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How to Create Real Estate Agent Infographics (10 Examples)

One of the most persuasive ways to build brand awareness online is to incorporate real estate agent infographics into your content marketing strategy.

Not all content is created equal. There’s a reason that 55% of B2C content producing companies rated visual content as their top priority.

Pearson reports that 65% of the population are visual learners. Hubspot notes that an infographic is 30 times more likely to be read than pure text. And Massplanner explains that infographics are shared 3 times more than any other type of content.

But, how do you create your own infographics that are useful to your audience, convert the right people into leads, and don’t look hideious?

Well, that’s why you’re here.

Because you’re not a designer or a professional content marketer, you’re a real estate agent. But, as we’re going to see, that doesn’t mean you can’t put together some lead-generating real estate infographics.

Here’s a three-step process for creating your very own real estate agent infographics: Choose an idea. Find your formatting. Use these tools.

Real Estate Agent Infographics – Pick an Idea

As with any piece of content, you need an idea. And brainstorming is the best way to dig up ideas. But since you probably don’t have a real estate infographic guru sitting next to you, and brainstorming on your own is boring, we’ve done the digging for you. Here are 5 examples of infographics that you, as a real estate agent, can steal ideas from.

(1) 3 Ways Real Estate Agents are Better than “For Sale By Owner.”

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The perks of explaining — in an infographic — why someone should use a real estate agent are obvious… especially if you are one. If prospects believe they need an agent to sell their house, and you’re the one who convinced them of that, they’ll likely be giving you a call.

(2) 5 Industry Facts & Figures for 2017

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Creating an infographic that illustrates the market’s health is a benefit to homebuyers and sellers alike. Anyone looking to purchase or peddle a house is likely interested in the market’s current wellbeing. This will help inform prospects of a ripe market and — if you include your phone number on the bottom — of who to call for help.

(3) To-Do List for First-Time Homebuyers

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This infographic is wildly helpful for the person looking to buy their first home. Every first-time buyer has worries, concerns, and doubts about the buying process. Creating a piece of content that covers the steps of purchasing a house helps to dilute these uneasy feelings — making the procedure seem a whole lot easier.

(4) 10 First-Time Homebuyer Mistakes

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Nobody wants to walk into a pole — whether that’s physical or metaphorical. Homebuyers are filled with fears of what could go wrong in choosing a house, purchasing the house, picking a real estate agent, getting a loan, and moving in. The infographic above does a nice job of ensuring that these fears don’t paralyze a prospect.

(5) Home Improvements that Pay Off

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Ever wondered what pays off on house remodels? Sure you have. And so has your potential client. Make an infographic that has information on what sort of remodels are the best to pursue. Again, the idea is to aid the person looking for help. If you help them now, you’ll likely get to help them again when they need an agent.

Choose a Format

Infographics are able to illustrate concepts that words cannot. Because of that, it’s important to consider what kind visual formatting you should use. Above all, don’t get fancy.

The simpler your real estate infographic, the easier it is to understand and the more people who will engage with it. Here are some formats to consider from beautiful — but simple — real estate agent infographics.

The formats are organized from easiest to hardest in regards to their creditability. Don’t be afraid to start at the beginning.

(1) The Numbered List

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The numbered list format is common for a reason. It’s easy to read, effective at illustrating simple pieces of information, and guides the eye seamlessly from point to point. Simply choose a number of tips, don’t-do’s, or guidelines and fill in the blanks. Start here if you’ve never created an infographic before.

(2) The Stat Card

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This infographic is nearly as simple as the numbered list format but requires a bit more research. Use the stat card format when wanting to provide useful information for the prospective client, such as when to sell, best house investments, or any other topic that’s data-driven.

(3) The Comparison

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Buying or selling a home is riddled with choices. How many beds and baths should I have? Am I getting my money’s worth? Should I rent instead of buying? Which is exactly why this format is fantastic for helping the prospect to make a decision.

Ask yourself what kind of questions clients have for you and then create a comparison infographic to provide the pros and cons of each option.

(4) The Flow Chart

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Building this kind of infographic requires some creativity beyond the previous templates. But the basic idea is allowing the infographic to guide someone from point A to point B.

Visually on the graphic, and contextually on the info, the piece gives the viewer an idea of what it will take to make the journey — whether it be from renting to buying, from owning to selling, or from selling to investing.

(5) The Form Fits Function

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This format for an infographic is one of the most creatively demanding. As you can see in the image above, the tips are placed visually within a house. Thus, the form matches the function. While this kind of infographic is beautiful to look at, it’s unnecessary. Unless you have the creative power, time, or money to design this kind of brilliant, free-flowing infographic, don’t.

Use these Tools

Thinking up an infographic in your head is one thing. Creating it is quite another. But, lucky for you, in our age of digital stampedes and marketing masters, anyone — including a real estate agent — can become a graphic design artist. Here are two tools you can use to create your own infographic right now for free.

(1) Venngage

Just in case you think you’re too good for an infographic creator, be aware that huge companies including Google, Hubspot, Microsoft, and Forbes all use Venngage. In today’s world, a great tool is utilized by the small and the big alike. Venngage is such a tool. Join up for free and it will walk you through designing your very first infographic.

(2) Canva

More versatile than Venngage — and still free to use — is Canva, a holistic graphic design platform. You can edit images, design a logo, and create banners, flyers, and infographics. Great for the inexperienced graphic designer.

A Final Tip

Yes. Your audience is three times more likely to share an infographic than they are to share any other piece of content. But, that’s only the case if you make your infographic easy to share. Whenever you post an infographic, always include the embed code so that people can easily share it to either social media or on their own blog. On our infographic explaining SEO and PPC, we included shareable buttons and the embed code, to maximize the size of its wings.

Keep it Visual, Fun, and Data-Driven

Visual content will continue to be powerful because human nature demands it. And real estate agent infographics, in particular, are powerful because they are a visual representation of helpful, inspiring, and insightful data. Plus, now that tools to create your own infographics abound, you’re out of excuses.

Remember, no first draft of content ever comes out perfect. So above all, just start. And keep in mind what you’ve learned here.

May 17, 2018
7 Content Marketing Ideas for Real Estate Agents: Inspiration to Bring Your Strategy to Life
It’s painful, grueling, laborious work. Especially when you have so much else on your plate. As a real estate agent, you know you need a content marketing strategy for your real estate agent website.

But you also need to schedule house visits, drive homebuyers to potential houses, meet with house sellers, solidify contracts, and do a whole lot more.

When the heck are you going to find the time to (1) come up with content marketing ideas for real estate agents and (2) create the content?

Well, that’s exactly what we’re talking about today: Real examples from real agents who’re using content marketing to catapult themselves to the head of the pack. Because potential customers aren’t just looking online… they’re making decisions based on what they find.

Content marketing is how you dominate search results, build trust, and attract new clients all before they even meet you.

Why? Because your strategy has to be built on your strengths … and loves:

Content Marketing For Agents

Download Your Free Content Marketing Strategy Guide

This post digs into the details with two top-to-bottom examples of exactly how to execute your content marketing master plan and a host of supplemental examples along the way.

So, let me introduce you to our content marketing test case …

Judy Weiniger runs the Weiniger Group, a seven-person real estate agency in central New Jersey. She’s active on various platforms, including social media, Youtube, and her website.

But, Weiniger doesn’t do content marketing just about selling houses; she makes it about what someone buying a house in the area would need and want to know. In other words, the content she provides is not one promotion, listing, or sales pitch after another. It is useful information that helps her audience.

That is the pinnacle of great content.

7 Content Marketing Ideas for Real Estate Agents

1. Real Estate Content Marketing Ideas All Start With The Right Agent Website

Let’s start by looking at her website. To begin, it’s gorgeous. You should click through to see the video background in the hero section; the following screenshots don’t do it justice.

Visitors are greeted with a friendly hello message — “Welcome to our neighborhood!” — followed by two CTAs directing them exactly where to go next.

While this isn’t connected to content marketing, notice that in the top right there’s a prominent “Let’s Talk” button for anyone wanting to connect directly.

As you scroll down, you’ll see the type of content she’s releasing, and it’s just what home buyers want to see.

First, there are the featured listings.

If the prospective homebuyer is there to look at houses, this section lets them do that … immediately.

Homes By Krista (a Carrot customer) takes a similar approach. It opens with a beautiful hero image and simple problem-solving message: “Sell your house faster and for more money” and “Find and buy the perfect home with less hassle.”

To find out more about getting your conversion-optimized Agent website, go here!

In Weiniger’s case, after taking care of the low-hanging-lead-fruit, she turns her full attention to content.

2. Real Estate Agent Blogging Ideas That Are Way More than Just Listings

Rather than just featuring houses and soliciting sellers, Weiniger caters her blog to people who either don’t know if they want to move to central New Jersey yet or are looking to explore the area.

