Direct Mail Marketing Leverage for Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

You can use direct mail to gain business leverage in your commercial property business. It is part of a good prospecting process that you can consider. That being said you really do need to do things to a system if you want results.

(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)

Are you ready for some new business system modification?  Here are the facts about direct mail marketing in our property industry:

• Be specific and not generic – drill down into a particular message to a target market. You can write your direct letters with the target market in mind. Understand what people like to hear and see as they consider the changes in the local property industry. Create some charts about vacancy factors, supply and demand, prices and rents. Graphs and statistics create questions and can show that you know the facts. That is where you can step in as the expert of choice to help with those market segments.
• Be local – most of the inquiry for properties will come from the local area. Concentrate your letters in the streets, the buildings, and the businesses, but always stay local in your focus. Keep that local area defined within precincts, roads, and suburbs. Get to know the precincts in the local zone and what people are thinking and doing in those zones. In doing this you can comprehensively get to know what rents, prices and inquiry is doing. You can feed that information into your recommendations and listing pitch.
• Contact small batches of people – you can ‘overdo it’ in commercial real estate marketing thinking that the volume approach is best when it comes to sending letters; the reality is far from that. Only work your direct letters into small groups that you can follow up. It is better to send 5 or 10 letters as direct mail pieces that you can follow up, rather than send 200 pieces that you do not follow up. There is also a cost component that should not be forgotten. If you send a letter, then you must follow it up.
• Create a series of letters to use – when you start the direct mail strategy, have a series of letters that you can send every month or 2 months to the same people. Regularity in contact creates familiarity. Help the people remember you by raising valuable ongoing information in batches that attract people.
• Simplicity really works – every direct mail piece can be simplified. Don’t send out something that is overly long and complicated. Most adults and particularly property people will on average not spend much time looking at your letter and message. Simplicity will help the message get through. Use a keyword or phrase to pull people into your correspondence then put a few dot points to extend the interest.
• Your business card – with every letter that you send out, enclose your business card so you can encourage ongoing contact. In most cases, business cards are kept for future reference even if your letter is ‘binned’. Make sure your business card is carefully designed with professional layout, as well as being printed on good rigid paper stock.

So you can do a lot with direct mail marketing if you design the system that works for you. Track and measure the results that you get back in, then improve your processes at every opportunity.

(N.B. these ideas are also sent out to regularly to our friends in Commercial Real Estate Online Snapshot to help amplify brokerage results…. Get your access here)