00;00;00;09 - 00;00;26;07
Unknown
All right. Welcome back to the seven Figure Flipping podcast today. I'm your host Adam Whitney. And I'm joined today by Lindsay aka my partner. Lindsay. Welcome to the show. Hi. Welcome back. Awesome. Good to see you guys. Today we're actually going to be diving deep into marketing. We're specifically going to talk about competitive markets or small markets. And what are the most viable strategies for either of those situations.
00;00;26;07 - 00;00;50;13
Unknown
So now tune in and here we go. All right so two major topics to touch on today as it relates to marketing. Topic number one is my you hear this all the time. My market is too saturated. I can't get deals or topic number two my market is too small. And I think I think that you really just don't have an effective system.
00;00;50;13 - 00;01;12;25
Unknown
That's your problem. Not that your market's too small or not that your markets too saturated. Because if you look at all markets, somebody is consistently doing deals. Somebody figured it out. Yeah. And for me I think like what have you done already. When people bring me a problem I my favorite question to ask them is what have you done already.
00;01;12;27 - 00;01;38;16
Unknown
Can you prove to me unequivocally that your market is saturated or you can't get a deal? And, we just saw this. Actually, I, I'm going to go right into a story and arc from our community. Raoul, posted that, he was incredibly disappointed because he went into his database and he's in the Virginia, I think, Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach area.
00;01;38;19 - 00;02;01;25
Unknown
He goes into his database, he pulls his leads, he runs him through a system to see, through reassembly, our CRM, his CRM, to see if they've been sold. He bought all those leads you paid for, only to realize that other lenses have purchased the leads that were first in your database. And so if he were to tell me this doesn't work, my market doesn't work.
00;02;01;27 - 00;02;21;26
Unknown
My marketing doesn't work. I'm like, oh no, it works. Those are all done deals that you had. And I don't know how many other people are actually thinking to look back at their leads. What about you? Are you seeing what do you see as you're talking to some of these investors actually. So we we saw that post, right?
00;02;21;26 - 00;02;41;20
Unknown
Come into our membership Facebook group. And he said it felt like a gut punch. But what prompted him to do that was that we held a sales and marketing, small group meeting here at our at our office and land O'Lakes, and we went through marketing and apps. And so it forced them to actually look at their data.
00;02;41;20 - 00;03;02;20
Unknown
So one of the key things that a lot of investors are missing is actually knowing what their data is and how to make decisions based on data. It starts though, by really understanding your market, what is actually happening in your market, what is transacting? Are you focusing on the right things? Yeah. And we we did in the two day.
00;03;02;20 - 00;03;25;22
Unknown
It was beautiful because we use some technology and we were able to see sold investor sales. And we analyzed a few different counties and zip codes. And you could see the sheer volume that was being sold like some some counties were 30 deals a month that are being done. And you'll have an investor in there doing like 2 or 3 deals, saying there's no more deals to be had.
00;03;25;24 - 00;03;45;27
Unknown
Like, I'm already doing all this marketing and one of the things that we did was we talked about, we looked at the business funnel and their and their, businesses to look from the top of their business down through their conversion, their sales. And we found all kinds of leakage. Right? We all when we do that, you know, from how are you generating leads?
00;03;45;27 - 00;04;03;06
Unknown
What are they costing you? How many raw leads to qualify leads do you have. How many qualify leads go to appointments. How many those appointments are attended. And then of course if you go to the appointments, how many offers are you making? How many contracts are you selling? How many are closing? Which is a really problem in our industry.
00;04;03;06 - 00;04;20;16
Unknown
People only close in half. Half of the contracts they sign and then money comes out the bottom. So somewhere in that funnel oftentimes is the answer to what's wrong with your business. And it has nothing to do with the actual market, right? I mean, we've done that exercise ourselves where we've spent quite a bit of money on paper leads.
00;04;20;16 - 00;04;38;19
Unknown
Right. And we don't see a return coming back. And so then we take it one step deeper, we go and we look at, okay, who did these deals sell to, if not us? Sometimes it's the MLS, right? And we're like, okay, we can live with that. But when it's another investor and then we analyze the notes, did we make an offer.
00;04;38;19 - 00;04;55;26
Unknown
How many times did we follow up? Did it, did they go dark? Did they go to somebody else? Did they did somebody else offer maybe a price that we couldn't. And so just really understanding what happened, not just that it went to another investor, but where was the problem on our side that caused that to happen? Yeah.
