Luxury Real Estate Marketing: The Black Sheep Factor of Excellence

Dedication to excellence has almost become cliché. Many companies and professionals tout these words, but few set standards of excellence that far exceed the expectation of their target market. Luxury real estate marketing professionals can gain currency with their clients by becoming familiar with some of the best luxury brands of the world and studying their anecdotal stories that truly exemplify excellence. One such company is Loro Piana, a purveyor of the finest wool and cashmere. Here is one of their stories.

The majority of sheep herders breed white sheep. Black sheep occur as a result of recessive gene combinations. They were not traditionally used for wool because their wool could not be dyed in the rainbow of colors demanded by the wool industry. This led to the idiomatic expression used to brand someone as a “black sheep” of the family, or one who is in disfavor with a group.

Now, Loro Piana has given the black sheep a place of honor. They have even trade marked the Italian words for black sheep-- Pecora Neri®. Black sheep are considered a treasure by this company and their loyal customers.

Loro Piana’s commitment to excellent quality is legendary. They have established satellite offices in the far reaches of Mongolia in remote mountain villages where paved roads do not exist. They monitor the natural fibers grown for them: the cashmere goats, the vicuna, and the llama. This insures that only the finest selection is imported to Italy.

Today, the black merino sheep is intentionally bred by some sheepherders in New Zealand. They produce lustrous wools that range in colors from brown to black, and create interesting natural patterns when woven into fabric. The beauty of the wool produced by these sheep caught the imagination of the Loro Piana family who are now their exclusive buyers. The result is evidenced in the rich dark fabrics that comprise the family’s distinct fashion collection. They call their collection “The Excellences”.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Stand Out With Citizen Journalism

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Today, if you want to be on the leading edge, luxury real estate marketing professionals need to morph into citizen journalists via blogging, video blogging, podcasting, and article distribution. Why? You need to reach people where they now hang out—on the internet and in social networks.

If customer loyalty is the goal (for referrals and word-of-mouth advertising especially) every successful professional and company in the world today needs to morph themselves into two-way communicators. To stay competitive you must engage your customers and clients in a dialogue instead of a monologue of promotion.

Brand loyalty is up for grabs in every segment of our economy. The companies who embrace social media as a means of facilitating two-way communication will be the big winners. Two-way communication means LISTENING not just talking at customers and clients. By listening to your clients, particularly your loyal fans, you can gain a tremendous competitive edge (while the competition is being complacent).

Most luxury real estate agents are flummoxed about what to write about in their blogs. The key is to pick topics that are, what we call, “follow-worthy”. This post is intended to demonstrate an example of citizen journalism. Follow us as we pursue a fun story!

Alexandra is a great cook. I am the merely the sous chef in the family. But, to reciprocate I am the chief dishwasher. My favorite dish washing liquid is Bright Green. I really like the natural citrus scent. The product is clear (no phony rainbow colors) as is its container, and it is biodegradable. The Bright Green brand stands for home products that are “safe, highly effective and soft on the environment”. It makes me feel good to contribute to the environment when I wash dishes.

But the container has a MAJOR design flaw. It is next to impossible to grip with wet hands. I feel that this product is so far superior to the competition that I was willing to transfer the liquid into a better plastic squeeze bottle. Now, how many other customers are having the same experience?

I went to the internet to find the company website and discovered that Bright Green is a Safeway sub-brand. If you were Safeway or Vons (our neighborhood market) and were selling millions of these bottles, would you be interested in my feedback? Think of the public relations story you could tell your customers: SAFEWAY (Vons) LISTENS! And, think of the competitive edge this would provide!

I could not find a website for Bright Green nor was there a place to offer my feedback on the Safeway site. So, I am going to call them. Stay tuned for the rest of the story!

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Luxury Real Estate MarketingTip: Dominate Your Brand Category

To better understand branding in the realm of luxury real estate marketing, it is important to understand brand categories. If market leadership is your quest, as a luxury real estate marketing professional, the key is to select a brand category or sub-category in your marketplace that you can dominate.

