As powerful as brands are, only 4% of real estate consumers chose their agent because of the brokerage with whom they worked.

This is the case because sellers want to work people that they know, like and trust and not just anyone from the brand itself.

What this means is that you need to stop marketing your company’s name and start branding yourself with prospects and clients in your marketplace.

Your celebrity is what the people in your business and market think of you, visualize you and REMEMBER about you.

Your image is key.

Do you have a brand that tells your prospects and clients why you’re the go-to agent in your marketplace?

Does your brand attract people to want to do business with you?

Is your brand so strong that your past clients and the members of your sphere want to refer people to you?

In a business where over 60% of the sales are generated from referrals, sphere or repeat business, your brand should be strong and something you focus on growing consistently.

Your goal is to make it so that when people talk about real estate, your name is one of the first two or three that come out their mouths.

This is what you need to know and do in order to make that happen.

Marketing Secrets to Become a Celebrity Agent

With celebrity comes authority.

As you build your brand and become known as an agent who can help people reach their goals faster, easier, better and for a great great price, the more authority you’ll have with them.

Today, even with the digitally driven environment in which we live, writing a book is still the number one way to build authority with your audience.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to go out and write a 200-page book and publish it tomorrow.

There are services out there that can help you do that with a lot less money, fewer headaches and in a much shorter time frame than you get it done yourself.

Companies like Dicks Nanton Celebrity Branding® Agency will help you become a published, best-selling author and help you create a tremendous amount of buzz about your celebrity as an author.

Plus, you’ll have a real book that you can give to prospects and clients that tells them how you can help them meet their real estate goals better than any other agent in the market.

As an author, you gain instant recognition and respect.

Instead of being a just another real estate agent who’s trying to get someone’s listing, you became the go-to expert who educates and delivers results.

Being able to do this builds incredible credibility and trust.

With such high trust and authority, your customers now come to you.

It’s the best way to do business.

Put yourself in your seller prospect’s shoes: wouldn’t you prefer to do business with an expert who wrote a book on the topic versus just another agent who doesn’t have the same authority or offer the same level of expertise.

There’s a reason the word authority begins with author...no doubt.

Free Media Attention

There’s a shocking number of radio, newspaper and television outlets that are looking for credible information about what’s going on the real estate market.

Because the housing market is the single greatest way for the average American to accumulate wealth (next to the lottery that is), real estate is a hugely popular topic.

The media recognizes authors, and is constantly looking for new books to feature on TV and radio, and in publications and blogs. This gets your name out in front of your target customers.

Instead of being a business person who is trying to sell someone a house, you became the knowledgeable expert who educates people. This builds tremendous credibility and trust.

Now your customers seek you out – they desire to buy your product.

It’s a completely new ball game.

The best part is that you can leverage what you wrote in your book to write blog posts, record podcasts, generate email campaigns and create radio and television segments.

The majority of people prefer to work with the expert - the person who wrote the book on the topic - versus dealing with someone from an anonymous company or source.

Volunteering and Charity Work

Today’s real estate consumers are extremely sharp and has high expectations of businesses with which they work. The Internet makes it possible for them to have incredible access to information about you and your company.

People want to work with organizations who are actually having a legitimate impact on society and not just going through the motions.

There’s a simple strategy that you can employ that allows you to do serious, sincere charitable work while building your brand and your business. It shifts your approach from obligation to opportunity and shift your decision-making strategy from feeling like it’s a task to accomplish to something you seek to achieve.

Support your the things your target demographic cares about and you attract them, their respect and their trust.

• Support the issues and platforms of your industry. Programs like Habitat for Humanity and Homes for Heroes provide a great opportunity for agents to do credible charity work and have it be line with they do on a daily basis.
• Support the organizations and causes of your community. Your consumers are your community members and they often support businesses that are loyal to the community. Be involved in local schools, soup kitchens and other causes that resonate strongly with the people in your community.
• Your philanthropy should impact your target audience. Support the causes your target audience cares about and you gain their attention, respect, and trust. Do some research to find out what events and causes are “near and dear” to these folks and then align yourself and your strategy with them.
• Keep your values in line with your audience. The highest level of influence is achieved by generating shared value. It’s rooted in the belief that earning profits and impacting social progress are not mutually exclusive outcomes.

The key in all of this is to be genuine and sincere in your desire to create change in your marketplace. This effort, combined with consistency in your efforts in doing so, should help you build your brand extremely effectively.  

Your celebrity awaits you

Once you start branding your business effectively, great things will begin to happen in your business:

1. You will start attracting people vs. you chasing them.  10-15% of your database is going to buy or sell a home this year; however, 100% of them will encounter at least one referral opportunity this year. Keeping your brand in front of them helps you get more referrals sent your way.
2. You will get more business online. Your brand is a reflection of who you are and you will begin attracting like people through your online marketing and branding efforts. The more interesting you are, the easier it will be to attract people..
3. People will start noticing you. If you’ve ever spent any time outside the office with a solid branding expert, you know that they get recognized everywhere they go.  Many of them can’t even go to dinner in their own town without getting recognized by someone at the restaurant. It’s all a result of having a long-term, consistent branding strategy.
4. Build confidence in consumers.  Being a celebrity instills confidence in consumers. Sellers and buyers both want to work with confident agents.
5. Create a steady stream of referrals. When you build your brand properly and instill confidence at a high level with your audience, they are compelled to send their family, friends and associates your way to buy and sell homes.

Achieving celebrity status is easier to achieve than ever before.

Writing and publishing a book can be done in 90 days for a very small investment on your part.

Once you have your book, you can repurpose the material and message in blog posts, emails, podcasts, radio and television interviews and a variety of other place. The best part is that the Internet allows you to make all this happen quickly and easily.

If you take the job of building your brand and celebrity seriously, you can have a huge impact on your business and put yourself into position to have people seek you out to do business with them.

And that’s when things really start to get good.