8 Common Marketing Questions by Real Estate Investors

At GoForClose, we get all sorts of questions from real estate investors about digital marketing. They want to know how it’ll make a difference in their real estate investing business and does it actually generate more leads? Here’s your first answer: Yes, it does!

Social media marketing, email marketing, direct mail, PPC advertising, cold calls and SMS, and content marketing all work together in cross-channel marketing campaigns to raise awareness and improve lead generation.

We field a lot of inquiries, so we’ve put together this list of the 8 most common marketing questions we get asked by real estate investors.

1. Why does digital marketing matter?

Digital marketing is the most powerful form of marketing because your motivated sellers are online. It is measurable, cost-effective, and lets you target ideal seller types. It also includes those channels where leads prefer to be reached and builds your brand, so leads get to know you better in an accessible platform.

When used effectively, digital marketing improves lead engagement, so you retain their attention longer, giving you a chance to nurture, retarget, and warm them until they are ready to sell.

2. What are the best channels for generating leads?

No single channel is effective alone. Instead, an interconnected network across which multiple channels communicate with motivated sellers gets the best results.

Imagine a lead runs an online search to sell their house. They click a PPC ad that takes them to a landing page to request an offer. The lead browses the website to learn more, but they do not fill out the form.

Their initial click of the ad triggers a campaign. Relevant social media ads appear in their feed while scrolling. Three days later, they ask for an offer. They get an email and an instant text message, confirming receipt of their information. Then, you or your team call to prequalify them and schedule an appointment. If the lead is “Not Ready” to sell, another campaign starts that nurtures them through email, voicemails, and SMS till they are ready.

The point is, no one channel is enough. You need to employ all of them.

3. Do I need a presence on social media?

Yes! In a digitally-driven society, social media reigns supreme. It is where you can let leads find more information about you, build credibility, and improve your brand identity.

Owning a business profile on a social network broadens your digital footprint at less the cost than traditional marketing. However, it takes time to build an audience of followers, and requires dedication to post on a regular basis and respond to comments.

Social media marketing also has special ad challenges and is slow to pay off: 90 days to 6 months for organic tactics. It requires patience.

4. How long does it take to see results?

Different marketing channels yield results on different timelines. The key is to be consistent.

One of the most common mistakes real estate investors make when doing it alone in marketing is not sticking with it. They get impatient when they do not see results in a month, and they scrap everything, or worse, they pause, thinking they can come back to it later.

Marketing is a job in and of itself. With inbound marketing, it’s a constant cycle of research, creation, publish, measure, and optimization.

With outbound, appointments can come early, but you still need to follow up and negotiate for a period of time before the sellers are ready to say yes to your offer.

5. How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing?

Measuring marketing success requires each channel to be part of a system that is trackable. Measure different variables for each channel:

• Click-through rates: Social media and PPC ads, email, and SMS
• Engagement: Social media, SMS, emails, and cold and warm calls
• Bounce rate: website, blog, and social media
• Conversion rates: the entire campaign
• ROI: the entire campaign
• And more!

Data is essential. Review metrics and analytics and make calculated decisions to optimize your campaigns. A/B test for better performance and to draw the most lead attention.

6. How do you transform more leads into conversions?

The one thing that is often overlooked by real estate investors when marketing is retargeting. It is not unusual for leads to click then backpedal, to reply once and then be unresponsive. A seller that is “Not Ready” today can be a success three months from now. So how do you bring them back to the funnel?

Retargeting helps you stay front-of-mind and encourages leads to engage in conversation again. A targeted remarketing campaign reaches out to leads who showed initial interest or intent, using email, social media ads, and PPC ads. Analyze your audience segments and A/B test your messaging, so that when you identify those leads, you know how to grab their attention and nurture them till they are ready to say yes. It can take two weeks or two months, or more.

7. Does traditional marketing still work?

Absolutely! Though most of the world has gone online, traditional marketing still works. Direct mail, for example, is a traditional medium worth using. Send targeted pieces based on seller specific motivations and verify address deliverability to make the most of your budget.

Television and radio are less direct. Cold calling is a more direct method: a trained caller can reach a large number of leads every day and prequalify them, either to set an appointment or to move them into a nurture campaign.

8. How do you send the right message to the right person (every time)?

We believe in the importance of good content to convert leads into sales. Good content builds credibility, engages audiences, and improves SEO rankings. A content development strategy, therefore, is essential, but it is only half of marketing success.

It does not matter how many leads you reach out to if you do not reach them where they can be found. Data on each property, such as pre-foreclosures, bankruptcies, and code violations, tells you what message to send. Skip tracing to verify names, phone numbers, and email and mailing addresses, plus address verification and litigation scrubbing, tells you where to send it.

GoForClose works differently today. Here is how it works now.