How to Choose a Quality Marketing Agency in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Marketing in commercial real estate brokerage is quite a special process. The larger brokerages usually appoint a specialist consultancy group to assist with marketing control, costing, and recoveries.
Over the last 10 years the vast array of promotional initiatives available to us both online and offline is truly amazing. Sometimes it is difficult to cover off on all of them; that is why a marketing agency is a useful process to consider within any successful brokerage.
What are you marketing?
The marketing process in commercial real estate is three fold. Consider these elements:
- The promotion of the brokerage
- The marketing efforts of individual agents or brokers
- The advertising of listings (both open and exclusive listings)
The promotional topic is just so important in commercial real estate today. You cannot overlook any of these 3 variations mentioned above.
Valuable promotional questions
So let’s say you are considering finding and using a specialist marketing consultant to handle your important issues for the brokerage. Here are some valuable questions to think about:
- Do they really understand your business? – There is no point in appointing a marketing group that has no experience with commercial property. Understand the importance of commercial for what it is. Ask them what they know about commercial and what ideas they have to improve your business profile through their experience.
- Have they got the experience? – Drill down on their experience. Ask to see evidence of advertising layouts, design initiatives with special property types, and ask about how they would merge your promotional activity across the internet portals, social media, and traditional marketing channels.
- What special strategies and systems do they offer? – There should be some unique ways in which they can help you. A deep discussion about special promotional strategies is worthwhile.
- How will they control budgets? – We all know that marketing money well spent is useful. It is also very easy to waste a lot of money if campaign planning is poor. How will they track the spending and the effectiveness of marketing spending? You can add an extra layer to the process here within the topic of vendor paid marketing from listings. That is special recover process to be considered and costed with all exclusive listings.
- Can they provide buying advantages and savings in the media channels? – Any consultant of this type should have purchasing advantages in the media channels. How will they pass those savings on to you?
- Who else do they serve? – Be careful here as they may be working for some of your competitors currently. Don’t allow a conflict of interest situation to evolve with your brokerage and other real estate companies of similar type.
- See some examples of marketing creativity – There is ordinary marketing and then there is exceptional creativity. Look for examples of great promotional activity and see how that could relate to your business and brokerage.
- How will you pay for their services? – Consultants of this type do not come cheap. You also pay for what you get so there is an equation of cost to control. Understand their costs and determine how you will pay for them over time.
Taking all of these things into account, you can select a well experienced and professional marketing consultancy firm to help build the profile of your real estate business. They can be a valuable component of the brokerage business and promotional activity.
You can get more marketing tips for commercial real estate brokerage in our eCourse ‘Snapshot’ right here.