Best Direct to Owner Marketing?

Question

New to Bigger Pockets but not Fix & Flips. Trustee sales are scarce in my market and wholesale deals have no spread. What are a couple of the best strategies these days for sourcing my own direct to owner leads/deals? Yellow Cards? Mass Texting Services? Distressed Property Lists?

I appreciate the help here gang!

Mike Smith

I appreciate the help here gang!

Mike Smith

Ned Carey · Answer

@Mike Smith Welcome to BP. One of my favorite sayings is "everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere."  You just have to keep trying different methods. Right now it is very competitive and tough to find deals everywhere and in almost every way.

Anthony Caruso · Answer

I like that sentiment @Ned Carey. Its true. I've been successful with postcards, letters, flyers, and everything in between as far as direct mail. Direct outreach is the way to go for fix and flips, especially if wholesale/tail margins are thin in your market.

Tell us a bit about who you're targeting? What types of motivators or distresses do they have?

Cornelius Garland · Answer

@Mike Smith I agree with Ned. Everything does work somewhere. I think we can get caught up in thinking that there is one "best way" to get seller leads. I've done it all, but I determine which marketing channel I use based on how much it costs to get a deal and the work involved. I'm big on outsourcing at this point in my investing career. Consequently, a lot of my leads will be cold initially, and it'll take more leads to get a deal. However, my days of manually scrubbing county databases to get code violations lists or manually generating probate lists are behind me. I have a team that assists me with all of my marketing and I'm mainly monitoring KPIs to make sure we are on track to hit our monthly goals.

This is the approach I use now: I want to only target the most distressed zips in each MSA. Applying the 80/20 principle in each market, 20% of the zip codes will generate 80% of your deals. I want to pull lists in those zip codes and market to them. I use cold calling right now because it's the way I can generate a lot of leads while maintaining a low cost per lead. Additionally, I can control which properties I want to target. This means I won't get junk leads, which is common when using Facebook ads. It's taking me anywhere between 80-160 leads to close up one deal in 30 days if I were to start a marketing campaign in a new market. This number decreases the longer I stay in a market because I'm generating more leads and closing deals off of follow-up.

You can replace cold calling with SMS, direct mail, SEO, Facebook ads, etc. It all works, but you just need to determine what you feel comfortable with spending, how much work you're willing to do, and how long you're willing to wait to get a deal. I know some guys that want to generate leads real easily and only want motivated leads, so they have no issue dropping $20k on Google PPC to get one deal. Other investors are willing to put in the work and spend less, so they may do SMS and manually text themselves for 4-8 hours per day. I hope this helps out, Mike.

Jeff Stephens · Answer

Mike, may I ask you a question? I see what kind of property you want to buy, but what type of negotiation do you want to have?  In other words, do you want to have a quick conversation that results in a quick cash offer? Or are you more interested in (and willing to) engage in more of a slower, relationship-oriented approach to negotiating?

Anthoney Hanks · Answer

@Mike Smith, welcome to the BP community!

Best Direct to Owner Marketing?

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