Investing in Real Estate :Four Steps to the Perfect Ad (Step 4) | Real ...

Posted on August 14th, 2012 admin

Article Summary:

Real Estate Investing Blog helps investors learn about real estate news, tips, how to landlord, tenants, flipping properties, wholesaling, buying, selling commercial residential.STEP FOUR: MONITOR YOUR RESULTS

You may very well have the best advertising campaign ever, but if you can?t measure your results, you would never know. But what if you could actually know exactly where every single customer came from? And what if you knew the cost of each lead

Article Content:

In our three previous steps, we discussed knowing the purpose and audience of your advertising, then we moved on to actually crafting the advertising message. ?That brings us to the fourth and final step in creating the perfect advertisement: ?monitoring your results.

Step Four: Monitor Your Results
You may very well have the best advertising campaign ever, but if you can?t measure your results, you would never know.? But what if you could actually know exactly where every single customer came from? ?And what if you knew the cost of each lead from each individual source?

Better yet, what if you could precisely measure the effectiveness of each ad ? of each subtle variation ? and then compare and test one version against another until you had refined your ad to perfection? ?I have great news: You can!

Today, by using a few simple and yet powerful tools you can do all of that. ?You can have the hard information you need to keep from wasting a large part of your advertising budget. ?When it comes to tracking your advertising, there are only three things you need to be concerned with: how many views your ad received, how many responses to those views, and the conversion rate. ??Let?s take a look at each of these in more depth.

Number of Views. ?The best ad in the world is useless if it is never viewed. ?On the other hand, a lot of views directed at a poor ad will also have limited results. Think of the Naked Cowboy in Time Square. ?How famous would he be if he were standing on a street corner in La Luz, New Mexico? ?Advertising is the same way.

You might have the best advertising message in the world, but if nobody sees it you are out of business. ?But if you craft the right message, designed to make a strong value proposition to your target market (think of the previous steps we?ve covered) and then get that message to be seen by enough of your target market, your results will be great. ?And knowing the number of views your ad receives tells you a lot about where you are advertising.

Number of Responses. ?If you you have plenty of traffic, and you have a well-crafted ad that speaks to your target audience, you will get a high number of responses to the ad. ?This is critical to having a successful advertising campaign. ?On the other hand, if you have lots of views and not many responses (people clicking on your ad) you have a messaging problem.

The problem might be a poor value proposition, or it might be a great value proposition but targeted at the wrong audience. ?Either way, if only a few visitors click on your ad or your click-through rate (CTR) is low, it really doesn?t help you. ?How many people respond to your message tells you a lot about the message itself and allows you to continue to tweak your message until you get it dialed in.? Once you have refined your message, there remains only one step to ensuring a good return on your advertising investment.

Conversion Rate. ?Let?s assume you?ve chosen a good location to place your ad so it is receiving lots of views. ?Let?s also assume that because you have carefully crafted and tweaked your message, ?the target audience likes it and your ad?s click-through rate is high. ?So far, so good. ?All that remains is capturing the leads. ? But how can you determine or measure how well you?re doing at capturing those visitors?

If you divide your total number of leads received by the number of responses to your advertisement, you have your conversion rate or capture rate (CR). ?This is probably the most important measurement of all website metrics because it gauges the effectiveness of your website. ?It is possible to have lots of responses but if you fail to capture them, you are still nowhere. ?And that is where most real estate agents are today.

Let me give you an example.? I was just starting to post this article when I received the following email from a really top-notch agent in my blog community:

Haven?t given you an update lately. I?m still running Craigslist ads, had nearly 19,000 hits on my website in June with 2,500 unique visitors and 130 leads registering. Working to build my team of buyer specialists to handle lead conversion. I?m spread too thin and can only manage to work with a fraction of the leads.
?
The Keller Williams eEdge program in conjunction with Market Leader is virtually a no-cost program for me, otherwise I would be working with you on this. My Real Estate Doctor brand is getting a lot of traction in the area as well.
?
You?re amazing. Keep up the good work.
?
John C. ? Kansas City

Here was my response to John:

Thanks for your kind words. ?I used Market Leader years ago and know a lot of their staff (those who have been around the longest). ?I actually spoke at their annual conference in 2003 in Orlando before they went public.

I would still recommend using the basic LCM gateway. ?Here?s why: ?Based on your numbers your conversion rate (CR) is less than 1% (pretty typical for real estate websites). ?Our Craigslist advertising is running (by ad):

So instead of 130 leads (which is awesome) you?d be looking at nearly 500 for the same effort.? Seems like a no-brainer that you could justify a day for an additional 12 leads a day.? Just sayin?

As always, it is great to hear from you.? Love your approach to the business.

