The real estate sector blossoms every passing year. This market currently holds a $10.7 trillion value. As a real estate agent or investor, now's the time to tap into this industry's wealth.
However, the competition in this industry is similar to its profitability. In the United States alone, over 106,000 real estate brokerages exist. Additionally, more than 3 million individuals hold real estate licenses within this jurisdiction.
To thrive in the saturated real estate vertical, you need a rock-solid marketing plan. In the subsequent sections, we'll examine why an effective marketing strategy is essential and variations you can adopt to take your realty business to the next level.
Are you yearning for more context? Let's dive in!
Importance of an Effective Commercial Real Estate Marketing Strategy
An effective marketing strategy is crucial to commercial real estate investors and realtors for these reasons:
1. It Promotes Customer Engagement
Many real estate businesses fail because they can't reach their target audience. Although certain firms can, they don't engage them properly. An effective real estate marketing strategy helps you avoid this pitfall.
With one, you can reach and engage your target audience via different digital marketing channels, including emails, newsletters, social media, yellow pages, blogs, and lots more. Offline marketing options (i.e., direct mail and TV adverts) are also viable.
With a working marketing strategy, you can seamlessly transform mere prospects into clients.
2. It Builds Brand Awareness
A commercial real estate marketing strategy is like a blueprint — you follow it until you complete your project. Interested prospects can easily identify with your brand when you stick to specific outreach approaches.
Also, an effective marketing strategy grants your brand the visibility required to trump the competition. For example, paid promotions — a typical marketing technique — will promote your real estate listings and sell your brand. It doesn't matter if you're new to the real estate world; an effective marketing strategy will make your brand known quickly.
3. It Builds Trust
It’s easy to go the extra mile when it involves online marketing. Using paid ads as an example, some commercial real estate companies make the mistake of choking their target audience with countless adverts.
However, bombarding your target audience with numerous adverts makes them resent your online advertising methods, prompting distrust in the long run. According to a recent Kantar study, 55% of consumers are numb to adverts, and only 11% watch ads.
Although ads are still a practical part of commercial real estate marketing, you stand a better chance of closing deals with prospects by implementing effective follow-up communication channels. Your message and promise to customers must be consistent across all your marketing channels to foster client trust. For this, an effective marketing plan comes in handy.
4. It Optimizes Spending
Irrespective of your business, you'll spend unnecessarily without a plan. In the real estate sector, the same applies. Unplanned marketing campaigns can ruin your business.
For example, running email campaigns today, paid ads tomorrow, and guest posting the next day isn't advisable. By towing this path, you diversify your marketing efforts without getting any real value.
However, with a consistent and effective commercial real estate marketing plan, you can execute marketing efforts bound to convert and attract decent ROIs.
5. It Supports Your Sales Team
The job of a sales team is to establish contact between the company and target clients. This team scouts for new clients and does its best to maintain the existing ones.
With an effective marketing strategy, your sales team won't go through the hassle of client acquisition and retention alone. A well-structured marketing plan attracts prospects and converts them into paying clients without hassles.
Furthermore, a good marketing strategy should uncover potential clients' challenges during interactions with your real estate firm. Your sales team can also leverage this insight and tweak their operations accordingly. A win-win for all involved parties.
Effective Commercial Real Estate Marketing Strategies
We've just examined how crucial effective marketing plans are in the saturated commercial real estate industry. If you'd like to curate a rock-solid marketing blueprint for your real estate business, it'll be best to utilize these strategies:
Define Your Target Audience
The first step to any marketing campaign is knowing your target audience. In commercial real estate marketing, audiences are those interested in purchasing homes or other landed properties. However, this market's vast size makes it almost impossible to make your offerings known to everyone.
As such, you must narrow down your target market via demographics. This activity involves identifying your prospective clients based on location, age, financial status, and taste.
If you’re selling commercial properties, your target market should be businesses. Conversely, focus on individual buyers if you’re marketing single and multi-family homes.
Your target audience should also influence what marketing channels to use. For instance, using social media for a younger audience and employing traditional marketing mediums for an older audience is advisable.
When you tailor your marketing efforts towards a specific demographic, the chances of getting a greater return on investment are high!
Ensure Your Website Is Comprehensive
A real estate website is a must-have, but having one isn't enough. Your web page must be comprehensive and updated. A detailed website makes it easy for prospective customers to understand the ins and outs of your brand.
For your website to be detailed, it must possess specific pages and sections. Notable mentions include:
- About Page: A good About page lets website visitors in on your commercial real estate business. It should feature in-depth details about the company, team members, and core operating values.
- Listing Page: Your real estate website should have a Listing page displaying the properties you intend to sell. This section should be easy to navigate, so visitors can quickly go through different commercial properties alongside their notable features and availability status.
- Guides: Great real estate websites host distinct guide sections for homebuyers and sellers. Guides inform intending clients of the processes involved in conducting business with your realty agency. Setting out these steps gives patrons perspective on how the home buying or selling process starts and ends.
