Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
I am a mad scientist when it comes to marketing. I will try anything once, and most things twice. So let me ask all of you, what is your favorite or most creative marketing technique?
I will shart my most creative. I made up a bunch of day glow orange stickers that say "I buy houses" and everytime I go to the grocery store, I place on sticker on the handle of my shopping cart. I have bought two houses from those stickers so far.
I ask them if their clients would like to sell their low equity homes on lease purchase instead of paying the traditional sales costs of selling with an agent, which saves their client sometimes as much as 9 to 12 per cent.
If the sellers have no equity, they do not need to break savings plans like IRAs to use to pay the costs to sell. Financial Planners like that!
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
@Val Csontos I do a good deal of lease options. The way my lawyer wants me to do it is as follows. To stay away from Dodd Frank, I dont close. I let my seller close with my buyer and I get paid to release my option contract, which is on file at the county. It works the same way that releasing a lein works at a closing.
Now back to topic, - marketing
I hire or employ a number of contractos. When they do a job, I give them a complimentary t-shirt that says "winner" on the front breast, and in much larger lettering across the back, it says "josh buys houses" with my google voice number. I dont care if they wear my shirt on the job or at the park, they are advertising for me. I bought two houses last year that I know came from t-shirt advertisment. I need to get better looking contractors.
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
Ok I will now share one of my internet marketing techniques. Every city is broken down into distinct neighborhoods. You probably cant get to the top of Google for the name of your city and real estate, you can however, get ranked for a neighborhood and real estate, or a school district and real estate. For example, Fox Chapel is one of the best schools in my state, and a lot of people want to buy and sell houses there. So I focus my search engine optimization efforts at owning the term Fox Chapel real estate (an example, not my real target).
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
On bandit sign and fooling the police.
There is an art to putting up bandit signs. The first thing that you need to realize that most of the time when you bandit sign is pulled down it is either the local police or some sort of local code enforcement guy. So I have the following three tricks to offer
First, place your bandit signs between municipalities whenever you can. In many cases you will find that the police on both sides will assume that the sign is in the other district and leave it alone
Place you sign as high as you can reach. I have used ladders but my wife find this long armed stapler contraption that allows me to place my signs two feet about my own head. I am 6ft tall, so it would take a 8ft tall man or a guy with a ladder to get my signs down
lastly, most ordinances revolve around placing signs on public property, better knows as telephone polls. I place my signs on trees as often as I can. The code guys dont bother with taking signs off of trees.
Investor · Valdosta, GA · Member since 2015 · 187 posts · 112 votes
11y
Wow! This might be my favorite thread of all the threads and topics I've seen in my time on Biggerpockets. You truly are a marketing mad scientist. I'm inspired to start thinking of creative (and free/inexpensive) ways to market myself as a wholesaler.
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
I have anothe marketing technique for you all to use. I make sure that every reporter in my town that writes about real estate, knows my name and that I am a subject matter expert when it comes to investing. I get a lot of free press that way. When they want a comment, they know that I can help them fill out a story for them.
I have developed this over a period of years. It all started when I emailed a reporter about a story that she had written. I offered her positive feedback and invited her to lunch. Reporters dont make much money in my market. This is especially true of the newspaper reporters. Be nice to them, let them know who you are, and they will make you a lot of money.
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
Here is another marketing idea. Establish yourself as a local real estate expert. How you do this, is you read the local newspapers. When a real estate story comes up, you send an email to the local real estate reporter. Tell them how great their story was, and most importantly, tell them what you do and that they can reach out to you anytime. You will be happy to offer comments or insight on future real estate stories from an investors world. It may take a few attempts but you will get free press in your local market with this technique.
Wholesaler · Hampton Roads, VA · Member since 2013 · 31 posts · 11 votes
11y
This thread is great! Ive gotten a ton of great ideas I plan on using in the future. One great strategy that I do not believe has been mentioned, deals with bandit signs. I have seen great success with posting bandit signs outside local home improvement stores like Lowe's and Home Depot, targeting investors and contractors, with information on my current deals. The signs usually read:
3BD/2BA Need to Sell Fast
Motivated Seller Accepting All Offers
The bandit sign laws in my area are pretty lax, and I have been able to build a solid buyers list from this marketing technique.
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
@Account Closed
I like that one, let me ask you a question, where exactly do you post your bandit signs, are they on the Lowes driveway in the grass or on a pole near there?
Wholesaler · Hampton Roads, VA · Member since 2013 · 31 posts · 11 votes
11y
Hey Josh,
There are several grass medians in and around the main traffic intersections of the parking lots; typically where drivers have to stop for pedestrians coming and going from the store. I have a good rapport with the store managers, and am timely with picking the signs up to prevent them from junking up the lot.
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
Lets talk about using social media to market your properties or to look for sellers, whatever.
Social media market is all the rage but most people have exactly no idea how it works or how to use it
Social media is just like gravity, you want to gather as much mass as you can, this mass will attract other like minded individuals toward you. At a certian point you will have enough mass that you wont need to promote your social media feed and people will line up to befirend you.
The best tricks to achieve critical mass is to start seaking out people like you (real estate investors) and befriend them. It doesnt matter if we are talking twitter, face book, or linked in. Start locally, then expand to areas across the country. Look for people with big followings. What you are trying to do is to get one person away from everyone that you would ever do a deal with. This can take some time but the results are worth it.
Now Linked in tops off about 3000 people I think, face book at 5000, and I dont think twitter has a cap. So lets imagine that you only use linked in, and you have maxed at 3000 people.
