Residential & Commercial Real Estate Marketing – Differences

The commercial real estate (CRE) industry is challenging and competitive. You'll need a different strategy to succeed in this market than what you would for residential properties, but it's not impossible if done correctly with the right marketing tactics. 

Good strategies can help your business stand out amongst other CRE brokers and attract new customers through visibility on search engines like Google and on social media platforms like Facebook or Yelp!

When it comes to real estate marketing, there's no such thing as too much preparation. That way you can measure the success of your efforts and make adjustments based on what works best for you!

With so many changes happening in this digital age we live in now, the following discusses some tips that will help ensure your business thrives. But before we dive in, let’s iron out the difference between commercial and residential real estate.

Is There a Difference Between Residential and Commercial Real Estate Marketing?

The truth is, there's really no difference between residential and commercial real estate (CRE) marketing except the target market. In residential real estate, you're targeting your ads to home buyers, and investors focused on buying only residential properties, like single-family homes. On the other hand, commercial real estate marketing centers mainly on CRE properties, such as retail properties, office buildings, multi-family homes, etcetera.

Regardless of the sector you work in as a broker; you'll find these real estate marketing tips valuable. The following are some residential and commercial real estate marketing strategies to help you get more clients.

Select Your Target Audience

Marketing your agency and properties often depends on your target audience and how you approach them. It'd be best to identify and define your audience; that way, you can easily create a marketing plan.

Consider checking what your competitors are doing and their marketing campaign to get an idea of improving your services. After that, segment your audience according to their shared characteristics like buying criteria, buyer type, geography, etcetera. That way, you know how best to create ads that appeal to them.

Maintain an Active Blog

Consider creating and maintaining an active blog. A blog is an ideal marketing tool that can massively impact your search engine results and social media visibility while serving as an avenue to interact with your prospects.

Educate your clients and prospects with expert advice and tips, critical company news, local market trends, discuss the relevant industry innovations, and highlight lease transactions.

As a professional in your field, your company blog will help to demonstrate your expert knowledge and establish your position as an authority in your area. Don't forget to invite suggestions and comments from your readers.

Get Active on LinkedIn

Presently, LinkedIn is the premier platform for professionals looking to network. With its over 500 million user base, LinkedIn is home to almost every professional in real estate, investing, and finance that you might want to meet. LinkedIn offers a powerful engagement platform with search functions, group discussion boards, and content posts.

You can combine your LinkedIn with ultra-targeted advertising to grow your client base and increase your company growth.

Build Your Brand Newsletter

Email is still among the best practical means of communication for any residential and commercial real estate agent. Compared to other online formats, email has a higher response rate. 

Besides allowing you to keep in touch with your customers and prospects, it provides an opportunity to showcase your company's activity, build a relationship transcending your website's anonymity, and offer valuable free information.

Run a Targeted Google Ad Campaign

Paid ads, especially Google Adwords, provide a scalable, fast, and efficient way of targeting potential investors and tenants online. 

Programmed ads enable you to direct your offers or services to people staying in a specific location, including displaying retargeted ads to prospects visiting your competitors or your website. Simply put, ads are the quickest way to be in your target market and prospect's face.

Track and Record Your Results

It's one thing to run ads on Google; it's another thing to remember to track your marketing performance and record your results every month. That way, you'll be better informed at making decisions and discovering if your website draws more clients. Suppose your website fails to gain prospects; you'll need to revisit it and take action. Consider using Google analytics to keep track of your property marketing plan and record your results. 

Run a Retargeting Campaign

One way to recapture traffic on your site is through retargeting. With retargeting, you get to show ultra-targeted ads to people that have already visited your website or performed an action there. Retargeting is crucial because 90 percent or more of your website traffic won't take any action when they visit; you'll need to run a retargeting ad to help increase return rates.

Have a Professional Website

One necessary commercial real estate marketing strategy for lead generation is an updated professional website. Your own website is the bedrock of any successful digital marketing effort, and it creates a powerful first impression. A joint study by Loopnet and Google showed that nearly 80 percent of investors and tenants use the Internet when making purchase decisions for a new property. 

Simply put, your website is vital for helping you acquire new prospects, gain brand visibility, and drive lease-up efforts and sales. More so, your website's user experience will significantly influence your ability to attract and reach more investors, brokers, and potential tenants.

Implement an SEO Strategy

Ensure your real estate website implements an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. An effective SEO strategy helps you generate free and massive traffic from Google and other search engines, helping you develop visibility for relevant keywords connected to your business. 

More potential investors and tenants utilize these search engines to discover properties. Thus, you need to ensure that your website is easily discoverable. Your SEO strategy must include a thorough plan comprising content strategy, technical SEO, user experience, link building, and social media marketing. 

If you can, consider hiring an SEO agency or expert to ensure your website is fully optimized. That way, you get to maximize your visibility. 

Get the Best Tools and Software 

Before you can achieve results with an effective commercial real estate marketing strategy, you'll have to get the right real estate marketing tools (marketing stack) in place. These tools cover various requirements and use and include everything from email marketing to contact management, listing presentations, etcetera.

Ensure you pay attention to the technology selection process to avoid changing platforms all the time. A switch from a commercial real estate marketing tool or software can hinder your operation and decrease productivity while making the transition. 

