Sometimes I’m on the phone with Realtors describing their branding woes, and I hear them say things like, “I’m just not a marketer. I’m a people person and I care about the relationships,” when talking about their service.

It’s a noble yet tricky statement. What I notice is the minimization, even embarrassment at times?, around “marketing” as an agent hat to wear. 

That’s because “marketing,” as we already know, is a word that gets a bad rap from certain corners of the Internet, and is now associated with all kinds of people and practices. 

Because everyone wants to play. The dude selling Get-Rich-Quick $99-a-month PDFs that are exclusive to you — blah and blah-blah-blah — then slams extra charges on your credit card, tells his in-laws he’s a marketer. We don’t like The Dudes, so we say we aren’t marketers at heart. 

And yet we’re all marketing, for better or for worse. 

You can look askance at it, but if you ever went on a first date or tried to raise money for your charity, you are a marketer.

(Relevant side note: “Askance” is The New Favorite Caroline Word. RED ALERT RED ALERT!!! EXPECT TO HEAR THIS WORD AGAIN!!!)

Of course, Realtors are marketers of intangible things. Efficiency. Knowledge. Sparkling clean integrity in smoke-n-mirror sales spaces. They want to be taken seriously in what they do, as they should; they want to be associated with “the true marketing.”

Which is WHAT, oh wise Caroline?

I’m not that wise, so I’ll steal from God Himself, Seth Godin. He frames true marketing this way:

“I’m going to argue that there are two kinds of really good marketing.

“There is really good marketing that involves repeatedly executing on standardized objectives and strategies so that you maximize your return on investment. And I would say that McDonald’s 1960 to 1980 was an example of that kind of marketing. Disciplined, focused, not ego-driven, and it generated profit for its shareholders.

“The other kind of marketing, which I’m far more interested in, is I would say art, and that is transference of emotion.I would say art is the transfer of emotion from one human being to another, doing something new, doing it for the first time, and doing it in a way that touches other people. And that is the art that we applaud when we talk about Steve Jobs, right? 

“That is the art that Howard Schultz brought to the table when he took over a struggling chain of four coffee shops that didn’t sell espresso.

“You know, Starbucks is here because they’ve done the first kind of marketing, the grind-it-out marketing, McDonald’s style. But they couldn’t have done that if it weren’t for the brilliant marketing, the art of Howard Schultz caring so much about a third place and caring so much about Italian espresso.”

In other words, too many people still confuse marketing with advertising, because that’s what it was for 50 years. A “Mad Men”-style idea of running ads that would pay for themselves… a perpetual motion machine of slogans and jingles, and it all ran on the practice of interruption.

Which worked great on TV. 

Then the Internet shouldered its way to the front of the line and insisted that we all “build connection” instead. It replaced the practice of interruption with a demand that we work for it: Earn our attention so we trust you, or we don’t pay you.

If you’re a Realtor who is successful on the Internet, it’s for that reason and only that reason. If people read your emails, follow your IG posts with commitment, or subscribe to your blog, it’s because you’ve found a way to earn attention (“create content”) that turns into profit.

It’s low-key astonishing.

That some marketers are actually presenting services + ideas in a way that’s ethically and artistically remarkable — meaning they’ve found a way to help people love their stories. Or they’re genuinely entertaining us, or saving us pain and risk in some way. It’s the kind of “true marketing” Godin is talking about.

And what we all want to inch closer to, year after year, within our own companies, as we try to frame our money-making efforts around something meaningful.

Most of the time, that means telling a story people aren’t expecting from your product or service.

I think about Blake, founder of TOMS shoes. Blake told the story we didn’t expect: 

“Hey, if you buy this pair of shoes, you’ll be part of a hip group in your community. Plus you’ll have a story you can share with everyone — that an identical pair of shoes went to someone who has none.” 

The story is not about the fabric or the workmanship, but about what your act of buying accomplished. You tell that story year after year after year, and you’ll end up selling millions of shoes.

Which is really shatteringly different from saying, “I can prove my shoe is better than your shoe. If you don’t buy it, you’re an idiot.”

