When real estate professionals think of short sale marketing there are many ideas that come to mind. Everything from attending education events, networking, getting certifications, creating websites and more are possible when it comes to generating short sale leads. The wide range of "marketing" activities can lead many unsuspecting real estate professionals down a path where they spend money but don’t get anything in return.

Before sharing with you essential marketing methods, consider the following rules before putting anything into action.

1. How much is an average transaction worth to you?

2. Do you have testing methods in place?

3. How are you holding your money accountable?

With these rules in place it will allow you to optimize your funds. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet. There isn’t one killer system that will bring you a flood of short sale leads for pennies on the dollar. The real secret to generating short sale leads is having a systematic approach to reaching your target market that brings you a commission check for no more than 7% of your average check.

Consider the following short sale marketing methods and what to attack with each one.

• Website – While there are many ways to do a website most websites

fail because they lack key elements. When you want to put a short sale website into action you will want to have a traffic strategy, conversion strategy, and follow-up methods in place. Most people just put-up a website and "hope" that the business comes in. Instead of hoping consider a balanced approach that brings traffic and customers from many sources.

• Direct Mail – Having a killer sales letter is great, but what happens when your response rate fails? Do you have an arsenal of postcards as well? Do you have optional headlines? Do you have different calls to action? Having different methods of testing for your direct mail will help you to consistently send out the right messages to generate leads.

When you have a website that has multiple traffic sources and direct mail that you can test with different headlines you will have two elements of a powerful short sale marketing system.

Discover the shortcut to having your own system in action today that includes postcards, letters, emails, and even social networking updates.