Forming a strong emotional connection with your target market is a sure way to increase your market share as a luxury real estate marketing professional. Southwest Airlines really gets this notion of forming emotional connections with its customers. They even send birthday cards to loyal customers.
If FedEx wants to gain a major competitive advantage over UPS in the parcel delivery service industry, it will need to identify a new category to own in the minds of its existing and target customers. With identical services and prices one of the companies will need to make a stronger emotional connection with decision makers in the companies they serve in order to win and retain customers. It all comes down to this question about the brand’s relationship to its customer: Which company feels the best to work with?
The US Postal Service, a distant 3rd (in market share) behind #1 UPS 
and #2 FedEx, is definitely on the right track as far as emotional branding is concerned. It has positioned itself as distinct from UPS and FedEX by claiming “greener delivery” on parcels. The assumption is that letter carriers already deliver to US addresses every day of the week (except Sunday). Therefore, they offer the industry’s lowest fuel consumption per delivery. This has given eco-conscious consumers a compelling reason to choose the post office over the other two carriers.
UPS did the green thing in 2005 by recalculating its routes to reduce left turns which cause drivers to waste fuel while standing idle in intersections. Although, it eliminated 464,000 miles from its travel and saved 51,000 gallons of fuel within Washington D.C. alone, due to more efficient routing, it cannot compete with the post office as the most green parcel carrier.
How can you make a stronger emotional connection with your clients and become the breakaway emotional brand in your marketplace?
This is part of an ongoing series about luxury real estate personal branding. Get Fluent. Get Affluent! Subscribe to The Language of Luxury by Email or RSS Feed. Comments? Please use form in left column