Direct Mail Marketing
Today’s electronic world is full of spam mail and junk mail, but in the real world, direct mail has worked, works right now, and will continue to work for the foreseeable future.
MarketLikeAWholesaler has discovered that direct mail is more successful at finding off-market, highly discounted real estate investments than other forms of marketing, including the internet and various types of auctions. Both have become crowded, highly competitive, and expensive. We can help you create direct mail campaigns that result in deals.
Before starting a direct mail campaign, think about these Four Corners of Wholesale Direct Mail Success:
1. Where do you want to work?
How far are you willing to travel to work on the property? The location you canvas for a discounted, off-market property should be local and convenient to you. If you are time poor, draw a circle around where you live that limits your driving to 45 minutes.
Convenience is crucial to overcome the ‘lazy factor,” where inconvenience discourages property inspection. This factor can waste marketing expenses and hinder lead exploration. Focusing on a local area increases knowledge, enhancing investment decisions. Time efficiency and local expertise are key in property investment.
2. What do you want to buy?
This sounds like an easy question to answer buy you must know what it is that you want to buy. An easier way to put it would be what is your primary exit strategy?
A single-family house that is suitable for remodeling/flipping for profit requires a different business model to buying and holding a single-family house. Similarly, there are many differences between owning multi-family housing and commercial real estate.
3. What is your investment budget and buying criteria?
How much can you spend on the real estate investment? You don’t want to waste your marketing dollars targeting properties that have a higher value than you or your buyers are willing to invest.
4. What is your marketing budget?
How much can you afford to spend on marketing and finding a highly discounted, off-market property? Like any advertising or marketing campaign, direct mail marketing gets results through repetition. 80%-85% of deals occur after the fifth touch (mailing). That means that a potential seller needs to see at least five pieces of direct mail before they will call you. For this reason, direct mail marketing campaigns work best when they are conducted over a minimum of six months.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. To achieve optimal results, plan on budgeting for the same marketing spend every month, for at least six months.
Marketing is not like a vending machine where you put in your money, pull the handle you want, and a pretty little package of yummy goodness just falls into your hands. If it were that quick, easy, and inexpensive, everyone would do it. If I were to carry out that analogy, the way most people approach marketing would consistently jam the machine. They’d lose all of their quarters and never get a snack.
Marketing is much more like farming. Planting seeds, watering, nurturing, pruning… spreading manure. Good seeds, hard work, diversified crop. Plant now, reap later. Once you learn how to do this, you’ll never go hungry again.
TIP: When you market over six months or longer, you begin to build your brand as an investor and potential sellers will be more likely to pick up the phone and call you.
Understand that 25% of deals occur due to following up with prospective sellers who said ‘no’ the first time. As with any marketing program, direct marketing is not a guarantee that you will reach a deal with potential sellers, however correctly executing your marketing plan, including follow up, will greatly increase your chances of a deal happening.
Jerry and the team at MarketLikeAWholesaler will help you understand and accurately identify each of these four key components.