How Many Hats do You Wear?

Multi-Faceted Personalities

It’s ironic that in this age of specialization, most of us must wear many hats and I am only talking about our business life. I’ll bet that you fill the following Directorships for your business: Director of Marketing, of Advertising and of Sales. These terms tend to be used interchangeably but they do NOT all mean the same thing.

MARKETING

Marketing refers to the planning stage. In big companies, the marketing department might research customer wants and needs, which guides the actions of Advertising and Sales. The Free Custom Web Plan that we offer agents and brokers is the first step in the Marketing or Planning stage. Here we determine what markets you want to target and decide on the best way to go about that. If you have not yet requested your Free Custom Web Plan, there is no time like the present. Go to http://www.sellrealestate.net/FreeWebPlan.asp.

ADVERTISING

Advertising refers to all the different ways you might promote yourself and / or your Website. Advertising includes things such as TV and radio spots, direct mail, search engine placement, signage and print media. It is risky business to engage in Advertising when you do not have a Plan but people do it every day. This is why so much Advertising fails to work.

SALES

Sales activities are those things that sales people do. Sales people contact prospects, make presentations, follow up, sometimes for years in the case of following up with past clients. Good Marketing and Advertising skills result in plentiful opportunities for sales people to do their thing. Skillful use of Internet technology, such as Email, will lighten the load for a busy sales agent or broker.

Real Life
Examples

Most of us prefer some facets of our business life to others and often slight those jobs we do not feel comfortable with or do not understand. That is when things start to go wrong. Let’s look at some Real Life situations. I’ll bet that if you have not done these kinds of things yourself, you probably know someone who has. If you will visit http://www.sellrealestate.net/
coordinatemarketing.asp you will find some helpful, interactive information about ways to coordinate your approach.

AGENT A

Agent A signed up for six months of Banner Advertising on a local newspaper’s Website. The cost was $1200.00. Agent A got Zero Results from the ad campaign. Why? First, there was no PLAN for how to use the banner advertising, which means that Marketing was ignored. The banner ads gave no powerful reason why anyone should click on them. So, because Marketing was ignored, Advertising was ineffective and no Sales occurred.

AGENT B

Agent B did have a plan to attract qualified seller leads by setting up a custom Website full of helpful information for sellers. However, this agent failed to get the Advertising part right so nobody knew about the wonderful Website. So, you can see that if you ignore either Marketing or Advertising, Sales will suffer.

AGENT C

Agent C knew better than to ignore Marketing or Advertising but, if you can believe it, this agent’s weakness was in Sales. The Website was well designed and well advertised and so produced many leads. In fact, it produced so many leads that Agent C got to busy to keep up with them all and therefore lost many sales. Websites can be created with built in Email follow up strategies so good leads are never lost.

How to Do it Right

First of all, if you do not have an overall plan for getting more business or attracting more leads, GET ONE. At this risk of being repetitive, go to http://www.sellrealestate.net/FreeWebPlan.asp. Complete the questionnaire, send it to me and I’ll help you develop a PLAN absolutely FREE.

WHERE TO START

Once you have a PLAN and you are confident that it is a good one, make sure that any Advertising you do supports that PLAN. If Agent A described above had a plan in place, the banner ads would have had a much better chance of producing qualified leads and sales. Why? Because there would have been a definite purpose to them, a purpose that fit into a well thought out plan or the ads would not have been ordered.

BEAT YOUR COMPETITION

Know that when it comes to local or traditional advertising you are not only competing with other real estate agents and brokers in your area. Americans are bombarded with advertising messages to such an extent that we have become very good at screening out the clutter. Today’s advertisers have to have something pretty important to say and say it in a clever way before anyone comes close to paying attention. When you know you are going to want your Website positioned well on the major search engines, it is a good idea to check out what your competition is doing online and make sure you do it better.

MOVE INTO THE 21^ST CENTURY

There is no reason why you, your team or your agency cannot compete successfully and obtain as much business as you want to handle. Internet technology makes both outreach and follow up not only easy but relatively inexpensive. If, like Agent C, you are overwhelmed by prospect and client communications, we should talk about ways to use Web design and Email that makes it easy for you to be all things to all people and to be almost everywhere at once. Yes, you can do this and still not be overworked.