It’s amazing how fast the years go by… yet how much you can accomplish in those 12 months when you get clear, get focused on your “big pumpkins” and have a mission that means something to you and your customers a core level.
I thought it would be pretty cool to do a quick review of some of the cool things that both YOU… our Carrot community… and us… Carrot the company were able to accomplish together this year.
All in all, 2015 was a banner year for our Carrot members and an amazing year of growth for our team and company because we focused so much on the one thing that matters… helping YOU get what you want out of life more easily and more effectively with our tools, software, training, and support.
So what happened in 2015?
Let’s dive into some cool stuff in this quick post!
Carrot Members Are Crushing It With Leads!
You guys were a force to be reckoned with in 2015. With over 20,000 leads per month coming in (when you 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! We’ll help you get there.
375 “Doses Of Awesomeness” Sent In!
At Carrot, hearing back from our clients is like fuel for us. So much so that we created an internal tool for our team members called the “Thread of Awesomeness” where our team members add the great things that Carrot clients send in to us on a daily basis. Here is a very small snapshot of some of the messages Carrot clients have sent us recently.
Over 6,600 Live Chats + 17,215 Help Tickets Solved!
You guys were busy! And so were we! Our team helped our Carrot members through the tough spots in 2015 in a big way. We process hundreds of tickets and live chats per week and we’re humbled by the ratings you gave our team during your interactions with us.
We work our butts off so you can spend less time working with our software and more time closing deals. Soon you’ll be introduced to our newest addition to the Carrot Customer Success team in January… keep an eye out!
We LOVE Chatting With Our Customers. Keep It Coming In 2016!
Or, Send Us An Email And Our Customer Success Team Will Dominate That Too! :-)
Never Stop Improving
Another Core Value of ours is “constant never-ending improvement“… and both our customers and us as a company sure did live that one. In addition to the dozens of features we released in 2016 to help our clients spend less time hassling with tech and marketing issues and to pull in more leads… and dozens of split tests we ran on sites to increase the conversion rates of your websites (to much higher than the industry average)… our members relentlessly showed up to our weekly LIVE Coaching Calls, asked us questions, and helped us find the best ways to help you improve. Keep it up in 2016! We have some amazing new features and additions coming your way!
We Helped Your Conversion Rates Improve Even More In 2015!
There are some really cool innovations coming out in Q1 of 2016 based on our continual conversion rate optimization team. It’s this dedication to performance and ROI that has helped you pull in so many leads in 2016 (especially on mobile devices!)
In 2015 we mailed out over 721 Carrot Bud dolls to Carrot members. That’s a LOT of Carrot love. And we just ordered another thousand for 2016 (with 2 new designs that you’ll love!). If you’re a Carrot member keep an eye out for special surprises from us. You never know… you may be the next to get your very own Carrot Bud in the mail in 2016.
721 Carrot Clients Received A Carrot Bud In The Mail In 2015
1 Carrot Customer Sent In A Carrot Bud Unboxing Video (haha, gotta love that!)
You guys are awesome! Our family loved the gift! Merry Christmas!
Posted by Justin Morgan on Monday, December 14, 2015
Plus Tons Of Amazing Smiling Faces With Their Carrot Buds!
Our Team Has Grown In More Ways Than One
InvestorCarrot started out as a one-man show 3 years ago… then we quickly added our CTO, built out the Customer Success team, and the rest is history. Now the team is continually growing to stay ahead of the curve so our members can also stay ahead of the curve from their competition. We’re proud to be adding several more full-time team members to the Carrot team in early 2016 as well! Keep an eye out!
8 Scotch Eggs Consumed (give or take a few)
Thanks, O’Tooles for making the best damn Scotch Egg in the land.
Countless Pints Of Beer Down The Hatch
… and much more fun, challenging, and rewarding ways our team grew in size, skill, and in our relationships together.
All In All, An Amazing Year You’ve Made It Carroteers!
With 2016 a blink away, make sure to use this time to look back on your own 2015. Reflect on the great strides you’ve taken toward your dreams and goals… and reflect on the things you still need to improve on and tackle with focus and intentionality in 2016.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out these 2 posts we published the past 2 weeks (both were our most actively shared and commented on content pieces in 2015 too!)… dive into them. They’ll help you make some important mindset shifts for 2016 and we walk you through how to make 2016 an epic year.
So, are you seeing your leads slow down right now versus the volume of cash buyer or motivated seller leads you saw in the summer? Well, you’re not alone. It’s a seasonal thing… and here’s what you can do about it to make up some of those lost leads with other types of marketing.
There’s an interesting phenomenon happening right now that some investors are noticing and I wanted to write a blog post about it to make you aware of it:
Some investors (maybe even you) are noticing fewer leads right now… have you noticed that? (It’s not happening to everyone but to some).
Maybe you’re seeing this happen and you’re wondering if something is broken on your website or if Google changed their algorithm again. So I’m writing this blog post to let you know: it’s actually very normal…
What’s happening is kind of like what happens with the stock market:
Look at a chart of the Dow Jones over a period of years and you’ll notice that it trends generally upward.
But look at a chart of the Dow Jones over a period of hours or days and you’ll notice that it has a lot of peaks and valleys.
The same thing is happening to investors: While Carrot users are noticing a steady increase in the number of leads they get online when you implement what we teach and stick with it, some are also noticing that there are peaks and valleys… and in the winter months leads for some types of prospects (like motivated house sellers) tend to take a bit of a dip.
Why?
Well, the simple answer can be summed up with a meme from the TV show Game Of Thrones…
Winter is coming! Well, actually it’s HERE in many parts of the country.
No, I’m not joking. The season and how cold it is outside can affect the number of people out hunting for someone to buy their house.
Let me ask you a question:
If you live in an area of the country where it snows, when do you think about a snow shovel?
Chances are, you probably don’t think about it at the height of summer, when you’re sitting on the beach and watching your kids play in the surf.
Chances are, you probably think about it when the forecast calls for snow… or (more likely) after you look out the window one morning and see the ground covered in snow. That’s when you think, “Oh, I hope I have a snow shovel!” and then you go searching for one in the garage.
The Home Depot knows this.
That’s why, during the summer, you probably won’t find a lot of snow shovels (you might find one tucked away in a discount bin somewhere), but during the winter, the snow shovels are front-and-center… probably the first thing you see when you walk in into the store.
There are seasonal fluctuations in many types of businesses (including here at Carrot) and smart businesses know this and they plan for it and deal with it.
The same is true for your real estate investing business
The exact same thought process that occurs with you and your snow shovel also occurs with the motivated seller and cash buyer leads who come into your business.
Here’s Why Real Estate Investing Lead Volumes Can Fluctuate During The Year
Motivated sellers might want to sell throughout the year, but there are months when they are more motivated to sell than other months.
Cash buyers might want to buy throughout the year, but there are months when they are more motivated to buy than other months.
Not surprisingly, lead generation trends correspond to the months of increased motivation, which corresponds to increased search activity.
In short: during some months, motivation to sell or to buy increased, which increased searches for related keywords, which increased leads generated.
We first reported to investors on this phenomenon in 2013, in the post Are There Less Real Estate Investor Leads In Holiday Months Than Summer Months? We showed that motivated seller leads tended to fluctuate through the year, with a noticeable spike in the summer and a noticeable decline in the winter. The same phenomenon holds up year-after-year!
The same is true for cash buyers as well. We showed that cash buyer leads tended to fluctuate through the year, with a noticeable spike in January.
Motivated sellers are looking to sell when it’s nice: the summer months; with July being an ideal time perhaps to get the kids settled in a new place before school starts. December tends to be a slower month because of the holidays and people in general just have so much to do in December that they often put their sale off until the new year.
Cash buyers are looking to buy when they’re thinking about their financial future. This often happens around January when we all think about New Year resolutions and the year ahead.
Some investors might get frustrated by this knowledge, and feel tempted to shut things down in the quiet months while they ramp things up in the busy months.
But I believe that investors have a massive opportunity to grow their business by ramping up their efforts in the quiet months!
