10 Marketing Automation Ideas for Commercial Real Estate Agents and Brokers

In commercial real estate brokerage you will get more momentum and results from your local property market when you automate your marketing.  Regularity is really important in spreading the message about your property skills and business.

For most ordinary agents, the process of personal marketing is tedious and random; unfortunately that then leads to slow growth of market share.  If you want to win a good share of the property business, the people in the market must identify with your skills and relevance.  They must remember you at the right time.

Marketing Automation Attracts New Listings and Clients

The core message here is that top agents are great marketers in many different ways.  Are you up to the challenge?

Here are some ideas to help you:

1. Blogs – Whilst you may work for a brokerage and list all your properties in both the industry portals and brokerage websites, that process does little or nothing to help the profile of individual agents. You can change all that by starting an industry based blog to talk about local property issues and market trends.  The blog should be informational and helpful to property investors and business owners.  It is then very easy to integrate your blog contents into your social media efforts.
2. High quality property campaigns – Every good quality property should be well marketed through the local area. In doing that you are showing the industry and the clients within it that you are a top agent with the best listings.  You will need vendor paid marketing funds to achieve that level of promotion so be prepared to sell your advertising ideas and marketing packages.
3. Articles – When something of property importance happens in your local area, you can write about it. Articles and editorials go hand in hand with quality listings and new property projects.  It is not hard to write about a good property or something that has a real factor of local interest.
4. Direct Mail – Send out a selection of direct mail campaigns over a period of 12 months. Regularity in regular contact is critical to help you build your personal brand as a local agent.  Design a selection of letters to be sent every 60 days to your identified prospects and qualified clients.  Most agents can send out 5 to 10 direct mail pieces per day.  They then have to make the calls to follow up all letters so automation in the process is important to getting the job done.  Get a good database to help you with the process.
5. Direct Cold Calls – The telephone should be your friend when it comes to property marketing. It is the quickest and most direct way to contact business owners and prospects in your property market.  In saying that a certain degree of confidence and practice is required initially to get the process underway.  You should create a mindset of focus to help you make the volumes of calls in a regular way.
6. Success letters – Every time you successfully sell or lease a property, send out some ‘success letters’ to the local businesses and property owners. Without giving out too much confidential information, you have a positive story to tell about the successfully closed deal.  Spread the word about the completion of the sale or lease and invite people to make contact with you.
7. Property brochures – All of your exclusive listings should feature as part of a brochure drop in the local area. High quality photos and great advertisement copy will help lift the level of enquiry.
8. Client contact – Some clients want or deserve more contact than others. Design some informational processes and handouts that you can use in the locality to show those clients the market trends and results.
9. Signboards – A good agent has plenty of signs in the local area on exclusive listings. Notice that exclusivity is the active word when talking about signboards?  Signs on open listings are a waste of time and money.
10. Inspections and Enquiries – From every property inspection and inbound enquiry you have plenty of reasons to stay in regular contact with people. Keep the doors of contact open and active.  When you find a person that has interest in commercial property, maintain the contact momentum in a professional way.  Be the ‘helpful’ agent that many people require.

So this is what ‘automation’ in commercial real estate marketing is all about.  Pick a few of these things and start promoting yourself comprehensively and directly.