Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Luxury on a Dime!

In our home town of Santa Barbara, California we are extremely fortunate to be able to shop year-round at outdoor farmers’ markets five days a week (except for relatively few rainy days). It is one of the many amenities that contribute to the quality of life here. To participate, all of the farmers’ produce must be certified organic.

In our local supermarkets and specialty markets like our favorite, Trader Joe’s, you usually have a choice between organic and non organic produce.  Organic is usually more expensive.  Given the price differential, you could say that organic produce is a luxury.  In fact, understanding the buying decision between these two options in produce can shed some light on the very meaning of luxury, itself.

Here is how the USDA (Department of Agriculture) defines ‘organic’. 

Organic is a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural product has been produced through approved methods. These methods integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used.

Many studies have demonstrated that organic is simply better for your health. This could be a justification to spend more on organic produce.  Many say that the peace of mind alone is worth it, even if they are not certain that organic produce is actually healthier. The price of illness far outweighs the price differential between the two choices.

Bananas are rarely grown by local farmers. Most bananas are grown in Central American and South America. Therefore, for us, Trader Joe’s is where we purchase bananas.  We like to buy them partially green so that they do not get over-ripe before we are ready to eat them.  But, up until recently, we purchased, non-organic bananas without thinking much about the difference.  That is because bananas supposedly are resistant to pesticides due to their thick skin.  

Recently, we could not find partially green bananas in the non-organic stand, so we bought organic as a matter of convenience.   Then, we had a big surprise! The organic bananas taste remarkably better. The flavor was more pronounced and so was the aroma. 

Now, we only buy organic bananas.  For 10 cents extra, the taste is worth it and in the long run, organic bananas are probably healthier.  What was interesting here is the decision making process that shed some light on the price differential that made organic banana a luxury.  Health, peace of mind, convenience and finally taste, these are some of the “quality cues” and the values that comprise the luxury mindset and justify a higher price point. Now, that is luxury on a dime!

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Redefining Luxury in 2012

One of the leading trends in the affluent sector that impacts luxury real estate marketing is the change in how the affluent define luxury.  The affluent are becoming “value masters”, the new badge of smart consumers.  The annual Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluent Survey (by Ad Age) is a nationally representative behavioral study of more than 14,000 adults living in households with at least $100,000 in annual household income.

Value Matters
89% responded “When I decide to purchase a luxury item, I go out of my way to find the best price possible.”
60% responded “Even though the recession is 'officially' over, I am still spending money much more cautiously than I used to.”
 
Quality
78% responded "When it comes to quality, I believe you get what you pay for."
18% responded "I tend to buy based on price, not quality."
 
Online
68% responded "When I go shopping online, I usually know exactly what I want to buy."
64% responded "I regularly read online reviews of products before making an online purchase."
 
Offline
63% responded "When I go shopping in a retail store, I usually know exactly what I want to buy."
47% responded "I regularly read online reviews of products before making a purchase in a retail store."

In buying a luxury home whether as a primary or secondary residence, the new affluent buyer is researching the market place.  With value as the objective rather than the old paradigm of “being able to afford anything I want”, the premium of perceived value (i.e., buying on the “right” street or the “right” neighborhood) does not have the same importance as it once did.   They are also willing to wait for price reductions.    Given the new shift in psycho graphics in the affluent marketplace, how will you adapt as a luxury real estate marketing professional?

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Creating Customers for Life

A consumer’s first impression of a company or luxury real estate marketing professional is of paramount importance. If you manage to make an indelible positive first impression, your next challenge is to be consistent with every subsequent encounter over time. That is if you want to have a customer for life. Here are a couple examples that illustrate this point.

Recently, we needed to get in touch with the manager of a branch office of one of the major luxury real estate brands in the USA, in a very high profile (and competitive) marketplace. But, we did not know the manager’s name. We placed a call to the office and encountered a voicemail that had one option: “If you now the extension of the person you are trying to reach, you may dial it now. For the company directory, press #”. 

Since we did not even know the name of the manager, we intuited pressing “O” and got another recording.  This time we were prompted to leave a message with the promise of a returned phone call.  However, we had to wait and listen to a lengthy message before we heard the sound of the “beep”.  We had to endure several completely irrelevant questions to the purpose of our call, like, “if you need our address, the address is …” Does this sound familiar?

What if we were consumers who were contemplating giving the listing of our $5 million dollar estate to an agent in this office, and we wanted to ask the manager which agent would be most appropriate for our needs? In a matter of 90 seconds of our life that were utterly wasted on this call, that company would be crossed off our list. That recording would have cost that company potentially $250,000 (with a 5% commission)!

