Real Estate Investing Blog

Below is just an exerpt of the first assignment given to new ForeclosureMillionaireClub.com members.

I am using this particular one because I think this new real estate investor is starting off on the right foot - - with a very successful principle.

“It is not enough to do your best; You must know what to do, and THEN do your best.” - W. Edwards Deming.
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Michelle, I’m turning in my first assignment. I’m new to real estate investing. Haven’t gotten my first deal yet, but I’m marketing to pre-foreclosures to get my first deal. Here are my answers to the assignment:
 
1. My goal over the next 6 months is to complete at least 6 profitable RE investment transactions. My goal over the next 12 months is to make at least $250,000 profit from my RE investment transactions. This will allow me to seriously look at quitting my full-time job and go full-time in real estate investing.
 
2. I have not closed my first real estate investment deal yet. I’m currently marketing to pre-foreclosures to fill my pipeline with potential RE investment deals.

3. I have not made any money in real estate investing yet. I’m actively working to change that everyday.
. . .
6. I’m currently generating my leads through a post card campaign to pre-foreclosures.
 
7. With one-on-one mentoring I’d like the mentor to give me the things I need to be doing on a daily basis to acquire my first RE investment deal and more deals after that. I’ve been in at least one mentoring program and realized I wasn’t being told about the things I needed to be doing everyday to land my first deal. I was being trained on stuff to do after I land a prospect. I’m learning though….

Alan,  Michelle here.  Wanted to let you know I have received, and read your homework.At first blush, I have to say, your ‘goals’ are very realistic.  Which means to say that you have come to them with some thought.While I realize that at this point you haven’t had the chance to digest all the information in the members area, I want to acknowledge you for getting out and prospecting already  - - -  even though you’re not sure of your step-by-step.

When you’re looking to generate wealth with real estate investment, one of the things that you’ll discover is that when you don’t have a great marketing plan, it’s a lot harder to accomplish your goals.

So just what should you include in your marketing strategy? What are the key components of a marketing plan when you wand to be sure that you are in a position in which you can succeed?

1. Be sure that your marketing materials target the person that you want to reach and grab his or her attention.
2. Keep it personal, explain in the text of your marketing why you want to work specifically with them, one on one.
3. Be clear within your marketing materials about the action that you want your prospects to take.
4. Make yourself accessible - particularly in the event that they have questions.
5. Be honest within your marketing materials.
6. Pay attention to the emotional - not just the rational needs - of those who you are trying to reach with your marketing.
7. Be sure that your marketing is focused around answering this one simple question: “What’s in it for me?”
8. While you are marketing your product or service, it’s important to consider that marketing should be about the recipient, not about you.

Those key elements will help you to do a great deal more with all of your business marketing; just be sure that you’re also taking the time to follow up and, if at first you don’t succeed, make a few changes and try again!

After all, marketing - just like real estate investing in general - is a practice, something that you get better at over time.

When you read about real estate investing, one of the things that is most obvious is that it’s a great way to produce an income. You’ll learn why now is a great time to invest in real estate - about great rates on loans, the fact that home prices are coming down and the fact that there are some areas in which great deals are all but knocking on your door. But one of the things that’s really important is learning about marketing.

Marketing is essential for any business. Investing in real estate is a business; marketing yourself is going to have a huge impact on what you’re able to do.

So how can you market your real estate investing business? First, remember this: you can market your real estate business online quite effectively. In order to market your business online, you’re going to want to look at using press releases. You’re going to want to have a website where people can learn more about you and about what you can offer them. You’re likely to want to start keeping a blog and to learn about pay per click campaigns as well.

You’re also going to want to take advantage of print marketing. Put ads about your business in your local newspaper and in real estate magazines - direct people to your website to find more information. Put up flyers on community message boards. Be sure that you have business cards. These simple steps are not only important for marketing, but they also help sellers know that you are in business.

Professionalism, after all, is a key component to marketing.

The Heart of Real Estate Investing.  I have written about here in my blog, and in our newsletters.  It was the hardest thing for me to understand when we began real estate investing.  And, because it is the most important part of any business, it caused me a great deal of stress and aggravation for a while.  And we needed it to work – just for the business to survive.

And it was Marketing.  Marketing from the beginning has been a challenge – it was a very big challenge for me.  I didn’t come from a big copywriting, letter writing, knowing how to write in a direct mail letter. My whole background was business automation.  It was like a foreign concept to me.

I can’t tell you how many times I wondered if a mail piece was actually going to work.  And then, what it meant to TEST the piece.  

We were given letters from sellers that were coming in from other investors.  We also got ideas from other investors at the seminars we were going to.  Eventually, after months and months, we finally began to find the best marketing pieces for our business.

Then, you have to test the process.  For example, You know, in direct marketing, you have to send out 3 – 5 – 7 pieces of mail, whether its letters or postcards - or a finely tuned combination of both?  Anyway that was really hard for me.

I immediately went to the computer to use what software was available - Word, Excel, Access, Act, and other database software I knew.  Then it dawned on me, “Did I want to spend my time programming again, developing a real estate marketing software, or make money in real estate?”

You may find, after watching this webinar, that you will catapult yourself over the hard stuff and in to an automatic system that works like a finely tuned car. Learn now about an automated process that takes minutes of your day and turns those minutes into dollars.  Profit that, in some cases, can begin in 24 hours.

PLAY THE WEBINAR REPLAY HERE NOW. 
(Note: depending on the speed of your computer and your connection, the video could take a minute to begin.)

Best of Success,
Michelle    

I wanted to share a topic that came up today as a result of a short, but to the point email I received today. SO. I am going to post that email AND my response. - - Let me know your comments.

Writer:

Dear Michelle, Your last advice to offer 100% financing to prospective buyers cost me $450 in advertising with 0 results at a time when that amount might as well have been $450,000 as I’m in foreclosure. I’m sick of this.

My response to her:

I want to thank you for taking your time to email me.

Your email lets me know ‘there are’ investors out there willing to go in to the trenches.

You did say that my ‘last advice’ was to offer 100% financing.
Are you speaking of an issue of our newsletter?

Anyway, Tell me about the property or properties you were using this ’selling’ technique on And, tell me where you (or the property) is.

I know how frustrating it can be to budget advertising/marketing and have it return 0 results.

What is amazing is that some marketing techniques - - - like using the newspaper - - - work terrifically in some areas and completely bomb in others.

When Richard and I started RE Investing we did exactly what we were told - at each interval of our learning. FIRST, we were told to use the newspaper to find sellers - we used the ads we were given. Now let me tell you, we ‘KEPT’ doing the newspaper ads because the people that were teaching us told us that was the way to do it.

RESULTS: A Big Fat Zero. WHY, Because

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I 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’.