The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced for the commercial real estate industry the need for quick, flexible solutions for monitoring real estate trends and managing portfolios. On the one hand, the economy’s skyrocketing demand for warehouse and industrial space left many long-sighted investors with more profit in their pockets. On the other hand, hospitality-heavy portfolios saw a significant drop in demand and revenue.
Commercial real estate (CRE) agents, brokers, and investors must be able to quickly prospect new leads, market their listings effectively, and close more deals if they want to stay in business. Successful marketing hinges on having the right set of tools that automate time-consuming tasks, close more deals, and stay in front of market trends.
Dozens of CRE marketing tools exist to help professionals accomplish this, but which ones should you add to your real estate marketing strategy?
Lead generation and prospecting tools
Whether you’re a CRE brokerage looking to buy, lease, or sell commercial property or an investor looking for the perfect location, prospecting is the lifeblood of your business. To stay in front of the competition, you need to be able to accurately build out contact lists that allow you to quickly contact property owners. Here are three of the top CRE prospecting tools for you to consider.
1. CoStar
Armed with a team of over 2,000 researchers and analysts, CoStar has been providing comprehensive commercial real estate data to industry professionals for over 30 years. The platform covers every aspect of CRE prospecting, from providing verified listings and comp data to tenant information and competitor analysis. CoStar provides all the information you need to make educated investment decisions for a variety of properties.
Best for: owners, appraisers and valuation professionals, lenders, retailers, brokers and brokerage firms, multi-family properties, and institutional investors
2. Reonomy
Reonomy draws on a national database of over 50 million commercial properties in the U.S., providing in-depth property information alongside the property owner’s contact information. Its advanced filters give you the ability to search for specific properties based on asset type, location, sales history, taxes, and even owner debt. With this data, you’ll be able to confidently approach property owners with your buying or selling offers.
Best for: brokers and brokerage firms, institutional investors, commercial services, owners, appraisers and valuation professionals
3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers a wide variety of tools that allow you to quickly find and connect with CRE leads and prospects. The Advanced Search feature lets you find people based on location, job title, company, interests, and more — giving you the opportunity to reach out, follow up, and make personal connections with potential leads. You can also use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to build custom lists of potential leads — complete with their contact information — and export them into your real estate CRM software.
Best for: CRE marketing and sales leads
Listing tools
Eighty-four percent of commercial real estate searches begin online: 59% through a dedicated listing tool and 25% through a search engine. Knowing which commercial real estate listing tools to use will help you effectively market your commercial properties faster and find high-quality properties for your investment portfolio. Here are three of the most popular tools you need to level up your listing game.
1. LoopNet
LoopNet reaches 10 million monthly unique visitors, which, as stated on their website, is “20x the traffic of [their] closest competitor.” With beautiful display functionality and different internal advertising incentives that can boost the visibility of your properties, LoopNet provides an easy-to-use listing platform for both CRE buyers and sellers.
Best for: brokers and brokerage firms, investors, buyers, tenants
2. Biproxi
Part listing tool and part marketing and analytics tool, Biproxi gives CRE brokers and investors an all-in-one solution to showcasing properties and organizing details of ongoing deals. Create clean, sleek property listings for free, receive customer alerts when new target properties are listed on their curated database, and complete deals — all on one platform.
Best for: brokers and brokerage firms, buyers, sellers
3. Catylist
Catylist powers over 50 local CRE marketing and listing platforms, meaning your listings are guaranteed to be seen no matter where in the U.S. they’re listed. Paired with comprehensive data and reporting technology, you can also see critical data on similar on- and off-market properties — giving you the advantage of posting competitive pricing on your property listings.
Best for: brokers and brokerage firms, economic development groups, property owners, investors, tenants
Comp tools
To make sure you’re getting the best deal when buying or selling a CRE property, it’s important that you know the correct market price. These comp tools (or comparable property tools) give you the insight you need to find and close the best deals.
1.CompStak
Commercial real estate data in CompStak is crowd-sourced from industry professionals and vetted by a team of data scientists for the highest quality. Users can view rent, lease, and sale price history; property and renovation details; tenant demographics and industry concentrations; and create and organize projects to track industry data for specific listings or geographic markets.
