The key to any successful business is keeping your pipeline filled with potential leads. Subsequently, the marketing strategies you use are one of the best ways to keep leads coming in. Moreover, real estate is a numbers game. The more opportunities you have, the greater chance of converting them into leads. If you are constantly waiting for your phone to ring, you are asking for an awful lot. Real estate favors the proactive. The more diverse your marketing strategies are and the more aggressively you follow up, the more successful you will be.
There are dozens of ways for a real estate investor to generate business. Between postcards, bandit signs, newspaper ads, billboards and door flyers; there is a method of marketing for whatever stage of the business you are in. Your budget will go a long way in determining what is best for you, but you need to take some action to get your phone to ring. It is best to experiment with a few different methods to see which are the most cost effective. If you are a new investor, having a billboard on the highway may not be the best way to spend your money. Once you find which marketing works for your budget, you need to stick with it for as long as you can. Having one method is OK, but the more you do, the higher chance you can reach a greater audience.
Getting the phone to ring is a great goal, but you need to be able to convert those calls into deals. The best way to stay on top of your leads is by being organized. If you do not have a method of tracking your leads and their progress, you may be wasting money. A simple excel spreadsheet can help you convert calls to deals. It is also a good idea to have a script and a mini application form to get the pertinent information on every call. You may only get one crack with someone who receives your information. It is imperative to get their motivation and expectations in the first contact. This will help you prioritize which leads you should tackle immediately and which may need some time to figure out.
It is easy to get sidetracked working on new deals as your call volume increases. Even if your phone is ringing and there are deals to work on, you can’t forget about your marketing. You can slow down what you are doing if you are too busy, but you need to constantly do something to generate leads. It is much easier to work on deals when they come then to try to find business when you are slow. Your marketing is the key to your business and has a direct impact on your bottom line. If you stop when you are busy, it make take several weeks to get going again. You should have a set start and stop time in mind before you start any marketing. If you know you are going to do something for 90 days, you won’t be as distracted if the initial response isn’t as great as you expect. By sticking with what you are doing for a prolonged period of time, you can truly find out what works, what doesn’t and what may need a little tweaking.
After a successful batch of mailings or postcards, you may want to see what else is out there. If something has worked, why would you want to try something different? The average success rate for any marketing is under 10% with leads and 3% with actual deals. So, for every 100 homeowners you mail, only about 10 of them will be real deals of which only 3 will turn into possible deals. If this is about the success you have had, you should be thrilled and continue with it. You can always try new things, but they may not be as effective as what you have done. If something works, stick with it until you see a decline in the numbers. It really doesn’t matter what kind of marketing you do if you don’t repeat it over and over again.
Very few leads will turn into deals after the first phone call. If a seller isn’t ready to act after the first callback, you shouldn’t forget about them. You need to either establish or develop a system for tracking your calls and following up. There are many deals every year where it is not the first investor that gets the deal, but the most persistent. If you constantly let them know that you are available; eventually they will want to work with you. This process can take days or even months before you get the answer that you are looking for. If you trash the deal after a call or two, somebody else is going to close on a deal that should have been yours.
You are only as successful as the leads you generate. Getting and keeping your phone ringing is the backbone of your business. The minute you lose focus of your marketing is when you will start to see a dip in your business. Do something to generate business every day.
