Kevin Lee started flipping homes in the Sacramento area in 2017. In just 18 months he completed 28 house flips! In well under 2 years Kevin became a successful real estate investor employing 21 people. Following his example can help you boost your real estate marketing.
Reality check, real estate investing of all types is getting more competitive. To be successful you need more than real estate knowledge. You also have to know how to communicate your value to others.
How can you implement the marketing methods discussed in this article to benefit you as a real estate investor? They will:
- Get you lucrative property deals from motivated sellers who want to sell to you
- Get you more leads including cash buyers that will want to buy from you
What does Kevin say are his absolute best real estate marketing methods?
Cold Calling
Direct Mail
Pay-per-click advertising
Radio ads
Let’s take a closer look at the first two of these marketing methods, cold calling, and direct mail so you can put them to work for you. We will dive into PPC advertising and radio ads in the future.
Cold Calling
Cold calling is one great old-school method for real estate investors to find motivated sellers by simply making a phone call. It’s described as “cold calling” because you have no previous warm connection with the people you are phoning.
Cold calling is an effective way of actively searching out new deals. There are a few different types of cold calls you can make:
- Prospective motivated sellers from an online list or other sources such as Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. (A list of motivated sellers can also be purchased, you can find hundreds of list providers here including many with five star reviews.)
- Referrals from past clients or other connections
- Current homeowners in a particular geographical area
Cold calling is about seizing the initiative. Obviously, you won’t hit a home run on every call and your percentage success rate will not be high. Most homeowners you call will not be ready to sell but cold calls are your opportunity to put yourself first in line for people who are.
Try spending one hour per day cold calling. Even if your percentage return is low and you only get one motivated seller per month that’s still a fantastic return on your investment.
Staying motivated is a question of perspective. If you find it takes 100 calls before you find a motivated seller then view each rejection as a win because with each rejection you are getting a step closer to finding that deal.
Your cold-calling script
There are many benefits to preparing and using a script for your cold calls, here are two major ones:
- Making calls will be much less stressful (for you or anyone you delegate this task to)
- Your calls will be much more effective (for you or anyone you delegate this task to)
Decrease your stress
If you find the idea of cold calling pretty stressful, welcome to the human race, and most would agree with you. But if you think about why it is stressful it is mostly about fear of failure and as the old saying goes, fail to prepare – prepare to fail. Stress comes from going into a situation unprepared and not knowing what to do.
Preparing a cold call script will give you confidence because you will know exactly what you want to say and how to say it. There is no such thing as easy and difficult, just familiar and unfamiliar so get familiar with your script, and your calls will become easy.
Another advantage of having a script is that you can also delegate your cold calling to a capable virtual assistant. If your VA has an effective script to follow they will have much greater success.
Improve your effectiveness
In preparing your script, start off by knowing what your goal is. What outcome do you want to achieve with this call? For your script to be effective, make sure you prepare it so that it checks all the boxes on this checklist:
- Intro grabs attention
- Qualifies the one answering the call as a genuine prospect
- Identifies the house owner’s pain points
- Builds interest
- Deals with objections
- Closes on a specific call to action
One vital point is to know in advance and accept the fact that you will face rejection. Your job is to remain enthusiastic with each call because enthusiasm is contagious. As we said earlier each “no” is one step closer to a “yes”. The trick is to anticipate that each call you make will be the yes you are waiting for, because that yes can come at call number 1 or call number 100, there is no way to know in advance.
It’s also important to be empathetic. This will come through in your words. Empathy requires a listening ear.
When it comes to motivated sellers you will probably be dealing with people in a stressful situation. Try to listen to their frustration and show you care and want to help.
Lastly, ask questions. Make it your aim to get to know your prospective client better, form a meaningful relationship, and build trust from the beginning. Make your clients feel as though they need you.
Direct mailing
Along with cold calling, direct mail is another tried and tested method that can give your real estate investor marketing a boost. It is one of the most widely used marketing strategies by real estate investors.
What are the benefits of direct mail marketing for real estate investors?
- It lets you reach a large number of potential sellers at a low cost
- You can precisely target potential motivated sellers
If you do the math, direct mail gives you a great return on your investment. For example, if you send out 1,000 postcards for $1,000 you could reasonably expect to receive 50 phone calls in response to your mail out.
That represents a 5% call-back rate. Even if you filter out everything except the very best deal you only need 2% of those phone calls to convert into a contract and you have found at least one deal.
Most investors would be more than happy to pay $1,000 to find that great deal on a property that will allow them to make many thousands more in profit.
For your direct mail campaign to get great results though, you need to start with the right mailing list. To be effective your mailing list should consist of expired listings, pre-foreclosure property owners, out-of-state landlords, and probates / inherited properties. Let’s look closer at a couple of these.
Expired Listings
When a homeowner lists their property for sale, they do so with an agent for a limited period of time. If the property does not sell within that time period it becomes an expired listing. If you call a seller at this time they will likely be much more motivated to sell than at an earlier point in the process.
To find expired listings you can search the MLS. Just search for listings that have expired recently or are due to expire soon in the geographical areas you are targeting.
Pre-foreclosure properties
Pre-foreclosure properties come available if the homeowner has failed to pay their mortgage payments for a period of time. Once the property goes into pre-foreclosure, the homeowner gets the option to either sell the property or pay off the loan. Calling a homeowner at this point gives you the chance to purchase the property well below market value.
There are many different ways to search out pre-foreclosure homes including:
- The local MLS
- Online directories
- Real Estate Wholesalers
- Real Estate Attorneys
- Referrals
- Prospecting Letters for Pre-Foreclosure Listings
- Public Records
- Local Newspapers
One of the best and easiest options for finding pre-foreclosure properties is to check online directories. Here are a few online directories to help you find pre-foreclosure listings:
- Realtytrac
- Foreclosure.com
- Redx
- Prospectnow
Your website is the hub of all your marketing efforts
If you think of your marketing as a wheel that allows your business to move forward, a wheel would be useless without a hub. Just as the hub is vital to the proper functioning of a wheel, a high quality website is vital to the proper functioning of your marketing and the success of your real estate business.
You need a professional website to send prospects to so they can learn more and take the next step.That website needs to be a professional, high quality site that enhances your credibility and captures those leads effectively.
With almost two decades of experience, Done Deal Website provides high-quality websites for real estate investors. To set yourself up right away with a real estate investor website that will help you fulfill your marketing goals check the demo.