All Forum Posts by: Omar Ruiz

@Tom Gimer

Yes, I agree. However, in order to get to that point, a medium must be chosen that can generate the leads. This forums intention was to focus on whether people have engage in digital marketing, not on the action of closing a deal.

@Tyler McReynolds,

I appreciate your insight of how this thread has transform from me asking about people's experience of digital marketing to now a back and forth debate about direct mail (traditional marketing) versus benefits of digital marketing. 

I can see how folks are very passionate about their choice of medium. My intention at this point is to track my analytics and share my findings since you are right...folks tend to talk without showing numbers. 

@Andrew Briggs, check your inbox.

Since I am licensed, currently practicing, and trained mental health professional, my tactic is to understand the psychology of a distressed homeowner and use my platform (website or online marketing) to motivate them to choose me over the competition. 

As I have mentioned in previous post, as I was building my site, I was thinking about what is my unique selling proposition (USP). What I concluded was that I work everyday as a therapist, someone who helps people naviagate difficult situations. I have developed my skill on how to talk to people, listen to them, and provide them with resources. If I was not successful at this skill, I would have not been able to develop my own practice and keep it running for the past few years.

I made sure my site showcased my USP by including different circumstances that happens to people which changes them to become distressed homeowners. I included information that people read to better understand how this situations contribute to stress. At the same time, I presented step-by-step (easy to read) wording so that I promote transparency around the process of selling to an investor. I have seen many sites that have 3 steps or 4 steps on the process, but I went a bit further and showed exactly what happens in each step.

For me, it is more than just getting leads and turning them into deals, its about my legacy. I desire to be known for the work I put in rather than the amount of money I earn. Sure, I have and continue to struggle financially trying to work a full time job as a counseling coordinator in a high school, while managing my 18 hour a week private practice and starting to build this investing (wholesaling) business. But struggle comes with the terriorty of trying to build a business that will allow me to transition out of the world of counseling and into the world of investing. 

To put things into perspective, regarding old school (tradtional) marketing, I bought a car sticker to place on my bumper, which is my website addess. I drive a green 99 honda accord and when people drive behind me, I know they see my website. Am I able to measure how many impressions I generate, no. But, I am more focused on bringing awareness to the site. I have seen people take pictures of my bumper, some people pull up next to me asking whether if I am the owner and if I am an investor, etc. Have I gotten a deal from it, again no. But it doesn't hurt to try.

@Jonathan Damon

I appreciate learning about your experience because it provides me insight on what works for other people in different states. For me, bandit signs do not provide enough creditability and I had no calls. Granted, I did not do A/B testing like you but I'm realizing that was because I focused more time driving for dollars and sending mail to property tax list. 

I would rather have a website that I can track more effectively than a sign that has a statement and a number. Internet is more accessible, so I do believe that there are more people online than people with who drive. Plus, people can "travel" more to different sites online than physically driving. As I said in previous responses, to me, the purpose of mail is to receive a bill, an invitation, a check, a notification of some sort or advertisement mail (which people have labeled it as 'junk mail').

@Tom Gimer

Yes, anything on a sign is for the purpose of branding. I truly believe that. Signs sends a message which is normally for the purpose of a call to action. For example, whenever there is a run for political office, people start seeing more bandit signs encouraging them to vote for that candidate. That is solely branding the candidate running for office. The call to action is to vote for that person or that political party. Another example is when a landscaper post up a sign in front of a house they worked on. The sign has their company name and a number. People driving by can see that the sign plus the work provides crediability towards ones business. Call to action here is if you want a nice trimmed yard, call us because our work speaks for itself (branding).

Bandit signs have had it's share of debates: Here is an article I read on BiggerPockets (https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/06/0...), which was posted 3 years ago.

I can respect anyone's perspective of effectiveness as long as they know it works for them. 

Now, I just launched my site and posted a link on the few Facebook investment groups I'm apart of for the sole purpose of increasing my buyers list & bring awareness of me (brand awareness) taking wholesaling as a serious business. 

Within hours, I have gotten about 8 investors to opt in. Google has yet to finish crawling and indexing my site, but as soon as it does, my hope is to both generate more awareness to other investors and potential leads from distressed homeowners. 

I have even connected with one of the investors (CNShomesolutions) which has their own site within Google ads, with the keyword "We buy houses Boston". They opted into my cash buyers list and they have a customized design. They shared some insight to me about how they gain leads through the variety of keywords they market to, we buy houses being the highest cost of them all since it provides the highest traffic.

@Jonathan Damon,

Bandit signs (to me) are just small versions of Billboards. & billboards, according to CapitalOutdoor.com, are designed to "build or reinforce brand recognition and bolster the advertisers image..."  

As far as Bandit signs, What I call what you are doing is A/B testing; basically figuring out which is the most effective sign that generates the most calls. Something, that I am willing to admit, I did not do with my initial Bandit sign campaign.

When speaking about conversion, I understand that to mean the percentage of users who take a desired action. The basic conversion formula is the number of customers who have taken an action divided by the total number of customers. 

I am taking a wild assumption to say that you do not have the equiptment to measure how much traffic is driving past your sign. Because of this, I am still confused as to how you are coming up with 8-10% call conversion. What I see you doing is tracking which sign gets more calls.

@Jonathan Damon,

How many mailers are you sending out per month & how do you track this 3 -8% conversion rate? Is is solely based on how calls you are getting? Plus, if you are using a bandit sign, how can you track it as 8 to 10%? I get you can track Direct Mail as you know how many mailers were sent and how many responses you recieved, but for Bandit signs... I don't know how you would be able to calculate the number of impressions you would get from your signs.

For PPC, in my market, the keyword phrase "We Buy Houses Boston" is going for $25 per click What some folks don't realize is that Google Ads decreases  the cost per click as long as Google notices that a lot of people are clicking on my ad , plus I have a lowerer bounce rate. 

