As part of our How Did They Do It? series, where we interview and spotlight companies who are successfully marketing their brands online, this post focuses on the successes of commercial real estate brokerage firm, Titan Commercial.
In the below interview with Emily Vanderbeek, Marketing Director for Titan Commercial, Emily shares the company’s on- and off-line marketing successes and strategies.
Below is the interview:
1. Where you do you spend most of your marketing dollars, on- or off-line? What past results have impacted your marketing spending decisions?
Titan Commercial spends most of its marketing dollars off-line. As a commercial real estate company, a lot of leverage comes out of putting up signage on the properties that we are representing. This way, individuals can see that the property is available as they drive by.
We also create informational packets for every property, which we either print or email to potential clients. This helps to ensure a quick, easy, and eye-appealing way of sharing property information.
This is not to say, however, that online resources are not valuable to us! We put our listings on multiple websites such as LoopNet, Costar, Property Line, etc. Also, we have invested heavily in email blasts and are currently redoing our website and looking into Search Engine Optimization. This is a large investment that we feel will be very worthwhile in the long run.
Past results that have impacted our marketing spending decisions are varied. The reason why we spend most marketing dollars on signage is because in the real estate world, a “for sale” or “for lease” property is expected to have a sign displaying its availability.
Also, a huge benefit of a sign is the amount of exposure it receives from the people driving by. In terms of online marketing, past email blasts and property listings have produced great leads and results for us. This is why we continue to spend a considerable and growing amount on online marketing.
As the world continues to gravitate towards online as a means of obtaining information, we feel that this will increasingly become a huge segment of importance for us to reach our customers, which is why we are heavily investing in website redevelopment and a social media presence.
2. How has marketing online affected the way customers and prospects perceive and engage with your brand?
Marketing online has made our brand easily accessible. Between email blasts, online listings, social media, and our website, with the click of a few buttons, you can find Titan Commercial’s property listings, our brand identity, and outreach efforts in which we are participating.
This has helped us to reach potential clients that we may not have otherwise been able to reach. It has also helped to shape Titan Commercial as a leader, by allowing us to tap into great resources like social media, which allows our business to engage with clients and customers. Additionally, our online listings have generated a lot of leads for our brokers, because the first thing that most people now do when they are seeking a property is to search online resources for their needs. We offer a quick and reliable solution to their needs through online marketing.
3. What social media platform has brought in the greatest results for your business? What are those results?
In regards to social media, Twitter has brought Titan Commercial the greatest results. Titan Commercial has shaped itself as a leader in the field as a result of the continual tweeting of our “Titan Word of the Day,” real estate news, and articles involving market trends. Many people have “retweeted” our tweets, and we know that our links are successful because they are continually growing in the number of clicks they receive (just a week or two ago, a link we posted received over 250 clicks!).
This clear engagement has helped individuals perceive Titan Commercial as a leader, because we have positioned ourselves as an educator, which is always a great position to be in. The results have brought a continual increase in Twitter followers, and it has also increased the number of viewings that our website has received.
4. How have Twitter / FB helped increase property listing viewings? In what ways? Be specific.
Twitter postings have helped to increase web traffic to our company website and, often, when people go to the web they will search our available properties. Every Twitter follower that we add is another opportunity for us to market our name and properties to him or her. We see this as a slow and gradual process, and we are aiming to build our brand name first, and from this, people who want to search for properties will come.
Additionally, every once in a while, we will tweet links to properties that we have available. This is done on rare occasion so as not to spam our followers. These links often receive hits, which clearly indicate an interested individual. Though we have not yet received an actual lead from our property link postings on Twitter, the clicks that we receive on our property link postings reinforce that we are indeed generating interest. Hopefully one day we will reach the right person at the right time, and they will actually pick up the phone to call us!
5. How are you tracking and managing your social media efforts / online marketing efforts?
The website https://bit.ly/ is a great resource because it shortens URLs and tracks the number of clicks that the link gets. This combination is perfect to use for Twitter and has been a huge resource for us.
We have continually managed our progress on social media by reviewing our followers every week and noting the number of click-throughs that we receive on our links. This helps us to gauge which links interest people, which links do not, and which links have been successful. Another way we manage our success is by tracking how many people retweet our posts. This is a number that is continually growing.
In regards to email blasts, we generate reports for every email blast that we send out. These reports tell us how many people opened the blast and the number of people that clicked through to the website. However, the best way of tracking success for email blasts is the number of leads generated, and we track these as well.
About Titan Commercial:
Titan Commercial is a full-service commercial real estate brokerage firm dedicated to embracing the relationships they have both internally and externally. They focus primarily on assisting clients with real estate strategy and operations challenges across a variety of real estate functions. Titan Commercial has been successful in acquisition, leasing, and disposition of commercial property and consulting.
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