“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.