Establishing Your Brand – Bigger Isn’t Always Better

We’ve mentioned here and there about building your real estate brand as a real estate agent, but what does that really mean and how can that help you get more leads or sell more houses? A solid brand stands for something.

It is the position that you take in your particular market that distinguishes you from all the other real estate agents around you.

Here are a few pointers to develop your unique real estate agent brand and how to you use it to get more leads and sales.

The first thing you need to do in establishing your brand is narrowing your focus. Sure, you might want to be the biggest and baddest agent in the entire tri-county area, but you have to start small and grow from there. To help, ask yourself these questions:

• How do perceive myself most comfortably when working with home sellers or buyers as well as other agents?
• Am I best at selling homes or helping clients find homes?
• Which of those do I like doing more?
• What types of homes am I the most successful at selling or showing?
• What neighborhoods, areas or types of neighborhoods am I the most successful in?
• What types of clients or agents do I enjoy working with the most and with whom I am the most successful in selling or searching homes for?

A lot of this comes down to numbers. Categorize each of your most successful and easiest sales or leads. Consider each of the questions above and hone in on not only where you were the most successful but where and with whom you enjoyed it.

So now that you have a focus, it’s time to develop your brand! This is who you are as an agent, and it will help you promote yourself to just the right target market in just the right way.

In doing so, you will effectively save yourself time and money that you would have otherwise been wasted on other demographics, areas or agents.

To help, it’s important to write down all of your ideas, no matter how silly or far-reaching they sound. For example, if you sell homes in your own neighborhood super well, then you can position yourself as your neighborhood’s go-to gal or guy for buying and selling homes for your neighbors.

If you have shown the most success selling and finding homes in the ritziest areas, then you are the million-dollar real estate agent.

Love finding homes for first-time home buyers or millennials? Then you are the agent for the new generation of home buyers. The list goes on and on.

With a catchy, one-sentence or one-phrase idea that clearly communicates who you are and what you are good at in real estate, you will attract more of those same leads, buyers, and sellers.

Now, instead of looking at many different areas to find clients, you can focus on finding just the target market that you have identified you love and are good at working with.

We won’t go into the details of finding real estate leads here, but remember when you do find them to communicate in their language and in the ways they listen.

That may be through mail-in postcards, buying an ad in a charity event program, sticking flyers or tchotchkes in race packets or sponsoring an event.

If you are dealing with millennials that may include online ads, connecting through Facebook, or video marketing on YouTube.

One thing that agents oftentimes forget is that your personal image matters as much in your branding as what you say. Without going overboard, dress in the professional style that is comfortable for that demographic.

Don’t be afraid to ask people you know in that demographic what they think or to do some research into how people in that demographic dress professionally.

Clean up your website and collateral so that it speaks to your more narrow focus and in the language they understand. This may take some professional writing or the help of someone you know who is good with words.

The key here is to know your target demographic: Where do they live? Where do they eat? Where do they shop? What do they do for fun? What are their interests? How do they like to communicate? If you want to be the “first time homebuyer specialist” then you will probably be working with a lot of millennials and need to be fluent in texting, email, and social media – because I can guarantee that most of your clients are and it is probably their preferred method of communication.

If you want to work with the older down-sizers, texting will probably not be an option and email is iffy, making paperless transactions difficult.

Make sure you have plenty of paper to print those contracts and ink in your pen for signing.

If you find that you have more than one target market, then go for it! Just make sure you know better who you are as an agent and letting others know that, too.

You’ll find that it’s better to be good at one or two things than to be okay at a lot more. Perhaps you should consider starting with a single target market and then slowly adding to it.

So what is your brand? What challenges are you facing in developing it? Leave your comments and questions below – we’d love to help you narrow down your focus in a future blogpost.