All Forum Posts by: Trevor Mauch

@Samson Kimani great question man! 

Since we work w/ tons of investors and we see all kinds of budgets and experience levels here's what we're seeing work. 

Time & Money Budget:

First figure out both your time and money budget. As you know it's going to be about impossible to get leads and close deals without investing time, or money... or likely both. 

If you have more time than money... then you'll definitely need to buckle down and carve out a solid block of time each day / week to do the more manual things. Prospecting on Craigslist (both posting ads and reaching out to sellers in a very strategic and process driven way, we can walk you through what others are seeing success at). Prob carve out 30-60 mins per day on the Craigslist side the first few weeks then you can streamline it down from there to prob less than 30 mins per day. SEO (if you learn it and implement it yourself) is very low cost... not fast... but amazing ROI over the long-term. We've seen it time and time again... over 60% of the 20k+ leads that came in last month for our clients was from SEO that they did themselves w/ our training and our platform.

If you have more money than time... then ya paid methods like direct mail, PPC, etc. etc. 

Bandit signs are still very effective in many places. One of our clients is buying 10-12 houses a month... mostly driven in rural areas in Oregon via bandit signs. Still works when done right. 

PPC can still work a the $600/mo budget if you do the PPC management of the campaign yourself. I see you're in Massachusetts... that budget actually may be enough to get by at the start if it's not for the bigger cities in MA.  But you've got to drive them to a site that converts visitors to leads at a high rate or it won't work too well. 

Getting Real With Our Budgets:

I think most people just randomly pick a budget number out of thin air and say "I have $X to market". Most people have no good reason for picking that number other than them feeling that's a good number they'd be willing to "risk"... vs. coming to that number based on data and math that is most likely to lead to your success. 

If $600 is really the only budget you have... then that's what you have to work with. I'd find ways to trim expenses in your life / business (cable bill, stop eating out for a bit, sacrifice a bit) and get that budget up to $1k/mo+ if possible. 

Just make sure whatever you do that you don't just budget 1 months worth of marketing and blow through that and then not have anything in month 2. 

Reach out anytime man and we'll help walk you through it man. I know I probably didn't give you specific "hey do this marketing method" guidance... but I think really nailing the marketing budget that will best lead to your success is the most important step first. 

Reach out if we can help you man! 

@Austin Mudd hope all is well man! 

I wanted to reach out here really quick. Ya if you're looking at the PPC marketing side of things just let us know and we can help you through that my man. Just hit us up on our next mastermind call and we'll walk you through it and help you w/ the strategy in your market. 

We've got ya Austin! 

@Sharon Vornholt Keep crushing it gal! Always love what you're doing on your podcast :-) 

@Jorge Borjas great question man. 

Here at Carrot we see about 30k real estate investing leads a month come in from our clients 100% online so it's been cool seeing the process that is working for people. Repeatable stuff but yes you have to be committed to invest time and/or money to make it work. 

The way we look at it is a website is just the medium. Just like the paper is the medium for direct mail. 

You can buy a stack of paper for post cards but if you don't have a really great marketing message that's proven to perform over and over... that paper won't do anything for you. 

Once you have an amazingly effective marketing message on the postcard paper... now you need to get that postcard in front of the ideal prospects who  you can best help. So to do that you either go and walk around handing those to people (not very effective, not very targeted) or you can buy a good proven list to mail those postcards to so it's more targeted. 

With websites it's the same... 

... you can't just setup a website and say "I've got a site up, I'm good. Lets start sending traffic to it now". @Scott Costello really active here on Bigger Pockets had set up his own site w/ a professional web developer who was great... but wasn't stellar at setting up a site that performs well... and it got ranked well and got some leads... but then he setup a Carrot site and gets 5x more leads through his Carrot site vs. his custom site. All because of the words on the site and the way it's setup to perform at a high level. 

Next... once you have the message and structure and flow of the site right... then you need to get targeted people in front of it who you can best help. 

How can you do this?

• Craigslist (cheap and quick, but can be hard in some markets)
  
• PPC (not cheap, quick... but you have to really have a high performing website + your campaigns dialed in. This is what we specialize in. Tom Krol uses Carrot using this method)
• SEO (cheap if you do it yourself, not cheap if you hire out to a reputable proven SEO expert, not quick... in competitive markets be in it for the long-term... 6-12 months. But it's the highest ROI marketing our clients see and that we ourselves see. Just have to be patient and implement a proven SEO plan or have a proven expert do it for you)
• Direct mail (add your URL to your offline marketing. Retarget those leads w/ Facebook ads and send your direct mail prospects to a high performing website. We're seeing this ramp up the ROI of clients direct mail in a big way)

But yep, great question man! 

Yes, you have to invest time or money after you setup a solid site to consistently drive qualified traffic to the site so your site (if it's setup to perform at a high level... most aren't). 

