Commercial Real Estate Tips: How to Position Your Business in the Market

To build your commercial real estate business like an office in your local town or city, and to get the right market share for you, you’ll need a ‘Strategic Marketing Plan’. Before creating the plan, you will need a ‘Strategic Marketing Position’.

In this way, you will have a constant impact with the right prospects and players in the commercial property industry. You simply want the market, business owners, real estate investors, and all local renters and buyers to know that you are the best there is and can help them with their special property needs.

So before you start considering your marketing plan, it’s worth considering what makes you better than the other agents and brokers in the area. You need to have a real reason to be different in your real estate business, and your prospects need to know you for it. This is as much a problem for the office as it is for you as an individual. Everyone in your office should be telling the same story when talking to prospects.

Don’t say that:

• You’re the best in the area, and you know what you’re doing.
• You are honest with the client from the beginning.
• You communicate with the customer every step of the way.
• He has operated locally for 20 years and knows everyone in town etc.

These generic statements are just that and have no relevance to the people you want to attract. Your reason for serving the real estate market has to be important and beneficial to the people you deal with.

You can specialize in just one type of property to achieve that relevance to the prospects you want to attract. Consider statements like this:

• We specialize solely in retail shopping center leasing and selling so that the properties we manage can optimize their rental performance, sales volume and return to owners given the local community and demographics.
• We know the rental and industrial sales market and we have a database that captures all businesses and properties locally for that very reason. This helps real estate clients know what competition they are up against and how they can adjust and focus on the real opportunity available.
• Selling and renting office property is our specialty because we have tracked most of the major local buildings and tenants for a few years, so we know who the major players are and when they will need to relocate or dispose of critical assets.

This valuable approach gives the customer or prospect real comfort in knowing they have something they can use. If you run a typical commercial real estate office, your primary services to the clients you serve could be reorganized and focused as:

1. Professional advisory services on the strategy behind the leasing, selling and management of commercial properties in the local business community. You incorporate the trends and sentiment of the local business community as well as the decisions and directions of planning authorities so that your clients make the right property decisions based on facts.
2. Lead the marketing of commercial properties for sale and lease, using special marketing packages that offer the investment client real impact beyond the standard ‘advertise and wait’ approach used by many other agents or brokers.
3. Property management services that offer meaningful revenue and expense solutions that package and orient the asset to the client’s investment cycle of property ownership and expected returns.

This rebranding approach is like a business plan in a sentence or two. It gives your office a reason to serve local real estate investors and homeowners who need your help. When you and your staff begin to live and work within the ‘brand’, the market begins to see that you are truly different and better than the rest.