How One Marketer Enables The Success Of Local Agents With A Targeted Data-Driven Approach

We’ve all felt the shift.

That startling burst of tectonic movement that rattled what we thought we knew about the real estate industry and brought a wave of newfound difficulty to the process of buying and selling property.

“[The] real estate market has changed dramatically.”

Not one to bury the headline, Dev Horn, VP of Marketing for national realty brand WeBuyHouses.com, mentions the staggering increase in mortgage rates and the limited inventory hitting the market as reasons for the recent rockiness in property business. 

But it’s not all he’s referring to.

There are other culprits wreaking havoc on an already unpredictable field.  

The ability to reach the right audience with the right messaging has been hit hard.

Really hard.

And it’s forcing the industry to rethink just how they target and source prospective clients. 

“What we experienced in the last two years is we have had to shift,” Horn explains. “[A] couple of years ago, you could just do Google pay-per-click and get pretty good traffic and pretty decent leads.”

“The cost per lead has gone down in the last year, but the quality is…not good.”

So, where exactly does this leave real estate professionals struggling to connect with quality sellers?

Quite literally hanging out to dry, wondering how they’re going to reach new potential clients when all they have to fall back on is regurgitated purchased lead lists that every other competitor is using. 

Add this to the laundry list of woes for the everyday property investor, and between skyrocketing referral fees, inflation, and income uncertainty – it’s one more thing to navigate while simply trying to keep their head above water.

“The problem is if you just put an ad out there and you say ‘we buy houses fast for cash’…you don’t know who’s gonna click on that, and Google could charge you $20, $30, $40, $50 a click…and you didn’t select those people.”

Blindly throwing money into a void and crossing your fingers that your messaging lands?

Sounds like a really productive use of your marketing dollars. 

So…what’s the solution?

The Power of Targeted Audiences And Getting Your Message Where It Needs To Go

“Instead of just putting our message out and letting anyone click on it…we should have a more data-driven strategy where we pick the people that we want to receive our message and then we reach out to them. So that we know that the people we’re reaching had certain criteria that made them more likely to be in our prospect group.”

Now we’re talking.

A National Brand Empowering Local Orgs Looking For A Way To Do Things Better

WeBuyHouses.com takes the guesswork out of branding.

Live in 32 states and over 200 housing markets across the U.S., they are built on a license-model, meaning they sell exclusive territory licenses to realty organizations across the country to leverage the WeBuyHouses.com brand and systems.

Typically targeting sellers who simply want to offload their property, WeBuyHouses.com often works with consumers who have just inherited a home or are absentee owners.

“What we try to do is find those people that have a house that’s more of an asset,” adds Horn. “They really just want cash.”

And not only is their branding straightforward – so is the hands-on support they offer their partners, all with Horn at its helm.

“My job basically is to create the marketing support for our WeBuyHouses.com licensees,” Horn notes.

“In order to use the WeBuyHouses.com brand, they need marketing materials such as postcard designs and letter designs. They need Google pay-per-click campaigns – they need all kinds of stuff."

And with that responsibility comes the necessity of setting up each individual organization for success. 

How’s that done? Easy. With hyperlocal lead generation and the power of public records data. 

Using Hyperlocal Lead Generation To Get The Most Out Of Your Marketing Dollars 

“I think when it comes down to it, I’m a marketing guy, and I want to find the right people,” explains Horn. “There was an old saying years ago…80% of my marketing budgets are wasted. I just don’t know which.”

And Horn explains with the market the way it is today – with limited inventory, high-interest rates, and even higher prices – landing your message with the right recipients is even more important.

“You need to get smart about who you are sending your message to,” he emphasizes, as you can’t afford to drain your ad budget. 

“Instead of focusing on just putting a message out that anybody can click on and instead, choosing the people that see your message, you can get way more efficient in your marketing.”

This is where the power of hyperlocal lead generation comes into play.

It is a fundamental strategy for success, defined by the art of doing things differently. 

