All Forum Posts by: Trevor Mauch

@Melissa Davis great questions here! Exciting stuff... yet also probably overwhelming a bit :-) But you're in the right spot. Sooooo many amazing people here ready to help ya. 

@Sean Dolan and @Danny Johnson are spot on that most people focus really heavily on the front end... getting the things setup on the front end to get leads (the website, direct mail, PPC, etc. etc.)... but they neglect to hone those skills on how to connect with a seller, build credibility, and close deals. So as you're going and getting leads, really focus on finding the resources and/or help to continually sharpen your skills on the communication and closing side of the equation. Lots of great threads on BP and great mentors as well. 

On the website side of things Sean (above) has solid experience in that with investors so his advice is solid. Work w/ a company like us at InvestorCarrot or Danny at LP and get things setup so you don't have to worry about that side of it. Then dial in your strategy on how to nail the lead flow and scale. 

Hit me up anytime if we can help you hone that strategy! Let the fun begin :-) 

@Cody Evans Great question man! 

Some great advice above as well. 

And what it goes to show is that there are lots of things that are working... some of it varies by market... by your budget... etc. 

@Peter Vekselman is spot on that that mix consistently works for people when they nail their DM processes (their list and pieces) and make sure you know your numbers so you're sending enough to get the response you need to turn into deals. 

@Mike Pastor nailed it as well on some of the other strategies. SEO is growing in effectiveness in a big way and PPC is probably the most consistent and fast way to get in front of motivated sellers online... it's just a matter of making sure you know your numbers, carve out a proper budget to see it through to success, and committing to make it work. 

You've got this man! Just get in hustle mode and drive for dollars, knock on some doors, hustle Craigslist for a couple months (even when you're discouraged by it), and if you have a budget for paid marketing... commit to either Direct Mail or PPC... connect with the resources that'll help you cut the learning curve... and make it happen. 

Report back on how things go! 

@Steve Labus Thanks for the input man! 

The only perspective I can show from our end at Carrot is we can see the results his own business gets from his FB ads and can track the lead quality to close. So he's closing consistent deals from FB... but ya, I can't say how well he's been able to replicate that in other markets for people he works with. Again a big difference is... from FB lots of the leads people will get are retail sellers and not the highly motivated ones. So it's critical making sure the business model has a way of turning retail sellers into revenue on the listing side otherwise it makes it harder to ROI on the volume of leads that come in.

Those retail listings for Tom help him to recapture his FB ad cost and then the flips in his market are very high margin so it enables him to spend more and go through more "non motivated" sellers and still turn a very healthy profit. 

Either way, good luck Steve and go crush it! We'll make sure to take that feedback about Tom and connect with others to see if it's a pattern or just an isolated thing. Thanks for the heads up! 

@Ibrahim Hughes the fellas above are correct in that there's nothing on our end here at Carrot that needs changed, it's on the domain side of things depending on what you're wanting to do w/ your email. 

Usually godaddy and places like that offer email services, OR we just use Google mail for business... and have our mx records point over to google to handle our email. 

Reach out if we can help you with anything man! 

We've got ya :-) 

@Eric Sztanyo You're spot on man. 

Launch new lead generation channels, master them, then layer on new ones. 

I know on that CarrotCast episode that Tom was on with me... he's mainly using Facebook ads for his sellers right now in his market. We're going to be releasing our updated version of our Facebook Leads course this fall and will include some things from Tom in there and lots of new advanced things most investors aren't looking at. 

But ya, a huge key to making FB ads work well is having a very well optimized site on mobile... and once he made that move to Carrot his leads went up in a big way. 

Reach out and we can help you dial stuff in man! With that said, FB ads aren't working the same in every market. Miami was a hard market to make it ROI because a mix of low average profit per deal and high lead costs.

At the end of the day... one of the reason's Tom is crushing it is because he's able and willing to spend more to get a lead than anyone else in his market. Like he mentioned, he'll spend $1M this year in marketing in that market and he'll get more than that back in just agent commissions alone from those leads... then add on all of his profits from his flips (which his average is well north of $50k-$100k per flip) and that enables him to generate 100 leads a week with his marketing. 

