REALTOR® Magazine Online: 5 Steps to Painless Ad Tracking

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Setting Marketing Strategies

Analyzing the Business Climate

Creating Your Market Identity

Planning Your Advertising

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5 Steps to Painless Ad Tracking

To make the most of your marketing dollars, you need to know which ads work and which don’t. Here’s a simple way to gather the necessary information.

Make a monthly advertising calendar. Look at your current advertising and break it down into categories—newspaper ads, classifieds, yard signs, home magazines, Internet, and any other media you choose. Fill in the dates the ads will run.

Break down types of ads. Make a list of the ads you are running, assign them to a category (direct mail, open house ad, display ad, etc.), and note where the ad is running. The list should fit on a single sheet of paper that can be put by every phone. Leave a space for hash marks so that when the phone rings, whoever answers can record how the caller heard about the home or the agent. Also leave space for comments.

Get the whole staff involved. Show everyone the calendar and the list by every phone and tell them that you’re on a campaign to find out how your advertising dollars are being spent. Request that they ask all callers how they heard about the salesperson or the home in question. Then ask them to mark the one-page list with a hash mark in the appropriate space and to record any relevant comments the caller makes.

Meet weekly to assess the results. Ask staff to tell you about their calls. How did callers sound? What did they ask first? Where they interested in the services or benefits you were emphasizing in the ad?

Tally the results every month. Eventually, trends will emerge that will help you understand which forms of advertising are most effective for your company.

Adapted from Blanche Evans, “Make the Most of Your Advertising Dollars,” Realty Times, June 25, 1999

TIP: For more tips on tracking advertising, visit the Personal Marketing section .

Coordinating Company and Salesperson Marketing >

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