. It’s simple when you have the right process and system for your content. But, aim for a new blog post every week if you can… once a month minimum (not only does this help for credibility, but it also helps your search rankings and leads!)
8. Avoid typos and errors – Enough said.
9. Borrow credibility from other sources – A great way to build credibility on your site is to borrow it from other credible sources. Have you been on a website and said “As Seen On TV” or “As Seen On Google”… or a site that has a quote from a famous and respected person? That’s all “borrowed credibility.” If you work with a real estate agent from, let’s say… Century 21… get a testimonial from them and ask permission to put the Century 21 logo on the site as a “company we’ve worked with.” Can you imagine the credibility that’ll give you in a website visitor’s eyes when they see the symbols of companies they know and respect on your site?
So, how many of those 9 credibility builders for your real estate investing website are you doing on your website?

If you’re doing 5 or more… you’re ahead of the curve.

7 or more… you’re doing better than 90% of your competitors.

All 9? You’re crushing it and should be teaching this lesson alongside us :-)

Action Plan To Boost Your Real Estate Investing Website Credibility

Real estate investor websites can be a huge tool in building credibility, or they can harm your credibility. If you currently have a website, pick 3 of the 9 elements above and implement them on your website this week. If you don’t have a website, make a commitment to get online this week, but keep credibility in mind as you do so.

Of course, we’d love for you to work with Carrot (and we have many of these 9 elements already designed into our website templates), but if you’re still on the fence, here are what we consider the 10 Best Real Estate Website Builders.

Have more questions? Book a sales call, we’re always happy to chat!
October 11, 2012
What No One Tells You About Designing a High Converting Real Estate Investing Landing Page
Ok, so you’re knee-deep in real estate investing and now you want to start to generate a cash buyers list.

Do you drive them to your main real estate investor website and hope they punch in their information to join your cash buyers list… or do you learn how to set up a real estate investing landing page (some people call them squeeze pages or lead pages)???

The answer is both… but if you really want to generate a lot of cash buyer leads for your real estate investing business you’ll want to set up what we call “Lead Pages.” In this post we’ll show you why landing pages work, we’ll show you real estate landing page examples, and show you how to get your own landing pages up and online quickly.

Why Real Estate Investing Lead Pages Work

Landing pages have been used online for a decade or so… evolving each year it seems to add in some fancy flashy new gizmo to help increase conversions. You’ll see videos on many landing pages, pictures, audio, some are fancy looking… others really plain and simple. In the end, it doesn’t matter what a landing page looks like… as long as it converts visitors to leads for your business.

Without cash buyer leads you can’t sell your houses. Without selling (or wholesaling) your houses… you can’t cash checks.

Without cashing checks… well… you can’t eat. Not fun.

Lead Pages (or as people call them, real estate investing landing pages or squeeze pages) have one goal and one goal only: To provide (solutions) value in exchange for a website visitor’s contact information so you can follow up with them. A good squeeze page doesn’t have a bunch of links, not a lot of options, etc.

The Anatomy of A Landing Page

I’m not going to spend a ton of time on laying out the anatomy of a real estate investing landing page because they’re really pretty simple. But first, a few questions you probably are thinking right now:
- Is there a specific design that always works the best?
- How can we tell if a landing page is really working well?
- What do I use to build my own real estate lead pages?
First, NOPE, there isn’t a specific design that always works the best. What works really well for your real estate investing business and your market may not work as well as another design (or message) on another real estate investor’s website. But, there are elements that usually work well.
1. A clear and concise headline at the top of the page
2. A short description of what they’re about to get in exchange for their email address
3. A few bullet points listing out benefits of what they’ll get when they “opt-in”
4. An opt-in (a box where people can put their information in and submit it to you)
Really, those are the only elements that are extremely important and pretty much are needed on any landing page. Yes, you can use pictures and videos… but definitely test the video versus just the text with no video… because you’d be surprised that often the one with just the text (no video, unless the video is killer) usually works better. Which is good news for you.

Here are some real estate investing landing page examples below that have worked pretty darn well. (NOTE: All content on the example lead pages below is copywrited and cannot be used without permission. They’re for reference only so you can see the structure and look/feel of solid landing pages for the real estate market)

Example 1: Very simple page, lots of whitespace on the page, offering a free guide to the visitor. Opt-in box on the right.

Example 2: An education based cash buyer generating lead page. Uses credibility from a well-known person to relay the message.