Best for: brokers and brokerage firms, lenders, landlords, investors
2. Crexi
Crexi offers users an intuitive interface that allows them to access over 13 million nationwide sales comps to help inform CRE buying and selling decisions. You can narrow down your searches to see rent, sales, and lease data on individual properties and filter by other demographics such as population, points of interest, and traffic in geographic locations.
Best for: brokers and brokerage firms, buyers, investors
Marketing tools
Multi-function marketing platforms and better property photos for your listings can help create a more engaging customer experience — helping you optimize your marketing to boost performance and save money.
1. SharpLaunch
An all-in-one digital marketing platform for CRE businesses, SharpLaunch provides users with a variety of tools to help showcase their businesses and close more deals. Build customized property websites, use beautiful, pre-made templates to design and send unlimited email marketing campaigns, conduct market research on your site visitors, and manage your entire property portfolio online on one single platform.
Best for: CRE marketing professionals or anyone looking to better market their properties using a single platform
Related reading: Why real estate agents must invest in digital marketing
2. Matterport
Make your CRE listings more attractive with 3D imaging and a virtual walk-through of each of your properties. Matterport offers cameras and software that make it easy to create 3D renderings of your properties to list on your website and listing platforms. It will even automatically create digital floor plans with accurate dimensions, so potential leads get a better idea of your property’s size.
Best for: landlords, sellers, and anyone looking to enhance their CRE listings
3. CallRail Call Tracking
If you spend a lot of time talking with leads over the phone, then you’re sitting on a treasure trove of valuable lead data. Make the most of each phone call by using call tracking to see where each lead is coming from when they contact your business. Use dynamic number insertion (DNI) to see which of your marketing platforms are bringing in the most qualified leads, and automatically record and transcribe calls to avoid missing any important details in your conversations.
Best for: small business owners, CRE marketing professionals, multi-property landlords
Lead organization tools
If you’re not keeping track of your leads, odds are you’re missing out on potential deals and opportunities. These lead organization solutions will help you stay on top of tracking leads and improving business communication.
1. Rethink
Running on the highly customizable Salesforce platform, Rethink keeps all your prospects, sales pipelines, and ongoing deals and negotiations organized in one location. Its reporting capabilities also let you see if your business is on track to hit sales and investment goals.
Best for: CRE marketing professionals comfortable with the Salesforce platform
2. Apto
Part research tool and part CRM, Apto gives users the ability to consolidate all of their contacts, interactions, deals, and property details in one place. It will then draw on national CRE databases to fill in any gaps in your contact information. Users can also build out “strategic call lists” that provide insight on when and how to contact those leads and prospects.
Best for: CRE researchers and analysts, brokers and brokerage firms, CRE marketing professionals
3. CallRail Lead Center
CallRail Lead Center organizes all of your incoming calls, texts, chats, and online form submissions in a single, easy-to-navigate inbox — helping you stay on top of lead communication. Using CallRail’s advanced tracking software, you can also see a timeline of how each lead has interacted with your marketing material and website, contacted your business, or progressed through your sales pipeline. Plus, Lead Center helps you avoid missed calls, texts, and messages by sending instant notifications whenever a lead contacts your business via call, text, chat, or form submission.
Best for: small business owners, multi-property landlords
Smart tools make for smarter commercial real estate marketing
There are plenty of tools to choose from when it comes to commercial real estate marketing. However, the best tools are the ones that simplify time-consuming tasks and automate your workflows, allowing you to spend more time on what matters most: generating leads and closing deals.
Rather than adopting a handful of new tools all at once, consider taking an inventory of your current workflow to see where you would like to improve. Maybe you’d like to decrease your property research time, build a stronger online presence, or improve your lead organization and response times. Consider multi-purpose tools that can consolidate two or three marketing processes, such as CallRail with it’s call tracking, marketing analytics, and business communication features. Then, once you’ve integrated that tool into your workflow, reevaluate which areas you’d like to focus on.
