Marketing update - Challenges

Those who have read my last few posts where I have been talking about getting my direct marketing campaigns going will have seen that I have been doing well keeping my plans for getting mailing out on track.

While this is my main goal I do realize there are other things I should be doing and not just going from relying on one deal source (The MLS) to put all my eggs in a new one.

Also since these mailing are my first pieces I'm not likely to get a ton of leads from them. I have not refined my list yet, no idea if my postcard that I'm sending will draw well and it is only going to me my first "touch" so the results should increase as I sent them more pieces, but that could be 6+ months before seeing those results.

Pretty much life and other real estate obligations have kept me from focusing on my other marketing areas. It is easy to justify that these urgent matters have to take precedence but still doesn't change the fact that the pipeline is empty if I don't have any new deals once things calm down. That being said did I really have to have a resale on a flip possibly fall through at the same time that a somewhat serious issue came up in SEVEN different rental units???? In addition to that I have a presentation at my local REIA that I'm giving this Thursday that I still need to finish (Procrastinating on that by writing this:) ).

So this is an abnormally tough 2 weeks (Sh*t started hitting the fan last week) but need to keep focused.

Okay so what have I done right:

1) I did get out those first 2 mailings and have 480 postcards out in less than a week (No calls yet FYI).

2) Actually have a 3rd set of 240 just about ready to go out (Just a few stamps short as they ran out when I bought them the other day). Finished most of them today as I watched the ALCS (Go Sox!). Good time to do mindless work!

3) I did upgrade my car magnets to my nicer branded ones:

Where I have FAILED:

1) I have not been posting my Craigslist ads consistently. I know if you over post you can get "Ghosted" so I want to avoid that. The problem I have is I get busy with things 9-5 when attorneys, bankers, underwriters, section 8 inspectors, other non furloughed government workers and many other only work that I forget to do it during the day. So since I don't want to do it too much I don't want to "waste" a post doing it at night. Then I forget to the next day and all of a sudden it is 4-5 days since the last time I did it. It is almost 10PM as I write this so I will likely forgo doing it again for the same reasoning...

2) Responding to Craigslist ads. Another one that isn't the be all end all, but free and easy. Also when I have done that I have gotten some decent responses. Nothing that close to making a deal but at least they are making contact and it is worth looking into more. I usually do this when I post ads so not getting on that also has hampered me from sticking to this regularly too.

3) Slacking on my MLS searches. Yes the whole reason that I am doing more marketing to sellers is that the MLS has been pretty barren for almost a year now. However it isn't totally dead. I have gotten a few deals since things have tightened. It also has been good to me the last couple years so I need to continue what has worked in the past but just get these new sources going too.

So there is my admission of guilt. Feel free to slap my wrists and tell me to get back in gear. I know what I'm doing wrong so hopefully that means I will be able to fix it.