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April Harvest Report – Mobile Is Now & Top Lead Generating States

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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 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 … Continued

How Many Websites Are Ideal For A Real Estate Wholesaler or Flipper?

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“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). —————————— Learn more about the differences between credibility websites vs. target market websites and why you need both. —————————– 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 … Continued

February Harvest Report – Lead Data & Survey Results

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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. 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, … Continued

The Most Overlooked But Important Page On Your Website (Backed By Science)

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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? Take a Free Demo 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 … Continued

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

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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 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… SEO (ranking high in Google) Paid traffic like Google Ads (PPC marketing) Hustle marketing (Craigslist, social media, etc.) 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! Effective PPC Marketing Strategies Training 20 Steps To Optimize Your Google PPC Campaigns Techniques for Creating High-Converting Motivated Seller PPC Ads The 4 Critical Parts of SEO For All Investor Websites 16 Key On-Page SEO Tips To Rank Your Web Pages Better 6 Simple Steps to Master Location-Based SEO Our SEO Bible For Real Estate Investors  7 YouTube Video Marketing Tips For Real Estate Investors Our Famous 3 Lead Per Day Training (40+ videos on SEO, YouTube Marketing, PPC, and more – Only $99) 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 So you have at least 10 – 20 people landing on your website each … Continued

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

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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? 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 … Continued

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

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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 … Continued

Annoucing New Property Listing Features & Improved Social Share Buttons

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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.   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 … Continued

The InvestorCarrot Marketplace!

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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 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 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 … Continued