Why Building Your Luxury Brand Image is So Important

What is it about you that’s unique and special? How do you communicate those characteristics through the luxury brand image you’re marketing via your advertising materials and in your presentations? Generally speaking, you want to build a branding campaign that can stand the test of time. Ideally, you don’t want to have to switch up your luxury brand image in a year or two — especially after you already put time and effort into centering your marketing materials around it.

What is your authentic style? It’s great to look at what others are doing to find inspiration, but you want to identify a branding style that’s right for you. Think about it. If someone is looking at your website, can they easily identify your brand message and what you’re all about? Does that style sync up with who you really are?

How Do I Determine What My Branding Should Be?

Agents are always saying to me, “I need to come up with a tagline. What should my tagline say?” The answer to this is fairly simple. Who are you, and what do you do best? That’s what you should base your tagline around. When I launched my coaching company, I struggled with this very idea. I knew in my heart what I was passionate about, but I didn’t know how to distill it down to a single sentence that potential clients would find appealing.

Fortunately, I received some insight that I still draw on today. “Debbie, if you really want to know who you are and what you do best, read the reviews left by your clients and customers because the things they repeatedly say about you represent the heart of who you are.” So, if you want to know how to brand yourself and highlight what you do best, look no further than client reviews.

How Should I Incorporate Branding On My Website?

One thing many website experts agree on, especially for luxury real estate, is that your photo should be on the homepage of your website. Many experts also suggest that you should have properties featured near the top of your homepage because that is what’s most likely going to initially catch the visitor’s eye. You should then feature your photo near the bottom, and be sure to couple it with a great bio. Oftentimes when agents come to us for coaching, I review their website and notice the photos they’re using are not recent, and the information listed is sometimes outdated (or even worse, has typos). Whatever you do, make sure that your bio is appealing and represents your luxury brand image.

Once you have your logo, colors, theme, tagline, and your overall style figured out, make sure to carry those elements all the way through each page of your website and marketing materials. This includes your email templates, your blog articles, your reports, and your postcards for direct mail. Keep your branding consistent in everything you do. If you do that, the people you consistently market to in your pipeline will start to recognize your luxury brand image and know right away that it’s you because of how consistent it’s been over time.

In luxury real estate, it is important that your website is attractive, but it must also be easy to navigate and packed with valuable content. If there are functionality issues, or if your content provides nothing of value, people visiting your website are going to take one look and leave. To help make sure your website is as appealing as possible, consider putting together a focus group of friends, or maybe even your affiliates, who can go through and critique your website. What do they like about it? Which elements did they find most attractive? What are the things that they didn’t like? Compile a list of their answers and thoroughly review those responses, and you may find some eye-opening things that you hadn’t even noticed before.

What Other Key Elements Should I Pay Attention to On My Website?

First and foremost, make sure you feature luxury properties on your website. If a potential luxury buyer or seller goes to your site and they don’t see luxury properties featured, it may appear to them as though you don’t even sell luxury real estate.

On the more technical side of things, labeling the tabs on your website is also important. Think of your website tabs the way you would news headlines. Headlines are supposed to grab your attention and make you want to read further, right? That’s why you should really give it some thought when it comes to labeling tabs and navigation menus on your website. For example, instead of “press releases” being featured, what if it said, “in the news” instead? This change might not seem huge, but it’s all about encouraging website visitors to click into and explore your website. The more they are willing to learn about you, the stronger connection they’ll start building with your luxury brand image. Consequently, they’ll be more likely to want to read your content and trust will soon begin to be established.

What Type of Content Should I Focus on to Build My Brand?

Throughout all of your marketing efforts, it’s important to position yourself as a “local celebrity” and a wise real estate adviser. One way to do this is to author informational blogs and consumer educational reports. If you’re in private coaching with us, you actually have access to eight different consumer guides that you can reference — guides such as, Is It Time to Move Up to a New Home or Stay and Remodel My Current Home, our Annual Real Estate Planning Guide, and How to Right Size by Downsizing into a Home That is Smaller and Yet Enlarges Your Lifestyle.

If you’re creating blog articles, you can interview vendors and affiliates about their services, and your own audience may in turn find those articles extremely valuable. When it comes to content in general, it’s important to showcase your knowledge and expertise in the luxury space, and you should be able to do so in a relatively easy, cost-effective way.

What are some topics you should be focusing on when blogging? In addition to talking about luxury real estate, you can highlight community activities and any local information your audience may find valuable. You can also incorporate a nice blend of lifestyle content. Remember, if you’re only occasionally blogging, be sure to make the pieces you do produce as valuable as you possibly can, and always focus on real estate before branching out into any other topics. Consider focusing on the elements you specialize in, but be sure not to limit yourself into too specific of a niche or specialty area.

For more visually-inspired content, you can create videos to share with people. To determine topics, take a moment to think about some of the more commonly asked questions people are discussing with you about the market or about buying or selling luxury properties. Make a list of all these frequently asked questions and use those topics as a jumping off point for your video content. Providing answers here should be fairly easy since you’ve already answered these questions numerous times before! Don’t overthink it when it comes to providing your answers.

As far as the look and feel of your videos, make sure they align with the look and feel of your website. Another good rule of thumb is to pay attention to whatever your competitors in your local market space are doing, and simply do it better than they currently are. Your videos should always have a call-to-action, so it’s important to establish what you’re offering viewers and keep track of how they’re responding to it. Consequently, you’ll be able to more easily identify marketing prospects and can add them to the appropriate stage in your marketing funnel.