In 2022, the traditional offline channels to market property listings aren’t enough. While flyers and brochures can be helpful, you need to do more to keep a competitive edge. Today’s consumers — both tenants and investors — tend to get information on their own before they get in touch with a broker.
Since today’s consumers want a way to evaluate your property from their phone, tablet, or computer, you need a way to digitally present everything that your listing has to offer, from the key specs to amenities in the area. By tapping into digital tools like a property website, you can not just make people aware of your available spaces, but also showcase those spaces’ best features in a way that sticks in the minds of potential tenants.
To make the most of the way you present your property listings in the digital realm this year, consider these three action items:
1. Build an optimized commercial real estate website
Today’s consumer expects to have things at their fingertips. CRE tenants are no exception. By building an optimized commercial real estate website, you give them a way to get all of the information they need to make an educated decision about your available properties. The website serves as a critical marketing tool to provide all of the relevant info in one place and streamline communication.
Your commercial real estate website design should include:
- Descriptions of the specific property offered and, when applicable, its building
- Beautiful imagery accessible in an easy-to-use photo gallery
- Interactive maps that call out amenities in the area
- A team section so they know who to contact — and how to contact them — if they’re interested in the property
- A menu that’s simple to navigate
These are all features that your website should offer, but don’t stop there. You also need to think about the overall performance of the site itself. You want it to load quickly with responsive design, which means it will look good on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Additionally, a truly optimized CRE website requires search engine optimization (SEO), too. This is essentially your way of ensuring that people can find your website when they’re looking for available commercial properties. Think through the on-page SEO for your website, like title tags, meta descriptions, and alt tags for your photos. As a rule of thumb, it’s generally a good idea to include the property’s address in all of those features.
2. Make your property listing shareable
Good CRE website design is just the first piece of the property listing marketing puzzle. Once you lay that foundation, you can build on it. Specifically, that means getting the word out about your listing by sharing it.
To help here, you can create a customized URL for your property listing, giving you a recognizable and easy-to-remember tool you can leverage. Once you’ve got this URL set up, you have a digital asset that you can easily plug into other promotional channels.
As you create this custom domain, put extra care into optimizing your website’s title tag, meta description, and featured images. Most promotional channels, including social media, will pull these into your post automatically.
Think about the snippet you might see on Facebook or Twitter, for example, with a title, little blurb, and photo. Your title tag will display as the title, your meta description as the little blurb, and your featured image as the post photo. Review all of these pieces and do a test post to one of your social media platforms to make sure everything is displaying the way you want.
Once you’re set up, you can use your custom URL to promote your property listing wherever you want by simply copying and pasting the link or even on print asset as an easy to remember URL address.
3. Tap into the potential of rich media
If you want to really pique people’s interest with your property listing, go beyond the simple photo-description combo. Dig into rich media like audio and video, including video presentations, to give people a better feel for the space. This helps to improve engagement and builds trust with your potential tenants.
Virtual tours serve as a prime example. Giving people the ability to “walk through” the space from the comfort of their office or home can be the key to setting your listing apart from other available properties.
Ultimately, taking a few steps can ensure you capitalize on the potential offered by digital property listing presentations. To market your available space, set up a property listing website, make sure it’s sharable, and enhance it with engaging media types. In doing so, you’ll set yourself up for success in 2022.
