Hasn’t this always been the case? Luxury is different for everyone. We all have our own definition of what luxury is. Here are some examples listed in a Trendingwatch.com article.
Time with loved ones
Time for oneself
All things local
Peace and Quiet
Eco-friendly
Households of Six or More
Anything Premium
What’s the point?
Luxury is what we make it. My luxury is different from your luxury. This is very important to keep in mind when thinking about marketing. Just because thousands of square feet may seem like luxury to you, it might not be the same for others. When developing a marketing plan, we must adopt a mentality of varying luxury.
How can we Use this mentality?
Understanding and using this mentality points back to a reoccurring theme with me. Our marketing and advertising plans need to be based on what our target market needs. In this case, what does our target market consider to be luxury?
Is luxury the biggest, newest and most expensive? It might be depending on the particular case, but I challenge you to look beyond the norms of luxury. When we develop second home communities for retirees, what are they looking for? Maybe it’s a way for them to enjoy time with their grand children. This could be considered a luxury to them. If we can identify something like this, then we can develop these luxuries and use them as marketing tools.
A prospective buyer visits your real estate property looking for a home to purchase. A leasing agent or even property manager greets him or her with a less than chipper or helpful attitude. As the prospect is shown the property and informed of its hopefully many benefits, your leasing agent continues their lackluster sales performance. At the end of the showing, your once potential prospect might be turned off from your property simply because of a horrible interaction with your leaser.
What does this mean? Did you lose a potential renter or buyer? Probably, but it also means so much more.
This is where real-time reviews can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Using their cell phone, the unsatisfied prospect could be posting a negative review of your property on multiple platforms in only the time it takes for them to walk to their car. (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc….)
Scary right? Now all of their friends know of the terrible sales experience. It gets worse. With the recent addition of social search to Google, people searching for your property on the Internet could possibly stumble upon their Twitter or Facebook update. Now the bad review goes beyond just their friend group.
So what can we do about this?
The answer seems simple. You outperform any consumer expectations. Is this possible? Maybe not, but it is an admirable goal.
What else?
A Trendwatching.com article suggests that companies should be extremely involved with the review process. This would mean monitoring reviews and responding to them, or actually providing a platform for reviews in order to gain insight and participation ease.
The reality is that people are going to say things about your property/brand. Why not take advantage of the good and bad? If you responded to someone’s positive Twitter comment about your property with a thank you, do you think that would help the chances of them buying or renting from you? You better believe it would. What if you apologized for the bad experience and invited them back for a special visit? It would definitely help.
This is something we need to be thinking about for next year. Real-time reviews will become more common as time passes. Are you ready to handle the good and bad? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
The points here are that urbanites process and consume at a higher rate than suburbanites and because of that, they demand more innovative products. This in turn requires marketers and advertisers to come up with more innovative ways of communicating with these consumers.
The most interesting thing about this article is the relevancy it has with our current emerging market trends. Marketing to these urbanites will be based on innovation and transparency, which is something we are already seeing with social media.
The article mentioned above details a rapid increase of urban living within city limits, which makes me think that we will continue to use social media in order to achieve innovation and transparency.
Marketers question the ability of the older generations to adapt and respond to social media. This article makes a great observation, in that with the way marketing is heading, suburbanites will be tempted to act in the same manner due to near-total transparency of online marketing strategies.
So what is the take away from this?
The number of urbanities is increasing daily, so we should begin tailoring our strategies to accommodate their lifestyles and their means of information processing. What if you don’t develop or sell real estate inside the city? You should still be paying attention because these trends won’t be far behind for suburban settings.
