How to Start Marketing Your Commercial Real Estate Property
Listing your commercial property has never been easier thanks to a mix of tried and true techniques and newer innovative technology. However, when you have a new commercial listing for say office or retail space, you might still wonder how, when, and to whom you should market your property to first. Here are some key points to remember when you have a new listing available and you’re looking to market it.
1. Reach Out to Your Friends and Family
At its core, commercial property transactions are about who you know. It’s important to connect with friends, family, and reputable acquaintances first to see if anyone is interested in your property. Once you’ve built up your network over a number of years, you have the additional benefit to build your business through referrals. Make sure to reach out with phone calls, emails, and lunch meetings; whatever you feel like your strong suit is, make it a point to connect with those around you to find potential buyers.
2. Ask a Successful Broker to Mentor You
With years of experience comes the added privilege (and potential hassle) of having more clients than you know what to do with. For newer agents who want to break into real estate and haven’t built up as much influence, one of their best options is to partner with an experienced broker who has the knowledge and insight to help you advance in your career. In exchange for mitigating the amount of work senior agents have to do, you’ll likely have more access to deals, clients, and networks from whom you can market your listings too. Since name recognition is also a big part of the industry, teaming up with an established agent or keeping yourself in front of your competition is crucial to success.
3. Post Your Property Listings
Thanks to the internet, commercial properties are now readily available for sale or lease online on a number of different commercial property listing websites. These are great places to start marketing your property depending on what resources you have available. Commercial Brokers International doesn’t endorse any of these in particular but we’ve complied a small list of sites and some of their differentiating factors.
LoopNet is a highly well-known CRE site that brings together office, multifamily, industrial, retail, and a number of different asset classes. LoopNet includes over 600,000 listings and has accrued over 5 billion square feet for lease globally.
RealNex Marketplace offers 300,000 listings in North America. It comes with its own CRM and integrated advanced technological solutions such as VR and mobile access for increased visibility for your listings. Currently RealNex has $450 billion for sale and 4.7 billion square feet for lease.
Digsy is another way to find office, industrial, or retail space for sale or lease. Digsy has the added benefit of letting agents get input from professionals in the commercial real estate industry. Although a bit smaller with 40,000 available properties on its website, it’s currently free to list or search properties as you wish.
RealMassive is another digital marketplace for commercial real estate, and encompasses four billion feet of office, industrial, and retail space. RealMassive allows individuals to streamline their promotional marketing with the help of analytics and inventory management.
CoStar is likely the most well-known listing site used by commercial agents worldwide. If the company you work with can afford it, take the time to utilize all the listing and property hunting tools that CoStar has to offer. CoStar is effectively a tool as much as it is a service, so be sure to speak with an experienced agent when trying to understand the ins and outs of how to utilize its functions.
·CIMLS (the commercial investment multiple listing service) has nearly $500 billion in available property and is a larger listing site with properties all over the United States. With a free plan that allows you to upload your current listings, it’s an easy and fairly capable way to start marketing your properties from the get go.
4. Promote Your Property Online (and Elsewhere)
The most important thing to remember when you have a listing is to promote it! Talk to your network, cold call, email, and spread the word of what your client is looking for. With today’s expanding digital marketplace, publishing your listings flyers via social media and through affiliate or referral channels is also a great way to generate interest in both yourself and your available properties.
At Commercial Brokers International we help our agents understand the importance of both offline and online action. The more you expand your audience and target your search to the appropriate parties the better off you’ll be when you finally do want to promote your properties.
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