25 Personal Branding Tips I’m Using From Now On

You’ve likely heard that as a realtor, you need to have your own brand. But what does that even mean, exactly? How do you start your own brand, much less make it successful? Below we’ll go over the top 25 personal branding tips that you can use to create a real estate brand that stands out from the rest.

Think Through Your Brand

1. Choose One Main Platform

First things first, you’ve got to find a place that can serve as a home for your brand. Usually, this will be your own personal website, with a home page that explains who you are and what you do. This should also include social media pages, though your website should be your primary platform for establishing branding.

2. Buy Your Personalized Domain Right Away

The first step to getting your own real estate agent website is purchasing a personalized domain. It’s usually a good idea to just use your name as the website name, as that is something unique to you and unlikely to ever change.

3. Use An Easy To Remember Version of Your Name

Whatever name you end up choosing should be easy to spell and pronounce. Otherwise, people will have trouble finding your website if they can’t spell the name correctly. Something short and simple will also be easier for your audience to remember.

Another consideration is to make sure the name you choose doesn’t have a bunch of listings on Google already.

4. Be Self-Aware

A personal brand should, of course, be personal to you. Your personality should shine through authentically. Remember to be yourself. In order to really know yourself and other peoples’ perception of you, you need excellent self-awareness. 

Find someone close to you who can be brutally honest and ask them who they know you as. Lean into your quirks, strengths, and weaknesses, because that’ll help you build trust faster with your audience.

5. Personify Your Audience

If you want to change your reputation, you need to have an idea of who you’re going to be interacting with. You should have a particular demographic that you’re targeting with your content, rather than trying to appeal to everyone at once. Identifying your audience will help you know what to focus on.

Think about the exact people you’ve helped already or interact with most frequently.  This will more often than not be your current audience, at least in the beginning.  

One strategy that can help you is to actually find random photos of people on the internet that look like your ideal clients. Print them out and use them to help you make decisions for your brand and business that align with what your ideal client expects.

6. Share Your Story

One of the best personal branding tips you might not expect is to use a condensed version of your life story in order to relate to your audience. Personally, one of the most frequent compliments I receive from clients and team members is how transparent I am.  

One way to be transparent to those that may not know you yet is to tell a relatable, honest story of how you got to where you are today.  Provide the world with living proof that you are what you say you are. Even if you don’t realize it, you are always being interviewed and evaluated for jobs that you don’t know about or that don’t exist yet.

7. Share Your Purpose

Another crucial step is to find your “why.” Ask yourself what is your purpose behind building a brand and helping your target audience. Hopefully, your “why” involves solving the needs of others, and not just your own. When your focus is on helping other people get what they need, you’ll naturally have more leads, money, and purpose.

8. Serve a Niche

The next step after finding your purpose is to find your niche. Rather than trying to cover everything in your industry, you should choose one specific aspect to specialize in. This should be something related to your target audience. 

For example, you could specialize in helping first time home buyers, a specific neighborhood, or a particular type of listing.

Don’t be afraid to get too specific.  There’s a saying that, “the riches are in the niches”.  I used to think if I was too specific that I’d pigeonhole myself and not have enough opportunity. However, it was the exact opposite.  

Design Your Brand

9. The Easiest “Logo”

One of the first things most agents starting a brand think about is a logo. However, you might be surprised to know that a full-fledged logo is not necessary. Instead, the perfect Realtor headshots can easily serve as your logo. Use your headshot on everything!  This makes you recognizable, as well as more relatable. In a service-oriented business like real estate, relatability is everything. 

10. A Catchy Slogan

Along with the logo is your brand slogan. Look up slogans from other famous real estate brands to inspire you. Or better yet, check out my post here. Think about your brand’s mission and what your goal is. Then, try to summarize the main idea in three or four words.

11. Consistent Colors

Another important aspect to developing your personal brand is the color scheme. These are the colors you should use across your website, social media, and printed materials. A soft color scheme with bold accent colors is good for drawing in peoples’ eyes.

Studies show that specific colors mean different things to people. Make sure to remember this when choosing your colors and what you want your brand to stand for. You can search for color tables on Google, which can help you choose colors that work well together.

12. Originality

Be creative! You don’t have to be a graphic designer in order to come up with a good design for your brand. Look at other realtors in your area and try to come up with something that sets you apart from them. Even if you just have an idea, you can always hire a designer on Fiverr or UpWork to bring it to life for you.

