INTRODUCTION
Commercial real estate properties often spend more time on the market and come with a higher risk compared to their residential counterparts. To see returns, commercial realtors and developers must start generating quality leads early, often before the development is even built.
According to the 2020 State of B2B Digital Marketing report, more than 80% of digital marketers identified social media as their most successful lead channel, with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter being the top three. Since LinkedIn’s visitor-to-lead conversion rate is almost three times higher than the other two, it makes sense for commercial realtors and developers to focus their B2B marketing efforts on that platform to start.
Here are some tips for marketing your commercial development on LinkedIn.
POSITION YOURSELF AS A COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE EXPERT
It’s important to brand yourself as an expert as a way to attract potential investors or buyers. Start by revamping your personal profile to include relevant commercial real estate experience, skills and certifications.
You also should rewrite your summary to showcase how you help your commercial clients and include a blurb about your current development(s). For instance, you could add a sentence that says: “Currently working on [name of development], a [type of development] located in [city or region].”
Your headline and cover image should reflect your expertise and current project(s) as well. For example, you could use “Commercial Real Estate and Development Expert” as your headline and upload a photo or rendering of your development as the cover photo.
If you have a company page, make sure to spruce that up by updating your cover image, company description and tagline to highlight your services and development(s).
Complete and up-to-date profiles are just the start to establishing your expertise. Post educational and timely content (e.g. blogs, articles, industry news) to your personal and company pages on a regular basis to show that you are actively engaged in the industry. In addition, comment on your connections’ posts and participate in discussions within LinkedIn groups, especially ones in your community and/or target industries.
If you specialize in retail developments, for example, you should follow hashtags related to retail and join groups like Retail Industry Professionals Group or Consumer Goods & Retail Professionals. This also is a good way to make connections and capture potential leads.
SHARE UPDATES ABOUT YOUR COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT ON LINKEDIN
Post regular updates about your development on both your company page and your personal LinkedIn account to help generate buzz. Avoid being overly promotional or sales-y. Instead, showcase how your development fits in with the neighborhood or how it will attract new businesses to the area. Depending on what stage your development is in, you could post feedback from community planning meetings, share progress pictures or welcome new tenants to the building.
Use relevant hashtags to expand the reach of each post. If we use the retail development example, that means using hashtags like #retailspace or #retaildevelopment in your posts. That will group your content with other posts related to that topic, which makes it more visible to prospects with those interests.
Share information about tours or open houses by creating LinkedIn events. Events allow you to include detailed information, such as location, date, time and a description in one spot. You also can include a registration form or link if you want people to RSVP or sign up for a specific time. Plus, you can invite relevant connections (e.g. prospects) to attend and post event-specific updates in the event feed. Anyone who expresses interest will receive reminders before the event begins.
You can make a LinkedIn event from your personal profile by clicking “event” under the “start a post” bubble or from the admin tools drop-down menu on your company page. Set your event to “public” if you want anyone to be able to join (e.g. new leads) or “private” if you want it to be invitation-only.
PROMOTE YOUR DEVELOPMENT THROUGH LINKEDIN ADS
Use LinkedIn ads to expand your reach and promote your development to the right people. The platform’s campaign manager features a variety of ad objectives (e.g. website visits, lead generation) and business-focused targeting parameters you can use to reach new prospects. For instance, you can target by location, industry, job title, member skills and member interests, to name a few. Select the criteria that best align with your target audience–the more you choose, the narrower your audience will be.
You also can select the format that matches your objectives. For example, you should use carousel ads or video ads if you want to showcase different features of your development or event ads if you want to promote an upcoming open house. It’s best to A/B test ads (e.g. create multiple versions of ads) to test language and visuals. That will help you hone in on what your audience responds to the best.
Pair your ad creative with a destination landing page that provides information tailored to the target audience. For example, you could have a landing page for law firms and one for accounting firms as tenants. Add conversion tracking to your LinkedIn ads to identify which leads came from your campaign versus other sources.
Similar to other forms of pay-per-click advertising (like Google Ads), LinkedIn allows you to select your start and end dates, set a budget (e.g. $10/day minimum) and monitor ad performance once the campaign is running. Aim to monitor your ads at least once a week to ensure they are performing as expected.