10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
By: David Martin renegadewholesaler@gmail.com www.renegadewholesaler.com 1
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
The massive amount of foreclosures across the world is creating numerous gold mines for savvy real estate investors. They are able to purchase these properties at amazingly low prices and then create additional cash from them. This is creating a “win-win” situation for all parties involved: •
Banks are able to get rid of some of their excess properties due to the incredible number of foreclosures on the market.
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Distressed home-owners are able to save their homes by working closely with investors.
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Investors are able to generate nice profits from these – and many other types of profitable investments.
So, it’s clear that even though we’re in a down economic turn, real estate investing is a still a smart investment. However, one thing that most real estate investors struggle with is how to “market” their real estate investment business and generate more leads, clients, and partners. We all would agree that traditional advertising methods are no longer worth the amount of money they cost. For instance, Yellow Page ads, Newspaper ads, and TV ads all cost a fortune. On top of that, they don’t yield the results that they used to. Why? Because most people simply are not using these methods anymore when looking for products and services. Most people head straight to the Internet... including those who are searching for real estate investors to do business with. The emergence of technology has since changed this and leveled the playing field for all investors. Indeed, anyone can market his property cheaply and on a global platform. With the dynamics of the Internet, it remains a fact that it is how much you know about internet marketing that will determine the success of your real estate business on a global platform. 2
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
All serious investors know they need to market their business online, but they simply have no idea how to go about it. However, in this report, we will discuss 10 powerful marketing methods that will help your real estate business reach the levels of wealth you’ve always dreamed of. Attracting and retaining real estate buyers, sellers and other investors is CRUCIAL for your success. Therefore, let’s look into a few of these marketing methods in detail. 1. Lead Generation Websites Just in case you have never heard of lead generation websites before, let’s define what they are: by definition, they are termed as online web pages that are used as a platform for the advertisement and promotion of business activities. These web pages are created with the sole intention of drawing the interest of prospective clients and ensuring that their interests are aroused to the extent that they long for more information in regard to your product. Research shows people make the decision to leave or stay on your website within seconds of clicking on it. So you only have a few minutes to get your point across - make it as simple as possible! The first page (or “Home Page”) of lead generation websites are called landing pages. The main goal of your Real Estate Investing landing page should be to attract the attention of your visitors. It should be a short and sweet page that clearly identifies the BENEFITS your visitors will receive by doing business with you. Your landing page should have an email capture form so you can collect your visitor’s information so you have a way to follow up with them. Think about how much business you will miss out on by not capturing your website visitor’s contact information! 3
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
In order to get people to leave their email addresses, you should offer them something of value for FREE. For instance, you can offer a free report on Real Estate Investing in exchange for email addresses. If your business model prefers that you collect your visitors phone numbers, you can request that as well on the landing page. However, studies show that people are more hesitant to give away personal information such as that into website forms. But that does not mean that it won’t work for your business - it all depends on your overall goals and the nature of your business. What you put on your landing page - as well as how you structure it - will determine its success for the most part. The page should be clean, have a strong call to action, and contain an email capture form at minimum. Another vital part of having an effective lead generation website is making sure your site is properly optimized so that it shows up in the search engine on certain Real Estate Investing keywords. A keyword is a word or phrase that people type into the search engines when looking for a product, service, or information. In order to capture some of that website traffic, the first step is to make sure your landing pages and websites are properly optimized with keywords related to your business. Experts in Internet marketing have proven that if you take time to properly optimize your landing page, you will most likely increase the number of visitors who click to your links by forty percent. This is because websites that are keyword-optimized tend to attract visitors that are actually LOOKING for what that website has to offer! So not only will you drive more traffic to your website, but you will drive more TARGETED traffic to your website. Your visitors will know that they’ve found exactly what they’re looking for if you setup your lead generation websites properly. For instance, as a real estate investor, you can have an appealing video on your site to display some of the properties you may be trying to sell. 4
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
Whatever you do, try and make your landing page as simple as possible and avoid excess information as that will distract the attention of your visitor. While we’re on this topic... When creating a landing page, it is very advisable to avoid placing unnecessary information such as your business information on the landing page. Remember, the whole point is to get the visitor to TAKE ACTION. So that’s what you want to focus on. Also, avoid any navigation from your landing page because your main goal is to generate interest solely through it. If you have to use graphics on your lead generation website, ensure that such graphics are captivating, and carefully placed so as not to act as a distraction for the visitors to your website. With such graphics, ensure that they are linked as visitors tend to click graphics for more information. It is strongly recommended that you also have interest-arousing captions alongside the graphics as people often read captions more on a page than any other information. The content on your lead generation website should be reader-friendly. As a matter of fact, many people often don’t read through content unless they are easy to read through. Try and use bullets to highlight your points and write headings in bold so as to attract attention. It will be good to consider the use of interactive contents such as videos, pictures and sound on a lead generation website so as to keep the visitor captivated to your page.
