A well-designed office website is pivotal to help reflect the value of your asset and can (positively or negatively) affect your overall marketing efforts.
Tenants are becoming increasingly tech-savvy, as they spend more time researching office space for lease on their own from various mobile, tablet and desktop devices. A well-designed commercial real estate website makes a strong visual impression, provides quick and convenient access to key information, and can help your property stand out from the crowd.
To help inspire your next website design, we compiled a selection of the 5 best office property websites based on design, content and functionality.
Digital marketing is increasingly becoming one of the key drivers of success for any commercial real estate sales or lease up effort.
Whether you’re a building owner or a CRE broker, keeping track of your marketing activities is crucial and will help you determine where to allocate your marketing budget and what isn’t working so it can be improved.
Once you launch your listing or commercial real estate website, then tracking results is easy and the math is straightforward:
More visits = more leads
More leads = more sales
More sales = more commissions.
So how do you start to create a marketing report?
With the abundance of existing information about marketing metrics we’ve narrowed it down to the 8 real estate marketing metrics that are most relevant to your real estate funnel and to the end result: closed transactions.
We’ve also included a marketing report sample spreadsheet you can use for your own property marketing. Simply download and swap your data to instantly generate results and graphs.
Commercial Real Estate Bundle (Excel)
Get a free commercial real estate marketing tools bundle containing samples and templates to help you plan, implement and successfully measure your marketing strategy.
8 Key Real Estate Marketing Metrics
Measure these 8 metrics to track the success of your real marketing performance and help build a marketing report.
1. Total Visits
Visitors to your site is the most direct way to measure interest and whether you are generating enough visibility. This is an important number to measure that has direct impact on the rest of the funnel.
Look at total visitors (volume) for a given time period and month-over-month trend (growth).
Dig in further and look at this data by marketing channel. For example, how much of your volume and growth is attributed to Google? Loopnet? Email blasts? Social media?
2. Total Leads
Leads are any prospects that contact you via your website. This could be by clicking an email link, filling a contact form, or picking up the phone to call you (more difficult to measure).
Similar to visitors, your real estate lead reporting should measure total number of leads and month-over-month trend. Ideally, you should also break this down by marketing channel to understand where you should be spending more of your efforts for greatest impact.
If your website is not producing leads, then it’s not having much direct impact.
3. Total Sales
Sales is the end game. It’s not only the result of attracting visitors and generating leads, but also your ability to close the deal.
The key to understanding the impact of your real estate marketing efforts is your ability to measure what sales were achieved from leads generated by your online activity.
Why?
Because this will give you a holistic view of your entire marketing and sales efforts. It bridges the gap of online efforts with offline deals. Look at total deals closed (volume) and revenue generated (deal value).
4. Lead Conversion Rate
Once you have visitors and leads, then you can calculate your lead conversion rate. The formula is simple:
Leads / Visitors = Lead conversion rate
For example, if you had 2 leads and 100 visitors for a given month. Then you would have a 2% conversion rate.
This is an important metric because it gives the relative impact of your results which can be obscured if you only look at absolute numbers. Moreover, it becomes very useful when comparing month-over-month trends to give an accurate picture of progress.
5. Sales Conversion Rate
Besides total volume, it’s also important to measure your sales conversion rate. This will help you answer a very critical question:
How many leads do I need to generate 1 sale?
The calculations is as follows:
Total Sales / Total Leads = Sales Conversion Rate
This is very challenging because the sales cycles in real estate are long and it requires extremely detailed tracking. Fortunately, there are number of tools and CRM systems that can help you with that.
6. Total Marketing Costs
Look at all of your costs for marketing spend and break it down for a given period of time. This can include costs related to advertising, PR, email marketing, website updates, consultants, agency fees and anything else related to your marketing efforts.
If you have a dedicated marketing team, then headcount costs should also be included.
Measuring overall marketing spend gives you the ability to track the relative efficiency and impact of your marketing as it relates to cost per lead and overall return on investment.
7. Cost Per Lead
Now you can get an idea of what is your cost per lead (CPL), or how much money do you need to spend to acquire 1 lead?
