Make Your Competition Irrelevant
In Part 1 of
this article series, we stated that luxury real estate marketing
professionals often fall into the trap of selling instead of marketing.
Marketing requires concisely communicating the essence of your
distinct promise of value to your ideal target market as you address
their most pressing needs. Selling is trying to convince those
prospects that are not really a match to you that they should work with
you or buy from you anyway.
Great marketing necessitates great strategy. Selling requires tactics, scheming and maneuvering. When marketing is done right selling is unnecessary and your competition becomes irrelevant.
In recent years it seems that too many
politicians have capitulated to the use of selling rather than marketing
themselves. Instead of focusing on issues and how they intend to solve
problems, they spend their campaign funds smearing their opponents.
This is more an assault on the intelligence of the voters than on their
opponents.
Here is an example of a politician
who understood the difference between marketing and selling and
contributed mightily to the lives of her constituency by encouraging
participation in the political process and fighting for equal
opportunity for all.
Marge Fong Eu, a third generation
Californian, was elected California secretary of state in 1974, making
her the first Asian American woman ever elected to a state
constitutional office in the United States. She became famous for
smashing a toilet bowl on the state Capitol's steps during her
successful campaign to ban pay toilets. She argued they discriminated
against women because men could use urinals for free whereas women
always had to pay a dime for a toilet stall in places where payment was
mandatory.
Marge Fong Eu concentrated on one issue,
banning paid toilets. She took a stance, which what we call a brand
position, and represented one core value, equal opportunity, a value
that Marge Fong Eu felt passionate about. This struck a deep emotional
chord with an entire gender. Getting her marketing message across in a
nanosecond, through a news-starved media, Marge Fong Eu won by a
landslide. That is marketing strategy at its best!
In fact, Marge Fong Eu won by a
record-breaking three million votes. She did not need to resort to smear
tactics. Her brand position was articulated with laser-sharp focus. She
did not need to out-spend her competition. Moreover, she simply made
her competition irrelevant.
In our strategic branding practice we
work only with incumbent market leaders or their challengers in the
field of luxury real estate marketing. Our job is to help our clients
identify what they are most passionate about, what they stand for
personally or as a company, and then develop a strategy based on their
authentic nature that helps them to gain or sustain top-of-mind status
in their marketplace or niche therein.
If market leadership is your quest,
the right brand strategy can take the effort out of besting your
competition. It can make your competition irrelevant.
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