Bandit Signs and Websites!

So now that we have went through developing your look, design, and brand, the stuff that you will be able to market will get larger. You can do bandit signs, the small signs that you see hung on telephone poles and stuck in the ground at intersections. The message should be concise and to the point. The better signs of course match the look that you have developed with the message that you want to convey. If you want to work the pre-foreclosure market then you can do “stop foreclosure” signs in the colors and look of your company. The basic message that everyone does is “we buy houses”, so you may want to diversify what your message is. If you use a different message it will make your sign standout from the crowd. Another point to remember when dealing in any version of mass media is that you WILL be shopped. Meaning your offer will be shopped to other investors that do the same thing. If you do bandit signs, the person that calls you will call every bandit sign in town to see what all of you will pay. One last point on bandit signs is that most municipalities have strict rules about bandit signs that are not usually supportive of them. You must learn what you can or cannot do in your market, and remember they will have your phone number so you cannot get away from them. During political voting times, they tend to be even more stringent about them. Most places have a law that stipulates how long those types of signs may be out and around elections they have a maximum time that they can be out after the election. Needless to say the time when they are looking the most at the signs is after an election. I have seen the fines get pretty expensive if the area is adamant about it. All of that being said, bandit signs are a cheap way to get the calls coming in though, but like we talked before be prepared for them. So you get your referrals going, and your business cards out all over town, and you have even put bandit signs out to get the phones ringing off the hook. So What’s next? Well now a days, you have to have a place to push everyone to, like a website. The internet is starting to attract more and more people to it as a venue to look at houses. So you get a website and that is it right? Wrong, that is just the beginning. I would like to suggest that you should boil it down to the least common denominator. I know that people build these nice fancy websites that have all kinds of stuff going on, but realize what people are going after. If you send a seller a postcard about their house with a web address on it and they go to your website. What do they see? A very cool site that has all kinds of stuff on it about you and your company and it has stuff about selling houses to first time homebuyers, buying houses, foreclosure questions, articles about the market, wholesale houses for sale. Wow you got a lot of stuff on there! Seriously, most research shows that you have about 3-5 seconds to capture that surfer at your site. So I suggest that you boil it down or net it all the way out. Get it down to the least common denominator. If you are going to chase foreclosures, then have a foreclosure website with only foreclosure information on it. If you are going to sell houses retail to first time homebuyers then build a site that caters to those first time homebuyers and answers all of their questions. You can also pair this technique with the phone system that I mentioned on my blog. The Onebox system has the ability to do an outgoing message. You can put the outgoing message on the phone line that you are marketing for your foreclosures to direct them to the website that gives them information about the process and who they should call (hint this will be you). So if you start thinking this way you can see the potential that a technique like this offers you. You could have a rental website and a dedicated phone number and have all of your advertising going to the outgoing message that instructs the caller to go to the house and check it out and if they like it they can take the application that is in front of the house and follow the directions there. The directions will tell them to go online and fill out an application. When you get the app you can check it out and decide if you like them or not. NOW, you call them back after all of this and you have a potential tenant that you are just now talking to! Better yet you can advertise a house in the paper and put under the ad that you have others at your website and not even put a phone number at all. The possibilities are endless here. Another part of having a website up is that it adds legitimacy to your operation. Everyone wants to know what your website address is and they want to “investigate you” by going to the site and checking it out. The biggest piece of this is that you can direct market to specific situations and cater to that market by using a website that is specific to that situation. You can market to heir property specifically and have a website catering to this topic. You could also attack people facing bankruptcy by doing a site that gives them information about bankruptcy and how it will affect their home during the process, which would be a “educational site”. I am sure you get the idea now. So what is the next piece in the puzzle? I think you are now up to looking for vacant houses and trying to contact the sellers. You should grid the areas that you want to buy houses in, I like to use a mapping program like Microsoft streets and trips. You determine the grids that you will drive and you can print the maps out, so that you can highlight the ones that you have driven as you drive them. All of this so that you can find vacant properties. When you drive the neighborhoods you want to write down the houses that you see that are in need of work or obviously vacant. You can tell this by the rotten wood and peeling paint, or the overgrown yard, or in most areas a missing meter from the power company. You take your list back to the office and look up the mailing addresses for the owners using your local courthouse data site for your county. You should then mail them a letter telling them that you want to buy their house. The more simple the better. This is where having a website can also come in handy, you can put the address on the letter to make it easier for them to contact you. There are a few other ways that direct mail can work as well, and we will talk about them tomorrow.