Here Are 10 Things You Can Do This Month If You’re Seeing The “Winter Lead Slump” That Some Investors Experience
The solution to fewer leads is a two-pronged approach:
You should level up the amount of marketing that you do to increase your leads right now, plus you should put some pieces in place to ensure that your leads remain stable throughout the year.
If you’re seeing fewer leads right now, here are a few ideas to help you shore up those lead numbers and not settle for a dip in volume:
Each week we’ll share with you our very best strategies for building your online presence and generating more leads. Our focus is to help you get more leads.
Keep marketing!
There might be fewer cash buyers and motivated sellers taking action right now… but they’re still out there!
So keep marketing.
Don’t wind down your marketing efforts just because it’s the end of the year and you’re assuming that all of your cash buyers have flown south for the winter.
Integrate your offline marketing
One of the first things we teach our InvestorCarrot members in our Carrot Guide is to integrate your website with your offline marketing. Test your URL on your postcards/letters, radio ads, TV spots, etc.
Find ways to integrate marketing you’re already doing offline with your website.
Accelerate the timeline
Cash buyer leads tend to spike in January because that’s one of the times of the year when cash buyers are thinking about their financial future. So create marketing that gets them thinking about their financial future sooner than January!
Start the conversation right now about how to get a jump-start on the new year. You can do the same thing for motivated sellers. Remind them that now is still a great time to sell and they can get cash in hand before Christmas!
Launch a direct mail campaign that markets…
“Cash In your Hand Before Christmas!”
…and get them to start thinking about accelerating their timeline to sell.
Market more to motivated sellers who don’t need to move (2nd homes, inherited, etc.)
Winter might not be an ideal time to move but not all of your motivated sellers need to move when they sell to you. Out of state owners, probate/inheritance owners, landlords, etc. – these people are still motivated to sell and they are not at all impacted by the weather.
Those absentee owners may want that cash injection before Christmas and the new year and may want to go into the new year without that burdensome property. Use that to your advantage.
Do more of what you’re already doing (ramp it up!)
The majority of PPC campaigns by “do it yourselfers” that we see have glaring things that need to be fixed that would really increase the results from the campaign. And lots of people are being held back by a PPC ad budget that’s too low. Here are some tips on making your PPC marketing dollars go further.
Add more marketing channels
If you’ve been thinking of testing some new marketing channels, now is the time to add them so you have them refined and humming along when the spring and summer months kick in.
Craigslist continues to be a surprising source of cash buyers and a consistent stream of sellers for our members.
Many investors have been ignoring Craigslist for a few years because it’s old school and it’s gotten harder to market in the real estate sections. But we have a very powerful and effective Craigslist training that shows you how to still get leads from this source. And I believe that Facebook is an AMAZING source of cash buyer leads when done right.
So now is the time to start testing some Facebook efforts. And don’t stop there.
Motivated sellers are far less motivated to sell in the winter because they don’t want to move when it’s cold.
So how can you help them avoid that pain? Does it mean getting really creative by offering to cover a moving company? Some investors might scream at the potential cost… but consider this: it might make more sense to get SOME profit from a few deals than to get NO profit because you can’t find motivated sellers who are willing to move.
Also, you know all of those leads you generated in the past 4-6 months that didn’t turn into deals?
Well, send out a campaign to all of them to see if they were able to get their situation taken care of.
You could send an email that looks something like this…
“Hi [name], I hope your holiday season is going well!
If you remember, you and I connected a few months back when you let us know about your property at on our website.
I’m going through my notes and wanted to follow up to see if you were able to sell that house yet? If not, would it be worth chatting again to see if the timing is right for me to make you another offer? I’m buying 3 more houses before the end of the year yours is in the neighborhood we’re looking for.
I look forward to connecting with you!
– [your name]”
Plan ahead
Chances are, you’ll see a bump in cash buyer leads in the new year so use this time to build some extra capacity into your business (i.e. train a new acquisitions person or estimator), which will allow you to do even more when those cash buyers spike in January.
Also, if you’re still working to get your search engine rankings higher… the winter months are the PERFECT time to put in the SEO time (or hire it out) to grow your rankings so your website is ranked higher when the search volume picks back up.
Think long-term
Search engine optimization can take 3-5 months to really take effect(or sometimes longer in competitive markets) so if you level up your search engine optimization game now, you’ll help to position your site for even greater search engine result greatness! Don’t wait until March to try to rank well for a competitive phrase by the summer “traffic bump”… if you do you may not be giving yourself enough time for the SEO rankings to mature.
Seeing Your Leads Dip Unveils A Hidden OPPORTUNITY
Most investors will tell you that fewer leads is a frustration.
But I think it’s an opportunity: it’s an opportunity to build a more diversified and stable business by deploying new strategies that you might not normally have time to try out. And once you build these strategies into your marketing, they’ll continue working for you to drive more leads into your business and push that trend line even higher!
See our plans or take a demo… but above all, take this seasonal opportunity to get creative with your real estate marketing!
It’s that time of the month, time for another Carrot harvest report. But this month we are throwing a little curveball that we think you will like.
Aside from living up to our transparency core value and showing behind the scenes of our website stats, including how many leads our members generated in the month of November, and of course where those leads came from… we are going to share an inspirational story about an InvestorCarrot member who joined less than 6 months ago and has already closed 4 deals from his Carrot website.
We are excited to share stories about members achieving their business and personal goals and want to use these stories to help you get excited about what you can achieve.
So here is what you should do.
First, dive in and see the November recap on the real estate investor lead volume (motivated sellers, cash buyers, note sellers, rent to own tenants, etc.), read Tim’s excellent story and then implement the same trainings and resources that Tim used to get results.
Let’s Get Started With Our Monthly Lead Harvest Report For November
As we’ve posted before, the holiday months tend to level off as far as lead volume goes for many types of leads that our clients are looking for. In November Carrot members pulled in 16,616 online opt-in leads (plus thousands and thousands of phone call leads that we’re not able to track), so the month was really a very average month compared with the previous 5-6 months of leads in our Carrot Harvest Reports.
A snapshot of the top lead sources for November leads through InvestorCarrot…
SEO remains the #1 way we’re pulling in so many leads followed by Craigslist marketing (which makes up a portion of the “(direct)” lead source), Facebook then PayPerClick leads which are growing.
So the bread and butter of what we teach in our trainings for our members is remaining to be extremely strong.
Now, with these lead reports each month, you may say…
“Ya, amazing seeing tens of thousands of leads each month… but are they turning into deals?“
We don’t have a way of tracking what happens to the leads after a member gets them into their Carrot Lead Database… but we do talk with our members all of the time finding out how things are going and what’s working.
We do know that there are tons of deals being closed every month by Carrot users with leads they’re pulling in leveraging our platform. On some weeks we may hear of half a dozen or a dozen+ deals being closed from various members… and those are just the ones we hear about in passing.
“Before Carrot, I was spending roughly $2k in PPC advertising per month with little to no results…”
Tim posted this pic last week of him and his Carrot Bud with a kick butt note about his journey so far growing his company and gaining more freedom
Tim is a relatively new real estate investor in Delaware and has been a Carrot member for roughly 6 months.
Tim is a regular on our weekly Carrot Coaching Calls(for our Content Pro members) where we dive into behind the scenes stuff that’s working in today’s market… and have open Q&A where we dive in and help our members with their biggest strategy related questions.
He’d come week after week and ask us questions… then he’d go away and implement and come back the next week with more questions.
Pretty soon he let us know he was having his first closing from his Carrot leads (at the start from his PPC campaign).
The kinds of students/investorsPP we love :-)
It’s exciting for us to see. Here’s how Tim did it…
So… we reached out to Tim after hearing about some of his success flipping local properties and asked him to share a little bit more about how he found Carrot, how he uses Carrot, and some of the success he has had.
We asked Tim to share a little about his journey, where he started and where he’s at now in his real estate investing business.
What were you doing before you joined InvestorCarrot?
“I was laid off from my job in June and decided to go full-time into wholesaling and purchase InvestorCarrot even though my wholesaling business was in debt up to that point. I worked very hard to follow the 3 Lead Per Day program and implemented everything I could, along with the weekly Coaching Calls.”
So, you focused on PPC marketing to drive seller leads, how were things working before you switched your website to the high converting InvestorCarrot websites?
