“Measure it!”

RISMEDIA, April 12, 2006—By the time they reach the age of three, most children can count to 10. As they grow and learn, some focus on math and science, but by the time we reach adulthood, no matter what path we’ve taken, the vast majority of us find ourselves in the world of business – and the goal of business is to turn a profit.

All of a sudden, numbers become important again – although now they are prefaced by dollar signs and followed by zeroes and commas; usually the more, the better. To earn money, we must sell our goods or services, and to sell these things, we must find people willing to buy them. We must find our “market”, and thus, engage in an activity commonly referred to as marketing. But how does one determine whether a certain strategy is a cash pipeline or a financial wind tunnel, sucking out all your hard-earned dollars? “Measure it!” says new iSucceed Mentor Russell Shaw.

When it comes to creating and maintaining a successful real estate practice, all activities – especially marketing efforts – must be measured. Shaw explains, “Measuring your marketing efforts is not hard. It just means answering a few important questions, like how many people responded to your marketing? How many listing appointments did you set? How many listings did you get? How many homes did you sell? Then you can determine whether or not it was worth your money.” Why must an agent engage in this kind of scrutiny?

For agents who are essentially self-employed and therefore funding all their own marketing efforts, money is a valuable commodity. To use it wisely, Shaw believes you must fully understand the meaning of ‘measurable marketing‘. “Effective marketing is obtaining shelf space in the mind of the prospect, to the point where, no matter what they do, you own a tiny little piece of real estate in their head,” he says. “It offers you the freedom of not having to compete on price. It gets strangers who’ve never called you before to call you and want to do business with you. Anything short of that is a waste of your money.”

Over the years, marketing efforts have grown vastly more complex. Shaw quips, “I can remember a time when putting your photo on your business card was considered an ‘innovative, powerhouse, ground-breaking’ marketing technique.” Today’s marketing efforts are indeed a science: from media type to delivery method, from volume to demographics, from frequency to ROI, marketing will have the passionate agent crunching the numbers to make sure his or her campaigns are worthwhile investments.

“Measuring your marketing effort is easy when it’s only coming from one source,” Shaw explains, “but when you have multiple ads running on many different radio and TV channels, not to mention ongoing print and direct mail campaigns, and several Web sites, things can get interesting.” And yet, when the mental real estate you own in your market begins to fade, you’ll need more than the ability to count to ten to keep the doors to your office open. Measure your marketing, and make more money than you ever have before.