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So what we’re gonna be chatting about today is brand vs brand identity. What the hell is it? Is my broker my brand? Are you the brand? Why do you need it? Why is it important? I’m telling you right now that if you do not focus on your own personal brand, you’re going to be out of business
Jason Byer serves as the marketing and partnership manager at Crowdspring, where he helps businesses and individuals grow their brand and make more money.
Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
- What is your brand?
- What are the components of a brand?
- Why is a brand important?
Resources
The Listing Advocate (Earn more listings!)
Transcript:
So how do you attract new business? You constantly don’t have to chase it. Hi, I’m Mike Cuevas a real estate marketing. This podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust and most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living. It’s your job to remind them. Let’s get started
What’s up ladies and gentlemen, welcome another episode of the real estate marketing dude, podcast, folks already chatting about today’s What the fuck do you do in a recession? I just did a video on this. And I was just talking about how important brand is
brand brand brand and a recession because you cannot rely on lead generation because everyone’s buying and selling habits have changed. So what we’re gonna be chatting about today is we have like the brand master from crowdspring. And we’re gonna go through brand identity versus brandied. What the hell is it? Is my broker my brand? Are you the brand? Why do you need it? Why is it important? I’m telling you right now that if you do not focus on your own personal brand is business, you’re going to be out of business. I’ve been saying this for last five fucking years on the damn show. So we’re gonna go here, and I think you’re gonna prove my point. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and introduce our guest, Jason buyer. Jason, how are you? Good. I’m great. Let’s do it. Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about whom you are. And we’ll get right into, like all kinds of questions for your so I lead marketing and [email protected]. And we help agents or agencies, small business owners, real estate agents build their brand that starts from that name that you’re going to use if you’re not using your brokers name and the logo and visual identity. And yeah, it’s branding is that secret sauce, it’s that it’s what sets you apart. It’s, it’s not difficult to find a real estate agent, right? It’s difficult to find one that you’d like working with. And that’s really what we’re trying to convey through the brand. And remember, like, these are the stats are there, they’re sickening. At I think plus percent of people said they’ll use their agent again, but only 29% do. Mainly people don’t stay in touch with them. But it’s impossible to be remembered without a brand. You know, people don’t remember. Mike Cuevas remember real estate marketing, dude, dude is my brand. But when I get done with the show, I’m gonna go turn into Mike. So you have to have a brand. You guys, it’s whom you are. It’s what people read. You remember people buy think about your own viewing habits, and content, habits. Whatever you create, you’re drawn to certain things, right? People are drawn to certain things. We’re drawn to different brands. And that’s honestly how our, my mind works. And I’m pretty sure it’s about just the way the human mind is. So let’s dig deep into it.
I think real estate agents don’t see themselves as a brand, mainly, because they’re they look at themselves as a person, human. I’m not a brand. I’m a human being. I’m a salesperson chasing the check. Do you mean brand? How do you how do I how do you do that? Absolutely. So let’s first define the word so we can get that out of the way. Because a lot of us think brands are corporations. It’s apple, it’s Nike, it’s not us, right? And so a brand is, is every interaction somebody has with you or your company, right? Depending on who you’re you’re really representing. It’s everything from the presence of your vehicle doesn’t have to be a nice car, but it’s got to be clean. Right? You know, when you open up the door to papers and stuff fall out and your old gym bag and things like that, right? That’s part of your brand. That was my car for sure. When I was selling houses. Exactly. Right. So how quickly returned phone calls, you know, your your voicemail, the email that you use, are you still using the MSN or Yahoo email, people judge that right? So this is your whole brand makeup is every little interaction. brand identity is everything visual about your brand. So these are things like your logo and the marketing materials, the color, the font that you use, even your name because you spell that out in different areas. And so that’s your brand identity. And so when you think about like, you know, do I have a brand as a person, we all have a brand. But