Tim said he started his investing business and wanted to use PPC to drive traffic to his website. This is a great way to get traffic coming quickly but he quickly realized he was spending too much and not getting any results with his non Carrot website.
“After I spent $6k on PPC and didn’t get any deals with my low converting old non-Carrot website, I knew I needed a better way.”
One of the best features of an InvestorCarrot website is it converts well. Therefore, sending PPC traffic to it is a no brainer. Plus with features like customizable landing pages and lead source tracking it makes PPC marketing easy to implement and track.
Tim purchased Carrot’s 3 Lead Per Day course and frequents the weekly Coaching Calls with excellent questions on the best way to implement the PPC/SEO strategies covered in the training.
Aside from implementing the 3LPD training we wanted to know what Tim liked best about his InvestorCarrot membership and how it has helped him with his business.
How has InvestorCarrot helped you overall, vs the lower cost website you had before?
“InvestorCarrot has helped me to streamline and automate my internet marketing. The most important thing InvestorCarrot does is to BRING ME DEALS!!!“
We have already shared one of Tim’s traffic generation strategies (PPC), but he was able to attract a lead from another traffic strategy.
Now that you’re using InvestorCarrot for your real estate investor websites and letting us focus on making sure it converts well, how many deals have you closed since you joined only 6 months ago and where did they come from?
“Of my 4 deals, 3 came from PPC and 1 came from YouTube. Most of my leads are from PPC (because I’m driving traffic to a website setup to convert visitors into leads unlike my old site).”
If you are a Carrot member you can view the 3LPD here.
In closing, Tim has some parting words for any InvestorCarrot members on how to get the results you want for your own business.
“Stick with it, have a plan, and believe in the system.”
We are really happy Tim found InvestorCarrot and love his eagerness to dive into the trainings and tweak his website to get the best ROI he can from his Carrot membership.
If you have a story you would like to share with other Carrot members, we would love to hear from you in the comments section below!
Also, as always… if you’re not yet an InvestorCarrot member and you want to finally stop dumping good money into PPC sending traffic to a low performing website and not getting results… give InvestorCarrot a try. You’ll find that our plans aren’t the cheapest on the market.
In fact, Carrot members like Tim are proud to pay much more than most other website systems. But, we focus on performance, support, and expertise in helping real estate investors generate more high-quality leads online and pulling a higher ROI.
In the end, Tim thought he was saving money going with a low-cost do it yourself website builder and it ended up costing him $6k in PPC costs that produced no results. Just by switching to InvestorCarrot, those same campaigns (with a few tweaks we helped him with in our training and Coaching Calls) turned into 4 deals so far and tens of thousands in profits.
I’ve got a secret to tell you about the real estate investing business: It’s really a PEOPLE business. You find sellers who need to get rid of a property, and you match that property up with buyers who want to acquire it. But the critical point is that the people make the deal happen.
So the express lane to growth as a real estate investor is simple: Get more people of the RIGHT PEOPLE into your investor lead pipeline.
Specifically, get more people with properties and get more people with money to buy your properties to notice you.
If you’re struggling with getting enough leads from your website, this blog post can help you diagnose what’s holding you back and will reveal some step-by-step strategies to get you moving forward.
Ultimately, there are 4 main reasons why you may be struggling with getting leads online as a real estate investor or agent.
4 Reasons You’re Not Getting The Real Estate Investing Leads You Want Online & How To Fix Them
1. Low Traffic or No Website Traffic
Are people landing on your website? Not enough traffic to your website is the #1 cause of the “Low or No Lead” problem. See how to solve that below…
Your website traffic volume is the first place to start.
After all, if you aren’t actively getting qualified people to your website with your marketing, anything else you do on your site won’t matter.
The first step is to get eyeballs on your site.
I like setting an initial goal to get 10 – 20 people to your website each week. That’s not a large number… it’s achievable, and if you’re not getting 10 – 20 qualified prospects to your website per week with your marketing… it’s your first goal.
So how can you get more traffic (qualified prospects) to your website?
Integrating your website into offline marketing (Direct mail, email signature, etc.)
We’ve written posts on this blog about every one of these and have done several webinars on driving traffic… so dive into the resources at your fingertips and make that first goal of 10-20 qualified prospects per month!
Here are some resources on driving more traffic to your websites to dive into!
Many more free resources here on our site will also help you increase your traffic.
If you’re already a Carrot member… hop on the next weekly Carrot Coaching Call, and we’ll help craft a traffic plan for you right there on the call if you ask us :-)
As we’ve written, SEO is a long-term (and high ROI) strategy… so don’t expect 10-20 qualified prospects per week to come to your site from SEO alone right away. It takes time to build… but it’s worth it once it does!
Also, Youtube marketing is a way to get your brand to the front page of Google search results (even if your website isn’t there yet), plus it’s a great way to get even more eyeballs on your brand if your website is already on the front page.
2. Low-Quality Traffic To Your Website
Not all website traffic is created equal… Are the people landing on your website the right ones? Ones that will turn into leads and deals?
So you have at least 10 – 20 people landing on your website each week and still not getting the leads you want? They may not be the right people…
Eyeballs are good… but the right eyeballs on your website are better.
Once you’ve built website traffic-generating systems to get people landing on your website, it’s time to start refining those systems to ensure you get the highest quality traffic you can.
Is Your SEO Optimized For High-Quality Search Phrases? While it’s tempting to drive as much traffic as possible to your website, the first action you should be taking is looking at your search engine optimization. Are you choosing the right keywords for the right audience? Not all audiences are looking for the same thing. One motivated seller segment may be more responsive to a specific keyword than another. Ensure you’re reviewing the latest version of our SEO Bible, which reveals over 71 SEO keywords that are working for investors now. Avoid altering our “baked-in” SEO since it’s been tested and proven to work.
An example of traffic that may be low quality for the average real estate wholesaler…
… are people who came from a search phrase or Google PPC campaign like “sell my house” or “list my house.”
Yes, they’re looking to sell… but these keywords tend to be from people looking for retail. Focus on keywords that people you can help would be searching.
And make sure you are using location-specific SEO on your site. Review these 6 simple tips to master location-based SEO to make sure your site is fully optimized for where you’re doing deals.
So consider what audience you’re looking to attract and choose your marketing strategies wisely. We’ve talked with many investors who have thrown hundreds of dollars at Facebook ads for motivated sellers only to be discouraged and think it’s a website problem. It’s a traffic quality problem. Facebook ads are a lot harder for motivated sellers than cash buyers.
Don’t Rely on Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns Right Away Unless You Have a Budget of at Least $1k-3k: Pay-per-click campaigns can take a while to optimize. In the short term, they can certainly drive traffic to your site, but they might not drive the right types of prospects, and you could you run through your budget faster than you expect! (Check out these 20 tips to optimize a Google PPC campaign – and pay attention to the case study at the very beginning of the post!)
Pay-per-click is excellent, but make sure you’re using other methods to drive the right traffic to your site while you hone your PPC campaigns.
Build Valuable Content Everywhere! The most effective way to drive quality leads to your site is to provide valuable information your target audience wants. It’s not about stuffing the right keywords into the title of a Youtube video or website page, it’s really about understanding who your audience is and addressing the problems, concerns, and questions that they have about how to sell or buy a property and why you’re the right person to help them.
Make sure you’re being helpful in all your content – from offsite to onsite content.
In the end…
…don’t just focus on driving traffic. Focus on getting the right people to your website who you can help and who can turn into profitable deals for you.“
If retail house sellers aren’t your ideal prospect… don’t use keywords that will attract them.
And also… don’t forget that when you visit your website, that will show up on your website stats reports… so if you haven’t done any marketing yet and see 10 visits to your website this week… those visits may be you visiting your website. So go out and actively market to get the right people to your website.
3. Low Credibility On Your Website
What’s the first impression people get when they land on your website? If your website makes them feel like you’re a fly-by-night operation or a “dark and seedy” character (or worse, like you’re hiding behind the website), your best prospects could bail and go to your competition.
As they say, the first impression is lasting. What is your website saying about you, your company, and your ability to honestly and ethically help them solve their problem?
