a Well-Defined Marketing Plan?

As much as many people I know are not enthusiastic about sales and marketing, most of the businesses that succeed do have a well-defined marketing plan. As a real estate investor, your success depends on how well you purchase properties and to some extent, your sales process. That is because in real estate investing, you make money at the purchase point. You must build your business like you want to sell it to the highest bidder. The work you do must be able to sell itself. Your personality, creativity, and work must be evident such that people will bring you properties to buy and you will also have realtors constantly knocking on your door to see what is next in line to be sold. Your proven record becomes your best marketer even if you or your business are not set up as marketing entities. Your great name, or popular business name, will bring excellent referrals, outstanding contractors, and repeat buyers.

Social Media

Research the effectiveness of Facebook ads and other social media avenues to see which ones will work for you. Various studies show that 69 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook. Ads in this platform are likely to reach your audience and expose you to local, domestic, and international brand awareness. Having such a system keeps the business on autopilot and provides repeat business with less intensive management.

Blogging

Constant blogging will give you more search engine visibility since Google ranks pages, not websites. Write blogs in those topics your target audience wants to read and promote the posts on social media.

Networking

Networking helps widen your reach and ensures you are drawing from different wells. You achieve this by attending various networking events and interacting with different business owners in the community. During networking, make sure you engage with others, as the more you interact, the more your name will stick with people. Networking is so important in business, there is a whole chapter dedicated to it in this book.

Marketing Operation

Your whole marketing operation must be designed around value creation and value giving even if you do not market extensively. Establishing such a system could take years, maybe less, and hard work, but that is the point you should get to for your business to function efficiently to meet your business and personal goals. Eventually, you will reap the fruits of your efforts through increased leads, sales, and revenue.

Website

These days, having a website is no longer a luxury. As part of your marketing toolbox, you must have a well-constructed website. One of the first questions I get asked as soon as I start talking to buyers and sellers is to tell them the name of my website. Websites add to your credibility and many would-be clients, rightly or wrongly, so consider that a sign of legitimacy. Therefore, you must have a website as a serious business.

At any rate, to be serious and successful in business these days, you must have a good social media strategy. Most leads come from online activity, and to get consistent repeat business, you should have a strong online presence. Once people are familiar with your site, they will make that a regular stopping place. As mentioned above and elsewhere in the book, such a social media strategy could include blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and others. Your website should be optimized for search engine where each page has a purpose, contains your relevant key words, and Google will readily crawl there.

Prospect Consistently

A proper on-going business must prospect consistently. As a real estate investor, some of your inventory could consist of those properties you wholesale without rehabbing. Some will consist of those properties you purchase from stalled construction projects; others will come from probate and estate sales. Your renters will also come from a variety of sources including government subsidized programs like the Section 8 housing and other not-for-profit organizations.

A strong customer base and even having a pool of a variety of skilled workers requires a well-organized and well-executed prospecting plan. As a progressing business owner, you must invest in prospecting and marketing systems to have an organized, predictable, and streamlined process that you can train multiple people in to execute on a continual and ongoing basis. Technological infusion throughout your smoothly operating system is a money-saving mechanism.

Brand-Building and Awareness

The best way to start any successful real estate operation is to determine who you want to serve. Your ideal customer, that is. Ask yourself, who is my ideal customer? I once saw a company that specialized in building houses for landlords in the assisted living space. They studied the guidelines on how their state inspects such houses. Once they mastered that, they segmented the different demographic groups to allow for a laser-beam focus to efficiently reach and market to their chosen specific population.

In the process, they created a personal brand and built their marketing around their ideal client. They made sure they understood their clients’ needs and how to satisfy them. To help their marketing campaign, they took time to create a buyer persona that enabled them built in-depth understanding of their core client’s needs and wants. Marketing became streamlined and easier as they targeted their resources to their ideal client. In no time, they started getting repeat business with little marketing as their company became associated with the brand in their state and beyond. This group also regularly hosted happy hours and networking events to keep their name in peoples’ minds in different parts of the state.

Be Aware of What Competitors Are Up To

A good business owner must be aware of what is going on around them by studying what competitors are up to. Your goal should be to stay ahead of your competition, but if you cannot, then see what they are doing and do it even better. For example, if you realize they are beginning to lower their prices and you cannot beat them, then you may need to start re-packaging your products differently to justify your prevailing prices or even higher ones if you choose. For example, if their similar rentals to yours are lower in pricing, you may decide to throw in a television set or a mounted microwave as an incentive. Sometimes, you may start equipping your rentals with washers and dryers to justify your higher price.

There are all sorts of pre-emptive measures you can keep incorporating to always stay above the competition. To know what the competition is doing, you can hire some kids for minimum wage projects to help with your anonymous research. Your goal is to be familiar with competitor’s strategies and pricing. You can also blog and write stories about your business, coupled with glowing reviews from your satisfied renters. The reviews must be true because competitors will shred you into pieces if they find you with false reviews. Your business could suffer irreparable damage. The social media crowd has been known to be unforgiving and relentless if they identify misbehavior.