What’s The Point of Real Estate Branding?

Branding is largely thought to be the logo design of a business and although this is an important element, a brand is so much more than this. Branding involves the entire process of creating a unique identity for your real estate company in the consumer’s mind with the aim of differentiating yourself in the marketplace to attract and retain loyal customers. Therefore, in today’s hyper-competitive real estate market - where you can only differentiate yourself by your service delivery and your brand - effective branding is more important to the success of your company than ever before. 

The Objectives of Branding

1.    To Define Your Purpose

Your brand is the essence of who you are, what you do and how you do it differently. Therefore branding needs to define your company’s purpose and communicate why it exists and who it serves.  

2.    To Appeal To Your Target Market

Your real estate brand needs to appeal to your target market, therefore before you develop your brand, you need to truly understand who it needs to appeal to. You need to have a deep understanding of who your buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants are in terms of age, location, language, interests, needs, income level, likes and dislikes. Then you need to create a brand that will appeal to that target market.

Everything from the colours, style and imagery employed in your marketing, to the tone of your written communication all the way down to your office décor and how you answer your phone needs to attract and stimulate your clients’ mind and emotions. If done successfully, target market branding will help prospective clients better relate to and understand your company, and therefore increase your chances of them choosing you over your competitors.

3.    To Effectively Communicate Your Marketing Message 

Your marketing message is what grabs your prospective clients' attention, tells them how you can solve their problem, why they should trust you, and why they should choose to do business with you over and above any and all other choices they might have. Your marketing message should “speak” to your target market by capturing the right language that personifies your real estate company, whilst relating to your target market and upholding professionalism and relevance.

Tone is important here and you need to define what tone you want to use for your brand. As a rule of thumb, real estate companies should always keep their tone professional - even on social media platforms. Remember that people rely on your company for specialised property and expert industry advice and services. You can be conversational, friendly and approachable in your tone but always keep it professional. Your marketing message should inspire, persuade, motivate and ultimately make your clients want to buy or rent a particular property and / or employ your professional services.

4.    To Be Easily Identifiable

To improve a prospective client’s ability to tell one real estate company from another, your brand needs to be uniquely identifiable, authentic and memorable. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, the last thing you want is for your brand to be a “me-too” replica of another brand as this will result in brand confusion and weaken your position in the market. Instead you need a clear, differentiating idea, message and creative design to make your real estate brand pop and stand-out from the crowd. 

The secret to creating a strong real estate brand is to clearly define your company’s purpose; appeal to your target market; effectively communicate your marketing message and be uniquely identifiable in everything you present to the marketplace. By doing so, you will differentiate your company from the competition and attract and retain a loyal customer base.