“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.




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