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Business Strategy Advice for Women Business Owners from NAWBO - Marketing Magic

Case Study

The Corcoran Group
New York, New York
Barbara Corcoran, Founder and Chairman
Year founded: 1978

Barbara Corcoran landed on the mean streets of Manhattan in 1973 with one goal: to become, in her own words, "the queen of New York real estate." At the time, it seemed her dream would remain just that. When she and a boyfriend started a small real-estate business, Corcoran-Simone, the naïve 23 year old had little more than her Princess-style telephone and the New York Times classifieds. She did, however, have a flair for public relations and a knack for spotting trends in the New York real-estate market.

By 1975, she realized the market was shifting from rentals to condominium and co-operative apartment ownership, so she quickly adjusted her strategy. By 1978, she had dumped the boyfriend (well, truth be told, he dumped her), she had her own business with seven agents, and her dream was starting to look a little more attainable. In 1981, a clever press release landed her in the New York Times , with the article citing her research and quoting her as an expert in the field. Today, she heads up a multi-billion-dollar company with multiple offices and hundreds of agents. Her dream has become a reality. "If there's one thing the little guy has over the big guy, it's creativity," Corcoran says. "And if there's one thing the big guy has over the little guy, it's money. I'll put my money on creativity any day."

Corcoran's own creativity has been her key to success from the very beginning. When she first came to New York, she got a job working as a receptionist for a real-estate firm. She soon realized that she could rent apartments as well as the brokers for whom she was answering phones, and went into business with her then-boyfriend. Her first rental was a testament more to creative marketing than to the merits of the apartment itself. Corcoran was trying to rent a standard one-bedroom unit, but she knew there was little to distinguish it from the many other properties listed in the Times. She convinced the owner to build a wall dividing the living room in two. The one-bedroom was suddenly a "one-bedroom+ den," and it rented in one day.

A few years later, Corcoran and the boyfriend split, and she struck out on her own with The Corcoran Group. As she built her business, Corcoran used more creative tactics to rent and sell otherwise generic apartments. She knew that her product, New York apartments, was not noticeably different from anything the broker down the street was offering. Consequently, Corcoran decided early on to market not just her properties but herself. "My competition spent a lot of time advertising the heck out of the properties, but I found little value in that," she says. "Rather than putting the properties forth, I decided to put myself in the limelight. I knew that if people liked me and responded well to whatever image I was putting out there, chances are they'd like my product."

It was the late-'70s and early-'80s, and Corcoran saw that the New York landscape was changing. The city was moving from being a market composed predominantly of rentals to one of individual ownership. Corcoran knew little about the condominium and co-op apartment market, but she sensed a tidal shift was about to occur, and she wanted to ride it. She brushed up on the co-op market and took a close look at her competition. "At that time, the winning real-estate firms all had a sort of snob appeal, a 'we're the true bluebloods' marketing strategy," she remembers. "But that didn't apply to New York anymore. Manhattan was changing from a small nucleus of very wealthy people who bought, to a very fast-moving, new-money group that was interested in buying. These people weren't interested in snob appeal. They were more attracted to a style that was fun and appealed to their 'make-your-own-society' attitude."

So Corcoran built a reputation and a brand that reflected the vitality and enthusiasm of a fresh-off-the-bus Manhattan newcomer. For example, when she ran her first corporate image campaign, she used the tagline "The Corcoran Group: Power Brokers," but depicted her brokers wearing their favorite sport clothes, posing with children and pets, and generally having fun.

From the beginning, Corcoran knew that another way to distinguish herself was by generating publicity. In the first half of 1981, her firm sold 11 apartments at an average price of $255,000. Corcoran estimated how many rooms were in those 11 apartments, then calculated how the sale price broke down on a per-room basis. According to her not-very-large statistical sampling, the average price per room was $57,000. Corcoran typed up a one-page summary of her findings, boldly titled it The Corcoran Report , and sent it to every reporter at the Times. The following week, her Corcoran Report was the basis for a front-page news story proclaiming, "Study Shows Co-op Prices Quadrupled." "PR is the free meal that's available to every business," Corcoran says. "It's the most underrated, underutilized tool in business When I didn't have any money for advertising, which happened often, I could use PR to promote my business."

The Corcoran Report, now a semiannual publication, is a must-read among New York brokers and buyers, and is a highly regarded source for industry trends, market data, and the changing pulse of the New York real-estate market. As Corcoran says in her book, Use What You've Got & Other Lessons I Learned From My Mom (Penguin Group, 2003): "Advertising helped us make our name, but publicity put it on the marquee."

For example, a few years back it was rumored that Madonna was shopping for a new apartment in Manhattan. Corcoran's firm wasn't working with the pop superstar; in fact, Corcoran had no idea who Madonna was working with or what she was looking for. Nevertheless, Corcoran typed up a one-page press release on what Madonna might be looking for in an apartment and sent it to local and national media outlets. Later that day, she was on CNN discussing Madonna's dream apartment and celebrity house hunting. Soon after, Corcoran had several celebrity clients of her own. "People buy into your image," she says. "People don't even ask what your experience is. As long as you have the look and feel of being the happening place, people will come and buy your product."

What the Experts Say

Today, Corcoran is one of the most savvy and powerful real-estate brokers in the country, yet, according to our experts, the strategies she used to build her company are relatively elementary. Those include establishing market position and distinguishing her firm from the competition. For Corcoran, that meant using a variety of marketing strategies--advertising, image campaigns, Internet marketing (when she launched www.corcoran.com in 1991, it was one of the very first real-estate websites), and public relations.

But what about your company? There are so many ways to spread your marketing message, how do you determine the most effective mix for your product or service? You can't, experts say, until you step back from your business planning and do what Corcoran did: Take a close look at your product, your company, and your customer. Once you gain a more complete understanding of all three, your marketing direction will become clearer.

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