How to Choose the Right Brand for You
5 April 2024
Vanessa Jeans
Founder of Halo Selection
After working for over a decade in real estate franchising for two of Australia’s largest franchise groups, I’ve developed valuable insight into the depth of support that a brand can offer a business. At Halo Selection, we’re all about solutions – providing a professional, tailored service to help guide agents or business owners through different business opportunities. One key aspect of this is branding.
Whether you’re an experienced agent looking to start your own business or an existing director considering a rebrand, there are many options available. The franchising model has evolved drastically over the past decade. Navigating through the choices can be challenging, especially whilst continuing to do what you do best: Real estate! The thing is, franchising isn’t a one-size-fits all option. Over time, I realised there needed to be a way to help align the right people with the right product, this led to the creation of Halo Selection.
By definition, a brand’s visual assets have the power to uniquely and immediately identify an individual, product or organisation. The tone of a real estate brand can impact whether or not the business has the ability to build rapport and trust with clients, employees and the community. The brand can also give you the toolkit, training, and technology to elevate your business with ease. When taking a step towards business ownership, aligning with the right brand, with the right values and support system can be a make or break decision.
When you think about big brands, it’s easy to categorise luxury brands from budget brands when you compare other industries. Compare fast food to five-star restaurants for instance. However when you do this comparison in the real estate industry, it’s not so simple. But why not?
Real estate franchising is far more complex. The logo and brand that appears on your website, for example, can instantly attract or deter customers. For consumers, it could come down to simply an experience they had with the same franchise name in a different area, that isn’t associated with you.
In very few industries is the customer experience level so personal and dependent on individual relationship, why have a brand at all when it can potentially do more harm than good?
This is when your understanding of the brand or value offering becomes crucial. What more do you get when joining a real estate franchise? Does the training and staff support provide enough depth to help you retain good people? Are there adequate reward and recognition programs to push you to the next level? Is the technology changing enough to keep you at the front of the game, but not too fast that you can’t fully understand how to use it to the best of its ability? Are you spending too much time creating your own marketing designs or does the provided material best reflect your needs? The list goes on and on, but these questions can be challenging to answer and compare from brand to brand without hands-on experience. So, if you can’t easily compare what’s behind the brand, how do you decide what is the best fit for you?
My advice is to always get to know the decision makers and understand how they can influence change in your business. When the right people are in control, the business can blossom and have a positive impact. The right brand partnership can take your business to the next level – however the choice should not be made lightly.
So ask yourself, are you a proud representative of your brand? Do you wear your logo as a badge of honour? If not, why? Is there maybe a better fit for you?
For my clients, it always goes back to their goals. If a business owner has specific growth ambitions, it’s important to make sure ambitions aren’t roadblocked by aligning with a particular brand. This could mean partnering with a brand that provides recruitment support and ongoing recognition for their team to allow for the best possible retention. This could also mean selecting a brand with the opportunity to further expand their market share footprint. Each individual will view success differently, therefore each solution needs to be specifically tailored.
If you’re not aligned with the right brand, it can have a large impact on you and your career. Often the reason clients are referred to me is a reflection of these consequences. A client may have selected a brand partnership because they were simply presented with an opportunity or they believed it was the only available option to them at the time. Fast forward a few years and their business is stagnant and they find themselves unable to grow or worse, are in decline. This is when the realisation hits that their brand alignment was perhaps mismatched. If you are fighting against the model, rather than utilising it, there is a problem. The question is, would your business be better positioned if you lean into the service offering or could you find a better fit?
Want to know what else good brands are doing? Check out our article here.