are we actively shaping it? Are we trying to control here’s the thing is that even even Apple and Nike can’t completely control their brand, they can only direct it, because you and I is the consumer and as the person looking at that company, we control the brand. We are the ones who who have certain thoughts about what this company or person means to us. What our goal is, is just to help provide the train tracks the rails to keep our brand moving in a direction that we want it. Do we want to be known selling to affluent individuals, or to budget conscious first time buyers. There’s a market for each, but we should be conscious of the fact of who we’re actually talking to. And not just you know, make it up on the fly. Well, I thought every real estate agents logo should be a roof with their initials and or maybe a set of keys next to it though. Yeah. And that’s the problem, right? So everybody thinks that way. And there’s certain industries that are very guilty of this. dentists, lawyers and real estate agents, you know exactly what that that logo is going to look like and therefore it means nothing to you. Right so when you go
out, and you spend all this effort, time and money to attract leads, you look just like somebody else. And it’s and you want to have that separation, it’s what we find with with free designs or something that’s cheap. There’s simply just mashups of certain industry symbols. And it doesn’t mean you have to avoid them. You can still incorporate things like you know, keys and homeownership into your design. But there’s ways to do that, that make them look more custom, that you actually took time to create something that that looks unique. So a lot of people, here’s here, I’ll tell you what their reservation is right off the bat, though. Well, if I if I do that, I might turn off some people.
What do you answer to that? Good? You know, like, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to niche down. We’re trying to find out, you know, who do we want to work with? And, you know, can we speak directly to them? Because if we’re not speaking to them, we’re speaking to nobody, right? If we’re saying we service, every client, every every person at whatever stage in life in any geography, we just look like somebody generic, right? But if we say, we’re only interested in selling a million plus homes in this area, that’s very specific. And now I want to work with you because I don’t want you to say you have to leave to go help some kid by his first house, right? Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe you want to go after the person whose first time homebuyers because they’re like, look, this isn’t my third house. I’ve gotten a lot of stupid questions I’m going to ask, and I’m gonna feel really bad. You know, asking somebody who only sells to folks a million plus, that’s not me. Right? And so you want to brand yourself. And when you start talking about branding, you know, what matters is let’s let’s go with colors, right? So colors have meaning. So if you’re targeting an affluent market, your best to use colors that create trust, like blue, or black and gold, which create affluence, or feelings of affluence. If you’re going after maybe first time buyers or you’re branding yourself, it’s kind of fun, maybe using some funky colors, you know, you’re using the purples and the pinks. And we’ve, we’ve seen Realtors do this? Well, you know, they’re known as the pink realtor. And they’re saying, Hi, I was just gonna say that the that was one of the best brandings I’ve ever, ever seen. There’s I forget who the guy was a tough dude, the guy was like six, four huge, like, muscle builder. And he was the realtor. So it was like, so perfect for him. Because you just remember, you don’t expect to see the big burly guy in a pink shirt every day. But that’s that was his brand. And he views it as his uniform. Right? Absolutely. So like, there’s a great point, you want to find those additional areas to insert your brand. Right? So some of the obvious ones are, you know, the sign in the front yard. But can you do a vehicle wrap on your on their kid? Can you do something on the outside? Can you do a big mural on the outside of your building? If you have a physical location, right? All of your outdoor advertising, or marketing flyers, this should all have your brand, you shouldn’t be second guessing what color am I going to use? What font am I going to use? It’s whatever you’ve defined as your core identity. Sure. So you might see someone who focuses with military or VA, maybe do some cat some camouflage. I’ve done a bunch of dog tag stuff. I’ve done a bearded realtor, and I call this show beard budget. Like there’s all kinds of stuff you guys can do. But you have to remember that when you fall in line, like with everybody else, you’re just a sheep and no one sticking out. And when everyone’s selling the exact same service, it’s not helping you any. The truth of the reality is, is that the more you stick out brand is the