Appraiser Marketing Tips

Before you start working on your next piece of marketing, ask yourself: “What is my goal?”

Numbers are going to be your friend when choosing a goal; they’re verifiable.

A good goal isn’t something qualitative, like “I want more orders.” A good goal is something that you can quantify - something that anyone will be able to look back on in a few days and judge in seconds whether you achieved it. As always, be specific. Take “I want more orders” and ask some specific questions like, “how many?” “over what period?” “what type?”, etc. Drill down until you get to something like “I’d like to get 2 new FHA clients in the next 3 months.” This will help you focus your campaign and message when you go to write your e-mails.

Also, don’t overreach, and don’t shoot too low. Setting goals that are overreaching are likely to end with you frustrated and unhappy, even if your actual results were good. “20% read rate” or “4 new orders on these 200 e-mails” are examples that are well outside the bounds of reality for most appraisers, so don’t set them as goals.

Set goals that are realistic, like “one new order from this campaign of 6 e-mails sent to 200 people,” or “ a 4% read-rate.” Incidentally, read-rate is governed by two things: subject line and market perception, but that’s for another post.

For now, though, just concentrate on setting a specific, verifiable goal – then write it down.