The Right Way to Build Your Personal Marketing Plan in Commercial Real Estate Agency
When you work in commercial real estate brokerage, it pays for you to have a personal marketing plan that you operate within on a daily basis. Certain things should happen to build your business profile locally with all property owners, business leaders, and property investors.
The secret to making the marketing plan work for you is in your consistency and relevance. The message must go out every day to new people. Whilst it is good to keep in contact with people that you know, it is more important to find new people who have an interest in what you do and what you have to offer.
Marketing Plans Matter
To drive your marketing plan ahead, you should establish a plan of approach and attack. Here are some tips to help you do that.
- Define your territory for the plan to operate within. Every business owner and property owner in that zone will be contacted as part of that plan over time. Don’t make the area too large as that will diffuse the results that you get. You cannot also be a specialist in everything and every area. An area that contains 3000 properties and or businesses is good enough for your work.
- Determine the part of commercial or retail real estate you want to be known as an expert on. It could be sales, leasing, property management, retail, shopping centres, office property, or industrial property. Choose the part of the industry that you enjoy because you will need to improve your property market knowledge and market share in it continually. When you like what you do, it becomes a lot easier.
- Set objectives in your marketing plan so you know what you want to do weekly, monthly, and yearly. Those objectives should include cold calling contacts, meetings, new business, client numbers, listings, commissions, and referrals. All of these factors are linked and lead to the next step in the chain of contact or business. You want to become the number one producer in your area, so stages of growth are required for you to get there.
- Understand your target clients and prospects individually. They will have requirements that you can tap into. Understand their demographics, location, property requirements, and the cycle of property change.
- Make cold calls to your prospect list every day. Set an allocation of 30 outbound calls. You will not reach 30 people but you will reach 15 or so. Spread the word about yourself to new people in real estate at every opportunity. That is what this business is all about.
- Use technology to add to the networking and contact process. Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging, and Facebook are all definitely useful in maintaining contact with your commercial real estate market. The three most powerful tools in the group for us to use are Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogging. Each of them will allow you to show the property market that you are an expert and specialist in your property type and the local area. Do not mix any personal and private comments with your business followers. If you must do that, revert to a segregated group on Facebook so you do not send mixed messages to your prospects and clients. Professionalism in real estate across all your messages is essential.
The process of marketing yourself is perhaps obvious to many in our industry; it’s just that most salespeople are random in the process. If you want to build your market share, set up your marketing system and work it on a daily basis. Expand your client base and prospect base at every opportunity.
