Creating bad branding is easier than some people realize. In our line of work, we are witness to a lot of common mistakes that can lead to poor brand recognition, a lack of quality leads, and low marketing ROI. As it turns out, not all apartment complex marketing ideas are made equal.
So what’s the good news? Thankfully, these mistakes are avoidable with a little bit of forethought and some guidance from those who have been around your block a time or two. So today we’re discussing common pitfalls in real estate branding and how you can avoid them. Let’s get into it!
- Lack of Differentiation
It’s easy to be just another fish in the marketing sea, especially when the market you’re competing in is densely populated. It’s essential that your brand be one of a kind so that your audience has a reason to choose you over other brands. It’s even more vital that you be able to communicate the uniqueness of your brand, or your audience will never be aware of the compelling reasons they might have to pick you.
If you’re having trouble differentiating your brand, ask yourself a few questions: Is there a need not yet being met among your target audience? How can you diverge from the design and personality of other brands to offer something new? Are there marketing strategies your competitors aren’t making much use of? Most importantly, what is your brand’s mission and how does that mission offer value to your audience?
- Inconsistent Integration
Even good branding fails when it’s not consistently implemented in all aspects of your marketing. Your digital ads should have the same look and feel as your landing pages; your email copy should use the same overall voice as your social media posts; your lease space should have similar design features to those gracing your print media. You’ll employ slight variations of course, in accordance with the needs of different channels, but everything you do should be in step—recognizable to the casual observer as all part of a single brand.
Inconsistent integration breeds confusion and sets you up for poor brand recognition. In order to be compelled by your branding, and hopefully even become loyal to your brand, consumers need to get a clear sense of what your brand is all about.
- Not Speaking to Your Audience
Understanding your audience is key. If you’re looking to appeal to millennials, for example, but you use messaging or design that would resonate better with an audience of 40- and 50-year-olds, your branding isn’t going to do good work for you. To see real ROI, you need high-quality leads, and in order to get high-quality leads, you need to make sure your branding is speaking to the right people.
Consider your intended audience carefully, and seek to learn all you can about them. What are their values? What kinds of media are they used to? How do they spend their time? How do they prefer to make their purchasing decisions? What makes them trust a brand?
- Not Following Marketing Trends (or over-adhering to them)
This one may seem like a Catch-22, but what’s really important here is balance. You want to be in-step with marketing trends enough that you don’t seem out of touch with reality, but you don’t want to be so reliant on current trends that your brand appears gimmicky or impermanent.
We recommend having a backbone of tried-and-true branding strategy but allowing yourself a little flexibility to incorporate trends as they ebb and flow. Just make sure the trends you’re incorporating speak to a core part of your branding that can stand the test of time even when that trend fades away.
- Not Considering the Big Picture
We get it: creating a brand can be a big project that demands a lot of personal investment, and as a result, it can be easy to become personally attached to the brands we create. However, it’s important to balance personal motivations with a degree of dispassionate perspective. In other words, it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture.
So for example, the personally-invested part of you may feel it’s best to avoid the color red in your logo and color palette. Maybe you hate the color red. Maybe it feels like a brash color to you, or maybe you’re even red-green colorblind and reds just kind of look boring to you. In spite of these things, red might still be an excellent branding choice. It might differentiate your brand from the competition around you, and it might communicate the qualities you want your brand to embody for your target audience. Your gut feelings are often valid, but it’s essential to maintain enough perspective that you can check your gut and make sure it’s not leading you astray.
Having trouble with any of these common mistakes? We’d be more than happy to offer some guidance that will help you steer clear of real estate branding pitfalls. Get in touch with a Threshold team member to find out how we can help!