Elizabeth Averyanova the founder of Studio Classica talks about her background and how she got into brand management. Elizabeth also discusses talks about what branding is and what’s the role of the brand strategist. Last, Elizabeth discusses authenticity and picture-perfect presentation and also social media presentation and the power of videos.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Elizabeth Averyanova can be reached at elizabeth@elizabethaveryanova.com.
Please follow Elizabeth on Instagram here.
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
Have you ever wanted to explore branding or improve your branding for your real estate business? We’re going to talk about that today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with brand expert or branding expert I should say Elizabeth Avery a nova, who’s going to talk all about real estate broker or realtor branding, which is something that we hear a lot we have hundreds and hundreds of agents in our firm. And that is really one of the biggest questions we get is How do I brand myself better digitally. So via social or in print, and in lots of different ways. So we’re going to talk about that. But before we get to Elizabeth, just a couple of quick reminders, please tell a friend about this show. Think of one other real estate agent maybe that needs help with their branding, and send them a link to our website if they’re not a podcast person, which they can stream all of our episodes right from a browser, which is keeping it real pod.com Is our website or they could just pull up any podcast app and do a search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button and let that last thing please leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. We read every single comment. And we really want to keep getting better, right? We want to keep meeting your needs. And we need to know what your needs are. So let us know what you can do right from whatever app store you might have. Or whatever podcast directory system you might be using. So thank you for all that but enough for me. Let’s get to our main event our interview with Elizabeth Avery ANOVA.
Okay today on the show we have Elizabeth a very Nova from Studio Classica. Now let me tell you more about Elizabeth. Now Elizabeth is a brand strategist, also a digital marketing expert, a web and architectural designer. And she’s also the founder of studio Classica. Elizabeth helps purpose driven entrepreneurs and industry leaders scale their online businesses with an impactful beautiful and df y design so that they can attract dream clients elevate their online presence and book out their offers with while creating a lasting impact in the world. She has fully transformed the online presence of many real estate professionals and experts. So Elizabeth knows what it takes to stand out, attract people who want to work with you, and close more real estate transactions. Elizabeth, welcome to the show all the way from Latvia.
Elizabeth Averyanova 4:02
Thank you so much, DJ, I’m excited to talk today.
D.J. Paris 4:05
I am a marketing person at heart. And I am going to do my best to not take over this conversation because this is your episode. But I live eat and breathe marketing. My sister is a brand manager or a CMO but started off as in brand management. So this is my wheelhouse. I don’t know as much as you but I am super passionate about this. And I’m so excited to have you because I think this is a conversation that Realtors oftentimes struggle with trying to figure out what is my brand? How do I present that to my audience? How do I demonstrate who I am on social on my website, in my print advertising, you know, and so we want to have those conversations with you because this is what you do. So let’s I would love Let’s start with your background talk. Tell us a little bit about how you got into brand management.
Elizabeth Averyanova 5:05
Yeah, perfect. So, so I’m a designer, like pretty much my whole life. And actually, my background is in architecture. And from, you know, from my education in in those fields, I, you know, I started my own design business 10 years ago, where we were serving in the architecture, space and design space, and really focusing on online services and reaching people pretty much around the world, through the internet, which is amazing. And in the past two years, I really decided to focus in on the branding side of it and the marketing side of it, because I also like you, like, I love marketing, and I love figuring out online business things and, you know, tying it together to really help people connect with their ideal client and help them grow their business to a whole new level. And so that’s how I got into branding through the way of wanting to really help people who are coaches in the space or who are industry leaders who are like, you know, really changing the game in their field in their niche and real estate came about because I have a brief foray into real estate. It was my only corporate job. And it was a pretty short experience, but really amazing, which is I actually was a was a research and advisory assistant at Colliers International. I get now it was like, wow, that’s really big deal.
D.J. Paris 6:26
It is a big deal.
Elizabeth Averyanova 6:26
At the time, I was just kind of it was 10 years ago, I was a lot younger, and I was just, you know, not quite, I don’t even know how it how it came about how I got accepted to this sort of position. But I, the catch here is I was in an international office. And, you know, in Riga, Latvia, and everyone only spoke Russian and Latvian languages. I’m a native English speaker, and I didn’t speak those languages. And it was a whole different experience. But that was my first initial like, delve into real estate. And I’m really excited. Now I get to tie all these past experiences together, to you know, really focusing on a big need a big area of our niche now is helping Realtors with their branding.
