A Marketing Plan - The Thing That Makes Deals Happen!

Rent to Own Edmonton

A Marketing Plan - The Thing That Makes Deals Happen!

You’re a Real Estate Entrepreneur or Investor, and you’re out there in the market place looking for deals. I have a question for you.

Are you doing a bit of advertising and just hoping that a deal will fall in your lap, or are you operating in a way that makes certain it will happen. If you don’t have a process for making sure deals happen, you don’t yet understand the importance of having a marketing plan.

The sad fact is that even after all their training, less than one percent of all real estate entrepreneurs and investors actually have a marketing plan. Even though it’s very simple, don’t underestimate its power.

The Most Important Thing About Marketing is to Have a Marketing Plan!

1) It’s a concrete result you put out for your mind to seize on and strive to achieve.

2) It allows you to clarify exactly what you want to achieve in the coming 30 days.

3) It allows you map out the activities needed to achieve that plan.

4) It allows you to plan in advance to delegate off the lower paying activities, so you don’t end up doing them.

5) It allows you set time deadlines, to hold others accountable so everything gets DONE!

6) It results in you being free to concentrate on your highest payoff activity: Making Offers on Great Deals!

7) You have a business that operates consciously, not by accident.

More people fail in real estate because they simply do not have a plan or goals. You should have a detailed marketing planof what you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it.

And, don’t be vague, either. Things like, I want to make more money than I can ever spend, and I want to be rich, and I want to make $10,000 a month, are not plans. They are too vague, and they won’t help you get there. Be as specific as you can possibly be.

In planning for monthly revenue, try to put your money goals in cash income, not gross revenue. I know gross revenue is what you’re used to thinking in, but cash is obviously more important. It’s what you take to the bank, and it’s what pays bills.

First, examine your current numbers. More than 80 percent of all real estate entrepreneurs know how many houses they are buying each month, but they don’t know where those houses came from and how many leads they had to process to develop them into the single deal. And, this is a deadly sin.

You Simply Must Know How You Are Currently Doing

You should know:

1) The total leads that call each month (each week is more manageable),

2) Where those leads come from,

3) How many “qualified” seller prospects (i.e. those that you are willing to invest follow-up in if they don’t sell now; they have motivation, you are interested in the house.) you get each
month,

4) The ratio of total to qualified,

5) The number of deals you close,

6) The ratio of closed deals to qualified leads – for each lead source

7) How much you make from each seller,

8) How much it cost you to acquire a new seller.

With this information you can look at your current resources, look ahead, and then plan out what you want to have happen. The number of deals you want to do, the amount of money you want to make.

For example, let’s say you are bringing in around $10,000 a month and your average deal gives you $5,000. Yes, I know that’s low, but for the sake of example. That’s two deals a month. These are cash proceeds and after expenses you net 50 percent of your gross or $5,000 a month. And let’s say that you want to double your net income next month.

You will have to get twice as many deals to double your business. Goal? Four deals a month, or one a week.

Let’s say you currently get one deal a month from a classified ad, and one deal a month for mailing expired listings. But, you get ten qualified calls a month from his classified ad and 10 qualified prospects calling a month as a result of mailing expired listings. So, you currently close ten percent of your prospects.

First, you can improve on this situation by improving that twenty percent closing ratio. By improving your closing ratio by things like more precise targeting, the present lead-flow would stay the same, you’ll get your same twenty real prospects and achieve your goal of doing four deals next month.

But assuming that’s not something you have control over right now, the other way to double your income in the next month is to double the number of qualified prospects you talk to and make offers to. So instead of getting 20 qualified leads to call, you would need 40.

Your plan to get forty qualified prospects would need 10 to come from expired listing mailings, 16 to come from flyers in target neighborhoods, 4 from business cards handed out everywhere, 6 to come from signs placed in the ground at high traffic count intersections, 10 to com from classified ads that drive people to the website. Total: 46 prospects. Cool! That’s six to spare.

With this number of leads coming in you have what is needed closed four deals and reach your goal of doubling your net income. Actually, it’s more than doubling because your fixed expenses don’t increase with the income.

You should have a monthly plan. Schedule thirty or forty minutes out of one day to make up your monthly plan and see how you did last month. Schedule this time and keep to it. Don’t do any work or take any calls during this time. Keep it strictly for planning. If you do this and you allow yourself to get into the whole spirit of planning, and making things happen on purpose, you will easily double your income in twelve months.

Your Monthly Plan Should Include The Following

1) A goal for total net income.
2) A goal for number of deals signed up
3) A goal for number of appointments made.
4) A goal for number of qualified, interested sellers.
5) A goal for total number of leads.
6) Average net income from each deal.
7) The number of prospects you have to generate to reach your goal.

