Search results for: “credibility”

April Harvest Report – Mobile Is Now & Top Lead Generating States
Did you know most leads viewed 3-4 pages before they opted in? What does this mean for your website? This month we will quickly break down our leads by traffic source and then get into a few more interesting reports like “Page Depth”. We will show which states are generating the most leads and how many website pages are visited before a potential lead opts-in.

A quick note, the purpose of our Carrot harvest reports is not to brag or boast. But, rather, we take pride in be transparent and sharing our data. This allow real estate investors a peek to see what is working for inbound online marketing.

In today’s report we’ll dive into…
- The opt in leads (this does NOT include phone call leads which easily doubles the amount of leads in total) for the month of April
- The main lead sources (where are your leads coming from?)
- Mobile keeps climbing
- Which states have the highest conversion rates?
- Why conversion rates are lower in a hot sellers market
- How many pages do the majority of your leads view before they opt in (the case for websites vs. squeeze pages)
For InvestorCarrot members, we hope you use the data found in harvest reports as an inspiration to know that your hard work will pay off and that implementing the training and resources will help you generate more traffic and convert more leads.

For non-Carrot members, use this as research to find out what’s working in today’s market… and then get out there and implement these strategies on your websites!

Where Did The 15,825 Real Estate Investing Motivated Property Seller, Cash Buyer, Rent To Own, And Private Lender Leads Come From April 2016?

Real Estate Investing Lead Breakdown… this snapshot shows the breakdown of leads generated in the past 30 days through InvestorCarrot.

Again, we don’t show these numbers to brag, although we are proud of our members and the numbers they’re pulling!

We have always been transparent and honest because it’s breed into our Core Values. Our goal is to present this data in hopes that it helps you with your inbound marketing and real estate investor website optimization. We’re are always ready to help.

As you can see, the vast majority of the leads in the past 30 days are from organic SEO. No surprise there. SEO is still the driving force behind inbound marketing.

Google won’t give us the specifics on this direct/none data, but huge majority of those leads can be counted as SEO. While, another portion of those direct/none leads come from Craigslist ads. They show up in the “(direct)” section because Craigslist doesn’t allow live links in real estate ads any longer in the majority of cities… so people have to copy and paste the URL into the browser to go to the website… which would make it a “direct” link to the site.

Mobile Is The Now (in a big way)

We’ve talked about it many times… and will continue to do so… if your website isn’t AMAZING on mobile (NOT just “mobile friendly”) you’re losing leads.

Mobile Gets Fewer Visitors But MORE Leads

Mobile Optimized Websites… extremely important opportunity for real estate investors to capture and convert leads. Carrot sites are now consistently generating 50% of your leads… this is because we’ve focused so much on crafting a high performing mobile responsive design to convert… not just to be “mobile friendly”. Does your website convert well on mobile or is it just “mobile friendly”?

Back in August we reported that mobile leads were the future. Now…mobile leads are consistently generating over 50% of leads in the device category. That shows how important it is to have a mobile responsive site ready for your potential leads.

We say this all the time, but we really do love seeing our customers have success and grow personally and professionally. The reality now is that you must have a mobile friendly website. It needs to be quick and simple to use, or visitors are going to leave. That is why continue to test and improve our websites, to ensure they give your visitors the best experience possible.

If you’re not a Carrot member and your website is not responsive and mobile friendly you must get a web developer to help you out. Or, jump on over to a mobile optimized Carrot site.

Top 10 Lead Generation Conversion Rates By State (With At Least 2000 Sessions)

We’ve published about this before, but as real estate markets heat up conversion rates for the wholesaler / flipper motivated seller website decreases a bit. If you check back on Harvest Reports from last year you’ll notice the conversion rates were a tad bit higher.

That’s all normal in a hot sellers market and if you’re doing any direct mail you’re seeing the EXACT same thing happening as well. 2-3 years ago you could send out a 1,000 piece mailing and get X amount of leads… today you have to send out a 5,000 piece mailing to get the same amount of qualified leads.

Why? It’s the market.

When sellers have more options to sell they look more, they get the confidence that they can sell it themselves, they list with an agent because houses are getting above asking price offers in many places, and we all have to cut through more clutter that sellers are seeing in their everyday lives.

Which States Have The Highest Average Conversion Rate In Today’s Market?

See The Top Spots For Real Estate Investing Leads… North Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts & Pennsylvania round out the top 4 states for highest converting states. One statistic that is always a fun and interesting to take a look at is the lead conversion rate breakdown by state. In April, North Carolina earned the top spot followed closely by Tennessee.

Why is that? A lot of the real estate market depends on where you are transacting your deals. These states typically perform higher than other states as far as conversion rate… but as I dive into below… very hot sellers markets tend to have lower conversion rates. So if your state isn’t on that list above, don’t sweat… it’s just a cool stat more than anything.

So what can you do?

Try and understand your leads better, what messaging do they respond to? To convert more visitors to leads, try switching up the copy in your hero section. Answer a question that they might have when they land on your site.

Instead of offering them a quote, consider offering them a consultation call, a free estimate of their houses worth, or a custom solution to their housing situation.

How Many Pages Did Visitors View Before Converting To A Lead?

The age old battle of “squeeze pages vs. websites” will continue until websites are no longer a thing… but we usually try to take the data driven approach to what works. We’ve tested squeeze pages vs. mini sites setup the way we set them up (so every page is geared to convert a visitor into a lead very strategically) and for motivated house sellers our style of “mini site” has always performed better.

But when we dive into the data even more… you see how darn important it is to your best leads to dive into the information on your website.

Most Of Your Leads Like To See 3, 4, or 5 Pages BEFORE They Opt In…

This report shows how many pages visitors landed on before opting-in as a lead.

This month we also took a look at some different stats: How many pages did a visitor visit before turning into a lead.

What should you do with this data?

First off, if you only have a 1 or 2 page website… you should probably add more content and pages to your site. Build out an amazing About Page, a great FAQ page, describe how your process works, add in some city specific pages, and more.

But make sure to structure your pages to all convert. You can use our FREE Conversion Rate Guide + Checklist here to help you make your website performs better.

This type of data allows a journey into the psyche of a user. A large majority like what they see after visiting five or less pages. But, there’s still plenty that it takes 6,7, 8…to make the decision. Notice that two page visits is in the middle. Pretty cool stuff!

It also shows the importance of optimizing all of your pages. Such as, making sure you capture and add testimonials to your site. If you need help, check out the various types of testimonials real estate investors can use to build credibility. There’s no better way to build trust with your customers.

Take the time to personalize and search engine optimize your site. That time spend = High ROI.

How Is Your Online Lead Generation Going For Your Real Estate Investing Business?

