Week in Review: 3 Block Quotes


Guy Kawasaki on viral vs word of mouth

Viral marketing is typically reserved for programs where the advertising is talked about as opposed to the product itself. A good example are viral videos, where the humor trumps the brand, ala Cadbury Schweppes drumming gorilla video—humorous partly due to the Phil Collins soundtrack, of course—and the parodies which followed). Word of mouth is the actual sharing of an opinion about a product or service between consumers. Your viral marketing only works if it gets people talking about the product itself. If it doesn’t, you might create some laughter and awareness, but there won’t be a change in sales.

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Greg Swann on single-property sites

If we can do it, we want for buyers visiting one of our single-property web sites to move into the home in their minds — just from the experience of the web site. If we can’t get them that far, we want to answer every question they might have, passively, from the web site — both to satisfy their itch to know and to establish our transparency. We want for buyers to long, to marvel, to exult about the tiniest details in our homes, treating our single-property web sites like the Christmas Wish Book. At an absolute minimum, we want for our sites to dominate their time. The more time they spend on our site, the less time they have to spend looking at other homes.

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Marc Davison on the development of the real estate web

I think we can all agree that building a relationship is the truest segue to creating a client. But when real estate emerged online over a decade ago it made a conscious decision to forgo that time honored method of building business. Instead, it lunged at the consumer. Baited. Switched. You know the rap.

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My fave Bad MLS photo this week is for all you Harry Potter and/or fixer-upper fans.