“Yeah, Sure You’re Going To Build a Pool and Restaurant … “

errrr… Aspiring Land Developer - Subdivider - Marketer?


So how do we as marketers affect word-of-mouth?


Here’s how I did it once:

With one partner, I bought 202 acres on Bear Lake [now known as Harbor Village]. The property had been historically used as a raspberry patch. There were no structures on the property. We cut in a nice gravel road and staked out boundary corners for Raspberry Patch Estates No. 1, creating “beautiful building lots." They were .28 acres and had a drop dead gorgeous view of Bear Lake – like most all other property on Bear Lake..

My long range plans included a club house, tennis courts, a swimming pool and other amenities in addition to the lake view.

But sales were very slow.

In a sales presentation I showed potential buyers drawings of the future restaurant, swimming pools, etc., and then we’d inspect the building lots.

"Yeah, sure you’re going to build tennis courts in this dead raspberry patch."

The concept of owning a beautiful lot with a view of the lake didn’t seem to be working – as the prospects gazed at dead raspberry bushes.

Mercy ...

We needed some packaging, man. Some vision. Some word of mouth …


--


So I hired a D-8 Caterpillar and sort of dug a foundation (...basically just a big hole. We didn't measure anything...) for the restaurant and swimming pool right in the middle of the dusty old dead patch of raspberry bushes. At least it created a huge pile of dirt that looked like something was happening. The Cat cost me about $750.

Then I called up a lumber company in Logan, UT and had a truck load of lumber delivered right next to the hole in the dirt. The lumber was about $600 and it stacked up real high.

Some lathe stakes with bright orange ribbon flapping in the breeze finished off the vision.


I did not change my sales presentation one word. It was precisely the same presentation, word for word, I’d been using since Day One for almost two years. My lot sales immediately picked up. I sold out the first subdivision in four months, after two years of working on it.

Subdivision no. 2 was engineered and about ¼ of it sold out in two months or so.






One afternoon I heard a guy in a pickup truck at a local gas station telling the cashier how cool he thought the new place would be.

I asked the cashier what he was talking about -- and it turned out he was talking about my project.


My restaurant. My swimming pool and my tennis courts. Sweet. Very sweet.

A lot of folks started talking quite a bit about it. The power of an unsolicited comment was phenomenal.

Buzz versus hype. Word of mouth vs. advertising.

I've since moved on to other projects, but yes--I eventually did use the lumber and the excavation and built a pool, tennis course, and a restaurant.

The restaurant building along with some condos are situated in the blue-roofed "light house" building at the entrance of Harbor Village @ Bear Lake in Garden City, Utah.




From My Porch








Prof. Mike @ Class Star®




ClassStar offers two, 3-hour core courses. Your business and referrals are appreciated.

The Porch weblog and all contents herein are © 2009 Mike Ballif. All rights reserved.

Why Marketers Have More Fun - And An Advertising Recipe

The Promotion Element -- Why Marketers Have More Fun.

We consumers are the central focus and intended recipients of someone’s message — a promotional message, e.g., advertising. As agents we hope our adverts reach a potential client. This communication effort and the strategies behind all our messages [and others we observe] are what we do as marketers to effectively communicate with our intended audience.

"Effectively," in this case means we predict that we will persuade or remind or convince our listeners--our customers in our attempts to create and further sustain our relationships with them.

A common misconception is that marketing is "different" than advertising. Another misconception is that marketing is the same thing as sales.

Promotion is one of the Four P’s of the marketing mix. Promotion is communicating information between seller and potential buyer or others in the channel. The purpose is to influence attitudes and behavior. ("Check out my listing." "Check out my professional property marketing services.") Promotion’s main job is to tell target customers that the right Product is available at the right Place at the right Price. We can develop strategies employing many promotional elements to get our message out.

How did you decide what kind of computer to buy, where to buy it, and how much to pay for it? All of you, and/or someone in your household heard someone’s message about the purchase of a computer. I’d imagine most of you sought out someone’s advice about computers. This form of messaging is better described as "word-of-mouth."

Can we really generate word-of-mouth really advertising. Yes we can, and I’ll supply a few techniques and maneuvers in future discussions.

There are many examples and methods of promotional techniques. How about the airplanes that pull banners behind them while we’re sitting on the beach in Maui, suggesting that we need to buy a T-shirt that says "Maui" on it? If a T-shirt store can hire a plane to pull a banner advertising $20 T-shirts, maybe we real estate marketers can find some success in this method over a several hundred thousand dollar property?

Do you suppose that maneuver could start a bit of word of mouth?

Say, “Yes.”

Maybe you've seen the Salt Lake Bees using the message in the sky technique lately…

Here’s a good recipe for writing adverts…

AIDA

Remember this moniker the next time you run a classified ad, or create your property information flyer: AIDA.

AIDA = attention, interest, desire, action.

Create your promotional message based upon the AIDA recipe.

--

Attention – Interest – Desire – Action.

We must first gain Attention.

Do that with a photo, or a good headline, a car on a mountain top near the start of the alpine slide, or with a banner in the sky.

Next we must evoke the viewer’s Interest.

Good facts, good comparisons, or something unusual that may be of interest should work:

"This used car was only driven by a grandma to her bridge club on Wednesday nights. She did that for four years, and that’s why there’s only 1,200 miles on the odometer."

“The home theatre in this property has shown Star Wars 427 times...”