For any given period of time, the calculation is:
Marketing Costs / Total leads = Cost per lead (CPL)
With this metric, you will get a sense of the overall math for your real estate marketing activity. It should help you understand “If I spend ___ on marketing then I should expect ___ in leads” and how viable it is to scale your efforts.
If you’re marketing investment is not translating into leads, then you need to know assess if there are other marketing activities that could be more effective.
8. Marketing ROI
If you’re tracking your marketing expenditure and the closed deals from your online activity you can easily determine the quantitative impact and overall real estate marketing ROI for your entire marketing/sales funnel.
Total Sales Value / Marketing Costs = ROI
Once you have this framework in place, you can drill down deeper to look at channel performance and specific marketing activities to help you answer the following question:
What gives me the best real estate marketing ROI?
If you can’t answer this question, then it will be difficult for you to understand the basic unit economics needed to grow and scale your business.
Marketing Report Template (Excel)
To help you put these KPIs into action, we’ve created a sample real estate marketing report that encompasses all the key metrics outlined above in a comprehensive Excel file you can download. Simply open the template file, include your own data in the spreadsheet and then refresh to automatically visualize everything in pivot graphs.
Until now CRE professionals could rely on ListingLab to build, manage, and control their own property websites with their easy to use management interface.
With the service shutting down in early 2022, CRE teams will have to look to alternatives to continue benefiting from streamlined property marketing and deal management.
There are a few alternatives to ListingLab available, some of which offer much more control over how listings look and behave.
Let’s take a look at the current benefits ListingLab provides to CRE teams and which tools could serve as an equivalent or better alternative.
ListingLab Benefits
ListingLab offers a self-service custom website builder that includes individual URL addresses for listings, secure portals for document sharing, and reporting.
Each listing page had its own custom URL (hosted in listinglab.com) including relevant property information and visuals, along with a secure portal offering a private area to create, manage, and process confidentiality agreements and deal documentation.
To build a property site, users can choose a template and customize it with their copy, images, and photography.
ListingLab also provides a listing inventory plugin to display all your property listings in a map or list view.
There are a few available filters by location, property type and unit numbers.
Each listing links out to the individual listing page.
Alternatives to ListingLab
Today, there are several other options available in the market for brokers and owners looking for modern looking websites and a streamlined deal management process.
1. Custom developed solution
With a customized developed listing and deal management solution, the sky is the limit.
A web design agency that specializes in commercial real estate sites can create custom property websites and listing engine for a set fee that can range substantially depending on the requirements.
Another option is to hire in-house web developers and designers on a contract or permanent basis. This can grant more flexibility, control, and speed over all digital endeavors. However, this route represents a longer-term investment, so must be carefully planned with the rest of the digital marketing strategy, particularly as it can be much more costly and time consuming.
The biggest downsides of a custom solution to consider:
❌ Takes months to develop
Building custom solutions is a time-consuming process. You could be looking several quarters into the future before you even have a beta product to use. If you’re in need of something sooner rather than later, this isn’t ideal.
❌ Costly implementation fees
Outsourcing software development to a web agency may mean you get a custom product, but it’s also an expensive endeavour.
❌ Manual maintenance
Every website and app needs maintenance. A custom solution means you need to pay someone to maintain that software on a regular basis.
2. All-in-one marketing software
One of the available solutions in the market is SharpLaunch, an all-in-one marketing software, that includes an-easy-to-use website builder and secure document sharing system used by hundreds of CRE firms including CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL and Marcus & Millichap.
Teams use the content management system to quickly create and publish beautifully designed property websites that include modern interactive modules to engage potential investors and clients and track their activity on the page.
Other benefits included with SharpLaunch:
✅ Property listings hosted on custom website domain
✅ Fast setup
✅ Automated data migration
✅ World class client support
✅ Advanced search features, sorting and filters
✅ Improved SEO
✅ User activity tracking
✅ Analytics and branded reports
✅ Integrations with other systems/tools
✅ Syndication to 3rd party CRE listings sites
Examples of SharpLaunch property websites
Examples of SharpLaunch property listing engine
Example: map based display
Example: grid display
Examples of SharpLaunch deal room
If you’re interested in learning more about how you can display your listings on your website, get in touch!
