Large Marketing Spend Yet Few Motivated Leads
Investor · Kansas City, MO · Member since 2015 · 70 posts · 22 votes
Hi All,
My partner and I have been actively marketing for three months now with a ~$3000/mon spend just on marketing. I've wholesaled previously and closed 10+ deals, as well as done flips and rentals. For the quantity of leads we're hitting, we aren't getting expected results in terms of motivated sellers. What would those wiser than I recommend we try to drive lead gen?
We use SMS blasts and colds calls with 80% of leads coming from texts. We hit both generic propstream lists (absentee, vacant, etc) and public data (code violations, evictions, tax late). We've averaging ~5000+ unique contacts a week and generating ~20 "leads" per week. Yet still only getting roughly 1 contract per month. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Hey @Chris Trupiano,
I agree with @Eliott Elias. It's important to focus on the sales process and follow-ups. If a lead doesn't recognize you by the 3rd follow-up, it's likely that you haven't built enough rapport with the seller. Personally, my average number of follow-ups to make contact is around 13. You could also try optimizing your lead gen after determining which marketing avenue cost less in terms of price per contract.
Good luck!
Maybe it’s not the leads, maybe it’s the way you convert them, maybe you need to follow up with them 7 to 8 times before you get a deal.
@Eliott Elias Thanks for the feedback. We Follow up 5 times to make the offer. Many times we are unable to get ahold of the person again. From there they are in a 10 message SMS follow up with the timeframe depending on their initial interest level. Only three months of statistics for these, but have yet to have a lead come back to life, per say.
I'm near St. Louis. Many people will tell you not to buy off the MLS. However, if you ask me there are a few worth looking at here. The market is hard to determine what would be a true ARV on some of these homes. But in others isn't so hard. This to me seems like a good one. https://www.movoto.com/saint-l... So does this one https://www.movoto.com/saint-l... I don't know KC like I do the Lou. But zip codes and research goes a long way :) Good luck :)
@Eliott Elias Thanks for the feedback. We Follow up 5 times to make the offer. Many times we are unable to get ahold of the person again. From there they are in a 10 message SMS follow up with the timeframe depending on their initial interest level. Only three months of statistics for these, but have yet to have a lead come back to life, per say.
Dude, trust me when I say this.. it is the leads.
It is your marketing methods.
We NEVER follow up with our sellers. In fact, we get a ton of angry calls from our sellers because when they contact us to sell their house it literally takes us a week to get back in touch with them.
When you are dealing with motivated sellers, all the rules you have been taught about "leads" are completely wrong.
What really ruffles my feathers is this.
Over and over and over and over and over again do you see my posts telling the masses that cold calling, DMM, and texting.. doesn't work?
I don't just say it... I explain it.
There doesn't exist a system, program, gadget, or software that can target motivated sellers. CAN'T.
Today you are not motivated to sell, but tomorrow something changed and you are. You don't magically appear on the motivated selelr list in propstream showing the masses that NOW you are motivated.
ONLY YOU know you are motivated and when you are motivated.. when you have an issue a problem, that needs to be solved.. where do you go?
Library? Ask mom? No! You go to Google.
By the time your calls mailers and texts reach a potentially motivated seller.. you are too late. They sold their house LOOOOONG ago when they went to Google immediately when they became motivated and sold their house to the #1 ranking website they found on Google.
Also mind what you are doing, Your data,... YOUR own numbers tell you it is not working right? But you refuse to accept it. You refuse to believe it. My dude, numbers don't lie.
No man...
If you want motivated sales, try SEO, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and the rising marketing star, youtube ads and TikTok.
Now you can keep fighting the good fight disbelieving your numbers, or you can step up. If you don't You WILL get left behind.
I know this is not exactly the solution you wanted to hear but if you don't step up you will really risk bankruptcy!
Hey @Chris Trupiano,
I agree with @Eliott Elias. It's important to focus on the sales process and follow-ups. If a lead doesn't recognize you by the 3rd follow-up, it's likely that you haven't built enough rapport with the seller. Personally, my average number of follow-ups to make contact is around 13. You could also try optimizing your lead gen after determining which marketing avenue cost less in terms of price per contract.
Good luck!
@Eliott Elias Thanks for the feedback. We Follow up 5 times to make the offer. Many times we are unable to get ahold of the person again. From there they are in a 10 message SMS follow up with the timeframe depending on their initial interest level. Only three months of statistics for these, but have yet to have a lead come back to life, per say.
