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This Real Estate Agent Doubled Her Closings + Increased Website Traffic By 227%

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In 2019, Shemeika Fox doubled her number of closings. But it wasn’t by sheer luck… it was by clear-cut strategy and intentional action. She’s marketing her business in ways that most real estate agents never even consider, and because of that, she’s cutting through the clutter in her competitive market. Just before that success, though, Shemeika was tired and frustrated — she was on the hamster wheel of business, sweating for every single lead. She knew something needed to change. And that’s when she made these five key shifts in her thinking and her marketing. 1. Mindset Shift: From Hunting To Farming Entrepreneurs are great at getting up early and working late. There’s a ceasless motivation that drives entrepreneurs, and while that’s an important quality for success, it’s also not sustainable. Ask any ex-entrepreneur why they got a day-job and they’ll probably tell you that they worked too hard and too long for too little payback. That’s because most entrepreneurs hunt for their closings. They pay for advertisements, ask for referrals, send direct mail, follow-up, and cold call. But here’s the thing: the moment that you stop doing those things… the leads stop flowing. Which means that the only way to generate more leads or to keep generating leads at all it to keep working harder and longer… to keep hunting. But what about a farmer? A farmer is different than a hunter. They plant seeds, nurture those seeds, and then reap the benefits of their careful attention. Sure, it takes more time to see the results, but the harvest is much more plentiful and, in terms of ROI, it requires much less work per closing. Farming strategies include SEO, buliding brand awareness, and content marketing… all strategies that most real estate agents neglect. Now we’re not saying that you should stop running ads or sending direct mail, but you should be farming and hunting for your leads. Hunt for leads when your business needs them immediately, and farm when you can allow a bit more time for results. This was an important mindset shift for Shemieka to make and it’s important for all entrepreneurs. Harder work is not the only way to generate more leads or grow a bigger business. Like the cliche goes, work smarter, not harder. For Shemieka, that means consistently running ads and sending direct mail, but also spending plenty of time building her online brand image, posting content to social media, and growing her SEO presence. 2. Simple, Effective Lead-Generation Website Building an effective website is one of the most difficult parts about building a real estate business. You need one because everyone else has one… but how do you get that website to actually be useful and generate leads? And in order to get the functionalities and features you need to get your website generating leads on autopilot, how do you build that without spending thousands of dollars on a custom design? For Shemeika (and for more than 7,000 real estate pros around the nation), Carrot was the answer. Before signing up with Carrot, this was Shemeika’s website. It might look pretty, but the problem is that it wasn’t generating leads for Shmeika’s business, no matter how much traffic she drove to the site. That’s why she signed up with Carrot. Here’s her new website. And guess what? People don’t just visit that site… they opt-in, they contact her, and those leads turn into closings. In fact, her website brings in so many leads that, in 2019, she doubled her number of closings. Why? Well, the genius of our Carrot methodology is in giving … Continued

