Small Office, Home Office Information

Hmmm - I owe some people some apologies. Elsewhere I mentioned that yesterday I would post about why video blogs had the potential to be unattractive marketing tools for small businesses and I didn’t do it … but I will - just as soon as I can find where Toni filed something she wrote for another website.

Once I’ve found it I can be a bit lazy and copy and paste most of it and add a few comments and it will be done.

Until then I’ll just have to feel guilty about not doing it and I was sitting here feeling guilty as I read through this week’s property guide for another project I’m working on.

Right now the real estate industry in Australia is in the doldrums and even though we live in one of the five biggest growth areas in the country the local real estate market is basically dead.

So I decided to have a look in the property guide to see how the local real estate agents were selling house. Now many real estate agents will tell you that houses basically sell themselves and I don’t doubt that for a moment. However when you’re in competition with many other real estate agents who list in the same property guide you do have to do something about getting people to stop and actually look at the houses.

Now a good way of doing that is to include power words in the headlines. Power words are words that the human race is conditioned to read and act on. Not surprisingly in a 50 page property guide I found one power word … and I also found a lot of crap too.

So here are 10 lines of real estate crap just from the first few pages of our property guide.

1. Opportunity Knocks - but it better not knock too hard because the picture of the house makes it look as though it’s about to fall down

2. Vendor Says ‘Sell’ - ummm … don’t they all?

3. Budget Beater - are you trying to tell me that buying this house is going to destroy my finances?

4. Magnificent Home - Panoramic Views - then why are you showing me a picture of the pool in the backyard?

5. You’re Buying the Land - the Units are Almost a Gift - you really think we’re that stupid?

6. It Doesn’t Come Much Better Than This - I hope it does because the house in the picture looks rather plain

7. Is There Cheaper? - Yep two lines down and three photos to the right in their own ad

8. Looking to Grab a Bargain? Why are you showing me a photo of an entertainment unit? I thought this was the real estate guide.

9. Is There a Better Location? - you mean the claustrophobic kitchen in the photo is the best location in town?

10. A Little Unique - yep it’s got three gum trees in the front yard instead of the usual palm trees.

Actually #8 contains a power word that I missed - it’s a pity the agent couldn’t match that word with a view of a house.

Even if you have a product that will sell itself you still need to use the right words to attract the attention of potential buyers.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2006 at 7:40 pm and is filed under Small Business Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.