Marketing is without a doubt my favorite part of the real estate investment game. Without successful marketing the phone does not ring, and if the phone does not ring you can pretty much guess how much money you will make.

A mentor of mine once told me that there are 3 kinds of people in the world:

1) Stupid People- Those that do not learn from their mistakes, and do the same thing over and over.

2) Smart People- Once they make a mistake they learn from it and make sure not to repeat again.

3) Wise People- Wise people watch other people make mistakes, so they can avoid having to make them.

Many people I have seen in real estate investment would qualify in the Stupid People category (including me for a long time). Why? The main reason is because doing new types of marketing takes time, effort and money. And even those few who are willing to pay the price of success often do not know what is working and what is not. Keeping statistics on the results of marketing efforts was something that I was just too Stupid to do for the first 6 months of our business.

So the minute we started keeping accurate statistics we went from Stupid to Smart. A simple notepad is all it took, a mark every time a call comes in for the type of marketing that sent it, whether it be a sign, a postcard or a letter.

Now the question is... How do I become a Wise marketer? Let me share with you some of the huge mistakes that we have made along the way.

1) Phone Sex Number Flyer- By far the funniest (well at least now) but when we started a door knocking campaign our leave behind had the incorrect number on it. Rather than sending the homeowner to our automated "foreclosure helpline", they were sent to a very sexy voice that offered to do much more than save their home. A few digits can make a very large difference.

2) Lifesaver Letters- A good method to ensure mailers get opened is putting an item in the envelope to make it "lumpy". Well, we had the bright idea to put an individually wrapped Lifesaver into each letter we sent to desperate homeowners (with pun intended). Ended up joke was on us because standard size envelopes are sent through an auto feeder at the post office, and lifesavers are 2 millimeters too thick. Lost nearly 1000 letters with postage (but we did get the Lifesavers back).

3) Wild Goose Chase- We got started in the pre-foreclosure business and we learned at our first seminar that door knocking was the way to go. Being the very ambitious young investors we are we wanted to make sure we got to the door before anyone else. Everyday we got the new Foreclosure results from the courthouse and went out to knock on their doors. We were so fast that we would end up getting their before the homeowners were notified in the mail (making for an awkward situation). Worst part was the amount of driving we had to do in between houses. We would knock on 3-4 doors per hour. Turns out if we waited a few weeks before makeing a list the houses were much closer together and we could do 8-10 houses per hour.

The amount of mistakes we have made with marketing are more than I care to list. While it would be Wise of you to avoid all those mistakes, realize that everyone needs to make mistakes in order to find what works. If you are not failing right now realize that you are not even in the game.

So what have we done that has worked for us?

1) Search Engine Advertising- Of course, you need a website for this one, but it really offers great bang for the buck. Best of all, it does not take any work after it is setup.

2) Sequencial Mailers- Much of this depends upon the quality of your list, but once you have a system keep a continuous flow of quality postcards or letters showing up in the mailbox.

3) Pay-Per-Call Ads- This is not a source to count on for high volume, but it really is an amazing tool that your competitors likely are not using. No website needed and you only pay when your phone rings.

We refer to our marketing budget as our "Golden Goose" because the more money we feed it, the more golden eggs we get. Hope our failures and successes help you to be Wise, so that your Golden Goose may eat well and your business reap the benefits.