Beginning at the end makes sense if you are really serious about increasing the results you get from your marketing.  Why? Because the end or the purpose of all marketing is the result or the goal that you want to accomplish, right?  This is where I start with agents and brokers when I work with them to create a FREE Custom Web and Marketing Plan.  Let me walk you through the process and then if you would like some free professional marketing guidance, visit me online at http://sellrealestate.net/FreeWebPlan.asp.

MAKE GOALS SPECIFIC

Maybe you want to double your transactions over the next 12 months or maybe you want to keep with the same number of transactions but you want each transaction to represent a higher dollar amount.  Whatever purpose you have for doing marketing and advertising must be stated in specific terms and must remain in the forefront at all times. All marketing and advertising that you do must work to further your goals.

HOW WILL YOU GET THERE?

Now the next question you want to ask yourself involves the universe of marketing strategies you are willing to use and the budget you have for getting where you want to go.  Here’s an example: Let’s say you are a brand new agent and your goal is to list 12 homes this year and complete 6 buyer transactions. You haven’t got a huge budget for doing this so you need to think of ways you can connect with prospective sellers and buyers on a shoestring.  Maybe you’ll agree to hold Open House for busy agents.  Maybe you’ll agree to do floor time.  You figure you can do some direct mail as long as it doesn’t go over 100 pieces a month and you know you will not do phone prospecting or door knocking.  It is important to know what you feel comfortable doing and what you can afford and then you start to match your goals with your methods and your budget.

Still using the example of the new agent with a limited budget, step three involves eliminating all the markets that you cannot or do not want to target based on your goals and your limitations.  You are not going to go after out of town buyers because you haven’t got the budget for good search engine placement.  You are not going to target a large geographic farm because you would have to mail out to at least 500 homeowners every month to meet your goals and you don’t have that kind of budget. 

What’s left?Simple!  You can target the For Sale by Owner Market and you can target homeowners’ whose homes did not sell.  Both of these markets will produce good results in terms of listings and easy, inexpensive marketing with a good strategy and a good custom Website to back you up. You would also meet your goal to close 6 Buyer transactions, as a percentage of those homeowners that you list will rely on you to find them their next home.

ACCEPTING NO LIMITS

Sometimes, especially when I am working on a brokerage Website, there are practically no limits to the type of marketing that will be done or the audiences that will be targeted.  This is the case when the broker wants to set up a Website that actually supports all the agents’ marketing.  Some agents might want to target FSBOs while others want to target million dollar listings and yet another wants to target high-end buyers.  Can one Website meet all these needs?  You bet it can. 

LEAD GENERATION

There are proven ways to generate qualified leads from a well-designed Website that is promoted online or with local marketing.  Some ideas are discussed at http://sellrealestate.net/LeadGeneration.htm and for more ideas that relate to your business, call me toll free at 888-814-5347.

The most effective use of your marketing dollars will depend on the market you want to attract.  Let’s say you want to target the 65+ age group for listings and you also want to target 40-year-old first time buyers.  Which audience do you expect to be online?

Let’s say you want to target buyers looking for homes on the water and possibly homes with a boat dock.  What makes more sense—a custom Website promoted on the major search engines or a custom Website promoted in national boating magazines? 

Let’s say that you want to focus on getting listings from a specific geographic area.  Would it be best to initiate a consistent direct mail campaign to all homeowners in the area directing them to your custom Website or should you spend your budget getting your Web placed well on the major search engines?

CHECK YOUR ANSWERS

The older market of people 65 or over is not well represented on the Internet while people aged 40 and thereabouts are extremely present online.  So, if you wanted to target both of these markets you will need a local approach targeting homeowners as well as a local approach targeting apartment dwellers supported by a good Website. 

In the second example, targeting buyers looking for homes on the water and possibly with a boat dock both magazine ads and search engine placement make sense. If the agent could not afford to do both, I would make the decision as to what is best based on the amount of people using the search engines to search for property in that area. 

If you are targeting listings the best way to support your custom Website is through local marketing. The cost for search engine placement is simply not justified when targeting listings as sellers are far less likely to use the Internet that way.  The ideal solution is to obtain the Email addresses for your geographic farm and then send them an E-newsletter on a consistent basis.