Title Marketing That Works

Are You Road Kill on the Information Super Highway?

Have you completely lost touch with what in going on in marketing your title company in the 21st Century?

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Do you hear about Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter in the news every day? Ever wonder where the money is in these social media sensations? Could you use these tools in your business? Come to our three seminars and learn the answers to these questions and any other questions you may have on social media marketing.

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How Much Should Your Title Company Spend on Marketing?

Estimating the marketing portion of your budget is no easy task. It often comes under the shadow of “darned if you do and darned if you don’t.”

You will hear people say (often as a complaint) that they spend nearly 10% of their budget on marketing. Then you may hear a comment from another businessperson that he or she “got the lion’s share of the year’s business off of a $500 brochure.”

This tells you that instinct and common sense are both involved in the process of setting a marketing budget. But here are some more definitive guidelines:

• If you are a start-up, plan on spending a sizeable chunk of your budget over the first two to three years will go to marketing, especially with electronic modes added to (not replacing) the print vehicles you need to use.
• If you add trade show presence to the budget, you can expect to spend hefty bucks to have a presence that meets, perhaps exceeds, the impact of your competitors.
• Direct advertising will boost the dollars you spend but will give you the best return over the long term.
• As a start-up, plan to spend 20 to 30 percent of your budget the first year or two on activities related to marketing. It should pay off.
• If you are simply carrying on with already established (and paid for) marketing activities, 3 to 5 percent would be more realistic.
• You also need to plan to seize opportunities when they arise. That means shifting – sometimes increasing – planned expenditures for marketing activities.
• If your “marketing” category includes personnel (in sales or, for larger endeavors, for a marketing specialist), those figures are in addition to the activity-based budget. After a few years, they can actually, with some economies of time and scale, figure into that marketing percentage of budget.

Your marketing efforts – for the most part – should pay for themselves. Sure, there are some things you simply must do to establish your company’s image, your brand, etc., especially at start-up. The point of marketing is to increase business. In other words, it must be effective. It might be to your advantage to look at marketing expenditures beyond the bare necessities of establishing an image in the following way.

If I spend “X” dollars to do this activity, how much new business do I need to generate to cover the costs of doing the activity? Can I reasonably expect to turn that amount of business? Can I reasonably expect to turn more than that? How much more? New business in addition to what is needed to pay the costs of the activity is an increase in your bottom line.

Unlocking the Hidden Value in Your Database

Accountants consider many elements of your business to be “assets”, including your building, equipment, cash-on-hand, and even “intellectual” capital. Success at any level of business requires maximization of the value of your assets. At a printing company, that means keeping the presses running. In a title company it may mean keeping employees busy with billable work.

While your accountant may not classify your customer database to be an “asset”, the database with your customer’s information could be one of the most valuable assets you own.

There are two ways to get more business. You can acquire new customers or get more business from your current customers. We have all read the marketing research stating that it’s much cheaper to sell to existing clients than to try to lure in new ones. Your customers know you! They don’t need to be goaded into crossing your proverbial threshold.

For many title companies, their customer database may be the most underutilized asset they own. While most title companies know they should market to their existing customers, few are successful at developing a strategy and implementing the tactics. Lack of time, lack of the proper tools (contact manager, data repository), and lack of investment are all reasons businesses may not be unlocking the value of their customer database.

All (yes, the definitive) title companies should market to their customers. The intensity that you do use your database to communicate and build relationships with your customers increases as the lifetime value (how long they keep doing business with you times how much the average customer spends with you every year) of your customer increases. If the average lifetime value of your customers is more than $10,000, which is very common in the title industry, you should start communicating with your customers right away. You are missing big business opportunities.

What can a title company do to communicate and market to current customers? There are many marketing tactics available – email, direct mail, in person or on the phone – to name a few. There are many different strategies – tell them about a new product or service you may offer, give them a discount on a particular product, ask for a referral, or just thank them for being customer. Understand that the mere act of touching them keeps you on the top of their mind. When it’s time to schedule a settlement they will come back to you.

Is your database a mess? Where should you start? Start by getting the information into a contact management application such as Act! or Goldmine (there are many others – Google “contact manager”). Even Outlook will do. Then decide your strategy – what you are going to say, how you are going to say it, who you say it to; and your tactics – direct mail, email, in person or on the phone. Businesses that faithfully commit to a database marketing strategy will see sales increases from 13% to 25% and even more.

