Achieve Better Listing Results with These Eight Marketing Strategies
In today’s commercial and retail property market there are big shifts and changes to the marketing of listings; strategies are required to encourage more enquiries, inspections and transactions.
Sales and lease transactions are largely started in the first instance through a buyer or tenant getting information from the internet. They are then fully informed before they connect with an agent or broker.
What is your internet presence like now to show the world that you are an industry professional? Have you got one? Perhaps it is too ‘generic’?
Think about your local area and the property listings that are available. It directly follows that the agent with a larger internet presence is likely to be the agent that gets a good degree of local enquiry.
It’s time to think about your approach to listing marketing and online engagement. It’s time to get more results with the listings that you work with.
Promotional Variations in Commercial and Retail Property
So, most property marketing today is a mixture of several online strategies and a good degree of direct marketing and prospecting. To balance that, it is always wise for agents and brokers to have a personal internet footprint (blogs, articles, social media) as well as a good batch of well-priced listings placed online.
Market yourself and your properties from a level of information engagement. Share your property market information online and do so comprehensively through different ‘channels’. Show the World that you are the ‘industry specialist’ and not just a ‘promoter of listings’.
Gone are the days of putting a listing on a website portal and waiting for the enquiries to come back in. There are many other things to do with a property promotion to get the message out. Also, remember that many property listings become ‘stale’ after weeks; that is why advertising copy and promotional photographs should change regularly.
What else can you do to attract attention? Add a story to the property promotion to create more engagement and certainly use social media in parallel to the property listing released.
Listing Belief
As a special comment here, ensure that you ‘believe’ in the listings that you take on or place on the market; know the factors of attraction that apply with each property and build the promotional story around the strengths of the asset and the target market. There is no point in taking on a listing that you are not ‘comfortable’ with or don’t particularly like.
All your clients want results, and the demands of a poor-quality listing will slow you down or divert your focus from other quality listings and clients. It is better to have a small number of good quality exclusive listings than it is to have many open listings that are ‘poorly’ positioned or priced.
Listing Types to Match Market Conditions
So, here is a checklist approach to starting a listing promotion for sale or lease. Look at how you can do these things comprehensively in today’s market:
- Inspect the property to know what you are working with and how it presents physically and financially (if it is an investment).
- Look at the strengths and weaknesses of the location, the asset, and the investment. Work with the strengths and resolve the weaknesses before you go to promote the listing.
- How will the local people see the property and how does it compare to others? Check out the local listings.
- Review the location for activity, property ‘comparable’ results, and the existing price or rent trends. How will your property compare with others?
- Understand what is happening in the location before you make any recommendations to the client or prospect that you are connecting with. Changes to roads, zonings, regulations, and property use will impact interest from buyers and tenants.
- Determine the target market of people, buyers, or tenants that would have an interest in your listing. Look for reasons for people to buy or rent the property.
- How will you engage with the right people to attract enquiry and inspections? Remember the alternatives of online and offline direct marketing. Both strategies will matter if you are to get improved results with your activities in the property promotion.
- You will need some stories about the property to get things going at the start of a property promotion. You can share those stories in articles, social media, and editorials.
From these simple approaches to listing a property, you can make your enquiry results much stronger. Work a small selection of good quality listings in this way. Results will soon evolve.
