Thursday, June 2, 2011

Luxury Real Estate Marketing: So, You Want to Be a Market Leader-Part 3

See Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog series, So You Want to Be a Market Leader

When you think of the word strategy what comes to mind? In the context of marketing luxury real estate, or any product or service, strategy ONLY applies to gaining or sustaining market leadership. It is just for incumbent market leaders who want to hold on to the #1 position and those who want to challenge the incumbent. More succinctly, it is only about being #1 or #2 in mindshare and in market share within any given marketplace or niche therein.

In the majority of cases the combined market share of #1 &#2 represents the lion’s share of the entire “pie”. These two contenders understand just how much is at stake. Very often, there is a vast crevasse between the market share of #1 and #2. For example, #1 search engine, Google, enjoys about 65% of the market. Yahoo, #2 owns 17% and #3 Microsoft Bing has about 11%.

Bing is trying valiantly to whittle down Google’s market share. Its most recent strategy has been to align with and own a piece of Facebook in order to make search more social (getting recommendations from friends when delivering search results). In a Wall Street Journal interview Google Inc. executive chairman, Eric Schmidt said that one of his biggest failures as CEO over the last decade was grappling with the rise of social identity services such as Facebook. Microsoft seized a potentially threatening strategic advantage with their social search strategy.

The marketing activity of an unmotivated #3 or any of those that are lower on the totem pole is actually not strategy. If you are not striving to be #1 or #2 you are merely engaged in tactics to fight over the crumbs, which may be plenty for some but not for those with the heart of a champion.

When it comes to marketing luxury real estate, keep in mind that you get to define the size of your marketplace if it is based on geography or just how narrow you want to slice your niche within a general category. For, example you can be the market leader in selling sky-in/ski-out properties in Vail Colorado, or in Deer Valley, Utah. The price point of these properties is typically very high and you do not need to sell many homes to earn sizable commissions.

We live in a time-pressed world where the majority of human minds can only remember up to 3 brands in any given category of product or service. Some people can only think of one brand in some categories. That is why being #1 or #2 is the only game in town for those of you who have embraced the unabashed pursuit of market leadership. For you, strategy is the name of the game and the jackpot is achieving top-of-mind status.

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