In the highly competitive commercial real estate (CRE) industry, you need to stand out from the crowd to succeed. Specifically, a good marketing strategy, if applied correctly, can help you achieve prominence among real estate brokers and, as such, draw more clients to you. Plus, a well-developed real estate marketing strategy helps you get organized and stay on top of your to-do list. Then, you can measure your performance and adjust your game plan to improve your results.
But, what exactly makes a CRE marketing strategy successful? In this article, we’ll break down the six steps that every CRE broker should take to generate more leads and boost their reputation in the field.
1. Identify your audience
When you’re working to put yourself on the map, don’t just advertise for the sake of advertising. Instead, identify your core audience and build your entire marketing strategy around it. Go through your sales statistics, analyze your past clients meticulously and create a buyer persona, which is a representation of your average user. In particular, note their gender, age, location, job role, spending thresholds, purchasing habits and any other characteristics that might come in handy when trying to lure them to your business. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the group of people who might be interested in becoming your clients, you can move onto the next step.
2. Establish your goals
With your target audience in mind, establish your business goals. These should not be future aspirations and vague intentions. Rather, they should be specific and quantifiable objectives that can be measured and checked off a list.
Additionally, establish your budget, know your competitors and think about ways in which you can differentiate yourself from their services. Define the key messages you’d like to convey to your target audience and consider how you can communicate them while still staying within your marketing budget. After you’ve completed this step, it’s time to put things into practice and use online and offline marketing tools to achieve your goals.
3. Enhance your online presence
These days, everyone who matters has a website. So, if you don’t have one already, make sure you set one up as soon as possible. Next, use content marketing tools to fill your website and your blog with insightful articles and videos to establish a strong online presence within your niche. Make sure you regularly update the site with news and informative pieces so you can become the go-to person for inspiring and useful content within your line of work.
Furthermore, harvest email addresses from the visitors that come to your site. Target them with industry-specific email marketing campaigns and newsletters to keep them hooked. Meanwhile, use social media to its full potential. Regularly post to platforms such as Twitter, where you can include short bits of important messages to your audience, as well as LinkedIn, where you can show off your expertise as a CRE broker.
When posting online, remember to incorporate relevant keywords and include calls to action in your text in order to engage your followers. Make sure your CRE listings are polished to perfection. Also, don’t underestimate the importance of online ads, which can help you advertise your business, target relevant leads and reach a wider audience.
4. Market offline
While the opportunities offered by online marketing tools can seem limitless, don’t overlook offline marketing. It’s still an effective way to build up and showcase your expertise in the industry, generate trust, get leads and enhance your brand image, which is especially important if you operate in a highly competitive office market like Manhattan.
Attending (or even organizing) networking events is a great way to meet new colleagues working in the field, but also to interact with prospective customers. Moreover, don’t hesitate to actively participate in these events by discussing recent trends in the market. Doing so is a great opportunity to introduce yourself and hand someone your business card.
Along the same lines, print materials – such as brochures, posters, flyers and display window signage – can also attract attention and generate leads for your business. Come up with advice, market predictions or anything else related to your CRE expertise and send it to local industry-specific publications. In this way, you’ll maintain a strong, active presence and build your brand in the process.
5. Measure your success
A key element of a good real estate marketing strategy is analysis. Measuring your results is important because it helps you understand which elements of your marketing strategy are generating the most leads, while also showcasing the aspects you need to revise.
For instance, audience behavior on your website, clickthrough rates from short links, and tools like Google Analytics help you measure your online activity and determine which elements were worthwhile in your marketing strategy – and which were sub-optimal.
6. Adapt your strategy
Once you have the metrics in front of you, tweak your marketing strategy. Understand and adapt to the demands of your target audience to increase your success rate. Fine-tune your CRE marketing efforts to make the most of your strategy and lead a successful marketing campaign that will benefit your business in the long run.
By following these steps, you can ensure your commercial real estate marketing strategy nets you more valuable leads, while also increasing your industry reputation and making you stand out in the industry.