Hey All,
I am new to BiggerPockets, but not new to the industry. My take on this industry is that if an investor wants to put forth the effort, they can KILL IT in their local market. Let me explain what I mean...
Traditional marketing like radio, tv, newspaper, direct mail, flyers and card decks are next to worthless and they cost too much money in most cases. The thing here is that with this type of marketing, you are throwing out a net and hoping to catch something. You don't want to go after a prospect, you simply need to be in front of the ones that are looking for what you have to offer. Did I make that sound too simple? Good because it is.
You see, 95% of all investors never brand themselves correctly (or at all for that matter). They will place an ad on Craigslist when they are looking to sell or buy and attend some local meetings and even look at what an occasional bird dog has to offer. That's not the way to do it.
The bottom line here is that if you have a systematic approach to what you are doing, you can literally control your market in about 60 days. That's no joke either because no one else is doing it. Press releases, videos, articles, web 2.0 sites, link pyramids, rss feeds, wiki posts, social bookmarking, social networking, profile submissions, etc. Done effectively and in the proper way, this can not only have you be the 1st person that cash buyers and motivated sellers come to in your local market, but you will have enough leads to cherry pick the ones you want and sell the others to other investors (and the price for good leads is salty for sure).
I will say this...Most folks don't know how or have the time to do all these things themselves, but there are firms that you can outsource this whole process to so that you don't have to do a thing. If you locate the right firm, you can obtain countless leads monthly for what you would pay for a newspaper ad or purchasing a handful of leads.
