Standing out from your competitors in real estate is about sending a powerful message about what you bring to the table. But before you start rewriting your company slogan, print mailers, or website copy, it’s crucial that get your internal messaging right first. Without a clear, concise description of your target market and value, it’s nearly impossible to keep your brand consistent across your website and marketing collateral—and an inconsistent brand is an ineffective one.
To create this internal messaging, The best marketing teams draft a brand positioning statement for their businesses to use as a guidepost in all future marketing efforts. While many companies pay a PR firm or marketing consultant thousands of dollars to help them construct a brand positioning statement, we’re here to help walk you through the exercise.
Step 1: Brand Positioning Exercise Brainstorm
The first part of the brand positioning exercise is designed to get your initial ideas on paper. To start, answer each of the following five questions individually by completing each of the sections below. You can answer with a single sentence, or add multiple bullet points for each section. The trick is to get everything down on paper first, then consolidate afterwards.
FOR: Who is your target customer?
Get specific here. “Buyers and sellers” is too broad an answer to be useful. Examples:
- First-time homebuyers
- Retirees who are downsizing
WHO: What does your target customer want?
What’s the opportunity or need in front of your target customer? What do they care about? What are they trying to achieve? What can you help with? Examples:
- Are looking for the perfect starter home
- Want to sell their home fast
IS: What can you offer your target customer?
What are you offering or selling to your target customer? Examples:
- Highest reviewed agent in Greater Boston
- Most home sales in Boston for the past three years
THAT: What is unique about your offer?
What benefit is your target customer realizing? What value are you or your team providing that makes you different from other, similar companies?
- local expertise
- thirty years of home selling experience
BECAUSE: Why does your offer matter?
Why is the benefit that you’re delivering to your target customers important? Why should they care? Examples:
- Homeowners want to sell their houses as fast as possible
- Buying a home is one of the biggest decisions anyone can make
Your brand positioning statement should focus on what you can deliver in the short to medium term. Your 20-year vision to expand across state lines or franchise your business is great, but it won’t help you message your current brand. Finally, for the sake of the exercise, forget about your shortcomings or weaknesses and focus instead on how you want your market to perceive your brand.
Step 2: Write Your Brand Positioning Statement
Now that you’ve gotten all of your ideas on paper, take a shot at forming a complete statement by pulling your responses together and inserting them into the template below. Think of it as a “branding Madlibs.”
Your “Madlibs” probably won’t make much sense to start. That’s OK! Once you have all the pieces, you’ll want to spend some time editing your wording and reorganizing your statement into something more coherent. The end result should be clear, concise, and differentiated. Here is an example of what a brand positioning statement might look like for a Boston-based brokerage:
“Wolf Realty specializes in serving first-time homebuyers (FOR) who are in search of the perfect starter home in the Greater Boston Area (WHO). Ranked the #1 brokerage by North Shore Gazette (IS), Wolf Realty’s team has the local expertise to help you find your dream home in your ideal neighborhood (THAT) because we know the right neighborhood is what makes a house a home (BECAUSE).”
After you draft your brand positioning statement, run it by your close friends and family for their reactions. We also recommend sharing your brand positioning statement with former clients to see if the messaging resonates. Once you have a brand positioning statement that passes this sniff test, you’ll have what you need to start developing messaging for your website and marketing collateral.
Remember: your brand positioning statement has no value unless you actively use it to inform your messaging. Each time you or your team create something prospect- or client-facing, read it against your brand positioning statement. Does the new copy embody what you have defined as your brand? Be honest. It’s critical that you stay on message so that when your ideal client finds you, the value of your offer stands out to them.
Have any questions about how to construct your own brand positioning statement? Comment below, and we’ll be sure to give you our two cents.
