__________’s premier real estate company.
Your full service real estate brokerage.
Independence and results since 1967.
Tag lines like these sit under your logo like dead leaves on the forest floor. They’re lifeless. Ignored.
Or worse, not believed.
What a shame. Because….
These things do matter
Being a full service real estate brokerage matters. An in-house mortgage, title, insurance and home warranty company can allow clients to move through transactions faster, easier, and with less stress.
But that’s not readily understood by the general public.
Left undefined, “full service” might be misinterpreted by people as way for you to take their money coming and going.
Being independent matters too. It suggests a connection to the community. Speaks to roots and history. Perspective. When defined and supported, it can translate into local knowledge. And trust.
Left undefined, people could view independence as a lone soldier with only a whistle for a weapon. No reach. Few systems. Little technology.
Being “Premier”… well, that should garner respect, right?
If I needed surgery or had to defend myself in a lawsuit I’d want the best working for me – the premier service provider.
Left undefined, however, this claim can seem hubristic and empty.
Empty claims unsupported by facts and a story lead those receiving them to draw their own conclusions.
For example:
This company claims their brand is “Where the experts are.” So I searched the site hoping to find one of them, seeking, perhaps, to discover what being an expert means and how it might benefit me. What I found instead was frightening.
2011: the year you find your voice
I know you need to get a leg up on your competition. Everyone does. Your story, and the voice in which you tell it, would be a good place to start making that happen.
Oliver Goldsmith, PSKaufman and Vanilla Bicycles, are three of my favorite obscure brands. They could easily bloviate about their value, service and products using the same careless, pompous copy real estate brands lean towards. But they’ve chosen a different path. Listen to the voice on these sites.
Jax Vinyard is another great example. Surrounded by pressing competition, the brand appears bigger, better and cooler through the clever and selective use of great copy. The words on their site have more differentiating power in the marketplace than any competitor with a “time honored tradition.”
So what
Over-confidence is boorish in face-to-face conversations. It’s repellent. 2011 must be the year you realize that’s the affect it has on the Web too.
If you’re great, back that claim with proof. An explanation. A story. Tie it to a meaning that matters. Something people actually care about. Something that translates into a benefit for them.
Read your home page copy out loud. Is it something you would offer to a stranger you just met if they asked you what your company does? Does it speak to who your customers are and what they might say or write about you?
If so, you’re on to something.
Take it all the way through every word and every pixel on every page
If not, well, you’re just another real estate company talking smack.
And that’s not going to fly anymore.
Local, Mobile, Social and the future of real estate
20 Tools to Bring your Real Estate Business to the Cloud
15 Ways to Make Your Marketing Mobile
This is RICH. Thank you.
Marc, So nice to see a blog post from you in my Google reader. Seems like it has too long. Always thought provoking and solid advice.
Finding your voice and matching that voice or walking your talk is so important now. Talking about ones experience and providing that experience are key.
We have shifted from a push marketing media to much more a two way conversation with social media and the net. And more important, we are able to cast our ideas out in hyperspace and have many visit and real or content, watching to see if the spin meets the reality.
A couple of comments that I can’t let go however…
“Being a full service real estate brokerage matters. An in-house mortgage, title, insurance and home warranty company can allow clients to move through transactions faster, easier, and with less stress.”
Being involved in mega real estate corporations as both an agent and manager I can safely say that 9 times out of 10 having an affiliated company, be it lender, escrow company, or related services is always about profit for the Company, not ease of service for the Client.
In any given real estate market across the Country there are good and bad of everything. Once you have bought into the one-stop notion and are encouraged by desk calendars, lunches, and perks (many illegal or unethical) for sub-par service at high prices. Rarely do these services stand up to competition or service of those in the community that are true leaders in their respective fields.
Do I know some good affiliated company people? Of course I do, but try to scale that across the Company and you are right back to stupid scales.
In my brokerage I have chosen never to have an affiliated company. Too much conflict of interest resulting in pressuring your associates to use the services. Yet I can give my Clients a list of names of the best of the best based on performance, and not a dollar going into my pocket – why do you think we have RESPA?