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Generated by Carrot member sites Carrot websites rank top 5 in most U.S. metros Than custom WordPress sites for Carrot leads vs. non-Carrot leads From start to scale — Carrot has you covered Launch In Seconds Modern, beautiful, and optimized websites out-of-the-box for speed, conversion, and ranking in Google. Learn more → Automated Content Our content tools make it easy to create content in minutes not days. With automation to help you execute a proven strategy. Learn more → Data-Driven Insights Carrot’s SEO tools help you find profitable keywords, rank for them and how to improve your website’s ability to rank in search engines. Learn more → Close More Deals Scale your profits with built in lead management features that make tracking leads and closing deals effective and efficient. Learn more → Frequently Asked Questions What type of websites does Carrot offer? Check out our current list of site types → Looking for something more specific? Contact our team and consider a service to help you set up your unique site. We’ve seen members grow from Real Estate Investing into other industries and create personalized Carrot sites to their needs. What makes Carrot better than other website builders? Performance and ease of use. We focus on data driven websites… designed to help you rank easily, while converting more traffic into leads. This means we are constantly testing our websites to make sure they perform. For more information check out our Carrot Methodology. You can have your first website live and ready for use today! Can I move my current website to Carrot? You can move your existing domain to a new Carrot site. And you will want to configure that new site with your existing branding and credibility (like logo, testimonials, projects, etc). We do not typically recommend trying to re-create an existing website on Carrot unless you are an expert and know your previous work will outperform our optimized systems. If you have a site that already ranks well for your important keywords, please contact our team and we can discuss a Concierge Migration to help ensure a successful transition without losing your current results. Does Carrot provide support? Yes! Carrot offers live chat and email support with all our plans. Phone support is a feature for our premium support add-on. If you need additional ongoing support, you can add or remove this at any time from within your account. Simply reach out through our live chat, drop us an email, or schedule a call with our team through the support options in your account once you add this feature. Does Carrot do SEO for me? Short answer is some of it. Out of the box Carrot websites come with SEO optimized content, an internal linking strategy and are targeting high value keywords. We like to say we take care of the fist 50% of it for you – but after that you will need to step in and make your website perform. Here is the good news. We have several ways to help you with this. Join the Carrot Community to learn and improve your SEO. Or you can use our Content Tool and SEO Tool add-ons to use our automation for some of your SEO. Finally, we have a marketplace with our proven SEO vendors who WILL do your SEO for you. At the end of the day someone needs to do your SEO – so it will either be you or an agency you hire. But Carrot is here with dozens of free and paid trainings and guides to help you no matter your budget. Have questions for … Continued

Google Ads Traffic Has Increased 4% During COVID-19 – Necessary Adjustments to Also Increase Your Leads

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Have you felt like this recently? Are you unsure if you should stop your Google Paid traffic right now? You’re not alone, but stay positive. We’re in this together! We’ve been answering these questions since March by providing data and challenging our members to shift their mindsets. This has led us to create this blog post. We want to show you what we’re seeing, why you need to change, and how to make those adjustments to WIN in Google Ads during COVID-19 and other events that can cause accounts to go haywire. We’re here to put your mind at ease. Additional COVID-19 Articles: What The Coronavirus Pandemic Means for Agents & Investors & Why We’re Doubling Down The Coronavirus Podcast Series: For Real Estate Investors & Agents How to Win with Content Marketing During COVID-19 | Playbook Emerges How Has Lead Generation Changed During COVID-19 for Real Estate? – Exclusive Data and Action Plan What Our Google Ads Data is Showing During COVID-19 Numbers were compared from January 15-February 29 and March 1-April 15. Sessions from Google Ads have increased by 4.01%. Sessions are defined as… “A session is a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a given time frame. For example, a single session can contain multiple page views, events, social interactions, and eCommerce transactions.” Leads have decreased by 13.55%. Across all members accounts, cost-per-click has increased by 39.3%, and to be expected, the cost per lead has increased by 19.4%. What does this mean? In “normal times” a conversion issue could mean you’re lacking credibility on your website. Or, not enough website personalization and customization. During COVID, it’s most likely due to searchers whose comfort level with the current situation is low. This presents a major opportunity to communicate with your audience in a different, more impactful way. So… Why Are Leads Down By 13.55%? Our best-educated hypothesis… there is a lack of communication between your visitors and your website messaging. Visitors need to know, during this time, that they still have options to sell their house right now. If they’re landing on a page that still has the typical message without educating them about what they can do, they’ll likely bounce for now. Communication is as important as ever. You need to tell them what they can do during this time where people are uncertain. For example, communicate that they can: Send photos of their house Join a video call Join a Facebook Live for a walk-through Hop on a phone call Get the selling process started without ever meeting in person More on this below… What Can You Do Right Now to Increase Leads by 33, 100, or Even 225%?! The members (not all, but MOST) who have made the necessary steps to communicate to their audiences are seeing an increase in lead volume during the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to give you some general tips to help make your Google Ads accounts more effective until this time in history is over. 3 Simple Things You Can Do Today to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Google Ads Accounts Tip #1: Communicate and Build Relationships With Your Audience During “normal” times, Google Ads best practices dictate that you dig deep into as much data as you can find so you can be all but certain your next campaign will succeed. But, we’re in unknown territory holding a lot of uncertainty. No one knows for sure what to totally expect from their accounts right now. The ones who will have the most success will be those who take their best, common-sensed, educated move … Continued

