Choosing the right channel for your message and audience is a key step.
If you are a real estate investor looking to start a new marketing campaign, you have several different distribution channels to choose from. Deciding the best choice for your business requires careful evaluation.
First, you must build your lists and segment your prospects. Once you have completed those steps, you are ready to determine how you will get your message out. Real estate investors use many marketing platforms, but that doesn’t mean they will all be right for your business or your audience.
Here are several to consider.
Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail marketing is still one of the most effective methods real estate investors use. Direct mail is the only marketing method that puts something tangible into the hands of your prospects.
Whether you send out postcards or letters, your marketing materials can be touched, held, and even saved for when the prospect is ready to do business with you. You never know when you’ll get a call saying, “Hey, I got this in the mail a few years ago, and now I’m interested in talking to you about selling my house.”
When using direct mail, you will want to create a multistep campaign. At the start of your campaign, introduce yourself and your business. Provide enough information to create curiosity. Next, you will send messages about why working with you is beneficial. This will educate your prospects further and get the phones ringing.
Each campaign should contain multiple messages that provide property owners with something new and different while reinforcing your branding and business. Direct mail is a great way to start a conversation, so be prepared to pick up the phone and make the sale.
Throughout your campaign, change your direct mail pieces to elicit responses from different audiences. For example, older sellers tend to respond to handwritten letters, while younger sellers may respond better to professional letters.
Make sure you match your direct mail campaign’s quality with your prospect’s quality. You’ll want to allocate more marketing dollars to lists with higher quality prospects than those containing prospects less likely to match your ideal client.
To create automated, multistep campaigns, consider using a tool that will allow you to build, manage, and track all within the same platform you use to manage your records.
Ringless Voicemail
Another standard method for reaching out to prospects is ringless voicemail. Ringless voicemail is a pre-recorded audio message that is placed in a voicemail inbox without the phone ringing.
This type of marketing works well as a follow-up to other types of marketing, especially direct mailing. You can create an original and natural-sounding message that is short, personable, and interesting enough to warrant a callback.
Ringless voicemail can generate many calls from people who may have yet to listen to the message. This is why you should use it with other marketing efforts and set up a voicemail to catch any calls you cannot handle.
Text Messaging
Another way to encourage a higher response volume is to use text messages. With text marketing, you set up a campaign with a cadence similar to direct mail marketing, perhaps one message every four to six weeks. Then, when the messages go out, you will get your responses immediately.
Remember, when using ringless voicemail and text messaging, it’s essential to adhere to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Your prospects must opt-in before you can send them a message.
Email Marketing
Email is a great way to get your name and brand out there. It’s a free way of letting your potential sellers get to know you and the services you can provide.
Email tends to have a lower response rate, and you may not get the same type of coverage because of the difficulty of finding email addresses, so you shouldn’t rely on it as your main form of marketing. However, emailing is excellent when you want to get a short message out to your prospects or for a list where you have a lot of email contact information.
Cold Calling and Door Knocking
Cold calling and door knocking are two old-school methods that remain popular in real estate investing. Both methods are more of a time investment than a monetary one. You can either do this in-house or hire a firm that does this work for you.
If you’re new to cold calling or door knocking, start with low-quality prospects to get used to the process. As you become more comfortable, you can focus on higher-quality prospects who will likely provide you with the best opportunity to gain traction.
SEO
Another type of marketing real estate investors use is search engine optimization. Optimizing your website for SEO means taking steps to help it rank higher in the results when someone types specific keywords in a search engine. For newer investors, you’ll want to keep this as simple as possible with your own website and blog. Hiring someone for SEO could cost a few thousand dollars a month, and it usually takes six to 12 months to see results.
Online Ads
One channel that has been gaining popularity in recent years is online advertising. This kind of marketing includes social media, Google, and YouTube ads.
Buying online ads may seem simple enough, but they require knowledge and ongoing adjustments to ensure they perform well. If you have that knowledge or someone on your team does, this can be a great asset.
Use More Than One
Regardless of what kind of marketing channel you prefer, you should always use more than one to reach all your high-quality prospects. In addition, your separate marketing efforts should always complement and reinforce each other. This means you need to keep your messaging and branding consistent across channels.
You must decide what channel will work best for your business and market. It is important to be consistent and patient, track your results, and focus on lead and deal conversion rather than response rates.
