3 Biggest Mistakes Investors Make With Lead Generating Websites

Are you tired of getting angry calls and deals with tons of competition when you send out direct mail to get motivated seller leads?

There’s a better way.

Direct mail is outbound marketing where you are sending out thousands of pieces of mail in hopes that it reaches a person facing a situation that would require your services.

With inbound marketing, you make your services known so that people who already realize they need your help can find you.

Which would you rather have? Tons of motivated sellers ready to sell finding you, or tons of tire-kickers calling you from your postcards and letters (that took forever to print, stuff the envelopes, stick the stamps, and send out)?

A Website is Perfect for Inbound Marketing

The Yellow Pages are dead. Everybody and their grandmother is searching online to find the services they need. Are you there for them to find you, though?

If not, it’s actually a good thing, because I’m going to show you the 3 biggest mistakes investors make, mistakes that I’ve personally made, when trying to generate motivated seller leads online.

Spending over a decade being obsessed with online lead generation, and generating thousands of motivated seller leads in the process, I’ve discovered what works and what doesn’t. I still actively generate the majority of my leads and deals through a single LeadPropeller website.

Even if you have a website, you will find tips in this article to help you get more our of it. I’ve found more than 90% of real estate websites I’ve seen don’t have all the ideas found here implemented.

Let’s get started!

Mistakes Investors Make #1: Not Focusing on Conversions

How do you make sure you are getting as many visitors to your website as possible to call you or submit the form? You’ve got to focus on convincing them to contact you, which is called a conversion.

Having your website optimized for conversions is of the utmost importance. As you work more and more to send traffic to your website, you want to make sure you squeeze the maximum number of leads out of that same traffic.

As an example, let’s say website 1 isn’t optimized for conversions and gets 200 visitors per month. Of those 200 visitors, only 2 people submit the form or call you. The conversion rate for website 1 is 1%.

Now, let’s say website 2 is optimized for conversions and converts at 7%. That same 200 visitors will produce 14 leads instead of 2.

If we acknowledge that, roughly on average, investors are able to turn 1 out of 12 leads into a deal, website 2 could possibly generate a deal per month for its owner! Whereas website 1 could take 6 months to generate a deal…

A 7% conversion rate doesn’t sound like much more than 1%, but the resultant 1 deal a month versus 1 every 6 months shows how big of a difference it really is.

How Do We Optimize Our Website For Conversions?

Working with thousands of motivated sellers personally over the years, I’ve learned how they think and what they are looking for. This has allowed me to understand why they might call one investor over another or submit the form on one website and not on another.

This isn’t second-hand knowledge from different industries. This is first-hand experience. Trying to translate success from websites in different industries in very dangerous, as the real estate investing niche is very different. We’re not selling widgets.

Motivated sellers usually don’t have a lot of experience selling real estate and are there fore apprehensive about being taken advantage of. Our websites need to put these sellers at ease and show that we are credible and professional.

You entice sellers to contact you with credibility boosting elements on your website.

Credibility Boosting Website Elements

1. BBB Accredited Business Logo (only if you are, of course)
2. Testimonials – Videos are the best. At the very least, include full name and location.
3. Professionally Designed Website – You are advertising the ability to pay cash for houses…don’t you think your website should look like you have the means to afford a nice website?
4. Normal Pictures of You – Yes, pictures of you from your cell phone work fine (be sure they look good though). Do not use stock photos…they seem fake and too ‘corporate’. Sellers want to be able to relate to you and know there is a real person behind the website.
5. Lots of Contact Information – You really need your name, phone number (business phone), and address on your website. People like to know you are not hiding. You don’t want to just have a weird email address that people have to contact you with.

Call to Action

Visitors to your website must know what you want them to do and what they will get from doing it.

Within seconds, visitors to your website should be able to discern that you buy houses and what the benefits to them are.

Your form should be prominently displayed (without forcing them to scroll to see it). The form should be made the focal point by having it be a contrasting color to the rest of the site.

The button for the form should pop out even more. LeadPropeller website forms default to having a form title of ‘Get a Cash Offer’ and the button defaults to ‘Get My Cash Offer’ so that visitors know immediately what you can give them and what they need to do to get it.

Ease of Use

Another Factor in conversion optimization is ease of use. LeadPropeller websites have a 2-step opt-in form for this exact reason. Don’t scare off website visitors with a form that asks 50 questions (most of which are somewhat personal).

The first form should only as for Name, Phone, Email, and the Address of the house they’re selling. That’s it. Once they submit that form, take them to the second form.This way, even if they don’t fill out the second form, you still have their contact info and can call them!

Another bonus to this 2-step form system is that you have time to contact them while they are still on your website filling out the second form. This is huge, and I’ll talk more about that in the next section for mistake #2.

Mistakes Investors Make #2: Not Communicating Fast Enough!

How can you make sure you convert more leads from your website into deals that produce profit? Once we make sure that we are converting as many visitors to the website as possible into leads, we need to focus on converting those leads into deals.

While much of the lead to deal conversion lies in the ability of the individual investor, a website can vastly improve your chances of getting a deal regardless of your ability to make a strong offer and close the seller.

F’in Competition

One of the biggest deterrents to you turning a lead into a deal is the competition. If a seller can find you online, they are likely seeing several other websites alongside yours.

When they submit their information to your website, the temptation is to hit the back button and go to the next website.

Don’t worry…all’s not lost. I’ve found an awesome way to prevent this from happening!

You can prevent this by communicating with the seller immediately. You need to know exactly when they submit their information to your site.

