Ensuring your marketing spend

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Estate Agent Newsletter
Issue 2
Ensuring your marketing spend is bringing you
instructions
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Getting tough on your marketing spend This is an
industry that prides itself on its negotiating
skills. And yet, in the midst of the cost and
margin focus, one area is mysteriously allowed an
easy ride marketing. Why is this? Why is so
much spent on marketing, and so little done to
consider how it should best be used to make you
money? Its a question of two things focusing
on what you really want your marketing to achieve
and checking to make sure that its actually
doing so. The 10,000 question If you run a
typical UK agency, youll be spending about
10,000 per annum on local press advertising to
support each of your branches. There is an
amazing consistency about this figure there is
no other industry that spends such unvarying
amounts. And here is the first alarm bell if
you are doing the same as everybody else
whether in marketing or in any other area of your
business you will not be making any distinctive
impact on your customers. Why is this
advertising done? Opinions vary, ranging from
because everyone else does it (never the most
persuasive answer) to because the clients expect
it (which doesnt convince either) to because
it gets us instructions. Before you embark on
another expensive burst of marketing spend,
therefore, stop and consider what is the purpose
of this? And can you achieve this more
cost-effectively? Dont let marketing off the
hook, just because its soft stuff. There is
nothing at all soft about 10,000 on each of your
branches cost base. And there are many other
things you could do with that money, or the
portion of it that turns out to be wasted.
Without testing your marketing, the only thing
you can be certain of is that your money is not
being optimally spent. The only purpose of
advertising One of the founders of the YR
advertising agency said The only purpose of
advertising is to sell it has no other
justification worth mentioning. In agency, that
means instructions advertising needs to win you
instructions you would not otherwise have been
given. Quite simply, you need to know what the
effect of your advertising has been. And
remember those alarm bells if you are doing
exactly the same as all your competitors, how
likely is any of your activity to make a
noticeable difference to customers?
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Evaluation finding out what works Why is this
supposed to be so difficult? You need simple
answers to tell you which of your various
activities are actually creating instructions.
You can do this as part of a one-off research
exercise, but the important tracking can be done
perfectly well yourself. Ask customers
in-branch, or phone them up after the instruction
was given but do ask them. You need to know
two things what, of your various activities,
they noticed and what was the crucial reason
they came to you. And if this is delegated to
branch staff, make sure it becomes a key job
requirement. Eliminate the weak spend The
research will tell you, broadly, whats working
for you, and whats wasting your money (and your
customers time). Use the hard facts they will
probably confirm what you have long suspected
anyway. Pare the advertising spend down to the
areas that are essential to convey what your key
business strength is. And then let all your
competitors continue to waste their money, while
you focus the savings on something that works
better.
Creating a distinctive message The first rule in
marketing is this be distinctive. How
distinctive is your own marketing? What would
your local customers and prospects say? The
chances are, theres nothing that will reach out
and grab them and thats what you have to do.
Marketing is not about communicating information
thats what the civil service does. You need
to engage with people who have no particular
inclination to notice you. Deliver evidence of
what you do Customers are really very simple in
their response to marketing they wont believe
you understand people like them unless you
demonstrate that you do. This is where the best
local marketing works by showing that you are
experts in handling people just like them. Think
who you want to impress then deliver
evidence. Involve the sales staff Finally give
the marketing material to the sales staff. Its
your people who sell the marketing material
needs to be used, and sent, by them.
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• Summary key questions for your business
• Do you evaluate your advertising spend?
• Do you know which marketing activities are
  getting you instructions?
• Does your marketing have real distinctiveness
  compared with your competitors?
• Does your marketing convey that you are experts
  for a certain type of customer?
• Is your marketing material sent out from specific
  sales staff in local branches?

• In Future Newsletters
• Moving your brand upmarket taking on the
  upmarket chains in your area
• Improving your financial services performance
• Better local marketing using databases and
  direct mail
• What do customers really see? Using research
  properly
• Planning your exit succession planning,
  continuity and business sale

• In Previous Newsletters
• Streamlining your business getting beyond
  your business plateau
• Making sure your Information Technology is
  making you money
• About Mungo Dunnett Associates
• Customer loyalty, relationships, marketing, sales
  and service are being wasted because companies
  cannot determine their monetary value. We
  deliver four things that are vital for
  businesses, but are typically difficult to
  accomplish
• 1) A clear understanding of where your
  profit lies
• 2) The creation of lasting and
  profitable customer relationships
• 3) Clarity for your business
• 4) Efficiency for your business
• We are not career consultants we are experienced
  line managers, accustomed to delivering results
  under pressure across a range of professional
  services firms. Our focus is on ensuring that
  our clients activities are geared towards the
  areas that are most commercially valuable, and
  that they are getting the maximum benefit from
  the investments they have already made, across
  their operations, IT, servicing, sales and
  marketing. For further information visit our
  website at the address below.

Mungo Dunnett Associates 9 Ormidale Terrace,
Edinburgh EH12 6DY Tel [phone] Email
info_at_md-as.com www.md-as.com