Want proof?

Scroll further down the homepage, and this is what you’ll see.

Weiniger doesn’t just play the part of a real estate agent — a home-finder and home-seller — she plays the part of friendly food citric, supermarket expert, school advisor, and more.

And they deliver. Two of Weiniger’s most popular posts at first appears to have nothing to do with real estate at all: The ULTIMATE Guide to Farmers Markets & Farm Stands in Central New Jersey and 11 Favorite Yoga (& Pilates!) Studios In & Around Warren.

But that “appearance” is exactly the point. Both articles answer the kinds of questions someone relocating or settling in would naturally have. When they take to the internet to find answers … guess who they find:

Weiniger occupies the second organic search result on page one of Google (the only result that beats them is an actual yoga studio and they even outrank Yelp). Plus, the posts are more than just words. They include embedded YouTube videos, direct links to all the mentioned resources, and interactive maps.

At the end of each post is Weiniger herself, her contact information, and a CTA to “Schedule Now”:

Naturally, once a visitor reaches the end of a post, Weiniger has positioned herself as an advisor. She’s helped them. She’s generated trust. And really… that’s the point.

Feel like that sort of design and technological integration is beyond you? It’s not because all those slick elements aren’t necessary.

Cranford & Westfield New Jersey Real Estate’s blog follows a similar topic pattern, without all the visual bells and whistles. And yet, this post — Grilled Cheese Shoppe Opening Celebration TODAY in Westfield, NJ — has generated nearly 2k shares on social media and ranks on the first page of Google:

The point is: that every real estate agent can do this with their blog content. After all, real estate agents know the area they live in better than almost anyone else. Why not utilize this knowledge of your town like Weiniger has?

Want even more real estate blogging resources?

Also, check out these two posts for inspiration:
- 101 Blog Post Ideas For Real Estate
- 11 Great Real Estate Investing Blogs We Marketing Geeks Love
3. Real Estate Video Marketing Ideas Where You Aren’t The Star

If you didn’t notice on their homepage, Weiniger also has a box linked to her YouTube page. One of the reasons you might have missed it is because it’s not titled, “Real Estate Videos.” Instead, it’s enticing: “Explore NJ Community Videos.”

On her YouTube channel, Judy educates viewers about everything from New Jersey’s local pharmacy to great pizza, pasta, and seafood in the area.

She does this with short video clips introducing each industry.

Sight is our most engaging sense, and using video to leverage that fact is a great way to engage potential clients. 51% of marketers name video as the type of content with the best return on investment.

But rest assured, these don’t need to be cinematic masterpieces. All these videos have in common: they’re about serving their audience… not serving the agent.

And as a Carrot member, you can even turn your video content in long-form blog content with the click of a button using what we call VideoPost.

But what should you talk about in these videos? What kind of advice should you offer? Here are a few ideas…
- Advice For First-Time Homebuyers — Show new homebuyers how to secure a low-interest loan, how to negotiate with sellers, what to look for when seeing a home for the first time, and tons more.
- Advice For People Trying to Sell Their Home — Show home sellers how they can get top-dollar for their house, how they can stage their property on a budget, or what kind of renovations they should make before selling.
- Testimonial Video For Your Business — Do you have a client who is exceptionally happy with your services? Ask them if you can record a short video of them giving you a recommendation. That will make for some great social media street-cred.
- Community Videos — As a real estate agent, you know your community better than most people. Record a video showing potential buyers all of the great things about your city, where to eat, what to do, and the best places to live.
Need some more inspiration?
- Here are 12 ideas to fuel your Real Estate Video Marketing campaign.
4. Real Estate Lead-generation Guides Worth Signing Up For

Also, on her homepage, Weiniger links to a piece of content that is real estate lead generation gold: a guide. In her case, it’s the “40 Top Tips For Selling Your Home!”

Because this guide goes above and beyond the typical blog post, it’s “gated,” meaning you have to signup for access:

This is precisely what you should do with your free guides — make it so people have to give you their contact information to receive the resource. That way, you’re simultaneously providing free value to your audience and generating leads for your business.

Bend’s Station takes the same approach, though they dedicate considerable online real estate to their guide on their homepage:

Inside is a beautiful and picturesque overview of the entire Bend area. And it ends with two opportunities to go deeper with Bend Station: (1) an email signup box and (2) a full form to “Get in Touch”:

Both guides major on the needs and wants of either prospective sellers or prospective buyers. They’re helpful and provide genuinely valuable content you can replicate for your local area (seeing a trend yet?).

5. Real Estate Agent Infographics Should Make Sense Of The Numbers

Speaking of beautiful and picturesque, also on Weiniger’s blog, you’ll find a series of Warren NJ Market Reports. Each one contains easy-to-understand (and easy-to-create) graphics summarizing the previous month’s real-estate financials:

Each time they culminate is a powerful, one-two content punch: (1) access to a digital copy of the report and (2) a CTA to “Chat with Judy!”

Keeping Current Matters follows a similar path with their simple, but wildly popular infographic that has been shared nearly 10k times:

Likewise, 1850 Realty supplies local market trends in a visual form both on their blog and across their social media:

Raleigh Reality takes a good versus bad approach with their companion infographics:

Even more simplified (but no less beautiful) are West + Main Homes’ monthly Real Estate Market Reports:

If creating graphics with something like PhotoShop or InDesign intimidates you, check out Canva or Venngage to build your own … easily.

Learn more about how you can create amazing real estate infographics
- How to Create Real Estate Agent Infographics with 10 Examples
6. Genuinely “Social” Content Marketing On Your Real Estate Social Media

Not surprisingly, Weiniger’s real estate content is all over social media. So we’ll take each one in turn.

Twitter

To start, she uses her Twitter account to do much the same thing she does with her blog and Youtube videos, but with less defined reason.

Her reason for creating the content I’m going to show you seem to be because she realizes that creating helpful content for everyone in central New Jersey is a great way to build rapport.

Plus, the more rapport you build, the more clients you’ll receive through word-of-mouth advertising; which no one needs to tell you is the most powerful form of advertising.

This Twitter post that leads to her blog is particularly engaging.

Our weekend guide is LIVE! 🎉 Don’t miss out on what’s happening in #CentralNJ 🗓😃>> https://t.co/psYJz2ZZdO pic.twitter.com/fyCAaoXIi8

— Judy Weiniger (@judyweiniger) January 26, 2017

You might think that when you click on the link, it’s going to be featured houses for sale that she’s trying to trick you into purchasing with some well-placed click bait, but that’s not the case.

Click through, and you’ll see a very legitimate list of weekend activities for the everyday New Jersey family.

Or…

She also uses Twitter to direct traffic to her blog cleverly:

Make the most of spring & get ahead on some home maintenance projects! 🌱🛠️💦 Check out these ideas & tips >> https://t.co/qBoczJH8oE pic.twitter.com/svDIIcEXTP

— Judy Weiniger (@judyweiniger) March 13, 2017

Twitter also serves as a way to send “follows” to her other social media platforms, such as Instagram:

Thank you @placester for the opportunity to share my passion of creating valuable content https://t.co/vEEARUDeRW

— Judy Weiniger (@judyweiniger) March 12, 2017

The tweet leads you here:

From Instagram, you can then jump to her blog post and webinar on Placester

And what’s the webinar about? Creating exactly the kind of content we’ve worked through above:

“I wanted to always lead with value and lead with trust. A better way for me to do that was providing content that really mattered. Valuable content that people couldn’t find elsewhere. As a local expert in my community, I was the perfect person to be able to create it and then distribute it.”

Judy Weniger, CEO of Weniger Group

Take Tom Flanagan, who is a believer in posting helpful tidbits of content for his followers on Twitter that lead back to content on their blogs:

#Amazon now offering smart home consultations in select cities: https://t.co/Ka1CQAbmJM #IoT #InternetofThings #smarthome

— Tom Flanagan (@tflan) March 1, 2017

These agents prove that not all your content must be a sales pitch. Content that is not a sales pitch is attractive to everyone… including those you want to sell to.

Facebook

Weiniger’s Facebook account reveals how every realtor should use social media. One obvious application is posting pictures of houses that are for sale.

Because while you don’t want to be overbearing, you also don’t want to avoid talking about houses totally. People know you’re a realtor and they want to see what you have to offer. Pictures are a great way to do that.

Heck, even people who aren’t looking for a house might reconsider if they see some incredible pictures of an affordable home.

She also uses a Facebook page rather than a personal account which conveniently allows clients to review her.

Weiniger also posts fun, personable, and interesting videos of local restaurants. This video content benefits the local diner, people moving to the area looking for somewhere to eat, and — ultimately — your business.

You can even take inspiration from a real estate agent, Jim Walberg, and post quick tips for people living in the area. Because, if we’re being honest, real estate is nothing without a healthy dose of city and state pride.

