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In a country that boasts 160,000 IPAs, standing out in a crowded field is crucial for beer brewers.
Nick Mallory, brand director with Boneyard Beer and vice president of Ackley Brands, told real estate professionals at Inman Connect Las Vegas on Tuesday that the need to stand out isn’t exclusive to beer brands. In real estate, potential new customers emerge with each rate adjustment, price cut or inventory uptick — and being on top of those adjustments is key to standing out in a crowded field.
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Nick Mallory | Image by AJ Canaria Creative Services
When Mallory took the stage during an ICLV session at the Aria Resort & Casino, he challenged the crowd to determine how long it would take one person to walk down a convenience store aisle and decide on a beer to purchase.
“Close to seven seconds. That’s what we’ve got,” Mallory said. “We’ve got 160,000 IPAs and seven seconds. Everything we do in the beer industry matters: what that packaging looks like, what the colors look like, what the fonts look like, how it attracts its consumers.”
Despite that urge to attract new customers, the beer industry endured a tough losing streak due to changing tastes and a changing world.
“We had 10 years of being the prettiest girl at prom, so to speak. We could do no wrong,” he said. “But following years of double-digit growth, competition and changing attitudes eroded those gains.”
This is a familiar refrain for real estate agents, many of whom entered the industry during a time of unprecedented low interest rates and overwhelming consumer demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, only to survive years of post-pandemic lulls due to high interest rates and record-low inventory.
Mallory told the crowd that the key to overcoming the battle with the market is knowing the target audience and keeping the branding S.I.M.P.L.E.: simple, interesting, meaningful, predictable, logical and exclusive. He detailed three parts of the acronym for the crowd.
Simple
Mallory compared marketing simplicity to Apple’s “1000 songs in your pocket” description of the iPod. Similarly, agents should distill their value proposition without a lot of jargon, acronyms or “inside baseball” terms.
Interesting
Mallory highlighted the importance of interest using an analogy between fly fishing and lure fishing. In other words, find out what the fish are eating, then grab a fly that mimics that bug. In other words, get to know your customer and create a client avatar that dives deep into that one person.
Meaningful
“To know what’s meaningful to a customer, you need to know what’s motivating them,” Mallory said, going on to reference Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
There are four buckets that humans are motivated by: stability and control, independence and fulfillment, belonging and enjoyment, and risk and mastery, he said.
“That’s it. You can boil down human motivation of those four things.”
To help Realtors better identify the brand archetypes they can embody for clients, Mallory provided a link to this resource.