Services should always be picked upon recommendation of past experience, shopped for being competitive (not always the lowest price), and being competent.
Wearing a tired consumer down and recommending some smuck just because he sits in your office is a poor business practice.
Clearly this is in direct conflict with the theme of your post?
“Over-confidence is boorish in face-to-face conversations. It’s repellent. 2011 must be the year you realize that’s the affect it has on the Web too.”
You would think this is true, but I see everyday examples that John Q. Public does not get it.
Hey Jeffery.
Nice comment. No direct conflict at all. In fact it actually further supports my notion that left unexplained, people will misunderstand its meaning. As I clearly have.
If what you say is true, that being full service is all about profit and nothing else, it adds to the question, I’m asking – why bother publishing it? Why put anything out there in the conversation that have no value, no merit and creates the opposite impression you’re trying to makes.
Nice observations J.
Marc, Exactly my point. The spin is it’s a better experience for the Client. The motivation is a profit center for the Company. In my mind this is the traditional brokerage model trying to survive by looking for other sources of profit. Just like an article I read today regarding the decline of Google which suggested is due in part to the lack to focus on the core business (search engine).
What we need is Brokers that focus more attention on a very important business, representing clients in purchasing and selling real estate, not trying to extract every dollar you can from them.
I know this is a pretty broad brush that I am painting with and there are many exceptions.
As Ken pointed out…this is RICH! I love it!
Its a tall task trying to change the minds of an industry who believes “what we do is good enough”
You have a perfect start here
Jeff,
In some cases it’s a spin. Yes. Others, not. There are some wonderfully structured brokerages that offer mortgage and title services that do as good a job as any on their market. If not better. I say, Prove it. Explain it.
I’m curious what their marketing directors and copy writers are doing if they aren’t continually working at communicating the best parts of the brokerage on the brokerage website as clearly as possible.
Thanks for speaking the truth yet again in only the way you can speak the truth Marc!
I recently asked a group of brokers “what’s your secret sauce”? In other words what makes your brokerage unique from every other? Few could answer the question. For those that did, they said something about their target audience – things like “I serve REO clients” or “I work with younger buyers”. I thought these answers were at least a start toward truly answering the question about your unique value proposition, but a long way from truly positioning your brand differently than the myriad of brokerages out there.
Brokers are clearly unclear about what their unique value proposition and it appears most haven’t even thought about it. We have a simple tool we use that may help your readers….
Complete the following paragraph:
For (Target Audience), XYZ Realty is the only (competitive set) that (key benefit).
Reasons to believe this:
This ia a timetested format used by P&G, Fisher-Price and lots of other consumer companies who are trying to find ways to differentiate their companies from their competition.
Ideally the reason to believe is customer-centric and aspirational in some way – it isn’t all about the company – it’s about what the company does for its customers – For example, Fisher-Price’s is “helping to give your child the best possible start in life”.
What about finding the ideal house to make a home?
What about performance – how about quantitative evidence that you truly do have the highest satisfaction rating in your market using a tool like QSC? What about the company that provides the most support to its customers to make transactions not so scary or overwhelming? These are the kinds of message that resonate with consumers – not the “I’m so great” and the “trust me” stuff!
Put consumers at the center of the discussion, not your company and you may find more success in 2011.
Marilyn Wilson
WAV Group
Marilyn,
Thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
You’ve tapped into an interesting right turn to this discussion.
That simple, time tested, big brand exercise works for big brands for two reasons:
- Big brands actually think about branding. They understand it and for the most part, spend as much time on building brand as they do making product. To your point using P&G as an example, that deep understanding of brand led them to create Mr Clean Car Washes – http://www.mrcleancarwash.com. They get branding.
- Big brands not only understand it, they employ branding/marketing people who actually know and understand what that is and how to do it. Nike employs hundreds of branding people who manage every single touchpoint that leads back to their products.
It won’t work for a brokerage though because brokerages never embarked on building consumer centric brands to being with. It was not in their DNA. It was about growth and market share. Not quality and market awareness. Today, a brokerage might have size and as a result, close more deals than their competitors, but that’s got a lot to do with their agents. The brands themselves, don’t matter. For the most part. Not in every case.
