Scale Up By Niching Down

Choosing a niche, or in some cases, a specific deal type is one of the most important, yet overlooked steps when marketing for motivated sellers.

Before you can send a single piece of mail, drop your first ringless voicemail, turn on your Google Ads campaign, or launch any other type of marketing,  you MUST choose your niche and determine who you will target.

In other words, you need to determine who in your market needs the services you are going to offer.

There are 3 main reasons for this:

1. You don't want to waste money on marketing to people who don't need your services
2. The quality of your leads will be much higher - reducing your Cost Per Lead (CPL)
3. When you get really good at one niche or deal type, you can build "rinse-and-repeat" systems that will allow you to scale must faster.

Sadly what many new (and even experienced) investors are doing is the exact opposite.

They are targeting a zip code and blasting every single house in that area with the same postcard, only to get a 0.5% - 1% response rate.

What's worse, most of those that call back are simply doing so to demand they be taken off the list!

This is a recipe for disaster and a great way to spend thousands of dollars on marketing with no real leads or deals to show for it.

So what do you do?

You choose a very targetted audience, niche, or deal type to target, and you build your marketing message around their needs.

A few examples of popular niches in real estate are:

• Probate
• Absentee Owners (Landlords)
• Foreclosures
• Expired Listings
• Code Violations
• Tax Delinquencies

Some of these lists can be found in the public domain, others you may have to purchase from a list broker like ListSource or Mellisa Data.

Once you have a good list, this is an asset your business can continue to market to for months to come.

The Importance of Knowing Your Niche

As mentioned above, when you choose a niche, your ability to build systems and scale becomes much easier.

Let's use Probate as an example.

When you're first getting started, you may not know a whole lot about probate, or the needs of the individuals who have recently inherited a house.

The thing is, the more you talk to sellers going through the probate process, the more you will start to understand their problems.

And the more you understand their problems, the better you will be at presenting them with your solution.

You will notice that many of the sellers have the same objections, and you will learn how to overcome those objections much faster.

This means you will be much more effective on the phone, and your ability to close deals will dramatically improve.

Now compare this to what most investors do.

They decide that choosing a niche will slow them down because they will have fewer sellers to target.

So they take the shotgun approach of marketing to anyone who needs to sell a house.

They find themselves talking to sellers that are in foreclosure, behind on taxes, live out of state, etc.

Every time they come up to an objection they don't know how to overcome, or they are in the middle of a deal they don't know how to handle, they have to stop, and learn the whole process all over again.

This is the trap many investors fall into, and one that you should avoid at all costs.

Choose a niche, and get good at it.

Then get great at it!

When you do this, 2 things will happen:

1. You will be able to build a system and plug people into that system so you aren't working in the business every day.
2. You will become known in your market as the "Go-To Guy/Gal" for your niche. (Read: Referrals will start to pour in)

If you don't know what niche to choose, start to think about the type of people you want to help.

Do you want to work with people who recently inherited a house?

Do you want to work with people who are behind on their mortgage and facing foreclosure?

Do you want to work with people who are landlords and sick and tired of dealing with tenants and toilets?

Thinking about the people you will be serving and their problems, as opposed to the strategy itself will help to inform what niche you choose.

Once you have identified your niche, it's time to get to work.

Read through the rest of this guide carefully, and choose the one or two marketing strategies that best fit your needs, budget, and abilities.

From there, you will have everything you need to get started generating motivated seller leads for your real estate business.