All Forum Posts by: Omar Ruiz

Since we had a quick mention about baby boomers, here are 2 articles that I found interesting as it pertains to marketing to that generation:

Forbes - Five things you need to know about Marketing to Baby Boomers

QuickSprout.com - Forget Millienials. 7 reasons why Baby Boomers are the Ideal Target

I have also added some visuals since I have gotten a lot of feedback about how great this discussion has been:

I have attached a screen shot of my Facebook business page just to showcase the begginings of my engagement with Facebook Ads (online marketing). 

As you can see my video post has reached 80 people with 29 actually clicking to watch my video (this represents 36% of people, targeted based on location & age, that have at least pressed play to watch my video). I have only spent $.71 on day one and had 29 people (that I can measure) see my video. The length of the video is 1min & 1sec. This is my first video, not the greatest but at least I have decided to take the plunge and start.

The second campagin is a website promotion ad. This is solely a picture of my logo, a few text, and a link to my site. It has reached 325 people since I started it 3 days ago. Only 5 people clicked my link (this represents about one and half percent margin) and I spent $3 each day, which by end of today I would have spent $9 (for which the cost per person reached is $.02). 

Question people may ask, have I gotten a lead yet? Nope. Its only been 3 days, and my site has still yet to be crawled by Goole in order to be indexed so it can't start ranking and for me to review my Google Analytics to see how much traffic am I truely getting...Which is why I say, give me 6 months as I need time to study and do some more testing. 

Please be mindful, I have only started the Facebook online course and I just want to try it out.

@Alex C. 

Check your notifications, just sent you a message with the link.

@McKinley Crowley,

When you are speaking about local listings are you referring to Moz Local or Yext listings. I have manually entered my site to different sites (Vator.com, BBB.com, Local directories, etc) for the purposes of backlinking. I used SEMRush to help me see what my compeition is using for backlinks.

I learned not to buy backlinks but if I pay for Moz or Yext, is this the same as buying backlinks or are these viewed differently since they are more for creating local listings rather than backlinks?

As for researched, I have spent time reading blogs, watching YouTube videos (Brain Dean, Neil Patel, and others) and installed Yoast plugin plus Google Analytics. I have submitted my site (sitemap) to Google Console today, so I am just waiting for them to crawl and index my site. I was told it would take from 4 days to 4 weeks. Since its the holiday season, I am fine with being patient around the crawling process. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to bring up a lot of unknowns to many investors who are interested in building their website and online presence. The push around implementing SEO is to help rank your site so it can reach page 1 on Google searches. This is called organic search results. You can increase your traffic by working on SEO which will, in time, increase your ranking, thus increasing traffic. But. many folks still do not know what is SEO, how can it be applied to your website, and the length of time it will take until you see results.

My question is can folks share your experience of SEO implementation? How long did it take? What do you really need to know? How did you learn about SEO and do you need to hire people to teach you about this tactic?

Here are the basic categories of what I have learned about SEO:

Offpage - Things you can't control on your site, but can have an influence on how it gets ranked. 

• Building Backlinks (from aged and trusted domains)
• Social Reputation/Social Shares
• Offline Marketing

Onpage - Things you have control within your site, that you can make changes to right now.

• Content
  
  • Keword Research
    • Short Tail Keywords
    • Long Tail Keywords
  • Keyword Planning
  • Keyword Organization
    • Keyword Density
  • Body Copy
    • Quality
    • Content research
    • Freshness
  • Header tags (H1/H2/H3)
• Vertical Search (Images/VIdeo/News)
• Title Tags
• Meta Description
• Alt Tags
• Alt Description
• Permalinks
• Descriptive URLS
• User Experience (UX)/User Interface (UI)
• Mobile Responsive
• Silo Structure
• Use of Images/Videos
• SSL Certificate (https)
• Site Speed
• Sitemap
• Internal/Outbound Links
• Link/Anchor Text
• Blogs

Violations

• Duplicate content
• Cloaking
• Thin Content
• Keyword Stuffing
• Piracy
• Ads/Top Heavy Layout
• Paid Links
• Link Spam

@Ian Walsh,

I would agree to some extent. Not all the properties I am targetting belong to Baby Boomers. For instance, Divorce, Landlord, Inherited Houses, Relocation, etc are just some situations that are not identifiable by age but rather circumstances.

The list I targeted (Property Tax) is specific to the Baby Boomers since that is a list that would focus on higher equity since there is no mortgage (or at least no 1st mortgages, my first lead was from a homeowner who took out a 2nd mortgage).

You point out the exact aspect as to why I have chosen to distance myself from direct mail. You said, "Our biggest market players use direct mail in massive amounts". If I am, as with many newbie wholesalers, trying to build my business, I must be realistic about how much I can afford and will my marketing standout from the crowd of letters sent.