Dude, trust me when I say this.. it is the leads.
It is your marketing methods.
We NEVER follow up with our sellers. In fact, we get a ton of angry calls from our sellers because when they contact us to sell their house it literally takes us a week to get back in touch with them.
When you are dealing with motivated sellers, all the rules you have been taught about "leads" are completely wrong.
What really ruffles my feathers is this.
Over and over and over and over and over again do you see my posts telling the masses that cold calling, DMM, and texting.. doesn't work?
I don't just say it... I explain it.
There doesn't exist a system, program, gadget, or software that can target motivated sellers. CAN'T.
Today you are not motivated to sell, but tomorrow something changed and you are. You don't magically appear on the motivated selelr list in propstream showing the masses that NOW you are motivated.
ONLY YOU know you are motivated and when you are motivated.. when you have an issue a problem, that needs to be solved.. where do you go?
Library? Ask mom? No! You go to Google.
By the time your calls mailers and texts reach a potentially motivated seller.. you are too late. They sold their house LOOOOONG ago when they went to Google immediately when they became motivated and sold their house to the #1 ranking website they found on Google.
Also mind what you are doing, Your data,... YOUR own numbers tell you it is not working right? But you refuse to accept it. You refuse to believe it. My dude, numbers don't lie.
No man...
If you want motivated sales, try SEO, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and the rising marketing star, youtube ads and TikTok.
Now you can keep fighting the good fight disbelieving your numbers, or you can step up. If you don't You WILL get left behind.
I know this is not exactly the solution you wanted to hear but if you don't step up you will really risk bankruptcy!
All my deals have came from follow up. One seller told me she will die in her home before selling to me, than came around 6 months later. To say you don't follow up means you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
@Eliott Elias Thanks for the feedback. We Follow up 5 times to make the offer. Many times we are unable to get ahold of the person again. From there they are in a 10 message SMS follow up with the timeframe depending on their initial interest level. Only three months of statistics for these, but have yet to have a lead come back to life, per say.
Dude, trust me when I say this.. it is the leads.
It is your marketing methods.
We NEVER follow up with our sellers. In fact, we get a ton of angry calls from our sellers because when they contact us to sell their house it literally takes us a week to get back in touch with them.
When you are dealing with motivated sellers, all the rules you have been taught about "leads" are completely wrong.
What really ruffles my feathers is this.
Over and over and over and over and over again do you see my posts telling the masses that cold calling, DMM, and texting.. doesn't work?
I don't just say it... I explain it.
There doesn't exist a system, program, gadget, or software that can target motivated sellers. CAN'T.
Today you are not motivated to sell, but tomorrow something changed and you are. You don't magically appear on the motivated selelr list in propstream showing the masses that NOW you are motivated.
ONLY YOU know you are motivated and when you are motivated.. when you have an issue a problem, that needs to be solved.. where do you go?
Library? Ask mom? No! You go to Google.
By the time your calls mailers and texts reach a potentially motivated seller.. you are too late. They sold their house LOOOOONG ago when they went to Google immediately when they became motivated and sold their house to the #1 ranking website they found on Google.
Also mind what you are doing, Your data,... YOUR own numbers tell you it is not working right? But you refuse to accept it. You refuse to believe it. My dude, numbers don't lie.
No man...
If you want motivated sales, try SEO, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and the rising marketing star, youtube ads and TikTok.
Now you can keep fighting the good fight disbelieving your numbers, or you can step up. If you don't You WILL get left behind.
I know this is not exactly the solution you wanted to hear but if you don't step up you will really risk bankruptcy!
All my deals have came from follow up. One seller told me she will die in her home before selling to me, than came around 6 months later. To say you don't follow up means you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
Yes absolutely follow up. Don't do what we do. I am not following up because I think it is a bad idea. We just get too many leads, and for us, it is just impossible to follow up.
What I am saying however is that the more motivated your leads are, the less you would need to follow up. Our leads follow up with us, we never follow up with them..
Again.. not a good thing.
They call is all pissed off yelling at us: "I fille din the form 2 days ago, where is my offer"..
and we go.. "ugh!!"
All I am saying is.. if they are not motivated, it doesn't matter how much you follow up, they are not going to sell.