If you’re interested in leveraging our Inbound Online Marketing platform at InvestorCarrot, our training, and our support team, take a demo or checkout our plans.

Over the last several months we’ve been developing some new features to further real estate investor success. We’re proud to have announced our new robust analytics, slick dashboard, and fresh site design options. Check’em out here.
May 12, 2016
How Many Websites Are Ideal For A Real Estate Wholesaler or Flipper?

“Mark” tried to cram everything into one website. A page for motivated sellers, a section for buyers, private lenders… even rent to own. He said he was trying to “simplify” and save some money. But little did he know he was actually losing money every year by confusing his motivated house sellers on a website that was also pitching “discount properties”.

Sound familiar?

So what should you do on your website as a real estate wholesaler or flipper?

And this is a great question.

We’ll dive into that in a clear and simple way in today’s blog post and answer that question based on data with the answer to this… “Whatever makes it easier and gets your ideal prospects to their desired result as quickly and as smoothly as possible in as few steps required to make the sale.”

So, You’re Flipping Houses Or Wholesaling? What Types Of Leads Do You Need Right Now?

You might be wondering how having more than one real estate investing website would even help.

And that is a really valid question!

Because, for instance, if you own a plumbing business in your local town… one website for your company is all that you need. Right?

So, the main thing to remember with your online marketing efforts when it comes to your website strategy is this…

… the more focused you can make the message to the target prospect you’re going after, the better the results you’ll get.

As the famous copywriter, Robert Collier once said…

If you’re not joining that conversation in your prospect’s mind immediately… and you’re cluttering the message with things on your website not related to their problem and how you can help them… your results WILL go down.

So going back to the local plumber scenario… if you did plumbing services and you were also an electrician and did electrical work… you have two totally different services that require a completely different marketing message to effectively sell them your services (and ideally two separate websites).

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Learn more about the differences between credibility websites vs. target market websites and why you need both.

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You wouldn’t want to have the person looking for electrical work to have to wade through tons of content on your site about plumbing (a service that they don’t need).

Make sense?

To say it again… the more focused you can make the message on the website specific to your target prospect (and what they need), the more engaged the visitor will be on your website and the more leads you’ll convert.

Why Is A Targeted Website Message Important?

Now that we understand that targeting your message on your website as much to your primary prospect as possible is important… let’s dive into why having that targeted message is important and works.

In short, we humans get distracted easily (especially online), and removing any chance of guiding your website visitor on the wrong path always improves your chances of making sure the website visitor gets your message and hopefully engages in it by becoming a lead for you.

According to a study, 55% of visitors spend 15 seconds or less on your website. The more you can engage them and speak to them and their specific problems and needs… the longer you can keep them.

But our targeted websites at InvestorCarrot show a different story…

Why is that?

Because we’re not sending a motivated seller to a website filled with content that doesn’t help them a darn bit… like stuff about your cash buyer program, or rent to own houses, or private lender program. That kind of stuff doesn’t matter to them and it just serves as a distraction to knock them off of the path of engaging them and converting them as a lead.

We’ll get into the “why” below here in a sec.

How Many Websites Do I Need If I’m A Real Estate Wholesaler Or Flipper?

The general rule once again is this: How many completely different services are you offering and completely different prospects are you going after?

If you are a local house buyer (going after motivated house sellers) and you also wholesale those properties to cash buyers… those are two completely different prospects for two completely different services you offer.

If you have lease option houses available and are looking for tenant buyers… and are also looking for private lenders… those are completely different services and different prospects.

In both of those cases, we’ve found that it’s much more effective to split those messages into separate websites.

So, if you’re a wholesaler and are looking for properties and looking for cash buyers, those websites should be separate websites.

So a minimum of two websites as a wholesaler in my opinion.

You would for sure want a website dedicated to helping motivated house sellers… then your second website could pull double duty as your cash buyer website and main company credibility website (which our “Main Company” websites in Carrot do quite well).

I know there are lots of people out there who will argue with this and will say “You can put it all on one website for sure!“.

And they’re 100% correct.

You can.

But if on every page, the prospect is 1 click away from content that has nothing to do with them… and can even throw them off from the actual message on how you can help them… why would you want to take the chance of muddying the water?

If a motivated seller saw a link that says “Investment Properties 30-50% Discounts”… what do you think will pop up in their mind?

“Wow, if they can sell properties that cheap… I can’t imagine what they’re going to offer me. Darn bottom feeders”

Haha, maybe not those exact words… but even presenting a motivated seller with that content definitely doesn’t help your sale.

The “Across The Table” Test

One simple test I always run through mentally with my marketing messages is this…

… I imagine myself sitting across the table from my ideal prospect and run through in my mind what I’d say to that prospect.

How I’d find out what their main problem is, their motivations, and what they really need help with.

And then mentally run through how I can help them reach those goals.

In the case of a motivated seller… if you use this “Across The Table” test… would you hand them a brochure that talked about buying their property on one page and on the very next page it tried to sell them a discount property?

Or would you ever in the process of talking with a seller fit in… “Oh, and by the way… if you’re looking for an investment property you can get on our cash buyers list!”.

Of course not.

Why?

Because it has nothing to do with how you can help them in their situation and the only thing doing that does is potentially throw off your actual message of how you can help them with THEIR CURRENT situation… selling their house.

If it doesn’t pass the “Across The Table” test… my rule of thumb is that I try to separate those messages in my marketing as well.

On the other hand… if I’m talking to a potential cash buyer… it is very believable that I may find a way to mention our private lender program, because they may also be interested in being an investor with us as well. So those could work very well on the same website.

Make sense?

With that said, in no way am I saying that you can’t pull in online leads with an “all-in-one” site that is for motivated sellers, cash buyers, lenders, tenants, etc.

I’m just making the case for how much more effective it can be to target your messaging to eliminate the chance that a prospect would choose to not work with you because of a muddied message.

If you lost just 1 deal over a 5 year period because your website spoke to too many different prospects at once… that would cost you a minimum $10,000.

With how easy it is to launch a real estate investor website on Carrot… why take that risk?

So How Many Websites Do You Need If You Do You Need?

If you’re a real estate wholesaler or house flipper…

… we suggest 2.

One for motivated sellers and one that pulls double duty for cash buyers/main company credibility (even helps out with private lenders).

Then if you want to attract other types of leads like rent to own or note sellers… those may be great as separate sites.

The one rule of thumb is definitely don’t cram all of those “focuses” onto one site. It’ll kill your performance and confuse your motivated house sellers.

If you are a note buyer/seller…

… we suggest just 1.

A person selling a note tends to be a person experienced in the process. So sellers expect to go to a “broker” and won’t be confused by seeing notes for sale on the site.

