Internet Marketing for Commercial Real Estate Agents

One aspect of commercial real estate marketing that is commonly overlooked or not fully implemented is that of the internet. Most real estate agents use the internet in its basic form for listings and that usually means:

  • Advertising property for sale
  • Advertising property for lease
  • Linking email newsletters to internet listings on the websites
  • Multiple listings of properties on a few websites including the industry based properties for sale or lease

So all of this (believe it or not) is quite ordinary and there are some other things that can be done when it comes to the internet profile within the commercial property industry. I am not saying that the above items are wrong; I am just saying that you can do much more, and from a new business perspective as a commercial real estate agent, that is a great idea. The internet is just so important to the future of real estate enquiry for you. When the property market slows or gets tougher, you need the best market exposure you can get. Ignore the internet at your peril.

Before I go into what you can do here, it is worthwhile defining why we should spend more time in getting the internet profile of your business and yourself up to new levels. The search engines are always on the lookout for new listings and things that are relevant to those people searching on the internet; they use ‘spiders’ to crawl the internet continually to capture new information and data. When the search engines can capture more of the high quality content for their customers that are ‘searching’, their business gets better. It therefore stands to reason that if you can improve your relevance to the customers using search engines then the search engines will rank you higher. That will help your ranking position in the local property market in comparison to other ordinary agents not taking these steps.

This process can be implemented both at an agency or individual basis; it all depends on if you are an office principal or an individual salesperson and where you want the results to happen.

So let’s get to the point of what you can do here in addition to the standard 4 items of internet activity above. In no particular order you can do the following:

  1. Decide what specialities apply for you and your business; these are the things that make you relevant as a commercial real estate person. They may be location and also property type related. This means you could be the specialist for your local area such as ‘New York Retail Leasing Specialist’. As another example you could be the ‘London Industrial Leasing Specialist’. When you have done this, move to the next item.
  2. Write informational content and articles within your speciality and add that content to your website on a regular basis. About 400 to 500 words will be the right size of article. Add that content to your website as fresh new pages at a regular frequency. If you can do this daily or weekly then you will be making progress (daily is the preferable option). The content should be informational around your property speciality. Search engines will see this content go up on the internet and start to watch your site more frequently; all the more reason to do the article loads frequently. Make sure that these articles are content rich and informational; remember that the search engines like high quality content.
  3. If you are an individual salesperson working for a real estate office, then you will have little control over the office website. On that basis start your own ‘blog’ using the same concept in 2 above however the ‘blog’ is yours and is located in one of the ‘blog’ engines. The same principals of content apply, however you are featuring yourself as the specialist and including details of how to contact you (email and website). Content is ‘king’ when it comes to building your profile as a commercial property specialist on the internet.
  4. In addition to the items above, write some articles on a regular basis (daily or weekly) for the article search engines such as www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com or www.articlesbase.com These articles must be information and not promotional. The articles should show that you are the expert. Each of these article sites will have its rules in this regard, so you can check out the rules in each case. Include on each of your articles you write in the ‘bio’, details of who you are and how to contact you. The search engines will see the links as well, and this also has benefit to your home page on your website.

These are some of the best things you can do to improve your internet exposure and lift your rankings potential. Yes I know that some of this takes time and effort, but the benefits are huge. The golden rule to internet marketing in commercial real estate is to keep up the content momentum on a regular basis. Within a short period of time (with regular content creation), the search engines will notice you and rank you better for the speciality that you choose. Consistency and quality are the rules here. In this way you can rank higher than the other local property agents when enquiries are made at the search engines.

You can get some more tips for commercial real estate agents at our website http://www.commercial-realestate-training.com/

By John Highman

John Highman is an International Commercial Real Estate Author, Conference Speaker, and Broadcaster living in Australia, who shares property investment ideas and information to online audiences Worldwide.