EP 202: These “House Heroes” Predictably Pulled in 3,551 Motivated Seller Leads in 2019 Using These Three Simple Types of Content

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Times are a little crazy right now! Coronavirus is throwing a wrench in the gears of many investors and agents all over the country. You may be wondering if you should pull back on your marketing and ad spend and what you can do to keep your leads rolling in during these wild times. This is exactly why we wanted to share with you this very special episode of the CarrotCast.

What The Coronavirus Pandemic Means for Agents & Investors & Why We’re Doubling Down

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It’s surreal right now. We’re in the middle of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a big deal. Additional COVID-19 Articles:  The Coronavirus Podcast Series: For Real Estate Investors & Agents How to Win with Content Marketing During COVID-19 – The Playbook Emerges During this article, I’m going to be talking about how you cope with these major changes in the economy, real estate, and the way that we’re working and living and thriving. Get Quick Context About This Blog Post Before Diving In… Listen to the Full Podcast Episode Below Now everybody’s going to be impacted in some way, shape, or form. But, you don’t have to be impacted negatively. There are people that I know, businesses that I know, that are actually doing better than ever right now because they’re geared and they’re set up and they planned for things like this. Or, maybe they just got lucky and they have certain products, of course, that are just in high demand for these times. I’m going to be talking about how to better prepare for what’s to come. How Do You Come Out on the Other Side of This Stronger? How do you as a real estate investor or agent plan and prepare for what is going to happen? I’ll be the first one to admit that I didn’t treat this seriously enough early on. I thought, it’s just this, like a lot of people were saying right, it’s this cold, it’s this flu. The flu numbers kill more people than this is killing. And that was honestly just a full misunderstanding of how pandemics work, a full misunderstanding of how math actually works in these types of situations. Preparing for the Financial Impact The financial side is what I want you guys to prepare for. What happens with all the shutdowns? The shutdowns are where the devastating part is on the financial side because there’s the health side of it, which is a huge deal, but it’s going to likely be shorter-lived, months rather than years. The financial side though is where it gets really, really interesting and possibly scary for many people. So if you have stay-in-place orders in California and Washington (now in Oregon) and all over the place, and kids are out of school here in Oregon until the end of April now rather than just spring break… That leaves over a month and a half to where parents have to figure out a way that they can work at home while trying to take care of their kids still. We’ve got team members who have multiple kids at home, who are working and they’re trying to do their best work. So we’ve put policies in place to give our team members more flexibility and more leeway during these times. And we said, “We’ll take it two weeks at a time during the next two weeks.” But, we’re not pumping the brakes. This is when we actually need to hit the gas more than ever to help our customers more than ever, to help you guys wade through and win in this market. And that’s where I’m going to come to next because there are so many people doing amazing right now still because so many people are pulling back and I’m going to show you guys exactly how to do that, but we need to be doubling down and helping you guys win even more right now, not pulling back ourselves and going, “Hey, let’s wait and see.” Don’t Pump the Brakes… Give It More Gas I think if you have a wait and … Continued

EP 199: Direct Mail Masterclass #4 | The One Missing Piece To Your Direct Mail Marketing w/ Christina Krause

