All Forum Posts by: Trevor Mauch

Hey @Jamal Johnson! Ya that site is actually built on our Juniper design inside your Carrot account. 

That site though he went through our Concierge Setup process which is our fully hands off setup process and includes our copywriter diving in and re-writing the copy and we went in and did his customizations for him. 

But ya man, choose the Juniper design to start... then add your pictures, your personalization, build out credibility w/ your testimonials etc... and hit us up and we can help you if you hit any roadblocks! Or if you want us to do what we did for Craig there (which everything we did is something you have access to do) hit us up and we can chat w/ you about the Concierge Setup. We've got you man! 

Trevor

PS - Right now in the market we're in it's very cluttered... so getting your personalization elements on your website is really important. Get your credibility built in, good pictures, solid clean branding, etc really makes a massive difference in the performance in this type of market. 

@Jimmy Moncrief Thanks for the shout out man! 

Ya, we love Roseburg. It's an area that I see definitely heading in the right direction... the big growth in the wine industry here (more and more people are buying here), vacancy rates in all types of rental housing are crazy low... waiting lists here right now... housing prices are still low compared to many parts of Oregon... we have a Costco (haha, but seriously... they don't invest in places that they don't feel are heading the right direction), and we're doing a lot here to really change the landscape around entrepreneurship and attracting young people back here. 

Great spot. @Tyler Rodgers hit me up anytime. I'd love to connect w/ you and if there's anything I can do for you let me know :-)

Hey Ronnie! Hope your New Years went great! 

When you decide what you end up going with just make sure you know what is the most important for you because Lead Propeller and Carrot really focus on and offer very different things. 

Yes you can get a website with both... but the core products and the value each put out there are very different. 

At Carrot we focus on performance and ROI for our clients above all else. Which is why you'll see Carrot clients all over the country dominating the search engine results and pulling in more online leads than any other platform by far.

That's part the way we design and continually test our designs to make sure they convert visitors to leads at a high rate... the support team we have to help you every step of the way... including our Success Hero's who can coach you through the right strategy for your market (all included in your plan), etc. And our product really focuses on SEO, conversion rate / performance, mobile, and content marketing. 

Lead Propeller definitely has an easier interface to edit the content on the websites and is simpler to use in many respects. It's also lower cost by a good bit. 

What advice I'd give is to just focus on the company that you feel will help you succeed more in the end and what will return the most money in the end back into your pocket. 

Both will enable you to easily and quickly get a website online, but after that they're much different in the service and what we focus on to be the best at. 

There are a few threads here on BP where people discuss these topics already that might be of help for you too :-) 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/92/topics/169...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/80/topics/187...

Good luck on your search! We're here for you if you feel Carrot is a fit but if not we're still here for you as a cheerleader to cheer you on to success! 

Haha, I LOVE that story @Jerryll Noorden ! Man, it's soooo cool working w/ people like you who put in the work, trust the process, ask for help, and just DO it. The results come to those patient and willing to put in the work and trust the process of something that works. 

Have a stellar New Year man and I'm hoping we can meet in person in 2017 somehow!!!!

Hey y'all, just popping in here really quick.

Ya if you're moving your site over from another platform to Carrot we'd be glad to help you w/ the process! 

If it's a quick simple migration we'll dive in and help make it happen. 

If you're moving over from Wordpress and have a bunch of content... often times we can migrate your content over pretty quickly. But depending on how your other site is setup it may take more work sometimes. 

Just let us know and we can help you if it's a simple migration. For more complicated ones w/ tons of custom pages reach out and we can give a quick quote on that. 

In the end though... the main reason people move over from wix, custom WP sites, and other investor site platforms is our performance and our support. 

More InvestorCarrot clients are pulling in more leads online than any other online marketing platform in the industry and more Carrot clients control more top 5 rankings for search phrases that matter than any other investor specific platform out there. 

We have built in so much into the intentional design of our sites, our simple lead manager, SEO tools, lead tracking abilities, content marketing tools, and our support structure to really help our clients succeed in a big way. 

Yep, you can for sure save a few bucks per month going w/ a cheaper solution like Wix but you'll be giving up performance and support... and what does 1 lost deal cost you per year? $10k? When you sacrifice performance (conversion rate, SEO performance, mobile performance) it can cost way more than a $50/mo savings w/ a low cost solution. 

But yep, we can help you migrate stuff over for sure! 

@Kim Tucker I LOVE it! 

Great stuff. It's soooo cool seeing that boost in performance you saw once you moved your site over to us! Makes me smile :-) 

But ya to echo what Kim is saying about getting leads... the market is in constant flux and you can't stay still doing the same things all of the time to drive leads. What's working great right now may not work as good in 12 months. Direct mail is a great example... 3 years ago you could send 1,000 letters and get X number of leads... now you have to send way more letters (maybe 5,000) to get the same amount of lead engagement... so where most people are giving up or sticking w/ their "1,000 letter number" and seeing dropping results... the savvy investors are doubling down on what has worked and ramping up that commitment. 

Then like Kim says, with online marketing that's the segment that keeps growing every year. more and more people continue to look to the web for answers and solutions and those people positioning themselves in front of those web searchers w/ a high performing website (most sites aren't setup to perform at a high level at all, ask Kim what switch made it work for her) and a solid LONG-TERM traffic plan. 

