Your guide to commercial property | For CRE Professionals

With so many commercial properties for sale and to let across the UK, how do you cut through the noise and get yours noticed? It’s easy to see why great properties get left behind, simply because another one looks better online.

Digital search has opened up the world of property. With a huge number of properties marketed side by side, tenants have an overview of the entire market. They have the power to search for exactly what they want in their own time.

Most UK businesses are now operating online, whether it’s a small café with a website to show their menu or a large insurance firm looking to provide a seamless customer journey. It’s no surprise that property searches have also become an online experience. But is it the same for commercial property?

With a wide range of channels that leads can come from, it can be easy for businesses to find themselves with a disjointed approach to lead management. Increasingly companies are looking to create a centralised approach to processing their leads to make sure no opportunity is squandered.

Big consultancies tend to elicit a wide array of emotions - from fear to admiration or even aspiration. There are some clear similarities between the core business models of these companies and the business models of commercial property agents.

Marketing has changed tremendously with the rise of internet connectivity, especially on mobile. B2C businesses were first to jump on this newly emerging digital marketing bandwagon - embracing channel marketing. B2B, however, was slower to the game and has been playing catch-up ever since, only in recent years embracing marketing automation and digital advertising like Adwords or Facebook campaigns.

The bread and butter of the London market has been through a process of transformation. The growth of the flexible office space market has taken advantage of consumer trends in online search to fill millions of square feet with startups, SMEs and corporate occupiers. At the same time, traditional lease spaces which would have flown off the shelves in 2014 are hanging around like a bad smell.

Commercial property is known for its reliance on email marketing. Tons of email campaigns are sent daily clogging inboxes of both tenant reps and prospective tenants, putting this channel’s effectiveness at risk of communication saturation. With GDPR upon us, this almost complete dependence on email marketing might find its limits.

The digital ecosystem provides scale to your marketing at a lower cost than traditional media. Word of mouth is a popular and often very effective way to promote your service. It’s a very traditional approach to promotion; however, give it a digital spin and the results from a word of mouth campaigns can be multiplied.

When writing for digital channels you need to stay true to the nature of the medium. Copy taken from lengthy brochures written in technical language might not translate into a catchy commercial property listing, especially if the listing is for a smaller property.

Email marketing is one of the most effective channels for promoting commercial properties. Used to drive interest and generate enquiries, a good email campaign can help you improve deal velocity. Deliverability of your email campaigns is key to their success.

When building an online microsite, you want its look and feel to reflect your branding. You also want to ensure all the selling points are highlighted and presented in a positive light. But it doesn’t end there. You need to consider the impact of all elements of your landing page on the ranking this microsite can achieve on Google search for specific keywords.

A fast-growing commercial real estate firm decides to buy a software company that helps them manage the coordination and communication of renovation projects. With their aggressive expansion targets, it’s clear WeWork has to be incredibly efficient with their operations, especially in the renovation period.

New technology means there’s a new digital revolution happening right now. This is technology you can use to drive your digital marketing campaigns, securing big ROI for a small investment. Here are three simple ideas you can put into action right now to ensure you convert more leads.

We talked about the pivotal role a digital marketer can and should play in helping agencies generate leads and grow business. Either through email marketing or SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and PPC (Pay Per Click), a good digital marketing specialist can have a tremendous impact on your business in this day and age of digital transformation.

In this day and age, your online presence is a core part of your business identity, and if you don’t have a dedicated digital marketing expert working in your business then you could be missing out on many benefits. Indeed, more and more businesses have not just one, but whole teams of digital marketing experts working for their companies, because they’ve seen first-hand the value and return on investment that can be secured.

As a commercial property agent, you know a good opportunity when you see it, you know how to close a deal, and you know how to keep your clients happy, but in the ever-evolving tech-driven world, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest tech developments and how they can help you do your job.

Not everyone likes using new technology, but if you don’t keep up with the latest tech trends in your sector, you could be left behind. And one area in which this is becoming increasingly apparent is the commercial property sector. Technology applications in commercial property have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, yet not everyone is embracing the benefits it can offer.

The truth is as an in-house marketer, it's physically impossible to be a guardian of the corporate brand and also market properties in the portfolio. You need to have partners to help you succeed. Commercial property agents are such partners.

Traditionally, commercial property marketing has relied heavily on generating enquiries from an existing network of contacts. An agent or a landlord would reach out to contacts from their black book to market a given disposal. Someone from their list would respond and eventually a building would be leased after lengthy negotiations.

A brand is a complex entity in the commercial property industry. You could differentiate a few approaches to creating a brand in our sector, such as a corporate brand or one which is conceived for a specific project or building.

Technology is well known for delivering high quality customer service: think Uber, Airbnb and Deliveroo. This is as true in commercial property as it is in fast food delivery.

5 marketing lessons the commercial property industry can learn from the best technology companies - part 2

5 marketing lessons the commercial property industry can learn from the best technology companies - part 1

By aligning your marketing strategy with the interests and pain points of your prospects, you can build online relationships and catch people when they’re looking for your product. Online principles are the same across all sectors - this well-trodden path is as applicable to commercial property as it is to buying a car.