(continued from above)
This is Great! Isn't it?
This strategy produces leads. If you were about to lose your home and you got 20 letters from investors wanting to steal your house and 1 letter offering free advice on how to solve your problems, who would you call?
The Problem
There are many problems. Here are some of the bigger ones:
* Some homeowners will not sell under any circumstances--if they sell, it means the bank won!
* Many homeowners are in denial about losing their house and cannot be convinced to sign a backup plan contract.
* Many homeowners feel that they deserve fair market price for their house and will not agree to sell at a discount.
* Most homeowners don't have the equity.
* Some homeowners maybe would have sold to you, if you hadn't taught them what to do to stop foreclosure without selling. ;) (This is not a bad thing--you've done some real good in the world. It just doesn't produce revenue.)
The biggest problem, though, isn't with the homeowner.
Experienced investors often tell newbies that you have to talk to 100 owners on the phone to find 10 houses to look at in order to find 1 house to buy. The reason investors don't need to look at 100 houses to buy 1 house is because they pre-screen owners on the phone.
The preceding strategy requires you to meet with every homeowner who calls you. You'll visit at least 10 times as many people to get a house as other investors. And an investor who is just visiting a house to see if they want to buy it can be in and out in 20 minutes for most houses. A comprehensive foreclosure prevention consultation takes a couple hours.
The time commitment is enormous once you've scaled your marketing.
None of the houses I've bought came from this type of marketing, and I do not rely on it anymore to drive my business because I've gotten too busy to invest the time.
Take-Aways
A real marketing pro can probably identify several others, but here are my take-aways from my experiences:
* A marketing campaign that showcases empathy will produce more leads than one that does not.
* A marketing campaign that focuses on solving homeowner problems will produce more leads than one that does not.
* Micromarketing produces more leads than traditional marketing.
* Pre-screening is critical to scale your operations.
* A problem-solving focus when meeting with a homeowner will get you more contracts (see post above about getting a contract even though the homeowner was hoping for a loan mod) but there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. (That one homeowner is the only homeowner I've had agree to this strategy.)
I hope this helps new investors identify some do's and don'ts for their marketing. Thank you for reading.
David Weiss
