Author: bsamii

For anyone that wants to improve their real estate marketing efforts for their CRE business, it’s important to stay on top of the latest trends and best practices. Fortunately, there are many excellent marketing blogs overflowing with information to help you do just that.

From industry insiders to professional thought leaders and agencies that have done a bit of it all, these 10 blogs will help you become a better real estate marketer.

Social Media Blogs

Simply Measured

Simply Measured is all about Social Analytics and Social Listening. They produce a handful of products in the space, including a robust API, so their blog posts focus more intently on the data side of social media.

If you’re like a lot of business owners and marketing managers and want to know that your efforts on social media will have a return, this is the blog to read.

★ Top Posts from Simply Measured:

Dangerous Social Marketing Habits and How to Break Them
It’s easy to use social media, and therefore it is easy to use it wrong. This post goes deeper than best practices to discuss the bad habits a lot of marketers use and how to break them.

Social Media Needs a Rebrand: How We Graduate to the C-Suite
A direct and keen discussion of the role social media plays and how a lot of people in the marketing space view it within the marketing toolbox. A must read if you are considering starting a social campaign.

Buffer

A few years ago, you wouldn’t necessarily find a lot of corporate blogs on this list. But content marketing has changed that, and few companies better embody that than Buffer, a company that has zero marketing budget, and instead relies on its team to produce world-class content that drives visitors to the site.

Their Buffer Social blog covers all things social media, as well as more general marketing topics, tutorials for use of their Buffer tools (and other tools in the space), and much more. It’s a great place to start when learning about the power of social media marketing.

★ Top Posts from Buffer:

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy from Scratch
A monster guide that provides a comprehensive roadmap to build a social media strategy with a step-by-step plan.

Email Marketing Blogs

Customer.io

 

Customer.io is a messaging product that helps to improve delivery rates, open rates, and everything else related to email and communication with clients. Their blog reflects this with frequent articles discussing all things email and customer messaging.

From A/B testing to delivery rate improvements to the sliding scale of key metrics that depend on your industry and marketing goals, this is a must read when building out email campaigns.

★ Top Posts from Customer.io:

The Formula for Driving Action in Your Emails
Janet Choi, who voices most of the posts on the Customer.io blog, dives deep into a real world experiment and how it performed in driving action within an email campaign.

The Princess Bride Formula for Memorable Welcome Emails
This is the kind of post that makes this site a joy to read. Clever, insightful, and pretty funny.

Copyblogger

The Copyblogger team has built a small media empire out of his blog, which started as a focus on all things blogging. It has since then become one of the must read online outlets for conversion-focused, content-driven marketing efforts, specifically as they relate to email marketing.

While you will also find plenty of articles on blogging in general, website content creation, and marketing tips, the email content is among the best and is a must when preparing for your next campaign.

★ Top Posts from Copyblogger:

5 Innovative Email Marketing Tips That Drive Readers to Action
A dive into specific, actionable tips you can use in your email campaigns to drive people to take action when they open your messages.

Which Email Marketing Strategy Should You Choose: Full Meal or Just Aroma
A discussion of two different styles of marketing emails: the short and enticing and the long and full of useful information.

SEO Blogs

Backlinko

Backlinko is one of the most successful SEO-focused blogs on the Internet, and yet it only has a handful of posts compared to most sites on the topic.

Why? Because the founder, Brian Dean, has made an effort to focus on quality over quantity, spending 50+ hours on every post he writes and promotes and only publishing every 5-6 weeks. As a result, he has posts that generate millions of pageviews per month and is well regarded in the SEO space.

★ Top Posts from Backlinko:

Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days
This is Brian’s premier post and one of the first to catapult him to the top. It’s also still incredibly relevant and he updates it frequently to stay fresh. Describing the core of his own content strategy, it’s a must read if you’re publishing content on your site at all.

Search Engine Roundtable

Barry Schwartz is one of the most prolific bloggers on the Internet. He has produced tens of thousands of articles for his own website and those to which he contributes, including SearchEngineLand.

Where Brian Dean covers the depth of concepts in SEO, Barry covers the news, changes, and goings on of the SEO world – a space that is constantly changing. To stay up to date on how you should be optimizing your site and your content, keep his site on your radar.

★ Top Posts from SE Round Table:

12 Years Covering The Search Industry
SE Round Table publishes a LOT, so take a look at the top posts of 2015 for a good sense of what you’ll find.

Content Marketing Blogs

Neil Patel

Neil takes an approach similar to Brian Dean in that his posts are incredibly long, incredibly detailed, and pervasive in the marketing world due to their quality. He doesn’t publish nearly as often as other thought leaders, but when he does, the content provides deep insights into how to build relationships, drive action, and provide value in the content you write.

He does cover other topics on the blog beyond content production, but since the core of his success and his business model is in building content, this is where his site really excels.

★ Top Posts on NeilPatel.com:

The Beginner’s Guide to Writing a Data-Driven Post
This is the handbook for bloggers looking to build long, insightful, data-driven posts. The kind of posts that will generate massive organic traffic, huge share numbers in social media, and true thought leadership status.

Follow These Long Form Content Examples to Boost Your Rankings
A hybrid content and SEO post, this one covers the kind of content and subjects that help their authors build strong positioning in the search engines.

Unbounce

Unbounce is a landing page and conversion rate optimization company and therefore a lot of their content focuses on exactly this. They discuss how to make the best possible landing page using case studies and data-driven strategies. But more importantly, they talk about how to create experiences for users that will keep them coming back, and drive them to visit that landing page in the first place, almost all relating to content.

It’s a nice cross-section of all the different elements that must come together in a successful campaign to actually drive action.