D.J. Paris 7:15
Yeah, I think it’s something that we we hear a lot from our listeners, which is, hey, I, I want to really, really revamp my brand, or figure out what my brand is. And then, you know, everyone, I think always wants to start on the design with the design. So they’ll say, Oh, I like this look. But I’m curious, when you start to work with a client, like a realtor, for example, or a team, a real estate team? How do you begin to sort of help them discover their brand? And what that sort of visual aesthetic might might look like?
Elizabeth Averyanova 7:57
Hmm, yeah, so I honestly, I’m kind of contacted every single week, pretty much by a real estate agent, who’s like, I need help with branding. But you know, they’re very overwhelmed. They’re very confused, they don’t really know where to start. And the biggest thing I see is that they’re afraid to really dive into what does it mean to figure out your brand name. And you know, so I have a lot of these conversations, but a lot of people are afraid to take that step forward of figuring it out. The very when I start with clients, the first thing I really need to know are what are your goals as a real estate agent or broker or realtor? What are your goals in the next six months in the next year, and in the next five years, the clients when we see have the most success are the ones who are very clear about their goals, and creating those smart, actionable, measurable goals.
D.J. Paris 8:47
So if somebody’s goal is I want to attract more home owners that want to sell, you know, sell property, right. So I want I want more homeowners to reach out to me, you know, to to, you know, sell my property. So is that a specific enough goal? Or are how specific do people need to be do? Is it better to say, well, here’s my current business, here’s where I’d like it to grow. I’m just curious on what the what that sort of looks like.
Elizabeth Averyanova 9:19
Yeah, definitely. So you know, we, you know, sometimes we do an audit of what are people currently doing? So we do an audit of, you know, of their brand and other business, but let’s just say like you said, that example if they want to reach more, I would get much more specific of of how many people but you also want to make sure it’s a goal within your control. You know, like, you want to make 20 you want to sell 20 houses this year. It what is actually in your control with related to that goal.
D.J. Paris 9:49
Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know what, maybe we should also define what branding is, and let’s, let’s talk about what is it and strategist do so let’s first define what a brand strategist does. I think that’ll give us a good intro to sort of branding 101
Elizabeth Averyanova 10:07
Sure. So, you know, so my vision of what a brand strategist is, is, is diving into your representation on line and offline. And and you know, as a realtor, you have a very unique position where you have to show up amazing online and offline both places, you know, a lot of online entrepreneurs can get away with just showing up good online, but offline, that that is not even part of the conversation, really. So a brand strategist is somebody who really strategically knows your goals. Help helps you identify your goals, your ideal clients, and you know, what, who you want to serve and what and how you want to serve them. And it helps, and they help you bridge the gap between that and and how you show up online and offline. And, yeah, go ahead.
D.J. Paris 10:58
No, I think that’s important because Realtors do struggle with that. So the thought is, okay, you know, look, I have this professional presence. And we have this social media, these social media platforms that enable me to show my professional life as well as maybe my personal life. And I know realtors are always sort of trying to figure out, how do I, how do I stay on brand another way? Let’s let’s first, you know, what actually, I’d like to talk about is determining one’s brand. Can you talk about how you determine what somebody’s brand is?
Elizabeth Averyanova 11:39
So yeah, well, we can, you know, everybody’s definition of branding is different. But I like to see that branding is simply an extension of who you are. And it will just be professionally who you are and, and how you are showing up online. So branding does go beyond the visual side of things. It also includes the visual side of of your brand’s colors, fonts, that your overall style, but I think it also combined, the way you talk as much as you know, the way you talk. So your language, your your it also ties in your values and your mission. And your your vision for yourself and your business. And it ties in all these pieces and your brand, is it’s kind of a fancy word, but it’s extension of who you are, and how you want to serve the world.
D.J. Paris 12:29
That’s really important. And I think this idea of how do I want to serve the world is is so critical, because the branding ultimately dictates not just the look and the feel of the materials that realtors will put out there, whether their digital assets like social media posts, or their you know, maybe, you know, physical print assets. So it’s, it’s I know, we think a lot about well, I want my brochures to look a certain way I want my flyers to look a certain way I want my website to look a certain way. But really what we’re talking about is demonstrating some sort of lifestyle, right, and I don’t mean lifestyle in, it has to be like a luxurious lifestyle. But But there has to be some intentional thought about what realtors are putting out whatever content they’re putting out, whether it’s social media, or web, or website content, or print content, it has to be all aligned. Is that accurate?