So it's not apples to apples. Lots of wholesalers are going out there tossing money into paid marketing and can't make it turn a profit for them... mainly because their business model doesn't allow it (low average profit per deal + they're tossing away leads that would be great listing opportunities). 

Go get 'em! 

@Art Nava Great question man! 

Really it depends on the type of lead you're going after... and the specific area you're targeting. 

Facebook is very effective at generating buyer leads pretty efficiently and easily while it takes more strategy and patience to dial in campaigns to consistently turn out high quality sellers at or under a good target lead cost for your area. But with that said... thousands of leads per month come through our system from Facebook ads. 

The path we've seen as the most consistent and predictable no matter the city is... 

1. Start with Google PPC / Bing PPC and a realistic PPC budget based on solid math (the math is the thing that'll set you free or kill a PPC campaign. Too many people pull marketing budgets out of thin air and pick a number they feel comfortable with... which immediately puts them at a disadvantage vs. using math to find out what budget and max cost per lead will lead to mathematical success. I did a podcast on this recently where I break down the most important metrics in PPC and how to determine a proper PPC budget that'll make sure you're working with the math vs. having emotion lead your marketing budget. 

$1k-$2k/mo in your market if you're managing the PPC campaign yourself and it's dialed in and sending to a high converting site like Carrot could be plenty, or it may be putting you at a disadvantage (according to the math). DM me and I'll send you a link to that podcast episode that'll help you nail the PPC math so you know you're starting with a budget that'll help lead to success. 

2. Facebook is usually not the first place we start for sellers... but we do always setup retargeting campaigns on FB for our Google and Bing PPC campaigns. That way you can fetch back those visitors who went to your site and build credibility with your ads over the coming weeks and months. We find a very high ROI over the long-term with properly setup retargeting campaigns (most peoples ads aren't dialed in well to convert and build credibility).

3. SEO: While we're building those... we set the SEO foundation and get a plan in place to grow your rankings over the next 6-12 months. SEO is a long-term momentum building play. 

The big key is really your strategy and having the resources, team, and training there with you on the journey to look over your shoulder to make sure your strategy is sound and you have things dialed in. 

Reach out anytime man! We're here for you and can walk you down that path. We've got you :-) 

@Account Closed Thanks for joining the thread man! 

Ya some fun conversation in here. I love it :-)

Reach out if we can help you w/ anything at all! 

Happy to show ya anything behind the scenes that you need as you ramp up your online lead gen efforts man! 

@Scott T. Yep, so many variables there for sure... and no one ad or marketing campaign can speak to every type of prospect or the way they like to communicate. 

Our philosophy is to know your primary prospect inside and out and speak to them primarily in your marketing (ads, website copy, retargeting ads, etc. etc) then make it easy for people to connect w/ you in whatever way best fits them (text, call, online opt in, etc.). And the biggest thing is to followup after a lead comes in and respond to any opt ins, calls, or texts immediately to help them during THEIR timeline that they want to be helped in. 

Hit me up if you do come back through Roseburg! We'd love to show you around the Carrot offices and introduce you to our team! Good stuff! 

@Scott T. Sweet man! Small world you're from Roseburg too! haha. Crazy. Well it's changed a bit since you were here, lots of great stuff happening today! 

On the ads... giving people options is always good and if people are ready to text or call directly from the ad... sweet, let them text or call (so we do tend to turn on those settings on ads at the start to see how they perform in that market). But if they're not ready to call... they likely need more info... which is where your educational website comes in.  So I know this isn't a clear answer... but some markets the call ads are performing great and picking up new leads that wouldn't have come in otherwise. But in my opinion... bringing them to your website where you can build credibility w/ them is always the best option... when you bring your unique value proposition and your credibility you start to de-commoditize your service. 

@Joey Smajd We'd love to work with you man! Hit me up if we can help with anything at all and we'll get your site dialed in. 