Saddle up for a deeper look at Facebook Ads for Real Estate
- Facebook Ads for Real Estate: The Why and How of Getting (REAL) Leads
Instagram

Let’s not forget Instagram!

Instagram is great for real estate agent content marketing because it’s a highly visual platform and, well… real estate is a highly visual product (house buyers love to look at pictures of houses).

Here’s a great example of a real estate agent’s post on Instagram…

Like this post, be sure to include your phone number and email address in every post so people can get ahold of you if they’re interested. Also, don’t forget to include relevant hashtags since that’s one of the best ways to get found out on Instagram (#housesforsale, for example).

I’d recommend using at least 10 hashtags on everything you post.

TikTok

TikTok is a new social media platform where users can view and share short video clips of just about anything — funny, serious, motivational… whatever!

And the platform is growing like a weed. It already has 500 million users, 41% of whom are aged between 16 and 24. Still, quite a few home-buying millennials and even some older folk visit the platform regularly.

You might be even more surprised to find out that many local businesses are finding great attention-grabbing, lead-gen success on Tik Tok — doctor’s offices, dentists, and even real estate agents are using the platform to spread brand awareness in their local area.

Here’s a great step-by-step video from a real estate agent talking about how you can use Tik Tok to generate leads for your real estate business.

7. Podcasting For Brand Awareness & Leads

Maybe you’ve never thought about creating a podcast before.

It’s probably not the first thing that came to mind when you considered creating a content marketing strategy for your real estate business.

But why not? There are plenty of buyers, sellers, and other agents who’d like to learn from an expert like yourself — why not be the one to teach them? Especially since doing so could result in tons of referrals and leads.

After all, when your committed podcast listeners here about someone who needs help buying or selling a home, who will they recommend?

That’s right, YOU!

And the best part is that creating a real estate podcast is as easy as pie in today’s world. You just need a decent mic (audio is one of the most important elements of any podcast) and some great content ideas.

Then, you can start recording your podcasts for free over at Buzzsprout — after some time, you’ll have to pay for hosting, but you can get started for no cost.

As for getting a decent mic, check out our technical recommendations over here for creating a real estate podcast.

And for coming up with great content ideas for your first few episodes, consider…
- Doing a few history lessons about the town where you operate. This can work to create interest in your local market and establish you as the go-to expert.
- Tips and tricks for selling or buying a home. You know way more than most people about how to sell a home for top dollar or how to buy a home at a discount. Why not share what you’ve learned and by so doing, increase people’s perception of your expertise.
- Real estate education. If you’ve ever thought about coaching other real estate investors or agents on how to build their own successful businesses, a podcast is a perfect place to do just that. Share what you’ve learned and, eventually, you might even get paid to consult up-and-coming agents or investors.
- Weekly updates. People read the newspaper and look on social media to find out what’s going on in their local community… how about they listen to your podcast instead? Every week, you could give updates about scheduled events, political developments, and other items of local interest.
One thing’s for sure — your podcast won’t start itself! So grab a mic and get recording. You might be surprised at how much you enjoy doing it.

Content Marketing for Real Estate Agents: What You Can (And Should) Use

Content isn’t truly content unless it gives. At its heart, content is a mode of creation that offers something to someone else before expecting anything in return. It really comes down to one question: Does it add value?

Have fun. Look for inspiration anywhere and everywhere, even in industries that aren’t about real estate — like technology, B2B, SaaS (software as service), and ecommerce content marketing. Sometimes, that’s where you’ll the best and untapped ideas.

Write about a local pizza shop that is making a killing. Do a video interview with your community college about its success. Create an infographic discussing how safe the local public schools are.

Whether it’s a guide for PPC or a list of popular local restaurants, your content strategy needs to revolve around the homebuyer and home seller, not around your monetary gain.

Realtor’s who’ve found the balance between when to make a sales pitch and when to produce purely helpful content are the most successful realtors.

In other words, your real estate content marketing strategy shouldn’t focus on selling yourself, but on buyers and sellers themselves, the people behind the money.

[cta offer=”seoagents”]
May 3, 2018
EP 90: How 3 Real Estate Investors Are Crushing It While Using Entirely Different Strategies
Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast and Subscribe Below!

In order to be successful in anything that we do, we have to leave what we were doing and old mental attitude, and go towards something else. Trevor Mauch

Good morning, good evening, or good afternoon, whatever time you are listening to this episode of The CarrotCast, and I’ve got a special treat for you.

I was down in Dallas, Texas, had a Mastermind just recently, it was the Investor Fuel Mastermind with Mike Hambright and a bunch of other amazing people. About half the room was Carrot customers, actually.

But these people were crushing it, and there were people doing 100, 150 deals a year. There were people that own 400, 500, 600, 700 rentals. There were people that own 1,000 doors on apartments. There were people that were doing some big, big stuff in business and life.

And what we did was we did an impromptu podcast with three of the Carrot customers after the Mastermind. We sat down at a table and literally put this cell phone in the middle of the table and the audio quality ended up way, way, way better than I thought it would. But we had a great conversation.

We’ll introduce you to those three Carrot members here in a bit.

The cool thing about it is they all are completely different backgrounds. They all are focusing on different parts of real estate. They all do a lot of different marketing stuff.

Blake McCreight is actually in Chicago, and he’s a non-techie, totally non-techie, 40 years old, closing a bunch of deals. In his past life, he was a turnkey guy, doing a bunch of turnkey stuff and he’s pretty much strictly just getting down and dirty and learning the real estate lead-gen side of things.

He did a bunch of wholesale deals. He’ll talk about how he did it.

Jamie Wooley. Jamie’s actually from Dallas, Texas, did 102 deals in her first full year as a real estate investor in one of the most competitive markets in the country, and she talks about how she’s doing it. And she’s really hitting things hard, and what her “why” is, because it’s not what a lot of other people think.

She’s not in this to be in it for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years. She said,

“I want to hit it hard for three or four years, really build a massive stockpile of cash and an asset, then stop and go hang out with family again.”

But she’s doing massive things, $50,000 a month in marketing. She didn’t start there, though. She walks up through how she did it.

And, then we have Rashad Sullivan out of California, young guy, 25 years old. And he’s crushing it, doing bunches of deals, did almost a half a million dollars in gross revenue in 2017, and he talks through how he did it.

But we talk about a lot of life stuff, too, so I think you’re gonna really enjoy this. One thing I want to toss at you is this: Every single week, I host a webinar. Just go to Carrot.com/webinar.

And this webinar actually is gonna dive into exactly how these market leaders are doing what they’re doing. It’s called the Market Leaders Revealed Training.

This Market Leaders Revealed call is gonna dive through the data, it’s gonna go into exactly what the big people in each market … even people who are just like the ones in this podcast you’re gonna listen to … what they’re doing to get most of their leads and deals in this market.

Without further adieu, we’re gonna dive into this episode of the CarrotCast.

Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast

[podcast-subscribe]

On this episode of the CarrotCast, learn how 3 real estate investors are crushing it using entirely different strategies.

1:30 – Quick intros. A little bit about Jamie, Rashad, and Blake.
7:10 – What type of marketing Blake is doing right now, why he was initially skeptical of online marketing, and how he pushed past that skepticism to close high double-digit deals in 2017.
9:50 – Snapshot of who Rashard Sullivan is and how he entered real estate.
13:15 – How Jamie got her start and some of her real estate investing failures and successes to build a 100+ deal per year business.
22:50 – Blake’s journey into real estate investing and some of his failures and successes.
27:25 – Examples of getting over your limiting beliefs. How these three real estate investors overcame their negative thoughts.
35:40 – For real estate investors, is age a limiting belief? Learn how Rashad has been able to overcome this thought.
40:00 – Within this specific state of the market, what are they doing for marketing?
- Blake – Diving into SEO and PPC.
- Rashad – Direct mail and driving for dollars.
- Jamie – Equity lists and postcards.
54:30 – How to build a business that truly motivates you while balancing the moments that it is taking away from your life.
- Rashad – Building a strategy around more passive income.
- Blake – Having a different mindset:
Less is more.
- Adrian Nez – The journey of outward giving and serving your family.
- Jamie – Building a residual income for her family.
1:09:15 – Parting words about having a “leaving a legacy” mindset.

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March 6, 2018
Inside Carrot: 3 Leadership Lessons From The Front Lines Of Customer Success
Working the front lines of any business can feel like you’re the grunt worker or the person that’s completely expendable. You’ll hear folks tell you to delegate basic tasks and hire someone who can help answer client questions. That these tasks aren’t the ones that will take you to the next level.

Because of this perception, being hired or working those support-based positions can seem like a chore or like it’s the bottom of the rungs on the corporate ladder, but we believe differently at Carrot. We believe that you can’t have a great product or team unless it starts from those initial interactions — which is why it’s best to hire great leaders, even on the front lines — because the front line is where leaders are built.

