Episode #35 – Marketing Strategies for Wholesalers
0:19
The main reason your marketing doesn’t work is because of your sales ability, your relatability, to these homeowners, these investors, a lot of that comes from knowledge and the confidence that you have in your ability. So, if you think about how things are, you know, typically contagious, if you’re in a bad mood, you meet someone, you put them in a bad mood, it’s a stressful conversation. If you’re in a good mood, you know, you sit there and laugh with whoever you’re you’re speaking with. So that directly correlates over to your ability to get results from your marketing and from your business. The The easiest way to do that is, you know, I mean, if you have a dog, if you have a favorite TV show a favorite, you know, song, something that is gonna get you in a good mood before you make phone calls, or you train yourself, whether you’re in a bad mood, and you answer that phone, when it rains, you train yourself to be in a good mood to be able to put that person in a good mood, because, you know, we had an episode a while back called the power of Yes, the more you can agree with someone, the more you’re reinforcing a relationship with them, you’re not necessarily agreeing with them. But you’re giving them the ability to move closer to you. As far as that that conversation and that relationship goes. Because the one thing no one wants to hear is is no. So the more you say yes, you know, the better your results are or could be. But you know, a lot of people forget that. The most popular word in the English language is a person’s name. So when your own when you’re on a phone, or when you’re talking to someone saying their name is reassuring tool, it gives them the confidence, the ability to be in a good mood, like you’re listening, you’re paying attention to them, you’re relating to them. That part everyone likes to hear their name, they don’t always like to hear their name, you know, in difficult situations, you know, think about when you were growing up, if you heard your first middle, or you know your full name from your parents, you automatically knew you were in trouble. But if they just called you by your first name, you didn’t know what was coming. And that that’s still true, regardless of your age. So the more you use someone’s name when you’re talking to them, typically the better results that you’re that you’re going to have. And that is that is important when you’re trying to to sell yourself because you’re not really selling a house when you go talk to a homeowner, you’re selling yourself so that they trust you or they want to do business with you. And that’s what winds up getting you these leads.
3:39
Now what I see and I do it as far as marketing goes, I do basically the exact same marketing everyone else does. But there’s a difference in the results from your marketing now you’re never going to close every lead that you get, but you need to have a good close rate. And you know, years ago when I was when I was selling cars, they would say that 10% of the leads is a good close ratio. And yeah, I don’t know if that still stays true in that industry or not. But you know, when you go into a car dealership, they don’t want you to leave they’ll throw every they’ll throw the kitchen sink at you the sales manager, let’s go drop this you know, keep it over the weekend, keep it overnight. They do not want you out of that car because they want to establish a bond between you and that car that you don’t want to leave to be able to get that sale. So in this industry it’s it’s a lot of the same. You know, everyone says be the first one to call Don’t let a lead sit there. That’s not always the case. Me personally, I do answer the phone when when the lead comes in. But typically what I do when so I get an email someone opts in on the website, or I get a lead from from a different source. Typically what I do is I will intentionally wait a couple of hours to call that person back. Because one thing that I’ve noticed in this in this business is, a lot of times when when people, you know, call you there, they’re kind of that that impulse. And when I mean impulse is think about when you go to the gas station, if you’re going to the gas station to get gas, but you walk up to the, to the counter, and you see a, you know, a Pepsi or three musketeers or something like that next to the cash register, there’s a reason those are there is because they’re what’s called as an impulse buy. And typically, though, they they mark up those specific items, because they know that person’s going to buy something on impulse, whether they need it or not. So when I say I typically don’t call people back immediately, when it’s a when it’s a lead that comes in, not directly from from a phone call that I answer is because I want them to have enough time to settle down. And a lot of times, I want them to be able to talk to other people before they talk to me, because a lot of times you’re gonna have those, those people that will call them and promise them the world. And then all of a sudden, they can’t, they can’t, you know, do what they say they can’t back it up, they over promise but under deliver. So when they have someone like me that calls that can basically do what I say that gives them a sense of reassurance. But when that when you know, and a lot of times, they’ll say, well, I’ve got somebody coming out at this time, whatever. And I