Finding deals is key. Great deals are found through some simple marketing strategies. Don't be scared by marketing.

Real Estate Investing - Finding Deals
By J. G. Kelly

Finding deals is key. Great deals are found through some simple marketing strategies. Don't be scared by marketing.

Marketing is really creating a big sales funnel. You put as many people in the top and the funnel reduces the number of people you can do business with. Does that sound too simple? This is the principal that marketing giants like Procter and Gamble, Colgate and many many others have been applying for years. Let's delve a little deeper.

1. Know who you are looking for! Your target market?

To find Real Estate Deals you want to speak to people who:

• Own homes
• Live in your target area
• are motivated to sell

You may also add

• own a house in a certain price range
• The house is in reasonable condition (or not-if you are looking for rehabs).

As you go down that list you can see that you want to find people who meet all those criteria. The funnel narrows as you go down. There may be more questions depending on your chosen strategy (e.g. wholesaling, rehabbing) but the KEY is that you must know who you want to do business with.

Example - My targets are home owner who are motivated to sell their property as soon as possible. Their homes are in bad condition & should be located in the 90210 zip code and valued between $300,000 to $400,000.

Now you have to find ways to reach them.

2. Why should this prospect do business with you?

If they were standing in front of you what would you say to them to persuade them to talk to you about selling their home? Another way to say this is: What is your message? This is also known as an elevator speech- meaning that it should be able to be delivered in a short trip between floors. It should be short and persuasive so that a very clear benefit is shown to your prospect.

I am sure you have seen some of the more common messages used by real estate entrepreneurs:

• I Buy Houses
• We buy ugly houses
• Sell Your House
• Cash For Houses

They are not particularly effective messages. They just say what they do... not what they OFFER! A much better example is this : I offer fast debt relief to home owners by buying houses in 7 days or less.

Can you see the difference? It offers the prospect a much better reason to talk with you.

3. How will you get your message to your ideal prospect?

I am sure you have seen this kind of list before: newspaper ads / roadside signs aka bandit signs/ cold calling / direct mail / the internet / TV ads / radio...the list goes on and on. The US postal Service www.usps.com has a great automatic way of sending mail to prospects.

Ideally use multiple media to get your message out to your prospects. It is estimated that it can take a person 6 exposures to take action in response to an ad. Using different media boosts the effectiveness dramatically. Think how you react to seeing a TV ad and then a magazine ad for the same thing.

Don't give up just because the ad has no response that week, put it in again. A person may decide to give your ad a call the 3rd time they see it because he had to think about it first!

To summarize:

• Identify your perfect prospect
• Create an offer that motivates your prospect to sell to you
• Make your prospect aware of your offer

J. G. Kelly is an entrepreneur who has been investing since 2003. From his own experience he has created a a short course on how to find out the key financial details about a property. With that data you can confidently construct strong offers that are more likely to be accepted.
http://www.RealEstateTitleResearch.com

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