I could dive into many reasons this is applicable but will limit this to three leadership lessons that I — Andre, a Customer Success Hero — have learned at Carrot from helping our team answer over 100 inquiries every single day.

Customer Success Lesson #1: Put Yourself In The Place Of Your Prospects

In support, we throw out a lot of information immediately and it can even be overwhelming if you have used websites before and focused your efforts toward online marketing.

It’s drastically more confusing if you have never touched a website before. And then you login and see our system… and holy cow!

Imagine all of the terms we will throw your way — from setting up a domain and seeing TTL, CName, 301 redirects, MX Records, A Records, IP Addresses. Then imagine hearing about keywords and keyword phrases, longtail and shorttail, and trying to decipher if they’re the same things and which you really need to use. Then you have SEO for real estate and PPC for real estate, Paid Traffic, Retargeting, USP, and so many other terms! Where do you start? Where do we start?

That’s kind of what it feels like when you’re asking support teams questions, isn’t it?

You’ve faced this in the real estate industry, as well. Typically, it happens when a motivated seller approaches you and they’ve reached a point of being overwhelmed and need help — quickly! Let’s face it, supporting those you serve and your business is all about triaging and facing each situation with brand new eyes and an open heart.

And above all, understanding where that person is coming from and their experience level. Here are a few ways to help put yourself in someone else’s shoes and find a way to best serve them:
- Ask clarifying questions.
- Find out what problems the person is experiencing.
- Find out what interests they have/what excites them.
When you take the time to get to know your prospects — their story and hopes and dreams — then you know how best to approach someone’s situation and what their next step and yours should be.

Customer Success Lesson #2: Be Lovingly Honest

You can’t buy everyone’s house. You can’t work with every investor. And Customer Success teams have difficult conversations. One conversation we have regularly is when we find copyrighted information and have to respond. When people scrape our site and content, the support team has to tell them to take the content down. And, as you might expect, that’s an uncomfortable conversation to have.

One day, I found myself in a situation where it was an actual Carrot customer that was scraping our content. That’s a big no-no. Our terms explicitly prohibit this.

What’s worse? This person had been a customer for about two years.

It was a hard conversation and not one that I looked forward to pursuing. But I ended up having a lot of empathy for him and I desperately wanted to find a solution — even though what he was doing was technically illegal. I reached out and told him the pages would need to be removed and he agreed but was shocked that this was the case when he was a customer. And I understood… it’s a very grey line.

After lots of thought, both in and out of the office, the support team didn’t find an answer for over 48 hours and I was concerned about how we could help the customer without offending our policies.

Finally, I had it!

Although it was the end of the night when I came up with the idea, I woke the next day invigorated and wrote him back and, saying, “Here’s what you can do: You can add a link on your site menu to our own website content.”

Of course, we don’t have all the answers immediately, or even at all, but it’s important, to be honest with yourself, your company, and – most importantly – those you serve. Even if that honesty is hard.

And always make sure to balance that honesty with a healthy dose of empathy and — dare I say? — love.
- Tell folks “yes” or “no” and try to find a solution or coach them on what’s best for the end game.
- There is always a way, but you may not always have the solution or be able to help. Accept that.
- Offer what you can, but don’t jump the gun on making commitments before you know what you’re capable of doing.
Customer Success Lesson #3: Learn To Say You’re Not Perfect

I’m definitely not the perfect example for performance at my job and I know it. Not every batter hits a homerun… sometimes you strike out.

Okay. I’m not the worst. But there are definitely days that my support conversations just don’t go like I want them to.

When I feel elated, I often wonder who I could have helped better. When you’re in the business of relationship, you’re gonna let people down. It’s important to recognize your strengths but, most importantly, to recognize that you’re gonna suck and it’s going to be difficult to admit it.

This is the reason why so many of us on the success team have our strengths and we all rely on one another to be the best foundation for Carrot and our partners and members. We make errors every day — sometimes every minute — such as misreading a name or misunderstanding a customer.

But sometimes, we make large errors.

I have missed calls with clients because a meeting ran long or I didn’t check my calendar. I have attached domains and broken domain emails because I forgot to review if someone had certain integrations.

Sites have been upgraded to include new features and all changes weren’t discussed… but reverting was impossible. There have been times when billing errors were been made on our support team and it’s never a good thing to take someone’s money.

Heck, there was even this time that I made a billing mistake.

We don’t want to be awful and we definitely want to do the best at our job that we can possibly do, but we make our mistakes. The important thing is to acknowledge your mistakes and admit them. If you can say that you’re not perfect, it opens the door for building a relationship.

The point?

You have to put yourself out there.
- Admit when you’re wrong and move forward.
- Stop dwelling on your mistakes.
- Allow other team members to do the same thing.
Conclusion

I hope this helps.

Working on a Customer Success team’s front lines means you will have hundreds of conversations a day and you will be able to build relationships. It is a sure-fire way to get much-needed practice in both conversational and time-management skills.

It’s challenging but very rewarding to witness when a person’s dreams come to fruition — when a lead comes in on a site you helped create. Or when a house sells and the family can finally have closure. Even cooler: when a first deal is made from a site lead.

The point is, at Carrot, we all lead in our own right.

If you want to join us, then consider applying to our customer success team here; but only if you’re ready to lead. :-)
February 15, 2018
From Broke to #1 Home Buyer in Boston: How Carrot Has Helped Tom Cafarella Generate 100+ Deals Per Year

Have you ever wondered if you’re on the right path? If your passion for building a sustainable business with passive income that creates financial freedom for you and your family is actually possible?

After all, maybe the wildly successful people are just the lucky ones. The ones who have that special temperament or were raised by that unique family.

Maybe you’re just not cut out for the success you dream of one-day achieving.

Or maybe, Tom Cafarella is right.

Tom Cafarella is the #1 home buyer in Boston, where they fix and flip over 100 homes every year (see how many Leads Carrot has generated), they have 150 team members, and he has a yearly marketing budget of $1 million.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

“How will I benefit from Tom’s story? He’s just one of the lucky ones.”

Well, actually, he isn’t.

We wanted to note that Tom was the #1 Home Buyer in Boston before Carrot. He owns a very successful real estate brokerage company in the Boston area and has been highly successful with direct mail, radio, and billboards. Also prior to Carrot, he had online marketing experience with different customized websites. But, it wasn’t until he joined and implemented the Carrot system, that his online lead volume doubled.

Hearing his story and learning what he did to get where he is might inspire you.

Let’s break down his journey into real estate investor lead generation and the Carrot system

In all started when Tom was born. He wasn’t born into a wealthy family where he inherited massive amounts of money and loads of entrepreneurial wisdom.

Quite the opposite.

Tom struggled financially and couldn’t seem to get ahead of the incoming bills. Growing up, Tom learned the consequences of being poor and he committed to himself that he would never live a life where money was an issue.

So what did he do?

He poured all of his heart into education, believing that through good grades and a marketable skill set, he would make plenty of money and never struggle with finances again.

After majoring in pre-med in college and getting straight A’s throughout practically his whole school experience — which he hated, by the way — Tom decided to double major in accounting.

At the time, accounting jobs were everywhere and Tom saw it as a way to secure his financial corner of this world. He would get a safe job that could support his family and he would work every day for 8 hours.

That is until he started working. Shortly after finishing school, he received a job at an accounting firm. He arrived the first day for work, took a seat at his desk, and immediately hated his job.

“It was worse than jail,” Tom described.

His entrepreneurial spirit wouldn’t allow him to work a desk job where he had very little say in his schedule, the company’s progress, or anything else business-related.

He needed a way out. But how? How could he get out of this hole he had dug himself into?

Tom didn’t know.

So he bought lots of books that discuss success and happiness and studied the process for pursuing true financial freedom.

As he did, he started to learn more and more about real estate as an entrepreneurial industry.

He became fascinated with real estate agents, wholesaling, and investing.

As he invested an increasing amount of time into his newfound real estate passion, relations at his accounting job got rickety and he was eventually fired for being so often side-tracked.

Tom was 25 years old when he got fired and he felt like a total failure. He didn’t immediately tell his family because of the ensuing embarrassment he was expecting.

Eventually, though, Tom realized that getting fired wasn’t the worst thing that happened to him. In fact, it’s exactly what would free him.

Since Tom was still living with his parents and had very little risk involved, he decided to pursue his dream of building a remarkable real estate business in Boston.

To start, he was a real estate agent.

But, after a while, he was given the opportunity to do a wholesale deal. One that he made a whopping $115,000 off of.

Although he admits that that deal was unusual, he got excited none-the-less and decided to start investing all of his time into building a wholesaling business.

At the time, though, he didn’t know how to replicate the deal he had done. How do you bring in more leads consistently? How do you convert these leads? How do you find qualified leads?

