Author: Trevor Mauch

With a new month comes a new investment in the success of our InvestorCarrot members!

Way back when we first started InvestorCarrot a couple years back we created our Core Values… and have been dedicated to growing our company by these values, living our lives by these values, and attracting like-minded customers and Carrot team members with these values.

It’s been a huge part of our growth and the success our members have seen over the past year (you guys are pulling in over 13k opt in leads per month!).

With that said, we have two new additions to the support and help we’re adding starting today, April 1st, to help you succeed even more as an InvestorCarrot member! And nope, this isn’t an April fools prank like we pulled last year ;-)

Welcome Our New Customer Success Hero: Adrian!

This has been in the works for quite a while and we’re ecstatic that we were able to make it work to help Adrian reach his long-term goals, work even more within his passions, and add a new element to our already awesome Customer Success program here at InvestorCarrot. Adrian was one of our first customers, is one of our most active, and we’re crazy proud to bring him onto the InvestorCarrot team.

Starting today Adrian Nez, a long-time customer and active wholesaler in multiple markets, will be a full fledged part of the InvestorCarrot team.

His focus will be helping our members with his “what’s working now” approach to getting your own inbound online marketing efforts ramped up and your real estate investing websites performing even better.

Over the coming weeks you’ll see Adrian…

• Diving in to help our support staff (so you may even talk to him on live chat from time to time!)
• Helping us get new trainings out faster so you can implement at the cutting edge of “whats working now”
• Taking over some of the weekly LIVE Carrot Coaching Calls with me
• And overall helping us improve our platform, it’s effectiveness, and inbound marketing innovation in 2015 and beyond

A Bit About Adrian And What He’ll Add To The InvestorCarrot Experience

Adrian has been an active wholesaler in several states and has really taken our “Inbound Online Marketing” platform and training and put it to the test over the last 2 years.

He’s our go to guy on Youtube video optimization… he runs the SEO campaigns for some of our largest clients (investors who have collectively done well over 4,000 deals)… and he’s been a consistent advocate for InvestorCarrot based off of his own results leveraging our platform.

So he’ll bring that same experience to you to help you get the most out of it.

Oh, and Adrian is still an active paying member of InvestorCarrot using it everyday for his own business.

It’s really cool seeing how things come full circle.

Adrian has always been that customer who has a crazy positive attitude, implements the heck out of what we teach, and really cares about helping people succeed. He’s the guy behind several of our most successful Carrot members already… and we’re excited to bring that energy and positivity to the InvestorCarrot crew!

So welcome Adrian in as our new Customer Success Hero! 

He’ll be on our Getting Started Call for new InvestorCarrot members tomorrow with me and will start to take over 1 Coaching Call per month… so reach out to Adrian and say hey!

NEW Expanded Live Chat Hours!

As one of (if not the first) online marketing company for real estate investors to offer LIVE Chat Monday – Friday, it’s been amazing connecting with our customers and soon to be customers through that little orange tab in the lower right of our website.

But, we’ve heard feedback from members on the East Coast that it would be nice to have access to LIVE chat a bit earlier.

In the past our LIVE chat hours have been 10am Pacific – 5pm Pacific (1pm Eastern – 8pm Eastern).

Starting Friday this week the LIVE chat hours will be expanded each day by 3 hours in the morning… starting at 7am Pacific (10am Eastern)! 

So be sure to connect with us and say “hey” if you haven’t been able to connect with our live chat on the east coast because of timing.

We’re here for ya and these additions are the first of many ways we’re investing into you, our customers to help you succeed.

Hit me with any other ideas or feedback you have on ways we can help you succeed and crush it with InvestorCarrot even more.

2015 is going to be a big year and we can’t wait to show you what’s in store!

At least a half dozen times a week I get emails from our customers and Carrot newsletter subscribers asking a question like…

“I see my bounce rate is 72% and that seems high. Is it? And does the bounce rate on your website really matter?”

First off… you may be wondering what a “bounce rate” for a real estate investor website is… why your bounce rate matters (and why it may not matter much at all)… and whether yours is even high in the first place (because it may not be).

A few things to think about before I dive in… so you know whether this post is for you.

