Search Results for credibility

YouTube Real Estate Marketing Tricks: Video Optimization To Get Leads

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YouTube Real Estate Marketing doesn’t have to be tough, but if you want it to generate leads, you’d better optimize… we’ll show you how. Why use YouTube for real estate marketing? If a picture is worth a thousand words, a YouTube real estate video is worth millions. People can actually see you. They can hear you. A video gives people a chance to build trust with you. That trust is at the core of conversion strategy. Trust is what makes marketing work. People must have a certain amount of trust in order to make a purchase or fill out a form to get more info. They have to believe in you. That’s what makes video so great – it’s your chance to reach people, to connect with them, to inspire them to take action… to sell a house, to buy an investment… whatever you’ve got to offer, video can help you connect in a way that no other medium can do. Think of it this way… a great sales video can keep selling for years, while you’re kicking back with your feet up. So without further ado, here are the keys to getting great results from video marketing: #1 – Do your keyword research. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to research your keywords. You must make sure that you’re optimizing for keywords that are actually being searched in your market. People search on YouTube differently than they do in regular Google search. They often use different terms and slightly different phrases. So don’t assume that the keyword research you did months ago when you were thinking about optimizing your site is going to be enough for a good video marketing campaign. Unfortunately, Google shut off the tool that told us directly what was being searched on YouTube… best we can see now is what they provide in their Display AdWords Planner – you’ll need a free Google account to use the tool. Here’s what the Display Tool looks like: #2 – Use no more than 2 keywords per video For search marketing purposes, it’s way better to make a lot of small videos on YouTube targeting many keywords than to make one long one. Think about it… people are searching a specific term, so you want your video to be directly related to that specific term. Sure, you can optimize a generic video a bunch of times with a lot of terms… but that technique won’t get good results. Here are a few places where keywords might help: Remember, Google is very smart. They work incredibly hard to make sure that good results climb to the top of their searches… so if you concentrate on making really high-quality content and optimizing it, you’ll get great results from it. Don’t try to do too much with one video… make a plan to create new videos often. #3 – Focus on making a great YouTube Real Estate Channel Yeah, I know… you wanna just make one video, then call it quits. But seriously, don’t bother. Trying to make one video will make you nuts. You can’t say everything you need to say in 90 seconds unless you’re super focused on just one or two keywords. Either prepare to make video marketing a big part of your business, or don’t do it at all. If you’re gonna do video marketing on YouTube, you’ll want to set up a really great YouTube channel. That’s the goal… the top of the mountain you’ll want to climb. High credibility, high trust, high views… high revenue. :) Videos that are on a great channel go to the top of the rankings. Don’t stress … Continued

The #1 Skill Your Real Estate Marketing Should Include Right Now

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Does your real estate marketing tell a story, or are you just advertising? After all, stories are the most powerful tool of communication, in business and in life. Humans communicate best through stories. How good are your storytelling skills? Besides reading this post, what are you doing to develop those skills? If you’re like most of our members, you’re constantly learning and developing your skills. Most of our members joined because they knew we’d give ’em a website that converted way higher than the typical real estate investor website, but they didn’t really understand our highest value: teaching skills. Storytelling is one of the most powerful skills you can possess. You already know that marketing is an insanely valuable skill. Marketing brings leads, and leads bring revenue. That’s obvious. But here’s the thing that most people don’t get about marketing: it’s all about telling a great story. STOP! Before going further, take some time to listen to how Max Maxwell Leverages Online Real Estate Marketing and Inspirational Storytelling to Close 1 in 4 Leads Behind every great brand is a powerful story that most consumers never see. Companies like Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola didn’t become household names because of their relentless pursuit of quality or their fantastic products – although those factors were certainly critical to their success. Companies become known for their stories. A great brand story is behind every powerful piece of marketing you’ve ever seen. Every great ad, every flawless logo, every iconic image was all carefully planned to contribute to the way that consumers view that brand. A powerful story actually creates the company’s identity, building up like thin coats of plaster, brushed on slowly, layer by layer to form a wall. Think about how many times you’ve heard of Nike, Apple, or Coca-Cola – way too many to count, right? Every time you heard that company’s name mentioned, it contributed to the story in your mind about that company. Your brand’s story can be that powerful. Sure, I know – you don’t have Coca-Cola’s marketing budget. But a powerful story travels, and it takes on a life of its own. A truly powerful story is one that can transform the lives of the people who hear it. But think about it… Doesn’t it transform someone’s life to get rid of a property that has been plaguing them with problems? What’s it like for someone to finally get the burden of a pending foreclosure off of their back? What’s it like for someone to finally get through probate? It’s a huge relief. It’s a life-changing experience. It is transformative. Tell that story. Make your story connect people with your business. Sure, we’ve done a lot of the hard work for you. When you launch one of our sites for Motivated Sellers, Cash Buyers and Private Lenders, or Rent to Own Tenants, you’re fully loaded with a ton of key components that help you tell visitors to your site a great story about your business. But if you want to tell a truly powerful story, you’ve gotta get personal. Here are some questions you should ask yourself when preparing to tell your most powerful story: What are the toughest problems facing people who are looking for help from my business? How can my business change people’s lives? How can my business impact my communities? Why am I the exact right person to help? What experience do I have that allows me to relate to the person I’m trying to reach? Those are really tough questions, no doubt. We’ve wrestled with them ourselves while building this business. There’s a … Continued

