Your Direct Marketing Testing Checklist

Posted by Krista on Dec 10, 2007 in Advertising | 0 comments

In my last post, I discussed why you should test your marketing materials and how you shouldn’t presume to know what your market wants – you should let them tell you. In this post, I’ll talk about the many parts of your ad you can test to improve response rates. Your headlines or opening phrases – For ads and mailings, your headline is the predominant phrase that should...

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A Real Estate Agent’s #1 Marketing Mistake: Not Testing

Posted by Krista on Dec 7, 2007 in Advertising | 0 comments

Many real estate agents are marketing dabblers. They try something (put up a website, send out postcards, advertise in the local paper, run a tv or radio spot, send a newsletter, etc), see it doesn’t work as well as they’d like, then move onto something else. They never stick with it, nor do they ever take the time to figure out why their marketing wasn’t successful. They simply...

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The 4 Types of Direct Marketing Offers

Posted by Krista on Dec 5, 2007 in Advertising | 0 comments

In my last post, I outlined what an offer is and some common mistakes real estate agents make when crafting their offer. In this post, I’ll talk more about the four types of offers: soft, hard, negative and deferred. Soft Offers In a soft offer, prospects usually must provide some type of information in exchange for a free report. For instance, they may have to mail back a business reply...

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Why Offers are Key to Your Direct Marketing Success

Posted by Krista on Dec 4, 2007 in Advertising | 0 comments

You’ve probably gotten mailings that tell you things like: “You may have already won $10 million.” “Buy one – get one free.” “Free personal organizer when you subscribe to our magazine.” “Call today for your free cd.” “Bring in this coupon and save $25 on purchases of $75.” Each of these is an example of an offer. In...

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What is Direct Response Advertising?

Posted by Krista on Nov 28, 2007 in Advertising | 1 comment

In my last article, I described how most people advertise and some of the problems with it. In this article, I’ll talk more about the components of direct response advertising. The entire point of direct response advertising is to get the prospects that are most likely to buy your services to take a desired action. Here’s what you need for a direct response campaign: Target Audience...

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Why Isn’t Your Advertising Working?

Posted by Krista on Nov 26, 2007 in Advertising | 0 comments

With this post, I’m going to start a series on direct response advertising and why it is superior to traditional advertising (aka image advertising or institutional advertising). Direct response is a concept that you can apply to your advertising, mailings, website and virtually every promotion you do that is specific and measurable. Simply put, direct response is the act of salesmanship...

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