Last week I had a chat with a Realtor + client, M, from Washington. She wanted advice around messaging and more specifically, a tagline for her team.

I’ve written about taglines before. It’s filed in the folder, “Marketing Things Realtors Needlessly Agonize Over.”

As I talked through things with M, what emerged was the idea of moderating expectations.

I have a lot of goals in my personal life, but I like to keep those goals separate from my business life.

Because the more overlap there is between my personal + business life, the more unrealistic my expectations of the business become.

It’s nice think I’m changing the world directly or in how I help clients change it, but really…my expectations are moderated.

It’s enough for me to arrange things so my studio provides honest work for honest fees.

So while lots of you are in low-key distress over how to formulate the right purpose-driven business tagline, I’m just wondering —

Why are we trying to find SO much meaning in our work?

Some folks are out there with remarkable platforms helping clients fund cancer research. But the rest of us are doing our jobs.

We’re helping people make better branding decisions around people, visuals and positioning. (Oh hey, it’s me.)

We’re doing real estate. (Oh hey, it’s you.)

That’s still remarkable.

I do love it if you can tie your real estate company back to a specific “purpose” that will resonate with your people, too. Those goals are worthy and help us all understand why you go back on Monday and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

But it really doesn’t have to be more than that.

Said simply:

I’m a huge believer in being purpose-driven, but that’s not positioning.

That’s what I fear is being misunderstood in the small business marketplace. (Real estate + beyond.)

So many founders are squirming over the commercialization of “stuff.” Realtors fear being disposable, of not being taken seriously in what they do — and they want to leave a mark on the world through their work.

Social responsibility is a worthy goal, but your buyers and sellers primarily care about how good you are at what you’ve been hired to do. Not necessarily your political beliefs or social outlooks.

Your clients deserve really good expertise.

If your entire positioning is driven primarily by a sense of affiliation, rather than expertise, that’s not a solid argument for positioning.

Purpose-led marketing feels great, and there is a place for it.

But I would rather not see you lead with that.

Lead with your expertise.

The alignment around purpose should, I think, be a secondary differentiator.

Trust your clients to make the right logical decisions around the purposes your business stands for, but encourage them to choose you for the expertise they deserve from you, first and foremost.

Let your expertise to fulfill the mission; if your clients happen to align with your affinities along the way, great.

So if you’re like Realtor M and the tagline convo is keeping you up at night, or you’re stuck on website messaging or overall framing around what you do….

Maybe ease up the purpose-driven marketing bit a tad.

Just do good work.

Think about how you can move wisely around the world outside of work.

Good real estate work is noble on its own — it doesn’t need to be more than that.

.

P.S – What’s BLUEPRINT, again? 

We’re a gaggle of designers, writers, and creatives on a mission to change the branding narrative in real estate.

We offer a signature branding service and the industry’s most elegant and high-converting digital products to help modern, stylish Realtors do three things:

➝ Communicate their worth;

➝ Become the obvious choice;

➝ Tell the right stories to stand out + SELL more.

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