Real Estate Branding – 6 Elements for Your Strategy

By: Frank DePino | May 18, 2023

Real estate branding is crucial for differentiating your company or individual services from the competition. Real estate resource HomeLight estimates that the United States has 1.6 million realtors according to late 2022 data, so there’s never a better time than now to find your brand. What are the elements of branding for realtors?

Here’s what your real estate branding strategy needs:

• Internal research
• Brand identity
• Brand strategy
• Brand launch
• Amendments to the brand

This guide to real estate marketing and branding will delve into what this form of branding entails, the stages of a branding strategy, and the mistakes to avoid. We’ll also share plenty of top-notch ideas for formulating your own strategy!

What Is Real Estate Branding?

Let’s begin with a definition. What exactly is real estate branding anyway?

Brokerages rely on branding for real estate the way that millions of companies in all sorts of other industries do the same.

Branding allows a brokerage to share its values and vision with its audience. These are unique elements that only a realtor can have and thus set them apart from their myriad of competitors.

A real estate brand includes colors, a tagline or slogan, a logo, and your communicative tone.

Branding for real estate agents has many benefits, so let’s go over some of them now.

• Establishes a recognizable brand identity that you’ll become known for among your audience
• Increases credibility and trust
• Gives you something to build off of once your brand is established
• Inspires customers to make a purchasing decision as they learn about your brand and why it’s valuable
• Can save both time and money

The 6 Stages of a Real Estate Branding Strategy

Per the intro, let’s look at the six critical stages of any successful real estate branding strategy.

Stage 1 – Performing Internal Research

Creating a real estate brand is the hardest part, as you’re starting from scratch. To guide you in the right direction, you should commit to an assortment of internal company research.

Here are some areas to start with:

• A brand positioning statement (if you don’t have one already)
• A clear overview of your company’s values, goals, and vision
• Stakeholder perceptions and how those opinions have changed over time
• Competitor analysis to see where other realtors are succeeding when you aren’t
• Audience research to understand who’s currently in your audience
• Audience segmentation to divide your customers into groups
• Market positioning

We can’t recommend a brand audit enough at this stage as well. This internal checkup will help you identify weak areas in your brokerage that you can improve upon before you continue your branding journey.

The brand audit should focus on three key areas: your customer experience (including your customer service, customer support, and sales processes), your external branding (content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, public relations, advertising, etc.), and your internal branding (including your company culture, mission, and values).

A brand audit pores over all external marketing materials, your website, and your social media metrics to gauge how well everything gels with your perceived branding benchmarks.

You also can’t go wrong issuing surveys to the other realtors you work with and your customers or target audience to gain their insights.

Stage 2 – Determining Your Brand Identity

Next, it’s time for the fun (but still challenging) part: creating your brand identity. This is when you will want to decide your:

• Brand name (if it will be different from your real estate brokerage name)
• Brand voice (friendly, funny, mysterious, formal, or sexy?)
• Brand personality
• Brand catchphrase or tagline
• Brand imagery, including color scheme
• Brand typeface
• Brand logo and logotype

Logo resource Design Powers states that you only get 10 seconds to grab your audience with your real estate logo, so it has to be good.

You also want your brand voice, catchphrase, and imagery to sing, so make sure you take your time putting together these significant parts of your real estate branding plan.

Stage 3 – Creating a Brand Strategy

Now it’s time to determine how you’ll bring your brand ideas to life.

You have so many options for realtor branding that you should incorporate into your brand introduction strategy.

They include:

• Redesigning your website
• Attending industry events and conferences
• Creating and distributing a digital newsletter
• Starting and maintaining an active social media presence
• Posting videos on YouTube or another platform
• Frequently updating your blog (at least two to four times a week).

Stage 4 – Launching the Brand

You know what your real estate branding will look like, and you’ve mapped out the steps to make it happen. The only thing left to do at this stage of the game is to launch your brand.

A brand launch is rarely an overnight process, although it can be. Usually, you’re looking at a timeframe of at least a couple of days and possibly a few months.

That all depends on how complex the brand launch is and how many elements will go into the launch.

Don’t feel like you have to roll out a complex brand launch because your real estate brand is new. You want something simpler and more expedited to which customers and would-be customers can quickly connect.

Stage 5 – Building on the Brand

Your realtor branding campaign went off without a hitch, you’re happy to report. While establishing a new brand is a feat in and of itself, you can’t rest on your laurels.

Next, you must build on the brand and strengthen it in the eyes of your current audience and leads.

If you’re not already using PPC advertising, email campaigns, social media campaigns, and SEO to drive your brand further, then these are elements to begin adding to your branding plan moving forward.

Stage 6 – Modifying and Evolving the Brand

As you tweak your branding, you may find that some tactics work and others don’t. If the data proves that you’ve been unsuccessful, it’s fine to pivot away from a strategy before it begins sinking your brand.

Building your brand will cause it to evolve over time. You may also find that you have outgrown your current brand and need to rebrand, in which case, the same steps as above would apply.

Real Estate Branding Common Mistakes

If this is your first foray into branding, let alone real estate branding, then you’re likelier to make a series of faux pas.

Recognizing mistakes before you commit them can help you avoid pitfalls in your branding strategy, so let’s go over some errors to avoid.

Inconsistent Branding

When your team isn’t all on the same page regarding your brand, everyone knows it. That includes your audience.

