$500 a month to spend on marketing, what should I spend it on?

General Real Estate Investing
1

I have $500 a month to spend on marketing, how should I spend it?? I know a diversified marketing strangely is the best but I can’t do it all on $500. My plan is as follows please advise

100 Bandit 12x18 Single Sided Signs
1500 flyers(black n white very simple)
Then the rest I was going to use to rent a car to put up these signs since I live in NYC and will need to get out of the city to mu target areas. Is it better to skip the flyers and go $200 on DM Yellow Letter? This is not all the marketing I plan to do just the stuff that will cost money. What yields the highest amount of leads for people?

2

I would def do some direct mailings and maybe cut down on the bandit signs and instead do some free marketing with classfied ads.

3

Are you looking for motivated sellers? What specific type of seller are you wanting?

  1. Cash for cheap houses?
  2. Small down payment and seller finance or take over the payments?
  3. Split funding seller financing?
  4. Net lease with the right to sublet?
  5. Lease purchase or lease option?
  6. Straight option or first right of refusal?

Or are you wanting to know who filed for Probate, Bankruptcy, Divorce, Eviction, Civil and criminal proceedings, Notice of default (preforeclosure) or behind in payments of 3 months or more?

There is a list supplier for each of these scenarios.

4

The very first thing you need to do is create your sales funnel, if you haven’t already done so. Otherwise, whatever traffic generating strategies you do will be wasted.

How are the leads suppose to come in by phone, email or both? How are they handled? Create a process something like this:

  1. Marketing strategies directs potential sellers to
  2. Website with your sales pitch and offers a free confidential consultation. Sellers fill out and submit…
  3. Real estate form with questions about their property and their situation.
  4. You analyze the form and you call the sellers at their convenience.
  5. After the phone consultation, you determine in there is a deal or not. If there is you meet with the owner face to face.

By doing something like this you will work smarter not harder.

Now as far as marketing, in the NY area I would for go the bandit signs. Putting them up is a hassle and you may violate some ordinances and get calls from the authorities especially in nice areas. Personally, flyers have not been that effective for me. But it would hurt to give it a try.

What I would suggest is to do online marketing. Create your website, make sure its optimized. Do PPC (pay per click marketing) on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Facebook. Buy banner ads on other popular websites. Post on Craigslist (there are companies that do multiple postings for you. Just search Craigslist posting service).

5

If I had $500 a month on advertising the first thing I would do is get a website made. There are real estate websites that will make it so easy to design yourself or they will do it for you. It is so easy. They have programs and templates that are very easy to use. I would then work to build us your social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. I know they track a lot of people into other networks like Linkedin.

6

I agree with John spend more time to develop a good website and being so much on the social media this will
help you reach so many people in a short time - very effective.