As Realtors we need to become incredible marketing experts not only of our properties but of ourselves as well. When marketing yourselves and your business you must think of branding and the many aspects within the "branding scope" of marketing. Diane Aurit wrote a great article about branding and how different big and small real estate companies are with regards to marketing. The big companies are usually "firm-centric" and concentrate on marketing their brand, not each individual agent. There are some newer models of real estate companies that encourage agent branding and called "agent-centric".
Thanks to Diane, I decided to write an article describing our branding efforts and the thought process behind our marketing with the hopes that other agents that don't know how to go about it will take a leap. I want to first disclose that I am by no means a marketing expert but have found this aspect of the business fun and creative. Our marketing has progressed through the years and it has always been recognized and commended, even by local Realtors.
When we first got into real estate, all the local Miami and Miami Shores Realtors had the same boring card with a white background (some red because of the brokerage they were with) and a stiff studio photograph. Being an architect, I decided that our marketing needed to be different and needed to stand out from the rest. This is the level of detail it involved:
- picking a font (it would have to be architectural and simple to represent me)
- background color (black was architectural, modern and elegant....and no one was using it)
-
photograph (professional outdoor shot - more natural)
- Pick a team name ("the garcias" was not working for me since I use my maiden name. Everyone knew us as Ines and Rick.....how simple was that! It turned into Rick and Ines because it sounded better, according to our oldest son).
- design a team logo
-
website with all the elements mentioned
Here are some examples of our first marketing efforts. It is always important to listen to the consumer and make subtle changes as you go, whether it's the use of a photo or your marketing message.......listening is the key.
You will need to identify what's important to you - in our case our photo and RICK AND INES became our brand and by keeping the rest of the elements consistent, the consumer was able to pick us out from the crowd. We would get interesting comments including someone telling us, "there were 10 different Realtor ads in the Chamber of Commerce this month and we were able to pick yours out before even looking because it was black".
We later developed a RICK & INES LOGO and included it in our marketing.
Other marketing efforts included having 2 different cards (since we are a team), the front would be the same for both and the back would have our different contact information.
We did fun pieces like this one (Warhol inspired) with an odd size - this one created a lot of buzz for us. All the legally required real estate information was on the back of the postcard.
It's important to recognize what makes you different than the rest and work from there. Niche marketing is always a plus - do you work with equestrian properties, farms, land, historic properties. If you can't narrow it down, think of what makes you different than the rest. Make sure what you produce is not forgettable. Be creative! Don't be afraid to be different.
We decided to make changes when others started using our colors and when people told us that we looked different than our picture, but we've always had transitions and kept something the same so that the consumer would not be totally lost and so our marketing efforts would not go out the window. We continue to "freshen up" our marketing efforts without short circuiting the consumer and we love when they notice a change and call us on it. Just today a customer told us that we needed to change our picture again.......hmmmm.
......stay tuned for Miamism branding efforts (a work in progress).
;)
;)
;)
