Branding

5 Ways to Up Your Real Estate Brand’s Game

Your real estate company is fighting for attention in a crowded space. Here's how to take your game to the next level.

You spend effort and resources into getting noticed and attracting the right buyers into your sales funnel, but how can you make the most of your time and your impression on your leads?

The key to effective winning comes back to sound branding practices rooted at the core of what you do. By applying some intentional branding efforts on the front end, you will in turn enhance and maximize all of your marketing efforts.

In the real estate space, the power of your brand and the way it behaves is the difference between winning and losing the sale.

Here are five ways your real estate brand can up its game:

1.) Invest in High Quality Materials

There’s nothing worse than flimsy or low-quality materials.

The real estate industry—where people are investing significant amounts of money—is reliant on two things:

  • Perception
  • Trust

Low-quality materials don’t give potential buyers, sellers or leasers a high-quality perception and they also don’t effectively build trust.

Here are a few ways to easily up the ante with your brand materials:

  • Increase the quality and thickness of your paper materials
    • Rather than using the standard-thick business cards, invest in thicker, more artisan card stocks. Moo offers a Luxe business card option that is three times thicker than the average business card. Not only will you portray quality and attention to detail, but these thick business cards are a conversation piece. Don’t believe me? Give it a test and you’ll see what I mean.
    • This also applies to your cards and brochures
  • Think about texture
    • Most agents and companies select the matte print-style business cards, which can lack texture and personality. There are plenty of ways to take your card beyond textureless, flatness, especially with the growing prominence of letterpress printing.

2.) Take Better Pictures

The same concept goes for your pictures, especially those presented online. Low-quality photos don’t properly represent the properties you’re showcasing and trying to attract buyers to.

I’ll never forget viewing a listing online and not being too excited about because the photos were rather blah. They were low quality and the angles didn’t make it look very spacious. On a limb, I decided to check it out and the difference between it and the photos was unbelievable.

The photos made it look cramped and dark when in reality it was spacious and full of light.

Be sure to capture the true feel of your properties by upping your photography game.

Take some better pictures by:

  • Upgrading your camera tech—DSLR cameras are more affordable than ever
    • Also take a camera class to learn how to use it. That will make all the difference.
  • Hire a professional photographer who you can rely on
    • Professional photographers can make spaces come to life with pictures that jump off the screen

3.) Add a Vibrant Color to Your Palette

Too often real estate brand color palettes fade into obscurity, especially the smaller firms.

Taking your palette to the next level doesn’t have to be difficult or frightening, although some organizations shy away from shaking up things with a new hue.

The benefits? A color to play with to make your marketing materials and advertisements stand out, especially those road-side real estate signs.

To add a vibrant color:

  • Amplify an existing color
      • Finding the perfect vibrant accent can stem directly from your current color set. When we worked with Allegheny Commercial Real Estate Services (ACRES) in Wexford—a brand traditionally strong on dark blues—we selected an electric blue that worked with the existing dark blue and creme color.

    ACRES brand identity

  • Utilize a complimenting color
    • Sometimes the best option can be complimenting a color, which essentially is an opposite. In the case of ACRES above, we could’ve just as easily went the opposite direct and picked an orange to compliment the blue color set.
    • Try using the below color wheel to start getting some ideas for complimenting colors:compliment color wheel

4.) Simplify Your Fonts

Many real estate companies have been in business for 10-plus years.

If this is you, it’s worth refreshing your brand by updating your font selection for two primary uses:

  • Headers and other headlines
  • Body copy (especially where large volumes of text will appear)

We’ve made amazing strides in the last five years with the roll out of Google fonts and a variety of other simple and readable fonts. It’s worth investigating and analyzing whether it’s time to upgrade your font selections or not.

Quick tips:

  • Google Fonts allows you to preview the various fonts available with sample text, which can be useful for seeing fonts in action
  • Avoid overly flourished fonts unless they are selectively used in logotypes (in usage with your logo). There is no excuse to be using these, however, prominently and frequently in marketing materials and especially web uses where readability is more important than ever.

5.) Give Your Website An Extreme Makeover

With consumers using online search 92% of the time for home-related search—60% of that on mobile and tablet—there is no excuse any longer to have a mediocre website.

Make it a point to create a relevant, visually engaging website that’s mobile and tablet optimized and consistent with your brand. Consumers utilize search to do their research far in advance and if you’re not attracting them to your site with high-ranking, educational content and conversion points (content offers, contact forms, etc.) then you’re missing out on a whole leg of the sales process.

Here’s how you can bring your site up to standard:

  • Utilize a real-estate-centric blog that’s used regularly
    • Ask you clients questions. Find out where they had questions and hesitations and address those questions in high-quality blog posts (500+ words).
  • Make it mobile optimized
    • Seriously, and for so many reasons, mobile optimization is no longer an option. Do it!
  • Make it informative
    • Load up your site with information to educate. This goes beyond the blog—this includes talking specifically about your team, your history, you approach and diving into your process.
  • Make it action-driven
    • Every single page should have a purpose and every page should include a next step at the end. Should they download an eBook with more info? Should they reach out and set up a consultation? Give them a next step to pursue.
  • Fill it with relevant photos
    • Cliché stock photos will dilute and weaken your brand. Invest in some high-quality photos representing your real brand. Again—this is all about perception and trust.

Need a Brand Facelift?

If your brand could use a little work, and you’re not sure what to do next, we’re here to help.

Get in touch with us today and get the conversation started.

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