Is Your Service Remarkable Enough for Continuous Referral

Remarkable service is one of the key ways to differentiate yourself from the competition regardless of which branch of the real estate business you excel in. People who appreciate this type of service are also people who enjoy referring others like themselves to the same business person. A recent study in the luxury industry rated service as the most important reason to refer someone. And those mentioned had remarkable financial results.  And these businesses continuously look for ways to be even more remarkable.

Your most highly valued asset in your luxury or any real estate marketing practice is your database of contacts, particularly those who would go out of their way to refer business to you because you have earned their trust and respect. 

It stands to reason that understanding and consistently implementing the best practices for building a high volume of high-trust relationships will not only yield a high volume of referrals, it will also open up the opportunity to sell your practice in the future at a premium.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to inspire people to spontaneously go out of their way to refer business to you? What sparks the urge to originate word-of-mouth advertising on your behalf?  The answer is creating extraordinary value far beyond the fundamentals that are expected of you. Your service must be REMARKABLE to trigger word-of-mouth advertising. 

A remarkable brand must communicate and keep its promises, consistently. Only then can you achieve brand loyalty. For instance, there is a luxury real estate firm overseas, that promises that you can speak to one of its friendly representatives 24/7, and bespoke service. You don’t have to deal with voice mail.  We checked to make sure that they do.  To continue to succeed this firm has keep this promise. Their team must be well versed in representing their brand message. Every time the phone is answered by a live representative there is an opportunity to demonstrate and communicate the essence of their brand.

 Personally, we find ourselves drawn to brands that have great service.  And we are always delighted to recommend them.  Our car brand is now offering 24/7 emergency repair, which means that if the car fizzles out on a weekend, you don’t have to wait till Monday to get it repaired.   They have found another way to give remarkable service, and to exceed our expectations. 

Branding Moments: Finding The Perfect Brand Colors-A Case Study

Many have asked how we come up with brand colors for our real estate clients and the companies we work with.We have a three part process.  The first is to give our client a comprehensive color test defining their favorite colors, the mood they want to convey, and the style of their practice.  The second involves the colors of their marketplace and the lifestyle.   And lastly, we combine all three into the brand.

Here is the case study.  Pictured above is the bark of a eucalyptus tree.  Note the myriad of colors and shades on the bark.  Since the target market lived among eucalyptus trees, this became our inspiration for color.

Our client's color preference were in the pastel family accented with a bright color.  Her market was a high end community with stately traditional homes.  The residents even named their eucalyptus trees.  Pictured above is the bark of a eucalyptus tree.

Together we selected the colors of the brand, and used a touch of orange (you can see it on the left lower side of the picture) and used it sparingly as an accent to the slate grey blue which became the main color.  This also is the color of the leaves on eucalyptus trees.

It was a perfect marriage of colors.  Every aspect of the luxury real estate marketplace was represented: our client, the market place and the lifestyle.

Wishing you a great weekend!

Luxury Real Estate Personal Branding: Getting the Most Thrills Per Minute

Courtesy of Rick Steves - ETBD

Do you recognize this man in the picture?  Chances are you have seen him on TV or in the bookstores. The same principles of personal branding that have enabled Rick Steves to dominate the affordable travel advice industry can help you achieve market leadership in your luxury real estate marketing career.

Rick Steves is a one-man-brand with a staff of 70 people and a thriving travel and media company that grosses around $30M per year—Europe Through the Back Door. Rick is the author of 40 travel guidebooks. His guidebook to Italy is the bestselling guidebook to any foreign destination in the United States.  His phrase books in foreign languages out-sell Berlitz.  His TV show is the most popular travel series in America on public television. Rick is also featured on a weekly hour-long national public radio show and has a weekly newspaper column syndicated by the Chicago Tribune. Additionally, he runs a successful European tour program with more than 300 departures that annually attract around 10,000 people.

