Marketing for Wholesale Leads
Wholesaler · Bay Shore, NY · Member since 2009 · 359 posts · 199 votes
Ive heard somewhere that to be a great real estate investor you have to be a great marketer. My marketing method is primarily a 2 letter direct mail drip campaign to landlords. The response rate is ok. I want to pick the brains of the successful wholesalers on this forum and I know there are many. How much of your wholesaling business is marketing for a) seller leads and buyer leads? How big is your your buyers list? What percentage of marketing is your wholesaling business - 40% 60% 80%. Do you prefer Direct Mail Marketing or Internet Marketing or other? Let me know your thoughts. Happy Wholesaling!
Depends on the area. Bandits signs in Austin are a no-no and the holster sniffing code enforcement dufus squad will ticket whatever $$$ the Federal Govt doesn't tax from you.
BTW Joseph- a 1.5 return on signs is outstanding! When I used to do it I was lucky to get a .25 response rate. Area was too saturated and signs got pulled quickly.
CL seems to yield a great response...from autobots trying to cross sell you anything from viagara to gambling websites...and even some stuff I don't need or want. Internet marketing isn't as effective with wholesales as many people who are free and clear or paid a good chunk of their mortgage are elderly and don't check the whole computer internet contraption thinggy too often.
As such, the youth-challenged Americans generally like prefer to read print media. To quote my dad: 'I'm not taking a laptop to the john!' Therefore, newspaper ads can be pretty effective. But stay away from the major newspaper and focus on smaller, local fringe town newspapers. Also, Greensheet and Thrifty Nickels offer just as good of a return and are less expensive than the bigger city daily rags.
I do like targeting my lists. Free and clear or mortgages that have been in place for 15+ years are good places to start. Using a hand written yellow letter direct mail campaign to target this list has been most effective for me. When people see a hand written envelope the size of an invitation or birthday card, they open it. What more can you ask from a direct mail campaign?
Also, many times a list broker can give you phone numbers with the list, which is a good way to find leads.
One final tip: put business cards about buying houses in local cafes, diners, Denny's, or barber shops, etc... If it serves dinner at 3pm, chances are elderly people who own their homes are there and this is a good market to target.
Hope this helped! Happy investing.
Hi Michael. I can only tell you what gets my phone ringing. I don't do direct marketing. Nothing against it, I just don't do it. Just this weekend, over the course of 3 days, I've gotten over 30 calls from 20 bandit signs, 2 ads on craigslist (posted yesterday) and 2 ads on backpage (also posted yesterday). In wholesaling, once you have the structure set up, and all of your intital capital expenditures are made (if you choose to do all of that first) I would say that for me, marketing is at least 80% of what I do. If I actually go to look at one in ten houses of people that call me, it's a good day. The price we need to get to wholesale something means that we have to weed through a lot of sellers. Hence the fact that marketing is huge.
I spend a lot of time on education as well. Education on marketing, new wholesaling niches to explore and master, negotiating with buyers and sellers, legalities for my area, learning comps for my farm areas, etc.
So ok, maybe marketking is 65%-70%. Education is 20%-25%. The rest is negotiating, inspecting, and traveling to and from the bank :lol: I'd love to know the more experienced wholesalers' take on this as well. Is this an accurate depiction in your estimation?
Depends on the area. Bandits signs in Austin are a no-no and the holster sniffing code enforcement dufus squad will ticket whatever $$$ the Federal Govt doesn't tax from you.
BTW Joseph- a 1.5 return on signs is outstanding! When I used to do it I was lucky to get a .25 response rate. Area was too saturated and signs got pulled quickly.
CL seems to yield a great response...from autobots trying to cross sell you anything from viagara to gambling websites...and even some stuff I don't need or want. Internet marketing isn't as effective with wholesales as many people who are free and clear or paid a good chunk of their mortgage are elderly and don't check the whole computer internet contraption thinggy too often.