What about a real estate example?

I once worked with an NYC Realtor who wanted to leverage her big-city hot spot connections to widen her audience. This Realtor loved to cook and in a past life, she’d worked as a chef. She started doing pop-up events with cooking classes, then spun that off into a cooking blog and mini course. 

It was more than a Realtor “side hustle.” This woman understood that food is emotional and an identity that defines how people eat and live. She leveraged the personal nature of the cooking and eating experience to market her own personality, and by extension, her work. The concept in application became an automatic lead generator for her real estate business, and her social media following doubled in her first quarter as well.

Brilliant.

Another example would be a Realtor friend of mine from back in Texas, who — already a talented and personal writer on her blog — once started an email series to her audience re: what it’s like to build a business on the back of mental illness. 

She’d been a longtime sufferer of depression and anxiety, and wanted to start a conversation about how, for entrepreneurs, mental illness can be both a roadblock AND an unlikely tool for growth.

She even interviewed some of her own clients who were friends of hers, and willing to share. Her series took off. The vulnerable, compassionate Q&A nature of the series — featuring honest individuals struggling through the ebbs and flows of emotional business journeys — struck a chord with hundreds of people in her audience, and suddenly her “voice” as a fellow human, not just a Realtor, became a part of their everyday.

How can you make this all work for you?

If you want to fall back in love with being a marketer – in the true sense – I’d encourage you to find inspiration by scanning your environment for examples of brands you love, either real estate-related or not, who are doing the emotional connection thing well.

Ask yourself: Why do I feel so personally connected to this brand? What invitations of theirs have created this feeling in me? How can I use my own voice similarly?

Don’t replicate, and also, there’s nothing new under the sun. Everyone is iterating on each other. We’re all just doing it our own way. 

How can you become more intricately involved in the lives of your audience? 

How can you invite them into the narrative of something personal to you?

Sometimes, MANY times, that means amplifying the voices of other people, not just your own. For instance, interview-style content series can be wildly effective. 

Ever thought about running a social media + email content campaign that is strictly a series Q&A, feature-style chats with local business owners? Or, could you “interview” a specific group of people who also intersect with you in a specific way, so it’s relevant.

That’s free, organic, personal. Remember, too, that you can “provide value” in real estate that translates to remarkable marketing through your blog, newsletter, social media, all of it, via actions as simple as:

• Making me laugh
• Getting me excited about a concept
• Telling me something random, but useful or relevant, that I just didn’t know before
• Making me crave something
• Inspiring me to do something better
• Making me feel like I’m Not The Only One
• Making me feel nostalgic
• Making me feel like an insider
• Recommending a place, book, or movie that should be my new favorite
• Annoying the heck out of me (honestly, yes, because the goal is either to attract OR repel, right? Either one puts you front and center)

We make things too complicated. You do it, I do it. 

We forget that the best brands with enviable marketing – from Oatley to Pizza Hut, Nike to Red Bull – aren’t putting pressure on themselves to “solve audience problems.” Instead they’re complimenting our choices. Helping us to relax. Inviting us to escape reality. They’re sparking joy and carving out white space for curiosity and relief in our anxious daily lives.

First they got our attention, then they earned our trust.

Now of course, if / as you attempt to market the same worthy way in real estate, you’ll get impatient. We often forget that there’s a cost to earning something, like the trust and attention of others who might pay to work with us.

You’ll feel the pressure to stop earning trustability, and start taking…include a few more links, make some bold claims, sell some ads.

But the more patient you are in your remarkable content, the more generous you become as a brand — the more your market authority is worth.

“True marketing” is about truth telling and empathy. Showing up and sharing a clear point of view.

Really, it’s about trying, over and over again. All of us can try. 

You’ll have a lot of misses, same as me, but the great brands have shown us that market authority is about the consistency of trying.

Take some deep breaths and stay patient in the connection economy process of slow but honest growth. 

Soon enough you’ll feel the reassuring wind at your back, and get exactly where you want to go, if you refuse to compromise on the kind of brand stories you tell along the way.

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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