There are many far-reaching advantages of implementing and following a professional marketing plan. Below are a few of the greatest:
Consistency
Experts agree that it takes anywhere from seven to 10 impressions or "connections" with prospects before they begin to process your message. If your community isn’t projecting a consistent message or visual with each impression, it may take many more connections to get your message across. Each element that reaches the hands, eyes and ears of your potential buyer has to sing the same song on time and in tune.
Day-to-day consistency means this: all brochures, handouts and collateral material should look the same and portray the same image.
Every advertisement, whether it’s a full page ad in a national magazine or a three-inch black and white ad in a local newspaper should employ the same organizational elements, image style and theme. Billboards, tradeshow booths and displays and graphics in the sales center should follow suit. The simplest way to ensure consistency of message and professional quality is to use one source for your materials creation. One "bad ad" that slips out from an uninformed team member who doesn’t follow the carefully established creative guidelines or employ professional layout or copywriting can spoil months of marketing efforts in the mind of a potential buyer.
Your community is asking buyers to spend a great deal of money. Make sure your materials reflect their investment.
Cost Effectiveness
Everyone wants to achieve the greatest possible result for the least cost. To do this, everyone in your organization must understand the importance of the roles and the different perspectives they bring to your projects.
Sales agents on the front lines of one-on-one contact can hear specific objections and problems from potential buyers. Developers notice lackluster sales or waning interest from the perspective of incoming versus outgoing funds. Managers feel pressure to search for avenues to increase morale and sales. So many different perspectives can sometimes result in a "shotgun approach" to marketing — throwing mud on the wall and hoping something sticks. Not very cost-efficient.
It’s vitally important to have one informed group serve as the disseminator of all marketing efforts and opportunities. If you employ an agency to implement a plan, it’s the agency’s duty to stay abreast of all advertising opportunities available to you and judge their effectiveness. Marketing recommendations should be presented to you in terms of track record, estimated success rate and how they will fuel sales and fit into the big picture. Once you have a "road map" of your marketing media (direct mail, ads, etc.), you’ll be able to see the value of each element and discover which is most effective.
With recommendations, design and positioning left to a marketing team, other members of your staff can do what they do best — your sales force can concentrate on selling and your managers can manage. You’ll be cost-efficient and knowledge-based with your efforts and each medium will be targeted to the right audience at the right time.
Tracking and Accountability
One of the greatest advantages of implementing a marketing plan is that you can carefully track your results and know what’s bringing in leads and producing sales. You can enjoy the luxury of knowing that all marketing efforts are producing for you and that those that aren’t will be reassessed or eliminated.
You’ll know where and when each advertisement ran and why. You’ll learn which areas of the country and what messages produce best results for you with direct mail. You can review qualitative and quantitative results for each effort.
Best of all, every single move will be accounted for. And when it’s time to implement next year’s plan, you’ll have a clear understanding of what happened last year and who is responsible.
A Good Marketing Plan Can:
- Ensure marketing campaigns are cohesive and targeted
- Identify and take advantage of opportunities in your market
- Measure your marketing success with tracking data
- Account for every marketing dollar your company spends
- Educate you about current market conditions making planning easier and your marketing more effective
So think of "marketing program" as a way to achieve a definite goal, a safety net and an investment in success. With an integrated plan, you’ll reap the benefits of a program whose overall impact is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Amy Tharrington is president of Maximum Design & Advertising, Inc., an award-winning, advertising and design agency that specializes in real estate marketing. Headquartered in Wilmington, NC, Maximum provides successful sales and marketing solutions for projects nationally. Tharrington can be reached at 800-609-0930.
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