Your audience will seek reasons to trust you as your traffic grows and the quality improves. Like detectives, they’ll look for clues on your website that point to your trustworthiness (or lack thereof) to assure them that they’re in good hands by working with you.
Just look at the first page of this Carrot member website and you’ll see that it contains subtle credibility clues for the site visitor.
The typical Carrot website has over 10 credibility boosters already baked in. You can add more credibility like testimonials, info about your company, local pictures, and badges like BBB to boost your credibility even more.
Clean and trustworthy looking website and brand
Easy to find information and navigate the website
The company page informs the prospective lead that you are a legitimate organization.
The How It Works link assures the website visitor that you have a plan to help them.
Testimonials provide credibility from third-party “success stories.”
A guarantee, when appropriate, helps reduce a sense of risk
Further assurances such as “No hassles. No obligation.” tell a prospective lead that you’re easy to work with and you have their best interests at heart
Localize the website so they know you’re a local solution they can talk to
Make it easy to contact you (add your phone number, opt-in form, contact page, etc.)
This is just a start. There are many more ways to add credibility.
Here are a few:
Talk about how long you’ve been in business and your unique way of being able to help them
Fill your testimonials page with testimonials from folks who have done business with you
If you are accredited with the Better Business Bureau, add a BBB to your site
Include videos of you speaking to your audience
Emphasize a “risk reversal” (try to remove the sense of risk with working with you. Put the risk on yourself, not them)
Make sure your website is fully mobile optimized and looks great on mobile devices (test your website here)
Even other forms of marketing spread your name around your market, contributing to people seeing your name, recognizing you, and trusting you.
Credibility on your website is one of the most important things you can do to help make sure your website isn’t turning your prospects away. Carrot makes it easier and more effective than other platforms, or you are trying to build a website from scratch yourself.
If you find that you’re driving great quality traffic to your site and it’s not turning into leads… it’s either number #3 (Credibility) or #4 (Conversion) holding your website back.
4. Your Website Conversion Rate Is Dragging You Down
Not all websites are created equal… some perform much better than others as far as converting a qualified visitor into a lead. If you’re getting enough quality traffic and you’ve built in credibility elements into your website… it’s likely that your website isn’t set up to convert very well (a very common mistake).
We constantly harp that performance trumps all else here at Carrot. It is more important than looking different in the market… more important than a “pretty” and “fancy” site… and far more important than a fancy CRM. Why?
Simple.
If your website isn’t built based on scientific testing to tap into your website visitor’s subconscious behaviors to help guide the right people toward making it easy to engage in your website and work with you…
… you’re wasting your marketing dollars.
Time and time again… we have investors switch to Carrot (who are already driving quality traffic) because they are getting good Google rankings or putting good money into Google PPC marketing… but their website is underperforming.
Then they switch to our science-based lead generation websites with our Carrot Conversion Methodology built into them (so you don’t have to be a conversion rate expert), and they see an immediate increase in their leads.
“I was spending $100 a day on Google PPC driving to my other website I spent good money on to have built…and struggled to get leads. Once I switched to Carrot & just used what you’d already built and perfected, in 3 months I’ve been with Carrot I now spend $10 per day and have over 450 rent to own tenant buyer leads. The only thing I changed was my website.” – Jim Pellerin – Home Ownership Made Easy
The only change was howthe website was structured, and the elements (often they’re ones you can’t notice) that we’ve built into our websites boost the performance and the ROI for the investor.
So, if you…
Are you getting at least 10 – 20 highly qualified visitors to your website each week
Have built-in great credibility elements into your website
… and your website still isn’t converting at a bare minimum 3-5% of those visitors into leads.
(our average motivated seller website converts over 9% of visitors to a lead, cash buyer websites over 18%, and rent-to-own websites over 24% of visitors turn into leads. How does yours stack up? Learn more about conversion rates here)
You have likely had a conversion rate problem, my friend.
Again, once your audience trusts you, they’ll more likely be willing to act, but they’ll need some guidance and direction to get them to take the right action immediately. That’s where conversion elements come in.
This is where we specialize here at Carrot!
We are constantly testing and modifying our sites to find the best-converting strategies that work! Although you may choose to make adjustments on your Carrot site, we urge you to do so carefully so that you maintain the conversion elements that we’ve carefully placed.
For example, the first portion of the site that your website visitor sees is strategically designed to increase conversion. Everything from the words in the menu to the call to action to the simple form – even that scribbled orange arrow is there for a reason!
We have over 30 Carrot Conversion Method elements built into our websites… many of them you likely will never notice but they boost performance… without you having to be a conversion rate expert.
If you want to ensure that more people take action when they’re on your site, keep those Carrot conversion elements on your site.
For precise ways to increase the conversion rate on your website, check out these free resources:
Implement the things in those posts above, and your website will perform much better.
Look at your website conversion rate this way. It’ll hit home…
Lose just 1 deal every 2 years because of an underperforming website… and that costs you $10k+. That’s enough to pay for Carrot for over 10 years.
But you say… “Carrot is more per month than the other website guys in the market“.
Yes, we are… because we focus on providing you with the highest return on the investment platform. Our websites are the highest-performing websites in the industry, and almost every other website builder emulates our conversion methodology for their website designs.
So, you may be paying a bit more per month with Carrot… but you’re saving yourself from losing out on deals and leads because you’re using a low-performing website solution to “save a few bucks.” Take a tour of Carrot or connect with us for a call. We’d love to walk you through case study after case study of how Carrot has helped more high-achieving investors than any other company in the world to ramp up their ROI from their online marketing.
It’s whymore and more of the most active and largest investors (ones who understand ROI) are moving from their WordPress websites into Carrot… our focus on performance and ROI.
If You Fix These 4 “Low or No Lead” Reasons On Your Website… You’ll Stop Losing Out On The High-Quality Real Estate Investing Leads Coming Online In Your Market Each And Every Day…
Not generating the leads you want online as a real estate investor boils down to those 4 things discussed in this article.
Find your weak spot and start implementing the changes we suggest in this article and our other free resources.
If you look back in 3 months and still aren’t getting the results you want… there’s only 1 other reason. I call it the 5th “low lead” reason. It’s you :-)
So go out there and focus on growing your online traffic, getting more qualified prospects to your website, building that credibility, and using a high-performing website platform.
If you do that… you’ll be crushing it in no time. After all, our members are pulling in over 48,000 real estate investing leads per month right now… there’s no reason you can’t pull in your fair share too.
And if you feel that Carrot can help you grow your business as well… hop on over and take a demo or reach out to us anytime. We’re here for you!
So, you’re starting to grow your company and you’re hitting those growing pains that come with too many things to do but not enough time to do it. You hire a VA or two… or maybe even some part-time or full-time employees. But if you’re not all working in the same office together… how do you make sure the team works together smoothly when you’re hundreds (or thousands) of miles away?
Here’s how we do it here at Carrot and some of the tools that we use every day as a remote team.
Making A Remote Team Work
There are some amazing things about building a “remote” team.
If you’ve never heard of that term, it’s basically where all or most of your team members are separated by a distance (usually in different cities, states, or even countries).
This is a pretty darn common thing these days with the technology we have access to that makes working from a distance a lot easier.
Now, on the flip side, there are some things about building a remote team that makes building a great company harder.
You have to work harder to build a great culture that your team loves being a part of.
You have to be more self-driven since your time is usually more flexible and it’s easier to slip into bad habits.
You have to make sure you still find ways to build personal connections with your team members so they’re not just a person doing a task… but a person that’s part of the mission that your company is on.
How does the Carrot team look?
At Carrot, we have a small staff of full-time team members that work here out of our headquarters in Roseburg, Oregon. Another set of of full-time team members are in other cities throughout Oregon. Then the rest of our company is all over the United States, working remote. Utah, California, North Carolina, you name it.
So what tools do we use the most that we couldn’t live without?
Look at all of the places you’re currently sending and receiving messages.
Odds are you’re using multiple programs to communicate with your team. And it’s costing you time and a big hassle for everyone.
When we first started this company and had just a few people, we’d basically send each other a lot of emails and if we needed something fast we’d fire up a Google chat.
