Market Positioning – How to be Unique, Special & Different

 Market Positioning: How to be Unique, Special & Different [27:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We speak with The New Home Sales Coach, Rick Storlie.

Are your buyers finding you online?  That’s where they’re looking – at least 87% of them.  And while marketing online follows a different set or rules from traditional advertising in many ways, it has it’s own rewards.

What is market positioning?

The term ‘market positioning’ is often defined as the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market.  However, Storlie believes that in most cases today’s homebuyer already has a belief about you and your product.

“When a consumer thinks about your company, what do they perceive you to be?  If they perceive you to be a homebuilder or a remodeler or a Realtor, then you’re probably not going to do too well in this marketplace.  The reason is that when we use these titles – ‘homebuilder’ or ‘new home sales consultant’ – inherently your buyer has a built-in perception of what that means.

If you’re a builder and you’re still in business, they perceive you to be a good builder, but they think that of all builders.  So if they think all builders are the same, there’s only one differentiator:  price.  And you can’t maintain that position for long.

So, market position is simply this:  How are you perceived to be unique, special and different?  Really, what it gets to is finding your niche.   Author Seth Godin puts it as ‘being perceived as remarkable.’  We’re homebuilders.  We assemble commodities.  But the perception has to be that we can do it better than anyone else.  We can’t create that perception for the general market, but we can do it for a specific niche opportunity as relates to demographics and psychographics.  That’s market positioning.”

Multi-Step Marketing

Creating your position – the perception that you and your products are unique, special and different – is difficult to do with traditional marketing methods.  Why?

“Most people are still marketing the way they did in 2004.  That means they’re using a one-step marketing approach where they are:

• promoting themselves and their company first;
• asking their customers to buy in one step;
• the customer has to give first in the form of a deposit or agreement;
• there is no relationship formed until after the sale is made.

If you look at most advertising today, this is what is happening… and it just doesn’t work.

What does work is a multi-step marketing approach where we start to engage our guests online before they visit our model home, email us, call us or we ever meet them.   So we have get them into a ‘marketing funnel’ to engage them in multiple steps.

Step 1:  Be consumer focused.

“The biggest problem I see in sales is that we jump to the solution too fast.  When you walk into a doctor’s office, your doctor spends 70% – 80% of his or her time trying to identify the problem before moving toward a solution.  We need to do the same – to identify with our target market segment better than anyone else, and show that we understand their problem better than anyone else.  Only then can you start to introduce your solution.

This comes back to your website and the importance of the copy on your site.  Most websites just aren’t very well written.  ”

Step 2:  Your guest becomes a customer over time.

It takes multiple points of online engagement to win your customer’s attention and interest and get to Step #3.

Step 3:  Develop a relationship.

This is the marketing funnel in action, and a key part of it with today’s online shopper is through social networking  – your Facebook Fan Page, your blog feed, your Twitter posts, etc.   It’s through these means that potential buyers will get to know you and perceive you as unique, special and different from your competitors.

“Social networking is simply an opportunity to start a conversation with a potential guest or prospect.  If 9 out of 10 of our buyers are searching online first, we have to be engaging them there,” says Storlie.

Step 4:  Give first.

“If you’re going to get someone to start a relationship with you, you’re going to have to give them a compelling reason to do so.  How many people do you get to fill out the contact form on the ‘Contact Us’ page on our website?  Maybe one a month?  You’re not giving people a compelling reason to want to contact you.

If people are searching online, they are looking for knowledge.   I can get information anywhere, but I can only get knowledge from a company that understands me and taken that information and spun it into something relevant to what I’m looking for.  When you as a company give first – you give knowledge to your target market by understanding the problems they have – when you start to introduce your solution the customer will engage.  You’ve given them a compelling reason to want more.

As Myers Barnes says, it should always be a controlled release of information.  You give them just enough to want to continue to have a relationship with you and you get permission to do your follow up.  Then you slowly give them more and more knowledge, each time giving them a compelling reason to want to get to know you better, to see the value in what you do, and most importantly, to build trust.  Once those three things happen, they will give you first shot at their business.”

Competitive Positioning

Storlie sees the market rebounding, but also becoming more stratified.  The big national builders will control the land; the ‘middle market’ will be squeezed out leaving only small ‘boutique’ builders to fill in what the nationals and the existing market can’t supply.  To find the right niche position, he suggests this:

“Our two main competitors will be first, the existing home market, then the big national builders.  To find your niche position, ask yourself, what does the market want that they can’t get anywhere else?  What can’t or won’t they offer?  What don’t they have?

Since our main competitor is the existing home market, I recommend that my clients go out and preview four to six used homes that you are going to be directly competing with, and ask:  What don’t they have?  What are the limitations of their design and neighborhood?  You’ll never compete with them on price, so you’ll have to figure out what they don’t have.  Then, your position will be centered on what you do have.

I know one builder who offers ‘barrier-free homes’ – homes that are designed for people with physical or mental challenges.  These homes can’t be purchased in the used market, and the big builders are never going to take up a niche like this.  So this builder has been able to position themselves as the go-to company for special-needs housing, and they do it better than anyone else.”

So, look at your market and ask:  What benefits are people looking for that aren’t available?  What niche can I fill faster or better than others?  What can I offer that no one else can or will?  Then, begin educating your market as to the benefits of doing business with you.  That’s market positioning.  That will mean your survival in the new housing market.

What niche market will you position yourself to reach in 2010?  Please use the comment box to answer.

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Contact Rick Storlie, The New Home Sales Coach

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