My Best Return on Marketing Dollars

I'm approached almost on a daily basis by someone wanting to sell me some type of marketing. I've tried many of them over my career, but I've gotten to the point I only spend marketing dollars in two places, postcards and Facebook. I'll talk about Facebook later, but this post is directed towards postcards.

Admittedly, postcards can be expensive if you're marketing to a large area with many homes. I think 1,000 homes is about the right size for an agent to farm so paying for a postcard a month takes a real monetary commitment. You also have to be willing to accept you aren't going to make a deal from every postcard mailout you have. I can guarantee you won't, but this is big picture stuff we're talking about.

I know when the homeowners receive my cards in the mail, they might just give it a quick look and trash it, but I'm still connecting with them in a subtle way. If they see our logo and name on the cards twelve times a year and even slow down once to see what we're all about, we've connected.

When I started out in residential, no-one knew who I was. I came from a commercial background and started out of my home office under my own name. I had my broker's license so I was able to do that but I didn't know a soul in the new area we'd moved to. Nor did I know any residential agents, so I just had to "wing it" and figure things out myself. I figured there was no better way to introduce myself than postcards.

I started sending postcards out even before I had my first sale. The card announced my commission rate which was quite a bit lower than my competitors. One of those cards led to my first listing, which I sold.

From that point on, every single time I closed on a home, I sent a postcard to the surrounding area with the address, listed price, picture of the home, a little about me, and a suggestion they visit my website. Every once in a while, someone would call after receiving my card but even if that didn't happen, I was OK with it and here's why.

Because postcards are so expensive, if I had several closings coming up, I'd wait for them all to close, then send one out. I still do that to this day. Here's one of the cards I sent out in 2021.

Branding is very important in many businesses and real estate is one of them. We're known by our gold tree and it's everywhere. You'll find our brand on our website, social media, emails, signs, YouTube channel, etc. People who live in this area may not recognize my name, but they'll usually remember the logo because they see it on our signs too.

Don't get disappointed and quit sending them postcards out because you aren't getting calls. It takes time and this is big picture stuff I'm talking about here. You aren't throwing that money away. You're investing in your branding.

There's an old rule of thumb it takes 8 postcards before people start paying attention to you. I don't know who came up with that, but it's probably a pretty fair statement. Consistency with every positive thing you do is the key to success and that goes for postcards as well.

I made a mistake with one of my postcards early in my career and it came back to bite me. I'll share that story with you here.