Those worked, but what happened was my inbox would get filled with emails and I’d find myself in my Gmail account all day long. I’m easily distracted, so being in my email account all day long really opened me up to let other people control my agenda with their emails.
At times I’d have 150+ unread messages in there.
Plus, if we wanted to send a file or a video, or look up a conversation we had in the past it would take me forever to do it and I could hardly ever find past conversations when I looked for them.
In the end, we were using all of these systems and I had to be logged into Skype, Gmail, Google Drive, and several other systems.
Enter Slack.
Slack seems like a totally unnecessary tool when you first hear about it.
I thought the same thing when my CTO said that we should try it out.
“Arg, another thing I’ve got to log into now?”
But now I can’t imagine running our business without it.
How do we use Slack to save time and build a better culture?
It’s our home base for all communications now. I rarely check email now.
We completely stopped using Skype because it’s so darn easy to launch a Google Hangout directly in Slack
We can have group chats, one-on-one private chats between team members… or even create channels for specific projects.
We can integrate it with most of our other systems we use. A new customer comes aboard Carrot… it pings our General Slack channel to let us know who they are and where they came from so we can celebrate! A task gets marked off in our project management software… it quickly tells us in Slack.
Oh… and also it’s our company water cooler. There won’t be a day that goes by without some funny carrot pictures, celebrating something awesome a customer or team member experienced, or even just the normal morning and evening “check in”.
I can’t imagine running our business without Slack.
So, once you decide you have to get a project done, what do you use to make sure that project actually… well… gets done?
The pad and paper or the checklist on a digital notepad on your computer just don’t cut it as your company grows.
Yes, it may work just fine when the company is just you.
But as you add people to your team (especially when it’s more than 2-3 people) you need to add in some organization and some systems to make sure your projects don’t just start… but more importantly… they finish.
We’ve tried Basecamp… we’ve tried just doing it all in Google Drive… and we switched to Asana about a year ago.
Asana is pretty darn robust and may be overkill for lots of teams. But we were finding that Basecamp just didn’t give us some of the flexibility that we were looking for and it didn’t let us manage subtasks and projects the way we wanted to.
How do we use Asana to better organize our projects?
Manage our content marketing schedule and writing team
Handle our big projects and the “to-do” lists for those projects
Hold our planning in an organized way
Help us collaborate with as many people as we want on our projects
With Asana we organize not just our projects in there, but as you can see from the screenshot above… we also build out our agendas for company meetings (we do a daily huddle, monthly planning sessions, and in-office days at our headquarters in Roseburg).
All of our goals and objectives along w/ the projects and tasks that will help us reach those goals are in Asana. No longer in some notepad, whiteboard, or stuck in our heads.
Asana is free for most teams and you can upgrade if you want to add more features.
Google Drive – For Storing & Collaborating On Files
Now that you’ve streamlined your team communication and made your “home base” with Slack, you’ve organized your projects with something that works best for your company, now you need to have a place to put documents and files that you want to save.
We’ve tried Dropbox and Google Drive. Both are great, but we found that Google Drive was just the best fit for us because it integrates easily with Slack, we all have Gmail accounts, and Google Drive is insanely robust and simple to use.
How do we use Google Drive?
Storing Contracts (both templates and signed)
Storing research we do on SEO / PPC keywords, markets, products, etc
Have writers upload articles before our edit team rolls them out to the system
Storing company assets like our branding files, team docs, company vision, video files, etc.
Storing testimonials and case studies so we always have an archive of amazing experiences our members have
… and more!
Basically, you’ve got to have a place that your team can store and collaborate on files.
Get them darn things off of your computer and into the cloud. Google Drive is crazy easy and cheap.
We’re currently on the 1TB plan and pay about $100/yr.
These days you don’t need a landline with a phone in an office to run a great company.
There are many virtual phone systems, some of them specialize for real estate investors and have people who can answer for you… while some just handle the technology side of routing phone calls to your virtual team.
We use Grasshopper, which is the system that is our voicemail box and routes phone calls to our team members no matter where they are.
How do we use Grasshopper?
To receive calls and voice mails
To receive fax messages (I can count on one hand the faxes we’ve received at Carrot)
To route calls to the best team member anywhere they are in the world
To handle our toll-free number
It really helps us have that flexibility of not having to have someone sitting next to a physical phone in an office in order to provide amazing experiences to our customers.
In-Office Days – For Building Culture And Having Fun!
Last, this isn’t a techie tool… in fact, it’s as low-tech as you can get.
But we make it a point to get together in person as much as possible somewhere in Oregon at least once a month (sometimes twice) to work together for a day.
Our in-office days are usually at our headquarters in Roseburg, but sometimes we head up to Portland, Eugene, or Salem so our Portland team members don’t have to make the long haul drive every time.
We always get the work done that makes the most sense to collaborate on in person plus we make sure to have some fun, grab some great food and brews, and hang out a bit.
In the end, relationships are the #1 most important part of growing a company.
So don’t be afraid to have fun, connect with your team in person as much as possible, and grow a great team for the long-term.
Now, you may be saying… “But some of my team lives in another state, how can we do in-office days?“
I have a good friend with a company in Florida, which has a team of full-time team members in the Philippines. He’s traveled to meet with them 2-3 times over the last few years to build a better bond with the team. Don’t fall in the trap of treating overseas outsourcers like second rate citizens.
They’re people just like you, working hard to put food on their families tables, and they like to have a great company culture and feel they’re a part of something too.
Now, Get Out And Grow That Company And Leverage Some Of These Tools To Help Your Remote Team CRUSH It This Year
Do you have any other remote working tools you’re using to work with your team that you love and can’t live without?
Put them in the comments section below! We’d love to find new tools too!
Carrot websites now control more page 1 Google rankings for motivated seller and cash buyer search phrases that matter than any other real estate investor website platform. So, if Carrot members are already ranking well and pulling in leads in your market…
Demo Carrot: How many deals are you losing to your competitor’s website?
… can you get the same (or better) results and tap into that flow of leads as well?
InvestorCarrot members control 3 of the 4 top spots for this phase in California… But they’re all getting more leads than they would have been without InvestorCarrot. Read this article to see why… and how you can leverage Carrot for better results even if your market has Carrot members doing well.
We’ll dive into the strategy that the most successful investors are implementing to go into markets that look “crowded” to most people… but end up being very profitable for those who choose to leverage Carrot and personalize it to stand out.
The #1 Question You Want To First Ask Yourself
So the #1 question you should ask yourself isn’t “Will InvestorCarrot still be effective for me if other people are using it?”…
… it should be “If I don’t go with InvestorCarrot, what will I implement instead to generate leads online as effectively as my competitors using Carrot in my market?”
Will your other options, even though they look different visually, perform as well and provide you the long-term return on investment that InvestorCarrot can provide? Some may. Most won’t.
At Carrot we, of course, focus on performance as the #1 metric… and making it as easy as possible to tap into our proven framework… personalize it to build in your credibility elements… and launch your website quickly so you can start driving traffic to it.
Which is why our members are pulling in so many leads and starting to dominate the online markets across the country… and not having to wait weeks or months and pay thousands of dollars to have a custom site built that you hope will perform well once it’s launched that still has ongoing maintenance costs and will have to be redesigned in 2 years again anyhow.
Another way to look at it is if a platform and system are proven to work well in your market for your competitors… does that mean you shouldn’t also use that platform that is working well in your market?
Consider the sport of automotive racing
All of the competitors are in very fast cars… they often start with the same foundation.
They start with that same foundation because it’s been proven to work many times over.
Then to edge out the other guys, they tweak it, improve it, and get better over time.
There’s no long-term advantage for the car that has been winning in the past vs. the new one just entering the league. The guy entering the league today can dominate the circuit 8 months from now.
If you start with a solid proven foundation, the small tweaks plus the driver’s skill and desire determine the outcome of a race.
You wouldn’t show up to a Nascar race in a Mini Cooper just because everyone else is using “the same” looking Nascar race car, right?
That’s what the InvestorCarrot platform is all about.
Building a proven and very effective foundation for you to build your business on so you can save time, save money, earn a higher ROI, and always be ahead of the technology curve.
