Does ‘Personal Branding’ actually work?

Before we get started, let’s cover a few quick questions right off the bat, ok?

 

What is Personal Branding?

In its simplest terms, personal branding is a (hopefully) easy-to-remember identity made from a combination of images, photos, colors, fonts, and business implementation or model.

 

Why is it important?

Think about this. If every single company and sales professional in the world all used plain white business cards with black lettering, it’d be impossible to tell anyone apart. So many years ago, someone thought “Hmmm…I’m going to use red ink for my name instead of black” and it separated them from the rest of the pack (for about a minute and a half!). Soon after, someone else decided to try blue ink, and another person added a unique design, and yet another added their photo, and still more tried using circular pieces of paper instead of rectangles, etc., etc. Each had hopes of making their own brand stand out from the crowd and become more memorable to the consumer. Hence, logos, trademarks and brand identities were born.

So yes, branding has become an incredibly important part of marketing. Companies spend fortunes on developing a “look and feel” that they hope resonates with their customers somehow. After all, if you mention “golden arches against a red background” to anyone in the world, practically all of humanity will know you’re referring to McDonald’s.

 

Does it actually work?

Well…that depends. Let’s talk about it.

We’re going to guess that you probably got all of those correct? The next set is a little tougher. Not impossible. But probably not as quick as the ones above (and in some cases, the answer may not come to you at all). That’s okay, of course. There’s a point to all this, we promise.

Here’s the next set:

The majority of the above logos probably only took a millisecond to recognize the brand and know what their business offers. ONE MILLISECOND!!! It’s that fast for two reasons. One is the fact that the human species thinks in terms of images, and two, because you’ve seen most of them repeatedly for years and years. Some of them you’ve literally seen tens of thousands of times. So, of course you recognize them!

But how do we get homeowners to think of YOU that quickly?? It’s not as hard as you might think! But it takes some doing…and here’s where sooo many agents get it wrong. They’ll spend a decent amount of money creating their own personal brand, which usually includes a professional photo shoot…along with a special font for their name, and a color scheme, and maybe some sort of graphic. They’ll have business cards printed, and many will do matching signs.

And more often than not…that’s about it.

The above agents have their own branding,
but watch what often happens.

Robert “Bob” Johnson has no branding at all,
but he’s killing it!

First things first. Bob is very professional. He’s also honest, reliable, available, involved, and has the highest integrity. However, Bob’s also a bit old school. He still prints small 4×6″ postcards on canary yellow paper with only black ink and uses the same exact postcard for every single mailing. His stuff doesn’t look nearly as nice as most other agents’ branding, but there’s one huge difference! Bob mails out 10,000 postcards each and every month without fail. The branded agents aren’t doing any marketing…although one of them sent out 250 postcards 4 months ago. She didn’t get any calls, so she’s stopping for a while. One and done.

Bob, on the other hand, knows that 3% of the population are “thinking real estate” at any given point in time. Not all are sellers of course. Half are buyers. Some are buying a vacation home out of state, and others are offloading a rental in a different county. Still others are only just now thinking about buying or selling but won’t be ready for another 4-6 months. Bob’s okay with that. He’s done the math. 3% of 10,000 is still 300 potential prospects. But let’s say that 50% of those are buying or selling in a completely different area, which only leaves 150 prospects for Bob. 50% of those aren’t ready just yet, which means he’s now down to 75. Half of those remaining already have an established relationship with their previous agent, which means Bob is down to a mere 37 prospects. He’s also not the only agent doing any advertising in his market area, so some homeowners are naturally going to call other agents.

BUT….

Bob averages 8 calls a month, which normally nets him 6 appointments. Out of those, he usually lists 4-6 properties, and his closing ratio is 99% (he closes virtually all of his listings once they’re marketed for sale). The average sales price in his market area is $1,500,000 so Bob is averaging six to nine million in closings per month! The majority of his listings are taken at 2.5%, so the gross income is between $150,000 to $225,000 per month. He’s the broker so there’s no split per se, although he has a complete staff to assist him with the volume of business he’s doing.

Here’s what Bob might not realize…

What Bob doesn’t realize is that in terms of printing, he could have full-color, high-impact marketing materials for substantially less than what he’s spending on his canary yellow postcards. Yes, that’s true! He could also be saving a ton of money on postage by using Every Door Direct Mail instead of first-class bulk rate postage. It almost makes you wonder if Bob could actually be averaging 15-20 calls a month by spending the same amount of money, but expanding his reach to another 5,000 – 10,000 homes?? We think he absolutely could be!!

So does Personal Branding work?

The answer is yes, but definitely not all by itself. You might have the coolest looking branding ever, but if you’re still only handing out 4 business cards per month and currently have six matching For Sale and Open House signs just sitting in the garage, your marketing gameplan might be in need of some help. You might also be falling into the trap of doing what a lot of agents do. Maybe you tried sending out postcards once, but didn’t get any calls, so you stopped. Perhaps you’re now focusing your attention on social media because it’s free? We know agents who spend hours and hours each week on creating YouTube videos. After two years, some of those channels still have only 47 subscribers and each video is averaging 9 views each. Along those same lines, some agents’ weekly Instagram posts are viewed by the same 26 people each and every time, and only 3 of them ever make any comments. You’ve possibly given up on facebook ages ago, and perhaps aren’t really doing much marketing at all at the present time. We don’t believe that strategy is going to net the kind of results you might be hoping for.

What’s the answer then?

There are no two ways about it. You HAVE to figure out a way to let as many people as you can know that you sell real estate! And you have to tell them again and again…(and again)…until they’re able to identify you as quickly as you knew that was a UPS truck (and not FedEx) in the exercise above. It’s really that simple. We’ll team up with you to help you train your entire market area to recognize your stuff in one millisecond…just like you did with the brands above. Some of that will be “look and feel”…and some of it will be content, but most of it will be consistency.

That’s where we can help! If you’re ready to build your business to new heights, we can help tailor a marketing gameplan for any budget! It’s easy to get started…just give us a holler!