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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.
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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.

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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

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eMarketing Basics
by: Matt Bacak

eMarketing, commonly known as an Internet marketing tool, refers to 'how' businesses market their services or products online. In this new age of technology, an Internet presence directly affects the success of a business. From an ecommerce site to an informational site, eMarketing begins at your homepage.

Utilize a Website

Every website has one goal and that is to heighten the interest of the reader. For the homepage to be an effective eMarketing tool, web content needs to follow the search engine optimized (SEO) techniques outlined by search engine domains like Google and Yahoo. Once landing on your site, the content will act as a sales letter.

Whether you operate a service or sell products, eMarketing is more affordable than the traditional means of marketing. Over 130,000,000 people surf the Internet daily. It would take a hefty investment to reach this number of people in the more traditional means of marketing.

Producing a website that ranks well in the search engines, will assist you in obtaining more visitors and visitors easily convert into customers at a rather amazing rate.

Cost Comparison

Printing promotional material can be quite costly. With a website, this cost is significantly lower because your site eliminates the need for brochures or an abundance of business cards. Instead of sending a new prospective literature in the mail, re-direct them to your website. It will guide potential customers through the basics of your business.

Studies show that the per-reader response rates of newspaper advertisements are low. This is due to the number of readers that scan over your add that really have not interest in your services or products. Online readers, however, are a direct result of search engines. These people want to know more about your services or products. The likelihood of turning visitors into customers is higher.

Advertising Campaign

With eMarketing, the cost of an advertising campaign is drastically lower. The same rules apply but with less effort. You'll need to locate your target market, address their interest, and show how they can benefit.

Typical, ezines or announcements serve as an eMarketing campaign medium. Utilizing these mediums will improve your online business. Here's how you can get started:

Ezines: Ezines are nothing more than an electronic newsletter. There are several services online that will assist you in writing an ezine. But use caution! It's bad business to send an ezine to someone who hasn't subscribed.

Announcements: Announcements are similar to a press release. Using the electronic transfer of news to an email box, you can announce new events, new services, and new products a lot faster.

Hottest eMarketing Tool

Today, e-books are the hottest marketing tool of the Twentieth Century. Once Internet Gurus grasp the concept of selling their services or products with an e-book, the market jumped. Adding an e-book to your tools of eMarketing is a smart move.

E-books consist of hidden links (as in, not apparent) that the inexperienced e-book reader can't see. These links help promote affiliate programs and sell your services or products. The readers click through the e-book and find themselves at your site.

E-books are an eMarketing medium that needs careful planning. It makes no sense to develop an e-book on dogs if you sell household appliances. To be successful at eMarketing with e-books, you need to write content related to your business. For instance:

� Home Improvement - How to Design a Kitchen

� Accountant - How Small Businesses can Benefit From a CPA

� Web Developer - How a Website Can Help

Bottom Line

eMarketing has saved businesses thousands of advertising dollars. It's an effective marketing tool that every business should take advantage of. With a better understanding of how eMarketing can help improve your business, you can prepare for an eMarketing campaign that will exceed all of your expectations.

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