Elizabeth Averyanova 13:29
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, the biggest thing I see is that the there’s a real lack of consistent consistency in how people are showing up in the online space. And it’s, it’s, you know, I, you sometimes feel like, Oh, it’s a saturated market, maybe you and there’s a lot of real estate agents, but you know, there are a lot of realtors who are not doing it well. And I honestly think it’s not that hard to take some time, put some intention into it, and you will immediately stand out, you know, be that you’ll be in that 1% of visually sitting out with a solid brand. Well, let’s
D.J. Paris 14:09
talk about maybe what real estate agents aren’t doing well. So when you’re exploring the landscape, what are some and again, obviously, this is not black and white. This is good, this is bad, but what are some things that you see that are either inconsistent or maybe not hitting the mark? Not hitting the intended sort of audience result?
Elizabeth Averyanova 14:33
Mm hmm. Yeah. So I spend a lot of time auditing people’s brands and I you know, what that means is I go to your Instagram for me, I you know, my age or my just whatever, that’s the platform I use. Typically that’s the number one thing I go to to find people that I want to work with is Instagram. You know, so maybe your audience, maybe you have to figure out maybe your artist is on Facebook, or maybe your audience is on LinkedIn, and really knowing who you’re serving and where do they where they hang out, is important. So for me, I hang out on Instagram if you if you need to know. So I go and look at other realtors on Instagram and what that means I go look at their profile, and they want that first, in first impression that I get is oftentimes like kind of kind of confused, I’m not really sure, you know what they do visually, it’s not appealing. And you know, in real estate, you want to make things really appealing to the buyer to the sellers, right? Like, you really need that first impression to be good. And so on Instagram, I see very inconsistent posts, or maybe they’re taking templates from totally different sources. We can talk about Canva. But Canva is a design tool that you know, a lot of realtors use for graphics. And there’s a lot of templates on there that are free and great. But the minute you start to mix them all together, it just looks kind of like music. So you know, that’s one the very first mistakes I often see. The next one is, what if I want to work with you, or I want to figure out more what you do. And there’s that link in the bio of Instagram. And when I click that link, what happens? Where does it take me. So a lot of times they see that it takes you to a link tree, it’s like a service link tree. So you click the link, and it’s a link tree. So then more links appear. You know, I see them the default style, they’re not branded, they’re not consistent with your look, or they’re like really funky colors. You know, so So what I’m so what I do when I’m auditing is I go through that experience of clicking through to the next step to the next step until I try to figure out okay, how can I contact you? How can I work with your How can I see your website, and that map that journey, you know, that’s your client experience? So if I’m confused, somebody’s confused or overwhelmed, or they’re like, Am I in the right place, you know that I clicked the right link, and it doesn’t look consistent, that you’re gonna lose your clients that
D.J. Paris 17:15
way. I think that’s really important because a lot of us just post content on social media as one off content without a clear, objective, right. So we, we might put a really beautiful post together, but we’re just putting it there. And that’s really just step one. And not if you don’t think through, you know, and it doesn’t not that every post on Facebook or Instagram has to have an action step. But if you do have an action step, like you were saying about link tree, so this is a very common thing that people put in their Instagram bio is in particular, our link tree is what is a link tree, a link tree is really a series of So Instagram only allows you to put one link in your bio. So because of that there’s a link tree is a free service where people are I think there’s a pay service as well. But people can basically put a series of different links when you click on that link. And it shows up as different, like action steps, essentially. I’m curious what your thoughts are about link trees in general? Because I Yes, I see that they could be very valuable, but you have to be really intentional about it. But do you like Link trees in Instagram profiles? Or would you prefer just one link going one place, and not a second? Now I have because what happens when you click on a link tree or tap on a link tree is now you have maybe six or seven or 10 additional buttons that you now have to read through to click curious what your thoughts are just in general about link tree.
Elizabeth Averyanova 18:44
Okay, so thank you for explaining link tree and and my mission is to abolish it from any any client that works. Thought you might say that link tree. So I’ve
D.J. Paris 18:58
The reason being that you don’t like Link tree is what.
