Commercial Real Estate Marketing Ideas

Don't wantcha for the weekend, don't wantcha for a night
I'm only interested if I can have you for life, yeah
Uh, I know I sound serious and baby I am
You're a fine piece of real estate, and I'm gonna get me some land

As much as we're familiar with the Shania Twain song from which the above verse is sourced, we're also aware that given an opportunity and the sufficient financial resources, each one of us would want to get us some land on a fine piece of real estate. No matter what official reports may depict and economic market surveys may show, we all know that there is no dearth of prospects who would be interested in buying a piece of land or other real estate that is well-located. However, the problem with land is that while its supply is limited (you can't grow more land, can you?), the limit of its demand always exceeds in accordance with the number of interested parties who are willing to pay for acquisition of a real estate or a part of it. Now, you must be thinking that when demand is way more than the supply, then it must be a cinch for real estate owners, agents and brokers to sell their offerings at unbelievably attractive prices, don't you? Well, it's not quite that easy.

Although it may be somewhat easy (no, I don't mean to undermine the marketing efforts of huge real estate developers and agents; I have used the word easy merely due to my inability to find a more appropriate term of comparison at the moment) to net in large-scale investors and venture capitalists who are looking forward to buying land for huge commercial or public utility projects, attracting smaller prospects can be quite a challenge, given the large number of options available to a small prospect in the same location. A good example of small-scale real estate business is selling or renting out residential areas and small commercial spaces for setting up shops, stores and small warehouses or godowns. So, how do people dealing in small plots and similar real estate grab the attention of interested parties? Well, here are some commercial real estate marketing ideas that should give you some pointers on how to go about it.

Marketing Strategies for Commercial Real Estate

Cash in on Expired Listings
No, don't frown! An expired listing is the easiest way to give you the right leads if you're new in the real estate business of a given area and farming an expired listing opens up a whole new bunch of opportunities for you! How? Well, the fact that it's an expired listing clearly points towards various unpleasant issues that have taken place previously which have left the prospects disillusioned and feeling betrayed by real estate dealers. Be persevering and set aside the negative response on your approach - this is the best opportunity to win them back by positioning yourself differently from your predecessors and walking the talk! In fact, you can actually enter the scene as a real estate consultant for disgruntled prospects and then lay down your pitch once you've won their confidence!

Start a Circular
If finances are not a constraint, you can approach the newspaper publisher of the target area and get them to print a 2 - 4 page free supplement on current real estate trends and a listing of the properties under your dealership. This supplement can be a weekly one and can be dropped along with the main newspaper on a Saturday or Sunday morning because weekend is the time when most people would indulge in the luxury of a detailed scan of the newspaper.

Contact the Owners
One of the best marketing plans for commercial real estate is to contact the owners of For Sale by Owner properties directly. You can easily get their contact details from newspaper or other published advertisements and make cold calls. However, if you are not averse to some field work, you can take a tour of the area you are targeting and take a note of the houses or properties that have signs expressing the desire to sell or rent the property and contact the owner in person. Direct contact makes a better impression than random cold calling as the owner must have received so many cold calls till now. Your meeting him in person makes you likely to be better remembered than all those numerous faceless cold calls.

Advertise
This is one of the most conventional but effective ideas for marketing commercial real estate. Make your advertisement as creative-yet-relevant as you can and you'll be surprised by the volume of response. When you advertise, you get contacted by a lot of prospects who are not included in any list or who do not advertise their property themselves. This way, rather than the thirsty going to the well, real estate advertising makes the well come to the thirsty! You can also take the help of a mailing list, either existing or a newly drawn up, to send direct mails to prospects.

Last but not the least, cold calling, the most conventional of all marketing ideas, be it for real estate or any other commercial domain, and drawing up mailing lists qualify as workable marketing options every time. However, rather than resorting to these as primary marketing tools, you can use them as auxiliary strategies to the above mentioned ideas to give a boost to your overall marketing plan rather than rest it entirely on these traditional methods which have become ubiquitous and repetitive ad nauseam!