You’ve probably heard the commercials. Chances are, you could probably recite this yourself…
“Two tickets: $46
Two hot dogs, two popcorns, two sodas: $27
One autographed baseball: $50
Real conversation with 11-year-old son: Priceless.
Some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”
These MasterCard TV commercials have been running consistently for 21 years now but with just enough variety and the right frequency that they are still effective ads. In fact, even the word “Priceless” tacked on to the end of a conversation has reached meme-like proportions.
I only need to say a few others and you can probably recite the offer or the ad: “Got Milk?” or “Maybe it’s Maybelline” or “Built Tough” or “Eat Fresh”. (I could go on and on and on.)
When you think of well-known marketing campaigns from some of the biggest companies, you may think of a word (like “Priceless”), a jingle, a sound, or a phrase.
So, if that’s the case for these big-name brands, why do sellers forget about you or skip over your marketing and call your competitor instead?
It’s NOT because you lack a clever jingle.
It’s because you failed to do something else that other investors are doing…
FREQUENCY.
Frequency is the secret sauce of successful marketing. Problem is, too many investors try something only once then move on. How frequently do you run your postcard campaigns, new blog posts, and social media posts?
Marketing consistently, striking the right balance between annoying and ignored, connects you to the most prospective clients.
Direct mail
Too many real estate investors give up too soon. We want to believe that the motivated sellers on our list will reply to the first postcard. But it is often the least motivated sellers that will contact you after the first mailing—they would like to talk to you and think about it. Truly motivated sellers may not reply until the fifth or sixth mailing. Wholesalers getting the most houses under contract sending a monthly mailing to their list of one or two thousand prospects for six months to get the highest response rate.
PPC advertising
When you run an with a compelling offer on Google ads or Facebook ads, run a second ad that changes it up a bit with a more daring headline or description. Set a monthly budget for this ad campaign to determine your daily limits. If one ad outperforms the other, drop the weaker one and split test again by trying to tweak the better ad. Repeat this process and you’ll have your best performing ad by the end of the month. Evaluate if it’s paying for itself and use that to determine your frequency of running Google ads or Facebook ads.
Website / blog posts
If you visit a website and find no new content has been posted for six to nine months, you’ll probably conclude they’ve gone out of business. Fresh content is important for your visitors and also for improving your Google rank. Once or twice a week works well for most real estate investing websites, with Tuesday to Thursday being the best days to post for the most traffic.
Facebook
Your Facebook business page needs a little more activity, like three to five posts per week. One post could promote your weekly blog post. At least one of your posts each week should be shared to your personal profile. Two to three times per week share posts from your business page into Facebook Groups as long as you are a regular participant. Two posts per day is the recommended limit for business pages and personal profiles.
Twitter, Instagram, etc.
The key thing is respecting the differences and using each social media platform in ways that work for that platform. So while 2-4 posts is the maximum for Facebook, you can easily send out 8-12 (or more) tweets in a day without being considered annoying. You can easily make tweets out of quotes and stats from your weekly blog post. For Instagram, you may think about posting somewhere between 2-5 times depending on what you are posting.
Summary
I’ve suggested some frequencies for your marketing efforts that work well for a lot of businesses. Marketing works but consistent marketing works best. Make sure you build repeat marketing strategies into your marketing budget. And keep this mind: all else being equal, it’s usually a better use of your money to send several postcards to a smaller group than to send one postcard to as many as possible.
About the author: Aaron Hoos is The Real Estate Investing Copywriter. The best investors in the country turn to Aaron for copy because they know they’re getting copywriting FOR real estate investors BY a real estate investor. To level up your investing business with more effective copywriting, check out RealEstateInvestingCopywriter.com