Don’t be frustrated early in this process. In 3 months you will see some additional activity, at 6 months you will know you did the right thing, and in a year you will be hiring more people to handle the extra business.

Lead Management Program

This is a article from the TMTW Elite Gold Newsletter

Lead management is the process of watching and directing the conversion of sales leads into customers. An effective lead management process establishes a clear process for handling and distributing inquiries and leads. Breakdowns in the lead management process often occur when lead generation is viewed not as an ongoing conversation but as a series of campaigns without substantive integration. The desire to seek more leads, regardless of quality, without properly managing those on hand can also impair the process. Other detriments to sound lead management include the lack of:

• An effective lead nurturing program
• An effectively utilized or well-maintained database
• Conformance with the lead generation program in general

Effectively tracking and nurturing leads are often the most challenging aspects of lead management, particularly in companies where there is little or no sales accountability. In such cases, fully 80% of sales leads that go into the black box are ever seen again.

In lead generation, tracking leads is critical to you getting the full value from your sales and marketing efforts. A company is a collection of processes. Just as you would never try to complete a settlement without having a settlement work process, marketing and sales must have a process to track and nurture leads.

Visit http://www.titlemarketingthatworks.com/demo.htm to learn more.

Leveraging Cheap Database Technology to Solve Your Lead Generation Problems

What are your marketing problems? Has the recent tight market cut-off your lead flow? Are you getting less business from your current customers? Is it difficult to follow-up with your current customers and frustrating then prospects fall through the cracks due to lack of follow-up?

Whatever it is, the first thing you need to do is have a list and work that list. It’s no coincidence Real Estate agents call their list of customers and prospects their “farm”. With a good list and cheap database to manage your list you can grow your current customers and nurture your prospects and have a bumper crop. Your list will be a valuable part of your business.

You can get started here with less than $300. Just follow these next few steps and you will be on your way to solving your lead generation problems.

1. Go Online and Purchase a list. There are several sources for prospect lists. If you Google “real estate agent list” you will see several companies selling lists. You can define your list criteria demographically, by city, state, county, almost any way you would like. I recently bought a list for a client with 2700 agents (including email) for about $130. One of the same companies selling real estate agent lists also selling attorney lists. I have found the best source for mortgage lists to be infousa.com. These are the same folks who advertise on TV as “Sales Genie” prospect providers. They are more expensive than the real estate agent lists. You can also go to trade associations and purchase lists from them.

2. Put the list into a database. Having a database of your current customers and prospects can be a valuable part of the value of your business. This is well worth the time you will have to put in to do it right. If you purchase a list you will usually receive it in some format that will open in Microsoft Excel. From there you can import it into your database. You should also add all of your current and past customers. Don’t forget the box of business cards from last years real estate trade show.

For your database there are several inexpensive options. I recommend using Act! a customer relationship management database with many great features and many you may never use. Act! 2008 is available for only $99 at Costco and has a retail of $229. You can sync your Act! with Outlook. Another option is just keeping your list in Excel. Excel is a good format to do mail merge letters and mass mailings but is really tough to look things up and read the information. I know many people who use Outlook. It has many features to help you manage customer relationships.

3. Use the database to contact your current customers, past customers, and prospects. Start with your current customers. Send them a thank you letter or give them a call. Just tell them you were going through you list and just want to call and say thank you. 70% of all customer defections are due to neglect. This will stem the tide. See if you can reactivate old customers. Again, give them a call, send a letter. Remember to ask for referrals if it feels appropriate.
For contacting your prospects (the list you just bought) I recommend sending three introductory letters over a two week period and then follow up with a phone call. The letters will “warm-up” the prospect with some information about your company. You can include a small but distinctive gift in the envelope to get their attention and make your letter more memorable. I will send all OLTA readers three introductory letter examples. Just email me at cripley@smg2.com for your free letters.

Act! can do mail merges (merging your list or parts of your list into a single letter to do a mass mailing) to print tens or hundreds of the same letter. You can do this with Excel and Word but segmenting your list is more difficult.

If you follow these three steps, I guarantee you will get new business from your efforts. Make a commitment to spend time executing these steps. Don’t miss a week. Schedule some time on your calendar to focus on marketing activity and don’t miss it.