Properly using "REALTOR®" in Your Marketing

The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) has registered a trademark on REALTOR®, and they’re very serious about protecting that trademark. Properly using “REALTOR®” in your marketing can save you from a lot of headaches, problems, and financial liability.

If you do misuse the term REALTOR® in any of your print marketing, social media or website name or materials, or email communication, NAR can take action against you. These actions range from a simple letter asking you to correct the problem, to actually having your social media account or website shut down.

Keep in mind that NAR’s goal is to stop the misuse of the term REALTOR®, and they consider legal action a last resort. With this in mind, let’s look out how you can correctly use the term and avoid any problems.

REALTOR® is Preferred by NAR, But...

There is a bit of leeway there. Which is good, because having the same word appear in all caps throughout an article or page is distracting for the reader, and can ruin written/printed copy you’ve worked so hard on. So a more modest “Realtor®” usage is acceptable.

“The National Association of Realtors, recognizing that putting registered symbols or all-caps REALTORs throughout text can easily dilute the message of the text for the general public, allows the third preferred use of Realtor, with just an initial capital letter,” wrote Jim Frimmer, Real Estate Agent with HomeSmart Realty West.

If you read NAR’s blogs and news releases, they often go with “Realtors®”, clearly seeing that it’s the least intrusive version to a story’s copy.  

In fact, to take it step further, Realty Times is one of the most respected real estate news sites on the entire web, and they feel that simply using Realtors, without the ® is more than acceptable. In fact, when a reader tried to call them out on their simple use of the term, they responded with:

“It is common media practice to use the term "Realtor" with a capital "R" and nothing more -- otherwise newspapers and magazines would be filled with copyright marks and content would be difficult to read.”

NAR considers this far less than ideal, but generally allows the media to do this.

Things to Avoid When Using the Term Realtor®

You have to be very specific, so there are a number of common mistakes you can make:

• “Realtor™” is incorrect, the term is registered, not trademarked.
• “Realtor©” is incorrect, the term is registered, not copywritten.
• “realtor” is incorrect. The term in all lower case is never correct.

And there are a few no-no’s for the word Realtor® itself:

• The term REALTOR® must refer to a member or a member's firm.
• The term REALTOR® may not be used with descriptive words or phrases. For example, Number1realtor.com.
• The term REALTOR® should never be used to denote an occupation or business. Do not combine words like “your,” “my,” “our” or any descriptive words or phrases between your name and the membership mark. Like JaneDoeMyRealtor.com.

And there are even more rules for how you can properly use “the big R” in your logo. There is an entire style guide you need to be aware of when creating your brand. For example, you cannot use the R to begin any other words, like you see here:

How to Create The ® Symbol on Your Keyboard

A lot of people don’t put the registered mark next to the word, because, well, they don’t know how. It’s actually quite simple:

On a PC:

• Make sure that Num Lock is on.
• Hold down the Alt/Option key.
• Type 0174 on the numeric keypad.

On Mac:

• Hold down alt and r at the same time

Now that you know the rules, you can easily stay out of trouble. Remember that REALTOR® is the official version. Realtors® is perfectly acceptable, and so is Realtor®. Just don’t use an all lowercase “realtor”.

Do you need to update your print materials to use “Realtor®” correctly? We can help and as you can see we are well versed at keeping you out of trouble. It's one of the many advantages of working with PrinterBees, we're always looking out for you where we can.  Click here to select your design and your layout.

PrinterBees provides real estate marketing materials like: Just listed Postcards, Just sold postcards, Short sale postcards, real estate business cards, real estate door hangers and pretty much everything else you can think of for marketing your real estate business. Visit us online at www.PrinterBees.com.

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PrinterBees also publishes the e-magazine Real Estate Marketing Magazine for Realtors® looking for current and up-to-date tips and tricks to grow their real estate businesses.  Visit Real Estate Marketing Magazine to get your free-subscription.