Direct mail is a common starting point for real estate marketing for wholesalers. What happens when you hit a wall and your business stops growing, or you just don’t get the traction and action you hoped for?

Boosting Your Direct Mail Performance

Some very successful real estate wholesalers swear that direct mail is the only marketing medium they need to get all the business they want and can handle. So, it works.

If your response rates are good and ROI is good, you might just ramp up your mail campaigns. Instead of 5,000 pieces do 7,500 or 10,000, and so on. You can expand your market area if needed or hop into new markets to make up the numbers.

If your response rates could use some improvement consider:

• Finding better mailing lists

• Testing a variety of mail pieces

• Testing different landing days

• Investing in a professional writer for better copy

Going Beyond Direct Mail Marketing

Even if your direct mail game is on fire, it just makes sense to diversify. Sooner or later one of your mail campaigns could let you down. It’s just the nature of marketing. If that’s your only horse in the race, and you don’t have a solid reserve fund you could be out of business. Instead, consider diversifying your marketing mix early.

Other starter marketing methods may include:

• Basic social media marketing

• In person networking

• Signs

• Working through real estate agents

• Referral marketing

• Email marketing

• Real estate blogging

If you are ready to step it up, be aggressive and really go after growth and quick results consider:

• Paid social media advertising

• Google Adwords

• Ringless voicemail marketing

• Bulk text/SMS marketing

• Telemarketing

If you’re not sure which way to go, one great clue is to not only listen to the advice successful educators are offering, but what they are doing themselves. They may be telling you to do direct mail, but they are selling you on that through email, YouTube videos, webinars and radio ads. Think about it.

There may always be a place for direct mail in your marketing mix. It’s just wise to be diversified early and to have more than one thing working for you. If direct mail isn’t producing the results you hoped for, try something else. If it’s just hitting a plateau, then keep tweaking and testing, while trying out other media channels.

When certain trends start to pop up in your market, you could turn to virtual wholesaling. These trends include:

Lower response rates for direct mail marketing

Sellers say they are getting too many marketing offers

Sellers don't seem as motivated as they were last year

These trends often point to a seller's market, which means deal flow will start to decrease. As a wholesaler, this means your marketing budget will go up and your ROI will go down. When this happens, it may be time to pivot into virtual wholesaling.

What is Virtual Wholesaling?

Virtual wholesaling is similar to traditional wholesaling, but allows you to enter into a different markets, remotely. It will include many moving pieces to successfully facilitate the transaction. If you have great conversational skills, excellent organizational skills and the ability to network, you can use virtual wholesaling to your benefit.

Building a Virtual Wholesaling Team

Before you even think about handling a transaction, you need to build your virtual wholesaling team. This team will need to include:

A Title Company

An Attorney

Wholesale Partners

In some cases, your local title company will work great, if they are a national company. However, if they don't handle title on the national level, you will may need to find a title company that does.

An attorney is the next member of your team you will need to find. Getting a local attorney, in the market you're working in, requires good recommendations, which may come from the title agent or even the real estate agent in the local market. Make sure to compare a few options before adding an attorney to your team.

Along with your title company and attorney, a few wholesaling partners can be helpful. Having local JV partners to help you will make selling in a new market much easier. Make sure you put a solid agreement in writing about how you will split the profits.

Enter a New Market with Virtual Wholesaling

Real estate has historically been up and down, favors the buyer one year and the seller the next. As a wholesaler, you have to stay on top of your market, but you don't have to be limited to just your local real estate market.

With virtual wholesaling, you have the ability to enter into any real estate market you want. All you have to do is build your virtual wholesaling team first. Not only will you have the ability to wholesale in a new market, but you may also be able to increase your rental portfolio and even start flipping properties.

 

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.

Which marketing channels should real estate wholesalers be ramping up to dominate in 2017?

Along with funding for deals, marketing is vital for real estate investors. Get ahead of the competition in your marketing to sellers and buyers, and you’ll dominate the market and control the flow of deals and profits. So, which types of tactics and media do you want to be investing in to really get rocking and do more deals over the next couple months?

1. YouTube

Video marketing is definitely trending. More and more consumers are digesting video content, and this is only likely to continue as devices and internet speeds get better. It’s as close as you can get to in-person marketing on the web. Now is the time to set a video content production and publishing schedule, and make a new Year’s resolution to stick with it. Don’t allow quality to become and excuse to stall and not get started. You don’t need a bunch of fancy equipment. What’s really most important is being unique and authentic, and offering value.

2. Instagram

Instagram appears to have totally kicked Pinterest’s backside when it comes to getting results in real estate marketing. All investors and wholesalers should really be on Instagram. Again, come up with a plan for posting something daily, and make it a priority. Use hashtags, mentions of other handles, and location based posts to increase engagement. You can use video on Instagram, but the data suggests still images perform better.

3. Blogging

Text content is only becoming more important. The analysts, top investors, and big corporations are all in agreeance on that. You’ve got to be producing good content on a consistent basis. Just make it interesting and valuable. Avoid the urge to just churn out filler content. Choose quality over quantity.

4. Off-Site Content

Don’t just publish new content for your own real estate website either. Guest posting spots on other sites, in magazines, and in the news can all be powerful ways to hack lists and leads in bulk, while boosting your brand visibility.

5. Live Events

The entertainment industry is a $2T business. That dwarfs most other industries, including many real estate sectors. While our lives may have mostly gone digital, and perhaps because of it, people want to get out and experience things in the real world more than ever. So, host engaging open houses, educational meetups, and collaborate with other business partners on interesting events that get people out and allow you to interact in a warm way.

6. Direct mail

Direct mail is still an important part of the marketing mix. It can still work, and be profitable. However, rather than going cheap and broad, consider being more targeted, creative, and invest in quality pieces which will really stand out and get attention.

7. Mobile Apps

 

Mobile apps continue to be among the best ways to stay in front of customers and keep engagement and transactions up. Mobile friendly websites are a must, as is mobile search engine marketing. Yet, apps continue to take over and become very key native advertising and branding tools. It might cost you less than you think to develop your own app, or even brand and existing app and make it yours.

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long.