I am often asked by my students what area of the business they should focus on first. This is understandable as it is a daunting task learning all you need to know when you are building a real estate investment business. Learning a little bit about everything, while mastering none, is a such step toward investment floundering in the beginning life of your business. In my experience, it is better to concentrate on the best revenue producing method at the time, while picking up details of other methods. What is important now is the customer contact that will allow purchases of properties at 50 to 65 cents on the dollar. In order to do this you must become a Master Marketer!

Your knowledge of marketing will be the foundation from which your business is built. Marketing is what makes the phone ring and generates leads. Leads are the lifeblood of your business. They are the oxygen your business breathes. The more leads you have the more money you will make. So how do you become a better marketer? First, you must understand the principals all successful marketers live by.

Real Estate Marketing Principal: Define Your Target Market You must understand that only 5% of all sellers are truly motivated and will be willing to sell their property at a significant discount. Therefore, you will want to gear your marketing efforts towards people who have a reason to sell their property under market value. There are many reasons why someone would want to sell their property at a discount. Death, divorce, bankruptcy, and foreclosure are just a few of the many examples of why someone would want to get rid of a property quickly. You can find many of these lists through the public records with a little effort. Once your target market is located, you must then reach out to these people through your marketing efforts.

Real Estate Marketing Principal: Create a Compelling Message How do you compel the prospect of your narrowed down market to react favorably? Narrowing you target market to motivated potential sellers will be most effective. Distressed property owners are by nature procrastinators and thus unlikely to respond to a generic offer. You must strike an emotional chord within the prospect in your offer letter by creating an irresistible offer that is compelling. Only then will the prospect react favorably to your contact offer.

Real Estate Marketing Principal: Create Systems for Outsourcing and Deliver Many potential prospects will not respond to your contacts initially, and require more exposure to your offers. It is important that you do not waste your time in the minutiae of the process. Developing a system will prevent you from wasting time while you respond to quality leads.

If you ever have the pleasure of visiting my office you will see that we have a system for every one of our marketing campaigns. For example, we mail to homeowners in bankruptcy every Monday. Every week my marketing assistant grabs the new list off the internet. She then downloads the names into our database for tracking purposes before emailing the list off to an intern. The intern then uses the pre-designed letters and postcards on file to fulfill the mailing. The mailings are then organized and mailed out on Tuesday. The beauty of the system is that I have nothing to do with the process and all I have to do is pick through the deals when they come in.

It is your job as the business owner to understand the importance of using systems that can be outsourced to other people. Otherwise, you will forever be stuck in your business and will never free yourself from the drudgery of WORK.

Real Estate Marketing Principal: Test and Track One of the most common problems real estate investors make is not testing and tracking their marketing. When it comes to marketing and running a business the devil is in the details. Marketers are usually ultra-creative people and often times allergic to the bottom line. However, there is nothing more important when it comes to building a business. Your goal as a marketer is to have a system to concisely test and track your marketing and understand the numbers. Measurement eliminates waste and tracking your results will help you build a profitable real estate investment company.

If you do not have a tool for testing and tracking your marketing then precious dollars will slip through the cracks. I created a tool to track my marketing and it is highly effective and has literally saved me thousands of dollars over the years. Monthly, I review marketing expenditures looking at how much was spent, how many leads were generated, and which campaigns produced actual deals. At that point, I can make decisions concerning shifting money from one marketing campaign to another to maximize the return on my investment. To find more wealth building articles like this one go to www.ThanandPaul.com.