Matt

I hadn?t planned on including an example, but when one came in that was such a clear case, I really felt it would be helpful to share it.? And John?s case is very typical.? John is doing great, even without my LCM technology, because he has been actively following much of my training for over a year.? But imagine what a better capture rate would do for him, all other things being equal.

Real estate websites, just like John?s, are notoriously poor at conversion or ?lead capture?. ?Why? ?Because they are not designed to capture customers but rather to dispense information. ?They do a great job at giving out information, but on average capture less than 1% of the responses. ?In fact, the latest number from the National Association of Realtors? pins that average conversion rate at only 0.87%. ?Less than 1% ? John?s was 5.2%.

That means that if you are using a typical real estate website you need 115 responses to capture a single lead. ?Even the very best and most expensive websites capture only 6-8% of respondents meaning that you will need 13-17 responses just to capture one lead. ?As you can see, the capture rate is very critical. ?The better the capture rate, the more customers you will have, all other things being equal.

But how will you know your conversion rate? ?Your website should allow you to track where your various ads are coming from. ?If it doesn?t, you have the wrong website. ?Our solution to this problem was to design a stand-alone lead capture module (LCM) that focuses on one thing: efficient lead capture.

Our ?LCM Gateway captures as much as 25-35% of all responses or between one fourth and one third of all those who click on your advertising message. ?That?s huge! ?And by using LCM technology, it?s also possible to see exactly where each lead came from. ?For example, you could have different ads running in the Google search network, the Yahoo! network, and Craigslist all at the same time.

In a given week you might receive 12 leads from Google, 9 from Yahoo and 10 from Craigslist, and instantly be able to identify the source of each lead, the conversion rate, and most importantly, the cost of lead. ?How cool is that?

For example, if you divide the total number of leads from each source by the number of ad responses you had from that source you have the conversion rate for that source. ?For example, if you had 12 leads from your Google ad, and you 40 people click on that ad, you would have a conversion rate of 30%. ?(12 / 40 = .3 or 30%)

You may have invested a total of in Google advertising to receive those 12 leads and you could then calculate that your leads were costing you .67 each. ?( / 12 = .67) ?In other words, having the right tool not only helps you do a better job of capturing leads but it also guides you as you try to decide which advertising ideas to spend your money on.

Tracking your advertising may seem difficult at first, particularly if you don?t have the right tools to track it properly. ?But after you begin to track your ad results, it will become second nature and you will always know what works and what doesn?t. ?Remember, it?s not how much money you make, but how much you keep that?s important.

Final thoughts. ?I would like to challenge you to take a look at your current marketing ? all of it. ?Now I want you to ask yourself a few honest questions: Does each advertising idea you are pursuing have a specific purpose and if so, what is that purpose? ?Who are you trying to attract with your advertising? ?What is the demographic of your ideal customer? ?What are their hot buttons? ?Needs and wants?

Does each advertising message have a very definite value proposition that is in alignment with the purpose and customer you?ve chosen? ?Is it simple and clear and tied directly to the needs and wants of your ideal customer? ?Do you have the tools in place to track your results for each of your advertising ideas? ?If not, why not?

Finally, I?d like to invite you to check out our LCM Success system. ?It will give you the tools you need to effectively capture customers, and organize your follow-up both on your computer and on your mobile devices. ?More importantly, my coaching staff and I are dedicated to staying with you, holding your hand, while you learn how to implement these tools and training into your own business.

I Hate Technology!
Do you ever get the idea that an entire cottage industry exists for the sole purpose of fleecing agents out of their hard-earned commission dollars? Ever feel like a new technology company springs up every 15 minutes with the latest, greatest new clever idea? And all the pitches are the same: a room full of drones on phones, calling agents from the NAR membership list, promising great success! Read more >>

Matt Jones is the founder and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com, nationally syndicated columnist, broker, and best selling author of LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, The Ultimate Listing Presentation, Traffic: How to Sell Fast and Net More, Becoming a Mega-Producer, The Science of Online Marketing, 10 Steps to Real Estate Success, 20 Questions: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Real Estate but Were Afraid to Ask, The Virtual Office Model, Max-Bang!, and The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation. Jones? North Carolina-based company has been profiled by major media outlets as an innovator and a pioneer in the industry, and CNN?s Pulse on America claimed FavoriteAgent.com is ?changing the way real estate is being done in America.? This article is cross-posted in the following locations: BlogMattBlog.com, RealBlogging.com, NewsGeni.us, TheCommissionCheck.com, RevampedAgent.com, and now Amazon Kindle.

???????

Source: http://www.nhjg.com/2012/08/investing-in-real-estate-four-steps-to-the-perfect-ad-step-4/

grammy nominations lil boosie new edition austerity rihanna and chris brown back together bobbi kristina brown keanu reeves