5 steps to craft an engaging online presence for your brand
By Gwen Moran
Overwhelmingly, people of almost every generation are moving their real estate searches online.
The 2018 National Association of REALTORS® Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report found that most people under the age of 72 searched for a home online before contacting a REALTOR®.
The report also found that purchasing a home through a real estate agent continues to be the most used purchase method for recent buyers. When choosing an agent to work with, buyers wanted help finding the right home, negotiating sales terms and negotiating prices. Buyers 37 years and younger, more than any other generation, found that their agent helped them understand the homebuying process.
In other words, having an effective online presence is no longer a “nice to have”—it’s imperative, says Brent Bamberger, founder of Walnut Creek, California-based branding firm Brandish Studio. Your online brand helps convey that you’re professional, trustworthy and established in the market—all attributes critical to real estate buyers and sellers, according to NAR’s report.
Follow this five-step approach to create a compelling and effective online brand that converts leads into clients.
1. Evaluate
Before Chris Smith, co-founder of Boston-based real estate marketing company Curaytor, even meets with a prospective client, he does what he calls a “pre-call stalk.” In other words, he and his team review everything they can about the REALTOR®’s online brand—from website design to blogging strategy to social media posts.
Areas where online brands are often flawed include poor design or copy, irregular posting on blogs or social media, and an overall lack of quality. While some marketers preach consistency across platforms, Smith says the quality of your brand must come first.
2. Align
Once you understand your brand’s online components, the next step is to ensure it’s appealing to your target customer, says Gemma Schaefer, marketing manager at Philly Home Girls (phillyhomegirls.com), a team within Coldwell Banker Preferred’s Old City branch in Philadelphia whose founders are Residential Real Estate Council webinar presenters. The team’s customer base is sophisticated and expects a high level of service—they want online interfaces they can access from anywhere. When Schaefer came on board more than a year ago, she treated the company as she would a lifestyle brand, creating an interactive, evocative website as the cornerstone of the team’s online presence. “More than 50 percent of our traffic is mobile, so we had to determine how to translate who we are into a brand online that works across all platforms,” she says.
That’s good advice for everyone, Bamberger adds. If your website isn’t responsive—programmed to display properly on every device—it may also hurt your search engine ranking. Kristin McFeely, who is spinning off her business from Philly Home Girls to create Philadelphia Home Collective (phillyhomecollective.com), also adopted a website and brand look loaded with rich, stylized photography, information about neighborhood specialties and heartwarming homebuyer stories. She purposely kept the name of the new business broad so she could add services such as home staging. In 2017, McFeely and Philly Home Girls co-founder Jeanne Whipple co-presented the RRC’s webinar “Develop a Personal Brand Strategy.”
3. Design
Charles Cherney, CRS, who heads the Charles Cherney Team at Compass in Cambridge, Massachusetts, read the book Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller three times before he sat down to redesign his website several months ago, he says. The book emphasizes the importance of the consumer being the hero and the provider being the guide.
Hit the Books
Need some online branding help? Here are three books that provide guidance and ideas.
Crushing It! How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence—and How You Can, Too: Influencer and marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk distills lessons from influencers who have built exceptional personal brands.
Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team: Alina Wheeler outlines a five-step process for designing your brand’s identity.
Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen: In this Wall Street Journal bestseller, Donald Miller describes how to use the elements of powerful stories to define your brand.
Working with Curaytor’s team, Cherney wanted to redesign his website (cambridgerealestate.com) to be visually dynamic and showcase his team’s deep knowledge of the Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, areas. But that didn’t mean abandoning some basics—including keeping his name and contact information at the very top of the page.
And while the site is loaded with content about the areas his team serves, including neighborhood guides, blog posts about various businesses and features, and even links to podcast episodes, the clean design of the site and the visually arresting live-action video components make it easy to navigate.
Smith says a customer-first focus on design is essential for any brand component, whether it’s a logo, website or other element.
“Ninety-three percent of customers trust design over word,” Smith says. So if you have an unappealing logo, font or colors, they’re actively working against you. He says REALTORS® should also pay attention to copy quality, posting frequency and engagement level. Getting a good understanding of your brand’s current strengths and weaknesses is an essential step, he says.
4. Engage
Dustin Parker, an RRC webinar presenter specializing in branding, heads The Parker Group real estate team in Lewes, Delaware. When he designed his website (delawaremove.com), he did so with an eye toward fostering interaction and engagement with his clients and prospects. A link to the team’s Facebook page is prominent at the top of the page, leading visitors to the primary place where Parker posts updates and hyperlocal content under his #getlocal, #localheroes and #givelocal hashtags. Each of these hashtags relates to local stories and make it easy for those interested to find information and participate in the conversation.
“Our campaigns about local leaders let us tell stories that are important to the area. They help us build relationships with local business leaders. And that often turns into referral sources,” Parker says.
His videos include his wife, daughter and home, so customers and prospects can see him as a parent and spouse who understands the needs of their families.
While social media is critical, Smith warns REALTORS® to avoid biting off more than they can chew. It’s worse to have several social media channels, a blog and a podcast that are all months or years out-of-date than it is to have nothing at all. Instead, focus on one or two communication venues where you can be active daily. If you find time
after implementing that schedule, then you can add more channels. Monitor these channels and participate in online conversations. This will help you build relationships with people who visit your site.
Engagement also includes making your website useful and functional. Cherney created neighborhood maps that serve as interactive guides. Visitors repeatedly return to his site to use the maps, even if they’re not in the market for a home. That helps keep his brand visible, he says. Common and popular tools include home search functions, neighborhood overviews and local news or updates.
5. Influence
With their deep knowledge of the communities they serve, Schaefer says REALTORS® should brand themselves as experts much the way today’s social media influencers do. Claim your hyperlocal area. Claim and upload your logo to listing and review sites like Yelp, Google and online real estate sites so that visitors recognize your presence. She says these are critically important for local search results. Share your expertise through blog posts, media interviews, social media posts, videos or other formats (keeping in mind Smith’s advice to keep your channels up-to-date).
Pat Ohmberger, CRS, associate broker at HOME Real Estate in Lincoln, Nebraska, agrees. Ohmberger has a professionally branded website as well as a popular email newsletter that she uses to showcase various items of interest and personal touches that build trust and relationships with her audience. While some told her she shouldn’t include University of Nebraska football schedules or other personal touches in her business correspondence, Ohmberger ignored that advice. The result has been greater engagement and open rates with her audience.
“You can take whatever’s in your area and make it work for you,” she says.
Are you interested in learning more about brand strategy and earning credits at the same time? Head to the RRC education catalog and type the word “brand” in the search box.
Brand Standards
Once you’ve established the look and message of your online brand, it’s a good idea to create brand standards to help keep that look uniform across channels, especially if team members are posting on your behalf, says Brent Bamberger, founder of Walnut Creek, California-based branding firm Brandish Studio. See below for a few ideas.
- Indicate the proper colors to be used in the logo or how it will be reproduced in black and white formats.
- Note the proper use of taglines and slogans, including punctuation.
- Provide brand voice guidelines for blog posts, social media copy and other channels. These should include parameters for post content, including tone, appropriate topics, etc.
- Include updates as you note ways that you wish to keep your brand uniform and consistent.
