CPPDSM4013-Topic 4 - Review and Report on Marketing Activities and Plan

One of the most important things you have to do when formulating your marketing activities and plan is to put aims and objectives with them. Every plan must have an aim and a list of objectives. Every activity must have a purpose. Without these all plans and activities would be totally aimless...like a ship without a rudder.

Not only do aims and objectives give you general and specific directions but they also give you something to measure against. This is mostly quantifiable. In other words, it is something that can be easily measured. As an example (and keeping it relatively simple): let’s say your general aim was to rent a house. If the house is not rented within a normal rental period for that type of property than you could say that the advertisement did not work.

One of your objectives could be to get 20 inquiries for the house. If say you did not get any more than say 10, you would say that your objective was not achieved. There are many reasons why the aim and objective were not achieved: the house was too expensive to rent, or you set your inquiry objective too high. These matters must be investigated but they wouldn’t even warrant investigation if the aims and objectives were not set and measured.

Reviews make sense

Besides measuring against something that is quantifiable, there are a number of other issues around reviews. These include:

1 Must use reliable methods and verifiable data

Your methods of measurement and what you measure is vital. Some of the sorts of things that can be measured include:

• Number of inquiries off an advertisement
• Number of people at an open home
• These must be measured against other factors that could come into play e.g. if you were a major franchise, would you be getting so many inquiries anyway?
• Off the street inquiries.
• Number of people who actually act on the inquiry rather than just ring in i.e. number of genuine inquiries as opposed to non-genuine

2 The statistics for these inquiries must be recorded

Any of the above data that comes in must be recorded. This recording must be in line with agency practice so that anyone in the office can use and interpret the data not only for the property mentioned but for other properties that may be coming on the rental market at a later date. Recording of data must be in writing whether it is on a computer and on hard copy.

3 Staff trained in recording of data

In order to ensure that all data coming into the office is handled in the same way, all staff should be trained in how to record the data and what questions to ask if not all information is given. In this way, all data is consistent with each other and much more usable.

4 A review will assist if a property proves difficult to rent

If a property proves difficult to rent, there can be several reasons. However, the two most likely reasons are that the rental price set for the property is wrong or that the marketing is wrong. If in your opinion the price has been set right (and you will know this if you have done your market research correctly), then it is more than likely to be the marketing.

Let’s assume that you have the marketing right and you know this from the fact that you have had many inquiries. Then this is telling you that the price is wrong. If they are both right then there is an obvious problem with the property that you should know about and it appears that every prospective tenant you have taken through the property knows about it already.

The latter is more than likely an incorrect assumption as anything that obvious should stand out to a trained professional such as a real estate agent. If you have not had the inquiry base that you had assumed you would have from your marketing than it is time to go over the advertising and see what was wrong. One of a number of things could be at fault:

• Wrong media
• Right media but wrong source
• Poor positioning of the advertisement
• Wrong timing e.g. wrong day
• Poor language

Any or all could be at fault. You must investigate to find out why. When you have narrowed down the ‘marketing fault” not only will it assist you in getting the current property rented but will also assist in any future marketing that you may be attempting in the future.

Analyse costs and timelines

When reviewing your marketing efforts it is essential that you look at the planned costs of the marketing and how this compared to the actual costs. If you spent the planned amount and the results were poor you may review the costs as being too low or inadequate. You will need to make the appropriate adjustments.

If you didn’t spend the amount then it could be that you will have to make the adjustment for the future. The same can be said of the timing. Were the timeframes adhered too as planned? If not why not and how are you going to overcome this problem in the future?

Conclusions are reported on

Once you have carried out your investigations into the marketing of the property, you should draw up a report. This report should be for the benefit of the owner so that they will know a couple of things:

• Where their money went to that they gave over to your office to rent their property (all monies accounted for)
• Why the property didn’t rent with the appropriate marketing that you told the owner at the time of listing
• Why the property did rent but outside of the timeline or budget made by you at the time of the listing
• Comments made on the property by prospective tenants

A further report should be made for the licensee. This report can inform the licensee of what marketing was tried and whether it worked or not, the budgets for the property and any appropriate measures the office can make the next time they market a similar property.

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