How to Create Custom Real Estate Reports for Lead Generation

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InvestorCarrot websites include some pretty cool Free Reports that will help you generate leads, plus you can create unlimited reports of your own to offer, too! Click the picture to sign up for Carrot right now, or keep reading to find out more about how to get great results from your Report Opt-Ins. Real estate marketing: should it be based on data or stories? The answer: Both. Reports are a great example. A good report is full of credible data, but it also tells a story. A great report builds credibility that helps you get better results in your future negotiations. So how do you use data to tell a great story that helps you improve your credibility? Just keep reading. ;) This post will tell you about the awesome Free Reports that are included with our sites to help you generate leads and conversions, plus I’ll let you know a few awesome tricks and tips to get even better results in your local market. First off, here’s what’s included in our sites: Motivated Seller Free Reports In Your System Selling To A Real Estate Investor (already inside of our motivated seller websites) 5 Ways To Stop or Avoid Foreclosure (already inside of our motivated seller websites) Free Investor Reports In Your System Passive Income Investing Report (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites) Private Lending Report  (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites) If you’re already an InvestorCarrot Member, you can: Brand and Customize Your Free Reports If you want to edit / brand these free reports you can click here to gain access to the Microsoft Word document versions of these reports. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: These reports are the property of Carrot and are only for the use of active / paying InvestorCarrot members. As long as you’re an active InvestorCarrot member you can use these all you want! If you’re not an active InvestorCarrot member and would like to use our free reports, see our pricing and plans and sign up for a plan that’s right for you. All Copyright violators will be pursued. Once you brand them… “Save As PDF” to save them as a pdf Upload them to your website(s) via the Media tab in your website dashboard Update the download link on the download page on your website to point to this new PDF file Save, and you’re done! If you need help just hit us up on support or LIVE chat! We’re here for ya! If you’re looking for an innovative way to stand out in your market, you should: Create High-Value Free Reports for Your Market You don’t even have to write these reports yourself. Most of the time you can find a decent blogger in your local marketplace who is willing to work for cheap… plus, they might even be a good partner to help you drive traffic and build your lists. You never know til you look, right? But what kind of Free Reports should you create? I’ll let you know a few ideas for content that will help you reach your target audience. Start with the end in mind. Who are you trying to reach? 1. Motivated Sellers. What types of situations can you help solve? There are countless examples of reports out there on what folks facing foreclosure, divorce, probate can do… so create one that’s specific to your market! Localize it… check out the rules and regs in your market. Interview a couple of brokers, attorneys, title company reps, folks from local non-profits… shoot, interview anyone who might be able to add a few great local tips and resources for … Continued

Video Marketing For Real Estate Investor Websites: Good Idea or Bad?

