Choosing my property styling target market.
In the gap between Christmas and New Year towards the end of 2018, I sat on my back deck with laptop, pen and paper and noted down every property I’d staged that year. All 100 of them.
At that stage my company had been operating for 8 years with no clear direction or place in the market and a tendency to say yes to every piece of business that came along.
When I had my list of properties I put them into 3 piles. In the first pile were properties I hadn’t enjoyed staging, the second pile contained properties I’d loved working on and the final pile was the houses that I didn’t feel strongly enough about either way.
I then tried to work out the themes from both the love and didn’t love so much piles.
84 Agnes Street, Auchenflower
In the ‘didn’t like staging’ pile I noticed the following:
1. I had used a cheaper furniture supplier plus decorator items from my own inventory that always made my staging look a bit ‘staging 101’ and average. Perfectly OK for the type of property but missing layering or soul or ‘something’ that I couldn’t put my finger on
2. I had worked with clients with high expectations, low budgets and therefore high disappointment levels. I was often micro-managed by these clients and they changed the quote so many times that the overall look was diluted. I never felt as though I’d done my best work
3. Conversely I also found it difficult to work on houses where I never met the client and was used as the supplier of furniture only.
4. The properties were lower priced and often a bit ugly (I’m being honest here!) so no matter how I staged the property it looked better, but not its best.
23 River Park Place, Fig Tree Pocket
In the love staging pile I noticed the following:
1. I loved to stage beautiful and high value houses – new builds for sure but also older more classic houses with original features. If the house was in a great suburb even better.
2. The staging was out of my comfort zone in some way – a challenge to integrate the furniture, a style that I wasn’t as comfortable with (e.g. super modern) a high profile new build or a high value property. Any high stakes property, whilst being a challenge provided the greatest reward.
3. My clients were lovely and did exactly as I asked them to do, saw the value in staging, didn’t quibble about the cost and left me alone to do my thing. As I got to know my clients I would do anything to keep them happy as I was so invested in their result.
4. The properties had been referred to me by agents I loved working with. There was a sense of being on their team and working towards a result together.
130 Crescent Road, Hamilton
My new direction was obvious! Go and find some great agents who can refer me expensive and challenging houses lived in by lovely people.
Me being me I then overthought and over complicated it and it took me a while to position myself and write my new website but during that time I started working with some fantastic agents with expensive houses who confirmed to me that I was on the right track.
Now I know what my company focus is:
“We help Brisbane’s top agents become more successful by staging their million dollar homes”
My focus is now on finding and serving those agents
I can also tailor how I market to these agents because I know where my company sits in the market.
As Seth Godin says in his fabulous book: This is Marketing
“Your ads and your products should cater to the customers you’d choose if you could choose your customers”…
…and I choose successful Brisbane agents who list million dollar homes
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