@Andrew Erickson Great question. It really depends on what you're trying to get done with the software. If it's a simple email list software to collect email addresses and send emails and automated campaigns to that list, and to manage that list of emails, something like convertkit.com or aweber are great for that.
If you're looking for more sophistication like to move leads through stages, to have built in tools that help you communicate by text/email, bring in team members to own leads, etc.. then more of a CRM may be helpful for you there. FollowUpBoss is a great system specialized for real estate agents but may be overkill. Another system is InvestorFuse which is specialized for real estate investors and their deal pipeline.
Hopefully that helps a bit! Good luck man!
@Rod Smith Great question man!
Happy to help at no cost man!
Pop over your URL and I'm happy to shoot back a loom video with some thoughts on ways to optimize it a bit more.
But at a high level... there isn't a magic formula only the pros know... but the pros put in the work to learn how to make a website really perform well... which does take putting in the time and the work to learn it.
It's like anything, there really aren't any secrets, just people who have put in the work to learn what makes things really perform well.
That's one of the benefits w/ Carrot is we can help you cut that learning curve and make it easier and faster for you.
The first step tends to be getting your website dialed in for credibility. Lots of people focus on "SEO" to get new leads first... but really the only SEO anyone should focus on first is ranking well for your company name and brand searches (like "[your company] reviews"). The reason for this is your sellers are researching often times before making a big decision like selling their house, and they'll go to google and search for your company name and search to see if you're credible. People wouldn't believe how many deals are lost at what I call the "decision phase" where a lead from an offline marketing campaign goes to research you, and doesn't find good credibility online (which includes the website).
So that's where I'd start Rod. Dial in the credibility on your site. We did a series of youtube videos on how to dial in that credibility on your site here. Dive in there for free and we can help you nail it.
But pop over your URL and I'll dive into it and we can help get you on the right path man!
@Chris Seveney I agree everyone should focus real energy on building a stellar network. 100% agree. But I'm curious why you feel SEO isn't a good marketing channel to invest in? SEO according to data across thousands of deals we've researched with investors tends to have the highest lead to deal close ratio and highest average profit per deal, mainly because of the motivation. Yes there are pros and cons for sure and like any marketing channel, SEO takes work and investment to master, but it's among the best and most consistent lead sources for motivated sellers. I'm extremely open to changing my mind though, SEO just keeps pulling such amazing results. I do advocate for mixing SEO w/ a strong offline strategy because they work together so effectively.
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@Michael Hayes Hope you're doing amazing Michael!
I echo what others are saying on here that hiring someone from fiverr or upwork tends to not produce great results long term. Usually they'll lean on building a lot of low quality backlinks very quickly which often gives a boost in rankings quickly... but then results suffer later.
For our clients at Carrot, those who are seeing the best results are doing a mix of things.
1) Most choose to do the work themselves using our platform, but like you said, it is work and takes time and isn't right for everyone. There are a couple really good FB groups that dive into SEO for our space, DM me and I can shoot you the links.
2) The rest outsource it. Believe me... I'd LOVE to find a really high quality SEO firm w/ a track record of long-term success that is less than $1k/mo... but after 10 years I just haven't found one yet. They tend to be around $1500-$2k+/mo depending on the competition level in the market.
The way I think about outsourcing any marketing is by using math to really determine the right budget to be successful.
I take the average profit per deal (APD)... let's say yours is $20k.
Then a 4:1 return ratio in marketing spend is where I like to aim... in this case, I'd be willing to spend up to $5k to get a deal. On the first deal on any channel I'll invest even more to dial that channel in then work it down to the $5k target.
But w/ SEO it's a bit different... because w/ PPC or direct mail you can get a result faster... w/ SEO it may take 6-12 months to get consistent leads from SEO... but once you get the high ranking you'll have leads coming in really consistently at an extremely low cost per lead and cost per deal.
