Adaptable Website Strategies that Really Work in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
So many commercial real estate agents and brokers struggle with website and internet marketing. They just don’t know what to do with their website other than list properties for sale and or lease. Given that most agents do the same thing, there is nothing of consequence to make an individual brokerage site stand out.
The Problem
There are hundreds if not thousands of brokers in some cities chasing the business and or attention of property owners, investors, and business leaders. Being ‘ordinary’ doesn’t sit well from a marketing perspective online.
The Marketing Alternatives
There are a number of marketing strategies that should be utilized at the same time by any brokerage, and online marketing is one key component of the process. Here is a promotional matrix that would suit most brokerages:
- Website and online marketing focusing on the location
- Direct Mail in your location and property market
- Cold calling business and property owners
- Brochure drops as part of campaign promotions
- Signage on properties
- Newspaper advertising
- Internet portals for commercial property
- Referral business
- Existing listings
- Social media communities
- Real estate brand or franchise group
Perhaps you can add more topics to the list? The important thing is that you have a matrix at brokerage level that picks up the issues that can work for you. Most agents and brokers should be doing at least half of these things on the list in a consistent way.
The Online Solutions
So let’s take the first item on the list. Within that one single topic there are many specific strategies to be considered and implemented. Choose the ideas from the list below that work for you. Here are some ideas:
- Search Engine Attraction – You want to attract the search engines to your website. The way you can do that is by posting helpful property information to your URL. Over time you want the search engines to see that your site is not just a batch of listings for sale or lease, but a site that offers intelligent and helpful property content.
- Local Area Focus – Create content that is location related. You can write and lodge articles on your site that talk about the town or city from a property perspective. That will help capture the attention of local investors.
- Property Type Content – Understand and define just what your brokerage is specialising in when it comes to property type. Create and lodge content online that is property specific (e.g. medical suites, industrial warehousing, CBD office, retail shopping centers). That concept will help lift your online image and profile as a potential industry expert to the search engines.
- Landing pages – Don’t just have a ‘Homepage’ on your website and link everything to it. Create a series of separate ‘landing pages’ (5 or 6) within the site that are specifically designed and written to particular market segments such as retail, industrial, medical, investment, project leasing, or investment sales. The ‘landing pages’ then give your website more online exposure to the search engines.
- Autoresponder – You can and should integrate and online autoresponder and database collation system to your website. You can then integrate that autoresponder into a ‘pop up’ message on your site that appears after a short time (e.g. 10 seconds) where your business is offering a free and special property report for the local area. The free report should be attractive enough to ‘tweak’ the interest of local visitors to your site.
- Social media portals – You can and should integrate your social media links into your website, however it is very debatable whether social media is really that useful in commercial real estate (most new business is created by personal contact). That being said, there is no harm in trying to make it work.
So now you can see how you can improve your online marketing ideas and activities with commercial real estate brokerage today. Choose the things that you can implement effectively and quickly then stick at the process.
