All Forum Posts by: Michael McKay

PROGRESS UPDATE #5

Lot's of updates from yesterday and today:

• I finished the initial funnel map, which you can view here. You can also see the map in the image below, but it's a bit blurry since the file gets compressed when I upload it.
• I had my VA find some royalty free stock photos of houses in bad condition to use the in the ads. I also took some photos of ugly houses when I was driving the other day.
• I started creating the specs for the video ads, so that I can send these off to get made.
• I spoke to the landing page designer and we should have a first draft of the landing page photoshop design by Tuesday.
• I started putting together a list of my favorite gigs on Fiverr for creating the video ad, designing ad images, and designing post cards. These post cards would get sent if people enter their address on our site, but not their contact info.

@JT Rose awesome. Thank you! I really appreciate the insight and I'm going to give this a try when I launch the ads.

@JT Rose That makes sense. I don't have any skip traced lists right, but I could definitely get some to test. I was diving a little more into LAL's and I found the info below in this article.

Are you using the special ad audiences instead of LAL's? If you are, are the results still comparable to LAL's?

@Kevin Ravenell Jr. Thank you! What percentage of your ads were video vs image ads? Did you find either performed better?

@JT Rose Do you mean uploading a custom audience list of skip traced numbers and then creating a lookalike audience from that list or creating LAL's from the video views and website visitors?

PROGRESS UPDATE #4

Here's a draft of my funnel map. It's still a work in progress. To view it in more detail, you can visit this link. If you click each stage or the gears, it gives you more info on what happens at each step of the process.

I made this Funnel Mappy. I have the upgraded version, which is $5 a month, but you can use the free version if you only need to make less than 2 funnel maps.

PROGRESS UPDATE #3

The logo came back from the designer today. I'm now sending everything to the landing page designer and should have a mockup of the landing page in 4-5 days.

I'm still working on the funnel map.

@Account Closed Thank you!

PROGRESS UPDATE #2

Today and tomorrow I'm working on building a map of my marketing funnel. This will be a detailed outline of what marketing the potential seller will see at each stage of the campaign and it will change based on their actions. E.g. If someone watches 75% of a video, they will see different follow up ads than someone who doesn't.

Here's an image I created of the basic funnel overview.

Once I've created the full funnel map, I'll post it here along with a detailed explanation and video.

PROGRESS UPDATE #1

The first piece I decided to tackle is building the landing page. I figured this is a good one to get out of the way, since it will take the designer a little over a week to create it. This will give me plenty of time to work on other things, while he designs the page.

Here’s the process I followed:

Step 1: Pick a name and check if the domain is available

There are a million websites that you can buy domains from (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Ionos, etc.). I found unloadmyhome.com was available and bought it through Ionos.

Step 2: Pick a platform to host/design my landing page

I know there are websites like Carrot, that offer pre-designed landing pages for investors, but I wanted to create a more unique page for my brand. Plus, Carrot is $49 to $149 per month. I’d rather use that money to pay a designer to create a custom page and pay $12 a month to host it on Webflow.

Webflow is a website builder, so it does lack some of the A/B testing capabilities that landing page builders have out of the box, but there are external tools that make it easy to A/B test Webflow pages.

Other options for landing page builders include Leadpages, Unbounce, Clickfunnels, and Convertri. These are more expensive at $75 or more per month, but have A/B test functionality built in. If I was building a lot of landing pages, I’d go with Unbounce, but since I’m only building one I decided to save money here.

Step 3: Find a landing page designer

Luckily, I had a landing page designer who I used for a previous project. He was available and willing to take this on.

If you don’t have a landing page designer, you can find some great ones on Upwork.

Step 4: Find other landing pages for inspiration

I searched on Google to see what other investors were using. I also searched “buy houses” pages on Facebook and went to the websites listed on their Facebook pages.

I looked through 40-50 landing pages and the two best websites I found were We Buy Ugly Houses and Open Door. I also took some inspiration from websites that I had paid designers to create for my other companies.

Step 5: Create specs for landing page designer

I use a free tool called markup.io, which allows you to import live sites and drop pins with comments. I imported some of my favorite landing pages and commented on which aspects I liked and didn’t like from each site. I also made comments with the copy I wanted in each section.

Markup.io is way easier than creating a detailed doc, since the comments are right on the live site and I can easily share it with the designer. The designer can then reply to my comments with any questions.

I also created a Google Doc for the designer, which included the colors I wanted to use and a few bullet points of the general direction I wanted to take with the page. I told him that I wanted a clean modern look.

Step 6: Get a logo designed

The landing page designer wanted to see my logo, so he can make the page design match the logo. I found someone one Fiverr, who specializes in real estate logos. He is making me 3 initial logo concepts with unlimited revisions for $45.

Total cost for everything above: $458

• Landing page design (one time)- $400
• Logo design on Fiverr (one time)- $45
• Markup.io- Free
• Website domain through Ionos (annual)- $1 for the first year
• Webflow website builder and hosting (monthly)- $12

Remaining budget: $2,042

I should have the logo back from the designer in 3-4 days. From there, I’ll send everything to the landing page designer.

@Mohammad (Asad) Asaduddin I haven't done much with direct mail. Maybe @James Wise can share some insights?

@Mark Sewell I've actually been reading some of Fritz's posts in Facebook groups. I didn't realize he had a Youtube channel. I'll check that now too. I watched some of Chris Chico's videos as well.

@Mitchell Benson Awesome! I'll send you a message now. Retargeting is going to be a big part of this campaign, so any insights there would be helpful.

Thats great that you've got 3 deals through SEO without spending money on ads. A friend of mine built his old company (not in the real estate industry) before he sold it entirely on local SEO. Happy to connect you guys if you want to exchange strategies.

How are you handling those fast responses? Have you automated any of the responses with software or do you just call as soon as they come in?