Tony Cline has over 20 years of experience in property management. After purchasing a real estate and property management brokerage in Denver, Colorado, he spent more than two decades as managing broker. Today he's focused full time on his work as a Property Management Success Coach. Tony is a Second Nature Triple Win Mentor.
Think of your brand as your company’s personality. You probably have a pretty good sense of what your personality is like. But if you asked all the different people you know—your spouse, your friends, your coworkers, the cashier at your local grocery store—they might not all say the same thing.
Not to get too philosophical, but the truth is, every person that knows you knows a different version of you. In your mind you’re the same you, but because everyone has had a different set of interactions with you, they each perceive you differently.
That’s exactly what happens with your company’s brand. You may work hard on what you want your brand to be, but it’s ultimately up to the people who are having those interactions with you to decide who you are and what it is.
Consistency is key
The people closest to you probably know you better than anyone, especially if they’ve known you a long time. The more interactions you have with someone, the more complete their picture of you is. In the same way, the more your audience is exposed to your brand, the more familiar with you they are.
But the important thing isn’t just to get in front of your audience over and over with as many messages as possible. Instead, you want to be as clear and consistent as possible with the same message.
People feel comfortable around you when they know what to expect. They don’t want to be walking on eggshells, trying to guess how you’re going to behave or what you’re going to say next. Unpredictability doesn’t beget strong relationships.
With your brand, your goal is to try to unite all of the many different audience perceptions as much as possible. You want to deliver the same messages, services, and core values in all interactions. When you repeatedly live out your brand and values, your clients, customers, and prospects will start to see you for who you really are. You may not be able to control their perceptions entirely, but you can certainly influence them.
You can control your branding, not your brand perception
There are certain elements of your company that you do have control over. One of those things is your branding—the name, logo, colors, and other visual elements that you use to represent your company.
Most of these branding elements are just scratching the surface of what a brand truly is. Because of that, in many ways, your logo and your name do not matter. On the flip side, they matter immensely. And yes, both of those things can be true.
If you’re providing good service and value in the market, and you have brand momentum, most people are not going to care what your company name is, what your logo looks like, or what colors you use on your website.
But in order to get that momentum and buy-in, you have to have a strong story. You need something for them to grab onto, believe in, and understand. And that story should be reflected in your visual branding.
A few years ago I was on the road traveling, and I decided to stop at a sandwich shop for lunch. The outside of the store had an intricately painted sign with classic colors and a striped awning. It looked like exactly the place where you’d get a great sandwich. But when we stepped inside, the visuals were all different. The signs indicating where to order and where to pick up your meal were completely different from the signs outside. The logo was different, the font was less formal—almost bubble letters—and the color was just a slight shade off.
Neither set of visuals was wrong, per se, but they were definitely inconsistent. I had no idea what to actually expect from the meal. In the end the sandwiches were good, and if I were a regular I wouldn’t care about the branding. But because they hadn’t built that trust with me yet, it was off-putting.
So make sure that your visual branding is strong, consistent, and representative of your company, but understand that brand goes far beyond that.
Narrow your audience and your messaging
I hate to sound like a broken record, and I know I’ve written about target client profiles before, but they’re an essential part of developing a consistent brand.
If you’re trying to make sure that you’re being consistent with your messaging, you also have to be consistent about who you’re messaging to.
If you try to be all things to everybody, you’re going to be nothing special to anybody. But if you develop strong messaging for a narrow client profile, you’re going to be more consistent with how you’re perceived in the market.
Tracking your brand perception
I spend a ton of time working with my clients on KPIs to make things measurable. Brand perception is one element that’s extremely difficult to make measurable and actionable.
There are plenty of frameworks for brand perception mapping, but those don’t measure brand objectively. There are others who lean on satisfaction surveys and customer feedback to gauge their brand. In my opinion, those aren’t a great way to measure how you’re being thought of in the market. They can be really misleading. For example, you can provide someone great service, really delight them, and get a high net promoter score from them, but still be missing the mark with where you want to take your brand.
It can be a challenging problem to solve.
The way I like to look at this question is, of the leads that are coming in, how many of them fit our target client profile? In other words, when new potential clients reach out to you and are interested in your management services, how many of them are the right size, geography, financial makeup, and goal orientation?
If you’re attracting more and more qualified opportunities, you’re doing a great job hitting your brand. The messaging is working and it’s reaching the people you want to attract.
On the other hand, if you’re attracting a lot of leads that aren’t in your target client profile, you may need to reevaluate how you’re presenting yourself in the market, because clearly something isn’t working. If you’re truly effective in how you position your brand, most of those misaligned clients will weed themselves out and realize that it’s not going to be a great fit before they even reach out to you.
What about when it goes wrong?
No matter what, eventually you’re going to slip up. Something will go wrong, a mistake will be made, and your clients might see a side of you they weren’t expecting.
You might spend your whole life trying to stay buttoned up every day and prove to your neighbors that you’ve got your life in order. But one day, you’ll walk out to get the newspaper in your pajamas with terrible bed head, and someone will see you. The illusion will be shattered.
The same thing happens with brands all around the world, in every industry. You might send out an incomplete email to your customer list by accident, or you might drop the ball on a maintenance order and leave a resident in the lurch. Especially in property management, mistakes are inevitable.
As I always tell my clients, I’m not upset when something happens. I care about what happens when something happens. In other words, it isn’t the mistake that really matters to me, it’s how you act in response.
I want every one of my clients to know how to respond to negative interactions. You should always make sure that you:
- Fix your mistake
- Clarify what went wrong and why
- Uphold your brand
- Deliver the level of service your clients expect and deserve
- Make meaningful changes to process or policy to make sure you don’t make the same mistake again
The goal is to meet the expectations that you set for your clients, hold true to your commitments, and deliver service in the way that you want your brand to be perceived.
Final thoughts
Your brand is like a garden. You either plant and sow the seeds of what you want to grow, or something else is going to grow in their place. Part of your job as a business leader is to make sure you’re planting the right seeds and continuing to water them.
Want to learn more about managing your brand perception? Check out our recent webinar with LeadSimple.
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February 20, 2025