My rule of thumb w/ SEO is:
- Break even or double my money in year 1. If I'm paying $1500/mo for an agency... that's $18k for the year... close 1 deal on month 8 (for example) and I paid for my SEO for the year + a $2k profit. BUT, now I have the good ranking and leads will be consistent, increasing my ROi big time in the coming years.
- 2-5x return in year 2 (often higher). Now that we have consistent rankings and leads... I'd keep my SEO investment going so I keep my ranking and gain new rankings. But now I want to at minimum turn that $18k into $40-$100k (often more).
- 5-10x+ return in year 3 (often higher). More rankings pick up if the SEO is done right and high quality links are built from a good SEO firm.
We have lots of clients who are seeing 20x+ returns on their SEO in their 2nd and 3rd years, but it really depends on the size of your market and how well the investor is at closing the leads. Quick followup on the leads is critical here.
The vendors in the Carrot Marketplace are ones we've vetted and who have pulled consistent results w/ lots of our clients.
Try them first. Setup a call w/ them through the marketplace and have a convo w/ them, ask them questions, create a realistic budget and expectations for the first year, and commit to sticking it out so the SEO has time to build momentum.
Last, none of us want to wait for SEO to take hold until we start turning deals, so that's where I'll usually do Google PPC, PPL, or a form of offline marketing to fill in the gaps while SEO picks up.
Hope that's helpful! We're here to help w/ anything my man! We've got you.
@Jesse Rathe Great question man. Propstream tends to be the one most people use but Dealmachine has some amazing data that propstream doesn't. Our biggest clients tend to use propstream for most of their offline marketing data then backfill it w/ deal machines 911 data (which is another way to verify the contact info of a property owner and it's really accurate).
Like @David Ramirez mentioned, inbound marketing is really effective and attracts sellers who are already raising their hand to say "I'm looking to sell". About 60k leads a month come through our clients sites in most every market in the US/Canada 100% online and it's a really consistent, but it does take some work and investment.
But yes, you can't go wrong w/ propstream or deal machine, the biggie is how you filter the lists and how you market them.
Follow Ryan Dossey on youtube, he shows how he uses propstream and dealmachine to pull lists, market them w/ direct mail and use an effective website to convert them. Hope that helps! Good luck man and don't hesitate to reach out if I can help w/ anything on your journey!
@Nate Sanow correct Annemarie’s site is a pure agent site.
Here’s another agent focused site that does really really well (they get a lot of leads and ranking really well in Google)
https://www.anthonybeckham.com/
hopefully that helps! 👊🙌🏻🥕
Hey @Ryan Cramer! Hey hey! I just had a chance to see this. I see you joined Carrot so welcome aboard my friend!
High level, MP is run by 3 great guys and experienced real estate dudes. Building what we've built at Carrot isn't easy and it's cool seeing them make a go of tackling the same challenge we did when we set out and what we've been focused on solving for the industry the last 8 years.
The main thing I always like to tell people is this:
1. Align w/ a company you resonate with values wise first. I always love to be a part of helping people achieve their mission and as a customer I am pumped when I'm excited about the mission and values of the companies I work with. So dive into those and pick the company you resonate with most there.
2. Results/Track record of performance: Above all, performance is most important. Aesthetic is easy, performance is hard. With websites performance is broken down into 3 areas:
- Speed (how fast is the website.). This impacts both SEO ranking ability and website conversion
- SEO ranking ability (many say they're SEO optimized, but the only thing you can trust is the results you see in Google, not the claims)
- Conversion rate (this is critical and what we've pioneered across the industry, but there are so many nuances on conversion rate).
I'll dive into each below in a quick video.
3. Support / community / tools to help you succeed: A software tool is only as good as the companies ability to support, innovate, and help you crush it. Having a robust community of those who have had tons of success w/ a tool helps to increase your chances of success as well.