If you’re a buy and hold investor or multi-family investor…

… one total website for all of your properties works great. Your focusing on attracting tenants. But if you want to attract private lenders as well to partner on your deals… then set up a 2nd website that is a main company credibility site.

Keep it simple. As few sites as possible without confusing the message on your important prospects.

And as always… shoot any questions our way!

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March 17, 2016
February Harvest Report – Lead Data & Survey Results

As we wrap up another month in 2016 we are ready to bring you InvestorCarrot’s lead data for February. Despite being the shortest month of the year, the lead volume was right on pace with December and January.

InvestorCarrot members generated 14,178 online opt in leads last month (this doesn’t include the tens of thousands of phone call leads). Which is very close to the 14,212 leads that were generated in January. Consistent lead flow is a great asset for a business. If you are driving traffic on a consistent basis it can make your marketing dollars stretch when you know which channel are your most profitable.

During the month of February, InvestorCarrot members generated 14,178 leads across all of their sites.

Thanks to everyone who took our 2016 survey last month! The survey gave us great insight and data

We ran a survey in February to get a little more information about how many deals members were closing from their leads, and to get some feedback on how we can make improve Carrot even more in 2016 (we have exciting news on the horizon).

The general consensus among our team after conducting this survey was…we need to do these more often.

We got a ton of great feedback from our members and got a lot of great questions from the form.

We read through every single submission, suggestion, and question. After talking with our team, we wanted to put together some answers and share some of the data we gathered from the survey.

Our hopes in sharing these results, is it answers a question you have, shows you where you are at in comparison to other Carrot members, and gets you excited about some of the changes we have in store for Carrot.

So let’s get started with some data and insights we found from the survey.

1. 74% of our members primary investing strategy is either Wholesaling or Fix & Flip

This isn’t a huge surprise to us, but we were curious if members were using their Carrot websites for investing strategies that were new and creative. We did find a few note buyers and commercial real estate investors.

The breakdown wholesaling came in at 43% and fix and flip was 31%.

2. 34% of our members have closed between 1-5 deals in the past 12 months

We are always curious about how many deals our members are closing from the leads they generate on their website. Tracking that data would be difficult and is often left to us reaching out to customers and hearing about their success. With this survey we were pleasantly surprised when a lot of members shared with us how many deals they have closed.

Closing 1-5 deals is a huge success and we are proud as heck that our members are turning leads into revenue. Nearly 29% of Carrot member said they have yet to close a deal from their Carrot websites. We are constantly working on ways we can improve Carrot to help bring this number down.

9% of Carrot members said they closed over 20 deals in the last 12 months.

These members tend to be leveraging a lot of different marketing strategies and are driving a large amount of traffic. If you’d like to learn about ramping up your marketing budget and leads, consider investing in an SEO firm or a PPC campaign. Talk with us today about how we can help.

3. We asked about what content you wanted us to write…the answer was overwhelmingly SEO

We were curious what types of blog posts, training’s, and featured content our members and prospects wanted to read from us. Within our company, we all had our hunches, but we asked, and you answered. The highest ranked topics were SEO, Pay Per Click, and Content Marketing.

This data excited us because those happen to be what we are great at and have a lot of data on. To better help our members with SEO we will be retooling some of our content to give more in-depth SEO advice, better PPC information, and make content marketing even better for you in 2016.

4. The most common frustrations, plus their answers

Probably the most important question we asked in the survey was “What is your current biggest frustration?”

We heard a lot of great feedback and were able to quickly resolve some of the frustrations with a simple tutorial or website tweak.

Here are a few of the top frustration Carrot members are having.

Frustration #1: Standing out in a crowded market

One of the recurring questions/concerns we saw on the survey were members saying they are seeing more and more Carrot members pop up in their market.

First of all, we view this as a huge benefit. You have the same tools and resources that others do and seeing other Carrot members appear means something is working. Even Starbucks has multiple storefronts operating on the same block. So how do you stand out in a crowd? The answer is easy. Brand yourself with your unique selling proposition, build credibility, deliver value, and make your site look different.

Carrot can help with the last one. We are constantly testing website elements and will have new features that allow you to make changes to your site.

We wrote about 6 ways to stand out in your market. Read about it here.

Frustration #2: Getting leads to return phone calls

This one is tricky. You can only help people who want to be helped (or so the saying goes).

But you have to put yourself in the leads shoes. There is a good chance the leads are submitting their information on a few websites. They do this to get an idea if other investors will offer more than what you can offer.

The key to getting a lead on the phone is calling them as soon as they submit a form on your site. You MUST do this because they are in the state of mind where they WANT to hear an offer, and calling them back shows you are quick, professional, and have your business running efficiently. If you don’t have SMS text notifications turned on your Carrot forms, read more about them here.

Frustration #3: Having someone write unique content

We understand that writing 100% unique content takes time. Someone on our team is writing every single day and you know what, we know it’s hard and not everything you write turns into profits.

If you are too busy to write content, but want to hire a professional copywriter that understands real estate investing, hang tight…

We are actively working on a solution that will allow you to purchase content for your Carrot site within our marketplace.

Some members are unaware, but if you are a Content Pro member you have access to our content packs. These are pre-written, SEO optimized blog posts. Each month our team writes 12 new articles that our software spins them to be localized for your area to give you a jumpstart. In literally 3 minutes you can schedule your blog content for an entire month. Learn more here.

Content marketing takes time. In fact, if you are expecting to see results from content marketing immediately, you should shift your traffic strategy something that delivers results faster (like PPC or YouTube marketing).

At the very least it can take a couple weeks (if not more) for Google to crawl your site and index the new content. So putting out 100% custom content is only half the battle. You need to find ways to get that content in front of people who are asking questions. This is where conversation marketing comes into the mix. If you have never heard of conversation marketing, drop what you are doing and go here to learn all about it.

Plus, we’re rolling out a full copywriting service in our marketplace in March where you can have our “hired gun” copywriters write custom content for your website for you! Be on the lookout.

Frustration #4: Not knowing what to do to get the highest ROI

This really is the million dollar question. If we knew the answer to this, trust us, you would know.

The thing is… it can be different for every investor depending on lots of variables.

We love sharing data with our members to help them succeed. The honest answer to this question is it depends. Do you have time to learn and implement marketing strategies? If no, then hire someone. Do you have a marketing budget to pay for someone to manage a pay per click account or your SEO? If not, you will either need to learn or close a deal to then bankroll your growth.

You might not think you have time to learn SEO or other marketing strategies, but at the very least you should understand their basic concepts. If you are looking to hire someone you should make sure to ask all the right questions and have a good idea of what they will be doing on your website.

