The short version
- Occupiers search for space by location, size and type. Almost nobody searches for a landlord or a managing agent.
- Your own website should rank for your own building names and estates. Most do not, which means portals capture demand you created.
- Availability that is out of date does more damage than no availability page at all.
- The measurable outcome is a viewing booked, not a form filled.
Commercial property marketing has an unusual shape. The audience is small, the value per deal is high, and a great deal of the demand is handled by agents who sit between you and the occupier. It is tempting to conclude that digital marketing is somebody else’s job.
That was more defensible ten years ago. Occupiers now research space the way everyone researches everything, and the landlords and estates that show up in that research get a first look at demand rather than a filtered version of it.
How occupiers actually search
The searches that matter divide into four types, and they need different responses.
- Space plus location. Office space, warehouse, industrial units or workshop, plus a town, district or motorway junction. This is the bulk of it, and it is highly local.
- Size qualified. The same with a square footage attached. High intent, because somebody who knows their size requirement has a live brief.
- Named building or estate. Somebody has seen a board, a listing or a mention and is now looking you up. The most valuable traffic you will get and the easiest to win.
- Type specific. Serviced offices, flexible workspace, self-storage, trade counter, last-mile logistics. Each of these is a distinct audience with distinct requirements.
Notice what is missing. Nobody searches for a property management company, and very few search for a landlord by name unless they already have a relationship. Marketing built around your corporate identity will reach almost none of this demand.
Build pages around buildings, not services
The single most effective change most property businesses can make is to give every building, estate or park its own proper page.
Not a PDF. Not a row in a table. A real page with:
- The building or estate name in the heading and the page address
- Location described the way occupiers think about it: motorway access, distance to a city centre, nearby occupiers, transport links, parking
- Available units with sizes, tenure, specification and, where you can, an asking figure
- Photography and floor plans that work on a phone
- A named contact and a route to book a viewing
These pages accumulate search authority for the location over time, which is the thing that keeps working after the current void is filled. A property portal listing disappears the day the unit lets. Your page does not.
Search the names of your three largest buildings. If a portal, an agent or a business directory ranks above your own page, you are handing over enquiries you generated with your own boards, brochures and PR. That is usually a straightforward fix.
Out of date availability costs you more than you think
An availability page showing units that let last year is worse than no page at all. It teaches occupiers and agents that your site cannot be trusted, and they go straight to a portal next time.
Maintaining it by hand is where this falls down. Somebody updates a spreadsheet, somebody else edits the website, and within a quarter they disagree. The version that works holds availability in one place and publishes it everywhere: the website, the portal feed, the brochure generator and the agent circulation list all drawing from the same record.
That is usually a small piece of bespoke development rather than a new platform, and it removes an entire category of embarrassment. It also makes marketing far easier, because you can advertise specific available units with confidence rather than advertising the estate in general.
Working with agents rather than around them
Agents are not competition for your marketing. They are a channel, and they respond to the same things occupiers do.
Practically, this means making it easy for an agent to represent you well:
- Current, downloadable particulars that do not need to be requested by email
- Consistent information across your site, the portals and the brochure, so nobody has to reconcile three versions
- A named point of contact who answers quickly
The enquiries that come directly to you are the ones worth measuring separately, because they arrive earlier in the process and with more context. A website that produces even a modest flow of direct occupier enquiries gives you a view of demand you would not otherwise have.
Letting space and relying entirely on portals and agents? We will look at how your estate performs in search, where demand is being intercepted, and what it would take to capture more of it directly.
Paid media, used narrowly
Paid search works in this sector, but only when it is tightly drawn. Broad terms attract residential searchers, students, job seekers and people looking for storage lockers. Narrow it hard:
- Tight geography, matched to where occupiers would realistically take space
- Size and type qualifiers in the keywords and in the ad copy
- Landing on the specific building page, never the homepage
- Aggressive negative keywords, reviewed monthly, because the wrong-intent traffic in this sector is relentless
Volume will be low. That is correct and expected. A handful of enquiries a month from occupiers with a live requirement is a good outcome when a single letting is worth what it is worth. Judge it on viewings booked, not on cost per click.
Measure viewings, not form fills
The conversion that matters is a viewing, and often a viewing that arrives via a phone call rather than a form. So the tracking has to cover calls as well as forms, and the outcome has to come back from whoever runs the viewings.
At minimum:
- Enquiries carry their source into whatever system you use to manage them, including calls.
- Somebody records whether the enquiry led to a viewing, and whether the viewing led to terms.
- Those outcomes are reported alongside the marketing spend that produced them.
Low volume makes this easier, not harder. When you get twenty enquiries a month you can afford to know exactly what happened to each one. The approach is set out in our guide to tracking which marketing generates revenue.
Common questions
Is it worth marketing a building that is fully let?
Yes, at a low level. Keeping the page live and current means you have search presence in place before the next void, rather than starting from nothing when a tenant serves notice. It also builds a register of interest you can call on.
Should each estate have its own website?
For a large park or a flexible workspace brand with its own identity, sometimes. For most portfolios, no. Separate sites split your authority and multiply the maintenance, and out-of-date satellite sites are common in this sector.
Do we need photography for every unit?
Good photography of the building, the common areas and a representative unit covers most of it. What matters more is that floor plans are legible on a phone and that specification detail is written out rather than hidden in a PDF.
How does this fit with SEO more generally?
Building and location pages are the core of it, supported by content about the area and the sectors you serve. It is a long game and it compounds, which suits a business holding property for years. Our SEO service covers how we approach it.
