Most real estate agents understand the importance of advertisement. Real estate agents constantly need to connect with new customers if their business is to grow, and for this reason everything from city billboards to Internet advertising needs to be considered.
But while the importance of advertising is indisputable, this advertising will go a lot farther if you have a clear sense of your brand identity. Branding is a difficult thing for many real estate agents, especially those who are just starting out.
While it is relatively easy to find out how to get your real estate license in California for example, or how to get sponsored by a brokerage, cultivating a brand identity requires a certain degree of trial and error.
Few brands arrive at their final form overnight, and if you’re like most realtors, you’ll probably have to try out a few different ideas before settling on one that works.
But once you do, you will find the work to have been well worth the effort: a brand identity is essential to long-term success in the real estate industry, and creating an association in clients minds between yourself as an agent and the kind of real estate you deal in will help ensure a steady stream of customers.
Here are just a few of the reasons why.
A Brand Identity Makes You Distinctive
The most important reason to think carefully about your brand identity is because branding yourself makes you more distinctive, and therefore more likely to attract new customers.
For example, if you mostly work with luxury sales, or rural sales, or you specialize in sales in a particular ethnic community, building a brand identity around that is a great way to attract the kinds of customers you want.
“If you have a particular niche in the real estate space (like auctions or rapid sales), it’s worth highlighting how your proposition as a business is unique,” comments Ruban Selvanayagam of Property Solvers.
A Brand Identity Establishes Trustworthiness
All real estate agents understand the importance of trust in a real estate transaction. For most people, buying a house is the single largest purchase they will ever make, and it is one that will have a decisive impact on their life for years to come.
Establishing a brand identity and brand trust reinforces your legitimacy and immediately communicates to potential customers that you know what you are doing and can deliver results.
A Brand Identity Helps Build Loyalty
In the housing industry, it is common for agents to focus more on the acquisition of new leads rather than the retention of customers.
The average American only moves around eleven times over the course of their life, and only a handful of those moves will involve purchasing new properties, so what are the odds a realtor will get repeat customers?
The truth is that cultivating customer loyalty through brand identity is a key strategy of successful realtors, not only because it can secure future sales down the road, but because brand-loyal buyers are more likely to recommend your service to their friends and family.
Settling on the perfect brand might take a bit of time, and you may even want to invest in professional help from brand experts. But if you want to be successful as a real estate agent, developing a strong brand identity early on is essential.