There’s been a lot of dialogue recently around raisingthebar – a stirring of ingredients that, if boiled to perfection, could transform the industry. Continuing education, sales coaching, licensing standards and more are in the mix.
These are things that real estate typically outsources to outside experts, and everyone seems OK with that.
Yet along the way up the bar, most choose to manage the marketing and packaging of their brand themselves – an odd contradiction, if you ask me.
A real estate Brazilian
Brand campaigns aren’t cookies you bake at home. Or a pot of goulash into which you throw pinches of this and that. It’s the singularity you weave into everything you do to stand out.
Technology has gifted us with many implements with which to work at this. They empower the user, but can also falsely lure them into believing they are “building a brand” when in reality they are simply making a mess.
You risk sliding down the bar you wish to climb. You’ll gravitate to that which is convenient, or free. You’ll write words that you would never speak to people.
Perhaps you will fail to realize that the stock image of a handsome couple you chose to portray buyers on your collateral may also be the erectile dysfunction models found on a pamphlet at RiteAid’s prescription counter.
Technology has been generous. But it can’t provide strategy – and the discipline required to wax your real estate brand to a perfect Brazilian.
Great brands don’t skim edges. They meticulously groom their campaigns to evoke desire within people who want their product or service. And when that personal connection occurs, when what you do matches how you appear, you create something timeless: A brand.
When you fail you become just another nameless, faceless agent. Or brokerage. Someone or something that just sells real estate.
Climbing
Maybe you have gone the distance. Honed your brand to perfection. Raised your personal bar. You’re ready to rock in 2012.
Why risk the final, grand reveal of who you are through a do-it-yourself, arts and crafts marketing campaign? Leaving your brand obscured beneath a tangle of shoddy marketing and expecting, hoping, praying, that people will search for it is too grand an expectation.
You don’t cut your own hair. You don’t build your own cars. You don’t cobble your own boots or manufacture your clothing – the things with which you adorn yourself to create the picture of who you are to the world. You seek professionals to help you look great.
So find seasoned marketers.
Let them do their job.
So you can spend more of your time climbing.
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And that’s why YOU are the master! Well said!
Marc, words just drip off your tongue with such eloquence. It’s one of the best posts I have ever read about brand. I myself have struggled with my own brand evolving from a practicing real estate broker to a Real Pro Advisor helping brokers and agents perfect their identity in the technology haze. I bet many will feel as I do, this post was written with me in mind. Thanks for helping me with my personal mission of clarity, I am less fuzzy then I was moments before reading this post.
Surely a real estate agent by definition is a marketer?
If they can’t be trusted to deliver their own brand message with skill why on earth would anyone hire them to market their home.
I know that because you see such mind numbingly bad marketing by agents that it’s hard to remember that an agent should be at their core a marketer. But in my mind the needed fix for that is career councilor rather than marketing consultant.
On the broker level I agree they need help
I think you skirted commando. XO
MacNificence! Great service companies’ brands mostly follow great service design. Form follows company function, seldom the reverse. Branding-worthy service designs scale, they are high value, high margin, finance-able. Many agent business models don’t have high value, margin or scale. It follows that their approaches to brand marketing are marginal, cookie cutter, me too, bikini wax approaches. What does it take for a Realtor brand to equal McDonalds?
Design their service model to be as attractive as MacDon’s service value chain. First offer macnificent services, the money will follow for all the professional brand marketers around.
This is so true. I am all for hiring a marketer for me… The question is, is there one that understands what I need done and be cost effective. Our marketing is constantly changing,
Thanks. Well said. And timely for my business. I have been upgrading equipment, taking webinars, following people online, etc…attracted to the “shiny objects” that are dangled before me. All the while wondering..how am I going to implement all of this in 2012 AND actually do business at the same time??? I should do what I am good at and hire someone that is good at what they do….to help me get those items done for my business. Splendid way you have of communicating…thanks for causing me to think.
Spot on. Actually had a “bringing back to reality” affect on me. Do what I do best. Leave the rest to the experts. Yours was an expert article. Thank you
A very thought provoking article. Creating a unique brand in real estate can be very difficult – there is simply so much “sameness”. If you take it seriously you need to develop a vision and work towards it tireless, just like any other company would. Some things can be delegated, but the vision and management of its implementation must be yours and your company’s alone.
[...] We hear it over and over again. The system is broken. MLS’s are broken. Even the branding is broken…WTF! [...]
I really enjoyed that!
Thanks for your thought provoking article.
Great examples, specially the last (You don’t cut your own hair. You don’t build your own cars. You don’t cobble your own boots or manufacture your clothing). Nice blogging! I enjoyed it!