"If you don't know where you've been, you'll never get where you want to go," my Grandpa Gooder always said. It's especially true with real estate marketing in today's market. Using the hindsight of year-end benchmarks is the best way to guarantee success in the coming year.

Whether you are an experienced real estate pro -- or relative rookie -- your first step toward thriving in tomorrow's "opportunity market" is to look into yesterday's rear-view window for what worked - and what didn't.

By focusing on five key benchmarks, you can create a road map for your 2008 marketing strategy that can avoid the potholes ahead. Here are five year-end benchmarks that are critical for your new-year marketing success.

1. Start with your numbers.

What was your gross commission income and percent of profit? How many total transaction sides did you have, and of those, how many were dual transactions? Single transactions? From your sold listing transactions, how many were your buyers? How many were co-op buyers? What was your average transaction sales price? What was your average commission? What was your share of all transactions in your area? What were the sources of your transactions: marketing, referrals, repeat clients?

Run your numbers and the areas needing attention will be obvious. Concentrate on your weaknesses. Your strengths will take care of themselves. Keep these figures year-over-year and the trends will become your roadmap to being smarter and richer. When recorded year after year, your activity history is invaluable, especially if you plan to sell your practice in the future.

2. Nail down your marketing expenses.

How much did you invest in marketing last year? What percentage of your income was spent on marketing? What was your marketing cost per transaction?

Be sure only to include your direct marketing expenses. An up-front capital investment is not a marketing expense; only the using of that capital investment is a marketing expense. For example, your yard signs and brochure boxes are "tools of your trade" and a capital expense, however, the property flyers that go into the brochure boxes are a marketing expense.

If cost-cutting is called for, remember to "cut back, don't drop out." Stop marketing and only one thing happens: Nothing. Focus on moving your marketing investment from what didn't work to what did work, and trying new ways of marketing that are focused on opportunities in your market. For example, if local listings are expiring, ramp up your expireds marketing, or, if middle-market homes aren't selling, focus on luxury properties, or, if buyers are hesitating, launch a "Buy or Rent" service. Be creative.

3. Establish lead generation, prospect follow-up and long-term contact expenses.

Lead Generation: What are you spending on advertising to "market strangers?" This includes production of marketing tools, advertising placement, postage, mailing services and Internet fees.

Follow Up: Figure out how much you are spending on lead management of "active prospects." This includes preparing free reports, pre-listing kits, videos, relocation kits, personal brochures, printing, postage, telephone expenses and gifts.

Past Clients: How much are you spending on marketing to your long-term contacts? This may include specialty items such as calendars or magnets; subscriptions, movie tickets, cookies, gift certificates (referral thank-yous and closing gifts); newcomer parties, client events; meals and entertainment.

4. Track your prospecting activities.

Marketing and sales are a numbers game. To be able to predict and duplicate your performance, you need to know your ratios and numbers. To do this, you need to create a record-keeping system that tracks the number of attempts, contacts, leads, appointments and closings you make.

When you chart these numbers from attempts to closings, you will see relationships, or ratios. These ratios will give you invaluable benchmarks for improvement. For example:

• How many attempts does it take to make a contact?

• How many contacts to generate a lead?

• How many leads to land an appointment?

• How many appointments to close a contract?

• How many contracts to settle a paid transaction?

For example, how many registrations of website visitors, who sign-in to search properties through your IDX home search, does it take to convert to one paid transaction? Conventional wisdom suggests the average is 2 percent if only new listings by e-mail are sent as follow up, while the conversion rate can reach as high as 15 percent when telephone follow up is added to the mix.

5. Complete a benchmark worksheet for your prospecting activities.

By keeping detailed records of your lead generation activities and their results, you can track the most important ratios for your practice. There is no "right way," only your way that fits your practice and your market opportunities.

Tracking will allow you to pinpoint your marketing strategy's weaknesses and strengths. You may discover that your marketing activity is almost completely directed toward lead generation, with very little focused on prospect follow-up or long-term customer contact. If so, fix it. You'll need to rebalance your efforts to give more attention to the neglected steps.

A balanced attack always will make your marketing work smarter, not harder, which will be reflected in a better bottom line. Now the exciting part: The 2008 market offers huge opportunities to the nimble and flexible -- if you know where you're coming from.

"Hindsight is the best foresight," Grandpa Gooder liked to say. He was right.