These were all questions that needed answers.

So Tom worked 100-hour work weeks for a while to build his real estate investing business.

Getting Through 100 Hour Work Week [Source: Nathan Peck, Director of Marketing at DollarHobbyz]

Real Estate Investor Lead Generation with Tom, Facebook, and the Carrot System

As he learned and become more adept in the real estate industry, his business became increasingly successful.

He tested everything with his marketing tactics — from SEO and PPC to Facebook Ads for real estate and bandit signs. Some things worked. Others didn’t.

Find out the exact system Tom uses for his Facebook marketing Read it here.

But he wondered how is website was performing and if it could be better. He kept hearing talk of us here at Carrot and decided to give us a try.

Immediately, his lead conversion more than doubled.

He originally thought that his current website was fine, but after using Carrot, he learned the value of using a website that’s built for conversion upon years and years of thousands of a/b tests for real estate investors.

Nothing can replace that, and at $100 per month, Tom claims having a Carrot website is a no-brainer.

“If people don’t have a Carrot website, I won’t help them, because that’s where they need to start.” Tom said.

Tom swears that marketing is the most influential part of his business and attributes his success to savvy marketing tactics. And right now, Facebook Ads for real estate is the most powerful marketing strategy that his business uses.

Already a Carrot Member? Watch Our Advanced Coaching Call: How Tom Cafarella Pulls In 100+ Seller Leads Per Week (mostly with Facebook) Watch it here.

Real estate Facebook ads are incredibly targeted and Tom emphasizes the fact that other real estate investors should spend the bulk of their time thinking about their relevance score.

A high relevance score on Facebook will lower your cost per lead and make your business more successful because of it.

The Why and How of Getting Leads from Facebook Ads for Real Estate [Infographic] Learn more here.

Already a Carrot Member?
Check Out Carrot’s Facebook Leads Masterclass

Learn how to drive leads to your site and build an audience with Facebook marketing.

Just make sure that you’re sending all of those leads to a qualified website (Carrot is what Tom recommends), otherwise, all of those leads are going to waste and your cost per conversion starts to climb through the roof.

Whatever you do and regardless of your budget, Tom says you must market and you must consistently market.

Pay attention to current leads and don’t let old leads die. Find a way to keep in touch with the people who’ve been leads for a long time because chances are, they’ll eventually be ready to buy. You just have to give them the necessary time and build a trustworthy relationship.

Your goal as a real estate investor should always be to keep increasing your marketing budget and your ROI.

Pay more to make more.

Additionally, Tom believes in using marketing tactics that very few people in the area are using to help yourself stand out. Tom loves cold calling for this reason — it stands out from everyone else’s marketing efforts.

Tom is 35 years old now and he’s living the dream he’s always wanted.

He’s financially free and his business is thriving.

Throughout Tom’s story resonates one particularly important point: hard work will take you where you want to go.

When asked what makes the difference between someone is successful and someone who isn’t, Tom said,

“Just one thing: hard work.”

On Tom’s wall behind his desk, there’s a quote that reads, “Ultimately the business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.” And he’s right. But all of this takes time. None of it happens quickly and you have to invest an inordinate amount of time to get where you want to go.

For those who do, they have very few regrets. Are you willing to put in the time and effort?

As Tom says …

“You can get rich, but you have to build the business.”

If you are willing, connect with us here at Carrot and we’ll make it happen for you. After all, real estate investor lead generation with some experts at your back is a whole lot easier than doing it alone.

Hit us up in the comments and we’ll connect with you personally.

Already a Carrot Member?
Check Out Carrot’s Facebook Leads Masterclass

Learn how to drive leads to your site and build an audience with Facebook marketing.

January 25, 2018
EP 81: 2017 Carrot Year-End Review – Looking Back On An Accomplished Year
As with 2016, 2017 was a banner year here at Carrot and our customers. Here’s a brief snapshot of some great things that happened in 2017.

It was an exceptional year for our Carrot members and another year of HUGE growth for our team and company. With the intention of amplifying our members and “Add humanity back to business and help people regain more precious time for the things that matter in life.”

Let’s recap some of the cool stuff in this quick post!

Watch the CarrotCast 2017 Recap with Trevor and Chris

Listen to the CarrotCast 2017 Recap with Trevor and Chris

[podcast-subscribe]

2017 Carrot Year-End Review

Carrot members crushed lead generation

9 awesome new features released

The CarrotCast Podcast continues to inspire

Customer Success team worked their tails off

Our team grew (again) and continues to be the innovators of our industry

… and more!

Here we go!

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Leads … You’re Crushing It!

You guys made another forceful charge in 2017. With over 270,000 leads coming in this year (when you DON’T count phone call leads… which we can’t track in Google Analytics currently) you’re pulling in more PPC, SEO, and social media online leads as a collective group than any other real estate investor lead generation platform… by far. Keep crushing it!

52% via Mobile Devices

Which States Converted More Leads? Well…

9 Major NEW Features Launched

Carrot Keyword Ranking Tracking

Another Core Value of ours is “Consistent Improvement and Innovation“… and both our members and Carrot continued to push this value. In addition to the features, we released in 2017 to help our clients spend less time hassling and time more time focusing on their business …

New Innovative Features we rolled out in 2017 include (but not limited to)…
- Advanced marketer plan
- Keyword ranking tracking
- Stats V2
- Lead manager sessions (merging)
- App cluster upgrades (hosting)
- AgentCarrot
And here’s one of the coolest/most effective marketing features for our members that we launched just last week …

Check It Out: Carrot VideoPost Transcription

Carrot’s VideoPost Feature – Turn Your Videos Into SEO Content In Minutes…

Enjoy :-)

We’re Building a Following for the CarrotCast Podcast

We had many amazing comments about the CarrotCast come through our Awesomeness channel this year. Here’s just a couple …

I’m hooked on CarrotCast! The latest interview with the entrepreneur from Germany… was pure awesomeness. A lot of helpful tips about real estate as well as good advice on balancing family life. Keep up the great work!
Tucker C

P.S. you’ve built a great company, you should be very proud. I listen to your carrotcast pods and really appreciate what you guys do. Nice to have a customer focused company in the industry, and your culture is admirable. Cheers!
William W

Top 10 CarrotCast Episodes of 2017

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EP 56: [Case Study] From Junior High School Teacher to $80k/Month Investor in a Competitive Market. How Brian Rockwell Uses Patience and Planning for His Success

It’s awesome because once you know the formula of how to do this, its just do it again and keep going and going and see how you can grow it.
Brian Rockwell

EP 31: Facebook Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors + Agents w/ Kiley Newbold

Your first month of online marketing typically is going to be one of your hardest and least productive because you’re really cutting new trail everywhere you go.
Kiley Newbold

EP 43: An SEO Master Breaks Down How He Closes 2-3 Real Estate Deals A Month From SEO In A Competitive Market w/ Dave Brown

I knew from my background that once I did the work, it would keep returning a benefit to me over and over again. Today, I’m reaping the rewards.
David Brown

EP 47: Flipping Vacant Land: How Gary Horton Pivoted His Wholesaling Business In A Tough Market To Be On Track To Flip 100 Pieces Of Bare Land In 2017

When you’re confident with whatever it is, you expect the result. You’re not hoping for it – you expect it. So you can say “hey, here’s what we’re going to do and you can just lead.” I think when you’re starting out, your confidence is more like you’re not sure what to do, and I think that is picked up on.
Gary Horton

EP 34: Bandit Sign Wars, Door Hangers, and Scaling With Online Marketing w/ Edward Beck

Within that first year I got more leads, 10x more leads, on the InvestorCarrot website, even before it was outranking the other website.
Edward Beck

EP 35: Hiring A Rock Star Executive Assistant – Resources, Tools, Mindset Shifts, and more w/ Adrian Nez and Trevor Mauch

If you want to stay busy in life but never accomplish anything, then stay busy. But if you really want to accomplish and be productiive, then you need to make that investment and find help.
Adrian Nez

EP 30: My 2017 Predictions For Real Estate Lead Generation In 2017 w/ Trevor Mauch

During times when the real estate marketing is going good, don’t lose your focus on the business fundamentals. Feasting and blindly following a business path can lead to destruction.
Trevor Mauch

EP 57: How to Achieve Financial Freedom and Build True Wealth w/ Jack Bosch

We don’t work just to accumulate money. We work so we can live… Most people forget that.
Jack Bosch

EP 36: What’s Your Credibility Score? The Top 5% Of Earners Are Doing These “Simple? Things To Build More Credibility In A Cluttered Market w/ Trevor Mauch

Create a connection with credibility and working hard to go the extra mile to show you’re an expert in your market.
Trevor Mauch

EP 37: Focus on Building a Long-Term Future in Real Estate While Avoiding Short-Term Tactics w/ Ryan Fletcher

Anything that’s worth doing is worth sucking at, first. I think that’s a Gary Halbert think that he said. And, you don’t start writing and immediately build an audience. It takes time. I tell everybody, if you won’t write for one then you won’t write for a 1000.
Ryan Fletcher

Over 500 “Doses Of Awesomeness” From Clients
Changing Their Businesses And Lives!