What do you think is attributable to Rick Steves’ success?  Here are some of the factors:

1. AUTHENTICITIY:  Rick “is” his personal brand
2. PASSION:  This man loves traveling and is passionate about teaching others how to get,  “maximum thrills per minute” (Rick’s own words)
3. FOCUS:  Rick focuses on and owns “affordable European travel” as his niche in the overall travel industry.  

If you are thinking that this level of personal branding is beyond your reach, think again.  You do not need to achieve top-of-mind status in all of the United States.  You just need to become the first luxury real estate marketing professional that comes to mind in the number of households that comprise your local target market.

You do not need your own TV show or radio show or syndicated newspaper column. You just need to stake your claim to an uncontested market niche that you can dominate with passion.  And, you need to leverage the internet media marketing tools that can catapult you to the top. 

If your competitors are your pet peeves, be like Rick Steves. Get branded! ( Yes, that rhymed on purpose).

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Don't Blow It By Being a Generalist!

Focus is the name of the game in luxury real estate marketing and branding  today, particularly because internet marketing, an inescapable component of any successful marketing plan, is all about “expertness” on a given subject or category of business.   Selecting and dominating an uncontested market niche is the fastest route to market leadership and top-of-mind status.

In business, niches are categories of products and services. The majority of people can only hold one or two brands in their mind in a given category.  What is the first facial tissue that comes to your mind?  Can you see the importance of being Kleenex, the category leader, the top-of-mind brand that commands the lion’s share of revenue in this product category?

If you wanted to gift a client who was interested in hand blown glass sculpture which artist would come to your mind first? If you didn’t know any of these artists, you most likely would ask a friend.  If your friend didn’t have an answer you would probably turn to Google.   

The glass sculpture tree depicted above by Dale Chihuly is the first image displayed on Google using the search term “glass sculpture”. Chihuly is, by far, the category leader. And, he not only is a master glass sculptor, but also a brilliant marketer.  His major exhibits are often staged outside and his publicity is extensive.

Essentially, Dale Chihuly identified an uncontested market niche that he could dominate, a niche about which he is quite passionate.  By popularizing the virtually unknown sub-category of contemporary style, he made glass sculpture more accessible and more appealing to more people than traditional, functional Venetian glass sculpture. This is Chihuly’s extraordinary promise of value that catapulted him to top-of-mind status and to high volume sales. He "owns" the contemporary micro-niche sub-category of hand-blown glass sculpture that previously was not on the radar of mass consciousness.

So don’t blow it by being a generalist!  Identify an uncontested market niche that you can dominate with passion in your luxury real estate marketing practice.

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Personal Branding: Feather Your Clients' Nest with Bespoke (Personalized) Service

One of the most important words in the Language of Luxury to include in your vocabulary is “bespoke”.  It means tailored, made to order, personalized or custom-made.  As a luxury real estate marketing professional adopting a “bespoke mindset” and offering a customized service can go a long way to differentiate you from your competition.  Feather your client's nest with bespoke service. This will add another feather in your cap and give your clients a compelling reason to refer you to others.

Nothing defines your personal brand better than your own brand of clothing or your own custom-made perfume. In one of the finest men’s haberdasheries in London, Turnbull & Asser, you can find an entire department of bespoke merchandise. While it is world renowned for its bespoke shirts, a tradition for over 120 years, Turnbull and Asser now sells bespoke belts, boxer shorts, gloves, knitwear, sleep wear, socks, ties, and umbrellas.

Bespoke perfumery is an art but it is also a science. The best perfumers are usually graduates of the prominent International Superior Institute of Perfume, Cosmetics and food Aromas (ISIPCA). Perfumers who are masters of their craft can identify hundreds of smells by nose.  They often spend up to one year creating a single personalized bespoke fragrance.

Some bespoke perfume artisans take on just one or two clients per year.  Depending on the rarity and availability of the chosen oils and ingredients, the cost can be up to $70,000. It may take up to three or four private consultations to concoct your own signature scent. There is an artisan perfumer in California who can create a bespoke perfume for you by mail for $900. 