Thank you Jonathan (one of the MP owners) for linking up that comparison page. As you know data is king and that's what we've pioneered over the last 8 years. I'm a competitive guy so I always love to battle together so we can together elevate the industry and elevate what investors and agents get. I want our competitors to be successful because Carrot exists far beyond earning income, we exist to help more people build businesses of freedom and impact, and if MP can help you do that because of some things they've learned from us along the way, that is a HUGE win in my book. A high tide raises all ships.
In that post though I dove in and ran a comparison myself (we are constantly running performance studies each quarter and each month making speed upgrades, security upgrades, conversion upgrades based on tests, and of course continuing to help our clients rank at the top of Google.)... and the page speeds I see on our end are a good bit different than what MP shows on their Carrot vs. MP comparison page.
Some pics and a video below. Now... with technology changing all the time and how fast we're iterating and improving... what shows on a page speed screenshot today will likely be a good bit different in 6 months. So the bottom line is both systems are fast, but in all the tests I ran below Carrot at the moment I'm typing this tends to be faster page speed wise.
In the testing I ran on Googles page speed tool and gtmetrix, out of the box our Carrot site seemed to have a solid performance edge.
I popped a couple screenshots below.
Out of the box Carrot:
GTmetrix: Carrot site out of the box - Desktop
Google PageSpeed insights - mobile: Carrot out of the box motivated seller site
Shows a 100 on SEO score, 100 on best practices, 96 on accessibility, and "67" on performance.
You may be asking... "a 67 on performance... isn't that bad?".
For context, Google's page speed tool is built for developers, not for marketers, so performance for them is measured quite a bit different in the ways we'd measure performance for SEO ranking and website conversion rate.
Example, you'd think that Google itself would rate 100/100 on performance on their own tool right? Well, here's a screenshot of a Pagespeed report on Google.com itself.
Google.com is an extremely simple page, almost nothing on it, and it is a 76. So Carrot's overall performance score is quite high.
Another comparison... SearchEngineJournal.com (THE online authority on SEO, their performance score is 47. So Carrot sites crush search engine journal).
Carrot Desktop PageSpeed Insights Score: Nearly 100 on all 4 metrics on desktop
MinutePages out of the box PageSpeed Scores:
Google PageSpeed tool mobile = 23 overall performance score, 77 SEO, 77 accessibility, 92 best practices.
MinutePages Desktop Score - 73 SEO, 55 performance, 79 accessibility
How to look at performance on a website...
When looking at performance on a website page speed is one factor. It's an important factor, but it's a single factor.
Yes, fast sites are good for Google and SEO (ranking high in Google), which is a reason why Carrot sites overwhelmingly dominate google search rankings for motivated house seller phrases. Yes fast websites help increase the conversion of a visitor to a lead.
But page speed has a diminishing return as you get below 2.4 second load time when it comes to SEO and conversion.
For example, you can have very little content on a page and few pictures and optimize for page speed... but if there isn't enough content on the page to build trust, credibility, and nudge the prospect down the path to not just turn into a lead but also a deal... then that extra .25 second page speed you got by cutting all of your content out and making it look pretty will likely reduce your overall conversion rate and will torpedo your chances of ranking well in Google.
But on the SEO side of things, Carrot sites give a huge edge in Google search rankings over all other platforms including MP (look through the search results for motivated house seller phrases in your market and see how many are Carrot v.s other platforms. It is because of the performance edge we've innovated into our platform and our support).
I will tell you though that MP has some really nice looking designs and the lead stalk feature is really cool. We actually have lots of our customers testing that same feature on their Carrot sites through 3rd party tools that do the same thing. They were able to put the script on their site from a 3rd party vendor who supplies the IP address data and they have it running on their Carrot sites. We're still getting mixed results on the IP data lookup feature as the data is a bit hit and miss accuracy wise and you end up getting a lot of very unqualified leads that now are going into a CRM or having to be followed up w/ by a human. A really cool feature though and we're continuing to test it. Once we find it delivers an overall higher ROI for our clients, it'll be an add-on people can add in the Carrot platform, but until then we're just guiding people to add it onto their Carrot sites from the 3rd party vendors.