• Do you value ranking high in Google for phrases your motivated seller, buyers, tenants, private lenders, etc. are searching?
• Do you want to increase the number of leads you’re getting online?

If so, you’ll want to read this post :-)

First…

Does The Bounce Rate On Your Website Really Matter?

What Is A Bounce Rate Anyway?
(in simple terms)

As far as Google is concerned, in their own words, a bounce rate on a website is… “The percentage of single-page sessions on your website”. In simpler terms… the number of visitors to your website who land on your site… then don’t click anything else and visit any other pages on your site.

Now, that’s the technical term.

But keep in mind… since your real estate investor websites should focus on generating leads… and a certain % of your visitors will just pick up the phone and call you (especially motivated sellers with our InvestorCarrot websites) without clicking on other pages on your website, those visitors will be considered a “bounced” visitor as far as Google is concerned.

So for a lead generation focused website that has a clear call to action for the visitor to pick up the phone and call you, your actual bounce rate may be a tad lower than your Google Analytics bounce report is showing you.

In addition, I’ve been asked hundreds of times… “What is a good bounce rate?”.

Really that’s a tough question.

It really depends on where your traffic is coming from and what the purpose of your website is.

If you run a news website and you have a bounce rate of 75%… that may not be a bad thing because people tend to read 1 article and then leave.

If you run an online store selling cool gadgets… and your have a 75% bounce rate… that means people aren’t engaging on your site, checking out other items, or placing things in the shopping cart. In that case 75% isn’t a good thing at all.

Last, if your website is geared primarily as a lead generation tool (especially for motivated real estate sellers)… you shouldn’t really expect a bounce rate below 40%. Heck, you likely shouldn’t expect a bounce rate much below 60% on a page specifically geared to get a motivated seller to sell you their house (unless you use one strategy that we’re testing right now that is yielding lower bounce rates but sellers that aren’t as highly motivated in general… but the jury is still out).

As a great basis of comparison… below is a screenshot of the traffic stats from our Carrot customers for this past 7 days.

Actual Traffic Stats From Our Members Websites In The Past 7 Days

Why Can Your Bounce Rate Sometimes Be A Big Deal (and when you should not pay much attention to it)?

Before you check your Google Analytics account and freak out because your bounce rate is 75%… just know that your bounce rate isn’t anything to really sweat over unless you’re really focusing hard on SEO and the conversation rate of your website and are in a place where you’re starting to ramp up your traffic to your website.

If you’re just now getting rolling with your website… or haven’t really started to focus on generating SEO traffic much… skip the rest of this post and go out there and focus on generating traffic to your website first.

Bounce rate is something we’ve focused on with the way we’ve built our InvestorCarrot websites… so you don’t have to worry about that stuff if you’re a Carrot member.

If you have a website you’ve built yourself, on another system, or had a web guy build one for you who isn’t an expert in real estate investing lead generation… and you’re ready to ramp your leads up… your bounce rate is something you should have an eye on.

Here are a couple of the main reasons you should keep an eye on your bounce rate as a real estate investor.

Bounce Rate Can Affect Your SEO Rankings

It’s been long known that Google looks at hundreds of factors when deciding where your website should rank.

Several of those factors are what are called “user signals”… which are things that the actual website visitor does based on the quality of your website.

According to a recent report put out by SearchMetrics, both Time on Site and Bounce Rate show a positive correlation… that websites that rank in the top 10 in Google tend to have good bounce rates and a longer than average time on site.

Your bounce rate isn’t one of the first things I’d tell an investor to focus on to increase your rankings… but if you’re struggling to crack into page 1 or rise up page 1 for a search term like “sell house fast DC” or something… take a look and see if your bounce rate is 70% +… or your time on site is less than about 100 seconds.

If it is — you should do something about it for sure.

With InvestorCarrot, to give you a basis of comparison on the “time on site” metric, below are 2 snapshots from our own Google Analytics account.

Avg. Time On Site For The Past 12 Months Across Hundreds Of Investor Websites

Avg. Time On Site For The Busy Warm Months In 2014 Across Hundreds Of Investor Websites

If you see your bounce rate more than what you see above or your time on site less than what you see above (especially if your average visitor stays less than 100 seconds on site)… check out InvestorCarrot.