If you are interested in learning more about SEO, Pay Per Click, YouTube, Backlinks, and a lot of other marketing strategies then consider our 3 Leads Per Day training. This training is the single best resource for real estate investors looking to market online TODAY.

To learn more about our 3 Leads Per Day Training, go here.

Be on the lookout for great new training and massive software upgrades in 2016 based on the feedback.

Keep sending in your feedback and go out there and crush it. And when you need help… just reach out to us! We’re always here for you.

We heard a lot of great feedback like we mentioned. We took all of it to heart and will be incorporating it into the new features, training’s, and tools we roll out this year. We sent some personalized emails to members answering the questions we could quickly help them fix on their site.

If we didn’t answer a big question you have about Carrot, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We welcome all feedback and would love to discuss how we can make Carrot better for your business in 2016.

March 3, 2016
The Most Overlooked But Important Page On Your Website (Backed By Science)
Did you know there’s a spot on your website that 8 out of 10 real estate investors and agents neglect that may be causing your best prospects to leave your website every day?

Demo Carrot: How many deals are you losing to your competitor’s website?
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The page that is often the 2nd most visited page on your website. The page can push someone over the edge to work with you or push them away from you only to work with your competition.

What is that page that carries so darn much weight in the overall trust and credibility of your website?

It’s your “About Page.”

Yep, that page you fly through and say, “I’ll come back to and finish later,” is possibly causing people to distrust your site and your company.

And maybe… just maybe… you may have already lost a deal because of it.

How Much Does A Lost Deal Cost You? $5k? $10k? $20k+?

This blog post will show you how to make sure you stop letting deals and leads slip through your fingers and lay out why that about page is so darn important (backed by science).

Ready? Awesome, let’s go!

The Science Behind The Way We Look At Websites (YES, you do this too…)

Building a real estate website that performs is part are art and a lot of science.

Over the past 3 years, as we’ve grown Carrot, we’ve run hundreds and hundreds of split tests on real estate investing websites in markets all across the country for all types of leads to hundreds of thousands of leads for our members…

… and one thing we’ve found that is the same across every test we’ve run is this.

The about page has always been one of the top 5 most visited pages on every site…

… and it’s one of the most engaged pages on every site.

Every site. This Google Analytics screenshot proves it.

Not one. Not a few. Every site we’ve run tests on has shown us that a significant portion of the visitors flow through to the about page to learn more about that company and see if they’re a credible solution to their problem.

Below are a few heatmaps from split tests we ran on motivated seller sites from Carrot members across the country.

Plus, we’ve thrown in a heatmap from our own carrot.com website just to show you it’s not a real estate specific phenomenon.

See How It’s Baked Into Our Human Psychology

Below you’ll find these heat maps that show the click pattern of the motivated house sellers on these websites. The bigger the “hotspot” and the redder, the more engagement on that link.

The cool thing is that we chose sites where their About Pages are in different locations and say different things (some say “About Us” and others “Our Company), so you know it’s not just because of the placement of the link on the site.

“Our Company” Link In The Top Navigation On The Right

Notice the motivated sellers engaging heavily on the “About Us” page. The strong heatmap glow validates their trust or lack of trust in the company before they choose to work with them.

“Meet Our Team” Link In The Top Navigation

Similar results in a link called “Meet Our Team” at the top of the site and similar engagement on the Testimonials link. Again, this shows the visitor is working on learning more about the company behind the site to make sure they’re legit and can honestly and ethically solve their house problem.

Same Result For This Site With An “About Us” Link In The Main Navigation

Florida Cash Home Buyers have been utilizing Carrot well, and you see a similar result. People are diving deeper to learn about and build trust in the website before they decide to work with them to sell their house.

The Carrot “About” Link Is Burning A Hole In Our HeatMap

Again, even before our members decide to work with us, they seek out information about us as a company to ensure that our values match theirs and that we’re real people behind this company.

4 Keys To Creating An Amazing About Page For Your Real Estate Site

We could show you dozens and dozens more heat maps showing the same thing, but in the end… your about page is crazy important.

So now that you know that you either need to get real with building out a GREAT about page or risk losing leads and deals let’s get to making an epic about page for your real estate investing website!

Using our Carrot about page as an example, here are 4 simple but powerful website about page ideas and examples. Hence, it’s an asset for your business rather than another forgotten “throwaway” page.

The first step, head over and open up our About page so you can follow along.

1. Let your values shine through

People want to work with people that believe in and stand for things similar to them. Don’t be shy about sharing your core values on your about page as we do here at Carrot. I can tell you firsthand that I know for a fact that some customers have joined InvestorCarrot because of our Core Values.

Display what you stand for loud and proud on your about page. Don’t hide it.

Here’s How We Did It (and you can too):
- A short list of our Carrot Core Values and what we believe in. What do you believe in?
- Our mission with this business… something that excites us at our core. Why are you in business?
- Make them feel important on the page… don’t just mention them in passing. Make them stand out.
2. Don’t just stick to stuff directly about real estate on your about page

I read so many real estate websites about pages that are just a bunch of real estate jargon and stuff that the investor thinks “validates” them in their prospect’s mind. Their 20 years of experience, 7 licenses, and just how much they “want to serve you ” may be true, but you’re not connecting with your prospects at a human level with that kind of speak.

Tell your story, what drives you, how you got started, and why you even care about helping them in the first place. Make it fun.

Here’s How We Did It (and you can too):
- What’s your story, and how did it lead you to help the people your company best helps? It matters.
- Talk about what you love about your business and how it relates to you being their best viable option.
- Make it fun. Add a picture of your team and connect with people on a human level. No glamour shots here.
- Introduce your team. Your team is important to the prospect because you’re the actual people behind the company. We added a picture of part of our team in a laid-back setting… then at the bottom of the site, you’ll see simple profiles of our whole team. It builds real connections, and they can picture themselves talking with these real people.
… then at the bottom of the page are our full team profiles.

3. Write conversationally, not in 3rd person like a robot

Robots are fun, but I don’t know anyone who trusts a robot. Do you?

All kidding aside, write the way you would talk to your prospects. If you are laid back and easygoing, write that way on your website. If you are analytical and fact-based, write that way on your website… but do it conversationally. I always like to imagine myself sitting across the table from my best prospects; what would I say if they asked about us? That’s how I’d write it.

Write in the first person. If you talk in the 3rd person when you’re in front of a prospect, you’d sound like a goofball… you better believe you sound the same way if you talk in the 3rd person on your about page.

