Realtors are consistently seeking for ways to become better marketers. Whether you just got your real estate license or you’re an expert in the field, continuing to educate yourself on how to best market your services is a constant battle.

That being said, branding is one of those all-important marketing concepts that always sounds really important but is rarely explained well. Not only is it unclear how exactly you should craft your brand, but rarely is it stressed just how encompassing your brand should actually be.

This article will guide you through seven mistakes many real estate agents make when building their brand, and how you can avoid them.

1) It’s Your Brand, Not the Brand of “You”

In today’s day and age, having a personal brand is all the rage. For many, their “personal brand” is just who they are. They don’t make an attempt to craft a brand. At best, they simply take their own personality traits and turn the volume up on certain ones.

For people who are naturally charismatic, this can be a really good strategy. For others, it can be a death-sentence. The people who do really well with this strategy could sell air conditioners to Eskimos already, the rest of us are going to have a harder time.

Ultimately, your brand is crafted to do one thing: sell. There’s only one surefire way to do that.

2) Start with the Customer

The real way to begin crafting your brand is by knowing your target customer. It’s important to know what they like and trust. If you’re going to be selling houses in Seattle, your brand might want to take a gentle, progressive approach. If you’re selling property in Downtown Detroit, you’re going to need to be a little more robust.

Tailoring your brand to your customer takes the guesswork and luck out of the equation. You can plan each situation accordingly because you know who your target customer is, how many kids they have, where they shop, etc. Crafting the message to sell becomes a lot easier.

3) Know Your Customer: Demographics

This one got two spots because it’s just that important. It’s not enough to just know the basic information about your customer. Where they live, and the typical age range, isn’t going to cut it.

There are two types of information you need to know when trying to establish who your customer is: demographics, and psychographics.

Demographics is the hard data. Questions with factual answers. Yes, this includes their age and location, but there’s a lot more people don’t think about:

• Are they married? Divorced? Single?
• Do they have kids? How many?
• What’s their household income?
• Do they have a college degree?
• What ethnicity are they?

All of this information will help you relate, serve, and sell to your customer.

4) Know Your Customer: Psychographics

Psychographics are the hard questions that relate to their goals, values, and interests:

• What are their 5-year goals?
• How do they plan to achieve their goals?
• What movies do they like?
• What do they enjoy doing in their spare time?
• What is their lifestyle?

How your customer answers these questions will inform everything else you do for them; which houses you show them, how you treat them, how you assuage their fears, and much more. The more information like this that you have, the more complete your brand will seem to your customer, and your service will be better.

5) Interview Customers

When you’re trying to answer these questions, it can be tempting to take the easy way. To assume you know what your customers want and try and fill in the blanks for them.

This doesn’t lead to sales.

The best possible way to get answers to these questions is to find people you wish to sell to and ask them yourself. Theory and hypothetical are nice in a boardroom, but the best place to get information is from the horse’s mouth.

6) Get specific

Now, you’ve done all your research. You know where you’ll be selling, who you’ll be selling too, and you’ve called anyone you could get on the phone with to try and get information about your market.

Now what?

The tempting answer is to take all this information, hang on to the general principles and desires that you learned about, and throw the rest away.

This will cause two problems: You just threw away 80% of that hard-earned research you did, and now you look like every other realtor in your market.

Get specific when thinking about your brand. You don’t appeal to families — you appeal to a family of four with a household income of 140k a year, one dog, two cars, and a thirteen-year-old daughter who is just about to start high school.

Not every customer you serve will meet this profile. But a good segment of your market will meet this profile, and they’ll pick your service every time. There will also be plenty of overlap in the wants and desires of that customer, and the rest of the customers you want to get. Focus on the one, and the rest will come.

7) Live it

This can be one of the most important, and most forgotten, parts of any branding endeavor. Your brand should be reflected in all parts of your business.

This can be intimidating for some. Now, you don’t have to maintain your brand every time you go home, and the work day is done. However, your customers should think you do.

If you are appealing to high-end clientele looking for luxurious homes, you would do well to arrive in luxurious SUV, wearing an extremely nice suit and a tie. If you’re appearing to a customer that is eco-friendly in nature and looking for an energy efficient home, you may want to relay that by arriving in a hybrid and opting for e-forms instead of paper.

Meet your customer where they are. It will be easier for them to relate to you, and easier for you to gain their trust. Think about what they want and give it to them — always.

Article Written By: Haley Kieser – investisdigital.com