The Fin Forum

It sometimes can be challenging to find motivated sellers as an investor. Increasing competition, declining home values and a soft lending market make it tough on investors.

Thanks to a sagging economy finding motivated sellers is not difficult. Truth be told, there simply is not. How do you track them down?

I think you’ll find that one of the most powerful resources for finding motivated sellers is the internet. Certainly, there are virtually scores of businesses hocking lists of motivated sellers. I’m insinuating a thorough internet presence that the owner has exclusive access to. In a nutshell, a website that you control that feeds you motivated sellers.

So how should you execute such a solution? You’ll need to start with classy site. It should demonstrate that you are a serious buyer and know how to solve their problem. Demonstration that you’ve resolved the challenges of other sellers is key. Convincing sales copy is a must if you want your visitors to want to work with you and contact you. Be sure it has a way for visitors to get their vital property and contact info to you.

Starting with the professional website you can either design it yourself or pay someone else to do it. Or you can get a pre-designed template and make some modifications to it. Desiging something from scratch or even buying a template will require some design and HTML skills. Unless you have a brother-in-law in the business you must have to have capital to hire someone. You should put a dollar amount to your time and choose whether it’s worth it. Should you allow yourself to make $20 per hour to create the solution yourself? Do you have time on your hands and not much money?

Happy customer testimonials should be littered throughout. Fashion your offline credibility kit to suit the online media. The use of real numbers, audio testimonials and faxed letters is a must. Audio testimonials are an excellent option. Happy customers have proven, time and time again, to be the most persuasive part of sales.

Use convincing sales copy to prod your visitors to complete your online forms. Dan Kennedy is a super resource here and I recommend following him where possible. He’s a man among boys when it comes to copy writing. Buy his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter, and rad it thoroughly. Construct each page of the site with compelling copy and a great call to action.

Last but not least be sure to liberally place lead generators. These are forms online that your visitors fill out. The forms capture vital contact information as well as details about their property. This portion requires some database programming that will attach to the fields on the form and store the data.

The final step is driving targeted visitors to your site. A great way to do this is to advertise using Yahoo Search Marketing. This can be done with searching engine optimization and PPC. When you start getting visitors you may discover that you need to modify your content. If you’re not getting as many leads as you would expect simply tweak your copy and/or rearrange the layout and test. Increasing your conversions can be accomplished by using squeeze and landing pages.

You’ll be able to use paid listings and SEO to gain sufficient traffic to capture motivated sellers on your website.