While working with one of my students this week on the FREE Weekly Training Webinar, I received an email with a discouraging attitude about using craigslist. You see, I gave everyone the assignment of creating and digital flyer and posting it on craigslist. The assignment wasn’t meant to generate an immediate lead, while that is what we all want from our craigslist ads, the assignment however was to get them doing something to start the marking process.

Here is her email to me:

Hi Mike, I posted this ad on Craigslist, I put a code where it made the picture fill up the whole page. I got a big fat 0 number of responses. I went with a gloomy appeal. Please let me know if it sucks, as a newbie, I need all the help I can receive.

Here is my response to her:  More...

I do a live weekly webinar training for real estate investors from all over the country. The weekly training is designed to help you either get started or get back on track. We have a vast verity of investors on the weekly training call from beginners to seasoned investors and one thing that I have been trying to emphasis on the training calls is that there is no one magical technique for success.

There are common traits and behaviors of successful investors, but they all have their own (sometimes unique) business models and they stick to it. However, in today’s rapidly changing market and economy, even those seasoned investors have been forced to change their strategies recently, myself included. That is why we have been seeing so many seasoned investors looking for answers.

I have been working with everyone to help them understand that one key fundamental to long term success in real estate, or any other business for that matter is the ability to change with the market. The market has changed and so must we.

So I am reaching out to all my fellow investors, new and old to find out what is working for you in your market? In the comments section below, tell us what is working for you, or what you have been doing lately. Then join us on the weekly training calls to continue this discussion on a weekly basis. More...

While the government wants us to believe that the recession is over and the economy is heading back in the right direction, all the indicators show something completely different. Housing prices in particular are heading back down in many areas, as I have predicted several times in the past on our weekly training calls.

CNBC even talked about it the other day on their Power Lunch news show.

Jobs are the biggest reason in my opinion. While the Unemployment rate has dropped below 10%, the number of people unemployed is still growing, currently over 17%. The unemployment rate only counts the number of people currently collecting unemployment benefits. It does not count the number of people whose benefits have expired and are still unemployed. More...

Approaching your advertising can be a bit of a daunting task, but fortunately there is an old school approach that holds just as true now as it did 100 years ago. The formula for advertising success can be summed up into four little letters AICA (Attention, Interest, Conviction, and Action). It’s not just the 4 elements that are important, but also the order in which they lay.

• Before anything will peak someone’s interest it must first get attention.
• Before anything will convince someone it must be of interest to them first.
• Before anything will cause someone to take action, they must be convinced to do so.

The main point being that when you’re advertising you have 4 steps to walk your prospects through and between those 4 steps there are 3 bridges you must get them to cross once you have their attention.

There’s real beauty in the simplicity of this formula that gives you a great framework to analyze your current marketing as well as formulate new marketing: More...