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10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
2. Giveaway Reports Now that you have created your lead generated website and you have used it to successfully capture the data about your visitor such as his e-mail address, the time comes for you to take your online marketing to another level through give away reports. As we all know, many people love free information and giving them useful free information in regard to the developments in real estate investing will make them gain trust in your business and help you build a stable base of clients willing to share their problems and investment dreams with you. The advantage of using free reports is that they can help in capturing leads because they give the impression that you have knowledge and information in regard to real estate investing. Therefore, those who read your free reports and get impressed by the information contained within them will most likely look try to contact you either for additional information or to get real estate deals from you. When offering a free report, it is advisable to include your property listings and any other information that relates to your real estate business inside of it. For instance, if you are running a free report on ten easy ways to sell your home fast, it will be good to have listings of houses that you have on sale listed at the end of the report. You should “always be selling” in everything you do online. In this case... let’s say someone just finished reading your report and they’re all warmed up to you. Do you think they’ll be interested in any other valuable information or products you have to offer? Of course. If someone reads your valuable report and is interested in selling or buying a house, they will most likely feel confident in contacting YOU. That is the kind of confidence and trust a free report is capable of providing for you. 6
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
Once you have gathered leads through free reports, it will be easy to store their contact details in a database and send them future free reports. Remember that it will be easy for a visitor to your lead generation website who has received an interesting free report from you to forward it to their friends who will in turn look for ways to contact you. This leads to another question, how do you ensure that your free report is captivating? The first thing is to ensure that the title is such that it can arouse interest. For instance, a title like ‘tips to making millions from real estate’ may attract millions of people since everyone, regardless of their culture and race, are always seeking ways to become rich. Know that even if the content of a free report are captivating, if the title is not structured in a clear and captivating manner, then it will most likely pass the attention of your potential customers. Another bright side of using free reports is that it will allow you to connect with those who are SERIOUS about doing business with you vs. the tire kickers. After reading your reports, only the serious parties will contact you for additional information - with no additional effort on your part. How do you make the best use of free reports? One way to do this is simply by e-mailing them to your existing list of prospective and existing clients. The other way in which you can successfully use the free reports is by giving them away on your lead generated website in exchange for your visitor’s information - which we talked about earlier. Just be sure that they are written to solve a user specific problem like, ‘how to increase the value of a house.’ Try to mail follow up messages within days after you have mailed your visitor’s have received the free report. This will allow you to establish an even greater relationship with them and possibly turn them into clients or partners.