00;04;55;26 - 00;05;16;08
Unknown
And I think I think one of the big misnomers and the things that people like to blame is the market in general, I believe and I've said this multiple times, even on this show, that we're in one of the best markets we can be in because it's steady state for the next couple of years, most likely, which gives us a lot of predictability.
00;05;16;11 - 00;05;38;17
Unknown
Distress is what it is. There are still deals being done. So it's our job to be efficient and effective and go in to find those deals. The it also requires a disciplined investor, though, because I think with some of the you know, rise in RV that we saw during the Covid era, I think people became very accustomed to and unfortunately dependent on that.
00;05;38;19 - 00;06;04;09
Unknown
And now you have to be disciplined. So when you're establishing RV, you need to be conservative and so that you're not disappointed on the back end when you exit the property. Yeah, that really to me comes down to your company's system. So what number one, are you a company or are you, hustling for your next deal? Are you a true operator who's, you know, running a business, or are you just hustling a deal here and there?
00;06;04;09 - 00;06;23;18
Unknown
Either way is fine. But when you're an operator that's just hustling a deal, you're going to have a lot of inefficiencies. You're going to have a lot of ebb and flow because it's super reliant on you as the investor. So if you go buy a property, if you go, you're participating in the marketing of it, to get it.
00;06;23;18 - 00;06;42;15
Unknown
You're participating in the sales to sign the contract and negotiate the contract and then once you buy the house, you're fully focused on turning the house, as a rental or disposition, get as a wholesale deal or whatever your exit strategy is. So when you're doing that, what's not happening is you're not working on the front end of your business to acquire more.
00;06;42;21 - 00;07;01;19
Unknown
So I see this all the time where the, the solo operator with maybe a VA or two will get a deal or two. They're stuck in the deal working on the deal. The deals will get done, money will come in and they'll freak out because they have no more deals. And, you know, hey, they've got all kinds of reasons of why that the market doesn't work.
00;07;01;22 - 00;07;19;29
Unknown
Right. Or or they stop marketing, right, because they're focusing on the deal. And I've seen that with a lot of investors, especially when they just start out, they stop marketing because they need to stop and then focus on their property. But then it's really, really hard to get that machine restarted again once when you stop it from rolling.
00;07;20;02 - 00;07;36;29
Unknown
Yeah. For sure. And, I was thinking a Stan. Stan always turns as he wants a deal. He'll he'll throw, you know, some mail out there, answer his own phone calls and, sign in and do a deal that way. A flip up in new Jersey. But, he doesn't want to build the team. He does want to be an operator.
00;07;36;29 - 00;07;52;23
Unknown
He just wants to be a solo guy. And, I can't fault them for having a lifestyle business or wanting to have a lifestyle business. I mean, he goes on a vacation after every flip. I think. So it's not a bad life. It's not a bad life. It's not a bad life. Okay, so the other thing about market.
00;07;52;23 - 00;08;13;20
Unknown
So I think we all agree. And if you're listening this, you probably agree at this point. The market conditions are the market conditions. There is no really good or bad. They just are what they are. The days are market is what it is. The sales price is what it is. And even if it's declining, those are things that you can both predict and adjust for which, you should be doing.
00;08;13;20 - 00;08;37;23
Unknown
If you're a professional. Now, the other thing that people are Will say is like, yeah, but Adam, you're in Central Florida. You guys have 2 million people, or you're in Tennessee or Georgia. You guys have millions of people. I'm in Podunk, Missouri, and there's no way I could increase my deal volume. And then we go look at the deals that are selling to investors.
00;08;37;23 - 00;08;57;14
Unknown
And it's like higher than where we're at in some cases. Right. What do you say to those people who are, maybe not being consistent in their marketing or are just kind of, they don't believe that their marketing will work? Yeah, it's it's a lot of self-limiting beliefs. I think that's what I was getting out earlier with.
00;08;57;14 - 00;09;17;01
Unknown
You need to know your market. I remember when I first started, I would I didn't have consistent deals and I was uncertain. Maybe if I just picked this one county, it was too small. And so the next stop for me, Bill actually coached me on this. He was like, how much distress is in your market? Do you have enough distress?
00;09;17;03 - 00;09;34;27
Unknown
Are there transactions going on? Are there are there wholesalers in that market? Are there other flippers in that market? So starting with doing that homework first to see what is actually going on that that should help you with that, that limiting belief. Right. If there's other deals going on and you have to figure out how to get them.
00;09;35;00 - 00;10;03;14
Unknown
Yeah. And I think having a small market gives you a competitive advantage because, you have less properties to market to, which means you could for the same amount of money, you can cover a whole county. Yeah, right. Than a big market, which, means you can be you can build your brand way faster. It would take me 60 to $100,000 a month in Google Ads, PPC in Tampa, and another 40, 20 to 40 K a month in direct mail.