A detailed plan to generate the number of prospects you need. Your plan doesn’t have to be typed out or put into a computer. It can be handwritten on paper. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

Scratch pad plans are good enough. The important part is that you do a plan every single week and keep on top of things.

This is a simple thing to do, but it is just as easy to not do. Blowing it off is the equivalent of you absolving yourself of responsibility for your business. On the other hand, taking the time to think through your goals each month, both for income, and marketing activity, then committing them to paper will make things start happening by plan and put you in control of your business.

47 Ways To Market Your Property

Rent to Own Edmonton

47 Ways To Market Your Property

In order to become a successful real estate investor there are certain skills that must be mastered. One of these skills is marketing. The following list is a great way to insure your marketing program is successful and make sure that your investment home does not sit empty and drain your bank account while you wait for a buyer.

Make an effort to do several of these action items each day until your investment home sales, rents, leases, or you are forced to move in:

1. Put signs in yard (be sure phone numbers are readable):

• For Sale
• Flexible Seller
• Motivated Seller
• "0" down

2. See that landscaping looks great

3. Check out & fix mail box if needed

4. Clean driveway if needed

5. Plant colorful flowers & add mulch

6. Paint and repair front door as needed

7. Replace front light fixtures as needed

8. Replace house numbers as needed

9. First look inside must be a positive

10. Make house smell like apple cinnamon

11. Soft music playing is good idea

12. Keep the inside of the house looking bright

13. Make sure house is very clean (especially kitchen and bathrooms)

14. Put lock box on door for showing

15. Take good pictures inside and out

16. Put tube on main sign with flyers

17. Check tube every few days (keep filled with fresh new colored flyers)

18. If local laws permit--place directional signs from main streets

19. Replace directional signs (as needed every few days)

20. List for sale & lease on MLS with pictures

21. Run “For Sale” ads in newspaper:

• Flexible Seller
• Be sure your ad gets listed on the internet

22. Run “For Lease” ad in newspaper (be sure ad gets listed on net)

23. Get an 800# with number capture feature

24. Run long term rent to own ad in tabloids (like The Greensheet and Penny Saver)

25. Place ad with FSOB.com

26. As calls come in keep good notes (for this and future sales)

27. Trade leads with others home sellers

28. Post ads on free real estate listing sites

29. Post house on real estate association sites

30. Visit neighbors and talk it up (offer a finder’s fee)

31. Blanket the neighborhood with flyers (include the finder’s fee)

32. Have open house every other week (each better than the last)

33. Promote open houses with:

• Ads
• Directional signs
• Big balloons

34. Have a lunch at home for realtors the week of the open house

35. Make up a realtor flyer, offer free lunch $ door prizes

36. Make friends with 5 realtors at 5 realty companies

• Tell about house
• Ask for new leads
• Ask to pass out flyers to other agents in their offices

37. Gather agents e-mail addresses from flyers, cards, ads, and booklets

38. Send e-mails to realtors & brokers--"If you show it-it will sell"

39. Follow up e-mails to agents with a call

40. Offer brokers a bonus if offer arrives by… (a specific date)

41. Set up your own web site

42. Do a color flyer with:

• Pictures
• Terms
• Discount coupon
• Web address & contact info

43. Print up a finder’s fee dollar (to pass out in the area and put in all your mailings)

44. Set up a 24 hour recorded message (to use with your 800#)

45. List the house on an eBay auction

46. Use a mailing service to mail out:

• Letters
• Flyers
• Finders fee dollars

47. Advertise in Los Angeles Times

Just doing a few of these items each day will pay big benefits for your future sales!

Source: REIclub.com

5 Steps to Real Estate Video Marketing Success

Rent to Own Edmonton

5 Steps to Real Estate Video Marketing Success

Video marketing is growing like wildfire and if you haven't already begun using it in your real estate practice you need to start now. Below you'll find a simple 5 step process you can use to get started or add to your repertoire in using video marketing for your business.

Step 1: Start With the End in Mind
I know that is a little cliché but it's critical when it comes to using video as part of your real estate marketing plan. There are really only about 4 different outcomes to try and accomplish. They are are as follows:

• Lead Generation
• Branding
• Listing Plan
• SEO

Once you have your desired outcome for your video it's time to move onto Step 2.

Step 2: Keyword Research
Regardless of your desired outcome, you'll need to do some keyword research to determine what keywords you want to go after with your video. This sounds complex - but really it's pretty simple. Go to Google and type in "google keyword tool" in the search box. It will return a result for Google AdWords: Key Word Tool. There you can simply enter keywords that you would want to target and Google's tool will tell you how much traffic those keywords are getting.

