This is an excerpt from a blog post about key sales and marketing tasks for the Fall period. We contribute Realtor marketing articles weekly to the Real Estate Weekly website. Read the entire article by clicking here.
The first thing to consider about the next four months is the “90-Day Rule for Marketing.” It might have been Patti Brotherton, a real-estate consultant, from whom I first heard about the 90-day rule and it sure makes sense for any business.
Whatever you do today will impact your business in 90 days. Prospect two hours a day and 90 days from now new business will start.
If you scaled back your marketing during the summer, it will have an impact on the next three months – but don’t despair. Here are five things you can do in the fall that will start paying you back by the end of the year.
1) Review the past eight months and plan for the next four
The best way to ensure you will end the year well is to review what worked earlier in the year. Use an Excel spreadsheet or a piece of paper write down all of your sales year-to-date. Make additional columns and list where the client came from – whether a referral, a repeat client, someone you met at an open house, a lead from your website or something else.
What do you do with this information? Spend 80 to 90 per cent of your time targeting where the majority of your business came from. If your business thrives on referrals, then make sure you make a few contacts with your referral sources. You can call them, email them or write them a letter or thank you note (see holiday marketing below). If your business came from direct mail, plan to mail out a few more pieces over the next few months.
2) There are eight key holidays/events before the end of the year
Thanksgiving, Halloween, Remembrance Day, end of Daylight Savings Time, Hanukkah, Christmas, Boxing Day and the New Year. At least five of these holidays are great marketing opportunities for reaching out to your clients.
3) Host a client appreciation event
Your success in the next few months will depend in a large part on referrals and it is important that you nurture referral relationships. The fall offers a number of opportunities to host a client appreciation event. During late September and through October you could buy pumpkins and offer them to your sphere or give them away in the area you focus on. You could host a family function at a local corn maze, announce a Halloween costume contest where clients submit photos and you award prizes. Add the photos to your website.
Keep in mind that a successful client appreciation event is measured by the “return on experience” vs “return on investment”.
4) Consolidate and categorize your database
Continuing on the theme of the importance of referrals, it is your sphere of influence that provides those referrals, but you need to heed item #1 above and categorize your sphere accordingly. In the next few months you should focus on the “A” clients; the loyal fans that go out of the way to help you and your business.
5) Make a top 10 list
This idea is compliments of Robert Crowe, a Vancouver Realtor, and is a tip that I personally subscribe to. Keep a top 10 list of people who may do business with you in the next 90 days. These might be people who expressed an interest in a larger home a few weeks ago. They may have called you about what the market is doing as they are thinking of downsizing. They might be a lead from a supplier you work with. Try and do something for all 10 every week. Email them new listings. Call to see if they are getting closer to a move.
Always look to replace people on the list with more likely prospects – keep the best 10 in front of you at all times and continue to market yourself to everyone else in your data base at the same time. This is a sure-fire way to double your business in the next 90 days.
Read the entire article by clicking here.