Hope this helps man! 

I'm doing a webinar on this exact topic tomorrow actually. PM me and I can send you the link. No cost and I break down the 3 phases...

1. Setting up your high performing website (most aren't, I show you how to fill those gaps)

2. Getting your first leads 

3. Scaling up your leads for consistency and predictability

Go get 'em man! 

Hey @Robert Orrigoni we'd love to have you man! 

We always say to focus on results and performance... those at the end of the day always trump an upfront cost savings over the long run. But ya man, we're here for you if you feel it's a fit! Just reach out anytime and we're here for ya. 

@Courtney Kamdar glad you're using LP and you love it. Go out there and crush it! 

Have a great week y'all! 

- Trevor

@Cesar Tamayo

Awesome man! :-) We look forward to working w/ you guys a bunch. 

A few quick answers for ya... 

• The keyword research, ya totally! That's something we can do for you for free on our weekly mastermind call. For Content Pro members we have a live mastermind call w/ me or Adrian on my team every Tuesday at 11am PST. Those calls are perfect for us diving in and helping you w/ that kind of strategy. All included in your plan. 
• Competitor research + give you a plan: Same thing as above. Our websites are setup great to give you a headstart but of course then it comes to actually implementing a marketing plan / strategy. We have lots of training to help you w/ this but the live mastermind call or a 1 on 1 strategy session w/ Adrian would be perfect here. We'd invest some time w/ you and help you hone in on a plan and give you some things to do. Or if you didn't want to do any of it we have people who can do all of the SEO and PPC work for you if you have more money than time. 

Either way we look forward to working w/ you! 

It's not easy to rank #1 for competitive markets... but our members are doing it everyday w/ a combo of our software system our training and our high touch expert help on our mastermind calls each week and our 1 on 1 strategy calls. 

We've got ya covered! 

Yes, what @Sean Dolan said above. Ditto that. 

Fiverr for SEO is like hiring the fiat mechanic down the street to service your Ferarri... they'll be able to work on it... but they'll probably break something or permanently damage something in the process. 

We had an InvestorCarrot client who was ranked well on page 1 in Google for a motivated seller search phrase in Denver... he was climbing... about spot #5 or so... went to Fiverr to "get some backlinks" to get a bit higher on the page... but the backlinks on Fiverr are always garbage and can actually harm your website rankings over the long haul. 

Long story short... when the links started to hit... his site slowly dropped then went away completely. Got penalized by Google for spammy backlinks and they're still working on getting it cleaned up over a year later. 

If you're serious about SEO... going the cheap route won't get you the result you want. I can tell you from experience. Effective and sustainable SEO takes time, is done right and not rushed, isn't cheap (because it's not automated... but is manual), and isn't cheap. The guys we work with are pretty much about $1k/mo in most markets for investors and I'd pay that all day long for the results they've been pulling for our clients. If you pay a solid SEO firm $1k/mo for 12 months in a competitive market that's a $12k investment... if they're able to get you a top 2 spot in Google for the main search phrases and those phrases get a good volume of searches how many deals does it take to earn your money back and turn a profit? 1 deal probably right? 

Then after that you can go into proactive maintenance mode... many people stop their SEO when they hit a top ranking and their leads keep coming in but aren't spending anything to get them at that point. We suggest not completely stopping your SEO if you hit #1 because it opens up the door for someone else in your market to outwork you and swipe your spot. 

SEO isn't a quick hit kinda marketing strategy so stay away from Fiverr in a big way. Harm from hundreds (or thousands) of spammy backlinks isn't easy or quick to fix. 

Hey @Cesar Tamayo great work getting launched and taking action man! 

First off, as far as "how long did it take for leads to come in" and "how long until you got your first deal from the site" I wouldn't be asking it specific to Lead Propeller customers but to real estate investors in general who are using the web to generate leads. That way you get a more broad and accurate picture of the medium as a whole... then you can dive in w/ LP customers to find out their conversion rate, cost per lead, cost per deal, what methods they're using for their lead gen etc. 

In the end we've seen people get their first leads leveraging Craigslist and their Carrot site or PPC and their Carrot site within hours after launching... on the SEO side that takes longer. In your market we have Carrot members pulling in leads now but it took months in many cases of working on their SEO to get their site ranked high enough to pull in consistent leads. 

So I wouldn't ask what others have done because their markets are likely much different than your market. 

I'd dive into the data and work backwards... 

 - How many people are searching the phrases you want to get in front of that sellers are seaching in your market? 

 - What are the people who are doing PPC and ranking high in Google doing in their campaigns and how much work / expertise do you have to put in to replace them in Google or squeeze your way in on PPC? 