one thing that it is your one thing and you have one, I’m gonna give them a couple examples on these so they could follow it. I’m gonna give you one I’m doing right now. So I’m going to have her on the podcast because it’s just an amazing story. But I won’t say her name yet. But we’re building a brand versus a brand new agent. And she her son was lost to brain cancer. And she was actually in the State of the Union. She got called out by President Obama and then and she was like the girl on when they do the state of you. And they always clap for someone that was her. Right? So as a few years ago. So what you did when when your son pass, she started this thing called kitchen and get cancer.org. Right? And she became a philanthropist in the last 12 years. It’s all she’s done. She’s meted and greeted and rubbed shoulders with very famous people, rich people, fluid people, you name it and she did successful but when COVID hit, she got crushed, took away all the goddess took away everything else. So she’s becoming a real estate agent. So we did with her. I go what do you really want to do with yourself? She goes off. I just want to save kids lives. I want to bring awareness as cancer I go, Okay, well, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to create a program and we call this program Johnny’s house. Johnny’s house is your son’s name, and every time there’s 10% of her closings will go to Johnny’s house. Now we’re going to license the program to other realtors who also want to give back. Sure, but everything she does is about giving, giving, giving, giving. So she could go out there and create content on say businesses in her community that also give back. Sure he’s going to help us golfers that’s all brand new guys. And the difference I think was what we’re saying here is that there’s a difference between brand versus brand identity. brand identity is going to be the stuff the visual crap, but the brand is going to be
What the fuck it stands for? Exactly, no, that’s a great example. Absolutely brilliant. Because you’re, you’re looking for a way to set yourself apart, right? Because at the end of the day, somebody’s going to be trying to compare you, and they’re gonna go to the fees, right? They’re gonna say, Wait, you know, 4%, you know, so you know, I’m in a more rural area, guys, we’re still 6%, which is just wild being in Chicago, you know, they got pushed down to 1%. And everybody’s, either way, everybody’s still competing for the small pie. So if you can say, here’s what we do with that money through Johnny’s house or something like that, that’s part of that brand story, you’re trying to create beauty 100%. And we talked about one, good one, because because some of your listeners might be thinking, Okay, I don’t have such a clear picture of my niche, right, I don’t have a charity that I want to create or support. I don’t. Right now, I’m just trying to chase leads, I’m not necessarily wanting to pigeonhole myself into one market or the other. One thing that you can do is start now, with the goal of simply rebranding refreshing in a few years, you don’t have to have the entire roadmap pictured, right? So Amazon wasn’t Amazon and Jeff Bezos had it was to sell books initially, and look what it grew into. You start with something simple, and it’s expected that you rebrand you refresh in a couple years when you have that define. But don’t forget that like, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is today, you want to start taking that action, right? So do something to start creating a little bit more of a brand of focus, with the intention of updating that every couple of years.
What do you think?
Can you have a brand without a brand identity?
It becomes difficult, because the brand identity is that that quick symbol, we process visuals, you know, 1000s of times faster? And so yes, I could tell you who I serve? And what I do? And how great you know, my closing is and all that, but are you really going to listen to me for a couple of minutes while I ramble on. But if you see a logo that’s using, you know, you mentioned the military example, it’s using sharp angles, you know, to show toughness, it’s using kind of a camo or dark green or gunmetal color, you’re starting to paint a picture, okay, this guy either is of that, or he’s focusing on vets, you know, it starts to and that just opens up a whole new brand, right? If I’m dealing with a vet, you know, there’s a certain level of expectation that I have working with him. And I’m excited by that, right. And so you really, can’t you, I suppose you could, but then you’d have to sit down with everybody and explain yourself instead of just allowing them to visually process it. So if you guys caught what he said,
visual imagery is processed through the brain faster than anything else. That means faster than what you hear. It’s more imprinted. And this isn’t this is just the way that we’re wired. I bet you you read the same book, I did look at the power of visual storytelling.
