When it comes to the Home Buying Business, the small “work out of your house” guy can easily dominate the corporate giants through simple creativity. Sure, Homevestors can afford to advertise on every billboard in town, and have several television commercials running at the same time but if you follow my strategy, you won’t have to. The amount of overhead that they spend EACH MONTH on Branding makes it somewhat cost prohibitive for the newbie. If you want to beat the corporate giants, you need to think Guerilla Marketing tactics. Besides, a limited budget can actually be a benefit to the true entrepreneur. It will force you to look closely at profits and how much you buy houses for. You’ll be driven by the numbers and saving money rather than Throwing Cash At Your Problems! Eventually, that cash is used up, and your problems will still remain. It’s amazing how a lack of cash will create incredible focus.
If you have a ton of cash…I want you to put it away….FAR AWAY…Pretend that it doesn’t exist!
The key to wholesaling Real Estate is pulling in leads of motivated sellers AS WELL AS finding tons of individuals that want to buy these wholesale priced houses in order to put the deal together.
How do we do this “On The Cheap”?
Well, I sat back the other day and wrote down every technique that I personally use to find motivated sellers and buyers for my deals and figured that I’d share them with my readers. Now, I must warn you that these techniques work best when used in conjunction with each other. You don’t have to use all one hundred techniques at the time, but I DO try to use a mix of at least 8 or 9 for any given campaign. Different strategies will work better for different people, and once you find what works for you keep shaking it up a bit and TEST TEST TEST…
Please Comment and let me know if you have any other interesting low cost strategies to grabbing tons of leads….In the mean time here are 92 lead generation strategies to help you grow your home buying business in no particular order…
1. Sales Letters to targeted neighborhoods
2. Classified advertisements in “Freebie Papers”
3. Craigslist
4. Create a Simple “Magazine” with information that would be of interest to individuals trying to save their home / divorce / etc. and place them in neighborhood convenience stores. (Can be simple black and white 2 or 3 pager). You can get it printed CHEAP online (Google it)!
4. Flyers on cars- Pay neighborhood kids to go to every mall & Walmart in your area armed with “We Buy Houses” flyers.
5. Leaflet dispensers at targeted locations
6. Special reports
7. Online “We Buy Houses” page – InvestorPro.com is a great prefab one, or you could make one yourself.
8. Telemarketing – look through your local property appraisor’s website and grab the info on properties in a particular area that meet your buying criteria. Go to – whitepages.com and input the address to grab a phone number. Give them a call and see if they’re interested in selling or know of someone that is.
9. E-Newsletters
10. Traditional newsletters
11. Viral marketing
12. Ebooks – Write a Book about how to sell your house Easily Without a Realtor and place links to your website.
13. Magazine and paper inserts
14. Bird Dogs – Have a bunch of Worker Bees out looking for properties for you. Pay them $1,500 for every deal that you make a profit on—They only get paid when you get paid so get as many out there as you can find!!
15. Introducers
16. Bandit Signs – Some people are totally against them. I put these bad boys all over town…:)
17. Family and friends
18. Joint ventures – There are tons of other investors that want to partner up their deals in exchange for your labor.
19. Radio ads
20. PR – Cheaper than TV ads and more effective. Call your local news and get a story that ties into “Local Real Estate”. Example: How To Keep From Losing Your House To The Bank In Such A Horrible Real Estate Market And Recession. – You will find tons of investors looking for partners or to purchase wholesale properties from you. Visit my website for a list.
30. Take other investors that have been doing this for years out to lunch Do The Same For local small bank presidents, Probate-Divorce Attorneys, Top Realtors…you get the idea.
31. Attend industry seminars
32. Gather and use testimonials – I usually bring a video camera to the closing to get a video testimonial for my website.
33. Offer a free consultation to discuss saving the individuals home from foreclosure. Of course, if you can help the person by moving some paper around or getting a forebearance agreement, you should do it. Believe me, it’s worth it because you’ll be known as the expert and will begin receiving referrals to deals that pay off far greater sums.
34. Offer to pay the individual for their time just to get your foot in the door. Yes it sounds bold…but it works!
35. Organize a seminar or a Free How-To clinic.
36. Promote an industry event – Have a booth and COLLECT AS MANY NAMES AS POSSIBLE!
37. Give endorsements to prominent people
38. Set up a Squidoo lens
39. Write articles online – EzineArticles.Com is great for that. You can put a link to your homebuying site and get ranked high on Google.
40. Form alliances with other investors
41. Create a give away e.g. calendars, mugs, posters…
42. Write for the local newspaper
43. Syndicate a column
44. Create a Flier and pay the newspaper delivery guy to deliver them when he delivers the morning paper.
45. Conduct Local Real Estate Research and present it to your local media. You’ll get credit for the information in a story again making you an industry expert.
46. Send articles to those in foreclosure that you might think would be helpful.
47. Advertise on buses, cabs
48. Speak at the local college
49. Panel at professional seminars
50. Write a how-to pamphlet
51. Make up cards that Offer a finder’s fee
52. Do pro bono work for charity with Real Estate links – Example: Habitat for Humanity
53. Put Signs on your car
54. Make up Polo Shirts Or T-shirts and give them out (I prefer the polo collared ones
55. Pull a publicity stunt – Careful my friend…:)
56. Cross-promote with other investors – Chip in for an 800 number and advertising. Split the leads up evenly or partner the deals.
57. Enter a contest
58. Create a contest
59. Direct mail to owners that have just filed divorce
60. Post card promotions
61. Business cards
62. Networking offline
63. Networking online
64. Go To House Expos
65. Referrals
66. Speeches
67. Door Knocking – Grab a list of houses that are in foreclosure and start knocking on some doors. 68. Social networking sites -ActiveRain, StumbleUpon – DIGG – MySpace – Facebook There’s Tons…
69. Christmas cards
70. Birthday cards
71. Thank you cards
72. Add value notes / paper cuttings
73. Promotional give aways..
74. Article writing
75. Online forums – Think local
76. Bill boards
77. Freebie pens / t-shirts / mugs
78. Loss leaders when selling property
79. Free teleclassses
80. YouTube
81. eBay
82. Mini-courses – Send a ton of free content to individuals that give their contact info on your website. Investorpro automates this process.
83. Two-step paper ad
84. Rotary Club
85. Church
86. Schools – Advertise in the PTA Flier or sponsor a school function.
87. Chinese Food & Pizza Parlors – Pay them to send your flier out with every delivery that they send out.
88. Drive through older neighborhoods and locate the owners of homes that look in need of great repair, boarded up, high grass, vacant.
89. Code enforcement dept.
90. Find Owners that have Tax Leins against property.
91. Locate recent probate’s — Check Obituaries
92. Let Realtors know that you buy houses quickly for cash, and to let you know if they have any pocket listings.
92 Ways A Small Time Real Estate Investor Can Beat Homevestors
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