We LOVE those! And those are just the ones we get each week… not counting the hundreds that happen that we never hear about!

The Carrot Support Team sends out an email chat every 45 seconds.

World-Class Net Promoter Score

One of the most effective ways to gauge the happiness of your customers and how good or bad you’re doing with the “Net Promoter Score”. It’s basically a question that asks how likely you are to recommend Carrot to a friend or colleague. With hundreds of responses in 2017 the majority scored us a 9 or 10… leaving us with an impressive NPS of 69.1%.

Now to put that into perspective… here is what some of the most respected companies in the world have scored for their NPS:

As part of our core set of values, we’ll continue to strive in 2018 to make our clients excited, happy, and successful, and to change the way people expect companies to serve them in the future after they experience the service the “Carrot Way”.

We Added Over 1400 New Subscribers and Accumulated Over 114,000 Views and Climbing!

Two Carrot Team Retreats + Growing Our Team…

CarrotCamp 2017!

CarrotCamp was unlike most events. It wasn’t a workshop or seminar, nor was it a retreat. It was an immersive experience where we did a deep dive into the campers world. We unplugged and got out of the office and into nature, and worked with our team to get massive things done to uplevel marketing… all the while building relationships with other high-level real estate entrepreneurs that will hopefully last a lifetime.

Campers Edward Beck, Jeff Milligan, Tang Nguyen, Tim Oppelt, and Kyle Doney discuss what they enjoyed, struggled with, and how Camp benefited them both personally and in their businesses.

Thank you again 2017 CarrotCampers!

Be on the lookout for CarrotCamp 2018 Editions …

We Launched Agent Carrot

RunnerUp In The Oregon Entrepreneur Network
“Entrepreneur Achievement Award” 2017 and a Portland Business Journal 40 under 40 Finalist

Source: Portland Business Journal: 2017 Forty Under 40 Awards

What An Amazing Year. And We’re Grateful To Have You On This Journey With Us.

How Was Your Year?

So, how was your 2017? Let us know below in the comments section. The amazing, the fair, and the awful :-)
Also… fire up your 2018 and get momentum building?

These 2 resources are the most shared and commented we’ve ever made. They can change your life…
- How A Pumpkin Farmer Changed My Perspective On Life And Business
- Make 2018 Your Best Year Yet! – Planning An Epic Year. Join us LIVE Thursday, December 28th @ 11:00 AM Pacific (2:00 Eastern)
Thank you for all you do and for inspiring us every day to do great things.

Chat with you in 2018!
December 26, 2017
EP 77: Closing 25% of His Leads: How Does Max Maxwell Leverage Online Marketing and Inspirational Storytelling to Close 1 in 4 Leads
Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast and Subscribe Below!

A lot of people put their goals out there but to actually document it and show the ups and the downs the bad months, the bad days. If you follow my Instgram you’ll see the bad days where I’m like I hate this, I hate this. Max Maxwell

One of our Carrot core values is “Be a Beacon of Positivity and Possibility”. I love to align with people who are beacons for other and Max Maxwell is one of them.

My view of entrepreneurship is broken down into three levels:
- The Dreamer. Someone is hustling to make it happen but isn’t there yet.
- The Doer. Is settled and established.
- The Inspirer. This person is set on being an inspiration for others to do better and achieve more.
On this episode of the CarrotCast Max shares some of the cool things he’s doing every day on Instagram and YouTube to inspire 1000’s of people.

We also dive into these three big takeaways:
1. Max’s story and exactly what he did to land his first two deals.
2. Using a stacking method to target hot leads.
3. Leverage online marketing with Carrot and how he closes 1 in 4 leads from PPC.
Listen to other CarrotCast episodes at carrotcast.com and be sure to give us a rating and subscribe on iTunes.

Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast

[podcast-subscribe]

Listen in and Get Inspired. Learn to Leverage Online Marketing to Inspire Others to Pursue Their Goals.

1:45 – Who is Max Maxwell?
3:30 – Why he shares his daily “ups and downs” of real estate investing on Instagram.
5:15 – What his team looks like after he started consistently generating $20-$25,000 per month.
7:05 – Why he doesn’t like the term VA and instead uses “remote employees.”
9:25 – His path to real estate investing.
11:30 – Stumbling onto probate leads and his fascinating story about closing his first deal.
16:15 – Reverse engineering to build his business.
18:10 – Max’s business model. Stages: lists, bandit signs, paid traffic, and cold calling.
19:50 – How he would approach taking on a new market that he doesn’t know a thing about.
23:30 – Leverage online marketing. What’s working for him on the online side of his marketing?
28:30 – Why Max chose to join Carrot?
29:45 – What are some of his favorite real estate stories that he has shared on Instagram.
32:15 – What is his vision past reaching the goal of $100k per month. Also, his reality T.V. idea to travel anywhere in the United States to help someone close their first deal.
35:35 – Follow Max on Instagram and YouTube.
39:25 – What motivates him beyond revenue. What is his “why” at this point in his life?
44:15 – Max’s closing inspiring words.

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December 5, 2017
Does SEO Work for Small Real Estate Markets? [Whiteboard]
Transcript

Hey, guys and gals. This is Trevor with Carrot, coming at you with another series of Carrot strategy sketches. Today, we’re gonna be talking about small market versus big market.

But, before I do, I want to throw a shout-out to one of our long-time clients and good friends of mine, Doug Faith, representing the Legacy Capital shirt you sent me a little bit ago. Man, I really appreciate you … Me, as a client, and you, as a client as ours, here at Carrot. Thanks, man. I’m gonna represent Legacy Capital. If you’re in Pennsylvania and you guys need capital to flip houses, go to Doug at legacycapitalpa.com.

Does SEO Work for Small Real Estate Markets?

Are you in a small market and you’re kind of wondering, hey, does Search Engine Optimization actually work for my market? Now, we get that question all the time here at Carrot. Is, shoot, can I, should I invest in Search Engine Optimization if I’m in a market of 30,000 people, 100,000 people, of a quarter million people, versus a large market, like Dallas or some other large market like that?

Well, my short answer is 100% yes. Do not get discouraged because you’re in a small market. Now, the dynamics are gonna be a little bit different. I’m gonna walk you through what you should do and kind of how to set your mindset there.

Then, we have other resources here at Carrot, other strategy sketches, coaching calls that we do for our clients, content pro members are above every single week. We have our three lead per day training, as well, that dives in deep on the specific strategies of SEO.

Large Real Estate Market Versus Small Real Estate Market SEO

The large market versus the small market. Here we go. The first thing is what qualifies as a large market or a small market? Well, there are lots of different definitions that we can kind of follow here, but I’m gonna follow this right there.
- Are you less than 100,000 people?
- Are you between 100,000 and 500,000 people population in your market area?
- Or, are you 500,000 and above?
That’s population in your primary market area, okay? As an example, I live in a town called Roseburg, Oregon, where we’re here right now in our studio at the loft in Roseburg. It’s a small town. It’s a town of between 20 and 30,000 people, so would we be able to flip five, ten houses a month in Roseburg just using SEO? 100% no.

So, one of the first things we need to do is we need to set our expectations, first of all.

You need to set those expectations for what your market is going to be able to handle. If you have these dreams of flipping 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 houses a year in Roseburg with SEO, you probably better reset those expectations and, then, implement what I’m about to teach you, okay?

If you’re in a large market and you’re looking to flip two, four, five, ten houses a month, a market like a Houston or a Dallas or many other markets, is that realistic? 100% yes. But you’ve got to go after and implement the strategy I’m gonna lay out, okay?

The first thing right here, if you’re in a smaller market like we are here in Roseburg or you’re in a town, like Medford, Oregon, which is around 80 to 100,000 people.

What we’re gonna do here is we’re going to expand our strategy. Because we can’t just go after the main keyword phrases for house-sellers like we buy houses or sell my house fast or cash home buyers, in that one city and think that we’re gonna get enough leads to fuel a two, four, five, ten deal a month business.

So what we want to do is we want to expand our keywords and we want to expand our markets. By expanding our keywords, what I mean is, you can’t just go after the one or two primary keywords in that market for sellers or for buyers or whatever you’re going after.

Go after those ones because that’s probably gonna be 60 to 80% of your overall traffic for sellers in that market.

But then expand them out. Go after more niche down phrases, like your probate phrases, like I’m selling a house in divorce or lots of different phrases and reasons why someone would sell their house.

