Most people don't truly understand advertising. I have heard of people who started to advertise in the paper and didn't have any idea about what to say in the ad. The average company today wastes $30,000 a year on advertising and marketing ideas that do not work.

I used to run ads in the paper. I started to look at the days of the months versus the volume of the calls coming in. What I found was that from the first day through the 14th of the month I wasn’t getting the volume of calls. The phones were dead. You could have sat around the office and heard crickets for those 14 days. I had nothing going on and I was spending a mint on advertising. Once we hit the 15th of the month, the phones start to ring. From the 15th to the end of the month, phones ringing off the hook. Get to the first day of the next month, the phone stops ringing.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon or even a nuclear scientist to figure out that I’ve got something going on in my market that impacts the way the phone rings. This has nothing to do with the ad. It’s the same ad every day of the week! What I realized was that people don’t start looking for their next place to move to until the 15th of the month. I made some adjustments to cut back on advertising expenses. I do not run ads from the first to the 14th of the month. If we get a call during that period of time, it’s from somebody that just got evicted. I might not want them.

I think you will find that the best activity starts at the 15th of the month and goes through to the end of the month. I only run retail sales ad in the homes for sale section. I run the other ads in the rental section. So you will only see my rent-to-owns and land contracts in the rental section. Check out the pricing in your local paper. If they have better pricing for rentals, I would recommend using my system. Save your advertising money.

Here’s how I structure an ad. I always have a heading. It says "rent to own property" or "land contract property" or whatever you’re doing. If you plan on wholesaling houses you should mention if they are bank repossessed homes for sale. Then the second item I put in is the address and I don’t put the city if it’s local. Then I put the number of bedrooms. I put any other things that might peak someone’s interest such as whether or not it has a garage or the number of baths it has. I don’t put the number of baths in if it only has one. Also, did I just freshen up the paint? Do I have a Jacuzzi? Is it new carpet? Does it have a fenced in yard? Does it have central air or a basement?

I put that information in and then I put our acquisition guy's phone in the ad. I want them to call his cell. He’s got it on him and he’s the guy who can talk. I will put our website address on half the ads. Why don’t I put them on all of them? Because the extra line cost me extra money and so I just put it in half the ads. I guess it’s more important to have that phone number on there for them to call. Let’s say I’m running two ads. I’ll put the website on one and not the other one. Kevin’s cell will be on both. We have photos of the property and we post it on the website.

Justifying the text helps fill up a whole line. What that means is if I get like three letters on the next line, I’m going to have to pay for that whole line anyhow. So if there’s any other feature in the house that I can add to fill up that line, I can take advantage.

Another problem you might have is errors. These newspapers will mistakenly put your competitor’s phone number on the ad or the wrong address or the wrong picture. Always check your ads, make sure you make the paper correct them if there are errors. You could lose a lot of business over a small mistake on their end.

Adding a website to you ad does make a difference. They have a more in depth look at the house online. So if you sway them in that direction they will have a lot of their questions answered. They can also fill out online applications. Websites are great and they have become one of the top ways to prospect in our business. You can put pictures and descriptions up online for everyone to see. It’s relatively easy to do.

With our website, we usually put a front picture up for sure. If there are good selling points about the back, we’ll put a back picture online as well. We also put pictures of the kitchen, living room and any other good features of the house. If you’ve got great woodwork or ceramic tile in kitchen, we will put it on our web page.

What makes the Internet great is you get people who just surf in accidentally. Then they like what they see and you’ve got them on your hook. But the chances of that are small. You need to drive them to your web page through your marketing. The way to drive traffic to your site is through your signs, billboards, newspaper ads, Google AdWords campaigns, truck wrapping or whatever works.

This is the way for them to look at your listings and the prices from their bedrooms. They get the whole scoop without leaving their homes. If you don’t have a web presence, you are missing out on one more thing that will help you sell houses. My advice is to get a web presence, even if it’s just a small page that links to you listings. You need to have something.

Lastly, we have a nice ad in the Yellow Pages. It is expensive and they jack the price up every year. It drives me nuts. Now they want me to go color. But I don’t want to hand them the extra bags of money just so I can have different colors in my ad. I have found that what is most important in a Yellow Pages ad is the message it sends. A lot of people will just put their name in huge letters as the headline. That’s not as relevant as what you offer.

Our headline is more focused. It reads, "Is your house in foreclosure? Are you going through a divorce? Are you moving, got another job, relocating?" This is more important to people than your name.

I wasn’t really sold on going with the Yellow Pages early on because of the expense. When I started out it was a couple thousand bucks a year for an ad. If you got the right ad and it ends up in the right location in the book, that’s a big thing. The ad pays itself back and then some. But it’s not always that way. I was not interested in taking that risk. We’re not in a big community, but between realtors, other investors, being able to get your ad in a prominent spot is still pretty tough. The Yellow Pages people know this and use it to get you to pay more for a better spot. It ends up being very expensive and all it really does is add credibility to your business to have a prominent ad in the Yellow Pages. We have only sold a few homes because of it; it is a small lead generator.

Test my system in your market and see what works. See what the best ad structure is and what the best time of the month to place it. Remember to include your website on at least half of your ads. Also remember that you need not jump right into having an expensive yellow pages ad. In my opinion, the yellow pages are the least effective lead generator.