How To Maximize Your Marketing Budget For Better Return

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How To Maximize Your Marketing Budget For Better Return – Part 1

By ⋅ July 22, 2008 ⋅

One of the common areas I see Real Estate Agents and Real Estate Investors struggling with is picking the right media to market themselves in.The most common marketing method adopted by new Real Estate Investors is Bandit Signs and line ads in the major papers. For Real Estate Agents, their marketing tend to be business cards and post cards (from time to time).

Let me start by saying, these methods are good marketing techniques… but unless they are part of a deliberate marketing plan, you should re-evaluate your marketing plan. Sure you will get some deals. But will you be able to get the best deal per dollar spent? Your marketing plan should allow you to project future leads and future deals. This in turn allow to increase your the sales volume by increasing the marketing technique that works best

So lets get started!

Newspaper Ads

Newspaper ads can be good source of leads, but you should not depend on it to be your primary source of leads. If you have the budget to run these ads, then by all means do so as a compliment for your other marketing strategies.

Some major newspapers charge $3 per line per day. I for one was spending $800.00 per month on a 5 line ad in my local newspaper. The results would vary from week to week and were inconsistent.

Newspapers usually place the larger ads higher in the columns followed by cheaper ones. An $800.00 a month ad used to get me good position in the newspaper, but I would still go on weeks with no calls at time, or too much calls at other times.

If you end up running this type of advertising, then you need to be creative with you Unique Selling Proposition. Unlike a sales letter, you only have 1 line to say everything you have to say and convince the prospect to call you. Decide on what can you offer that is unique to you, that would make a prospect so convinced to call you. answer that, and your phone will ring. Always Avoid the "me too syndrome" where all the ads sound the same.

Newspaper Inserts

Surprisingly, this is rarely used and I don’t know why. Inserts are the extra junk advertising material you get in the paper usually on Wednesdays and/or Sundays. You can include an 8×11 flyer in the newspaper and have it delivered to large number of subscribers.

The cost of such services varies from city to city, look to spend around $50 to $100 per thousand inserts. The way newspapers tend to do them is by dividing the city in zones and you must market to the entire zone. Zones can vary in size, but there are usually around 10,000 homes in a zone. A zone could be made up of one zip code, multiple zip codes, or partial zip code depending on their size.

What I like about inserts is that now you get to target specific area and you have a double sided 8×11 flyer to convince the prospect to call you.

By the way, I really hate the term flyer because everyone seem to have a fixed perception of what flyers should look like… I would never use that type of flyers.Anyway, one way to minimize the cost of this type of marketing is by cooperating with other related businesses and split the cost. For example, find a mortgage broker who is willing to split the cost and each of you can get one side of the insert.

10,000 flyers would cost you about $500 to $1000. That is $0.05 to $0.1 per home plus the cost of printing the insert paper. Run this type of marketing for at least 3 weeks in a row.

Free Periodicals

I am not a big fan of these, but I will tell you my experience with them anyway. The nice thing about this type of papers is that you can target specific areas of town. Each paper however is different in their distribution criteria. Advertising in these papers tend to be cheaper than the daily paper.

The bad news about them is that they tend to always want minimum of 4 weeks commitment. I am all for repeat marketing, but I do not like having to make a commitment before I know if the media works. You will be so tempted to sign up for the longer terms due to the discount, but if you decide to go this route, bite the bullet and get the shorter period and pay more till you test your ad and find one that works for you.

Sales Letters and Post Cards

Sales Letters are one of my preferred marketing methods. I always opt for Sales Letters or Post Cards as my first choice of marketing. The challenge with this method of marketing however is that in order for them to work, they need to be well written and convincing. And they need to be sent to the right list of people.

As far as Post Cards go,I have realized much better response from Post Cards that contained a really good headline and long text describing my services. These are known as Advertorials and I like them over the traditional picture of pretty home and slogans Post Cards. In fact, my famous Post Card is a two pages long, single lined sales letter printed on a 6×11 Post Card in article style with handwritten testimonials on it. I am adding new features to it that will double the results, but that is pending testing. That reminds me, ALWAYS TEST NEW MESSAGES! you never know which will work.

I always hear "oh I tried post cards and they don’t work" or "oh I sent letters before, but no one called back." The problem is never with the method itself. It is usually one of three things:

First, your sales letter or post card is not convincing at all and does not include the right triggers to get the prospect to call you..for example, I received a handwritten note in a post card envelope from an investor stating:

"if you are interested in selling your house, please call me. I am an investor and I buy houses."

This is extremely weak and I couldn’t help but to ignore it. Sadly, this is widely taught among Investors too.

Another example cames from a fellow new investor who mailed out 5000 post cards and did not get a single call. I asked if I could see the post card. The post card was a 5×8 post card of a house in the background with his company name and "we buy houses" slogan. The post card was cute, but nothing in it to convince the prospect to call.

Second, sending the material to the wrong people. You should send this type of marketing to specific group of people who are most likely to want to sell. Expired Listings, For Sale By Owner, For Rent By Owner, Landlords, Divorce… the list goes on. It does not matter how great the sales letter is, if you send it to someone who is not looking to sell, you are not going to talk him into selling their house.

Third, they usually send the mailing once only. Research shows that people tend to start responding to marketing letters after receiving the material for the 3rd, 4th, and sometimes 8th time. So mailing to a prospect only once is a sure waste of money.

Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages are good way of marketing, but they too require a year long commitment. I have an article on making Yellow Pages work, but until you have the budget to invest in Yellow Pages and test it to see if it works, I would not use it. Don’t commit all your marketing budget to one form of marketing, specially Yellow Pages.

Yellow Pages should generate some leads and more than pay for itself, but it is a sure costly way to find out if they work.

Like I said, I’ve written an article about Yellow Pages so go read it.

Money Mailers

Money Mailers are the free coupons you get by mail. Essentially what you are paying for is to have a small insert into a large envelope filled with advertisements.

I like Money Mailers, they are cheaper than post card and they are distributed the same way Inserts do described above. You get to choose one of the areas they have defined and you pay per mailing. This type of mailing usually is sent on monthly basis (sometimes every 6 weeks or based on seasonal schedule).

You can pay little extra and have them send a larger folded paper. this would be great and I would definitely pay the extra for it. Of course, if you know what to use the extra space for.

End of Part 1!