This article concentrates on success tips for your direct marketing campaigns.

Post Cards or Letters?
Should you send letters or post cards for your direct marketing campaigns? The answer to this question depends on your marketing needs. Sometimes your training can determine the answer.

Before answering this question I have to mention that you MUST have targeted leads. The more targeted your leads are, the better the response you will get. This means that even if you happen to use a very effective media, the response you get will also depend on how targeted your leads are.

In my business, I only send letters to probate leads. Once people have inherited properties, the process of probate can take months. For this reason, I send them one personalized, sympathetic letter every 30 days for six months. If they have not responded within this time, they are out of my mailing list.

I address the envelope with a red hand-written font and put a real stamp to all my mail.

All the others get a post card twice in a period of 30 days. My post cards always have a real stamp, and are glossy with screaming colors. My mailing label always has a different screaming color.

This attracts attention so they will not trash them with the rest of the mail.

I prefer to get stamps and address stickers done locally. I always prefer to drop my own mail at the post office! This way, I can control when I get the highest volume of calls. If I drop my mail on Saturday, then most of my leads will come in on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Post cards
Post cards are cheap and easy to manage. For $200 to $300, I get around 5000 post cards. Postage stamp is the only major cost. The address stickers cost close to nothing. You can get stamps and address stickers done cheaply too. I get people to do this work from Craigslist.

Regular letters
You will spend more money with regular letters, and you must have a reliable printer. You can get a generic letter done for you. In my business, I print my own letters since I have a reliable printer.

In any case, I never have more than 100 letters at a time, so I can easily manage this.

Odd-letters
I have mailed yellow letters in yellow odd-shaped envelops. Even though they are very effective, they can also be quite expensive. For this reason I gave up on them after several weeks to reduce my expenses.

I have my marketing well optimized that I feel comfortable with the response I get without them. This is not to say they were not effective – I just have enough leads that I do not find the need to use them.

Call to action
Every marketing piece must have a strong call to action that tells your leads what to do next. You must include your phone number and the web address of your real estate investor website.

Approximately half the people will visit your website and sign up from there. These leads will be fully pre-screened and pre-negotiated. You will end up saving a lot of time, money and effort by not having to repeat the same things over and over, and you spend a few minutes only to tell if it is a deal or not.

The other half will prefer to call – there is nothing you can do about this.

Ultimately, a well optimized direct mail marketing campaign will get more leads and profits for your real estate investing business.| Ultimately, as long as you can optimize your direct mail marketing campaigns, your real estate investing business will continue to get more leads and profits.}

When targeted marketing campaigns succeed, it is not unusual to get overwhelmed by the sudden flow of leads. A well SEO optimized, automated, direct response website for real estate investing can handle these leads and pre-educate them about how you buy houses. The leads the website delivers are fully pre-screened and pre-negotiated requiring just a few minutes of your time to follow up or pass.

In this article, we explore how to effectively launch a winning post card marketing campaign on a tight budget.

Of course we assume that your leads are already in place.

Creating the effective post card
Majority of people like to use a local designer and print shop for their post cards. This Is fine, but you can also create your own in a short time with little to no expertise.

Nowadays there are online companies that provide the tools to create your own post card from scratch. And if your designer already created one for you, you can upload it to their website for printing.

I like overnightprints.com and printsmadeeasy.com for this. They are created for the novice internet user to create post cards among other things so that anyone can create their own postcards.

I like to place my orders when they are running specials. In general, I spend only $200 to $300 on 5000 high glossy, double sided post cards. If you did this through your local print shop, you would probably run over $1500.

Catchy is better
i) Color – ever wondered how your mail piece would be noticed in the middle of all the junk mail we receive? You must have your post cards sticking out from the junk to be noticed. I like bright colors like yellow, red, green and blue.

ii) Graphics - house or dollar notes catch instant attention when used as graphics. And communicate your message fast. This is a must have component in your marketing post cards.

iii) Content – always make sure you have a catchy opening like a heading. It must be brief and to the point. People are not interested with tons and tons of text.

Highlight the benefits of what you can do for the motivated seller. Brief and to the point in a few words brings the best results.

iv) Call to action – a call to action is a must. They must provide a strong reason to call or visit your website NOW. Of course, it follows you must have a real estate investor website that tells your story for you and delivers leads for you. Website leads come pre-sold, pre-screened and pre-negotiated saving you lots of time and effort.

Marketing labels
Address labels and postage stamps make the post cards stick out.

