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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