Search results for: “credibility”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your brand’s story can be that powerful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that’s a little later in the process.

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

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

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

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

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

They tell a powerful story.

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

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

We’re here to help.

Join up on Wednesday for our weekly Live Coaching Call.

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

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

The answer: Both.

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

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

Just keep reading. ;)

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

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

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

Brand and Customize Your Free Reports

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

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

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

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

Create High-Value Free Reports for Your Market

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

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

But what kind of Free Reports should you create?

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

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

1. Motivated Sellers.

What types of situations can you help solve?

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

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

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

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

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

2. Real Estate Buyers, Investors, and Lenders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So get out there and start writing!

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

Use Great Data and Tell Powerful Stories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To put it another way…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check this out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those are all really great video marketing practices!

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

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

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

Then click the snazzy little “Embed Video” button.

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

That’s it! How simple was that?

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

And if you’re not already a Carrot Member, check out the reasons you should be! Watch our Demo Video right now!
April 21, 2014
How Affiliate Marketers Can Use the Storytelling Secrets of Pixar to Make Money
Quick Note – Our Affiliate Contest is Taking Off! There’s a few people leading the pack, but there’s plenty of room for you to jump in. Go check out the contest now – and if you’re not already an InvestorCarrot Affiliate, sign up here – it’s fast and free!

You know Pixar is the ONLY movie company never to take a loss, right?

All of their movies have been successes at the box office (although Cars 2 was kind of a dud, it still earned big $$$$).

Their secret storytelling formula was leaked and tweeted out, and when we saw it… whoa! It’s pure gold for anyone who is engaged in affiliate marketing – really, content marketing in general. You know why?

Storytelling is the key to successful sales.

No matter how good of a storyteller you are, you can always be better.

We’ve got a powerful video for you here… even tho the audio is pretty lame, the content is great.

In the time it takes to watch an episode of the Office, you could be lining up the strategy that will make you thousands of dollars – and help you win some cool stuff in our affiliate contest.

In this video you’ll learn:
- The exact formula Pixar has used to write every single movie they’ve made – (none of their movies have ever taken a loss – that’s a first in Hollywood)
- How to use Pixar’s character development tricks to create sales content that builds trust, credibility, and engages your audience more than ever before
- Fast, easy ways to get “unstuck” when you’ve got writers block and are struggling to put out that next content piece
- Why you should never ever try to make “perfect” content… and why you should always begin at the end to get the best results.
You’re not already signed up???

Join our Affiliate Program now!
February 18, 2014
[Real Estate Heat Map Results] Where Are Sellers Clicking On Your Real Estate Website

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

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

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

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

1)   The site is getting no visitors, and

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

The first problem is usually solved with SEO content when:

1)   The site doesn’t have good content,

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

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

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

What are people doing on your real estate website?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did you notice on that heatmap?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is your credibility on your own real estate website?

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

And yet…

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

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

Credibility, Content, and Contact

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

Even more great lessons here…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup, that’s it.

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

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

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

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

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

This Is All Built Into Your Carrot Websites Already!

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

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

Keep An Eye Out For More Articles Like This!

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

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

January 20, 2014
Sample Real Estate Investing Free Reports for Lead Generation – Ideas to grow your business
Need to generate leads for your real estate investing, wholesaling, or fix and flip business? Read on…

So, you want more leads for your real estate investing business? Or any business for that matter?

Great. You know the easiest way to generate leads as a real estate investor?

Offering something of value to your prospects for free… in exchange for their information.

In this article, we’re going to talk about using free reports as a lead generation tool for motivated sellers, cash real estate buyers, private lenders, and more.

Sample Real Estate Investing Free Reports

A free report can be on anything that will help your prospect get closer to their goal… while at the same time build credibility for you and get you closer to a sale.

Here are some topic ideas for free real estate investing reports you can use to generate leads online.

For Motivated Sellers:
- 5 Ways To Stop Or Avoid Foreclosure
- Why Sell To A Real Estate Investor?
- How To Repair Your Credit During A Foreclosure
- 5 Ways To Sell Your House Fast In Today’s Market
- 6 Ways To Increase The Value Of Your House Before You Sell
- How To Navigate The Probate Process: Selling An Inherited House The Easy Way
… those ideas are all geared to help the prospect get information on solving one specific problem. There are many many other topics you can write (or have someone else write) free reports on.

