Hobbs/Herder Digital Print Services

Intensifying Your Focus

In marketing, is it better to reach more people less frequently or less people more frequently? Don Hobbs answers this critical question and provides tips to maximize the effectiveness of your direct mail campaign.

Think of your personal marketing campaign as a flashlight for a second. Depending on how you position it, you can either shine a little bit of light over a large area, or you can concentrate that light into a much more powerful beam shining on a smaller area.

The problem I often see agents encounter is they try to cast that light over too large of an area. When they do, the light is diluted. Or, in marketing terms, the agent's marketing efforts go largely unnoticed. Think of the marketing campaigns that are most memorable to you. They aren't ads you saw once or even a couple times. They are the campaigns that infiltrate every aspect of your life. They are everywhere you look.

Don't Give Them the Opportunity to Forget You
Two major elements of effective advertising campaigns are repetition and consistency. Your market needs to be constantly reminded that you exist. The problem is that when agents get greedy in the number of people they reach and decide to reach more people less often, they sacrifice repetition of their marketing message.

Here's an example. An agent will tell me that he wants to be his hometown's top agent – let's use Reno, Nevada, for example. Rather than start small, the agent wants to reach as many people as possible, so he begins mailing to a group that is much too large to be supported by his budget. Rather than reach everyone in his farm three times a month as he should be, he mails quarterly or maybe once a month. This is a recipe for failure.

By sacrificing repetition in favor of reaching more people, all he's doing is watering down his campaign's effectiveness. Consumers don't remember you 10 days after your last mailing, let alone three months later. There is a better way.

Laser Focus
The only way to get people to know who you are is to intensify your focus. You must choose a farm area that your budget can support to reach at least three times every month. Then do so. Hit it hard. Make a splash. The repetition and consistency of your message will result in more business, and as you capture more and more market share and your marketing budget grows, then you can begin to increase the scope of your campaign.

The key is to spend your money wisely. If you're going to invest in marketing, you need to do it right. Agents who try to cut corners and stretch their marketing dollar are only hurting themselves.

Defending Your Turf
When you spread yourself too thin, not only is your marketing's effectiveness reduced, but you become vulnerable to other agents biting off smaller, more focused segments of your market. I know of a particular agent who once held a significant market share in a rather major city in Southern California. As he expanded his scope, however, he became vulnerable to those agents who chose to specialize in various segments of the larger market he was attempting to control. The more he expanded, the more he fell prey to agents who specialized in niche segments of his market.

The lesson to be learned here is that to be successful, all you really need is one market that you "own." If you continue to market yourself to those people and never relinquish your focus, you can be extraordinarily successful without having to run yourself all over town. My advice to the agent who wanted to control Reno was to pick a couple subdivisions that consisted of 1000-1500 homes (for more on choosing your farm area, click here and to concentrate his efforts on just that area. Who cares about the whole city? Realistically, even if he had $100,000 budget, he still couldn't reach the entire city with the regularity necessary to be effective.

Make a Bold Impression on Your Market
Let's say you're trying to determine your direct mail farm. Your budget allows you to reach 1,500 people once per month, or 750 two times a month, or 500 people three times per month. Which do you choose?

Hopefully, you chose the 500 three times per month. Even choosing the 750 option will reduce the effectiveness of your materials. Start small, and grow from your strength. As your business (and cash flow) increases, then add those next 250 names to your farm, so that you're mailing to 750 people three times each month. Eventually you'll be farming all 1500 homes and dominating your market.

Keep in mind this article is not about how to choose your farm area, but rather how to get a bigger bang for your buck. I'm not sure if 500 people is enough to accomplish your goals, and I would never suggest that you allow your budget to dictate the size of your farm. What I do know is that reaching 500 people three times a month will produce much better results than the other two options.

The "Blitz" Approach
For those of you with a bigger budget, an alternative approach to a standard, evenly allocated direct mail campaign is the "blitz" approach. Rather than spreading your marketing budget evenly over 12 months, stagger it to increase your presence prior to prime selling seasons. When other agents stop mailing during the holidays, increase your marketing in anticipation of the post-holiday flurry of activity. Remember that it's crucial that you do not disappear in the lower budget months. Using the "blitz" approach, you can hit it hard and make a real impact for a short amount of time and put your campaign in "maintenance" mode the remainder of the year. If anything, this approach should prove the main message of this article – to dominate your market, the three most important words to remember are focus, focus and focus. Shine that flashlight in such a manner that homeowners can't help but feel your presence, and then don't let up. When you intensify the focus of your marketing, I guarantee you will be more successful.

MegaAgent Tip:
Don't get discouraged if people request to be taken off your mailing list. Some agents interpret a few people's requests as an indication they should slow or stop marketing altogether. Instead, interpret it as an indication that you're being noticed. Losing five or 10 people from your entire farm is not problematic, so don't let it slow you down.