Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Great Marketing is Matchmaking

In marketing luxury real estate ideal transactions are those where buyers feels that they have found a home that is a perfect fit for their needs and wants at a price that is mutually acceptable to the seller. The same principle applies to marketing you; that is, finding clients who are an ideal match to your core values and your personality. When like-minded people who share similar values and compatible personalities do business together business relationships and transactions just flow more smoothly.  

People like to do business with people they trust, those who share their values. People trust people like themselves. Trust accelerates sales. Mistrust introduces resistance and slows things down.  

Great luxury real estate marketing is actually great matchmaking because, when you find clients who are the right matches, selling becomes irrelevant.  If you find yourself selling, you are trying too hard to convince someone with dissimilar values that they should forego their own values (or buy something they actually do not need or want). It is like tyring to pound a round peg in a square hole.  It is stressful to you and the client.

Essentially, if you feel you have to resort to selling, you need to step back, shift your mindset and re-examine your marketing. At some point you have convinced yourself that there is a scarcity of clients who are a match to your values and personality. That is ALWAYS an erroneous assumption, even though it appears to be the case from a scarcity-based mindset.  Shifting to an abundance-based mindset, you suddenly discover an abundance of clients who are looking for you as ardently as you are looking for them because you have the potential to be a perfect fit.

A marketing mindset is an abundance-based mindset. A selling mindset is your clue that you have slipped into a scarcity-based mindset. Stay tuned for part two of this article series to discover how shifting your focus from a selling mindset to a marketing mindset can make all the difference in the world to the bottom line of your luxury real estate marketing practice. 

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Celebrate the Luxury of Diversity

America is known at the melting pot where different cultures live and work together. As a luxury real estate marketing professional it is paramount that you understand and appreciate the nature of your clients’ backgrounds, including their countries of origins, their cultures and the holidays they celebrate.  This is a great time of the year to celebrate the luxury of diversity!

Springtime is a time for holiday and religious observations. Here are some of the holidays to be aware of this time of the year:

The month of March ends with the observance of the Christian celebration of Easter.  In some countries (Central, and South American} the whole week prior to Easter Sunday is known as Santa Semana (the holy week). Many observe the holiday during the entire week by not working and going to church. 

Nowruz, the Persian New Year begins on March 31^st.  Nowruz is celebrated by the people of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Kashmir, Azerbaijan, the Kurdistan regions of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Syria and Georgia.

The  Jewish Passover began on the 26^th and will be observed through April 2^nd.  The Bahá'í Faith celebrates Ridvan (a twelve day period from April 21-May 2), signifying when Bahá'u'lláh proclaimed His Mission as God's Messenger for this age at a garden in Baghdad, which became known as the Garden of Ridván (Paradise).

This year, the Christian Orthodox faith celebrates its Easter on May 5^th, as they follow the Julian calendar, instead of the universal Gregorian calendar.  One of the reasons the Christian Orthodox celebrate Easter according to the Julian calendar is that Christ died after celebrating Passover, so it makes sense that their Easter would follow after that.

In our commercial real estate practice, we had clients of all faiths and cultures.  They were always delighted that we knew their holidays.  We were often invited to celebrate with them, learn their beliefs and taste their celebratory foods.  Personally, (Alexandra here), I had the luxury of celebrating 2 Easters as my mother was Roman Catholic and my father was Greek Orthodox, and the same was true of Christmas.  Ron and I also celebrated Passover with Jewish friends, and Nowruz with Iranian clients.

We wish everyone of every faith and culture a very happy celebration during this wonderful time of year.  Celebrate the luxury of diversity!

* The illustration above is known at the diversity tree of love.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Define Your POV (Point of View)Part 2

In part 1 of this article series, we discussed the importance of having a Point of View (POV) as a journalist via the media of your blog.  This is essential if you want to engage online readers and build a loyal audience of raving fans who are interested in what you are writing about, and are inspired to refer you, list with you, and buy from you. 

Your goal is to engage the attention of your target audience.  Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Think of all the online marketing that is vying for their attention.   Your audience is actually voting with their attention.  Why should they vote for you?

People give their attention to people and things that resonates with their values and with their personality.  That is why it is so important to have a distinct Point of View that amplifies your values and your personality. With a distinct POV that is clearly articulated your target audience will be able to discover that you are attention-worthy, faster.  With all of the competition for attention, this is now an imperative.

If you are a fan of seafood as we are, you have many choices as to where you buy your fish and shellfish. Every major supermarket chain has a seafood section and also sells frozen fish. 

