Branding your renovation business is about selling the experience. You need to work out how you want your clients to feel about your brand.
Branding Your Renovation Business
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
- [01:15] Emily Osmond in She Renovates Livestream Conference 2021
- [01:44] Background of Emily in the renovation business
- [02:59] Planning and teaming up to do a joint venture with a friend
- [03:45] Buying and selling a property: A savvy way to kick-off
- [04:33] Emily’s experience in helping people in the property space
- [05:41]Setting goals with clients and what they want to achieve
- [07:40] The power of building your brand with renovation business
- [9:49] Evaluating your property’s marketing strategy
- [11:32] Focus on building a connection with your audience
- [11:58] Promotions: How can people work with you and take the next step
- [12:23] Grit mechanism for doing joint ventures
- [13:27] How to put out the right content
- [14:41] A great marketing tool for your renovation business
- [15:50] Emily Osmond’s programs
“It’s so important to build a brand. This creates opportunities to showcase the work we’re doing, build an audience and expand our clientele as we move forward and do more projects.”
~ Emily Osmond
Get To Know Emily Osmond
Emily Osmond is an international business coach and speaker, based in Melbourne, Australia. She is also a marketing educator and a property addict.
Emily’s Background In Renovation Business
Emily grew up in England. When she was a child, she always be rearranging her cushions in her bedroom. She was interested in design and that type of thing. She didn’t end up studying interior design straight out of university, but it’s something that she has always been interested in in terms of property. Purchased her first home property when she was 24 and living in Ballarat at that time.
It wasn’t long after when she met her fiance, who used to work for a property development company doing more of the finance or, transactions manager there. And so, he then bought his own property.
A little while later they purchased an old, very rundown semi-detached home that was actually a commission home. It has one to two tiny bedrooms and they did a long settlement with that. They got out planning, permits, and teamed up with a friend to do a joint venture and built two large homes on the block of land. They have recently purchased their second development for the next renovation business in Ivanhoe, which they are excited about.
How To Grow Your Renovation Business
One of Emily’s clients in her first few years of renovation business is someone that she’s still very good friends with today, Sandy McKinley. She runs a property called Acre of Roses located in Victoria.
Emily and Sandy went to some workshops that Emily used to run around content marketing like Instagram, etc. Sandy, together with her husband, have started working together and Emily stopped with them to set their goals and what they wanted to achieve.
The Power Of Building Your Brand With Renovation Business
As they set the goals for their gorgeous Airbnb, they worked on their brand. Emily believes that when you have an Airbnb, you are not selling hundreds of rooms but you’re selling an experience.
They worked out the brand values, the aesthetic and how they want people to feel. Sandy is an expert at this of thinking when someone walks through the door or even before then, what are they hearing, what are they seeing, what are they smelling, what are they touching, tasting or that type of thing.
The result of them working together including Sandy’s hard work and her husband, Rob, was that they exceeded their booking slots. People struggled to get a room because they are so booked out and they have so many repeat customers which is a big win. As soon as they leave, they are pretty much booking their next stay there because they have such an amazing experience.
Sandy had people reach out to her that were stylists for magazines. She had one cover on a country-style magazine and multiple features in that one. She had international media coverage and has thousands of followers on social media. She’s now brought out but they still looked at how can she scale this business. She’s now bringing out a product line and there are international people that want to taste the properties.
The Importance and Opportunities of Building A Brand
Build a brand that people will follow. Something that they will appreciate and understand the quality of work that you do. With this, you have an audience and potential bias for the next project you do in the next project.
Currently, in their joint venture, they are now creating their own brand. They are showcasing the work they are doing so they can build their audience and potential clients. It is something that they are savvy about and understands how to do because it gives them more choices as well. They build their brand through their content with their audience. They build that sense of trust and credibility showing that they know what they are doing and they have the experience that they bring and give value.
People are going to know about what you’re doing unless you are putting it out there. And so this is why having your own brand and understanding how you want that to be presented to the world, what the aesthetic is, what the values are, the quality that you’re putting out there and what I see, Social media, your website, that type of thing is also a bit of a proof point to people
Instagram: A Great Marketing Tool For Your Renovation Business
Emily shares that she has friends that do renovation business and they capture and showcase their projects online. There are now people lining up on their Instagram saying “whatever you’re doing next, I want to buy it”.
Understanding how to put out the right content to showcase what you were doing is important. For her own business, Instagram is a major channel where, a lot of her ideal clients spend time personally, tagged in things or listen to her podcasts.
On Instagram, a lot of it you can share like behind the scenes and stories. People respond and then you are in a private dialogue with them and you can get to know them and have those conversations. Emily’s partner, and their joint venture partner, just signed on to
Instagram and are new to it. And now, her partner will be on the couch, scrolling through Instagram and following all of the architectures, developers and interior designers. It is where people go to find brands to find inspiration and to look at what people are doing. It’s a huge tool that is at our fingertips to use for free.
Emily Osmond’s Programs
One of the programs is about working with an interior stylist just recently for a project and she was talking about it in her house. She calls it the continuous improvement project (CIP) for always switching in pillows or new art and Emily coined that term. She is always looking how she can improve, grow and serve her students.
Here are Emily’s current programs:
For Emily, it’s supporting them to make that first a hundred thousand dollars or sorry, in their business, which you know is kind of tipping point to where you can take a little breath. She also teaches them, how to get clients, how to become skilled at marketing and skilled at selling. And then from there, she decided that she wanted to go down the education route and help people in that way through her online programs.
I’m always refining, but like the best way I can describe this is really how to make money in your business, working with clients and how to do that is having that strategy to get clients. And as students joined, they go through this initial challenge that I’ve just created for them to help them just get that win on the board, whether it’s their first couple of thousand dollars in their business, like ever, or to show them how they can make their next $2,000 just to make that so tangible and easy and clean and simple for them.
She Renovates Facebook Group
If you want to meet up with a group of savvy renovators. I would say come over and join She Renovates Facebook Group. It’s a completely FREE Facebook group and it is growing at the rate of knots. We hit over a thousand members just recently, and now it seems to have picked up momentum. They are all savvy renovating women and men working their little hearts out to live a better life through renovating.
