Why you must track your results:
If you don't know what's working and what's not, you'll have no way to increase your business.
Things aren't always as they seem. You can't guess whether something is working or not. You must keep track of the numbers and let them tell you.
Let me give you a few examples:
Ad A:
This is a small classified ad that runs everyday in the paper to generate buyer leads. It costs $350. You get 150 leads and out of those you get 6 sales.
Ad B:
This is a direct mail piece to generate buyer leads. It costs $600.00 to send it to 300 prospects. You get 3 sales.
Which is better? At first it may seem that A is better, but look at the rest of the numbers.
Ad A:
The 6 sales generated, had an average commission of $2,000. In other words, the clients generated in this example were low-end homes. You shouldn't complain, you have to take everything you can get in this business.
Ad B:
The 3 sale s generated had an average commission of $5,000. Plus, One of them has already referred 2 clients to you within 2 months of closing their transaction. These two transactions brought in another $4500.
As you can see, you made around $12,000 off the front end of A. Ad A cost you $500.00. That's $11,500.00 left in profits.
Ad B on the other hand generated $15,000.00 on the front end. The back end (referrals) is gravy! The cost of Ad B was $600.00, so that's $14,400.00 left - that's more profit than Ad A generated all together!
I hope now you can see why you must keep close track of your numbers. Some methods may be misleading where you think you are doing great but really you aren't.
Don't have an 'idea' whether something is working well. Know your numbers and know for sure!
NOTE: The above example is only hypothetical. As with any kind of advertising and marketing, you could make more or less than the hypothetical example above.
