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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

EP 195: Cold Calling Their Way to $900k in Profits. How Max Maxwell and Tony Robinson Have Used Carrot and Calls to Their Advantage

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Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast and Subscribe Below! People that are beginning don’t have to look at our business model and mimic exactly what it is because the reality is, of you’re a Solopreneur you need one deal a month. That is it. I say you’re one deal away. That deal is going to change your life. Max Maxwell One of our missions here at Carrot is to help you grow that freedom, grow that flexibility, increase those finances and finally make the impact that you want to make. That’s really the entrepreneurial dream that we’re all after, is getting that freedom, flexibility, finances, and impact. One of the ways to do that is by what we call stacking your leads. Stacking your leads means finding one thing that works and then stacking more things on top of that. It adds diversification. It makes it to where you can really scale better and go deeper into your market. One of the ways that a lot of people are doing that is with cold calling. Now, the cool thing about any kind of real estate marketing, whether it’s direct mail, cold calling, anything at all offline, radio and TV, is your website if you do it right, is actually going to help amplify all of that marketing. Every single day whenever you’re putting out that marketing, people are taking out their cellphone and they’re going to the internet and they’re going to research you. Your company name, the phone number on your direct mail pieces, or the phone number you’re calling from, possibly your personal name and your competitors. If you have a tight strategy and you’re leveraging Carrot to rank well and then perform amazingly on mobile and convert those people into leads and build credibility, you’re going to be winning more of those deals. Every single day there’s tons and tons of deals are lost because people aren’t focusing on the performance side of their online performance side of their offline marketing. People are dropping balls in leaky buckets everywhere when prospects are hitting the web, after seeing your online marketing … Or after seeing your offline marketing or getting a cold call from you and you’re not closing the deal on your website. This call right here is about cold calling. Amazing, amazing clients of ours, Max Maxwell and Tony Robinson, they were at the CarrotCamp recently here in Roseburg, Oregon at Carrot HQ and they really showed how they’re on their own journey to go over $100,000 a month. At that time at CarrotCamp, they were already at about $900,000 in wholesale profits, which is amazing! The primary source for that is cold calling amplified by their Carrot website and a little bit of pay-per-click that they’re doing. We said, “You know what, Max, Tony? Come to my office, let’s talk about what you guys are doing in the cold calling. Let’s go up a couple of levels.” We’re not going to get into the weeds in this call, but we’re talking about what these guys are doing to pull out so many deals in their market with cold calling. What processes and what tools they use. Also, who they’re hiring and how to pay them. They dive into it fully here and they also talk about a new tool that they released, which is really, really cool, that they have been using and their students have been using. In addition to that, we actually brought Max onto a training program that we created this last year called the Market Leaders Reveal training program. It’s a 10 week, … Continued

EP 192: How To Use Social Media to Build A Powerful Brand & A Business You Love w/ Record Producer Turned Real Estate Agent, Peter Lorimer

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Meet Peter Lorimer. He’s responsible for over 30 #1 Hits, the host of his own Netflix series, and an agent that is dominating his own niche in real estate.

You’re going to learn how Peter positioned himself as an expert, created and dominated a brand new niche, built an insanely powerful brand, where 90% of his leads come through real estate social media, and, most importantly, how he does all of this while having the time of his life.

Carrot’s 30-Day Challenge: Ready To Obliterate Your Best Month’s Lead-Gen Record?

