Friday, September 28, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Revisiting the Definition of Luxury


 Galileo 
Through our journey in writing the Language of Luxury for luxury real estate marketing professionals we have, from time to time, revisited the definition of luxury itself.  The more we study this subject and write about it the more we conclude that luxury is one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. It is not just for the super rich! Sometimes the best things in life really are free. 

Luxury does not necessarily mean expensive things. We have said that true luxury can be as simple as a great belly laugh (hence LOL) or taking the time to do personal things that you have not made time for due to other pressing matters.  You can have tons of money, but if you cannot enjoy it, is it a luxury? 

This year we were introduced to the Kahn Academy, a revolutionary free educational website where you can learn many subjects including mathematics from basic addition to calculus via free video tutorials.  Bill Gates has his kids studying math here. You may have heard about this on 60 Minutes. 

Over 1 million students worldwide are on the site. Schools across the country are using this study method to free up teachers to become “study coaches”.  With this method traditional classrooms are transformed into labs where students progress at their own pace, become more independent and self-taught.  It is simply brilliant! 

With a passion for education, I (Ron here) decided to refresh my math skills and experience this revolutionary learning method first hand. I started at the very beginning (literally addition and subtraction). Now, I am working my way though Algebra with the goal to go all the way through Calculus, a subject I did not take in high school or college. 

As luxury real estate brand strategist, market leaders, or their challengers, hire Alexandra and me to help them capture or secure the lion’s share of their marketplace.  This requires creative problem solving skills to help our clients out-smart not out-spend their competition.  
Studying mathematics again has definitely helped to sharpen these skills. But, it has also been a pure luxury to learn just for the joy of learning.  It was this quote by Galileo that inspired me to “go back to school”. 
“Philosophy is written in that great book that ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written.  This book is written in the mathematical language…without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth”   --Galileo
Galileo’s quote also resonated with what we have been sharing with our LOL audience:
 To be successful as a luxury real estate marketing professional and continuously expand your referral base of high net-worth individuals, you must learn to speak their language, the Language of Luxury.  You will continue to appreciate in value, as a professional, if you do so.
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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Personal & Company Branding: The High Cost of Misjudging Your Target Market - Part 2

This issue of accurately assessing your target market and communicating with your ideal clients on their wavelength is crucial to your success as a luxury real estate marketing professional. In Part 1 of this article series, we wrote about Louis Vuitton and Ruth Chris closing their doors in Santa Barbara because they misjudged their target market, which cost them both dearly.

In nearby Thousand Oaks, known for its strong community and excellent school system, an “Asian fusion” restaurant opened after an extensive, long term and very expensive build-out in an upscale shopping center there.  Located directly across from the family-friendly and extremely popular Cheesecake Factory (over 160 restaurants in the chain) it closed within one year.

Again, the demographics of Thousand Oaks supported the potential success of this restaurant.  But, they completely missed their psycho graphic target.  The décor was dark and uninviting. The menu was a mélange of Asian cuisines, which works at their other locations in Los Angeles but not here. The name of the restaurant, Buddha’s Belly, did not help its cause.

Ironically, in the high-end shopping center of Century City, which is adjacent to Beverly Hills, the  owner of the Cheesecake Factory opened an Asian fusion restaurant, Rock Sugar, with  a magnificent, inviting décor replete with beautiful and exotic Asian furniture and water features. You feel transported to the Far East the moment you approach the front door.

This restaurant is thriving because it hit its mark both in demographics and in psycho graphics.  The shopping center is surrounded by office buildings and is particularly suited for power lunches.  The food is fabulous.  It is a great date restaurant that is also perfect for special family gatherings.

Take the time to carefully understand both the demographics and the psycho graphics of your target market.  Doing so can save you a considerable amount of time and money!

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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Personal & Company Branding: The High Cost of Misjudging Your Target Market – Part 1

When crafting your personal or company brand, as a luxury real estate marketing professional, it is crucial to accurately access the demographics and the psycho graphics - the mindset of your target market.  Otherwise your brand can miss the mark and not resonate with your ideal clients. Avoid the high cost of misjudging your target market at all costs!

Year after year Louis Vuitton is recognized as the world’s most valuable luxury brand.  It sells its products through standalone boutiques, lease departments in high-end department stores and also online. The brand itself is valued at over $19 billion, and the company is valued in 2012 at $25.9 billion, according to Bloomberg.

