As we have discussed many times, the smart, efficient, productive method for finding motivated sellers with great deals is to set up a marketing campaign.
For the marketing to be truly effective it needs to be repetitious.
You have 2 choices:
- Market to targeted lists
- Market to targeted geographic areas
Targeted lists work well because the recipients are already likely in need of your service. Since the list is focused on one type of seller it is generally smaller resulting in less costly marketing
The down side is that often every other investor and sometime Realtors; attorneys; and loan modification specialists are also marketing to the same people greatly reducing both response rate and effectiveness.
Because they are limited in size, they often limit the total number of deals you can acquire in a month. Therefore targeted list marketing is a god place to start, but if you truly want your investing business to grow to numerous deals per month, you’ll need to add geographic marketing.
Select your geographic market based on several factors:
- Price range of the homes (I prefer bread & butter priced homes)
- Age of the homes in the area
- Overall condition of the area (I prefer tired, but not run-down)
- Family areas
- Desirability (are homes selling in that area?)
- Density – total number of home within the area
The biggest advantages of target geographic marketing over target list marketing are:
- Locate and identify hidden motivated sellers – those that do not appear on any list
- In addition to direct mail, mass marketing will be highly effective within your concentrated area
- Limited competition for each deals & larger margins – since responders are not on a list, no competitors are marketing to them
- More deals – you can market to increasingly larger areas as your business continues to grow
- Longevity – Brand recognition will increase over time providing for more effective marketing
- Expert status – you’ll become an expert in the targeted areas and will know values and demand quickly and intuitively
I am not recommending that you start with geographic marketing as it does require a larger budget, but as your business continues to grow, this will become the heart of your marketing and provide you with your biggest deals.
Expect abundance,
Lou Castillo
