Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Marketing – How to Create an Informative Commercial Property News Service and Why Do It
In commercial real estate brokerage, a property news service is very effective in updating local business owners and property investors about recent sales, leases, and new local developments. On that basis the news service can be part of your client contact model and prospecting plan.
A few simple marketing rules
If this strategy is for you, remember that professionalism must flow through all of your information provided in the news based publication; be factual and informative, whilst avoiding controversy.
Any overstatements or incorrect information will also be circulated permanently online across the internet in a permanent way, so be careful and set some rules to the newsletter process. You can also be sued for saying things that should not have been said or that may have been a breach of confidentiality.
Your social media platforms can dispatch your information automatically and comprehensively to the people that you know and connect with. Say something of value and not something that people will see as irrelevant. Viral marketing occurs when relevance and quality are well crafted into your property message.
Here are some ideas to help you create a good quality real estate news service online and for your brokerage activities:
- Location – The news that you send out will be of real value if you stay within a property type and a location for the information gathered and circulated. If you specialise in different property types then you could have a separate newsletter for each (e.g. Medical, Industrial, Warehousing, Office properties, and Retail).
- Building a list – This special news based marketing process and client contact service is of little use unless you build a list of email contacts. To do that you must have the permission of the people that you are sending messages to and you must track and maintain contact information accurately. Asking the questions at the right time will help you get that approval from people the very beginning of any new relationship.
- Use a professional auto responder – Use an online based database and auto responder system to send out your information. You can load the auto responder with special informational emails that can be sent out in a logical and regular way. With all of the widely used auto responder systems you can get html based code for your list to load into your website and social media platforms that will automatically capture new subscribers.
- Social Media and the Website Portals – When you send out information of this type, use your social media portals. The search engines will see that activity and rank it for relevance and location. That is why you must keep your topics tight, location relative, and within a property topic.
If you want this real estate newsletter process to work effectively, get away from sending out the same old ‘rubbish’ that most brokerages send; typically that ‘rubbish’ will be a generic list of current property listings. That level of communication is of little benefit and value to the reader other than to occasionally attract an enquiry. It is likely to be of little or no interest to the genuine investors and business owners in your town or city who really want to know what is going on with property trends, results, and enquiries.
Re-position your marketing information so you are talking about market trends, recent prices and rents, road changes, zoning changes, and new property developments. Be valuable and be informative in your property newsletter and marketing process.
