At my real estate seminars I am often asked by my students what area of the business they should focus on first. I can relate to their concerns because I know how much there is to learn when you are building a real estate investment business. Unfortunately, some investors flounder the first couple of years in the business because they try to learn a little bit of everything without mastering anything. As a speaker and educator, I think the opposite approach is better. Instead of trying to dabble in every niche, I think you should spend the majority of your time studying the areas of the business that generate revenue NOW! You can learn the rest of the business as you go along, but what is important now is to get your phone ringing off the hook. You are looking for motivated sellers willing to sell you their properties at 50 to 65 cents on the dollar. In order to do this you must become a Master Marketer!
The foundation you develop for your Real Estate business is a direct result of your knowledge of marketing. In order to increase your contacts, lead generation, and closings, a firm handle on the principles of marketing is essential. You must become a master Marketer! Mastering and applying the proven principles of successful marketers will generate the necessary leads for success in your business.
Real Estate Marketing Principal: Define Your Target Market You must understand that only 5% of all sellers are truly motivated and will be willing to sell their property at a significant discount. Therefore, you will want to gear your marketing efforts towards people who have a reason to sell their property under market value. There are many reasons why someone would want to sell their property at a discount. Death, divorce, bankruptcy, and foreclosure are just a few of the many examples of why someone would want to get rid of a property quickly. You can find many of these lists through the public records with a little effort. Once your target market is located, you must then reach out to these people through your marketing efforts.
Real Estate Marketing Principal: Create a Compelling Message Once you have narrowed down your target market you then must compel the prospect to take action. Distressed property owners are by nature procrastinators and thus unlikely to respond to a generic offer. Therefore, you must create an irresistible offer so compelling it gets the prospect off the couch and over to the phone. The message must strike an emotional chord within the prospect if it is going to be effective.
Real Estate Marketing Principal: Create Systems for Outsourcing and Deliver Most prospects do not respond to your marketing efforts until they have seen your message at least seven times. Successful marketers realize they need a system to accomplish this. It is virtually impossible for any investor to fulfill all of their marketing campaigns by themselves. Without systems you will continually be short on time and short on quality leads.
In order to have quality time to select and process favorable prospect responses, it is important that you develop systems to perform repetitive and time consuming processes. My business has a systems for each marketing campaign. For example: Every week my marketing assistant grabs the new list of bankruptcy off the internet. She then downloads the names into our database for tracking purposes, emailing the list off to an intern who uses predesigned letters and postcards on file to fmake the mailing. The mailings are then organized and posted regularly. I have nothing to do with the process and all I have to do is pick through the deals when they come in.
It is your job as the business owner to understand the importance of using systems that can be outsourced to other people. Otherwise, you will forever be stuck in your business and will never free yourself from the drudgery of WORK.
Real Estate Marketing Principal: Test and Track You want to build a profitable real estate investment company. To do this you must eliminate waste and unprofitable process directions. After all, it is the bottom line that will determine success in your venture. You cannot be blind to this necessity thus your goal as an owner and marketer is to have a system to concisely test and track your marketing and provide you with an understand the numbers.
I sit down every month and review my marketing expenditures. I look at how much was spent, how many leads came in, and which campaigns produced actual deals. I then make decisions for the next month shifting money from one marketing campaign to another so as to maximize the return on my investment. If you dont have a tool for testing and tracking your marketing then precious dollars will slip through the cracks. I created a tool to track my marketing and it is highly effective and has literally saved me thousands of dollars over the years. To find more wealth building articles like this one go to www.ThanandPaul.com.
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