Here's a keyword example to try: foreclosure listings Harrisburg Pa. Did you notice that Google identified all of the key words associated and provided the total number of searches as well as their respective local and global search strengths?

Once you have a list of potential keywords, go back to the Google search and enter in your keywords to see how many competing sites there are on Google. The best keywords to target are those that have high search volume and not that many competing pages.

This information is important- it will be used to sometimes determine the topic of your video, to title and to describe your video when it is time to release it to the public (see Step 5).

Step 3: What Type of Video Will You Use?
There are several video types you can use. For example you can create a video slide show, video property tour, neighborhood video tour, screen capture video and the list can go on and on. You just need to pick which type of video you are going to use and then move on to Step 4.

Step 4: Create or Render

Once you determine the type of video, you'll need to create it. How you create the video is going to depend on the type you choose in Step 3. You may need to go to an actual property and shoot the video tour or you may be able to simply create it on your computer with a slide show or screen capture. Once you have it created you will need to either upload it to a video sharing site or you may need to first render the video and then upload.

Step 5: Syndication & Distribute (The Fun Part)
So you have your video created, now what? It's time to get it up and out on the net. There are tons of video sharing sites out there, but definitely the best and most recognized is Youtube. So that is probably the best place to start. It's super easy to create an account and upload a video there. But if you really want to turbo charge your results you are going to want to syndicate your video on many different video sharing sites. I know this sounds like a big pain, but here's the cool thing, there are sites out there that will do it for you. The best free site to do this is tubemogul.com. The way it works is that you upload your video to tubemogul and then enter your title, description and tags and it will actually syndicate your video to a bunch of different sites all at the same time!

Source: REIclub.com

3 Ways to Build Your Buyers/Sellers List

Rent to Own Edmonton

3 Ways to Build Your Buyers/Sellers List

As real estate investors, we buy and sell property. I focus on residential real estate in southeast Michigan and one thing that is consistent no matter where you are based is that as real estate investors, we all need to build our buyers list and sellers list in order to do our work. When I first started getting active in this business, people asked me, “Emily, how is your buyers list going?”

So, by hearing over and over how important it is to have a pool of buyers ready to go for when I want to sell a property, I began networking and asking each investor I met what kind of property they invest in. I made a spreadsheet with all of their contact information, what they were looking to buy and their price range (when I was starting out I didn’t want to invest in a software system to manage this information, so a nicely organized spreadsheet did the trick). My buyers list began to build.

I had someone else ask me, if you only have a buyers list, what inventory are you going to have to offer them?” This was also an important wake-up call that I also need to be looking for prospective sellers all the time to build up my sellers list–which is where leads can primarily come in from. Since I am not a licensed real estate professional, the MLS wasn’t high on my list of initial resources to search for deals.

When I sold copiers we had to make cold calls, a lot of them, we often called it “dialing for dollars” and it wasn’t always fun…or ever fun really! As a sales rep, I was also lucky enough to have a base of customer accounts that I had to look after and sell to when it came time for their business to purchase new copiers. As a real estate investor, I had nothing…no names to work with, no account base whatsoever…I had to build from the ground up and this process certainly doesn’t stop.

While calling people out of the blue asking them if they want to sell or buy a house doesn't seem to make sense, there ARE ways to successfully prospect for leads.

Here are 3 Methods to Build your Buyers and Sellers List:

1) Bandit Signs: Good ol' fashion "We Buy Houses" signs. In this day and age of online marketing, it was a marketing method that I had to remind myself “Don’t knock it til you try it!”

The keys to a successful bandit sign campaign are the following factors:

Phone Number: Get an easy to remember phone number

Color: I like white background and bright blue font (professionally printed)

Sign Size: I like 18’ x 24’. You can expect the signs to cost $2-3 per sign if professionally printed with the specs I suggested. Here's a good resource for ordering: http://www.supercheapsigns.com/

Location: I put the signs up myself. People thought I was crazy for not "outsourcing" this but I wanted to learn how to do it myself because how else would I be able to explain to someone the most effective ways to do it? There is certainly a method to putting these up and it includes putting them in places where traffic stops for a while, not where cars are whizzing by more than 30 MPH. I feel its effective to target the zip codes you like to do business in as well as consistently posting signs at the same locations.

Something to be aware of when you are putting these up – they are called bandit signs for a reason –they are generally “not allowed” by most city ordinances. So, just keep that in mind or you may get a call from the city. If you do, I recommend you be very apologetic. Be sure to ask them where the sign was located and make sure not to put the sign back in that spot!

