Real estate and marketing go hand-in-hand. As a realtor, you are constantly marketing yourself and your services to find potential clients. You’re marketing your client’s properties to potential buyers. You’re marketing your community to potential buyers by selling a lifestyle. Regardless of the situation, as a realtor, you are always marketing, but one of your most important roles as a realtor is to market your personal brand as a real estate professional.
WHY PERSONAL BRANDING MATTERS
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” Branding for real estate agents is a way of gaining name recognition and enhancing your professional reputation to earn business by establishing a professional presence that is notable.
Branding makes your business stand out from the crowd; As a realtor, your personal brand is its identity; the strengths, qualities, and features that distinguish you as a professional in the real estate industry. It is the emotional connection that customers associate with your services; it’s the way they feel, the experience they expect to have, and the unique qualities that differentiate your professional identity from other realtors in your industry. Making clients choose you as their realtor to represent them with their real estate needs over other realtors.
Whether you are a licensed real estate broker, broker associate, real estate agent, or any other type of real estate professional, you are associated with a real estate agency or brokerage that has its own brand. So, why is it important for individual agents to have a personal brand? Keep reading to find out why and for some helpful tips for establishing your personal brand.
ESTABLISHING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND IN REAL ESTATE
For real estate agents, personal branding is more than designing a logo or selecting colors for your business cards; it is much more personal than that. It involves your personal and professional reputation, the way you are viewed in your community, what strengths and skills potential clients associate with your name, and more. Below are some helpful tips to assist you in your journey to establishing a personal brand.
FIND YOUR NICHE
It is essential for real estate agents to find their niche in the market and market their personal brand with qualities and individual strengths that differentiate them from other agents in their community to gain business. What makes you different from other agents in your community? What value do you bring to the table? What services do you provide to your clients that they can’t do representing themselves?
Ø Do you have your Graduate Realtor Institute (GRI) designation?
Ø Are you a second, third, or fourth-generation realtor?
Ø Do you specialize in a particular neighborhood or area, the luxury market, first-time homeowners, or commercial real estate?
Ø Do you donate a portion of your commission from every sale to a local non-profit organization?
Position yourself in the market – Establish a specialty in your area. Review your past transactions to see if you recognize a pattern. Did you work with more first-time homebuyers? If so, then concentrate on marketing your self as the best agent for first time home buyers.
Build a website
Now that you have established what your brand represents, you need to introduce your brand to your community. I suggest you use a website. The best way to build a website is to work with a webmaster who specializes in designing websites for realtors. There are plenty of companies that specialize in real estate sites, and they will have several designs for you to choose from. Don’t spend time trying to reinvent the wheel.
Establish a Social Media presence
Use your social media accounts to reinforce your personal brand. You should be posting about topics that support your brand ideas. Did you recently assist a buyer in the successful purchase of their first home? Congratulate the buyer in a social media post! Did you just get a new jaw-dropping luxury listing? Post about it on social media! Were you recognized as the realtor of the year? Brag about it on social media! Are your friends and acquaintances aware that you are a realtor? Informing your sphere of influence on social media is one of the easiest ways to spread your brand. Be sure to keep your friends and family informed regarding real estate and ask them if they know anyone who could use your help. According to SproutSocial, “77% of realtors actively use social media for real estate in some way, shape or form, and 47% of real estate businesses note that social media results in the highest quality leads versus other sources.”
Social media marketing is a no-brainer because there are many ways to reach your target audience for free. That’s right, I said it. FOR FREE! You need to prioritize your time, be consistent, and focus on posting to your social media accounts weekly to build a following. It takes time to build an audience on social media, but the time you put into it will be well worth it. So, what are you waiting for?
Print Marketing
Social media marketing and traditional print marketing accompany one another. Business cards, yard signs, brochures, local newspaper ads, postcards, and mail advertising is essential to your personal branding as well. Of these print marketing options, postcards and mail advertising are the most important.
Remember that particular neighborhood or area you specialize in? Take the time to schedule a postcard mailing targeting that area to inform and remind property owners of your services and offer them a free competitive market analysis of their property. But don’t stop there! The next month, send that same area another postcard mailing updating the property owners of their neighborhood market activity, quarterly statistics, and remind them again that you are a realtor who specializes in their area. Got a new listing? Send this neighborhood a postcard. Just sold a listing? Send this neighborhood a postcard. Why? Because it is essential to be consistent with your marketing tactics. If a client is looking to buy or sell a property, you want to be the first person who comes to mind. You can accomplish this by staying fresh on their brain by mailing postcards to your target audience consistently to build your reputation and personal brand as a knowledgeable agent who produces results.
As a realtor, marketing is a vital part of your job. Now that you have found your niche, positioned yourself in the market, are creating a website, establishing a social media presence and planning out future mailers targeting a specific geographic area, type of client or market, you are on your way to developing your professional real estate brand and generating more business.
15 Comments
Guillermo Page
Melina this is such a great article, not only because you touch on the importance of personal branding, but because you also demonstrate how people can actually build up their personal brands. We tend to think of marketing and branding as relating to actual companies or products and services, but it’s key to also consider how we should look at ourselves as a product we are selling. This is especially true for individuals whose work depends on their ability to differentiate themselves, like realtors.
MelinaMiller
Thanks Guillermo, you are absolutely correct in that notion. Many individuals fail to recognize the importance of personal branding and how it can positively or negatively affect their business. With so many digital tools available personal branding has become essential for success and easier than ever.