Where some companies have impersonal approaches and one-size-fits-all methods to marketing, targeting everyone in the hopes that maybe their message lands with someone...anyone – we think you can do better. 

You can beat big business as they throw marketing dollars you don’t have aimlessly into the furnace – by playing (and winning) at an entirely different game.

What are the rules? It’s all about the TORN approach.

Not in the know on the most useful acronym you’ll hear about today? We’ll break it down.

T – Targeted. Find the right leads and focus your dollars on them. Don’t mass market. Don’t copy/paste to all. Be selective and intentional – just as Horn is suggesting.

O – Outbound. Phone, email, direct mail, online ads, and in-person approaches work best once you’ve done your research and can personalize your approach. These strategies are more cost-effective and prevent you from being outbid by larger corporations (who can afford sky-high bids for online advertising and search engine optimization). 

R – Relevant. Your messaging should always be customized and fitted to your target audience. If you’re on the hunt for distressed properties to offer cash buyouts, would you be marketing to brand-new homebuyers with high equity in their homes? Probably not. Tailor your communications to break through the noise.

N – Neighborly. You’re not going to win with aggressive and intrusive strategies. Build trust, make connections, and show you’re playing a different game. The bad antics of big biz? You’ve never heard of them.

While you can leverage certain social channels’ own custom audience tools to gather larger groups of potentially interested clientele, you can also take your messaging up a notch and focus on specific individuals found within hyperlocal public record data. 

That extra step to personalize? Well worth it.

Data shows targeted ads can increase click-through rates up to 670%. Plus, more than 80% of users are more likely to click on an ad tailored to them. 

Believe in the power of targeting yet? You should.

And even beyond social media, up-to-date public record data connects the dots to homeowner contact information, giving you a plethora of options for how to reach potential sellers in ways that fit best with you and your custom marketing strategy. 

Effortlessly reach prospective sellers via email, phone, digital ads, direct mail, or in person.

Yep – multi-channel campaigns just became a whole lot easier. 

Narrowing Your Search Makes Partnership A Breeze

As Horn supports those realty organizations licensing the WeBuyHouses.com brand,  setting them up to win allows for consistent progress and profit for WeBuyHouses.com.

When they succeed, he succeeds.

And if you're wondering just what that partnership looks like, look no further than the dynamic hyperlocal lead generation platform PropertyRadar. 

Tapping into the power of public record data, PropertyRadar bubbles up everything you could ever need to know about a property, allowing users to create dynamic lists of homes that match the personalized criteria they're looking for. 

“We do kind of a turnkey,” he notes. “We might meet with them, open the PropertyRadar interface together, play around, find their list…and then from there, we just go. We go make postcards happen.”

And the power of that list?

Being able to narrow your results and target who you need to target? That’s the stuff of magic. ✨

And here at PropertyRadar – hearing about it never gets old.

“You can define filters to downsize the universe into a list of viable prospects and then have that depth of information of each one of those kind of prospects in that list…it’s just another feature of PropertyRadar where I think the thing that impresses me the most is this integration of multiple data sources into a very comfortable interface that allows us to search by anything that we can imagine – a county or city, a polygon."

You heard right. 

Not only does PropertyRadar boost handy criteria to narrow down your search and find the properties and homeowners you need most, but you can also completely customize your search radius.

Draw your own map within our interface, choosing custom boundaries to scoop up the residences you want to see and eliminating the ones you don’t.

Government-drawn city lines? Get out of here.

Zip code confines? There’s the door.

We found something better.

“When you start adding those things all together, that’s why we’re with PropertyRadar today.”

Defining Your Target Sellers And Properties Unlocks Key Insights

PropertyRadar is a revolutionary force within data-driven hyperlocal lead generation.

From extensive history to its current owners – PropertyRadar does so with a dynamic, technology-first interface, empowering any realty professional to deep dive into their communities and understand not only the neighborhoods in which they are trying to serve but also the specific properties that offer them the most opportunity.