★ Top Posts on Unbounce:

Are You Missing This Vital Ingredient in Your Content Strategy?
One of the most popular types of posts on the Unbounce blog is the “you’re doing it wrong” post. It started with their coverage of landing page do’s and don’ts and has extended now into content strategy and other marketing topics. This is a great example as relates to content.

13 Warning Signs Your Web Copy Stinks
This is one of the more popular posts on the Unbounce blog and again it hits on the “you’re doing it wrong” angle. If you enjoy posts that carefully illustrate the things you should avoid doing, this one is a very effective.

Hubspot Inbound Marketing Blog

Hubspot’s blog used to post 200-300 posts per month. These days they are down to a pedestrian 100 posts per month, each of them a deep dive into a topic related to inbound marketing.

Their marketing blog in particular has the kind of reach and depth that it’s hard to miss. Search for a topic related to marketing and you’ll almost certainly see a Hubspot article on the homepage, and while almost every post drives to a download or Hubspot product discussion of some sort in the footer, the content is impartial and action-oriented – it’s a great place to start for anyone getting into inbound marketing.

★ Top Posts from Hubspot’s Marketing Blog:

Reasons Inbound Marketing Campaigns Fail – And What to Do About It
A visual walkthrough what works and what doesn’t in inbound marketing. This is as good example of the type of content frequently posted by Hubspot, providing insights into how what they do works.

How Content Marketing Impacts Your Bottom Line
An in-depth infographic, the staple of many Hubspot blog posts, with insights into how to make content marketing work for your bottom line.

Content Marketing Institute Blog

Joe Pulizzi and the Content Marketing Institute team has put together a healthy portfolio of materials related to content marketing over the last decade. The blog is the heart of it all, with dedicated articles about content production, curation, lead nurturing, and more.

Focused on more in-depth and case study driven content than the action-tips style of post that Hubspot delivers, CMI’s blog is a nice counterpoint when reading up on inbound marketing.

★ Top Posts from Content Marketing Institute:

Build a Successful Content Marketing Strategy in 7 Steps
Written by the company’s founder, Joe, this article contains the 10 page framework CMI uses for building out a plan.

12 Things to Do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post
One of the big points preached by the CMI team is that content production is only part of the formula. Successful inbound marketing requires promotion in equal or greater measure. This post dives into the 12 things you should be doing after you write and publish something to ensure it gets traction.

Conclusion

Whether you’re building the digital presence of a business that has been active for years or you are launching a new real estate endeavor, success will be tied closely to your marketing efforts.

That’s why the marketing blogs in this article are so important. From industry best practices to hot new trends, they cover a bit of everything, and can provide the insight needed to stay ahead of the constantly evolving curve.

SEO marketing for real estate is one of the most effective ways to move the needle for your company or property marketing efforts.

To stand out in the crowded commercial real estate market, regardless of location, tenants and investors need to find your website first and foremost amongst your competitors.

You’ve likely heard of SEO (search engine optimization), knowing just enough to realize how competitive the space can be and that a haphazard attempt won’t get you very far.

You know it’s important, but have no idea where to start, and what kind of investment is going to make the most sense for your business.

To help overcome those obstacles, we’ve compiled this guide to help identify the specific things Google looks for in websites when establishing rankings and how commercial real estate websites can improve their SEO performance.

Why is SEO So Important

Imagine having to pay for every pair of eyeballs that visit your website. Every single one. It would cost a fortune, especially with the ridiculously high cost of digital advertising in the commercial real estate industry.

Here are some examples of what it would cost if you were to pay Google for sponsored keywords (Adwords):

• “New York Office Space” – $22.34 cost per click
• “Houston Office Space” – $17.53 cost per click
• “NNN Properties for Sale” – $18.28 cost per click
• “Real Estate Investment Firms San Francisco” – $18.98 cost per click
• “Retail Lease Rates” – $19.59 cost per click

Now imagine getting hundreds or even thousands of clicks  without having to pay for ads. That’s what SEO provides – an organic flow of traffic from search engines that you don’t have to pay for one at a time.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet.

There will be heavy long term investment in your website, brand, and off-site elements to achieve visibility in Google’s search results for competitive real estate-related terms. But once you do, all that investment will pay itself back many times over.

Ranking Factors

What exactly is Google looking for when they decide which sites will rank on the first page for a given search term and which do not?

According to MOZ, one of the foremost expert SEO firms, the following 9 factors are most important for SEO impact.

• Domain level links
• Page level links
• Page level content and keyword targeting
• Page level content features such as length, readability, uniqueness, etc.
• The quality of the experience users have when they visit your site
• Brand metrics including mentions in the media, association with larger entities, etc.
• Keyword matches in the domain and URLs
• Length of domain name, the extension used in the domain, SSL certification, etc.
• Social media metrics including volume and quality of the mentions received

Let’s dive deeper into each of these factors, how they directly influence your search engine ranking positions (SERPs) and what you can do starting today to affect them.

There are two sides to any SEO strategy – the things you directly control on your website and the signals that other websites send in the form of backlinks to your content.

We’ll tackle each of these individuals with some of the specific factors that matter most in commercial real estate.

Further reading: 

10 Crucial SEO Ranking Factors You Need to Know (Optinmonster)

On Page SEO

What is On Page SEO? Any factor on your website you can improve or optimize that affects how it ranks in the search engine results. This most refers to your web page’s content, user experience, HTML source code and other technical factors.

There are dozens of factors that you can directly control on your website that have an impact on how Google views and ranks your content. This is the foundational work you must do if you want to be considered and avoid potential penalties against your content.

Important Factors for On Page SEO:

Keyword Research
Your website needs to use the terms and phrases that your ideal prospects are searching for. At the same time, you want to optimize your site for the keywords that have the largest possible traffic within those that are appropriate. To do this, keyword research and optimization of your site’s H1 tags, descriptions, and core content is important.

