Who’s watching your marketing and advertising dollars? Lots of folks. The Internet is replete with literally thousands of businesses who compete for your hard-earned dollars with alluring promises to double your Internet hits, triple your ad responses and provide you with so much business that you are going to need a limo and driver to shuttle you to all the closings…..Or maybe bus tokens when you’ve spent all your budget on ads and don’t have any left to put gas in your car.

New agents are the primary targets because they don’t know better and, usually, have a little bit of start-up money for that marketing “splash”. Most of the trade publication articles on this subject are written by well-intentioned, but heavily vested consultants/trainers/coaches and other marketing-service providers. Many of the articles you review advocate spending a minimum of 10% of your income for marketing, advertising and business development activities. In my experience, that figure is valid. Depending on my level of activity and effectiveness in budgeting, I have averaged between 9% and 12% of my gross income for the last five years. 

So, that can be a sizeable amount of bucks. In 20 years, I have hired four different advertising/consulting firms to assist me in developing particular strategies. All four were well known and recommended to me by other successful Realtors. Three out of four were a bust, a complete waste of money. Largely because they over-promised and under-delivered on the effectiveness of the interventions and marketing materials agreed to. Marketing promotions and ads needed to be re-done multiple times and, the finished product was just okay. It was nice to look at, not bad to read, but just didn’t have the zing and zest I had been promised and hoped for. Frankly, given more time in the business and review of other promotions, I think I could have done as well as they did and saved $5,000+. Don't automatically discount your own creativity potential!

The firm that I spent the least money with and had the best results was Hobbes and Herder. They have been around for 15 to 20 years and enjoy and excellent reputation in the industry. My biggest lesson in all of this is to avoid the “Me too” or I gotta have that marketing promotion to get me 10 new listings. Bull. If you pick a farm and really, personally work it; if you either visit or send relevant property sale and related info monthly and more often between March and July, you will have a chance at getting your 10 listings. But you “gotta wanna”. You have to be involved with that four-letter-word a lot agents hate – “WORK”.

The other piece of the pie to “work” is your sphere-of-influence; past clients, friends and others who want you to succeed. If you want, you can spend a lot of money on post cards, newsletters and pumpkins, but without personally staying in touch periodically, you will notice the referrals drying up.

One of the difficulties with the real estate business is the complete freedom of choice that you have in how you spend your money to support your efforts and business development. Find three of the best performing agents in your area (doesn’t have to be in your company) and, invite them to lunch. Tell them you admire the success they have achieved and would appreciate some of their time to learn how you can do your business more effectively and, how you can allocate your advertising dollars most efficiently with the best potential for results. When you limit your decision-making to yourself, you lose the exponential value available from other accomplished and capable professionals.

What lessons have you learned over the years about advertising and marketing decisions? What was your absolute best idea? What was your most abysmal failure?