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What if you could take a system that’s proven to generate high-quality leads — a system that has made hundreds of investors and agents around the nation millions of dollars — and implement it right into your business in just 30-60 minutes per day over a 30-day period? Sounds too good to be true, yeah? Well, that’s exactly what we’ve created… We’re calling it our 30-Day Authority Building Challenge [CLICK HERE TO JOIN]. And in it, we’re going to walk you through how to brand your real estate business, how to drive traffic, and — most importantly — how to get high-quality leads (and even how to obliterate your best month’s lead-gen record). Are you ready? At Carrot, we’ve helped countless real estate pros beat their most aggressive market competitors, generate more than one million leads, and build businesses that support themselves and their families. Over the last few years, we’ve learned a lot about what real estate marketing tactics work… and what doesn’t. And we thought to ourselves… “What if we created a tried-and-true, fool-proof lead-gen system for agents and investors — a system that would help our members become the go-to experts in their market, drive leads passively to their website, and build the business of their entrepreneurial dreams?” This challenge is helping people even more than we could have imagined… One of our long-standing members, Chris Wojciechowski, said he wishes we would have created this challenge 3 years ago! So… Are you ready to create a marketing system for your real estate business that generates leads like clockwork, that makes your business more predictable and sustainable? Moreover, are you ready to spend just 30-60 minutes per day over the next month to make it happen? Great! Click below to join! A Glimpse At The 30-Day Challenge Gameplan We’ve recorded a ton of in-depth content for this challenge. We’re going to show you how to set up your website, choose the best keywords to target, leverage social media, convert leads like clockwork, and lots more. Not only will we teach you how to do those things, but we’re also going to keep you accountable — each day has a checklist of items you need to finish. You’ll need to set aside 30-60 minutes for most days. By the end of it, you’ll have a website set up to convert leads, a traffic plan to drive high-quality prospects to your website, and an irresistible, trustworthy brand image. Pretty sweet, right? Here’s a little peek at the agenda for investors (and below that is the agenda for agents). A Glimpse At The 30-Day Challenge For Investors Week 1 – Mindset & Marketing Plan ✍️ Launching your site Building credibility Localizing your site Adjusting your content strategy Schedule your content Week 2 – Creating Your Content Plan 📋 Content, content, content Integrate with 3rd party services Connect your social media accounts Set up your data hubs Week 3 – Drive Traffic 📈 Create your first Craigslist post Setting up your paid traffic sources Set up your first Google Ads campaign Start working on your SEO Week 4 – Put Your Content Hyperdrive ✍️ How to create citations How to create Backlinks Creating your first video Launching a buyers website How to create buyer list We’ll also teach you… How to set up a Facebook retargeting pixel Learn how to create a Google Business profile How to Create Unique Content for SEO And tons more… INVESTORS: Ready to beat your best month’s lead gen record? Join the 30-day challenge below and let’s make it happen! “It was great! I enjoyed every minute, … Continued

EP 186: Carrot, Fix my Business! Behind The Scenes Strategy Session w/ Real Estate Investor + Agent, Robert Grand

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Hey Guys and Gals! Today we are doing something a little bit different for this episode of the CarrotCast, we decided to do a 45-minute business teardown where we hop on with an agent or investor and unlock the biggest pain points in their business, so you can get a behind the scenes look at the journey of someone just like you and find out what it takes to get on the fast-track to success. We sat down with Robert Grand, owner of Grand Realty and Eugene House Buyers to take a look at his business and his websites and how they could be improved. I do 3-4 of these calls each week, but have never recorded one until today!  We touched on some exciting topics including easy tips for content creation, creating a follow-up system, and restructuring deals to better capitalize on leads. Listen in as we breakdown Roberts’s business and discover ways to help him and his team find massive success, thus creating a major community impact in 2020.  Read the Full Show Notes Below… Carrot, Fix my Business! Behind The Scenes Strategy Session w/ Real Estate Investor & Agent, Robert Grand If you are an investor or an agent, you will want to do all you can to maximize your marketing efforts. With a few small tweaks and additions to your site, you will be able to create credibility and gain traction in your SEO efforts.  Robert Grand is a former firefighter who has been a real estate agent since 2012. Together with his partner, he runs a traditional real estate agency, a property management company, and does investments. Robert has two sites with us, one for Grand Realty and another for Eugene Housebuyers. We did a quick rundown of each, providing some tips to really make the site stand out and grab the attention of potential clients.  Eugene House Buyers Eugene House buyers is set-up with the Hemlock theme. I always advise Carrot Clients to do a quick google search of words they want to rank for and take a look at any of the Carrot sites that pop up. In order to stand out, you’ll want to do something a little different with your theme, content, and message.  The site looks good and has a great local picture. The CTA stands out and matches with the company’s branding. Your call to action should always stand out, being one of the first things people see when visiting your site.  The content doesn’t appear to be updated from our stock content, which is ok, but it may not be so great for SEO. I always advise clients to go in there and tweak a few things to make it more personal. Ideally, 100% of the content should be different, however, just by editing 30-50%, Google will recognize it as unique content.  Updating the About page is extremely important. It provides a connection between you and your potential clients. You’ll want to make it personal, showing who you are and what you do. And of course, you should have a few pictures! On the realty side, Robert has a great about page, I suggested he grab some of that content and bring it over to the investor side.  Follow-up is another issue we addressed. If someone wasn’t interested in the cash offer, they were just letting the lead go instead of referring them over to the realty side. If you offer both services, be sure to provide dual offers and options for your clients! Robert left about $100k on the table last year just because the wasn’t passing … Continued

