Commercial Real Estate Brokers – Tapping into Your Target Audience of Buyers and Tenants for a Quick Result

When you take any commercial real estate listing to the market, it is essential that you match the property to a segment of tenants and or buyers as the ultimate target audience.  In that way you can then design the correct advertising copy and the images to suit.

You only have a few weeks of opportunity at the start of any marketing campaign to create reasonable volumes of enquiry and hopefully a number of inspections.  To achieve that promotional momentum, the target audience needs to align across a number of media channels and advertising segments.  There needs to be a consistent message in the property promotion featuring the strengths of the property to the buyers or the tenants you are targeting.

To get things under way with your property promotion, review the strengths of the property and itemise them for potential use in the advertising copy.  Most property advertisements need approximately five or six dot points as features to encourage and attract readership.  If you don’t know what the features of the property would be then your marketing campaign will be confused.

Any weaknesses in the property should be addressed prior to the commencement of the marketing campaign.  Most buyers and tenants will firstly assess a property based on visual image, location, features and strengths, and then the basic facts.  The information that you merge into your marketing strategy and promotional layout should be well considered to attract the eye of the reader.  Images and keywords in the layout of the advertisement will help significantly when it comes to enquiry conversions from the newspaper media, and click throughs when it comes to online property listings.

Tips for Attracting Your Targeted Tenants and Buyers

To attract the target audience in your town or city, consider the following questions and strategies as part of establishing the marketing campaign:

• Given the local area, what are the competing properties, prices, and rents are you up against? Like it or not, the tenants and the buyers will generally have the upper hand when it comes to making an offer with any price or rental.  Your client needs to be conditioned for the current market circumstances.
• How would your property compete against the prevailing market conditions? If you track the levels of enquiry across all exclusive listings, you will soon know what the tenants and the buyers in today’s property market are looking for.  Your listing needs to be optimised to perform in today’s property market.  Exclusivity will allow you to do that.
• How can your property stand out as relevant and real to the tenants or buyers in your targeted segment? Assuming you have an exclusive listing, take the time to establish real momentum in the marketing campaign using specific facts about the listing and the location and factors of attraction.
• How much time do you need to sell or lease the property? Most property marketing campaigns take at least 6 to 8 weeks to achieve a reasonable momentum and coverage.  After that point in time the levels of enquiry can fall across most segments.  Design your marketing campaign to achieve the best levels of penetration over that period of eight weeks.
• What media types can you use to spread the property message effectively and directly to the market? Today you need to consider the best way to mix advertising promotions across the online and offline marketing alternatives.  The Internet will give you maximum market penetration, however there will be other properties listed in the same location at the same time online.  The drafting of your property advertisement needs to convert better levels of enquiry through the use of professional photographs, carefully selected keywords, and a good advertising layout.
• What concerns and challenges do the local buyers and the tenants in today’s property market have? When you understand the buyers and the tenants in today’s property market, you can address any existing concerns and challenges that they may have.
• What will be the best sale or lease method to suit the particular property listing? In some circumstances, you may only have a small number of enquiries coming in from the property campaign.  On that basis you need to consider how the enquiries will be encouraged and captured, the qualification process, inspections, and negotiations.
• What enticements and incentives should you offer to attract the best levels of enquiry? Some buyers and tenants will always ask for an incentive or reduced price before they will close on a transaction.  The client needs to be prepared for the process of negotiation.  You may need to show the client how other property owners have adjusted to the prevailing market conditions.
• What level of marketing expenditure and funds can you convert from the property owner in preparation for the marketing campaign? There is a direct ratio between marketing funds and property enquiry.  When you spend more on marketing, the levels of enquiry escalate.  On that basis you really do need to consider how you can spend the vendor paid marketing funds effectively and specifically to encourage enquiry.

From these simple facts and strategies, you can see how important it is to match your property marketing campaign to the client, the property, and the levels of enquiry that you are expecting.  Gone are the days of generic advertising and promotion in commercial real estate.  Every quality exclusive listing should be specifically promoted when all prevailing market conditions are considered.  Strategy is everything when it comes to optimizing inquiry.