Effective Marketing Strategies Needed in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

In commercial real estate brokerage, your marketing should be matched to the location and the target audience you are seeking to attract. Both of those focus points are non-negotiable and must be active in the advertising copy and images you use. Every marketing dollar should be spent with care and precision.

Consider your location, your town and your city.  There will always be plenty of competition with other agents and brokers seeking to attract enquiry and opportunity.  The best agents will usually have a refined process of marketing to pull in the better levels of enquiry.

Real Estate Marketing Assessment

One way to assess this competitive challenge and how it may impact your real estate business is to do a promotional assessment across all of the most common marketing channels used in the location and the industry.  As part of your business model, you should be doing that assessment on an annual basis so you can refine your advertising campaigns for both listings and brokerage activities.

Is your current level of marketing strategically successful?  How would you consider the success or otherwise of your listing and property promotions in the following media types:

• Signboard presence for the location
• Internet portals and particularly the industry portals
• The website(s) for your brokerage
• Your personal industry-related blog(s)
• Your social media outlets and the ways in which you use those social channels
• The flyers and the direct mail that you send out each week
• Your direct marketing campaigns into your location

There are plenty of things for you to do here regarding attracting enquiry and encouraging property inspections.  The advertising strategies that you deploy with all of your listings should be quite well crafted to the target audience that you are seeking to attract and the location that people can relate to.  I go back to the point that these two elements of focus are non-negotiable and should always exist in every property marketing campaign.

Plan real estate promotions

So you will need to plan your property promotion so that every marketing campaign can be successful in the shortest period of time.  Every campaign needs to be well tuned, effective and direct.

When you next consider the structure and strategy of a promotional campaign for a listed property, review the following questions and how they relate to the listing itself and the target audience you are seeking to attract:

1. What is the target audience that you should seek to attract for the property? You need to be quite specific when it comes to setting the audience and determining their motivations.  Think as they think; read as they read.  Design you promotional material accordingly.
2. Where is that target audience located? When you understand the location of the people you are trying to attract, you will then have some choices as to the channels of media and the campaign structure.
3. What will their motivations be for property purchase and/or rental? When you understand the motivations of the person that should be reading your advertising, you can tune in the copy and the headlines accordingly.
4. What are the features of the property that will pull in the enquiry and encourage inspections? Look at the property from a buyer or tenant perspective.  Understand the property’s strengths that are valuable to the marketing campaign.
5. Are there any weaknesses in the property that need to be addressed before any marketing campaign starts? Most properties today have weaknesses that should be understood and potentially addressed before any marketing campaign commences.
6. What words and descriptions can you use in the promotional material to attract larger volumes of enquiry from the chosen target market? Get away from generic property descriptions and ordinary advertising strategies.  Be unique and special when it comes to the descriptions and the stories you create around your property listings.
7. Can you do an editorial as part of the campaign? Some properties have a reasonable level of interest and perhaps a story that can be shared to the local area.  Look into the history of the property to determine how an interesting editorial could be created.
8. What tag lines, headlines, and images can you use to attract the eye of the reader to your marketing material? Understand the words that sell and the phrases that sell when it comes to property promotion and marketing.  You can get some books to help you with this information and the ideas behind attractive headlines, tag lines, keywords, and promotional phrases.
9. What are the best modes of promotion that will reach out into the active property buyers or tenants that you are seeking to target? Choose the media outlets that are relevant to your location and particularly the target audience.
10. Are there better times of year where the property should be promoted to achieve more enquiry and promotional result? Review the impact of the seasonal property cycle to understand how it may impact the property listing and the results you require.

Never before has there been such a proliferation of marketing tools and particularly so with the social media and online media strategies that are available.  The people that we are seeking to attract to our property listings today are smarter and more discerning.  They will only focus on the things that are of real interest to them.  You only have a few seconds with any media layout to attract their attention before they move on.

Your promotional strategies for all of your property listings need to be finely tuned to convert better enquiries and inspection opportunities. Each day, all of your local brokers and agents are involved in a’ media competition’ to pull in enquiries.

What are buyers and tenants doing?

Every property buyer and tenant will check out local listings online and through the traditional media.  Your property listings should be carefully crafted to get the enquiry results that you want and your clients expect.  Are you up to the challenge?  How can you improve your promotional strategies?

Interestingly, the best real estate agents or brokerages for a location generally have a highly tuned and refined advertising and marketing strategy to support the office and the listings within the business; that is how they promote and convert more business over time.  They understand the value of marketing both online and offline.

Your professional Agent image

The clients that we serve and the clients that we are trying to attract will always judge the professional success and marketing image of a commercial real estate business before they make a final choice of the agent or broker to list their property.

Clients and property owners today understand that the promotion of a property today is not an ‘experiment’ but a very special process requiring skilful people and brokerages with dominant market share.  They want their property listed with the best agent and the best brokerage.  How are you positioned on those two points or factors?  How can you stand out as the agent of choice for the location and or property type?  Assess your current situation.

As the professional real estate agent or broker for your location, the strategies that you apply to your promotional processes should be extraordinarily good and specifically tuned to every good quality listing you promote.

Your Real Estate choices

Make some specific choices when it comes to the marketing strategies behind exclusive listings vs. open listings.  Your exclusive listings should be specially promoted and directly marketed.  Open listings are generally a waste of time and should not receive much of your promotional focus.  Focus most of your promotional efforts into your exclusive listings in a creative and relevant way for the location.

Your marketing strategies in commercial real estate brokerage should be very specific and direct. They should pull in the reader through carefully selected channels of promotion with excellent copy and professional images. That’s your job; that’s your profession.