Q & A Episode 10 - Ensuring Your Brand Evolves with Your Business
Episode #10 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Ensuring Your Brand Evolves with Your Business
Mark Williams discusses the importance of establishing and evolving a strong brand identity to connect with the right target market as a custom home builder. He shares insights on understanding ideal client profiles, leveraging unique competitive advantages, and building credibility through consistent quality and service.
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About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. WIlliams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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hey listeners in the last couple of episodes I've talked about the benefits of cbusa the leading group purchasing organization in construction we're gearing up here in Minneapolis for an annual Builder event called The Summit September 22nd through September 25th it'll be in Minneapolis Minnesota this event formerly known as the power 30 is CB USA's biggest event of the Year cbusa members from across the country will come together to learn and engage in networking opportunities like face-to-face meetings with top brands
00:00:29 and Reps interact breakout sessions with fellow builders in an exclusive vendor Expo showcasing the latest materials I'm excited to attend and I'm excited to be recording a podcast episode in front of a live audience fellow homebuilders if you want to be a part of this too then head over to CB usa. uslearn today learn more about CB USA's benefit and apply for a membership at CB usa. uslearn additionally if you'd like to hear more I interviewed Ryan lipek from cbusa on episode 26 of the curus Builder
00:01:01 [Music] podcast welcome to C builder podcast I'm Mark Williams your host today is our Thursday Q&A today's question is how do you establish yourself and your brand in your target market or your ideal client this is a great question I think we'll take the full 20 minutes to talk a little bit about this for one thing whoever asked this question uh you're light here years ahead of where I was when I started my company uh I was 23 24 years old kind of in the middle of when I started my career built a house and
00:01:36 sort of just self-discovered along the way and I would love to go back and ask a question like this I think uh had I been more Curious at the time of you know hey could I sell my company who is my ideal client I think when I first started it was I'm going to build a house because I love it and I'm really passionate about it and I sort of figured it out you know year in and year out I would say I really didn't start spending a lot of time thinking about this till five six years ago so maybe 3/4 of the way of my current career and
00:02:04 for sure the last two years I've thought a lot more about my ideal client and someone gave me a great analogy about this is so maybe I'll talk a little bit about your ideal client is where do they go what do they eat and uh this person was a fisherman and they said you know if you want to catch a big fish you've got to go where the big fish like to eat after just thought was an interesting concept it really connected with me and so you know for we're in the luxury Market probably one and a half to five
00:02:32 million so as a stereotype where do those people go to shop where do they go to eat uh what kind of cars do they drive and so I spent some time thinking about that and that was really helpful for me to even consider like what Publications would I consider advertising in how would I perceive even the the live events that I do I also think that you know being a dad of three it was sort of interesting uh there was another company one time that you know we get a a lot of plls on all of our time and this person said hey would you
00:03:03 like to go to this evening event a baseball game I think it was and I said I'm sorry that just doesn't work and that same person then said you know I think later in the year was getting towards Christmas they said we have this uh light parade thing that you can take kids to and I was like sure I'd be absolutely take that because it was something I could do with my kids so you know for this person she was considering me her client and she knew that I wasn't really giving up my nights but that I would do it if it was a family event and
00:03:30 so I I think if you let's say are catering to a young family let's say You're Building you're probably building a two-story uh stereotypically at least in our market and so you're thinking things like a sport court you're thinking about things that are very kid-friendly you know is there some sound insulation between the bedroom so if the kids are jumping on the beds you know you can still sleep between the bedrooms so anyway I think spending some time and actually writing out what your ideal client even looks like there's a
00:03:56 marketing term that many of you might be familiar with called Henry that's h n r i and that's high income not yet rich and that is obviously sort of like an upand cominging uh Market I had heard someone years ago say that I asked them what they thought about Instagram and I had said at the time that I don't really get a lot of leads out of Instagram we spend a lot of time and resources and money there but I haven't really seen you know people come directly through it to buy something uh or to build a custom
00:04:24 home and he had just said that that was that was his clients five years before they'd be his clients and I thought that was really interesting it really helped me stay the course and want to continue to be there and you can look at your demographics depending on you know what your you know where you find your demographics as a builder you can look at your analytics on Instagram and it'll tell you you know mine is like 70% women you know 30% men you know different age groups things like that and so depending
00:04:51 on what part of the country you're in depending on who is following your content you'll get a better idea of how to essentially Market to them uh for my personal ideal client it was you know something that was valuable to me even when I first started quality was always really important I cared far more about quality than I cared about quantity and so maybe because I was the son of a builder and a designer I really appreciated uh really good craftsmanship I've always loved Cabinetry and I've always loved trimming in fact I've only
