Introduction
Mixed use commercial real estate is a great asset class. The ability to mix the best of both worlds together is highly preferred by consumers due to the unmatched convenience of placing everything a person would need in one centralized location.
Offering excellent walkability, a vibrant community feel, and integrated access to daily needs such as shopping, dining, living, and recreation. Mixed use properties lead to better experiences, more foot traffic, and willingness to pay more for an enhanced lifestyle.
Finding the right tenants can be a challenge no matter how the property is designed. To drive qualified tours your marketing needs to speak directly to your potential clients needs for two (or more) different types of CRE.
You not only need to know the best ways to reach them but you also need to ensure that you stick to one story with consistent campaigns that actively engage your target audience. In this article by the Cindtoro team we are going to teach you the various ways you can market mixed-use space successfully.
Who This Article Is For
We created this article for commercial real estate developers, asset managers, directors or leasing teams who are looking for ways to lease mixed use real estate properties. You likely fall into some of these segments. The property is freshly constructed and in need of a lease-up, you have a great site but a cold pipeline or you are just looking for ways to reduce vacancies across your CRE portfolio.
District Thesis
The first step is to establish your overall branding and story. This is single-handedly the most important part of the entire process without it nothing else works.
Mixed use spaced operates differently during certain segments of the day broken out into sections such as morning, midday, evening. Your firm’s marketing efforts need to convey that your property is “good” for all times of the day.
A single headline will work best as long as it captures the message your firm is looking to convey. Some great slogans could be some of the following: “Live. Work. Play.” OR “Invest in Integrated Living” OR “Experience the [Property Name] Lifestyle”
After you have a headline that captures the property’s essence and fits your desired messaging, place it everywhere throughout all of your creative assets and ad messages.
Priority Audiences – choose who you’re marketing to
The way you market to retail operators will be different from the way you market to commercial real estate brokers / site selectors. Defining priority audiences for marketing is a relatively simple yet often overlooked task. Most companies have an idea of who they want to reach but fail to explicitly write down an exact version of their target audience.
This simple oversight can increase cost to acquire new tenants and can lead to wasted advertising spend. By taking the time to narrow down key audience information you will help to enhance overall promotional efforts and make it easier to effectively target your ideal client profile.
Segmented Email List
One of the best ways to promote a mixed use commercial real estate property is to use a focused email marketing strategy. Emails offer the ability to directly engage with your target audience that other methods are not capable of.
The key to email marketing success is segmentation and clean deliverability metrics. This is where you create a focused list for people to fall into certain categories helping to ensure your email messages “speak” to end users as effectively as possible.
Email marketing is not as simple as sending emails and hoping for the best. It requires a well thought out strategy. People hate spam, they also hate receiving emails too frequently or ones that do not fit their needs. To avoid issues with email deliverability avoid sending unnecessary emails or spamming your database.
Improve Reach With Online Ads
If you don’t have an email list to leverage your best option (also one of the fastest) to find people for your mixed use property is to run paid digital ads. Many commercial real estate firms overlook this method mainly due to the fact they either don’t know about it or lack of budget.
But since you are reading this article at least one reason is no longer an excuse. Paid ads give you the opportunity to promote your property to people who are actively searching for it on major search engines. No matter how someone searches for a commercial property you can reach them online.
Improve searchability
When you search for “mixed use commercial real estate in X location” do you show up? We are going to boldly assume the answer is no. If that is the case, improving your property listings pages with relevant information can improve your odds of appearing in the search results.
A basic description of the property is not good enough. If you want to be the number one in your local market you will need at least 250 to 300 words at the minimum per each property listing on your webpages.
Online Virtual Tours
in-order to facilitate an enhanced user experience your firm should be using some form of online virtual tours. This improves overall marketing efforts while also helping both parties save time, energy, and money. Your prospect gains the ability for a virtual tour so they can see if the property / space is the best fit for their needs before either party spends time re-arranging schedules for an in-person tour.
Use Social The Right Way
Many commercial real estate firms use social media the wrong way. They fail to educate their user base about the surrounding market or an upcoming mixed use property in development. CRE firms that prioritize education, teasers and take the time to create a quality brand story are the ones that have the most success with social media.
If you are just posting boring images with little to no context while expecting your strategy to work you are majorly behind the eight ball. Take use of all the available features each platform has to offer.
You do not need to post on every platform just because you read an article saying “more is better” the most important thing is to keep in mind where your target audience spends the majority of their time and to create well thought-out engaging content.
Remain Engaged Offline With Creative Assets
Build out assets your firm can hand out to your most engaged prospects. Branded items like property listing presentation flyers, annotated maps and print ads can work wonders for people firms who are looking to remain engaged with their target audience offline.
To make the creative assets as effective as possible ensure you are using professional imagery. Do not forget to use your thesis taglines such as “Live. Work. Play.” or others throughout your promotional materials. Give these items to people if they are interested in learning more about your CRE firm and available listings.
Also, consider including relevant pieces of information such as traffic counts, drivetime to city hubs as well as any other useful things to help guide potential tenants with their decision making process to lease space with your firm.
Conclusion
Most firms overlook the small details that cost them greatly in the long run.Leasing mixed use CRE requires a tactful approach that when done correctly can fill your property with ideal tenants. Now that you know some of the different ways to market a mixed use commercial property, put these methods to the test. If you need help the Cindtoro team is here to assist. We look forward to hearing from you.