The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated an already growing digital revolution within the commercial real estate industry. Gone are the days of relying exclusively on flyers, door hangers, and brochures to advertise your business.

Now, your business plan should embrace and make use of the digital technologies and marketing strategies to drive outreach and brand awareness.

1. Define your objectives and target audience

   The most successful approach to marketing a commercial property depends on identifying and understanding your target audience.

   Think about where your audience spends its time online — a specific social media platform, specific property websites, somewhere else?

   How will you reach them — paid social media ads, quality branded websites specifically highlighting individual properties, or online commercial real estate listings?

   What is your budget? Think about your value proposition, which will set the foundation that sets you apart from your competitors and gives a base for future marketing communication and materials.

2. Create a commercial real estate marketing plan

   These marketing plans provide a concrete, comprehensive overview of how you’ll measure success, your overall mission, selling points, target audiences, and strategies and metrics. When you create your plan, be sure to include:

   • Budget
   • Business summary
   • Marketing channels
   • Marketing material
   • Metrics
   • Target audience and market

3. Create or upgrade your company website

   That old adage about never getting a second chance to make a first impression? It totally fits here. Use your website to establish your authority and cultivate trust and confidence with potential prospects. (In a future email, we’ll offer advice on how to do just that!)

   Develop a digital footprint for your properties; showcase them with interactive features. These digital hubs add a wow factor, engaging and converting more visitors. You can use the hubs to display availability, brochures, floor plans, interactive real estate maps, video, 3D virtual tours, and more.

4. Build and segment targeted email campaigns

   When you build and segment a database of potential prospects, your targeted email communications yield more bang for the buck. You can use a real estate marketing software platform, commercial real estate CRM, or another method that works for you. But prioritize a plan to grow and nurture your user base, reach prospects, and engage and convert them.

5. Give your contacts and prospects something useful

   It’s hard to know where to start or how to effectively utilize high quality content — and get that content out to your contacts. So much information floats around, you don’t want to be just part of the noise. Instead, focus on writing or curating relevant, useful, entertaining content and sharing it through blog posts, email newsletters, infographics, market studies, or videos.

6. Leverage social media

   Social media platforms offer a free, effective method to build brand awareness — and drive people to your website. You can use social media to spark conversations and facilitate connections within your network — and grow your own network, too. LinkedIn is 277% more effective for generating leads than Facebook or Twitter, too.