Savvy real estate investors, like experienced real estate agents, appreciate the marketing capabilities that Craig’s List can offer. All too often, too many folks fail to use Craig’s List as they could or should, then when success using that tool is fleeting or non-existent, they quit using it as unworkable, blaming Craig’s List as a failure and a waste of effort and time. That shortsighted view greatly misses the mark. If it failed for you, maybe you are the problem, not the tool you employed. It is the same attitude an amateur baker may have when the cake turns out a disaster and concludes that the recipe or the ingredients are the reason why. The truth is that it may be the baker.
It is all in the marketing, your presentation, and the effective tool implementation. It is crucial to know your targeted audience, bait their attention by appealing to their needs, then reel them in with a concise and spirited call to action.
For investors, Craig’s List can be a most effective tool among all the tools regularly chosen. To find the targeted and motivated sellers you seek, you must gain their attention and interest, then their trust, and that will take a marketing vision to genuinely express empathy as you focus on a very targeted and measured group. Cast too wide a net and you are likely to get nowhere. Drill down to a subset of a subset. For example, seeking all localized sellers is too broad a net. If your focus is lease options or more specifically, sandwich lease options, and you are already building an ever expanding tenant buyers list to match rent to own tenants with the most motivated of sellers, a better focus may be to target out of state sellers with expired listings and properties that have been on the market for over 160 days. That is a more targeted subset of all potentially motivated sellers whose motivation may not be compatible to your goals of matching them to rent to own tenant buyers. To be the winning white knight, the match you strive to make must make perfect sense to all.
Be genuine, be empathetic, be personable, be helpful, credible and trustworthy, and offer a concise, well written, descriptive, very catchy ad to stand out from all the tepid and bland competition. Paint a vivid story that grabs attention and always includes your call to action, so the viewers you are targeting reach out to you. You need to know your audience. The successful realtor may have that eye-catching picture that a targeted viewer is mesmerized by but the targeted out of state investor may need to see something very different to be called to action.
It is an art form to master and effectively utilize Craig’s List, how to post often, and at the same time, tweak your ads to avoid flagging and deletion. Likewise, it is business prudent to effectively track what you do on Craig’s List to see what works for you and what does not. All for another blog at another time.
Recognizing nothing comes easy and being aware that using this tool efficiently and effectively may be challenging and somewhat time intensive, you may train a team member to handle this effort under your direction as you pursue the fish you have baited and reeled in. Remember, a business that makes no money is, at best, an expensive hobby. Make your efforts business smart and profitable.
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