Thoughts on Real Estate Marketing…

This morning’s headlines screamed about the dire things to come as Washington State slashes its budget. The article cited people losing jobs, services being cut, and on and on. The projected revenue shortfall is a whopping $5.1 billion. Then it went on to tell of the budget reductions necessary from the colleges and Spokane County.

Then I read the whole article. I read part of it twice, because the truth was buried in the middle and skipped over quickly.

That truth was that revenues are still projected to be higher than the budget for the current 2 year period – the shortfall refers to the increase that the Governor wanted to include in the new budget.

In other words, the cuts aren’t cuts. They’re reductions in the increase.

There’s a marketing message in here – but I’m not sure it’s a method we should try to copy. It is, after all, deceptive.

It’s kind of like selling a weight loss product. If you promise that taking your pill means the consumer can eat anything and everything without gaining weight – but you really mean “Instead of gaining an extra 20 pounds this year, with our product you’ll only gain 18 pounds,” then I think any customers who bought the product might be a bit miffed.

I think in the current economic and political climate we all need to look past the headlines and try to get the truth of the story. I have no idea why the media is pushing fear and panic, but we’ll all be better off if we don’t buy into it – and instead just keep on doing our work well.

Yours for prosperity,

Marte