Elizabeth Averyanova 19:01
So I’ve gotten rid of quite a few of my clients link trees. If you listen to this, you’ll know. But one is it’s sitting your earned traffic. So you’ve earned the attention of potential client is sending those people to a platform that’s not your platform. So it’s sending it to a link trees platform is for example, it’s not sending it to your website platform where they could dive deeper into you. So they’re just sent a link tree. So I don’t like that. That’s one reason. The other reason is you can look because
D.J. Paris 19:31
you could lose people because they could get overwhelmed by the sheer number of options you have. And so there’s it’s it’s not a great I guess what I was getting at I’m curious to get your thoughts. I don’t find that like when I when I hit a link and it goes to a link tree. I get sort of turned off as a consumer I just started go. Now I have to make another decision and I have to read through all these button options. I don’t really want to do that.
Elizabeth Averyanova 19:58
Yeah, and so that’s the Second is that there’s too many choices. And I mean, not that you don’t have to do that. But there are a lot a lot of choices. And oftentimes I see that the specific text that the description that people use on those buttons are very unclear and really make you think and like you said, you don’t, you don’t want to do that. So you have to the language is not clear. It’s not actionable, like, what is what’s going to happen then. So that’s a mistake I see. And then it just number three is just, this is not always a branded experience for your clients.
D.J. Paris 20:31
Yeah, and that’s true, it’s not. And I think if you are going to use a link tree, as a realtor, you’d want to have just a couple of options. One would be I’m thinking about buying a home, I’m thinking about selling a home, I’m thinking about, you know, or I’m thinking about moving or you want them to be super descriptive, but we can move on from link tree, but but I just see it as so common and so popular. And again, we just what I love, Elizabeth, about what you said is that your job is to take the journey of a consumer, and basically be the consumer go through the experience and find things that could be modified and changed and shore, the shore and beat to make things more direct, more simple, and to give the client the actual experience that they want. Right. So let’s talk about a little bit about what good so we know that there’s a there’s a lot of problems with realtors just posting half Hazzard, images, videos, there’s no consistency. How important by the way is consistency in the visual. So the aesthetic, the vision that there’s consistency in the look, and also in the, the frequency. So I’m curious about frequency, because that’s another thing we hear on the podcast is how often should I be posting? And I know there isn’t a magical answer, but how important is the consistency from the from the style and design to the actual frequency? Mm hmm.
Elizabeth Averyanova 22:03
Yeah. So, you know, it’s as important as you want to make it and the reason you would want to be consistent, and you would want to post regularly, and by that I would mean at least once a week, but more like Lehigh higher volume, so two or three times a week, and that you consistently show up in your audience’s, you know, feed on their social platform, or in their inbox. If you’re, if you happen to be sending emails out on an email list, you both of these things are important, because then you start to gain recognition. Visually, people start to recognize you. Oh, that’s, you know, this post. Yeah, that’s her look, that’s Oh, you they don’t even have to spend, you know, more than a mil set a couple of milliseconds, saying, Oh, I know who was post that is, I’m gonna check it out. Because she always provides really high value, or he always gives really great tips about this or that. And so is she, you know, showing up consistently, you start to build that recognition. So you build that that no factor, you always hear about know, like, trust factor, but you build that no fat, no factor. So people start to know you, and start to build up that trust in you. Over time, when they’re ready for your services, you keep showing up, you’re gonna stay top of mind.
D.J. Paris 23:29
Yeah, you came from the architecture world. And we’re here in Chicago, one of the most prolific sort of architects here in Chicago’s history is Mies van der Rohe, who has a very specific style. And you can essentially, from a branding perspective, all of the buildings are I think, I’m not familiar with everything, he’s dead, but for the buildings, I know that he did, they’re all a very specific style, there are very specific brand. And you can look at these buildings here. And if you’re a Chicago person that’s listening, you know, what we’re talking about, because they have a very specific brand and style. And, you know, and so I’m curious, you know, just thinking about you in the architecture world. How can how can an agent because what you really want is you want somebody to look at something and immediately know that that’s you, right? Like, we want somebody to associate a certain look a certain feel a certain style to to a broker or to to a realtor. How should they start that journey? What’s the what’s the first thing that an agent should do to really start down the sort of branding, you know, exercise path?