META Description and Page Title
The META description is what users will see when they find a page from your website in the search listings. It should clear, easy to read, and detailed about what they will find on that page. Use all 160 characters. Similarly, the Page Title should describe what the page is about and use all relevant keywords at least once within 70 characters.

Site Performance
Google’s algorithm is built to measure the user experience more than anything. If your site has roughly the same degree of content quality as a competitor but is easier to use, you will rank better nine times out of ten. For this reason, your site needs to be quick, easy to navigate, and generally pleasant to look at.

URL Structure and Navigation
Specifically, navigation plays a big role in a site’s user-friendliness. Can someone find everything they need within 2-3 clicks? Or must they dig through convoluted menus and messy inter-linking of pages? Similarly, URLs should be easy to read and follow logical hierarchy.

Content Development and Uniqueness
Content that is well-written, unique and only found on your website are crucial factors for SEO. Google will ignore pages that use content found on other websites. Known as “duplicate content”, this can be detrimental to your website, reducing the volume of original, useful information for visitors. Your site needs a good balance of high quality, original, and in-depth content.

Frequency of New Content
At the same time, content should be updated regularly. In commercial real estate, this can be done with greater ease than many industries because of the nature of the business. New properties, updates to property descriptions, or recent listings all make for good new content, as does a regularly updated company news and blog.

Property Specific Targeting 
This is vital for real estate SEO. Not only should each property you represent have its own page, targeting both location keywords and the property address and name, but you should consider a standalone URL just for that property.

Mobile Responsiveness
Google no longer lists websites in mobile search results if the site is considered to not be “mobile-friendly”. This means it should display with a custom, easy-to-use mobile-version when someone is on a phone or tablet. This can represent upwards of 20% or more of your total traffic, so it’s incredibly important.

Further reading:
The On-Page SEO Cheat Sheet (Neil Patel)

22-Step On-Page SEO Checklist (Robbie Richards)

Off Page SEO

What is Off Page SEO? Any factor that is not on your website that affects how it ranks in the search engine results. This mostly refers to promotional signals related to social media, links from other websites, and other factors that impact your overall ranking and they come in several different forms

Everything above sets the table for your website. It establishes a strong platform, and a smooth running machine that ticks every box Google has when evaluating a site. This next batch is focused more specifically on how the rest of the Internet looks at your website.

Google’s algorithms have long relied on backlinks to determine rankings. Each link you receive from another site acts as a “vote” for your authority. The higher quality the website sending you such a vote, the more valuable it is. So a good balance of volume, quality, and specificity are important to show that your content has a broad reach, is highly regarded by top rated sites, and answers specific questions that people in your field are asking.

Below are some of the specific types of links that have the largest impact on SEO as a whole.

Important Factors for Off Page SEO:

Link Building
Commercial real estate is primarily local, and so too should the links you generate to your website. This means generating links in local property listing sites, writing guest articles or posts for local newspapers or blogs, and getting visibility form any local (or national) associations or organizations you are involved with. These links are targeted and are considered highly valuable.

Press
Getting in good graces with local reporters can be beneficial, but so too can carefully targeted and well-timed press releases. News mentions from PR efforts can result in both increased brand equity and dozens of local, high-authority backlinks if the story is sufficiently newsworthy.

Outreach and Community Building
By interacting with other business owners, participating in the Chamber of Commerce, networking with local reporters, and working with local charities and events, you can generate links online from offline efforts. This is one of the key ways that real estate SEO crosses offline and online marketing efforts.

Social Media
Social media can provide thousands of signals to Google, each of them a vote for the quality of your content. While a Like on Facebook isn’t as valuable as a backlink from an established new site, you’re likely to get a lot more of them. Social signals from the big 5 social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn), along with the dozens of smaller ones can generate a lot of visibility and may have an impact on your rankings.

Further reading:
Link Building: The Definitive Guide (Backlinko)

Tips to Improve Your Website

For those reading this right now, wondering what you can do, specifically, to make an impact sooner than later, there are a lot of options. But there are certain things that have a greater impact than others.

The core of good SEO is the user experience – every major update to the Google Algorithm, every announcement from their web spam team, and every ranking factor they weight heavier than others is built on this core concept. They want people using their search engine to find the answers to their questions.

That means a website that is easy to use, loaded with high quality, relevant content, and that guides user’s as efficiently as possible to what they are looking for. The following tasks will help you to provide that experience and improve the overall performance of your website from the user’s perspective.

Detailed Property Descriptions
Creating a detailed and unique commercial property description is vital. These pages have a high chance of ranking well in search, but only if they contain relevant images and videos, and a good amount of text describing the property.

Use of Images and Videos
Original photos, images, and videos have extremely high value and can help to differentiate your site from those of your competitors. Aim to have at least one photo for every 300+ words of text on a page, and include 5+ images and 1+ video for every property listing

Regular Content Updates
The content on your website is extremely important. This starts with the property listings and descriptions that form the core of your site’s content, updated availabilities for each of these properties, and company news announcements. Additionally, a blog has tremendous brand and marketing value, but it also helps to improve your SEO performance by adding new, relevant content to your website on a regular basis. Focus each blog post on at least one keyword term you are targeting to ensure maximum potential value.

Page Speed
If your site loads slowly, people are more likely to leave before they find what they need. Google’s site speed test tool will tell you if your site performs within their expectations. If it doesn’t, look for ways to reduce load time with light weight images, videos, and JavaScript. This is especially important for mobile versions of your website.

Further reading:
The Essential Checklist for Launching and Effective Property Website

Link Building for Real Estate

If off-page SEO is so important, how do you actually generate those links to your website? Fortunately, there are many ways to build these links quickly and effectively in the commercial real estate space. These include:

Mentions in the Press
Links from press are extremely valuable so make sure any references to your properties or your business in the includes backlinks. If they do not, contact the journalist to get those links added.

