Flyers are a good way to locate motivated sellers and can be used to target specific neighborhoods where you want to buy houses. You can either hire a company to do this for you, or hire older children to hang these flyers for you. Do follow up by driving by the area to make sure the work was done. This technique can be repeated either monthly or quarterly depending on your time and budget.
Billboards are another way to attract motivated sellers. Just remember that they can be costly and hit only one part of your target market. One way to make billboards less costly is to go in with another investor on them and split the cost. You can have the calls sent to an answering service who can split the calls between the two of you. This method definitely makes it more equitable to do billboards. Also ask your billboard company about remnant space. What this means is that for a lower cost, the billboard company will put your billboards wherever there is an empty billboard. This can be another way to get your message out.
One of the other ways to get the message out that you buy houses is to simply tell everyone you know what you do for a living and that you pay referral fees. This is the cheapest way I know to find houses people have for sale. Make sure you let everyone you talk to know what it is you do. For example, your hairdresser, dry cleaner, pest control person, grocer, toll takers, pool cleaning person, lawn person, Fed Ex or DHL delivery person, attorney, accountant, neighbors, friends, relatives, co-workers or anyone else you know or talk to.
Always remember to implement between three and five different strategies since you will be targeting your market in a variety of ways. For more information on finding motivated sellers, visit my web site at marketingmagiclady.com.