My Venture Into Marketing for Deals

[Joe C.]

Hi Everyone,

The BP community (you all) have inspired me to begin to take action.

I started with driving for dollars. Spent several days driving around town and identified 261 dilapidated homes to market to. Sent the first batch of yellow letters (I printed, stuffed, and stamped) to this list on June 26th. Had 1 hangup and 1 asking how I know (believe) he was selling. Just sent a second batch to the same list a couple days ago. Had 1 hangup, 1 asking how I know he was selling and "take me off your list", and another 1 saying her husband and she may sell in a few years so they will keep me in mind.

Question: Do I keep sending this lady the same letter as I send with the others in the list? Do I move her into a different marketing campaign more specific to warm leads? Or just ignore the fact that she expressed interest and move on to more motivated sells at the moment?

After the first batch of printing, stuffing, and stamping, I thought it was way too time consuming. So I bought a list of out of state owners for my county and enrolled the help of yellowletters.com. I ordered two combo campaigns which will contain 6 different touches. Michael Quarles was kind enough to offer a volume discount for ordering two combos. Thanks Mike. I assume it's one touch a month so I won't have to do anything with this list for 6 months except take phone calls and hopefully evaluate leads and submit offers for deals.

In addition to the direct mail campaigns above I built my website. I originally had not planned on a website presence. But after reading many posts that advised on one, I did it. Will probably need to spend more time on a regular basis to SEO the site.

Many posts and podcasts suggested networking. So again, I took the advice of this forum's contributors and started networking. I had attending many REIA meetings before but never networked while I was there. Mainly attended for education and information purposes. What a wasted of opportunity, right? So the last meeting I attended, I made extra effort to talk with people; which is hard for this shy introvert. Met several newbies and one more experienced investor. Got their numbers and will try to connect with them on a deeper level over coffee or something and see how we can help each other learn and grow in this business.

Also pulled auction as well as pre-foreclosures in and around my town that's scheduled for auction in August. Went to their doors and knocked. Had one out of 14 doors answer. 13 were not answered so I taped a piece of paper reading "I would like to buy your house. Call Joe at xxx-xxx-xxxx" Should I also mail them something? I am hesitant to spend more money on postage.

Looked into potentially marketing to probates, too. Learned how to pull the estate papers off the internet without having to step food into the recorder's office. But still requires a lot of time. If I don't get any leads from all the other sources I will have to start implementing this as well.

I've taken lots of action, in my opinion. I understand that it will take time for these actions to be fruitful. In the meantime, I have lots to do to keep busy.

Am I doing too much? Should I be focusing on just a few and be more of an expert on those few vehicles?

Thank you all for reading.

Joe