00;10;03;17 - 00;10;26;25
Unknown
And I need to be on TV for me to be the true dominant. Oh, you're talking like 150 grand a month, at least in the Tampa market, to become a dominant factor in the market. Whereas if you're in, say, you know, Springfield, Missouri or, Gary, Indiana, or some of these smaller markets, you could throw up one billboard, you could do mail, you could do, something.
00;10;26;25 - 00;10;46;18
Unknown
It's called Every door, direct mail, EDM, which you can't put variable data on that mail, but you can get mail for pennies on the dollar, pennies on the dollar, and you can send it to way more people. So you could literally be the most known investor in your market faster and for cheaper than somebody in a bigger market.
00;10;46;18 - 00;11;07;20
Unknown
It could be. Yeah. And there's, there's more than one one way to market. Right. You don't want to be single threaded either. So you know are you. Yes. You can be doing direct mail. You could also be cold calling. You could also be getting some niche data. You could get water shutoff notices. There's so many different ways that you can you can tackle that data from different angles.
00;11;07;20 - 00;11;34;11
Unknown
Until you've done that, you probably haven't exhausted enough opportunities for sure. What would you say when you talk about niche data and kind of focusing in on something small? So if they're an investor with a small budget, what would you tell them to do in order for them to be like omni channel marketing? I would I would take a look at probably my, my favorite was when I would look at tax delinquents.
00;11;34;14 - 00;11;55;19
Unknown
I knew that they were delinquent on their county taxes. I knew that they were going to go to auction. And so I also knew that it was going to be, unlikely that they were going to answer direct mail. They probably were avoiding their mailboxes. So then also driving around, if you're especially if you're in a small market, there's not that many to tackle.
00;11;55;23 - 00;12;24;22
Unknown
So driving for dollars, is it vacant. Is there still somebody there you can skip. Trace them. You can call them. You can put a note on their door. So in addition to sending mail, there's a lot of other small things that you can do surrounding that data to support that effort. Yeah. I think that mail call knock on the door, like these are all just fundamental marketing things that for whatever reason, people don't do the thing.
00;12;24;22 - 00;12;40;11
Unknown
That's the thing they know that works. But getting them to actually do it and follow through, I mean, it's kind of scary to go knock on somebody's door. You know, maybe they have a job and they don't want to go drive around and they don't have time to go drive around to look for stuff. So you have to find what works for you.
00;12;40;18 - 00;12;52;23
Unknown
Hey, I didn't want to do any of those things either, by the way. I had I had babies and I had a full time job, but it really it really comes down to like, how bad do you want it? Because you're going to give up something, you're going to give up time. Are you going to give up money?
00;12;52;25 - 00;13;11;24
Unknown
For sure, yeah. And I remember, when I first started doing direct to seller marketing years ago, I was like, okay, cold calling is affordable. This is when cold calling in bulk was like a pretty popular channel I'm going to call. It's relatively affordable. I got a dialer. It was Mojo dollar at the time that what we use now.
00;13;11;24 - 00;13;30;24
Unknown
But, got Mojo dialer, got a list out a prop stream, put a headset on, I started dialing, I was about three hours into that, and I was like, I'm never do this again. This is terrible. Literally went to hire train VA, hired a VA. And from there I just, I would be at work, my VA would be setting appointments for me and doing all the admin.
00;13;30;24 - 00;13;45;04
Unknown
And that was a way better model for me. But I had to spend a little bit of money because it's not that I didn't have the time. I didn't want to commit the time because I didn't want to do that activity. It's, right. But talk about that a little bit more, because that was from your your classes.
00;13;45;05 - 00;14;08;02
Unknown
My office. Yeah. So in my, I was in I was still in the military. I was in base housing. And these are like, small units, maybe, maybe 1500 square feet. And there's just enough room for my family in there. So we had this one oddly oversize closet upstairs that I could literally just fit my desk in all the way at the back end, and it was, like, narrow.
00;14;08;02 - 00;14;24;05
Unknown
And then in the back it had like a bigger cutout. So I could squeeze this desk in there, turn it sideways, and I could be sitting in there. I even hung up pictures on the wall and, I had to run. There was no electrical plug inside of the closet. Of course, I ran an extension cord in the closet.
