Personal Branding for Real Estate Agents: Narrow Your Focus

TRAVEL: BORA BORA FROM THE AIR

An excellent lesson can be learned by luxury real estate marketing professionals, both for personal and company branding, by looking at Microsoft’s latest change in their search engine brand. Prior to Microsoft’s recent rebranding and re-engineering, MSN was languishing in a very distant third place and was losing market share to #1 Google and #2 Yahoo. Now, Microsoft’s new Bing is making gains and has a fighting chance to significantly increase market share. What is Microsoft’s new strategy? It can be summed up in three words: NARROW YOUR FOCUS!

Microsoft has basically conceded to Google. It may never catch up to this iconic break-away search engine brand. But, they have done a brilliant job of identifying four niches in which they believe they can surpass Google and Yahoo, something they can do better than anyone else in the world of search engines. Those niches are Travel, Shopping, Health and Local Search.

Why these categories? Each one commands high traffic and also high advertising rates; advertisers compete aggressively for pay-per-click ads here. By focusing on these four lucrative search sweet spots their profit margins will increase. The economic driver is higher advertising revenue per click-through. If they can provide a better user experience in these particular niches, they are betting that they can get Google and Yahoo loyalists to switch brands when they need to search these categories.

Microsoft decided on the name Bing because it has just four letters, it is easy to remember, and also because it has the potential of becoming synonymous with searching for Travel, Shopping, Health and Local Search. Notice that Microsoft already uses Bing as a verb in their ads. To Google or to Bing? That is the question that Microsoft must wedge into the minds of those searching in these categories, if they hope to gain defectors.

How can you, as a luxury real estate marketing professional, narrow your focus and serve a particular niche better than anyone else in your marketplace?

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Who is the MVP (Most Visible Professional) in your Marketplace?

If your quest is market leadership as a luxury real estate marketing professional, you need to be top-of-mind, the go-to brand in your local marketplace. You need to become the most highly recognized agent, team or brokerage firm internationally. Not only do you need to be the stand-out in the minds of buyers and sellers, you also need to be the go-to agent in your area for referring agents throughout the world.

To achieve this status you must become a master of social media and get connected across the globe. Are you the most connected agent in your marketplace?

Our friends at Proxio, the international MLS and global referral network, and Inman News have launched a search for the 100 "most connected" Real Estate professionals -- the first annual Proxio Most Visible Professionals (MVP) in Real Estate Challenge™.

The 2009 Top 100 Most Visible Professionals will be featured on Proxio’s international website, and the Top 25 will be recognized in a press release and at a “MVP Mixer,” co-sponsored by Inman News, at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on August 4, 2009, the evening prior to Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2009.

Take the challenge and good luck!

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Institute for Luxury Home Marketing Partners with Napa Consultants

Napa Consultants, International is proud to announce a new partnership with The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing (ILHM). The two firms are working together to develop benefits for the members of the Institute and also a series of short marketing videos which will be available to all real estate professionals online.

We look forward to bringing our marketing services to luxury residential agents who are Institute members. Working with Laurie Moore Moore, and Waco Moore, the CEO and President of the Institute is a sheer pleasure. Their programs are second to none.

About The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing (ILHM)

The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing exists to help real estate professionals around the world provide high quality service to buyers and sellers of luxury properties. Institute members complete special training to build expertise in the marketing of upscale homes and estates and those who meet performance standards may earn the prestigious Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist (CLHMS) designation. For more information about the Institute visit www.LuxuryHomeMarketing.com

Here is the first of our video series entitled, The Power of Personal Branding.

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Personal Branding for Real Estate Agents: Quality Cues Part 2

This is part two of our previous post on quality cues. Quality cues are indications of quality in packaging, displays, product features, collateral materials, website design, messaging, etc.The more quality cues you can offer in your luxury real estate practice the more your personal or company brand will become distinctive.

Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip

When marketing luxury real estate, use as many quality cues as possible to connect with your clients emotionally. Messaging is extremely important. We cringe whenever we read how a home “boasts” some feature like an infinity pool or a state of the art entertainment room. Instead, reach for the emotional connection with potential buyers.

For example: Communicate the sense of relaxation and relief they will feel when they plunge into the pool after an exhausting day, or the enjoyment of watching movies and eating popcorn with their friends and family.

And, take a cue about quality cues in messaging from a mass marketed coffee brand that overcomes the perception of being too big to care about customers—Tully’s coffee.

In part one; we mentioned that we purchased a 12 oz. bag of Gelson’s Finest coffee at Gelson’s market. A gold clasp that helped reseal their package was an important quality cue. That same day we also purchased a 12 oz bag of Tully’s coffee. Tully’s is available at over 5000 markets. We like their Decaf House Blend.

Tully’s quality cues are right on their package and on their website. It’s more in their messaging than in their graphics. For example, on the package you can read that “coffee is our passion”. Here is their call to action: “Enjoy a cup and celebrate the wonderful complexities of our pride and joy”. On their website, you are asked to “Taste Our Obsession”.