 - What is your ability to close a deal? If you're an experienced investor then you'll close more of your online leads into deals than a newer investor just because of the experience factor

 - What types of deals are you going after? In some markets some people are fine with a $4k profit. While others won't take less than $15k. So identify your target profit per deal and talk to people who are pulling in deals like that and see what they're doing

In the end, you CAN crush it man with the right plan and a high converting website. 

In Reading, PA... if you're following a solid SEO plan you can rank in the top 3 within 4-8 months for highly competitive phrases in that market. If you're doing PPC and have a high converting website (which we've found many LeadPropeller clients coming to Carrot after finding their websites underperformed as far as conversion rate goes) you can have seller leads coming in as soon as today. 

Just really depends on your time and money budget and the performance on your website. 

I hope I didn't throw too much at you Cesar! Go get 'em man! 

Here are some free resources on PPC marketing, SEO, and Content Marketing, and conversion rate optimization to help you on your journey (no opt in or anything required. Just dive in and implement!)

https://oncarrot.com/resources/

Good luck and enjoy! 

- Trevor

@Russ Scheider haha. 

We're here for you man! 

Yep, the main decision at this point is whether you want to learn the stuff (which we can guide you toward free resources to do so) or whether you want help doing it. We can help you either way :-)

I saw you connected w/ me through an IM here on BP so lets setup a time to chat and we'll help you move forward! :-) 

- T

Hey @Mike C. ! Hope all is well and great thread you've started up here! 

Yep we integrate with Podio. Right now the integration is through a system called "Zapier" that is kind of a go between service that connects Carrot and Podio well. 

But we're revamping our efforts on rolling out a direct Carrot to Podio integration and our dev team had a meeting on it yesterday actually. 

Most of the high end investors who work with us (more top wholesalers and flippers use Carrot than any other platform) use Podio and haven't had a problem integrating the two. We can always help if needed too! 

Yes just research the BP forums and there are some really good convos on Carrot vs. LP from BP members that may help you make a decision. 

Here's one: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/92/topics/169...

@Kyle Cabral yes I'm pretty sure LP only sends leads to their inhouse CRM. I could totally be wrong on that one though. But at InvestorCarrot tons of our members use Carrot in conjunction w/ Podio. Probably the most common outside CRM used on our platform. 

Mike our focus is on building the highest performing inbound marketing web presence... to make it easier for you to attract people to your site and convert them at a higher rate once they're there. Then our philosophy is once the lead is converted we have a simple lead manager but allow you to really send those leads almost anywhere from there based on whatever system you're using. That way you get the best of both worlds and you're not tied to using our lead manager. 

Reach out if you have any questions at all! We're here for ya! 

- Trevor

Haha, @Russ Scheider that is overload man! 

Let's dive in and help you man! 

A few questions below... 

1. When you say "I feel like we are relying on keyword searches, as if it is 1992"... what specifically do you mean there? Are you going after certain keyword phrases? If so, let me know what they are and what kind of results your seeing on your http://charlestonallcashhomebuyers.com site. 
2. None of that stuff you mentioned is dead :-) That's a good thing. But you do need to choose what to focus on to master (or hire out). We never suggest people start with Twitter or Instagram. They are things you "stack on" once you have got your website stuff figured out and honed in. Google PPC is working as well today as ever. Just a slight strategy tweak after googles latest update. 
3. On your http://charlestonallcashhomebuyers.com site, there are some key things that are dragging down results on that site in a big way. 
   
   - SEO wise: Your title tag is struggling. Work in something relevant to the phrases you want to work to rank for. The page has very little content to help Google realize it should rank for certain phrases in Charleston. Gotta beef up that site and get more content and optimize it well. 
   
   - Conversion: The opt in form is likely causing your site to underperform by a lot. It's way too many form fields and really adds resistance for the house buyer in filling out the form. Ideally shorten down that initial form a good bit. We have found in our testing a 2 step process is performing best. We're re-testing other form setups but haven't yet beat a step 1 form with 3-4 form fields that feeds into a longer step 2 form. We wrote a blog post about it here that walks through it. 
   
   There are other conversion elements that are lacking on the page too. Not your fault man! It's just that we have about 7 years head start on you in conversion rate optimization :-) It's what we do everyday. You're not expected to know it. But here's a resource you may find useful to beef up the conversion rate on your site based on our own testing (it's a checklist)
   
   Conversion Checklist
   
   No opt in for any of that stuff. Enjoy :-)
   
   
   Report back when you've had a chance to answer those questions above and/or implement! 

Our biggest advice is to focus on what you do best and let experts focus on the stuff you don't enjoy and aren't good at. If you feel online marketing is something you want to make a big part of your business, really commit to learning SEO and conversion optimization... or hire it out to people who do or get systems that make it easier. 

If you need any help w/ this stuff reach out. We're here for you (and can make your life a heck of a lot easier ;-)

- Trevor