For a commercial real estate agency gaining new property listings is one of the most important things any firm can do. Once you gain those listings you have to move on to the next most important steps which is increasing visibility, starting a marketing process and ultimately selling a commercial property.
You may be searching for things like “how do I increase the visibility of my commercial real estate listings in my area or local market” Or, “How to market a CRE listing?” Or “What are some ways to drive traffic to my commercial real estate listing”
Questions like the above are very valuable at pinpointing how to do just that!
In this article by the Cindtoro team we will show you how to improve the visibility of your newly found cre listing in your target market. The strategies that we lay out within this article will be applicable to any area of the United States or world for that matter!
These visibility strategies will be highly useful if you or your firm sells or leases commercial real estate and is looking to get in front of the right types of buyers / investors.
Who is this article made for?
While article this will be mainly focused for commercial real estate, some of these strategies are also applicable to local realtors / residential real estate professionals. If you are in the field of residential real estate we encourage you to think outside of the box for some of these strategies because selling homes can be different than selling commercial real estate online.
Let’s get into the article!
Key takeaways:
- There are multiple strategies you can use to effectively market CRE property
- These methods are most impactful when combined with other forms of digital and traditional advertising.
- The process can be used for residential real estate agents who sell homes but needs to be tailored to their firm and marketing goals
- The Cindtoro marketing team is here to help you if needed
Share your listings on social media
Sharing your new listings on social media is one of the first ways you can gain increased Market exposure regardless of the type of real estate that your company services. With the average time spent on social media being about 4 hours per day, using social media platforms as a tool to promote your listings can be an excellent way to reach users who may be looking to purchase a property in your local market.
Let’s take for example you are a commercial real estate firm in Orlando, Florida and you are looking to promote an industrial warehouse on social media. Here are some good post ideas:
- details of the warehouse
- the location it’s in & the surrounding area.
- the zoning usage of the property.
- the unique features
- Parts of your offering memorandum
- much more!
With social media if you want to be found by the most relevant users you will also need to make sure that you use relevant hashtags so, since this example is trying to sell a industrial Warehouse some of your hashtags will need to be things like
- #OrlandoFlorida
- #Industrial warehouse for sale
- #orlando commercial real estate
- #industrial real estate listing
- #Cindtoro (Insert name of your firm)
Using hashtags like this you will be able to increase the visibility of your firm and listing on the social media platforms. Also keep in mind to use the most relevant platforms for your listings. And obvious one here would be utilizing LinkedIn.
However, as a caveat, just because LinkedIn is a great social media platform to reach professional users does not mean that you should not look outside of that and utilize other platforms like Instagram or Facebook.
Use commercial real estate SEO
We’ve talked before in the past about utilizing commercial real estate SEO to increase your website traffic on search engines. But why is using search engine optimization so important to increasing real estate listing visibility? Simply put, SEO helps you get found by people who are searching in your local area for the types of properties that you have to sell.
Commercial real estate SEO is important to the process of promoting your agencies listings due to the number of people that utilize a search engine before they start any buying process. In fact did you know that over 81% of people use a search engine before they make any kind of purchase?
With that in mind have you asked yourself this question: “what am I doing with my websites SEO as a real estate agent so I can reach the right types of buyers and sellers who are searching for properties in the areas that I service?”
Guest post for other websites
Since guest posting goes hand in hand with improving search engine optimization another good way to way to digitally market commercial real estate listings online would be by guest posting on other websites in your local market.
Guest posting is important to any business because it helps to establish credibility with an industry.
There are numerous different types of websites that you can guest post for and many of them industry relevant.
If you’re new to the world of guest posting as a marketing tool here is the process.
You write an article for a website, that article is then placed on the external website. ( after contact with the established webmaster who has the ability to make that happen ) What takes place after this point is the webmaster of that external site should send a link also known as an external backlink to your real estate website. ( although they are not required to do so)
This helps you increase your overall relevancy and authority within a search engine, and thus helps improve the visibility of your commercial real estate listings online.
Commercial real estate focused podcast
Podcasting as a tool to promote your firm is greatly under utilized digital marketing tool that you should look to capitalize on! While it would be both strange and very difficult to promote an individual listing on podcast.
It would however be an excellent way to promote your real estate company and showcase the types of CRE properties that your firm services and the area that you do it in.
Here is an example of how to do this:
At the end of a podcast, you could mention about your firm, the types of things you do, and the area that you do it in also leaving contact information for people to reach you later.
Another benefit of using podcast to promote your commercial real estate firm is as the podcast grows overtime. People will likely go back to an old episode that may have featured you or your firm. As they do, the visibility of your company will grow.
Email marketing and drip campaigns
It goes without saying that anybody looking to sell any type of property should look to use email marketing and targeted email drip campaigns!
Email list are an invaluable tool to market newly acquired property listings online to both buyers or sellers of commercial real estate.
The email list possesses many benefits with the main one being the ability to directly reach the people that you are looking to influence.
Everybody knows somebody else, and by using the list you have a direct point of contact with somebody who may know a buyer or seller.
If you don’t have an email list, then you will need to build one. we will have a separate article covering how to build an email list for the commercial real estate industry at a later date.
Real estate aggregator sites
Just like there are multiple different types of commercial property. There are also multiple commercial real estate listings websites.
These websites are already established and can be a great way for you to quickly increase the visibility of your listings. So, like the saying goes If you can’t beat them, join them!
