How Do Clients Find You and What Do They Want
In these times of diverse marketing in commercial real estate, it pays to understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to people finding you and connecting with you with their property needs. When you have this information you can improve on the things that work and drop those that don’t work.
Every marketing dollar spent in commercial real estate should be well considered and directed to the right media strategies; that is in the cases of your listings, your brokerage, and your office. It is remarkable just how many brokerages have very little idea of just what media methods are bringing the people to them.
Shifts and Changes
There are reasonable shifts in marketing today that are well away from the traditional newspaper and brochure promotional process. In some cases newspaper advertising is a total waste of money for some properties; that can also be said for the brokerage itself.
Try these ideas to help plan your promotional processes:
- Every salesperson in the team can have an ‘inquiry capture’ form on their desk or to carry with them when away from the office. It is then simply asking a new caller or person how they came to know about you or the property. At the end of the week take a tally of the numbers from all salespeople. You will soon see how your business and listings are being found.
- Pay particular attention to the inquiries you get with major listings and high profile marketing campaigns with quality listings. The results you get from those efforts will be valuable indicators for future promotional strategies.
- When you track and measure your inbound inquiries you will see trends of inquiries with property types, seasonal campaigns, days of the week, and shifts between sales campaigns and leasing campaigns.
- You will see better levels of inquiry from listings that have featured professional photographs and well written advertising copy. Any exclusive listing marketing campaign should be costed to include those factors.
- A featured signboard on an exclusive listing will attract inquiry from the local area. Some brokerages will pay for the signboard themselves in exchange for a quality exclusive listing for a reasonable time frame. The logic works as long as you are prepared to work the listing comprehensively into the target audience.
- Some property types will create greater levels of inquiry from investors. Determine the ‘hot property categories’ and find more listings in the local area that suit.
So there are plenty of things to do here that will help you maximize your results in marketing. Make the right promotional choices by understanding your inbound marketing enquiry.
