As a Real Estate Agent your personal brand is everything to you. It’s the instantly recognisable first thought that comes to somebodies mind when somebody thinks of you.

The mistake that most new Real Estate Agents make when building a brand is usually a lack of consistency. Ultimately they end up time and money redesigning images and graphics for marketing materials when they should be looking for congruency.

Often the best branding is the simplest. Stick to a common message throughout your marketing. Use the same words,same colours and same graphics.

You want this kind of congruency trough all of your ads.

With that in mind here are 5 steps to building a brand from Andrew Molz that will save you some headaches in the future.

Step 1: Make sure you have a great-looking headshot so you can incorporate it into your branding and marketing efforts. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money on a headshot, but I will say that you get what you pay for.

Step 2: Decide whether you’re going to use your name as your brand (John Smith Homes, for example) or file a DBA (such as Smith Real Estate). After you decide where you’re going to take your real estate business, get a quality logo created. This, along with your headshot, is going to be your calling card when you’re marketing yourself.

Step 3: Don’t get lost in the weeds marketing your Agency. Always make sure you are the focal point (unless your Agency has marketing guidelines that state otherwise). After all, you don’t really know if you’re going to be happy at the company where you currently are hanging your hat. Remember that if you ever decide to change companies, all of your marketing material, content, websites, etc., are going to have to reflect the change.

Think carefully about creating your own logo and branding package so that no matter what brokerage you’re with, your branding and marketing stays consistent. It takes a lot of your own money, time and effort to get people to recognise your brand; don’t regress by switching everything if you change brokerages.

Step 4: There’s nothing worse for a potential client than finding an agent’s website and discovering that the telephone number listed on the site has been disconnected. For one, it says you don’t care enough to take the time to update your websites. It also makes you look a tad bit unreliable. So when you decide to dedicate a phone line, be sure to decide whether you want to use your mobile for personal and work, a landline at your home or a whole new phone line just for business.

Step 5: Select a website name you want and keep it. That way, people will always be able to find you! Having one main website domain is optimal for your business. That, combined with a consistent phone number and your logo/headshot branding, will ensure that no matter where your content lives, it’s all consistent and uniform.

Follow these steps and you can begin to properly market yourself in a consistent and effective manner.