1. BRANDING: Real estate is local and my main brand, “Sally English and The English Team” remains superior to the competition in all my markets. I have never relied on the Brokerage company for branding. In fact, most buyers and sellers are unable to recall the actual real estate brokerage where I have my license. The English Team did 623 sale transactions in the past ten years and my brand, “Sally English and The English Team”, sets the bar in my target market.
2. THE SALLY ENGLISH BRAND: The Sally English brand is unique. And all marketing materials are coordinated to comply with the brand and image we wish to present. This unified marketing readily identifies the “Sally English and English Team” brand.
a. We have a logo that goes out on all our marketing
b. We have a unique color scheme (yellow over orange). All marketing materials coordinated to pantone color identification chart.
c. We use a custom font on all our marketing materials. We purchase a custom font from Adobe to visually represent our brand. This custom font is used throughout our marketing materials.
d. Website tied to branding: we named our website to tie to the “Sally English and The English Team” brand, not to our brokerage. The website you find promoted on all our marketing materials is www.englishteam.com
e. Contact Information throughout all our marketing materials is 770-939-3174 and sallyenglish@englishteam.com. Again, we own these methods of contact. Our email is goggle based and we own the application. We also own the phone number and pay the bill monthly. These contact methods have never been tied to the brokerage.
3. ONLINE BRANDING PRESENCE: If you go to my website you will find very little evidence of any brokerage affiliation. I do the minimum affiliation required by GA law. I have always done this as my “brand” has always been “Sally English and The English Team”
4. Websites: Another area where my branding comes in to play are the actual online websites where I market myself and my listings. I actually own and operate all my websites.
We own the web addresses, hosting and content on all our websites. It is all copyright protected and insures that we deliver a consistent message to the consumer. Websites we own and operate include:
b. http://sallyenglishblog.com/
c. http://www.searchatlantagahomes.org/
d. http://www.bestatlantahomevalue.com/
e. http://www.helpingatlantafamiliesinforeclosure.com/
There are a lot more websites that direct consumers to the ones above.
5. AFFILIATED WEBSITE BRANDING: In my affiliated websites the contracts are in my brand name, Sally English and the English Team, not my brokerage:
a. Trulia
b. Zillow
c. Realtor.com
d. Google
e. Postlets
f. CraigsList
g. Twitter
6. Sign Branding: We have to use a brokerage approved sign panel. Everything else about the signage is branded with Sally English and The English Team. A test of our branding is the actual sign calls I receive. Callers can often not identify the company name. They look for the real estate agents name. What sign callers will notice is that the signage is “branded” by the “look” I have developed for Sally English and the English Team. Our consistency in signage continues regardless of the brokerage company. This includes
a. Large white custom post
b. INFO box attached to the post and stocked weekly with color flyers
c. Rider that shows the www.englishteam.com website
d. Custom Yellow directional signs that have English Team prominently displayed
e. Custom Yellow Sunday Open House signs that have English Team prominently displayed.
7. Think globally and act locally: Well, I stole that saying but it has great application to real estate. One problem I did have with our brokerage website was losing buyer prospects if they did make a contact through a national brokerage portal. When a buyer logged on to a national brokerage website or called a national brokerage phone number, that contact was sent back out to a local real estate agent within the national brokerage network without consideration for the listing or property address that the home buyer was interested in.
These agents could then take the client and steer them in a whole different direction from the property they were originally interested in. I have had contacts sent to me that originally wanted information about South Atlanta or Conyers.
Not gonna happen with a local company where the emails will go directly to me and where I personally know the receptionists who answer the phone. This is an example of where technology did not keep up with the marketplace. It is also an example of how personal contact and simply answering the phone can make a huge difference in how successful your business becomes.
8. MARKET SHARE: My national brokerage company lost a huge amount of market share in Georgia market last year. There were losses in both the number of agents working at the Georgia franchise and in the market share of transactions. Not a good indicator.
9. Focus on the Home Seller / Buyer: Large franchise brokerages appear to have lost an understanding of who is the ultimate customer in their business model. Each real estate agent pays a monthly fee to the Franchise owner for the either the State or region. And also a yearly fee to the International owner.
The problem is the franchise owners are not concerned with adapting to a tough real estate market and fail to understand what it takes for an agent to properly market and sell a home in our present competitive market place. Fee structures were set in the boom years and they will not listen to agents as we tell them we need to spend more of our dollars on marketing properties and less of our dollars on a fee structure that go to line the pockets of a franchise owner. It is not business as usual in today’ real estate market place.
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