Whether you are a broker , property investor or business proprietor, marketing your commercial properties can be a long stressful time , depending on the market at that time. Marketing your properties to the max is one way to give yourself an advantage in the most cost effective mode.
For the masses involved in commercial real estate, radio and tv advertising is way to costly to warrant disbursement of your marketing dollars on, in most cases. Advertising in your cities yellow pages is an option for real estate agents and brokers, depending on which city you do business in and how big of a display ad you wish to run, it could run you 1000s of dollars a year.
A second option is to promote in your local papers commercial real estate section. Again the price will depend on what city you do business in and the size of your display ad. A property listing could easily cost you $250 per month. If you are running a half or full page listing, it could easily run you 1000 dollars every 30 days. Advertising like this can ad up very quick and is definitely out of the question for the intermediate real estate investing enthusiast, and this is money that could easily be invested more efficiently in another capacity.
There are realtors who specialize in commercial properties, business owners and individual commercial real estate investors, commercial real estate brokerage companies, who spend a lot of money having websites created for them and some of them are highly successful. But, the truth is for every one successful real estate website, there are thousands that are at the reverse end of the spectrum. It’s not because their websites don’t look good, and for several thousand, if not more dollars, they better look good! It’s because so many of these companies and realtors believe it’s like the motion picture Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner, when Shoeless Joe Jackson said, “If you build it, he will come”. Many people tend to think that, to get traffic all you have to do is build a website , guess again!
Once you have your website you will either need to hire a search engine optimization company (very expensive) or teach yourself search engine optimization techniques. A real estate brokerage that is quite large may decide that with the very large total of listings that they have, hiring an SEO company would not be out of their price range. Unfortunately that is not the case for realtors whose broker is not interested in spending any money, modest business owners, or property investors who wish to sell their properties without the aid of a realtor.
You would then need to learn in the latter situation about search engine opimization techniques, search engine rankings, an understanding of how Google and other search engines work, Social bookmarking, Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Video Marketing, Article Writing, Article marketing and submission, Google Adwords, Press Releases, Blogging, generating Back links, Keywords, optin methods, email autoresponder software knowledge, building a list, I think you get the point! To have a successful website that will create leads requires the use of the above mentioned activities, which requires a tremendous amount of time. And don’t think that once you are set up, your good to go for ever. This is an ongoing unremitting process that requires full time care, by a full time employee. Each listing or property should be inputted into all of the Web2.0 activities that I have mentioned and a few more that I have ignored to mention. Whether you are an owner of your own real estate brokerage, a real estate agent, business owner or a real estate investor, there is an alternative option to get your commercial properties, businesses or investment properties in front of millions of probable leads on the Internet.
There are companies that are dedicated to commercial real estate marketing like For Sale For Lease who still use traditional marketing methods like The Globe and Mail and The Financial Post and diverse dailys across the country. The internets website ranking authority Alexa.com ranks them in Canada as one of the top sites for Commercial Real Estate in front of just about all other commercial real estate sites in Canada. Using a company like For Sale For Lease, who has already established themselves using all of the Web2.0 strategies we talked about before, makes a lot of good sense. They have various product packages available to suit all aspects of commercial real estate from big companies or businesses, to the small business owner or property investor. My personal favorite is the deferred marketing fee where For Sale For Lease will take your commercial real estate listings including vacant land, leased property, luxury homes, businesses for sale or investment properties, apply all of the Web2.0 methods I mentioned above, blogging, social bookmarking, press releases, etc., and not charge you a penny, unless the property is sold or leased to one of the leads generated by For Sale For Lease.
Though this company is based in Canada, the unique visitors to their website also come from the United States, United Kingdom, India and many other countries. For this reason and the investment opportunities that are now available in the United States, For Sale For Lease will be adding a New Category for United States investment properties. They will also accept real estate investing opportunities from the international community as well.
As we have learned, having your ownweb site does notensure leads or sales, and a lot of money and work is needed to have your website appear high in the search engine rankings. We have also learned that their are professional companies that are all ready in a position to assist with the commercial real estate marketing side for our properties. It’s now up to you to decide which method you will choose, just make sure you use one of them.
For more information about For Sale For lease contact Hans Anderson at hans@forsaleforlease.ca or toll free 1-800-673-9716 x219 or by cell at 1-705-730-3693