To illustrate the concept of brand categories, let us take tomatoes as an example, as a category of fruit. The last few Saturdays at the Farmer’s Market in Santa Barbara have been a feast for the eyes and senses.. The most breathtaking sight, however, is the heirloom tomatoes.

In August, the heirloom or heritage tomatoes are at their peak displacing their cousins, Early Girl, Beefsteak, Better Boy, and Celebrity. Think of heirlooms as the luxury category of real estate marketing. These aristocratic tomatoes are more expensive. They come in many colors many variations of stripped patterns. In each of these sub-categories of luxury tomatoes there is an opportunity to become the market leader, the best seller, the break-away brand.

The differences in the DNA makeup of these categories are minor, but the characteristics in terms of shape, color and flavor are distinctive. The heirloom tomato’s target market many be tomato lovers in general, but each customer has preferences. The key to branding is to clearly amplify the difference so that the customer looking for sweet, low acidic tomatoes, for instance, can quickly be matched with the right brand. Branding therefore, accelerates the selection process in a sea of choices.

CHEROKEE PURPLE

Selecting the right brand name can speed the selection process up even further. Many of the heirlooms have intriguing names such as Brandywine, Green Zebra, Mr. Stripey, Pineapple, and Jubilee. But, the stand-out brands have a story that helps create a faster emotion connection, an immediate bond with their target market. The Cherokee Purple, for example, is named for the Cherokee Indians who cultivated them. Mortgage Lifter, with its big pink fruit, helped its farmer, Charles Byles, pay off his $6000 mortgage in 6 years in the 1930’s.

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, the fastest way to market leadership is to select an uncontested market category or sub-category and dominate that niche by providing an extraordinary, unparalleled promise of value. Then, tell a compelling story about your brand that is indelible.

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Luxury Real Estate Web Design: Is Your Online Presence Distinctive?

We often talk about the imperative of personal branding, in the highly competitive world of luxury real estate marketing. Now, with social media leveling the playing field your website is accessible more than ever before, and the need to stand out is mission critical. Having the best “packaging” is often the determining factor in selecting an agent online because consumers are pressed for time and they have the power to quickly move on to check out your competitors in a single click.

Today, we were in the book store. Alexandra was looking for a book and I snapped this picture of the “Women’s Interests” section in the magazine racks. The layout of the covers on just about every magazine in this category looked almost identical. With the exception of one magazine, every cover has a picture of a model surrounded by words intended to hook buyers. Doesn’t this remind you of the plethora of agent websites with head shots that look so much alike? Even the content is the same.

Statistics show that most books and magazines are selected solely based on the cover, the graphic imagery and the messaging. It is the same online. Think of your personal brand as your book cover or your magazine cover. Certainly, there is much more to your brand than this. But, if you are looked over because you blend in like the majority of magazines in any given category your shelf life is going to be limited and you will not have a chance to deliver your valuable service as often as you would like.

It is important to understand that in blending in and looking like everyone else in the luxury arena you are not demonstrating your marketing savvy. More than ever the luxury seller is looking for the individual who understands the importance of standing out in an ocean of me too.

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Luxury Real Estate Agent Personal Branding : Promote the Community & the Lifestyle More than You

Visit www.LivingInWineCountry.com

Personal branding for luxury real estate marketing professionals should center around the promotion of the community and the lifestyle of your marketplace more than you. If you are passionate about your marketplace you will sell yourself in the process. Here is a video that we produced with our partner, The Institute of Luxury Home Marketing that conveys this concept.

Check out the benefits of earning the prestigeous CLHMS designation offered by The Insttute for Luxury Home Marketing. Recognized as the mark of accomplishment in luxury markets around the world, the Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist designation assures affluent buyers and sellers that the agents who have earned it have the knowledge, experience, competence, and confidence they require.