As such, the youth-challenged Americans generally like prefer to read print media. To quote my dad: 'I'm not taking a laptop to the john!' Therefore, newspaper ads can be pretty effective. But stay away from the major newspaper and focus on smaller, local fringe town newspapers. Also, Greensheet and Thrifty Nickels offer just as good of a return and are less expensive than the bigger city daily rags.
I do like targeting my lists. Free and clear or mortgages that have been in place for 15+ years are good places to start. Using a hand written yellow letter direct mail campaign to target this list has been most effective for me. When people see a hand written envelope the size of an invitation or birthday card, they open it. What more can you ask from a direct mail campaign?
Also, many times a list broker can give you phone numbers with the list, which is a good way to find leads.
One final tip: put business cards about buying houses in local cafes, diners, Denny's, or barber shops, etc... If it serves dinner at 3pm, chances are elderly people who own their homes are there and this is a good market to target.
Hope this helped! Happy investing.
Thanks Tom. I must say that the signs this weekend pulled in a better response than usual. I wrote some pretty outrageous things on the signs though, so more folks read them. As far as craigslist goes, I had that problem at first. Just choose to hide your email address before you post. I get almost no spam now, and at least 5 leads per week with a couple of free ads. What the heck, right?
Thats really good and useful informatio...Thanks. I have the same cross selling spammers sending me e-mails when I post ads on CL but it does help me build a buyers list. Bandit signs are so costly they dont provide a good ROI for the amount of leads they produce. Every time they disappear I say thats another 2 bucks down the drain.I'm curious though...other than posting an ad on Craigslist for a property that may or may not exist how do you market for buyers to build your buyers list? Is your buyers list 20, 50, or 100 strong in terms of go to, reliable buyers?
I already have about five buyers on my list that say they are cash buyers and can close quickly and want me to "inform them of any upcoming deals"
I did this in a few days.
Mostly, I used the newspaper and called up every number I could see for people buying houses - alot of them are rehabbers, not wholesalers, so it works. And I also called up landlords with the "for rent" ads.
I got a buyer from CL too.
And soon, I'm going down to the county office to request some list information and I'm going to go Driving for Dollars!
Ah, this site is great!
Michael,
Marketing is definitely a major component of your wholesaling business. The majority of my sellers leads come from direct mail campaigns and I only build my buyers list online. I would say that I think professionalism and follow-up is the most aspect of your business.
Positioning yourself as a professional real estate investment firm as opposed to a guy who bought the latest real estate guru information product and following up with leads will earn you more trust and deals than marketing by itself could ever produce.
Hope that makes sense.
That's an excellent point Khary. Follow-up and responsiveness is huge, and that's a lesson I had to learn over time. I think I was too scared to answer the phone at first :) How would you say that you give your business the impression of being a reputable real estate firm? I'm definitely not implying that it isn't, but how do you project that to folks? Because I'm sure most of us are just Joe Shmoe that started with a course or something at some point.
Also Michael, if you're paying 2 bucks for bandit signs, I feel like you're paying too much. PM me if you like and I can tell you about a place where you can get the big ones for just about half of that.
Also Michael, regarding your buyers list advertising, I rarely post a property that I don't have online. I advertise to rehabbers/landords that I have residential 1-4 unit properties for 50-70% ARV available for cash. Then I tell them a little about myself in the ad, and why they should definitely, certainly, and totally sign up for my vip buyers list.
I direct them to my website, which isn't even really all that great, but it has a buyers list form on there that I set up free at wufoo.com. It has some basic questions in there that gets sent to my email and lets me know if I want to get in contact with them. I've got maybe 10 on my list, and I don't know that any of them are "go-to" guys per se, but I know that they have access to cash. I have maybe 20 others that I might call if I've got no one else on the line, but that's good enough to get you started.
Joseph- how do you find landlord leads?