Bespoke goods benefit not only the customers, who can freely express their individuality, but also the artisan, as they are not constrained by the commercial limitations of mass production. Delivering a customized service in marketing luxury real estate can make you stand out and also offer you a way to express your own creativity.

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Luxury Real Estate Branding: The Spaghetti Bench Mark

A benchmark is something that serves as a standard by which others may be measured or judged.  To be original, as a luxury real estate marketing professional, your personal brand of doing business should set a new standard of excellence in your field. It should raise the bar and become a benchmark.  How else will you become the standout, if market leadership is your quest?

To become a market leader we recommend that you identify and dominate an uncontested market niche. You need to select something that you can do, with passion, better than anyone else in your marketplace and become known for this as your trademark. A trademark is a distinguishing characteristic or feature firmly associated with a person or thing.  You must spot a niche that is underserved and not obvious.  Then, you must claim it as yours and own it.

The Spaghetti Bench, by the Franco-Argentinean artist and designer Pablo Reinoso, is both a benchmark and a trademark series of work. He has taken the ordinary, yet functional park bench and elevated it to something quite extraordinary. It would be next to impossible for another artist or designer to do a similar work without being called a “me-too” or copycat. 

The Spaghetti Bench is truly remarkable!  You just feel compelled to tell others about it. We actually contacted Mr. Reinoso in Paris and asked for his permission to publish his works on the LOL Blog. We were that moved to share it with you.  We hope you pass this post along to your friends, if you are moved by his work as well.

It was an immediate emotional response for both of us when we saw two park benches intertwined, becoming one, yet retaining their individuality.  Reinoso’s works convey what we value the most: innovation. How absolutely outrageous to begin a piece of art in one room and have it continue in another as it transforms from inert to dynamic movement. It spans a spectrum from practical to lyrical and says, “You can have it all!” It reaffirms that we do not live in an ‘either-or” world as many would have us believe, that your lifestyle, your love style and your work style can be a continuum when you live a life of passion.  And, that is part of what defines luxury for us.

When you are willing to step out of the realm of conformity, to free yourself of the tyranny of the status quo and become an original, only then will you have a remarkable personal brand that becomes a benchmark for all others.  Find that which can become your trademark, as a luxury real estate marketing professional, and you will succeed beyond your dreams.

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Luxury Real Estate Branding: Discover What Makes You Special?

Dragon Fruit

Quite often, we get calls from luxury real estate marketing professionals asking us for an image makeover in the form of a logo, or a new website that will assure their success in the new age of social media marketing.  They think that is the definition of branding.

The new opportunity on the World Wide Web is to express your unique voice as an expert in some uncontested market niche and to become the market leader in that niche.  People are looking for answers to their most perplexing challenges. They seek a voice that is special, one that they can identify with, a voice that is compelling and follow-worthy. 

This voice cannot be made up by some marketing image maker and cannot be modulated to please others; it has to be the voice that reflects the authentic you. Your voice is your "DNA"!

For example, there is only one dragon fruit (see photo above). It is unique among cactus fruits.  In Taiwan diabetics use the fruit as a food substitute for rice. It is also credited with alleviating respiratory ailments.  Other cactus fruits do not have this claim to fame.

Fabricated images are doomed, at some point, to fail and fade away.  Hype and spin cannot disguise the lack of substance anymore.  The internet has imposed transparency on all fronts.

Branding is not buying a new outfit or simply having a graphic designer design a new logo.  It is discovering your voice and promoting the unique attributes of it.  Once you have discovered it, you must stick to that which you are.  Life becomes a binary world:  what is on your path and what is not on your path—what is on your brand signal and what is off signal.  The design and the logo are dictated by the brand not the other way around.

One of the best definitions of a brand was given by Lisa Price, founder of Carol’s Daughter beauty products.  Because of her understanding of branding, she was able to take her business from her kitchen to the nation at large. She has attracted some of the world’s most famous “spokes beauties”, such as Halle Berry, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Mary J Blige, to sing her praises.

