A Marketing Campaign

A Marketing Campaign

Several years ago we were coaching clients on how to invest in discounted notes. We taught them to buy a list of note owners and to start a mailing campaign where they would mail 50 to 100 post cards weekly. This was the life-blood of their success.

As a Real Estate Entrepreneur or Investor, no doubt you’re out there in the market place looking for deals. But, I have a question for you.

Do you have a marketing plan in place or are you just hoping that a buyer will fall in your lap, or are you operating in a way that makes certain it will happen. If you don’t have a process or a structure for making sure deals happen, you don’t yet understand the importance of having a marketing plan.

The sad fact is that even after all their training, less than one percent of all real estate entrepreneurs and investors actually have a marketing plan. Even though it’s very simple, don’t underestimate its power.

The Most Important Thing About Marketing is to Develop a Marketing Campaign!

1) It allows you to clarify exactly what you want to achieve in the coming 30 days.

2) It allows you map out the activities needed to achieve that plan.

3) It allows you set time deadlines.

4) You have a business that operates consciously, not by accident.

More people fail in real estate because they simply do not have a marketing plan or goals. You should have a detailed marketing plan of what you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it.

First, examine your current numbers. More than 80 percent of all real estate entrepreneurs know how many houses they are buying each month, but they don’t know where those houses came from and how many leads they had to process to develop them into the single deal. And, this is a deadly sin.
You Simply Must Know How You Are Currently Doing

You should know:

1) The total leads that call each week,

2) Where those leads come from,

3) How many “qualified” buyer prospects you get each
month,

4) The ratio of total buyer to qualified buyers,

5) The number of deals you close,

6) The ratio of closed deals to qualified leads – for each lead source

7) How much you make from each seller,

How much it cost you to acquire a new seller.

With this information you can look at your current resources, look ahead, and then plan out what you want to have happen. The number of deals you want to do, the amount of money you want to make.

For example, let’s say you are bringing in around $10,000 a month and your average deal gives you $5,000. That’s two deals a month. And let’s say that you want to double your net income next month.

You will have to get twice as many deals to double your business. You goal is four deals a month, or one a week.

Let’s say you currently get one deal a month from a classified ad, and one deal a month from word of mouth referrals. But, you get ten qualified calls a month from bandit signs and 10 qualified prospects calling a month as a result of mailing expired listings. So, you currently close ten percent of your prospects.

First, you can improve on this situation by improving your closing ratio to twenty percent. By improving your closing ratio by more precise targeting, the present lead-flow would stay the same and you’ll get your same twenty real prospects and achieve your goal of doing four deals next month.

But assuming that’s not something you have control over right now, the other way to double your income in the next month is to double the number of qualified prospects you talk to and make offers to. So instead of getting 20 qualified leads to call, you would need 40.

Your plan to get forty qualified prospects would need 10 to come from direct marketing, 16 to come from flyers in target neighborhoods, 4 from business cards handed out everywhere, 6 to come from signs placed in the ground at high traffic count intersections, 10 to com from classified ads that drive people to the website. Total: 46 prospects. Cool! That’s six to spare.

With this number of leads coming in you have what is needed closed four deals and reach your goal of doubling your net income. Actually, it’s more than doubling because your fixed expenses don’t increase with the income.

You should have a monthly plan. Schedule thirty or forty minutes out of one day to make up your monthly plan and see how you did last month. Schedule this time and keep to it. Don’t do any work or take any calls during this time. Keep it strictly for planning. If you do this and you allow yourself to get into the whole spirit of planning, and making things happen on purpose, you will easily double your income in twelve months.

Your Monthly Plan Should Include The Following

1) A goal for total net income.
2) A goal for number of deals signed up
3) A goal for number of appointments made.
4) A goal for number of qualified, interested buyers.
5) A goal for total number of leads.
6) Average net income from each deal.
7) The number of prospects you have to generate to reach your goal.

A detailed plan to generate the number of prospects you need. Your plan doesn’t have to be typed out or put into a computer. It can be handwritten on paper. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

Scratch pad plans are good enough. The important part is that you do a plan every single week and keep on top of things.

This is a simple thing to do, but it is just as easy to not do. Blowing it off is the equivalent of you absolving yourself of responsibility for your business. On the other hand, taking the time to think through your goals each month, both for income, and marketing activity, then committing them to paper will make things start happening by plan and put you in control of your business.