00;14;24;05 - 00;14;45;10
Unknown
And, my wife, Jenny, she said that that's your office, and I would be in there at, like, four in the morning, like trying to do deals and talk to sellers and stuff. So I mean, that's what it takes to make it happen, I think. And I think sometimes people will look at where we are right now. We we have an office, we have a larger team, we have access to more marketing.
00;14;45;10 - 00;15;14;22
Unknown
But but we built that over time. It started with you in a office and to be driving for dollars. Yeah. And, you know, you do have to pay your dues. I think there is. There's no, like, get Rich in the next 12 months. Schemes going on. Real estate remains a get rich, slow game. It can be a beautiful business that gives you freedom and makes you a lot of money, but it will take time and experience, and you got to level up your skill and in order to do that, it's like a really, really simple formula.
00;15;14;25 - 00;15;37;15
Unknown
It's it's doing the thing over a long period of time is going to increase your skill level. When your skill level increases, the amount of money you make increases. Absolutely. So we talked a lot about what we would do and if we were in a small market, but what about if you're in a larger super competitive market. What what would you do in that situation.
00;15;37;20 - 00;16;05;06
Unknown
Yeah, for for me, I want to be omnichannel. So I'm going to go in and pull what I deem to be the top 1000 property records. And I'm going to do that by a first locational. Like I want to get houses in areas that are highly desirable. So I'm looking at demand. If I'm going to wholesale, I'm looking at the flipper demand, which we have such great access to resources today, it's very easy to find that data.
00;16;05;08 - 00;16;22;17
Unknown
So I want to see flipper demand. If I'm in a wholesale, I want to get the top 1000 records in that location. Good properties. I know that will move. If I get them, then I want to stack in distress until I get my list down to a thousand. So I want to know if they, have a tax delinquency.
00;16;22;17 - 00;16;37;01
Unknown
I want to know if they're in pre foreclosure or foreclosure. I want to know if they're probate. So I want to, I want to stack as much good quality data, but I only want to get to a thousand records. So then I'll play with equity a little bit. Then I'll play with, owner occupied versus absentee you.
00;16;37;01 - 00;16;58;20
Unknown
If it's absentee, you're more likely to get the deal faster because somebody doesn't typically live there. But you may have to take on a tenant, for example. So that's first, first and foremost, get the top 1000 records. Now it's only a thousand records. So to send mail to a thousand records would be 500 bucks, you know, $0.50 a postcard.
00;16;58;22 - 00;17;18;28
Unknown
Or you could kind of generate some on your own and just drop them off at people's houses, depending on what kind of time you have in. If you're local, get the mail in there. Then I'm going to skip trace that through, skip Jenny through. People search kind skip tracing, you name it. I'm going to get the phone records back and I'm going to get that called.
00;17;18;28 - 00;17;37;15
Unknown
So either I'll do it, which I probably will not. I'll have a VA do it. Somebody who's a pro at cold calling, call it. And then I would also text it. So now I'm now multi-channel, I'm calling it, I'm texting it and I'm sending it mail. And my only goal is to talk to all 1000 homeowners and get a yes or no.
00;17;37;15 - 00;18;04;22
Unknown
Or maybe that's it. I guarantee you pull 2 to 3 deals out of those thousand records. If you relentlessly work 1000 records to get a yes or no, or maybe like I, I would be shocked if you didn't. I think that's key. And it keeps you from getting discouraged if your outcome or your your goal right from the beginning is to get a contract that that is so defeating.
00;18;04;24 - 00;18;23;28
Unknown
If your goal is, how can I make contact and have a conversation with every single one of these people? And that is your goal, it becomes much easier. And then the more conversations you have, the more comfortable you get, the more comfortable you get, the more appointments you get, the more appointments you get, the more offers you make, the more offers you make, the more deals you got.
00;18;24;01 - 00;18;47;19
Unknown
And now we're confident in the skills going up. And as the skill goes up, the results get better. The confidence gets better. You're right. And that's like that's the piece. That's the component of this that people are missing. I can literally come in and help you build a seven and multiple seven figure business, the entire blueprint. But I can't do the work for you, and I can't do it for a long enough period of time, for you to get the result for you.
00;18;47;20 - 00;19;16;10
Unknown
You only you can do that. And, I think people just go on. They get they get down this road, they start to kind of do the thing, but not fully committed. Then they start to see other things and go, oh, that looks like it's less friction easier. So now they go dabble in innovation or they go dabble in, storage facilities or curative title deals, whatever is being marketed to them.
