Real Estate Appraisers typically have very little money to spend on advertising and/or marketing. The onus is on any savvy business person to ask sufficient qualifying questions, and keep enough records, to determine what advertising and marketing expenses deliver sufficient return to justify continuation.
Your phone number, cell phone number, pager, fax number and email address are all listed in Appraiser Directories, like All Area Affiliate Listing, as well as most other appraiser Internet directories and portals, and potential clients can call you directly.
When you get an inquiry, you owe it to yourself to ask how the potential client making the inquiry found you. If the response is vague, try to get them to be more specific. If they say they found you on the Internet . . .
- Ask them where on the Internet?
- If they respond I found your web page. Then ask them how they found your web page?
- Was it a search engine like Google?
- Was it an on-line directory etc.?
Like you, I am a practicing real estate appraiser. Since I primarily service non-lender clients, I am constantly marketing for new business. I keep a log of every inquiry I get, tracking the true source as well as the ultimate result.
I periodically cross check (particularly at renewal time) my inquiry log against my advertising budget log to ensure I am spending my money where it is most likely to generate business.
Another important concern is the ad itself. The mere fact that you have placed an ad is no guaranty that it will generate results. It is the advertising medium's responsibility to generate traffic to the ad. It is the advertiser's responsibility to ensure that potential clients that have been brought to your ad choose you.
This is an important objective of my blog articles - to help you design ads that generate inquiries. They will all be analyzed and explored in depth in future installments to this blog.
Here are a few initial suggestions:
- Use a Headline.
- Concentrate on as many What's In It For Me! [the potential client] benefits of using your services as you can muster.
- Make an attractive offer that will elicit an inquiry.
- Ad size can matter - if you are allotted say 300 words - use them all wisely.
- Test your ad.
- Always include a call to action.
The only real opportunity most of us have to gain competitive advantage and grow our business is in marketing - there is little opportunity elsewhere.
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In marketing there is enormous opportunity to leverage your efforts. It is the one place where you truly still have infinite leverage with almost no downside risk. Everyone does some level of advertising or marketing - it could be sending letters, calling old clients or new potential clients or even in the form of making a charitable donation that includes a journal advertisement.
Think about it for a moment . . . Doesn't it cost exactly the same amount of money (or time or effort) to produce and/or place an ad, letter, etc., irregardless of whether that ad or letter, etc., returns one response, ten responses, one thousand responses . . . 10,000 or 100,000 responses
When you bring in a new client, it costs you the very same amount of effort, time and expense whether the new client brought in by that ad or letter, etc., buys once, once a year, once a month, once a week, once a day or 10 times a day.
You must understand that you have now and have always had the ability to make every action, every opportunity, every cost you expend in advertising or marketing, every effort you undertake to produce for your efforts to produce significantly multiplied results and then the have those results multiplied again and again by simply changing the geometry of your business, the leverage inherent in marketing can allow you to become exponential in thought and action.
The First Truth - Human Nature Is Immutable - Since the dawn of time and till Armageddon or a nuclear holocaust does us in, human nature has been and will be human nature.
You ask...What does this have to do with marketing an appraisal business? Simply people in general tend to react to things in similar ways. Most people really could care less for anyone other than themselves or maybe their closest family and friends, and even the family and friends are sometimes a stretch.
The average person would typically be more concerned with their slightest little bitty headache or some other very minor annoyance that was occupying their thoughts that day, than they would be if you or I or anyone else of little importance (to them) were to keel over and drop dead right in front of them.
Sadly, but true, this is a simple fact of life.
What can we learn and use from this bedrock fact?
To get people (like maybe your potential clients) listening to what you have to say to them you must learn to concentrate on the "What’s in it for me".
Think of your own habits when going through your daily incoming business, or personal email or snail mail, and please, please, please be truthful to yourself.
Do you even open every letter? Most do not. Of the letters in which someone is trying to sell you some service or product, do you typically read the entire letter?.
If you are like most people, you probably do not read past the first paragraph (if you even open the envelope or click on the email), unless there is something there that really gets your interest.
Do you really think that your potential clients act or react any differently on average than you do?
Of course they don’t.
What would typically get someone’s attention and hold it?
Nothing on earth will get someone’s attention better than something that will benefit them. Something that easily shows them the What’s In It For ME?
Any sales letter (I will be using direct mail for this example, but the basic concepts will work equally well in ANY medium) to be effective, must be read.
To be read it must attract and hold the interest of the potential client.
It should come as no surprise that time after time, in direct comparison tests, letters with headlines, always produce a significantly higher response (usually in excess of 30% - even when using the same exact words, but changing the format to include a headline). Notice, I didn’t say maybe or sometimes - I said always.
This is a well documented, proven scientific fact.
