I have $500 to spend a month...what now?

General Real Estate Investing
1

I have the funds available to spend about $500 a month on marketing.

What would be the best use of my money? Direct mail?

2

Depends on your prospect group… Certainly DM has its place.

3

which prospect groups would you target first. Im going to be wholesaling.

4

Why wholesale?

only two real groups in today’s market…

  1. Over Leveraged
  2. Highly under leveraged.
5

So in other words is that like pre-foreclosure and free and clears?

I’m wholesaling because I am a poor college kid with absolutely no capital or means to do a deal myself. I hope to get comfortable with wholesaling and get some money in my bank account then start doing the deals.

6

To wholesale a deal, you’ll need to target sellers with equity. They can already have equity (free & clears and other low LTV properties), or you can carve equity out of an over-leveraged house with a short sale. Non-owner occupieds (landlords mostly) are a good list to target.

7

Best lead sources

  1. Fustrated Landlords who have owned their properties more then 10 years and haven’t refinanced.

  2. Probates

  3. Short Sales

  4. REO’s

8

$500.00 a month is a pretty good amount. I spend about that amount on yellow letter campains and I rock it every month. Normally turn 1-2 deals a month easy.

Again, depends on what you’re trying to do is how you should market…

If you’re looking for motivated sellers to call you, I would suggest you use the yellow letter method.

Good Luck!

9

HI even i think the same and its better that you will follow the same advice as it will be beneficial to you.

Thanks

10

You are working with a lot of marketing money every month. $500 can get you 500 bandit signs that you can post all over your city and surrounding cities. You just need to make sure you are able to answer all of the phone calls that will be coming in.

Or you can send half on some signs, and the rest on a website where you can start posting your properties so that local investors can come to your site and take a look at your homes anytime. :bobble

11

Bandits sounds good. Quite a lot of money though so would be good to stretch it for the long term. How is your website? Is it modern or starting to look 1990? Could throw a little every month at a decent startup freelancer if you can find one. Get them to slowly update your site for a little $$$ per month or even SEO it up.

12

I agree with that, but…

What kind of website to sell houses costs $250/month? You can get a simple prefab site for a fraction of that, or even build a simple one yourself for pennies. Better yet just create a vflyer or postlet.

13

Not $250 a month for a website. I am talking out flat rate. If you have a website that is getting traffic to it, you are golden. So bandit signs to get the calls, and website won’t hurt. The extra stuff brings in that extra money.

14

do PPC, very affordable with high return. I control the number of leads I get by adjusting my budget.

Alternatively, direct marketing with post cards. 500 postcards min, 1000+ pref. use the 4x6 postcards, cheaper but the message needs to be right.

15

PPC is great, but we have to understand that the average newbie will murder themselves trying to target keywords. It works, and with high ROI, takes some KW marketing skill that comes with time. Good stuff though.

16

First of all marketing is not spending money it’s about investing your dollars wisely so that you get a return on your investment. The first thing you should do is create a lead generating system that is designed to find, attract and capture motivated seller and motivated buyer leads. For example, you should have a website, a toll free 800 number, a sequential letter system for the various niches that you are going to mail to i.e. absentee owners, frustrated landlords, probates, pre-foreclosures, code violators etc.

Your marketing system should be designed to run on auto-pilot which enables you to concentrate your energy and focus on making offers.