This post is part of our ongoing series about brand differentiation for commercial real estate firms. Yesterday, we explored innovative ways to cultivate personal relationships with your clients.
Today, we’ll explore how you can use your office properties to enhance your firm’s brand identity.
STEP TWO: Use your properties to enhance your brand identity
You’ve created a brand for your commercial real estate firm, but have you ever considered how that brand translates to your properties? How can a property represent your brand? Return to the same questions you asked when establishing your firm’s brand:
- Who are our target customers? What is our tenant persona?
- Which real estate areas are we focused on? Where do we excel compared to our competition?
- What message do we want to promote through our business?
Based on your answers to these questions, think about one of your firm’s office properties.
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- What adjectives describe the space? (e.g. Modern and high-tech vs traditional and established)
- What is the personality of the office environment you have created? (e.g. Creative, innovative, and lively vs Classical, conventional, and relaxed)
- If your office property was a person, how would you describe it? (Adaptable, Helpful, Clever, Quirky, Serious, Fun, Friendly, Resourceful, or something different?)
Do your office properties coordinate with your firm’s brand?
To ensure your properties are consistent with your brand personality, it is important to devote time to creating appropriate brand symbols for your office properties. Give each of your office properties a name, logo, and slogan that match your brand personality. Create an individual web site for each property and fill it with pictures that embody your firm’s brand personality, from staged photos of the space to stock images that represent your tenant persona.
A brand is a story, and the more time you devote to characterizing your properties and connecting them to that brand story, the more each property is likely to end up in front of the right tenant at the right time.
When your office properties are connected to your firm’s brand, prospective tenants will immediately know what kind of office environment they can expect.
Remember, a brand is a promise.
Make sure your properties match up with the mission and values of your commercial real estate firm, and watch the tenant applications pour in. Establishing office properties that are in tune with your firm’s brand will help create authenticity in your marketing and build trust and credibility for your commercial real estate firm.
Read Part 3 of this series to learn more about designing your office properties to connect with your firm’s brand story, and Part 1 to learn about cultivating personal relationships with clients.
