A Brand Is Not A Look

What is a Brand? Many refer to a brand as the logo (that includes the brand name), or the basic “look” of the collateral material or website. Many think that luxury real estate brands should have script fonts, gold-metallic embossed lettering, on business cards or presentation folders for example, or use the colors black, gold, burgundy, or dark green. While these elements may be used to help express the essence of a brand they are just superficial aspects of personal and company branding. A brand is not a look!

A luxury real estate marketing brand is the inimitable “soul” of the professional or company expressed via their exceptional manner of interaction with their target market. It is their distinctive way of doing business based on their priority values and their unique personality. The logo, the name and the look must symbolize this entire package and communicate the essence of the brand.

Nordstrom as a brand is known for wonderful customer service. That is what their brand stands for. One of Nordstrom’s signature ways of interacting with a customer is for the salesperson to come out from behind the counter and hand the customer the bag. It is a subtle way of saying, “I am accessible to you and I don’t hide behind the counter.”


A look can be easily imitated. How many auto makers copy the styles of the world’s most expensive cars? What cannot be imitated is the soul of a brand. What are you doing to consistently express the soul of your brand?



Credit for this post goes to Ron and Alexandra Seigel

How to Create “Buzz” About You

Do you want to stand out from your competition and become the breakaway luxury real estate marketing brand in your area? The most effective real estate personal and company branding involves identifying an uncontested or under served market niche that you can dominate. But, to become the breakaway brand you must offer a remarkable value proposition that catches the attention of the media and sparks word-of-mouth advertising or “buzz” among your fans.

With the Internet making real estate market information ubiquitous most luxury real estate marketing professionals find it very difficult to differentiate themselves from their competition. They are usually hard-pressed if asked to articulate how they are different or better, how they stand out. If you are having this challenge, you are not alone!

Another word for market niche is market “category”. Categories are easy to understand in the restaurant business: fast food, Mexican, Chinese, steak house, etc. You can imagine how difficult it is to find an uncontested restaurant category if you just think about the usual suspects. Most restaurant categories are usually over-crowded in larger towns. But, here is a example of how a new restaurant can position itself to become the breakaway brand in an uncontested new category.

Imagine this, an informal restaurant that looks like a fast food restaurant where you order from a posted menu and they bring your order to the table. You can sit indoors or on a patio with picnic tables and umbrellas. The quality of fresh ingredients, and the caliber of menu items, including home-baked breads, which is what you would expect at a full service restaurant for double the price but you pay far less.

This identifies a much-under served market: Foodies who want the quality of “slow food, fast”! This would strike the right chord with persons needing a good meal but not having a lot of time. People need a lunch place that has great food with an original, varied menu that is inexpensive enough to visit often.

Did you pick up on how the suggested restaurant is able to articulate, in just three words, a new brand category as well as their extraordinary promise of value: SLOW FOOD, FAST? Not only does it meet a lot of needs, it also it easy for fans to spread the word. It facilitates word-of-mouth advertising, which is one of the most important reasons to get your personal or company branding spot on in your luxury real estate marketplace.

Luxury Is A Soul Supplement

Reaching international buyers is increasingly becoming a significant component of your luxury real estate marketing practice. For that reason it is important to understand what luxury means to those in foreign countries because it can vary dramatically. But, what you will find is a common thread shared between luxury real estate buyers worldwide. Thoroughly understanding this universal principle can help you accelerate the speed of trust with all new clients and also can give you a tremendous competitive edge.

In our own strategic branding practice for luxury real estate agents and brokers worldwide we constantly look for new definitions of luxury. We found this very profound definition in the primary title of a book written by Jean Philippe Warren, professor of sociology and anthropology at Concordia University in Canada: Le Supplément d’ âme (“the supplement of the soul”). We interpret this as “that which feeds or adds to the soul”.

And, herein lies, the universal principle that can help you understand luxury buyers and better speak their language. You need to determine, what feeds the soul of your client!



Credit for this post goes to Ron & Alexandra Seigel

The Importance Of A Buyer's Agent

Many home buyers view a real estate agent as someone who just opens up a home for them, providing little other value. While this may be true in some cases, many agents wear a lot of different hats and actually bring a lot of skills to the table.

Today’s post will shed some light on things a good buyer’s agent does and why you should use one if buying a home.

