Best Practice Tips for Online Marketing in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
The online part of our commercial real estate market place is quite special and evolving. There are many new and different tools that we can use to communicate listings and property opportunities. (NB – you can get our marketing tips in our brokerage course Snapshot right here)
Don’t let the online part of our business pass you by; get involved with online marketing.
Develop a specific marketing strategy for yourself and your listings online. Be different and relevant for the location as you achieve your online brand and professional momentum for the location. Take the time to work with the latest online business tools that can comprehensively connect with your market. What tools do you commonly have to use? Try some of these for starters:
- Publishing editorials online about properties and location issues
- Using article marketing to reach your market through different portals
- Loading blogs to your blog sites about the location and the properties
- Creating podcasts to talk about your location and the property trends
- Using videos to show factors of change and listings in your location
- Using slides to explain key issues about local property trends and focus factors
So why is this a problem?
Many agents and brokers simply struggle with the online promotional process; they fail to consolidate their online activities. Typically, they will list a property on a website or an industry portal, and then wait for the inquiry and calls to come in. That ‘generic’ approach is completely wrong; our clients expect and deserve better in property promotion and market coverage. Get involved with your online marketing processes and improve them over time. Put your business and your listings into your ‘Internet’ presence.
Here are some specific and direct strategies that you can use as part of building your online presence and your listing momentum:
- Property headlines – when you create a headline for a listing, consider the location, the property type, and the opportunity. You can build some keywords around those issues as you craft the advertising copy for listing release. Remember that the search engines today are focusing on keywords first and foremost. Your property and its advertising copy should be matched to the searching trends of the search engines and the industry portals.
- Local area focus – consider your location or precinct for property types and property requirements. You can write articles about the location and the properties, and publish those articles in your social media channels, industry blog, or websites.
- Simple facts – keep things simple when it comes to property marketing, promotional efforts, and client contact. Choose concepts and target markets with all your exclusive listings. Develop some initiatives to spread the word about a property or a recent property release. One listing should have a consistent marketing message across all your media channels and social media outlets. Don’t confuse the property message or the promotional activity.
- Scarcity and relevance – every good quality listing should be promoted with a view to timeliness and conversion. Local area relevance will help you achieve that; stories about the property and the location will help to attract customer interest.
- Social media – whilst there are plenty of different online social media tools to use today, choose only two or three that you can use in a regular and ongoing way. Don’t confuse your social media marketing by spreading yourself too far across too many different promotional methods. When you have chosen the media tools that can work for you, use keywords and concepts consistently each day as you talk about market trends and property listings.
- Successes and case studies – with any listing conversion, quality property promotion, and successful transaction, there will be things to talk about and share. Create some case studies about the location or the individual property; circulate those case studies into the location, the property owners, the tenants, and other interested parties. Your successes in marketing any property today should be shared into the location to build your brand and your client base.
So there are some specific things that you can do here when it comes to online promotion and property marketing. You can take every exclusive listing and do more with it. Remember the target market that you are seeking to attract, and then go deeper when it comes to your promotional message.
