RPZ101

"Nothing happens until somebody sells something."

- Red Motley

Marketing is everything you do to promote your business which results in your customers – buyers and sellers – calling YOU to do business with YOU on a regular basis.

Marketing does not mean advertising.

Advertising is a component of marketing. A strong word-of-mouth campaign is part of marketing. And so is your appearance. Business cards. Stationary. Envelopes. The clothes you wear. And your broker affiliation. No detail is too insignificant to be included, utilized, and exploited.

Marketing is everything you do to promote your business which results in your customers calling YOU to do business with YOU on a regular basis.

A campaign, on the other hand, as defined by the Webster’s Desk Dictionary: is any systematic course of aggressive activities designed for some special purpose.

Combined: A marketing campaign is a systematic course of aggressive activities designed for the express purpose of getting business to come to you on a regular and consistent basis.

Translated: Wallet busting profits. Fat, rich, and famous. A six figure income!! That’s good news.

The bad news is that most business people and salespeople and real estate salespeople in particular do not, I repeat, do not have a marketing mind set. They do not design a marketing campaign from the outset and regard it as the highest of all priorities and, consequently, they don’t reach their full money making potential. They quit. They drop out of the business like rain from the sky.

Tragic, isn’t it? The drop out rate in our industry is incredible. 50% gone within six months. 80% gone at the end of their first year. And thousands of new licensees quit before they’ve even made their first dollar! It’s so very, very unnecessary.

Marketing is the key to unlocking the vault of unlimited opportunity.

Learn to recognize the myriad opportunities available and exploit every single one of them that fits within the framework of your personality, time, and capital restraints.

YOU NEED A PLAN OF ATTACK. A CAMPAIGN.

Before you do anything, though, you need a plan of attack – a marketing campaign. You need to determine up front what you want your marketing to accomplish, what kind of return on investment you desire from your time and your efforts because only you know how many miles you’re willing to run, how many mountains you’re willing to climb, how much you really desire the attainment of your personal goals and how much you’re willing to do to get there.

The importance of planning your marketing campaign is paramount… 

SEVEN POINT MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Kenneth Blanchard said: "Don’t just do something. Think about it." That’s good advice, especially when it concerns the design and implementation of a marketing campaign.

R.C. Cunningham, Executive Vice President of AFG Industries says it a different way:

"Every company (salesperson) has the opportunity to minimize head-on competition and to maximize their sales and profit potential by hitting ‘em where they ain’t.

The key to finding where they ain’t is a well defined strategic plan which…evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of your company compared with the competition.

This information…becomes the road map that tells you where you are today, lets you see where you want to go tomorrow and how to get there. It’s really knowing your market, and your competition, that makes the difference in selling…"

It boils down to planning. Dynamic goals are the determined plans for your life. A properly prepared marketing campaign is the determined plan for the acquisition of new clients on a continuous basis. In other words…what, specifically, are we going to do to get from here to there? What specific steps, what marketing strategies, what step-by-step systems will we establish, implement and maintain?

Things get done because a plan is put in place to do something.

The seven points of your marketing campaign are:

1  Determine your objectives

2. Set a timetable for the realization of your objectives

3. Operate from a predetermined budget

4. Determine your audience, that is, your market

5. Decide on your offer, what components

6. Create your offer and components

7. Analyze and measure your results

Determine your marketing objectives

You need to have a reason, a purpose, an objective in mind before you embark upon a full scale marketing campaign. Focus and direction come as a result of setting clear, specific objectives. Having predetermined objective helps you get from where you are to where you want to be.

The broad view, of course, is your objective is to get more clients, more business. That’s the broad view of what you want your marketing campaign to accomplish.

And the broad view simply isn’t good enough here. It is very, very important for you to quantify your objectives at this point in your career. It isn’t good enough to say "I want more business" because "more business" is much, much too vague. "More business" could mean an influx of low income, first time buyers which demand a tremendous amount of time that you simply don’t have available or are willing to make available.

More business could mean more call ins from your signs or more listings or more referral business or transferee referrals. More business is much, much to vague to work with.

Now as much as I’d like to be able to determine a set of marketing objective for you – I can’t. It’s impossible. YOU must set your objectives and determine what you want to achieve. Only you can do this most important task.

Six Steps To Developing Strong Marketing Objectives

1. Be Specific: Every objective must have a SPECIFIC result in mind. The easiest way to be specific is to use numbers, that it, to quantify your objectives.

2. Must Be Measurable: All of your marketing objectives need to be measurable. Otherwise how will you know if you are reaching them? What clue will you have? Include the qualifiers of time and type as well as how many.

