Only a Realtor Without a Personal Brand Would Say This

You’ve got to do both if you have any hope of having a successful business for any significant amount of time.

Sure, marketing the property should be your chief focus as a listing agent. After all, the goal of what we do is to satisfy the client, which means we need to sell the property, which means we must market the property. Duh.

But to say that one shouldn’t market oneself is ludicrous. After you sell the property, that you successfully marketed, then what? How would other sellers know that they could achieve similar results with you if you don’t let them know about your brand.

It is basic business branding. It goes on all the time. Simple example: Burger King is in the restaurant business, they sell food and satisfy their customers by creating and serving tasty food efficiently and affordably. They market the food and the service they provide. They also market Burger King because, if you like the food that they sell and the service they provide, you need to know where to get it.

Real estate isn’t much different. We work in what is largely a service industry that helps move a commodity. If we do that successfully, we want people to continue to come back to us in order to continue doing it. In order for that to happen, we need to market ourselves in conjunction with the property.

If you just want to sell one property that you already own, then there would be no need to market oneself. If you want to be in business, then you had better be marketing yourself, too.

Aloha from the Beautiful Big Island of Hawaii! Another agent and I were just talking about this yesterday. He has a seller who wants him to take an expensive print ad out in a local real estate magazine and he told his seller, “No. I have enough listings already, thank you.” The Seller was naturally perplexed until the agent explained to him that while a print ad of the property does “advertise” the property, we don’t actually SELL homes through this marketing medium, we sell ourselves! Which means we wind up with new listings and that dilutes the time we have to focus on selling the listing inventory that we already are committed to selling. At the end of his explanation, the Seller no longer wanted this agent to take out an expensive print ad – brilliant! Warm aloha, Katie Minkus, R(B).

It’s virtually impossible to separate agent from property.

Many a time I have wanted to show a home and roll my eyes when I see who the listing agent is..

Like anything, I think it’s not possible to separate the two, neither should they be.

Although real estate is a commodity, it’s also an emotional commodity. That’s why you need the agent differientation.

I’m with you. I’d down with how Apple does things. They don’t say, we’re just here to sell music, so we have this thing called an iPod/iPhone for that. It’s the whole experience, design, function, marketing, colors, packaging….everything matters. They don’t have to scream Apple, but make no mistake about it, everything is marketing, what their stuff does is all a by-product of marketing. Products, services and stuff drive marketing and marketing drives products, services and stuff.

3cents for the day.

The strongly branded agent will be a draw for the property listing, and the well done listing brings credit to the agent. Doesn’t each support and feed on the other at the same time?

Wow! These comments are interesting. Our team ( 4 people) have been selling luxury real estate on Sanibel and Captiva Island for the past 15 years. Our brand now comes before the listing. We are so well known on the island, that people now associate us with the best listings before they even see the individual property. They trust our brand to be associated with the best product. So ABSOLUTELY is it YOUR BRAND and then LISTING! And I can tell you the same in Miami as well. Zeder team and Audrey ross are all about the brand and everyone now knows they have the best product.

I have been fortunate to work along side several great agents while I am working towards my license. One of the things I have learned is that you must Market Yourself. If you have taken the time to develop a strong brand in your local community then it becomes an asset when you list a property and is a key selling point when going to a listing appointment. “Not only do you get your listing marketed, but you get it listed with the power of my brand name behind it” Kind of statement.

I think your marketing is a reflection of your brand and so the two are intertwined. I mean if you do a crappy black and white brochure then you are saying that your brand is not professional. Not a good reflection on the listing agent.

When I was looking for a graphic designer I looked at materials. What looked professional, clean, well done? They pointed to one company. That is who I went with.

Their names were on a small little line at the bottom. The good marketing was their ad. So…I think that generally speaking you want to advertise the property professionally and with yes…your information on it.

I just don’t think that the listing ads need to have a picture of the agent taking up 1/3 of the flyer.

I think a reasonable amount of branding to the agent is acceptable, however, if the marketing is more about the agent than the listing, how does that benefit the seller? If the idea is to draw attention to the listing, there should be more said about the features and benefits of the listing than the person that listed it.

I’ve seen my share of ads and listing collateral that were clearly designed to promote the agent over and above the listing. If I were a seller, I would certainly question the effort.

Basically impossible to market a home without marketing yourself. If you are doing your job of marketing a listing to the best of your ability, you are inadvertently advertising yourself as well.