Realnew,
I think that your marketing budget depends on your goals. Bear with me, here.
You want to figure out what your goals for the month, 6 months, year, etc are first.
From there, find out how much it’ll cost you to get each lead. In the start up phase, some of this you’ll have to make educated guesses on and then tweak as you start getting hard numbers.
Figure out how many leads you need in order to get a deal. Once again, in the beginning you’ll need to estimate until you can get some hard facts. Err on the high side so that if you’re wrong, you can shave money off the budget instead of adding to it.
I wouldn’t feel right telling you that in order to create a marketing budget that you only need to figure out how much signs, business cards, and newspaper ads cost. It’s not that easy.
You really need to take the time to think about your budget and how it relates to your long and short term goals. If you haven’t established those yet, that’s a better place to start.
I agree with 800sellnow. Networking is a great way to get the information of other investors so that when that first deal comes across your desk, assuming you aren’t ready to start holding anything, you can wholesale it in a matter of hours or days without having to worry about holding costs right away because you’ve created a list of people to wholesale to.
I am going to go against the norm and suggest that you hold off on Google until you are more established. Concentrate on creating a great direct mail campaign where you are targeting specific sellers in specific situations. Direct mail is phenomenal in that you can write as many or as little as your budget allows.
Google is not as concentrated towards motivated sellers as direct mail is. With direct mail, you hit them at home, can specify how you can assist them with their current situation, and know that the very person who needs to see your letter has received it.
With Google, it’s hoping that they type in the keywords you selected. Hoping that they click on you versus everyone else on the page, and hoping that the click converts to them calling or emailing you. There’s too much left to chance there for me.
Don’t get me wrong…Google is a great tool to use when you’re more established and can start testing other marketing medias. But for right now, stick to something that you can track and get an accurate account of exactly how many responses you got from your direct mail campaign.
One more thing…I think business cards are absolutely vital to your marketing campaign when you’re just starting out. Leave them on the table at any restaurant you dine in, fast food joint you go through the drive thru on, and any and everywhere you can think to put them.
You should be leaving/handing out at least 10 business cards per day. They won’t make you any money sitting in a box at home. However, if people see on your card that you give a $500 referral gift for every house they send your way that you buy, your business cards will start generating leads all by themselves.
Big Cheese