Guess what topic is #1 on this list of marketing “tricks”?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/abrams/2015/09/18/strategies-7-small-business-marketing-tricks/72350974/

I couldn’t have said it better myself. But let’s give credit where it is due. The author is spot on with her statement that –

“Email is still an extremely effective method of keeping your name in front of prospects and customers.”

You may have heard me say this at WREIA a few times over the last couple of years:  “I wish I had started collecting and organizing my contacts sooner in my career.”

You can still find my post on a recent email test with a 40% response rate.

When I finally did start organizing the information on people I met – it was a little messy.  When someone gave me their business card I went back to the office and pasted their card to a 3×5 index card and put it in a small plastic box.

Pretty quickly I outgrew the little plastic box.   My card colleciton stayed on paper but I moved everyone to a circular “rolodex”.  Finally in the early 2000’s my office assistant moved all of that information to a new electronic contact management system.

Email is so much cheaper and easier than my old system. We all know this at this point.  What has made things difficult now is spam filters and other guards that people have put around their inbox – and for good reason.

#4 on the authors list is “Join a local organization and go regularly.”

Networking is essential to the success of your business.  At some point in your work day it’s important to step out from behind the laptop and smart phone tethers and go live with a conversation with real people in real time.

Sure, you can keep up with people online and through email, but nothing beats a real live person-to-person conversation.  It’s why airlines have no chance of going out of business.  People have a need to connect.  No amount of email or Facebook posts will ever be as good as a hug from an old friend or family member.

When it comes to business, the best among us know that it’s hard to “lose” when you have a chance to look right in the eye of your customer and tell them why you have the best solution to their problem.

WREIA is different from every other group in the DC area. Your defenses won’t go up when you see this months out of town expert trying to sell you some packaged way to find homes or connect with people.

Our WREIA members know that they can expect real world solutions from DC professionals who do what we do for a living.

This month is no different.

Come on out and join other WREIA members this month.

It’s going to be like a one night mini-course on how to generate leads and property referrals from people you know and even from people who have never heard of you.

Two things will force you to make changes in your business.

Lack of Capital and lack of Time.

Lack of Capital means that you have to find a way to bootstrap a solution.  We all tend to be good at this in the beginning of our careers or when we are launching a new venture.  Simply put, when our reason to succeed is big enough, we are almost unstoppable.

On the other hand, once you have some success, managing that success takes a lot more Time.  Lack of Time will force us to make business changes as well and take things to a whole new level.

If you find yourself without capital or without enough time – you have two choices when it comes to making changes:

You can either adapt to the market, make some changes and choose to deliver what people want,

or,

you can keep doing what you are doing, and over time you will start to wonder why you are not keeping up with the younger and hungrier crowd.

The details of an article have been on my mind over the weekend.

The article is about the changing face of renters in the Metro Dallas area.  You can find the article posted at http://www.dallasnews.com/business/residential-real-estate/20150910-boomers-sold-on-rentals.ece

According to the article the average age for a renter is 38.

However, only three-quarters of the rental market is under 45.  25% of the rental population is over 45 years old.

That leaves a huge number of people in the retired and baby boomer markets.  Apartment developers that are catering to this crowd are doing well.  Business 101, right?  They are finding a segment of the market and providing a service or product that they need.

The speaker at our WREIA meeting on September 28th is an active investor who has adapted and updated his business on 3 occasions.  I know because I frequently work with him and still mentor him on some of his deals.  He has over 15 years of experience in real estate as a developer, landlord but he started like many of us did as a part time rehabber.

Aside from the time in the business, he is passionate about how he uses technology to leverage his marketing. He uses his marketing skills to source new deals and sell existing projects, as well as find new people with capital.

He has used all types of media for his marketing – from billboards to radio, magazines and direct mail, right on down to Facebook and Google – all with a variety of email campaigns thrown in.

You can always learn a thing or two about marketing from someone with real world experience like this.  Make plans to be with us on Monday the 28th.

He is going to be talking about campaigns that he has been running over the last few weeks.  Including a project that I reached out for some help implementing.

If you missed my post about a recent Labor Day Email Test that was read by 40% of the people we sent it to – you can still read it here.

If you want to grow your business without spending a fortune – plan to join us at the next WREIA meeting on Monday, Sept. 28th.

Which leads me to my last point.  Sept. 21st is another great chance to ask some questions. If your marketing is failing to get the responses you are hoping for – this is a terrific opportunity to ask a pro what you can do to improve it!

Come on out and join other WREIA members this month.

It’s going to be like a one night mini-course on how to generate leads and property referrals from people you know and some who have never heard of you.

• “Learning is best when it’s an active process.”

I remember a time, a long time ago back in the early 2000’s, when I could send an email and it was common that 30-40% of my list would open it within 24 hours.

That was a long, long time ago, and that was to a warm list – meaning those people had heard of me.  Maybe they had even done business with me. Still, I was thrilled when 3 or 4 out of 10 people would open my email.

