A Sad Day for Marketers...

I was about to post a very special classified ad a colleague of mine turned me on to, but i've very important news:

Gary Halbert Died Today!

Now, many of you won't know about the man, but you should have noticed in my readinglist his works.

Gary a.k.a. The Prince of Print was one of the greatest copywriting and marketing geniuses...ever. period.

Rest in peace, Gary.

-Ted

Ted's Top Ten - The Most Important, Must Read Books for Marketing and Advertising

Dear Real Estate Ace:

I've been searching doggedly through my library of reading materials to share with you, what I believe are the best books available on marketing. I have to warn you though, some of these are a pain in the rear to get. Some have been reprinted, but in revised editions by guys who are total idiots. I'll try to let you know which are worth reading. Anyway, if you want to market for your real estate business, you should definitely take the time to check out these:


The Gary Halber Letters, Gary Halbert
Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins
Triggers, Joseph Sugarman
Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples (Fourth edition or earlier)
How-To Write A Good Advertisement, Victor Schwab
The Ultimate Sales Letter, Dan Kennedy
Mail-Order Secrets of A Marketing Maverick, Joseph Sugarman
The Collier Letter Book, Robert Collier
Anything else you can find by Gary Halbert
Influence, Cialdini

Tootles!

-Ted

CRUSH Your Competition (Part 2)

Dear Fellow Real Estate Junkies,

I started the last post ranting about asking questions of your leads, and looking at the competitions marketing to get an edge in this game of creative real estate investing we all play.

So what did I find from all of those ads, and postcards I took from seller that I met with?

90% of them sucked!
(and mine did too)

From there I (and you need to do this) asked myself how do I beat them. Well, okay like the opening to the movie Patton, I wanted rip my competition apart and stomp on their guts!

I looked for better headlines, better hooks, better formatting, less cutesie picture bull$hit.

And this leads me to a coming post, possibly a full-blown articles (and if I really want to cover it right 3 chapters in a course). When think about marketing there are three key criteria you absolutely must meet.

The 3 M's of Marketing/Advertising:

Message, Market, Media

Well that's all for now.

To your success,

Ted, The Master of Mail

CRUSH Your Competition (Part 1)

Dear Real Estate Super-Stars,

I was all ready to rant off about the 3Ms of marketing, but I realized I've been promising for a while how I'd write about my most favorite subject of all:

Stomping Your Competitors Into The Ground
With Better, Smarter Marketing

See gang, I'm a pure-and-simple capitalist, and I'm a competitive one at that. I think you should revel in making money. You should want to do your business better than everyone else - no time for losers. May the strongest business win! Can't handle it - get a job.

To that end I absolutely hate dumb marketers, and the world is full of them.

So here is the story, you need to figure out what works in your market and tune into why its working. I always ask peope WHY they call me, and if you're starting out you'd be surprised what people tell you.

Here's one such call:

ME: "How did you find out about us?"
Caller: "Oh yeah, you wuz with a bunch a signs on the road"
ME: "Did you call any others?"
Caller: "Nope."
ME: "Why'd you call me?"
Caller: "Yours was the only one I could read!"

Holy cow I thought! Could this be real? You bet! A little common sense and you can tweak your marketing. In any kind of signage readability is king - screw pretty pictures, extra words, it's all crap. Make the stuff readable!

But how do you figure this out?

TEST IT!!!! My friend and I tried all sorts of things... for signs we fiddled with text sizes, colors and other little details... we poured hours over everything. The difference is in the details.

I do the same thing for mailings. I'll write literally a hundred headlines anytime I want to mail something. (Yes a hundred headlines, anything less is sad excuse for an effort.)

Moving on, I want to share how I started to clue into other media... I started with the standard crap you see in Real Estate courses you know the stuff they give you just to get up and running with.

I wasn't sure how to make it better, so the next person I went to see I made a deal with. While on the phone I offered them a quarter for every piece of advertising they had that had anything to do with selling their house. You know what?

I spent nearly Fifty Bucks on junk mail!

It was a damn good investment. I had my competitions' stuff. I now had a clue what floats around out there... most of it is truely garbage. Some of it ain't.

What I found out, will come in the Part 2.

-Ted

A 39 Thousand Dollar Mistake in Creative Real Estate Investing

Dear Top-Gun investor,

First, It's been a month since my last post... Beggers can't be chosers right? (Just kidding, I do apologize)

Anyway this mornings post is from a caffienated conversation I had just a couples hours ago, as a fellow investors and I remember just

How We Lost 39 Grand in
Brain-Dead Obvious Deals

(I should mention though we were just starting out) So here's the story.

We'd spent about 10 nights out on the town during the wee hours of the night posting signs, and I dropped about a grand in to some post-cards, which took another day or two to pull off. We did all this over a period of two to three months, and had what to show for it - 200 motivated sellers.

