Monitoring marketing campaigns is crucial to becoming a top producer in real estate marketing.

Realtor marketing involves more than just running an advertisement or sending out postcards. One of the most important things you need to be aware of and get better at is tracking marketing initiatives you’ve already started. You must monitor the results of your marketing efforts if you want to be a top-producing realtor. Fear not—this is second-grade math!

As postcard mailings are a typical kind of real estate marketing, let’s use them as an example to get things started. Most real estate agents will choose a neighborhood, send their postcards out for three months, and then tally how many active clients or closings they received due to their mailing. Does that suffice? Nowhere near.

You should first get ready to mail your postcards for considerably longer than three months. Before a prospect feels comfortable enough with you to respond, they often need to see your message at least seven times. Yes, some options will answer within the first two months, but most will do so later. Set aside money for marketing in this manner.

The next step is to ensure you have a “prospect funnel”—a procedure for these prospects to respond to your marketing—in place. For instance, most real estate agent marketing entails having a nominee call your cell phone and make an immediate sale. To try to persuade the girl you just met in the gym to “bind the knot” with you tomorrow at 7 o’clock is analogous, though.

To build these relationships, I’d advise going slowly and putting a “prospect funnel” in place. You’ll draw in more prospects and convert them into live customers and completed transactions.

Let me explain this kind of real estate marketing…

A website or blog where potential customers may register for a “Free Report” or “Free Video Tutorial on How to Save $7,000 While Selling” is one technique to set up your “prospect funnel.” Think of a beneficial offer you can make in exchange for their name and email. You may now start building the relationship that will result in an active client and a closed contract in this way.

To send these prospects information and frequent updates, you must set up an “autoresponder” when they complete the first stage of the funnel by replying to your postcard and signing up on your website.

An “autoresponder” is software that enables you to email these prospects automatically (my 4-year-old can use it!). You can create a series of emails that will be delivered to your options on specific days and times.

You may continue to provide them with helpful information, suggestions, and pointers in these emails while also pointing them toward the next stage of the funnel—speaking or meeting with you. You might tell potential buyers they can contact you by phone or email for a free home tour. You can advise sellers to contact you by telephone or email for a free market analysis.

So, here’s the problem about this kind of realtor marketing that you need to comprehend.

It’s not unusual to provide a free market analysis or home tour. This is a service that all realtors offer. Nevertheless, the fact that you’re promoting these services after you’ve already begun cultivating a connection with them is why you’ll get a greater response rate. Similar to trying to convince someone to marry you before you even meet them, other realtors are impatiently proposing it before they even meet the possibility.

By developing the relationship through this “prospect funnel,” you gain an advantage. All that matters in achieving a client is the relationship. Without it, they will view you as simply another Realtor. You’ll get much better outcomes if you’re patient and give them time to get to know you.

Well, you begin “selling” a prospect on joining your team after they have contacted or emailed you about a free house tour. You’re an experienced Realtor in this.

You are skilled at demonstrating your superiority to others when you are in front of them. You know how to show off your personality. And since you’ve already been developing the relationship, getting this commitment from a prospect will be much simpler! Unlike every other Realtor, you are not beginning from scratch.

After receiving a commitment from a prospect, the final stage in this kind of marketing for Realtors is to clinch a sale. The result and where you make your money is by assisting them in buying or selling a home.

The “prospect funnel” conversion rates are where the tracking of your marketing initiatives enters the picture. You must know how many prospects move on to the following step in the funnel.

You must know how many postcards you sent out and how many potential customers visited your website due to their responses.

– You must know the number of website visitors who registered for your free offer.

– You must track how many prospects who signed up asked for a market analysis or a home tour.

– You need to keep track of the number of prospects who asked for a home tour or marketing analysis and who later closed a deal.

The “prospect funnel” I just described is just one type you can use. Your funnel can be configured and created however you desire. For the future, it’s important to take little steps rather than giant leaps. Your numbers will decline if you make the steps overly intimidating and large. Ensure every step is easy and comfortable, and your numbers will soar.

Realtor marketing typically consists of only knowing how many deals you closed due to a specific campaign. Occasionally, you don’t even know which campaign they participated in. This method of tracking your marketing leaves out a ton of data that may triple your closings.

You can identify which steps in your “prospect funnel” need to be adjusted to achieve your end goal—more closed deals and more money in your pocket—if you know the conversion rates from one step to the next.

For instance, if more website visitors register for your free offer, that must imply more home tours and closed sales. The previous steps impact the subsequent phases in the funnel.

See how this method of real estate marketing functions. How important is tracking your marketing campaigns this way, do you see? It’s the difference between managing your real estate business like a top producer and managing it carelessly.

The math required is straightforward division. Divide the number of prospects from the last phase by the number of candidates who moved on to the following step for each step in the “prospect funnel.”

For instance, a 5% “conversion rate” would be achieved if 100 people visited your website and five signed up for your free offer. The most complicated math you’ll encounter is that! Not bad at all, right?

After tracking your marketing for a while, you should start a friendly rivalry with yourself and constantly strive to outperform your previous results. Strive to increase your conversion rate to 7% if it is now 5% at one step. Use a different image or modify some of your sales copy if necessary. Your income will continue to rise if you can keep your conversion rates up. It’s that easy.

Test, test, and more testing! If you want to be one of the top-producing Realtors in the industry, tracking your marketing efforts is a must!

Real estate broker Josh F. Sanders founded Shiloh Street University, an online marketing program tailored particularly for Realtors and brokers, in Seattle, Washington.

The mission of SSU is to “Create Wealthy Agents through World-Class Marketing” by offering comprehensive marketing tutorials on video, lead-generation lessons, and advice on how to train real estate agents (see: http://shilohstreet.com/blog/blog/realtor-training.html), articles, and recommendations for marketing companies.

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