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Thursday’s episode of The James Orr Show included the following:
- First, James talked about Wednesday’s episode, as well as reminding listeners that they can find other episodes on iTunes as a podcast.
- He also directs newer listeners to check out the Resources for New Real Estate Entrepreneurs, which include many articles, videos, and downloads.
- To kick off the show, James goes over The Daily Checklist, as well as reveals a new Affirmation for the Day.
- The focus of the call was marketing to absentee owners.
- During the discussion, James explains several different methods of marketing including voice broadcasts, postcards, and flyers.
- James also talks about the difference in receiving calls about properties as opposed to calling about properties.
- To end the show, James reminds everyone to join the Private Money Mastermind Group, which will double in price by August.
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Tuesday on The James Orr Show, we started out by going over the Daily Checklist and dove into the Goals Checklist to start. We began to look at exactly what it would take to get a brand new real estate wholesaler to start earning $5,000 per month.
Additional questions that came up led to a discussion of using Absentee Owner mailings lists including where to get the list and what to mail.
This show is now available as a digital download: The James Orr Show – Episode 2 or get access to all future live episodes, consulting during the calls and many of the previously recorded episodes as an Inner Circle Member.
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Whether you are a rookie real estate entrepreneur or a veteran, it is always beneficial to evaluate your current advertising methods. You should assess whether or not your methods are reaching the right market and if your message is being received with a positive response. In this article, you will find five effective advertising methods for your business.
Although this article addresses five methods, you only need to implement two or three of these methods. Set up a tracking system to measure the success of each advertising method. If after further analysis you decide you are not getting the success you were hoping for, institute a couple more of the methods.
Method 1: Door-to-Door Flyers
Door-to-door flyers allow you to get your full marketing message out to people in one step. Your flyer should also include a 24-hour recorded message hotline, so that sellers can be pre-screened and given the benefits of working with you prior to reaching your phone directly. Depending on your budget, you can either deliver the flyers yourself or hire someone to put out the flyers for you. Hiring someone will cost you about $7-10 per hour or 7 to 10 cents per flyer. To have the flyers printed, you can use your local copy shop.
Method 2: Door-to-Door Door Hangers
Similar to flyers, door hangers are mini flyers hung over the handles of doors. These can give you about half to a third of the space of a flyer, since they are usually printed two or three to a page by a printer.
Method 3: Postcards to For-Sale-by-Owners
Owners who are selling their houses without a real estate agent are potentially motivated sellers. You can either compile a list of for-sale-by-owners or use a service that can complete this task for you. A good way to contact for-sale-by-owners is to send postcards. You can upload your list to the US Post Office website to have the postcards mailed out. By using the US Post Office and a company to compile the list for you, you reduce the time spent on creating the advertising – time better spent on dealing with motivated sellers who are already calling.
Method 4: Postcards to Out-of-State Owners
Similar to the postcard you would send to for-sale-by-owners, you could also use the US Post Office website to send out postcards to non-owner occupied houses or out-of-state owners. Out-of-state owners have their property taxes sent to a different state than that of the house they own. With a postcard, you have a limited space to get your entire marketing message out. In this case, include your 24-hour recorded message line, so that the seller can get more information about your business prior to speaking with you.
Method 5: Over-Sized Postcards to Entire Neighborhoods
A saturation mailing of an over-sized postcard to every house in a neighborhood produces great success in receiving phone calls from motivated sellers. Depending on the size of your budget, it is recommended to send out 5,000 postcards to 5,000 different houses in certain zip code. A mailing of this size should result in 10-15 calls from motivated sellers. From those calls, about one or two will sell their house to you. The cost to mail out the 5,000 postcards can be less than $1,500.
Although this may not be the most cost effective way to buy a house, it is still an effective way of advertising. For example, if you target at least $20,000 in profit per house and spend $750 in advertising to buy the house, the $20,000 profit makes the cost of the postcards justifiable.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. For step by step checklists and systems for implementing your real estate investor marketing plus much, much more order a copy of the most excellent Real Estate Investing Systems from Amazon.
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Last night I downloaded an updated list of Absentee Owners in preparation for doing another series of direct mail campaigns to buy houses. Before I started to download the lists, I did some preparation work to plan the mailing I am doing.
I am doing a direct mail campaign to my local area and so I selected the zip codes for the parts of town (and one neighboring town) that I am interested in buying in. In total, I had approximately 10 zip codes that I wanted to pull Absentee Owners from. Remember, Absentee Owners are home owners that have their tax bill sent to an address other than the property address. I further limited my search to only Single Family Homes. I am not interested in commercial, industrial, multi-family or anything like that for my personal portfolio and so I excluded those from my mailing list.
With the list provider that I use, I am limited to searching for and showing the results of 1,000 records at a time, so I couldn’t just ask for all Absentee Owners in those zip codes for all time. While this may seem like a limitation, it actually made it easier for me to plan and space out my mailing so that I am not overwhelmed with over 100 calls from motivated sellers in one week – like I’ve done in the past with Absentee Owner mailings (and vowed not to do again).
So, to break down the lists, I first made a list using Microsoft Excel with the years 1970 to our current year and then did a search for each year to find out how many Absentee Owners bought houses (and still owned them today) in those years. In the third column, I had a running total of Absentee Owners so far. Here’s an excerpt of my data:
- 1970 – 0 Absentee Owners – 0 Total
- 1971 – 0 Absentee Owners – 0 Total
- 1972 – 14 Absentee Owners – 14 Total
- 1973 – 23 Absentee Owners – 37 Total
- 1974 – 23 Absentee Owners – 60 Total
- 1975 – 28 Absentee Owners – 88 Total
Then, I took that list and broke it down into groups of about 1,000. Most of the more recent years had about 1,000 Absentee Owners in one year, but some of the earlier years I needed to group together to get approximately 1,000 in that group. For example, my first group, which I call Campaign 1 was all the Absentee Owners from 1970 through 1987. It had 937 Absentee Owners on it before I cleaned it.
After I cleaned Campaign 1 of duplicates and records that did not have valid addresses or names, the list was down to about 672 Absentee Owners. Then, I went on to the US Postal Service website, uploaded that list and the post card I am using. I then scheduled it to be sent out.
I will do a mailing list like this every 5 days or so to keep a steady flow of motivated seller calls coming in, but not too many that I can’t keep up with the research and purchasing of the good deals. If I start to get overwhelmed with too many, I will increase the interval between the mailings by a few more days. If I am not getting enough calls, I will mail them a little closer together. In this way, I can turn on and off lead flow like you would turn on and off a fire hose.
Until my next post,
James
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