All Forum Posts by: Ed Brancheau

I'm not in MD -- I'm in San Diego -- but I have been digging up deals in Portsmouth... mainly because San Diego is so expensive and competitive.

I'm guessing you're looking for some wholesalers to bring you some killer deals?

If so, PM me and let's chat.

The short answer is YES.

I'm an SEO expert that runs a successful digital marketing agency so I know what I'm talking about.

And while the content that they deliver for SEO purposes is good for making your blog seem active without having to do much work. However, the content doesn't rank well.

I'd say it's better at establishing trust once the person gets there.

That said, I have the Advanced package and I've highlighted in the image below, why I have it:

Their chat support is great and takes care of 95% of all problems but those 5% of more difficult problems are taken care of so much quicker with a conversation on the phone.

Regarding the other arrows:

• Unlimited tracking links will make your advertising more effective because you can track more details.
• The premium designs do look better.
• Be sure to use the dedicated onboarding specialist. I can't remember how far out you have to schedule your appointment but don't start building your site until you get them on the phone. You'll save a lot of time, aggravation, and maybe even money. (If had a few clients come to me to fix problems that they would have avoided by going with a Carrot onboarding specialist.)

Then there's the most important part of real estate investing... Marketing.

And that's why you're choosing Carrot in the first place, right? Well, this one on one will help you achieve higher ROI.

Personally, I think Advanced is worth the investment even though the feature you asked about is really the thing they do the worst.

I'm willing to talk partnership. I like it when new investors ask for partnerships rather than employment. Connect with me and let's chat.

I'm interested in REIVault because I'm doing deals but I don't have a good lead-nurturing system in place and I don't have enough time to develop one because, ironically, I'm busy running my digital marketing and lead-nurturing system for realtors.

I'm thinking, "Why develop a new system when I can just hire REI Vault?"

So, I'm wondering if you still use REI Vault and would continue to recommend them?

Came across this thread because I'm doing background on the founders of REIVault and their service. From my background as a digital marketer, it looks legit. But I also know that some people talk a good game but don't deliver.

To answer your question, I have created courses about building a digital marketing company, and I can tell you that I haven't created very much competition for myself for a lot of reasons.

The biggest reason is that 95%+ of the people that sign up DO NOT do the work. My method is 100% effective and not even that difficult to implement but only a third ever take ANY action and only 1 out of 20 does everything they need to do.

Now, BiggerPockets has about 43K wholesalers that have posted at least 10 times. Multiply them by 5% and you got about 2K ACTIVE wholesalers across the United States.

And the general rule of marketing is that at any given time, 1% of the population is interested in what you're selling.

So, I just did a search on Freedomsoft and in San Diego County, there are 9,782 3-bed / 2-bath Out of State Owner single family homes. The 1% rules means there are probably 100 interested in doing a deal RIGHT NOW.

Since San Diego makes up about 1% of the US population, I estimate there are about 20 ACTIVE wholesalers in San Diego County but at even 5X that amount, all of the ACTIVE wholesalers in San Diego County would still get at least 1 deal on a 3/2. Throw in all of the other types of properties and you got even more deals.

My point is that even if you doubled or tripled the amount of competition, there's still plenty of deals.

Now, from the trainer's POV, why wouldn't they sell their knowledge if they know that we're not even close to saturation and if only 5% of the people they teach are actually going to take action?

They can make $20-50K per month helping others make deals in real estate PLUS they're building a referral base. That's $600K per year.

Plus, I know my mentor gets at least one deal brought to him each week.

He won't do deals where he doesn't make at least $10K so that means these deals are making him and additional $500K per year on top of the deals he's generating himself.

After he created the course, he only has to hold 3-5 hours of training per week to give additional advice.

Do the math and he's making about $4K per hour.

Hey Wyatt, the Carrot Agent sites are really new. They built them last year and recently added Agent/Investor hybrid sites as well.

I have dozens of REALTOR clients and the 20-30% that switched to Carrot are achieving a higher ROI than those that have not switched.

However, while I believe that Carrot is the best choice (I use it for my investing sites), there is probably some factor that the clients who switched are less lazy than those that didn't because "I don't want to spend a bunch of time moving everything" was the #1 excuse to not switch.

So, it could be that the 20-30% of my clients that switched are just the cream of the crop to begin with and would have succeeded either way.

What I can tell you from an investor standpoint is that Carrot makes it easier to get things done because, while it's built on Wordpress, they only implement what they have proven to be effective for the vast majority of people.

So, it kind of keeps you on track and stops you from getting in your own way.

Finally, their support and training is top notch.

How many? I'd bet not many.

But the better question is "How many should?"

Everyone!

You need an automated system that responds to all leads within five minutes.

Whether that's a text message system or a phone center, you absolutely need to respond within five minutes.

I trained VAs and set up my system and then, as soon as I had it running smoothly, I discovered a great service called "Call Pat" or something like that. They work exclusively with real estate investors and know what they're doing.

Sorry, I can't remember the exact name but now you know they exist!

Yes. Be a real estate agent that only works with investors.

Then reach out to people that have distressed properties and explain to them that you have investors that will present fair offers to them.

I posted about this before so check out my previous posts: https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

One advantage to focusing only on investors is that you can earn double commissions AND/OR charge more than the standard 6%.

First of all, do Carrot's 30-Day Challenge. That will really get you going.

