Putting together an engaging commercial real estate marketing strategy can be difficult.  I’ve put together some commercial real estate marketing techniques that can be used together to create a winning marketing strategy.

#1 Local Advertising.

Claiming your business and enhancing your listing on Google, Yelp, Bing and Yahoo can be a great (and free) way to capture more local leads. Branding your listing by adding content to your listings with business address, website, hours of operation and social media links can bring in additional Internet leads that you’ve been missing.

#2 Researching.

Gather a list of property owners or leases in your area with Reonomy.  You can pull a spreadsheet of commercial property contact information, filter by building type, and use a radius around your office address.  If you’re looking for tenant rep, Data Axel has a great database full of owners, managers and decision makers that you can download into easy Excel spreadsheets.  Getting a list of your target audience is a must, especially if you’ll be doing any cold calls, email marketing, texts or direct mail.

#3 Goals.

It’s very important to have clear goals in your commercial real estate marketing. These goals can be simple like “earn X amount in profit each year” or “close 2 properties a month” or “get 10 new clients this year”.  Sit down and think of a realistic goal and a preferred one.  Earning double what you did last year is preferred, but 20% more is likely.  Having a “super star goal” and a “reality goal” will help you from getting discouraged.  If you’re new at the commercial real estate game, remember that branding a new business takes time, keep your goals small at first.

#4 Social Media.

Start out by advertising all your closed commercial real estate properties, sharing your virtual tours, and announcing your newest press release.  Feel free to add personality to your posts by sharing personal wins, or even just picture of your food (do people still do that?).  Love funny memes about boring meetings?  Post those too.  Social media has become a way for people to get to know your branding without doing the work of building a relationship.  Which means the same techniques for making friends go hand-and-hand with social media and branding.  If it’s too much to keep involved with your social media requirements, you can always outsource on websites like Fiverr and UpWork.

#5 Press Releases.

Clippings of your published press releases are a great to show potential clients that you’re “for real”. It also may attract leads if someone sees that you’ve closed a deal that’s similar to a building in their portfolio.  Getting started with press releases may seem like a lot of work, but once you have a list of PR contacts, emailing them your closed listings is easy.  Listing Hero has step-by-step instructions and easy copy/paste templates that will have you promoting your investments and listings to major news outlets like a media mogul.

#6 Networking.

Industry conventions are one of the best places to network. NAIOP, CCIM and ICSC has some great events.  There also may be some great, local conventions in your area to join.  Also, consider what your target market may attend.

#7 Mailers.

Now that the FCC is considering removing the B2B exception on cold calls, I’m rethinking how I feel about mailers as viable marketing materials.  When postcards used to cost $0.25 for printing and mailing, I was all about using mailers in your marketing campaigns.  Now that they run about $1, I’m much more reluctant to suggest them.

If you want to start using marketing materials like mailers, I suggest sending a small batch of 50-100 and testing your message and freebie.  Build a landing page and measure how much traffic the page got and how many freebies were downloaded.  If it was a flop, redesign the postcard and try again.

Experimenting with small batches before investing in a large mailing campaign lowers your risk of losing money.

#8 e-Newsletters.

Email newsletters are great nurture campaigns and should be added to your marketing plan. They keep you top-of-mind when your potential client is finally ready to buy, sell or lease.  Even if you don’t have time to do one every week, get started with once a month.  Offer value like, “#1 question I get asked about leasing [property type]” and “The steps I take when a property doesn’t sell as planned”.

In commercial real estate, we work in larger dollar amounts.  When the product costs more money, it takes longer for the potential client to decide.  Keeping in touch with helpful topics will get them to know, like and trust you without you ever needing to pick up the phone.  Newsletter Hero has 100+ email prompts to help you create a money-making newsletter.

#9 Sales Funnel.

There are several parts of the sales funnel, but let’s focus on delivering a freebie (eBook, checklist, video, podcast, online course, webinar, etc.) and sending the people that downloaded that freebie an email welcome sequence.

Your welcome sequence emails should mainly define the problem you solve and overcome any objections your customer may have.  They’re also a great way to showcase your brand – whether it’s a casual tone, professional or other.  Your audience will get a good idea of what it’s like to work with you.

Don’t try to change your personal tone because you think potential clients only like one thing.  My causal tone attracts awesome clients that I like to work with.  The stuffy folks unsubscribe pretty quickly!  And that is fine with me!

Your tone will attract people that will naturally get along with you.

#10 Review and adjust.

Not all ideas are amazing, but it’s good to try new things instead of remaining stuck.  For instance, attending all trade shows, experimenting with Google AdWords, or hiring SEO consultants are great places to start!

And yes, sometimes the tests will fail.  Whether they were too much work for lower-than-expected profit or cost you money with no results, you tried and learned something valuable.  Don’t be afraid to test, review and adjust your marketing strategies as you go along.

Keeping it Real.

I once spent over $1k testing email blast systems and I ended up about -$15.  Not including the time and effort spent creating ads and sending on all the systems.  Not everything is going to work out right away.  From that test, I did lose time and money, but I found the email blast system that works the best for me.  Now I can 100% say that I’m spending my money in the correct place.

Test different strategies to see what works with your prospects in your area.  Keep trying new things, you’ll find the best mix for you!

Helping you with winning marketing strategies is another way I’m taking the “broke” out of commercial real estate brokerage.