Many investors have website where they get an email when a form is submitted. This is not going to be the optimal choice for you because you’d have to check your email every minute to make sure you see each new lead immediately.

That’s why LeadPropeller members have the ability to have a text message (with the information submitted to their website!) sent to their cell phones. This allows them to see the name, phone number, and address of the house that the seller is selling right away.

They just need to click the phone number and have their phone dial out to the seller. It’s really as quick and easy as that!

As I mentioned before this is very cool because, with our 2-step form system, the seller is likely still filling out the the second form when you call them…they are still on your website and not on your competitor’s website!

Technology is the coolest!

We don’t just stop there, though. We also have a text message sent to the seller after they submit their information to your website. This message simply says something along the lines of:

Hey, this is Danny. I got the information about the house at 123 Main. Will call in a second.

You might be thinking, “Wouldn’t that seem automated if it’s sent as soon as the form is submitted?” Yes, it would.

That’s why we have a delay built in and allow the address they submitted to the form appear in the text. Now it seems completely realistic that you actually typed the text personally and sent it to them!

If your website doesn’t have these texting capabilities, you’re at a huge disadvantage. This is the one area that needs to be shored up if you want to maximize the return on investment you are getting from your website.

Mistakes Investors Make #3: Not Having the Correct Expectations

How long does it take to start getting leads?

Too many people have no idea what to expect when they first set up their real estate investor website. That’s understandable, as markets are different and knowing how the internet works can get pretty complicated.

Your Website Will Not Be the Field of Dreams

You cannot just set up a website, even a highly search engine optimized website, and expect it to magically start having visitors. There are millions of websites and more has to be done to have your be found.

There are 3 top ways to get traffic to your website

1 – Direct Promotion:

Direct promotion includes having your website on all of your other marketing. This works in several ways. First, it gives you more credibility and allows potential sellers to find out more about how your service works, and about you. It also allows sellers another way to contact you. Many motivated sellers simply don’t want to pick up the phone and call a stranger.

Craigslist ads are another way to generate traffic from motivated sellers quickly. You can post free ads on Craigslist that focus on the benefits of your service. I also like to post ads based on situations motivated sellers typically face, such as:

• Foreclosure looming, and you’ve come to the realization that you waited too long to do anything about it
• Nasty divorce that can’t be over with soon enough
• Death of a relative that leaves you a house you don’t need
• Tenants that are ruining your life
• Your house is too big and you want to downsize
• You’ve bought another house and need to sell your old one fast
• You’ve waiting too long to fix your house and now it’s overwhelming

2 – Ranking Organically:

Organic ranking refers to showing up in the search results on Google or Bing for the keywords motivated sellers search for. So, if a seller gets on Google and searches, ‘sell my house fast in Cleveland’, you want your website to show up at the top of the first page of the search results.

This is where expectations are usually way off…which is why most real estate investors give up on using a website to generate motivated seller leads online. The recommended method of ranking organically is to be very consistent at making blog posts that focus on a single keyword each.

This is called content marketing. Google loves this because it provides tons of value and information to website visitors. You should lot it too because it helps your site to rank, and for your site to convert better because it sets you up as an expert.

Even with consistent, weekly posting to your blog, it can take more than 8 months to have your website start to show up near the first page.

You might think that stinks…and it does…but it also means most of your competition isn’t willing to do it. If you know it takes this long, you’ll be willing to put in the investment and work to find true success with your website. The cheapest and best leads I get come from ranking my website for well over a thousand keywords (yes, this was done with content marketing – tons of blog posts).

3 – Paid Promotion (Pay Per Click):

Think of pay per click as your ticket to the top of the first page of Google and Bing for the best keywords motivated sellers search for…for a price.

You can pay to have your website show up above all of the organic ranking today! Of course, there are a lot of intricacies with running successful pay per click campaigns that would be impossible to cover in this article. I recommend you check out our in-depth post on the topic here: LeadPropeller Pay Per Click Guide

My recommended Strategy for Online Lead Generation Domination

I recommend serious investors get a high-converting website built with search engine optimization in mind.

Then, start including the website on all of your marketing, and start running Craigslist ads consistently. Get a FREE copy of our Craigslist Ad Strategy Guide at here!

Then, create a budget for pay per click so that you can start generating leads right away. This will allow you to do some deals quickly, which can generate profits you can reinvest into SEO to rank your site over time.

Finally, a content marketing strategy should be developed where you either use LeadPropeller’s search engine optimized content packs, or hire a writer to professionally write your blog posts (making sure they are optimized for search engines). These posts need to be over 1,000 words each, and include images and outbound links to credible websites.

Want to Learn More?

I’m holding a weekly webinar to go into great detail about how my own website has generated 404 highly motivated seller leads that turned into 30 deals over the last 12 months. Seats are limited for each webinar, so be sure to register now. Register here by clicking the button below:

Proven Online Lead Generation Strategy

See these 4 easy steps to create your own online motivated seller lead generation machine.

Step 1: Get a Website

Get a high-converting, search engine optimized website such as LeadPropeller.

Step 2: Generate Quick Traffic

Include your website on all of your other motivated seller marketing, and start running Craigslist ads consistently. Get a FREE copy of our Craigslist Ad Strategy Guide at here!

Step 3: Paid Traffic

Start running pay per click campaigns to generate leads and deals immediately.

Step 4: Long-Term Growth

Use the profits from the deals done with quick traffic and paid traffic to create your long-term content marketing machine so that your website starts to rank in the search engines. This will provide long-term consistent leads over time.