SBA Case Study

Considering your marketing budget

Often real estate sellers do not know how much they want or can or should spend on marketing their properties to foreign buyers. Here we will not talk about sellers and agents who try to sell a mansion through a free ad in the Penny Saver newspaper... This is for people who are serious about selling their real estate properties to international buyers. Let 's look at some relevant data that the author has retrieved from the internet searches. The USA Small Business Administration puts marketing budget numbers from 2% to 10% of sales. Some other reliable sources say that marketing budgets of small to medium companies are usually from 1% to 12% of sales which is in full compliance with the SBA

You are a realtor and see that foreign buyers come and acquire properties around your country and area. You already have a website with your listings which is probably bilingual (your country 's language and English) or just English if you are an American broker. You hope to sell to foreign buyers 2 or 3 of your listings with the total price of $1,000,000 and thus make $60,000 in commissions on sales before the end of the year. Let 's assume that you are willing to find a foreign realtor to send you clients from their country over and have to share the commission with this realtor 50:50, so your commission will be $30,000 and to earn it you should spend 10% or $3,000 on marketing in this foreign country (as a matter of fact, entering the market is the most expensive, later your happy clients will refer their friends to you and it will be absolutely free...) What would be the wisest thing to do with your marketing money? Of course, your foreign language internet presentation has to come as the priority - with property descriptions, photos, details on the legal process for a foreigner buying a property in your jurisdiction, visas or waivers for foreign citizens, and more. It can be a separate foreign language website or a switch to another language or languages from your existing website (never a machine translation, it is toxic for