4 Steps to Create A Strong Brand For Your Property Management Business
When you’re building a property management business, you have to be committed to being of service to people. Companies/Individuals must feel impacted by your influence, in order to partner with you. Your #1 goal is to solve problems and in order to do this effectively, you need a strong brand! Branding is the foundation of your company. It comes before Marketing (which is the most critical and continuous element of running a business).
“A brand with a strong core becomes a starting point and a guiding light.”
Every business starts off as an idea! Write down the dreams and visions that you have for your company and start the process from there.
1. Identify Your Target Market
The first step in creating your brand is identifying your target market. Nail down a property management niche and answer the following questions:
What are the three biggest goals you want to achieve?
What is the DNA (core identity) of your business?
What is your company’s USP (unique selling point)?
What is your message and what profoundly affects your audience?
Use these answers to then comprise an audience report, consisting of demographics, behavioral actions (buying habits), geographic locations, interests, etc. Defining your customer avatar provides a detailed profile of your target audience. Utilize this information to tailor your marketing, and to motivate prospective clients to do business with you.
“The DNA (core identity) of your business will serve as your company’s mission statement.”
Use these answers to then comprise an audience report, consisting of demographics, behavioral actions (buying habits), geographic locations, interests, etc. Defining your customer avatar provides a detailed profile of your target audience. Utilize this information to tailor your marketing, and to motivate prospective clients to do business with you.
2. Create a Brand Style Guide
After pinpointing who you’ll be selling to, you’ll need to create a set of standards that defines your brand. This is the most essential and creative step in the branding process. Consider it your Brand Bible! Depending on your starting capital, you may want to outsource this to a brand strategist/website developer but if you’re working with limited resources, you can complete this step yourself through using various software platforms. This guideline is imperative so make sure you set aside the necessary time to complete it, as you’ll be relying on it heavily, especially as your company scales.
Begin the guide with your brand story, which encompasses information from the previous step. Create a logo and other important visuals, such as icons, graphics, submarks, alternate logos, etc. Decide on your color palette and typography. And lastly, your brand voice — what is your brand’s tone, grammar usage, point of view, etc. These are the foundational elements to every one of your company’s blog posts, social content and internal/external documents.
A brand style guide provides structure and helps a company stay consistent with their identity and message.
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3. Connect the Dots with a Marketing Plan
All the time spent on marketing should be done in support of your brand. Create a plan of action that converts prospective customers into recurring clients. This plan should consist of captivating and cohesive content.
You have to connect the dots with your marketing plan. Your email campaigns should be in sync with your blog posts which should be correlated to your lead magnets, infographics and social media content. Everything is intertwined and related. Do not over-complicate your strategy, keep things simple while providing depth within the realm of your property management niche.
Regardless if you’re a one-person marketing team or you have an army of paid professionals, a marketing plan must be drafted before the launch of any online campaigns.
4. Plan Effectively with a Content Calendar
This is the final step that consists of putting all of your plans into realistic actions. Initially, start off with two social media platforms to avoid burning yourself out. This plants the seeds of consistency. Schedule a day to create a month's worth of content and set up automation tools to streamline the processes.
There are content calendar platforms you can use or you can create your own in Google Sheets or Excel. Again this is a step that you do not want to over-complicate, because the priority is to get the content out to convert lead generation. Sometimes planning can become too excessive, so just jot down the important details on a calendar and use Google Analytics to measure and test your advertising.
Branding has a direct effect on your visitation, ROI, sponsorships and employee retention. It is what others say, feel and think about your organization. For that reason, create terms, designs, feelings, and features that distinguishes you from your competitors. Property management is an over-saturated industry, but you will have no problem aligning with your partners, clients and audience if you have values in place that make up the overall existence of your business.