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Video marketing can generate huge traffic and great conversions, or… it can suck the life right out of your message. Welcome to another edition of the Carrot Test Kitchen… where we break down our recipes and show you how to create insanely great lead generation sites for your real estate business. Today’s post will tell you how to set up a great, low-cost video marketing campaign that (if it’s done right) can really help move your business forward. Fortunately, it’s really easy to add video to your InvestorCarrot site… and to get some great benefits from Google’s traffic at the same time. In this post I’ll show you how to add video to your InvestorCarrot sites, plus give you a great example of a video to watch right now… and tell you what *not* to do. First, why does video marketing matter to real estate investors? Video marketing is particularly important for real estate investors, because when you use it properly, it can really help to grow your business. Think of your video like an automated salesperson for your business… once you record that video, it can be played again and again to anyone who is looking for your services, day or night, on weekends and holidays… without the bother of an interrupting phone call, while eliminating the hassle of having to say the same thing again and again. A great video is more than just a commercial for your business – it builds trust for a great beginning to your relationship with a new client. A great YouTube marketing video sets the stage for negotiations by showing off your credibility and describing how you do business. A truly great marketing video helps the viewer to trust you, like you, and want to do business with you. On the flip side, a bad video can really turn people off. If you’re showing your potential clients a cheesy video that’s heavily scripted with obvious sales language, loaded with stock photography and drowning in clip art, what are they supposed to think about you and your business? To put it another way… If you never show someone your own voice and use your own face, how are they supposed to trust you? See, here’s where real estate investment is very different from a household product that’s advertised on the television. If you’re selling something like shampoo or root beer, you don’t have to convince the consumer that you’re trustworthy or credible… just that the shampoo will bring you that silky, luxurious hair you’ve been wanting, or that this root beer will deliver more delicious flavor than any root beer they’ve ever had. When you’re selling products, trust can really help… but it’s not essential. But when you’re trying to convince someone to let you buy their property or sell them an investment, trust is utterly critical. It’s everything. Without trust, you don’t have a deal. And yet I see so many real estate investment companies using these terrible little $5 videos they bought online, probably late at night after a few drinks… and now they’re probably wondering why no one is watching and why their business isn’t growing. Would you want a $5 salesperson to represent your business? In most big companies, the top salesperson is the second-highest-paid in the company… right after the CEO. Sales is the life blood of businesses. Without sales, there is no revenue, and without revenue, your company will die. Exactly why would you trust a $5 sales video with the life blood of your business? Don’t get me wrong… I don’t think you need to spend a … Continued

How Affiliate Marketers Can Use the Storytelling Secrets of Pixar to Make Money

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Quick Note – Our Affiliate Contest is Taking Off! There’s a few people leading the pack, but there’s plenty of room for you to jump in. Go check out the contest now – and if you’re not already an InvestorCarrot Affiliate, sign up here – it’s fast and free! You know Pixar is the ONLY movie company never to take a loss, right? All of their movies have been successes at the box office (although Cars 2 was kind of a dud, it still earned big $$$$). Their secret storytelling formula was leaked and tweeted out, and when we saw it… whoa! It’s pure gold for anyone who is engaged in affiliate marketing – really, content marketing in general. You know why? Storytelling is the key to successful sales. No matter how good of a storyteller you are, you can always be better. We’ve got a powerful video for you here… even tho the audio is pretty lame, the content is great. In the time it takes to watch an episode of the Office, you could be lining up the strategy that will make you thousands of dollars – and help you win some cool stuff in our affiliate contest. In this video you’ll learn: The exact formula Pixar has used to write every single movie they’ve made – (none of their movies have ever taken a loss – that’s a first in Hollywood) How to use Pixar’s character development tricks to create sales content that builds trust, credibility, and engages your audience more than ever before Fast, easy ways to get “unstuck” when you’ve got writers block and are struggling to put out that next content piece Why you should never ever try to make “perfect” content… and why you should always begin at the end to get the best results. You’re not already signed up??? Join our Affiliate Program now!  

[Real Estate Heat Map Results] Where Are Sellers Clicking On Your Real Estate Website

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This article is the first in our Carrot Test Kitchen series – it’s a series of posts that help you to dissect the secret recipes we use to generate thousands of leads for real estate agents and investors across thousands of websites around the USA. Are you putting lots of effort into building a high-converting real estate website to pull in buyers, sellers or investors… but not getting the results you want? There are two main problems that we often see on real estate sites: 1)   The site is getting no visitors, and 2)   The site’s visitors aren’t submitting their information. The first problem is usually solved with SEO content when: 1)   The site doesn’t have good content, 2)   The content is not optimized to reach the search terms that people in the local market are actually using, or 3)   The site’s competitors are ranking higher in a search. There are quite a lot of other tricks to boost traffic to your site, and we’ll be talking about that again real soon…. But today, I want to help you out with the second main problem we see: What are people doing on your real estate website? It’s critical that the design of your site is set up to actually convert visitors to leads. Although it’s utterly crucial, conversions are often overlooked when average people are putting together their websites. Too often they hire designers who are obsessed with aesthetics… rather than results. Those folks need to quit calling themselves marketing experts… because they’re artists. Most art doesn’t sell. It hangs there, looking pretty… but it’s not selling your business. Are you trying to create art, or are you trying to get real estate leads? Listen, I get in this argument with designers a lot… so please don’t send me a bunch of angry emails about how design matters… I know it matters. It’s just that it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty… it matters if it works. Like with my accountant – I don’t care if my accountant is pretty, I care about what happens if I get audited. When you’re setting up your real estate site, it’s not how it looks… it’s how it works. That’s the really cool thing about real estate heat maps – one of the many tools that we use at Carrot to test out our theories of web design… because we don’t even trust ourselves – we want to know that our system is built on proven data about what works before we commit your hard-earned cash – and more importantly before you shift the marketing of your business to our system. We know your business is super important to you… just like ours is to us. So what’s a real estate heat map anyway, and how can you use it to generate more leads online???  Back to the point, thanks… in this context, a heat map is a generated picture of where visitors to the website move their mouse and where they click on the page. Below I’m gonna put a few examples of a heat map that we generated for a user’s site, and give you a few key points on what works so well on this design. Brittany sent us a quick email after watching one of our webinars, asking for help getting more leads… we were able to double her conversion rate with just a couple of simple changes that I’ll get to soon. Check out these heat maps (the site is greyed out, with little points of light showing where people have lingered with their mouse or clicked – the … Continued

