Navigating the commercial real estate marketing process can be overwhelming. Finding a reliable marketing partner simplifies this journey. In a sea of options, it’s essential to identify the top commercial real estate marketing companies.
Major Players in the Commercial Real Estate Real Estate Marketing World
Here are some of the industry leaders that have demonstrated excellence in commercial real estate marketing.
Calico Marketing
Websites designed to collect leads. You are given access to “Sales Funnel Masterclasses” to create additional sales pipelines and marketing materials.
The Good: The “hard stuff” of building and maintaining a lead generating website and linking it to integrations like IDX and CRMs is all taken care of for you.
The Bad: Only website design is the “done for you” service. Marketing templates, walk-thru videos are offered, but are do-it-yourself.
Personal Note: This is my company, so I’m a bit bias on how it’s awesome.
ConnectCRE
High-end commercial real estate agency that offers every service imaginable.
The Good: They can handle anything, PR, material collateral, digital, and even events.
The Bad: If you’re looking for a la carte services, like just a logo design, probably not your best bet.
Personal Note: I want to hate them, but their stuff is legit. Their coding is clean, their SEO is actually good (this is rare), and one of the few companies that does pay-per-click correctly. It hurts, but I give them an A+.
Agility Marketing
Offers branding, digital marketing, and graphic design for commercial real estate agents and brokers.
The Good: The owner of Agility Marketing is the leading expert in creating custom listing brochures and offering memorandums.
The Bad: Not a full service marketing agency, this is more a la carte.
Personal Note: I’ve personally worked with Deborah for years! I highly recommend her for all your custom graphic needs.
MilesBrand
Offering branding strategy, online capabilities, graphic design and signage.
The Good: They offer a wide array of services including branding, website design, organic search, marketing collateral, media services and more.
The Bad: Their clients seem to be mainly residential real estate industry, not commercial real estate.
Personal notes: I hate when companies don’t spell out exactly what they do and how they do it. Their website content is too vague for my taste but their designs look nice.
What to Look for in a Commercial Real Estate Marketing Partner
Expertise
I would love to tell you to find someone with direct experience in commercial real estate, but we all know those marketing firms are few and far between. Most “real estate marketing agencies” are all about new homes or luxury properties, few are for commercial real estate.
If you’re looking for a specific look or feeling, keep an open mind. Someone who has never worked in commercial real estate may need a bit more hand holding than an expert, but if they can get your style right, it might be worth it.
Service Offering
I’m going to be viciously honest here. I’ve never met a “generalist” that was amazing at everything. You’re either a “jack-of-all trades master of none” or you’re an expert in one.
If you’re going after an agency pay attention to the services they seem to be pushing the hardest. Do they promote their pay per click services hard, but they glaze over search-engine optimization? If your sales rep spends a lot of time talking about one or two services, it’s likely that’s their in-house services and everything else is being outsourced on Fiverr.com.
In my experience selling services back in my college days, I was told to promote the in-house over the outsourced because it’s not as profitable, AND we don’t have as much control over the quality.
It’s a good guideline to help you in your search.
Reputation
Do a Google search for the company’s off-site reviews. I.E. Search for “[Company] reviews.”
Too many people take the reviews posted on the company website at face value, when a Google search will reveal that not every review is 5-stars.
Innovation
If you buy a GoDaddy builder website like it’s 2008, I will never forgive you. There are SO MANY new and better ways to make a website. Also, make sure whatever you choose for your marketing hub (websites are often where all the marketing magic takes place) ensure you’re going with a service or platform that can integrate into everything you need in the future – IDX, CRM, etc. Don’t settle for less.
How Commercial Real Estate Marketing Firms Boost Visibility
Let’s pull back the curtain on how exactly marketing firms can boost visibility.
Strategic Branding
If you’re with a franchise, good news! This has been done for you. Follow their branding and don’t deviate. If you have a designer or marketer that refuses to work with it, find another one. A GOOD designer can make any combination of clashing colors work if they know what they’re doing.
If you don’t have a franchise brand, your first step in the branding journey will be developing a logo. Your logo will dictate your color scheme, and font choices, but don’t get in your own head. I’ve met so many brokers that stall because they can’t decide on the “perfect” logo. If you’re having issues, I’m giving you permission to write your company name in Helvetica Bold, and your tag-line beneath it in Helvetica Normal. Voila, I saved you thousands of dollars.
If you choose a bright color and you’re worried about your marketing materials being garish, use the bright color sparingly as an accent and rely heavily on white, gray, and black for major portions of the design.
Digital Marketing
Creating a website is one of the first things you’ll do with any marketing firm.
If you don’t have a website by now, do you hate money? Seriously, get online and connect your Google My Business and to your site…if you like money.
Once you have these basics established, you can continue your digital journey with search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media marketing.
Add an e-newsletter to your client list and prospective client list to ensure you’re “top-of-mind” when they’re finally ready to buy, sell or lease a commercial property.
High-Quality Marketing Materials
It’s shocking how many, even huge brokerages, have agents that use WORD to design their offering memorandums. Do they have no self respect?! While some marketing agencies may offer this service, here are some ideas to get it a la carte.
