In today’s ever challenging market of selling real estate, it is ever so important to maximize the use of your marketing dollars. To this end I ask, do you know where your buyer leads or listing leads are coming from? Do you know how your last buyer found you? Or how you got that last listing? If not, you’re really just rolling the dice with your advertising dollars! And in today’s market, who can afford to do that?
Ask The Question… How Did You Find This Property?
I urge you in an effort to monitor and track the success of your marketing; ask your clients how they found the property. Or, “Where did you see this property?” I know it is sometimes outside of our normal comfort zone to ask, especially once you’ve already secured their business. However, your client will appreciate the question and it will only serve to reinforce their belief in you working for them.
Let them know, while asking this question, that you are constantly evaluating and changing marketing methods as you measure their success rates and that any feedback they can give you would be helpful. They will be happy to know you care what advertising is working for you. They will also care to know that you maximize methods which bring you the greatest level of activity and create the biggest opportunity for sales. Your clients will also be highly flattered that you are asking them for input.
Create A System To Organize Your Tracking
As you receive your leads and you interact with your clients, be sure you keep their answers organized and readily available. Create a file system named Marketing Results or something to that effect. Use this system to evaluate your efforts. I recommend evaluating advertising methods at least every quarter and sometimes as often as every month. Often times, it takes a couple of months for any form of real estate advertising to really kick into gear. That said, make sure you organize your answers from your clients somewhere that is exclusive to lead feedback. You might even get a small separate spiral notebook dedicated to only leads and where they came from.
Quality and Ethical Lead Programs
The last thing I will mention is the importance of employing a quality lead program from a company that performs with integrity. There are many lead services available, the majority of which are not worth their weight in salt! Search around the Internet for complaints about companies or check with the BBB online. If there are problems with a company and you look around on the Internet you’ll find them. Here are a few high quality and highly ethical companies out there: Propertynut.com, Realtor.com and Homescape.com.
Be careful that you don’t enter into any long-term contracts before you’re able to adequately “test the waters.” In this regard, Propertynut.com may be your most affordable and most aggressive opportunity to immediately jump in and begin tracking and getting results! Their services are reasonable and they have an exclusive lead capture system included in the monthly advertising price. They also don’t have any long-term contracts. Again, no matter what company or system you use you should be committed to giving it at least 3 months to see results and to make any assessments on its effectiveness.
Good luck and good selling!
