Marketing Plans that Work-Part 1
Posted by: Michelle Odessey, in Marketing, Find Motivated Sellers, Single-Family Properties, Short Sales, Pre-Foreclosures & REOs, GeneralI remember when Richard & I began our real estate investing business – now seven years ago, one of the first seminars we attended was one exclusively on marketing. We learned twenty ways from Sunday how to do business cards, even more on bandit signs, thirty different newspaper ads, post cards, letters, flyers . . .. We were ready to go!
First of all we were both still at our full-time jobs so we opted for ‘newspaper ads’. Most of you know we live in Atlanta so our only logical option was the Atlanta Journal Constitution. MONEY WASTED! No responses that brought us anything that even resembled a motivated seller.
Next we decided to do the ‘work all week and then spend our weekends putting out signs’. The signs seemed reasonably priced, we felt good about the size, color, website, etc. AND we actually got phone calls from them. However, after the first 10 calls or so we then realized we needed to organize all our prospects. We then ‘thought the next important thing to do’ was to get a handle on which signs (street corners) produced the most calls so we could ‘target our marketing’.
Now, rather than cover the entire seven years of learning right here, because we did move on to other marketing methods like direct mail, let me jump forward here to the most important lesson it took us at least 6 years to learn – Follow Up!
That was so challenging to manage. These sellers needed to hear from us (from you) more than once, especially if they were motivated sellers, because they ‘wanted’ our help and, ‘oh by the way!’ that is what any direct mail marketing system is all about.
Even though Richard and I were both very computer literate and we did rig up a workable system of some sort that was a combination of Excel, Word, Access, Outlook, Act, Mailloop, and additional file cabinets, we even eventually ended up paying someone else ‘hourly’ wages for, about 20 hours per week. A highschool student on a work program at $8/hour.
That went OK for a while, an additional $160/week. Within just 12 weeks – by her Christmas break, we had paid her $2,560 and she was not doing any decision processing like which deals were better than others or which list was better – she was just ‘getting the mail out the door’ for us.
I’m not complaining (too much). It made a world of difference in the number of deals we did and we also used LOTS OF GAS, and TIME going to sellers’ homes.
The best best way to make your marketing system, bringing it into the 21st Century is to have it totally automated so it takes One Hour for your assistant (or the highschool student you hire) to get all your mailings ‘out the door’.
Questions To You:
Out of all the marketing methods used by real estate investors, which one do you think is the most effective? Which one do you think is the cheapest? Which one do you think takes the most time?
How about your marketing system. Is it a ‘system’, or does your office look like a hurricane just blew through?
We will be having a free webinar on automated marketing systems. If you want a place on that webinar just go to InvestorWealth.com/preview.htm to snap up a spot.
Until next time,
Michelle
Entries (RSS)
February 7th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Marketing what is that? I need help!!
February 8th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Please sign me up!
Thank you
February 8th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Exactly James, that is what I mean. It’s just like anything other business - your marketing plan is the life blood of your business.
Knowing how to do the best negotiating, both with motivated sellers and loss-mitigation reps, attorneys, finding private money - all that is the expertise that we ALL have to learn, fine tune and sharpen.
However, if you don’t have any prospects/deals to do it on, OR the deals trickle in, your wallet as well as your expertise will take forever to grow!
November 11th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Michelle you know I do not want to miss this! Larry!!
February 18th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Michelle, I am unable to locate your previous archives of past speakers. I am looking in particular for Nick ?????? on property management. Please providethe link, his proper name for access to his website/materails or ??? … thanks.