From this we had a pretty solid short-sale worth $10-20k, a $15k retail deal where we had taken the deed, a $5k wholesale deal in an 80K neighborhood and another $14k wholesale deal to be had in a $150k neighborhood (aka nice for B'more).

So I bet you're thinking wow Ted you made $44k your first three months in Real Estate - Hah -no! Not even close...

We had an RE Agents scare a seller away from us, followed up with one seller an hour late (literally!) and I ticked off a bank rep. When the circus was over there was only one flip deal was had.

Point is: market for 4 deals to get one done! Don't market to try and get a deal, when you start out, you're bound to mess up a lot.

Peace out, cub scouts.

-Ted

Happy Holidays

Just wishing you a merry holiday season and a happy new year!

-Ted

Marketing Systems for Real Estate Investors

Dear Top-Gun Marketers,

It's been over a week since I've posted, but I had pull my last one. You see, I recently wrote a post about marketing systems at about 2:00 AM. Unfortunately, I woke up the next morning and realized it was the most incoherent thing I'd ever written. Guess I didn't have enough caffiene in my body because everyone knows I'm used to being up very very late! But actually there may be a better story in here...

When I First Got Started...

I use to put up Bandit signs as a quick and dirty way of getting leads. After a quick stop at a Dunken Donuts, my friend and I would go into Baltimore at about midnight and let loose on the town. Now when I say we put up Bandit signs you should know we were not playing around! We climbed poles (that's right, screw ladders), strapped signs in places nobody could reach, stood on each others shoulds sometimes, got more signs out in more place than most people could believe. Every minute of our time counted, and we rocked the city of Baltimore.

40+ signs, 2 Red Bulls, and a Starbucks later we'd be home around 7AM... Never mind I had a day job (or two). When I walked in I'd crash down right on my couch, and just as I was about to sleep...

The Phone Rang!

Now most people would say "Gee great, lemme talk to a motivated seller", but let me tell you trying to negotiate a deal after a caffiene crash is insanity. And, it's even less fun when some nut name Jerry is calling you to take down those da$!ed signs.

If I neglected my answering machine for more than a day or two I had a second problem... 40 phone calls to make and a heck of a time playing phone tag.

Don't get me wrong, sleep deprivation from a ringing phone is the Real Estate Investors fantasy - for 6 months, my reality.

It started to dawn on me...

We All Need A System

I started working with an answering service. Had only important calls routed to my cell phone. I looked for ways to keep me from spending pressious time yapping at sellers who were wasting my time. It didn't happen over night, and I still tweak the system today.

Point is, you should be refining and/or developing your processes to make life easier on you.

Marketing systems can be a little complex, but not so much for Real Estate Investors like you and I. I'll explain the hows and whys in a coming post.

Just remember: It get's easier once you get started.

-Ted

P.S. Who wants to know how to STOMP your competition with marketing? That post is also on its way.

P.P.S. I recently consulted a propeller-hear (you know, tech guy). I was worried people will forget to check back here for new posts, so he is in the middle of setting me up with some sort of alert system or something... details to follow.

P.P.P.S. My email box is getting jammed up with questions, comments, and all sorts of goodness. Though I can't personally answer every email, I do read them. I also base my posts in part from the emails I recieve. Feel free to drop me a line or two: tbudzich@gmail.com

My Old Roomate Jim...

Okay, so last post I said I was going to hit on some quick ways to start getting leads to flow, but first I need to share another story or two...

I once lived with a roomate who wanted to get into real estate... This guy Jim had a mentor, went to a club occasionally, and sort of took advice and rolled with it. Last I heard though, he took some...

Six-Figure Job In IRAQ!

Now it's bad enough that this guy gave up on his aspiration to become a real estate investor, maybe he thought it too much work. What's worse, he settled for a job that you and I pay for! I gotta tell ya, I tried to help him market, but his head was truelly in the wrong place... He bought a case of Band-It signs - 10 of them went on poles, 90 of them sat on the living room floor. He mailed out post cards - I read them - truelly bad pieces. Actually truth is, the postcards he mailed barely made sense, and he only mailed maybe a thousand or two.

He had in toto, attempted maybe three things, butI should really say he attempted the

BECAUSE:

10 Bandit signs isn't trying!

Mailing a postcards without putting two ounces of thought into them isn't trying

Mailing a postcard with a cute, seemingly relevent picture to 400 people isn't trying either...

Let me tell what is:

1. Tacking up 50 signs a night... (usually involves a tank of gas and two Red Bulls and couple of Dunkin' Donuts) Do this ten times and you may get some where

2. Mailing 5000 postcards/letters I used to mail 'bout a 1000 at a time - got about 5 calls each time. Once I started figuring out what to write, which lists to hit, etc., it went to about 30 calls/1000.