WHAT DOES A BUYER’S AGENT DO?
1. Preview homes in advance – No reason to pull up to a home that is located next to a commercial building ( that was conveniently not mentioned in the on-line description ). Previewing in advance saves your time.

2. Has knowledge of the local inventory.

3. Provides “insider information” – knowledge of homes that will soon be coming on the market or ones whose sellers are extremely motivated.

4. Educates their clients on the different areas.

5. Is proactive to find you a home. A good agent will call their buyers about a new home on the market or coming on the market BEFORE the buyer has a chance to call them.

6. Will refer you to another quality agent if they don’t service the area in which you want to buy.

7. Thoroughly explains the buying process.

8. Will take additional photos or video of a home or neighborhood and email them to you. Especially important to out of town buyers.

9.Gets you information not readily available on-line.

10. Refers you to trusted lenders, inspectors, and contractors.



Remember, this is just a small sampling of things a good buyer’s agent will do for you. This list doesn’t even get into some of the more complicated parts of the process such as negotiating and inspections, things that can be very stressful and emotionally intense.

Many of us are more than merely door openers. We bring experience and knowledge to the real estate transaction. The best part is that we represent your best interests only and the seller pays our fee.

More Leads.... More Deals!!

To someone who makes a living in sales — any kind of sales — finding the best leads is the most important thing to their success. And it is particularly important if you make a living practicing real estate during a very tough economy. It’s more important than being good with customers. It’s more important than being knowledgeable about real estate. It’s more important than working hard for long hours, although all of those are important.


Why is finding the best leads so important? Because you can be the very best agent in the industry, but if you don’t have customers, you’re out of business. You can be willing to work long hours, but if you have nobody to work with, you are out of business. On the other hand, you can be a mediocre agent that’s too lazy to work hard, and still make a lot of money in real estate… if you have the best leads. (I don’t recommend that model, but I’ve seen it happen more than once!)

"What are the best leads?" Now we’re getting to the heart of the issue. First, let’s define “best leads”. The best leads are the ones that result in closings, wouldn’t you agree? But the fact is that all leads are not those “best leads” — the ones that close.

In fact, statistically speaking, only one in twenty-four real estate leads will actually result in a closing. In other words, finding real estate leads is much like eating ribs: lots of work and lots of mess for a single bite of great food! The work is hard, but the payoff is great! So let’s look at that sad fact for a minute. There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to generating business in your real estate practice.

School of Thought 1: Turning Bad Leads into Good Leads. For about the last decade there has been a steady shift in our industry. Real estate is still the same. Our customers are still the same. What’s changed is their shopping habits, and with it the way we have to market our services in order to attract our share of business.

Unfortunately, many of us are reluctant to change so we continue to do the same things we’ve always done to attract our clients. The results of using those same marketing strategies, however, have steadily gone from great, to good, to not-too-good, to pretty bad, to very bad. Maybe this is not your experience, but it is the experience of many agents practicing today.

And because those old methods of attracting clients are yielding fewer and fewer leads, there is a natural tendency to try to somehow turn those few “suspects” into prospects. It is the natural progression when leads are few and far between — leads are scarce so we must try to rehabilitate each one. My grandfather used to refer to this as “trying to turn chicken manure into chicken salad”. Now I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like any chicken salad I want to eat!

School of Thought 2: Make Plenty of Leads and Flush the Bad Ones. Another school of thought is to generate many more leads than you need and rapidly eliminate the lower quality leads. Like the old Doritos commercial said, “eat all you want, we’ll make more”, I say “flush all you want, and just make more”. But for many agents today that is easier said than done.

For those agents who are using their old marketing methods to generate business they don’t have the luxury of discarding leads. Over 90% of today’s agents are relying on circle of influence marketing, open houses, print advertising, and referrals for their customers, and for those agents, there are just too few leads produced to allow them to “flush” any bad ones. The reason is really simple if you think about it.

Imagine you’re fishing. Where is the best spot to fish? Duh! It’s where the fish are biting. The latest research from the National Association of Realtors® says that 93% of all of today’s real estate customers are now beginning their search online. The funny thing is that over 90% of today’s agents are still looking for customers where the other 7% are “biting”. That explains why there is such a shortage of business for those agents.

