Develop your umbrella brand. Start with a strong image.

Key West Realtor Brenda Donnelly owns two business brands: Island Homes Key West and Historic Key West Vacation Rentals. They serve different target markets, but the information needs of both clients often overlap. Donnelly sells homes, inns, bed-and-breakfasts and guesthouses. She also markets and manages high-end vacation rental properties. Her home buyers often start as vacation home renters. She also maintains a companion blog.

Although the two businesses are separate, it’s easy to see the ways in which a vacation rental can turn into a home purchase — a home that may return to the vacation rental market under Donnelly’s management. Each business feeds the other.

The challenge is establishing an “umbrella” social brand that allows Donnelly to connect with both target audiences. She needs to speak to the specific needs of each target audience while easing them between renting and owning — all without duplicating information or draining her time and resources.

So, we are creating an umbrella brand that she can use across both companies. We’re starting with one, highly identifiable icon coupled with a strong branding statement: Stay a week. Stay a month. Stay a lifetime. We’ll add streamlined social media accounts that can “push-pull” friends and members across both businesses’ websites. Next step: Creating customized, original website and social media content for both target audiences.