In March 2017 we analyzed over 40 commercial real estate agencies in Boston area and noticed the following 5 trends:
Loopnet continues to have a great influence on the online commercial real estate marketplace because it has more than 8 million registered members and 5 million unique monthly visitors and no major competitor. You should definitely post your Boston listing on the platform unless you have some very good reasons not to. The website is improved on an ongoing basis and helps connect commercial real estate sellers and buyers. The platform has received some negative reviews by paid users so before you invest your money in a paid user account, make sure to do your research in advance.
National commercial real estate brands such as CBRE and Colliers continue to dominate Google index for the most popular Boston commercial real estate keywords. These brands do not have the best websites but they do rank on top of local and organic Google listings because of their brand trust. If you do not have a lot of brand trust, you may increase your brand trust with increasing citations in reputable business directories and online media within your geographic area.
WordPress is the platform of choice for new commercial real estate websites. We analyzed over 40 commercial real estate agencies in Boston area and every 3rd website is using WordPress CMS. That should not be a surprise because over one quarter of Internet websites use WordPress to manage their online presence. Some commercial real estate businesses in Boston tend to have nicer and custom designs but they fall behind because they underinvest in Internet marketing.
Emerging commercial real estate agencies in Boston are using modern design to differentiate themselves from more established commercial real estate agencies. For example, Boston Realty Advisors was established in 2001 and the firm definitely stands out in the eyes of potential customers because of its modern and unique website design. There are some other ones as well but we will not list them because of broken website features we noticed.
Future commercial real estate agencies will specialize in hospitality, medical or other areas in order to stand out. Established brands are so entrenched that new and some less known CRE players will have to specialize in order to attract new business and grow faster. For example, Corbet Restaurant Group specializes in restaurants and bars space for lease or sale. Therefore, they make it easier to attract, prospect and convert qualified decisionmakers because they are more specialized.
In my next post, I will rank the top 5 websites for researching commercial real estate in Boston.
If you liked reading my 5 online trends, you may consider to:
- Request a free Internet marketing strategy review for your real estate agency.
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- See what we do for other OGO Sense clients.
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