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10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
3. Email Marketing Speaking of “following-up”, we can’t leave out e-mail marketing. Indeed, it is an indisputable fact that e-mail marketing is one of the most powerful tools that a real estate investor can use to reach his target market. Why is this so? It is because when an email is properly structured, it carries with it the power of converting individuals into real estate investment clients and partners. With an effective e-mail marketing campaign, real estate investors can grow their business to level that you never imagined. Therefore, if you are not utilizing this amazing tool in this technological age, you are on the wrong online marketing track. Once you have developed a lead generation website, the next step is to capture leads on that website. This is done with the help of an email autoresponder system, which is where you will setup and manage all of your email messages. Inside of your autoresponder system, you will be able to create an opt-in code, which you will then place on your lead generation website. This will allow you to capture leads on your website and then follow up with them on a consistent basis with valuable information in the real estate investing niche. Not only will you build a strong relationship and be viewed as the “authority” when it comes to investing in real estate, but you will also be able to sell to your list. Autoresponders also have the capability to automatically reply messages sent to it. For instance, it is very possible that you have come across email messages that state that an individual is not in the office but will reply your email once he returns. Such emails are likely sent by autoresponders for the purposes of covering for the owner of the email address when he is not around. Therefore, in a business setting, an autoresponder will send replies to e-mails without any human intervention. 8
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
If you are wondering how to get a good autoreponder service, there are several available on the market, such as Aweber.com, iContact.com, and ConstantContact.com. 4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) If you are a real estate investor, you have probably heard of SEO, but have no idea how it really works. This is true for most business owners. SEO sounds like this mystical internet thing that can help you get more business online. However, SEO is a simple, yet very strategic, process that involves proper keyword research and implementation. SEO involves increasing your website ranking for keywords that your target audience types into the search engine when looking for real estate investing information. The main goal of SEO is to give your business proper online visibility and exposure so you can be found by your target audience. Most serious business investors know that this proper online exposure is the key to reaching the masses on a global platform. As you know, your goal as an investor is to let people know about your investments with the hopes of doing business with them. However, in the world today, there is so much online information that if you don’t structure and distribute your information properly, it will not be noticed or accessible online. This means that your desired audience may never even see your website and other web properties if you don’t take the measures to put them out there! SEO is the tool that ensures that the information you wish to pass to the relevant target audience is structured in such a manner that they are able to easily find it and access it online. The reason serious investors need to invest in SEO is because of its power and capabilities to enable you to get noticed by others. It gives your website the opportunity to be seen by others because the search engines are able to detect it and present it to prospective clients who are looking for what you have to offer. 9
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
How exactly do you achieve Search Engine Optimization? The first thing you need to do is to have a good title tag for your page. The significance of a title tag in SEO is that it is the backbone to the success or failure of the whole SEO process for your website. Therefore, ensure that your title tag bears the relevant keywords and talks correctly of the information available on the web page. A title tag should also contain a link to the main website page so that someone carrying out a search can easily trace his way to your website. The second important thing in SEO is to have well-optimized Meta tags. For your information, Meta tags refer to small pieces of information that describe the information found on a web page. Keywords and browser information are often good examples of Meta tags. Finally, you will only succeed in SEO if you use search engine friendly URLs. It is advisable to use static URLs instead of the dynamic ones because it is easier for them to integrate with the search engines. Static URLs are also easier to remember and ensure that the search engine spiders have the capacity to effectively crawl through them unlike their dynamic counterparts. Another factor to consider while optimizing your website for a search engine is that websites which have links to other sites are often ranked higher than websites without links. These are called “backlinks.” To get the most effect from backlinks, it’s advisable that your website should contain links to other websites with similar interests. For instance, as a real estate investor, you should ensure that your website contains links to other real estate websites. Your website link should also be listed on various real estate related websites to give you even more juice. One good example is if you frequent real estate forums, be sure to place a link to your website in your signature (if the forum allows it). This will serve as a very powerful link back to your website and contribute to increased rankings over time. This SEO information is just a small portion of what is involved with the entire SEO process. Most businesses seek the professional help of SEO professionals when it comes to optimizing their websites as they just don’t have the time to learn how to do it themselves. This is advisable if you don’t have any prior SEO experience. 10
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
5. Online Classified Ads / Craigslist / Back page Classified ads are normally short ads that are placed in certain sections of newspapers and online classified directories. The purpose of online classified advertising sites is to ensure that online readers have quick access to ads that meet their needs. There is a real estate section in just about every online classified website. So this is definitely one form of marketing you should use as a real estate investor. Investors search these sites daily looking for buyers, sellers, and other investors to partner up with. Therefore, you should establish a presence on these sites if you want to gain the attention of your target market. Online classified websites are the “new” newspaper classifieds! I’m sure you would agree that most people spend a LOT of time on the Internet today. Because of this, online classified sites have gained popularity over the past few years at extremely high rates. The most common online classified ad site today is Craigslist.org. Craigslist.org was started by Mr. Craig Newmark in the year 1995 and the website has been known as a place for classified listings since then. This site is a marketplace for all types of business people from attorneys, to plumbers, to insurance agents, and many others. In a very short amount of time, Craigslist quickly became the most popular classified ads site in the U.S. and other parts of the world. How powerful is the Craigslist website? According to current online statistics, the website is available in over four hundred cities and is worth over ten million US dollars! When properly structured, a classified ad could bring thousands of customers to your website; therefore leading to increased web traffic and business growth.