Links from Commercial Real Estate Websites
If you are listing your properties in major commercial real estate websites, you’ll have the opportunity to include links to your website and to property website.

Links from Associations
Chances are you belong to one or more real estate-related association. If so, you can typically acquire a link for your website. For example, if you are a CCIM member you can include your link on your profile in the CCIM member directory. Same holds true for many other associations.

Guest Blog Posts
Writing guest posts for trade journals, blogs and other commercial real estate websites can help create visibility for your personal brand and positively impact your search rankings as well.

Wikipedia Links
Creating a Wikipedia page for your property and citing your website as a source can be an effective way to gain a powerful backlink from a top rated site. Typically, for a high profile properties a Wikipedia page may already exist.

Further reading:
40+ Ways to Promote your Commercial Property

Reporting & Metrics

Now that you have a good handle on improving your website and building links, you might be wondering if it’s been worth the effort.

The only way to find out is by measuring your success and building a real estate marketing report that includes a few key metrics. SEO is a long-term play and results usually grow slow and steady.

Here are some SEO metrics worth considering:

Visits
How many people visited your website from Google? The overall impact for all of your SEO efforts should broadly translate into more visits and probably the most relevant factor of success you should measuring.

Links
Gauge your website’s influence by analyzing link metrics such as the total number of inbound links or referring domains to your pages. The goal is to increase link volume from highly authoritative sites.

Keyword Rankings
Check the rankings of specific keywords you are targeting as well as overall keyword visibility for your website. Ideally, you want to see keyword movements trending upwards and increasing the number of keywords you show up for on the search engine results.

Site Performance
The page load speed of your website’s pages are a ranking factor that need to be kept in check. Keep track of your pages speed as well as any page errors on a periodic basis.

SEO Tools

It’s easy to look at everything in this article and grow weary. It’s a lot.

But don’t think of SEO as a massive project with a big price tag. It’s much more than that.

This is an investment on par with any property in your portfolio. Good real estate SEO will help you to achieve what no advertising campaign ever could – persistent, organic authority in the world’s largest search engines. Hundreds or possibly even thousands of searches a DAY related to your properties.

There are no shortcuts here. No easy button you can hit to push your site up the rankings and become the highest ranked site for any one set of keywords. There are plenty of people out there who will claim there is (and gladly take your money), but this is a long game, and the people who succeed are the ones who take that time and invest carefully in their business.

If you’re ready for the next step, there are hundreds of powerful tools on the market (many free) you can use to start researching and taking action.

Here are some we recommended:

Ahrefs

Ahrefs.com is a comprehensive SEO tool that can be used free on a limited daily-access basis to research your current Google Rankings, backlink performance, get content ideas, and keyword opportunities. This works for both your site and your competitors.

Moz Open Site Explorer

Moz Open Site Explorer is also freemium, with limited daily use to get in-depth link analysis of your website as well as compare performance of a competitor’s site.

Similar Web

SimilarWeb will compare a website with others, to help you find relevant unknown competitors. High quality content you can emulate, and potential keywords and content topics.

KeywordTool.io

KeywordTool.io is a powerful tool for any SEO keyword research you might perform. It provides estimates of total search volume, along with the cost to advertise and suggestions for other terms you might target.

Google Trends

Google trends allows you to see the recent movement of search volume for a term or overall trend, along with recent news stories and events related to it.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is a performance analysis tool that gives  you insight on how well your site loads and provides recommendations on how to optimize it.

With these tools and the checklists above you can utilize SEO to boost your rankings, generate more organic (free) traffic to your site, and drive more interest from potential prospects.

It’s no secret:

Commercial real estate marketing is highly fast-paced, highly competitive and constantly changing.

 

What worked yesterday, doesn’t necessarily mean it will be effective today.

This means that CRE companies that have stepped up to make marketing an integral part of their DNA are seizing massive advantages and leaping way ahead of the curve.

We got in touch with three of Boston’s prominent CRE marketing leaders to give us insight into what it takes to work as a commercial real estate marketing executive today.

Thinking about a career in CRE marketing? Want to know if you’re cut for it?

Keep reading.

Key Responsibilities

What exactly does a CRE Marketing Director do?

The job description can vary depending on the size and type of company. In general, a commercial real estate marketing director is responsible for the overall marketing success of an entire organization and works in a multi-disciplinary setting alongside top executives, brokers, creative professionals, agencies, and externals clients (building owners and investors).

Here’s what the experts say:

New business development and property marketing strategy are the primary core responsibilities of most CRE Marketing Directors today. Communications and corporate branding are the secondary areas of focus that also fall under the realm of this role.

  Taidgh H. McClory

We are constantly thinking about cool ways to leverage new technology to drive response, generate a palpable buzz in the marketplace, and report back to our clients with metrics that demonstrate that our leasing and marketing programs move the needle.

  Steve Steinberg

Some of the main responsibilities of a CRE Marketing Director include developing marketing strategies and social media initiatives across all service lines that deliver your company’s message and unique selling propositions (USPs), as well as implementing corporate branding practices.

You have to be able to create and measure the success of not only your internal marketing programs, but also your client’s marketing programs. A public relations program is also a large component of marketing that helps enhance Cushman & Wakefield’s image and positions us to be thought-leaders in what can be a crowded marketplace.

  Linda M. McDonough

Experience and Skillsets

What does it take to be successful in CRE Marketing?

With the emergence of new tech-savvy decision makers, changing behavior of tenants and investors and commercial real estate marketing software, the commercial real estate industry is poised for innovation and rapid change.