Carrot Success Story: How To Drive 7 Figures Through Your Carrot Site With Ryan Dossey

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“If you had to give a ballpark guess, how much money would you say your Carrot site is worth to your business?” I asked. I reached out to Ryan Dossey for an interview because first, he’s been a Carrot member since like 2014 (long enough that he can’t remember exactly when he signed up) and more importantly, because he’s a wildly successful entrepreneur and real estate investor. He has been mentioned and/or quoted in Forbes, Time, Money, Entrepreneur, and Yahoo Finance. In the last 18 months, his business, Christopher Ellyn Homes (which does a little of everything — wholesaling, flipping, and buy-and-hold) acquired $8.8 million in rentals. In terms of cash flow, his real estate investing business typically generates somewhere in the high five-figure range every month (they’ve hit 7 figures a few times). He’s also the founder of Call Porter and Ballpoint Marketing. “Oh man. It’s hard to place a number on that. But I’d say that our Carrot site is easily worth 7 figures to our business,” Ryan responded… “I mean, we’ve done 7 figures in assignments through that site. If it wasn’t for my Carrot site, I wouldn’t have the same credibility I have today in my market.” Talk about some awesome feedback! He also offered some tips for real estate investors who are looking to grow their businesses and cut through the clutter. 5 Ways Ryan Dossey Generates Consistent 7 Figures #1: You Gotta Get a Carrot Site Back in 2012, Ryan was just getting into real estate investing. And the first site he created for his business was hosted on Lead Propeller — one of our competitors that many of you are probably aware of. But eventually, Ryan got fed-up with painfully low conversion rates and moved to Carrot. More specifically, his Lead Propeller site was suffering to the tune of a 1% or 2% conversion rate. His Carrot site now receives about an 11% conversion rate. He gets far more leads. And because of that, he’s able to build a sustainable business with predictable lead-flow and income. Even when sending direct mail, Ryan says, “It’s my website that build credibility when people are trying to learn about my business. If I didn’t have a trustworthy site that loads fast and looks like a million bucks and converts well, then my business wouldn’t be as profitable as it is today — plain and simple.” Which begs the question: is your site doing all of those things? If it isn’t, then you might consider getting yourself a Carrot site. Our sites load even faster than Google and we’re constantly optimizing tech stack, SEO, and design. To quote Ryan once more, “My favorite thing about Carrot is that they’re constantly optimizing so you don’t have to.” #2: Customize Your Carrot Site Having been a Carrot member for 4 or 5 years, I thought Ryan would be the perfect guy to give advice to new Carrot members about how to get the most of their membership. So I asked him, “What would you tell new Carrot members to do with their site to get the most bang for their buck?” His response was simple: “Customize it. You have to make it your own. You have to create a brand image for your business.” Specifically referring to his own Carrot site, he said, “We customized the hero image on the homepage, we rewrote and customized the entire ‘Our Company’ page, and we replaced all of the stock images with real images of our city or the people who work in our business.” And he recommends that all Carrot members … Continued