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10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
A good classified ad should be structured in a manner such as to easily draw the attention of the reader to it. Not only that, but your classified ads should contain proper keywords that your target market may use to look for your service. This will help your online classified ads come up in search engine results just as your website would! The title of your ad should be STRONG and should contain the keywords as well as the body of your ad. This will help you attract your true target market. Be sure to place an image in your online classified ad. As you probably know, images and graphics make ads and other marketing materials convert at much higher rates than those with no images. Images attract readers and generate immediate interest in your business. Therefore, you should utilize them whenever possible on online classified websites. Never forget that you are in a competition against other real estate investors and only the person willing to offer the best will get the most gains.
6. Blogs The internet in itself is dynamic, even in the world, everything is dynamic. Nothing remains the same. As a real estate investor, the property you had lined up for sale yesterday will not be the same property you have for sale today. The terms of trade yesterday may change today and the investment projects that seemed so viable yesterday may not just be worth it today. This is how the idea of “blogs” was introduced. running log of posts placed on a web page.
A blog is a “web log” - or a
It is a proven fact that blogs go a long way in ensuring that the information available on a real estate investor’s web page remains up to date in accordance to the dynamic nature of the business environment.
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10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
Blogs also allow investors to inject fresh content into his website for the purposes of SEO and other online marketing techniques. If you want to successfully use blogs as a means for internet marketing, it is best to use the Wordpress content management system for blog creation. The reason as to why Wordpress is preferable is due to the fact that it is SEO optimized and has the capability of allowing its users to create countless number of blog posts. It is also advisable to constantly update your blog with posts related to the real estate investing industry. This will increase the rate that the search engine robots are able to detect and grade your keywords. Blogging for real estate investors have proven to be profitable as they allow you to build a following of readers who start to trust you when it comes to this business. These readers are often interested in learning more and will purchase additional information from you that relates to real estate investing. Not only that, but some of these readers will also want to do business with you on some level; so blogging truly can open up endless possibilities for you as an investor. 7. Social Media Over the past few years, one of the major technological advancement that has taken the Internet world by storm is the rapid growth of social marketing sites. People are using social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to connect with family and friends, as well as to do business. In fact, more and more businesses are moving towards social platforms in order to put themselves in front of other real estate investors, buyers, and sellers. Why is it are real estate investors being encouraged to use Facbook as a medium for advertising? Despite the fact that it is only seven years old in the market, Facebook has grown rapidly to host over seven hundred million users! 13
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
Therefore, the importance of Facebook in online marketing cannot be underestimated as it provides real estate investors with the possibility of reaching all corners of the world rapidly and easily. Facebook works on the platform of trust and shared messages; making it easy as an investor to create trust, build a following, and conduct real estate business. On Facebook, those who are within a network of friends have the capability to see each other’s profile updates, personal information, status updates, photos and other personal information. This makes it easy for a real estate investors to identify and create a list of active customers for online marketing purposes. Twitter is also another social site that is similar to Facebook in that it acts as a strategic marketing tool by linking investors and their potential customers across the world in real time. Following other real estate professionals on Twitter will allow you to follow popular trends in real estate - such as prices, sales, and other important factors of the business. You can easily stay on top of what is going on just by following others and keeping yourself in the loop. Not only that, but you can send your own Tweets on Twitter to your followers. This will allow you to keep an audience engaged in what you have to say. Tweets are very limited in the amount of characters you can enter, but they are extremely effective in sending out quick bits of information related to the real estate industry. You can also use these tweets to direct traffic to your website or blog. For instance, you can setup your Facebook and Twitter accounts to automatically update when you make blog posts. This is perfect if you want to offer free real estate investing advice to your followers, which has a very high perceived value - keep doing this and they will follow you forever! 14
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