There are a number of critical skillsets and qualifications needed to have a successful career in CRE marketing.

Here’s what the experts say:

In today’s environment, some of the best professionals in CRE marketing are creative problem solvers first and foremost, early adopters/testers of technology and master project managers with the ability to translate and lead internal and external customers through the marketing process. However, at the end of the day it is critical to have a deep understanding of the commercial real estate industry from both the owner and occupier point of view.

  Taidgh H. McClory

It is critical to get to the heart of every asset, their characteristics and differentiators. Then position each property in a distinctive, streamlined fashion. Attention spans for brokers and tech driven users are shorter and shorter. It is important to engage your audience quickly or you’ll lose them.

  Steve Steinberg

One of the skills necessary to be successful at CRE marketing first and foremost is the ability to adapt to changes in the way marketing is done, whether adopting new technologies or using social media. Technology continues to be a powerful force in our industry, and staying ahead of the trends gives us a great ability to understand and collaborate with our clients.

You also need to understand who you are marketing to and use the most effective tool in your marketing efforts. For instance, our millennial clients are more open to using technology and like to engage over Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or even Snap Chat while some of our other clients prefer to communicate via email. I use social media to drive business and establish Cushman & Wakefield as thought leaders in the commercial real estate field. Social media is a powerful way to make new connections and foster existing relationships with clients and fellow industry professionals, not only in Boston, but throughout the country. I have met various people through Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn and share market information as well as leads and business introductions.

Finally, prioritization is definitely a necessary skill, as I am always juggling many projects at once.

  Linda M. McDonough

Where to Find CRE Marketing Jobs

Now that you’re ready for a new career in CRE marketing, where do you begin to look for jobs?

There are a number of approaches to take.

Start with your own network (friends, family, colleagues). There is nothing more effective than getting introduced to a company by a trusted mutual friend that opens the door for you.

Events and meetups are also a good place to start and can often lead you to meet the hiring managers directly.

There are also plenty of options online:

1. Hiring companies

A good place to start is by visiting the careers sections of the companies you are interested in. Most of the larger CRE firms have dedicated job portals with hundreds of career opportunities across the country.

Below are links to the career pages of five of the largest commercial real estate brokerages:

• CBRE
• JLL
• Cushman & Wakefield
• Colliers
• Newmark Grubb Knight Frank 

2. Headhunters

For more senior positions, headhunters can be an effective option to explore. There are a number of CRE companies working with external recruiters and this could be a good bet if you want to land an executive career. Firms like Gilham, Golbeck, & Associates, Gillian Executive Search, and Real8 Group are exclusively focused on commercial real estate and always in search for candidates.

3. Generic job boards

Another good place to find available jobs is by through large job boards like Linkedin or Indeed that are feature-rich and allow you to filter by location, seniority and company. Also, most job boards let you save searches and send you email alerts when a relevant opportunity has been posted.

Your commercial real estate website has approximately 10 seconds to make an impact on a visitor.

According to a study by Nielson Norman Group, the first 10 seconds of a web page visit are critical for a visitor’s decision to stay or leave. The research shows that web pages have a negative aging effect and after about 30 seconds the curve becomes relatively flat.

So how do you create impact in 10 seconds or less?

Avoiding these 5 mistakes will help make sure you keep your potential clients engaged to learn more about your property and increase your chances of generating new prospects.

Let’s dig in.

1. Poor Quality Photos

It’s cliché but we all know this: first impressions are critical.

If you’re thinking about saving money by not hiring a professional photographer, you’re making a very costly mistake.

Photos provide the first impact of your listing (not to mention all other marketing materials) and are key to capturing the initial interest of a prospective tenant or investor during those precious 10 seconds.

Make the investment on high-end professional photos.

Professional photographers can turn your property into a beautiful composition, capture essential building details, and transform uninteresting properties into attractive ones.

Whether you have a beautiful class A office building or an unappealing lower class B industrial space, professional photos can provide impact across all your marketing touch points.

In addition, hiring a professional photographer helps you save time and reduce stress compared to doing it yourself. Touch-ups, resizing, sky changing, and exporting photos all takes up valuable time and can be frustrating if you don’t know what you’re doing.

2. Generic Property Description

Do not create a property description with generic, thin copy.

Words can be powerful: make sure your property overview is informative and provides important highlights about the property. They key is to get to the point quickly and keep it short and sweet (aim for 80 to 150 words).

A lot of CRE professionals provide a general overview but with diminishing attention spans, it’s important to craft a well-thought-out commercial real estate description to hook interest quickly.

Here’s a good example:

If you don’t know where to start, here are some questions worth answering:

• What type of property is it?
• Where is it located?
• Who is it for?
• What benefits could the prospect enjoy?
• What tenants are already there?
• Are there any recent upgrades?

3. Weak Benefits

What makes your property special?

Why should anyone choose your property and not a competitor’s?

Provide clear, compelling advantages and make sure it is relevant to your audience. If you are targeting millennials in a high-tech market, then focus more on building amenities and relevant local area amenities than technical building specifications.

It’s important to spell out descriptive qualities that makes your property stand out.

Look at the adjectives used above to help drive the message home:”fully flexible”, “excellent signage”, “prompt customer service”, “abundant parking”, “superior access”, “extensive onsite amenities”.

Remember, it’s not just what you say but how you say it.

4. No Floor Plans

After photos, floor plans are the most important element on your property listing to help drive engagement and capture interest.

Floor plans are key for three reasons.

1. They keep your visitor engaged with your listing for more time
2. Prospects scan start visualizing their space and further elevate their interest
3. Saves you time by reducing any prospects that are not a good fit

If you don’t have floor plans, capturing serious interest from prospects is going to be an uphill battle.

The good news is that it’s a battle that can be avoided.

