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Many real estate agents burn themselves because they go with their gut instincts instead of relying on fact based research. For instance consider this situation. Someone pitches you a good idea for a marketing promotion, and you trust that it's great. You start using the idea with no tracking mechanism that allows you to measure the results of that promotion. So when you see some business come your way you conclude right away that you are doing things the right way. If you continue with this assumption, you may end up spending all your time and money on a method that could work or not.
Honestly, I believe that any kind of marketing that I can't measure is not worth my money or my time. There are a couple of reasons for this. Obviously, I would want to know when my efforts are being wasted on something that doesn't even work! The second reason is that I want to know if the marketing promotion is effective, and if so, how well it is working. I would like to be able to know where the best places are to spend my resources by comparing this marketing effort to my other efforts.
I would also love to be able to run tests on some of the variations of the promotion in order to know if improvements can be made on the rate of the responses. Due to the fact that it will not incur any additional cost, improving the response rate will directly add to the bottom line. Here's an example for you to consider. Say I was trying out a new type of print advertisement. The ad would need to include a way for any prospects to leave a response. I would ensure that the responses to the ad can be tracked.
For a print ad I could use a recorded message phone system and a unique extension. Or I can create a web page for individuals to visit. Each ad would point to a particular web page. Either way, I could keep track of the number of leads generated by that ad. If I made the decision to test a different ad, I would assign it a unique extension or web page. The results of the two different versions can both be looked at to determine which is the most effective.
You can assign a unique ID number to each ad or piece of marketing in order to know exactly how many people responded directly to that particular promotion. Your marketing efforts should use this type of tracking as the standard procedure. By doing this your decisions are made from concrete evidence. You will find that looking at facts instead of assumptions will be more productive and profitable in the long run.
About this Author
Building a real estate business does not happen by accident. With the right information you can learn to get Real Estate Leads consistenly and with less effort. Also get resources and information about getting Online Real Estate Leads so that you can automate your marketing.
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