Elizabeth Averyanova 24:47
Hmm, okay, so you made a really good analogy with architecture and you know it Chicago has a number of amazing architects in history and I love the history of Chicago, but Oh, The you want that moment that instantly they can recognize you. So it could be visually, but it also could be a specific color that people see that color. And they always think of you. Or it could even be a specific word or like a phrase. And they they think of you, you know, I have a client. You know, for example, like if I think of the word remarkable, or I think of like a deep, like a kind of a deep red color. We have a client, we work with Mark Kilimanjaro,
D.J. Paris 25:28
who has been
Elizabeth Averyanova 25:31
amazing. Yeah, I instantly think of her you know, so that is brand recognition. It can be a color or a word or something. So you have to think about you and what, what, you don’t need to think of 10 things, but it really is what it can be that one thing that is extension of who you are, what you like, and also relates to your ideal client was what can be the one thing that’s part of your brand?
D.J. Paris 25:56
And how would somebody determine, you know, what, or what’s a way somebody could determine what that one thing is? If somebody says, I don’t really know, you know, Marquis lemons, you mentioned has remarkable that’s her. Remarkable, right. That’s her. That’s her, her brand. And, and it works. But if for somebody that doesn’t have that, how would you suggest that they might go about figuring out what their brand is?
Elizabeth Averyanova 26:19
Hmm. Okay. There’s, I think, at least two questions. But you could ask yourself one question, which is, if you had the perfect birthday celebration, what would that look like for you? You know, maybe that’s, you know, a quiet evening with just your family, you know, with a with a glass of wine, and it’s very, you know, peaceful, maybe outdoor dinner with candle lights? Or maybe it’s a more like, outgoing type of party at night in the city, you know, what is? What would be your your birthday party? That’s one way to figure out, start to figure out your personality. Another question would be if you didn’t have, you know, all the work tasks on your to do list in your planner today, what would you spend your day doing? And think about that? And no, these are questions just to really start to dig in your personality. And, and, you know, we all we’re all multi passionate people, but that, you know, what is the one recurring theme that keeps coming up? If you’re more visual, and you just feel like, okay, I want to choose a specific color. You can say, when you go to your closet, what’s the number one color you see? For me, I have like a very neutral like monochrome, clean white style, I opened my closet, it’s 90% white clothes.
D.J. Paris 27:40
Right, that’s, that’s your look, you’re you, you enjoy monochrome. And, you know, we, you know, you also talked about what we’re really talking about, I think is authenticity. How important is it in real estate? Well, look, I mean, for being honest, authenticity for realtors has not always been a top priority. In the marketing side, right? We take pictures, and we Photoshop them so that we all look perfect, we erase wrinkles, we look younger, you know, we we want to demonstrate perfection in the photos of the listings that we have, we want to artificially fix problems. How important is authenticity? And when I mean authenticity, I mean showing some of the cracks, showing some of the faults, the fault lines, right the imperfections? Is it okay to show imperfections in and does do our audience? Do our audience want to see imperfection? Or do they expect everything to look perfect?
Elizabeth Averyanova 28:46
Well, absolutely, they just want to see real life, your real life. You don’t have to expose everything of course, but you know, they want to see reality more than the perfect world you know, that’s that’s absolutely I think it’s a non negotiable at this point when we all have smartphones all connected 24/7 And you know that yes, there’s filters on Instagram and those are great, but they really you really just need to show up who you are and not not change that.
D.J. Paris 29:18
I think that’s a really good point. So I know sometimes people feel insecure about you know, doing video or making you know, oh, I don’t know how to edit correctly or I don’t have the right lighting. But I My experience has been that as long as you’re providing quality content. You know, that sort of Trumps some of the imperfections maybe with editing or with shooting the you know, or even just taking a you know, an image
Elizabeth Averyanova 29:49
I think if you’re stuck in that, I don’t know how phase you know, go there are solutions out there. You don’t need to know all the answers because there are people teaching how to make Instagram reels for you know, as a real estate agent, we just created a course one of our clients created a course on how to how to master reels. You know, if you don’t know the how you don’t figure it, you can figure that out. But the best thing is just start posting and start getting out there and start getting that connection with with your audience.
D.J. Paris 30:20
I want to I want to talk about studio Classica. This is your company. And it’s Studio classica.com. And in Studio C L A s s I see a.com Let’s talk about this and what you do for for realtors I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast, do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode.
