Affinity Marketing - Pre-Decision Business Analysis
In our previous article, “Looking at Affinity Marketing Through an Analytic Lens”, we discussed the merits and potential of affinity marketing as a low cost, high converting real estate lead generating tool. We also set some expectations about the business development timeline.
The next step is to conduct a business analysis before investing in the infrastructure necessary to leverage an affinity program to generate home buyer and seller leads for yourself, your team or all your agents.
What questions do you need to ask and what resources will you need to ensure that your affinity program is successful? That depends on your goals and objectives, and those will depend on what role you play in your brokerage – agent, team leader, relocation department manager, independent or affiliated broker or VP of Growth for an enterprise-level real estate brand.
Regardless of your role, an affinity program can help anyone leverage their business relationships to generate real estate leads - if it’s set up and managed right.
You will need to consider several issues in order to do a thorough analysis: 1) conduct a needs assessment; 2) identify your goals and objectives; 3) crunch some numbers to identify the revenue potential; and 4) review the resources that you have and those you will need. Let’s get started.
1 - Needs Assessment
The needs of all stakeholders must be assessed so that your program hits the mark and solves their problems.
Clients, both relocation and affinity (local, regional, and national).
Suppliers – agents, lenders and/or movers (local, regional, and national).
Your goals, and that of Leadership - depending on your role.
Business development – you, your agents, or a dedicated sales representative.
Administrative team – customer service and website administrator and marketing.
2. Goals and Objectives
Clearly state the overall goals and objectives and align them with the needs of each stakeholder to ensure that your program is balanced and will produce the expected results. Again, your goals and objectives depend on your role. If you’re a team leader, your goal may be to generate quality leads to distribute to your team. If you’re a broker, you may want to find new tools to recruit and retain agents. If you’re an individual agent, you may want a low-cost way to generate leads just for yourself and earn income on leads closed by other agents. There are many goals and objectives for each role. Understanding these will help shape how you design, deploy, and manage your affinity program.
3. Crunch the Numbers Using Historical Data
Affinity Marketing Calculator
Based on actual real estate affinity marketing data collected over the past 11 years!
Ultimately, it’s all about the bottom line. Up until now, actual numbers have never been available. To assess the revenue potential of your affinity program, apply the conversion data provided in the previous article “Looking at Affinity Marketing Through an Analytic Lens” to your prospect/client base. This will calculate the annual revenue results that can be achieved using OPS’ proven methodology.
Alternatively, we’ve done the math for you! Click the button below to request a copy of our affinity calculator. We will email you the calculator where you simply input the employee/member population of prospective client organizations to calculate the gross referral fee revenue. This does not include commission revenue because it’s different depending of who has deployed the affinity program.
If you already have an active program, you can compare the results from our calculator to the results you are getting from your current program. This will help determine if a change is warranted.
4 - Review Your Resources
The next step is to assess the resources that you have and what will be needed.
Financial – includes funding for overhead, staffing, marketing, business development, technology. Your budget will depend on your role, and how big you want this program to be. If the revenue projections are favorable, be ready to commit the financial resources to support the effort.
Staff – you will need someone to get the business (Business Development), manage the calls and inquiries (Customer Service), and someone to maintain the relationships (Client Relationship Management). The goal is to generate leads, and keep agents focused on what they do best – closing deals! You’ll need to have someone on the receiving side to catch all the inquiries, scrub them, and then assign and monitor services. In our experience, we have found that one full-time counselor can handle about 600-700 inquiries a year, which results in hundreds of real estate assignments.
Technology – what are your options to deploy an affinity website? A flyer no longer cuts it. You choice will depend on what services and content you’ll be offering, who your clients are, code or non-code options, can one platform accommodate multiple co-branded client portals, each with a unique lead routing roadmap, who will be administering the site and more…
Service partners – other than your real estate services, assess which suppliers are needed, how many within each service category – lenders, movers etc. Are they local, regional, or national, and are their incentives appropriate and meaningful? Don’t forget that your affinity program is a marketing venue for your service partners. To keep them happy, they are looking for quality leads, not necessarily quantity.
Marketing – you’ll need sales and marketing collateral and materials, and develop ongoing marketing campaigns to help your clients build awareness for your affinity program among their employees and membership.
Your Final Report
Based on all the information gathered above, you’ll have the outline for a business plan that takes everything into account. If the results are favorable, you can proceed – with your eyes wide open.
The important thing to remember is that this is YOUR program, serving YOUR clients, for the benefit of YOU or YOUR agents. Therefore, it can be shaped to support YOUR culture through the business rules you apply.
OnePoint Solutions had 20 years of experience designing, deploying and managing affinity marketing and lump-sum relocation programs. We offer pre-decision consulting that helps our clients navigate the process of determining not only the potential of this lead generating program, but how to make sure it’s right for you - regardless of your role or goals. We offer a step-by-step approach and will guide you through all the decision points that must be considered BEFORE you invest your money, time and resources.
Contact us to learn more about our pre-decision consulting designed to get you off to the right start.