I like bright luminescent labels with their color contrasting with the rest of that card.

I know some people prefer to order those cards that are sent directly by the printer with pre-sorted postage, but these look too commercial and you lose the uniqueness of the cards, hence their effectiveness.

Learn how to increase your effectiveness with a website for buying houses that is interactive and automated, and that also attracts leads with effective search engine optimization. The leads you receive come pre-negotiated and pre-screened saving you lots of time, money and effort.

These tips will help you attract more business by effective search engine optimization.

A website for real estate investing is a must as it tells your story for you. Most importantly, through effective search engine optimization (SEO), the website can build your business by attracting and converting leads for you.

Search engine optimization is the process of making sure your website gets higher up in search engine results than your competition.

Effective SEO must involve a few key elements to be synchronized so that your website ranks better than your competitors. Search engine optimization involves two parts:

i) On-site SEO – On-site SEO involves making sure your selected keywords appear in title, meta description and content. We have discussed these terminologies in detail in a separate article.

ii) Off-site SEO – this involves building one way links from third party website to your website.

To be effective you must make sure a few elements are in place:

i) Keywords – most people search for information on the internet by typing phrases that describe what they need. These phrases are called keywords or key phrases.

The first step in search engine optimization is to get the best keywords in your niche. Remember that it might not be possible to optimize one page for all the keywords. It is common to have as many as 20 keywords that match your niche.

You must select the major keywords that can bring you most business and concentrate on those.

ii) Market region – It is likely that you target a certain geographical location in your business. This targeted SEO delivers clients right in your local market.

iii) Separate keywords into relevant content – chances are that your website has several pages, each talking about different things you do. Whenever possible, create a separate page for similar set of keywords following all the rules of proper on-site SEO.

The end result is a website with most keywords represented in different pages.

iv) Keyword stuffing – never stuff keywords on any page in your website. Websites are ranked by how relevant their content is. Stuffing keywords only makes matters worse.

You also run the risk of getting blacklisted by search engines.

v) Anchor links -building back links involves creating relevant content such as articles and posting this content in directories such as article directories.

The anchor link to your website must be a keyword. Avoid words like “Click here”. Links going to your website should be real keywords.

vi) PR rating – page rank determines the strength of a link. Web pages are rated from 0 to 10. a PR of 10 has more SEO juice than one of 0, etc Targeting stable website with high PR yields better results for you.

vii) Deep linking – Linking your keywords to inner pages on your website is called deep linking. Even though most people will visit your home page, inner pages could attract a lot of traffic if optimized well.

viii) Duplicate content – whenever possible, avoid posting too much duplicate content on different websites. It is better to re-write content several times and spinning it for better results.

Learn how a real estate investing website equipped with automation capabilities to run your business and optimized for search engines can increase your bottom line by attracting leads and converting them to closed real estate transactions.

This article covers analysis of website visitors so you close more deals with less time, effort and money.

How to track website traffic
It is crucial to analyze website visitors if you have a website. The best tool on the market is provided by Google.

If you do not have a Google account, open one. Look for Google Analytics and follow the prompts. They generate a code which you put on every page on your website.

If you have a good real estate investor website, you just need to save this code in one place and it tracks your entire website.

Parameters provided by Google Analytics
First, Google will show you the types of visitors coming to your website. Google Analytics covers almost all parameters you can think of. They present all the information nice and easy to understand with graphs.

i) Unique Visitors – unique visitors in a given time period

ii) Repeat Visitors – people coming back to your website. Approximately 30% of website visitors are expected to be repeat visitors.

iii) Pages visited – most visitors visit the home page more than other pages. If you find people visit other pages more than the home page, you probably have important information hidden in inner pages. You might need to make sure most of the information a visitor needs can be found on the home page.

iv) Length of visit – how long visitors stay on your website is important to show you how much you engage them. An effective website should instantly capture visitor attention, keep them engaged and convert them to closed deals.

If visitors leave in less than 5 minutes, you might need to tweak it more to be more engaging.

You can get a real estate investor website with engaging video and direct response content that increases conversions.

v) Referring URLs – this tells you where your visitors are coming from. Your advertising dollar can therefore be more concentrated where you get more conversion.

vi) Keywords – this tells you which keywords are most important for your business. You can then tweak your search engine optimization to target these keywords.

vii) Geographical region – obviously in real estate investing, you target a certain geographical area. Once you know which areas send you visitors, you can then asses need for change if necessary.

viii) Number of pages visited – also gives you pages where they exit your website. If the exit page is not after they sign up, you may need to make some changes.

