Greetings Floor Dealers!
5 Tips for Setting up a Target Farm
The real estate industry has been using the farm concept for years, allowing Realtors to build their businesses successfully. There is no reason you as a flooring dealer can’t “steal” this strategy for our industry.
Marketing farms work basically just like agricultural farms. You plant the seeds, water and cultivate them, and then reap the harvest. And like an agricultural farm, a marketing farm is not a one-shot deal. It’s something that takes time and patience, but it can mean HUGE results and ongoing profits once you have established it.
Here are the steps you’ll learn for planting a farm:
1. Determine what kind of farm
2. Determine the size of your farm.
3. Plant the seeds
4. Water and cultivate the seeds
5. Reap the harvest
Step 1: Determine the kind of farm
The kind of farm is really the niche you’ll be marketing to. The first farm you should set up is your past client farm. (Instructions on how to do this are spelled out in great detail in the Rapid Launch program.) Your past clients represent the most profitable farm you can possibly maintain, so until you have your past client farm set up, I don’t recommend setting up any other farms.
So for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume you already have your past client farm up and running. What other kinds of farms could you establish? Well, the thing to keep in mind when selecting a farm is, “Who is my ideal client?” What is their income? Age? Number of children? Credit rating? Where do they live? What magazines do they read? What kind of cars do they drive? Etc. Here’s a partial list of potential farms that would contain your ideal clients:
Geographic farms—select certain neighborhoods that meet your criteria for the ideal client
Demographic farms—income range; age; gender; number of children; credit worthiness; etc. Demographics that match your ideal client.
Profession-specific farms: Doctors, attorneys, nurses, dentists, etc.
The idea is to create a specific list of traits of the ideal client you currently have, or would like to have. The clearer you are, the more accurately you can pinpoint your message and who you deliver the message to.
Step 2: Determine the size of your farm
Most advertising is done “hit-and-run” style. A flooring dealer buys a list of 20,000 people (the list is usually chosen in some ridiculous, arbitrary fashion), and he mails one time to it because that’s all he can afford. Therefore his marketing is a mile wide and an inch deep. Hit and run.
Farming takes a different approach. The size of your farm is really a function of your marketing budget. How many people can you afford to market to each and every month? If you have a “farm” budget of $1200, and it costs $1 per month per lead to communicate with that farm, then your farm should be no larger that 1200 contacts.
Step 3: Plant the seeds
The “Connect Campaign” in Module #2 of the Rapid Launch is a seed-planting strategy. It plants the seeds with your previous clients. The letters in this campaign can be quickly and easily “tweaked” to connect with a new farm.
Step 4: Water and cultivate the seeds
Module #3 of the Rapid Launch, “Building and Maintaining a Herd” is also a “water and cultivate” strategy, and it details how to nurture the seeds you have planted. A great way to nurture your new farm is with the monthly Home Advisor client newsletter. You’re already doing it for your previous clients, so it takes ZERO extra effort to have the printer produce extra copies for your farm. Also, send your farm any specials you are offering to your past clients.
Step 5: Reap the harvest
As you get new clients from your farm, plug them into your Reticular Activator campaign (Module #6) and farm them for referrals with your Referral Rewards program (Module #4). Gather testimonials from them (Module #4), and send these out to your farm.
Okay, let’s look at an example putting this all together:
Step #1—Determine the kind of farm.
You decide to target an upper-end subdivision that has a high percentage of people who are your ideal client.
Step #2—Determine the size of your farm.
Your “Farming” budget is $500 per month, so you select a 12-block area within that subdivision that has 500 homes.
Step #3—Plant the seeds
You send a “tweaked” version of the 3-Step Connect Campaign.
Step #4—Water and cultivate the seeds.
You send them the Home Advisor each month, along with any other marketing you send to your past clients.
Step #5—Reap the harvest.
Plug all clients into your Reticular Activator campaign, Referral Rewards program, and gather testimonials and photos. After the installation, they are now part of your past client “herd” or “farm,” and they get plugged into whatever marketing system you have set up for past clients.
To further cultivate your farm, each time you get a client from the farm, send a letter or postcard with the testimonial and photo from the client to everyone in the farm. Use a headline like, “How Your Neighbor, Mrs. Johnson on 1234 Jones Street, Just Got the Flooring Of Her Dreams.” Include a special offer for “Neighbors of Mrs. Johnson Only.”
This same technique can be used for demographic, geographic, and profession-specific farms. Just remember to keep the farm small enough so that you can afford to market to them each month. It’s better to have a farm of 200 that hears from you monthly than 5,000 that only hears from you once a year.
Keep in mind that even though farming is extremely effective, it’s still a “cold” marketing technique: in other words, you’re going after people who have no prior relationship with you. And like any cold marketing, it can be expensive to get a new client. Therefore, it’s critical that you have your Reticular Activator Campaign, Referral Reward, testimonial, and “Herd” strategies in place before doing a cold farm. Your biggest profits will come from the referrals generated from “farm” clients.
To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”
Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
See what real, live dealers are saying!