So the fact that you got the lead after you follwed them up to death is NOT because you followed up.. it is that they BECAME motivated. Yes it absolutely can happen you get a contract signed that way.. but can you honestly say it is the right way to do it?
You are pissing people off and only that become motivated that are not hating your guts by then, will contact you.
The question you need to ask yourself is this...
Out of every dingle person that got back at you after invasive persistent follow ups, how many wrote you off and looked for someone else that didn't piss them off?
Correct answer is.. you will never know... but I do! I get a TON of calls from people complaning about other investors that wouldn't leave them alone and they picked us because we are professional and don't harass people.
That is the take away here. You only look at or see the leads that slipped through but you are blind to all the leads you lost because of the methods you and many others apply to get leads..
And because you have no clue how many leads you lose and you only see the leads you didn't.. all you see is "hey I got a lead, it works".
You only see the tip of the iceberg. The dark truth of what you are doing to your reputation, you just don't realize.
A lot of sellers arent ready to sell at the time you are contacting them or perhaps there is some kind of title issue that needs to be resolved before deal can close. But it sounds like you arent getting actual motivated sellers you are getting tire kickers and calling them leads. I would maybe change the way you qualify them and ask more specific questions--narrow down the time frame in which they would like to sell so you can prioritize those looking to move within 30 days or less. Add more questions to determine level of motivation and then re-analyze your data to determine how many truly motivated leads you are getting per week, and also consider making some changes to your follow up system and your conversion tactics.
Same post and question as another person.
As mentioned above I would change your marketing “funnels”.
1. Who wants to sell their house? How can you find them? Reverse mortgage, cremation, burial, divorce, moving, uhaul, appraiser, death, assisted living, retirement home, etc etc. Google ads.
2. GIS records. Everyone more than one month past due.
3. GIS records. All properties with more than xx PIDS listed at the bottom. Find someone to pull the above data for you.
4. Drive by. Any unkept yards, any snow not removed by day 3.
5. Contact all lawn care people and pay for leads.
Solutions. Offer solutions. Support 1031, seller installment deals, reverse mortgage, property management with buy clause and deposit, contact all bank asset managers get in their speed dial and deliver. Other solutions.
Something that I wish was shared more is the quality of "leads" that come from each marketing channel. When you hear a company promoting 1-3 cold call leads a day for only $1,000 a month, you're not getting 1-3 motivated sellers a day, you're getting 1-3 people that didn't hang up on the VA. Texting and cold call leads are by far the hardest to convert (none of these lead gen companies will tell you that). Typically the people that do well with that style of marketing are through and through sales pros.
Direct mail isn't quite so bad, and PPC/SEO are typically the easiest to close.
All that being said, Mike Garry teaches cold call sales and is a good resource for training and whatnot. If you want an introduction let me know.
Also, now that I read your title again, $3000 is not a large spend for 1 deal a month. That's actually a pretty solid marketing spend per deal. Assuming you're making $10k-$20k per deal, you need to ramp up your marketing spend if you want more deals.
@Chris Trupiano Tim from Carrot here!
Couple thoughts to consider when analyzing your marketing
Typical cash conversion cycle for most marketing is 6-9 months. This means its 6+months on average from when you spend the money to when you actually close the deal. PPC I believe is closer to 3-4 months.
It sounds like you are cold calling and have been at it 3 months, so it's not quite long enough to REALLY know what your long-term ROI will be.
I've seen average lead to deal ratio for cold calling/SMS at like 1-in-60 in competitive markets like Phoenix. KCMO isn't as competitive, but its is still more competitive than you may expect. You may actually be in the expected returns for your marketing and just need to have a longer-term view on it.
If you want to make improvements its 2 things: 1) sales and 2) lead quality
Lead quality can be fixed with better marketing like more targeted niche lists, SEO like Jerryll states, or PPC.
For Sales, ideally: Less than 10min speed to lead. 3X contact on day 1, daily for the first week, then weekly for first 3 months. No VAs handling the leads unless they are COLD follow ups. for PPC this is a requirement because the leads are HOT.
PPC can be generate leads much faster than SEO, but over 5 years won't as good an ROI: 1-in-15 per deal in today's market ROUGHLY. But lead cost can be $200-$400/each.
All channels work, the lead costs, lead conversion rates and cash conversion cycles are just different.
Happy to chat more about this, best of luck!
@JD Monroe will have some insights on this