Elizabeth Averyanova 31:56
Okay, yeah, absolutely. So we you know, we. So we help real estate agents show up more professionally online. And you know, even in offline space, too, but but mainly in the online space, because that’s where people are searching. And that’s where if you keep showing up regularly on social media, in a branded, elevated, beautiful way, then, like we said earlier, your clients start to recognize you. And they you stay top of mind. And when they’re ready to sell their home or buy a home, you’ve stayed in their mind, and they will reach out to you or they’ll reach out to your real estate team. And so we help we especially help real estate, men, real estate leaders in the space who who wants to start helping other real estate agents. So a big part of who we help is people who want to teach, teach how to build a successful real estate business, or how to add six figures to your real estate income in the next year. And so that teaching mentality that mentorship or if you know, people who want to create courses, and even if you don’t feel like you’re big in your field, yet we have, you know, people rising like rising leaders who they they’re ready to create a course because they start to get a lot of the same questions from their agents or from, you know, from people online. And that’s a sign that you can package up that knowledge you have that some specific niche of real estate. And there are other people out there who want to learn from you.
D.J. Paris 33:27
Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, you can basically so when people when agents work with you, when Realtors work with you, they you can build them websites, you can work with their social media posts. Tell us some of the services that you assist with.
Elizabeth Averyanova 33:43
Yeah, perfect. Yes, absolutely. So we help, you know, figure out your branding. So figure out you know, the brand strategy, but also the visual side of it. So the visual social media posts, your your profile headers on Facebook or LinkedIn. You know, we make sure it’s consistent everywhere you want to show up online. We, for example, create social media templates that then you can use and carry forward. Usually, we do that as part of a branding package. From there, we often build like your complete website, which is your personal brand website. I know a lot of real estate people have a website that there’s sort of given. And I generally think those are not so functional, especially if you’re trying to really build your personal brand and your identity in this space. So we build your custom website. And then from there, oftentimes we build, you know, for those who want to teach, we would build the courses or membership spaces in the online space. So a full branding and design services.
D.J. Paris 34:41
Yeah, it makes it makes perfect sense. And so you know, I would What are a couple tips that you have for anyone that is out there that is thinking of redesigning their site, redesigning some of their colors. What’s what’s in right now. What what did the public want to see when they’re hitting a website or social media? Like what are some aesthetic sort of trends that you know that are, would be helpful for our audience to know. Mm hmm.
Elizabeth Averyanova 35:13
So, you know, aesthetic trends I see are incorporating videos into your website and into your definitely into your social media. But if we focus on the website, you know, tying in video to your website, whether that’s sort of a video background that’s professionally filmed, or if it’s just a video of you sitting down in front of a camera, get a nice background, and, you know, talk about, you know, a two minute three minute clip about, about what you’re doing who you help, and including that sort of video, someone on your website, that video is a huge way to connect, you know, and really accelerate that that connection with somebody watching it. And you can really, you know, accelerate the speed at which they’re, they get to know you or feel like they know you. Because, you know, for example, we you know, I have a video somewhere in my in my onboarding process, when we start new clients, I have a video somewhere there. And people will feel like that people have told me Oh, I feel like I already know you already talk to you, even though we haven’t talked yet. So just bridges that gap.
D.J. Paris 36:22
Isn’t that ultimately the goal? Right? If if it’s a stranger, who doesn’t has not actually met the agent yet? If they can say, Gosh, I feel like I know you? That’s that’s a huge victory, isn’t it?
Elizabeth Averyanova 36:39
Hmm. So So the video is, you know, it was trending from 2020. But it’s not going away. So get on the video, bandwagon is the number one.