Here in Santa Barbara, we are very fortunate to have local fisherman who sell their catch of the day at the harbor and also at our local Farmers Market (when conditions are favorable).   We also have a spectacular wholesale seafood distributor, Kanaloa, which sells local and imported seafood to restaurants and markets all over the country.

The quality and variety of Kanaloa’s fish is unparalleled in California.  Lucky for us they are open to the public as well.  But, what is their POV as a company?  Here is their mission statement that thoroughly resonates with us making them worthy of our attention, our customer loyalty and rave reviews: 

“Doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place, for the right individual, for the right reason, with the right feeling…every time.”

Many luxury real estate marketing professionals and companies strive for excellence. But, few attain it consistently. Let Kanaloa be an inspiration to you. It certainly has inspired us.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: Define Your POV (Point of View)

James Dean, 1955 movie, Rebel Without a Cause*

The world of professional journalism and the media in general are two subjects that are mostly unfamiliar to luxury real estate marketing professionals.  Yet, to fully engage in and leverage the amazing marketing benefits of social media you need to know at least two fundamentals:

Social media is really not all that different from traditional media such as radio, newspapers, magazines and TV

Without a distinct “Point of View (POV)” you are dead in the water before you even begin

A media is just a vehicle through which you can deliver content of interest that is compelling to your target market.  What is bewildering to those engaged in marketing luxury real estate is the concept of building an audience of raving fans. Suddenly, this has become part of your job description if you want to leverage social media to the fullest!  Making the time to do this on top of your normal business routine, however, can give you a spectacular competitive advantage because you will stand out from the crowd. 

If you just consider the importance of one word, “SHARE”, you will understand the primary added value that social media has brought about and where its opportunity truly is.  When you publish genuine, original and compelling content, the very mechanics of social media can facilitate the process of putting word-of-mouth advertising on steroids for you. 

But, you might as well abandon the idea of becoming a publisher of content if your content is not original. More importantly, if you do not have a distinct and consistent POV, no one will pay attention to you over time and no one will share your content with others.

Take a look at The Food Networks’ hit reality show, The Next Food Star where the winner is awarded his or her own series on the Food Network.On the show, they strongly encourage the contestants to articulate their POV so they can build a fan base who eventually will vote for them.

The winner of season two was Guy Fieri who went on to star in Dinners, Drive-Ins and Dives that now seems to be ubiquitous on the Network.  With a hip, rugged, down-to-earth personality he connects mightily with his target market as he showcases the best comfort food eateries in the country.  With his wild, spiked dyed white hair and pierced body parts, Guy has a very distinct POV. He also has a BBQ sauce (and other ancillary products) that is sold in markets throughout the USA.

Last season’s winner was Jason Wamer.  He defined his POV as "Rebel With a Culinary Cause".  Iron Chef, Bobby Flay, stated, “Jason’s zany ideas and quirkiness will ad a unique value to the Food Network”.  And, Giada De Laurentis, said, “Jason really knows who he is”.

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, have you defined your own POV (Point of View)?  This is one of the keys to developing your personal brand, which is exactly what we help our clients to do.

*The photo of James Dean is from the film "Giant"

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip: English vs. “Googlish”

Recently, we saw an article by a Forbes magazine writer titled, Is Blogging Dead?” and that got us thinking about how that question might apply to luxury real estate marketing.  Blogging has been around for some time now.  Has it already become passé?  We think blogging is alive and well providing you are blogging in English vs. “Googlish”. 

Blogging isn’t going anywhere any time soon because good journalism is and always will be an integral part of our human experience.  As long as people seek the opinion of experts in a given field and the Internet can instantly connect you to opinion leaders blogging in some form or another will always be relevant. 

The real question for you is: Do you know who your target market is, precisely? Is your target comprised of humans or robots? Are you speaking to your audience in their language? Are you provided compelling original content that is newsworthy, buzz-worthy and follow-worthy? Or, are you cramming a bunch of empty keyword phrases together that are repeated far too many times in order to court the Google robots?  If the latter is the case you must be blogging in “Googlish” not English. 

Sure, there are excellent benefits from being recognized by Google as an authority.  But, your page ranking will reflect that naturally. Google wants to match up the experts with those who seek their advice. They can sell more ads if they do this well. 

Advertisers are looking for eyeballs that are seeking quality content. You may have heard the expression, “Content is King”.  We say, ORIGINAL content is still king” because that is what builds an audience and raving fans.  But, if your heart in not in your blog you are engaged in an activity that is a colossal waste of time, time that could be spent much more productively, like actually meeting new people who could become new referral sources for you.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Innovate, Innovate, Innovate!