For Cash Real Estate Buyers:
- A Local Real Estate Market Report (investors eat these up. Offer this on your home page… just compile a new local real estate report every few months w/ free info you can find online or from your real estate agent)
- 4 Ways To Cashflow Invest In Today’s Real Estate Market
- How To Buy Investment Real Estate With Your IRA: The Pros, Cons, and What to Avoid
- How To Analyze A Real Estate Deal So You Never Lose A Penny On A Deal
For Private Lenders:
- An Unofficial Guide On Private Lending In Real Estate: What Is It, Pros, Cons, Risks, Rewards To Look For
- 3 Ways To Invest Passively In The Current Real Estate Market
You get the drift. Simple stuff… just good little guides that will help whoever you’re trying to attract get a bit closer to solving a problem or helping them reach a goal.

How To Write A Real Estate Investing Free Report

We actually provide our Carrot members 6 or so real estate investing free reports that you can use in your online lead generation (our members can even edit and customize the reports)… but if you’re not yet a Carrot member and want to create some great “free report” material to give away on your site… here are your options:
1. Bear down and write them yourself: Really, they don’t have to be long… 2 – 10 pages is good enough. Anyone can write a 2 page report… right? Just create a report title, determine what you want that report to do for you (i.e. – get a seller to call you), then start doing some research on Google to come up w/ the content to write about… then write for a couple hours. Done.
2. Hire someone to write the reports for you: You can go to websites like www.TextBroker.com, www.Guru.com, and others to have great content written for you pretty reasonably. A 5-page report on a topic like the ones we’ve lined out will probably only cost you about $50 – $100 or so for solid writing. If you want top shelf writing with good graphics… you’re probably looking no more than $200 – $300 or so. Pretty cheap in the whole scheme of things.
3. … or once again, shameless plug… but join Carrot and get access to ours :-)
What To Do With The Free Real Estate Lead Generation Reports When You Have Them?

Get them on your website, in your email signatures, etc.

Here are some examples of effective ways we’ve been generating leads with our free reports (and ones we’ve seen elsewhere that we know work well).

Example #1: On their website, they put these 2 free reports on the page. One is a home sellers guide and the other about ways to stop foreclosure. Simple enough eh? And it works great. Then, when people click on these they go to “Lead Pages” (some people call them Squeeze pages for real estate investing ).

Example #2: A Squeeze Page (or we call them “Landing Pages” ) for Real Estate Investing. A page like this is where you’d drive people to once they click on a link to download your free report. These pages are the real key… they need to be designed to convert well. Keep them simple, keep them short, and the only goal of the page is to get someone to put in their email address in exchange for this valuable information. From there, they’re in your email database so you can follow up with them again.

Example #3: Here’s an example on one of our AgentCarrot websites that drives people to opt-in to get a free home value report. Quick, simple… not a fancy design… but we’ve found designs like this tend to work very very well.

Example #4: This is a really cool strategy that has worked really really well for us on all of our sites in multiple industries… including real estate investing. At the bottom of every page on your website you should have some sort of a call to action. In this example, on the bottom of our “motivated seller sites”, this particular site focuses on “stop foreclosure”… we have a message offering our free report. This is VERY effective. Build out your own, or of course… we have these built right into our Carrot platform for our members.

What To Do Next To Get Leads Online For Your Real Estate Investing Business?

So, now that you’ve seen some examples and samples of how to effectively use free reports for your real estate investing business… what do you do next?

Here are some quick action steps for you:
1. Take some of our topics above or create your own free report topics… and create your first free report in the next 7 days (or hire someone from guru.com or textbroker.com for cheap). OR, join Carrot and get our “done for you” reports, websites, and Lead Pages to use to generate more leads online.
2. Get your website tweaked a bit to have 1 goal in mind, to generate leads… and close deals… that’s it. If a specific page on your site doesn’t actively drive people to take an action… add a free report link on it. Simple.
3. Start driving traffic to your site. We teach our Carrot members how to drive traffic to your site… you can have the best site in the world… but if no one gets to it and reads it… it doesn’t mean a thing. So, learn how to drive traffic and start to generate leads with your new free reports.
Have questions? Comments? Want to see inside our free reports that our members use? Just make a comment below and we’ll email you some sample pdfs that you can check out that have worked really well to generate cash buyer leads, motivated seller leads, and private lender leads.
November 21, 2012
What No One Tells You About Designing a High Converting Real Estate Investing Landing Page
Ok, so you’re knee-deep in real estate investing and now you want to start to generate a cash buyers list.

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

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

Why Real Estate Investing Lead Pages Work

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

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

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

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

The Anatomy of A Landing Page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is My Landing Page Working Well?

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

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

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

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

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

It really depends on the skills or budget you have.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what do you do now?