Then, you can leverage our training and experienced team to help you edge out your competition.
6 Ways To Separate Yourself From Other Investors Leveraging InvestorCarrot Websites
1. Use all the advantages you can get (lazy = fewer results)
Time To Complete: 20 – 90 mins depending on the level of personalization. Or have us do it for you!
If you want to start with a leg up on the majority of your competition, one of the best ways you can do that is by building your online presence on the Carrot platform.
Yeah, we’re plugging ourselves, but for a good reason:
We recognize that your focus should be on doing deals, which is why we focus on building a platform to send you leads and continually improving that platform every month to help you stay ahead of the technology curve.
But don’t just launch your InvestorCarrot website, slap on a domain, and walk away if you expect to stand out from others using Carrot in your market.
Leverage the tools built into your Carrot platform to personalize your branding, content, credibility, and even design.
You can make your website look a LOT different and really separate yourself visually from the pack while still leveraging what makes InvestorCarrot so darn effective.
Less Than 30 Minutes Of Personalization Work On An InvestorCarrot Site
See the transformation with a bit of professionalization? At your fingertips, you have the ability to make your website look quite a bit different. And these personalization are only the tip of the iceberg on what you can do.
2. Adjust your content (especially if there are other Carrot members in the search results)
Time To Complete: 30 mins – 2 hours depending on the level of content tweaks. Or have us do it all for you!
If you’re serious about your business long-term… Spend a little bit of time to put in more specific information about your market and your business on your pages. Or have us write custom content for you!
Sometimes you will be competing in a market where there are already a ton of investors, and perhaps even several InvestorCarrot investors, too!
How do you appear in search results if other folks are already rocking it? Adjust your content to add your flair.
This will help you avoid duplicate content penalties in your market while retaining the Carrot platform’s ranking power.
You don’t have to change the content a lot, but you should change it a bit (aim for changing about 30-50% of the content): make sure you keep the value of the content, and don’t forget to incorporate search engine optimization like appropriate keyword usage.
And the beauty is, just use our current content as your framework for what to write where.
If a part of your home page talks about the different situations sellers may be going through… just rewrite that paragraph in your own words.
This alone saves you dozens of hours and lost money and results vs. having to write all of the content for a custom website you build elsewhere.
Overall, even with multiple Carrot members ranking crazy well on page 1 for the same keywords in the same market, we’re seeing that it’s a non-issue if people tweak their content a bit, follow our training, and leverage our help to get your rankings higher. There are many markets where Carrot members control 3+ of the first page results, and all of them are generating more leads than they ever were with their non-Carrot sites because they’re ranking higher with Carrot… and their website is converting more visitors into leads than their non-Carrot site.
3. Adjust your SEO title to stand out in the Google search results
Time To Complete: 3-5 mins per page.
When your prospective leads search on Google, they will get a page of results. Like this…
From that search result, they will decide to click on one site or to search for a different term.
They will base this decision on what they see and what stands out to their eye: The title of your website, a brief two-line (approximately 125 characters) description, and your website URL.
Did you know you can control what Google shows here?
Yep, you can!
So let’s use this flexibility that Google gives us and liven up that search listing to stand out from the others on the page and get more people to click through to your website.
Check out this “Sell my Memphis home” search result in the picture below.
Notice that the top spot is held by a Carrot customer. Not only do they have the top spot because of the SEO power of the Carrot platform, but they also have the most compelling and enticing title (“Get A Cash Offer Today”) – that’s the power of copywriting! Their Google search listing stands out more than the rest and shows the searcher how they can help in clear terms.
Even if they were slightly farther down in the list, their powerfully written title would still attract people to click them over their competition.
Let’s adjust that search listing right now!
If you’re already a Carrot member, just head into your Page Editor, scroll down to the Carrot SEO Tool, and update your SEO Title and description to stand out and separate yourself from the crowd.
Just Edit The SEO Title And Description To Change How Your Site Shows In Google’s Search Results!
It’ll take you less than 5 minutes to get this done on InvestorCarrot! And reach out to us if you need any help or insights :-)
4. Build in some credibility elements
Time To Complete: 20 – 60 mins. Or have us do it for you!
Credibility is key when a motivated house seller or cash investment property buyer is looking to make a big financial decision. We’ve already given our InvestorCarrot websites a head start on building credibility with the way our websites are structured out of the box. But, from there you can boost that credibility by adding in your own flair.
The main thing that you can use to separate yourself from others in your market is… well… YOU.
Your personality.
Your experience.
Your credibility.
How you can help them.
You will want to personalize your site so people will see you as not only THE best solution for their problem… but also that they just plain connect with you and your company and feel that you’re the one they can trust to help them out.
How can you do that?
Take These Small Credibility Tweaks As An Example…
Update your “Hero Image”: The Hero is the big picture behind your opt-in form. We’ve found it’s helped to improve performance on our websites, especially when you add a picture that is unique to you and shows your local area.
Add in credibility badges: BBB logos, awards, and even badges showing you’re a member of respected groups can help improve credibility and boost performance!
Testimonials: Add in some customer testimonials. These could be things your clients have said about how you helped them… or if you’re just starting out… character-based testimonials from colleagues, your banker, etc that show you’re a trustworthy and competent person.
Simple and clean branding: The first thing people usually see is the upper left side of your website. So make sure it looks inviting and trustworthy. You don’t have to have a fancy logo… but an ugly logo or bad company name could reduce your credibility.
People have to feel like you can help them and trust that you can do what you say. Make them feel that comfort and connection on the site.
Bottom line: Highlight how you can help your audience and show them how your services are best suited to solve their problem the best.
5. Consider other keywords ignored by your competitors
Time To Complete: 15-30 mins per week + we’re here for help!
There are hundreds of phrases motivated house sellers in your market are typing into Google… go after some of those that are less crowded while you build your rankings on the competitive search phrases.
We usually focus on the main handful of keyword phrases when we use examples… like your “sell my house fast” type keywords.
But for motivated sellers, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of keyword phrases your prospects are typing into Google each month.
If one keyword phrase is flooded and crazy competitive, go after other keyword phrases as well that your competition isn’t yet focusing on.
As an example…
Here Is A Report On The Number Of PPC Keywords This Particular Investor Is Advertising For In Google
Almost 900!
Wow.
I bet your competition is only going after 1 or 2 keywords when it comes to SEO.
If they are, spin up some pages
Cast a wider net and create content on your website that goes after those phrases your competitors are too lazy to go after.
And while you’re doing that… keep working on ranking higher for those competitive phrases that your competitors are ranking for… and overtake them over the long-run because your website is more content rich.
Bam, you win the internet :-)
You might be wonder what types of keywords are the ones your competition likely isn’t focusing on?
Well… phrases targeted to specific situations and specific areas is a good place to start.
Selling a house in divorce [in your area]
Selling a house in probate [in your area]
Selling a house I inherited [in your area]
Selling my house without a broker [in your area]
[your area] cash home buyers
You get the idea.
Cast a wider net.
That’s what the big boys do.
There are literally hundreds of phrases you can go after with your SEO, PPC, and YouTube video marketing that your competitors likely aren’t paying much attention to.
If “Sell my Columbus house” is too competitive, what about… “Sell my Columbus house quickly” or “avoiding real estate agent fees in Columbus“?
The traffic to these may be less (it depends on the market) but when you start to rank well for a bunch of these less competitive phrases that your prospects are searching… over time those start to add up. Plus, these types of leads will be much more targeted and turn into deals at a much higher rate.
6. Leverage other media too! Video and SlideShare
Time To Complete: 30-60 mins per video.
If there’s a ton of competition and you’re struggling to show up on the first page, or if you’re just starting out and want to get the first-page status fast, or if you really want to bump your online marketing up a notch or two, this is a very powerful strategy:
Google pulls search results from YouTube and embeds those results inside their normal (text-based) results.
So with the right optimization, you can put your video on YouTube and have them show up in Google results even if your website doesn’t yet show up there! That’s exactly what’s happening when you look at a search like “Sell my Phoenix house”…
Notice that the videos are in the top position… above the websites!
Google is always tweaking this; sometimes the videos appear below the first, second, or third website result, but still very high in search results.
