Transcript:
Welcome to the Tax Sale Podcast, where tax sale investing is made easy.
I’m Casey Denman, a tax sale veteran, expert, and trainer, author of the tax sale playbook, founder of the tax sale academy and your host here on the tax sale podcast.
Thanks for joining me on today’s podcast, and as always, at the conclusion of this podcast, if you’re looking to learn more about investing in tax defaulted real estate head to taxsaleacademy.com. That’s taxsaleacademy.com.
I’m super excited about today’s episode. This is a topic that I really enjoy and I’m hopeful that you’ll come to enjoy it as well by the end of today’s episode. We’re talking about marketing. Specifically, marketing in a way that drives your tax sale business.
I can remember when I first got into tax sale investing many years ago when the internet wasn’t as widely used by investors and we actually picked up the phone to sell properties. What I’d often times do is start calling previous buyers and local real estate agents that I had worked with and knew had buyers of their own and I’d begin to sell them on the properties I had and the areas these properties were in.
I remember one specific agent who was from out of town who drove up, I took her on a tour of a few subdivisions, then I began scooping up as many lots in those subdivisions as possible. I’d buy them, call her, she’d sell them and this became a never ending cycle.
While I didn’t realize it at the time, I was essentially being a marketing vessel for my tax sale business. I wasn’t just an investor, I became a marketer. I’d sell her and others on the idea of investing in that area, on the area itself, on the subdivision and eventually on that specific lot.
Now, this isn’t the approach I recommend doing in today’s era of technology. We’ll discucss later in today’s epsidoe, but there are much easier ways than cold calling agents and driving strangers around. But nonetheless what I was doing then is marketing, building my buyer’s list and growing my business.
When I sit back and really think about the best times in my business, the years I experienced the most growth, sold the most properties, made the most amount of money, it was also the times when I marketed the properties and my business the best.
Most of the people who have watched my YouTube channel, listened to this podcast, read my book and even joins The Tax Sale Acadedemy probably understands the importance of marketing and selling, but they put it on the back burner. It’s secondary to them. They focus on everything else upfront. And while there isn’t anything wrong with focusing on research, buying, auctions, that kind of stuff because it is so important, don’t neglect the fact that you’ll eventually need to sell that property.
So I want to lay out a few different marketing tips when it comes to your tax sale business:
The first one is that your marketing plan actually begins, whether you know it or not, before you purchase the property. Part of your due diligence is to determine the value and desireability of a property. These two obviously play hand in hand – price something too high and you’ll never sell it no matter how desireable it is. Buy something that has zero desireability and no one will care about your low price. Supply and demand run parallel to this too, of course.
I did an episode on this a few weeks back, about preplanning your exit strategy. That’s not just a catchy title or something you should think about. It’s something you need to do. The time to figure out how to exit an investment is BEFORE you buy the property, not afterwards. The best marketing plan begins with the best product possible at the best price possible.
The next one is audience. Imagine you’re driving down the road and you see this beautiful mansion. The owner will sell it for $100. But no one knows it’s for sale. So . . . no buyer will ever purchase it. If you have the most amazing property at the most amazing price, there isn’t a single person in the world that is going to buy it if they don’t know it’s for sale. Obviosuly that’s a bit of a stretch, you’ll probably do something to market the property. But how much traffic is that something generating for you?
While we’re on this point, we also need to disucss the type of audience. Posting your property for sale on your personal Facebook page where your 76 friends can view it probably won’t be all that helpful, even if your weird uncle does decide to do the whole like, comment and share thing. What you’re looking for is something called target traffic. I write about this in Tax Sale Playbook. Targeted traffic is the type of traffic that would be most interested in the product type that you’re selling them. You want to get your property in front of as much target traffic as humanly possible.
The next tip is that your words and the way they are delivered are what will sell your property. A lot of the old school guys are incredibly guilty at doing a lousy job with this one. I’ve seen the same exact piece of land marketed two ways: I’ll summarize, but the first was along the lines of “.24 acre mobile home lot, dirt road, needs well and septic”. The second advertisement was “Build your dream home here OR this lot even allows mobile homes. Quiet and rural setting!” Obviously, it went on and on in that type of tone. And while many ads are overdone, it’s important to understand that most buyers won’t respond to boring. When we look at any ads, people, places, anything . . . boring does not sell. You need to learn to write your words in a manner that will generate interest, excitement and, most importantly, a buyer.
Alright, next one. Use technology, please. This is not 1990 anymore. Technology is required. The better you are at using it, the better of an investor you’ll become. PLEASE remember that. The better you are at using technology to get your property in front of targeted traffic, the more successful you become. Embrace, use and leverage technology. You need to look at the internet as a funnel of sorts. You have all this traffic, 4.5 billion internet users. From there you’re funneling them down to the people who are interested in real estate in your area. That’s step one, use technology to narrow down that list. Then you’re funneling them down even farther to the ones who are interested in that type of property at that price point in that area. Then you’re funneling them down even more to the most interested buyers.
Every step of the way you’re utilizing tools that will help you achieve the most targeted traffic. That’s why a buyer’s list is so valuable. A buyer’s list is a list of people that have already been funneled and are ready, willing and able to buy a property right this second. It’s a concentraction of buyers that have already gone through this process and who you’ve already used all of your filtering and funneling tools on. Your goal should be to levereage every single bit of technology at your disposal to create the most targeted traffic possible with the least amount of effort and expense. That’s it. If you can do that successfully, you’ll reap the benefits for decades to come.
The last point I want ot make is to adjust as necessary. As you begin to market your property, ask yourself every day if you’re doing the most you possibly can to gerneate the most amount of targeted traffic with the least amount of effort and expense possible? Notice here I dind’t say no effort and no expense, but the entire idea is to run it efficiently. If your current process isn’t working any longer or goes stagnate, then make changes. Remember when I said earlier in this podcast that I used to drive people around looking at properties? Yeah, I haven’t driven anyone around in well over a decade now. That’s obsolete. I adjusted.
And it’s not just an adjustment every year. It’s daily. Make micro adjustments if you have to. Tweak the advertisements, add an addition email to your followup sequence, use one new website to advertisement, whatever it is just keep pressing forward and tweak what isn’t working. And get this . . . . even when it is working, what if you can still make minor tweaks to test out other things to see if they’ll work even better? A successful marketer is one who is constantly improving.
So hopefully those marketing tips have helped you out. We often make the mistake of calling ourselves tax sale investors and focusing on the tax sale investing aspect of it. The research, tax sale and buying aspect. Please don’t neglect the marketing aspect. If you become a superhero in both the tax sale side of things and the marketing side of things you will absolutely be an unstoppable force and you’ll make lots of money doing it.
I hope today’s episode was helpful for you. If so, do me a huge favor and leave us some positive feedback. That positive feedback is the primary way we measure whether or not this podcast has been helpful for you and we’re so appreciative of each one of you who have taken the time to do so already.
If you’d like to learn more about investing in tax defaulted real estate, head on over to taxsaleacademy.com. If you’re ready to go all in an commit right now, then click on that join button and become a member of the academy where we teach tax sale investing in a comprehensive, step by step manner, including how to market properly.
Take care and make it a successful day.