On the complete other end of the spectrum we recently had lunch our favorite Italian restaurant in Santa Monica, California that made a lasting first impression over 27years ago, and has been impeccably consistent at making remarkable impressions each and every time we return there.  Il Forno has fabulous food, outstanding service and a wonderful wine cellar. If feels like “coming home” to our extended family when we dine there.

Il Forno was founded by Joseph Suceveanu in 1985.  The Chef, Domenico Salvatore has also been a part of Il Forno since the same year. In addition to Santa Monica, Il Forno can also be found in three different locations in Japan: two in Tokyo, and one in Fukuoka.  When they opened in Japan, Il Forno was immediately considered to be one of the top Italian restaurants in the country.

Great first impressions need to be made upon first encounters. But, every single subsequent encounter must be great to create a customer for life.

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Personal & Company Branding: A Surefire Way to Challenge the Market Leader

 

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, what is a surefire way to to challenge the entrenched, incumbent market leader in your marketplace or niche therein?  This is a similar question that countless international tech companies have been asking as they attempt to challenge Apple in the category of tablet computers.  

iPad owns 70% of the tablet market in the USA. Many companies have tried to challenge Apple in this arena. Yet, only one company is poised to make a dent in Apple’s market share. That company is Amazon who recently launched their line of Kindle Fire tablets. 

The best brand strategy for a challenger is to sharply position your product or service (in the case of luxury real estate marketing) as the opposite of number one.  This gives consumers a viable alternative to the market leader and summarily dismisses the rest of field of competitors. That is exactly what Amazon is attempting to accomplish.

As the world’s greatest online retailer Amazon understood something that has eluded most other tablet manufacturers: So far it is consumers, more so than businesses who are using these devices and they are using them to consume apps and media (books, magazines, movies, TV shows and games). Tablets are predominantly virtual vending machines! 

In addition to Amazon’s strength as a retailer, they also provide out-sourced, cloud-based web services on their very powerful servers. Netflix, for example, uses Amazon’s web services to run their website. Leveraging this capability for their new Kindle Fire, they were able to bring down the cost of manufacturing their tablets to less than half of ALL of their competition. 

In fact, Amazon is able to sell their Kindle Fire line at a slight loss because they are able to make up the difference many times over with the sale of apps and media. Equally important is the fact that all of the media that you purchase from Amazon is stored on their servers (i.e., in the cloud) not on the hard drive on your Kindle which is another cost saver in manufacturing.

By lowering the price to a point where other tablet manufactures cannot compete, those who do not have their own app and media stores, they have potentially catapulted themselves to the number two position. Amazon has also framed the choice for consumers as a two company contest between the iPad, with premium features, and the more basic Kindle Fire tablet, simply based on on price. 

Both Apple and Amazon have a tremendous competitive advantage over the rest of the tablet manufacturers. They both understand that once you store your apps and media in their cloud, your likelihood of switching clouds is minimal.  It is just is too much trouble to switch for most consumers. 

Finally, Amazon’s other strength is their worldwide customer base. The Kindle Fire has come out just in time to gain major sales traction during the 2011 Holiday season. 

Amazon has even changed the game for Google who supplies the Android operating system to most manufacturers of tablets including the Kindle Fire.  Google has a strong potential customer base, they have cloud based services, and they have an app store. But, they are not strong in media sales and they do not yet have their own tablet device.   

Other potential iPad challengers have their own operation system. But, Microsoft, who has a cloud based service (Office 365) and Research in Motion, who is spending $100M to purchase a cloud based web service company, are simply late to the party. Neither have an substantial app or media store.

The moral of this story, for luxury real estate marketing professionals, is twofold: 

1. The best way to gain and sustain market leadership is to identify an uncontested or under served market niche that you can serve,with  passion and better than anyone else in the world (your marketplace), by adding extraordinary value.  That is what Apple did with the iPad.
2. Here is a surefire way to challenge the incumbent market leader: First assess your strengths and your competitor’s vulnerabilities. Then, take aim at that the weakest vulnerability with full force and concentration. Position yourself as the opposite of market leader to create an either/or choice for the consumer.  That is what Amazon did by focusing on price.

We are not recommending that cutting your commission is the way to challenge the market leader as a luxury real estate marketing professional. Market leaders in real estate often get complacent and have plenty of other vulnerabilities. The key to challenging the entrenched incumbent is to create a truly viable alternative that positions you firmly as the number two choice and summarily renders the others a distant number three at best.  