Harnessing information on over 150 million properties – creating a targeted list of residences that match the customized criteria you’re looking for (perhaps distressed properties or absentee owners), is an absolute cinch. 

“It was the idea that we could create a set of criteria, define a list, and then monitor that set of criteria – it was unique to PropertyRadar,” says Horn. “This is something special.”

Horn’s not wrong.

PropertyRadar’s monitoring feature is an absolute game changer. 

With over 250 search criteria to choose from, you can effortlessly choose what types of homes you want to seek out.

Homes with low equity and absentee owners in Los Angeles? Sure thing.

Properties facing foreclosure in Houston? Of course.

Larger residences with elderly owners looking to downsize? No problem.

Add these homes to a saved list and switch on the dynamic monitoring feature to be kept in the loop whenever new information and new properties become available that match.

The pros here are a mile long.

Not only does this ensure your data is accurate and up-to-date (putting to shame those bought and immediately outdated property lead lists), but it means you could be the very first with this fresh information and have a serious leg up on the competition.

“We could be the first to know that someone has inherited a property or gotten the title changed to them, and now they absentee own a property they just inherited, and now we can see that person, and we can reach out to them."

But to succeed in partnering with prospective clients looking to sell their homes for cash, you have to do a whole lot more than just find a list of properties.

You have to do your research and go deep, understanding each and every property to ensure you can give a strong estimated valuation and fair offer.

Deep Diving On Property Details Personalizes Your Approach

“The magic moment for people is when I click on a record in the list, and then they realize that this isn’t just a list. Each one of these records is a portal into that property.”

Neat? We’re just getting started.

Horn is able to leverage PropertyRadar’s vast reserves of data for multiple purposes.

He can effortlessly help partners tap into larger lists of residences for coordinated marketing campaigns, or he can go granular on a specific listing.

“If we want to know anything about a homeowner or house, PropertyRadar is our source…whether it’s in a bulk level for some sort of mailing list or at an individual level of determining…what’s the value of a property,” he explains, adding that the transaction history is also extremely valuable.

“I think what has surprised me most about PropertyRadar is the multiple use cases for us.”

Using PropertyRadar For Continued Success And Growth 

Trusted by over 1 million homeowners, WeBuyHouses.com is a staple in the realty industry.

Especially necessary for those looking to sell property in as-is condition without hassle; landlords, absentee owners, those facing foreclosure, and more now have a path to financial freedom and a fresh start through WeBuyHouses.com’s seamless four-step process:

1. Contact WeBuyHouses.com and submit details about your property.
2. Schedule a visit from a local WeBuyHouses.com licensed professional.
3. Get a cash offer (with no home repairs required and no obligation to accept the offer once given).
4. Sell fast and easy.

For a company so fundamental to the market, it’s no wonder they opted for such an innovative lead gen tool to be their right hand.

But PropertyRadar turned out to be so much more.

“I thought when we were getting PropertyRadar that we were just getting…maybe a better mailing list service, better interface, you know, that kind of thing,” Horn notes.

The reality? “I think PropertyRadar is a big part of the gas that goes in the engine of the real estate investment.”

And as experts in multi-sourced, back-tested data since 2007, we’ve made it our mission to help power the engines that make up the realty profession nationwide.

With hyperlocal lead generation at our core, we want to encourage, support, and spark the success of those working within the market – as well as those who need the support of these professionals for a fresh start.

“I’m a huge advocate of it because I love data,” reinforces Holt. “If I want a data-driven strategy, I need a service like PropertyRadar."

At the heart of it all, the path to success for WeBuyHouses.com is the success of its hardworking licensees countrywide, proudly carrying the WeBuyHouses.com brand and the power of PropertyRadar in their pocket.

“It’s ultimately with great tools like PropertyRadar; our business does better because our clients do better.”

And if you’re looking for similar opportunities to scale and grow your real estate game?

Take PropertyRadar out for a complimentary test drive, and watch our data work for you.

Get started now with a free trial, and leverage PropertyRadar's powerful interface, seamless search capabilities, and find your next seller today.