Also, many brokerages do not have internal branding departments who sole job is to manage every touchpoint and oversee each decision ensuring consistency across the brand. After all, how could they? The greatest touchpoint to a brokers brand is the agent who really only cares about their own brand.
Chaos.
The result – most brokerages built whatever semblance of brand they have around getting as many yard signs out there in the marketplace. But that’s not branding. It’s only name recognition at its simplest.
If people can’t tell you what the name means or why it matters then it’s not a brand. It’s just a name.
So a brokerage needs more than this as a starting point. Its been our experience that after some very deep diving and serious excavation, there is differentiation out there. For some. Often times, brokers become enlightened when it’s revealed. Like having found a lost wallet and finally, upon retrieval saying “oh yea, that’s where I left it.”
Marc, there is nothing magical, or different about any brand. They all peddle the same products the same exact way on the web. There is no company differentiation, as far as consumers see it. But when you study the major commercial brokerages, who laugh at their residential brothers and don’t even want to be mentioned in the same sentence, then you see a real difference in the brands. The cbre’s and cushmans of the world wouldnt be caught dead hiring jut anyone with a pulse, they demand so much more of their sales people, and business people respect them for that. They know their products, the market and everything there is about their buildings, but the same can’t be said for the residential side.
It all come down to the fact that realtors are helpless at selling homes unless there are lots of willing buyers. Three years of a crap market and nothing has changed.
When you believe that the same business model that you used in good times is just as effective to use when the market sucks, your business has a major problem. Obsolete comes to mind
When an industry welcomes other industries to develop and sell products that may help sell homes better than you can, as you may be doing, then the industry is on it’s way to being irrelevant.
Who has more value…the people who list the product but doesn’t know how to sell it, or the person who has a better tool or attract viewers or to sell it, and can grab more eyes than you can.
For change to happen, you must first have to admit there is a problem. Something not all of your followers will admit to.
It certainly makes sense. To stand out from the bland corporate identities you MUST shine. Great post
I read your post with interest and discovered the company you are referring to is Realty Executives.
Their branding is one where they essentially deny that they are real estate agents, but are really “Executives” instead.
What the hell does that mean? Are they ashamed to be Realtors or something? Are they saying they are better than other Realtors and yet expect the non-Executives to help them in selling their inventory?
Makes no sense to me at all. Maybe someone can explain this to me. Is this what an “Executive” does exactly? http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=c6d6ecDtV4o&feature=related
Is this video part of an Executive’s listing presentation or something? I simply don’t get it.
Joshua,
The same question could be asked of their use of experts. Experts, executives, these are things that, if applied, could mean something to the marketplace if they were backed by some examples. To your point, when I consider what an executive might be, it canotes someone with some sort of educational pedigree who typically doesn’t roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty doing the field work but instead delegates it off to subordinates. Maybe that’s what they mean. I don’t know. But all sort of feels like words thrown out to the public with no rhyme, no meaning, no substance, no soul.
Thanks for the link to the video. It made me hungry.
There are so many better ways for realtors to effectively market themselves and their listings to attract consumers, but the concept of real marketing has bypasses the industry. Thank goodness that the consumers thrist for home ownership far exceeds the realtors ability to to market and sell them. It’s amazing how much worthless garbage consumers can endure.
Now that the crash has awakened us to the real perils and risks associated with home ownership, most agents will have to scurry around and try to prove their value, whilenthe good ones can show their value. The last thing a buyer or seller needs, is an agent armed with a license pretending to be an expert.
Like it or not the role of the realtor has forever…either prove your value or find some friends who will use an idiot friend to sell a home to, because no one else will use you.
Great post, the video with the “ultra professional and ultra friendly guy in a Don Johnson suit and a fedora” really gave off an air of professionalism, not some guy just out to get my money.
I would work with that guy and learn his secrets anyday
Keep up the great work 1000Watt!
Funny… He struck me as your regular average Joe. He seemed like a guy with some great “secrets” that would make me rich. I didn’t get the feeling he was trying to sell me something at all… lol
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