First, watch this video. Note that it’s produced by Keller Williams Realty, Inc., the corporation that actually franchises the name. This is the official position of the franchise, not of an individual agent or an individual office or franchisee. And KW says, the brand doesn’t matter.
I wrote pretty much the same thing on a blog comment once, and was promptly threatened with dire financial consequences. The omerta is strong in the real estate industry, paisan. But when one of the largest franchises in the industry says the same thing, I’m going to assume it’s safe to tag along without having people jump down my throat simply for discussing the topic.
In any event, I assume that the KWRI people produced this as a recruiting tool, to convince real estate agents to move from wherever they be to the local KW franchise. Most consumers wouldn’t give a hoot about this sort of inside-baseball stuff. Having said that, I have a couple of questions. [Ed: Yeah, what else is new, Rob?]
The incredibly smart, sometimes bearded, Gahlord Dewald has a post up on Inman (will go behind paywall in 24 hours) in which he counsels brokers and agents to “break free from cookie-cutter real estate” by paying more attention to categories of information and data:
Think your brand is different from your competition? Go look at the categories for real estate on your site then go look at the categories for real estate on your competition’s sites. See any difference?
This isn’t a case of tools not existing. Categories are an inherent function in every database-driven content management system out there.
But a quick tour of real estate sites will reveal that most of these systems have been set on autopilot to mimic the same categories that were used for real estate in — you guessed it — newspapers.
His recommendation is to rethink the categories for a real estate search website, perhaps to better “narrowcast” information to a specific segment of the audience. It’s an interesting approach, and one that I’ve recommended to others in a slightly different context via persona-based marketing, but… the post made me wonder about something.