say, Okay, well, I’ll come out an hour after, because I want to be the last one there. Because typically, when you’re the last one layer, you’re the one that gets the gets the contract. Now, it doesn’t always happen that way. Some people go out there and, you know, say they’ll give you this amount for a house, and you scratch your head and say, I don’t know how that’s possible. But you know, if if they’re, if they’re able to close it, that’s, that’s great for you, that’s more money for you, this is what I can do. So if you know if that doesn’t work out, feel free to give me a call, and I will actually, you know, buy this house, there won’t be any I can’t close on it, there won’t be any, I’ve got to send my contractor over there and my partner this and that. So you know, a lot of times, I’ll end up getting the phone call a month after I’ve been out to look at a property because whoever it was that came before me and offered that higher price couldn’t actually close. And that that happens a lot of times without me even doing anything because I put them in that automated email and text system to where you know, 15-30 days, they’re getting a text or an email from me that it’s I’m kind of staying in front of them and letting them know, hey, the backup plan is here. And a lot of times the backup plan becomes the best plan. So it helps you not overpay and it helps you not over promise a lot of times when when you have that confidence that you can do and deliver what you’re what you’re saying that you can do. Because, you know a lot of times people will go out there and it’s what I what I do with the with an MLS system, a lot of people will go out there and they’ll put a house under contract as soon as that houses is on the market. That that may be that may be a good strategy for a lot of people. That is I do not do that. And never ever ever do that. I look for houses that have been sitting there for a little while. Because one thing that that that I’ve realized over the years is you have people that will call that agent or call that wholesaler that homeowner if it’s a for sale by owner, and now you know, let’s say they’re asking $200,000 for their house, they get these $150,000 offers time after time after time. So mentally, everyone that has come before me has beat them down in their mind. And then when I come in, and I say Hey, I’ll go look at this property and I get in front of them. And we start discussing, you know what I’ll pay for reasons I’ll pay for it. You know, things like that. Then it makes sense to them. When they get to the point to where they’re tired of having to show this house. They’re tired of taking these phone calls, they just want to be finished with it. So when these other people go out there and they say I’ll give you $150,000 for the house, I might show up and say Hey, I’ll give you $140,000 but they’ve gotten to that emotional point to where they’re just tired of it. And then they wind up selling it to me, I’ve done that countless of times. And it winds up being a better deal for me, because everybody else that came before them, that owner wasn’t necessarily ready to sell that house, they didn’t have a realistic expectation of what they could get for their house. But after they kept hearing a lower number time, after time, after time, after time, they started to realize, maybe what I wanted for this house is not possible. So when they hear from me, and I show up, and I’m a professional, I have confidence, I don’t jerk them around and give them false promises. They realize it’s just time to sell. So let me take what I can get, because I’m tired of dealing with this.
10:51
Now your marketing side of it. This is where a lot of people get frustrated. And I’m gonna kind of explain some reasons why it happens. And I’ll start with, say, Google AdWords years ago, Google would let you kind of have exact matches and things like that. So where if somebody searches for, you know, say, we we buy houses, if you had an exact match sitting on that, then the only thing that would trigger that ad? Was we buy houses? Well, Google realized that they weren’t making the money that they should be making. So even though you have an exact match, keyword search, now they turn these exact match results into I mean, I had one the other day that I was looking at, for I think it was sell my house fast. And it pulled up. How much do houses sell for Oh, such and such Street. And that was the stock market opening, by the way. But instead of them just having an exact match of sell my house fast. Now it’s how much does do houses sell for on the street, which had nothing to do with that keyword. Somebody was asking basically for comps instead of trying to sell their house. But when you click on, you know, little terms and agreement with Google, that’s that’s basically what you’re agreeing to. So you you, you have to take those with it. And it in all honesty, it sucks, because you look at how much that How much did the house sell for on such and such Street, you might have a $10 click that didn’t have anything to do with, with your exact with your search phrase that that you were trying to get matched on when somebody searched for it. So what I do is the broad keywords, the modified broads, the phrase matches all of those things, you have to kind of leave them the way that they are. But whenever I see something like that come in, I take that phrase immediately. And I mark it as a negative