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Updated over 7 years ago, 04/28/2017
Trying to keep my marketing costs down in Houston
Hi everybody,
I have been using yellow letters dot com for my marketing needs (yellow letters) so far. I am reaching out to all my Houston investors to know what you guys are using (large companies or local alternatives) for your marketing needs. I am trying to cut down on my costs to be able to send out more letters out.
Please let me know what you guys have been using and what have been your experiences with those services.
I sincerely appreciate the help!
Tristan
Hey Tristan S.
As we discussed the other day I ordered mine locally. If you are interested PM me I can give you more info.
Cheers!
What are you currently paying per letter? I've wondered if it might be economical to have high school / college student or a stay at home mom do this for some extra cash on the side, since it's flexibile and can really be done whenever someone has a few spare minutes here and there.
@Tristan S. No I haven't. Was just a thought - I haven't looked into the costs much at all yet. It seems that if you're having letters printed and stuffed in envelopes and envelopes printed, it would probably be cheaper to go with a bigger operator (economies of scale). But if you're having something more custom done with some or all elements written by hand, it might be cheaper to find someone locally do it if you find the right person. Again, I'm just starting to look into direct mail myself and haven't done anything yet so this is all speculation on my part! I'll definitely be interested to see what others here have to say.
Realistically doing your own direct mail is a full time job. Mail houses have very expensive highly specialized equipment that makes it profitable for them. Sure... You could save a few pennies a piece... But... What's your time worth?
If you REALLY want to get your cost down and have an excess of time there are TONS of things you can do to get your cost way down and still generate lead flow!
Originally posted by @Ryan Dossey:
:If you REALLY want to get your cost down and have an excess of time there are TONS of things you can do to get your cost way down and still generate lead flow! "
Hi Ryan, would you elaborate on these things? I realize they may be normal or common sense to you but any info on this topic would be appreciated.
You could doorknock prospects, cold call, network, and really refine your lists. I've even gone so far to recommend driving the addresses on your mailing lists to make sure that they actually make sense for you to mail! (Like reverse driving for dollars if that makes sense)
If you need any more help just drop me a PM.
@Ryan Dossey thank you for that insightful answer, this really helps. I glanced at your sight and i will be contacting your for more info on skip tracing.
@Tristan S. Most real estate investors and realtors fear the hang up or are not able to locate correct phone numbers for the sellers they are looking for. This leads to them paying crazy amounts of money in direct mail just to get a deal. When i first started investing in real estate this was a huge problem dumping money into direct mail and not seeing a great return on my investment. That’s when my business partner and I began skip tracing phone numbers for potential sellers that were on our direct mail list and calling them directly. I then set followup sequences inside of my CRM which notifies me when it's time to give a cold lead a ring again.I've seen my response rate go from a 1-2% to around a 4-7% increase when i added cold calling.The beautiful thing is this entire process is now outsourced and it makes my business more profitable and gives me more time during the day. Let's keep ringing potential sellers directly it works wonders. Feel free to comment and tell any crazy cold call stories i tend to get a good laugh out of them and any questions you may have pm me i’d love to help.
I would suggest a good website and then drive traffic to that website. My website costs around $100/mth. I'm using free Craigslist ads to drive traffic to the site and I am getting leads. I am also using PPC (pay per click) ads and that is driving people to the website and generating leads as well. Even with PPC my costs are way, way less than direct mail.
I just got another lead this morning to follow up on. Here is a snapshot of some of the info that the seller entered into the lead form.
@Ethan Summers thanks for your answer, what service have you been using to find the phone numbers of your leads?
@Phil Reames, I have a decent website, was thinking about PPC, facebook ad...etc but it seems like the costs of the main key words are insane due to the competition in the Houston market. Apart from the use of craigslist, what are other cheap ways of driving traffic to your website ?
Thanks
A lot of keyword research. Find keywords that have low competition but are still generating decent search volume in your area. Also limit the geographic area that your ads are shown in. I'm getting leads for about $2.50 per click. You can set a maximum budget per day.
So instead of going after a main keyword go after a secondary word that has low competition but decent search volume in the area you want the ads to run. There are a lot of videos on Youtube about how to find low competition keywords. It is a bit laborious doing the keyword research but well worth it. Once you do the research you can use it for PPC and you should also work the words into the content of your website. That way you can slowly move your website up so that it comes up on the first page of google searches. When you are showing up on the first page you start getting organic visits which are free. SEO is well worth it.
@Tristan S. Some resources you can use to locate correct addresses and phone numbers are findtheseller.com, TLO, Microbilt, or Spokeo. If you plan on prioritizing your list and going after the low hanging fruit, then I would use findtheseller.com. This can get very pricy because they charge like $6 per search; however, it's a quick fix and they have a quick turnaround time. Spokeo is as about good as White Pages, but I would use them for phone numbers rather than correct addresses because they'll likely be wrong. Microbilt was the first tool I used, and it was spotty with numbers but typically gave me correct addresses. It costs about $50 per month and is good if you are doing around 20 searches per month. You'll need to contact them and go through the process of getting an account, which takes roughly 2 weeks. Lastly, if you plan on doing this consistently then I would seriously consider TLO. I've had great experience with it, and it costs roughly $250 monthly for 3600 searches annually. I've found that I get 1 out of 25 numbers are incorrect, which is roughly 90% accuracy rate on a 1000-lead list. You need to go through the process of getting an account, like Microbilt. TLO will take you about a month to get but well worth it if you do plan on making skip tracing returned letters part of your business model. I would just weigh your options and see what fits your needs.