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Direct mail is all amount momentum and consistency. Once you have that momentum, don’t break it, keep it going and you will see the magic begin to happen. Christina Krause Direct Mail Masterclass #4 | The One Missing Piece To Your Direct Mail Marketing w/ Christina Krause We’re coming at you with part 4 of our 4-part series on direct mail marketing for real estate. In the last two episodes of this series, we sat down with Todd Swaggerty of Yellow Letter HQ to get his take on direct mail marketing for real estate, what you should be mailing, and when. We talked about lists and how to hone in on your ideal clients.  Today, we are sitting down with Christina Krause of Postal Impact and Virtual Lead Managers. She’s been with us at CarrotCamp and at our Market Leader Summit. I am super excited for this episode as we sit down and dive deeper into tracking, training, metrics, and all of the insanely strategic things Christina does for her clients. So get out a pen, get comfortable, and get ready to learn about what your direct mail campaign may be missing: DATA.  Don’t Miss The Other Episodes In This Direct Mail Series! Read the Full Show Notes Below… Deleted: Here at Carrot, we will always advocate for a well-rounded marketing mix. Your PPC, your direct mail, and your social campaigns are all just pieces of a larger puzzle. When done correctly, each part of your marketing mix will amp each other up. Your offline marketing supporting your offline marketing and vice versa. This is why we are so excited about this series covering direct mail for real estate.  To close out the series, having Christina on was a perfect choice. Her data-driven lead-gen has been helping real estate investors all over the country get more leads and close more deals. While her company isn’t a mail house, they do oversee the campaign from start to finish. They will generate leads, oversee the mailings, and most importantly, track the data throughout the entire sales pipeline.  Mailing To The Right People For her clients, Christina will often run a direct mail campaign that is 90% postcards and 10% letters. According to the data, letters have a higher response rate but will cost more to send. As such, the letters are reserved for the highest value leads. To find the highest value leads, you’ll have to get the right lists, study the data, and track everything! Using Direct Mail For Real Estate? What You Should Be Tracking…  You see the threads on all the real estate websites. People will say to do this or don’t do that. Put this on your mailpiece. Don’t put this on your mail piece. Taking the advice of people online can help you learn a thing or two, but to know what is going to work for your business you’ll have to do some testing. You want to put your money into things that are working, not hearsay from things you read online.  Tracking your results is the only way to know what works. Christina recommends these three KPI’s or Key Performance Indicators.  Your Response Rate – This is anyone who called you because of your postcard. Even if they asked to be taken off of your list, your mailer got their attention and initiated a response. Be sure to remove any dupes, only counting unique callers.  Your Net Lead Rate – Now how many of those people who called actually had a house they are ready to sell? This is your net lead rate. Even if … Continued

EP 196: Direct Mail Masterclass #1 | Intro: Your First Step to Successful Direct Mail | How to Amplify Your Offline Marketing w/ Trevor Mauch

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You big volume will come from your offline marketing. Your most motivated leads will come from online and SEO. When you pair the two, you create a force of marketing, that will give predictibility and freedom. Trevor Mauch Want more motivated house sellers using direct mail? We’ve got you covered. Listen to real estate’s #1 experts in direct mail teach you exactly what thousands of investors and agents are doing to bring in more high-quality leads, at a lower cost, without the headache. In this 4-part direct mail series, we answer all your questions on budgets, lists (including ones you never knew about), who to target, when to target, frequency, follow-up, mail pieces, testing, and more! Whew, that’s a lot! Can you even handle this?? Let’s dive in! Read the Full Show Notes Below… Why Direct Mail? You might be wondering why we’re doing not just an episode about direct mail, but a whole series on the subject. The answer is simple: direct mail works. Direct mail for real estate is part of a larger marketing plan that will help you to build consistency within your business.  While Carrot helps you to stack bricks and generate inbound leads using SEO, direct mail and other offline marketing channels will help to activate the demand within your potential customers. In this series, we will answer all of your questions about direct mail for real estate including:  How often should I send my mail pieces? How much should I spend on direct mail campaigns? What should be on my mail pieces? What shouldn’t be on my mail pieces? How to build a great list? How is your team handling calls? When should I retarget my campaign? When you are armed with the answers to these questions, you can easily close 5, 10, even 20 more deals per year! We’ll show you how just by making a few tweaks to the marketing you’re doing now, you will be able to close more deals without even trying!  Start With One Marketing Method When you are building your marketing plan, you’ll want to find one channel and go all-in. Own it. Master it. Once you do, you begin to stack more and more channels, building consistency, predictability, and momentum within your business. Our marketing plan generator is a completely free tool that will help you to get your marketing dialed in. All you have to do is answer a few general questions about your business, and you’ll gain some valuable insight no matter where you are in your business.  Add Some Legs To Your Marketing Stool  If you have your online presence down, start your offline marketing to generate the demand. If you have the offline thing down, amplify it with your online presence. SEO will help you attract the most motivated people, collect the most revenue, and close the most deals However, direct mail for real estate is all about the volume. When you have the two channels working together for you, you’re capturing leads from all angles My Challenge For Your Direct Mail Marketing Whenever someone gets a mailpiece that sparks their interest, more often than not, the first thing they will do is Google you. The same goes for cold-calling. When a strange number pops up, the first thing people do it look the number up to find out who is calling them. In most cases, looking up the phone number will lead to one of those “who called me” websites, often listing your phone number as spam.  My challenge to you is to take a look at a recent mailpiece and write … Continued

