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What’s Marketing Got To Do With It?

J. Lamar Ferren
3 min read
What’s Marketing Got To Do With It?

When I first got started in real estate investing, I used to ask myself this question.

After all the real estate courses I’ve read and all the teleseminars I dialed in onto, the word “marketing” was being drilled into my brain and I just didn’t get why it was so important to real estate.

My only goal was to get my first deal completed as soon as possible.  So I studied real estate investing for hours and hours; from how to cold call and approach sellers, to how to fill out contractual paperwork, to how to calculate this, to how to calculate that…

Then it was time.

I stalled for so long because I was trying to look for reassurance in what I knew, and I kept hesitating because I wasn’t confident in my skills. While mindset is crucial to your business, we’ll touch on that another time. It was time for me to get out there and do my first deal, so in order to do that, I needed to get a lead.

How do you go about getting leads?

Advertising of course! (I knew that much)

So I started writing down some advertising methods:

  • Creating business cards and handing them to investors, sellers, and buyers.
  • Making flyers in posting them all over town
  • Going door to door and putting up door hangers
  • Sending out postcards
  • Placing ads in the newspaper or online
  • Making signs and sticking them in high traffic areas
  • Putting up a website and driving traffic to it

All these methods of advertising gave me the ability to drive leads. After trying a few of them, I saw some activity but not much. Then as I wondered what the problem could be . . . it hit me! I wasn’t marketing!

I could no longer ignore this concept that was to be so important to my business. Advertising is just an element of marketing. Marketing consists of many other elements as well.

Here are a few:

Marketing Message:

Your message is what is placed strategically within your ads, which are written in a compelling matter. These exist in order to serve one purpose, to elicit a response! By knowing what to say in your ads in order to generate a response, you’ll have more success over others who just post an ad just to get seen. Of course everyone wants a response, but everyone doesn’t show it in their advertising. It’s all about including that Call to Action!

Marketing Media

While their are hundreds of ways to advertise your business, it really comes down to testing which kind of media generates the best response. The only way to figure that out would be to test it out. Make all of your marketing compelling, and be sure to test!

Market Research

Everyone’s goal is to get their business in front of many eye’s as possible. However, you need to identify your target market — the people who you want clicking on your ad. They are the ones who hand you the check in return for your services. You have to find out who they are and where they are; then you put your marketing message in front of them using your marketing media. Remember, market research should be the first thing you do . . . Period!

So you see, the more you understand marketing, the more profitable your advertising will be. This is a lesson I had to catch onto quickly if I wanted to see my business grow. You need to understand the need for a marketing plan. A marketing plan is an organized way of strategizing your business growth. It does this in a way that truly highlights your “hook” or unique message that sets you apart from your competition. Your plan should also:

  • Highlight the different marketing medias that you will use in order to spread that marketing message.
  • Highlight who will see this message and where they will see it.
  • Break down your day to day tasks that are strategically directed toward a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly goal.
  • Break down your budget and a number of other aspects.
  • and much more . . .

The bottom line is that you need to plan it out!

So to answer the question, “What’s Marketing Got To Do With It?”

The Answer: EVERYTHING!

It’s not a coincidence that when you switch the “D” and the “L” in the word “LEAD” you get the word “DEAL”

Marketing always get you leads, leads always get you deals, and deals always get you Marketing again!
To Your Success,

J.Lamar Ferren

“New Breed” Investor

Photo: dospaz

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.