Example 3: Simple looking page as well. Simple headline, image of what they’re getting, and opt-in form to the right

(all of the lead forms above are pre-built forms professionally copywritten that Carrot members get to use as members… in addition to being able to create an unlimited number of custom Lead Pages saying whatever you want them to say, inside your account. Learn more about the Carrot website marketing systems)

Example 4: A cash buyer page we came across online that looks great and I’m sure works well (since they’re sending paid advertising to it). Notice the structure of the page is essentially the same as the above 3… but with fancier graphics.

The reason we’re showing those real estate lead page examples is mainly so you can start to learn why things work… rather than just copying things without knowing why you’re copying.

We’re all about the whole “teach a man to fish” thing… so you understand why things work so you can take full control over your own marketing… but we also like to make things easier for you with our Carrot software that will help you set up your lead pages for you.

Is My Landing Page Working Well?

As far as being able to tell if your landing page for your real estate investing website is working well… there are a couple of ways. The simplest… is if you’re getting leads.

Are you getting anyone to put in their info and send it to you? If so, it’s working. Now, if you want to make it work better… you have to “test”. It sounds fancy… but all testing is, is tracking how many people visit your page versus how many actually “opt-in” (put their info into your opt-in form).

So, if you have 100 people that have seen your page and 20 have put their info in… it is converting at 20%. Now all you need to do is get some software that helps you track that.

Google Analytics has free tools that will help you do it, or our Carrot website lead generation system has a built-in conversion rate tracker on all of your forms so you can see exactly which ones are working the best.

What Do I Use To Build My Own Real Estate Landing Page?

It really depends on the skills or budget you have.

If you have money to put into the project... hire a web developer who has a LOT of experience in generating leads online and knows everything inside and out about creating lead pages that work.

As a warning, 98% of web developers have no clue what converts… many will say they do. Always get references, have them show you actual pages with conversion numbers… and make sure they know how to use tools like Google Analytics so they can help you put in conversion tracking so you know if their pages are working.

You should be able to get a solid lead page created for under $200 by a competent web developer to get the page set up… then whatever they charge after that to set up the Google Analytics, graphics, make changes to the page as you test, etc.

Overall, over a period of a year, you can probably have a solid web guy do this for you for under $700 a year.

If you’re on a really tight budget and plain and simple absolutely have no cash to invest in a solid lead page system… you can “swipe” other pages, learn HTML so you can customize the HTML page, then put it on your own hosting account.

This will probably take 3-4 hours of your time if you know some HTML, or a few days minimum if you don’t know HTML yet.

It’s not really hard HTML, but I can say with experience that I’ve wasted more than a few days hacking away at HTML that I’m terrible at

Blowing more time and money in the end because I was just trying to “save” some cash. But, if you absolutely have no money to invest… this will be your only route.

If you have a small budget but want a professional result that works… find a real estate investing website system like Carrot that has cutting-edge real estate investing specific lead pages in the system. Look for something that has simple-looking Lead Pages (simple is better) and that is flexible.

The worst thing is when you’re tied to a specific design and specific content that you can’t change. Make sure you can edit the content on your Lead Pages so you have full control. In addition, make sure the system tracks the traffic to your lead pages and shows you conversion rates so you’re not in the dark.

Last, make sure there are several options on where the leads go after they opt into your Lead Pages.

If you use a system like Aweber (the email marketing system we use) you’ll want your lead pages to integrate for free with Aweber. Carrot will let you use your Aweber forms, MailChimp forms, or our custom form system on your Lead Pages… and it’s crazy easy.

How To Get Your Own Real Estate Landing Pages For Your Website

I just went over what a Lead Page is (or squeeze page), why they work for real estate investing businesses, what good ones look like, and 3 options on getting your real estate investing lead page up and online.

So, what do you do now?

First, if you don’t have a Lead Page and you’re a wholesaler in real estate… you NEED ONE. I’ve personally built very targeted cash buyers lists well over 500 buyers 100% online via a squeeze page… it works really well and you’re essentially leaving money on the table if you’re not using them.

Next, decide your budget, skills, and even more important… how valuable your own time is worth. People try to save money by hiring things like this out cheap (thinking any web guy will know how to create a landing page that works) or they try to learn it all themselves in the name of “saving money”.

If you don’t already know HTML (if you don’t know what HTML is, I’d highly suggest you don’t do it yourself) then you’re going to be investing a lot of your own time and energy that you should be spending actually finding deals and making offers.

In the time you learn HTML and hack away at things yourself you could have potentially done a deal that pays you $5k – $20k (which would more than pay for a solid lead page system).

Usually, the option that makes the most sense is to piggyback on a lead page system that already works and that you can have full control over whether you know HTML or not. Of course, we’re pretty darn bias to our own real estate investor website lead generation system… you should check it out and see if it’s right for you. But, there are other systems out there too that you may look at.
August 1, 2012

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