Bernice Ross

Effective branding is at the heart of virtually every successful business, yet it is a rarity in the real estate industry. If you’re branding your business with your name, it may be time to take a different tack.

In my more than 30 years in the industry, I’ve been affiliated with several of the major brands in the business. The standing joke inside Coldwell Banker is that people often think that they’re in the banking business. At Century 21, a common question is “Are you the people who have the great deals on car insurance?” And by the way, exactly what does RE/MAX and ERA stand for? (Real Estate Maximums and Electronic Realty Associates, respectively.)

The Most Effective Brand

The challenge in each of these examples is that the branding doesn’t meet the three simple criteria for having an effective brand. An effective brand has three components: it is memorable; it immediately brings the product being sold to mind; and it identifies a specific target market.

Here are three examples of effective branding from outside of real estate that are easy to recognize:

The Un-Cola: Seven Up’s tagline, “The Un-Cola,” is easy to remember and specifically targets people who want something other than a Coke or a Pepsi.

The Ultimate Driving Machine: You may not know what the letters BMW stand for, but their branding has stood the test of time. The reason? Their tagline tells what their product does – i.e., it gives you the “ultimate” driving experience. Referencing what the product does is much more effective than branding with only a name.

Netflix: This is a superb example of strong branding – one word that says exactly what the product does – it provides “flicks” (movies) on the “net.”

In terms of real estate brands, the one that best fits the criteria above is relatively new – NextHome. This brand describes exactly what they do in a single word: find your next home.

The Least Effective Brand

In contrast, the most common type of branding in the real estate industry is based upon people’s names. This is the least effective approach to branding because virtually everyone has difficulty remembering names.

The reason is that every day you are constantly bombarded with names of people you meet, as well as names in the news and thousands of product and place names. The reason you have trouble recalling names is due to “interference.”

To illustrate how interference works, you can likely easily remember what you had for dinner last night. On the other hand, it’s highly unlikely that you remember what you had for dinner a year ago, since you’ve had 365 dinners since then. The memory of all these other dinners “interferes” with the memory that you are attempting to recall.

Complicating the situation even further is the fact that even if the customer does remember your name when they meet you, memory research shows that we forget 90 percent of what we have learned within the first 24 hours.

If you were to meet me at a social event and I introduced myself as Bernice Ross of ABC Realty, chances are you will remember the “blonde lady who sells real estate,” but you won’t remember my name.

If you work for a big-name brokerage such as Coldwell Banker or Keller Williams, the consumer is more likely to remember the brokerage brand because they see it on every “just listed” card, “for sale” sign, business card, newspaper ad and webpage that the company’s agents send out.

The Most Memorable Brand

To establish a memorable brand, make sure that you reference “homes,” “real estate” or “properties,” as well as a niche or specific geographical area that you serve. For example:

• Phoenix Probate Real Estate Specialists
• Westlake Waterfront Properties
• Richmond Historical Homes by Sally Agent

Sample URLs could be WestlakeWaterfrontProperties. com or RichmondHistoricalHomes. com. If the URL is not available, choose a different brand. Be sure that the URL you choose references both your geographical location as well as your specific niche.

Branding is the most effective when you use the brand on all of your marketing materials. Consequently, your website, your cards and each piece of advertising you distribute should contain the same branding.

If your company is purchased or goes out of business, or if you decide to change brokerages, having your own brand allows you continue to market without losing momentum. In contrast, if you are relying solely on your company’s branding, you would have to start your branding efforts all over – this translates into lost income.

Remember, the key to successful branding is to let your consumer know what you do, where you do it and who you do it with!

Bernice Ross, CEO of RealEstateCoach.com, is a national speaker, trainer and author. She may be reached at Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com.