Business cards resource Brandly found that brand visibility is 3.5 times greater for a company that keeps its brand consistent.

Figure out your brand early and don’t deviate from that, even as a team manages the brand.

Failing to Research Your Audience

Branding is about establishing a personal connection with your audience through storytelling and other elements. Once you build that emotional connection, you have a more visceral relationship that usually translates to more sales and better loyalty.

That only works if you’re targeting the right audience or the right subsections of your audience!

Not Using Color

Another stat from Design Powers notes that color can boost brand recognition by up to 80 percent.

If you’re using monotone colors or bland hues that don’t electrify your audience, you fail to fully capitalize on your brand!

Having No Brand Strategy

You wouldn’t launch a sales or marketing strategy without a plan, so why should it be any different when branding for real estate agents?

You need that blueprint to follow, which can only be obtained by researching your company, digging into your audience, surveying valuable parties, and auditing.

Doing Too Much Too Soon

As we said before, there’s no need to stretch your brand too thin initially. You just want to establish your brand, not establish it and grow it in 30 different directions.

That’s a lot easier to do once your brand is already well-known.

What Are the Most Recognized Real Estate Brands?

Which real estate brands have mastered the fine art of branding?

In 2021, the National Association of Realtors surveyed about 400 people to find the answer.

Here are the most instantly recognizable names in real estate and why!

• Coldwell Banker (91 percent of respondents knew the brand by its colors)
• RE/MAX (90 percent of respondents recognized the balloons)
• Berkshire Hathaway (84 percent of respondents recognized the brand by its font)
• Keller Williams (81 percent of respondents recognized the brand by its colors)
• Century 21 (30 percent of respondents recognized the new logo amid rebranding)

The Best Real Estate Branding Examples and Ideas

Do you need a couple of real estate branding examples to inspire your own branding decisions? Maybe some ideas?

Let’s start with three exemplary branding examples from our list of the best real estate developer websites.

1. Millennium Partners

How best do you reflect your excellence in architecture? By designing an upscale website that showcases such rich design works front and center!

2. Longpoint

The real estate firm Longpoint prioritizes peace of mind through housing, and nowhere does that come through louder or clearer than on its website. Between the photo of a tranquil town to the copy that reads “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” Longpoint’s branding is on-point.

3. Tbilisi Gardens

At Tbilisi Gardens, the goal is to move further away from the hustle and bustle of city life. You get that vibe just by browsing their website, which is designed to make you feel comfy and serene.

Let’s wrap this section with some pointers, ideas, and tips as you create your own realtor branding plan.

• Authenticity matters: Be you, 100 percent you. That’s what will draw your audience to you and keep them hooked. When you present yourself as less than authentic, you drive your audience away and tarnish your reputation.
• Find your niche: The real estate field is a huge one. Surely, you have a niche you can call your own. For instance, Tbilisi Gardens is about moving away from city life.
• Use storytelling: Brand storytelling is a powerful tool to have in your arsenal. We have 30 great examples of storytelling here that you won’t want to miss.
• Consistency, consistency, consistency: Yes, we must drive this point home again. A consistent brand is one that your customers can connect with and come to rely on because it’s unchanging. As we discussed earlier, that’s not to say your brand always has to stay the same, but consistency in your brand change is important as well!

Luxury Real Estate Branding

Is yours a luxury real estate brokerage and you want to establish or redefine your brand? In this post on our blog, we identified the 12 marketing materials your brokerage must have as you build your brand.

They include:

• Event hosting brochures
• Paid social media ads
• Virtual video tours
• Lifestyle video content on social media platforms such as TikTok
• Email marketing
• Digital storytelling
• Newspaper listings (that’s right, don’t underestimate the power of the newspaper!)
• PPC ads
• eBooks and whitepapers
• Luxury blog
• Landing pages
• Custom-designed website

How to Build Your Brand as a Real Estate Agent

Branding for real estate agents doesn’t diverge far from the branding strategy we’ve already outlined in this guide.

If you don’t already have your value proposition or audience research, you should start with those areas.

You also need to create a real estate branding strategy. Then you’d launch your brand and build upon it, scaling for success!

Hiring a Real Estate Branding Agency

Whether you’re a real estate agent who’s strapped for time or you have no idea where to start with your branding strategy, you might consider looking into a branding agency that specializes in real estate.

These agencies can serve you whether you’re part of a niche real estate area or the broader industry. The full range of services you’ll get and the depth of expertise you can tap into will ensure your branding strategy goes off without a hitch.

You can rely on a real estate branding agency to identify and connect with your audience, boost your SEO and online presence, strengthen existing customer connections, build new relationships, and manage your online reputation.

All along, while you’re working with the branding agency, your real estate brokerage can continue with business as usual, never skipping a beat!

Conclusion

A real estate branding strategy is a must for any realtor. You can separate yourself from the competition through branding, strengthening customer relationships, drawing in new customers, and making yourself more of a household name. If you’re stumped on where to start, the pros at Mediaboom can help. We’re a full-service digital marketing agency that assists professionals in the real estate industry just like you. Contact us today to learn more!

By: Frank DePino

Frank DePino is Principal and Founder of Mediaboom. Since 2002, Frank has led Mediaboom’s award-winning staff of creative and technical professionals, building the most effective marketing and advertising solutions for its clients.