Thoughts on Marketing…

Readability and communication are more important than proper grammar in marketing copy. And yet, amateur marketers still pay too much attention to the rules their High School English teacher taught. The result is dry as a bone, stiff copy. And you know, nobody reads dry words until they’re required to do so. At the same [...]

Your goal in writing real estate ads is to “Put the buyer in the home” and cause them to need to see it in person. To do that, you need to paint some word pictures of both the physical and the psychological benefits of the home. That means instead of writing “large kitchen” you should [...]

Copywriting has plenty of rules for you to follow, and maybe even more than one that’s labeled “Rule #1,” but this one is too important to ignore. The rule is: Remember that it isn’t about you. Your marketing, if it’s to be effective, HAS to be about your prospective customers/clients and what they want or [...]

A few days ago I received a series of emails from someone whose name is well known as a marketer of “how to make money on line” programs. Once again, he was promising the sun, moon, and stars to anyone who signed up for his latest and greatest. I have no idea why I read [...]

Copywriters are always on a search for words that will persuade the readers. Just yesterday I spent nearly an hour on the phone with a client who was trying to decide on the best word to describe an offer he was making. It can be a long process, pondering each word and trying to decide [...]

When you write marketing copy, you hope to persuade. But as it turns out, some of the more popular words that marketers choose have the opposite effect – they ANNOY. A recent Active Rain post posed the question: “Which words make you disregard a marketing message?” Here are some of the replies: Paradigm shift hard-worker [...]

Use the rule of threes to keep your marketing message moving forward.

This message was originally posted on Active Rain, a little over two years ago. It was intended for real estate agents, but the principles apply no matter what business you’re in. So here is the question: Is writing your own marketing materials the highest and best use of your time? You as a real estate [...]

You don’t see case studies widely used in real estate marketing, or in any other small business but why not? Wouldn’t case studies lend more credibility than short testimonials? We know testimonials work in every service business. But we also know that they are not always believed. It’s too easy to write a testimonial and [...]

Back in 1993 when I decided to strike out on my own and left the real estate agency I’d been with for years, I had no clue about lists. I also had no clue about the importance of reaching back into the past to contact the clients I’d worked with before. Believe it or not, [...]