How to Ignite the Search For Real Estate Investors

A lot of people think that attracting real estate investors and raising capital means you have to pick up the phone and start dialing for dollars, cold call people, or network and make elevator pitches to complete strangers.These are all the wrong things to do.I speak from experience. When I was starting out, I was like most beginning real estate investors. I had self-financed my first couple of deals and had run out of cash and credit. However, a great deal had just fallen into my lap and was ready to go, but I needed capital fast. I tried all the methods above, for grand total of zero dollars. I lost that deal, but it was a powerful lesson in what not to do.You don’t need networking or elevator pitches, nor do you need to pick up the phone and make endless phone calls. When you dial into our process and start using the techniques we teach, you will have a steady stream of pre-qualified, pre-educated investors coming to you already pre-disposed to doing business.Our core concept uses what I call the three Cs of effective capital raising marketing, which is constant, consistent, and edutaining communication. These are the keys to effective capital raising.

You are probably wondering what I mean by “edutaining” your prospective investors. It’s an important concept because most people getting into marketing fail because they get too wrapped up in the details. Edutaining dials things down a notch by not overwhelming your prospects.Edutaining aims to be a little bit educational and a little bit entertaining.Why is this important?The reality is that you and I (because you are listening to this podcast after all), are what I affectionately call “real estate weirdos.”We are into this stuff because we love real estate. We’re a little bit different from most of your non-real estate friends who would much rather be watching Netflix.That’s what you must keep in mind when creating your marketing material. You want to be just educational enough, and hopefully a little bit entertaining, to not overwhelm your prospect so they look forward to receiving your emails. You want to avoid the jargon, the in-depth spreadsheets, and all the facts and figures we real estate weirdos love to dive into.Ideally, you want to deliver your education using a story about your personal experience and wrapping it in a little entertainment. There are all sorts of ways you can deliver marketing material, and I recommend you use a variety of tactics.

A marketing tactic is simply a method you use to connect with your prospects.For example, in the first week of the month, we send out an electronic newsletter, otherwise known as an ezine. This content is created to catch people up on what you’ve been involved with over the last month.It’s not too newsy, but it can be edgy, somewhat educational, and hopefully a little bit entertaining and personal as well. Avoid all the nerdy real estate stuff and share a little about your personal life.In the second week, we might publish a blog post, which can be a short article about real estate, why it rocks, and why other investment vehicles suck. Every piece of marketing material includes a clear call to action, which can be as simple as asking the reader to click a link to find out more or get in touch via email.In the third week, the marketing tactic of choice might be a video log. Usually, it’s a short video about 3 to 5 minutes long where you talk about some of the real estate investing you are involved with. The content could also be about one of your profit centers or discuss one of the steps in your process. Whatever content you include, be sure to keep it short, concise, and easy to understand.Keep it at Reader’s Digest level and don’t forget the call to action because this will make all the difference between success and failure. If you don’t tell your readers or viewers what to do next, the most likely response will be they do nothing.

We provide a complete done-for-you service, but if you’re the type of hands-on person that likes to take the reins, here are the steps you will need to take to get up and running investment capital marketing.We recommend picking one thing and going with that, so you don’t get overwhelmed. Pick something you are comfortable doing. For example, if you enjoy writing, choose a writing task like creating a blog post or newsletter. If you aren’t so big on writing but prefer to film yourself instead, create videos of yourself talking about real estate investing. Videos are incredibly effective and always get the most engagement.We do all of this with our clients, so we cover all the bases. However, if you are doing it yourself, we highly recommend you work in batches. Start with one thing and get it up and running before you start with the next. You are more likely to achieve longevity using batches than going month to month.For example, if you plan on releasing a video every week or month, do all your videos in one hit and queue them up to go out on a schedule. The same goes for your articles. Gather your topic ideas, write them all one after the other in one hit, and queue up the publishing schedule so they go out at a regular time.Working in batches is a lot more efficient because you can set up your schedule and not have to worry about it for a few months, which means you can put all your focus on the next batch of tasks.It’s easy to get sidetracked when you work month to month. One month you will be busy, which means everything will get sidelined until you have time. Working in batches means you will more likely abide by the three Cs I talked about earlier: constant and consistent content.

In the next lesson, we are going to talk about how you can multiply your capital-raising efforts with webinars. A webinar is a group presentation where you can talk to 5, 10, 15, or more prospects at a time and significantly improve your success rate. It’s going to be a valuable addition to your marketing arsenal, so make sure you don’t miss it.