But to be fair, even w/ our stellar customer service record from time to time we've dropped the ball for one reason or another... it just happens with thousands of customers... so it may have been a hiccup in their system or something... but my guess is their support didn't "ghost" you, it was likely a systems issue or just bandwidth. Or, we've even had it happen where we were sending the client back replies but they never saw them because their email was filtering them out as spam for some reason. Anyhow, just saying this to give LP the benefit of the doubt and I know how difficult it can be to scale a company into the thousands of clients while still retaining an amazing client experience. It's not easy, but it's important and a worthy challenge. 

Hit us up! We're here for ya :-) 

@Tim S. Great thread you started here man and I always love it when investors look seriously at their marketing and make sure it's what they want to represent their business. 

First off, I'm not sure which sites you're looking at for Carrot but over the years there have been thousands online and once a client launches a site on our platform they can then customize it within our high performing framework... and we've seen some really bad customizations in the past that really did decrease the credibility of their business in my eyes. Wacky colors, bad videos, weird copy, removed our forms and tried to reinvent the wheel... those types of customizations almost always reduce the performance of their site vs. the way we built it. 

On the flip side, I'd be happy as heck to send you a list of Carrot sites you can take a look at that are performing insanely well in their markets and are a great mix of modern design and high performance copy / design. 

Just let me know on the above :-)

It's a really fine balance when it comes to what to put in a marketing message. 

What we feel looks "good" doesn't necessarily always relay the message in the way that our prospect will best absorb it. 

When someone has a problem... a real problem... and they're researching... you can better believe that they'll read a TON of information when researching that decision. And as long as the information is structured and written in a way that flows w/ the way they make decisions and it addresses their pains, fears, frustrations, shows them how you can relieve those, walks through your process, builds credibility for you... they'll read it. We all do this when we're researching something we care about. 

But if you're not your target prospect... or if you send your site to a friend and they say "I'd never read that... that's so many words"... if they're not your target market or a professional copywriter... I wouldn't put too much stock into their opinion because if they're not going through that problem... the website won't speak to them at their gut level... and they'll just look at all of the words as "clutter" that doesn't add value to them. 

I wrote a blog post recently on this topic where I walk through how a motivated house seller thinks and how they make decisions... w/ a small infographic that walks through the 5 Stages Of The Decision Process For A Motivated House Seller. You can find it on my blog. If your website doesnt' address the prospects biggest questions and concerns at each of those stages... you're not delivering the message they need to feel fully informed on their decision... and they'll likely bounce and head to a site that does answer their questions. 

Do this... 

Just think of the way you make decisions and research big decisions in your life and ask yourself if you read a lot of stuff or would make a massive financial decision based on a landing page. 

Here's one last example... Bats In My Attic... 

Kinda funny story, but my family and I moved to a house on a river recently and when you live by the river there's all kinds of critters. 

So we had hundreds of bats get into our attics last summer and it became a big problem I needed to solve. 

So what did I do? 

I hit the internet... and started typing phrases like... "how to remove bats from an attic" "bat removal experts" "can bats make you sick" etc. etc. Tons of phrases. 

And this site kept coming up all... the... time. 

http://batsintheattic.org/ <=== 

It's an ugly as heck site. Could they make it look nicer? I'm sure they could. But the thing is... that would all be vanity for the site owner... because the gold on that site is in the copy. The content. The message. 

I read probably 20 pages on that site... I kept clicking their links and learning... read testimonials... and finally called their "local" number on there to talk w/ a local specialist. 

The thing is... this site is just a lead generation site for wildlife control companies. But it got me. And it had tons of value and by the time I was done reading it I knew this company was an expert, they knew their stuff, and I didn't want to trust my families health with a non-expert on this topic. 

If I would have saw that site before I had the problem... I wouldn't have read hardly any of it. It would have looked "cluttered" to me. But once I had the problem... it was my savior. 

A lesson I learned long ago is go w/ data, testing, and results... not our own personal preferences on what we think looks good. And NEVER ask advice from a friend who doesn't have that problem my copy is trying to solve unless they're a professional copywriter. 

I'd be happy to show you a slew of sites you'll love the design of but also that perform really well. 

DM me and lets chat man!