00;19;16;12 - 00;19;36;13
Unknown
By the way it's being marketed to you. The same. Easy. So you sign up for the thing and what it all it really does is it distracts you. But when you pull the curtain back and you look across all these real estate businesses, whether they're doing $8 million a year or $3 million a year or just $1 million a year, they're all fundamentally doing the same thing.
00;19;36;13 - 00;19;58;15
Unknown
They're doing multi-channel marketing called tax direct mail or direct mail, PPC, TV. And they have an incredible process and system for taking care of those leads. And they relentlessly talk to those leads until they sign those deals. And, over time, they get better and better. They get more and more exit strategies and they make more and more money.
00;19;58;15 - 00;20;17;28
Unknown
That's it. That's all that's happening. Nobody's doing anything more special than that. There's no I list that's better, than any other list. The standard lists are all still very good and viable. Now, unless you can get data direct from the county, like you said, water shut off or something like that. That's always the best data, right? If they're working a new list.
00;20;18;01 - 00;20;36;16
Unknown
So I decide I'm going to do direct mail for the first time. How long of a period of time do I need to commit to that for? Yeah, that's, we we modeled this out actually, at the event, and it's from the day you spend money on direct mail to the day you bring capital back into your business.
00;20;36;16 - 00;20;58;02
Unknown
It's called the cash conversion cycle. And for direct mail on a flip that's about 260 days. So I spend mail today. I spend money on mail today, 260 days later, I might get money. Now what's happening between now in those 260 days? I'm spending more money on marketing because I was told to be consistent and I'm spending more money.
00;20;58;02 - 00;21;15;29
Unknown
And this is where people start to freak out. Oh my gosh, I have money going out and nothing coming in. They can't they haven't been through the cycle so they can't see how the cash moves yet. So they get nervous, they stop and all they do is delay the success of their business. Nothing worse than starting and stopping the work.
00;21;15;29 - 00;21;38;24
Unknown
So the literal worst, okay. For really any investor who is doing marketing, even if you're small and you're targeting a small niche list, it is critical that you're doing omnichannel marketing. So it could be direct direct mail, cold calling and SMS kind of on the cheaper end of the spectrum. Or it could be as high as PPC, direct mail and TV.
00;21;38;24 - 00;22;02;21
Unknown
And you have big broad omni channel marketing. What was the clip of, visibility credit sponsor. And the reason that works is because visibility creates velocity, and not everybody is going to see all the direct mail. Only 1% of those people are going to call you. So maybe only 5 or 10% of those people pick that card up and read it.
00;22;02;24 - 00;22;27;03
Unknown
The rest of them just discarded it right into their trash. So what about the other 995 people? Like, we got to get in front of them with calling or texting, or they've got to see us on Facebook or Google ads or PPC somewhere. It's the only way you're going to create profitability. It's the only way you'll have the velocity on your marketing to create the margin.
00;22;27;05 - 00;22;51;02
Unknown
Okay. So with all the things that we talked about today, there are some principles. There are some just fundamental things that just flat out work in marketing. So how would you summarize for our listeners what they should and should not be doing? Number one, stop looking at what everybody else is doing, because marketing is very, very specific to where you are geographically.
00;22;51;05 - 00;23;12;22
Unknown
And then start doing some research, figure out what is actually transacting in your market, and then go from there, figure out what data you have access to. Niche that is harder to get Ahold of, but if you do get Ahold of it, it's better data to attack and then be consistent. Consistently execute the marketing plan that you establish.
00;23;12;28 - 00;23;29;24
Unknown
And then when you get those leads, you have to consistently follow up with them until they close for sure, for sure. And I think the only thing I would add to that is, not just consistency, but even as with a small budget, you can still be omnichannel in your marketing. A little mail, a little call, a little texting.
00;23;29;24 - 00;23;53;24
Unknown
Just go super deep on the little bit of data that you might be marketing to. Okay, so that's our episode today. Thank you guys all for listening to the Seven Finger Flipping podcast with Lindsay and I. We really, really value your feedback. So if you're loving this version of what we do, if you're loving this podcast on Seven Finger Flipping and how we're doing it today, please just leave us a five star review.
00;23;53;27 - 00;24;18;27
Unknown
And by the way, if you guys don't know, we are constantly doing training that is either, free for you to learn and get your game moving or it's incredibly cheap. And I'll tell you what, it's not just for the new investors. We do capital raising training. We do, free lead gen training. We do deal analysis training, stuff that we just want to give back to the community and help other people, build their businesses the same way we did.
00;24;18;27 - 00;24;27;29
Unknown
So we'll we'll we'll link some stuff in the comments, some trainings that you can participate in. And we'd love to see you there. So thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you on the flip side.