Here’s How We Did It (and you can too):
- Write like you talk in real life. If a 5th grader can’t read it you shouldn’t write it.
- Don’t use paragraphs that are too long. Keep things short and punchy.
- Use “I”, “we”, “my”, and “our” rather than 3rd person speak. (unless you talk in 3rd person in real life that is…)
4. Add a call to action on your website “about page”

Here’s another great idea we tested that boosts performance… every darn page on your website should end with a clear call to action. Never let your website visitors get to the bottom of a page without guiding them on where to go next. This is especially true on mobile devices, where we tend not to want to scroll back up to the top of the site on our cell phones after reading a page with a good amount of content.

Put a “fast offer” form at the bottom of your about page and your phone number for them to call you to work with you. This is already built into all of our Carrot websites, by the way :-)

Here’s How We Did It (and you can too):
- What is the main action you want them to take? Add a button or simple link to fill out a form (or the actual form) and even a phone number at the bottom.
So What Should You Do This Week?

Real estate is a people business; often, these transactions are among your client’s most significant financial decisions. When people are making financial decisions, they tend to research them online…

That almost always leads to the about page once a prospect gets close to working with you, and they just need a bit more verification before they do.

As you’ve seen, science has shown that your about page is a hot button, and you’ve seen some website about page ideas… have you focused enough time and energy on it?

I’d challenge everyone to take the tidbits from this blog post this week and implement at least 2 of the 4 tips. Beef up that about page and attract more of your website visitors to work with you… your wallet will thank you for it.

How many of the four “About Page” keys do you already have on your real estate investing website? Let me know in the comments section below!

For more actionable marketing tactics, check out our marketing plan strategy guide!
January 21, 2016
Here Are The 4 Reasons You’re Not Getting The Real Estate Leads You Want Online
I’ve got a secret to tell you about the real estate investing business: It’s really a PEOPLE business. You find sellers who need to get rid of a property, and you match that property up with buyers who want to acquire it. But the critical point is that the people make the deal happen.

So the express lane to growth as a real estate investor is simple: Get more people of the RIGHT PEOPLE into your investor lead pipeline.

Specifically, get more people with properties and get more people with money to buy your properties to notice you.

If you’re struggling with getting enough leads from your website, this blog post can help you diagnose what’s holding you back and will reveal some step-by-step strategies to get you moving forward.

Ultimately, there are 4 main reasons why you may be struggling with getting leads online as a real estate investor or agent.

4 Reasons You’re Not Getting The Real Estate Investing Leads You Want Online & How To Fix Them

1. Low Traffic or No Website Traffic

Are people landing on your website? Not enough traffic to your website is the #1 cause of the “Low or No Lead” problem. See how to solve that below…

Your website traffic volume is the first place to start.

After all, if you aren’t actively getting qualified people to your website with your marketing, anything else you do on your site won’t matter.

The first step is to get eyeballs on your site.

I like setting an initial goal to get 10 – 20 people to your website each week. That’s not a large number… it’s achievable, and if you’re not getting 10 – 20 qualified prospects to your website per week with your marketing… it’s your first goal.

So how can you get more traffic (qualified prospects) to your website?

We focus on…
1. SEO (ranking high in Google)
2. Paid traffic like Google Ads (PPC marketing)
3. Hustle marketing (Craigslist, social media, etc.)
4. Integrating your website into offline marketing (Direct mail, email signature, etc.)
We’ve written posts on this blog about every one of these and have done several webinars on driving traffic… so dive into the resources at your fingertips and make that first goal of 10-20 qualified prospects per month!

Here are some resources on driving more traffic to your websites to dive into!
Many more free resources here on our site will also help you increase your traffic.

If you’re already a Carrot member… hop on the next weekly Carrot Coaching Call, and we’ll help craft a traffic plan for you right there on the call if you ask us :-)

As we’ve written, SEO is a long-term (and high ROI) strategy… so don’t expect 10-20 qualified prospects per week to come to your site from SEO alone right away. It takes time to build… but it’s worth it once it does!

Also, Youtube marketing is a way to get your brand to the front page of Google search results (even if your website isn’t there yet), plus it’s a great way to get even more eyeballs on your brand if your website is already on the front page.

2. Low-Quality Traffic To Your Website

Not all website traffic is created equal… Are the people landing on your website the right ones? Ones that will turn into leads and deals?

So you have at least 10 – 20 people landing on your website each week and still not getting the leads you want? They may not be the right people…

Eyeballs are good… but the right eyeballs on your website are better.

Once you’ve built website traffic-generating systems to get people landing on your website, it’s time to start refining those systems to ensure you get the highest quality traffic you can.

Is Your SEO Optimized For High-Quality Search Phrases? While it’s tempting to drive as much traffic as possible to your website, the first action you should be taking is looking at your search engine optimization. Are you choosing the right keywords for the right audience? Not all audiences are looking for the same thing. One motivated seller segment may be more responsive to a specific keyword than another. Ensure you’re reviewing the latest version of our SEO Bible, which reveals over 71 SEO keywords that are working for investors now. Avoid altering our “baked-in” SEO since it’s been tested and proven to work.

An example of traffic that may be low quality for the average real estate wholesaler…

… are people who came from a search phrase or Google PPC campaign like “sell my house” or “list my house.”

Yes, they’re looking to sell… but these keywords tend to be from people looking for retail. Focus on keywords that people you can help would be searching.

And make sure you are using location-specific SEO on your site. Review these 6 simple tips to master location-based SEO to make sure your site is fully optimized for where you’re doing deals.

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

So consider what audience you’re looking to attract and choose your marketing strategies wisely. We’ve talked with many investors who have thrown hundreds of dollars at Facebook ads for motivated sellers only to be discouraged and think it’s a website problem. It’s a traffic quality problem. Facebook ads are a lot harder for motivated sellers than cash buyers.

Don’t Rely on Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns Right Away Unless You Have a Budget of at Least $1k-3k: Pay-per-click campaigns can take a while to optimize. In the short term, they can certainly drive traffic to your site, but they might not drive the right types of prospects, and you could you run through your budget faster than you expect! (Check out these 20 tips to optimize a Google PPC campaign – and pay attention to the case study at the very beginning of the post!)

Pay-per-click is excellent, but make sure you’re using other methods to drive the right traffic to your site while you hone your PPC campaigns.

Build Valuable Content Everywhere! The most effective way to drive quality leads to your site is to provide valuable information your target audience wants. It’s not about stuffing the right keywords into the title of a Youtube video or website page, it’s really about understanding who your audience is and addressing the problems, concerns, and questions that they have about how to sell or buy a property and why you’re the right person to help them.

Make sure you’re being helpful in all your content – from offsite to onsite content.

In the end…

…don’t just focus on driving traffic. Focus on getting the right people to your website who you can help and who can turn into profitable deals for you.“

If retail house sellers aren’t your ideal prospect… don’t use keywords that will attract them.