13. Consistent Design

Is your design more cartoony or serious? Or traditional or modern? Whatever it may be, use it consistently across all elements of your brand. You want to have a uniform appearance on every platform, both online and offline, so that people instantly recognize you.

Build Your Brand

14. Create Valuable, Targeted Content

Another crucial aspect of having a brand is providing the content. Content is what fleshes out your brand. People can learn more about you and your mission through your writing, videos, and the pictures you post. 

Start producing content right away, even if you don’t feel ready yet. You can always go back and change things later. The important thing is to start getting your audience’s attention and provide value to them.

15. Build an Online Presence

An online presence is key to building a successful brand. Set up your website and social media pages, post content regularly, and interact with your audience often. Over time you will grow your audience as you gain more name recognition and keep providing value to people.

As your online presence grows, your brand will naturally develop.  Don’t feel like you have to have it all figured out in the beginning.  Personally, much of my brand has developed as a result of building my online presence and finding opportunities to continually increase my brand recognition.

16. Deepen Your Relationships

Show up consistently and provide value both online and offline in order to build a relationship with your audience. It’s not enough to just provide content that helps their current needs. You’ve got to anticipate their future needs and fulfill them before they even know it.

Additionally, the way you respond to comments, feedback, and reviews says a lot about you and your brand. A lack of response says something as well.

17. Equal Effort in Offline Presence

While the online world certainly plays a key role these days, you should be sure not to neglect your offline presence. This includes business cards, flyers or pamphlets, billboards, and signage that you use for your listings. Focus your effort in your local market, where people will encounter your brand.

18. Printed Materials and Promotional Items

Be sure to use your branding on your printed materials and promotional items. For example, if you have pens or tote bags to hand out to people, they should be decorated with your logo, slogan, and color scheme.

19. Be Aware of Competition

Before establishing your brand, do some research on your competition. Figure out what makes you different from them and then try to emphasize that difference. This will help you be unique in the value that you’re presenting to your audience.

20. Keep It Fresh

Trends change and we change. Much of what you have created five or more years ago may likely seem out of place today. For this reason, consider changing up the style of your brand every so often. Don’t be afraid to make changes to an established brand to reflect what you’ve learned or how you’ve changed over the years. This will also help people stay more engaged with your brand.

21. Loyalty to Clients

One of the most important personal branding tips is to stay loyal to every client you work with. Your clients are your most valuable brand ambassadors. This goes hand in hand with building a strong relationship with your audience. 

Invest in them by doing things such as writing handwritten notes, sending them Christmas or birthday cards, or cards on the anniversary of the date they bought their home. 

22. Ask for Referrals

Perhaps the best way to build your brand is by asking for referrals. This will help to grow your network in your local market. It will also create more brand awareness for your business by people that have already experienced your brand in some way.  Create Brand Ambassadors out of your most loyal clients, and watch as they promote you and your business to their networks.

23. Get Reviews and Testimonials

One of the most relevant personal branding tips is to ask for reviews and feature them on your brand’s website and social media pages. This is good for brand awareness, brand building, and attracting more clients.

Dedicate time each week to building your reviews on sites like Facebook, Google, and Zillow.  As the future increasingly becomes digital, your online reputation becomes more important.  Many clients make a decision on a real estate agent before they’ve even spoken to them, solely based on online reviews.

24. Invest in the Proper Tools

You won’t be able to get the job done right if you don’t have the proper tools. This includes keyword research and SEO tools, CRM and email management systems, Google Alerts to track mentions of your brand, analytics for your website, and photo editing software like Canva for editing photos and graphics for your website and social media.

25. Hire a professional designer

As a realtor, it’s not expected that you would also have graphic design skills. In order to have a professional appearance, consider hiring a designer to come up with your logo, website design, and any other creative visual elements that will go into your brand. Freelance platforms such as UpWork are a great place to find talented individuals who can work with you.

Final Thoughts on 25 Personal Branding Tips

Follow these 25 personal branding tips to create a successful brand for your real estate business. Building a brand takes time. But if you consistently put in the effort, you’ll soon find that all your hard work will pay off.  In addition, having a recognizable brand will make all your other marketing, advertising, and lead generation efforts much easier.  

Your brand is the single most valuable asset to your real estate business (second is your database). So start off Day 1 with this in mind and treat it so. Good luck!