Marketing Approach

[Todd C.]

Hi all - 

Throughout my real estate investing career (~1 month) I've sent out approximately 400 yellow letters and and have done a ton of craigslist advertising. Thus far, however (keep in mind that I've just recently sent out the letters), I've only received 1 motivated seller (his asking is way too high) and a few additional leads that weren't motivated, for a total of 10 leads. Not too shabby, right? 

This is only the beginning with me. I'm determined to get my business off the ground.

A bit on myself - I'm currently living in NYC, originally from NJ. I work in finance, which is an extremely demanding job (typically work from 7AM-8PM every day, including some weekend work). With that said, my transportation home to NJ is limited and my time to market is also limited, however, I am determined to get this to work like a well oiled machine.

Now with that said, I'm trying to formulate a good marketing strategy for myself. 

Ideally, I want to ramp up quickly, but in a calculated manner. At this point (pre-1st deal) I'm comfortable spending about $600 a month in marketing. 

Because of my limited availability, I will need most of my marketing to be automated, therefore, I am planning to have a service write and mail about 500 yellow letters a month on my behalf. Now my 2nd prong here is going to either be bandit signs or creating a presence online. To be honest, I won't have the ability to get out to my targeted area every Friday evening to place out signs and pick them up every Sunday afternoon - It's just unrealistic given my circumstances. So that leaves me with either paying soemoen to do it or creating a website. As of now, I'm leaning towards creating a web presence using the M5 Automated Marketing Machine This system, however, comes at a cost close to $100 a month and I'm wondering if that's the best way for me to market myself and my company. Has anyone had much success with online leads?

Finally, I'm thinking about setting up a local phone service through Vumber so I can direct leads to different #s in order to track where they are coming from.

Does this seem viable? Should I really only be focusing on 1 strategy first and work my way up? Thoughts?