2) Squeeze Pages (or landing pages): People talk about these a lot today. The term squeeze page has come from the goal to “squeeze” information (namely an email address) out of your prospects. It is worthwhile for a person to provide their name and email address as they will get a free report for example. Greg Clement, a real estate investing authority & mentor I have counted on, defines the squeeze page as “a web page designed to compel the visitor to take one specific action upon the moment of landing on the page. The sole purpose of the squeeze page is to convert the page visitor into a lead.”

3) Direct Mail: This is another method that I swore shouldn’t be needed in 2010 when so much is done online and through email. While direct mail is certainly more expensive and more work than sending emails, it is a method that generates a mild to moderate amount of leads. I have mailed physical letters to prospective sellers in order to grow my sellers lists. I focus on targeting only a few different audiences (foreclosures and probate) as I want to be sure my efforts are not spread across too many areas at first.

One thing to keep in mind with direct mail, you have to have very low conversion expectations. I send out hundreds of letters and get 3-6 responses…I keep track of the cost to understand how much these leads are costing me and for now, it is worth continuing.

I am confident that if you use these methods, the leads will come and your buyers/sellers lists will build over time. As I use these methods to slowly build up my contacts, I keep in mind that real estate investing is a long-term business…a marathon, not a sprint!

Source: REIclub.com

3 Biggest Mistakes Investors Make When Marketing Online

Rent to Own Edmonton

3 Biggest Mistakes Investors Make When Marketing Online

Biggest Mistake #1 – The Time You Post...

The number one mistake I see real estate investors making with their online advertising is posting at the wrong times. Almost all free online classified sites automatically post new ads at the very top of the page, thereby pushing older posts towards the bottom. In other words, if you place an ad at 6 in the morning, your post has an increased risk of never being read by your target audience. Additionally, if you live in a larger city, there is a chance that your ad will not even be located on the first page before noon! Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way. For years I would wake up first thing in the morning and post my ads. Although it appeared I was getting this mundane task out of the way, in reality, most of my ads were not generating maximum exposure.

Secondly, I see a lot of real estate investors posting their listings really late at night. From my experience, this happens to be the 2nd worst time of day to post. Think of it this way. In order to receive the biggest return on investment, you will want to post your ads at those times when most people are surfing these sites. Personally, I have found that both lunchtime and after dinner work most effectively. However, it could still potentially vary for your area, so be sure to test these things first.

Biggest Mistake #2 – The Same Old Same Old...

We’ve all made the mistake of posting an ad that only gives the rank and file information on the property, along with a phone number. For example – “3 bed, 2 bath ranch in Blank School District, with full basement and 1 car garage on ¼ acre. Call Us at 1-866-409-0902.” Unfortunately, this kind of ad doesn’t command the reader’s attention or really give them a reason to get excited and take action. Therefore, you need to hook them with an enticing headline, while providing information that will truly motivate them to contact you.

Biggest Mistake #3 – No Real Call to Action...

Similar to mistake #2, it is critical to include a real call to action when you write your ads. Here are some better examples: for your free list of foreclosures visit our website at www…, email us for your free list of luxury homes in Miami, or call our 24 hour recorded message for more information about our first time home buyer program.

In summary, I see so many investors, agents & brokers become despondent and give up, because they waste their time on ads that go unnoticed and never generate a response. However, online classifieds are not the problem; rather, it’s the type of advertising. By avoiding these 3 major mistakes, you will begin to witness a much stronger response and increased lead flow for your business.

6 Steps To Generating Free Leads On Craigslist

Rent to Own Edmonton

6 Steps To Generating Free Leads On Craigslist

Step 1: Create An Account:

This is the easiest step by far, but is critical to getting the best results and to track your results as well. All you need to do is go to Craigslist.com and click on the login button, then on the next page if you don’t already have an account you’ll click on the area that says “Don’t already have an account”. You just fill in your information, name and email, and you’ll be sent an email to confirm. Once you receive the email, click on the link in there and voila you have an account you can start to use.

Step 2: Pick Your Campaign:

Here is what I mean by picking a campaign. If you are going to generate leads on Craigslist you need to do it with a purpose. You need to choose the kinds of leads that you are looking to work with. Here are some ideas: wholesale buyers,foreclosure/REO buyers, lease option buyers, apartment building buyers, luxury home buyers, first time home buyers, buyers in a particular school district, you get the idea.

