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Average agents chase business, top agents attract business. Attraction marketing is the ideal business model. It is achieved through developing a personal brand that captures and maintains the attention of your ideal clients. This article shares a seven-step process for growing your business through building your personal brand.
Step 1: Identify your ideal client
Before you can begin the process of building your brand, you must identify who you will best be able to serve.
- Who is your ideal client?
- Are they a buyer or a seller?
- Are they a first-time homebuyer or a homeowner looking to sell and then buy a larger home?
By identifying who it is that you can best serve, you can now begin to understand how to position yourself as the ideal agent for them.
Everything you do in your business should start with an understanding of the needs of your ideal client. This is especially true when building a personal brand.
Step 2: Develop your unique selling proposition
Once we’ve identified your ideal client, the next step is to develop a unique selling proposition that sets you apart from other agents. In other words, what are you going to do differently to help your ideal client achieve their goal faster and with the fewest number of hassles?
The unique selling proposition is typically broken into one of three areas. These areas usually include either information provided, service provided, or systematic plans to achieve the client’s goal.
Here are a few ways to differentiate yourself from others in these areas:
- Produce informational content addressing the biggest pain points or questions for your ideal client.
- Create a concierge plan for buyers or sellers that shares the additional services they can expect when working with you.
- Create a marketing plan for homeowners that shows them a clear path on how you will be able to sell their home as fast as possible and at the highest price possible.
Whatever it happens to be for you, your personal brand must clearly communicate what it is that you do differently and why those differences are of value to them.
Step 3: Craft your compelling brand story
Your brand story is about sharing with your potential clients who it is that you serve. It gives you the opportunity to attract people that will work well with you and to repel the people that might not be a good fit for your business.
I start by simplifying your brand story down to a one-sentence social media bio using the following outline:
I help (whoever you help) (do whatever you help them do) so they can (do whatever they desire to do).
Here are a few examples:
I help first-time homebuyers purchase their first home so they can achieve the American dream of home ownership, changing the trajectory of their family’s finances over their lifetime.
I help real estate investors locate and purchase quality investment properties so they can build a portfolio of properties that will produce passive income and give them financial freedom.
I help military buyers and sellers buy or sell homes when they are moving to or moving away from [your local military base] so they know their housing needs are handled professionally while they serve.
The second step is to share the story of why you love working with your ideal clients. Maybe you are an investor that can share your personal story of how investing in real estate helped you gain financial freedom and the reason you love working with investors is to help others meet their goals.
Maybe you remember your family buying their first home when you were a child, and you know how that home helped provide financial security for your family. Or, as a former military spouse, you remember the stress housing added to your family when relocating, and your desire is to help alleviate as much of that stress as possible for military families.
The key is to be very clear about who your ideal client is and why you love serving them. By adding clarity, you will attract the clients you desire to work with.
Step 4: Identify where your ideal clients spend their time
In order to attract your ideal clients, you must position yourself and your marketing where they are. Again, this is where being very specific about who your ideal client is will help you identify where they are.
For instance, if your ideal client is a first-time homebuyer, then according to NAR, the typical age of a first-time buyer is 36 years old. Based on this information, we might be able to assume that they will be active in school activities with their children or that, based on their age, the predominant social media app they utilize is likely Instagram.
This information helps us position ourselves and our marketing efforts where we anticipate our first-time buyers will be.
Whoever your ideal client is, a Google search about activities they participate in or predominant social media usage for that demographic will help you position yourself in the best way possible.
Step 5: Establish a consistent visual identity
One definition of branding is the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design. The key is to have a distinctive design so that when someone sees anything you do, they immediately recognize it as yours. This is achieved by having continuity and consistency.
This means your color scheme should always be the same. This means your font should always be the same. This means everything you do should be easily recognizable as something you did.
By establishing a consistent visual identity, the effects of your marketing will be compounded over time.
Step 6: Create valuable and consistent content
The agent creating the most educational, entertaining, and consistent real estate-related content in your market today will be the top producer in your market within two years. A brand is foundationally built through consistent content, and distributing consistent content has never had a lower barrier of entry than it does today.
Social media platforms, Google Business Profile and YouTube are all free. Not only are they free, but they are designed to push your content out to the people looking for the topics you are discussing.
The more valuable and consistent the content you provide, the more these platforms will understand who your content is for and the more they will promote it for you.
The next question is, how often should you be posting? According to Hootsuite, these are the ideal number of times you should be posting on various social media platforms:
- Instagram: Post between three and five times per week
- Instagram Stories: Post two times per day
- Facebook: Post between one and two times per day
- TikTok: Post between three and five times per week
- LinkedIn: Post between one to two times per day
- Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business): Post at least one time per week
Although these are the suggestions from Hootsuite, many believe posting more frequently will speed up the growth of your following on all platforms. Whatever it is for you, consistently creating valuable content is key to establishing and expanding your personal brand.
Step 7: Engage and nurture the prospects your brand attracts
The first six steps will attract a following, but attraction is only part of the success equation of personal branding. Engagement and nurturing the people you attract is where true success is found.
Engagement involves responding to every comment made on your social media. It involves becoming active with the events, charities, or activities your prospects are involved in. It is about moving the initial attraction of potential prospects toward building a relationship with clients.
Nurturing involves follow-up and strengthening relationships. This means not only responding to comments people make on your social media but commenting on their posts. This means providing value without expectation for it to return.
Engaging and nurturing is about building relationships. The only difference between a contact and a contract is the letter R. That R makes all the difference because it stands for relationship. Don’t stumble right before crossing the finish line. Engage and nurture the prospects your brand attracts.
Simply put, your personal brand is your business. It is how prospects and clients perceive you alike. When you focus on bringing clarity and consistency to your personal brand messaging, business growth will follow.
