How To Keep Doing Lead Generation While Everything Is On Lock-Down?

General Real Estate Investing
1

How can you continue generating business when everything is on lockdown?

Here are 3 strategies:

  1. Talk to your PC. Send them a text to let them know that you care. This way, you increase Top-Of-Mind Awareness. Fill your pipelines and sow the seed for future business.

  2. Virtual networking with investors. They will want to buy during the probable housing downturn. You’ll find them at online real estate investor meet-up groups. Go to meetup.com, find investor groups, and join or initiate virtual meetings with them.

  3. Keep prospecting for motivated sellers (Expireds, FSBO’s, vacant homes, vacation homes) because they need to liquidate assets so they can get cash reserves. Do a virtual listing presentation with them.

Even when everything is indefinitely on hold, keep filling the pipelines. Be proactive and find people to help. So when everything opens up again, you’ll be in a position to make money and you can thrive through the tough times. Play to win, and always expect YES

2

It’s interesting to me that MLS listings have fallen off by nearly 30% in the last month. Of course, that mostly means that the sellers that didn’t need to sell, let their listings expire, or worse, couldn’t lower their prices any further, and decided to sit it out for now.

Either way, the ones that still have their houses listed are the MOST motivated to continue trying to sell, despite fewer buyers and a depressed market.

The bottom line? Now’s the time to negotiate a bargain, and/or create an opportunity for yourself …especially if you’re buying a house to live in.

And ignore the naysayers that say that soon-to-be defaulted buyers are ‘not’ motivated, because they have mortgage forbearance options available. Sorry, but mortgage forbearance, does not mean that a borrower’s credit isn’t compromised or damaged in the process.

Find the motivated sellers and make a profitable offer. They can always say, ‘yes.’ You can’t steal deals if you don’t make the offers.

Otherwise, when’s the most welcome time to douse the seller with a fire hose? When his mortgage is on fire.

3

Great tips! Thanks for the information! :cool

4

Totally agree with continuing to do your marketing. The only adjustment should really be when it comes to viewing houses in person.

It’s too early to see a wave of foreclosures and buying opportunities, but I feel like that may be around corner. May as well keep the marketing efforts up in the meantime so you’re ready for if/when it does!

5

I would hit your marketing channels while lots of other people are paused. Online auctions like Google and Facebook will be cheaper. If you do postcards there will be less competition so hopefully your response goes up. Don’t stop marketing, keep going hard just make sure you track your results so that you can optimize your spend.

6

We completely agree, we wouldn’t say now is the time to double down or anything like that but you want to be in a position to make money when the flood gates open.

Also, something we have been discussing is that although many people’s foreclosures are getting delayed, it is delaying the inevitable. People that have lost their jobs or are falling behind are going to need help out of there situation when all of these government interventions are gone. As far as we know, they aren’t waving missed payments just giving extra time to pay them. It’s going to be very difficult for the average person to catch up on their mortgage payments and having a foreclosure on your credit isn’t ideal. So, it will be an important time to help people with their real estate problems.

7

I had the same question about lead gen and to put my foot fully on the gas, stay the same, or slow does.

We primarily do cold calling, and have had good feedback overall from homeowners when we call them. So we plan to continue that!

What are everyone’s thoughts on direct mail? We haven’t done any in the past 6 months, and were about to start up, but then Corona hit and we’re still trying to decide to start up now or wait it out a few more weeks.

Can anyone speak to their direct mail response rate and call back rate over the past 6 weeks or so? Are people still opening letters? Disinfecting mail then throwing away?

8

I can speak, but it’s impossible for you to get the same results as me, unless you’re targeting the exact same prospects, in the exact same demographic, with the exact same parameters and exact same frequency. Otherwise, it’s different for every investor.

The better approach is simply define your prospects, define your farm area, determine the numbers of prospects that lay within your farm that fit your criteria, and start mailing every six weeks, until you get measurable results. That is, you keep mailing until you close on a deal. That result will give you a cost per conversion.

Of course, that cost can fluctuate due to seasonal variables, market sentiments, and the news. Not to mention how well you become known by the prospects you’re mailing to.

Direct mail is expensive, but the purpose is to catch the fruit as it ripens, not pluck half-ripe green apples.

So, consistent direct mail marketers get first bite at the apples as they fall off the tree, while the one-off amateurs might get lucky ‘just because’ they happened to mail at the right moment. However, who is a prospect likely gonna call first, if they’ve seen several mailers from you, but only one from Mr. Fly-By-Night? And that’s where familiarity gives you the edge.

On the other hand, if your direct mail hasn’t produced a conversion in six months, something is wrong. Direct mailing doesn’t guarantee results. It just gets the results that can be got at the time (assuming the list is current, well-sifted and consistently exposed).

Never mind that we need at least seven hooks (marketing efforts) in the water at any given time. Each compliments and affirms the others. Otherwise, depending on one piece of bait is worse than golfing one-handed.

That’s all I got.

9

Thanks for the response. Helps to hear others perspectives on Direct Mail. Another follow up question …

More specifically, has anyone that was consistently doing direct mail the past 6 months seen any dip in response rate in the past 6 weeks due to COVID-19? Has response rate not changed much? Has it increased??

Thanks!!

10

Are you guys using ppc to market to sellers now? I haven’t been on this site in years so I am trying to catch up.

11

Thinking about starting up PPC soon! Have never done it before though, but excited to begin experimenting. I love your bird dog website that is smart! How do you usually go about finding bird dogs in your area?