All this information is important so that you can tweak your website. Be sure not to make hasty changes unless you are sure they reflect general trends. Factors outside your website can influence visitors to your website.

Ultimately, statistics on your real estate investor website allow you to make important changes so you concentrate on strategies that work for you making more profits.

A good website for real estate investing is crucial to successful business, especially one that is integrated with tracking capabilities for visitors and equipped with direct response content that constantly engages and converts visitors. Particularly important too is ability attract visitors through effective search engine optimization so it constantly delivers closed deals with little input from you.

It means that if you rank highly in the search engines locally, you can attract a lot of business.

In this article, we cover how to rank highly in the local search results in the search engines.

What are local searches?
All the search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo – have three types of search results:

1) Pay per click – You pay for each visitor that clicks through to your website from your ad. For your ads to be active, you must maintain a payment method.

It does require you to spend sufficient time to optimize your ads to make sure you get a good return on your investment.

2) Organic searches
These are the main search results that usually appear below paid ads. It is every marketer’s dream to rank highly in organic search results – bringing you a lot of profits.

We have covered how to rank highly in organic searches in a separate article.

3) Local searches
Local search results usually appear between the pay per clicks and organic search results. It is accompanied by a map of the local area highlighting the location of the businesses.

This means that just outcompeting your local neighbors can bring you a lot of leads right where you do business, even if you do not rank highly in organic search results.

How to submit your business in the search engines
In order to submit your business in local searches, you must open accounts in all the three main search engines and submit your business.

When you submit your business, always make sure you submit as much information about your business as possible. They let you submit a full profile including title, description, pictures, videos, etc. Make sure you submit the URL of your real estate investor website!

Your URL appears prominently so people can visit your real estate investor website from local search results. I have seen a lot of ads with no URL – big mistake. In such a case potential leads are left with only a phone number if you have one and the description you have submitted.

1) Google
Open an account with Google. Go to www.google.com/local/add. They will ask you to log in or sign up.

If you are signed up, they will take you through the signup steps. You must provide a real address even if it is a P. O. Box.

To activate your ad, Google will mail a postcard with a PIN to your address. Your ad will only be activated once you enter this PIN.

2) Yahoo
Go to www.listings.local.yahoo.com/signup. They will take you through similar steps like Google. Yahoo takes 30 to 45 days to activate your ad. They do not send you a PIN.

3) Bing
Go to www.bingbusinessportal.com. The steps are just like Google. Bing will send you a PIN by mail to activate their local searches.

How to rank highly in local searches
You do need to have more back links than your competitors to rank higher than your competition.

Back links are links from third party websites pointing to your website. The more links you have, the higher you rank in both local and organic search results.

The number of comments by people you have served also seem to play a role in how high you rank in the local search results.
Successful real estate investing requires that you have leads constantly flowing and convert those leads to clients and closed deals. Find out high effective search engine optimization (SEO) can keep these leads flowing from the search engines, and how an automated real estate investor website converts these leads into closed deals. Ultimately you end up closing more deals spending less time, money and effort.

When you have a better placement in the search engines than your competitors, you attract a lot of business compared to them.

This can be accomplished by optimizing your website to rank high in the search engines. This article covers how to accomplish this.

The process of working your website to rank higher than others in the search engines is called search engine optimization (SEO). It involves making sure your website ranks highly for selected keywords or search terms that people use to look for your services.

The higher your keywords rank, the higher the search engines rank your website – and you receive more visitors, leads and business.

Search engine optimization involves two aspects:

1) On-Site search engine optimization
This means making changes to your website to achieve better rankings in the search engines. For better ranking in the search engines, the content must be relevant to the search keywords.
For this to happen, you must make sure your keywords appear in the following areas:

Title tag – The relevant keywords must be included in the title tags. This is mostly the one that appears as bold in search engine results.

Meta description – this should be a short phrase in the meta tags, that usually appears below the bold title in search engine results. It should be easy to read and describe your services in one sentence that also contains your keywords.

Content – Your content must contain the relevant keywords. Avoid stuffing keywords or your website could get penalized.

Domain name – if at all possible, if your domain name can contain your main keywords, the results are much better.

2) Off-site search engine optimization
The second step to effective SEO is off-site optimization. This involves building one-way links from third party websites to your website.

The more links to your website, the more popular you are in the search engines and the higher you rank.