00:05:23 ever had two cabinet makers my entire career one for the first eight years and then now for the last uh 12 years uh another cabinet shop and I just really really appreciate that myself and it's also I've also asked a lot of my clients sometimes at the end of a project what you know what things did you appreciate the most and which people did you appreciate the most and we've done this word thing where basically the word grows depending on what they react to and the two things for me uh they happen
00:05:52 to be the name of my cabinet shop Rich hip or hip Cabinetry as well as uh woodwork at the time we had a gentleman named Todd wigman shout out to him amazing Craftsmen and people always I think because they saw so much of what goes into home framing is one of them and so is trimming there's a lot of time spent and you can Vis visibly see the difference and I think that was one of the main reasons other than these people were incredible Craftsmen in their own right as well as very personable so those were things that didn't surprise
00:06:22 me um I think again thinking about your ideal customer you know for me if I am to to answer this question for my own company I'd say the majority of our clients are probably F 50 to 65 years old they're empty nesters uh or soon will be they they want to travel they want they don't want a house that's too big oddly enough they don't want a giant home that's eight nine 10,000 square feet because they know have to that they have to take care of it they're also old enough that they're at an age that they
00:06:49 realize a lot of the stuff has to be taken care of and I'll say that about my second uh clientele demographics in a minute and so I think they want something that's very well appointed uh they really appreciate craftsmanship they appreciate uh you know attention to detail but they're also they don't want it to get too out of hand they're also very much concerned about their budget they're entering potentially retirement you know in five to 10 years uh based on when they're building this and so they're considering like hey they don't
00:07:16 want to get too far over their skis because they've not navigated retirement before I think the other demographic of client that I have is kind of the opposite which is 30 to 50 so they're young families uh they're that that Henry clientele that is really looking to establish a home that they can grow in it's a young family and it's probably not their first home this might be their second or third but they want to build a home that they're going to stay in for 15 20 years totally different clientele
00:07:42 um and so it's really sort of interesting so in my case to answer this question uh I'm thinking about two different kinds of clients we recently did a brand exercise with a curious Collective and we're going to do it again with um designers as well as Architects because every company I think probably needs a spend more time on brand than they think and uh shout out to Molly windmiller here locally in Minneapolis with lab uh Minneapolis she does this really cool brand exercise and one of them is understanding your brand
00:08:10 archetypes this an old thing you can probably Google it and I think there's like 10 or 12 different uh I think there's 13 different um categories that will sort of latch on to you and so you know mine happened to be which it was called the jester and it was like it it just if you're choosing to celebrate yourself as your company it's a little bit different um you know then you can really it's almost like a personality test if you're choosing as a company to identify like as a brand and think of
00:08:38 well-known Brands like Nike or Ferrari or Ford or whatever you want to think of um think in those terms if it's not going to celebrate yourself or what you are as a person and I don't think there's a right or wrong here I think you just I think it's just important that you would ask yourself these questions um one thing I saw recently that was really interesting was um like Ferrari they don't sell cars they sell a status symbol I thought that was really interesting uh there was another one that was like apple doesn't sell
00:09:07 products it sells Innovation and Amazon doesn't sell um you know individual things it sells convenience and speed and so it was really interesting to sort of challenge these brands that we know and love and use a lot but from a different point of view and they're very rarely a thing it's more of a concept or a lifestyle and I think the sooner that I realized and I think I did realize this a lot earlier on than maybe I I give myself credit for is that we were building a home for people that wanted a
00:09:40 certain lifestyle and I maybe got away from that in the middle of my career and now I've kind of redoubled down on that and and understanding like what kind of Lifestyle do you want and it's not about building the biggest house or the smallest house I think it's about building a house that fits you and I think the same is true of a brand I think you don't want the biggest brand or the smallest brand you want a brand that fits you um shoe size you know I've mentioned this before but like I think
00:10:08 Shaquille O'Neal has like size 22 or 24 shoe size I'm like a 10 and a half like I'm going to be very uncomfortable in his shoe and he'd be very uncomfortable in mine I can't I'm not gonna be able to run I'll fall right out of his shoes and you know he couldn't even fit you know half of his toes in my shoes the point is is like it needs to fit you and it can change you know I think one of the things that I've realized about a good brand is that it has to be dynamic enough to grow with you and sometimes we
00:10:33 outgrow our brand I think that's why you know considering a brand refresh for me it was about every seven to 10 years I needed a brand refresh and I've spoken previously on the podcast you know Mark Williams Custom Homes went through a brand rechange at the same time we started the Curious Builder about two years ago now and it was really important someone brought me aside in this case it was my wife and she said you know the homes that you're building are no longer what your brand represents and so it was more than just typography
