Determining Your Marketing Plan in 7 Easy Steps

One of the things I have learned over the years about my ongoing marketing efforts is that my results only seem to be limited by how much time, effort and creativity I put into the marketing process and not how much money I spend. The more time and energy I put into the marketing of my real estate investment business, the better my results tend to be. When I decide to slack up, get lazy and not stick to my marketing plan, my results quickly diminish as a result.

This is also true of the people I hire to market my business for me. Their success does not depend on how much I pay them, nor the size of their marketing budget, but how much time, energy and creativity they put into the marketing process.

Remember, 800 Pound Guerilla Marketing is about dominating your local market using a little time, effort, creativity and a relatively low budget using both new and traditional marketing techniques along with the power of the Internet. The more time, effort and creativity you put into the marketing process, the better your results should be.

As real estate investors, one of our most important responsibilities is to generate a steady flow of motivated buyer and seller leads for our business. After all, no leads = no deeds = no profits. If we don’t want to be responsible for personally generating leads ourselves, then we must hire someone competent to generate leads for us. But even if we do hire someone, it is still our responsibility to make sure they are generating the quantity and quality of leads we need to meet our business’s short term and long term financial goals.

If you want to generate all the leads you can handle for your real estate investing business, start by following these 7 easy steps to determine your marketing plan and your marketing budget:

1. Determine How Many Leads You Need
2. Determine Your Market
3. Determine Your Marketing Methods
4. Determine Your Marketing Message
5. Determine Your Marketing Media
6. Determine Your Marketing Budget
7. Determine Your Marketing Plan

Thoughts to Ponder Regarding These 7 Easy Steps

1. How many leads do you need to succeed? How many deals do you want to do per month and per year? How much cash and equity do you want to make per month and per year? What do you predict your average profit will be per deal? How many leads do you need to get to one deal? How many leads do you need to generate monthly or annually to do the number of deals you need to reach your short term and long term cash and equity goals?
2. Who and what is your market? What kinds of deals do you want? What kind of customers, buyers and sellers do you want? What kind of houses do you want to buy or control? What areas of town do you want to farm? Who really is your ideal customer, tenant, buyer or seller? What houses do your ideal customers really want to purchase or rent?
3. What marketing methods will you use? Will you prospect or advertise for leads or use both? Will you use mass marketing techniques, direct marketing techniques or both? How will you generate the highest quantity of high quality leads? Will you use one step marketing, two step marketing or both?
4. What will your marketing message be? What will you say to generate interest, arouse emotion and get your prospects to take immediate action to contact you? Will you brag about yourself or will you talk about what’s in it for them? How will you get their attention? How will you get them to read your marketing message? How will you get them to call or visit your website for more information? How will you capture their contact, property and situational information?
5. What marketing media will you use? How will you deliver your marketing message to your market? Will you use traditional media, new media or both? How many different techniques will you consistently use to generate all the leads you can handle?
6. What is your marketing budget? How much money do you have to spend to get ready to market and actually start marketing? What marketing media and techniques will best fit your budget?
7. What is your marketing plan? Have you put your simple marketing plan down on paper? Are you consistently working your marketing plan? Are you putting in the time, effort and creativity needed to generate all the leads you need to succeed? Are you tracking your results? Are you tweaking your plan as needed to reach your marketing and financial goals?