Building links involves writing relevant content such as

Articles -article directories allow you to put a link back to your website when you post an article. Effective articles also need to have the right keywords.

Blogs – blogs and web 2.0 properties also allow you to link back to your website whenever you post content. Remember to submit all your blogs to RSS directories.

Directories – some classified directories are very popular with SEO.

Social bookmarks – there are hundreds of social bookmarking and article site and blogs. Your links on these sites can appear in search engines in a matter of minutes.

Press releases – press releases will get your name out there, and are also important in SEO. If done right, these can bring you a lot of business.

Advantages of search engine optimization
1) Little competition
Most real estate investors get a website and just stop there. They do not do anything about their search engine ranking.

A one-time effort can keep you at the top for years with no further effort.

2) Long-term benefits
Once your website is optimized, you can continue getting visitors and business for years. People will easily find you whenever they need your services.

3) Low cost
Considering the long-term benefits and income potential, search engine optimization is very affordable. An investment of just a few hundred dollars can bring you lots of business for years to come.

Successful real estate investing requires that you have an effective real estate investor website that converts leads into closed real estate deals. Find out how you can attract more business through effective http://www.realestateinvestorswebsites.net/search-engine-optimization/ and close more deals using less time, money and effort.

In this article, we explore marketing strategies, both online and offline, that will get you closing more deals and put more money in your pocket.

It is important to realize that no single marketing strategy should be employed all-inclusively. The most powerful marketing must be a combination of all your marketing strategies.

Online marketing strategies
Of course, the first thing you must get for your business is a good real estate investor website. This is where all your leads land and plays several key roles in real estate investing:

• It tells your story for you
• It captures leads for you
• It pre-screens and pre-negotiates deals for you
• It builds buyers lists for you
• It converts leads into closed deals through integrated marketing tools such as autoresponders

You can get a fully equipped real estate investor website ready for business within one hour.

Once you have a website in place, you then need to employ marketing strategies that will keep those leads coming in:

1) Search engine optimization
You are likely to attract more business when you rank highly in search results in the major search engines.

The search engines is where most people begin looking. This means if you rank highly, more people will visit your website.

Search engine optimization places your website and business high in search results. The goal is to achieve a top or first position for the search terms you select.

The beauty of search engine optimization is that you can continue getting leads even for years with a one-time effort. This should form your first marketing strategy.

2) Press releases
Target prospects will contact you when you release topics of interest to the press.

If you can keep them coming, your phone will keep ringing. Local media are also likely to interview you as an expert in your field. This kind of exposure can bring you a lot of business.

Similarly, articles on your blog on your website that are also syndicated to other places will increase your visibility. Your real estate investor website should be equipped for this.

3) Pay per click
This can bring you leads quickly, although I rarely recommend it. It is necessary to optimize your ads to get a good return on your investment.

Offline marketing strategies
Your website address must always be included in your offline marketing.

1) Direct mail
This is without doubt the most powerful offline marketing strategy. The reason is that the leads you send out to are targeted and you are likely to get a high response.

The key targets in my business are people who own real estate and are in legal trouble. This includes people going through divorce, bankruptcy, liens, people who have inherited properties, burned landlords and so on.

Both letters and post cards work well enough.

2) Bandit signs
Only use these if your city allows them.

3) Radio and television, newspapers, brochures, flyers, and billboards
These can also bring you a lot of leads and can make part of your marketing strategies.

The key to success in real estate investing is having a real estate investor website that is fully equipped with marketing tools as well as tools for interacting with prospects, pre-screening and pre-negotiating deals for you. Find out how effective search engine optimization combined with such a website can keep those leads and deals coming in.

You should be getting testimonials from everyone you work with   – Realtors, motivated sellers, tenants, etc.

So how do you go about getting testimonials and how do you use them?

Never wait long
First, it is important to remember you should never wait long before asking for a testimonial.  If you wait for a few days, you will be forgotten.  The best time is when the excitement is still high, for example as soon as you close a deal.

Get a video testimonial, take pictures
When they have a check in their pocket, it is very easy to ask for a testimonial.  They can write it down for you.    If at all possible, take a picture  of them.

You end up with a hand-written testimonial with a picture.  This is more credible than a typed testimonials.

Better still, have a video recorder with you at all times. These days you can use your smart phone to get a video testimonial.

You get more credibility with a video testimonial and they only take two minutes to get.

A voice recorder on your smart phone can also come in handy.

