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Tell Your Clients - Read Before You Believe

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Services for Real Estate Pros with Marte Cliff Copywriting

This week I've been working on some web pages and blog posts for a San Diego website - so I started doing some research. I was looking for statistics about foreclosures, short sales, pricing, etc.

Imagine my surprise when I found these two results on Google - one above the other:

google results

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was even more surprised when I read the two posts and found that they were both correct!

One writer focused on the difference between 2nd and 3rd quarter 2010. The other focused on the difference between 3rd quarter 2009 and 3rd quarter 2010.

So... it all depends upon the message the writer wanted to convey.

Darn writers anyway...

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Phil Leng
Retired - Kirkland, WA
Phil Leng - Retired

Hi Marte,

Your post made me chuckle.

I have an accountant friend who offers the following criptic quote:

"Numbers are like people. If you torture them long enough, you can make them say anything you want!"

Phil

Jan 19, 2011 08:15 PM
Marte Cliff
Marte Cliff Copywriting - Priest River, ID
Your real estate writer

Phil - I love that quote, and it is so true. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said there are three kinds of lies. "Lies, damn lies, and statistics." (Or something like that.)

Jan 19, 2011 08:44 PM
Loreena and Michael Yeo
3:16 team REALTY ~ Locally-owned Prosper TX Real Estate Co. - Prosper, TX
Real Estate Agents

All information when shared is a form of opinion... We've known that we can tweak the data to show what we want the person to see....

Jan 19, 2011 09:36 PM
Liz and Bill Spear
Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH
Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Marte, And part of the reason I retain a natural skepticism about "news".  It's made to dance the way the author wants it to.  Watch the same with business reports all the time....the author can find one thing that didn't go right in a quarter and fixate on that, OR focus on all that went right.  Which direction do you think is typical :)

Jan 19, 2011 10:32 PM
Joe Kenny
Realty Executive Midwest - Darien, IL
Better Than Your Average Joe

Marte, Can you see me shaking my head?

Jan 20, 2011 01:48 AM
Marte Cliff
Marte Cliff Copywriting - Priest River, ID
Your real estate writer

Loreena - It reminds me of science classes, when the instructor said that you could start with what you wanted to prove, then pick the right experiments to do it.

Liz and Bill - Unfortunately, far too often they want to focus on what's wrong. I think that practice in individuals is what makes so many people fail to thrive.

Joe - Yep, I can see you!

Jan 20, 2011 06:08 AM
Not a real person
San Diego, CA

It’s all in how you market things.

I’m always skeptic about percentages, though. Here’s why:

Let’s say you have two companies, A and B. A increased its sales by 100%. B increased its sales by a mere 1%. Which would you rather have?

Without knowing more, everyone would choose A. However, A only increased its sales from 1 unit to 2 units. B increased its sales from 100 to 101. Usually 101 units will bring in much more money that just 2 units.

However, what if those 2 units were space shuttles, costing $5 billion each, and the 101 units were matchsticks, which cost a penny each?

Isn’t mathematics and marketing wonderful? J

Jan 20, 2011 04:19 PM
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