Real Estate Marketing Tip Of The Month

[HHI Golf Guy]

In an earlier part of my life, I was a very successful General Manager with Marriott hotels. My specialty was going to under performing hotels and increasing both revenues and profits. Today, besides SEO, web marketing, and real estate, I still consult for a portfolio of hotels.

One of the mistakes that I saw other GM's make - and I see a lot of real estate agents make - is taking a shotgun approach to marketing. You know - you pull the trigger and you hope that the buckshot hits something.

I'll save target marketing for another time, but I use this analogy to bring up another point. When you take a shotgun approach and you do receive a few leads, you're not always sure where these leads are coming from.

Take print media, for example. Most agents that have a web site will put www.myrealestatewebsite.com somewhere in their print advertisement. But how do you know how many people visited your web site based upon your print media ad?

There is an easy way to better track your results. Create a new web page for every print media ad that you run and use that web address in your advertisement. For example, if you run a newspaper ad, list the web address as www.myrealestatewebsite.com/newspaper.htm. If you run an ad in Southern Living magazine, list the web address as www.myrealestatewebsite.com/southern-living.htm.

This way, when you review your monthly web stats you can get a better idea of the productivity of your ad. With any results, you can also get a better handle on ROI.

You should never, ever run any type of ad without doing your best to find a way to track your ROI.

[KSA]

This is an excellent tip about measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Without being able to measure, you can't continually evolve your marketing approach to make it more effective.

Along this same line, any ad that you run should have a "call to action", meaning that there is something specific you want people to do in response to the ad. If you are promoting a particular home, make sure a link to that listing is very prominent on your home page. Then, if the ad is working, you'll see an increase in the visits to that listing page.

If you are doing a general advertisement, come up with a great reason for visiting your site. Develop a specific report that will be e-mailed to the visitor (you get lead info that way!). Develop something unique, not just the standard buying and selling info. You could use a report on recent home sale prices, or something that would be of local interest to your target market. For example, a list of school calendars showing days schools are closed for breaks, teacher/parent conference days, etc.

You could always put a prominent link on your homepage to that report, and in your ad, encourage people to "Visit www. mysite.com, and click on Special Report".

Naturally, there may be regular visitors to your site who click on the Special Report, but if your ad is working, you should see increased traffic to the report after the ad is placed.

In any event, its always a good idea to ask people who contact you, from your website or by phone, how they found you!