A Dollar is a Dollar

How are you planning on spending your money to market yourself in 2013?

Have you established a marketing budget or is your plan being made up as you go? Most agents marketing budget includes the plan to “spend money as I make it.”

This year is the time to start thinking about the ROI on your personal marketing efforts. Are you building recognition? Gaining new members to your fan base? Establishing a local brand that people know, like and trust?

Think about this; you could spend money on something that is superfluous and ego driven or you could spend your money on things that make a difference to a community, a group or an individual.

Assuming both paths lead to business, you win either way.

Assuming both paths lead to recognition (that is, the marketing is working) without immediate business, the only choice is the latter.

How Are You Spend Your Money?

$5,000 on a prominent billboard that everyone in your local market sees but doesn’t equate to a single lead or closed transaction…

Or…is it smarter to reach out to the local school in your community (or where your kids and/or grandkids graduated from) and endow 5 scholarships in the amount of $1,000.

Think about it.

Same expenditure, different impact.

One reaches thousands…maybe more.

The other reaches less people. Perhaps even only one family.

One path allows you to “see” my billboard while the other lets you “watch”your son or daughter get the chance to go to college or help pay for books, board or tuition.

$100 worth of postcards to strangers is the same cost as $100 worth of pizza and beers delivered to 4 clients who have earned your trust.

One reaches many but impacts none while the other impacts a few and might not reach many.

That’s not why you do it.

You do it to build relationships, solve problems and have fun.

A really smart friend of mine who has a brilliant marketing mind used to challenge people to remember that “a dollar is a dollar.”

How you choose to spend it could have a huge impact on you and those around you.