And also… don’t forget that when you visit your website, that will show up on your website stats reports… so if you haven’t done any marketing yet and see 10 visits to your website this week… those visits may be you visiting your website. So go out and actively market to get the right people to your website.

3. Low Credibility On Your Website

What’s the first impression people get when they land on your website? If your website makes them feel like you’re a fly-by-night operation or a “dark and seedy” character (or worse, like you’re hiding behind the website), your best prospects could bail and go to your competition.

As they say, the first impression is lasting. What is your website saying about you, your company, and your ability to honestly and ethically help them solve their problem?

Your audience will seek reasons to trust you as your traffic grows and the quality improves. Like detectives, they’ll look for clues on your website that point to your trustworthiness (or lack thereof) to assure them that they’re in good hands by working with you.

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

Just look at the first page of this Carrot member website and you’ll see that it contains subtle credibility clues for the site visitor.

The typical Carrot website has over 10 credibility boosters already baked in. You can add more credibility like testimonials, info about your company, local pictures, and badges like BBB to boost your credibility even more.
- Clean and trustworthy looking website and brand
- Easy to find information and navigate the website
- The company page informs the prospective lead that you are a legitimate organization.
- The How It Works link assures the website visitor that you have a plan to help them.
- Testimonials provide credibility from third-party “success stories.”
- A guarantee, when appropriate, helps reduce a sense of risk
- Further assurances such as “No hassles. No obligation.” tell a prospective lead that you’re easy to work with and you have their best interests at heart
- Localize the website so they know you’re a local solution they can talk to
- Make it easy to contact you (add your phone number, opt-in form, contact page, etc.)
This is just a start. There are many more ways to add credibility.

Here are a few:
- Talk about how long you’ve been in business and your unique way of being able to help them
- Fill your testimonials page with testimonials from folks who have done business with you
- If you are accredited with the Better Business Bureau, add a BBB to your site
- Include videos of you speaking to your audience
- Emphasize a “risk reversal” (try to remove the sense of risk with working with you. Put the risk on yourself, not them)
- Make sure your website is fully mobile optimized and looks great on mobile devices (test your website here)
Even other forms of marketing spread your name around your market, contributing to people seeing your name, recognizing you, and trusting you.

Credibility on your website is one of the most important things you can do to help make sure your website isn’t turning your prospects away. Carrot makes it easier and more effective than other platforms, or you are trying to build a website from scratch yourself.

If you find that you’re driving great quality traffic to your site and it’s not turning into leads… it’s either number #3 (Credibility) or #4 (Conversion) holding your website back.

4. Your Website Conversion Rate Is Dragging You Down

Not all websites are created equal… some perform much better than others as far as converting a qualified visitor into a lead. If you’re getting enough quality traffic and you’ve built in credibility elements into your website… it’s likely that your website isn’t set up to convert very well (a very common mistake).

We constantly harp that performance trumps all else here at Carrot. It is more important than looking different in the market… more important than a “pretty” and “fancy” site… and far more important than a fancy CRM. Why?

Simple.

If your website isn’t built based on scientific testing to tap into your website visitor’s subconscious behaviors to help guide the right people toward making it easy to engage in your website and work with you…

… you’re wasting your marketing dollars.

Time and time again… we have investors switch to Carrot (who are already driving quality traffic) because they are getting good Google rankings or putting good money into Google PPC marketing… but their website is underperforming.

Then they switch to our science-based lead generation websites with our Carrot Conversion Methodology built into them (so you don’t have to be a conversion rate expert), and they see an immediate increase in their leads.

“I was spending $100 a day on Google PPC driving to my other website I spent good money on to have built…and struggled to get leads. Once I switched to Carrot & just used what you’d already built and perfected, in 3 months I’ve been with Carrot I now spend $10 per day and have over 450 rent to own tenant buyer leads. The only thing I changed was my website.” – Jim Pellerin – Home Ownership Made Easy

The only change was how the website was structured, and the elements (often they’re ones you can’t notice) that we’ve built into our websites boost the performance and the ROI for the investor.

So, if you…
1. Are you getting at least 10 – 20 highly qualified visitors to your website each week
2. Have built-in great credibility elements into your website
… and your website still isn’t converting at a bare minimum 3-5% of those visitors into leads.

(our average motivated seller website converts over 9% of visitors to a lead, cash buyer websites over 18%, and rent-to-own websites over 24% of visitors turn into leads. How does yours stack up? Learn more about conversion rates here)

You have likely had a conversion rate problem, my friend.

Again, once your audience trusts you, they’ll more likely be willing to act, but they’ll need some guidance and direction to get them to take the right action immediately. That’s where conversion elements come in.

This is where we specialize here at Carrot!

We are constantly testing and modifying our sites to find the best-converting strategies that work! Although you may choose to make adjustments on your Carrot site, we urge you to do so carefully so that you maintain the conversion elements that we’ve carefully placed.

For example, the first portion of the site that your website visitor sees is strategically designed to increase conversion. Everything from the words in the menu to the call to action to the simple form – even that scribbled orange arrow is there for a reason!

We have over 30 Carrot Conversion Method elements built into our websites… many of them you likely will never notice but they boost performance… without you having to be a conversion rate expert.

If you want to ensure that more people take action when they’re on your site, keep those Carrot conversion elements on your site.

For precise ways to increase the conversion rate on your website, check out these free resources:
- 2-Step Opt-In Process To Boost Your Leads
- These Simple Words Improved Conversion Rates By 45%+
Implement the things in those posts above, and your website will perform much better.

Look at your website conversion rate this way. It’ll hit home…

Lose just 1 deal every 2 years because of an underperforming website… and that costs you $10k+. That’s enough to pay for Carrot for over 10 years.

But you say… “Carrot is more per month than the other website guys in the market“.

Yes, we are… because we focus on providing you with the highest return on the investment platform. Our websites are the highest-performing websites in the industry, and almost every other website builder emulates our conversion methodology for their website designs.

So, you may be paying a bit more per month with Carrot… but you’re saving yourself from losing out on deals and leads because you’re using a low-performing website solution to “save a few bucks.” Take a tour of Carrot or connect with us for a call. We’d love to walk you through case study after case study of how Carrot has helped more high-achieving investors than any other company in the world to ramp up their ROI from their online marketing.

It’s why more and more of the most active and largest investors (ones who understand ROI) are moving from their WordPress websites into Carrot… our focus on performance and ROI.

If You Fix These 4 “Low or No Lead” Reasons On Your Website… You’ll Stop Losing Out On The High-Quality Real Estate Investing Leads Coming Online In Your Market Each And Every Day…

Not generating the leads you want online as a real estate investor boils down to those 4 things discussed in this article.