As the global pandemic continues to drive astonishing advances in digital life, the commercial real estate industry is adapting rapidly with exciting innovations. Now more than ever, building owners and property managers are discovering that engaging, informative, and accessible property management websites can deliver a wide range of advantages in today’s marketplace.
Along with most other aspects of their businesses, tenants today expect to be able to accomplish a variety of tasks 24/7 with a click or tap of a screen.
Why do you need a property management website?
Beyond simply existing as self-service portals, a well-developed property management website helps property owners and managers streamline services and communications by providing an intuitive information hub that empowers tenants to easily access everything they need.
Here are 5 reasons why a property management website can help enhance the tenant experience from end-to-end.
1. Present a consistent digital identity
As with any business, you need a professional and inviting digital presence for your properties. A management site can connect seamlessly to the main site for each property, offering a fluid experience as prospective clients become tenants. This external-internal flow helps you maintain consistent brand and marketing identity, further developing trust and confidence as you build long-term relationships with your tenants.
2. Centralize information and access to support
At the most basic level, your property management website should act as a main information hub and connection to your management team.
At every hour of every day, your site can provide DIY access to details like building maps and parking rules, and automated services such as maintenance requests and guest registration. This also reduces the administrative workload for your management team, allowing them to prioritize key interactions.
3. Highlight and improve access to tenant amenities
By featuring property amenities on your management site, you can further support your internal marketing efforts by showcasing everything your building has to offer. Additionally, providing online access to booking tools can encourage more tenant uptake – an easy way to enrich their day-to-day experience.
4. Create a sense of connection and community
In the brave new world of living virtually and working remotely, a sense of belonging to a community is more important than ever. Many property management website templates have tools or integrations with tenant experience apps that facilitate connections between tenants, including message boards, interactive directories, instant messaging, and more. These services help build a digital community that tenants can interact with every day, at any time, at their own pace and convenience, to foster feelings of connectivity and satisfaction.
5. Increase tenant engagement
Along with encouraging communication between tenants, a property management website can provide ways to boost communication between tenants and management. From delivering immediate updates about COVID-19 safety protocols to sharing details about an upcoming appreciation event, email campaigns sent from your dashboard can proactively keep your tenants informed and engaged.
6. Gather invaluable data
Running smoothly behind the scenes, certain tools can allow you to collect and present detailed insights on tenant satisfaction and paint points, space usage trends, and demand for different amenities. You can then draw upon these insights for future improvements to monetize and market your building for greater revenue and retention.
Overall, a great property management website can help differentiate your building experience to attract and cultivate long-term tenants.
Property Management Website Examples
Now that you know the rationale behind building your own property management website, along with the key elements to include, here are a few successful examples for inspiration.
Key Elements of a Property Management Website Template
Here are the indispensable qualities to look out for when evaluating property management website templates:
Visuals
Make sure the template allows for beautiful and enticing images, videos, floor plans, virtual tours, and navigation elements to bring your property to life. This section can also include photo galleries of different tenant events, for example.
Property descriptions
This is a key way to re-emphasize and accentuate the top amenities and unique facets of your asset. Additionally, you may feature interactive maps of neighborhood amenities and points of interest.
Building certifications
Organize any accolades, awards, sustainability certifications, and professional accreditations in one place to form an impressive display of third-party endorsement.
Integrated work order system
Make it convenient for your tenants to create a new ticket by integrating a maintenance request or work order system within your property website.
Document portal
Allow your management team and tenants to securely exchange sensitive, important information. For example, SharpLaunch’s Document Portal offers a central online repository as a simple way to sign, process, send, receive, and store key documents.
Tenant directory
Build confidence via peer influence by visibly showcasing your tenants. This can have both an external and internal component. For example, SharpLaunch offers a module to display tenant logos, links, and locations in your property. Internally, this can then be linked with a messaging service, social media-style comms portal, or message board.
Tenant Services and Property Management Team Contact Information
Offer a direct, instant, and transparent link between tenants and management services for high-quality customer service. Additionally, you can use a specific section of the website to list all the available tenant services and key contacts. This way all the information such as cleaning and security services, timetable and availability, parking and access information are in one place and accessible 24/7 online.