LinkedIn is another excellent social media platform for real estate investors. LinkedIn is a network of professionals who connect - usually to conduct some type of business. Professionals link up through this powerful platform for various reasons. Using LinkedIn gives you the opportunity as an investor to have up to date information on business market trends and consumer behavior just by connecting with like-minded individuals across the globe. 8. Video Marketing Did you know that according to research, most people are attracted to what they SEE vs. what they READ? In fact, studies show that most people prefer watching online videos to reading online articles! So if you want to achieve real success in your real estate investing business, you may want to integrate online videos into your marketing strategy. Videos are flashy and they draw attention quickly, which is what you want. Videos will almost always rope your website visitors in; their curiosity will get the best of them and most of the time, they will watch your video. This is your chance to put your best foot forward - whether it’s providing them with valuable information or just introducing yourself. Visitors will always feel like they know if you if you put up a personal video message, although this is not the only type of video you can do. In fact, you can create captivating videos without appearing in them personally. For instance, you can create a presentation style video that simply taps into the frustrations of your target market and then offer them some solutions (free or paid). There are many ways to get creative with video marketing, but make sure you keep your videos short and sweet. Make them educative and somewhat interactive, but keep it simple. Most people today have short attention spans, so you don’t want to turn them off with a long, drawn out video that takes 10 minutes to get to the point. Your videos should generally be 1-2 minutes in length - especially if the main goal is to get your viewer to take action on something. Some videos 15
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
may tend to be a little bit longer depending on their intent. But in most cases, keep them short. Be sure to include a call to action as well as your contact information at the end of your videos. Otherwise, it’s a waste. Once your viewer is warmed up to what you have to say, there’s no better time to get them to call you or download your report or email you. Videos simply capture the attention of your target audience, so make sure the quality is good and the content is valuable. Once you have created your videos, they can be distributed all over the world - not just on your website! Online video directories provide you with the ability to post your videos there. This is powerful for two reasons: 1. it provides massive online visibility for your video and... 2. it provides a powerful backlink to your website. You’ve probably heard of YouTube - it’s only the largest online video site in the world. Not only that, but it’s the 2nd largest website period - right behind its owner, Google! YouTube is free and allows you to place as many videos there as you want, so it’s definitely not a good idea to ignore this powerful marketing tool. People who are on YouTube looking for information about real estate investing won’t find anything about you - unless you put yourself there! People who watch your videos on YouTube will probably click back to your website, which is powerful for driving traffic. There are also other online video portals that you can post your videos on as well. Don’t stop at one... remember the goal is to give your business “massive” exposure. One powerful note about online videos is that they are extremely “viral.” If someone watches a video that they like, they tend to share with their friends, family and colleagues with one simple click. Can you see the power in this?
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10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
Videos also provide another powerful “backlink” to your website - helping it rank further. Be sure to include a link to your website in the “Description” box on every video you submit online. Video backlinks from massive sites like YouTube carry strong weight and are great for boosting your website rankings. Speaking of rankings... it is important that you keyword optimize your videos when submitting them as well. For instance, be sure to enter your keywords into the title and Description box as well to increase exposure on those video sites. In fact, your individual videos themselves can even rank in the search engines. Let’s say someone is looking for information on investing in real estate in the Google search engine and they put in a keyword. If you have optimized your videos properly, chances are that your video will pop up over the organic listings. And guess what... videos usually get a higher click rate than websites! Remember the fact that people prefer watching online videos to reading online text? When done properly, videos will definitely help generate buzz and increase your clientele in the real estate investing business. 9. Online Press Releases If you have ever used online press releases as a means of marketing before, then, you will agree that everybody LOVES breaking news. Therefore, press releases are the perfect way to tell the world about your business and what’s going on. Don’t make the mistake of trying to “sell” through press releases - this is very counteractive and is a complete turn-off to readers. They are meant to provide information about hot topics related to your business and nothing more. Real estate is a hot topic in general... so you know that it would be a perfect fit for press releases. Real estate is an ever-changing game and you HAVE to stay on top of those changes in order to invest properly.