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Personal & Company Branding: What Is the Soul of Your Brand?

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, the fastest way to achieve market leadership is to identify a new category of business and start out as #1 in that category.  One way to find a new category is to look for an underserved segment or niche within your marketplace. Then offer an extraordinary promise of value that makes your competition irrelevant.   

If you can identify a problem that your competition does not adequately address your original solution can become news!  Doing so can leverage the news-hungry media to promote your new category and your new brand in the process. Take Onesole, the “original interchangeable shoe” for example.

Dominique McClain, a pharmacist and frequent traveler, set out to create and patent a shoe that is comfortable, versatile, fun, economical, and easy for travel.  The tops of the shoes literally snap off and can be changed!  You can virtually have a closet full of different shoes with just a couple of very comfortable soles and a variety of tops.  

While she was sports fishing, Dominique had her big “ah-ha” moment. She noticed that the stainless steel snaps that secured canvas on boat (and can withstand 70 mile an hour winds) were the perfect solution to affix interchangeable tops to the soles of shoes.

Voila! A new multi-million dollar category of women’s shoes was born that solved the problem of having to haul many pairs of shoes on business or leisure trips. And, it made it affordable to vastly expand one’s shoe wardrobe in tough economic times. Sometimes the best marketing ideas are the simplest.

Dominique did all of this without having formal business or fashion education.  She also intuited the importance of giving her brand a name that would also name the category.  She did not fall into the trap of calling it Dominique, for example.  The value of this is that once you hear the name Onesole and understand the new category it makes it easy to remember and also tell others about the new category. The name readily communicates the soul of the brand, the thoughts behind it that solve the problem.  People like to help promote effective solutions.

What is the soul of our brand?

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: The Secret of "Pull" vs. "Push" Marketing

Identifying and serving an underserved market niche better than anyone else can take the notion of sales out of your business equation, all together.  In your luxury real estate marketing practice a niche may be a geographic area or a category of properties or a group of consumers with the same values such as environmentalists. The key to marketing to a group of consumers with the same mindset is to fully understand how they think. Most importantly, this includes knowing their deepest concerns or pain points.  If you can clearly and quickly communicate that your service can relieve their pain you literally will not have to sell them on working with you.  They will sell themselves on you.

Crafting the right marketing messaging is the art of precisely communicating your extraordinary promise of value (through all facets of your brand identity) in such a way that your target market can instantly  recognize that you are the one who can best meet their needs.  Essentially, you need to know their mindset or psychographics so you can speak to them in their language.

In the realm of luxury real estate you are dealing with achievers of wealth, those aspiring to achieve wealth or those who just want to emulate the wealthy.  Your message to achievers will be entirely different from your message to emulators because their needs are distinct.  To understand how important the right messaging can be let us take L’Oréal hair coloring products as an example.

Headquartered just outside of Paris, L’Oréal is the world’s largest cosmetic and beauty company.  For a while Sex in the City star, Sarah Jessica Parker, was the spokesperson for their hair color line, which usually sells at somewhat of a premium. Ms. Parker’s character in the show is the quintessential emulator.

The question of self-worth is often a pain point for emulators. L’Oréal’s classic advertising slogan, “Because I’m worth it” spoke directly to emulating consumers. The “it” word in the slogan presumes that the product is superior and worth the premium price.  Since its first use in the mid 2000s the slogan has evolved to “Because we’re worth it” because research proved that ‘we’ evoked an even higher level of consumer involvement in the L’Oréal philosophy and lifestyle. Plus, it elicited more “perceived” consumer satisfaction with the products themselves.  The new slogan was further extended for the kid’s line of hair and body products with, “Because we’re worth it, too”!

Are the ingredients in the product that much better than the competitor’s product line?  That is debatable.  But, the perception that L’Oréal has created is one of superiority.  With just four words L’Oréal has created what is known as “pull marketing” vs. “push marketing”. They are not selling hair color ingredients here.  They are offering self-worth as their unique promise of value and their target market is reaching for the relief that represents.

With this “pull marketing” strategy L’Oréal does not need to compete on features that any competent competitor can copy like “foam” or “mousse” versions of the product. L’Oréal has also come out with a “mousse” version of their hair color product just to match the competition. But, competing on features alone is futile.

With one brilliant preemptive move, L’Oréal OWNED the word “self-worth” in the minds of their target market. No other competitor can stake claim to it without looking like a copycat. Test it for yourself. Just ask any woman what brand comes to mind when you say “Because I’m worth it”.  This is brand strategy at its best. L’Oréal has achieved and has sustained top-of-mind status.   

