7 Ideas to Generate Commercial Real Estate Leads

For CRE professionals who want to successfully market their commercial properties, the road to success starts with commercial real estate lead generation.

Today’s tenants, buyers, sellers and investors are spending more and more time online to get information about commercial real estate deals and opportunities, so having a commercial real estate marketing strategy to attract attention and gain trust is paramount to convincing leads to do business with you.

Let’s take a closer look at 7 tactics and ideas to help with your commercial real estate prospecting and lead generation.

1. Build a List from an Existing Commercial Real Estate Database

Mining your existing contact list is a good place to start and try to segment your contacts based on interest, profile type and level of prior activity. Even contacts that have been inactive for several years may prove to be potential opportunities as their needs may have changed alongside what you can offer. Reach out via email, phone, or LinkedIn to reengage these older contacts.

2. Use Commercial Real Estate Data Sources

There are some great commercial real estate data sources available that provide information about ownership, transactions, and investment opportunities. Here are a few sources you can use to find potential prospects:

Real Capital Analytics allows you to identify potential investment opportunities by targeting properties that meet specific detailed criteria to help you find firms that could be potential joint venture partners.

Reonomy is a commercial real estate data platform that facilitates prospecting processes for CRE professionals and uncovers ownership information for over 49M commercial properties in the U.S. Reonomy sources its proprietary data
from a variety of public and exclusive private data source

CoreLogic offers commercial real estate data and analytic capabilities, with an inventory of data and analytic solutions for securitized and non securitized properties through the U.S. The property details available include ownership and mortgages, mortgage maturity data, listings of distressed properties, and a snapshot of specific property owner and lender’s holdings.

3. Research Leads on LinkedIn

Use Linkedin’s people search to find prospects by location, industry, current company, and degrees of separation. You can then send direct messages to open doors and start your outreach efforts. If you want to get more serious about your lead generation, then check out Linkedin’s Sales Navigator tool. It is one of the most effective social selling platforms for CRE professionals that want to engage brokers, tenants, and investors at scale.

4. Generate Leads Through Your Website

The foundation of any inbound marketing efforts is a commercial real estate website that can be easily found and help successfully capture, engage and converts visitors into potential leads.

No matter who your target is (investors, tenants, landlords) building an effective website is the single most important marketing asset of any lead generation effort.

5. Include Lead Generation Forms on Your Website

Contact forms are vital to capture user information when they are looking for general questions, a consultation or sales call requests. Optimize your forms to be accessible on all devices while capturing all of the information you need. Some of the best practices for capturing visitors’ information is to minimize friction when filling out forms: include fewer form fields (3-5 is optimal), link to your privacy policy and pay attention to design and strong call to actions.

6. Advertise on Facebook

Facebook ads allow a social alternative to Google, with targeting based on demographics, location, and interests as indicated in Facebook Profiles. You can also target by Page (ex. anyone following CBRE, JLL, Colliers, etc.), audience segment, or retargeting from previous visits to your websites. A well-optimized Facebook ad campaign can also be at times less expensive than Google’s larger platform. The goal of the ad is to drive a bigger audience to your lead generating page where they can download a piece of useful content or sign up and share their email with you.

7. Join Commercial Real Estate Associations to Expand Your Network

Joining a local commercial real estate association is a great way to expand your network and build valuable relationships. There are a number of national associations such as BOMA, CCIM, CoreNet Global that also provide education and networking opportunities to widen your reach. Build your custom contact list and maintain regular contact with your network to make sure they are exposed to your newest opportunities.

The above are 7 suggestions on how to quickly generate commercial real estate leads. If you have better suggestions, please comment or contact us：george@ideamake.cn.