3. Must Be Realistic: Not too easy, not too hard. Pretty vague, I agree, but only you know what is realistic for you. Keep in mind you need to consider the resources you have available such as assistants, time, technology, and money.

4. Have a Time Schedule. 42 units/12 months = 3.5 units a month. 70 prospects/12=5.8 mth.

5. Must Be Compatible. Your marketing campaign must be designed in such a way that it is compatible with everything else going on in your life and organization. This is one of the reasons you really must take a good, hard, honest look at what you really want out of life and your career. What sense does it make to reach your financial goal only to lose all of your free time? or your family? Or, on the flip side, what sense does it make to have a lot of free time and be broke?

6. Must Be Written. The major advantage to writing down your marketing objectives is to have a ready reference guide. You can always pull out your guide, compare it with your measurements and see if you are on track or not. If not, of course, some adjustments will have to be made.

Set a timetable for the realization of your objectives

You want to earn commissions of $200,000 by the end of next year. You earn an average of $2,000 per transaction. You need to turn 100 sides. That’s 9 deals a month. 2 deals per week. You’ve determined you need to generate 10 leads to get one good, solid deal. Therefore, you need to generate 20 leads per week. That’s approximately 4 leads per day.

You’ve now created a time table which outlines the most important thing you can do to obtain your marketing objectives… generate 4 good leads a day. This is the most important thing you can do. Period.

Operate from a predetermined budget

It simply won’t do you any good to obtain your marketing objectives if you’ve spent all your profits in the process. You must take the time to plan and budget your marketing campaign. The easiest way to accomplish this is to determine, up-front, a percentage of gross earning which you will dedicate to your marketing budget. For instance, we use a static 15%. 15% of every gross dollar we earn is earmarked for marketing.

Once earmarked… if your marketing results are not producing your required results… don’t spend more money! Figure out what is working, what’s not, and make the appropriate adjustments. The only time you should fudge on your budget is when you have determined your actions will result in even MORE profits.

Determine your audience, that is, your market

The first rule of successful, massive lead generation marketing is to develop a compelling marketing message targeted to a very specific prospect.

Successful lead-generation starts with an exact answer to the question Who? The closer the match between your message and the specific type of prospect you want to work with–the more leads you will get–the more bang for your buck. And unless you have an unlimited supply of dollars you can play with you must, MUST, make the commitment to market smarter by picking better, more specific targets. The more vague about WHO you are marketing to, the more you are sabotaging your marketing success; the more you’re wasting your money.

And don’t give me the ole song-and-dance routine saying "Well, that’s okay for other businesses or professions, but it won’t work for real estate because we sell to everybody so we should market to everybody…"

I thought the same thing and it cost me a tremendous amount of money and grief and wasted marketing efforts. By throwing your message out to everybody and hoping the right people will find it is like dropping a 100,000 copies of a message addressed to your Aunt Mary in Phoenix out of an airplane as you fly over Arizona. Maybe she’ll get it–maybe she won’t.

It would have been A LOT more cost effective to address your message to a very specific address –Aunt Mary’s–and forward it directly to her. Likewise, if you want to work with first-time buyers, your advertising and marketing efforts will be much more effective and cost efficient if you gear the message specifically to them and place your messages specifically where they will see it.

Decide on your offer, what components

Your goal in marketing is to obtain a response. And you must make a clear, distinct offer to garner that response. If you don’t, you simply won’t obtain one.

Decide up-front what your objectives are. Do you want to have potential sellers call you and make a listing appointment? What type of sellers? And what, specifically, are you going to offer them to convince them they should call you over and above all your competition? HOW are you going to present that offer? Over the phone? Live? Write a letter and enclose a coupon? Send a postcard?

Are you going to offer a guaranteed service? A discount? YOU HAVE TO KNOW UP-FRONT AND GEAR YOUR CAMPAIGN AROUND THIS KNOWLEDGE which brings us to…

Create your offer and components

You have an objective: to generate buyer leads. First-time buyers. You want to generate 20 good solid leads within a two week time frame. You’ve allocated $400 to the project. You’re targeting middle income, single or married individuals who have not as invested in their first home. You determine the classified section of your local press as well as up-scale apartment buildings would be a good place to advertise. Perhaps a mailing list can be obtained of recently married couples. You’ve also decided you want to offer and present your knowledge of loans… low acquisition cost loans…. low money down loans. And, within certain guidelines, you will offer a buy a house from me guarantee.

You’ve determined the best place to broadcast your offer is through the classifieds, but the problem lies in being able to tell your whole story in such a small place. So… logically… you need another component. And you opt for a local voice mail broadcasting service. You also intent to create a mailing package which includes a brief letter, brochure, and response card.

