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Demonstrate your expertise, be clear about who you want to work with, and be authentically yourself to create a lasting personal brand, Derek Carlson writes.

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One of the biggest mistakes I see agents make is failing to build a personal brand. Instead, they choose to rely on their broker’s brand. That’s a huge missed opportunity, because when done well, it helps to more consistently generate revenue and often leads to increased repeat business, which is the Holy Grail for agents.

So in this article, I’m going to break down how to build a powerful personal brand that helps you to attract and retain clients.

What is (and isn’t) a personal brand?

First things first — a personal brand is a lot more than a nice logo and a slick website. That’s just the foundation, and while it is a critical component, there are some other critical components that are even more important.

Your personal brand is a distillation of what you specialize in, what you stand for and why you do what you do. It also needs to convey your personality, which helps to attract the right prospects and repel the wrong ones. The latter is more important than most people realize because the wrong prospects waste your time, destroy your productivity and erode your positive mindset.

Core elements of your personal brand

Aesthetics and visual aspects

The visual aspects of a personal brand are the first step in your personal brand, but unfortunately, it’s also where most agents stop.

While your personal taste plays a role in the appearance of your personal brand, it’s even more important that it appeals to your prospects. This should consist of your personal logo in text, which could either be a typeface or a signature. I prefer the latter, but not your real signature. Instead, hire a graphic designer to craft one for you so you don’t make it easy for people to forge your signature on documents.

It also encompasses your color palette, professional headshot and cover photo. These should be consistent across all platforms, but your cover photo will need to be tailored to each platform as they all have different size requirements. You also need to ensure your cover photo displays properly on both desktop and mobile versions of each social media platform.

What you specialize in

Realtors are a commodity. With nearly 1.5 million agents, prospects have a lot of professionals to choose from, so you need to give them a solid reason to choose you.

A deep specialization is a powerful way to do that. Some good examples include first-time homebuyers, luxury homes or military service members, but your options are virtually limitless. The more specific, the better. Focusing on your city is an example of poor specialization because every agent should already be an expert on their own city.

Your specialization gives prospects a clear benefit from working with you because you understand their unique situation that most other agents can’t provide, making it a powerful differentiator.

What you stand for

People want to work with people they believe share their values.

Your character plays a big role, so factors like honesty and integrity are critical, but it goes deeper. People want to work with people who share a similar worldview, so your social and political beliefs play a role as well. That’s why what you believe and the organizations and causes you support are factors as well.

This is how the world works today, and with so much information at our fingertips, it’s easy for prospects to find out what you stand for. The days of being agnostic in this sense are long gone, so embrace it.

Why you do what you do

You need a powerful “why” behind what you do. No one wants to work with an agent who is just in it for the money; they want to work with someone who has a deeper mission behind what they do.

For example, my own personal brand is based on the principle that I believe the model that most brokerages follow is bad for both agents and clients, so I built mine on a model that provides far more value to agents and clients, and our results speak for themselves.

We retain agents longer than most brokerages, and they close more transactions, so they develop deeper experience in a wider variety of transactions. This makes them more valuable to clients, and since they stick around longer, they earn more repeat business.

Your “why” should follow a pattern that you’ve already seen thousands of times because it’s the basis for pretty much every Hollywood movie you’ve ever watched. The key is to take your “why,” also known as the hero’s journey, and distill it into a concise and powerful message that differentiates you.

How to present your personal brand

The elements of your personal brand should shine through in every aspect of your marketing, including website copy, emails and social media content.

It’s not just about your expertise — it’s also what you specialize in, what you stand for, and why you do what you do, and most importantly, your unique personality. It should give prospects a clear picture of who you really are.

The mistake most people make is dumbing their content down, either trying to make it appeal to everyone, which is impossible, or trying to ensure it doesn’t alienate anyone, which is equally impossible.

It’s important to remember that an effective personal brand will both attract the right prospects and repel the wrong ones. A lot of people are pretty good at the first aspect, but most, frankly, suck at the latter. That destroys the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

You need to demonstrate your expertise, but you also need to be clear about who you want to work with and most importantly, you need to be authentically yourself.

When you nail all of that, you’ll consistently attract the right prospects and repel the wrong ones, and as a result, generate more consistent revenue.

March is Marketing and Branding Month at Inman. As the spring selling season kicks in, we’ll examine the proven tactics and new innovations driving results in today’s market — and celebrate the industry’s top marketing and branding leaders with Inman’s Marketing All-Star Awards.

Derek Carlson runs Realty ONE Group in Naples, Florida.

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