My Article Database: Free Articles for Teaching and Studying English as a Foreign Language in China - by Paul Sparks




 Homepage
 About Me
 Teachers
 Students
 Lessons
 Photographs
 Links
 World News
 ICQ Chat
 Contact Me
 Articles
 
My Article Database:

 

Accounting
Acne
Adsense
Advertising
Aerobics
Affiliate
Alternative
Articles
Attraction
Auctions
Audio Streaming
Auto Care
Auto Parts
Auto Responder
Aviation
Babies Toddler
Baby
Bankruptcy
Bathroom
Beauty
Bedroom
Blogging
Body Building
Book Marketing
Book Review
Branding
Breast Cancer
Broadband Internet
Business
Business Loan
Business Plan
Cancer
Car Buying
Career
Car Insurance
Car Loan
Car Maintenance
Cars
Casino
Cell Phone
Chat
Christmas
Claims
Coaching
Coffee
College University
Computer Tips
Cooking
Cooking Tips
Copywriting
Cosmetics
Craft
Creative Writing
Credit
Credit Cards
Credit Repair
Currency Trading
Data Recovery
Dating
Debt Relief
Diabetics
Diet
Digital Camera
Diving
Divorce
Domain
Driving Tips
Ebay
Ebook
Ecommerce
Email Marketing
E Marketing
Essay
Ezine
Fashion
Finance
Fishing
Fitness
Flu
Furniture
Gambling
Golf
Google
GPS
Hair
Hair Loss
HDTV
Health Insurance
Heart Disease
Hobbies
Holiday
Home Business
Home Improvement
Home Organization
Interior Design
Internet Tips
Investment
Jewelry
Kitchen
Ladies Accessories
Lawyer
LCD / PLASMA
Legal
Life Insurance

Return to Articles about Emarketing

Your REALTOR® Marketing Plan

by: Barrett Niehus


By Barrett Niehus
http://www.4mysales.com

The steps to creating an effective marketing plan begin with identifying who you are going to be targeting, what you are going to spend, and how many sales you are going to receive as a result of your efforts. By identifying this information in the initial stages of your market plan development, you will significantly increase your return on investment and substantially increase your sales. Below is a step by step process to help you lay the framework for your own marketing plan:

Step 1) Identify your budget.
Identify how much you are planning to spend on your marketing endeavors in order to maximize your investment. How much are you planning to spend on your marketing? How many prospects are you planning to reach, and how many sales do you expect to close? Include your time investment in this analysis as well. Many inexpensive marketing tools take an enormous amount of time and subsequently have a significant cost.

Step 2) Identify your ideal customer.
In order to target your customer effectively, you must know what they look like. This process is generally known as “stick figuring” and identifies the key traits of your ideal customer. Who are they? What do they do for a living? What do they read? Where do they shop? What do they value? How do they entertain themselves? Where do they spend their time? What does their family look like? What is their income level? Answer these questions as specifically as possible to determine the best way to target them.

Step 3) Identify the medium.
List all of the possible mediums to touch your customer. Arrange the list from the most specific way to target the customer to the broadest way to touch your prospect. On the same list, list the prices per piece and the specific price per prospect. This will give you an idea of where to best spend your money and where you will receive the greatest return on investment.
.
Step 4) Allocate your budget.
Identify the top five mediums that touch your prospects in a cost effective manner and allocate 80% of your budget across those pieces. Reserve the remaining 20% to use for unique or targeted follow-up marketing pieces.

Step 5) Schedule your campaigns
Schedule each campaign to touch customers multiple times through different mediums. Plan some overlap on when each piece hits each prospect to maximize awareness of your services, but draw out the periodicity of the total campaign as long as possible to maximize the duration of awareness. A good rule of thumb is to touch a prospect at least once per week. Multiplicity of your message is also beneficial. However, do not touch a prospect with the same piece more than three times as resistance to your medium and message may develop.

Step 6) Track your results
Continually track your campaigns and where each prospect hears and acts on your message. With this information, you can know which portions of your campaign are effective and which parts need to be modified.

When developing your marketing plan, some general rules of thumb are useful to help manage your expectations. As you develop your budget, mediums and plan, keep in mind the following widely accepted marketing statistics:
* Typical response rates from print advertising and direct mail are between 0.5% and 1.5%
* Generally, you will need to touch a prospect six times before they recognize your brand and eight times before they take action
* Always include a call to action in all of your pieces and a way to track the response from each piece.
* In every piece, always include multiple methods of contact, i.e. internet, telephone, fax, mail, etc.
* A prospect will typically spend three seconds on your piece before moving to something else. Make your communication simple and attention grabbing.
* Be consistent in your message across all marketing pieces to create awareness of your brand and services.

---------------------
Barrett Niehus is a senior marketing manager for 4MySales.com REALTOR Marketing tools (http://www.4mysales.com) an organization designed to help real estate agents and brokers increase their presence in their market. Barrett has been active in the field of small business marketing throughout his career and continually participates in the development of tools to enhance the personal growth and reach of real estate professionals.

Copyright: Please use and reprint this article freely


About the author:
Barrett Niehus is a senior marketing manager for 4MySales.com REALTOR Marketing tools (http://www.4mysales.com) an organization designed to help real estate agents and brokers increase their presence in their market. Barrett has been active in the field of small business marketing throughout his career and continually participates in the development of tools to enhance the personal growth and reach of real estate professionals.

Copyright: Please use and reprint this article freely





 

New! Watch Online Articles with YouTube for Free:

 

 

 

 

Click Here to Return to Top of Page