If there’s one thing property managers don’t like to hear, it’s the word vacancies. It’s the cause for many sleepless nights spent analyzing, which leads to extra cups of coffee. It can mean an overall increased feeling of irritability, or stress. It’s a downright scary word in the commercial real estate world.
Nothing affects cash flow and a property manager’s bottom line more than vacancies. Fortunately, nothing can help fill vacancies quite like smart preparation and marketing. So, what are some marketing tips to help you fill these vacancies? Let’s take a look at five of them.
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Stay In the Loop
A proper marketing plan starts with strategy. Your entire marketing strategy for filling vacancies revolves around your lease commencements, expirations, and lease options, and this process begins a lot earlier than you realize.
From the start of a lease, you have to be responsible for holding up your end of the deal, which means you have to track the options for each and every lease. This is especially important when it comes to leases that have First Right of Refusal or Renewals options. In addition to monitoring the lease expiration date, you have to keep a close eye on the option start and end date.
So how does this relate to marketing? Well, in order to market your space, you need to know what you have available and when it’s available. Sure, you can set up helpful date reminders, but there are better ways to visualize the information and monitor it on a daily basis.
For example, Quarem’s Lease Commencement and Expiration dashboard gives you a quick look into your entire portfolio of upcoming leases or leases that are expiring. The best part is that you can look as far into the future as needed.
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Target The Right Tenants
Tenant mix is a tricky balance that requires both a strong understanding of all of your leases, and a competitive knowledge of the current market. On the one hand, you may have agreements with particular tenants that grant them exclusivity. So, you have to be in the loop with all of your obligations and agreements. On the other hand, you have to increase profitability and stay competitive with your amenity offerings.
Understanding your current tenant mix, and the agreements attached to each individual lease, helps you identify your opportunities so that you can create effective marketing strategy. A very colorful way to stay on top of this information is with a chart like Quarem’s Tenant Mix dashboard.
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Encourage Referrals
Nothing ever beats (and ever will beat) word-of-mouth marketing. This type of marketing is even more powerful for property managers when it comes from your best tenants. (You want more tenants like them, after all.) Make sure you implement some sort of referral program for existing tenants and have the documentation to back it up. By rewarding current tenants and having them attract new ones, you’ll be improving tenant experience in two ways. CRE software like Quarem can help you securely store and manage all documents, including those related to referrals.
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Listen to the Market and Your Tenants
This is a no brainer – market research is vital when it comes to staying competitive and marketing your vacancies. It’s smart to keep tabs on the trends within your city, state, and the industry as a whole. Additionally, it’s important to analyze your operation in comparison to the other options out there. Consider starting this process internally with a customer satisfaction survey. For example, maybe you’ll discover that your current tenants aren’t satisfied with the limited dining options in or around your property. What kind of options do your competitors currently offer? What creative alternatives are others within the industry practicing to combat this issue?
Listening to what’s going on around you and analyzing your own operation to find creative alternatives can sometimes be the difference that fills a vacancy.
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Prioritize Your Brand
Your brand is the center of your marketing strategy so it’s important to constantly develop and improve it in order to put your best foot forward with potential tenants. Here are a few great starting points for developing and promoting your brand.
- Create a professional website – a website can be an excellent and informative digital resource for those initial introductions during the research process. Give potential clients a dynamic look into your offerings that can help them picture a future there as a tenant.
- Spread the word on social media – social platforms are some of the best tools for representing your brand in a very accessible way. Take advantage of the various forms of content that give you the ability to let potential tenants see a behind the scenes look at life as a tenant, give insight about the city or area you work in, or even share helpful tips and tricks related to the industry. Social media is also a great way to actively communicate with your current tenants.
- Host events on property – events are a great way to show off your space to a wide range of contacts that can help you grow your business. Consider utilizing those vacancies to host an event for brokers that are searching for the perfect office for a client, or work with a local trade organization to host a meet up and show off your list of amenities.
Pro tip: sharing your brand will lead to making new connections that you want to be sure to follow up with. Software like Quarem helps you organize your entire list of contacts and create reminder notifications to make sure you keep in touch.
CRE software like Quarem can be a great tool to help you organize key data so that you can improve your brand and create effective marketing strategy. If you’d like to learn more about Quarem, request a demo today.