The other ten percent of today’s agents are getting to divide up 93% of the business while the remaining 7% (the offline business) is being divvied up by those other 90% of the agents. In other words, if we want to be successful at fishing we need to go where the fish are biting, whether we are comfortable there or not. And if the fish are biting online, then that’s where our marketing must be if we want to be successful.

That does not mean we simply need to have a website. The fact is that most of agents who comprise that 90% already have websites. What they need is a way to capture customers from their websites and that’s something else altogether. That’s totally different. Most real estate websites don’t have an effective LCM or “lead capture module” at all, resulting in little to no business coming from the website. In fact, most agents have a website already but did no business from that website last year.

On the other hand, if that website has an effective LCM, it can capture the name, phone number, and email address of between a fourth and a third of the site’s visitors, or about 30 times as many leads as a typical real estate website. And with effective lead capture technology on the website the agent is now able to bring in many more opportunities, and that allows him or her to toss the bad leads and only work with the good ones.

According to NAR, only a very few agents do much of their business from online sources, but for those agents who do, their results are phenomenal. They bring in lots of leads — the good, the bad, and the ugly — but the difference is that they have the option of flushing the poor leads because they’ve generated so many leads to begin with.

If you find yourself trying to turn bad leads into good ones, I want you to take a step back and see if the reason is because you have a shortage of leads. If you do, today is the day to fix that. You can be like those agents who’ve cracked the online business. You can add your own LCM technology and immediately have more opportunities than you can handle on the first day. Skeptical? Then try it. Check out LCM technology today and tomorrow you can start flushing the bad ones.

One Way to Stay on Top of Your Game

One of the ways to stay on top of your game when it comes to marketing luxury real estate is watching HGTV when they feature extraordinary homes and million dollar rooms. It will help you expand your “vocabulary” in the Language of Luxury. For example, in a recent episode of Extreme Homes, an absolutely stunning custom designed, multilevel home was featured that was built on a cliff overlooking the Southern California coastline. The homeowners are truly passionate not only about fine architectural design but also automotive design. In fact, when they drive one of their cars into the garage (on the upper level) the floor of the garage can descend into the lower level of the home where the car can be showcased like a work of art. (See the photo above). Understanding what your clients are passionate about can help you find them the home of their dreams. It can also give you a competitive edge in a listing presentation when you can connect with homeowners on their level. The more you are familiar with the many facets of the luxury realm the more you will have in common with your ideal clients. The faster you can build rapport the faster you can build trust. This also translates into the acceleration of referrals. And, that is a great way to stay on top of your game. Credit for this post go to Ron & Alexandra Seigel

Luxury Marketing Tip: Fight Or Take Flight

As a luxury real estate marketing professional it is essential that you understand that luxury is a relative term. The word has been strongly associated with the lifestyles of the rich and famous and primarily with conspicuous consumption and being ostentatious. But, there is so much more to the meaning of luxury than glitz and glamour. Perhaps you saw the recent 60 Minutes TV show that featured two extreme stories about luxury. One story was about a Korean prison camp escapee whose concept of luxury was eating boiled chicken because he was only fed cabbage and gruel his entire life. Certainly, we have heard of extreme poverty in underdeveloped countries. But, never have we heard of three generations of prisoners who were being punished for the political crimes of their forefathers. The other story was about a psychiatrist who realized a dream of creating the first airplane powered solely with solar energy, one that could fly at night using the stored solar power from the previous day. To this visionary, luxury was the satisfaction of achieving his individual potential. It is utterly amazing to conceive that such extremes can co-exist in modern times. But, such is the current state of human nature. How is it possible that one man can fight so fiercely just for the right to find nourishment, while another man can let his imagination take flight, beating all odds to make the impossible, possible? Abraham Maslow was best known for creating the hierarchy of human needs. He addressed these extremes when we expounded upon the spectrum between the need for physical health and safety through the need to belong, the need for self-esteem (and the esteem of other) and the need for self-realization. The upper tiers of this hierarchy is where you find most luxury real estate buyers. Yet, throughout each tier is the yearning of the human spirit to take flight, to rise above it all, physically, mentally and emotionally. The rewards of satisfying one’s needs, each step of the way, is what true luxury is all about. Take the time to genuinely understand the needs of your clients. Understand what luxury means to them. This will serve you well and will enable you to serve your clients better than ever. Credit for this post is given to Ron & Alexandra Seigel.