This is a guest post from an interview with Legion member Eric Braun AKA @NotYourAverageLender on Instagram.
Value proposition refers to the value a company promises to deliver to customers should they choose to buy their product. A value proposition is part of a company’s overall marketing strategy.
Investopedia
When we talk about building a brand, we’ve all heard the topic of becoming a celebrity in your marketplace, positioning yourself as a celebrity. And I think it comes from a key principle that in any business that transcends industries in attention is extremely important.
Attention is everything. If you have a restaurant that has the best food in the world, but you’re the only one that knows about it, you’re going to fail as a restaurant.
Also, If you’re a loan officer that has an insanely valuable thing that you bring to the industry, the way you service clients, the way you build Realtor relationships. Having value to add is the only way you’re going to be successful.
Forget that. If you don’t have the attention, you’re not going to be successful. So I said to myself, “alright, if I want to serve the most people, I have to be where most people are, and that is social media.”
How do we gain attention branding?
Right now the question is, how do we make a good brand? So that’s the first thing I’m going to touch on today.
Some of the accomplishments that I’ve been able to have in my business from implementing these strategies include being voted top 40 under 40 in the country most influential mortgage professionals. Like Nick mentioned, my IG following is pretty decent. I’ve been a speaker at multiple events across the country.
I’m talking Boston, Miami with Nick, which was an amazing time, events here in Long Island and then we also started the brewery event, which our last event had I think 140 people attended.
I think Rene Rodriguez said it in an event, who is incredible. I’ve actually attended some of his masterminds and I left a changed person. You can’t go to one of his events and come out the same. I went to one of his events and had an incredible experience. But anyway, he said, “The brand that you build right now will follow you for many, many years.” And I could not agree more. Now is a perfect time.
Like I was just mentioning, most people are on social media now more than ever. Everybody’s constantly looking. So if you’re building a brand and putting out content during this time, it’s only going to help you.
I don’t care if you can’t do a loan below a 700 credit score and below a 20% down payment, if you’re putting out content right now, maybe not. Maybe don’t talk about that, but if you’re putting out content right now, that’s valuable, you’re going to win.
So how do we build the brand?
I think the best definition of brand that I’ve ever heard was Jeff Bezos. And he said,
“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”
Jeff Bezos
You already have a brand. I want to be very, very clear, you already have a brand.
You have to ask yourself now that you’re becoming conscious of it, which is one of the other principles that I want you guys to take away from this, is you have to be conscious about your message and the content you’re putting out there and who you are as a person, because that is your brand. And, as soon as you’re conscious of it, you can start to tweak it in ways where you’re going to see more results, but you have to be conscious that you already have a brand.
Now you have to ask yourself, “what is that brand?” Right, “what brand do you have right now?” And “what brand do you want to have and how can you bridge the gap?”
Well, like I said, I think the best brands start with some deep soul searching.
So ask yourself those questions…
“Who are you?”
“What do you love?”
“What’s your mission statement?”
So for me, I love people. And my mission statement is to remove average from real estate, by adding value to consumers and real estate professionals. Every brand has a mission statement, and it doesn’t have to be that long thing that I just said.
Nike – “Just Do It”.
Allstate – “You’re In Good Hands”
So there’s the brand and then the mission statement, make sure you can nail down both and make sure it’s authentic to you. Now after you build your brand, your mission statement, kind of piggybacks on your value proposition.
Right? So my value proposition, and this is a thing, all of these things, one without the other don’t equal the best result. You have to have all of them. You can have attention, but no value proposition. Also, you can have a value proposition with no attention. They both have to be present. So our value proposition or my value proposition, And before you identify your value proposition, you have to identify your target audience.
I want you guys to change your mindset on the way you market on social media. This was one of the biggest paradigm shifts that I had that has allowed me to see success in my business using social media and the strategies that I’m going to go over shortly.
I’m not on social media to get borrowers or to get customers, I’m on social media to get referral partners. This is because the odds of a random person finding me on Instagram, even with my following, yes, it has happened. But it’s usually through somebody that referred over, which was going to happen anyway, but the odds of somebody coming to your Facebook profile, friending you and saying, Hey, can I get a mortgage are very, very slim unless you’re doing some sort of paid advertising.
So I want you guys to market to real estate agents.
Need help marketing your mortgage business and attracting better referral partners? Consider applying to join The Legion of Loan Officers at https://legionofloanofficers.com/apply.