I'm considering marketing a condo complex with 51 units. I thought every month might be a good target. My costs are the costs of stamps and the cost of post cards (100 for $50.00. What do you think? We're condos so I am afraid of going door to door with these...I think it's in our bylaws that there won't be any soliciters.

I'd like a way to do this cheaper however. Does anyone have any thoughts, or do yo u whink it's not practical to do it? I was hoping a monthly mailing would keep my name out there until we get to the Spring market, which I hope might be a touch better.

Thanks for your thoughts

Try http://www.tpmco.com. It might be a bit more expensive then what you would do on your own, but you don't have to think about it as they do it all automatically. I would rather pay a little extra a month then have to set aside a morning doing postcards every month. I lose motivation so I would soon stop doing it.

Try http://www.newmethodmarketing.com

I visited their booth at NAR and they have a very large mixture of post cards (two sizes) that included various messages for different target market.

What about door knockers? With postage getting so high, it could be a savings to hire someone for a few hours to deliver them to every condo.

I do a monthly mailer myself. I do bulk mailing, but that has to be 500 or more pieces to get the discount.

In my opinion, direct mail is worth it if done correctly. My bulk rate is 24 cents a piece.

Get yourself a regular farm of at least 500 homes. Then your free to tack on any other mailing things you want to try. For instance, I will be doing a buyer only piece in Feb to about 300 apartment units. Since I already have over 500 I do monthly with other farms, I will still be able to do them with the discount.

An interesting note is that I have been getting really good results with my mailers. I only started them in September, but have gotten about 4 leads per month from them. Way more than I figured with the current market and season.

I also walk a farm area of homes. These get a newsletter delivered to their door. I don't knock, just leave the item. I do these to about 300 - weather permitting.

My single suggestion is to create an original piece to send out. All the "easy" ways (IE: using a NAR template or some service that creates your content for you) might feel like a deal, but the stuff that really seems to work is the stuff that I make myself. My currently mailer is an 8.5x11 sheet folded once with listed and sold data for that homes neighborhood along with data about the city and county. The key is making the piece specifically relevant to the person your sending it to.

Good Luck
R

Ferne to marketing such a small area probably won't get you a sufficient return on your investment of time and material. Have you given thought to increasing your numbers by say, trying other dwelling in the same geography? Outside of direct contact you're only going to see a 1 to 2% return on whatever marketing activity you engage in so you really want to up your attempts to increase your closed transactions.