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

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

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

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

Usually, the option that makes the most sense is to piggyback on a lead page system that already works and that you can have full control over whether you know HTML or not. Of course, we’re pretty darn bias to our own real estate investor website lead generation system… you should check it out and see if it’s right for you. But, there are other systems out there too that you may look at.
August 1, 2012
REItheme – Here we are!
It’s been 2 years in the making… over 350 beta tester real estate investors later… and we’re officially releasing REItheme real estate investor websites to the whole world (at least… the whole real estate investor world ;-).

The Story

The story of how we came to be over the last 2 years is really pretty simple. We ourselves are real estate investors and own rental properties still today. In addition, we’ve worked with thousands of real estate investors around the country through our free tools and content at our sister site thereibrain.com. Through working with our subscribers and students there was one common need that they all voiced…

“I need a simple but effective website to use. Do you have a recommendation?”

We got that question over and over… so in 2010 we decided to create the first version of the REItheme sites just for those initial members. That group was our “beta” group which is over 350 members strong now. Giving us feedback, testing the sites, using them for their own real estate investing businesses… the whole shibang.

Then, finally… after enough procrastinating and delaying (because we’ve been so darn busy growing our other companies)… we decided to finish out REItheme so the entire real estate investor community can have access to the website system we’ve developed over the last 2 years.

Why We’re Different

The real estate investor website market has been a pretty stale market over the past 5 years. No real innovations, no one really deciding to take the leadership role in the market, and no one really focusing on what is best for the customer for running their real estate investor websites.

Above all… here are the main reasons why we’re excited about REItheme (and so are our customers):
- Customization: No two real estate investing businesses are the same, so why should you use the exact same website as 1,000+ other investors? That’s not the recipe for success in any business. You have to differentiate your company from the rest. With REItheme we’ve worked hard to make it so you can easily customize virtually every aspect of your website. From the branding, colors, and look/feel of your website… to the content… lead capture forms… properties… and more. You can put your own personal touch on your real estate investor website so it’s not like thousands of others… and you take control over every aspect of your website and no longer have to rely on a web guy or someone else to update your content for you.
- Stellar Member Experiences: Over the past several years our team has built multiple successful companies, combined reaching into the 7 figures… and a huge thing we’ve learned is that the better we’re able to create great customer experiences… the more our customers love us… and the more people flock to our services. So, we’re not just about amassing as many customers as we can… we’re about making using REItheme the best possible experience for you… from the signup to using your website day in and day out.
- Leveraging Social Media and the Search Engines: A HUGE drawback of most other real estate investor website templates on the market is that they look like they were built in 1987 and haven’t been built with the new technologies in mind. We’ve been able to generate over 30,000 real estate related leads directly from the search engines by ranking our pages and sites high for competitive search terms. Most website systems today in the real estate investor world never crack the top few pages of search results mainly because they weren’t built from the ground up with search engine optimization in mind. The same goes for social media. We want to make it easy for you to get the benefits of social media sites like Facebook… right from your own website.
- Credibility: Credibility is a big thing in any business… especially as a real estate investor. So, it’s very important what your website looks like and what it says when your prospects and clients find their way to your site. Our top notch design and copywriting team has put together great looking and professional websites that give a great first impression… and we’ve added in credibility elements that’ll help you relay the right message to people you want to work with. Easily add in testimonials, tell your story about your company on your about page, and more.
- Continual Improvements: We have a dedicated team focused on continually making REItheme the best website system for real estate investors today… and in the future. As new technologies come and go… we’ll continually update the system so you get those benefits without having to hire a web guy every time things change. Also, we’re continually testing our websites and finding new ways to make them rank higher in search engines, generate more leads, and be easier for you to use… and we always push those results down to your websites automatically. With REItheme you won’t have to worry about being left behind the technology curve… we’ll help you stay ahead of it.
The Future

We’ve got big plans for REItheme and the growth of this company and the growth of our customers businesses. We have no intentions of building REItheme into a “one stop shop” for real estate investor tools. There are already great systems out there that will calculate your offers on properties, manage your deals, run comps, and other great things.

That’s not our focus.

Our focus is to be the single best system for managing your web presence for your real estate investing business… with the features that help generate more traffic and leads as the main focus… and keeping the system simple and not packed with features 95% of investors don’t need.

Getting Started

So, if you’re a real estate investor and are looking for a better way to manage your online presence, generate leads, and regain control over your websites… check out REItheme to see if its a fit for you.

Also, if you know other investors who could use a website system like REItheme… check out our referral Partner program where you can earn 25% commissions on ever new REItheme member you refer (for the life of their account).

Enjoy and we look forward to working with you!

– Trevor and the REItheme Team
June 11, 2012

More posts