In 2012, Louis Vuitton shuttered its boutique in Santa Barbara. In 2011, in the same upscale shopping center, Ruth Chris, the famous steak house chain with over 130 restaurants, also closed its Santa Barbara doors. What happened?

Certainly, the Santa Barbara demographics can support high-end retail stores and upscale restaurants.  But, are the psycho graphics, the mindset of the target market, a match? In this neighborhood of large estates owned by"old money"  they are not. 

Just a few blocks away Chuck's of Hawaii, thrives. It began serving award-winning steaks and seafood over 45 years ago. The inside is romantically lit and is casually furnished with wood tables anound chairs. A bartender in a Hawaiian shirt serves their famous Mai-Thais as well as a wide variety of local wines. Their dinner menu is still hand painted on bottles of Lancers’ wine.
The décor of Ruth Chris restaurants is considerably more formal than Chuck’s and that is where it miscalculated the Santa Barbara psycho graphic.  Chuck serves free high end hors d’oeuvres during Happy Hour, which packs people in and creates a buzz that, attracts a strong dinner crowd. 

In adjacent Montecito, Lucky’s Steak House also thrives.  This is an intimate, smaller neighborhood restaurant that caters to a higher concentration of the upper demographics, than the general population of Santa Barbara.
Accurately judging both the demographics and the psycho graphics of your target market is like fine-tuning a radio.  If your brand is not right on the money you will get static instead of a clear signal. And, static can be very costly in terms of wasted marketing dollars.
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Monday, September 24, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Differentiate Yourself with Substance

If you are going to take the trouble to brand yourself as the “go-to” luxury real estate marketing professional in your area, make sure that your marketing message clearly and sharply differentiates you form your competition. Your marketing message must have substance and leave no room for guessing about what you are trying to convey.  That is,  if you want gain more market share.

Your substance is the essential nature that makes you stand out.  It is what we call the DNA of your personal brand. Most importantly, it is that which is inimitable about you in a business context, expressed in such a way that it instantly addresses your target market’s most pressing needs better than your competitor does.  Here are some examples of marketing messages that are devoid in substance and effective brand messaging.

As we were perusing our menu at the Cheesecake Factory, we noticed this Diet Coke ad, which in our opinion says absolutely nothing about how Coke is different from Pepsi or other competitors (see the image above). What is the message here?  Is a bottle of Diet Coke a liquid asset (in financial speak)? Does drinking Coke assure that you will “stay extraordinary”?  We can only guesstimate the huge amount of money that went into this campaign and completely missed its target.

A VW commercial opens with people of all ages laughing, which is always a delight.  It ends with the VW logo and the slogan, “It’s not the miles; it is how you live them.” A great thought, but does it compel you to purchase one of their cars vs. a competing model?  They want you go to a website called, whyvw.com, and read about VW values:  quality, safety, value (for the price), environment and performance.  These values should be every car manufacturer’s values.  It still leaves the question, “Why VW?

A large institution recently purchased one of the local banks in Santa Barbara. Their ads are everywhere in town attempting to promote how they are different. Each ad focuses on a single word that is supposed to communicate this. Here are the words: integrity, friendliness, trustworthiness and teamwork.  Is that not what banks are supposed to have?  Would this campaign get you to switch banks?

Luxury real estate marketing professionals often try to differentiate themselves by touting their integrity or their friendliness.  Isn’t that the price of admission for any professional?  Dig deeper and identify what is substantive about you, and how that can meet the needs of your target market.  That is what branding is all about.
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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Beyond Popcorn to Tasty Marketing

As a luxury real estate marketing professional it is important to keep up with luxury marketing ideas that are outside the real estate field, as they can inspire and refresh your marketing approaches.  Here is an ingenious idea to lure the movie going public engaged in actually going to movie theatres, rather than waiting for Netflix or other on-demand channels to release the film.

This year at the New York City Food Film Festival, popcorn will not be served.  At the movie “Whiskey: The Islay Edition,” a story about the importance of single malt scotch to the island of Islay, scotch will be served along with a bacon wrapped steak. At the Chicago Food Film Festival there will be a presentation of  “Mozzarella, Inc.,” a documentary about two young Italian Mozzarella salesmen in London, and fresh mozzarella will be served.

