Realtors have a hundred and one problems every day, but as company founders, they often seem to forget that positioning is one of them.

Possibly their biggest one.

And after 8+ years as a creative devoted to the real estate space (that’s a lot of emails / texts / coffee chats / phone calls with Realtors, and ONLY Realtors; God help me, I need a hobby), I’m still formulating my POV on “real estate positioning.” Lots of clarity is still elusive for a topic this big.

Today I’m going to throw out some positioning nuggets and hope you’ll catch them, then go clarify more + further for yourself.

Lots of agents are feeling the positioning burn now amidst our the current market shakes n’ tremors —because nothing makes you stop and consider your stance more than when things slow down. That’s when you decide to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall, and think about a disciplined brand presence + marketing plan instead. 

Why do agents struggle so much with positioning?

Because of a skewed view of marketing, for one thing.

Many Realtors are proud to proclaim, “We don’t need to market much” or “We’re XYZ% referral-based”… as if consistent, purposeful marketing is for little agent people with poor pipelines.

Of course that’s faulty. Smart people market all the time, no matter how busy they are. Smart marketing is about control — what KIND of business you have, represented by a distinct stake you’ve claimed in your space — rather than how much business you have.

So why don’t more agents own + execute more disciplined marketing plans?

The public reason is because they’re too busy.

The real reason is because they aren’t confident or focused — and because a true marketing plan forces positioning.

Now we won’t admit to such things publicly, but if you’re still doing real estate with shabby positioning — with undifferentiated positioning — it’s likely due to one of these reasons in your head:

“It’s too EARLY to position myself.” You’re a newer real estate company lacking clarity. You understand the role of tighter positioning in a cut-throat sales, but you’re still learning and lab-testing. It feels “too early to settle” on one positioning path.

“It’s too BORING to position myself more narrowly.” You’re an agent / team who’s been around for a while, but you believe you’re better at real estate because you work with all types of clients presenting with all types of challenges. You crave variety on a personal level, and more deeply, you’re afraid you’ll lose audience interest if you don’t keep showing how you conquer a wide spectrum of challenge on the buy/sell side.

“It’s too LIMITING to position myself tightly.” If you’re an agent who struggles to keep your pipeline filled, being choosier with your messaging registers as risk. You want to keep all “ideal client” options open.

Any/all of the above ways of thinking about running a real estate business (and, okay, ANY business) translate to being another Bored Generalist Realtor…someone our world decidedly does not need more of.

Still, Bored Generalist Realtors look around and find excuses to stay brand-bored, generalist, and undifferentiated:

“I mean, I’m still pretty busy.” 

“Other agents are in the same boat, floating on the sea of sameness. We can’t all be wrong.”

“Let’s just keep our fingers crossed and ride out the next economic wave. We’ve gotten this far with flatting referral work! If we weren’t this good inherently, we wouldn’t need a marketing plan like those other agents who aren’t popular or connected as we are.”

The problem with ALL of that — with staying undifferentiated — is that it’s the equivalent of heading to a big party with six different outfits of wildly different styles packed in your car.

You pull over a block before you arrive and peek into the host’s backyard to see what everyone is else is wearing.

You rifle through outfits, put on the one that most closely matches what your prospects want to see and hear, then walk into the party, desperately hoping the other guests will see themselves in your choices.

Instead, I’m asking you to choose one outfit based on your own personality and goals. Do your pre-party research — but stop peeking into backyards. Shoot your own target before you even walk through the door.

Because effective marketing requires a TARGET, followed by a message that sufficiently resonates to foster a convo between two willing parties.

You need BOTH forces at work in unified tandem, all the time. Your positioning with your marketing; your marketing with your positioning.

What you wear to the party is your brand positioning (visuals + messaging). 

How you enter and engage the party is your marketing (collateral + campaigns).

Realtors love outfit-switching their positioning in this business, partly due to a personality profile most agents possess — one of real energetic entrepreneurial curiosity, and an ability to find opportunity everywhere.

Put these great traits together, though, and you can easily be pulled offroad to explore all kinds of brand styles / supposedly lucrative marketing endeavors. The dopamine rush of exploring new things makes you feel alive, but I’ll tell you what just won’t work long-term…getting continually distracted by your curiosity and your conquering attitude.

Outfit-switching before every party. That kind of personality exploration is great on its own time, but feels like a lousy way to make a living.

As always, this is a call to dig deeper and deeper and deeper. The unlimited curiosity of your personality profile, if overused, could be your greatest weakness, if it means you’ve settled into the professional average…

…if you’ve become another Boring Realtor Generalist who simply knows how to look cool in different spaces.

Instead, you want to dig deeper to unearth the good stuff, and so become less interchangeable with your peers. 

Then your message radically shifts. Then you’ve told your brand what one outfit it wears, and the choice stays consistent. Then over time, people can spot your colors + cut a mile away.

And this is how your stance, your differentiated stance, will then speak to the market:

“I’m choosy. I have standards. I’m confident. I’m not needy.”

“I care enough about my target clients to go deeper as a specialist in what they specifically need. I work with lots of people, but I REALLY understand this and this specific vertical within real estate, too.”

“I’m not just better at Realtoring about; I have expertise and this is how I show it.”

Remember that ultimately you run a knowledge-based business, not a service-based one. In a world where there’s already so much knowledge to be had, fast and free — marketing consistently, and from a well-differentiated position of strength, is the most important thing you can do at your company.

So dig deeper to communicate with purpose. 

And when you start to finally articulate your difference, don’t panic-trash all that in downturn seasons. Don’t reinvent what is working well.

Instead, keep sharpening the messaging knife around the best things you do for the same best, hungry clients who are asking for your insights, your difference, and your boldest brand choices.

If the right choice is obvious, they’ll happily make it.

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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