Marketing Matters

How Much Marketing effort?

I recently got a PM from a colleague of mine asking a few common wholesaling questions that touch on marketing. There are so many looking to try wholesaling that I though spelling out the effort involved in marketing would be a good idea.

So I'm going to post here his questions and my reply........

Marketing Questions:

Hey Jerry,
Read your wholesaling 3on3 interview series a couple months back...great stuff!!
I'm a relative newbie and have been marketing to absentee owners and probates. Just wondering how often you mail your lists. Monthly? Quarterly? One and done?

I read somewhere a successful wholesaler said, "The number one skill in this business is finding deals".....he gets around 400 leads a month then just cherry picks the good deals. He said most wholesalers don't get enough leads coming in so they try to make a non-deal into a deal. Just wanted to get your thoughts on the subject...take care!

Wholesaling answers:

This is absolutely a numbers game, so the more leads you have coming in, the better off you're going to be. That doesn't mean that you can't get lucky from time to time though....2 of my client partners scored deals off the bat with less than 1000 letters sent.

And yes, I see this all the time, wholesalers who are hungry for deals stretch something that is clearly not into the semblance of one. When you're new, you want every call to be a lead, and every lead to be a deal. But as you progress, and build your marketing machine, you come to trust it....it's easy to get off the phone with someone today if you know the phone will ring again tomorrow.

In the beginning you waste your time simply because you haven't learned the value of it yet. But the more often you chase those rabbit trails, the more you realize them for what they are. And in the process, you hone your skills.

Once you've done your first deal, you get a big confidence boost, and suddenly you can tell the difference between a motivated seller, and a non motivated seller. THAT is the game changer. So you learn how to generate more and more calls, to get more real leads to get more real deals.

I mail to my absentee and equity lists monthly. That never stops or slows down. I do generate a new list every quarter, but I scrub it against the old one. That way I always have new names that match my criteria, and folks who have sold by other means get taken off. I spend a lot on postage, but I try not to waste a stamp if I can help it.

I mail to my probate list every 6 weeks or so. I tend to take the long ball approach with them, and I keep mailing to them till they tell me to go to hell or sell me their house. This is very black and white; they either love you or hate you with no in between!

Those 3 lists, plus some internet marketing are all that I currently do. With the web, it's all a matter of pointing people to your site. SEO is important, but top ranking is near impossible, so I settle for ways to make me more visible, and reduce PPC costs.

Hope this answers your questions. Let me know if I can be of service to you.

Jerry