If you’re stuck in a brokerage (or by yourself) and you have ZERO options for creating high quality materials, Google Slides is a legit option for creating brochures. I have a product that comes with commercial real estate brochures and OMs in Google Slides templates, if you want some extra help.
If you have a little bit more budget, Canva.com is a great tool for creating brochures and OMs.
If your budget is higher than that, Agility Marketing offers custom listing brochures and OMs.
Compelling Content Marketing
I’m going to be viciously honest again. A marketing firm can SEO your website until the cows come home, but if you don’t have a consistent flow of blogs, videos and/or social media with links to your services, you’ll be in a constant uphill battle to get that coveted first place result organically.
Use Google Keyword Planner to find phrases your target audience is searching for. Use these keywords to build your content. The easiest way to get more traffic into your website is by publishing content for keywords that are easy to rank in. “Industrial Real Estate San Diego” may be impossible without paid ads, but longer strings like, “Where to find tenants for my San Diego industrial warehouse?” will be easier to rank highly in.
Online Ads
Pay-per-click can get you top results on every keyword you want. HOWEVER, if your website isn’t getting results with your warm audience (people filling out forms, emailing or calling from the website) it will NOT work on a cold audience. You will be wasting money. Don’t waste money.
If pay-per-click is going to be your game, test lead generators, pre-recorded webinars, etc. to see what is in most demand to your current clients. Only when you have a winner with your warm audience, should you test it on ads. Ads are a great way to lose your shirt, so make sure you have a lead generator that works.
Public Relations and Media Outreach
While a marketing firm will promote their PR relations, I’m going to pull the curtain back.
I’m not a huge fan of using PR for anything more than promoting listings. I want to note that I do not believe PR will finally sell that suborn property or get your more clients. Instead, PR should be used to “wow” your clients. There’s something about seeing your property posted on hundreds of media outlets that money can’t buy…well… you actually CAN buy this.
Services like PR Underground can post your property on major media outlets starting at $75. It’ll produce a PDF with links to all the media outlets that published the property. When you send that bad-boy to your client, they’ll be floored with how much work you put into their listing – they don’t need to know it took 20-minutes and under $100.
Choosing the Right Commercial Real Estate Marketing Agency for Your Needs
Before you start looking into marketing firms, ask yourself, “What do I really need?”
If the Goal is Branding…
Here’s what a comprehensive branding package from a marketing agency typically contains: logo, brand message, and brand guidelines.
Marketing collateral such as listing brochure, offering memorandums and slide decks are usually offered as a graphic design add-on.
Digital products like website design, social media, email templates, video production, and landing pages are usually offered as add-ons.
Make sure your contract shows a list of what you expect for the cost. The clearer you are on what you’re getting, the less questions you’ll have on your branding journey.
If the Goal is More Leads…
Have I used “viciously honest” too many times? I won’t say it again, but here’s the truth. Marketing firms can’t promise you leads. Marketing firms can assure that your stuff will look good, and your website CAN capture leads, but they can’t promise people will go beyond the click and fill out a form or contact you.
Even the pay-per-click service can’t promise you leads! There is no guarantee the people clicking on your ad are going to become leads. Clicks are not leads.
Only YOU can get leads. I’m sorry to destroy your hopes and dreams, but it’s true.
Going over exactly how to do this would be another 2,000 word article, so if you want to know specifics, Get the Free Resources. Check out the free videos, the PDFs “Pipeline Lifeline” and “Pipeline Gold Mine” for more info on improving your lead generation.
If the Goal is Streamlining…
Are you sure you need a marketing firm? Other than setting up integrations to IDX and CRMs, most marketing firms won’t provide any project management help.
If you’re looking to get all your deals in a project management software, setup some automations, and learn to outsource some of your work, check out Scale Up Hero.
The Pitch!
If you haven’t already guessed, I’m a bit biased towards using my marketing firm, Calico Marketing. Your website is the number one piece of marketing your commercial real estate will need, make sure it’s top notch. Our website designs come with everything a commercial real estate agent or broker needs for lead capture, and generating leads hands free.
I also offer the Sales Funnel Masterclasses so you can build sales funnels and get more leads.
Remember, no marketing firm can promise leads, but I can give you everything you need to optimize your commercial real estate Sales Pipeline to keep the leads flowing.
Sales Funnel Masterclasses are unique to Calico Marketing, and no other marketing firm can come close.
Access is FREE with purchase of a website!
Anyone can build a website.
Anyone can put buttons on a website and call it “lead generating”.
I’m the only one that provides a the Sales Funnel Masterclasses, giving you strategies to drive traffic to your site, setup automations, and keep in touch with automated welcome sequences to turn traffic into sales.
If you don’t have a sales funnel, you won’t get long lasting results, period.
If you’re nodding along and agreeing that it’s time, let’s get started! Schedule a call or zoom.
I’m out to take the “broke” out of commercial real estate brokerage.
I want to start with you.
You coming? Schedule a call or zoom.