Sample Real Estate Investing Free Reports for Lead Generation – Ideas to grow your business

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So, you want more leads for your real estate investing business?  Or any business for that matter? Great. You know the easiest way to generate leads as a real estate investor? Offering something of value to your prospects for free… in exchange for their information. In this article, we’re going to talk about using free reports as a lead generation tool for motivated sellers, cash real estate buyers, private lenders, and more. Sample Real Estate Investing Free Reports A free report can be on anything that will help your prospect get closer to their goal… while at the same time build credibility for you and get you closer to a sale. Here are some topic ideas for free real estate investing reports you can use to generate leads online. For Motivated Sellers: 5 Ways To Stop Or Avoid Foreclosure Why Sell To A Real Estate Investor? How To Repair Your Credit During A Foreclosure 5 Ways To Sell Your House Fast In Today’s Market 6 Ways To Increase The Value Of Your House Before You Sell How To Navigate The Probate Process: Selling An Inherited House The Easy Way … those ideas are all geared to help the prospect get information on solving one specific problem.  There are many many other topics you can write (or have someone else write) free reports on. For Cash Real Estate Buyers: A Local Real Estate Market Report (investors eat these up. Offer this on your home page… just compile a new local real estate report every few months w/ free info you can find online or from your real estate agent) 4 Ways To Cashflow Invest In Today’s Real Estate Market How To Buy Investment Real Estate With Your IRA: The Pros, Cons, and What to Avoid How To Analyze A Real Estate Deal So You Never Lose A Penny On A Deal For Private Lenders: An Unofficial Guide On Private Lending In Real Estate: What Is It, Pros, Cons, Risks, Rewards To Look For 3 Ways To Invest Passively In The Current Real Estate Market You get the drift. Simple stuff… just good little guides that will help whoever you’re trying to attract get a bit closer to solving a problem or helping them reach a goal. How To Write A Real Estate Investing Free Report We actually provide our Carrot members 6 or so real estate investing free reports that you can use in your online lead generation (our members can even edit and customize the reports)… but if you’re not yet a Carrot member and want to create some great “free report” material to give away on your site… here are your options: Bear down and write them yourself:  Really, they don’t have to be long… 2 – 10 pages is good enough. Anyone can write a 2 page report… right?  Just create a report title, determine what you want that report to do for you (i.e. – get a seller to call you), then start doing some research on Google to come up w/ the content to write about… then write for a couple hours. Done. Hire someone to write the reports for you: You can go to websites like www.TextBroker.com, www.Guru.com, and others to have great content written for you pretty reasonably. A 5-page report on a topic like the ones we’ve lined out will probably only cost you about $50 – $100 or so for solid writing. If you want top shelf writing with good graphics… you’re probably looking no more than $200 – $300 or so.  Pretty cheap in the whole scheme of things. … or … Continued

What No One Tells You About Designing a High Converting Real Estate Investing Landing Page