phrase, a negative keyword cert, so to speak. And it’s frustrating that you just constantly have to do that. Because you’re you’re in a lot of ways you’re wasting money. But you’re having to fight their system, because all they’re out there doing is just trying to make money for their company. And they really don’t care. If they’re giving you the actual leads that you won’t, because they think that they have enough search volume to where you have to do it. So what I do, and they cannot stand it is I set my search budget, my ad budget every single day to $25. You do not go over sometimes they go a little bit over, but you do not go over that, that that daily budget that I have out there. And some of the key words, you know, may have a $20 max battle. But I said every one of my bids, I do not let Google pick my bid price, anything like that I said every single one of them because you’ll have these in there. You want to be the top of the first page on this keyword just I don’t do any of that. And I know a lot of people do. And that’s fine. Let them waste their money. Because the reason that I do that and I put those those phrases in those keyword searches in the negative beats Is because I’m, I’m reducing what I actually want Google to show my ad own. So there are certain keywords that I know are going to give me the search that or won’t. But when people start searching for things that are not there, I don’t want them, I don’t want them clicking on my ad. So a lot of times these invest these wholesalers go out there, and they just talk to the first page, and they’ll pay whatever it is. And the first time you see $100 charge for one click, it will change your Outlook, because what you’re what you’re effectively allowing are these wholesalers that are just spending money to spend money, thinking they have to have every single lead. So you let us that’s money they can’t use to buy houses with. So if you know if they’re out there spending $50 a click $100 a click, they’re spending $10,000 a month on a Google Ad bid. You take that for a year, that’s $120,000. And depending on what market you’re in, that may be five houses. And that might be one house. But that’s that’s one they’re not getting. So you have to look at it in a in a trade off way, especially when it comes to Google ads. There, they legitimately could care less about their about the people that they’re charging, they’re just looking for the revenue. If you ever tried to call customer support, to have a question about an ad or something like that, then good luck with that, because you’re not going to be satisfied with the answer. They’ve got programs out there now that one that I use is called click cease. Basically, what it does, is it tracks the IP addresses of people that are clicking on your ads. Because surprisingly, you’ll have a lot of your competition, click on your ads just to fraudulently towards you money. It happens all the time in this business. So when you run these ads, you need something to track these IP addresses. Because you’ll wind up seeing these the same IP showing up that just keeps clicking your ad, you might get, you know, one a week or five a week or whatever it may be. But these programs like a click SES will pick up on that. And then they have something arranged with Google Now you’re rarely getting money back. But they’ll send the report to Google for you every single month saying hey, this IP, click this ad five times we need our money back. Now, occasionally, they’ll give you some money back. But nine times out of 10 they’re not gonna do it. But what it winds up doing is blocking that IP address from seeing your number. So it’s similar to say blocking someone on Facebook, you don’t get to see their comments anymore, their posts, things like that. So it’s saving you money, so to speak. Because your your competition is out there just clicking just clicking on your your ads, trying to cost you money. Instead of getting business the honest way. You’ve also got wholesalers out there that will click on ads, to call other wholesalers and say hey, I’ve got a deal on such and such Street, or I’m out of state and I’m calling you know, people local. I cannot tell you how much that upsets others in this business, if you are clicking on ads, it would shock me if you’re getting any kind of response that you like, from another investor, when you click on their ad and cost their money, because if they find out, you’re doing it nine times out of 10 they’re gonna cuss you out and hang up on because it’s not professional. It’s just not. You can go and search, you know, Home Buying companies in a certain market. And you’ll have results that show up that isn’t going to call someone any money, call those numbers, because nine times out of 10 the same people that are running the ads are listed on the first page of Google anyway. So you sitting there costing somebody money just to pick up the phone and say hey, I’ve got a deal. I can sell it to you for you know $150,000 when it’s $100,000 house because you know absolutely nothing about what you’re doing. I blocked those numbers from my phone. And I blocked those IP addresses as well because I never want to talk to that person again. They’re they’re costing me money, they are wasting my time. So that’s that’s something that if you do it, don’t ever do it again because if that investor finds out about it, it’s not going to be a happy conversation that you have.
