Why Agents Should Be Building A Brand vs. A Business

As every seasoned real estate agent is aware that selling homes is as much about relationships as it is about knowledge of the real estate market. When you have plenty of good relationships, people will seek you out. Most agents focus solely on building their business rather than their brand, but the truly great ones understand the important role of brand building. Here’s the difference between the two, and why focusing on the brand will ultimately propel your business forward.

What is a Brand?

First, let’s understand what a brand is, and what it is not. When we talk about a brand, what we mean is what people recognize that correlates to your business. While you may work with the best real estate brokerage, you are the one that people will engage with during the sales process. That means you are the brand, not your partner company.

What’s the Difference Between Building a Brand and a Business

In today’s market, everyone is on social media, and that includes real estate agents. However, most agents focus on simply using these platforms as another place to display the listings they have for sale. This is great for attracting the people who want to buy now but does little to attract referrals down the road.

Brand building is people remembering you whenever they need or are asked for a real estate agent referral. It’s these referrals that will keep business coming to you for years to come if you take the time to develop a solid brand now. Here are some of the things focusing on your brand will do for your business.

Building Trust

First, when you focus on building your brand, you focus on delivering content that your audience will find valuable even when they are “off the market.” This means delivering content that goes beyond transactional marketing messages with listings or a pitch for your service.

Rather, building this name recognition means people trust you, as a person, because you’ve earned that trust. You can do this by sharing one of three types of content: educational, entertaining, or inspirational. These messages encourage people to continue following you and share your messages and brand with others.

Developing Connections

You draw connections with your audience when you connect with them on an emotional level. This is the story, if you will, behind everything you do as a real estate agent. What is it that makes you uniquely you, compared to every other real estate agent in the area?

Those are the things you want to shine through in your content. When you connect on an emotional level with your audience, they’ll be loyal to following you consistently. They’ll also share your content, affording you the opportunity to grow your connections to people you have yet to meet.

Building Conversions

The process of developing your brand includes helping people like you and trust you. Once they trust you, they’ll be more likely to respond positively to the marketing messages. This means they’ll appreciate the listings you do share or the offer for service. These are necessary components to keep your business building and so your audience knows exactly what you have to offer. However, you have to do the work of developing trust before you can ever get to the work of converting your audience.

Break the mold of the normal real estate agent, and use the same playbook as the Most Referred Experts team. Start focusing on building your brand, and watch as your business takes on a life of its own.