Leaving the Ferrari in the Driveway
Posted by: tim in tim vasko, technology, strategy, connected market space on Nov , 2009
I've seen it happen time and again. Beautiful, well designed web pages, with flash and media, that cost the equivalent of a Ferrari are delivered, deployed, the companies and executives are excited. It rolls out, like a brand new red Ferrari slowly backing out of the garage. Then - nothing! It sits there.
Where are all the visitors? The neighbors come by and ohh and ahh. The proud owners stand by the car, jump inside, show off the bells and whistles - this video does this, and look at our virtual tour. Cool huh? But, very soon, the customers leave, the neighbors (clients) are bored. The proud owners don't really ever start the engine. Then something gets them going about their regular day, and way of doing things. They shut the car door and walk away - expecting it to drive itself. There it sits.
The difficulty of marketing today, and using the web is that it is a business within a business - it requires expertise (a lot of expertise), discipline and an entirely new level of thinking. Marketing has never been easy. But with all of the Conversation Marketing [you can view my video here #2 in the series - for a more in-depth understanding of Conversation Marketing]- actively engaging your prospects and turning them into customers - keeping them as loyal clients, is more difficult than ever. We deliver a ton of tools to clients.
Unless the web enabled tools available are used diligently, and over time, the metaphorical "Ferrari" just sits there, with all of the power under the hood and it never gets seen by more than a few. It never gets to rev up the engine and drive sales, drive leads and deliver profits.
There is a lot of work here in this new media and marketing territory. There are a lot more people active on keyboards and screens every day, doing a lot more than just typing in search terms. The Conversation Market is alive and well. And more active than you can imagine. We also call this Word of Mouth on the Web TM. Those companies that are figuring out how to use this powerful word of mouth online are thriving - gaining more market share than ever across every business sector.
Here is a hint - it doesn't take a "Ferrari" - just an active and well managed, well thought out and consistent conversation will do.
It takes knowledge and determination to do the real work behind the technology to make the marketing successful. It is more complex, and getting more so every day. Go it alone? You'll soon find out how expensive and difficult a proposition that direction might be. Today Free and Cheap and Fast can be very expensive (to be discussed in my next post).
Odds are, you don't have the team in-house to do this on their own (unless you run an online marketing and software development company). Even if you do have a team, you'll need to support them with the proper tools - or they will struggle. We understand this challenge for companies and for marketers. Which is why we created the Connected Market Enterprise tools - and built our team of experts to help you drive your market.
It's time to get your business out of the garage and onto the right track. Within a few months, you'll have the market engaged and have harnessed the power of your market to drivers to deliver your ROI on your marketing budget. The fuel behind the "Ferrari" on the net is content and conversation - The Connected Market Space is the secret to driving your sales skyward.
Impressive web sites are fine. But just a Google Pay Per Click and a great home page can do more damage to the marketing budget than good for your bottom line. Check out the difference with the right tools and approach at CMAEON with The Connected Market Space.
“The rich aren’t as rich as they used to be,” said Alex Rodriguez, a Miami real estate agent with JM Group USA Inc., whose listings include a $2.9 million property marketed as a short sale because the price is less than the mortgage, leaving the bank with a loss. “People have reached the point where they can’t afford the carrying expenses of a $2 million home.”
Payments on about 12 percent of mortgages exceeding $1 million were 90 days or more overdue in September, compared with 6.3 percent on loans less than $250,000 and 7.4 percent on all U.S. mortgages, according to data from First American CoreLogic Inc., a Santa Ana, California-based research firm. The rate for mortgages above $1 million was 4.7 percent a year earlier.
As defaults on the biggest mortgages rise, borrowers such as Steve Holzknecht are turning to short sales to exit loans that now are larger than the market value of the house. In such a transaction, the lender agrees to accept less than a 100 percent payoff on a mortgage to expedite the property’s sale.
Holzknecht, 53, last month cut the asking price for his 7,280-square-foot home in Kirkland, Washington, by $550,000 to $1.25 million, lower than the balances of his two mortgages. Holzknecht, the former owner of Four Suns Inc., a Seattle luxury homebuilder that went out of business two months ago, constructed the Craftsman-style home in 2000. He declined to identify his lenders or the amount he owes.
Common Plight
“It’s not uncommon to see this situation on the high end of the market -- homes selling for less than it would cost to build them,” said Holzknecht’s agent, Joe Flick of Roanoke Group in Seattle. The property came on the market eight months ago priced at $1.85 million, he said.
Porter Michael Peterson, a 33-year-old linebacker for the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons, bought a mansion near Tampa, Florida, four months ago for $1.1 million -- almost half the amount of the mortgage taken out by the sellers three years earlier, according to real estate records. Reggie Roberts, a spokesman for the Falcons, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Short sales almost tripled to 40,000 in the first six months of 2009 from the same period a year earlier, according to data from the Office of Thrift Supervision. The bank regulator doesn’t break out short sales by size of mortgage.
Upside Down Mortgages
“You are just starting to see the tip of the iceberg with luxury short sales,” said Adrian Heyman, owner of Property Advisors, a real estate broker in Scottsdale, Arizona. “A lot of wealthy people are upside down in their mortgages and they just can’t afford the second or third vacation home anymore.”
There are 114,000 home loans of more than $1 million, according to First American. About a quarter of all mortgaged homes in the U.S. have loan balances bigger than their current value, known as being upside down or underwater, the data company said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than half its value as it tumbled to a 12-year low in March. The number of U.S. households with a net worth of more than $1 million, not counting primary residences, fell to a five-year low of 6.7 million last year from a record 9.2 million in 2007, according to Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm.
The financial-services industry was among the hardest hit by the recession. While Goldman Sachs Group Inc. set aside a record $16.7 billion in the first nine months of the year for employee bonuses, some Wall Street executives will see pay cuts, according to Johnson Associates Inc., a New York-based compensation-consulting firm.
Distress
Year-end bonuses for people at hedge funds, asset- management firms and insurance companies probably will drop an average 20 percent, the firm said.
“There’s a lot of distress,” said Tracy McLaughlin, co- owner of Morgan Lane Real Estate in Ross, California, north of San Francisco. “You have hedge-fund guys whose funds evaporated and a year-and-a-half later they’re still not working.”
The entry-level segment of the housing market was aided this year by an $8,000 first-time buyers tax credit that pushed resales to a 6.1 million annual pace in October, the highest since February 2007, the National Association of Realtors said in a Nov. 23 report.
President Barack Obama signed a bill last month extending the program into next year. The new version keeps the first-time buyer benefit and makes a smaller credit available to some move- up buyers. It can’t be used for homes priced above $800,000.