Now, and only now, can you get down to the business of creating your campaign. You now have all the tools, the objectives to accomplish it.

So you write your classified ad. You record your voice mail script. You write your letter and design a wonderful brochure. And all the components add up to a dynamic, money-making package. See how it works? You plan to the nth degree, then simply work your plan!

Analyze and measure your results

Most real estate agents and brokers seldom track the response of their advertisements and marketing campaigns and, as a result, they repeat their failures and have no idea of what works and what doesn’t. A similar mistake is to assume you know what will work best, what will generate the most responses. You should test to find out.

Test headlines. Test running ads which tout monthly payments versus selling price. Test offering guarantees. Test using a voice mail system, Free Recorded Message versus answering live. Test different scripts and approaches during your presentations. Test, test, and test some more. It can and WILL pay huge dividends.

For example, let’s say you budget $200 a month for a classified advertising campaign. You pull 6 good leads. Your ad read: Beautiful country home. 3bd/2bth. Must see. Won’t last at $169,500. Call 555-1212. Not a bad response.

But then you test. You run a different ad for the same house which reads: Country living for only $2500 down! $717 per month. 3bd/2bth. You gotta see it to believe it. Call 555-1212. You generate 12 calls. Well… gee… which style ad makes more sense? Now, using this second ad as your control you continue to test against it. You next ad might read: You gotta see it to believe it. Country living for only $2500 down! $717 per month. 3bd/2bth. Call 555-1212. If it pulls better, you have a new control. If not, you trash it… and continue testing against your control until you beat your previous results.

If you can’t measure your results… you can’t know if you are on track to making your objectives a reality or not. You must quantify your results. You must!

*****

Now instead of getting up every morning, checking the floor-time schedule, sitting in the office, shuffling papers and hoping someone will show up, you have created a Marketing Campaign, a systematic course of aggressive activities designed for the purpose of getting business to come to you on a continuous basis. Will it work as planned? That’s the purpose of measurement. If it’s NOT…revise the PLAN until you discover what IS working.

You have designed your future. Simple. Easy. Powerful.

THE SIMPLEST, MOST POWERFUL WAY TO ENHANCE YOUR INCOME IS TO PLAN AND THEN WORK YOUR PLAN.

Here are a few more guidelines for designing the marketing campaign that brings you the most for least – that turns you into a Mad Moneymaking Marketer.

1. There are dozens upon dozens of marketing strategies. Choose only those that you look forward to trying out. Contrary to popular opinion, you are not superman or super woman. Don’t attempt too much (or too little), and don’t plan on doing something that you know you won’t do. Remember and acknowledge your pain threshold. If you are absolutely, positively, afraid to speak in front of groups – well, don’t plan on public speaking. You won’t do it – you’ll have sabotaged your success. Don’t be a martyr. There are plenty of workable methods in here which will suit your personality and talents. I guarantee it.

2. Never rely on only one strategy at a time. In other words – don’t be lazy. Besides – circumstances, situations, economics, etc., etc., all have a way of changing. What works great today may not necessarily work tomorrow. Think about it. If you put all of your eggs in one basket, what happens if you drop the basket?

3. Decide which is more valuable to you: Time or Money. Generally speaking, the more of your time a marketing activity requires, the less money (out of pocket expense) it costs you, and vice versa.

4. Use complementary strategies whenever possible. This will create a synergy that can propel your results to astronomical heights.

5. Model the methods the top producers are using in and around your area. Why reinvent the wheel? If it works for them and is compatible with your personality and talents – it will work for you. Also, in researching the methods of the top producers, you will find great big gaping holes which YOU can fill.

Keep in mind, however, that most of the top producers, unless they are using a number of the secret strategies we teach here, are top producers because they have been in the business forever and have built up a rather large following over time. Most of their business is referral business. That’s great – but not immediately available to the beginner or the relatively new agent. Keep that in mind – most of your immediate business will have to be generated business.

6. Design your marketing campaign in small bites. Weekly. Monthly. Review your results. Keep what’s working and abandon the rest – keep in mind, however, some strategies take longer to see results than others. Still, keep abreast of what’s happening. Don’t just assume anything.

7. If you are relatively new to the industry, the ideal combination for you is to choose a couple of short-term result-oriented strategies and a couple long-term strategies and implement them simultaneously. This will help decrease the possibility of running out of money and/or patience before you before to reap the rewards and causing burn out.

Happy Selling!

Brandon Patrick

Dean of Students

Real Estate Toolbox University