- Blog: Content marketing remains effective in the commercial real estate space. You can leverage it by attaching a blog on your website. The blog must feature current and helpful information about the realty industry.
- Contact: Your marketing efforts will only succeed if potential clients can contact you. Therefore, a contact page on your real estate website is a no-brainer. The page should list multiple contact alternatives, including phone numbers, email addresses, and social media handles.
Besides the above pages, ensure your website has a welcoming and intuitive layout that loads smoothly on any device type. A good web designer can implement this structure for a fee.
Invest in Content Marketing
As we've established, content marketing is effective in the real estate sector. It's an easy and low-cost commercial real estate marketing technique to leverage. However, it'll only serve its intended purpose when you regularly create and post high-quality content.
Your content strategy must cover top commercial real estate marketing ideas to entice your target market. Content could revolve around property location details and notable real estate market trends.
If you can't write high-quality content, hire an expert content creator to curate these posts. Agreed, it would cost you a few dollars. But you stand to benefit from the brand awareness and lead generation quality content provides.
Alternatively, you can invite other commercial real estate professionals to contribute guest articles on your blog. You can also post guest articles on other commercial real estate sites and link to yours. Tit for tat!
Content marketing is a tedious task with the capacity to catapult your real estate brand into success or make you lose prospective real estate clients to your competitors. If you're struggling with creating quality content, consider managed services from leading real estate content marketing experts like Ardor SEO.
Optimize Your Website for SEO
Any business that wants to thrive online must focus on search engine optimization. SEO is the science and art that makes your business visible on search engine rankings, especially Google.
Data shows that 97% of home buyers use the internet for property searches. Imagine if your real estate website ranks on Google's first page. It translates to one thing — more customers to patronize your listings.
For proper search engine optimization, you may need to hire an expert. However, you can get decent results with reliable SEO tools. All you need to do is optimize your website and content with target keywords, backlinks, and quality images.
Your SEO efforts will take some months to reflect on search engines — generally around four to six months. So, consistency and patience are vital.Say goodbye to the hassle of lead generation and focus on what really matters, closing those deals. Ardor SEO specializes in effective SEO solutions tailored to the real estate industry.
Get in touch today to take your online presence to the next level!
Conduct Email Marketing
Emails are commonplace when it comes to digital marketing. Why? They're effective. Thus, it'll be best to make this strategy part of your marketing plan for commercial real estate.
The success of any email marketing campaign depends on timing and creativity. Your emails must meet your customers at the right time and be creative enough to spike their interest. If they don't, they'll end up in the trash folder.
However, you can avoid this with a unique email marketing plan.
How?
For starters, invest in good email marketing software that'll help you generate leads. The software should also provide converting templates and vital marketing materials.
Next, decide on what type of emails you want to send.
Natural and original emails are perfect. Avoid filling customers’ inboxes with emails focusing on your listings only. Your email marketing efforts should include newsletters on real estate events, guides, and customer testimonials.
Invest in Professional Photography
What is a real estate marketing plan without quality pictures? You can describe it with one word — failure. A commercial real estate marketing plan aims to sell properties, and no one would buy if they can't see or assess what you're selling.
Taking random pictures of a house or commercial property for sale isn't enough. You must invest in professional photography involving more than a camera and lens. To make your listings stand out, utilize external flashes, light meters, and drones.
With 83% of buyers stating that high-quality images spurred their interest in purchasing a property, consider adding professional photographers on your marketing team.
Create Walkthrough Videos
Walkthrough videos are the current trend in the real estate industry. These short videos provide virtual tours of a property, highlighting its prominent features and helping real estate companies sell listings quickly.
Walkthrough videos have the edge over pictures, as the former delivers a detailed view of the property. They're also effective because they answer customers' questions concerning room size, style, appliances, and furniture. By creating clips giving insight into these areas, you can close deals faster.
You can attract more prospects by hiring a professional videographer to record and edit your walkthrough videos. However, if you're on a low budget, consider customizing templates from top-notch video marketing tools.
Like photos, your walkthrough videos must denote impeccable quality. Ensure they cover the property's unique selling point that appeals to your customers.
Create a Google Business Profile
A Google Business page supplements your digital marketing efforts. It increases your chances of ranking high on Google search engine result pages, making it easier for customers to know your business. A GMB page also increases credibility.
While creating a GMB profile, provide specific details such as company location and contact information. Google will also prompt you to upload media, making these pages a perfect spot to display your listing photos and walkthrough videos.
Upon GMB page creation, your business will appear when customers around its location search for real estate companies. When they do, they'll get specific directions to your office since your firm's location is available on Google Maps.
The details on your Google My Business page must correspond with your website, as most customers gravitate from this section to your business's web page. So, if these details don't tally, this marketing strategy fails as trust levels decrease significantly.
Request and Display Testimonials
Testimonials play a significant role in influencing customer purchase decisions. Data confirms that 72% of customers trust a business more after reading positive testimonials and reviews about them. As such, ensure your commercial real estate marketing plan includes testimonials.
