The lowly postcard is one of the most powerful, flexible and cost effective marketing techniques you can use to grow your business. Postcards can be used to prospect for leads, keep in touch with mini-newsletters, drive targeted traffic to your website and much more.
There are six components to a successful postcard marketing campaign. The six steps are:
- Defining the desired end result of the marketing.
- The list being mailed to.
- The look of the postcard.
- The message on the postcard.
- The call to action on the postcard.
- Your timely response to the leads.
The process of postcard marketing - and all marketing for that matter - is to define its purpose. Why are you marketing? What is the message you want to convey? Who is the message for? Are you sure it is the right target demographic for the message you want to deliver?
For instance, if you are prospecting for fixer-upper homes, you are more likely to have success mailing to absentee owners in a poorer part of town than you are to homeowners in an exclusive rich area of town. But you can only know that by first knowing the outcome of your marketing
Once you understand the end result of your marketing effort, you can then move on to the next step.
Choosing your mailing list - Once you know the end result of your marketing, you can work backwards to figure out who needs to reveive your marketing materials to achieve that result. For instance, if you are looking for rehab projects or don’t wanter owners in the low income part of town, you would want to get a list of the names and addresses of all the owners in that part of town. If you have a program to help people going through foreclosure, you only want to invest your marketing dollars contacting those people.
Once you have your demographic defined, you then need to create a mailing list. Depending on your parameters, you may be able to get the county tax assessors office to generate a list of contacts for you. Or you may need to contact a local list broker who specializes in dealing with the particular demographic you defined. In either case, a few phone calls will get you the details you need.
Once you have found and purchase your list, you then need to design your postcard.
The three elements of your postcard - Your postcard will have three elements. The first is the look of the postcard. This includes things like the physcial size of the postcard, the color of the cardstock the postcard is printed on, any colors of ink used in the printing and the actual layout of the message, addresses, etc. on the postcard. Different looks can affect the response so it is good to keep track of responses for every mailing so you can test different variations of look.
The second element is your marketing message. As part of developing the target audience for your real estate postcard marketing campaign, you should have ammassed a variety of statistics about your target homeowners. This information will help you craft a message that will speak to them and their situation. In other words, if you are targeting out of state landlords who are sick of being a landlord, the message on the postcard better describe the pain of being an out of state landlord in great detail or it won’t be effective. The closer your message matches the mindset of your target audience, the better your results will be.
The third element is the call to action. Once you have the reader excited about the message he is reading, don’t leave him hanging. Tell him exactly what to do next. Should he call you to dicsuss the matter further. Should she go to your website to fill out a contact form and learn more about a special program you have to help people in her situation? A call of action can be as simple as "Call 123-4567 for immediate action." It doesn’t have to be complex but it must be included.
Ensuring a timely response - The last element of successful postcard marketing is having a timely response to the leads you generate. The ideal is someone calling you when you ae available to pick up the phone. But if someone is emailing you or filling out a form on your website or leaving a message on voice mail, the bond that was created by the message in the postcard is diluted just a bit. And if you delay contacting the prospect for too long, you can completely lose the bond.
A good rule of thumb is to contact people that same day whenever possible even if it is early in the evening. Making that same day contact really strengthens that bond. If the lead comes in at night or you are just too busy to call that day, call first thing the next day and at the very least leave a message with your phone number and a reminder of why you called and also leave a time you will call them back. That shows you are definitely interested in contacting them and will make the effort for them.
By following these steps, you will be able to develop a powerful marketing machine for your real estate investing business. Cost effectively generating qualified leads and working them with dedication is what is going to get you your next investment property. And that is what the real estate investing game is all about.
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