Commercial real estate is a tricky market nowadays, with everyone complaining about the skyrocketing prices of housing – and businesses sure save on renting office space by working hybrid or remotely. How do you win the marketing game in that kind of playing field?

Most guides address things like target audience, email campaigns, and listings features, so today we bring you 5 tips you might not have considered but which might help you rise above the competition.

Get into video

Any real estate listing has to include smart, high-quality photos if it wants to have any chance of success, but that’s not enough for the modern customer, especially not for young professionals. If you want to reach the new generation of tenants (or business space renters) you have to join the world of video content.

Videos have a dynamic element that lets your prospective clients immerse themselves in the space, rather than being passive recipients of someone else’s static (photo) perspective. A well-made video gives a realistic sense of the layout and size of the property, and highlights its best features in context. You can get a similar effect with a good 3D virtual tour as well.

The point is to make your listing look “alive” so people will be more interested more quickly and make their decision sooner. As a bonus, video content is highly shareable, which improves your chances of landing a deal even outside your primary advertising platforms.

Diversify your online presence

One of the most common strategies for increasing your leasing rates is to have a professional website, and it’s a good tip, but a commercial property owner needs more than just a solid site. First, branch out onto relevant third-party platforms like CRE portals in your area, listing services, and Google My Business. Further, split your marketing channels into owned, paid, and earned.

Owned means your own assets: your website, social media profiles, blog, mailing lists, etc. Paid channels are performance-based ones, as well as banners someone hosts for you, cost-per-click ads, and other paid advertising.

Earned marketing channels are free ones: social media word-of-mouth, SEO, and unpaid brand advocates (i.e. satisfied customers who recommend you of their own free will rather than you prompting them to do so).

Invest in proper maintenance

To be fair, this is more of an ongoing backstage task than a typical customer facing marketing tip, but it’s an essential strategy nonetheless. Keep the property in top shape or you risk not only losing prospective renters, but incurring major expenses down the line. Stay on top of the cleaning, inspections, repairs, and upgrades. Pay special attention to property-wide systems that people don’t usually think about day-to-day, such as:

• Plumbing
• Ventilation
• Heating and cooling
• Electrical installations
• Fire safety installations
• Roofing and attics
• Foundations and basements
• Various insulation

Consider collaborating with local plumbing services, electrical services, and similar entities for long-term maintenance. Most businesses have favorable rates and conditions for steady regular customers, so ask about your options. See if you can make arrangements for regular inspections, annual preventive maintenance, emergency repair scenarios and the like.

Get involved in the industry network

Your connections will mean the difference between successfully marketing your real estate properties and fading into obscurity. There are a few ways to forge them. First off, attend conferences, panels, and other events. These get-togethers let you create massive numbers of leads and professional relationships in a short time span. Other marketing channels aren’t that effective that quickly.

Next, start advertising in trade journals, both in print and online. Appearing in these publications dramatically improves your credibility. It also expands your reach, since trade journals are read by industry peers, brokers, investors, etc. on a daily basis.

Your business will be exposed to either a wide (national or global) audience or a regional target group. Choose the publication you advertise in based on your overarching marketing strategy at the time.

Don’t forget about remarketing

Display advertising might be the most commonly recommended tactic here, but the key to the game is to make the most out of your cookies. As a brief reminder, a cookie is placed in a person’s computer (or their phone, or tablet, or whatever other device) when they visit your website.

This little crumb of data lets you identify them later on, which allows you to target them for future advertising. In a way, the cookie becomes a “tag” that “labels” this user as being interested in the kind of content or service you provide.

This tells the rest of the web that they might want to see advertisements for such services, and that way you can serve them relevant ads for your business when they visit different websites. It’s an effective method to remind past visitors about your listings and nudge them to visit your pages again – to make a little pun here, it’s a discreet way for you to live in their head rent-free.

To wrap it up, we’d like to remind you that you shouldn’t disregard all those classic pointers that other marketing guides will give you. They’re classics for a reason. You do need a robust website, effective audience segmentation, and all that.

But you should complement those strategies with these practical tips to cover all your bases and empower your CRE business to thrive in any context.