What can "Legos" teach you about selling a house in a tough market?

For all businesses, marketing is far more important in a slow economy than at any other time in the business cycle.  Why?

Because when sales are slow, it is your marketing message that must be focused to get the attention of consumers that have a burning desire for exactly what you are trying to sell.

In this article I’ll give you TWO examples of how you can focus your message and sell your listings faster.

But before I do, let’s take a quick look at how Legos was saved by marketing…

For starters, Legos is not an American company.  It is an old company that has been around since the late 1940’s, and its headquarters was in Germany.

The company was doing okay in their early years, but Germany was a small market in those days, and Legos had ambitions to expand to the U.S. market.

So, in the early 1950’s the company used the same marketing message that worked in Germany to make their U.S. launch.  But the attempt failed miserably.

The company tried again only to get the same failed response.  It made a third run at the American market, and once again there was no response.

But on the fourth attempt, it made one critical change.  Legos hired an outside advertising consultant, Louis Rapaille.  Rapaille was known for “unusual” experiments to help businesses improve their advertising.  He steadfastly believes that companies are too close to their own situations to be objective.

So, to help discover the underlying problem for Legos, he set up an observation room at the Legos headquarters and watched how children actually play with them.  Guess what happens when you give German children a box of Legos?

They carefully unpack the box…they verify that all parts shown in the booklet are present…then they build exactly the few samples shown in the manual.

When Legos management saw this, they were not impressed because that is exactly what they imagined would happen.  But then, Rapaille brought in some American kids.  Guess what they did?

They ripped open the box…tossed the instruction booklet aside…dumped everything in a pile and started experimenting.  What this proved was there was nothing wrong with the product, the price or target audience—the only “problem” was the marketing message.  Everything was solved by literally changing one word!

In the German market Legos’ advertising message told parents to buy the product if they wanted to encourage their child’s inclination for engineering (something we now know Germans excel at).

Rapaille advised Legos to reposition their product for the U.S. market as a toy that would encourage creativity.  Legos management was highly skeptical of this minor change, but as soon as they tested the new ads, sales began to pour in.

As we all are aware Legos went on to be wildly successful in the U.S. market.

The moral is: the wrong marketing can keep a perfectly good product from selling, and it happens all the time.

This kind of marketing research is never discussed in the typical business setting, but it is studied constantly by the advertising industry.  There are many instances of reversing a sales slide by simply changing the marketing message.

Here are a couple of more famous cases:  Phillip Morris failed in its initial launch of Marlboro cigarettes.  It was aimed at women smokers.  The company took the same cigarette and simply changed the marketing by inventing the Marlboro Cowboy, and it became the largest-selling brand in history.

More recently, a failed new vodka brand was selling only a few hundred cases a year.  The packaging and marketing message were changed, and in two years it became the number one vodka brand (called Absolut Vodka).

What do all these examples have to do with YOUR business selling homes?…

How Houses Go From Unsold-To-Sold
By Changing the Message

We are no longer in a market where you can stick a sign in the yard and get multiple offers.  Here are two recent examples of what to do to get your listings sold…

EXAMPLE 1: In the first example, a home failed to sell in the traditional way.  The well-intentioned agent listed the home in MLS, had a sign in the yard, ran small ads in the newspaper, and used a typical flyer.

I took the same house and sold it for FULL price in 11 days by making changes in the marketing.

I did TWO things to improve the marketing message of this home and to get it sold fast…

1.  Changed the headline. The previous agent failed to mention that the home was small.  I actually used the word “small” in the headline.  So, why use such a “negative” word in the main heading?

That is a trick question because—to the right buyer—a “small” home is not a drawback, it is actually a huge benefit.  Besides, why gloss over an objection prospective buyers will discover anyway?  Doing so only attracts the wrong audience.

2.  Emphasized the primary benefit. Equally important as the headline, the previous marketing failed to stress the home’s primary benefit—the scenic and private back yard setting.

My ad stressed the “rain forest” theme.  When the message is properly executed…the right audience finds you.

Here’s my “rain forest” ad I created to sell this home…click the image below to download a pdf.

EXAMPLE 2: The second example involved a house in Lakeway (an area near Austin, TX) that had been listed three times and on the market a total of 18 months.  In all that time the seller never received an offer.

Each agent had used a typical flyer that simply told features of the home…the number of bedrooms, baths and living areas (sound familiar?).

Several key benefits of the house were never mentioned in the previous marketing.

It was on a double lot, had a 3.5-car garage, and was one of the only houses in this old section of Lakeway that had received extensive updating.

I simply used an ad that would attract prospects who valued these benefits, and the home sold in just under 45 days.

I don’t have a pdf ready for this “Lakeway” ad, but here’s a larger view of the ad so you can see how I emphasized the benefits right in the headline…

To wrap things up…it doesn’t matter if you’re the owner of Legos or the owner of a house, the principle is the same: the wrong marketing message will result in failure.

Start looking for these small tweaks to the message of your listings.  Remember, always always always, promote the benefits your audience wants in meaningful and specific ways.

[Ed note: Copyright Stan Barron.  Reprinted with permission.  If you, or someone you know wants to sell a house, please give Stan a call at 512-345-8585.  Also, many have responded to this post commenting that the Lego company is Danish and not German.  It is true, the company is from Denmark.  This article refers to when one of their headquarters was in Germany.]