One of the hardest parts of real estate investing is getting the exclusive hot lead or motivated seller to contact you. Normally, finding the deals requires a large amount of time, and the people who do have the time will generally be pounding the pavements all day long.

These folks will on average be more successful at a faster rate than someone who's time-limited because they're "out there" doing it all day long. But you don't have to be "normal"; even if you have a day job like most people, you can still have great success generating incoming leads by having an efficient system that does the lead generation work for you.

Develop and grow your own "Lead Generating System" and your real estate business will explode automatically.

After I really learned to market my business, I realized that although it is important to learn all of the real estate buying and selling techniques, you must turn yourself into an expert on the most important part - marketing your business to generate new incoming leads.

Having a marketing system is not about taking on another JOB. Having a marketing system is all about getting away from the grunt work of lead generation. It's about letting the marketing system run your business with little or no help from you.

My marketing system has developed into a compilation of various "tools" that are designed to work together to generate incoming leads automatically. For example, these tools are composed of Direct Mail Letters, Postcards, Newspaper Ads, Radio Ads, 24-Hr Pre-recorded Hotlines, Free Reports, Press Releases, Websites, Service, Comparison Tables, and Testimonials.

The combined use of these tools is the way to execute your marketing system. But the first step in developing your own automatic marketing system is to identify your own target market.

Have you thought about the market that you're trying to reach? What kind of homes are they? How old are these homes? What kind of sellers do you want to work with? Where are these homes? Are they 12 to 50 unit apartment buildings with on-site management or are they single family row homes?

In order to be effective in getting those targeted leads to call you from the areas that you want, you must narrow your focus and develop your own criteria for buying your real estate. Make your target market small. Most service based businesses (like yours) become successful not by creating new markets but by going into markets that already exist and that they feel comfortable with.

Remember - good targeted marketing will have you aiming all of your incredible offers specifically to the market that wants it.

For example, let's say you're targeting pre-foreclosures. You must then craft your services to revolve around the "wants" of someone facing foreclosure. Remember - this is about satisfying their "wants", not what you think their "needs" are. Their wants may be:

- Debt relief

- Compassion

- Patience

- Relieving their embarrassment

- Privacy

- Sympathy

- Understanding

- Stress relief

You must "get inside the heads" of your target market to understand their wants no matter who they may be. That statement is critically important. If you do this right, you'll make a crucial connection with your target market and all barriers will be broken down. If you don't follow that rule, you may be wasting your time and your results will certainly suffer. But get this right and you'll be very successful in your business.