Pull marketing is what happens when you get your branding and messaging spot on.  Instead of going fishing for prospects, the fish jump into your boat. That is because you are communicating your extraordinary promise of value to your target market with precision, in their language.  You are not selling. You are solving their problem and you are relieving their pain.

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, do you know the pain points of your target market?  If you have not taken the time to articulate your unique promise of value in such a way that you are solving problems and relieving pain, you are working way too hard at selling. And, you are probably annoying your target market in the process.

Check out our lastest Blog Series: So You Want to Be a Market Leader

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Apple, What's Your Secret? Part 2

Courtesy of Apple

We have identified the phenomenon of “complacency” as is one of the potential vulnerabilities of market leaders who have outdistanced their closest competitors by a considerable margin.  There is a tendency to coast on their momentum instead of continuously reinvest in staying sharp.  They tend to “rest on their laurels”, relying on the recognition of their previous achievements to stay on top. As a luxury real estate marketing professional, if you want to challenge the market leader this is an important symptom of vulnerability to be able to recognize and also be able to exploit.  

In Steven Covey’s mega-bestselling book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People he writes about the flip side of complacency which is  working too hard, for fear of losing ground to the competition, and not taking the time for self renewal or “sharpening the saw”.  In our strategic branding consulting practice and also as syndicated bloggers we are continuously interviewing top producing agents.  We notice that the market leaders who are workaholics are equally vulnerable to being challenged as the complacent ones.

When a new idea of doing business is introduced to the complacent market leader, the response is often “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it”?  When a new idea in proposed to a workaholic it is often rejected because they do not have the time to take a break from sawing in order to sharpen the saw.  In both cases there is a paucity of innovation, ingenuity and imagination at the top which makes them vulnerable to challengers who are eager and willing to “think outside the box.”

In our previous post we highlighted the brilliant success of Apple’s retail stores.  Clearly, Apple is an enlightened market leader that does not rest on its laurels.  It continuously stays sharply focused and is an uninterrupted font of innovation.   Within a year of the debut of the iPad, iPad 2 trumped its predecessor and preempted many of its would- be competitors by including superior features like two cameras and a skinnier profile.

The genius who is mainly credited for the success of the Apple stores is Ron Johnson, the Senior VP of Retail Operations, who recently was tapped for the CEO position of J.C Penny to restore its prominence as a market leader.  In an interview, Johnson said, “I’ve always dreamed of leading a major retail company as CEO. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to help J.C. Penney re-imagine what I believe to be the single greatest opportunity in American retailing today, the Department Store.”

A true market leader is willing to continuously re-invent and re-imagine its business model.  Essentially, a great market leader never stops thinking like a challenger.

If you are a market leader and you find yourself getting complacent or becoming a workaholic these are warning signals that your health and the health of your luxury real estate marketing practice is in jeopardy.  You are definitely vulnerable to being caught off-guard by a challenger who is open to new ideas.

Read Part 1 of This Series

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing:Are You Playing Your "A" Game?

One of the core attributes of a successful luxury real estate marketing professional is consistent focus.  Complacency begets inconsistency.  When you get complacent, you are vulnerable to those competitors who maintain their focus.

Notice the consistency of focus in top professional athletes, musicians or entrepreneurs.  Let’s use professional musicians as an example of consistent focus. 

The very first thing a musician in an orchestra does is tune his or her instrument with the perfect pitch of the oboe playing the key of A.  Think of perfect pitch as your pure brand signal.  What do you do to align yourself each day with your pure brand signal and your vision for your luxury real estate marketing practice?

Professional musicians practice consistently.  Once you have defined your winning formula in your real estate practice you must focus consistently on practicing what works, over and over again, fine tuning as you go along. 

We recommend deliberately quieting the mind on a regular basis.  When your mind is quiet all opposing or contradictory thoughts disappear and you are most receptive to “possibilities thinking”. That is a good time to contemplate your vision for playing your “A game” in your business. 