00:11:01 change and color changes I mean it was a new website a new look a new Vibe like all new and I think maybe I'm wrong in this but I feel like men are a little bit more set in their ways than women I think of like shirts you know I can go through my closet and I'm I'm not somebody that necessarily throws things away um easily but I I don't hold on to stuff I'm kind of in the in the middle I guess and I guess my point in bringing this up is I bet if I went into my closet right now I could find shirts
00:11:27 that I probably don't wear maybe once a summer and just get rid of them and I think the same is true of a brand I think if you look at your business like it represents you you know maybe you're training for a marathon and you've lost weight and your pants no longer fit you you have to get a new pant are you better off taking your pants into a tailor getting them retailored um it it's a lot of work and probably actually more expensive than just probably going and buying a new pair of pants and so
00:11:52 make sure that your brand is fitting what you are and the services that you want I think it can be aspirational too this episode episod is brought to you by Alpine hardwood flooring they've been our partner now for over a decade installing all our wood floors on all our new homes as well as our remodels and on a personal level Adam and Anthony Jen lot of the owners are just absolutely amazing people they've been so supportive of my career as well as doing anything we need to make sure that our clients are happy and they work so
00:12:19 well with our other vendors and trade Partners at not only protecting their product but also ensuring everyone else's looks great so if you're looking for a wood floor or for a refinish I highly recommend Alpine hardwood flooring I think one thing that Architects do really well better than most builders in my opinion is that a lot of Builders will put every single photo that they've ever done on their website thinking that more is better and sometimes in a in a design meeting it's nice to sit down and be like oh we built
00:12:46 this house it just because it's fresh in your memory you obviously it's not like you throw pictures away of your kids uh you keep them you just might not have them you know hanging on every wall all the time you change them out and I think your website should be maybe your more recent work or the aspirational work or the work that you want to do more of I think when the brand uh specialist that I work with kind of explained that what should be on your website is the homes that you want to attract the clientele
00:13:12 that you want to attract which is what we're talking about right now is identifying your brand in your target um your target market uh one of the things that we went through is these different brand pillars which is really helpful and I'll just buzz through them right now there's five of them there's Clarity which is just being really succinct and specific there's purpose which is being intentional real being authentic uniqueness being distinctive being original expressive so is it compelling narrative is it connective and
00:13:40 credibility is it consistent is it quality and is it trustworthy so these are all Big Brand pillars that you can spend time thinking on again I'm not one that created this this is all out there you can search this as well um and there's workbooks uh that you can go through so like for me Clarity is what is something that you want to be known for something very succinct um is it lifestyle is it enjoyable is it fun is it aspirational and I'm not here to share all the things that you know I've identified with but for you to sort of
00:14:10 think about that you know pick I think the shorter it is uh the simpler it's kind of like Kiss keep it simple stupid if you can you know I think all this is where I think having your brand live you know live well so you can dwell well or you know dreams or like you know you see all these tag lines uh along this I used to have it too which is like you know building dream homes one home at a time you know so those little sayings stick but they should really uh line up with what your core values are I think
00:14:39 purpose you know I for me I didn't realize it at the time but I do now is like just being authentic be who you are and it's a little I think when you are a brand especially if it represents you as the business owner the the closer you can make it to yourself um assuming you're comfortable and happy with yourself not that there's not work to be done there but the easier it is for that brand to just you are the brand again I'm speaking from my own personal experience that you know my company you know is me and so that's the brand it
00:15:09 would be a little bit more difficult I think to create sort of a third-party persona but I think a company can I mean I think those companies I named before like Nike Ferrari uh Ford I mean a brand can certainly have an authentic purpose and I think when they stray away from it I think of Coca-Cola you know Coca-Cola I don't know what year it was I was probably still in high school so sometime in the 90s and they went to a different Coke and people hated it and I think they got rid of it and went back
00:15:37 to the original formula because they were trying to refresh it so some things you know your core audience might not want you to do it I know that there was one Builder he only Built Ramblers and his brother only Built two stories and you know what would it be like the world would be shocked if you know if that Rambler Builder started building two stories you know would his clients be like oh I guess he doesn't build Ramblers anymore so I I think just knowing your own messaging and think about it I think you can certainly be
00:16:03 Diversified but some of the most successful companies are ones that just stay super tight focused and i' heard recently too that sometimes when you have success you start uh straying into other ideas and other things and you get away from kind of your core your core message and I'd even heard recently in the newspaper just seeing companies that were laying off people and essentially what happens is if we aren't keeping track of our costs you know we're getting a little fat and in the middle that layoffs happen because we weren't