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Ok, so you’re knee-deep in real estate investing and now you want to start to generate a cash buyers list. Do you drive them to your main real estate investor website and hope they punch in their information to join your cash buyers list… or do you learn how to set up a real estate investing landing page (some people call them squeeze pages or lead pages)??? The answer is both… but if you really want to generate a lot of cash buyer leads for your real estate investing business you’ll want to set up what we call “Lead Pages.”  In this post we’ll show you why landing pages work, we’ll show you real estate landing page examples, and show you how to get your own landing pages up and online quickly. Why Real Estate Investing Lead Pages Work Landing pages have been used online for a decade or so… evolving each year it seems to add in some fancy flashy new gizmo to help increase conversions.  You’ll see videos on many landing pages, pictures, audio, some are fancy looking… others really plain and simple.  In the end, it doesn’t matter what a landing page looks like… as long as it converts visitors to leads for your business. Without cash buyer leads you can’t sell your houses.  Without selling (or wholesaling) your houses… you can’t cash checks. Without cashing checks… well… you can’t eat.  Not fun. Lead Pages (or as people call them, real estate investing landing pages or squeeze pages) have one goal and one goal only:  To provide (solutions) value in exchange for a website visitor’s contact information so you can follow up with them.  A good squeeze page doesn’t have a bunch of links, not a lot of options, etc. The Anatomy of A Landing Page I’m not going to spend a ton of time on laying out the anatomy of a real estate investing landing page because they’re really pretty simple.  But first, a few questions you probably are thinking right now: Is there a specific design that always works the best? How can we tell if a landing page is really working well? What do I use to build my own real estate lead pages? First, NOPE, there isn’t a specific design that always works the best.  What works really well for your real estate investing business and your market may not work as well as another design (or message) on another real estate investor’s website.  But, there are elements that usually work well. A clear and concise headline at the top of the page A short description of what they’re about to get in exchange for their email address A few bullet points listing out benefits of what they’ll get when they “opt-in” An opt-in (a box where people can put their information in and submit it to you) Really, those are the only elements that are extremely important and pretty much are needed on any landing page.  Yes, you can use pictures and videos… but definitely test the video versus just the text with no video… because you’d be surprised that often the one with just the text (no video, unless the video is killer) usually works better. Which is good news for you. Here are some real estate investing landing page examples below that have worked pretty darn well. (NOTE: All content on the example lead pages below is copywrited and cannot be used without permission. They’re for reference only so you can see the structure and look/feel of solid landing pages for the real estate market) Example 1: Very simple page, lots of whitespace … Continued

REItheme – Here we are!

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It’s been 2 years in the making… over 350 beta tester real estate investors later… and we’re officially releasing REItheme real estate investor websites to the whole world (at least… the whole real estate investor world ;-).   The Story The story of how we came to be over the last 2 years is really pretty simple.  We ourselves are real estate investors and own rental properties still today.  In addition, we’ve worked with thousands of real estate investors around the country through our free tools and content at our sister site thereibrain.com.  Through working with our subscribers and students there was one common need that they all voiced… “I need a simple but effective website to use. Do you have a recommendation?” We got that question over and over… so in 2010 we decided to create the first version of the REItheme sites just for those initial members.  That group was our “beta” group which is over 350 members strong now. Giving us feedback, testing the sites, using them for their own real estate investing businesses… the whole shibang. Then, finally… after enough procrastinating and delaying (because we’ve been so darn busy growing our other companies)… we decided to finish out REItheme so the entire real estate investor community can have access to the website system we’ve developed over the last 2 years. Why We’re Different The real estate investor website market has been a pretty stale market over the past 5 years. No real innovations, no one really deciding to take the leadership role in the market, and no one really focusing on what is best for the customer for running their real estate investor websites. Above all… here are the main reasons why we’re excited about REItheme (and so are our customers): Customization:  No two real estate investing businesses are the same, so why should you use the exact same website as 1,000+ other investors?  That’s not the recipe for success in any business. You have to differentiate your company from the rest.  With REItheme we’ve worked hard to make it so you can easily customize virtually every aspect of your website.  From the branding, colors, and look/feel of your website… to the content… lead capture forms… properties… and more.  You can put your own personal touch on your real estate investor website so it’s not like thousands of others… and you take control over every aspect of your website and no longer have to rely on a web guy or someone else to update your content for you. Stellar Member Experiences:  Over the past several years our team has built multiple successful companies, combined reaching into the 7 figures… and a huge thing we’ve learned is that the better we’re able to create great customer experiences… the more our customers love us… and the more people flock to our services.  So, we’re not just about amassing as many customers as we can… we’re about making using REItheme the best possible experience for you… from the signup to using your website day in and day out. Leveraging Social Media and the Search Engines:  A HUGE drawback of most other real estate investor website templates on the market is that they look like they were built in 1987 and haven’t been built with the new technologies in mind.  We’ve been able to generate over 30,000 real estate related leads directly from the search engines by ranking our pages and sites high for competitive search terms.  Most website systems today in the real estate investor world never crack the top few pages of search results mainly because they weren’t … Continued