@Scott Showers,

I would mail out about 500 a month because that was how much I could afford for marketing. I would email each towns tax assessors office and request a copy of the tax title list. I had to contact several towns becuase many of the list were smaller than others. I did purchase 2 seperate list from ListSource (one focused on Spanish speaking homeowners since I am bilingual).

The calls I did get were mostly from the Property Tax list. I got different types of calls. A good handful of homeowners who were mad and wanted me to take them off the list to others who wanted to set up a time to meet. What I also noticed was that I saw a corrolation between Driving for Dollars and Property Tax list. Most of the houses I would see as distressed were on the Property Tax list.

@Antoine Martel

I just started watching my online course on Facebook ads. I have also started a video campaign (boosting my video post). How long are your videos? Do you incoporate Facebook live, pre-record the video, use a cartoon template video or have it recorded professionally? I also noticed that if someone clicked on my video it was $.03. I am still awaitng to see the cost when they click to my site.

I appreciate everyones 2 cents about Digital Vs Direct Mail. The original intention of this post was for me to hear from people who have converted to the digital space, not about why I should continue Direct Mail as part of my funnel method. I hope that my responses throughout this post provides the readers a look into my journey towards building an investment business utilizing digital means. 

Does Direct Mail work? Of course it does, and I have shared how I have recieved calls from it. But, ultimately, that is not how I want to run my business in 2018 and on. 

If that statement rubs you the wrong way, than I would want to know from you, how come? Why are you so upset about the choice I have made for my business? Do you feel compelled to teach me something? Are you worried my business will fail? Do you think I am a naive Millennial who has no idea about the business? These are just some questions I want folks to think about before they respond. It is in my opinion that it is important for folks to understand that you have a right to an opinion within this forum. You can say Direct Mail is all you do and it works within your market. But, please understand, if your opinion does not bring value to my life and the choices I have made thus far, then it will have no impact on the decisions I will make for my future. Which is why I have no desire to go back to Direct Mail, regardless of what folks have shared. If it works for you, continue doing you. 

Its surprising to me how passionate people are when it comes to providing me with feedback regarding their experience of direct mail versus digital. I also enjoyed reading peoples insight on what makes a "good marketer". I am facinated to hear more from peoples experience (short or long) of building an online presence. 

My question to the BP community has been about learning what folks experience from they decide to go all digital? If so, why? What are you noticing works best for you? Do you know what is your average CPC, and how much are certain words cost?

@Ned Carey,

Here is some clarity to those who are reading this forum, I look to simplify marketing. By this, I mean I place marketing into two categories: Offline & Online. 

Each category has their own funnel method (Offline - Direct Mail, Driving for Dollars, Door knocking, Bandit SIgns, etc... Online - Email, Website, Google/Bing Ads, Retargetting ads, Youtube, Podcast, etc). 

For months, I have solely tried Offline marketing tactics. I got one lead from each method (more from Direct Mail). But, these were not motivated sellers. They all experienced distress (i.e. hoarding, landlording, and pre-forclosure), but they were not motivated enough to sell at a discount. They all wanted retail price, willing to discount but not enough that justified the condition of the house. 

Thank you so much for your feedback Ned. I would respectfully disagree with you about limiting myself. I look at the choice I am making to transition to digital as my way to adapt to the changes in consumer behavior. I have no desire to be a wholistic marketer. Like your quote says, "Everything works somehere". For me, offline was not my everything. Plus, I am not spending my marketing budget on illogical methods, there must be logic to what I am doing. 

@Vince DeCrow

I would love to get a look at your site and chime in with you about your experience. I have spent time studying SEO (Keyword Density, H1/H2/H3 tags, title tags, meta desciption, 300 min words on each page, internal & external links, silo structure, simple permalinks, alt tags, etc). and implemented on my site. This is why it took me so long to launch the site. 

I am just awaiting to hear back from my web design team as I need them to change my sitemap from HTML to XML so that Google Console can crawl it and Index it.

@Tom Gimer

I will admit, I personally need more training around sales skills. I am confident that I have skills around navigating complexity, especially when there's a lot of emotions attached to it, since that's what happens in my counseling sessions.

My plan is to continue reading articles, watching YouTube videos, and practicing with my business partner. My partner is a bit more skillful in closing. So, he is my plan B. My plan C is using Big Brand (ugly houses). One of the franchise owners recently emailed folks seeing they would give $5k referral fee if we refer them a lead they can close on. My hope is not to go with plan C, but it never hurts to have that as a back up option.

@Grant Smith

I promise to keep folks updated. I thought about potentially vlogging about it, but that would be a big leap to put myself out there.

@Christi Hawkins 

I was skeptical about purchasing a course but so far, its been worth the $ & time.

@Jimmy Watts,

I'm taking them from Udemy.com.