Commercial Real Estate Agents – Making the Right Choices in Marketing Quality Listings
In commercial real estate brokerage today, there are plenty of people and other agents promoting listed properties and they are doing so in many different ways. It can be hard to stand out as the agent of choice or the agent with the best listing in the property market today.
On that basis, you really do need to make the right media and marketing choices when it comes to property promotion and the marketing message. Get deeply involved in your marketing of listings and yourself. Create conversations every day.
At the start of any property marketing campaign, you only have a short period of time to send the right message and attract the enquiry. After a few weeks, the property will be relatively ‘stale’ and uninteresting to the property buyers or tenants as the case may be.
Essential Marketing Questions
Think about these questions:
- How can you promote the listing effectively and directly?
- What are people looking for today when it comes to property purchase or property lease?
- When will be the best time to promote the quality listing to the targeted audience?
- What are the strengths of the listing that can create the levels of enquiry?
- How can you improve the property inspection process to encourage better interest from the inspecting party?
- How can you directly market some of your listings personally to the local area?
- What are the weaknesses of the property that will need to be considered and addressed prior to the commencement of the campaign?
- What can you do when it comes to improving enquiries from each marketing campaign?
- What are the ratios and results from enquiries currently when it comes to property types and locations?
- How can you differentiate and escalate the amount of enquiry for your exclusive listings?
- How can you move away from generic marketing activities?
There are two groups of listings in most brokerages at any point in time. Consider the following differences and how you would handle each:
- Firstly you will have the open listings; these are randomly listed and promoted properties marketed on the basis of luck more than anything else. Clients owning those properties are not normally fully committed to the marketing process, and can also be quite unrealistic when it comes to the prevailing market conditions. Don’t waste too much time when it comes to working on open listings. It is worth noting that most top agents will not get involved with open listings; if the client wants the commitment of the top agent to the marketing process, exclusivity is required.
- Secondly, you will have the exclusive listings captured and converted using your professional business skills and marketing efforts. All of your business focus should be towards your exclusive listings and the clients committed to the direct campaign and marketing process. Every exclusive listing should involve a good degree of vendor paid marketing up to an amount of approximately 1% of the potential sale price. When you have dedicated marketing funds to work with, you can do something directly and successfully in sending the right message about the property listing. Focus on your good clients and exclusivity. Escalate your sales pitch and presentation processes to sell the right message about property exclusivity and agent commitment.
It is questionable whether you would or should spend any time at all on marketing open listings other than placing the relevant property listing on your website. I would also go so far as to say that you should have separate sections of your website devoted to exclusivity versus open listings.
The open listings in your books should not feature in any major way in the website structure and layout. The exclusive listings should always feature at the front of the website with larger advertising copy and better quality photos.
If you don’t treat the listing types separately and specifically, you cannot successfully pitch and present your real estate services for exclusivity. If the client is serious about taking their property to the market, there is only one choice of promotion and that involves exclusivity.
So let’s presume you are good at converting listings in this way. Give your exclusive clients and listings the promotional prominence and the marketing dedication they deserve. Put any exclusively listed property at the front and on the top of all the open listings.
Get your high-quality property listings loaded on the home page. Sell the story about the good quality listings that you have converted and include professional photographs and high-quality advertising copy. Have a feature property for the week on your homepage in a prominent position.
