The key to success in any business is effective marketing

The key to success in any business is effective marketing and follow up systems, yet I see ineffective marketing everywhere I turn, especially in the real estate investing business. The other factor I have found in this business that limits people’s success is not knowing the proper ways to structure a deal. When it comes to creating creative financing solutions, only a handful of investor agents and agents can meet that challenge.

Knowing when something is not a deal and being able to walk away instead of trying to create something that is not there, can save any investor agent hours of work and a lot of brain damage. Being able to go ahead and help the home owner by helping them sell their house using creative solutions is a huge niche that we have and definitely needed in the current economical conditions. In addition, being able to recognize an opportunity while others have not seen the potential is a trait that can make you millions of dollars once you are trained to have that vision.

Streetwise Real Estate Investing is based on identifying two major factors to being successful in the real estate investing business, solving the financing problem, and putting the process on auto-pilot as much as possible. The first factor is you need a great coach to walk you through the details of doing the deals correctly so you can maximize your return in investment. Second, you need an excellent marketing system that generates great leads and that provides follow up systems for developing a strong relationship that can be put on auto-pilot.

That being said, at some point it comes to creating trust and rapport with the client in a face to face meeting and how effective you become in that setting will determine whether you are going to be a millionaire or looking for another line of work.

Years ago I recognized that many people when speaking on stage had a hidden agenda. Often I have overheard speakers admit that what they had just told a crowd was not what they really did, but was part of a presentation meant to sell a specific product. Having spent $5,000 to $10,000 a month on a variety of advertising and testing all those results, I can assure you that some marketing campaigns of outdoor signs and expensive TV budgets are developed more around the idea of the franchisor being paid a 20% advertising commission and building the name of the franchise, than effectively generating leads. As a general rule, image marketing and branding doesn’t work for the little guy and is usually not the best way to generate leads or the best method of building long term relationships with clients. Direct response marketing however, quantifies every detail in a marketing effort to maximize results. For example, if we are sending out a direct mail campaign at a cost of around $1500 which includes printing, mailing list and postage – then those costs are fixed. You pay the same price whether you get 1 lead or 20 leads. It has been proven that you can increase the effectiveness of an ad by up to 21 times by doing little things like changing the headline, the offer, the price or the body copy. How do you know how to do this? By testing that’s how.

We use split testing constantly to improve our scripts and our advertisements to insure that the control group we are currently doing is the best in the industry. You can be assured that a marketing campaign designed and implemented by headquarters is based on the premise of the best cost effective method of generating leads, and we have the numbers to prove it. When you combine direct response marketing with a cost effective national marketing exposure of a co-op synergized marketing effort, you come up with one of the most effective systems out there. We current are seeing the cost per lead around $30 and the cost to get a listing or investment property for yourself being around $1000. Imagine if you can consistently get a listing and sell for an average $100,000 house for $1000 and make $6000 in commissions, how many time would you want to do that a month?