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Luxury Real Estate Web Design: Accentuate the Lifestyle in Your Marketplace

WALKING IN THE WOODS ON A FALL AFTERNOON

As a luxury real estate marketing professional it is important to accentuate the lifestyle of your marketplace in your marketing materials. Think about the forms of recreation in your area and what people wear when they engage in these activities. This can be the inspiration to set the tone or the mood of your website design.

For example, when people from big cities fantasize about buying a second home in the wine country they seek to relax, unwind and indulge in culinary adventures. If they have a mountain retreat in mind it may be isolation that they crave or physical fitness from skiing or hiking. Alternatively, those thinking of purchasing a pied-a- terre in a bustling metropolis are looking for excitement, entertainment, the arts and shopping.

Setting the right mood on your website by accentuating the lifestyle invites visitors to stay longer because you have engaged their senses and their emotional needs. Choosing the right colors therefore, plays a more important role in web design than most realize.

There is an entire psychology of color that must be taken into consideration when designing your brand. Are you trying to sooth your visitors or pump their adrenalin? High-energy demands bright colors. Some colors can reduce your blood pressure other can agitate.

If people associate your marketplace with the nightlife, dressing up more than occasionally, you should seek a more formal feel. If people tend to dress down in your marketplace, then a more casual mood needs to be set. Expressing the transition from informal to formal can also be important. An example would be a golf and tennis community where it is more casual during the day, but more formal at night, at suppertime.

All these elements of lifestyle should be accentuated in your web design because in luxury real estate you are not just selling homes. You are selling experiences.

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7 Reasons to Go Out of Your Way to Promote Luxury Real Estate Marketing Professionals

ROCK SUGAR

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, what would it mean to your bottom line if more of your friends and clients went out of their way to refer business to you? Just about everyone in business knows that word-of-mouth advertising is the sweet spot of marketing. But, few know what it takes to get that to happen, consistently. The answer is simple: be remarkable, deliver remarkable service, and get a remarkable website.

Recently, we were asked to recommend a good online computer back-up service. Our answer, hands down, was SugarSync. We had tried several systems. And, SugarSync was by far the best for several reasons:

• The price is right at $4.99 per month for 30 GBs of storage.
• It enables us to share files between computers, like an intranet so we can co-edit documents in real time
• It allow us to send large files to clients
• All files are available 24/7 remotely via computer and even via iPhone if need be
• It quickly backs up all documents, photos etc., which means complete peace of mind

SugarSync did not need to give us any incentive, whatsoever, to toot their horn. We are that satisfied by their service. But, this friend noticed that the company would give us an additional 500MB of extra storage when she signed up using our referral link. And, she got the same amount of extra storage.

People love to promote if you give them compelling reasons to do so. Here are 7reasons we would go out of our way to refer a luxury real estate marketing professional:

1. Rapid response communication to email and telephone calls
2. Kindness and courtesy
3. Optimistic attitude and fun to be with
4. Bridging communication during the transaction for assurance that details are being taken care of or if some expectation changes
5. Staying in touch after closing escrow
6. Superior marketing savvy
7. An informative website that has compelling reasons to revisit before, during and after close of escrow—a remarkable site that is worthy of promoting

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Luxury Real Estate Web Design: Does Your Website Have Curb Appeal?

It is time for a wake-up call! According to a 2009 NAR report 60% of agents have a website that is 5 years old or more. According to Vinton Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet, the internet changes and grows in “dog years” not human years. That means that most agents’ websites are over 35 years old. How old is your site?

Think of your top three closest competitors. Take a close look at their websites. Are they up to date or obsolete as well? Does yours stand out? Or, do all of your sites look similar?

When you acquire a new listing, you take a fresh look at the home from the buyer’s perspective, and advise your clients about maximizing its appeal. This may involve re-arranging the furniture and staging to reduce clutter. Sometimes the best advice is a new paint job and making some minor repairs. Statistics back the fact that a home’s superior curb appeal can translate into thousands of dollars of added value at the close of escrow.