According to Ms. Price,

“When you are an entrepreneur and you are starting your business, it is so important to know what your voice is, and what it is that you bring to the table that is different.  You won’t have a brand, you won’t have an identity if you don’t hold on to that, that makes what you do special.”

Discover what makes you special. Find your unique voice as an expert and you will thrive in this new decade where a personal brand can set you apart from your competition.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Dominate The Uncontested Market Space

Recently, we responded to an S.O.S from a successful luxury real estate marketing professional who put out this distress signal:  I have been blogging consistently. Why is no one commenting or following me?  Is there anyone out there?  For those of you who are experiencing the same frustration, here is an important tip: Discover and dominate an under served market niche

A niche is specialized market. It is a market segment or a particular market “space”.  An example of a niche in luxury real estate would be historic homes. When we were in commercial real estate in Beverly Hills we specialized in high end retail and the entertainment industry.  One of our jobs was to find potential tenants for retail stores and shopping centers that we represented exclusively, on Rodeo Drive, or surrounding areas.

In doing some research for an upcoming blog series we found an excellent analogy for niches by Ray Wert on his Jalopnik.com blog.  He referred to niches as the spaces between the marbles in a Mason jar that is full of marbles.  If you were to pour sand in the jar it would fill those spaces and there would be a surprising amount of room for the sand.  Only when you can no longer add sand is the jar really “full”. The marbles represent what everyone else is doing, the niches exist in those spaces between the marbles that the sand fills.

To be successful as a blogger, as a luxury real estate marketing professional, you must first identify an uncontested market “space”.  The first place to look is for an under served consumer group.  It must be a niche about which you can write passionately.  It needs to be a market segment for which you can offer an extraordinary promise of value, value that cannot be found elsewhere. And, you must blog in your own unique voice, your authentic style.  That is, if you want to build an audience and be follow-worthy over time.  

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Luxury Real Estate MarketingTip: Dominate Your Brand Category

To better understand branding in the realm of luxury real estate marketing, it is important to understand brand categories. If market leadership is your quest, as a luxury real estate marketing professional, the key is to select a brand category or sub-category in your marketplace that you can dominate.

To illustrate the concept of brand categories, let us take tomatoes as an example, as a category of fruit. The last few Saturdays at the Farmer’s Market in Santa Barbara have been a feast for the eyes and senses.. The most breathtaking sight, however, is the heirloom tomatoes.

In August, the heirloom or heritage tomatoes are at their peak displacing their cousins, Early Girl, Beefsteak, Better Boy, and Celebrity. Think of heirlooms as the luxury category of real estate marketing. These aristocratic tomatoes are more expensive. They come in many colors many variations of striped patterns. In each of these sub-categories of luxury tomatoes there is an opportunity to become the market leader, the best seller, the break-away brand.

The differences in the DNA makeup of these categories are minor, but the characteristics in terms of shape, color and flavor are distinctive. The heirloom tomato’s target market many be tomato lovers in general, but each customer has preferences. The key to branding is to clearly amplify the difference so that the customer looking for sweet, low acidic tomatoes, for instance, can quickly be matched with the right brand. Branding therefore, accelerates the selection process in a sea of choices.

CHEROKEE PURPLE

Selecting the right brand name can speed the selection process up even further.  Many of the heirlooms have intriguing names such as Brandywine, Green Zebra, Mr. Stripey, Pineapple, and Jubilee. But, the stand-out brands have a story that helps create a faster emotional connection, an immediate bond with their target market. The Cherokee Purple, for example, is named for the Cherokee Indians who cultivated them. Mortgage Lifter, with its big pink fruit, helped its farmer, Charles Byles, pay off his $6000 mortgage in 6 years in the 1930’s.

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, the fastest way to market leadership is to select an uncontested market category or sub-category and dominate that niche by providing an extraordinary, unparalleled promise of value. Then, tell a compelling story about your brand that is indelible.

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Luxury Real Estate Web Design: Is Your Online Presence Distinctive?