Send a letter and / or email
Mail a letter the same day you close a deal.  Send it by email as well.

The letter should be something like this:

Dear Mr. Seller
Thank you so much for allowing us to serve you. It was a pleasure working with you and seeing the deal through to completion.

I was wondering if you could do me a quick favor? Could you write a short testimonial for me? I would really appreciate this as it would help me help more people looking to sell their houses quickly.

Please use the attached piece of paper and return envelope for your testimonial.

Thank you in advance and please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.

Sincerely,
Your name here

Always include a sheet of paper with the heading “Write your testimonial here”.   Try a yellow paper written in red.  It prompts them to write the testimonial right there and not keep it for later.

A stamped, self addressed envelope is a must.

Lots of people will not respond, but most will. Always ask for testimonials.  The more people you ask, the more testimonials you will get.

These testimonials will go a long way in building your business.

How to use testimonials
Testimonials are a big part of your credibility kit.  Have them on your real estate investor website.  The video testimonials are excellent for this.

Put them in a file or credibility kit and carry them in your car at all times.   Every time you go to see a house, show them to your motivated sellers.

The result is that you will end up buying more houses.

A successful real estate investing business demands that you have a constant supply of leads coming your way. Find out how an interactive real estate investing website can pre-educate motivated sellers for you and bring you pre-screened and pre-negotiated deals for your business.

In this upgrade, marketing features that attract prospects, follow up with them to engage them and convert them into clients are emphasized.

Every business today needs social media marketing as a major marketing strategy to reach more people.  These websites bring the added capability for real estate investors to engage visitors in social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

When selling houses, the websites incorporate the use of building buyers lists with creating referrals on the website and through social media to reach more potential buyers and make more sales.

The websites are delivered equipped with advanced search engine optimization especially targeting the local market.   This means they attract business locally for the real estate investors.

The inbuilt video speaking model commands instant attention delivering down to earth, believable  message that relates to the needs of the website visitor, leading to a higher visitor retention and conversion into clients.

With inbuilt educative E-books, the websites convert visitors into prospects actively engaged with helpful information.   The inbuilt autoresponders then send them helpful messages at carefully pre-timed  intervals.

The result is higher conversion and more closed deals.

For more information, please visit www.RealEstateInvestorsWebsites.net or call 214-227-8718.

So which deals should you pursue and which ones should you leave alone?

To be successful in real estate investing, you must follow a simple business model that you understand.   It is necessary to develop ball-park figures that help you analyze deals whether you wholesale properties, do lease options, fix and flip, keep as rentals, etc.

The following 3 steps apply when analyzing your deals:

1) Pre-screen your sellers
You must pre-screen all your motivated sellers to gather all the information necessary to analyze your deals.  You do need to have a good real estate investor website that helps you pre-educate motivated sellers, pre-screen them and pre-negotiate with them.

The information you receive through your website is enough to know if you have a deal or not.

If you pre-screen them over the phone, you must have a simple script with questions that help you calculate your numbers.

2) Run comparable sales
You must estimate the cost of the house if it was sold TODAY in perfect condition.

3) Analyze your offer
With this information, you can easily tell if you have a deal or not.  Of course, you must have the mortgage balance and asking price to do this.

a) Wholesale deals
If the house costs 70 cents on the dollar minus repairs or lower, it probably qualifies as a wholesale deal.  You should aim for 65% minus repairs in a poor real estate market.

Remember that you must also account for your profit when doing this calculation.  So if you want to make $5000, your buying price would be 65% minus repairs minus $5000.

You have to remember that the lower your buying price, the lower you can flip it and the faster you can sell it.

b) Rentals and lease options
A house in good shape that does not qualify as a wholesale deal probably qualifies for rentals and lease options.

You therefore need to know the rental rates in the area.   For the deal to work, the rental rate must be higher than the mortgage payment.  This means if the rent is $1500 per month, and the mortgage payment is $1150, then you should have at least $350 in monthly cash flow.

It is a good idea to use the rental rates for lease options, though you can fetch a higher monthly payment with a lease option.

It is always important to have equity in the deal for this to work.

c) Short sales
A short sale is viable if none of the options above cannot work and the mortgage payments are late.

Properties with more than one mortgage are better than those with just one.

A more detailed analysis of short sales is covered in our other articles.

Be sure to visit our blog to learn more about techniques and strategies for real estate investing. Learn how you can increase your profits with an automated website for real estate investing that makes you close more deals using less time, money and effort.