Hi Tom,
Often times they will call me just from my bandit signs, but I've also had some luck calling for rent signs. Though, at least by me those folks are sometimes just people that can't pay their mortgage. So it usually works out either way. I've never done postcards. It's on my to-do list for sure, I'm just busy enough right now with the other less expensive stuff.
The majority of my marketing has been direct mail from pre-foreclosure lists or from signs. I agree the leads from the signs are not enough to get a good ROI on the money I put out.
My buyers list I also developed from Craigslist with a catchy niche, that works everytime. I also go to a lot of networking events that's always a huge help for me.
Finding distressed landlords was a easy. I went to the County where they list section 8 housing and they give you the landlord and all of their properties free! Just tell them you looking for a place to live and you need a list of sec 8 housing in the local area. It should have the owner as contact person. Call them and let them know your an investor and you are looking to find out if they are interested in selling their properties (sometimes they have more than one.) or you can ask them if they are looking to increase their inventory!
Great point Charisse! Also, if you don't feel like stopping in at the office and talking to people, you can find your local Section 8 office online as well with just a little digging. That can be a great source of info.
Joseph, its been 4 months since your post, im just wondering how are things working for you know and what do you find most effective.
I find craigslist and backpage are effective as well as Google Places. I am considering hand written yellow letters, and perhaps your effective bandit signs you previously mentioned you knew of a place online where you could get them at a very competitive rate, hope you don't mind me asking where.
Sure thing Jay, I still get most of my calls from bandit signs to be honest. Though now that I know some more people in the business I sometimes get calls that way too, so that definitely helps. As far as where to get the signs, colleague request me and I'll pm it to you. I don't know if I can share links on the posts here. Maybe I can just type the name... Dirt cheap signs DOT com. That's one of many places, but that's where I've been getting them since spring of this year. If that doesn't do it for ya, you can also check local plastic companies in your area. They may have corrugated plastic cheaper, and without the shipping. Hope it helps.
Anyone else have any ideas to share? I'm always game to try something new in my marketing.
I find that deeply discounted properties that scream motivated seller on craigslist does make my phone ring the most for finding buyers.
I also had success with direct mail postcards to that zip code to non-owner buyers who bought in the last 5 months.
Those are my successful things in finding buyers.
Finding sellers is an entirely different problem for me.
I don't know if anyone has tried this method. But it works for me.
I call every "rent to own" and "lease purchase" phone number and reply to every "rent to own" and "lease purchase" ad I see online. Doesn't matter if it's out of my state.
Out of 10 calls or replies I send, on average I received 3 call backs or replies.
I have obtained 9 cash buyers so far.
I haven't tried bandit signs because my area is already saturated with them.
I call every "rent to own" and "lease purchase" phone number and reply to every "rent to own" and "lease purchase" ad I see online. Doesn't matter if it's out of my state.
Out of 10 calls or replies I send, on average I received 3 call backs or replies.
I have obtained 9 cash buyers so far.
I haven't tried bandit signs because my area is already saturated with them.
Deb-Im not sure I follow you please break it down for this greenhorned rookie..:) thank you
Hi Ian,
Anytime you see a "for rent" or a "lease option" sign, ad, etc, there's a good chance that it is an investor either trying to rent or cash out on a property that they've fixed. You would simply gather some numbers, call them, and say that you saw their sign, ad, etc, and were wondering if they were interested in picking up anymore properties in that area. If so, explain a bit about what you do, and get their info. You would want to know their name, number, email, what areas they buy in, what areas they avoid, price range, type of property, amount of rehab they want to do, how many properties they plan to buy in the next 12 months, their prefered exit strategy, and how they plan to pay for the properties (cash, hard money, financing, etc). Sorry if that was kind of rambling, but just make yourself a form with that info on the computer and you will have yourself an action-packed buyer lead sheet :) Hope that helps. Anymore questions, post away.
@Joseph Ziolkowski - I am new to REI and trying to navigate all the different paths. I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your response. Very straight forward, helpful and not condescending. I wish you much success!