Take what we call “transaction engineering” out of the picture for a moment.  You are expected to be able to see a transaction all the way through to close of escrow.  Let’s concentrate here on consistently doing the things that together comprise your “A game”.  These are the things that are necessary to get transactions into escrow in the first place. Focus is all about the doing the small things like consistently:

•  Staying in touch with your sphere of influence
•  Promoting new business  
•  Returning phone calls and emails in a timely manner
•  Showing up for appointments on time
•  Meeting new people who can be referral sources

 If you get complacent and neglect these small things you are sacrificing your winning formula that has made you successful.  To play your “A game” consistently over time you must find a way to stay focused and stay in perfect pitch.  One way that we recommend to do this is to delegate everything you possible can that you do not absolutely love doing.  This can be challenging.  But, then if you are showing signs of complacency, a good challenge may just be the ticket for you.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: So, You Want to Be a Market Leader-Part 7

Today, in marketing luxury real estate, being tech-savvy involves much more than just optimizing your website to rank highly on search engines. It encompasses the art of building an audience of raving fans not just through blogging or having a Facebook page, but also through the latest social media practice of creating a “curated” online experience.  In this final post in our series, So You Want to Be a Market Leader, we discuss how Tiffany & Company, the leading American luxury jewelry brand, has preempted their domestic and European competitors with this cutting edge, indirect or “peripheral”  marketing and branding strategy.

We understand that building an audience was never part of the job description of a real estate agent. We understand that it is time consuming, not to mention a long term strategy. But, it is swiftly becoming a requirement if you want to gain or sustain market leadership. Every incumbent luxury real estate market leader who does not fully embrace the new media is potentially vulnerable to local challengers who are willing to do so.  

Leveraging social media and mobile apps was certainly not an aspect of the jewelry marketing play-book either. But, Tiffany & Company is intent on attracting a younger audience and they know that they cannot rely solely on the tradition of their blue gift boxes or the half-century old Breakfast at Tiffany’s movie to win this new business. They are also intent on keeping ahead of their European counterparts, such as Cartier, who is challenging Tiffany’s dominance in the US when it comes to purchasing engagement rings by young affluent customers.

Tiffany has an iPhone and iPad mobile app where you can customize your own engagement ring and design and change the carat size of the diamond.  When you place one of the rings that you already own on the screen it will tell you your ring size.  But, soon every major jeweler will have their own app and this “feature” will no longer be unique.  That is why we say that you cannot count on features as a way to differentiate your brand from your competitors’. Competing on features is not a brand strategy because brand strategy is all about seizing and holding on to top-of-mind status.

Recently, Tiffany & Company launched a new “curated” website called What Makes Love True.  Their brand strategy is to “own” the word LOVE in the minds of their target market. If you want to sell engagement rings as your core product that would be an excellent word to own. 

Tiffany takes on the role of “curator” of this online exhibition listing romantic places and restaurants to “pop the question”, lists of love songs and romantic movies that you can buy via iTunes, and also videos of customers of all ages who discuss the romantic courtships that lead to their engagements.  You can also interact with the site by placing your initials (and your mate’s initials) on a map with your own story of why this location is romantic.

Staking a claim on “true love” as their brand position preempts any other competing jeweler to do so without looking ridiculous as a copycat. Can you imagine Cartier saying, “We stand for true love, too”?  Provided that Tiffany continues to develop this site in interesting ways, we believe that this peripheral branding strategy is nothing less than brilliant!  It is emotional branding at its best.

As a luxury real estate marketing professional who is bent on gaining or sustaining market leadership, what can you stand for, what word can you own? And, how do you go about executing a strategy to successfully achieve top-of-mind status with this brand position?

In our luxury real estate marketing consulting practice we work exclusively with incumbent market leaders or their challengers. We do not work with direct competitors within the same marketplace. Our ideal clients are those who realize just how much is at stake in terms of market share and revenue at this level, when you achieve top-of-mind status.  If you have the heart of a champion and are keen on “the unabashed pursuit of market leadership”, give us a call for a complimentary consultation! 805.684.8180

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: The Heart of a Champion

If you want to become the dominate luxury real estate marketing team in your marketplace or niche therein, you and your team must have the heart of a champion. This post is dedicated to a true champion, Dirk Nowitski and the entire 2011 World Champion Dallas Mavericks team and franchise. 

Dirk was one of only five players in NBA history to win the championship while being the only NBA All-Star on the team. Only Nowitzki and three other players have averaged more than 25 points and 10 rebounds in the NBA playoffs. Only Nowitzki and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have ever had four consecutive 30-point 15-rebound games in the playoffs. Dirk is the only player in NBA history to get over 100 blocks and 150 three-pointers in a single season.

The Mavericks were not the favored team going into the playoffs. Nor were they expected to win in the finals according to most media pundits.   But, they had a strategy.  And, at the core of their strategy was their essential strength: cohesive teamwork that was consistently evidenced on the court and courtside.