5. Missing Call-to-Action

The primary objective of your online listing is to get prospects to contact you. Therefore, it’s important to have a convincing and visible call-to-action.

Essentially, tell your visitor: what should they do next?

Do you want them to schedule a property tour? Request more information? Contact a broker? Execute a NDA?

Always help point the way to the main objective of the page. Don’t think a random telephone number or generic contact form by itself is going to convince visitors to get in touch.

Provide a short, clear instruction that is very visible on the page and lets your visitor know what you would like them to do.

—

What other mistakes do you think could be ruining your property listing? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

To understand the overall impact of your marketing activity, you need to define the value of a lead, or potential customer.

By doing this one exercise, you will gain valuable insight into how to improve your marketing and lead generation efforts…

… and help answer a simple question: is my marketing working?

What is a lead?

In commercial real estate, a lead (also referred to as a “prospect”) is anyone that shows interest in buying, leasing or investing in your property.

A lead generated from your company or property website could contact you by filling out a contact form, registering to gain access to something, or by simply sending you an email.  They key is to track this activity so you can measure your lead generation and understand its impact on your business.

How to calculate value of a lead?

The value of a lead can be calculated by a very simple formula:

Average commission x Conversion rate = Lead value

There are simply two inputs that you need to know to plug into the formula. Let’s break it down:

1. Average commission or sale 
How much money do you make from a typical closed transaction? Although every market, property and deal is different, you need to look at your historic sales and create a good approximation of how much money you make on average.

2. Conversion rate of transaction
What percentage of the leads you receive convert into a closed transaction? Again, this will probably be different depending on the size of the deal, property, market, etc. but you need to make a good approximation.

Here’s an example:
Let’s say on average you make $40,000 for each closed transaction and you typically close 1 out of every 20 potential customers (leads). That means the value of a lead would be:

$40,000 x 5% (1 out every 20 leads) = $2,000

So, the value of a lead (or potential customer, or “prospect”) is $2,000.

This now gives you a framework to put your marketing activity into a quantitative context.

With this information you can now set objectives and have a better idea of the number of leads you need to produce from your marketing activities. For example, if you want to make $300,000 in commissions in the coming year then you would need to produce 150 leads ($300,000 total value / $2,000 lead value), or approximately 12.5 leads per month.

How to generate more leads?

Online lead generation is a numbers game and there are really only two ways to increase your numbers.

Either: 1) increase visitors or 2) improve conversion rate.

To increase your lead volume, you need to increase visitors to your website or property listing. There are plenty of good marketing ideas but the key is to create a well-defined game plan, stay consistent and continuously measure success.

Also, make sure your website is optimized as best as possible before launching your property online. This can have an important impact on your conversion rate, or the ability of your website to convert visitors into leads.

 

There are plenty of great CRE blogs from which you can get valuable information to help you become a better commercial real estate professional.

To save you time, we’ve dug through a few of the top CRE blogs to pull out some of their best posts — packed with insights and best practices you can actually use to improve your marketing and help grow your business.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Coy Davidson:
Stop Sending Ineffective Marketing Emails

We all hate receiving property email spam. It’s simply not effective and 9 out of 10 times, the property is not relevant for the end user and the email goes unopened straight to trash (or spam).

Coy calls out building owners who still think general broadcast emails non-targeted spammy emails are an effective digital marketing strategy to help create visibility for properties.

It’s time to rethink this and stop clogging up all of our inboxes.

2. Allen Buchanan:
Create a “Digital Footprint” for Your Vacant Building

Creating a digital footprint for your property is key to help secure a tenant for your vacancy. If you’re still only relying on traditional marketing… time to step up your game.

Although it seems obvious, in today’s digital age there are plenty of commercial real estate marketing tools and platforms that can help generate visibility for your building so it’s easily found online by all potential prospects.

Allen says it best:

“If a vacancy cannot be found digitally, a vacancy may stay that way…vacant!”

3. Massimo Group:
Focus on Your Clients and Provide Them Relevant Content

How do you cut through clutter and reach your target audience?

Greg Schraff boils it down to two things:

1. Make it easy for people to find what they are looking for

2. Deliver something that is relevant and useful to your customer

If you can’t figure out how to reach your audience, your competitors will.

4. Duke Long:
Don’t Hold Back from Your Individuality

Duke is best known for his straightforward, non-B.S. authenticity. He keeps it real.

The biggest thing you can learn from his post is this:

Don’t compromise your personality.

This goes for CRE but also a good life lesson to apply in any industry.  Our sense of individualism often times gets lost when working in business settings…

… or better said:

Don’t “hide behind the suits and shitty generic glam shots.”

5. Joe Stampone:
Build and Maintain Your Network

Joe knows how to hustle.

In fact, he dedicated an entire blog to it and shares plenty of secrets.

If you want to cultivate a real estate network like Joe has,  it’s important to have a systematic approach using CRM tools and staying in touch with proper follow up strategies.

Check out some effective follow up ideas in his post. It even includes real life sample emails.

6. Bo Barron:
Build a Sustainable Business by Creating a Database of Prospects

How do top producers succeed (even in down markets)?

Answer: Dedicated and focused prospecting.

When inbound prospects don’t come to you, you need to build your sales pipeline and get after it yourself. According to Bo, there are three effective ways to build yourself a database of prospects:
1. Buy it
2. Outsource it
3. Do it yourself

Every broker can “build a sustainable business by creating a database of prospects”.

7. The Broker List:
Use Blogs to Market Yourself (Even If You Don’t Have a Blog)

Blogging is an extremely effective way of marketing yourself, increasing brand awareness, and driving traffic to your commercial real estate website or listing.

But… it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to maintain your own blog.

Linda Day Harrison gives some useful tips of how to blog using existing content platforms like BrokerList, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Guest Posts on other blogs.

