Commercial property sales and leasing reports empower commercial real estate investors to anticipate market trends, make informed decisions and capitalise on lucrative opportunities.
Market reports are also crucial lead generation tools for commercial real estate agencies to generate client leads.
Marketing your commercial real estate agency
Marketing a commercial real estate agency is very different to marketing a residential agency. That’s because commercial clients and their needs are very different to those of residential clients. Commercial real estate clients tend to be:
- experienced in purchasing, selling or leasing commercial assets
- willing to take calculated risks
- informed and knowledgeable
- running their own businesses or family businesses, or institutional investors
- buying businesses based on their own business knowledge of an asset class (i.e., buying properties in the same industry)
- building or managing a sophisticated property investment portfolio for themselves, their family or a syndicate.
Commercial property transactions also tend to be for larger amounts than residential property investments.
For all of these reasons, commercial real estate clients are very data-driven when making their investment decisions. They value up-to-date information to help them assess property values and determine the most favourable time to buy, sell or lease.
Whether you’re a commercial sales or leasing agent operating under the banner of a global brand, a national franchise network or a smaller boutique office, it’s crucial to have the latest market data to gain a competitive edge and attract more potential clients.
The problem
Unfortunately, unlike the Australian residential real estate market, there is a distinct lack of commercial real estate information and insights available at the micro (i.e., street, suburb or town) level in Australia, including details about the mix of businesses and commercial properties that are currently operating or needed in specific areas.
When you check out the online marketing activities of the big commercial real estate corporations, they produce amazing reports, but they tend to be at very high macro levels. These giants have research divisions that crunch the numbers on a market-wide, asset-class basis. Their reports only provide commercial property information and trends on global, country, state or city-wide levels.
It’s the same with the reports generated by property data companies like CoreLogic. Once again, you’ll find that they provide great micro-level residential real estate information, but only macro-level commercial real estate reports.
However, the commercial property sector consists of many micro markets within the larger macro market, and conditions in these smaller markets can vary significantly from the broader picture.
So, commercial property investors are primarily left in the dark about investment returns and the current state of the market at a local level unless they do a lot of time-consuming research and number-crunching themselves.
The opportunity: unleashing the power of micro-level commercial property reports
Commercial real estate agencies that can provide up-to-date, micro-level commercial property sales and leasing reports to prospective clients have the opportunity to gain a competitive edge, regardless of the size of their agency.
These reports enhance their credibility and can be used to grow an active database of potential clients. These potential clients can then become the agency’s ongoing marketing, sales and ‘hot lead’ pipelines, as illustrated in the marketing and sales funnel diagram below.
Significantly, the micro-level reports not only generate new potential clients for a commercial real estate agency, but they also reactivate dormant leads from the agencies existing database.
How we can help
Our digital marketing team at Hoole specialises in real estate. We can help you to unleash the power of micro-level commercial property sales and leasing reports to grow your marketing and sales funnel, just like we have for Ray White Commercial.
Case study: Ray White Commercial (RWC)
Kristian Morris, owner and director of Ray White Commercial Sydney City Fringe, engaged Hoole to raise the bar on his agency’s marketing efforts.
My team and I spent the first few weeks deep diving into his agency’s market and client data, including the types of properties and asset classes in their sales and leasing portfolio in the suburbs and streets of the Sydney city fringe, as well as the types of clients they work with.
It was important for us to gain this background knowledge to get a feel for the diverse types of businesses and commercial opportunities located there. These opportunities include:
- retail
- food and beverage
- hotel/accommodation
- office
- education
- fitness
- medical
- childcare
- aged care
- petrol stations
- industrial
- land for development.
This local knowledge enables us to personalise our digital communication about Ray White Commercial’s specific micro market – i.e. commercial property investors interested in locations within a 10km radius around Sydney’s CBD.
We became familiar with the most common types of commercial properties in the area, including their costs, rents and yields, which can vary significantly depending on the asset type. We learnt a lot about ‘Shop Tops’, a classic Sydney commercial property that can be found on many main suburban high streets (buildings with a retail shop at the street level and a residence on top).
We also delved into the types of commercial landlords who invest in Sydney city fringe commercial property and their reasons for doing so. We then implemented a four-stage plan in consultation with the Ray White commercial team.
Stage 1: The creation of commercial sales and leasing reports
These reports contain all of the sales and leasing activity in the Sydney city fringe area. The sales report is monthly, and the leasing report is bi-monthly.
Both reports contain valuable micro-level information for prospective commercial property investors in the area that isn’t available anywhere else. For example, each report contains crucial information such as the asset class, location, selling/leasing price, property size and land area. The reports cover the latest commercial property sales and leasing agreements for nine key ‘micro’ areas (streets) in the Sydney city fringe area.
The reports are used to maintain regular contact with RWC’s existing Sydney city fringe database. They remind past clients and previously identified prospects that the RWC Sydney City Fringe team is the ‘go-to’ commercial real estate agency when they want up-to-date information and advice for the area.
Stage 2: Advertising the commercial sales and leasing reports
The reports are also advertised on Google, LinkedIn and other social media sites to help generate new leads. New prospects who are interested in the information must provide their contact details to access the reports, so RWC’s database grows with each download.
Significantly, RWC’s prospect database has grown tenfold since the downloadable reports strategy was unleashed. It has both reignited their existing database and grown it significantly.
More prospects = more leads = more sales.
Stage 3: Digital campaigns
Digital marketing campaigns are run with the database focusing on those who have engaged with the most recent sales and leasing reports. This generates a potential sales pipeline of contacts who can be followed up by RWC’s sales and leasing team.
Stage 4: Sales management
The follow-up process outlined in Stage 3 identifies the hottest commercial property leads for RWC’s sales and leasing term to focus on intensively and convert into sales and leasing agreements.
Like to find out more?
If you’d like to discuss how our digital marketing team at Hoole can help you unleash the power of commercial sales and leasing reports to generate more real estate leads for your agency, book a free consultation with me, Melanie Hoole. I’ll look at how you present online currently, share marketing insights and give you on-the-spot recommendations.
Written by Melanie Hoole
My team and I specialise in helping real estate and property professionals perfect their personal brand, build a first-class digital profile and implement inbound marketing activities to attract leads. If you are unsure which direction to take with your digital marketing contact me for help.
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