Companies that optimize and streamline their marketing processes will likely experience overall success and sustained growth. 

Ask for Referrals

Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the most effective means of scaling your real estate business. It can help you grow your business and bring in more prospects without having to spend too much on advertising or marketing materials, like print materials and business cards. 

However, ensure you ask your client for these referrals. It'd help to build relationships with your clients, create a referral request program, and follow both your client and potential prospects up to ensure you're on the same page with them.

FAQs

The following are some of the questions you might want to ask when it comes to creating an effective commercial real estate plan:

What Are the 4 P’s of Marketing in Real Estate?

Placement/Positioning

To attract a large number of potential clients, consider positioning your adverts at the right places and in the right way. Choose many high-traffic real estate listing websites to broadcast your ads. 

Pay attention to your listing descriptions and highlight the features of your property in a subtle yet enticing way. Also, avoid using salesy phrases, instead connect your prospective customers emotionally to the commercial or residential property you wish to sell.

Product

Commercial real estate is the product you're offering, and while it's crucial to cater to many customers to become successful, you might want to prepare yourself for tradeoffs.  According to Michael E. Porter, a renowned economist, tradeoffs build competitive advantage.

Thus, you'll need to discover your niche and give your customers the best service in that niche. Suppose you're selling luxury properties; ensure you offer only premium properties for sale. That way, you distinguish yourself from other realtors. 

Price

Strategically pricing your properties is crucial. Suppose you psychologically price your property using odd numbers like $349,999 rather than $350,000; you might lose out on customers searching for properties above the $350,000 breakpoint. Psychological pricing might work in the retail industry, unlike in the real estate sector.

Promotion

This last P of real estate marketing teaches how to promote your product. Succeeding in the commercial real estate industry means applying various real estate marketing methods. 

From promoting your product online to organizing open houses, you'll need to exhaust all possible marketing efforts to get the maximum number of customers and attract the perfect buyer for your property.

How Do I Market Myself as a Commercial Real Estate Agent?

Develop Email Marketing Campaigns

One best way to generate more leads is to adopt email marketing for commercial real estate. Consider sending a monthly newsletter roundup of the entire website blog posts and reaching out to your contacts when there are new listings. 

Ensure to include the property pictures linking to the complete listing, a virtual home staging, and a video property walkthrough.

Partner With Local Businesses

It'd help to use your connections and partnerships with local businesses like home decor showrooms, coffee shops, clothing boutiques to promote your listings. You can invite them to take part in an open house show. 

It might help if you set up pop-up shops in your open house and encourage prospects to visit it and view the building to decide if they still like the property. 

The pop-up shop in the rooms will enable the potential client to explore each room. What's more, through the open house you can liaise with the local brands to give some discounts on their goods and services. 

Try Experiential Marketing

One best way to engage your prospects is by experiential marketing, which invites your clients and prospective customers to interact with your brand in the real world. 

For instance, you can organize a tour of the property's neighborhood to teach homebuyers in that area about the home buying process or invite prospective buyers to see the home.

Employ Virtual Staging

The best way to pique your buyer's interest is to offer them a sneak peek of the home through virtual staging. One significant benefit of virtual staging is that it saves you the money and time needed to stage a property physically. A 2019 study by NAR showed that more than 80 percent of staged homes sold faster than unstaged properties.

How Do You Market a Commercial Rental Property?

List Your Property on the Leasing Firm’s Website

The best way for homebuyers to find their property online is through the listing page on prominent leasing firms' websites. Then add a link to download the e-flyer and links to your email. Ensure the property listing page features all the vital information in the flyer, like the details, contact information, maps, and images. 

The listing page is a perfect avenue to showcase additional marketing materials for your commercial properties, such as video, virtual tour, property website, amongst others. 

Furthermore, premium listing pages often feature interactive maps, asking rates and current availability, an inquiry form for reaching out directly by brokers and tenants, etcetera. Ensure they're all linked to your site so that once the prospects click on it, it'll direct them to your site.

Broker Email Campaign

To actively promote your property and ensure the listing is on the top of the brokerage community's mind, ensure you execute an email campaign for the property.  

Ensure you regularly schedule the email campaign to the brokerage community. A typical email should include property details, a link to the broker's contact information and flyer for inquiries, high-quality photos, and the property listing page link.

Leasing Sign at the House

Despite the advance in technology, we can't ignore the influence traditional marketing has on business growth. The best way to show that you have an available property for sale is to put a physical sign on the property. 

You'll need to place a property leasing sign on the home's front to get the attention of prospects driving or walking by the neighborhood. 

Conclusion

Commercial real estate marketing strategies project your agency and the properties you're selling in the best position to generate leads. Thus, commercial real estate efforts effectively connect you to a targeted audience, driving leads.  

Retail properties and commercial real estate companies need to incorporate traditional and digital marketing while benefiting greatly from relationships with previous clients. 

Knowing how to network, leverage relevant and available tools, and market your properties right will enable you to become more noticeable to potential customers and grow your real estate agency.

In this tough economy, it's important to find new ways of drawing in customers. If your real estate agency is struggling with the competition and lack of leads from people searching online for properties then contact Ardor SEO today to help draft an ideal marketing strategy that will work well for you!