Paola
You make a good point, Guillermo. As individuals, we are also marketing ourselves in the process when trying to sell a product or service. Creating a personal brand will help sell your services in a more effective way. Customers will be able to identify with us and trust us in the advice we give them when influencing them. Investing in yourself is definitely a rewarding experience that will aid your marketing efforts.
Paola
I definitely encourage building a website, not just for real estate, but for many other industries. I think creating a personal brand is so important. If you do not have a website, most people will not think you are credible. I highly suggest entrepreneurs to take your advice, Melina. In the website you create, you will be able to reflect your brand personality and connect with the clients that resonate with your values as well. Investing in creating an engaging website will have many benefits that will last you a lifetime. Looking forward to more of your insightful posts!
Marjan Chaiatri
Melina, this is a nice article! I very much liked it how you nicely started with a broad discussion on personal branding and then continued by giving helpful tips on “How to…”
very informative and helpful article, nice job!
Loyda Molina
I agreed Marjan, this article can help people from any field to create a personal brand. People usually think that building a brand is complicated. I think my takeaway from this article is finding your niche, simple step can help entrepreneurs and professionals that are looking to grow within their company. Having your line of expertise and your value proposition can make the difference between being average or successful.
christabel shinde
Great post, I have a couple of realtor friends, am going to share this post with them. I think realtors, especially the older ones, do not understand how important it is to build an online presence. You can’t hand out business cards and hope for the best in 2020. This is a competitive industry, you have to separate yourself from the crowd. Social media has led us to believe that we can do anything and everything. We can do anything, but we can’t do everything, finding a niche is probably the best you can do for your brand. You cannot become an expert if you divide your time, to master everything. The best thing to do is to find something you are good at and try to become an expert at that. When people see you as an expert, they are more comfortable to work with you.
Patrick
It blows my mind that people still underestimate just how powerful the internet is. Having an online presence is possibly one of the most important things anyone can do, for any business. Not only does it offer easy to access touchpoints, but it also provides a place for a community to form, and ultimately strengthen your brand. To your last point, giving off the vibe of being an expert is extremely important when you are trying to get people to buy your product. Having an online presence can only go to strengthen that, it enforces the idea that you are dedicated to your trade because you invested time and money to create a profile/brand for all to see.
Patrick
This article as a whole does a great job of highlighting the incredible importance of personal branding. It doesn’t matter what field it’s in, it is important to build your own brand, even if you are a part of a larger entity. It’s how your co-workers, colleagues, and customers are able to recognize, remember, and talk about you. In the art industry especially, personal branding is so overlooked, and artists use the cop-out that their art is their brand or make the mistake of letting their viewers tell their story for them. It would be beneficial to people in any field to read this.
Jordan Duong
Patrick, I totally agree with you. The way someone view your business is pretty much as important as the satisfaction of the product you sell. I find it interesting how by reading article like this one, I realize that all different aspects of marketing are connected to each other; for example, I believe that personal branding is directly related to customer relationship management as it is all about the customer’s vision of the brand.
Helem Milian
I completely agree with you there Patrick! No matter the industry, personal branding is always crucial to the success of your company and that of communication and engagement with your customers! I really liked reading this article and agree it was enjoyable and totally beneficial to anyone needing a little extra knowledge on personal branding. You want your audience or customers to remember you not only by your product but through your communication, persona, and even how you engage with your own customers! This is very important and this article highlights all those things very well.
Jordan Duong
Melina, your article was great and really brings awareness to the three major way of presenting your image to the world. I agree with the first step, creating a website. That is indeed what I first did and focused on when launching my brand. I needed it to be professional, attractive and presentable, and figured that the best way of doing so would be to build a good website. That was quickly followed with social media, but it takes more time to make those effective as they need to be built. Print marketing is in my opinion less effective in some industries, while more effective in others. And for your real estate industry, I believe that it is a necessary form of advertising for you. These three ways of raising awareness to your brand can also be applied to every other industries, and that is really why your article is great is it gives a real life example with real estate.
Loyda Molina
Thank you, Melina, this article can benefit people in any field. In my case, these steps can also help financial professionals to create their personal brands. Like in the real estate industry, we face the same challenges as having too many people doing what we are doing as a part-time career. We all have a friend or a family member that has a license. A lot of agents lose business because their prospects have a friend or family that sells life insurance. By having a niche and creating a strong personal brand these agents can earn the business because we all want to buy from the experts. This article gives full-time agents a great guide on how to create a strong brand to differentiate themselves from everybody else.
Helem Milian
Hi Melina, this was a nice article to read, your flow was easy to understand and very insightful! One thing that stood out to me the most was how you made it a point to really sell on personal branding. A lot of times new businesses and even older ones forget to sell the companies personality as well as their products, and in real estate personality goes a long way! I also liked how you gave ample amounts of tips to help viewers find their niche and really build on brand awareness, that this something this industry can benefit a lot from. Overall this was a great post, and I enjoyed reading it!
Whitney
Love this article especially the push on marketing materials to notify target audience on relator brands. Creation of website and social media presence and print marketing definitely is in line with the marketing approaches of the 4P’s and 4 C’s which can help influence behavioral change. By realtors looking at themselves as the product and how they can directly influence their customers, they can increase their awareness, accessibility, and build customer loyalty. This goes especially for your strategy for print marketing. Consistency is key and by establishing that, customers will have the desire to come to you for their next rent or house hunt!