One of our market-leading clients has an interior design background. She and her partners took a listing of a couple who relocated to Asia with the condition that they were given a budget to re-landscape, re-paint and make repairs. Our client completely orchestrated the improvements on behalf of her absentee owners. When it came on the market, the home was sold in one day.

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, think of your website as a luxury home and visitors are driving by. Does your website have curb appeal?

Or, think of your website as a luxury store. Do your display windows beckon visitors to enter? How can you expect to capture leads if you cannot get visitors through the door?

This is a wake-up call. Take a good look at your website. Take the plunge and reinvent yourself before your competitors do. Think curb appeal and consider what is at stake!

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Is Innovative Interactivity the Wave of the Future for Luxury Real Estate Marketing?

Recently, a 3D floor plan company was called to our attention that takes virtual tours to a new level. As former commercial real estate brokers we appreciate the need to help clients visualize how their office space will lay out. Space planners offer renderings with elevations to accompany floor plans that help the visualization process, marginally. For major tenants they build 3D models which work much better. However, they are expensive to produce. So, 3D web graphics may be just the ticket. But, will this work when marketing luxury real estate?

Perhaps, if a buyer of a luxury condo needs to compare floor plans this would be helpful. Or, possibly a second home buyer from outside of the market place could save a trip by being able to better visualize the views from certain rooms. Or, maybe it would helpful to see the potential of remodeling, and the advantages of removing certain walls to rework the flow of rooms.

The old bottom line questions that luxury real estate professionals need to ask about the new wave of innovative interactivity still apply:

• Will this new technology help me get more listings and sell more homes?
• Will investing in this technology give me a genuine competitive advantage?
• Is this the next fad, or is 3D here to stay?

To help answer these questions, take a look at The Watch Avenue which is supposedly an answer to the glut of luxury watch brands and their ubiquitous imitators that sell for pennies on the dollars. It is intended to be a 3D interactive shopping experience set in Paris.

In addition to entering and stopping in boutiques such as Hublot, Corum, Vacheron Constantin, Chanel, here are some of the other features of The Watch Avenue:

1. An attractive woman appears as your shopping guide who talks to you and follows you as you explore the watch boutiques and “stroll” down First and Second Avenue.
2. You can stop into the theatre and watch a movie about a watch
3. You can go to the bookstore and read books about watches
4. You can go to the kiosk and see recent magazines about watches.
5. You can go to a museum hosted by TAG Heuer
6. You can visit a general information center
7. There is even a watch making school to appreciate the art of making fine timepieces

In your estimation is this the future of shopping? Is this the future of luxury real estate marketing?

Ironically, there is a billboard on The Watch Avenue that states,”Fake watches are for fake people—buy real”. Isn’t this entire site virtual reality?

Please share your thoughts about this experience.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Essentials: A New Definition of Wealth-- Super-Connectivity

Have you heard that about 60% of those who sign up for a Twitter account abandon their account within 60 days? Could it be that they just do not understand the value of this media? Many luxury real estate marketing professionals are scratching their heads trying to see where the ROI (Return on Investment) is in social networking. Many conclude that it is a colossal waste of time.

We could not disagree more. For those who are either skeptical or fed up with the entire idea of social networking we offer this advice: Look beyond the mechanics of the media to understand the message: Going forward, your net worth, your wealth will be determined by the richness of your relationships. The more high-trust relationship you can establish and maintain with friends, colleagues, neighbors, clients or customers the more social capital you have and the wealthier you are. The key is to understand that wealth in this context does not just apply only to your bank account; it is all about your wealth of experience.

The mechanics serve only to facilitate communication and enable you to create and maintain more relationships than ever before. Networking is as old as the human experience. What is new is the opportunity for “super-connectivity”. Amplify the effect of making friends or business connections at an intimate dinner party by a thousand-fold or more. Super-connectivity is a new definition of wealth.