We often talk about the imperative of personal branding, in the highly competitive world of luxury real estate marketing. Now, with social media leveling the playing field your website is accessible more than ever before, and the need to stand out is mission critical. Having the best “packaging” is often the determining factor in selecting an agent online because consumers are pressed for time and they have the power to quickly move on to check out your competitors in a single click.

Today, we were in the book store. Alexandra was looking for a book and I snapped this picture of the “Women’s Interests” section in the magazine racks. The layout of the covers on just about every magazine in this category looked almost identical. With the exception of one magazine, every cover has a picture of a model surrounded by words intended to hook buyers. Doesn’t this remind you of the plethora of agent websites with head shots that look so much alike? Even the content is the same.

Statistics show that most books and magazines are selected solely based on the cover, the graphic imagery and the messaging. It is the same online. Think of your personal brand as your book cover or your magazine cover. Certainly, there is much more to your brand than this. But, if you are looked over because you blend in like the majority of magazines in any given category your shelf life is going to be limited and you will not have a chance to deliver your valuable service as often as you would like.  

It is important to understand that in blending in and looking like everyone else in the luxury arena you are not demonstrating your marketing savvy. More than ever the luxury seller is looking for the individual who understands the importance of standing out in an ocean of me too.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: What Color is your Luxury Brand?

For luxury real estate marketing professionals, choosing the right colors in the process of branding is an important element of your brand identity system. Color is a means of communicating your personality and your unique identity. It sets the tone and the mood you want to project to your target market. It also tells them what you stand for.

Traditionally, the colors associated with luxury are black, gold, forest green, and burgundy. Here are some basic traits of these colors:

BLACK evokes feelings of elegance, sophistication, mystery and drama.

GOLD is shiny, rare, glows and sought after.

BURGUNDY is a deep red and it is seen as sophisticated, classic and more refined than red.

FOREST GREEN is associated with money and prestige.

Here are some colorful luxury brands:

HERMES: Bright burnt orange is the dominant color. Orange is a hot color, reminds us of fun, sunsets and autumnal foliage. Hermes ties their orange boxes with brown ribbon. Brown is the color of substance and earthiness. The color message is fun and substantial.

TIFFANY: Tiffany blue is a registered trademark. Blue reminds us of the sky and water. Blue evokes the feeling of consistency, trust (true blue), and confidence. Their accent color is white. White stands for purity. Their jewelry design is pure, serene and everlasting.

FAUCHON (gourmet food) : Hot pink is energetic, youthful and devil may care. Accent color is black, solid and sophisticated. Food is exciting and sophisticated.

In nature colors, wildlife is there for attraction, camouflage and survival. Flora also cooperates in this process with its own enormous range of color. Observing nature is a great way to study color combinations and be inspired by it!

As a luxury real estate marketing expert, what colors will reflect your nature, and simultaneously resonate with your target market and the community in which you work?

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The Art of Staying In Touch- A Luxury Real Estate Marketing Tip!

Are you staying in touch with your clients after the sale? Staying in touch does not mean boring them with articles about recent real estate related court cases, or telling them to change the batteries in their smoke alarms. Boring, canned, impersonal e-newsletters just do not cut it anymore with web-savvy clients and friends.

Your communications must be about the things that people value. Moreover, they must be about the things that a particular person values. Consistent, personalized one-on-one communication is an art form that most time-starved luxury real estate marketing professionals have neglected. Yet, if you could quantify the results of personal communication in terms of referrals and listings you would think twice about doing it more often.

Most agents haven’t noticed that once a client moves into his or her new home THE LAST THING they want to communicate about is real estate. In fact, if they do not hear another word about real estate for another five years or more it would be too soon. Sure, they are curious what the house down the street is listed for and what it sold for. They are interested in their own property’s value. But, what they are most interested in is their own lives not the lives of Realtors®.

Whether the subject is golf, tennis, or perhaps a new restaurant with a very special cob salad on the menu, these are the topics that interest people. This is far more interesting than a reminder to clean the leaves out of their rain gutter before the rainy season. Interacting personally, one-on-one, this is the key. Focus more attention on your people’s particular interests and watch your practice soar!

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