8. CRE Outsider:
Bolster Your Online Presence with Social Media

You may understand the importance of social media, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to participate and make most use out of it for your business.

Chris Clark (CRE Outsider) is fairly active online and helps break down recommended strategies with social networking. If you haven’t figure it out yet, this post is will help you know where and how to start.

9. Apto:
Take a Systematic Approach to Prospecting

We already saw three ways to create a database of prospects but there’s a lot more considerations you need to make when prospecting for new business.

The folks at Apto provide six golden rules to help you better define the process and make sure you generate the results you’re looking for.

Here is an example: #6 Prospecting Pays Off When Conducted Regularly

10. CompStak:
Time Kills All Deals

In commercial real estate, time on market is critical and Michael Mandel clearly spells out of why “signing a market deal as quickly as possible should be everyone’s number-one goal.”

The post outlines a play-by-play scenario of how time (and information) can impact a deal and affect the landlord, the tenants, and both tenant and landlord rep brokers.

Bottom line: access to information is key to help reduce time and close transactions faster.

 

Following up with potential business prospects is the single most important factor to help you win more deals.

On any given business day, people will open approximately 66% of their emails, but will respond to less than 40% (of the ones they receive).

With the amount of emails (and other distractions) your clients receive every day, chances are that you may not be at the top of their priority list. But don’t let that bring your morale down.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a typcial “salesman” you can outperform your competitors by out-following up with your clients. The truth is that most sales professionals don’t always take a pragmatic approach and give up too easily after not receiving a reply. This is not only true for commercial real estate, but also applies to almost every other industry.

So what can you do to get more replies?

We’ve put together 4 golden rules to help you get back on your prospects’ priority list and increase your chances of responses.

1. Lightning Speed

It seems obvious enough, but response time is the most critical first step. Quick responses establish a sense of trust, responsiveness and professionalism.

In fact, in a recent study by Dr. James Oldroyd, the results showed that “the odds of making a successful contact with a lead are 100 times greater when a contact attempt occurs within 5 minutes, compared to 30 minutes after the lead was submitted. Similarly, the odds of the lead entering the sales process, or becoming qualified, are 21 times greater when contacted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after the lead was submitted.”

Sometimes a quick response simply is all it takes to win the deal and prevent your prospect from “shopping around” and talking to competitors.

According to InsideSales.com, an astonishing 35 to 50 percent of sales go to the person that makes first contact. Don’t let that be one of your competitors.

The numbers don’t lie: the faster you reply, the more chance you have to get a response.

2. Improve Your Messaging

Staying on top of the radar does not mean you need to craft long-winded emails. Nor does it mean you need to use generic (“just wanted to check in”) cookie cutter emails. Messaging is key and plays an important part to help you garner a response.

Try to stand out and keep it brief.

The best follow-up emails are short, offer some kind of value, and always ask an action-based question that prompts a response. This is so important that it’s worth repeating again: always ask and action-based question that prompts a response.

Also, personalize as best as you can so it does not seem like a cold, auto-generated response. Check out some email follow up template examples here: https://goo.gl/OQFpai

Finally, try sending emails outside of normal business hours. A study by Experian shows that email response rates are highest in the evenings between 8:00pm and 12:00am. You can schedule your emails to be delivered at just the right time for recipients with Right Inbox’s email scheduler.

3. Stay Organized

There’s nothing worse than losing track of the status of your sales prospects or trying to recall what you last spoke about. One of the cardinal rules of sales follow up is to take good notes and know the status of each prospect.

Keep track of the last contact date, what their needs are, what their budget is, their target move-in date, and any relevant information about next steps that have been discussed.

If you’re not using a CRM (customer relationship management) tool, now is a time to think about one (see below). Besides keeping notes on your prospects, a CRM can also help you organize your pipeline. You can categorize prospects and keep tabs on “warm” leads vs. tirekickers so you know how to better allocate your time and energy.

This will also prevent you from surfing unorganized data and help centralize all of your sales activity to make your life much easier.

* BONUS:
Here are three simple and free CRM tools that we recommend:

• • Streak (https://www.streak.com)
  • Insightly (https://www.insightly.com)
  • HubSpot (http://www.hubspot.com)

4. Increase Follow Up Frequencey

Consistency is the name of the game and it’s what sets winners apart from losers.

Here’s the truth: approximately 70% of sales emails stop after the first attempt and only 19% go on to follow up a second time (source: Yesware). This means a great majority of people (including your competitors) are missing significant sales opportunities simply for the lack of persistency.

This is a numbers game.

The number of emails sent directly correlate with response percentage as shown by analysts at Yesware (below).

Remember: silence doesn’t necessarily mean rejection.

So don’t be afraid to keep sending emails (2, 3, …. 10) or pick up the phone and call until you get a response.

It’s a seemingly small part of the process, but it can be a game changer for your real estate marketing efforts:

Your domain name.

How do you find the perfect real estate domain name that conveys everything you need it to communicate in just a few short characters?

There are a number of things to consider, some general tips related to domain name selection and others specific to the industry.

The bottom line though?

This is one of those seemingly small but incredibly important decisions that will have a decent impact on the effectiveness of your property website.

There are two factors to consider in the process:

The root – the part you get to choose and that will describe your property – and the TLD – the bit at the end (.COM, .ORG, etc.)

Both are important, and with options becoming more plentiful in recent months, you’ll have more to choose from than ever before. Let’s look at some of the factors that will impact this decision the most.

What’s in a TLD (top-level domain)?

For a long time, this wasn’t much of a discussion. If you could find it, you bought a .COM domain name for your website.

Why?

Because they were the most universally recognized form of top-level domain and there weren’t that many alternatives.

So what’s changed?

