Flickr by Sash's Kitchen-Studio Photography
This topic holds a lot of fascination for me, as I see it play out every day. Where I live in Virginia Beach there have been three tragic deaths in the last year from people coming out of bars at 2:00 a.m. and crossing Shore Drive, where they met their demise. As I said, tragic. But I’m guessing alcohol was involved and I know these folks weren’t crossing at a marked cross-walk or traffic signal. An unfortunate game of human dodgeball and we all know who wins that. So how did the City respond to the outcry for “Shore Drive Safety!”. Well, of course, by punishing the 50,000 drivers who travels this road daily by lowering the speed limit from 45 mph to 35 mph. Was it a popular move for grieving families and all who are concerned about safety? Sure. Was it the right move where even a modicum of investigation would have failed to show a link between the 45 mph speed limit and drunk people being killed at 2:00 when trying to cross in the wrong spot? I think not. But more times than not, this is what we have come to expect of our elected officials.
But I’m not here on a political rant. This is, after all, a blog about housing and things related. So what’s the connection? Too often I see this very concept played out in my industry. On a micro level, we are all trying to find the key to generating traffic and attracting more qualified buyers to our sites. Too often what is popular is to beg the builder for another ad, a bigger ad or some other “creative” play that has little real connection to solving the challenges we face. But let’s face it, it’s easier to scream to the builder, “We need traffic – run an ad!” than to do the hard work of digging deep to understand our buyers, what problems they were solving that led them to our sites and what methods they used to get them there. It requires research, analysis and, yes, a lot of gut. But I’ve rarely seen a problem in the last four years of this difficult downturn that could be solved by just running the right ad.
Difficult challenges require people, and thinking, up to that challenge. A lot of doing what’s right, and not what’s popular. The examples are countless. But Linchpins are up to the task. Are you one?