“Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.”

 - Walter Landor

Why is it so important to brand our product?  Before we get started, I want to be clear about something – the product you need to sell is NOT real estate.  The product you need to sell is YOU.  If you don’t sell YOU first, there’s no need to worry about how you’re going to sell real estate.

The ultimate goal of branding is for your product to be the first thing that comes to mind when the consumer thinks about the type of product you offer.  Two classic examples are facial tissues and first aid bandages.  When you sneeze, you reach for a ‘Kleenex.’  When your child gets a boo boo, you reach for a ‘Band Aid.’  When you want to sell your house, you pick up the phone and call ‘(insert your name here).’  A steady stream of people ready to do business with you is the obvious benefit of having a great brand in your marketplace.  So how do you do this?  How do you own that piece of the consumer’s mind that equals real estate?  Let’s start by discussing some common branding myths in our industry.  (New agents pay close attention – I’m about to save you thousands of dollars!)

• I don’t have enough experience to worry about branding myself.
  If you don’t start branding from the get-go, you will have wasted valuable time and money.  From the very first letter to your sphere of influence to every single postcard sent to your farm area, the look and feel of each piece should be consistent.  I recently attended a seminar in which the instructor made a very memorable statement: 
  Visibility is more important than ability.  Now stop for a minute and really take that statement in.  At face value, it sounds awful, but think about this:  You could be the absolute best in the industry, but if no one knows about it, you may as well be sitting at home making cookies all day!  Secret agents don’t do a lot of business.
• I need a huge budget to create a brand.
  No, you don’t.  You just have to be consistent and repetitive.  Start with creating a look for yourself.  Maybe it’s simply a color that you use throughout your mailings and on your Web site (you do have a Web site, don’t you?), or the font for your name.  You don’t have to be a marketing genius or come up with some incredible logo.  Just pick something and keep it consistent.  Next, repeat after me:  It is better to send a marketing piece to 100 people five times than to send the same piece to 500 people one time.  This is important.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had agents come to me and say that they spent hundreds of dollars sending out a huge mailing to their farm area only to get zero response.  Duh.  Start small and be repetitive and consistent.  As you begin to own the “real estate” minds of those 100 people, the phone will start ringing, you’ll start doing more business and you can add to your list.  As the list grows, you begin to own the minds of more people, and your real estate career begins to snow ball.  Doesn’t that sound nice?
• My broker has a brand, so I don’t need one.
  People don’t do business with companies; they do business with people.  Buying or selling a home is a very emotional thing for most people.  When you are well branded, the consumer thinks of you, not your company.  When the phone rings at the office, you want them to ask for you, right?  When your branding message is consistent with that of your brokerage, then the stars align and great things happen!  Okay, maybe stars don’t align, but wouldn’t you agree that a consistent message from you and the brokerage would help owning the “real estate” mind of consumers more successfully?  Here’s a pretty straightforward example:  If your brokerage’s business model and subsequent branding is that of a “discount” brokerage, and your branding efforts tout you as “top quality,” do you think the consumer might get a little confused?  The absolute worst thing you can do in your branding efforts is to confuse the consumer.  Align yourself with a brokerage whose brand is consistent with your own, and you’ll find it easier to be a success. 

Now you’ve got some basic ideas to begin branding yourself.  Here are your next steps:

• Attend the branding class offered by HAR.  It’s free!  Why wouldn’t you do this?
• Talk to your broker (or manager or marketing department) about helping you create a brand that is consistent with the brokerage’s branding efforts.  One of my favorite things to do is to sit with an agent and help design a brand and determine an agent marketing plan that is consistent with that of my firm.  It makes us both more successful in the long run.
• Decide on a marketing plan for your shameless self promotion and stay with it.  Don’t give up!  If you only work at it for three months and stop, you will have just thrown away three months worth of time, marketing and promotion dollars.  You’ll need to stick to your plan for at least seven months to one year before you really begin to see the “snow ball” results. (There are ways to speed up this process, but that’s for another article.)

So, there it is… no excuses… get out there and brand yourself!