Above, left to right: Matthew Leone, Ashley Brennan and Lauren Henss
Brown Harris Stevens and FirstTeam recently launched their first bicoastal networking event by hosting the third annual Luxury Real Estate and Design Summit in partnership with Luxury Marketer.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Matthew Leone, Chief Marketing Officer of Brown Harris Stevens, and Lauren Henss, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at First Team for a lively panel conversation about luxury marketing for agents in a constantly evolving landscape.
Here are my top five takeaways that I believe any agent can lean into, regardless of a property’s price tag or the size of their luxury portfolio:
1. Luxury is a level of detail, not a price point
Leone suggested swapping “luxury” for a better word: bespoke. To him, it means obsessive attention to detail in everything an agent does, and storytelling is where that shows up most. You can present a home with the usual baseline facts, or you can dig in: Interview the architect or the interior designer, learn every material in the house, and help a buyer picture their life there.
His example has stuck with me. Don’t just list the outdoor space; describe it as the perfect spot for morning coffee with a view. He compared it to a five-star hotel or a Michelin-starred restaurant, where guests rarely remember the pillow or even the food, but they never forget how carefully every moment was considered.
Henss built on that idea. Every listing is different, she said, and the goal is to create moments that matter across the entire client journey, staying 10 steps ahead of your client. And those moments don’t have to be expensive, but they absolutely have to be meaningful.
2. The narrower your niche, the bigger your business
Henss told the story of an agent at FirstTeam, a working fashion model who came into real estate just two years ago. He wanted to start in Turtle Rock, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Orange County. Then she pointed out that homes there change hands roughly once every 15 years.
So they started over with a sharper question: Who, exactly, did he want to serve? The answer was tech executives at Fortune 500 companies shopping for second homes in Pelican Hill and Newport Coast. He committed to a 90-day content plan and a minimum monthly budget, tested what worked, and kept going for a year. Today he leads a team of 10 and ranks among FirstTeam’s top 10 agents.
Leone framed the same idea as differentiation. With an estimated 2.1 million agents in the U.S., many of them sharing your brokerage’s brand, you need an identity of your own within it. If you can’t explain why you’re different in under 30 seconds, he said, you’ve already lost the room. Once you’ve earned that attention, keep it with the insights and service only you can offer.
3. Call your PR team before you post anything
This is probably my favorite pro tip, but I’m admittedly biased. If there was one piece of advice Leone pressed hardest, it was this: When a listing has a great story, take it to your PR team weeks before it goes live. Reporters want exclusives, not leftovers. Post it on social media or your blog first, and a major outlet will likely pass because the story has already been told.
Land the exclusive, though, and everything else follows. Other outlets pick it up, and the coverage feeds your social posts, a blog recap, your marketing materials and your listing page. He said he’s lost count of the properties that went to contract the same weekend their press hit.
Henss shared what great storytelling can do. FirstTeam took over a $32 million Newport Coast listing that had sat for two years. The house itself was unremarkable, but it had a 5,000-square-foot garage with turntables. So they rebranded it as a car collector’s dream, invited wealthy collectors to an event, and partnered with Ferrari for test drives. The result was national press and an offer within two weeks.
And when a listing isn’t headline material? I chimed in that a well-crafted blog post with some ad spend behind it can still surprise you. One BHS blog post about a listing in the building where Only Murders in the Building is filmed landed in The Wall Street Journal three weeks later. Leone added a timely reason to keep publishing: AI search tools tend to surface recent content that isn’t behind a paywall, which gives a fresh blog post outsized reach.
4. Let AI assist you, never author you
Both panelists are enthusiastic AI users. Henss pointed to speed: She produced a property pitch video in about an hour, and it helped her team secure Mansion Global coverage for a major listing.
Leone offered the phrase I’ve been repeating since: Assistance over authorship. Feed AI your own ideas, details and voice, and let it help shape them into a listing description, social posts and a press pitch. Hand it a vague 15-second prompt instead, and you’ll get the same generic copy as everyone else who typed it. Worse, he said, fully AI-written content can rank lower in search and is increasingly flagged on social platforms.
Henss had a practical safeguard. She tells her AI tools to write like a seasoned residential real estate advisor and to push back when she’s wrong instead of agreeing with everything.
5. Depth beats reach
When it comes to social media, agents are constantly told to be everywhere at once. Leone called that advice damaging: It leads to burnout, and burned-out agents quit posting. Instead, figure out where your clients actually spend time, look at your engagement numbers, and double down there. Henss’s version was simple: Pick one platform and get really good at it. She’s a fan of Substack for thought leadership. When you try to be everything to everyone, she said, you end up valuable to no one.
To keep the workload manageable, Leone recommends creating one strong piece of content and sharing it across every platform rather than making something new for each. And when it comes to your audience, quality wins. If you’re emailing 40,000 people, he said, you’re doing something wrong. A few hundred real clients, each with their own network, can sustain an entire career.
The Final Word
Their parting advice for the next 90 days tied it all together. Leone’s top priority was to share your expertise often, in whatever format feels natural, because the average New Yorker knows 20 to 25 agents. Henss suggested teaming up with about four professionals your clients already trust, such as trust attorneys or luxury travel advisors, and creating content together. And Leone closed with a reminder that no amount of posting replaces personal contact: the call, the text, the coffee, the small dinner. Every time you’re in front of people, business happens.
If you’re interested in watching the full luxury marketing & PR discussion, see it here.
For more information, visit https://www.bhsusa.com/.
