he steps to creating an marketing tools take an enormous
effective marketing plan amount of time and subsequently
begin with identifying who have a significant cost.
you are going to be targeting,
what you are going to spend, and Step 2) Identify your ideal
how many sales you are going to customer.
receive as a result of your In order to target your customer
efforts. By identifying this effectively, you must know what
information in the initial stages they look like. This process is
of your market plan development, generally known as "stick
you will significantly increase figuring" and identifies the key
your return on investment and traits of your ideal customer.
substantially increase your Who are they? What do they do for
sales. Below is a step by step a living? What do they read?
process to help you lay the Where do they shop? What do they
framework for your own marketing value? How do they entertain
plan: themselves? Where do they spend
their time? What does their
Step 1) Identify your budget. family look like? What is their
Identify how much you are income level? Answer these
planning to spend on your questions as specifically as
marketing endeavors in order to possible to determine the best
maximize your investment. How way to target them.
much are you planning to spend on
your marketing? How many Step 3) Identify the medium.
prospects are you planning to List all of the possible mediums
reach, and how many sales do you to touch your customer. Arrange
expect to close? Include your the list from the most specific
time investment in this analysis way to target the customer to the
as well. Many inexpensive broadest way to touch your
prospect. On the same list, list least once per week. Multiplicity
the prices per piece and the of your message is also
specific price per prospect. This beneficial. However, do not touch
will give you an idea of where to a prospect with the same piece
best spend your money and where more than three times as
you will receive the greatest resistance to your medium and
return on investment. message may develop.
.
Step 4) Allocate your budget. Step 6) Track your results
Identify the top five mediums Continually track your campaigns
that touch your prospects in a and where each prospect hears and
cost effective manner and acts on your message. With this
allocate 80% of your budget information, you can know which
across those pieces. Reserve the portions of your campaign are
remaining 20% to use for unique effective and which parts need to
or targeted follow-up marketing be modified.
pieces.
When developing your marketing
Step 5) Schedule your campaigns plan, some general rules of thumb
Schedule each campaign to touch are useful to help manage your
customers multiple times through expectations. As you develop your
different mediums. Plan some budget, mediums and plan, keep in
overlap on when each piece hits mind the following widely
each prospect to maximize accepted marketing statistics:
awareness of your services, but * Typical response rates from
draw out the periodicity of the print advertising and direct mail
total campaign as long as are between 0.5% and 1.5%
possible to maximize the duration * Generally, you will need to
of awareness. A good rule of touch a prospect six times before
thumb is to touch a prospect at they recognize your brand and
eight times before they take * A prospect will typically spend
action three seconds on your piece
* Always include a call to action before moving to something else.
in all of your pieces and a way Make your communication simple
to track the response from each and attention grabbing.
piece. * Be consistent in your message
* In every piece, always include across all marketing pieces to
multiple methods of contact, i.e. create awareness of your brand
internet, telephone, fax, mail, and services.
etc.
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.
Source: www.isnare.com