If you’re not sure how to do this, check out our post here on tips to optimize your YouTube videos. Also, for Carrot members check out our 3LeadPerDay training for a full in-depth training on the entire process.
Focus On Your Results And Stop Worrying About Your Competition
Competition… it’s part of the biz! You have a choice: you can avoid the competition altogether, or, you can put in a ton of hours and work to try to compete on your own, or, you can get into the race with Carrot’s version of a Nascar race car and use these 6 strategies to help you refine your online presence and raise your website even in competitive search terms.
There are a ton of options when it comes to launching a website for your real estate investing business. From cheap and low-cost mass template builders like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, GoDaddy, LeadPages, and others… to high-end custom websites that may run $6,000 or more.
So, what are the differences between the different website types and what we offer here at Carrot? Well, I shot a video to answer that very question!
Before you dive into the video, I want to introduce the four main things you should consider when launching a website for your real estate investing (house flipping, wholesaling, rent-to-own, note buying, anything). They’re right under the video.
Check out those 4 crazy important things to consider before you launch your website… then I’ll expand on that a bit and show examples in the video below.
Low-Cost Generic Website Builders vs. Specialized Website Solutions Like Carrot
The 4 Most Important Things You Need To Look At With Your Real Estate Website
The first is… your website’s #1 priority should be performance.
Not how fancy it looks. Not whether you think it looks pretty. Not how fancy the CRM is. And not whether you think it looks different from others in your market. It’s…
“If I send 100 qualified people to this website with SEO, PPC, Craigslist, or direct mail… is it going to convert as many of those into qualified leads so my website isn’t a leaky bucket?”
Because every lost lead is a lost potential at a deal.
And as we always like to say…
If you lose 1 deal that would have netted you $10,000 because you were trying to reinvent the wheel or save a few bucks a month and your website isn’t performing like it should… that $10,000 is real money lost out of your pocket.
Before you go out to build a real estate investing website on Wix, Weebly, or Godaddy… focus on making sure what you build your website with is focused on performance (conversion rate optimization) as its main priority because a high performing website means more visitors converted into qualified leads (and in turn, more deals closed).
The second is… ease of use.
There’s got to be some way to ensure you’re using the system well.
We’ve taken 80% of that off your lap and built it into our platform.
Many of our Carrot members don’t even use our system. They hire us to do some of the build-outs through our services, or they might hire some other people or they have their friend use the system, and they just go be the agent or be the investor. So you get to choose how much of the system you will use yourself versus just wanting to pay people to do that for you, so you can do the parts you enjoy and love.
The third is… aesthetic
We want to make sure that number one, you should be proud of the website that represents your business.
Aesthetic is number three in my eyes because aesthetics only matters to you from that perspective. The aesthetic is what you think about your website. Performance is what your prospects think about your website.
The aesthetic is “I think it looks pretty.” Performance is your prospects say it solved their problem and got them to opt-in and become a lead.
So that’s why aesthetic is number three. Many agents and investors put aesthetics as number one. They lower performance and end up having so many lost leads and deals because they think prettiness and aesthetics are more important than performance.
Fourth is… cost.
And then last here is cost. I put the cost as last, where many of you guys might be thinking, “Oh my gosh, the cost is number one for me. I don’t have a big budget.” Because a lot of us look at cost differently than we should. Many of us look at the cost as what’s the monthly payment that I will be paying for that tool, or how much am I going to have to pay my buddy down the street to develop my website for me.
But the actual ultimate cost is not the monthly payment you will pay. The ultimate cost is how much money this website makes or does not make for you. So if you use a website like Wix and it’s going to be low cost, but let’s say it loses you one or two deals every year because it’s not set up for performance. It’s not set up to convert well, for page speed, or to rank well in Google. And if you lose one deal every year, let’s say your average profit per deal is $10,000. That cheap website just costs you $10,000 bucks.
It’s often easy to go with the website solution that looks at the lowest cost monthly.
After all, a $10/mo website with one of those low-cost generic website builders is only $120/yr versus what our average investors pay of $99/mo (for 3 websites, our weekly Coaching Calls, our content marketing system, and high-performance built-in).
But when you look at the return, you get for those dollars and your time… the story changes drastically.
1 extra (or 1 lost) deal because of website performance is a big deal when dealing with real estate.
1 extra deal pays for a Carrot membership for 10+ years.
So focus on performance and the return on investment your real estate investing website system can provide you over the long run.
Ongoing expert guidance and help from those who have done what you want to do.
An often forgotten thing critical to your success in generating consistent leads online today and next year (over the long-term) is the support team behind you.
If you go with one of those low-cost website builders, you can better believe that their pricing model doesn’t allow them to invest a lot into building the team and support structure to make your life easier and more successful over the years.
If you’re paying $6/mo for hosting… you may be able to reach out to them for help with basic technical things… but most of the time, the questions that you need to be answered most are the strategy-related questions that can take you from no or mediocre results… to crushing it.
With Carrot, we have amazing support (just ask around)… industry-leading training to show you exactly what our most successful members are doing to drive leads… and our full-time staff is among the industry’s most experienced online lead generation experts (specific to real estate investors). So if you have questions about your strategy… or your PPC marketing isn’t getting the results you need… or you’re ranked at the top of page 2 for your #1 keyword… who are you going to turn to at those cheap and low-cost website builders for the strategy help to get you over that hump?
Weekly Live Coaching Calls, 1 on 1 Strategy Sessions, Industry Leading Training, We’re Here For You
With Carrot, our weekly LIVE Carrot Coaching Calls, complimentary 1-on-1 Strategy Sessions with us, and fast strategy help are all included as a Content Pro member.
It’s like having the most experienced lead generation expert on call… and it’s included in your Carrot membership at only $99/mo.
The difference between amazing and no results is often the strategy help and expert guidance.
If you want to try to save a few bucks and go it alone… how much extra time and money will you invest? For only $99/mo, it’s a no-brainer for high-level investors who recognize the value of their time and expert guidance.
Getting The Right Tools In Place To Grow Your Real Estate Business (and have less hassle with tech issues)
These days your website is one of those tools that is a really important part of your credibility, lead generation efforts, and the future of your marketing.
More and more people are going online to find solutions to their problems (especially on cell phones)… so getting your web presence right is a pretty darn important thing these days.
Just like you get the right direct mail before you spend that money to send out those letters… take the time to make sure your website is dialed in and will convert a high percentage of your visitors you’re working so hard to get… into qualified leads.
We can help you here with Carrot, and we’d love to review your website and give you honest, candid feedback on what you can improve with your current site if it’s at one of those low-cost generic website builders.
Just leave your website URL in the comments section below and we’ll shoot quick videos walking through changes you can make to your current site to make them more effective.
And as always, we’re here if you feel Carrot is a great fit. Just take a demo or check out our pricing and plans.
By now you should be catching on with what these Carrot Lead Harvest Reports are all about. Each month we are committed to opening up our data and showing where the real estate investing leads on our platform are coming from. We love to be open and transparent, and hopefully, these numbers are as exciting to you as they are to us.
This is a great way for all of the Carrot community to keep a pulse on what is working and introduce new online marketing opportunities for real estate investors.
For InvestorCarrot members, use this as inspiration to know that what is at your fingertips with the InvestorCarrot platform, our training, and support is crushing it (in a good way) for our members… and it can for you too.
For non-Carrot members, use this as research to find out what’s working in today’s market… and get out there and implement!
A Few Quick Notes Before We Dive Into The Data
What types of leads are they? The leads we are showing are motivated seller leads, cash buyers, rent to own tenants, note sellers and some private lenders mixed in there. The cash buyer, rent to own tenants and motivated sellers make up the bulk of the leads you will see.
Do these leads include people who called on the phone? Nope, the numbers you will see on this page are ONLY leads where the seller, buyer, tenant, etc. put in their information into one of our InvestorCarrot member’s websites. Right now we can’t track phone call leads on member’s websites, but from our surveys and talking with customers that is likely another 5,000-8,000+ leads per month coming in from phone calls. But for the sake of this post, we’re only going to show what we can back up by data… and since we can’t currently track phone calls our customers receive… we’ll leave those leads out for now.
