Marketing to Attract Motivated Sellers in an Ever Changing Market
I am often asked whether or not there are still good real estate deals out there with the market constantly changing like it has been. The real estate market will always experience ups and downs and as real estate investors we need to be trained on utilizing the best tools to locate the motivated sellers within those markets. I often hear comments like, “you were just lucky” or “you got in on the real estate game when there were still lots of deals out there, that just isn’t the case anymore”. Those folks couldn’t be more wrong in their thinking. There are always deals to be made if you know where to look for them no matter what the market is doing.
Using direct mail to attract motivated sellers is one of the best tools in the real estate business for locating highly motivated sellers all the time. There are several reasons for this.
The first is that generally speaking, there is no competition for these properties whatsoever. Most of your competitors don’t use targeted direct mail campaigns to locate motivated sellers; and the sellers themselves generally don’t know they are going to sell their property until they receive contact from you. They know they have a problem to solve regarding their property, they just don’t know how until they receive contact from you and know you are there to help them.
Secondly, once you build a machine whereby you have direct mail going out on a regular basis, you create an ongoing source of leads. Not only do you have deals coming at you today, you are constantly planting seeds for future deals. Direct mail campaigns are the only marketing technique where you can create this scenario. As these sellers’ situations change, they will contact you first because you have taken the time to create credibility with them through your mailings, even if they are contacted by someone else in the interim. You can also control the number of sellers who are contacting you at any given time by controlling the number of mailings that go out. You can also control the types of sellers who are contacting you and the types of properties you want to purchase. In a changing market, this ability is especially important.
Another really great advantage of using direct mail to locate motivated sellers is that since it is targeted to specific lists and specific types of sellers, you are getting the very best use of the marketing dollars available to you. The more direct mail campaigns you do, the higher the response rate gets. So the more you do it, the less it costs per lead and per deal. Direct mail is the only marketing technique out there that allows you to have these controls.
In addition, you are using your available marketing dollars to target specific types of sellers as opposed to other types of marketing like signage or an ad where you are hitting a much broader market area. You should always have between three and five marketing techniques working at any given time and one of them should absolutely be direct mail campaigns to motivated sellers. You can continuously customize your mailings so you can target specific types of sellers within your market, so you are able to “flex” with your market as your market continues to change. Direct mail is the only type of advertising that allows you to do this.
There are several great ways to get the lists you need to mail to. For the most part they are very easy to get. You can get lists to mail to from your local newspaper, from the property assessors office, from mailing list companies, or from the courthouse. There are also several national mailing list companies that can customize whatever types of lists you need.
When deciding what marketing tools to use in your real estate business to locate motivated sellers, direct mail absolutely needs to be one of your primary tools. It is definitely one of the most inexpensive, effective, and powerful tools there is to locate highly motivated sellers and create very profitable deals for your business.