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All Forum Posts by: Dan Barrett

Dan Barrett has started 3 posts and replied 53 times.

Post: Having trouble picking a website provider

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

I consistently find, by measuring our client data, that Investor Carrot converts better than either the industry or national average. I give it a strong recommendation.

You can be very successful with any platform, though. Far more important than the software itself is the work you put into your content and set up...

@hilarie said it right - testimonials, SEO, content....these things make or break your success.

Best of luck!

Post: Best Practices for Website Domain Names?

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

@Gururas Khalsa In general, having a keyword in the domain is preferable for search rankings, while using your company name is better for long term branding.

However, neither of these are hugely important.

Far more important, in my opinion, is picking a domain name that is easy to remember and spell. :-)

Post: Online Marketing (Paid Search)

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

Hey Tina! Welcome. I'm not an investor, but we do AdWords for investors full time. If you'd ever like to talk shop, let me know! :D

Post: Get Truly Motivated Seller Leads For High Profit Off Market Deals

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

I've worked with Tom in the past and can absolutely vouch for his integrity. He knows his stuff and I highly recommend him if you're looking to work with someone that walks the walk!

Post: Suggestions for Google Ad words management

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

Hey @Michael Herrera

I've heard very good things about Lightmark, and Sean above.

We also do adwords for investors - my link is in my profile.

We do free strategy sessions where we build out your strategy, regardless of whether you work with us or not. That might be your best next step, because as Sean mentioned, whether you're a good fit for a certain company will depend alot on your budget, market, goals, etc.

Hit me up if you have any questions.

Post: Investor carrot or lead propeller?

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50
Originally posted by @Carolin Grable:

@Sean Dolan how do you track phone calls in adwords?

 You can track phone calls two ways in adwords:

1.) If you use call extensions, you can enable call tracking. This will track a call whenever someone sees your number in the ad itself, and calls straight from there, without clicking onto your landing page.

2.) If you want to track calls from your landing page, I recommend CallRail. Create a keyword pool, then you'll insert a small bit of code onto your page. Whenever someone comes from an ad, they'll swap out the number with a tracking number, then pass the call information back to AdWords.

Hope that helps!

Post: Pay per Click PPC for motivated Sellers

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

We did a huge statistical analysis for OnCarrot of which keywords work, and why, for REI PPC.

It's available free, here:

https://oncarrot.com/ppc-report/

To summarize the problem, though: you're pulling keywords from thin air based on what you think people will type in when they want to sell. The problem for Investors, however, is that real people do not, in any considerable volume, divide themselves up by search term in this way.

Let's take two examples: Martha, who's INCREDIBLY motivated to sell her house, and Dave, who's your classic tire-kicker.

Martha inherited the house she needs to sell. It's a wreck, a perfect match for someone to wholesale or rehab. She has absolutely no interest in fixing it up - it's a problem and she wants it GONE. She's willing to take nearly any price.

Dave thinks his house is worth $650,000, when it's only worth $300,000. He doesn't really want to move, but he desperately wants someone to offer him a lot of money for his house so he can brag to his neighbors. He loves talking on the phone, considers himself a master negotiator, and has ungodly amounts of free time.

Martha, in this instance, is the BEST possible candidate for an REI lead....while Dave is the WORST.

What do they both type in to Google?

"sell my house"

That's it.

The data bears this out time and time again - while long-tail keywords are a thing, and you can make money by bidding on them, there is FAR more competition for stuff like "we buy houses" and "sell my house fast" than normal, because other investors all target those keywords. Everyone thinks that's where they money is, so competition is fierce....even though there's not a lot of money there.

Let me know if that makes sense!

Post: Online Marketing VS Direct Mailing Campaigns

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

Hey @Edwin Barrientos!

Some very good points in here! @Ben Roberts is certainly right about some of the technical difficulties that define the online marketing space, but I would probably argue it isn't quite as overwhelming as it may seem - although there are, as he points out, millions of different variables to think about, that's only true if you weight all possibilities equally. If, instead, you were to simply start with what's been proven to work as a foundation, there is less to worry about (although Ben's main point stands - you do need to think about a number of different factors).

I recently posted my thoughts on this in a different thread, so I hope you'll allow me to re-post here. Hopefully this provides a different take on this question:

Strengths/Weaknesses of the Primary Marketing Channels in REI

DIRECT MAIL

Direct Mail has long been the workhorse of motivated seller lead generation. There's a reason that nearly every REI coach/guru teaches direct mail - it works, and has worked, for decades.

Direct mail has two primary strengths: list selection and affordability.

List selection allows you to know, for example, that everyone getting your pieces has a property in probate, or that everyone has a certain amount of equity. That's INCREDIBLY powerful, and allows you to fine-tune your marketing.

Affordability simply comes down to the fact that it's cheaper to send out direct mail pieces than it is to do nearly anything - and if you're outsourcing, it takes very little time (though many investors hand-write their letters, which obviously negates that last point).