@Matt K., thanks for introducing Bluetooth ads as I was not even aware that medium existed. I will do some more research about them.

@Gerrell King, I saw a video on Youtube from Trevor, owner of OnCarrot.com, where he was discussing some website he found. He mentioned howthe site provides its' visitors with exact information about their business (almost like a comparison chart regarding how much percentage they charge customers). He mentioned the idea of looking at my Unique Selling Proposition (USP). So, after looking at so many investing sites, I came to realize that no one cares to go in depth about the process of how investors come up with an offer or the actual step-by-step process from the time they contact the site owners. So essentially, I decided that the value I am providing will be transparent content (information) on my site. That no homeowner will be confused as to why their offer might be 40% to 70%^ below Market value. My BP profile has my site listed, in case you wanted to check it out since today was my launch.

@Jonathan Damon, I do agree (wholeheartedly) about how we go about marketing has an impact on how our audience will recieve the information. As for email marketing, here is a link to an article about the response rate for emails. It shows that roughtly 20% of people (depending on your business niche) will open those emails, about 3% click on the link to head back to the website, and 1% may bounce off from the site after landing on the site. Similar metrix from Direct Mail of the 1% response rate.

According to ZeroLimitWeb.com, they found that 67.60% of Google searches click on the top 5 organic results (which are the results below the ads). Only 3.73% click on results 6 through 10. And 71.33% of people will click on a link on page 1 of their results before deciding to do another search.

This leaves with Ads about 15% of all traffic within any given search. So, people do click on the ads, but depending on many factors (specific keywords you choose for an ad, how much you bid on those keywords, the struture of your ad, etc) will determine how much actual traffic your ads are truely generating.

Bandit signs, similar to direct mail, may become over saturated. There is still a cost to Bandit Signs, you still have to pay for the sign and the the aluminim bar (unless you staple the sign onto a wood pole). I had signs posted up and my market was rough. I had my sign taken down the next day, other signs taken down within a week, and lost some signs becuase of severe weather. I posted them on high traffic areas, close to the surburbs and highway. No calls. Like I said before, I have tried and continued to try but decided to not waste my money as well as time on traditional marketing in a digital age world.

@Michael Hayworth

I can see your perspective if we are talking about Big brand multi-billion dollar companies. Those commerce businesses have been around for years and when they tested marketing online, it made no sense because, my guess, their product & brand is what gets people to buy. But when we are talking about small businesses, like new investors, I truly believe online is our best option for a higher ROI with our marketing efforts, since we are more of a service than a tangible product. If you want to think outside the box, our websites are our product.

Just like Psychology Today works for my counseling business, Angies list works great for your remodeling business. You pay to be a member of their site as they have done the work to make their site rank on page 1 of Google, which guarantees that people will search within their site to find you (just like people do on Psychology Today for me). 

I had created my own therapy site but soon realized that I was getting 99% of my referrals through Psychology Today. After 3 months, i decided to ditch my personal site altogther. No love lost.

What you just shared just proves my point even more because these referring based websites (Angies list and Psychology Today) do a great job creating an online presence that ensures they rank on high on Google searches so that they generate more visitor traffic, essentially giving them more authority im Googles eyes.

Your clients for remodeling and my clients for counseling are searching online, which proves that digital marketing does work. 

Honestly, if digital marketing didn't work as well as traditional, why would OnCarrot.com or LeadPropellor.com still be in business? They have successfully gained customers who have generated leads by using their template sites. Even though I am not a customer of either site, I still respect what they have done to pave the way for modern investors.

Let's put things into perspective about mailers. My experience is that you have to send out a huge quantity of mailers due to having a response rate of 1%. 

Example, 600 mailers are sent. Possibly 6 people respond. Half of those want to be taken off the list, which leaves with 3 people. And half of those won't accept your offer, which brings you to 1.5 deals that month. Mailers (if using yellowletters) cost what... $.79.  Multipy that by 600 letters, that is $474 for the month for marketing cost. And, people say it takes at least 7 touches before people respond, so thats 7 months if i send mailers once a month which equals $3,318. 

Since you do mailers, am I off on the numbers? How many mailers do you send monthly and out of those, what is the percentage of leads, and from those leads, how many deals?

@Tom Gimer

What I am learning as a marketer (wholesaler), you take the risk of losing money on any campaign you bark upon. I see no difference if someone clicks on my page and then clicks the back button from I mail a letter and don't hear back. I lose money both ways. However, I at least know the person who landed on my page, I can retarget them, which allows for an ad to follow them as they go to many different sites, without having to worry about them telling me to take them off any list. 

For me, Traditional marketing is not holding up the highest ROI for leads. If mailing works for you, great...continue your farming. But, once the years go by and we inheirt the next generation of homeowners, you will have to adapt to their lifestyle.

My belief is that becuase of how technology has evolved so quickly, getting access to a phone (which has online capacity) is so much more attainable. So, there would not be any excuse of not even having a flip phone with 2G/3G internet. 

People in need of solution will do one thing, which is to reach out. Whether that be a phone call to a family member/friend, to going online, to speaking with a neighbor or postal worker, people will find out someway. Most likely, those same people they speak with may suggest to go online or they will go online for them.

Give me 6 months from this Friday and I will post up my updates about how online marketing has worked out. I will be glad to present my numbers just to showcase whether I am far fetched or I am on to something.

@David Goldberg

I am a wholesaler with an office in Boston (Dorchester Ave near Fields Corner). A good space to meet other investors is attending to Black Diamond REI Insiders. They had a meet up yesterday in Waltham. This evening, there is a meet up in Reading with another group (Boston Investors). I won't be able to attend.