Not to be outdone, at the first annual Minneapolis, Feast for the Eyes Film Festival they plan to feature local food and micro brews with their film lineup.  This will include new movies such as “Now Forager,” a story set in the New York restaurant milieu that features mushroom hunting (foraging) as a setting for falling in love.  No doubt wild mushrooms with be part of the goodies served.

How can this translate to luxury real estate marketing?  One of our clients in the wine country has new wine tasting at her office by invitation only. She serves an array of hors d’oeuvres made by one of the celebrity chefs in town.  This has created great buzz for her business as well as listings and sales.  Now that is a tasty marketing strategy!

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Monday, September 17, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Dominate Your Niche & Not Go Buggy!

 In marketing luxury real estate, being a generalist is the surest path to mediocrity. The fastest route to market leadership is to identify an uncontested or underserved market niche that you can dominate. However, you must find a niche that you can serve better than anyone else and you must be genuinely passionate about it.  To understand this vital principle, here is an example of how this plays out in a completely different field.  

Did you happen to catch the season premiere of Shark Tank, the reality show where 5 wealthy entrepreneurs (including Barbara Corcoran, the New York real estate maven) compete to invest in promising start-up companies? The two women who invented BuggyBeds, the early detection system for bed bugs, made a presentation that wowed all five Sharks, and us too!  They had turned down a buy-out of $5 million dollars prior to appearing on the show. 

Apparently, there is a significant increase in the reported cases of bed bug infestation in the last few years. Females lay up to 500 eggs! Their patented early detection bed bug glue trap slips under a mattress and sells for $8.98 for a package of four.  Now, here is an uncontested market niche!  With the Shark’s help, every major hotel chain, every mattress company, every home improvement store chain and more will soon carry this product.  

BuggyBeds is a need that consumers did not even know they had. Now, “over-night” it will become a necessity. They got their branding spot on! The brand name itself identifies the new product category they created.  

When you identify an uncontested market niche you create news. By promoting the new category to a news-hungry media you can promote your brand in the process. By leveraging the media (including social media) you can maximize public relations and word-of-mouth advertising and minimize your marketing expense.  

When you take on an uncontested market niche in this way, your competition, if any, becomes inconsequential. If they attempt to copy you they are perceived as a “me-too” (think Zune vs. iPod).  Once you break the news about the category, their chance of getting substantial media coverage is very slim. They will have to out-spend you in marketing to try to keep up with you. 

If you have selected a niche that is not new, but is underserved, you still have the opportunity to create news because you or your company becomes the viable alternative to your competition that heretofore was not challenged. You can still spark word-of-mouth advertising that can lead to dominating your niche.
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Thursday, September 13, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Website Design: The Winning Formula--Eye Catching Design + Original Content

In recent posts we have been focused on the importance of capturing attention with superior luxury real estate website design and holding attention with original content. We rarely include You Tube videos in our posts. But, this one is so astonishing because it so clearly illustrates both of these concepts.

Human beings tend to make snap judgments and pigeonhole people based on outward appearance. That is why great web design is vital for capturing attention. Apple, the most highly valued company in the world, certainly understood the value of excellence in design. Without it you may be ignored, despite your talent, not to mention the time, energy and money you have spent getting people to your site in the first place.

But, once you have captured their attention with eye-catching design, holding it is an entirely different challenge. That is where continuously providing fresh, follow-worthy and share-worthy ORIGINAL content comes into play. It can spark and accelerate word-of-mouth advertising for you or your company. This video has been viewed over 20 million times. We hope it inspires you as much as it did the two of us. If the video does not appear on your screen, here is the link.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Does Your Website Home Page Capture Attention and Draw Traffic?

The design of the home page of a luxury real estate marketing website should have a wow factor. The best global luxury retail brands understand this principle when they design their store front windows. The goal:capture attention-draw traffic into the store!

Whenever we are in Beverly Hills, we take the time to study the store front windows. In the window display depicted above, the handbag appears to be hung on a branch. However, the tree is actually a photograph that creates this optical illusion in the window of the Louis Vuitton store.

You can spin your wheels and waste valuable time in social media in blogging and in search engine marketing that drives traffic to your website if your website does not capture their attention immediately. Take a lesson from the top luxury brands and make sure that your website visitors feel compelled to enter your store and shop. Does Your Website Home Page Capture Attention and Draw Traffic?