If you’re going after cash buyers, go after phrases, like handyman properties or fixer-upper properties in insert city. Discount properties, cheap properties, cheap real estate, investment real estate, buying investment properties. Expand your keywords out in that market.

Targeting Different Markets

The next thing we’re gonna do is target other markets around ours, okay? We have a client here in Oregon and he mainly operates in rural parts of Oregon.

He really doesn’t operate in the main part where the main population is in Northern Oregon where Portland is. Now, he does have great rankings there, but his main thing is rural.

If he were to focus just on Roseburg or just on Medford or Grants Pass or any one of those cities, he wouldn’t be getting the deal volume he is right now.

But he has a massive band assigned strategy and his SEO and PPC is all based around expanding the markets. He’s in about 10 to 20 different markets right now, doing between 5 and 15 deals a month.

Expand your keywords and expand your markets if you’re in a smaller area, that’s gonna take care of your lead volume. You cannot stay just focusing on that one market with one or two keywords and have the deal volume that’s gonna sustain you.

Very similar strategy for 100,000 – 500,000. The thing is, you’re just gonna be getting more leads when you get those rankings, get the traffic coming in. So you might need to expand it into fewer markets or to fewer keywords because the population’s larger, but you are still going to need to expand.

Once again, going back to an example that is type of that city, like a Eugene, Oregon. Now, I’m using Oregon because I’m familiar with the area … Or Bend, which is around 100,000 plus mark.

You’re probably not gonna fuel a 5 to 10 deal a month business in just one of those cities, but if you tackle both of them and maybe six or seven other cities around that … Redmond and Prineville, and go down into Klamath Falls and come over to Roseburg. Then, tool up your business to be able to serve those markets.

Then, you’re gonna be able to really build a really, really consistent and stable platform in your house flipping business. Or if you’re doing another type of business, I always use the plumbing example.

If you’re in a tiny, tiny market and you want to grow a bigger business, expand it out to other service areas, and make sure you’ve set up your business to do so.

Expanding Into a Large Real Estate Market

Last, if you’re in a larger market. 500,000 isn’t that large of a market. A lot of the larger metro areas are a million plus, a million, 1.5 million, whatever it is. You can completely go deep in that market. If you’re in a Dallas and a Houston, in a large city in Florida, you can keep on going on down that list.

You can completely sustain your business in that large market. Portland, Oregon, as an example. One of our clients, Joe Taylor, which we’re gonna be doing a CarrotCast with him, is the largest home buyer in that area. Buys tons of homes and he’s just in that area. He has a very, very big business because he’s going deep.

He’s going deep on his direct mail net market, he’s going deep on his other marketing strategies, and he’s going really deep on his SEO, targeting multiple websites in that same market. Also, doing some PPC, I believe, don’t quote me on that. But, then, go deep in that market even further to capture it.

Go deep there, get the top two to three keywords, focus on those in that market first, and, then, expand out to more niche down, longer tail keyword phrases, like selling a house without a real estate agent in Portland, as an example. Then, from there, you start to hit the suburbs around that. You’ve got your Sherwood’s, you’ve got your Tigard, Tualatin, and Gresham, that kind of thing. So, that’s how you expand there.

Long-Term SEO Thinking

A couple other tips here really quick. Think long-term. Anything with SEO, we’ve talked about so many times, anything with SEO, you’ve got to be a long-term thinker in there. If you’re not, you should probably hang up your gloves right now and go try something else because long term is exactly what SEO is, and if you don’t think long-term, you might as well burn your money, all right?

Next is small markets are great, so don’t get discouraged because you’re in a small market. We have a lot of clients in small markets that are doing very, very well. We just have to go back up to tip number one with setting expectations and, then, making sure that you know your expectations in that market.

If you’re in a market, like Roseburg, of 30,000 people, you’re probably only gonna get, if you rank number one in Google for the main keyword phrases, you’re probably only gonna get between 2 and 10 leads per month from that.

Then, you add on some PPC and, then, you add on some other keywords. You’re probably not gonna get more than 10 to 15 motivated house sellers coming in, in that market. Max. That’s if you’re going after that.

So, you hit up the five or ten other cities around you, expand deeper there, then, that’s how you start to get your 20, 30, 40, 50 plus leads a month.

Are you going after a small market strategy? Sweet. Stack ’em up and expand. If you’re going after a big market strategy, dive deep.

Go After It!

Go after it, hit us up with your progress on that. Email us at support@oncarrot.com and let us know if you need any help. If you’re a Carrot client, we have our weekly coaching calls every single week where you can ask those questions. We can dive in and help you craft a plan for SEO or PPC or getting your website conversion up.

If you’re not a customer, go try us out. Go to oncarrot.com/plans, join. You have a 30-day trial to give us a try and see if it’s a fit for you. I think you’ll really, really like it, but know you’ve got to work your butt out, you’ve got to either invest your time or money, but also know we’re here for you. We are the best. We’re gonna help you get that result.

All right. Take it easy. Check out the other whiteboard strategy sketches on our YouTube channel and subscribe here in this video, so you can get first updates to all of them that come out.

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November 16, 2017
SEO for Real Estate Investors | How Long Does It Take to See SEO Results?

One question a lot of people have when they’re starting or thinking about doing SEO as a way to generate leads for your business is they think, “Well, how long is this going to take?”

Once I launch my website and I start performing the tasks or someone starts doing it for me, is this a week? Is it four weeks? Is it a year? What’s the timeline?”

In this quick post, we’re gonna walk you through, with real-world examples, what you can expect as far as the timeline for search engine optimization to take hold when you’re implementing things that we teach in this training.

How Long Does It Take to See SEO Results?

SEO for real estate investors can be a long-term play, and I’m not gonna lie. If you’re in a more competitive market, as we’ll show, you’re not gonna get ranked in the top three in Google for a very competitive phrase like, “well my house fast” or, “we buy houses,” or, “investment properties in … ” you get the idea. It won’t happen within a matter of days or weeks.

You really have to have a short-term traffic plan to be able to drive traffic to your websites with AdWords, Facebook, or Craigslist marketing using our Craigslist training, in the short-term.

If You’re Already a Carrot Member, Check Out These Premium Training Courses:

Posts2Profits Craigslist Training
Facebook Leads Masterclass

Long-Term SEO for Real Estate Investors Strategy

Over the long-term, especially if you’re in a larger city, you’ll want to really focus on building that SEO because when SEO takes hold, it is insanely worth it. So how long it’ll take to rank well on Google, and by ranking well, what I’m talking about is the top three positions for the right keywords? A lot of people say, “Hey, what will get me ranked on page one on Google?”

And really, page one doesn’t really matter a whole lot. It’s really the top five positions, in particular, the top three positions are where you’re really gonna get consistent traffic and leads. That’s what we’re aiming for is the top three positions, one of the first three spots in the organic search result for sellers, buyers, tenants, whatever you’re looking for.

But it depends on things like the competition in your market. So the more investors or the more agents that have websites that are going for the same keywords, obviously the harder it’s gonna be to rank there.

But I want to put your mind at ease that every single market in the country can be overtaken by someone setting up their website today. We’ve had people in every single, and many of the biggest markets in the country.

The Future of SEO for Real Estate and 5 Signs you’re Under-prepared

Either they went and set up a fresh website or have had one there for years and years, but they implemented the things in this training. They leveraged our system and they were able to outrank their competition over a period of time.

It depends on how well your on-page is optimized, how well that content is optimized for those exact keywords. If you’re wanting to rank well for investment properties in Las Vegas but you don’t have the keyword phrase optimized on your page using our SEO tool for that, then it’s gonna be really hard to rank for that.

Also, how well your off-page optimization is done. Are you building some backlinks? Are you doing some social media stuff where you’re getting people to Facebook like or Google Business your page? It doesn’t have to be a lot. You don’t need many backlinks and you don’t need a lot of social media activity in many markets to rank very, very well.

If you just bought your domain recently and just launched a website, you’re definitely gonna have to build Google’s trust in your website, over the next several weeks, next several months.

Then Google will start to notice that you’re going to be around here for a while. So we’re hoping that as you implement the things we’re teaching you, your ranking will continue to increase and then once you lock-in the top three positions for search phrases that matter, your leads should start to go up.

Here are some real-life examples. Here’s one in the Houston market.

Fastcashoffers.com ranks number one for “we buy houses Houston”

This is arguably one of the most, if not the most competitive market in the entire country for motivated sellers online. This particular Carrot customer retained a search engine optimization vendor in our marketplace to do the SEO for them because they didn’t have the time to do the SEO.

It took about 10 months. It took 10 months to go from page 3 or page 4 where they started for, “We buy houses Houston and Sell house fast Houston.” Now, they’re at the number one position. So if you were to go to Google and type up, “We buy houses Houston,” they’re in the number one position. Google does kinda change their mood, so every now and then it’ll bump back down, it’ll bump back up, but it’s been holding there for quite a while.

