A short quiz:
- Are you getting emails every day from people who want you to buy their property at a sharp discount?
- Are investors offering to give you their cash for mutual profit?
- Are motivated buyers paying full price for what you’re selling?
- Is your website making you money or just another expense?
If your answer is anything other than “hell yeah” to each of those, you’re probably wasting a lot of money.
Don’t worry; it’s a common mistake. It’s amazing how much money is thrown at useless marketing that doesn’t get results.
If you really want to analyze the ROI of your marketing, you first have to know how much each lead costs you to generate. Lead cost is the first step in a results-driven approach to marketing.
Do you know how much each lead costs your business?
Here’s a quick worksheet to figure it out:
Add up the amount of time you spend on marketing each month: _______
The amount you should be earning per hour: _______
Multiply line 1 by line 2: _______
The monthly amount you’re paying in web hosting, SEO and design: _______
The monthly amount you’re paying for advertising and traffic: _______
The monthly amount you spend on content writing and consulting: _______
Add up the last 4 lines (this should be your total marketing budget): _______
How many leads (on average) does your business get each month? _______
Divide the total month’s budget by the # of leads: _______
That’s your price per lead!
Many investors are spending over $500 per lead and not even realizing it!
How does yours compare?
Or, more importantly…
Are you expecting enough from your website?
Most people’s expectations for their website are off… they don’t really know what a website should do, but they think that they need one.
In fact, they’ve convinced themselves that a website is essential to their business without truly understanding the strategy behind it. This isn’t unique to real estate investment… most businesses should be focused on generating leads online, because it’s the best way to dramatically lower their long-term marketing costs.
So don’t stress about it. You’re thinking about it now, and that makes you ahead of the pack. Here’s a little secret:
Lead generation is way easier than most people think.
Too many business owners make a critical mistake that crushes the potential of their entire business…
They outsource their marketing without knowing what they’re buying.
And they end up spending way too much on marketing without even knowing it.
They think they need all those billboards, bus stop ads, or print ads… without even realizing that they’re paying 10-50 times more for every lead than they need to be in 2014.
We built InvestorCarrot [link: oncarrot.com/demo] because the other real estate investment sites out there weren’t doing nearly enough to bring real business – and real revenue – to investors.
We saw our friends pouring their money into marketing that just wasn’t delivering… and we knew we could do better.
In fact, most of the websites out there don’t bring in leads at all. They’re just poorly designed templates “borrowed” from one another. It’s like a brochure or a business card – hopefully nice to look at, tells what you do, gives out your contact info…
But it won’t sell for you – while you’re sleeping, at the beach, hanging with your kids, or whooping it up at the hottest club in town.
The secret truth of online real estate deals
But can you really generate insane wealth from online leads?
Most people have no clue that great real estate deals happen online all the time.
But they don’t happen by accident… it’s because the best investors in the business are prepared to get the leads.
Of course, they’re ready, willing and able to recognize and capture the deals.
In fact, they’ve set up solid systems to bring leads to them – they don’t have to waste their time hunting through crap to find gold.
The secret truth: The best deals happen by being first to capture the lead.
Think about it: If someone has a great property that they’re willing to sell for super cheap, how many investors will they have to tell before they find a willing buyer?
That’s right – just one.
The first investor may not be the best choice – but it’s often the one that desperate sellers choose.
If you’re not getting lots of great leads, it’s because your competition got there first.
How to tell if your competition is ahead of you
You know that there are plenty of other investors in your market who are playing the same game as you.
Honestly, it doesn’t really matter if they’re smarter, richer, more established, or prettier than you.
The truth is easy to understand… like in any race, the winner is the one who gets to the finish line first.
Right now, open another browser window and Google “sell my ______ house fast” (replace the ______ with the name of your market, like Chicago, Boston or Manhattan).
The folks on the first and second page are getting the vast majority of the traffic for that search term.
If you’re not in front, you’re not winning the race.
It’s just that simple.
There’s some pretty simple tricks that can be used to get to the front… they’re the same ones we’ve used for years to win in every local market where our clients operate.
Of course, it took us tons of late nights, tens of thousands of dollars in trainings, and loads of hard work to learn these tricks and skills.
If you don’t have that kind of time, there’s a major shortcut you can take – and best of all – it pays for itself almost right away.
How to win the SEO race in your local market
I’m sure you already know why SEO matters – that local search is the future of internet marketing, and that 95% of real estate transactions start online.
Optimizing your website for search is essential – and that’s the core of the SEO game.
Just a few years ago, you could get there fast, just by throwing up some crappy writing stuffed with keywords.
Not anymore. There’s too much competition, and too many people learned how to game the system. So Google, Yahoo and Bing made it a bit harder. They’ve tweaked it so that crappy content won’t hold good rankings for very long.
If you want to win the race, you have to develop great content. It takes a ton of time and energy to write great content.
Not only that, you’ve got to engineer a website that converts – that is so full of compelling information that boosts credibility, creates excitement, and generates trust that people can’t help but be pulled in.
You’ve also got to test your results by putting together variations – if you want to evolve faster than your competition, you have to try new things and incorporate what works into constant growth.
I used content, conversions and testing to generate over 70,000 leads for hundreds of real estate investors in a short time – for very little cost.
In fact, the best users of our system are generating multiple daily leads with 10-20 hours of work each month.
How?
Our team does the toughest work for you.
We hired outstanding writers, excellent designers and outstanding technical experts who continually develop content that keeps investors just like you at the front of their local markets, winning the race.
We’ve already built out entire websites, complete with content, that is set up to convert. It’s ready to launch.
In less than 30 minutes, you can set up an entire website with loads of great, high-ranking content that helps you generate leads fast.
Even if you don’t have technical expertise yourself.
And the best part – we’re constantly testing, upgrading and refining our results to make sure that our investors are winning.
So what’s the next step?
After you launch your site, you have to drive traffic to it.
You have to work your way up to the top of the search rankings.
Carrot can help you do that. When you sign up, you’ll get offered an insanely great training that’s available only to Carrot members.
Or Carrot can help you boost traffic to your site through SEO for a very low monthly fee.
Want to be the first in line in your market?
Want to make 2014 your most kick-ass year in real estate investing?
