Ok, starting to freak out!! Advice would be appreciated!

[Amanda Fox]

Ok, I'll try to make this concise. My marketing budget is $1500/mo. Our original plan was: bandit signs, direct mail to absentees and drive for dollars, email blasts, and network with wholesalers. We are a couple months into our marketing and here are our results. DIRECT MAIL: 1 mailer sent to 600 absentees, 1% call response rate, 0 leads. BANDIT SIGNS: I HATE THEM. My conscience has won out, but I have 500 signs that we bought before my conscience got loud enough, I contacted all the cities in our area, determined we could (still gray area) post signs in ground on Fri, remove on Sun. That approach, not surprisingly is not super effective. 1 call/30 signs.

Mail is not more effective, I think, because there are 7 other investors mailing to many of the same addresses (we asked one of the callers). It's actually a really good response, probably, given that competition.

So... here are my questions: 1. can I be a successful investor without bandit signs? 2. Am I wise to dig in deeper with direct mail, continue to mail to the 600, work harder/do more research to obtain more motivated seller lists, ramp up majorly our drive for dollar strategy. 3. What are your thoughts about replacing bandits with 1 large billboard in a very busy location. 4. What would you do, philosophically and practically if you were me.

Our goal, btw, is to be a large investment business, not small, flipping and wholesaling 5-10 properties/month SFR and MFR. We (my hubs and I) have limited experience on the flipping side and extensive experience on the real estate side. Please help, we're floundering!