The brand is a far more abstract, albeit simple concept, and I’m here to teach you how to approach this concept, so that your title agency can actually be more coherent, when in the public space.

People vs Companies

If we draw a parallel between a company and a person, you may be better able to grasp the notion of branding and why you would need it. 

Think about someone you know that dresses radically different every single day and talks about completely different things every single day. Then, think about someone who, for the past 15 years has been looking fairly the same and has been talking about fairly the same things. Out of these two people, and, considering the latter is a very likable person, whom would you trust to deliver on their promises? Of course it’s the latter. As for the former, you’d think that person is “all over the place”.

This is the exact same for your title agency. In short, think of brand as you agency’s persona. The character, out of which all behavior stems.

Get behind a core value for your brand

Since character comes from something you truly believe in, you have to a little bit of introspection and really figure out that core value or set of values, you and your agency employees really believe in and identify with.

So, for the sake of practicality let’s take a practical example and carry it forward throughout the article.

Let’s say we are a small team of very laid back, trustworthy, warm people and we’re starting a small cozy office where we’re going to do real estate closings. Great!

Now, we (the team) all believe in taking it easy, being relaxed, building very strong and almost intimate relationships with our Realtors and Lenders, but at the same time being thorough and dependable. This will be our core value, and for the sake of having a better depiction of this set of values, we’ll come up with a tagline that defines it. Let’s say the tagline is: “Peace of mind. From the heart.”

Let’s go implementing this

Once this core concept is crystalized, you’re successfully completed the most important stage, and now it’s time to implement this concept, consistently, all throughout your interaction with the outside world, a.k.a. your “touch points”.

Now, let’s imagine we don’t even have a company name yet, neither do we have a logo. So let’s start with that. First, the name. Well, since it’s all about “peace of mind, from the heart”, a good name for the title agency would be “Serenity Title, Inc.” or “Tender Title & Settlement, LLC”. We’ll pick “Tender Title” because it’s an alliteration (more on that later).

We’ll design a logo that has nice wavy, laid back, smile-like lines, but we’ll use blue as a color that symbolizes trust and instills the feeling of reliability.

Next, we’ll work with an interior designer so make sure our offices have nice comfortable sofas, the kind of familiar setting, where relaxed, strong and familiar relationships form. We’ll obviously have an awesome italian expresso machine right in the lobby.

We’ll have our employees’ job titles customized so that instead of “Title Agent”, we’ll call them “Master Peace of Mind Provider” (don’t laugh – it’s these kinds of things that matter).

The website will feature images of relaxed, smiling professionals in a plant filled office, with a nice brown leather sofa. Or, a pillow.

And on and on and on. The implementation of the core concept needs to find it’s way, in a creative manner, to every single point where you interact with your customers, partners, but also inside your organization, because it has to be something everyone in your agency needs to believe and identify with.

One more example, this time a real one. And by the way. We have many title agencies that do this absolutely perfectly and they know who they are. However, we can’t name names here, so we’ll actually take TitleCapture as a real example.

We at TitleCapture are tech nerds who have a very keen eye for aesthetics. We believe that title agencies can gain a competitive edge by using technology that is ridiculously easy to use, as well as stunningly beautiful to help them with their marketing. This is us.

Therefore everything, from our name that implies “capturing” new deals, to how our product looks like, stems from this belief. As long as we’re authentic and consistent, we’ll remain the industry leader… heh.

So now think about your agency. Do you have your unique brand driver? Do you have that persona, that image of your title agency, that you want to start expressing consistently? If so, good luck and get to work.