19:58
The other avenue that a lot of people users as Facebook years ago, you could you could specifically target, get some good leads on Facebook, things like that. Now, it’s pretty well worthless. A lot of people still do it. People will say, Hey, I can I can get you these leads, and I can do this. You can’t even get a look alike audience for housing, you can’t target for housing, you might be able to go in there and put in interests like Home Repair, Zillow, realtor, homeownership, things like that. That’s not gonna, that’s not specifying what you’re what you’re looking for. because years ago, you could go in and say, hey, I want this demographic, this age group, I want people that own a house, I want people that have a mortgage that are behind on it, I won’t, how many lines of credit that they have, things like that. But then Facebook had some kind of lawsuit for discrimination or whatnot. And now it’s a special category. So if you put anything on there, you know, related to buying houses or anything like that, they want to prove your ad unless you you put it in a housing category. And then when you put it in a housing category basically takes all your targeting away from it. So Facebook, just like Google, is pretty much just throwing it against the wall to see if it sticks. Facebook has something that that Google doesn’t, because when I do it, typically I’ll see leads come in that say I live in apartment this and I would like to buy this house and how much is this house when you when you, you know, run these ads? Especially if you put a picture of a house on the ad, instead of someone actually reading the ad, they just see your house and they’re desperate? How much do you How much is this house. So you know, you’re you’re spending money then because people are just simply not reading the ad.
22:01
And because Facebook is trying to abide by whatever lawsuit that they had filed against them, that kind of puts the handcuffs on, on investors to be able to find leads through Facebook. Even though I’ve run them, I’ve never actually closed the deal off of Facebook, a lot of times I’ll even call these people back, especially when I put the form right there on the ad. I’ll call these people back in the night and do that. I wouldn’t have your contact information, if you didn’t. So sometimes it’s just a simple little tap that they’re not paying attention to. And because Facebook pre fills, you know, the forum for you. Next thing, you know, you’ve got a lead that they didn’t mean to so to speak.
22:52
The the other one that everyone does is is the postcards. And everyone always has a question of why do I get so many that are, you know, postcards that are returned? or Why do I get you know, these leads that people will call me and say they’re not trying to sell my house or that they sold their house last year, or it’s a different situation. What you don’t realize is is these postcard companies are purchasing the information from every courthouse in the country. And it’s what is called as an xls feed. It’s the same theme that Zillow is of the world and the realtor dot coms of the world use the courthouses are actually selling this information to these different providers. If you wanted to go buy it yourself, you can do that. It’s there’s there’s nothing that says that you can the reason you get bad information, stale data, things like that is because it depends on how often the courthouse updates that feed xls. Think about a spreadsheet, like through Excel xls feed. So when say you’ve got a courthouse that only updates their information every six months, you are going to have terrible information. If you get a courthouse that updates at once a week, you you’re gonna have good information, getting a courthouse to tell you how often they update their list. Good luck on that, because they’re not going to do it. Unless you make a real good friend in that courthouse. They’re not going to do it. I don’t know why. But most of them in the courthouse. If you go to the assessor’s office, or the collector, you’re they’re not even going to know that they sell the information because The database columns from some other, you know, top floor department, the executives, whatever. But every courthouse sells that information. When you’re, when you’re trying to get the best data, a lot of times it, you need to stack the information. And what I mean by stack the information, let’s say that you use prop stream. Now prop stream. A lot of people use it, I use it, there’s there’s faulty information on Prop stream. It’s not necessarily their fault. But you have to figure out how to find it and remove it, so that you’re not wasting money on that marketing. And one way that you do that is you go through and say I want a tax lien, or I won’t tax delinquents, I will no ownership change, if we’re in 2021. Now, the last sale date, I won’t previous twos. You know, today in 2019, I don’t want somebody that bought a house within two years, because I don’t have enough room in it nine times out of 10, to be able to sell it for what I need bought for, you can go in there with the cash buyers, things like that. But if even if you go in there for, say, a cash buyer that paid all cash for it, and a lot of times that information maybe is maybe faulty as well, because that courthouse may not record an actual mortgage on that property. So it’s listing it as a cash buyer. And then you’re sitting there sending a postcard to them, not realizing they actually have a mortgage on it, or they go refinance it, and then get recorded where there’s a mortgage on it now.
