Real Deal REInvestor Network

Designing a Marketing Campaign-- Determine Your End Goal and Work Backwards

Before designing a new marketing campaign of any kind, you need to determine your end goal and work backwards to determine the steps, processes, money and time you’re willing to invest in order to reach that business goal.  For example, is your end goal to wholesale a property? Is it to make $5 for every $1 you spend mailing this letter? Is it to create two new investor clients who put $100,000 or more with your private investor project?  Once you’ve determined your end goal and worked backwards, if you’re willing and able to spend the money and invest the effort to reach the goal, then put the plan in motion.  

I have a client who created an information product on “how to make money” that sold for $4998,  and I designed a sweet marketing campaign for him, which entailed a direct mail marketing package that included a $2 bill stapled to the top of a letter and a stamp on the outside of the package that said money enclosed. Now, he’s selling a product for $4998, so to me it makes perfect sense to be willing to spend $2 per customer if it increases your response rate over a regular letter. 

That client was not willing to do that campaign that I put together, but the letter started, “Hey, you might want to know why there’s a $2 bill stapled to this letter. I want you to know I’m so confident that you’ll want my product that I’ve stapled your change to this letter in advance.”  That’s a cool little strategy to grabs people’s attention. In fact, in copywriting terminology it’s called a “grabber” when you staple or attach something to the top of a letter that grabs people’s attention.  

The end of the letter said, “If you’re not going to purchase my product, then I guess I just invested $2 in you.  You can feel free to invest it in yourself, or you can hope to go get lucky at the local race track,” and I’d give them the address of the local racetrack close by in the letter. We all know what $2 is good for.  And what does $2 make you think of?  A lot of people think of it as a lucky charm, because $2 bills are rare and uncommon. 

I played on that whole thing in designing this marketing campaign and in essence said, “Look, if you’re not going to invest this money in my product, then this isn’t your change from your $4998 product purchase sent in advance, but I still encourage you to invest this money in yourself. Or, if you’re one of those people who thinks that success is about luck, you can take this $2, walk down to your local racetrack and see if you can win some money, because that may be the only way you’re going to get it.”  

It was that kind of tone without saying that. Why did the client I designed that marketing campaign for turn it down?  I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t confident enough in their product that adding that into the mix would help them get that added number of sales to offset the cost of having a 2 dollar bill in every direct mail piece they sent out. However, a future client did use the idea, and those of you who want to know what the results were can contact me one-on-one sometime and I’ll let you know. It’s impressive. 

I tell that story to tell you this—begin with the end in mind when you’re designing a new marketing campaign for your real  estate or any business.

This is the process I use to start a campaign for real estate investing, an info product for myself, or a project for a copywriting or consulting client.  Determine your end goal and work backwards.  It’s that simple. 

Once you’ve designed and get a marketing campaign rolling, you’ll have the confidence that when you send a certain message through a certain medium to appeal to a certain market, it will make money.  All you have to do now is tinker with process a bit. Work on it to get it better and produce better results. I’ve seen certain marketing messages go from a 1.2 to 1 ROI with testing to a 10 to 1 ROI and it’s just by tinkering with those three variables – message, medium and market– that once you have a winner test a little and do it again. 

One of the coolest ways to get feedback very quickly is Google AdWords, which I am not an expert in, but what is cool about it is that you can put an ad up and find out the next day whether it worked or not, or whether you lose your shirt so don’t do that if you don’t have a lot of funds. 

I hope that you have found this article helpful for when you are designing new marketing campaigns. 

Remember to simply determine your end goal and work backwards from there.