I’m looking at it right here. And I so do that it was one of the best books I’ve ever read, when it just really changed my outlook on so many different things. But what they say in the book, though, is they go back and the way I always understood and this is when it clicked for me was that if you go back to like Egypt in the cave days, what the hell was on the walls, right, just a bunch of hieroglyphics. Those are pictures. And that’s how the ancient humans told stories before words were created. So our brains are wired, God made us this way. Like we tell pig, we tell stories, but we intend, and we have stories that we do through pictures. So when you have your logo, like if I just have my logo on this video, I’m constantly branding, branding, branding. Now, let’s talk about elements of a logo, because all people are gonna be like, oh, like when I build a logo, I just need to accomplish three things for me, I needed to tell story, I needed to remind people, what the hell you sell to make money. And then I need to reflect your personality into it. As long as I have those three elements, that logo will turn into your most powerful marketing piece you ever do. Because you don’t even have to talk about real estate, you just have to show it. Exactly, exactly. And it’s going to follow you around on every piece of marketing that you do, right. It’s expensive doing direct mail, it’s expensive, creating these relationships where maybe somebody sends an email, to introduce you, you want to make sure that it’s it’s a big deal buying and selling a house, you know, it’s a lot of money at stake. It’s a lot of trust that we’re putting into a realtor, you want to make sure that that you have those opportunities to keep building that trust as you go along. And that’s a great place to keep inserting that logo. We did a this morning, I was scripting a video for one of our clients. And he’s a VA veteran himself. He’s a mortgage broker, but he’s in the north. He’s like in the Seattle area up there wherever that basis, but so he does a VA buyer bootcamp. Alright, so every 30 days, he does a VA buyer bootcamp, he knows exactly who and his audiences. Well, he’s having it at a veteran owned brewery. Okay, guys, so like, you have to make sure in all of his videos, there’s an American flag in the back. Right? Right. So it’s, it’s it’s what can you own that be proud of it and fill out those additional ways you can insert it, that’s a great example. You could have chosen any venue to have this. Instead, he’s further pushing this idea. We support that. Yeah. And that’s what people are going to remember. You know, there’s so many examples that you know, I could give you guys and but you have to really be willing to do it.
I always tell
people especially with comes on video. I don’t believe you can be successful on video without first identifying your brand because what the fuck are you gonna talk about? Right? You’re gonna run out shit to say I can only talk about real estate for so long. Like I’m telling I’m gonna talk about dude want to buy or sell real estate? Fuck no, no one’s gonna listen to that guys, it doesn’t work that way you got to, you have to stay in communication with people because once you have your brand identity, how you build your brand, at least with your database, it’s your consistent communication to the same audience over time. It’s very simple. If you stop talking to them, they’re gonna cheat on you as another real estate agent. It happens every day go on Facebook right now there’s about 4 million Realtors crying because they just logged on and someone named cousin believer and Sue just got a referral from a family member that forgot their real estate. Right? That’s that you don’t you know what the only reason that ever happens to by the way is because blood is thicker. Or blood is was a blood is thicker than relationships Trump All right blood is what the hell’s the saying? I can’t think now I’m struggling with it. You know, I’m talking about right I do my tongue. But yeah, guys, I mean, there’s so many different things you can be doing. But you have to be willing to do them. A lot of people to I see are like very
hesitant to express themselves and really niche down. Sure. And I always tell them and answer that question. Real simple. I go, if you believe you’re the right person for the job, it becomes your obligation to scream it from the rooftops? If not, you’re not the right person for the job. Right? When I think this is that hard look, right, that you mentioned with, I forgot the person’s name, but you know, creating this Johnny’s house charity, and then she has a story, right, she has something impacted. You’ve mentioned the vet use of it. You know, some of these might not be as obvious we might not be event we might not have lost somebody to cancer. So we’ve got to start thinking about what’s our own either struggle, or what are we passionate about? Right? Did we come out of debt quickly? Right out of the gate? Did we have massive debt and brought that back under control? These are? These are hero type stories, right? I think too often, you know, we want to be the hero in the story. And instead, we want to be the guide. Right? So we want to guide somebody else who and make them the hero, right? Champion them. And so we have to understand what are we good at? Who are we good at talking to? You know, what’s kind of our, our, you know, superpower is too strong of a word, but what just comes natural to us, you know, to be able to communicate, and that’s probably a very specific audience. What do you do on the weekends, that’s your brand.