Direct mail also has two primary weaknesses: low response rate and low barrier to entry.

Direct mail typically has a low response rate, with anything over a 1-1.5% response being considered quite good on a national level. DM also typically has a lower conversion rate of leads to deals, the national average probably being about 30 leads needed for every property put under contract.

The caveat to this is that your list selection affects this quite a bit; I spoke with an investor the other day that gets a 40% response rate on his mailings (hand-written, to a well-maintained list). That's quite rare, however, at least in my experience.

A low barrier to entry means that markets with a lot of other investors are often saturated with direct mail. Often, multiple investors are sending out the exact same mailings they got from their instructors, and potential sellers will sometimes have whole stacks of postcards on their desks by the time they call you (if they do). I've noticed a real uptick in complaints about this lately, but that's purely anecdotal.

PPC

PPC, or pay-per-click online advertising, is the newer kid on the block, although it's been growing quite a bit due to some prominent adopters (notably Sean Terry, the guys at We Buy Houses, etc).

PPC has two fundamental strengths: speed and objectivity.

PPC is one of the fastest marketing channels there is, and it's raw speed allows you to launch into entirely new markets in around ten minutes or so. There's also a great deal of velocity in getting your first leads in the door; if you have some knowledge, you can start generating motivated seller leads within an hour or so of launching your campaigns.

PPC's objectivity comes from the huge amount of data it generates; once you've run for a bit, you can tell which keywords generate your leads, what you paid for them, the responsiveness of the people that searched them, the conversion rate of those people, where they came from, the time of day and day of week they converted, etc. Using that data allows you to grow and get more efficient over time, increasing your leads while cutting your costs.

PPC has two fundamental weaknesses: difficulty and cost.

Difficulty: While I believe firmly that anyone can learn to run an effective motivated seller PPC campaign (I teach people to do this every day), it's still a technical skill that can be overwhelming to people. This is the core of why so many people lose money on PPC - they make some kind of technical mistake early on and end up spinning their wheels, getting frustrated, and quitting.

As for cost, PPC leads tend to be higher cost than something like direct mail, but also higher quality. So, while a PPC lead might cost you anywhere between 70 and 150 dollars, depending on your market and strategy, the typical rate of conversion into deals is roughly 1 out of 20, rather than 1 out of 30. Even with that considered, high levels of competition make some markets prohibitively expensive for some investors.

SEO

SEO is probably the oldest online marketing method, but also the most powerful - the vast majority of all searches online go to "organic" (i.e., non-paid) listings in Google, and consistently high ranking for a valuable keyword can be worth dozens of deals over the course of a year.

SEO has two fundamental strengths: long-term ROI and volume.

In terms of long term ROI, no marketing channels beats SEO. Since, by it's very nature, SEO can generate a long-term, steady flow of leads at no cost, it tends to be wildly more profitable than paid channels. The quality of traffic, presuming some strategic work on your part, can also be incredibly high. Once you're ranked, these leads are free - it's very hard to beat that.

For sheer volume, SEO also beats out most other channels. Search volume has been going up every year since Google first showed up; motivated seller searches, specifically, should also trend upwards very consistently as the younger, "internet-first" generations become the primary source of all home sales. Nearly 70-80% of all searches go to organic listings, making this the biggest single source of leads in nearly every market.

SEO has two fundamental weakness: time to pay off and labor-intensity.

SEO has a long time to pay off, in the sense that it requires a good deal of work and effort to actually move the needle and change your site rankings enough to create a greater lead flow. If we assume that a site needs to be at least on the first page of a particular search to generate leads consistently, and preferably on the top half of the page, it will often take 3-6 months of consistent work to get there. Many people get discouraged, drop out, or can't maintain the consistency needed over that time period.

SEO can also be very labor intensive. If you're blogging, optimizing, posting on various other sites, doing social media, etc....it can all add up to a great deal of work, especially if you're not being extremely efficient or smart about what you spend your time on. Conversely, if you outsource to an agency that's any good, they will be putting in a lot of work and will charge you accordingly.

I tried my level best to make this as objective as possible. All marketing channels have strengths and weaknesses, and in reality, you should do ALL of these! If you need to choose one to start, though, you might consider testing them out and seeing which seems to give you the easiest path forward.

If you have any questions or want any clarification, tag me and let me know. :-)

Post: Hello, it's me...from Orlando

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

@Zack S. Welcome!

Selling on amazon is fascinating to me and what I typically day dream about when I think about starting another business. :-)

Post: Advice Needed for website. Running your RE like a business.

Dan BarrettPosted
  • Vendor
  • Middlefield, CT
  • Posts 55
  • Votes 50

@Angelica Osusky Just to add to what everyone else is saying - I think that's a fantastic idea.

I'd go even further - put your personality into the site. Include personal photos, use your real name, add as many testimonials and personalized elements as possible.

So many investor sites are identical - and don't even let you know the name of the person you're calling. In every test we've done, highly personalized, "real" sites outperform and out-convert more "professional" approaches. :-)