These days, there are hundreds of TLDs to choose from, many of them very specific to our industry. If you can find a .COM domain that matches the other factors we’re about to discuss, it’s still worth buying first, but you can also choose from location specific domains (in New York City for example, residents are able to buy the .NYC domain), or words like .REALESTATE or .REALTOR (if you are a member of the NAR).

So which is best?

Location is important, as is the memorability of your site. If you can get a .COM that fits all the criteria below, it is still the easiest to remember, but if the region offers location-specific domains, consider them, especially if they have heavy branding behind them like New York’s.

Use the Property Name when Possible

First thing’s first – make sure the property name is included in the domain whenever possible. This should be the brand name if you can find it. For common-name related properties this may be tougher, though. If your property is named “Blackstone” or “Capital Square” or something similarly evocative but generic, you likely won’t find a matching domain.

Sure, you could make it longer and use the address or city, but don’t risk breaking the following rules in doing so. Quick rule of thumb here is to search for the property name in all of its common iterations. If you can’t find a matching domain, consider moving on to something related.

Most of the time, by combining location and property name, you should be able to find something that represents your property without sacrificing existing branding.

Shorter is Better

Shorter is better for several reasons. Not only is it easier to remember for tenants and prospective tenants, it is easier for your colleagues and brokers to give it to people when networking, and it fits more readily on a business card if it is short.

There’s a big difference between RDUcenter.com and RDUcenterMorrisvillegGA. The latter is a mouthful to say and hard to read by sight. Aim for 13 or fewer characters except under special circumstances (if your exact property name is a bit longer that is fine).

KISS – Keep it Simple!

Even if you can keep it short, don’t get too creative to do so. Overly complicated domain names are equally as hard to remember as those that are too long. Extra acronyms, a mishmash of letters, or over abbreviation of city and state to make your domain name unique can be a big problem in this case.

For example, “echelonbkny.com” is short but it’s also a bit complicated. By including abbreviations for both Brooklyn and New York, the letters start to run together and you’re once again left with a complicated mess.

Even more potentially problematic is if you abbreviate the name of your property to make it fit – don’t create new abbreviations or acronyms that people wouldn’t recognize automatically without prompting.

Don’t Hyphenate

Hyphens as a general rule of thumb aren’t used in domain names. There are several reasons this goes against best practice:

They are hard to read, harder to convey to people in speech, and people frequently forget them when typing in a domain name, ending up on the wrong site (or getting an error page).

This fits well with the tip above to keep it simple. If you have to use a hyphen to get the domain name you want, it’s getting too complicated. Find an alternative if this is the case and ensure you get the maximum value for your effort.

Check for Trademarks

This happens to far too many business owners and marketing managers:

They think they find the perfect domain name. It’s short, easy to remember and a perfect representation of their brand.

But a few weeks later they get the DMCA notice telling them they are using a registered trademark in their domain name and must sacrifice the domain to the rights holder. Not only do you lose the domain name, you lose all the efforts put into building it up as part of your brand.

Even if a domain name is available, the trademark holder “owns” the rights to that domain as related to their trademark. They can very easily come after you and pull it out of your hands. Do a quick search on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website to ensure you’re not risking a notice down the line.

How to Find Domain Names

With all of that in mind, how do you look for available domains? There are several resources out there to help you search for domain name ideas. We don’t recommend using the same site to search for and buy your domain.

Why?

Because registrars (companies that sell access to domain names) have an interest in selling as many domains as possible. So their search tools aren’t always the best, and they don’t have access to the full list of options or suggestions.

Instead, use tools like the following to help in your search:

• Instantdomainsearch.com – Quick and active search helps you find domains that fit your needs. Also has a very robust aftermarket search tool to help you find domains that others are selling.
• Domainr.com – Helps to find the shortest available domains based on the criteria you provide. Doesn’t just spit back alternatives to the name you give but offers suggestions based on the current batch of TLDs on the market.
• Leandomainsearch.com – Offers a powerful domain name generator that will help you find different permutations of your brand or property name in relation to what is currently available.

Each of these offers something unique and different and when combined, you can see options you may not have considered previously.

Where to Buy Domain Names

There are thousands of registrars that sell domain names and for the most part, they offer comparable services and prices. There are a few rules to follow when buying your domain, however:

• Choose an established company – While you don’t need to choose the largest registrar out there (e.g. GoDaddy or Network Solutions), you should choose one that is established, has a decent number of customers, and has a history of service you can check.
• Check comparable prices – Because most registrars are resellers by nature, make sure they aren’t marking up domains any higher than their competitors. On average, you should expect to pay $10-$15/year for a popular TLD like .COM and a bit more for customized TLDs that are industry or location specific.
• Don’t buy from your host – Avoid buying a domain from the same company that hosts your website. If you ever need to change hosts, you don’t want your domain name stuck of held hostage against the move.

Once you’ve purchased your domain name, you’ll be coming back here to connect your domain to the host where your website lives, make changes to your email settings, and other changes that might require customization of the domain settings. So be sure the service you choose offers accessible, easy-to-use features for each of these requirements.

Real Estate Domain Name Ideas

The best way to think of real estate domain name ideas for your new website is by instantly checking availability as you come up with an idea. Don’t waste time writing down names because chances are, most of your ideas are not available. Use the tool below to type in an idea and instantly find out if the domain name is available to purchase.

Ensuring the Best Domain Name

What’s in a name?

When it comes to your domain name, a lot. You need something memorable, easy to share, easy to type, and brandable. If you can find the right combination of these factors in conjunction with your property name and description, you’ll have a good start for your online presence.

Just be sure to do your research and find the best fit based on the above criteria. Spending that little bit of extra time will pay off in the long term, both for your marketing efforts and your search engine optimization efforts.