@Darrell Essex Hit me up if we can help in any way man! We're here for ya!
@Justin Rank hope you're well man!
Would love to connect to dive in and see what you had a chance to execute and if you're game, to map out a plan to scale things up.
It depends a lot on many factors... but size of market, whether you choose to accelerate things with Google PPC to get quicker leads or just do SEO etc. SEO is a longer term strategy, where most people skip part of the process with SEO is backlink building.
Just shy of 1 million inbound seller leads came into our platform the past year or so, most of them Google organic then followed by PPC and social. So it works, but depending on competition in the market it may take more work or investment to get things up to momentum. Hit me up w/ an email (trevor @ carrot) and we'd be pumped to have another shot to map out a plan w/ you and get things dialed in.
@Anibal Mijangos Great question man!
Like @Farak mentioned above at Carrot (I'm the founder) we've really focused over the years on dialing in a few key things that have built Carrot into the leading platform for those serious about scaling leads online in this space. I always love digging into data and happy to share any screenshots of data or info that would help the decision for sure. I just want you to make the decision fully informed and that you're pumped is right for you. Even if it's not Carrot, I want to serve you and help you crush it big time!
Both products really have different advantages and benefits.
- Carrot: Full robust ecosystem w/ proven track record of more sites ranking in the top 5 in Google for motivated seller (land and house) phrases than any other system + robust training, support, community, and features to rank well in Google, fast loading sites, and high conversion. Carrot focuses on attracting and converting the most motivated leads w/ the highest performing sites.
- MP: Has some great looking site designs and the "anonymous lead capture" feature which is very cool (I explain it more below)
Pricing for both is similar, then you have to weigh the resources, support level/access, strength in tech stack, etc for your decision.
With Carrot we focus on better SEO optimization (Google "sell my house fast [insert any city]" and count how many Carrot sites are on page 1 vs. other types of sites). SEO has been our focus for 8+ years and data shows it's the most effective for ranking in Google in our industry.
And we focus on conversion rate and page speed. MP has done great on page speed as well and they're far better than most other systems out there, so kudos fellas! I wish all site systems took the tech stack seriously as most in this space run really slow, MP is nailing this well. It's a continual battle between Carrot and MP on page speed, so you can't go wrong w/ either on that.
Conversion, over 80k online opt in leads a month come through our system each month (including phone calls) which is far more than any other website system out there.
I'm big on data and letting the data inform you, then leaving it up for the consumer to decide based on the data, so happy to share anything if it would be helpful.
Just be a bit careful and ask to see the data on some of the claims.
These bullets below are from the MP site and I want to make sure there's objectivity when looking at the claims because for most people they may take it for face value vs. digging into the data or the way to measure the claims.
"ATTRACT More Organic Visitors"
NOTE: Carrot sites pull in far more organic visitors than not just MP, but all of the other systems in the market combined as far as I know. I'm happy to share our data on it. So yes, MP does attract more organic visitors than many other sites out there... wix, squarespace, etc, but data shows it's a wide margin behind the organic visitors Carrot members get.
Organic traffic in this industry goes 1) Carrot 2) Custom Wordpress Sites 3) Homelight.com
"CAPTURE 10X More In-Bound Leads"
NOTE: This one is a "depends what you look at" number. Again on the above, Carrot sites attract a wide margin more inbound leads through Google than all other website systems in our space. But the "anonymous lead capture" system on MP is really cool and it's what they include when saying "10x more in-bound leads".
The anonymous lead capture is a feature open for anyone to add to their website (we have Carrot members using it as well in some markets), but it grabs the IP address of a site visitor, matches the IP/data with other data tied to that searcher and gives you as the site owner a data set. The tools say it'll give you data on about 30% of the website visitors, which is really cool.
The challenge is... included in this data is your competitors, your mom, people who aren't motivated and may never sell their house who just stumbled on your site somehow, people who already opted into your site and you got their lead, etc.
