I’ve had some discussions lately with coaching students about marketing. One student was perplexed and somewhat upset, understandably, that “nothing is working”. So, we drilled down into his work to see if we could uncover something. I asked what he was doing for his marketing.
“Direct mail” was the answer. Good, that’s a great way to reach out to a lot of people and get decent results; although this was clearly NOT the case for this guy. Now, I should mention that I have seen his marketing letters and they are really great – to the point, clear, and all about helping the prospect.
So, naturally, I went to “quantity” and found that he was doing about 100 a week. Not an avalanche by any means, but certainly enough to generate a response or two from time to time. But, “nothing” is what he claims to be getting. Absolutely nothing. Makes no sense, really.
Later that same day, another student approached me with a couple of questions and remarked that he was fielding a “bunch of leads”. “Wait a minute”, I said with this earlier conversation in mind, “where are you getting these leads?” Oh, direct mail, talking with REALTORs, and friends.
So, the first thing you could rationally conclude is that he had multiple streams of marketing going on, but with all things being equal, he should have had little or no response from direct mail. Not the case. He was getting the lion’s share from direct mail response. He was having good conversations.
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