Starting out with limited funds

Greg Herder, of Hobbs Herder Advertising in Newport Beach, Calif., offers this marketing plan for salespeople with between $2,000 and $5,000 to spend.  It’s based on repeated mailings of a single, strong direct-mail piece, which he says is the most effective way to allocate your limited funds.

Objective: Create enough of an impact over a relatively short period to obtain business quickly and create a steady cash flow that will allow for longer-term marketing approaches.

Month One

Develop a budget and schedule for your plan.

1. Decide how large your target market is. You need to know how many marketing pieces you need. To follow the sequence suggested below, you will need approximately 3,000 brochures.

Estimate how the funds will be allocated: for design and copy, for printing and photography, for mailing and postage.

2. Create a personal, four-color brochure that focuses on the unique selling proposition you have identified.

3. Look at other brochures, and analyze what you think is effective.

4. Select a designer and copywriter to help you develop your piece. Sources: other small businesses in your area, local printers, a college advertising department, and the Internet.

5. Look at the designer’s and copywriter’s samples. Do they have the look that you want and that will fit your target audience?

6. Ask for estimates to complete the brochure. Review estimates carefully to see what they include.

7. Ask the designer to assist you in getting preliminary bids from one or two printers for the general type and quantity of brochures you want. Again, check to be sure what is included in the price: shipping to your office; changes made during printing; overruns?

Month Two

1. Work with the designer and copywriter to finalize your brochure. Allow at least two weeks for copy and two weeks for design.

2. Have brochures printed. This usually will take two weeks, but get a definite commitment date from your printer.

3. Develop mailing lists for your brochure. Preprint envelopes or labels so that you will be ready to mail when the brochure is ready.

Month Three

1. Mail your brochure to your sphere of influence with a nice cover letter telling them that you have just completed a new marketing brochure and would love feedback on whether the brochure captures your personality. Remember, this is not a sales letter.

2. Set up a database to track responses from your mailings. Assign a code to each group in your mailing so you can track response.

3. Mail 10 brochures per day into your farm area. If you don’t have a farm, send your brochure to 10 names from the reverse directory.

4. Again, enter responses into your database. Code the source of the lead and rate the quality of each lead from “A” (hot prospect) to “C” (marginal interest).

5. Hand out 10 brochures per day to people you meet. Always have your brochures ready to give out.

6. Twice a week, mail your brochure with a nice cover letter to the expireds and FSBOs you have located. In the cover letter, simply tell them you are a little different than most practitioners and that, if they like your style, you would love to help me. Then promise you will not call to bother them again.

7. Hold an open house every weekend, and greet people by giving them your brochure and a flyer on the property when they walk in the door.

8. Four days later, follow up with phone calls to everyone who signed the guest book at the open house. Again, code and add leads to the database.

Month Four

1. Repeat Steps 2 through 8 from Month Three

2. Mail your brochure again to the prospects rated A in your database with a cover letter reminding them of your contact. Use a merge feature in your word-processing program to customize the letter.

Month Five

1. Repeat Steps 2 through 8 from Month Three.

2. Mail your brochure again to the prospects rated A and B in your database with a cover letter reminding them of your contact.

3. Evaluate the results of your mailing. How many responses did you get? What groups responded most favorably? How many responses converted into referrals, listings, or sales?

Results: 95 percent of our company’s salespeople have generated between two and five transactions in the first 30 days after mailing and 10 or more transactions within 90 days of mailing.