Find your weak spot and start implementing the changes we suggest in this article and our other free resources.

If you look back in 3 months and still aren’t getting the results you want… there’s only 1 other reason. I call it the 5th “low lead” reason. It’s you :-)

So go out there and focus on growing your online traffic, getting more qualified prospects to your website, building that credibility, and using a high-performing website platform.

If you do that… you’ll be crushing it in no time. After all, our members are pulling in over 48,000 real estate investing leads per month right now… there’s no reason you can’t pull in your fair share too.

And if you feel that Carrot can help you grow your business as well… hop on over and take a demo or reach out to us anytime. We’re here for you!
November 24, 2015
Carrot Websites Already In Your Market? 6 Ways To Stand Out
Carrot websites now control more page 1 Google rankings for motivated seller and cash buyer search phrases that matter than any other real estate investor website platform. So, if Carrot members are already ranking well and pulling in leads in your market…

Demo Carrot: How many deals are you losing to your competitor’s website?
Take a Free Demo

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

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

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

The #1 Question You Want To First Ask Yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider the sport of automotive racing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s what the InvestorCarrot platform is all about.

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

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

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

6 Ways To Separate Yourself From Other Investors Leveraging InvestorCarrot Websites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less Than 30 Minutes Of Personalization Work On An InvestorCarrot Site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time To Complete: 3-5 mins per page.

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

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

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

Did you know you can control what Google shows here?

Yep, you can!

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

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

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

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

Let’s adjust that search listing right now!

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

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

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

4. Build in some credibility elements

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

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

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

Your personality.

Your experience.

Your credibility.

How you can help them.

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

How can you do that?

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

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

5. Consider other keywords ignored by your competitors

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

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

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

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

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

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

As an example…

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

Almost 900!

Wow.

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

If they are, spin up some pages

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

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

Bam, you win the internet :-)

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

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

Selling a house in divorce [in your area]

Selling a house in probate [in your area]

Selling a house I inherited [in your area]

Selling my house without a broker [in your area]

[your area] cash home buyers

You get the idea.

Cast a wider net.

That’s what the big boys do.

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

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

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

6. Leverage other media too! Video and SlideShare

Time To Complete: 30-60 mins per video.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Focus On Your Results And Stop Worrying About Your Competition

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

Take a demo today!
October 29, 2015
[Compare] Carrot vs. Cheap & Low Cost Mass Website Builders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And as we always like to say…

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

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

The second is… ease of use.

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

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

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

The third is… aesthetic

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

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

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

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

Fourth is… cost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 22, 2015
Annoucing New Property Listing Features & Improved Social Share Buttons

We’re on a roll over here at InvestorCarrot and, just like in farming… we’re making this spring a time renewal, refreshing, and improving the Carrot platform each and every week.

With that said, we’ve rolled out several pretty cool and important updates over the last 2 weeks, with more to come over the next 2 weeks.

Today we’re going to focus on 2 updates to the platform and your real estate investor websites.

One is a pretty major update to our property listing engine based on feedback from members and the other is an improvement on the way your social media sharing buttons work on your websites.

We are really excited about these changes and we know you will be too. If you are a new customer and haven’t used the property feature before you might not appreciate the awesome redesign these Carrot features have undergone. But we won’t leave you out. You can check out the screenshots below to see the changes we have made.

Update #1: The New Beautiful Property Listing Website Engine. Simpler. Sexier.

This major update isn’t one that’ll help you get more leads, but it is a major improvement on how you get your deals in front of your cash buyers, your rent to own tenants, and turnkey investors. Lots of our members were looking for a more modern and simpler way to launch a property listing website for their real estate investing or real estate agent business.

So we set out to make your property listings beautiful, more useful and intuitive, and more powerful in this first update of several planned updates to the Property Listing Engine.

The New And Improved Property Listing Page... help your buyers see more properties without scrolling (plus they look sharp!)

So What’s Different About The Look Of Your Property Listing Sites?

We made tons of updates to the Property Listing Engine on your websites, but here are a few of the biggest.

A Simpler, Easier To Read “Grid” View Of All Of Your Properties

This helps your cash buyers, rent to own tenants, and turnkey buyers see more properties without scrolling down. Plus they look great!

Mark Your Property Status And Type With A Click Of A Mouse

A simple click helps you indicate if a property is sold or rented, plus our system will tag your properties whether they’re a “Home For Sale”, Duplex, Apartment… you get the idea.

Improved Image Gallery That Looks Great On Every Device (especially mobile!)

We moved the image gallery from the bottom of your property listing sites to the top and made the gallery crisp, clean, and easy to use on all devices. We’ve found buyers want to see the visual of the property above all else, so they’re now front and center.

Simpler And Cleaner Google Maps And Street View Display With Clear Call To Action

No Properties To Upload Yet? We’ll Still Make You Look Professional!

In the past, website visitors were faced with a blank page if there weren’t any properties uploaded to the website. Now, our system is helping you build credibility and your cash buyer list even if you have no properties to upload on your website yet.

Nearly 30% Of Your Traffic Is Mobile:
These Property Listings Look Great On All Devices

A New, Simpler Process To Create Your Property Listings

We’ve rethought how listing your properties through your InvestorCarrot real estate investing websites should work, and we’ve simplified it.

Now we walk you through a very simple and intuitive “wizard” to get the property details in place, upload your pictures, and optimize the posting for SEO.

Hop in and try the new Property Listing Engine in your InvestorCarrot account!

Update #2: Faster, Sleeker Social Media Sharing Buttons

In our never-ending quest to always improve the performance of your websites we often will pinpoint very simple changes that we can make that help make your websites even faster than they already are.

In one of our tests, we discovered that there was room to improve the website load time by streamlining the Social Media Share buttons on your websites.

How Did We Improve The Social Media Buttons?

First of all, the new look is much more modern and clean on your website.

But that’s not the main reason we made the change.

Typical social media share buttons have their own separate styling and count of the number of “Likes” or “G 1+’s” made on that page. But every time someone landed on the website, their web browser would contact each of those networks like Google or Facebook to see the current “count” and render the share button on the site.

It’s not a huge deal, but it does decrease the page load speed and can make your site feel sluggish when it is really just waiting on those separate networks.

So these new social media share buttons load insanely fast, look great, and still do the same thing as before in helping you spread the word about your website and boost your social media sharing signals for SEO.

Does This Mean I Lose My Facebook and G 1+ Shares?

Nope! Your shares always follow your domain name… not the buttons. So whatever shares you had on your web page before, they’re still there!