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10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
Press releases are perfect for letting people know what’s new, what’s changing, what’s hot, and what’s not hot in the real estate investing world. When people are doing research on real estate, they are sure to come across some online press releases on the topic. If your goal is to get in front of these people, you have to submit online press releases. Sounds like a lot of trouble? It’s not... A press release is a short and sweet write-up about anything related to your business. Once they are written, you submit them to several online press release sites over the web. Press releases are powerful in that they also rank high in the search engines and receive a lot of exposure all over the web. To get the maximum exposure from press releases, you should write and submit them on a regular basis. The more the better. The more people see your name and brand out there when it comes to real estate investing, the more credibility you build for yourself. Not only that, but press releases also provide you with powerful backlinks to your website and help improve its search engine rankings. So they are great for SEO as well. Be sure to include relevant keywords within your press releases as well as in the title of your press releases. If your press releases are high-quality, informative, and written with SEO in mind, they can provide you with the type of massive online exposure you need to market your real estate investing business. 10.
Articles
Similar to press releases, online articles are another powerful way to generate web content about your real estate investing business. Articles are simple write-ups that speak about specific topics are the perfect way to engage with your target audience. Millions of people scour the internet looking for information in regards to real estate, so writing and distributing articles is a great way to put yourself in front of those people. 18
10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
Articles will not only help you provide valuable information to others on real estate investing topics, but they also help brand yourself as the authority on the topic. When writing your articles, they should also be short and to the point usually no more than 600 words. They should focus on one particular topic and work to educate the reader. Once you write your articles, they can be submitted to dozens of online article directories - putting them in front of the world. Your article titles and bodies should also include keywords related to your business for SEO purposes. This will help your articles come up in the search engines when people type in particular keywords. When you submit your articles to online article directories, they have a resource box at the end of each article. This is where you would place your personal information such as your name, short bio, and a link back to your website (to give your website a little backlink juice). Articles are great for communicating with your target base of consumers. People are often looking for solutions to their problems and a wise real estate investor will identify such problems, look for solutions and draft articles that are able to help people solve those problems. For instance, if a real estate investor discovers that many people are losing their property due to fraud, he can write and submit an article on how people can prevent such fraud. The importance of articles is that they contain the information that many people need, as well as a solution. Well-written, high-quality articles could be your means for penetrating into the massive online real estate investing information high-way. Real estate investing is a niche that needs to reach a global - not just local audience. Articles can help you do this because once they are distributed online, they are available for the whole world to access.
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10 HOT Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors
So if you are an investor looking to do business with investors in other parts of the world, article marketing can help you reach audiences all over the world. As you can see, there are numerous ways for you to market your real estate investing business online. If you don’t consider yourself to be “internet savvy,” then your brain is probably floating with new ideas right now. Gaining exposure online in the real estate investing niche is not hard. However, it does take a lot of time, dedication and patience to start seeing the rewards that the Internet can bring to your business. If you are looking to really boost your real estate business and start connecting with buyers, sellers, and other investors, you should take a serious look at setting yourself up online. “Setting yourself up online” involves more than just putting up a website. You have to drive traffic to that website by using other powerful online tactics, which we discussed in this report. I hope that you’ve found value in the information presented to you here and that you have a much better understanding about what you should be doing online to attract more business and partnerships. If you would like some professional help getting started online, contact me at renegadewholesaler@gmail.com for a free consultation. I look forward to speaking with you.
By: David Martin renegadewholesaler@gmail.com http://www.renegadewholesaler.com
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