Archive for Real Estate Brands
This guest post was written by Chicago Condos specialist, Mert Sahinoglu.
Here are some offline website branding techniques that every real estate professional can apply. Some are very untraditional.
Home/Office Roof
Your Real Estate Office/Home-Office Roof should have your domain name on it. It is great branding for airborne traffic as well as Google/Bing Map Satellite view.
Car
Many real estate professionals already place their website on the side of their cars through stickers. There is one place they miss: the License Plate Frame. No better advertisement in the city or highway traffic jams.
Voicemail/Phone Listing Ads
Make sure that all office/cell phone voicemail messages and real estate listing presentations have your domain name in the message.
Phone Number
Get your phone number to have your domain name (800-real-estate-domain-com). Anything up to a 7 letter domain name should avoid confusion.
If your domain name is quite long (such as buildrealestateresults.com), you can consider getting a short URL. For example, buildrealestateresults.com could be brer.fm. You could advertise it as 1-800-1-BRER.FM. The short domain version of your site can also be used for Twitter links & other social media branding.
Real Estate Office Supplies
All your real estate office supplies should have domain name branded on it. Especially pens and notepads that get “relocated” by your guests.
Donate Domain-Branded T-shirts to Clothing Drives
Donate T-shirts/Caps to clothing drives that aim at the local poor in your area. It is a tax write off and a free advertising. Oh, by the way, you should sometimes wear your own domain branded clothes too.
Brand Your Dog or Larger Pet
All Clothing worn by your dog should have your domain name branding.
What other offline real estate website branding techniques can you think of?
Note from Kathleen:
Mert, the telephone example is really unique. I did a search at GetRealEstateDomains.com (a Godaddy registration site we sponsor), for BRER.com.
While that one is taken, of course, the search always shows alternatives, and there were quite a few. BRER.biz for example, (although it’s not available any more) BRER.tv, BRER.us, etc.
On the screen with the alternatives, there are some tabs under “We also recommend”. Clicking on the International tab brought me to even more alternatives. So, if your desired short name isn’t available, look for alternatives you wouldn’t ordinarily use.
Naturally, you’d always want to keep a clear, .COM name as your default for SEO and to ensure that folks who can’t remember the abbreviation can find your site on a .COM domain.
Now, my only problem is that the acronym for BuildRealEstateWebsites.com is BREW. And, looks like all the beer drinkers of the world have already snapped up all variations of that one!
Your Logo is NOT Your Brand
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Based on some statistics I receive, I’ve noticed that an article I wrote about branding is the most often copied page on our main website. The message of that article was this:
Your Logo is NOT Your Real Estate Brand!
That may cause you to say Hmmm. But, here’s what I mean.
Your logo represents your brand. Your logo is the visual clue you give the world to help them remember your brand. So, if the logo is a visual clue, then what is your brand?
Your brand is the definition of what your
real estate business offers to clients and customers.
Think about that for a minute.
Would you stop by KMart to buy a wedding dress? Would you drop in to Saks Fifth Avenue to buy a $2 pair of socks? Of course not. And, why do you think that is?
It’s because the marketing folks at KMart and Saks have worked very hard to train you about what to expect when you shop there. Would your answers to the questions above change if the KMart logo was blue with a happy face? Or, if the Saks logo was printed using Arial as the font?
The point of developing a brand is to define your position in the marketplace and your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). It’s identifying the things that differentiate you in the market and translating those things into benefits for the consumer.
Don’t get caught up developing a logo until you know what it’s supposed to stand for. And, if you’re like most people, it’s a tough thing to do for yourself. So, give us a call if you’d like help.
I was on ActiveRain recently and saw Tim Maitski displayed as a featured member. He was billed as the “Video Agent Guy”, and I wondered what that meant. So, I visited his ActiveRain profile. Tim is branding himself as the Video Agent Guy for several reasons.
For one thing, he has a website called VirtualBuyersAgent.com. He sells himself as the agent who will do a video tour of any home a buyer is interested in and displays it on a web page just for that buyer.
For another thing, he has a website called VideoAgentGuy.com. That real estate website is a blog that Tim uses as a video blog. He tapes videos while he’s driving around Atlanta and posts them on this blog.
You need to remember that Tim lives in Atlanta, and given the traffic situation, I know he probably spends quite a bit of time in the car – perhaps even stuck in traffic.
Take a look at that video blog. The first thing you will notice is that each blog post contains a video and a summary of the video content. He’s doing the right thing from the perspective that the summary will be used by the search engines, and it’s also useful for people who don’t want to spend the time watching the video.
What do you think? It’s a very unique approach. To do something like this, you’d need to be very comfortable talking on camera. You’d need to find a way to rig the camera in the car. And, you’d need to be sure you could talk and drive at the same time. Tim seems to do quite well doing both.
On one hand, it does make good use out of the time you spend in the car. On the other hand, I’m not sure I wouldn’t kill myself. Would you do something like this?
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Help Me Help You
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In an effort to make this blog as relevant to your needs as possible,
I’d like to know what’s on your mind.
In the right column, you’ll see this image:
And, below that, there’s a link to ask a question or suggest a topic for a future blog post. You can choose to have your name and a link to your website in the “answer post”, or you can remain anonymous.
So, what’s driving you crazy these days?
Drop me a line and I’ll let you know when a post concerning the issue you raise is being published!
What’s On Your About Page?
· CommentsAre You Lost in the Crowd?
Have you taken a look at your About page on your website lately? What about your introduction on your marketing material? When you read about yourself as you are presented to the world, does it sound familiar? Does it sound like every other agent’s description of themselves, with only the names changed to protect the innocent?
Anytime you write about yourself, you should really be writing about your business. Many “About” pages are written like a biography, something like this:
- “Joan has been with ABC Realty for four years, and was a member of the Millionaire Club in 2003. She has been a licensed realtor for ten years. Joan is a member of the Podunk Association of Realtors and the National Association of Realtors. With her husband Harold, she has lived in XTown for 15 years and has a son and daughter. Joan loves people and does her best to help her clients achieve their dreams.”
OK, So What’s Wrong with That?
Well, for one thing, you’d think a REALTOR® would know how to display that designation. For another thing, most people think if you are a member of the Millionaire Club that you make a million dollars a year. That can be pretty intimidating; besides that, it’s an industry award and doesn’t necessarily mean anything to someone who isn’t a real estate professional. Finally, citing an award you received 5 years ago and never again since doesn’t really help your cause.
The biggest problem is that there is not one benefit identified. A prospect reading that description might think Joan sounds like a nice person, but they have been provided no compelling reason to work with her.
Get Benefit-Oriented!
Long ago I took a sales course that emphasized three ways people describe things. I’m not sure if they’re still teaching this approach, but it’s always worked for me. The idea is that you describe a product (or a real estate consulting practice) in three steps: Feature, Function, Benefit.
Basically, you work through those three steps until you reach the benefit, and that’s how you sell something. Here’s an example – let’s say we were selling a 6-slice toaster:
- Feature: Six toasting areas.
- Function: Lets you toast a lot of bread at one time.
- Benefit: No one has to wait for a piece of toast while their eggs are getting cold.
The closest thing to a marketing message in the agent’s bio above is this: Joan loves people and does her best to help her clients achieve their dreams.
So what do you think? Is that a feature or function? It sure isn’t a benefit!
Get a Brand
The purpose of developing a brand for your real estate consulting business is so that you can identify your niche, and come up with a list of benefit statements that you can use on your website and in your marketing material.
If you don’t have a brand, at least take a hard look at your marketing message and make sure it’s full of benefits!
