Marketing

June 5, 2020 by nvh2

How to Make a Commercial Property Presentable Before Listing It

Commercial properties come in all shapes and sizes. They can be the size of a warehouse, or a small shop in a mall. Regardless of its size and purpose, there are a few key things that you can do to make your property stand out and justify a higher list price. To get going on your preparations, start with these three tips.

New Paint

Nothing makes a place feel rundown and depressing like peeling, chipped, or dirty paint. If this is the current state of your property, you should consider giving it a new paint job before listing. The new paint will give your property a much newer feel. Even if the paint is still in good condition you might want to paint it anyway.

By painting the walls white, you can help make the property seem bigger and give it the feeling of a blank canvas. This will make it much easier for potential buyers to imagine how their color schemes will fit in the room. There are a few ways you can paint your property while sticking to a tight budget. Since the paint is only temporary, you can use lower quality paint. If you choose to leave the paint as it is, you could just focus on touching up certain areas.

Kitchen and Bathroom Upgrades

Kitchens and bathrooms are key selling points, so these should be up-to-date. If you rent your property to businesses, these can make a huge impact on the business’s productivity. A nice kitchen/kitchenette makes a great break room for employees. A poor-quality bathroom will leave a poor impression on visiting customers. No matter who your potential buyers/renters are, they will be impressed if these rooms are in good condition.

Simple Furnishing

Depending on the type of commercial property, staging an empty location can be a big mistake. It makes the place look bare and boring. Consider putting in some simple furnishings to brighten the place up. You shouldn’t spend a lot of money on this. The furnishing is just for show, so it can be cheap, yet stylish. Try to anticipate your tenants’ preferred use for the property and design your furnishing accordingly.

These preparations may take some time and cost you a bit of money. But they will allow you to get the property sold or rented more quickly and at a far better price. Just be sure to plan out your actions well and keep careful track of your expenses.

If you’re planning to list your commercial property, we can help to connect you with buyers. Reach out to us to learn more about how we can assist you!

April 30, 2020 by nvh2

What Your Real Estate Website Needs to Be More Effective in Gaining Customers

These days, businesses simply can’t survive without a website. The internet is the first place a customer looks when they are looking to work with a business. With every business building a webpage, it can be hard to stand out. In order to get attention, you need to focus on your niche. If you run a real estate company, there are a few industry specific aspects of your website that deserve special attention. The following advice will help you focus your efforts so that customers are impressed when they view your page.

Add Quality Videos and Photos

There is absolutely no excuse for a pixelated image on your website. Pixelated photos and videos don’t allow customers to see the quality of the property. Instead, they get the impression that you don’t take pride in your work. On the other hand, HD photos and video show that you do high quality work. Video courses are a powerful type of lead magnet to include on your website. Quality video with nice music can help a customer build an emotional connection to the properties on display. It can be expensive to hire a quality photographer, but the returns are worth it.

Virtual Tours

The last thing you want to do to a customer is drag them through tours of properties that don’t catch their interest. This tires the customer, destroys their enthusiasm, and strains your relationship. You can avoid this with a virtual tour. With the emergence of 360-degree cameras, many real estate companies are starting to put together virtual tours of the properties that they sell and lease. This allows customers to get a better idea of what properties they want to visit in person. If a customer sees that you offer virtual tours, they will be much more interested in working with you, than a company that only shows pictures.

Engaging Content

In order to increase customer traffic to your website, you need to appear more in online searches. One of the best ways to do that is through content creation like a blog. Having a regularly updated blog will move you up in search engine algorithms. Having quality blog posts will create a good impression with your customers. It is a great way for you to show them your industry knowledge.

Working in real estate is a rewarding business. You are helping people find their dream space. You want to make sure that your hard work is paying off. By updating your website and following the above advice, you will see an increase in customers that trust in your ability to get the job done.

Looking for a new, bigger business location? We can help.

June 5, 2012 by Lauren Noelle Gauthier

Richmond Entrepreneurs Compete for Best Start-Up Business

undefined

August 15, 2011 by Nathan Hughes

Guide to Social Advertising

There is a lot of information out there about social media and how to use it to promote your business. I read a lot of write-ups on that and enjoy learning about social media — as you can tell with my involvement as a Founding Board Member of Social Media Club of Richmond/SMCRVA (website Twitter Facebook page).

Since the focus of this blog is not primarily social media, I try to keep that talk to a minimum. Once in a while I come across something that I just can’t help but share. This guide* from Eloqua struck me as particularly useful and to-the-point:

[slideshare id=8838937&doc=eloquagrandeguidetosocialadvertising-110812150816-phpapp02&type=d]

Speaking of social media and SMCRVA, be sure to check out this month’s SMCRVA event where you can meet and greet Richmond’s best connected social media folks and hear our esteemed speaker, Amber Naslund:

On Thursday, August 18, SMCRVA is giving Richmonders a unique opportunity to listen and learn from Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra), world class social media pro, blogger, VP of Social Strategy for Radian6 and co-author of “The NOW Revolution”.

Be one of the first 180 to buy a ticket and receive a free copy of Amber’s new book, thanks to The Hodges Partnership and Hodges Digital Strategies.

Buy tickets here (and quickly, so that you can be sure to have a copy of Amber’s book waiting for you at check-in!)

*Funny coincidence, I first saw this guide because of a tweet from Amber’s co-author, Jay Baer. See? Everything comes full circle.

February 7, 2007 by Nathan Hughes

Pay what you think is appropriate

I don’t know that I would suggest this pricing strategy, but it is interesting. There is a coffee shop (Terra Bite Lounge) in Washington state that has no prices, but instead has a donation box. The theory is that peer pressure, guilt, and common decency will cause the consumers to give appropriately (or more than appropriately).

Here is a link to the Seattle Times article, but I would suggest that you go to the Freakonomics blog where there is an interesting discussion going on in the comments. Apparently there are several other businesses that have tried the same approach in different parts of the world — with different results.

December 19, 2006 by Nathan Hughes

Rules for “One-shot Sales”

Or "Embracing the naive prospect" by Seth Godin, the marketing guru.

Seth points out some valuable insights for anyone that sells to a target market of consumers that are making a "once in a lifetime" purchase. (i.e., a DJ for a wedding, or a Realtor that deals primarily with first-time home buyers)

At first, I thought I would be pointing to this mainly for the benefit of other Realtors, obviously with the first thought coming to mind of how I deal with first-time buyers and sellers of businesses and real estate every day. Then I realized that beyond my bubble there are industries that deal with this "naive" type of customer every day, too.

Now "naive" in this sense is not meant to put down anyone, it’s just to acknowledge the experience level of your target market.

Wedding vendors are a great example of this — the wedding process is not something that most people end up going through enough to be experts at it (let’s hope not, at least). It is a crazy time trying to plan it, and even if you have a wedding planner, you still had to pick that person.

Visit Seth’s site and see what he has to say about how to deal with these "naive" consumers. I think his insight was right on track.

I would love to hear how anyone else is dealing with this issue in their own businesses. I submit that this blog is one of the ways that I am addressing it in my business.