So now with that braod list of real estate people, when you try to wholesale a deal, 3000 people see the message. That is step 1
Step 2 is get your self into as many large real estate groups as you can, or connect to them. Join as many as you are allowed to join. This will expand your list exponentially. So now you can reach out to 50,000 real estate investors with a single message.
Entire books have been written on the subject, but this will get your started for now
To your success
Josh
PS if you like this forum post, then vote for is, so others will notice and join in.
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
Ok I will give you another way to find house deals.
People like to look at pretty girls, this is universaly true.
So what I did was a contacted a local fraternity and offered to sponsor their "hot legs contest" This mean that I had to put up $100 prize money.
I also gave every contestant a t-shirt for entering. So now with about $300 invester, I have a herd of pretty women walking around town with Josh Buys Houses shirts and my phone number. Well I have recieved a few calls from guys who want to talk to the girl with the shirt, I have also been able to buy at least 3 houses Since I wont do a deal for less than $5000 profit, my worst case is that I only made $14,700 + the added bonus that a group of attractive college girls are now doing my marketing for me.
Qualicum Beach, BC · Member since 2015 · 18 posts · 4 votes
11y
Hi,
Great and very useful tips from all of you.I ma happy to visit this thread and learn some new tactics .A big thanks for this thread really shareable also.I am looking forward to it .
Realtor · NW Suburbs of Chicago, IL · Member since 2015 · 156 posts · 62 votes
11y
How about YouTube?
I'm getting ready to establish an online presence (in a new industry being REI, I am currently know for my mad skills selling Lexus-www.she-sells-lexus.com) but this time for my REI business. Since I am new and still learning, but yet too passionate and impatient to wait to get established online until AFTER I know more, I'm trying to develop my content ideas so that I will 1) Get Noticed (per Grant Cardone); 2) Generate a Following and; 3) Create Opportunity. Curious to know what you have/have not tried...?
Also, I like the t-shirt idea...recommend any vendors in particular?
first off in the grand world of internet marketing google rules, you always want to rank for a keyword on google, well here is the trick, Google owns Youtube, and google likes to rank stuff on Youtube, so it is easier to rank for a keyword with a video on youtube that it is to do the same thing with any other sort of web site.
Now with that understanding, how do we rank organically for a video? I wont get into plugins and SEO ranking software because with each change of the google algorythem that entire game changes. So back to organic ranking
YouTube =YT, is indexed by Google, by title, and the body of the description. So you want to have you description match your title, or at least the keywords in your title. What I like to do is miconiche a video. I dont go for Pittsburgh Real Estate like everyone else does. I go for specific neighborhoods because I can easily rank for Brighton Heights (a Pittsburgh Neighborhood) with a house for sale, rent, or Josh Buys houses.
You want to use every charicter that YT will allow, about 2000 charicters. Describe your business in every way that you can, get all of the GEO tag stuff in there, city, state, county, neighborhood, school district, etc.
Then you can hop over to fiverr.com and purchase a bunch of enhancements to your video. You can get backlinks to your video, likes for your video, reposts of your video. I also like to blast my video out to my lists, buyers in general, but all lists that you have Google will notice the traffic spike and give your video authority.
Ok thats a bit more than I wanted to get into here, but ranking video is easier than ranking almost anything else on the internet.
Real Estate Investor · State College , PA · Member since 2009 · 594 posts · 173 votes
11y
I operate a cleanout company. Many of my clients call me first before they even call a realtor getting ready to sell a house. Not sure if that qualifies as exactly marketing but it is an effective way in buying a house below market value.
Thanks for all your insights and experiences. So much good info here, why I love BP. They certainly didn't teach any of this in any marketing courses I've taken.
@Josh Caldwell, curious if employing any of these techniques has ever gotten you into trouble. What do you say if someone complains or someone calls the cops? You mentioned you were a police officer, so I guess that helps. For instance, your example of the labels at the grocery store carts, I can't imagine the owner not saying anything. I love your example of using bandit signs on the border of jurisdictions. Brilliant!
Investor · Dallas TX, United States · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
11y
Lee,
good question. Yes, I have had code enforcement guys call me about bandit signs, but since I use a google number, they cant begin to figure out how to send me a fine, if I ever felt the need to push the issue. I just comply and come and get my signs.
The only one I have actually had to visit a police station over was a standard yellow letter. The lady was crazy and convinced that I was staking her. That conversation took about 5 minutes of explanation with the desk sgt, he got it and explained to the lady that I send her some "junk mail" and that she should just ignore it. Other than that, no trouble at all. If I keep this post going and I get into how to siphon internet traffic off of your competition, then that might change!!!
Specialist · Clermont, FL · Member since 2015 · 91 posts · 35 votes
11y
To piggyback off the Youtube conversation, some people are putting transcripts (or partial transcripts) of their videos underneath the videos, with a link to the entire transcript on their website (of course). It helps with SEO organically because of YT's ties to Google.
Keep in mind that while some people use Youtube, the attention spans are getting shorter each day. So I'd suggest keeping videos well under 10 minutes (5 if you can). Also, if a video seems like it's going too long, don't be afraid to break it down into chunks. Depending on their purpose, time and attention span, most people would rather watch 4 5-minute videos instead of a 20 minute video. And you should always be urging them to subscribe to your videos/channel. And make sure you ask them to leave comments and questions, and engage back when they do.
Wholesaler · Scottsdale, AZ · Member since 2014 · 227 posts · 93 votes
11y
Some good techniques in this post. By far the lowest cost per lead has been online, but it's a game of 1%ers. No single medium such as YouTube or Twitter or a website, but a combination of them all. You really need to invest in the whole shebang.