Those rates are the average rates across our platform… so some members websites are doing MUCH better because they’re driving more highly targeted and quality traffic… while others are driving lower quality traffic that may “bounce” much more quickly.

In the end, your bounce rate and time on site are factors that can affect your search engine rankings… but don’t spend a lot of time on them if you haven’t even focused on the higher leverage activities you can do to rank better first.

Bounce Rate Is An Indicator On Whether Your Site Is Converting Well Or Not

Another thing that the bounce rate is a leading indicator for… is how well your website is performing.

If your website is geared to convert visitors to leads and you have a bounce rate over 80% lets say, you can bet that the website likely isn’t performing very well on the conversion side of things.

But, does a bounce rate of 70% mean that your website isn’t converting well?

Not necessarily.

In some markets with PPC marketing, a 9-14% conversion rate is a solid conversion rate for motivated sellers. You could conceivably have a website with a 70% bounce rate and still have a respectable conversion rate of a lead.

What To Do About Your Website Bounce Rate And Let’s Eliminate The Bounce Rate Fear Today…

If you’re not generating much traffic or leads yet… you shouldn’t even be worrying about bounce rate at all. You should be focusing on the higher leverage things to get traffic to your site. Bounce rate is priority number 1,004 on your list of things to worry about at this point.

As an InvestorCarrot member, go through our SEO tools and training… our Craigslist Marketing Course, etc. And heck, our system already has a very good bounce rate and among the best time on site stats in the industry.

If you’re not a Carrot member, no sweat. There are lots of things you can do to start ranking better in Google and getting more leads. In fact, we have free resources here on this website that’ll help you do that.

If you are on page 1 or close… and are having a tough time getting that #1 ranking and you have a bounce rate over 70%… you may want to see what you can do to improve your bounce rate and time on site… it could help give you an edge in Google’s eyes.

Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

1. Join InvestorCarrot so your website loads faster, is mobile optimized, has better and more engaging content that keeps people on your website longer, and has the conversion elements built into the website to convert higher than the average real estate investing website.
2. If you’re not on InvestorCarrot, if you’re using just a squeeze page… stop! Use a full lead generation website to ramp up your time on site and lower your bounce rate (and increase your leads).
3. Write better and more powerful content that engages the person on your site.
4. Stop using videos that auto play when someone lands on your site (that’s a bounce rate killer).
5. Make the first impression of your website be a good one. It should feel credible, inviting, and make a connection with the visitor.

In the end, don’t fret about bounce rate if you haven’t started to generate more than 100 visitors a month through your SEO or PPC so far.

And if you have a bounce rate over 70% but are still getting great leads… don’t sweat it! Focus on the big things that will help you drive more traffic and improve conversions… and if you keep doing the right things and keep building your website to provide value to your web visitors your bounce rate may just take care of itself.

NOTE: 4/2 – APRIL FOOLS! – Thanks for with us on our April Fools gag. It was a blast! Some people really loved the new “branding”… some thought we were off our rockers! But everyone had a blast with it. Of course Carrot is going NOWHERE and we’re excited at the future of InvestorCarrot and our customers :-) Now… 364 more days to plan next years April fools… ;-)

For the past year, our team over here at Carrot has been working hard to help you grow your real estate businesses… and have fun doing it.  We’ve grown from zero customers to well over 500 active members now… and growing each and every week.

Yes, we’ve had some stumbles as we’ve grown and some growing pains… but we’re proud to say that we’re starting to make our little dent in the universe one Carrot member at a time.  We literally get testimonials and stories from our members every single day talking about how Carrot has literally changed their businesses.

In fact, here’s another deal that one of our awesome customers closed this week because of leads she got from her InvestorCarrot websites (way to go Britt!!!!).

NOTE: See her comment in that post on where she says all of her leads come from. Online in her case = InvestorCarrot. We love it!

With All Of The Deals, Leads, Great Conversions, Fun Carrot Bud Shares… It’s Time For A Change.

Our Carrot staffer April Phouls doodling the heck outta our whiteboard to map out our bigger better future. See the full whiteboard here

Around the start of 2014 we really got to looking at things.

