Thoughts on Real Estate Marketing…

… pants on fire! If I was more ambitious, I’d send that childhood chant to a few websites I visited today. But I’d better begin at the beginning… This morning at 6:23 a.m. my telephone started ringing. It took me a few seconds to wake up and realize what that noise was, so the answering [...]

Urgency and scarcity are good marketing tactics, but only if they’re true. False urgency and false scarcity can ruin a marketers reputation by exposing them as liars.

I write fundraising copy, and I enjoy being paid for my efforts. But… when I write a letter for a non-profit I do expect that the letter will supply many more times the dollars to spend on the cause than they paid me for the letter. I think that most other fundraising copywriters have that [...]

Today a friend and I went in to Spokane to the closing business sale at Linens n’ Things. The big signs out on the street holler 25% – 50% off! There were even people carrying those signs and waving them at passing cars. But guess what? We didn’t find anything for 50% off. Everything was [...]

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. [...]

This morning, as I sat reading the latest news about the mortgage bailout, I started to wonder about that. The reporter quoted one man who said that nearly every other home on his street had a for sale sign, and some real estate brokers are actively advertising that they have dozens of foreclosure properties for [...]

I’ve made up my mind – from now on curiosity can motivate the cat, but not me. When I get a promotion that doesn’t reveal the price, I’m hitting the delete button. How about you? Will you keep on clicking that buy now button just to see how much it is – and be drawn [...]

…Or are they just another way to help you part with your hard-earned cash? So far, in spite of the big hype that’s been showing up in my in-box, my research tells me that these are scam techniques. I think the concept of “truth in advertising” has entirely escaped these folks. But I’m willing to [...]