I've spent the last several years on the marketing side of real estate investing, working with a cash home buying operation here in the Northwest Indiana / Chicago Southland market (Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Jasper, and Newton counties, for those who know the area).

Before that, I spent about 16 years in digital marketing more broadly — SEO, paid ads, content, automation — running a handful of my own ventures along the way. But REI marketing is where I've landed, and it's been a different animal than most industries I've worked in. The sales cycles, the trust-building with motivated sellers, the local nuances of farming specific zip codes and counties — it's its own world.

I've spent a lot of time in the trenches on things like:

• Localized SEO for city/county landing pages (the kind of granular, "Gary IN" / "Hammond IN" level targeting that actually moves the needle for investors)
• Paid lead gen for motivated sellers, including navigating the housing ad category restrictions on Meta
• CRM-to-ad-platform integrations so deal stage data actually informs ad optimization instead of marketing and sales living in separate worlds
• Content strategy that doesn't read like every other "we buy houses" site

I lurk here a fair amount already, but figured it was time to actually introduce myself rather than just absorbing value silently. Happy to weigh in on anything marketing-related if it's useful, and genuinely interested in hearing how other investors and wholesalers here are thinking about lead gen, branding, and standing out in increasingly crowded local markets.

Looking forward to being part of the conversation.