Step 3: Create Your Campaign:n

This step can be a little time consuming (really only 30-60 minutes), but the good thing is once you are done it’s done for good. You may want to go back from time to time and tweak, but most of the work is complete. Here is how to create a campaign for Craigslist lead generation. Once you have picked your campaign you then need to create several different ads to post and generate traffic. Craigslist doesn’t allow you to post the same ad over and over so you’ll need several different posting titles and posting descriptions (you’ll also want variations for the location and price boxes as well). By creating different titles and posts it allows you post frequently, which allows you to consistently drive traffic to your landing page or squeeze page (never send the traffic to your main web page) or to email or call you.

Step 4: Implementation – Posting Your Ads:

Here is where the rubber meets the road. Now that you have your campaigns created you need to start posting. I recommend to post twice daily during the week and at least once a day on the weekends. You will want to be posting when there is a lot of traffic to Craigslist because the way their site works the longer your ad is up the farther down the page it goes. So you probably don’t want to post at 5 in the morning as it’s not likely that many home buyers are surfing Craigslist at that time.

Now it is critical to be consistent posting your ads. This literally takes just a couple minutes a day, but it will become one of those things that after some time becomes a bore to do. If you really can’t stay diligent with it have your assistant, if you have one, do them for you or you could even hire one of your kids to do it as well. I know I am stating the obvious here, but if you don’t post you won’t get leads so make sure you stay consistent!

Step 5: Follow Up:

Here is where it starts to get exciting. Depending on the information you collect from the leads you may be able to follow up in several ways. If you are just collecting name and email, obviously that means your only form of follow up will be through email. If you are collecting phone numbers, which I would recommend, then you can make outbound phone calls. If you are able to collect full contact info including address I would highly recommend sending a sales piece, ideally a sales letter enticing them to work with you as a client. Your follow up must also be consistent and scripted. If you are offering a free list of homes, whether they be fixer upper or foreclosures etc, make sure you are regularly sending out the list. For example in my business I send my free lists to my leads every Thursday morning.

This does several things, keeps me on a schedule and creates an expectation from the buyers that they’ll be getting their new list each Thursday. In order to get maximum response from your list you need to make different offers to them. Here are some ideas for offers you can be making to get them to raise their hand to work with you: teleseminars, homes tours, group open houses, live seminars, etc.

Step 6: Track & Improve:

The last step is the least glamorous, but might be the most important of all. You need to be tracking your ads and results from the start! If you don’t track you’ll have no idea what’s working and what isn’t. Here are some of the things you need to track, which ads are getting the most response, how well your landing page is converting, how many leads you are getting daily, how many leads turn to clients, how many leads open your emails, and much more. Now this part of the business isn’t much fun, but you can only improve what you track and if you aren’t tracking this information you have no way of improving your results

Source: REIclub.com

Foreclosure and its Effect!

There are lots of real life stories you can read and heard today from homeowners who have survived the crisis. The termforeclosure is not a popular word and people are not aware about this word since the beginning of the year 2005 when it hits a lot of homes in the United States. Maybe one of your relatives or close friends has suffered from foreclosure. If you know someone who suffered from this crisis, then you are aware about the effects of this crisis to their life. Since the devastation started in the year 2005 millions of families in the United States already experienced the crisis.

When you talk about foreclosure, there is no need for too much elaboration. When you have borrowed a mortgage loan for the purpose of buying new home and it was defaulted in repayment. Your lender will surely act as soon as possible to retrieve their capital by foreclosing the mortgage loan and filing a foreclosure case against you. Foreclosure is something very hard to stop when it’s already rolling. This is why it is important for all homeowners to act as quickly as they can as soon as they receive letter about foreclosure.

Your property will be sold right after the due notices to the borrower and if you do not respond to the default installment of your mortgage, your property will be sold at a public auction. This can be done in either two ways. One is through the County Courts or through a third party. Once your home has been auctioned you cannot do something to get back your home. All you need to do is to wait for the new owner of your property to ask you to vacate your home.

Foreclosure can really affect the lives of the entire family especially if you have children going to school. The will surely be affected largely by the changes that will happen as time passes by. As you leave your former home, you have to locate for new residence to occupy. If you have found new home far from your old residence, then your kids needs to be transferred into another school. This is a very big adjustment to them. New environment and people can stress kids. If you have little kids, you must avoid going into foreclosure as much as you can. Tightening the belt and wise spending will surely save you from experiencing the same crisis.

Right after the auction, you will be asked to vacate the property. It is important for homeowners to inform his or her family member about this situation. You have to explain to your child clearly why these things are happening. Honesty is important during this hard time. Do not give your family or your children hope that you can get your home back, if you can see that there is no hope. It would be very helpful if you will tell the truth and make them aware about the real situation. These are the worst case scenario which might happen to anyone, if they will not take hold of their finances wisely