Real estate investing, note investing, starting a business – it’s all just business. Businesses live and die based on ONE thing – leads. It doesn’t matter if you have the coolest product in the universe, if no one knows about it, you’re dead in the water. You could be the most amazing and cheapest accountant in modern history, but if no one knows who you are, you may as well quit.

Real estate investing and note investing are 100% based on filling your funnel with quality leads. In order to do so we need two things – a list or a prospect database, and a way of reaching out to them. After that, it’s all experience and execution – that’s the easy part.

Online Marketing for Real Estate Investors

Marketing online is a pretty important aspect of your marketing plan, and one that we’ll spend a lot of time addressing in the future. If you don’t know how to market online for your business, try investing some time into listening to some internet marketing podcasts like Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income Podcast and check out one of the thousands of internet marketing blogs out there.

Direct Mail and Traditional Marketing for Real Estate Investors

I feel obligated to tell you that traditional marketing is not dead. Many people think that Facebook, LInkedIn, Twitter, and Google Plus are the future of business and they may be. I will assure you though that in the immediate future there is no substitute for a conversation, a coffee, and a handshake.

Cold Calling

Dialing for dollars. What an apt description. Cold calling is not for the feint of heart, but neither is starting a business. So, my advice to you is comb the internet or check out the resources I have here on cold calling and acquiesce to the fact that it produces results and that if you want to maximize your reach, you will want to include it in your marketing plan.

Signage – Bandit Signs & Billboards, Bulletins

There are a lot of real estate investors who have profited significantly just from bandit sign placement. There are others who have invested in billboards and knocked it out of the park. For locating deals, billboards and bandit signs are fantastic marketing efforts. White text on a blue background seems to be the most reliable color scheme and the higher the placement on the poles the better. Know your local regulations before you go wallpapering your community or the code inspector may call you for an appointment and  fine you for your trouble.

With billboards it’s really all about cost benefit analysis. Billboards don’t make sense for the investing in notes business as it is such a small niche compared to foreclosure hunting, equity hunting, and distressed sellers.

Bulletins are better saved for marketing to renters and prospective buyers on owner financing.

Buying a List & Direct Mail

List buying is a great way to locate absentee owners and a variety of other high-conversion prospect categories. Getting the list is much easier than grabbing their attention. Consider using a yellow letter mail service that actually writes your script on traditional lined yellow note paper to stand out from the crowd. Some of the yellow letter mail clients are seeing a 16% response rate!

Reverse Ad Marketing

For investing in notes, there are two main profit centers – flipping existing notes and manufacturing new notes. Manufacturing or creating new notes is called note manufacturing. We typically use direct mail to locate existing notes for sale. There are list providers that will sell you a list of owner financed mortgages that you can mail to pretty easily. Remember, high impact mail piece and know what to do with the lead if they call!

For note manufacturing, some of the best leads are existing ads. When someone markets a property for sale and includes the keywords “owner will carry” or “seller financing” they are a great potential note manufacturing candidate. This is where you become a note specialist and walk them through the transaction and part of the deal could be you selling their note on the secondary market and making a fee. You could integrate yellow letter mail here as well to create an additional touchpoint as well as phone calls, email, and postcard marketing.

5 Powerful Tips for Real Estate Investor Marketing and Note Investor Marketing

1. When placing bandit signs in areas where placing bandit signs is “discouraged” try posting on Friday evening and pulling them either really late Sunday night or really early Monday morning. Code inspectors don’t typically work weekends.
2. Personal branding is a great supplement to your direct mail and signage compaigns. Before they call, they’re going to Google you. What are they going to find? If the answer is nothing, or they’re going to find some dubious stuff, you need to work on your reputation management and personal branding online.
3. Track your progress. Especially for direct mail, start tracking your progress. Signage too. Does blue and white work better than black and yellow? Do yellow letter mail pieces work better than postcards? Do door hangers work better than post-its?
4. Set cold call goals that have nothing to do with money. If you’re going to make calls, and I strongly suggest you do, then track the calls. How many did you make? How many people picked up? How many appointments did you set? How many appointments did you have? How many deals did you do? This way you can track and if you need 100 calls for 1 deal and you want to do 10 deals you can fiigure out how that works.
5. Be ready for objections. Every once in a while and I mean once in a WHILE, you may get someone who says – I just want out. Most of the time, you’re going to need to guide someone into the deal and to do so you will have to overcome objections. Find out the top 8-10 objections and have a response for EACH one. Study, memorize, make part of your thought pattern.