We looked at the future of Carrot as a company, a product, our customers needs and goals… and saw things in a bigger brighter future.

We mapped out our next “evolution” of Carrot as a brand… a product… and a force to help change the world… and in the end, decided that with a huge strategy shift… should come a fresh new brand identity to usher in this new era here at our company.

Announcing Our New Name: Turnip (InvestorTurnip). Yep, that’s right… let’s “Turn It Up With Turnip!“

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

First off, why?

Why turnip? Wasn’t Carrot just perfectly fine?

Well, we didn’t come to this decision lightly. We really loved (and still do) the Carrot name.

Our members have come to love the Carrot Bud (our mascot) sightings… getting a random Carrot gift in the mail when you do something cool with our company… and the all around great feeling you get when you see the color Orange all over the place.

We get it. We loved “InvestorCarrot”.

But we’re all about staying ahead of the curve.

Whether it’s keeping our technology at the cutting edge so you as our customer stay at the cutting edge… or continually providing epic training to help you stay sharp…

… and we did some research and noticed that the brand of carrots in general (the vegetable) has remained stagnant over recent years… while the brand of turnips has actually increased in popularity with Americans.

Since we’re all geeky with Google search data… we ran some reports and found that Google Trends shows that turnips have really grown in popularity over carrots in the past decade.  See the chart below from Google Trends.

And we don’t want to have our brand attached to a “dying” vegetable.

Turnips are the future. And InvestorTurnip is your future.

Further Research That Helped Shape Our Rebranding Decision

When I initially came up with the “InvestorCarrot” brand back in late 2012… I really loved the ring of the name “Carrot”.

But I really didn’t do any “market research” on people’s perception of the Carrot.

Once I saw the startling data above (that Carrots are losing popularity to Turnips) I decided to actually do the right thing this time around… and put in some time in market research. As we all know, your brand can be HUGE in how people perceive you.

Name a shoe company “Slow Shoes”… and you’re dead in the water. But “Air Jordans”… and the sky is the limit.

So surprisingly, once I got out there and started asking around and doing “blind taste tests”… I started to see the same.

In fact, at my daughters pre-school we ran a taste test with a bunch of 3 – 5 year olds... kids who have grown up on “Go-Gurt” (is that even real yogurt? I’m still not sure… ) and baby carrots (kids these days don’t even know what a real carrot actually looks like! They think they all grow to be just “baby carrots”)… as you can see in the picture below…

Turnips beat out carrots by a wide margin in this taste test

Kids are our future… and if this company wants to stay relevant and “on the cutting edge”… we feel that by getting on the turnip bandwagon before the majority of American’s realize there’s even a band wagon to get on… we’ll be setting a trend and get a lot of early adopters who just like to be the “first” to do the new cool thing

We feel that turnips are iN…

… and Carrots are on the way out.

We found some interesting facts about the turnip that we really loved too… check them out on the Turnip Wikipedia page. I think you’ll find them pretty darn awesome too.

How Does This Affect You As A Carrot / Turnip Member?

First off, if you’re already an InvestorTurnip member (all members have been migrated to our new InvestorTurnip platform effective today) you don’t have to do anything.

Just toss out the Carrot Bud doll if you were lucky enough to get one (or save it as a collectors item and sell it on ebay someday)… and we’ll soon be coming out with our new “Terry the Turnip” mascot dolls… and our new Turnip t-shirts that are almost done with production. More on that soon.

There are a couple things you’ll need to do though before your Carrot account is fully operational on our new InvestorTurnip account.

Follow the quick steps below today and lets usher in the new era and welcome in our new brand identity of InvestorTurnip!

Step 1: Post a quick comment below (and “like” this post) and let us know about your excitement for the new branding! Research shows you’re bound to love it! But we’d love to hear. Comment below!

Step 2: Just so you’re up on the “latest” turnip factoids (and the surprising but true meaning of the word “turnip”… head over to the wikipedia turnip page << Check it out

Step 3: We haven’t 100% committed to the whole “InvestorTurnip” brand yet, our lawyers (dontcha love ’em?) are looking into any possible trademark infringements or other legalities that may prevent us from going all “turnip” on ya. So keep a look out for future announcements.