Today, it’s not uncommon to get closer to 10-15% open rates on an email.  That means that 1 out of 10 people will actually be reading my emails.

A lot of factors go into that lower “open” rate today. Some of the reasons we all have a lower open rate in 2015 include: aggressive spam filters, lower attention spans, dead and churned email accounts, folder filters and so many more reasons.

Why would anyone in business still send email if only 1 person out of ten will read it? What if I told you that email is one area that continues to propel my business year after year – even at 10% open rates.

Let me explain with a few details.

I had very low expectations.  In fact, I thought the response would be a little lower than normal as it felt to me that people were still not “back in town”.  Metro DC traffic was still low and many of my friends were out of town enjoying the last few days of summer.

Except this time we used a new tool (that I had never heard of) and made a few small changes to my usually effective marketing plan.

Which leads me to my last point.  Sept. 28th is another great chance to ask some questions. If your marketing is failing to get the responses you are hoping for – this is a terrific opportunity to ask what you can do to improve it!

Come on out and join other WREIA members this month.

It’s going to be like a one night mini-course on how to generate leads and property referrals from people you know and some who have never heard of you.

Thomas Berger was a Pulitzer prize finalist, and among many other accomplishments Mr. Berger had his book Little Big Man tuned into a movie (1970) staring Dustin Hoffman.

For years Mr. Berger was at the top of his game.  We all know that you can learn great things from the people around you that are leaders in their field.

But you can learn MORE when you know the right questions to ask.

And our line of work is no different.  Asking the right questions can put you out in front when it comes to closing deals that benefit everyone.

The problem is, how do you learn the right questions?  Better yet, what is the best way to learn HOW to ask those questions?

For the past few years we have asked our WREIA members what they enjoy most about our monthly meetings.  Every year one of the regular answers has been the meetings that we devote to Role Playing.

When I think back on it, when I was first getting started one of the largest strokes of good fortune I had was my ability to sit next to my mentor Ernie Kessler and listen to him respond to phone calls.

One of the things he did very well was listen.  But first he got the ball rolling by asking the right questions.  In just a few short minutes he could create deals that  pleased everyone involved and he did it in such an easy way.

Even today, I think that is a great formula for success – Ask questions and listen (really listen) to the answers.

At our WREIA meeting on Monday night we are going to do some role playing and you get to sit back and listen to how we engage people in various, and sometimes difficult situations.

Just a few scenarios we are going to talk about:

By the way – here is your chance to ask some questions of your own.

If you have a recent situation or question that you were asked, but you didn’t know how to respond – let us know.  Call the office (301-881-5541)  or email us.  Give us some general details on where you got stuck in a conversation and we will try to make it part of the presentation on Monday night.

The best part is – we have a VERY active membership and someone else in the crowd on Monday night may offer an alternative way to respond to your situation that has worked for them in the past.

Come on out and join other WREIA members this month.

It’s going to be like a one night mini-course on how to generate leads from people you know. I will explain what I did when I was first getting started, and what I do differently today to bring in “Network” deals.

I just got a report a few hours ago from two Temporary Employees.

Let me tell you – I was very pleased.

They did a job for me today that I knew wasn’t going to get done unless I hired someone to do it.

I didn’t have enough hours in the day, and everyone else we work with has been very busy as well.

At WREIA on Monday night we are going to talk about hiring temps.  There are a few things you need to know, and guidelines you need to stay within, but temporary or seasonal employees are the secret weapons of a good number of large and small companies.

Temporary work is a BIG Business.  Amazon hired 80,000 temporary employees to help them get through the holiday season last year.   Eighty Thousand! 

You certainly don’t have to hire thousands of people.  I hired just a couple people (kids, really) that did some work for me today.

The first “lie” is the you have to “outline it all first”. Let me tell you, this is where I see  a lot of people get bogged down.  People just getting started in our business think they have to have every detail planned out, and everything accounted for before they make an offer on a property.

What usually happens is – they never get started.  No offers.  No projects.  No profits.

This “outline it all first” lie is particularly relevant to our WREIA meeting this month.  I suggest you throw some (emphasis on some) caution to the wind and just get going.  You don’t need to hire 14 inspectors, 27 advisers and 4 architects to do a  renovation on your first condo.

And yet – that is exactly what happens.  People get busy hiring experts to come in and advise them, when the next investor that comes in sees a deal and jumps on it.

There are plenty of things you can do to protect yourself when you are making an offer.  But once you have quickly looked at everything, and done your homework – make the offer.  Plan in a contingency for some mistakes – BUT GET GOING!

I hope you are making plans to be with us on Monday June 22nd.  We are going to be talking about small ways to save on your renovation projects.  Saving a little here and there throughout the process can really add up to thousands of dollars at the end of your projects.  Those are additional profits that may not be falling to your bottom line today.

Come on out on Monday, June 22nd and take away a few tips from our WREIA members, as they explain simple things that they do that help add dollars to their bottom line.

John Peterson

 301-881-5541