You’re trying to stand out in a crowded market.
Experienced and inexperienced real estate investors race to offer their services to every motivated seller in the neighborhood, and you try desperately to beat them to it. Sometimes, you do. More often, you don’t.
Your conversion rate suffers and your business struggles to stay afloat amidst the den of coyotes surrounding the market. You can’t seem to reach motivated sellers first and, when you do, your marketing materials don’t have the desired impact.
But you’re not alone.
Truth is, that’s the case for a lot of real estate wholesalers in today’s world. The business model is appealing to aspiring entrepreneurs (and it’s proven to work), meaning a crowded market where only the best players survive.
So the question is a simple one: how do you stand out as one of the best investors in your market? How do you run more powerful (and profitable) marketing campaigns and how do you convert prospects at a rate double that of your competitors?
Let’s talk about personalization.
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Why personalization can help you stand out in a crowded market
Before you can understand the power of personalization, you first have to put yourself in your ideal market’s shoes.
The average person sees and receives about 2,900 marketing messages every single day — each trying to push on a pain point, offer a solution, and sell a product.
This means your ideal market is bombarded with marketing messages all day long.
Which further means that creating marketing materials that stand out is a real challenge — one that will require you to do something different, something that your competitors aren’t already doing.
Of course, there are a lot of options. You could send direct mail at a different time of day or you could increase your offering price (and risk cutting into profits). Maybe you could even send twice as many mailers as you are now.
But you and I both know that none of that is the long-term solution you need.
You need a solution that’s easy to implement, relatively inexpensive, and remarkably effective.
The answer?
Personalization.
Here are some stats to get you’re mind churning.
- 39% of people who have a personalized shopping experience tell their friends and family.
- 96% of marketers agree that personalization helps to enhance customer relationships.
- 88% of prospects expect a personalized experience.
So what kind of personalization are we talking about?
Am I talking about using merge-tags in your email campaigns to include your prospect’s first name? No. Actually, I’m not.
That is one small piece of personalization — a piece that is overused and often ineffective. Sometimes, including a name can actually make an email seem less authentic when your prospect already knows that you’re emailing a big group of people.
What does work?
These 3 dead-simple, crazy effective things.
1. Use hand-written direct mailers
Not all direct mail is created equal.
Some direct mail catches the attention of its recipients, some doesn’t. And the mail that does catch attention and encourage motivated sellers to reach out isn’t like all the other mail that the person pulled from their mailbox — it’s different. And that’s why it caught the person’s attention in the first place.
Sure, you could use bright colors or legal paper to try and stand out (albeit a little deceptively), but that’s what all the other real estate investors in your market are doing, meaning it won’t work… because it’s the same as everything else.
You know what most investors aren’t doing? Sending hand-written direct mailers that look like this.
And that’s the real stuff — ink that smudges and indents the paper. It’s written by robots over at Ballpoint Marketing, a service launched by Ryan Dossey (the founder of Call Porter) that’s meant to increase the conversion rate for your direct mailers by ink-writing every single letter.
Does it work?
Beautifully.
In a test, Ryan spent $250,000 to pit these robot-written letters against the typical postcard; the results were staggering, with a Cost-Per-Acquisition of $7,000 on the postcards and $3,000 on the inky mailers.
Less money. More results.
2. Use a CRM for friendly phone conversations
How many times do you have to contact a prospect before they convert?
The answer might surprise you. Not 3 times, 4 times, or even 5 times. But 8 times.
You have to contact (emails, texts, phone calls, mailers, etc) a prospect an average of 8 freaking times before that lead decides to work with you. And beyond the fact that that means you need to be following up with your prospects consistently (hint hint — read more over here), it also means you’re going to build a relationship with that prospect — a relationship that requires you to remember details you can’t possibly remember.
Enter CRMs (and the increase in sales they produce).
While it might not be the first thing that most marketers think of when I say “personalization”, maintaining a relationship with your prospects over their conversion journey with a CRM is a vital part of your funnel.
If they call you and you don’t remember who they are (because you don’t have a CRM to remember for you), then that’s going to be a hard hit to an already fragile relationship.
3. Write copy that sounds like you
When you’re following up via email, text, or even with direct mail, write in such a way that it sounds like it’s coming from you. Avoid making the copy too promotional or too stuffed full of marketing jargon.
More personal copy usually performs better (especially in the real estate industry) because it sounds like it’s coming from a real person… which it is.
What would you trust more?
“I buy houses fast and I’d like to buy yours for CASH!! What do you say? Want to make a deal?”
Or…
“Hey there,
My name is Justin and I’m a real estate investor based out of Washington — I help owners of homes who’re going through difficult times (divorce, foreclosure, etc) sell their house fast for cash. Feel free to contact me if and when you need to sell — [phone number].”
Yeah. Exactly — and the answer is the same for your prospects.
Talk like yourself and your leads will trust you more.
Use these three tips to double or triple your conversion rate from your marketing materials and let us know how it goes in the comments!