At Carrot we focus on helping people build "evergreen leads" which happens when you focus on the most motivated and highest converting leads. We've tested the anonymous lead capture and while we did get lots of data on leads, it ended up being mostly unmotivated or untargeted contacts we had to now reach out to. There can be value from this data once again, which is why we've made it so members, if they choose, can add this feature to their sites through a 3rd party vendor.
So when it says "10x more leads", it's not apples to apples and can be a tad misleading. I'm assuming, MP is counting a lead as a person who either opted into a site AND/OR didn't opt into the website, but that the system was able to get some data on through the anonymous tracker. These tend to lead to lower quality/lower motivation contacts (I wouldn't call them leads, it's a data list of potential people who may have interest). There are 3rd party tools like Shadow Pixel and others that allow you to get a code to put it on a site (including Carrot) and get the data.
What we count at Carrot as a lead is just someone who actually chooses to take the next step and become an inbound lead (fill out the website form or call the phone number on the site), which leads to higher quality and higher conversion.
But yes, this feature can be cool and useful when combined w/ a great followup process, and Carrot members today are using it on their sites in some markets, when they have a solid cold call team who they want to supply more leads to.
"CONVERT More leads into closed deals"
NOTE: The lead to deal conversion ratio really depends on so many factors. The lead source (a FB lead will convert 1 in 20-30 leads into a deal, direct mail 1 in 40-60 leads into a deal, Google ads 1 in 10-20 leads into a deal, Google organic 1 in 5-15 leads into a deal). The vast majority of the traffic on Carrot sites is Google organic, which is the highest lead to deal conversion type of traffic, which leads to a very high lead to deal ratio across our platform. But lead to deal is dictated first by traffic source (like I mentioned above) and then by followup process (calling within 5 mins max and great closing skills), and the website itself aids it by ensuring it has great credibility on the site and builds trust.
Summary:
End of the day, it just depends on what you're looking for. If SEO, reliability, conversion, and robust support structure are important then Carrot may have the edge.
If you want the integrated anonymous lead capture system and some really slick designs, MP is an amazing option and led by a great team of guys. Either way you'll get owners who care about you, we just take slightly different approaches helping you get there.
I hope you have an amazing week and good luck! Hit me up if I can help w/ anything at all!
@Josh Ashland Great questoin and awesome you're diving in on multi-fam!
I've bought several multi-family and commercial buildings on owner carry and I feel those types of deals will only increase the next 3-5 years. With interest rates higher it means fewer buyers are out there on these properties, and the boomer generation is the largest holder of rental real estate still (outside of large institutions) and they are getting to a spot where they're ready to sell... combine that w/ higher interest rates and I feel it's ripe for people wanting to sell w/ owner carry.
I like pulling lists of people who have owned multi-family 10+ years in my buy areas and sending them letters and calling. It's worked for me in the past and I feel it'll continue to work.
Online can work as well for smaller properties (duplex, tri plex, 4 plex, maybe up to 10-20 units max) because the people owning small multi-family tend to still be the "mom and pop" and will go to Google to search phrases like "sell my duplex by owner" or other phrases like that... the search volume is low but it does happen. I have a Carrot site setup for that to rank for those types of phrases. Properties 10 units or more those sellers tend to really go to brokers or sell to their known network or to people who get in front of them w/ offline marketing.
One key to it all though especially on owner carry is like @James Hamling mentions, building trust and credibility are key and can make or break the deal. So having a solid online reputation is more important than ever... it could mean the difference from someone selling the property to you or not.
I hope that helps and good luck!
@Carol Small Great question! Lots of great CRMs in the space. Like @Jason N. said any of those would work well, but they all work a bit differently and my advice is always to use the one that you'll actually use.
I'm partial to InvestorFuse for several reasons, but I know the owners of the other CRMs Jason mentioned above and they're all great people and really solid products.
Good luck and let me know which direction you chose!