Repetition & Marketing Metrics, Are You Measuring Up?

What is known by all marketers, but not realized by many small business owners is repetition and measurement are the keys to running a successful marketing campaign. The primary focus of any marketing program is to get your target customer to purchase your product. However, many small business owners do not effectively utilize repetition to brand their product, and very rarely do they utilize any form of metric to measure the success rate of a program.

Statistics vary, but it takes the average person at least five exposures to a brand name or product before he or she will make the commitment to purchase it. In addition, it usually takes more than thirty exposures to a marketing piece before the customer can remember it at will. The simple lesson from these facts are that you must run advertisements multiple times, and consistently use the same or similar images to market your product. Run the same advertisement in multiple mediums, with the same logos, images, and themes as it has been proven to be the best mass media approach to marketing your product.

Repetition is the key to creating a successful marketing program, but how exactly do you measure the success? A successful marketing campaign develops awareness of your product which translate into larger sales volumes, but what part of the campaign has had the greatest effect on awareness and increased sales? To answer these questions, you must approach your marketing program with some pre-defined ideas on how you are going to measure results, and how you are going to differentiate the results of one marketing medium from another.

To define exactly how you are going to measure the results of a specific marketing program, you must evaluate the message of your campaign. You must determine exactly what is going to close your customer, and if anything in the message can be echoed back to you in a quantifiable form. Many times, you can include an offer, coupon, or discount in the advertisement which can be documented at the time of sale. This provides an easy metric for tracing the effectiveness of an advertisement. If a traceable coupon or discount is not available, you may need to rely on measurements of increased sales and statistical analysis to quantify the results of your program.
The two fundamental themes in marketing are repetition and measurement. A marketing program will be ineffective if it does not provide sufficient repetition and exposure. In addition, the program will be useless unless it can provide a quantifiable response. Both provide the foundation with which to build an effective marketing campaign.

FSBO Leads are Available Now

It’s been a month full of challenges and I have been asking all of my colleagues for a do-over for 2007. So far nobody has taken me up on the offer. In spite of the challenges, we do have some great news to share. Our FSBO system has been upgraded and expanded to provide even more leads. In addition we have set our new FSBO lead system up so that all our visitors need to do is request that the For Sales by Owner leads be emailed directly to them on a weekly basis.

The new tool is pretty slick. Just sign up for your weekly FSBO emails on the home page of http://www.4mysales.com/ Now on our home page you can create your own podcast to email to your clients and get a weekly list of FSBO leads.

Expired Listing Leads… Everything Must Go Regardless of Loss, Cost, or Value

It’s the new year and everybody is having a sales. In real estate this applies to many of the vendors of different services; including those that help identify expired listing leads. I am of course speaking of the RedX expired listing lead service that interfaces with your MLS to provide a daily list of expireds that have been screened through the do not call registry. My friends at the RedX contacted me with a great offer and an invitation to let everybody know. For the time being… (February 15 to be exact) They are waiving both the setup fee (this saves you $150 right off of the bat) and providing a 30% discount off of the first three months worth of service. Essentially this means that their existing service which is usually priced at $150 startup plus $56.99 per month can now be enjoyed for only $39.99 per month with no setup fee. Not a bad new years sale with over $200 in savings for trying out their service.

If you are interested in signing up, here is the link to their offer: http://www.theredx.com/signup/4mysalesexpiredsale.html
It’s branded with the 4MySales logo as part of my agreement with them.

No what do I know about The RedX? I have worked with them for about two years and used to include their product in the 4MySales service offering. Logistically it was a nightmare getting customers signed up and serviced through both 4MySales and RedX so we eventually ended that arrangement. Anyway, their system consists of a contact management software that interfaces with your MLS. I believe that their system is set up so that you login to your local MLS, specify the search parameters and the returned data is uploaded into the RedX software where it is screened by the Do Not Call list and then compared to previous versions of the listing. Those listings that have had the information changed (telephone number modified so that the listing agent can protect his listing) are restored.

In essence the remaining call list is a clean list of expired listing prospects with the CORRECT contact information.

I am sure that there are many nuances that are included in their system, but I have not delved that deep into their software.

On a final commercial disclaimer note: I do have a commercial and affiliate relationship with these guys. They have a great product, but please do your own due diligence.