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Saturday, September 8, 2012

Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Why Google Keeps Changing Its Algorithms

This week, we were reviewing the Google ranking of a luxury real estate marketing professional who is the top producing agent in her marketplace, but ranks 7th in natural search results on her primary keyword phrase. Of the two agents who were ranked higher on the same page, one sold just a single property over the last 12 months and the other did not sell even a single property!

Are consumers being served by placing mediocre agents ahead of market leaders? Google doesn’t think so. That is why they are constantly trying to fine-tune their algorithms to achieve more satisfying results.

In the context of finding qualified local service professionals on the Internet, Google’s ideal job is simply to match the consumer’s search query with the most authoritative experts in a given marketplace. For Google, customer satisfaction with this “matchmaking” service is paramount because they are able to place revenue-generating ads on these popular pages.

Prior to the Internet and search engines, it was statistically proven that whoever got the first buyer or seller call had the best chance of winning the business. While this may still be true with telephone contact, we question that it is true online when it comes to search engine ranking, especially in luxury real estate marketing. One glance at a cluttered site that is difficult to navigate can send a web visitor back to the search result page in a single click.

In another instance one of our local business organizations was looking for a speaker on social media. They hired the #1 ranked “authority” on Google to speak and the group was horrified by the presentation. It was obvious to every businessperson in attendance that this guy barely knew what he was talking about. When confronted his response was, “I know how to rank #1”.

In addition to strong basic SEO architectural structure on your site itself, Google is looking for current, fresh, relevant, authoritative, ORIGINAL CONTENT more so now than ever. And, they are adjusting their algorithms accordingly.

Consistently publishing and distributing new content (through social media channels) via your blog is the best vehicle to achieve this. Getting other authoritative websites to establish links to your newsworthy, follow worthy, original content is also very helpful. But, the days of just publishing unoriginal content, that has even become boring to the Google robots, is over!

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Friday, September 7, 2012

Marketing Luxury Real Estate: Beverly Hills Branded Barricades

As a luxury real estate marketing professional it is important to immerse oneself in all aspects of luxury marketing, not just real estate. By observing the top global luxury brands one can learn volumes about communicating to high net worth clients.

Today on an early morning jaunt to Beverly Hills for a meeting, we had time to spare. After fueling ourselves with a warm bagel from St. Urbain, we took a walk on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Dior had moved up the street to a larger location. They had an innovative branded barricade to mask the remodeling and construction in the store.

Dior created a façade that looks like a quilted leather bag. It was so realistic that we were compelled to feel the paper to make sure it was not leather. Every detail was present including the handle and the Dior bauble that hangs on it. The strategy here was promoting their unique handbags as well as their innovative, creative designs.

The Christian Dior brand, which is part of the LVMH family (Louis Vuitton Moet & Hennessy), is beautifully and harmoniously represented here. Christian Dior, the designer, revolutionized the fashion industry in 1946, departing from the then popular boxy look to more feminine lines. He said, “I have designed flower women," emphasizing the curvaceous form of women. His innovative thinking provided a legacy that lives on as you can see,

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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Personal & Company Branding: The High Cost of Being Vague About Your Brand

Photo by Gerald Bougham

Be explicit about who you are and what you stand for, as a luxury real estate marketing professional. Being vague about your personal or company brand can cost you considerably.

An important aspect of personal and company branding is clearly and consistently articulating how you want to be perceived by others. If you do not explicitly define who you are and what your brand stands for, people will brand you or classify you in their own pigeonholes.

In our commercial real estate practice in West Los Angeles, we were best known for our expertise in leasing high-end retail space and working with the entertainment industry. We had a high profile in this niche because our signs were on buildings from West Hollywood to Beverly Hills to Santa Monica by the ocean.

We also sold many commercial properties (most of which were not actually listed) to a select group of developers and investors. We typically kept a low profile about our sales because we just did not like to boast.

But, when the property manager of one of our leasing listings needed to sell another building that he managed he looked for a buyer on his own instead of giving us the listing. He would have gladly given us the listing, but, he just did not know that we sold buildings too! Ironically, that property fell out of escrow with his buyer and we had it sold within 24 hours to one of our clients.

Here was business right under our noses. Although, we were well branded as leasing experts in the mind of this property manager, he was clueless of our sales expertise. That was a $75,000 opportunity that almost passed us by. This is the value of branding that we will never forget. Nor, should you.

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