This week we went to lunch at one of our favorite (and world famous) Santa Barbara restaurants which happens to be a taqueria where you order at the counter then dine in their patio on picnic tables. While waiting in line (yes, the line can sometimes be around the block) we met a fabulous family and struck up a conversation. By the time it was ready to order we were invited to be the guests of our new friends and “break tortillas” together.

We did not stop talking and sharing common interests the entire time we sat together. It was exhilarating to connect in such a meaning way, with intelligent, yet light-hearted conversations on many, many subjects. By the time we were ready to leave we were fast friends. Although, we live a good hour and a half drive from each other, there is no doubt that we will continue our friendship.

We have had similar experiences of deep connection while meeting and conversing with luxury real estate professionals over the internet from all corners of the world, people we will soon meet in person at a conference in Vail, Colorado. We all cannot wait to meet each other after enjoying the pleasure of many, many thought-provoking blog conversations in which we not only discovered similar business philosophies, but also common interests about which we are all passionate.

How extraordinary this experience of super-connectivity has been! The spontaneous combustion of new friendships will no doubt lead to referrals of business over time. But, that will simply be a by-product of likeminded business professionals getting together and just having fun.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Stand Out with Rapid Response Communication

In today’s highly competitive real estate environment the essential new skill for luxury real estate marketing professionals is rapid response communication. The Internet has made real time market information readily available to consumers. Consumers now demand an immediate response to their direct inquires and know that the next professional is only a click away.

We define rapid response communication as personally responding to phone calls or Internet inquiries within two hours or less. Ideally, you should respond within minutes.

Seasoned professionals take heed! Rapid response communication needs to become business as usual. It is no longer an option. It is an imperative if you are intent on continuing to out-produce your competition. Those real estate professionals who embrace this art form will gain a significant competitive advantage in their marketplace.

To understand the extent to which consumers are becoming more and more savvy and expect quick results take a look at the shoe business. Think in terms of three types of shoe stores:

1. The “general store” (Nordstrom’s)
2. The specialty store (The Walking Company)
3. The global Internet store (Zappos.com.).

We were recently in Nordstrom’s. Ron wanted to try on some sandals. They did not have his size in a particular Mephisto model that was a best seller. In typical Nordstrom’s style, the salesman offered to track it down in another store and FedEx it within a couple of days. That was not fast enough.

We knew our options. The Walking Company, just a few stores away, carried the same brand and the same model. It was just a few stores away from Nordstrom. So, we moved on.

The Walking Company had the shoes in stock and they fit perfectly. We happened to have a store credit there. Between the two of us we had purchased at least six pairs of shoes at this store over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, we were not able to apply a store credit to this purchase because we did not have the physical credit receipt with us from a prior returned item.

The local manager was unwilling and unable to go against company policy. We did not have time for them to reach the regional manager to over-ride the policy and make an exception for two loyal customers. This would never have happened at Nordstrom’s. Letting a loyal customer walk out the door over a store credit issue is unthinkable there! Decision makers are always accessible at Nordstrom’s.

Later that day, Alexandra went online and found the identical sandals at Zappos.com for a slightly higher price. As a first time visitor she called customer service to verify their policy of not just matching the price when higher prices were quoted, but discounting it by 10%. The live customer representative was immediately accessible, extremely cordial and she was empowered to give us the discount on the spot. The next day (less than 24 hours later) the shoes were delivered to our front door with free shipping! All of our expectations were exceeded!

The Zappos.com experience exemplified rapid response communication elevated to art form. With a central warehouse and centralized inventory control the chances of being out of popular models of brand name shoes are very slim. With central tracking of returned items and a no-fault return policy (within one year) including free shipping on returns, this concern should become a non-issue for consumers.

The global Internet business model out-maneuvered the general store and the specialty store and gained two very satisfied customers. Rapid response communication is an essential way to stand out in a crowded market.

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