The next step is to create Desire:

"If you buy this car you will sleep better at night."

“If you buy this home, Mr. Bachelor, the swimming pool will assure you of all the single women in the neighborhood stopping by to clock in some pool / tanning time.”

Finally, call for Action:

"Buy it today before someone else does. I’ve had thirty three calls about it since 9:00 AM."

Of course, a disclaimer here about puffery vs. factual data is in order…but I think you get my point.

---

The foregoing is a fun exercise, but it’s not really quite that simple in practice. Obviously no one buys something just because we tell them to. Advertising can only "work its wonders" in conjunction with and reliance upon other components of the promotional strategy. Properly designed strategies include many more elements.

There’s an advert by McGraw Hill that appeared a few years ago in major trade publications. It shows a conservative gentleman, presumably the decision-maker, sitting in a chair listening to a salesperson. The advertising copy says:

I don’t know who you are.

I don’t know your company.

I don’t know your company’s product.

I don’t know what your company stands for.

I don’t know your company’s customers.

I don’t know your company’s record.

I don’t know company’s reputation.

Now-what was it you wanted to sell to me?

I first saw that advertisement in a marketing text and it has always been with me. As marketers, we need a promotional strategy to pre-answer all of those questions. The potential buyer should know the answers to all of his questions before we ever get in front of him or her. Word of mouth is one tool to do so...

Word-of-Mouth

Word of mouth is free.

I remember my younger sister arguing with my mother over a pair of "cool" blue jeans. They were the coolest jeans the kids were wearing. My sister had to have a pair even though they were about $45 "overpriced."

Well, it seems that my mother found the exact blue jeans on sale at the store with a big red K. And they were about $25 less than the price at the "cool" boutique where my sister told my mother to find them. Not only did my sister want that particular brand of blue jeans, she insisted that my mother buy the jeans at the boutique -- and definitely not at the big red K store.

My sister, in addition to wearing the jeans, also needed to be able to tell her friends; "Yes, I got them at the "cool boutique," which, translated, means the higher price was eventually paid by my mom so that my sister could now be cool like her friends.

My sister’s peer group had through word of mouth, influenced not only what to buy, but where to buy it.

It's a very powerful manuever...

See my next posting for a real life example of word of mouth.

From My Porch

Prof. Mike @ Class Star®



ClassStar offers two, 3-hour core courses. Your business and referrals are appreciated.

The Porch weblog and all contents herein are © 2009 Mike Ballif. All rights reserved.

Solar, Domes, Nylons and Tires

Futurist Buckminster Fuller refined, tested, and eventually received a patent on the geodesic dome; a dome dwelling that you'll probably list or sell someday. I'll cover it in a future blog.

This time around I want to relate some real answers about installing solar power on our rooftops, nylons for the women that don't run, and car tires that don't wear out. Actually, it's more about finance than nylons; but please read on...

Buckminster Fuller proposed in his remarkable 1981 book "Critical Path" that "solar is the answer." Near the same time the book was published in May 1981, the price of gas hit an inflation-adjusted $ 3.21 a gallon.

Mercy.

Three bucks. And it appears we're heading there again.

As "green" is now one of the most important topics in real estate ("under all is the land"); Fuller's Critical Path publication before his death in 1983 is still perhaps the most important how to capture and use energy manual ever written. It has just taken us 20 or 30 years to get around to using his ideas.

Our solar technology inventions to date have largely been photovoltaic cells -- wafers and panel systems that convert sunlight into electricity. However, it seems the technology vanished soon after its introduction.

"The big energy companies probably bought the technology to get it off the market for now so they can continue selling fossil fuel ..." I used to tell my classes. I'd suggest that once the oil companies figure out how to put a meter between us and the sun, we'd see solar technology in the marketplace.

I still think I'm right about that one.

Then I'd further suggest to my classes some new colloquialisms derived from "after all, we put a man on the moon:" we ought to be able to manufacture tires that don't wear out...and nylon stockings for the women that don't run."

Perhaps they are possible... but Fuller's posit that solar is the answer was made in 1981. I'm not saying Fuller made solar energy technology viable; rather I'm pointing out Fuller has successfully made the case -- technologically and economically for global reliance on solar energy.

But residential solar energy systems probably have not been commercialized due to the cost of installing photovoltaic panels on our rooftops. It's something like $30,000 to do so. If we believe our own statistics that the average home ownership period is five to seven years, we'll pay to install the solar panels and subsequent owners of the house get the benefits.

So, we don't install them. $30,000 or so is a big bite. It's much easier to send our $90 per month to Rocky Mountain Power, eh?

I want to pass along two web links: the first to an article in "Miller-McCune - Turning Research into Solutions" magazine. A former city councilman in Berkeley, California has come up with a financing method to get residential solar panels installed. It has merit and will benefit all sides of the transaction. It also shows the financial capacity to make it work is already in place.

Check it out at: miller-mccune.com/science

The other link is to Buckminster Fuller Institute. bfi.org. Review this gentleman’s work, and you will win friends, influence your elders, grow two inches taller, find true love and double your sales. ;-))

From My Porch That Needs a Photovoltaic Panel On The Roof

•

Prof. Mike @ Class Star®




ClassStar offers two, 3-hour core courses. Your business and referrals are appreciated.

The Porch weblog and all contents herein are © 2009 Mike Ballif. All rights reserved.