7 Marketing Tips For New & Established Real Estate Investors

Even if you don’t make a living selling homes as an actual realtor, developing a real estate investing marketing strategy is still a huge component of being a successful real estate investor. Getting behind the wheel and driving for dollars is going to be an essential part of your lead generation strategy but there are only so many places that you can be at one time.

Today, we’re going to discuss some marketing strategies that are going to help you uncover more high quality leads for you whether you’re a wholesaler, fix and flip developer, buy notes, or any other facet of the real estate investing world.

1. Hosting open houses on Facebook Live, Youtube, Periscope: Live video has exploded across social media networks over the last few years. Whether you decide to sell the property yourself or hire a real estate agent to do so, doing a live version of your open house lets people know that the property is available and being able to see the features on video jumps out of the screen the way still images really cannot do. Host them not only on your business’s social media pages but also on your personal one.  Even if someone doesn’t happen to be online to view your open house at the exact time you’re conducting your live campaign, put some money behind the video content and run it as an ad on Facebook and Youtube for 1-2 weeks.

2. Take visitors on a virtual walkthrough: Similar to the open house idea, there is no better way to invite other buyers into your property from the comfort of their own home than doing a virtual walkthrough with your camera. You, or your realtor, can lead clients through each room in the house crafting the story of the home that really makes the viewer feel as if they’re right there next to you moving from the kitchen to the living room to the backyard.  

3. Setup a website/Facebook page for your company that features your properties: In the event that you don’t have this already setup for your business, you really need to. The vast majority of people that you do business with under the age of 45 are going to Google you and/or your business to make sure that you’re legit. Fewer things scream “SCAM!”  to a millennial or Gen X buyer like not having a web presence. This is also where you’re going to post about all of the other successful investments you’ve done and properties that you have available.

4. Use chatbots on your Facebook page/website: People still pick up the phone to call when they see something that they’re interested in but not as often as they used to. Solutions such as Mobile Monkey and Drift have made it easy to communicate with visitors to your Facebook page and website instantly via chatbots. You can script your bot to answer some of the more frequently asked questions about a particular property or how someone can buy one of your properties while you’re on the go! Granted, not every visitor will take advantage of these features but the solutions named above are free if you don’t have a lot of volume. These can also be used to distribute content or send someone to a particular page on your website.

5. Create a free downloadable resource & follow up with those that download it: An e-mail list is the biggest digital asset that your company owns aside from your website. Why grow an e-mail list? Similar to your phone directory of investors in your market or the list of people who you’ve done business with in the past, this is another way to get in contact with people.  All you have to do is figure out what type of resource people in your market would want be it an e-book, a calculator, a series of tutorial videos, or anything else. Use an e-mail service provider such as Drip or GetResponse to have it automatically e-mailed to them. Now, you get an e-mail address that you can follow up with in the future and the visitor gets a valuable real estate resource—everyone wins!

6. Become a thought leader in your local market: You should know the markets that you invest in very well because you know what drives the value of the properties that you invest with in that market. You know the restaurants, the schools, the after school activities for the kids, and all of the other alluring parts of that community. Why not share that knowledge with people that are looking to move there. This gives you a better line to the community and creates a buzz within that area. Of course residents, neighboring towns, and people looking to move to that neighborhood want to know what’s going on this weekend, about that new store that is opening, or anything else. This has the double benefit of people being interested in what the local community expert knows that they may not and gaining notoriety for being a person who puts their own money into making that town a better place.

7. Use Facebook ads or Google Adwords to target your ideal demographic: Paid advertising is very effective on Facebook and Adwords but I would be lying to you if I said there wasn’t a learning curve in learning how to setup your ads, landing pages, and effectively target the people that you want to connect with. However, it is definitely worth it once you can figure it out. You can target people by life stages (just got married, had a child, etc.), by income, by education levels,  and even people who are in the market for homes on both of these platforms. Each of these features dozens of targeting criteria that helps to put your property in front of the right type of property buyer.

Today, we only covered digital advertising methods to find customers but didn’t even scratch the surface of the evergreen methods of sending direct mail/postcards and cold calling to uncover your ideal prospects and buyers. Those offline methods are still effective, even if time consuming, but are increasingly competitive. Take these tips to go forth and find your next deal!