Some of these websites are
- LoopNet
- Zillow
- Homes.com
- Apartmentbuildings.com
- Apartments.com
- And others
Using these types of real estate listing websites can get you in front of a target audience that is ALREADY searching to buy, sell, or lease for commercial real estate.
These websites can be applicable to commercial or residential agents, brokers or agencies.
Creation of video tours and professional commercial real estate photography
Creating high-quality video tours and getting professional images of a property you are trying to sell or lease is another way to increase the visibility of your listings.
When it comes to the world of commercial real estate people want to see what the property condition looks like before they make a purchase or submit an LOI.
if somebody is in a another state or geographical area, they will have difficulty viewing the property in person unless they travel. So, in comes the creation of high-quality video tours and professional real estate photography.
The combination of both professional video and images will allow you to showcase the property using two different advertising approaches which will appeal to two different types of audiences. It will also set you apart from your local competitors who may use lower imagery.
On top of that high-quality professional videos, and photos are also critical parts of your commercial real estate offering memorandum to showcase to prospective property investors.
Optimize your property listing with additional information
Since purchasing a commercial property is such a large undertaking and it typically requires millions of dollars. Potential buyers / investors will want to know as much information as they possibly can.
And you as the commercial real estate agency needs to give them as much information as you possibly can to assist them in making a potential offer.
Give them as much as you can, when it comes to increasing the visibility of your property listing, optimize it with as much information as possible.
This means including as many relevant details as needed to showcase the property appropriately the more the better!
Blog about your listing
We touched on the use of search engine, optimization, and guest posting to other websites for promotion.
Your firm may still be searching for ways to increase the traffic to your website and subsequently your listings.
An excellent way to do that? Blog / write articles.
You may be wondering, what types of articles should you write?
These could be things specifically about your commercial real estate listing, your company, or even the brokers or local agents that work at the firm.
Blogging in this way will generate increased traffic to your website and put more eyeballs on your commercial or residential listings.
Use real estate Google PPC search ads
Using commercial real estate Google pay per click PPC advertising is another way to increase the eyeballs that your listings have.
Google search ads are an excellent way to do this because they allow you to target by relevant sets of keywords that are important to your firm.
Here are some examples of keywords that could be promoted using paid advertising
- Lease commercial property
- Commercial real estate office lease
- Commercial real estate office lease in X market
- Hotel for sale
- Etc etc
A great thing about using paid search advertising like this is your company only gets charged when somebody actively clicks on your advertisement. Making it a highly cost effective way to market your company.
Have a featured listings section on your homepage
Featuring your most important real estate listings is an excellent way to increase visibility.
The homepage is where most website visitors will often go. so having a section that has your most valuable properties that you are looking to sell or lease is a fantastic addition to your commercial real estate website.
Ensure your website is mobile, friendly
If you have a real estate website, have you checked its mobile friendliness? we would assume probably not. That could be a fatal mistake, especially if you’re looking to promote your company. Did you know that? 60 % of website traffic comes from mobile devices like your phone?
If your website is not mobile friendly, then you are losing out on a large market share to companies who have mobile friendly websites.
Create a single property website
You may have specific information that you would like to share about one of your listings. Perhaps it could be one of your most important commercial listings that you have at your firm. If that’s the case, then you should consider creating a property website that has the details about this listing for prospective investors.
This is a great way to promote a single listing because all of the information focused on that singular landing page is focused for that property. This means that people cannot become distracted and search for other things that may not be related.
Mailers and flyers
Using mailers and flyers is still a very effective commercial real estate marketing tool that you should continue to utilize. Advertising through this traditional medium, can be don by including details of the property, details of your firm or details of your agents working the deal.
Get creditable press mentions from news websites
There are numerous different types of commercial real estate news websites
That you should use to market both your firm and listings on.
Here are some real estate focused news websites that you should be aware of
- Connect Media – Connect CRE
- Bisnow
- Globe Street
- The commercial observer
- The real deal
These websites already have massive amounts of real estate focused traffic and the readers and associated traffic they possess can be invaluable to selling the types of commercial property that your firm has to offer.
Share Vacant Space for Events
What do you do if you cannot sell or lease a vacant commercial real estate space in a fast enough timeframe to maintain positive cash flow for the property and firm as a whole?
Do you just let it sit there and suck up your cash?
You can use the vacant space as a place to host events. There are numerous amounts of people who are looking for a place to have different types of business events, personal events, and even weddings.
By offering your vacant commercial real estate property as a place for an event you can maintain some level of cash flow from it instead of having it sit dormant.
Offering memorandum
We already touched on the offering memorandum a few sections ago, an offering memorandum could be an excellent way for you to stay in front of your highest quality target leads.
Keeping your offering memorandum in front of prospective investors this helps to keep the visibility on your commercial property listing.
Need other ways to market your listings and generate inbound leads? Hire Cindtoro
Consider hiring a commercial real estate marketing focused agency like Cindtoro. Cindtoro is a full service agency that services multiple verticals and was founded in 2019 to provide the highest quality digital and traditional marketing services to commercial and residential real estate firms who want the best.
Interested in getting in touch with our real estate marketing team? Send us an email, fill out a contact form or call us!
We would be happy to help you increase your property listing visibility and your firms dominance in the local areas that you serve.
Recommended reading:
commercial real estate marketing blog
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