This far into 2014, I certainly hope that your marketing musts are fully in place and bringing in consistent leads! Buuuut just in case they aren’t, let’s talk integration — it’s probably the most effective way to build your business and get new leads and closes coming in consistently.

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 The internet has changed the face of marketing. (Understatement of the century, right?) Marketing avenues like websites, pay per click (PPC), email and search engine optimization (SEO) grow in popularity every day. And yet, as critical as it is to build a strong online presence, it’s equally as important to stick with your traditional print marketing that works and integrate it with your digital initiatives.

 Consider these response rate statistics for different media as published by the Direct Marketing Association in 2012. (Click through rate was used for online options.)

• Direct Mail: 4.26% response to house list; 1.44% to prospects
• Email: 0.12% to house; 0.03% to prospects
• Display ads: 0.00% to house; 0.04% to prospects
• PPC: 0.00% to house; 0.22% to prospects

 The key to maximizing all of the above strategies is to integrate your marketing. By integrating your marketing strategies, you produce a higher return on investment (ROI), thanks to improved results on both fronts. Together, your strategies complement each other to create a more effective marketing plan. It's a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" kind of situation.

 Why? There are two reasons…

THE BENEFITS OF MARKETING INTEGRATION

1. Targeting Ideal Prospects

Pay per click (PPC) is perfect for targeting people already looking for you (i.e. sellers, buyers, potential investors, etc.). The clients you get from PPC can tell you a lot about the people you should be targeting, too. Let’s say, for example, you are targeting a particular neighborhood where there are a number of distressed properties. But through PPC advertising, you find that a majority of the leads you are closing actually come from the other side of town. Suddenly, you know that you need to shift your focus. You can use this new information to purchase a highly targeted direct mail list and connect with higher quality prospects. Suddenly, you’ve got prospects coming in from two avenues (PPC and direct mail), each of which is helping the other.

2. Greater Exposure to Quality Prospects

The more marketing material you flow out, the more prospects and sales will flow in. And by mixing your marketing strategies, you can achieve the right balance of legitimate marketing tactics and affordable ones. You can target the leads your PPC ads generate with direct mail, which helps with credibility and response rate. In turn, you can also use postcards to drive traffic to your website, which allows you to use tools like PPC display ads to follow up with those online prospects until they become customers. This is much more affordable than following up via another direct mail piece.

Related: Real Estate Marketing: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

HOW TO INTEGRATE ONLINE AND OFFLINE MARKETING

1. Use Direct Mail to Drive Online Traffic

The key to integration is that you want to maximize the strengths of each strategy. Direct mail is a great lead generator, so use direct mail to drive new leads to your website where you can collect your info. This does NOT mean sending prospects to your homepage, though. Landing pages are a much more effective way to convert new prospects.

 A landing page is a single-purpose webpage that guides prospects through the sales process. Prospects are shown more info about what generated their interest in the postcard (versus just wandering around your website) and receive a special offer if they fill out a contact form. Now they are a full-fledged lead you can follow up with.

Related: The Down & Dirty On Direct Mail for Real Estate – Pros and Cons

2. Use Google Follow-up to Convert More Online Prospects

In the Age of the Internet, 95% of people go to a website before calling an office. So how do you follow up with prospects that visit your website but don’t leave contact info? You can’t, right? Wrong! Google offers follow-up ads that track all the visitors of your website and show targeted follow-up ads to the ones who don’t fill out a contact form. This way you can continue to get repeated exposure to these prospects until they return to your site or close.

3. Use Email to Convert More Leads to Sales

If you do both of the above steps, you should have all of this new traffic heading for your website and (ideally) leaving their email address. You can use these email addresses to send out a regular email newsletter that helps you stay in touch with prospects weekly, monthly, or on whatever other schedule you choose! You can also send a series of automatic emails called a “drip campaign” meant to slowly build trust and bring prospects closer to closing the deal.

Both newsletters and drip campaigns are excellent at keeping your name in front of leads, but you need email addresses to make them worthwhile! Make sure your website has ample contact forms for web visitors to fill out, so you can continue to build your email database and connect with online prospects.

Integrating your offline and online marketing strategies is really the only way to get maximum value out of your marketing. Start out by using these three concrete steps and start improving your prospect conversion results immediately.

What steps are you taking to integrate your marketing?