26:52
So you’re you’re kind of stuck in sending out postcards for people that can’t sell it. So like I said, if you’ve got $150,000 sale, and it looks like a cash, nine times out of 10, somebody that paid $150,000, for a house bought at retail, or close to retail. So for you to make money, let’s say that you need to get it for $100,000, you’re rarely going to find a house within a two year period that you can, you know, get them to take a loss own and sell it for less than they bought it. So that’s why I always go for the last sale date two years earlier. So what what you can do, and this is what I do is stack them all together, the tax liens, the cash buyers, divorces, bankruptcies, those kind of things. And my list is not always going to be a big list. And that’s fine. Because I don’t want to be a big list because I’m wasting money. I’m trying to laser focus target the people that are more likely to sell than just throwing it out there and seeing if it’ll stick. And then what winds up happening I use a I use the the yellow letter HQ for mailing these out. But there there’s a couple of places to where you can go find their financial score, so to speak. So if someone is in a lot of debt, or they’re not in a lot of debt, you can go and pull a list of what they basically call the financial score index. So say like, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, their report and this person is 30 days late on their credit, they’re this they’re that they’re underwater, their debt to income ratio is as low. You can go pull those lists, just for houses with a certain score on it. I typically I think do a 20 to 30, because those are the ones that are kind of in some financial difficulty. And then when I sit there and put those two together, those two lists the one that I pulled from prop stream, and in the one that there is in financial trouble. What winds up happening is it tells me on that yellow letter HQ that I have this this amount, this number of potential leads that are on both lists. So now I know exactly who is in financial trouble. And who was on these lists, instead of just sending them out there and hoping somebody calls because that puts me into a specific group of people that are more likely to sell their house instead of somebody that isn’t and just calling me to tell me to take them off their list and Don’t ever call them again and you know, you You’ve gotten those phone calls, you know what they say on. So when you’re when you’re trying to maximize your marketing, you have to sit there and and realize you need to practice your sales ability, practice your happiness, because people will gravitate to your happiness, your willingness to help them, you’re happy to help them. This is what I can pay for the house. You know, take it today, that’s great. If not call him if it doesn’t work out. But maximize your your leads, so that you’re not wasting money. And you may sit there and go, Well, I can only send out 500 postcards, you know, this month, if you got 10 deals out of 500 postcards, instead of 5000, you saved a lot of money, you saved a lot of time answering the phone, going through leads, filtering them things like that, versus just throwing it against the wall to see if it sticks.
30:58
So make sure when you’re doing this, you’re you’re practicing your sales, you’re trying to get as specific as possible, you’re using the Facebook and the Google is just a if I get lucky type marketing, just as exposure for your brand, the company so that when someone goes to search, you know, for you, you look like you’re an actual professional, because you’ve got an online presence and other places. Because people will do that now. But you’re not counting on Facebook or Google to actually give you solid leads, month in and month out. Because they’re not, they just want revenue to tell their shareholders, how great and wonderful they are, how much money they’re making, so that their stock price goes up. And you know, they can become even more billionaire than they already are. You have to take control of your destiny, so to speak on this. So practice your sales part of it. And also practice how you’re actually marketing how you’re getting specific about it. Because if you’re doing the exact same thing everyone else is doing, you’re gonna have a you’re gonna have limited success. Now. The marketing channels, they’re pretty much set up there, you know, maybe you advertise on YouTube with a video. But the channels themselves the Google’s the Facebook postcards, some are still cold calling and sending mass tax and things like that. Those are channels, those are pretty well set. Unless you’re just going out there getting lucky and hanging out at a shopping center or a bank waiting for somebody to try to refinance at can something like that, then the channel parts or set you just have to alter your approach in those channels to be able to be more successful than your competitors. Kind of outsmart them though the works. Work smarter, not harder mantra is where you’re going to find success in that I’m going to I’m going to post a link for the the yellow letter HQ to kind of give you a breakdown of how it works. Under you know on this on this podcast so that you can you can take a look at it see if it’s something that that you want to want to look at. And maybe start using it’s not expensive, but it’s not for everyone either. It may be for you, that’s completely up to you but but with that we’re going to we’re going to draw to a close if you want to find any more information about how to kind of grow your business, the the the foundation part not the the fancy and the guru type things just business.
34:08
You can go over to EarlToms.com and look at some things like that. Listen to another episode of the podcast because we do this every other week every two weeks. We do it for free just to try to help help everyone out kind of make this this aspect of the industry a little bit more a little better. Because if you’ve been in this industry long enough you know you know the good and the bad of it. So we’re trying to bring some more good out of it but but like I said I’ll post a link for the the yellow letter HQ and if you want to find any more information, you know feel free to run over to EarlToms.com and and read and listen to try to help you out but Like I said, with that we’re gonna draw to a close and we’ll have another episode for you and in two weeks.
35:07
Thanks for listening