In marketing luxury real estate, being a market leader is not always a picnic. Why? As a market leader, you are often the target of many challengers. Just look at the onslaught of competition that the icon brand, Apple, is now facing. 

Apple is known for consistently innovating, and introducing entirely new categories of products and services. The company became the market leader by creating brand new markets that did not even exist before. 

Along comes challenger, Samsung with an interesting brand strategy.  They recently spent over one-half billion dollars on advertising trying to convince consumers that Apple is now yesterday’s news with their smart phone slogan, “The next big thing is already here with The Galaxy S3 and even more recently, the S4. 

Essentially, Samsung’s strategy is to create the perception that Apple is no longer the cool, hip contemporary brand, “it once was”.  Instead, they want consumers to believe that Apple is now the more conservative heritage brand, not the edgy contemporary brand.   Apple used this very same strategy in their highly successful advertising campaign comparing Macs to PCs depicting Microsoft as the stogy heritage brand. 

But, one thing is for sure:  Apple is not going to sit on their laurels. Nor, should you if you are the incumbent market leader in your luxury real estate marketing practice.

Prior to the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Blackberry enjoyed its stint as a market leader in smart phones (especially in corporate America) by combining the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with secure email and some Internet browsing.  They were late to the table in adapting the touch screen and an operating system to support it, not to mention supporting an eco-system of app developers. 

Blackberry, is finally trying to catch up. Even CEO, Thorsten Heins, said that Apple’s iPhone is not the state-of-the-art  smart phone it once was. In fact, it’s starting to look a little dusty, according his Wall Street Journal interview.  Is this actually true?  Maybe it is not.  But, in our opinion, his remarks reflect a brand strategy of piggy-backing on Samsung’s attempt to dismiss the reigning market leader, Apple, as old. 

Blackberry discovered that if you do not keep pace with the speed of innovation, you could easily be replaced. But, this does not apply only to the world of high-tech.

On Melrose Avenue directly across the street from the Pacific Design Center is the architecturally contemporary home accessories showroom of Robert Kuo, (pictured above).  Originally, Kuo brought the magnificent art of cloisonné to America, but with a modern twist. He utilized the influences of Art Nouveau and Art Deco and introduced new shapes and finishes to this ancient art, which brought him notoriety.  His work can be seen in the National Museum of Taipei and in exclusive international hotels. Now, his sophisticated designs have taken organic forms.

So, let this be a lesson to those of you who are market leaders in your luxury real estate marketing practice.  Be complacent at your own risk. Innovate, Innovate, Innovate!

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Personal & Company Branding: The Added Value of Provenance - Part 7

Pacific Design Center on Melrose Avenue -  Adjacent to Beverly Hills, CA

Stay on the Leading Edge - Don't  Sit on Your Laurels!

In this article series we explored an essential principle that can play a big role in adding value to luxury real estate personal and company branding.  Your provenance, which is your history, background, lineage, pedigree, or heritage, can contribute mightily to the story of your brand. It is where your brand “comes from”.   

If you are the market leader in your area, one of your core strengths in relationship to your closest competitors is your track record, which is a key component in establishing your provenance.  A strong track record is virtually irrefutable and it is intimidating to your challengers. 

With a strong track record, however, it is very easy for market leaders to become complacent. To sustain market leadership it is extremely important that you do not “sit on your laurels”.  You must stay current and relevant.  You must keep innovating to stay on the leading edge ahead of your competition. 

In our strategic branding practice we work exclusively with those luxury real estate marketing professionals and companies who are bent on gaining or sustaining market leadership in their marketplace or a niche therein.  True brand strategy is a battle for mind-share and market share between incumbents and challengers.  Our clients take this seriously because, at this level, it is the lion’s share of business in their area or niche that is at stake. 

We coach our market leading clients to stay on the leading edge and not to sit on their laurels. We also help them to amplify the provenance of their brand story, by clearly displaying their formidable track records in their Gallery or Portfolio of Sold Homes on their web sites.  Just one look at their track records can be enough to instantly convince a home seller to list with them, and not even bother to investigate the competition.   

Here are two examples of how our market leading Santa Barbara clients communicate their provenance.  Linda Lorenzen Hughes is the market leader in the Hope Ranch area and Chris Palme is the market leader in the Santa Barbara Riviera niche. (Click on their names)

We hope you enjoyed our 7 Part  series on the added value of provenance.  If you are a market leader in your area of expertise or you are serious about challenging the incumbent, check out our track record (Client Testimonials) and contact us.

View the Entire Series: The Added Value of Provenance

Part 1 l  Part 2  l  Part 3 l  Part 4  l  Part 5  l  Part 6  l Part 7

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