By Samantha Clark
It’s the beginning of a new year! In 2018, you should be looking to start fresh and possibly even rebrand yourself and your business. If you’ve been a real estate agent for a few years now, you've probably come to realize that your business has changed a lot—what it stood for five or 10 years ago isn’t quite the same today.
Rebranding can be a great idea for your business. It doesn’t mean your current brand has failed; it just means you're looking to improve and grow. The reason why so many businesses rebrand is so they can properly adapt to the present market by keeping what's working and getting rid of the stuff that isn’t.
Here are six ways to rebrand and understand exactly where your business is heading in 2018:
1. Define Your Mission Statement. Your mission statement is your brand put into words. It’s also what your elevator pitch would be if anyone were to ask what you do, and how you could help them. Write down what it is that you stand for as a real estate agent. It might help to think back and remember why you became a real estate agent in the first place.
When determining what your mission statement is, focus on what separates you from other real estate agents, as well as what makes your business original.
2. Change Up Your Brand Graphics. You likely won’t have to start from scratch when you're rebranding (unless you want to!). And if you're comfortable with the graphics of your current brand, you can skip this step.
Maybe you love your logo, but cringe when you tell people your company name. Or maybe the logo works, but the colors are off. If part of your rebranding involves changing the style of your brand, there are ways to do it even if you don’t want to spend money hiring a designer.
Sites like Pinterest offer tons of ideas that will help you focus on where to take your brand. Once you've decided the direction you'd like to take, visit a site like Canva to bring your look to reality.
3. Research the Competition. You’ve likely noticed other successful real estate agents doing something right, so research what that is, and work on incorporating it into your new brand. You can go to their website and read testimonials, or just see how they're marketing themselves.
Then, ask yourself how you could be doing what they're doing while making it even better. By focusing on things that already work and simply improving them, you can really grow your business.
4. Focus on Your Target Audience. Do you have a target audience at the moment? If not, you should definitely work on creating one. This is something you can do by getting a piece of paper and writing down a description of who your ideal client is.
Once you understand who your ideal client is, you will know better how to help them.
When determining who your target audience is, answer questions like: What does this person do for a living? What is their salary? Where do they want to move to?
5. Update Your Website. Do you have a website, but can’t remember the last time you logged into it? Maybe you set one up a few years ago hoping to see some success, but gave up after a few weeks.
Having a website is important for every business out there, especially for real estate professionals. And as each year passes, more and more people are turning to the internet to find houses to buy and real estate agents to hire.
If you already have a website that's working for you, consider adding a blog to it. Blogs are becoming more and more popular because they're a great way to showcase your expertise. And if you update yours frequently, Google will see that your website is constantly updated with informative content, which will make your website rank higher in searches (never underestimate SEO!).
6. Be Active on Social Media. Social media is growing and changing all the time, becoming a much more common way to do business today. Taking advantage of a variety of social media platforms will quickly help your audience see what you're all about.
Posting 3-5 times a day on Twitter and once a day on Facebook and LinkedIn will give you more exposure; however, posting consistently is one task that often gets forgotten as real estate professionals go about their day-to-day routine. Consider looking into tools like Hootsuite and RISMedia's ACE to make the process a lot easier.
These are just a few ideas on how to effectively rebrand yourself as a real estate agent, but if you're diligent and commit to focusing on these key areas, you will have a fresh, new look for 2018.
Samantha Clark is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to RISMedia's Housecall blog.
I agree with Joyce!
Very helpful article for beginners found it useful. Many thanks.