3. Running ads twice a week in Craiglist... (But only if you do other stuff too) Friend of mine claims he does the craigslist thing once-per-week. I've checked up on him though (truth is about once per month)

4. Dropping flyers on FIVE Thousand cars. Not a targeted audience... painful to do (I'd sooner put the nail through my hand while tacking a sign to a pole (seems less painful)

Here's the POINT: Most people do diddly-squat!

Jim didn't actually do anything! "I sent out a mailing, I put up some signs" he said... I knew the truth he put up ten signs and mailed maybe a thousand people... in his mind that was trying... personnally going to Iraq "because it pays well" seems like selling yourself short... I'd rather sit here and get rich, and I hope to help a few of you do the same.

Most people don't really put a lot of effort into this stuff (btw, an hour sitting at your computer is not an hour of work)... If you want your marketing to work, you gotta either get a bad message in front of a lot people (band-it sign "WE BUY HOUSES 555-1234" 6+ in 10,000-car-per hour intersectiona) or a good message to a targeted bunch.

Personally, I think it's a lot easier to start out with jamming a bad message in front of a ton of eye-balls, and then try and work your way up from there. When I started out, the message was terrible, my signs did poorly, my post-cards where bad, but I didn't throw my hands in the air and say "I tried". NO, I asked myself what got response. I asked myself why. I pondered what would work better and I tried each change I could think of dozens (probably hundreds) of iterations later I found stuff that works pretty darn well.

Next posts:

What a well-oiled marketing machine looks like (okay, what my machine looks like)

7 Sins of marketing - aka How-To flip your company upside down and get stuck back in a JOB

My favorite subject, How-To CRUSH the competition. There's a lot of it, don't be shy.

Good luck,

-Ted

P.S. Tell me your story what are you REALLY doing to get the ball rolling... In upcoming posts, I'd like to feature some case studies, but I need to hear from you.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

First, A thank you to everyone who's checked out the Blog, and emailed or commented to me.
You're interest and support is greatly appreciated.

Onward...

Guys I'm stunned (and in come cases shocked)!

So far I've heard from a variety of folks, some who get "it", some who need a little help, and some who are just getting started. Two (repeat two) people understand the ONE thing their business is about. More on that later, first a quick story of when I first got into real estate investing.

I remember spending a ton of time trying to learn the mechanics of REI... I spent a good year on it in fact. Funny thing is, for all the time I was learning how to structure deals, the ins-and-outs of rehabs, sub-to, L/Os etc...

I didn't get a darn deal done!

After that, I realized I was never going to get anything done if I didn't get somebody who wanted to sell me their house. Sure I tried the MLS, but frankly the banks were thumbing their noses at us. On a whim, I took a case of bandit signs and started tacking them up... they weren't even my signs! My friend Steve, gave me about a case load of his because he'd never got around to using them. Well, at this point I'd love to give you a Cinderalla Story of how fantastic the work... but it didn't happen that way! They did okay - got maybe 10 calls. But this was...

A flash of insight!

The signs got me and my partner some phone calls, I plunked down $250 for another case... still about 10-20 calls... I was hot-to-trot, signs were cheap, calls were coming in. I started to ponder what I might change about the signs, were to put them, what design to use. Three - count 'em - THREE cases later...

I was netting 40 calls!

It became very clear that a flood of calls was a key to me...

Now, I can't cover a whole lesson on Band-it Signing, but that's not the lesson here!

The lesson... Your Business IS Marketing!

That's your business, and a couple of people who replied get that!

If you're getting started, you need to get a ton of leads so you can mess up a bunch of stuff and still come away with a deal... If your already rolling you're reading this because you need/want more deals.

My next posting, I'll start to address the quick and dirty ways to get the ball rolling...

-Ted

1. What this is all about...

Hello and welcome.

This blog is dedicated to showing you the ropes of how to market as a real estate investor. It's NOT how to do piddly-diddly marketing that gets you a couple responses. I want your phone (or your assistants) to ring off the hook... Actually, I want you to be so swarmed with hungry sellers you get yourself an answering service just to handle them.

If you're new, frankly you need a storm of leads to get in the game. If you're seasoned as an investors, you need/want more deals to fill the pipes.

So why would I do this?

Well, a friend of mine and I were having drinks one night and talking about how we got started. We talked about all the dumb rookie marketing mistakes we made and all the subtle things we did right (though we stumbled on a lot of it). He reminded me that we've slammed the Baltimore/DC area with so much marketing that I've got 152 (average) calls per week. Then he reminded me that people actually offered me serious cash money to buy some of my phone numbers. So as we kept ranting, it started to seem like a good idea to tell others just how to do this sort of thing!

So what now?

Well truth is, I don't know. I'll start posting on this blog, but...

I want your feedback!

Yup... I want to know what it is you'd like to know about getting truck-loads of motivated sellers. So tell me what you want to know about! email me at tbudzich@gmail.com and post a reply to this message. Let me know what you want to know how to do, and I'll get busy posting!

Stay tuned...