Build Your Brand to Build Your Business

Your brand is the centerpiece of all your marketing efforts as a mortgage professional. To one degree or another this has probably always been true, but in the modern age of online marketing, it’s never been truer than it is right now. Your brand captures who you are, what you do, and what you stand for… helping prospects get a sense of what they can expect from you, and why they should trust you. A strong-enough brand can both aid and support business growth. The better your brand, the more visibility you’ll have—and as your business grows, that brand will be the voice for your services across multiple platforms. It doesn’t matter what size your business is at this moment, investing in strengthening your brand is always important, and will always offer rewards. Here are a few things to consider if you want to build your brand to build your business:

Set Yourself Apart

A successful brand has to be recognizable. If yours looks exactly like every other loan officer in town, prospects won’t be compelled to choose you to represent them. This doesn't mean you need to be flashy or jump on all the latest trends, it just means that you need to highlight what makes you unique. It may be wise to begin on a conceptual level: What sets you apart? Do you have a niche? Which values are most important to you? What kind of service do you deliver? After you’ve answered those questions, then it can move to a more visual level. Ideally, your brand will take these bigger ideas and translate them into the content you create and share, your graphics, and even the color scheme you choose. The whole point is to communicate—clearly and concisely—the things that define you and the things that make you different.

Make Sure Your Brand is Cohesive

Equally as important as standing out from the crowd, making sure your brand is cohesive is also vital. It’s great if your website gets traffic, but if it doesn’t have the same branding as your Twitter account, Facebook business page, or even your business cards, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to strengthen your brand and make it instantly recognizable. When your audience encounters your brand in multiple places and knows immediately that it’s your brand, they start to develop a sense of familiarity with it—and you. In many cases you may have never met them in person, but this brand-familiarity works to build a foundational level of trust before your first meeting. Think about all the places where someone could encounter your brand—your website, social-media profiles, printed materials, in person—and ensure that they’re all working together to convey the same image and the same message.

Are You Living Your Brand?

It’s common to think about our brand as how we’re represented online or in print materials. These iterations are important, of course, but they aren’t the only places where your message and brand can be strengthened. You are an equally important messenger. Living your brand means living up to all the things your brand represents. From the type of service you pledge to deliver, to the values you claim are important—if you’re not personally delivering on the promises your brand suggests, you’ll be at risk of tarnishing your brand and losing consumer trust.

Continue to Expand

Your brand has the power to reach more people than you can as an individual—and that’s where so much of its power lies. You want to design and build a strong, cohesive brand, and then you want to continue working to expand it. This means making it easy for people to engage with it. Make your website user-friendly and interactive, with clear calls to action. Keeping a regular blog, for example, can help keep visitors interested and coming back. Each time they read a particularly useful article, they may forward it to a friend, and then another person is being introduced to your brand, and so on. The same is true for social media. By staying active on social media and connecting with more people, you’re being proactive with expanding your presence.

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Your brand is an invaluable tool for growth. Whether you’re in the beginning stages of building your brand and just getting it out into the world, or you’re looking for ways to refine and improve your existing brand, these ideas will help to maximize your efforts.

If you’d like to talk more about any of these ideas, or if there’s another issue I can be of assistance with, please reach out. I’m always happy to block off some time to connect.