If you want to learn how to become an optimal marketer, you don't have the right to arbitrarily decide what is the most appropriate headline or proposal to use - your market always knows what the best headline etc. is and will always tell you if you learn to implement two very simple strategies, to ask your clients for the answers and then learn to test.
I have been very successful in learning the desired benefits from our lender and lawyer clients by regularly using the following short client survey.
APPRAISER, KENNETH M ROSSMAN
CLIENT SURVEY
Date
Company Name - optional
Name of Respondent- optional
Please give us an honest assessment - we really want the bad and ugly as well as the good. The only purpose of this survey is to try to help us improve our service to you and to be more responsive to your needs.
Compared to our competitors on a scale of 1 (you hate us) to 5 (you love us) - How do we compare - 1 2 3 4 5
What is it about our firm that you like the best? (why do you favor us with your business).
What is it about our firm, that you dislike the most?
If you would like us to do anything differently what would it be?
What topics would you most like to see covered in our blog or newsletter?
(if you publish a blog or newsletter)
Bear in mind that a primary purpose of this installment will be to teach you how to find the appropriate headlines for you from your clients.
You can use whatever I have discovered to work for me if you like, but the dynamics could be quite different, and the results you receive may not be that great if your clients have different concerns, expectations and desires than mine.
I have incorporated the use of the previous survey into a systematic mailing campaign to all my lender and attorney clients.
The purpose of this type of a mailing campaign is really two fold.
First to bolster your image with your clients and encourage them to give your firm more and more assignments, the second is to learn from your best clients, why they like to do business with you.
If you are like me, you would want more clients who are just like your best clients. It stands to reason, that the reasons why your current best clients like to do business with you probably are the same benefits you need to stress most when soliciting new clients. Those benefits become the headlines & sub-headlines you need when soliciting business from new potential clients. This is an unbelievably powerful yet incredibly simple strategy you must learn to master if you are to become an optimal marketer.
You don't have the right to arbitrarily decide what is the most appropriate headline or proposal to use - your market always knows what the best headline etc. is and will always tell you if you test.
Your best headline is ALWAYS the single most important benefit to the intended customer (what's in it for them - if they take the action you request).
The headline is typically responsible for 70% of the effectiveness of any advertisement.
Jay Abraham (my marketing mentor) has documented up to a 21 times (or 2100%) difference between two similar headlines in response, and sometimes it is impossible to tell which one the winner is.
If you do any direct mail, you should always use a sales letter, rather than a brochure alone or self-mailer. Response rates for self mailers are typically poor. Adding a brochure to the letter should improve response.
Every letter, like every ad, must have a headline. Use sub-headlines throughout the letter to emphasize all the benefits you offer.
Telemarketing behind the letter can increase response by 30 to 1000%.
Your letter should educate your prospective client on the benefits or results that they will receive by taking the action you suggest (what's in it for them), not just listing features.
We are in an extremely competitive business.
Many,if not most of your competitors, probably offer similar services to those which you now offer.
Your marketing job one is to cull out the specific distinctions that you can use to set yourself apart from your competition.
You may not think you now have those distinctions, but your clients can help you to isolate them and by listening to their responses to the What is it about our firm that you like the best? (why do you favor us with your business). Question.
You can also create new distinctions and attendant services to fill your clients needs by listening and coming up with solutions to the problems your clients identify in the If you would like us to do anything differently what would it be? And what do you dislike most about our firm questions on the survey.
If your best clients won’t fill out the survey form, call them and ask verbally on the phone or go to their office or meet with them or take them to lunch, play golf with them, take them on a boat or fishing trip or whatever you can get them to participate in that will give you an opportunity to interview them and ask the same questions.
Use a tape recorder or take notes, but whatever you do record the information, because it is more valuable to you than gold.
What's an example of a lender oriented service distinctions that I have developed using client feedback? One prime example would be immediate borrower contact. In a million years I would never have known it was such a strong draw for many lenders.
When I ran a large fee shop, we had for years hired an appointment secretary to do the appointment scheduling, primarily to keep control over the work flow.
When we first sent out our survey, eight different lenders specifically mentioned how they liked that feature and several went on to explain how over the years they had saved many transactions that would likely have been lost otherwise, had it not been for the quick feedback of trouble with their customer.
Conclusion: The strategies and concepts in this series will give you a degree of freedom that is hard to contemplate. Please make a commitment to yourself to take advantage of the information! I promise you will not be disappointed. You must learn to IMPLEMENT - This is the fundamental key to your marketing success. There are no rules in marketing . . .only those you impose on yourself!
In Part 2, Ken shows us how to zero in on the single most important benefit to the intended client or customer - the "What's In It For Me" - if they were to take the action you request in your solicitation.
Author: Ken Rossman - Click here for a free listing (no strings - no credit card needed to register) in your home county on my All Area Affiliate Appraisal Network on-line directory. For more information about All Area: click here.
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