Direct Response Ads

There are essentially three types of marketing:

1. Direct response marketing
2. Direct marketing
3. Personal promotion (branding)

Direct response marketing is designed to solicit an immediate and quantifiable response from a target prospect. The delivery of the message uses media such as magazines, TV, radio, newspapers, direct mail, or yard signs. The message always contains an attention-grabbing headline, copy that is pertinent to the target prospect, and a call to action with a time-sensitive offer. Direct marketing has no intermediary media. The agent contacts the prospect directly via telemarketing or door-to-door. Promotional marketing/branding is the most expensive, virtually impossible to track, and generates the lowest response. Ironically, promotional marketing is where the vast majority of agents choose to invest their marketing dollars.

Unless you are the clear brand of choice in your market, direct response should be used on all types of real estate marketing: in picture ads, in homes magazines, listings that appear in the real estate section of your Sunday newspaper, direct mail pieces, and informational ads.

In our business building module, we describe the elements and processes used in creating different types of direct response ads. In this business building module, we tell you how to implement an informational direct response ad. We create an ad that uses a free report, instead of the home, as the main marketing attractant. This module includes 20 prewritten direct response information ads and reports.

Why Use Direct Response Informational Ads?

Direct response informational ads can be the most effective and economic forms of marketing. In the early 1900s, one of the founding fathers of informational direct response, Claude C. Hopkins, invented fundamental rules for writing informational ads that (if followed) provide the best possible opportunity for a profitable campaign. The ad rules Claude created literally revolutionized advertising and helped establish some of the premier American companies including Goodyear, Proctor and Gamble, and Quaker. Those rules are still in use today:

• Decide on a specific target, and market to them exclusively.
• Use a headline to gain attention, emotional copy to engage the reader, and a close for action (provide an incentive with a timestamp to respond).
• Always test and track your marketing.

Modern day consumers still respond to direct response informational marketing. The Electronic Retailing Association released a study which measured consumer shopping preferences. The results revealed that 70% of consumers desired to receive information about a product or service prior to direct solicitation. Consumers also opted to respond using technology. The most preferred methods of response were automated toll-free numbers and websites.

Direct Response Ads Marketing Guide P a g e| 2Fundamentals of Informational Direct Response
There are no magic prewritten informational ads that deliver hundreds of hot leads to you, despite the opinions of marketing gurus. While the majority of the information in the Arch prewritten ads can be used as is or verbatim, invest a few minutes to customize the information to specifically market to your demographic and greatly increase your odds of return.

The goal of any marketing campaign is to entice the recipient to read and act on your message. In order to do so, you must follow these fundamentals:

• Decide on a target market
• Utilize a responsive marketing piece
• Identify responsive ad mediums (track results)

Each prewritten informational ad is directed at a specific target. For example, for buyers there are ads targeting:

• First-time homebuyers
• Investors
• Mover-uppers

Customize these targets by adding demographic or geographic types of information. For example:

• If you live in west Austin and are wasting $800 a month on rent, here’s how you can purchase your first home…
• The 10 best investment opportunities in Laguna Beach…
• Blue ribbon school districts in southwest Phoenix…

Utilize a Responsive Marketing Piece

Arch has twenty prewritten scripts and reports available in your materials and on the website at http://www.archtelecom.com/downloads/.

These reports address FSBOs, expireds, first-time homebuyers, renters, and other consumers. All of the reports are in Microsoft Word and are easily edited to add your contact information and logos. More importantly, each report can be constructed to fit your individual market.

To shadow or copy the recordings onto your system: •Log in to the Customer Portal.

• Log in to the Customer Portal.
• Click the Powerline tab.
• Choose Create Shadow Extension.
• Enter in the extension number you want to create in the Extension field.
• Enter 8009519704 in the Source Mailbox field.
• Enter the proper extension number for the report in the Source Extension field.

Identify Responsive Advertising Mediums

You must know where your target market looks for information as the best ad medium varies depending on your target and your geographic location. Often, this is not the most obvious place or where all the other agents advertise. Most agents do not devote any diligence to tracking response rates at all and simply market their homes where their competition does.

The most responsive ad mediums in your market are unknown until you track your marketing’s response rates. To find the prime market, you must track two things:

1. The response from the ad
2. The response from the ad source

Using the source digit in the Powerline™ system, you can accurately track the calls generated from your advertisements. Additionally, by using one of the filters on the online reports, you can simultaneously track a specific ad’s effectiveness. This ensures that you maintain the maximum return on investment from your advertising dollars.

Experiment with ads, and stick with the ads that get the best response. Once you’ve found a responsive ad and ad medium, continue to track the response. All ads eventually lose their effectiveness, but it could be in two months or two years.

Do not change the ad until it becomes unresponsive; change for the sake of change is just as unwise as continually running an unsuccessful ad. Even though the ad may not be new to you, it only matters if it solicits a response from the consumer.

Do not place an advertisement for several different reports. When offering your expertise as the marketing attractant, don’t dilute yourself by claiming to be an expert on everything. Refer to the paradox of choice: if a consumer is given too many choices, they often select none.

Many top producing agents tell you that their consumer direct efforts are their number one source of new clients. One of the main reasons their consumer direct efforts work so well is that they are marketing to their prospective database generated over the years. If a prospect doesn’t buy or sell within your timeframe, don’t throw the lead away. Place the prospect into a drip marketing campaign. The most expensive lead you’ll ever generate is a cold one, and the least expensive is a referral. You’ve already invested the money into generating the cold lead. Don’t waste it by throwing it away.