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They stayed at the number seven and number five position, they bounced between those positions for literally, probably, three to five months. This screenshot here is a timeline over about six or seven months of what it took to get them ranked high.

As you can see, it stayed there steady, steady, steady, really wasn’t moving. It actually took a dip down when Google made an update. Google was kind of readjusting things, and it jumped back up and it’s been settling in at number one ever since then. For them, it took 10 to 12 months to really, in one of the most competitive markets in the country, hiring an SEO team to do it, and they’re crushing it.

So how they got there, they had a domain that they brought to Carrot. They had already been aged a bit. So they had already bought that domain.

Are you Sabotaging your Real Estate Website’s Rankings With These 3 Black Hat SEO No-no’s?

They’d owned it for years before they ever came to Carrot and they had already had a website on that domain before. So they had already done some things that kinda gave them a jump start.

They had a few backlinks and they had their citations or their business directories already on there. And then just bringing that over to Carrot really put on the afterburners. That’s what took it from page three, page four on Google to rising up in the rankings pretty darn high in the most competitive market in the country.

I thought it was gonna take longer than the 10 to 12 months that it took. It took 10 months. Honestly, I thought it was gonna take well over a year but because they already had the domain purchased and they had some other backlinks and some citations already built, it made it happen quicker.

Here’s another one in the Baltimore market.

Sellmybalitimorehousefast.com ranks number one for “we buy houses Baltimore”

Again, very, very competitive market. It took them four to five months to rank on page one for phrases like, “We buy houses Baltimore and Sell house fast Baltimore.” Then it took them another four to five months of working this training, building some backlinks, getting some citation going, some social media action, to get to the number one result. The person who had held the number one result before was literally there for three or four years.

Learn how David Brown leveraged the Carrot real estate investor websites to generate his motivated house seller leads and get more traffic.

This Carrot member came into a market with a fresh website, brand new domain name, and within eight to nine months, they overtook that number one position, started to get really, really consistent leads and deals and ended up closing over 20 deals within the next 12 months after that. 100% from SEO, netted almost $100,000. They were very, very low-profit margin deals but they closed a lot of them.

Here’s how they did it. This customer-focused on the on-page. They really focused on making sure that the content on the page that we provided was unique to them. They used our SEO tool and then quickly shifted gears to building quality backlinks and social media boosts through our training. You can see, it took a while. It bumped up, it bumped back down, then all of a sudden, bam. It bumped up and it’s stayed there ever since.

The Birmingham, Alabama market is a pretty decently competitive market. This person hired the SEO firm to do it as well, through our marketplace. It’s a really competitive seller search phrases like, “Sell my house fast and we buy houses Birmingham.” It took about four months to get to the number two to number three position in Google with a fresh domain name. Then another couple of months, they hit the number one for several of the top search phrases.

8 Easy-to-overlook PPC and SEO Ideas That Will Skyrocket your Real Estate Investor Marketing ROI

So how did they do it? They hired our team to do the SEO, and all we’re doing is implementing exactly what we teach. We started off with just further tweaking the on-page factors. We tweaked up their content a little bit more so it was more different than any of the other Carrot members in their market.

You want to make sure your content does stand out.

We added some more high-quality content, some blog posts and changed some of our pages a little bit, and then added some specific information for Birmingham.

We also built a few backlinks and citations and that’s it. Literally, there are less than 5 or 10 backlinks pointing to this website. We did build the citations, which, if you don’t have the time to do that following our training, we can do it for you and that’s all that we did. So very minimal stuff.

It was mainly just focusing on making sure the content was tweaked to them. They had testimonials on there, built some blog posts in there, and then we built a few backlinks and citation, and it crushes it.

Here’s another one in California.

Quickhomeoffers.com ranks number one for “sell my house Bakersfield”

They focus on medium-sized cities within California, Fresno, Bakersfield, things like that. They also tweaked their own content so it was unique from any other Carrot member in California.

It took them a few hours to do, so it was all a very good investment of their time. They added in specific information for their city. So they created city-specific landing pages, which we teach in our training, and we also teach in our Carrot Coaching Calls.

He built a few backlinks and about three months later they’re sitting on page one. Then after another two to three months, they’re in the top three, and a month or two after that to level-off in the number one position for their main keywords in several cities around the state of California.

Riding the SEO Roller Coaster

You might see your website slowly, slowly rise, bumped up, bumped down a little bit, and kinda steady stayed up. Or, you might see a slight decrease in your rankings at a period of time, just hold tight. Don’t worry about it. Sit there for two or three weeks and see what happens. Often times, it’ll bump back up.

Here’s another real-life example on the flip side of this.

Metrodetroithomebuyer.co ranks number two for “we buy houses Detroit”

Those ones I mentioned before were all in pretty competitive markets. The most competitive ones took 10 to 12 months of good SEO work, actively having someone do the work for them. The kind of medium cities took four to six months to do some good work, then they did the implementation or had someone do it for them.

See here, this is in Detroit, another competitive market, but he focused on different keywords. He focused on keywords that weren’t the main keywords, and he literally had his web pages ranked on page one and in the top of page one within two weeks of launching his website. Here’s an email that Dennis sent. He said,

“Trevor, holy crap. Got my first lead from my metro Detroit home buyer site and I haven’t done much, if any, customization yet. A person on the West Coast with several properties here to sell. Very cool.” – Dennis Fassett

So it can happen very quickly.

Here’s my general guideline: if you’re in a small market or you’re going after a small market, and I’m talking a population under 100,000 people, you can legitimately get your web pages ranked on page one within 2 to 12 weeks and often times in the top five in Google, on cities with populations under 100,000, within 2 to 12 weeks.

As an example, we’re working with a client here in Oregon right now and we literally just launched their website last month, did the customizations that we teach here, we added some city-specific pages, used the SEO tool to make sure that they are optimized for that phrase.

Within three weeks, they were on page one.

Now, he’s ranking number one or number two for a couple of the phrases in some of the cities and the top five for others. I expect those ranking to climb. The reason that it happened so fast is that it was smaller cities, and the content on each one of those individual city-specific pages was tweaked and customized a little bit.

This isn’t just launching a website and sitting there. This is someone working the SEO, doing the things in the Carrot training and allowing two to six months to get onto page one in the top five or so.

In large markets, a population of a million-plus, we’re talking six-plus months to get onto page one. Sometimes, you might have a miracle and have it happen quicker.

If you have already brought some domain juice with you, if you’ve owned the domain for a while, if you already have some backlinks pointing toward it, if you already have some social media activity pointing toward it, that’s gonna help you accelerate the process.

But if you bought a domain brand new and you’re in a large market and someone’s actively doing the SEO for you that we teach in here, it’s going to take six or more months to get onto page one in the top five.

It can really vary, so even if you’re in a very large city, even if you’re in Houston or if you’re in New York or LA, it can really vary in how long it takes. So if you’re going to go after a broad term like, “Investment properties in Chicago,” that’s a pretty broad term where that’s more competitive.

There’s a lot of people going after that, it’s gonna take longer to rank for that than what’s called a long-tail keyword phrase that has four or more full words in it. “Fixer-upper investment properties in North Chicago,” that phrase, even though it’s still in Chicago, it’s a longer phrase, it’s more targeted. There’s gonna be less competition. It’s gonna be easier to rank for that, a lot easier.

SEO in Different Market Sizes

Here’s a general guideline. Smaller markets under 100,000, if you’re going after strong keywords, 2 to 12 weeks to get onto page one if you’re doing the right actions.

Medium markets, population 250,000 to 1 million, 2 to 6 months if you’re doing the actions to get those rankings.

Larger markets, six-plus months to get onto page one if you’re doing those rankings. And then from there, it can take several months longer potentially, depending on your market, to get into that top two or three positions if you’re doing the right actions in here.

SEO for Real Estate Investors: ROI

The ROI on SEO is huge if you do it right. So even if you’re in a competitive market and you’re going, “You know what? I don’t have six or seven or eight months to get the leads coming in,” what you do is you go to our other trainings and you get some paperclipping going.

You get some YouTube video marketing going, which is going to rank very quickly if you do them right, within weeks, even in competitive markets potentially. You get some Craigslist marketing going. Get that stuff going in the short-term.

In the long-term, if you’re in a competitive market, you or have someone work on the SEO for you. This is that first example that I showed you where it took about 10 to 12 months. I emailed him … This was several months ago at that time and they did four deals that month alone. Got bid out on a few, sat down, started building up some more city-specific pages, so they’re working it by splitting out city-specific pages and getting articles written up. They closed four deals and netted well over $30,000 that one month. The next month, they closed deals again.

So the long-term ROI, being patient, especially if you’re in a competitive market and the implementing or hiring someone to implement for you, is gonna be a big, big deal. Be patient and you’ll get the results.

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October 26, 2017

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