We are on a mission to rebrand our company. That is to say, the name won’t change but the experience will. From a business perspective, branding is not that different from marking the hindquarters of cattle with a hot iron. It becomes a mark, or an identifier, that distinguishes us from all the other cattle in the pasture. That’s because sometimes we, the real estate professionals, look pretty much the same to the consumer. (A hard truth for many of us to admit!)
Obviously the name of the game is to gain realization in the mind of consumers that our real estate brokers and agents are the ultimate specialists in their market. Increasingly, almost exponentially, you’ll note that the trends of this experience are happening in the online world. Welcome to the new pasture.
This is the subject of a many real estate blogs these days, however done by a limited number of contributors. Although growing, and I suppose I’m now one of them, I’d like to place emphasis on the shift from marketing a product or service to buying a product or service.
This is important in real estate today and really deserves much more focus. Especially since branding and marketing are essentially the same thing to most. This becomes increasingly important as the trends from “selling” are declining. Because of culture, technology and the myriad of distractions in day to day life; most products and services are bought by the consumer nowadays and not sold to them.
The trend began when you got your first computer and entered the young grasses of the Internet. Just think about the increase in online purchases you have experienced throughout the past ten holidays without physically being in the store with a salesperson. How many online greetings and gift certificates have you received?
Now you see why we have to reposition the brand. It must be online and it can’t be just a logo, it must be an experience. Consumers are being attracted to a knowledge base and the brand makes ratification to the purchaser that the product or service is that of quality.
The most successful businesses on the Internet are interactive and full of recent reviews, information, pictures and video. The experience is rich – you can talk back to it, follow it, share it and have access to from a cell phone. This is the territory we are rebranding.
So, how is this happening? It centers on our associates understanding that personal promotion is now done online. Secondly, it is not the personal promotion the industry pundits have sold you over the past 15 years. Simply, it is solely about promoting your knowledge base of your market, not by saying you are good, but by actually showing and delivering content and information through our technology. That is the experience, which is part and parcel, to the rebrand.
We are enthusiastically creating and updating these systems for our customer, the Realty World Northern California and Nevada franchisees and their associates. If you’re not using these systems today, we invite you to come with us and discover the tall grass!
Scott LeForce
President
scott.leforce@rwnc.net
