I'd stay close to urban areas and try to target university students or young professionals who are trying to save money.What are your strategies?

Switch up the type of leads you are targeting.

What really helped me was networking with folks and taking trips to scout areas that I wanted to target.

First thing you need to do is build a list of prospective targets.

The best way to find them is to send out mailers.Some good lists to target are Absentee Owners with Equity, Seniors with Long-time Ownership and Homeowners with Low Financial Stability Scores.You can work with a list broker to optimize your list for your area.

Based on my research and your input, I've narrowed down my targets to: Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania (where I reside). 

My suggestion would be to read as much as you can and get to know as many people as you can in your target market. 

The best thing to do is to target multi family properties where you have already run the metrics through air DNA and know that they will perform nicely.

If you're going to do DMM you either have to hunt and source your own leads or stand out amidst the competition.For instance, I've also seen investors who target struggling homeowners and offer JV deals directly with the owners.

Have no clue what it entails to sell or price the house, have super crocodile bath breath, have no idea what upgrades are worth, have no clue what items of their house brings value and what items do not, and what items actually reduce value (a crappy pool, a desperately needed to be torn down shed) etc. etc.Although motivated sellers, they are in many aspects worse than a blind targeted lead where you have to argue and debate trying to convince them their house is really not all that!