Marketing For the Deals

Ok! This blog will probably start to morph away from just being about wholesaling and onto being about our business in general. This is a very motivating thing for me, to be able to ungarble all of the stuff in my head is good for my focus, and I hope it is good for everyone that reads this. That being said, if there is anything in particular that you would like for me to touch on or if you have specific questions about something shoot me a email to steve@flipitbig.com and I will respond asap, and if you ask me to address a certain topic I will squeeze it in asap as well. So, anyway, this business is all about marketing. Here is what I hear from newbie’s and investors that have been around for a while as well; there aren’t any good deals on MLS, or I can’t find a deal anywhere. The ONLY rule you need to remember in this business is motivation is the key. If your buyer or your seller are motivated, you are halfway to the deal already. The key is to get the motivated sellers to call you and let you know that they are motivated and want to sell. Easy enough right? Now I am not totally against MLS, but my mindset is that when dealing with houses on MLS realize that you have about a 1-2% chance at finding a good deal on there. That being said which deals sounds like it is probably better, a deal that you have to run through a commissioned sales professional, or a one on one negotiation with someone that has only bought 1 or 2 houses at best and NEEDS to sell? Not a hard question right? So the question is where do I find these people that are trying to give their houses away? The answer is of course is marketing. Now I just did a cruise where we focused on marketing so this is another passion that I have as well. Not to mention the fact that I spend about 90k per year on marketing, so I am intimate with the subject. So what ways can you use to market for deals?1.Referrals2.Business Cards/Flyers3.Bandit Signs4.Direct Mail5.Billboards6.Radio7.TV8.Wrapped Vehicles9.Storefront Advertising10.Dig Leads11.Pre-Foreclosures12.Internet/Pay Per Click There are a lot more as well, but obviously these are plenty to get any investor going. The sad thing is we could probably talk for a hour or more about each one. In fact there are plenty of seminars that touch on each one of these types of methods. Now most investors will not start out with all of these going at once, so they have to pick one or two and go from there. So let’s talk about what I think is the most important part of marketing…..you plan. You do have a plan right?Ok here is the point, how do you know what works if you don’t track it? And how will you know what to do if you don’t try a few things first? So you start with something that you can change, which is your marketing plan. This can be very simple and very cheap or in the stratosphere, but the key is to have a plan to work at. One problem that real estate investors have is that they become self employed and the boss sucks. You stop treating your business like a business. Not only do you need a plan, but you also need to know your numbers. Every investor should know how much money that they have invested in every lead that they get. Also how much they have invested every time they buy a house as well. If you do not know these numbers and where the leads come from then you cannot be successful. So a good sample plan may be something like this;$200 per month on bandit signs$25 per month in business cards$35 per month in greeting cards for referrals$200 per month in direct mail$40 per month for pay per click web leads$500 per month total marketing plan50 leads = $10 per lead5 buys = $100 per buyAn average of $10k per deal = $50,000 in revenue generated from $500 per month in advertisingNow this may be off and a little of an exaggeration, but you get the point. How much money can you afford to spend on advertising once you understand that every dollar that you make is tied directly to each house you buy and also to every dollar that you make in this business? I hope the answer is a lot. I will go into some detail on each of the types of marketing as we go along.