D.J. Paris 36:50
Yeah, start start making video. And I think we’re so lucky to have devices, you know, in our pockets at all times that produce high quality, at least recording. And we have the ability to produce content that our audience wants very inexpensively. But the if you really want to take it to the next level, you really need somebody to look, I was I’ll give you a really simple example, I I’ve been a writer for a long time. And I when I write a piece for a publication, I work and rework it and rewrite it and rewrite it, I think it looks perfect, then I send it off to an editor, and it comes back looking totally different. And the editors job is to make it look better for the audience that it’s going to be read by. And I am always like, I’m going to send this off to the editor, they’re going to send it back without any changes, and they’re gonna go wow, DJ, you are brilliant. This is just gonna go, we’re going to publish this just as you wrote it. And it’s never happened. They always rewrite it. And they always make it better. And my point by saying that is yes, you can put up all your own posts, you can use Canva. As we mentioned earlier, it’s a great tool. There’s lots of really neat functionality there. And it’s awesome. But you probably should run it through and not through an editor. Somebody like Elizabeth Pryor? Because she’s going to make everything look the right way. And, and and that’s, you know that that’s really important. And how important is it to have to have somebody like that, you know, to edit to be your consistency editor, I guess I would say,
Elizabeth Averyanova 38:34
hmm, yeah, I think if you’re serious about building successful business, about growing your real estate business, you know, is deaf, I’m totally biased, but it’s worth the investment to, you know, run it through professional like work with a professional for a period of time to get that visual look at that brand figured out. Because it is going to change the game and you showing up for your clients, you’re going to feel more confident putting those posts out on social media and you’re going to feel you know, much more direction and who you’re helping and how you’re going to show up online. And it will pay back dividends in your return on your investment. You know what you get, you know, you’re gonna hit to hit your goals because you’re you’re determined to do that, and you’re serious about it. So I think it’s a game changer, really.
D.J. Paris 39:24
And for everyone listening, the reason why we had Elizabeth on is she and her team have do incredible, absolutely incredible work. I really encourage everyone listening to visit Elizabeth’s website, just take a look at what she does for realtors and other other brands that she works with. It’s really remarkable. And notice as you look through some of her work, how you feel, as you’re perusing the different websites that they’ve created different brands that they’ve worked With notice the feeling that comes through. And if that resonates with you, if you go, Gosh, I want people when they visit me digitally online, whether it’s on social media or on my own website, if I want my clients to have a similar experience, I would encourage you, you don’t have to do everything yourself. Reach out to Elizabeth, she is awesome. She’s worked with some of the top Realtors in the country. She’s worked with people that have been on our show. And that’s why we have her on the show because she is so highly recommended. But I want everyone to visit her website, which is Studio classica.com. By the way, we have a link to that in the show notes. So if you’re listening on a podcast app, just look in the show notes for studio Classica. But you can visit it yourself to studio classic cut a at the end studio classic cut.com. And take a look at what they do. It is absolutely remarkable. It’s clean. It’s minimal. It’s absolutely on trend. I am Elizabeth’s like biggest fan. Because when you look at what she does, it is absolutely just such a clean and beautiful aesthetic. And she can help you do that. You don’t have to figure out how to do that yourself. By the way, creating clean, minimal, beautiful content is not easy. That’s why you hire somebody like Elizabeth, it’s actually difficult to do. So that’s why you hire her. But Elizabeth, you know, this is a perfect time to sort of wrap up our episode because I want everyone to go visit your website. And then I want everyone to reach out to Elizabeth to if you’re looking to hire a branding expert, I will tell you, branding is one of the most important parts of your marketing strategy. It’s oftentimes overlooked. In fact, it’s almost always overlooked, because we just want to put out content. But if there’s no intention behind it, if there’s no cohesive strategy, you’re really going to run into some challenges. Hire somebody like Elizabeth, I really, really encourage you to do that. So Elizabeth, what’s the best way somebody should reach out to you if they want to work with you?
Elizabeth Averyanova 42:02
Well, thank you so much, DJ. And if you are thinking about what can we do with your branding or your website, the best way to reach out is, of course, our websites to classic.com. And we you know, go to our services page. And you can check out what more about what we do and check out our packages, you know how we can work together?
D.J. Paris 42:22
Yeah, I really encourage our all of our listeners to check it out. And I wish I wish you were an advertiser of ours because I am so passionate about your work. And maybe one day you will be but but for now I really encourage our audience to check it out. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for being on our show. We are We are honored to have you. And for everyone out there visit Studio classical.com. Please also tell a friend about this podcast. Think about one other agent in your office that needs help with their branding send them a link to this episode. They can find us at keeping it real pod.com all of our episodes are there can be downloaded and streamed right from a browser or just pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real hit the subscribe button. And please leave us a review. Let us know what you think of our show. So whatever system you might be listening to us on Apple podcasts, Google Play Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon wherever. Let us know what you think of the show. Leave us a review. Elizabeth, thank you so much all the way from Latvia. We are excited to chat with you. Thank you for taking time with us and we will see everybody on the next episode.
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