You know, if you’re out there, and if you’re if you’re, if you’re not proud of it, start doing something that’s more exciting, right? If you’re not proud of it, you’re just a miserable human being. I mean, that sucks. Don’t overthink it. It’s much easier than you guys think. But I telling you like this whole real estate agent business is getting shaken up to the ground. And the only way you’re going to compete against the dollars being thrown against your profession is through personal brand and relationship with the people you already know like and trust. Right? You’re not going to outspend them and lead generation guys, tell me I’m telling you the conversation revenue back end with some of these funds, you will never outspend them on lead generation, there’s billions and trillions of dollars being poured into the market to take real estate agents out of the equation. And the only way you’re going to fight back I swear to God is going to be through your personal brand. Well look at look at every industry, look at how you can sell something on Shopify, and compete with Walmart, right in Amazon, where it’s much more convenient. It’s cheaper, it’s guaranteed. You’re only able to do that because of this brand. Right? And it doesn’t like you said I’d like to keep focused on Don’t overthink it. Look, I’ve got two kids. You know, a lot of my weekend is taken up with taking care of the kids, right and making sure that they’re successful, that can be part of the brand too. You don’t always have to be rock climbing, whitewater rafting and elk hunting like we were talking about right before the right and so but if you’re doing those things as well, that can certainly help and start start seeking those out. Yep. I like it, man. What, oh, I think we sort of covered a lot of this stuff here. And it actually gets a lot of time. You know, it’s really one of these. It’s one of these tactics that you have to really sit down and start thinking, Okay, who do I want to focus on? You know, how can I start inserting this brand through a visual way? This is why it helps starting with a logo, or refreshing your current logo because it gives you that foundation, it says okay, here’s my my colors, here’s my font. Here’s my style, and now I can give that to somebody and start inserting that in other parts of my marketing. And it should be something you come back to you should come back to this regularly. Okay, did I make a mistake? Do I not like this market? Is the market too big or too small? Do I am I not strong enough in this area? Should I rebrand or refresh? No problem with doing that you don’t have to like start this and commit to it for 10 years. It’s a process and what you what you can do if you’ve been doing this for if you sold at least 10 houses in the last 12 months just average your clients that’s your brand. Yeah, right. Well, you’re gonna know we had a we had a client she’s been we’ve been creating content for her for like 18 months and she’s finally figured out what her brand is and she’s realized that she’s attracting young black entrepreneurial people love it own and yeah, we’re going all in on and now we’re gonna have a whole brand series just going through it and you can take it one step further by owning that market, right? You’re not doing that for the nation.
It’s for one area Chicago, you know, the riches are in the niches she’ll she’ll go further because there’s not a shortage of people to sell houses to last time I looked over live somewhere unless you’re a bum. Right? Absolutely. So, folks, this is a really, really good stuff. Jason wants to go ahead and tell them how they can reach you more about crowdspring. And then we could get this thing wrapped. Absolutely. So if you go to crowdspring.com, you can see we’ve got, we publish our pricing, it’s actually a fun process, you get to see dozens of designs for your brand submitted, pick the one that you like, and unlimited iterations to move that forward, 100% money back guarantee. And if you want to get your brand reviewed, we do free brand reviews, where we actually give you a 10 page custom report to break down different areas of your brand that we think are either strong or could use some improvement. And we’re happy to provide that to us. If you go to crowdspring.com and reach out to support on there. We’ll send you your customer customer review. Cool thank you and thank you guys for listening to other episode real estate marketing dude podcast. You guys know where to find me real estate marketing do.com Real Estate American radio.com Need help with video you need to get a new logo. You just need to start making some noise. That’s what we’re good at. Let me use my brain and I’ll put you on the map so people stop cheating on you with other real estate agents. It’s never fun. Thanks for watching. Subscribe, follow us on social we’ll see you guys next week. Bye.
Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing dude.com We make branding video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training and then schedule time to speak with the dude and get you rolling in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcast. We’ll see you next time.
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