10 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Real Estate Branding Strategy

From targeting the wrong audience to inconsistent branding efforts, curating an effective real estate branding strategy has various challenges. Real estate developers and home builders commonly struggle with creating positive recognition with company branding, developing a connection with target audiences and increasing brand awareness.

A real estate branding strategy directly influences a home builder or real estate developer company’s reputation, which shouldn’t be taken lightly. Mistakes in brand strategies are costly both in price and consumer relationships, making it critical to avoid them when possible.

HubSpot explains that “branding can be the deciding factor for consumers when they make a purchase decision, [it] gives your business identity beyond its product or service, makes your business memorable, supports marketing and advertising efforts and creates a reputable, highly regarded workplace for employees.” Before embarking on a branding campaign, check out the top 10 common mistakes to avoid in your real estate branding, curated by Milesbrand:

1. Targeting the Wrong Buyer

Understanding different buyer personas when branding and marketing real estate helps to create the perfect real estate branding strategy. Intimately understanding what types of target audiences resonate with certain locations, homes, communities and lifestyles is key to practicing efficient branding strategies. 

Often real estate developers and home builders fail to relate to their buyers which tarnishes branding results and marketing efforts. When targeting the wrong buyer persona, the messaging behind the real estate branding strategy doesn’t quite resonate with the correct consumer audience.

HubSpot has many tools to help gather the right information to develop your personas:

• Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.
• Use form fields that capture important personal information when creating website forms.
• Discuss leads with your sales team to learn more about the ones they're interacting with the most.
• Conduct consumer interviews to learn more about what they like about the homes and community.

2. No Clear Positioning

Real estate branding strategies take an immense amount of effort and planning before beginning implementation. Real estate developers and home builders should be thoughtfully meticulous when developing a brand promise, name, logo and target audience and ensure that such components relate to one another. Jumping into creating a brand too quickly and cutting corners makes it impossible to build a cohesive brand that promotes a clear position in the industry.

Not only does clear positioning allow home builders and real estate developers to set a strong brand promise but it also provides an open path for such companies to deliver on the promise without any doubt. According to Brand Master Academy, these are the top advantages of a clear brand positioning:

• Laser Focus on Target Market
• Differentiation from the Competition
• Clarity on Brand Direction
• Enhanced Understanding of Customer Challenges
• Increased Memorability
• Brand Storytelling that Resonates
• Increased Relevance

3. Neglecting Your Initial Plan

While being adaptable is important, real estate developers and home builders should avoid straying too far from the initial real estate marketing plan and brand positioning. However, it is always a good idea to expect the unexpected and stay on top of the competition.

The best way to guarantee effective yet timeless branding is to set a confident strategy and stick to it! At Milesbrand, we have the tools and expertise to build a real estate branding strategy that no home builder or real estate developer will want to ditch by implementing the following efforts:

• Conduct a brand charrette.
• Differentiate your brand positioning with creative ideas that best express your brand promise.
• Communicate your brand plan to take you to market.

4. Lack of Storytelling

Many industries, including real estate, are full of emotional consumers and engaging storytelling is one of the best ways to effectively communicate a brand to buyers. Here are a few key marketing storytelling statistics from My Brand Post:

• 92% of consumers want brands to create ads that tell a story.
• Brands that use storytelling in their marketing outperform their competitors.

• 56% of consumers who feel an emotional connection to a brand will stay loyal to it.
• Storytelling can increase the perceived value of a product by up to 20 times.

“Storytelling is a powerful tool in marketing that can help brands create deeper connections with audiences, increase value of products or services and outperform competitors,” stated My Brand Post. “Brands that consistently use storytelling in their marketing see higher engagement, increased brand loyalty and greater success overall.”

5. Focusing on Features Instead of Benefits

While special features are a great asset to any home or community, many home builders and real estate developers make the mistake of placing too much focus on the features and not enough emphasis on the overall benefits that the buyer will receive. This can be communicated in several ways, including:

• Videos — Incorporate home how-tos, reviews and more that show why the development is the only choice that meets the buyer’s unique needs.
• Written content — Providing beneficial content centered around lifestyle can be great for digital channels. Written content can boost SEO while encouraging buyers to save, share and engage with brands on an emotional level.
• Showcase homes — Spotlight features of the homes while communicating how they specifically benefit the buyer.

6. Uninteresting Photography and Creative

Creative works, such as professional photography and visual content, allow real estate developers and home builders to showcase homes in a tangible way that words, phone calls and promises can’t. According to Square Lovin, visual content provides incredible advantages such as being absorbed quickly, storing longer in the brain, being an efficient teaser, helping to increase understanding, intriguing emotions and increasing credibility.

Investing in creative and photography to impress buyers can transform how a real estate development or home-building company is perceived. Utilizing original lifestyle photography is another way to set your community apart from competitors and truly convey the brand and lifestyle offered to future home buyers. The more aesthetically pleasing a brand is, the more appealing the brand is to buyers.

7. Adopting a Follow-the-Pack Mentality

What may work for one developer or home builder doesn’t necessarily mean that it works for every home builder or real estate developer in the industry. Consumers want to work with companies that are the best within a specific niche, stand out, resonate with homebuyers and provide a positive difference from competitors. 

Building a real estate branding strategy that connects with homebuyers and embraces the one-of-a-kind values that the company offers is crucial to creating brand voice. Real estate developers and home builders should use clear positioning, a distinctive brand promise and a strong value proposition to create a unique brand strategy that perfectly aligns with the company.

8. Lack of Brand Consistency and Graphic Continuity

Brand consistency is one of the most important aspects of building a successful company. From the colors and fonts to the logos and messaging, providing a cohesive marketing strategy across all branding elements and efforts supports the memorability and awareness of the company. A lack of brand consistency, graphic continuity and storytelling will dilute a brand, confuse customers and reduce customer loyalty.

MailChimp states that “when customers recognize a brand, they’re more likely to make purchases and commit to a company for the long term.” Brand consistency can help a company in several ways, including these few provided by MailChimp:

• Increase customer trust and loyalty – Good branding gives a company personality, making consumers want to interact with the business.
• Stand out from the competition – Brand consistency distinguishes companies from one another and provides an emotional reason to choose a specific brand.
• Build brand authority – A brand can become a leader in the industry by increasing authority through consistency.

9. Unfulfilling Brand Promise

A brand promise is how home builders and real estate developers gain and maintain trust with homebuyers. Providing a sense of commitment and dedication to the consumers, unfulfilled brand promises not only hurt the company’s reputation but also turn away future customers.

Real estate companies must offer a brand promise that idyllically aligns with the services and experience the developer or builder is providing. Whether it is the quality of the homes, the customer experience or the overall process, ensure that the brand promise gives existing and prospective customers a clear understanding of the intentions behind the company.

10. No Brand Ambassadors

Whether it is the internal team or an external agency, real estate developers and home builders need a team who understand and appreciate the vision, voice, messaging and intent behind the company brand. Many companies that lack brand ambassadors tend to be less successful than those that invest in the time, effort and money to ensure that each employee is an integral part of the branding strategy. 

Encourage real estate teams to engage with the company on social media, utilize the power of word of mouth and cultivate beneficial relationships with consumers and industry professionals.

Partner with Milesbrand to Avoid Common Mistakes in Real Estate Branding

At Milesbrand, we understand the importance of an effective real estate branding strategy. To avoid common mistakes, such as targeting the wrong audience, lacking in brand consistency and providing an unclear brand position, partner with our talented team of experts to ensure a branding strategy that perfectly reflects your brand promise, messaging and goals. Contact us today!