PropertyManagementMaven: Do you track your marketing to determine what works and what doesn't work?

A client showed me two postcards he was contemplating sending to distressed homeowners, and he asked me what I felt was the best one. My answer was send them both and see what works the best. Send one postcard to 500 people, and send the second postcard to another set of 500. Whichever gets a better response is the winner.

The first elemental step is to ask a homeowner how they heard of you. Pretty simple question that is neglected so many times. How can you gauge the effectiveness of a marketing campaign until you ask a warm lead (someone that contacted you) where they learned of your services?

I can't tell you how many times someone picked up a list from me and later said, "it didn't work out". Most of the time I hear this, there was a unscientific or sporadic approach to measuring results. You can't determine the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. This is very avoidable by simply asking a new prospect how they heard of you. By methodically tracking results of your marketing, you can optimize your campaign based on your learnings.

Here are some practical steps you can take now:

- Ask every prospect how they heard of you.
- Put a marketing code on every mail piece, and ask the prospect what that code is. Put this code on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper.
- Create a unique landing page that corresponds to different marketing pieces. For example, Ad 1 directs homeowners to yoursite.com/foreclosurehelp and Ad 2 directs homeowners to yourside.com/alternativestoforeclosure.
- Attach different phone numbers to different marketing pieces. So if you have five different mailing pieces, get five different phone numbers, and measure which gets the most calls. There are inexpensive online services that enable you to take out several phone numbers. My favorite is www.tossabledigits.com, which can provide multiple local phone numbers that get forwarded to your cell phone or any other number you designate. You can then go online and see how many calls were made to each number.

Marketing shouldn't be a crapshoot, but a science.