How Branding, Visibility, and Growth Strategist Erica McMillan Dominates Differentiating Luxury Real Estate for NewsWorthy Homes  

 The secret to selling luxury is often kept a mystery since the process is both the perfect blend of art and science. To be able to sell high-end luxury tickets, it’s necessary to have a unique understanding of human behavior and psychology.

Typically, when referring to ultra-luxury property purchasers, we are referring to experienced real estate buyers who seek a perfect balance between their desires and their requirements. These affluent buyers seek for elements that fit with their identity, and if the way they feel about themselves matches up with the story the luxury listing tells.

Sitting on the Forbes Business Council and Entrepreneur’s Leadership Network, Erica McMillan is a serial entrepreneur, growth strategist, visibility and branding expert who works with top luxury agents. NewsWorthy Homes, founded by Erica McMillan, features remarkable homes, usually $10+ Million all the way to the most expensive estates in the world sitting pretty at around $200+ Million. Representing estates like this and grabbing the attention of the uber-rich buyer to have interest, takes a different kind of methodology. McMillan outlines how the best of the best luxury real estate agents successfully navigate attracting the right buyer of these NewsWorthy Homes.

Erica McMillan refers to the process as the D3 method. Differentiate. Disrupt. Dominate. She explains that the underlying theme throughout this process must be the ‘art of the story’ to drive the emotional connection for the buyer to the luxury property. This is true for all properties, but when the price tag is $50+ Million, the marketing strategy must resonate on an entirely different level and succeed through a perfectly tailored strategy based on innovative technology and creative storytelling.

Differentiate

McMillan is known in business for her unique way to differentiate, whether that be a person, a company, a brand, or a luxury property. With 17 years of marketing research under her belt, the first step is to understand the unique selling proposition of the luxury listing. Why is it newsworthy? In an effort to uncover the most important facet that will dictate the strategy for marketing the listing, extensive collaboration begins with sellers to research and comprehend their habits, how they perceive their life to appear to others owning such a property, and why they fell in love with the estate or built it in such a way. In acquiring an understanding of the seller’s connection with the property and their lifestyle within it, no detail is overlooked. However, it isn’t as simple as asking the seller what makes their home unique, it involves quantitative and qualitative analysis of polling the target audience that matches the demographic of the type of buyer that would be interested in this property to fully uncover the unique differentiator of the listing. This is where psychology and human behavior takes center stage.

Disrupt

Once the differentiator is discovered it is time to disrupt the market in which the listing resides, as well as the markets with similar listings that attract the same kind of buyer. McMillan reveals that the top-tier real estate agents that work with her have access to her exclusive media-relations network, innovative technology, viral social media strategies, and proprietary solution that serves as a vehicle to disrupt the targeted markets resulting in the listing being so unique that the buyer can’t focus on any other homes for sale. Disruption refers to a situation in which new listings to a market use cutting-edge technologies or business models to take from the traditional established players. Creating a disruptive campaign is certainly not doing what every other top-tier listing agent is doing. It is doing not only what they can’t do, but what they didn’t think to do to get the right targeted exposure to reach the potential new buyer. Exposure isn’t enough; a disruptive campaign reaches the potential new buyer multiple times in different, impactful ways and the powerful storyline told through differentiation creates such a deep connection that this potential buyer has imaginations of the land, views, and overall feeling of life in the property, all before stepping foot into the home.

Dominate

Dominating the algorithms on sites like Zillow, and search engines like Google result with a calculated, disruptive, successful marketing campaign that focuses on telling the story of the differentiating aspect of the luxury listing. With domination comes a sale, and if correctly crafted, the seller is getting asking price and the buyer is forever grateful to be the lucky one that acted first. 

Written in partnership with NewsWorthy Homes