Great seeing that momentum Kim! 

Hey Gloria hope all is well! 

Apologize on the delay seeing this BP thread :-) 

Anyhow... I checked out our support software and chatted w/ our team and if you had any trouble getting a hold of us that's not normal at all. I know Adrian mentioned that a couple of the strategy calls you guys had got cut off during the call because of the phone connection on one of the sides... and I see in our support portal you've reached out to us many times but our software shows us getting back to your inquiries within 24 business hours every time but one... so apologies if there was something that slipped through. 

Always make sure to reach out to our live chat from 9am PST - 5pm PST from inside of your account M-F and we're here for you! 

Hey @Ryan Dossey Hope all is well man! 

Glad to see you're w/ Carrot :-) 

I'll throw out a little note based on what you said that is the core differentiator of Carrot vs. LP (or Wix, Weebly, etc.)... is results. 

We focus on results and performance above all else... which puts money in your pocket. Much of what we restrict for members is honestly because people were making changes that were hurting the effectiveness of their website... in turn reducing their ROI... which is counter the reason investors should have websites in the first place. It's cool how you mentioned that you have generated leads with InvestorCarrot but didn't with Lead Propeller... THAT'S the main difference between the two and between generic cheap website builders like Wix as well.

There are so many "little things" that we build into our sites that most people don't notice.. that are based on our hundreds / thousands of split tests... that all stacked onto each other help to make you more effective and have a higher ROI than any other platform.

For that you've got to give up a bit of the control on totally changing design (unless those specific design choices are based on specific knowledge that will increase the performance of the site vs. just making changes to make it visually different). 

So glad you're getting leads man! That's our aim :-) 

If you want to customize it even more man hit us up and we can help you! 

Here's one we just finished w/ one of the largest home buyers in all of Maryland and it's got some design elements that really differentiate it while still retaining the elements that make Carrot perform so well. 

http://www.directmdcashbuyers.com/

We're running PPC traffic to this right now and seeing great results so far. 

@Trevon Peracca hope all is well and great question! 

While you're diving in and doing your research always look at the priorities you want the website to help you with. 

High achieving investors that we work with tend to focus on things in this order:

1. Performance and ROI

2. Ability to build credibility for their brand

3. Ease of use

4. Cost

Most investors though tend to do it exactly backwards and look at cost and ease of use first... and don't put the focus into performance and ROI.

We focus on helping our clients generate more leads and get greater performance and ROI (Like Ryan above mentioned that he's getting leads w/ Carrot and wasn't w/ LP). Yes you'll give up some design flexibility (for a reason) in exchange for us helping make sure your site performs at a high rate and puts more money in your pocket in the end.

We're here for you if you have questions! 

@Samson Kimani great question man! 

Since we work w/ tons of investors and we see all kinds of budgets and experience levels here's what we're seeing work. 

Time & Money Budget:

First figure out both your time and money budget. As you know it's going to be about impossible to get leads and close deals without investing time, or money... or likely both. 

If you have more time than money... then you'll definitely need to buckle down and carve out a solid block of time each day / week to do the more manual things. Prospecting on Craigslist (both posting ads and reaching out to sellers in a very strategic and process driven way, we can walk you through what others are seeing success at). Prob carve out 30-60 mins per day on the Craigslist side the first few weeks then you can streamline it down from there to prob less than 30 mins per day. SEO (if you learn it and implement it yourself) is very low cost... not fast... but amazing ROI over the long-term. We've seen it time and time again... over 60% of the 20k+ leads that came in last month for our clients was from SEO that they did themselves w/ our training and our platform.

If you have more money than time... then ya paid methods like direct mail, PPC, etc. etc. 

Bandit signs are still very effective in many places. One of our clients is buying 10-12 houses a month... mostly driven in rural areas in Oregon via bandit signs. Still works when done right. 

PPC can still work a the $600/mo budget if you do the PPC management of the campaign yourself. I see you're in Massachusetts... that budget actually may be enough to get by at the start if it's not for the bigger cities in MA.  But you've got to drive them to a site that converts visitors to leads at a high rate or it won't work too well. 

Getting Real With Our Budgets:

I think most people just randomly pick a budget number out of thin air and say "I have $X to market". Most people have no good reason for picking that number other than them feeling that's a good number they'd be willing to "risk"... vs. coming to that number based on data and math that is most likely to lead to your success. 

If $600 is really the only budget you have... then that's what you have to work with. I'd find ways to trim expenses in your life / business (cable bill, stop eating out for a bit, sacrifice a bit) and get that budget up to $1k/mo+ if possible. 

Just make sure whatever you do that you don't just budget 1 months worth of marketing and blow through that and then not have anything in month 2. 

Reach out anytime man and we'll help walk you through it man. I know I probably didn't give you specific "hey do this marketing method" guidance... but I think really nailing the marketing budget that will best lead to your success is the most important step first. 

Reach out if we can help you man! 

@Austin Mudd hope all is well man! 

I wanted to reach out here really quick. Ya if you're looking at the PPC marketing side of things just let us know and we can help you through that my man. Just hit us up on our next mastermind call and we'll walk you through it and help you w/ the strategy in your market. 

We've got ya Austin! 

@Sharon Vornholt Keep crushing it gal! Always love what you're doing on your podcast :-)