With all the tools at your disposal, measuring the success of a digital marketing campaigns is easier than ever. So, it’s surprising to learn that one in three estate agents doesn’t know what they’re achieving for their marketing spend - or in some cases what the point of it is.  

There are plenty of reasons for this, from lack of time to ignorance about the more complex areas of digital marketing. In some cases, agents are paying relatively small amounts of money for search engine optimisation or pay per click advertising campaigns – less than £200 a month. But without proper tracking and analysis of results, linked back to business goals, this is money down the drain. Running a good digital marketing campaign, which generates results starts with a proper strategy, clear goals, detailed tracking, regular reporting and analysis.  

Every penny you invest in your campaign needs to refer back to this strategy and your goal, whether that’s raising awareness of the brand, generating leads or conversion - in other words getting more buyers on your lists, encouraging vendors to book a valuation or signing up more landlords to your management services. 

When it comes to planning a measurable digital marketing campaign, there are seven steps that you need to put in place.

1 Set your goals

You need to define your goals from the outset if you want to be successful. For example, you might want to acquire more properties to sell. You should make your goals quantifiable, so set a target of a 30% increase in properties on your books.

2 Establish a benchmark

You need to understand what you have been achieving before the campaign in order to demonstrate results. So, if you want to acquire more vendors, look at how many properties, on average, you’ve been taking on over the past six to 12 months. This is your benchmark to check your progress after the campaign launches.

3 Decide how you will track your results

Before you start your campaign, you need to put in place the mechanism for tracking success. This should include visits to your website, clicks on your call to action, phone calls and enquiries. You can use Google Analytics to measure your website traffic, and the tracking provided by your email marketing software to monitor newsletters, but you need to put in place processes for the off-line elements of your campaign.

4 Run your campaign

With everything in place, it’s time to start engaging with your audience by delivering your digital marketing campaign.

You can read more about this in detail in our other blogs but, essentially, everything starts with your ideal audience and the messages and channels you need to reach them and drive them to your site.

5 Measure and report

With your campaign well underway, you need to start extracting the results from the tracking process you put in place in step three and reporting your results.

6 Analysis

This stage is about taking your reports and really interrogating them to find out how your campaign is working. Look at the leads you’re generating and your conversion rate and work out which channels and which messages are resonating best with your ideal audience.

7 Act on the data

If your analysis shows that something is working well and bringing great results you may want to invest more in this element of the campaign. Conversely, if some of your tactics are not achieving your objectives, you need to decide whether to divert your investment elsewhere.

For many estate agents this level of planning and analysis is something they wish to outsource to a marketing specialist. If you go down this route, be careful to give your contractor a clear brief. This should include your business goals, your benchmark based on past performance, and the level of information and analysis of results that you wish to have reported.

If you are already running a marketing campaign, but are not sure what you are getting out of it, we suggest you go back to step one and define your goals before jumping to step six. A good data analyst will be able to tell you what you are gaining, and make recommendations for improvements in order to achieve your goals.  

To find out how Art Division can help your agency click here