4 Step Branding and Marketing Strategy in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
In commercial real estate brokerage, your brand is a big part of your success over time. That brand is both personal and business based; it should consolidate and grow in a positive way. What is the target here? You want people to remember you and contact you when they get to a property challenge or need in sales, leasing, or property management.
So, there are some things to do here in new business and client growth. At the earliest stages of your career, you will not have much of a personal brand in the property marketplace. Because of that, priorities should be placed immediately on a prospecting model to help you achieve that ‘market presence’.
How do you work with this? Every day you can connect with more people in your city, the territory or location, and particularly so across your targeted property types. Track your progress in a database of constant activity and relationship building. Make sure that the database is accurate and up to date.
The Direct Outcomes Needed in Personal Branding
Here are some ideas to help you do that direct marketing process:
- Brand awareness – your office may have been transacting business from a location in your town for many years. Assess the brand by asking a few local landlords and business owners of what they know or think about your real estate business. Local recognition is important, so understand the ‘base’ of recognition that you can work with and grow in your town or city. Can you improve or ‘fit into’ that existing brand?
- Image – your real estate business may be known as a ‘specialist’ brokerage in some way or form. Use that established ‘specialist’ image from the marketplace and put yourself firmly in the existing marketing message as a ‘specialist’.
- Loyalty – if you are working for an established local agent or brokerage, there are likely to be several ways you can build on previous levels of business. Look at the existing brokerage client list and the older transactions for the business. Talk to the people that have been serviced previously by the brokerage to see if they are open to ongoing contact.
- Dominant market leader – you will always have a good degree of the brokerage competition chasing property listings and people in your location. Your competitive position must be strong and ‘specialised’ to get around that issue. Know that you cannot cover off on every property type and the associated changes in your location. Choose the property types that can work for you and make your real estate business stronger for the long term.
When you consider these things, you can then more effectively use the specific marketing tools that are available to you. It is then easier to take your ‘points of difference’ and to apply them in newspapers, listing marketing, direct mail, cold calling, and online or social media marketing.