There are many Tully’s coffee stores. We spotted one in Seattle on our last visit there. To make a deep emotional connection with customers, Tully’s lets you know that “Community is their Commitment”. Tully’s is proud to support many local organizations that focus on children’s educational development and health.

Here’s yet another quality cue in Tully’s messaging: Their description of the decaf blend is “smooth, inviting and buttery”. These are emotional quality cues followed by the word, in botd—BALANCED. These words resonate with the values of coffee aficionados and thus become quality cues.

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Personal Branding for Real Estate Agents: Quality Cues- Part 1

For luxury real estate marketing professionals, small things can make a big difference in terms of standing out from your competition. As an example, one of our clients, who is from Switzerland, uses special flat, rounded gold clasps instead of paper clips. These wafer-thin fasteners fold over the upper corner of papers that need to be held together. It is very elegant and impressive. Best of all they only cost a few cents each. Now, these particular fasteners can only be found in Europe. This then becomes one of many, many ways in which she distinguishes herself, in a nanosecond!

In branding terms the fastener is a “Quality Cue”. Quality cues are indications of quality in packaging, displays, product features, collateral materials, website design, messaging, etc. The more quality cues you can offer in your luxury real estate practice the more your personal or company brand will become distinctive.

We thought of our client when we were shopping for coffee at Gelson’s, an upscale market chain in Southern California. Gelson’s recently came out with their store brand of coffee, called Gelson’s Finest. We trust the quality of Gelson’s as a market. So, we were willing to try it because we were certain that they would not put their name on sub-par coffee.

Usually, when a market puts their name on a product it is a way to increase their profit margins and the quality may be less than the known brands. The packaging is also less attractive than the name brand packages. Gelson’s added a couple of quality cues that encouraged us to at least try their new coffee. The packaging is first rate. And, they included an attractive gold clasp to help seal in the freshness instead of the usual bendable plastic strip that wraps around the folded top of the opened coffee bag. How convenient! And, the coffee is good!

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, what are your quality cues?

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Essentials: The True Value of Luxury- Part 2

Large Falafel cooker

An abundant mindset is the hallmark of a consummate luxury real estate marketing professional. Here are two ways to cultivate an abundant mindset

1. Practice being appreciative of that which you value in your surroundings
2. Practice recalling moments of sheer abundance

What are some of your luxury moments?

Babs, Circa 1963

In our surroundings , some of our favorite moments are walking on the beach, watching dogs catch Frisbees, and children digging holes in the sand to build castles. In memory of our dads for Fathers' Day we recalled a couple of special moments of luxury. For Alexandra in particular, it was enjoying a falafel sandwich at our favorite Lebanese dive in Westwood (Los Angeles), which reminds her of precious moments in Beirut with her father (The cost=$5.00). For Ron it is being ushered to the head of a long line at a Las Vegas showroom because his dad was an invited guest. He can remember one show in particular, in 1963, when Barbara Streisand was second bill to Liberace.

Memories of wonderfully luxurious experiences are portable. They do not need to be insured, dusted or stored.

We should aspire to learn to continuously appreciate all that we value around us: nature, people and the diversity that life brings. Appreciation transcends economic conditions. It will never experience a recession or a depression. Appreciation is the luxury of the heart and soul which recognizes the perfection of everything that touches our life. It is finding a way to be in love with life under any and all conditions. That is true abundance, the true value of luxury.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Essentials: The True Value of Luxury- Part 1

As a luxury real estate marketing professional it is important to tune into the way in which opinion leaders define luxury—not just those in the real estate realm. It will help you ascertain your own definition of luxury. Here’s an interesting quote about luxury and the recession from Michael Burke, the president and CEO of the famed Italian fashion house, Fendi:

“Luxury should not be affordable. It cannot be, it shouldn’t be for everybody. The way the products are made, the quality and the work, luxury is not for instantaneous gratification, one should aspire for it. There has recently been far too much froth in an overcrowded marketplace”, adds the executive, "too much fast luxury. That's why we need a recession so there is equilibrium and so we can return to the real values of luxury."

Perhaps, the true value of luxury is appreciation, e.g., the pleasure and the enjoyment of fine craftsmanship. Appreciation cannot be purchased; it is an emotional response to seeing and feeling something that delights our senses. Does one have to own it to appreciate it?

Today the majority of the wealthy talk about the luxury of time as being one their most important luxuries. Their interests are veering away from the latest fashion to social consciousness, and to experiential luxury. Most talk about spending quiet time with family or just sitting and watching a sunset, or even doing nothing. Can you buy time?

If luxury is essentially experiential then luxury is for everyone. It is about viewing one’s environment as a source of luxurious moments that are absolutely free. Friends who have visited the poorest corners of the world marvel at the happiness of the people and their willingness to share their perceived abundance. They are moved to tears when they realize they are the ones with a scarcity mentality. Can you buy those spontaneous experiences?

What are some of your luxury moments?

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