What do you do when someone isn’t ready to buy right now? Write them off and move on to riper fruit? Hopefully not. Lead nurturing is the process of taking someone from the “interested but not ready to buy” status and moving them to “ready to close.”

Many agents get so caught up in just getting new leads in the door that little consideration is given to how they should be handled once they have them. This is a huge mistake that could lead to lost business and a lot of wasted effort.

What if you could spend the majority of your time offering solutions for people with similar needs? By engaging in a practice called Precision Marketing, you can identify the ideal clients and situations for you and go about systematically targeting prospects who fit that criteria.

Even if you do nothing else online, as a business-owner, you have to have a web site. It’s just not an option anymore. People expect a legitimate, successful business to have a web site. Need more convincing? Here's 10 more reasons you need a web site.

For agents working with a small marketing budget, the Internet is a virtual playground of relatively inexpensive (or downright free) opportunities to raise awareness about your services and build your brand.

So you’ve established your target market and brand positioning with your Marketing Plan. Now it's time to choose the appropriate marketing channels to use in reaching out to prospects. What makes the most sense for you depends on your target audience, the product you’re selling, your budget, your timeframe and your technical know-how.

Of course It’s easier to jump from tactic to tactic—send a sales letter, run an ad, do a seminar—without taking the time to develop a plan for what you want to accomplish with your efforts. But it's not more effective. Developing a marketing plan will help you establish exactly who you are, who you are trying to reach and what you are trying to accomplish.