I've done bandit signs and they do work but I didn't find them to be the best use of my money even though I had someone put them up every Friday night and take them down every Sunday night to avoid fines.

I've never done door hangers but if I were to do them, I'd hire a college student to put them up AND I'd also set them up as a user on my PropStream account and have them "drive for dollars" as they walk around to post the hangers.

I'd show them things to keep an eye out for and how they can skip trace properties they come across. And I'd tell them that I'll pay them $10 for each property that meets my criteria plus $500 for every signed deal.

As for the cold calling, there's no way to filter out all of the stupid. But the Carrot system will better qualify people because they'll be reaching out you.

Frankly, sometimes I think, "How in the hell did these people even have the brains to buy this property in the first place?"

I don't think there's anything really wrong with your call-in voicemail message but, personally, I don't mention my business name. It's just a preference though and I don't see how it could have caused the guy to turn off.

He's probably in a painful situation that he doesn't want to talk about but needs to talk about.

OK. Full disclosure. I own a digital marketing agency so I have a lot more experience than 99% of the people on BP.

And you're likely to get a lot of people saying they lost their shirt with Google Ads. I don't deny that that happens to 95%+ people with no experience.

Since I primarily work with real estate businesses like real estate agents, I find that they're way too busy to do a good job themselves because you only have so many hours per day and you can continuously scale your business.

If you decide to do it yourself, the best place to start is with Google's free training. Plus, start slow but not cheap!

The #1 mistake that newbies make is that they think they should bid the least amount and then increase their bids as they have success. But they only think this way because they think that it's a regular bidding system like eBay.

It's not.

It's actually very easy for the #1 ad to pay less per click than any of it's competitors.

Search Engine Land has an excellent article about how bidding works on Google Ads but here's an example:

But the problem with this is that the Quality Score is the most important factor... not the cost per click (CPC.)

What I do is create dozens upon dozens of ads and ad sets to split-test them all. 

Plus, I bid about three times what Google recommends (keep in mind that it never ends up being that high.)

After about three days, I'll know which are winners and which are losers.

Of course, I'll ditch the losers.

Then, with the winners, I start slowly decreasing my bid by 15% until I drop to #2.

At that point, I bump my bid back up to the previous bid to get back to #1, and I slowly lower my bid by 5% until I hit #2 again.

Bump it back up and then start lowering by 1% until... well... guess what.

This all takes about a month of testing and making sure that I don't forget or I'll get burned.

THERE ARE THREE CRITICAL THINGS YOU NEED TO DO TO MAKE THIS WORK

1. Respond to new leads within five minutes. "But that's not possible, Ed, because well I'm not always available."
2. True. That's why you need an automated system to respond to new leads if you can't pick up the phone right away.
3. You must track all traffic coming to your site and "remarket" or "retarget" them because you'll rarely make a sale the first time someone calls you. These are what cause all of those ads to follow you all over the internet.

OK. NOW HERE'S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO INSTEAD ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE AN ESTABLISHED BUSINESS...

This is a simple but powerful strategy that has worked for every single one of my Realtor clients. And I have clients selling $5M houses in Beverly Hills beating out the agent from Bravo's Million Dollar Listing.

I like to call it the Youtube Spiral:

1. Buy a cheap but decent lavalier mic and a little cell phone holder that makes it easier to hold your camera. You need the mic because the sound on Youtube videos is more important than the visual.
2. Pick one point on a map. You don't have to actually live or work there but it's going to be the only area you focus on. For example, the agent working in Beverly Hills lived up in North Hollywood but she wanted to focus on Beverly Hills. Honestly, I wasn't sure my strategy would work in such a competitive environment but it did.
3. From that one point, start walking and shooting videos about everything you come across and just spiral out, block by block. Make a separate video about every park, school, store, gas station, library, church, temple, even restaurant. Even little things like a secret tree swing or a little piece of grass where you can have a picnic. Everything!
4. Do short little interviews with the business owners, pastors, teachers, firemen, etc.
5. Do this all day, every day (your Fitbit is going to start posting some crazy step numbers!) unless you are actually with a client or following up with a potential client.
6. Always mention your name, phone number, and call to action. Then post the videos on Youtube and Facebook. While the content should be high-quality, the "production value" doesn't need to be professional. Just be sure to flip your phone sideways so that the video displays horizontally. Down and dirty works best.
7. Stop all marketing and whatever else you think you have to do. You'll start it again later and it will work even better than before because you'll have hundreds of videos all doing one thing...

Presenting you as THE GO-TO EXPERT for your area!

Whereas your competition will SAY they're an expert, and they may be but how would anyone know, you'll be SHOWING that you're an expert.

And here's what will happen... all of those people that talked to, especially businesses, are going to remember you. Plus, they're going to refer people to you because you're helping to get the word out about their businesses.

Then, when potential clients do a search for you, and 85% of people search for business' reputations, they're going to find hundreds of videos showing how phenomenal you are.

I guarantee that you're going to get at least one referral within 30 days plus you'll continue to get them without any additional work.

Once you do all of that, I recommend creating Youtube Ads because they're really affordable plus people on Youtube will naturally come across all of these videos after they see your Youtube Ad.

This has worked for every single client of mine in even the toughest markets in the country and it will work for you. All it costs is $50 and probably a new pair of shoes when your done because the soles will be worn down.

This has got to be my longest post ever so I how you enjoy it.