00:16:31 watching cost we probably started expanding outside our core envelope and there's number of businesses out there that do a phenomenal job staying in their Lane you know it might be villa homes and that's all they build um you know it might be you know single family uh homes Custom Homes semi whatever it is there's a success strategy there but I think when we start to try to play in all of them and trust me I'm guilty of this I've done this many times in my career where I had a great bright idea
00:16:58 and I thought I would try something new and there's some value in that so I'm not saying don't try it but just be aware of it and understand that if it's going away from what your core focus is that uh you could lose your core client and the client might change and I think again that goes to back to their brand refresh you may want to change clients you know maybe you don't want the client that you have you know I mean early on in your career we spoke about this previously you know of hustling for
00:17:23 every job that you have and identifying your ideal client well you know if you don't want to say yes to every single person hello you have to start saying no and how do you say no well you can only really say no if you're on firm footing if you really know what services you offer and you can sort of Define that I think the next pillar going into a little bit more detail is expressiveness I think how we connect with people I to me this has been probably one of the the keys to my success or longevity anyway
00:17:50 is I really do enjoy people so the homes that I build we really want to connect to them whether it's connecting to their lifestyle connect uh to their value statements so I think understanding your company's desire to connect and then being unique you know if you are going to be a commodity so if a client could pick you or 10 others just like you what are you doing that's different uh is it service is it quality is it design maybe it's the land maybe you have there's this saying that real estate agents Love
00:18:18 Like Love My Land love my Builder you know if you control the land in the right locations doesn't matter if they like you they've got to build with you if they want to be on that land there is something there's very few things that you can't change in a home but one thing you can't change is the land and the location and so location has always been pretty key I mean you look at the real estate market whether it's commercial or residential um you know having the the prime locations uh they come with a
00:18:43 premium but there's a reason and so I think thinking about your think about your competitive Advantage you know is it maybe you're maybe you're a sole proprietor I think I used to sell this all the time I used to sell against bigger companies and it was very successful for me where I say you know what I'm as the owner of the company I'm going to give you a lot of my of my time because I am the company and as I've gotten bigger I still say that because it's still true I run a still a pretty small ship and a pretty tight crew uh
00:19:12 but you know as you if your if your goal is to scale at some point you're not going to be able to say that anymore or if you do you better not you better be backing it up uh you don't want to tell your client you're going to be there the whole time and then not be there because you've set them up to fail and your project managers to fail um and so I think if your unique competitive Advantage is hey um you know I'm the greatest Builder you know make sure that you a are and then B that you are there
00:19:37 servicing the client or I know a lot of builders that are that tell you right up front you know I have an amazing team my team will service you Way Beyond what I can personally and that's also true and so I think just understanding what your unique competitive Advantage is we're excited to announce that we've opened up another curious Collective for the last year we've had the Curious Builder Collective we now have the cures Builder Collective for designers the first ones will be happening in September all the
00:20:04 details are going to be on our website we have 30 spots available half of them have already filled We additionally have eight spots left in the Builder Collective if you're interested in getting together in small groups of nine with local Minneapolis based Builders and designers in separate groups and talking about your business talking about your Brands asking those questions that you wish you could ask another business owner then this is the place for you details can be found at the Curious Builder podcast.com and then of
00:20:30 course credibility credibility is super huge but I think this is usually done over time I think the best way to show you're credible is just a like what somebody said don't judge me my by my best day Don't Judge Me by my worst day Judge Me by what I do consistently throughout the years and I think that credibility that consistency that is super key to the longevity of any brand and any business but for sure in custom home building I think because a home is so personal it's really really important
00:20:59 that you extend that level of trust and that extend uh extending that level of credibility you know to your homeowners I think your reputation matters I think it's really really important to to think about that so I'm glad that this question was asked hopefully some of those things were helpful I know that makes me want to go back and even though I just did this exercise actually last week uh during a brand exercise in the Curious Collective um I don't think you can ever spend too much time refocusing
00:21:25 on who your client is you know who your brand is and who you want to show up to be till next week thanks for joining thanks for listening to the Cur Builder podcast if you like what you listen to please give us a five-star rating and write us a review it really means a lot it's a great way for us to just understand what you like about the podcast and what we can keep doing so like and review and please share with your friends and family find out more at curious Builder podcast.com [Music]
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