9 Backlink Strategies to Grow Your Real Estate SEO

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Having good real estate backlinks can provide a huge boost in your organic rankings. However, if you do them wrong, the effect can devastate your rankings, sending them into the Google abyss. That is why educating yourself before starting a link-building strategy is critical. × × Demo Carrot: How many deals are you losing to your competitor’s website? Take a Free Demo Table of Contents What Are Real Estate Backlinks? In the world of real estate websites, backlinks are like gold. They’re essentially links from other websites that point back to yours. Search engines see these backlinks as a vote of confidence in your content and expertise. The more high-quality backlinks you have from relevant real estate websites, news outlets, or local directories, the higher your website will rank in search results for local homebuyers and sellers. This translates to increased online visibility, attracting more qualified leads and ultimately growing your real estate business. Why Are Real Estate Backlinks Important? Backlinks are a major piece of the SEO (search engine optimization) puzzle. They go together like peanut butter and jelly. You need one to make the other better. High-level, here are four quick reasons why it’s important to have a good backlink strategy: Here’s an example. When someone types “sell my house in [market city]” or “real estate agent in [market city]” into Google, you want your website to come up on the first page. If it doesn’t, you’re missing out on a lot of website traffic, leads, and, more importantly, deals. Some 93% of internet experiences start with a search engine, including the real estate industry. When people — your target market — are looking for help, they go to Google. And if you show up on the first page, that’s good for business. Two of the most powerful factors for ranking in Google are website traffic and backlink portfolio. In other words, the more traffic and backlinks a page on your website receives, the better that page will rank for your target keyword phrases. Unfortunately, getting traffic and backlinks is one of the most difficult things. This article will give you practical tips for promoting your content and building links to your website. Related Content: How Many Backlinks Does it Take to Start Ranking Your Real Estate Website in Google? 9 Real Estate Backlinks Strategies Here are nine real estate backlinks strategies to help improve a website’s authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. 1. Consistent Content Creation This is your first step on the way to building your SEO rankings. Without consistently creating blog content for your website, you might rank for a few keyword phrases on your homepage. Still, you won’t rank for any longtail keyword phrases (like “how to deal with foreclosure” or “how to sell my how during a divorce”). Think of every piece of content like a door to your website. The more doors you have, the more people can visit your website, and the more opportunities you have to rank in Google. A good rule of thumb, though, is to create only one piece of content for each keyword phrase you’re targeting. While consistently creating content can be time-consuming, our Grow plans at Carrot include done-for-you blog content. You just need to customize about 25% of each post and publish it! Many of our members, like Ryan Dossey, consistently get SEO leads from those done-for-you blog posts! But maybe you want to create your own unique content—no problem! We’ve created VideoPost, which you can use to transcribe video content into a blog post with the click of a button—learn more … Continued