We’d Love Your Feedback Below!
Give These New Features A Try!

This is the first of several property listing updates we have planned and we’d love your feedback.

What do you love about the new property listings on your website?

What would you love to see done to help you market your properties even easier and more effectively?

We’re all ears!

If you’re not an InvestorCarrot member yet, head on over and take our demo or see our pricing and plans. Be a part of the 48,000+ leads per month our Carrot members are pulling into their real estate investing websites with Inbound Marketing each and every month.

March 26, 2015
The Carrot Vendor Marketplace!

Over the year and a half since InvestorCarrot was born, we’ve had a lot of improvements, upgrades, and new features.

Heck in the past 4 months alone we’ve launched hundreds of improvements to make it even easier and faster to launch effective online lead generation websites as a real estate investor, beef up the level of support members get even further than it already is, get your leads faster (sms alerts), make your websites rank better in Google, and convert leads at an even higher rate.

But all of that pales in comparison to what we have in store for InvestorCarrot members over the next 4 months :-)

Today we’re happy as heck to roll out the first version of our Carrot Marketplace to the InvestorCarrot community.

What Is The InvestorCarrot Marketplace And How Does It Help Make Your Life Easier?

As a real estate investor, when getting real estate investing leads online… launching an effective website is just the first step.

We already make that crazy easy. <== See a video of the process there

But if you’re wanting to drive a lot of traffic to your websites (motivated sellers, cash buyers, private lenders, rent to own tenants, note sellers, etc.) you or someone has to roll up their sleeves to get to work.

InvestorCarrot gives you a huge jumpstart with our real estate investing websites to rank better in Google and convert your leads much higher than the industry average… and our support is what we’ve been told time and time again is the best in the industry by far.

So now with our new Carrot Marketplace, we’re making it as easy as buying milk (or carrots :-) at the grocery store to find the vendors, services, and help so you can ramp up your results even faster.

What Will You As An InvestorCarrot Customer Find In The NEW Carrot Marketplace?

Log into your Carrot account and click the NEW Marketplace tab to check it out for yourself.

But here’s a quick snapshot of what you’ll find in there right now… and what we have in store for the marketplace in 2015.

In this first rollout of the marketplace we’re making it easier for you to get access to the services we’ve already been helping you with and offering for months and months… this just streamlines the process and puts the powerfully into your hands.

Online Marketing & Lead Generation Strategy Help And Services

Certified Carrot Preferred Partners: If you want to rank your website better in the search engines, better optimize your SEO, turn on some PPC… we’ve got you covered. Our certified partners have a minimum of over a year experience with our software and our customers before they can be a “Certified Carrot Partner”. Our current partners have pulled top rankings and hundreds of leads for our clients.

Everyday InvestorCarrot customers reach out to us looking for help with their real estate investing PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to help ramp up the traffic and leads. If you’re in a more competitive market (a town over… say 50,000 people)… you’ll likely have to focus some time implementing our 3 Lead Per Day Training to move up the rankings in Google.

Carrot gives you a head start, implementing the steps in the 3 Lead Per Day Training give it a boost.

So you’ll now be able to connect directly with vetted and Certified Carrot Partners who can do the SEO and PPC work for you if you’d rather just have someone else do it.

These same vendors have been working with InvestorCarrot members for over a year and pulled some pretty amazing results in the process (top Google rankings in markets all across the country and consistent leads each and every day)

Help Customizing And Optimizing Your Websites

Want To Be Hands Off? Our team can handle all of your customizations and branding for you if you want. There’s no excuses for not getting results now ;-)

We’re always focusing on making InvestorCarrot even easier to get highly effective websites up for your real estate investing business quickly… whether you’re a techie or not.

But, if you’d rather have us do the branding for you… and build out your city-specific pages for you… and help build your personal credibility into your websites for you so you don’t have to lift a finger, that’s where this section comes in.

Access our QuickStart service where we ask you 13 simple questions, and our team gets to work customizing your websites to fit your business, branding, and goals.

Plus have our team help you capture more traffic with city-specific / local pages and more!

These are all things you can easily do for yourself inside your InvestorCarrot account… but if you’d rather focus on what you do best and have us do it for you, we’ve got you covered.

Premium Training

The Fire That Fuels Your Growth: Our 2 flagship trainings (only available to InvestorCarrot members currently) are now in the Marketplace. But be on the lookout for more advanced training and tools to help you get an edge in your market.

Our members are generating well over 10,000 opt-in leads per month right now (that doesn’t count phone call leads)… and a huge part of it is the combination of the effectiveness of our website platform and the training you can access as an InvestorCarrot member.

Right now you’ll find our Posts 2 Profits Craigslist training and our 3 Lead Per Day (SEO, PPC, Youtube marketing course) in the Carrot Marketplace.

But we plan on launching more Premium Trainings in 2015 (in addition to our weekly LIVE Carrot Coaching Calls FREE to Content Pro members) to help you market effectively on Facebook, use Retargeting to “fetch back” more leads, and more! So keep an eye out for new Premium Trainings.

Get InvestorCarrot Swag

Why have a company name like Carrot if you’re not going to have fun with it and be loud and proud about it? Right? :-)

Well, now you can get Carrot Swag right in the marketplace.

Want a t-shirt (American Apparel – Made in the USA)? Grab one.

How about some awesome note pads with our Core Values on them… grab those in our “Carrot Swag Bag” which includes a t-shirt, a NEW Carrot Bud doll, Carrot stickers, and our awesome Carrot Idea Pads.

What’s In Store For 2015 With The Carrot Marketplace?

We’re working furiously on developing new features into the software to solidify our place as the leading Inbound Online Marketing platform for Real Estate Investors… which we’ll release to members as we finish them up.

But, we’ve realized that some features don’t make sense to build into every website that is launched. Things like an advanced BirdDog Referral Program system to help you generate bird dogs to find you more deals. Or “built for you” Podio apps to help you better manage your lead flow. Or marketing campaigns that are crushing it for people. Or 1 on 1 strategy consulting with me and our top performing Carrot members to help you bust past your roadblocks and excel… you get the idea.

So be on the lookout for other resources, tools, and website add-ons so you can further leverage InvestorCarrot to reach your goals.

And heck, if you have ideas for great resources, tools, and new functionality for your InvestorCarrot websites please shoot them our way!

Be on the lookout for more announcements about new features and enhancements over the next several months. We’ve got some in store that we know you’re going to LOVE.

Sound Off Below About The New Marketplace!

Hit me w/ comments and questions below… or if you’re not an InvestorCarrot member yet but are considering it, throw your questions my way! We’re here for you and would love for you to be a part of the success that our members are having (10k+ leads per month and growing!).

January 23, 2015

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