What are leads that show up as “Direct” in the stats? Great question! Google started showing a huge chunk of traffic in Google Analytics as “Direct (none)” a while back. In the past, “direct” meant that the person actually put your URL into the browser and went to your website. But now, Google is mixing in a huge number of visitors that actually came from Google searches. Some studies show that 60%+ of the traffic that shows as “direct” is actually from Organic Google search. Google just does a good job of hiding that from us for some reason. So for the sake of this post, we’re going to say 60% of the “direct” lead source is actually SEO related.
Online Lead Generation: 16,568 Seller, Cash Buyer, Rent To Own & Tenant Leads Came In During September
Here Are The September Lead Totals… InvestorCarrot members generated 16,568 leads in the 30 days of September.
If you are following our monthly harvest reports you will notice September’s leads were slightly less than last month. Whenever you study data like this, you must consider historical relevance to understand what the data is actually saying.
Summer Months Are Heavy Motivated Seller Months… fall and winter dip a bit historically. As a real estate investor, you are probably aware that leads tend to get a little harder to come by in the winter months. But the seasonality of leads shouldn’t deter you from ramping up your marketing efforts.
Make sure you know that there is seasonality to online searches and demand… and make sure you have other types of marketing to help stack on the leads during months that are traditionally slower “seller” months.
As we expected, the lead sources are in a similar order from last month
A majority of the leads coming to our customer sites are from direct traffic, which includes Craigslist ads, SEO, and people just typing in the URL of your website. No big surprises here.
Keep using those.
But, as we’ve seen in recent months again… Facebook (mobile) and Google Adwords continue to be amazing sources of leads. The Facebook leads tend to be cash buyers or rent to own tenants as motivated sellers are harder to attract through Facebook marketing (but not impossible).
Let’s look at the real estate investing leads by state
One statistic that we always find interesting is “goal completion” by state… in less nerdy terms… leads by state.
As you can see in the picture below, the darker the blue color… the more leads were generated by our members in those states in September.
Real Estate Investing Leads By State For September
See The Hot Spots For Real Estate Investing Leads… North Carolina, Texas, Florida & California round out our top 4 states for generating leads.
Now, remember, these are all types of leads. Sellers, cash buyers, rent to own tenant buyers, private lenders, etc.
There are lots of ways you can interpret this… but here’s what we see from it.
The “early mover” markets like Florida, Arizona, and California are hot right now. Many sellers are jumping into the fray wanting to sell their houses and there are a lot of investors looking to buy properties in these markets. But then you see states that have more consistently strong real estate markets that are also pulling in solid leads. Like Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Georgia, and many many more.
If we compare this against the top real estate markets to flip houses in the US in 2015 (below) you’ll see that some of this data matches up quite nicely. Also, you’ll see that in many states in our chart above that aren’t a dark blue… they are still insanely great markets to flip houses in right now. So use both our chart above with the chart below to really target in on hot flipping markets right now.
From MarketWatch For The Top Cities To Flip Houses In… See Baltimore (which is a solid market for Carrot members) leading the pack… along with many cities in Florida and all over the country!
Fun Fact: 20% of last months leads came in on a Tuesday
This isn’t groundbreaking or Earth-shattering data, but it is pretty darn cool nonetheless.
We can drill down in our Google Analytics and see which day generates the most leads for our members.
What should you do with this data?
Well, you can use it to tweak some ads or be more active on social media during these times.
Try tuning your Adwords, or Facebook marketing to use more of your budget on a Tuesday and see if you can’t get a boost in leads. Also, make time to be on Twitter looking at trending topics or ways to engage with sellers and buyers on forums and Facebook discussions.
Google Analytics makes Sunday 0, so 1 would be Monday and so on.
Day Of The Week Leads Come In
The #1 Day Is Tuesday, Worst Is The Weekend… The middle of the week is when you should expect the highest volume of leads.
As interesting as the #1 day that leads are attracted online according to our data… is also the times that the least leads come in… the weekend.
Notice that Saturday was the worse in September, Sunday 2nd worse, and Friday 3rd worse. With the middle of the week coming in on top.
What does this mean? It gives a bit of a glimpse into the way motivated sellers, tenants, and cash buyers search. They tend to want to forget about their real estate issue on the weekends… and come mid week are reminded that they really need to get their butt in gear and make stuff happen.
So leverage this data by bumping up the activity on your social media marketing during mid-week and maybe even making sure your direct mail pieces land in their inbox mid week (test it).
How Is Your Online Lead Generation Going For Your Real Estate Investing Business?
If you’re interested in leveraging our Inbound Online Marketing platform at InvestorCarrot, our training, and our support team, take a demo or checkout our plans.
Over the coming months, we’re developing new PPC landing pages (we’re actually testing them on PPC campaigns right now), new SEO tools to help you more effectively rank in Google, and beefing up our Customer Success team to help investors… from beginners to the most advanced… leverage the web in a more effective way.
We don’t do this very often, but we want to get better at it! This post is just about some of the powerful new features we have launched for Carrot customers over the last month.
Referral & Lead Source Tracking
Have you ever got a lead and wondered how they landed on your site? Was it SEO? Was it a PPC campaign? Did it come from Facebook? Well now you’ll know where all of your leads came from.
With our new “Lead Source Tracking” feature you’ll see where every lead came from in an instant.
You have always had access to some of this data if you were a Google Analytics wizard, but now every lead that comes through your site says where the they came from – helping you see how your marketing is going, and how people are finding you online.
Simple Display in Your Lead List
Want to see your lead’s source right there with your other form data? Just click the gear icon, on the Forms >> Entries page… add the column to your active list for that form, and you’re all set!
Full UTM Link Support – ADVANCED FEATURE
If you are not already using UTM style tracking links for your marketing efforts, start now if you’re already generating a good amount of leads and traffic. A lot of email marketing tools like MailChimp have this built in, and anywhere else you put up a link to your site, you can build your own links that show you how your visitors are getting to your site, and ultimately: how effective each of your marketing methods are.
UTM tracking links are standard for Google Analytics, and now every lead in your carrot account is compatible with these links as well. So if you set up a code that includes even more specific data about the campaign, that will be saved to your lead and you can review that for each entry.
Again, this is an advanced feature, so if you’re just getting started you can ignore this one :-)
Email Notification Support
You can even add the lead source to your notification email to see the source as soon as the lead comes in. Just edit your admin notification email, and choose “{leadsource}” from the dropdown to add it so you can see right there in your email inbox where that lead came from.
Page URL in Admin Lead Notifications
This is a question we got a lot – “I have more than one site, and when I get lead notifications, how do I know which site it came from?”
Well, now all admin notifications that include the full entry details also contain a link to the page the form was submitted on… so you’re never guessing which of your websites the lead came from. Easy peasy.
Short Codes in Lead Form Titles/Descriptions
This is a simple, but powerful new feature – use your “Company Info” shortcodes right inside of form titles and descriptions. New Carrot sites take advantage of this new feature out of the box from now on to help further customize your website content automatically, and existing customers can add those shortcodes into any of your existing forms as needed!
Company Info in Lead Form Notification Emails
Another simple new feature that makes your email notifications to new leads more personalized and credible right out of the box (on new sites). Have Carrot sites created already? Just edit up your form notifications and check out the new “Company Info” options when add in merge codes.
Get Response Integration
Here’s another often-requested integration checked off the list! Now send your new leads directly into your marketing funnel with our native GetResponse.com integration for your forms. GetResponse is an email marketing software that a lot of investors use, so now you can integrate your Carrot forms directly with your GetResponse lists!
Be On The Lookout For Some Amazing Updates In August!
I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag right now but we have some big updates we’re working on for August that’ll help make your life easier in many ways. You’ll have a clearer plan of action to see success with your online marketing, you’ll see some visual updates on the way your Carrot sites look, and much much more!
Let us know in the comments box below what features you’d love to see on InvestorCarrot!
![[Compare] Carrot vs. Cheap & Low Cost Mass Website Builders](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/2015.10.3-carrot-vs-website-builders-featured.png)
This is a question we got a lot – “I have more than one site, and when I get lead notifications, how do I know which site it came from?”