Whenever you close a deal with a client, ask them to drop a review of your service. They can do this via different channels, including on your website, social media handles, or email.
However, public testimonials — those on Google My Business pages, Facebook, and Zillow — are best. That way, customers know these reviews are from real people and not doctored.
Run Targeted Ad Campaigns
The internet changed the real estate industry and, by extension, commercial real estate marketing in many ways. One significant change is the introduction of targeted ad campaigns and pay-per-click advertising. Employing both in your digital marketing strategy ensures maximum results.
With targeted keyword campaigns, you can target prospects based on location, age, occupation, gender, interests, language, etcetera.
Conversely, pay-per-click advertising ensures you get value with every cent spent on ads. Here, you only pay when someone clicks on your ads.
Many channels exist to run targeted campaigns for marketing a commercial property. However, social media — especially Facebook and Instagram — remain the best for real estate businesses looking to showcase their offerings to prospects without breaking the bank.
Invest in Traditional Paid Media
Your commercial real estate marketing plan shouldn't center on online marketing. Before the internet, commercial real estate advertising existed. So, you can effectively market commercial properties via traditional paid media.
Traditional paid media involves marketing via offline marketing channels like prints, direct mail, telephone, billboards, radio, and television. You can leverage it, mainly if local audiences constitute your target audience.
For instance, you could convert walkthrough videos to TV commercials. Also, transforming high-quality content and newsletters into radio broadcasts works the trick for brand exposure.
Be Active on Social Media
A solid social media presence is vital for businesses nowadays. According to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) study, social media provides the highest lead quality percentage (47%). The same applies to your realty business once you utilize social media as a marketing strategy.
With numerous social media channels, real estate agents and investors should focus their marketing activities on popular alternatives like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
On these platforms, all you need is a professional handle and a steady stream of high-quality posts.
Your bio should give an overview of your business and feature contact details. Ensure your posts revolve around your commercial real estate branding, listings, customer testimonials, and industry news.
To build brand trust via social media, ensure you respond adequately to customer queries and comments (negative or positive).
Publish Market Reports
Conducting regular market research gives your business an upper hand. Unfortunately, only a few commercial real estate firms implement this strategy.
You become an authority in the commercial real estate arena by publishing local market reports. As such, clients are more likely to trust your services. Also, individual real estate agents who want to reference your reports will link to your website.
Market research will help you understand the industry at any given time. You get valuable data, analyze it, and draw conclusions. With the findings, you uncover new marketing ideas for commercial real estate and solve existing challenges.
Collaborate With Other Commercial Real Estate Companies
The ultimate goal of your commercial real estate marketing efforts is to grow your business. Collaborating with other companies can help you achieve that, especially if you're new to the industry. Besides firms, endeavor to connect with individual agents.
Collaborating doesn’t mean you must put pen to paper and sign contracts. A simple shout-out to a top real estate firm celebrating a major success is sufficient.
The firm may respond to your shout-out with a "thank you," granting you free exposure. Also, they'll return the favor when it's your turn to celebrate.
You can also consider signing partnership agreements. However, be selective and only partner with companies with clean records.
Organize Webinars
Organizing webinars is another effective digital marketing approach to building customer trust and credibility. Webinars provide a platform for you to attract clients with your real estate knowledge.
Notably, webinars help generate quality leads. About 73% of marketers attest to that fact, and you can get up to 1,000 leads with a value-oriented webinar. When organizing real estate webinars, be clear on your content strategy. Generally, it’s ideal to follow the educational path.
Create webinars to teach clients how to budget for, identify, evaluate, and purchase properties. Your audience may be sellers. For this set, create webinars on how to market a commercial property and interact with buyers.
Properly Track Your Progress
Lastly, it's essential to track your results properly. Monitoring your progress is the only way to know if your strategies are effective.
If you're implementing the wrong strategies, you don't have to wait until your campaign ends to discover your plan failed. Tracking your results as you progress helps you identify what's working in real-time and what isn't.
Many tracking tools are available, but Google Analytics is the most popular free option. Google Analytics features data tools for monitoring, filtering, and visualization. It delivers crucial metrics like user count, bounce rates, and average session durations. It also provides demographic data, including user age group, location, language, and device type.
Due to Google Analytics' popularity, it integrates with many third-party digital marketing tools. So, the extent of its tracking transcends your website. You can also track your progress across email marketing tools and social media.
Conclusion
A commercial real estate marketing plan is essential for your company's survival in this saturated industry. Thankfully, the practical strategies above will help you craft a blueprint that converts.
When creating a marketing plan, ensure you understand your audience and utilize strategies that suit them. That way, you can extend your business's digital footprint and prompt decent ROIs in the long run.
With numerous commercial real estate marketing strategies to consider, creating the perfect marketing plan might seem daunting. To make light of the task, contact ArdorSEO — a reputable digital marketing agency that will employ proven and tested real estate SEO techniques to improve your business's Google SERPs rankings and generate leads bound to convert.
