Top 11 Marketing Budget Wastes—and How to Avoid Them

Part 4 of a 4 part series

Marketing Waste No. 9: Losing people on your Web site

Today’s Internet consumer, (which is a bit of an oxymoron given nearly 75% of US households have Internet access), start looking for real estate information online typically when they are in the early thinking about moving stage. This means you want all marketing roads to lead to your web site.

The first thing you need to make sure is that your Web site content is of interest to your prospects. The second thing is to have calls-to-action that will get your Web site visitors to engage—view a video, download a whitepaper, fill out a survey. Offering free information designed to appeal to the information gather’s will make it easy for the prospect to engage you on their terms. Offer CMA’s, updated listings, buyer/seller information packets, how prep home for sale tips, etc.

Last, you need to make sure that you can track these interactions. With this information in hand, you can fine-tune your follow up to match your prospects' interests and avoid wasting valuable marketing and sales resources.

Marketing Waste No. 10: Not knowing what you get for your money

Every marketing activity should be attached to a measurable goal. If it's not, you probably shouldn't be doing it. A measurable goal could be number of leads, number of new contacts, number of downloads, deals, all the way to revenue dollars. See more about it in "How to Measure Your Marketing" and "Measuring Marketing ROI—How Low Can You Go?"

Marketing Waste No. 11: Not taking action on what you’ve just learned

One or more of these money wasters probably hit close to home. The key to marketing optimization is continually weeding out the budget drainers while seeking new ways to deliver greater market impact at lower cost. If you're looking to do more with less, you must be willing to embrace change. As the saying goes, "You cannot continue doing the same things and expect different results." Take the time to set a new, super-efficient marketing plan. Think about the savings.