In marketing luxury real estate as a team, it is essential that you assess your core strengths.  Perhaps nothing is more important in building a championship real estate team than strategic thinking.  This involves uncovering, identifying, and developing non-obvious opportunities to create value for your target market, extraordinary value that differentiates you from your competition. It necessitates challenging your assumptions about your current value proposition and re-engineering your strategic plan if you already have one in place. 

As a team or a company, strategic thinking is best conducted in brainstorming sessions which can be fun and exhilarating if you set the right tone.  When you brainstorm you are tapping into the realm of imagination which is the source of fresh, new ideas.  The entire purpose of brainstorming in this context is to challenge conventional thinking. 

Brainstorming should be open to all team members. However, as the leader of brainstorming sessions it is important to set some ground rules.  When we brainstorm with our clients, whether the session is for an individual agent, a team or company, we introduce the concept of the “bulletin board”.  The idea here is to just let all ideas that you hatch have a place on the board without criticism or immediate evaluation of its merit.  You never know when a fragment of one idea can trigger a flash of brilliance that makes its way to you new strategic plan. 

The very process of brainstorming on strategy not only develops a vortex of creativity where great ideas are born, but it also can create an atmosphere of trust that builds cohesive teamwork.  If it feels safe to contribute to this “mastermind” everyone can own the strategic plan that emerges.  Under these conditions the likelihood is high that the plan will be executed with minimum hassles.

To Dirk, the Mavericks and to all of you luxury real estate teams who have the heart of a champion we salute you.  We understand what it takes to establish innovative strategies to out-think your competition and we know that it is cohesive teamwork that is at the core of your success.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: So, You Want to Be a Market Leader-Part 6

 

The Latest iCloud Technology- Courtesy of Apple

In our previous post (Part 5) of our series entitled, So You Want to Be a Market Leader, we covered one of the key vulnerabilities that luxury real estate market leaders tend to exhibit: losing focus.  In this post we cover the other key vulnerabilities: Being complacent and being “tech-challenged”.   If you want to overtake the incumbent market leader, rather than identifying an uncontested market niche that you can dominate, you need to assess your opponent’s weakest link and wage an all-out battle that is 100% concentrated on one of these three specific vulnerabilities.   

Complacency, a common vulnerability of market leaders in luxury real estate, usually manifests in the form of neglect of the relationships that got them to the #1 position in the first place.  Lack of consistent personal communication with their sphere of influence can create a very compelling reason to switch if the challenger excels at this and offers a remarkably distinct value proposition.

The consistent use of superior technology (especially methods for attracting a high volume of buyers) aimed directly at a market leader who is not tech-savvy, can be an excellent plan to challenge an incumbent.  Incumbents who take on over-priced listings that languish on the market may look impressive to luxury home sellers in the short run.  But, eventually, the agent who can demonstrate the ability to bring buyers to the table through superior technology will win the listings, too.

If you want to challenge the incumbent who is “tech-challenged” preempt this powerful attribute of being the most tech-savvy. That means, be the first challenger to seize this brand position by “owning” the very words "tech-savvy" as a brand position.  Be the first to brand yourself as the tech expert in the competitive landscape that exists, not in your computer or in your office or in some other physical location in your marketplace, but in the minds of your target market.

When you are the first to take on the opposite attribute of the incumbent market leader as your brand position you stand a great chance of at least being #2.  That is because you have framed the race for market leadership as a two person or two-company contest: “Tech-savvy” vs. “tech-challenged”.  Creating an either/or contest summarily dismisses the rest of the would-be challengers for market leadership who may try to own this attribute in the minds of the target market. Saying "I am tech-savvy, too" is a very weak competitive position.  It is like another rental car company besides Avis saying " We try harder (than Hertz), too".

Today, being tech-savvy is much more than just generating leads specifically for properties.  It encompasses the art of building an audience of raving fans through social media and engaging in peripheral or indirect marketing. Tiffany & Company has just launched a social media website that we will review in Part 7 of this blog series that positions the jeweler to own the word “love” in the minds of its target market.  If you want to sell engagement rings as your core product that would be an excellent word to own.

In our luxury real estate marketing consulting practice we work exclusively with incumbent market leaders or their challengers. We do not work with direct competitors within the same marketplace. Our ideal clients are those who realize just how much is at stake in terms of market share and revenue at this level, when you achieve top-of-mind status.  If you have the heart of a champion and are keen on “the unabashed pursuit of market leadership”, give us a call for a complimentary consultation! 805.684.8180 

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