What is a Microsite and How Can It Help Me Market My Properties?

It is not easy to sell land, it takes lots of time and effort to sell commercial real estate properties and find tenants. In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of microsites, what they are and how they can highlight your properties, listings, and availabilities for marketing purposes.

What is a Microsite?

A microsite is defined by Wikipedia as “an individual web page or a small cluster of pages which are meant to function as a discrete entity within an existing website or to complement an offline activity.”

So basically, a mini-website page that doesn’t have multiple navigation options like a website.

It allows you to create a website with the sole purpose of marketing to leads and prospects a single property or selection of multiple properties that could be based on price, location, etc.

Why Real Estate Microsites?

To stay ahead of the competition, the most successful brokers have professionally-looking websites and pay for property listings to advertise their listings and track all property information in their CRMs.

Using microsites can help brokers generate more leads and sell or lease their properties faster.

#1 Engage with Users

Microsites allow you to engage users and interact with you or your marketed property in a focused setting eliminating outside distractions that could derail the deal or conversation.  This includes other listings or advertisements.

#2 Improve Your SEO

In addition, microsites can assist you in your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts.

For example, with xRE Composer, you can overwrite the domain to create a vanity URL so that your company name, property, location, or any keyword necessary is part of the URL to assist with a search online.

#3 Generate New Leads

Marketing with a microsite allows you to separate the offering from a larger website and can assist you in generating new leads.

It can allow your prospect to focus on the property or properties you wish to share without them getting lost in a website of offerings that aren’t relevant to their price point, location, or other requirements.

However, you can still link back to the main website on a microsite to connect the marketing dots as well as contact and social media links.

Getting Your Microsite: Available Solutions

Nowadays, there are a few available options to showcase your property listings.

#1 Looplink by Loopnet

The fastest way for you to get started is to use the Looplink listing management solution by Loopnet. They will provide you with the embedded widget you can use to add property listings functionality to your website.

Pros:

• It is fast.
• No technical knowledge is needed.
• It offers searching functionality and each property has its own page.

Cons:

• It is quite costly and they keep increasing the pricing.
• It is not very user-friendly as your website visitors won’t be able to review the property listing on your website, but will be directed to a new window.
• You don’t have any SEO advantages while using this solution as all website visitors will be directed to the Loopnet website to review the listings.

An Example of a Property Listing Using Looplink

#2 Use a Development Partner to Create Your Custom Website

There are quite a few software development companies that can help you to develop your own website and add property listings functionality to it.

Pros:

• You can get property listings functionality exactly as you wish with your branding.
• It will be a part of your website, each listing might have a unique page and generate leads thanks to SEO and social media promotion.

Cons:

• Expect to pay at least a few thousand of dollars.
• It takes time to find a good web development company.
• There should be someone from your end who is able to clarify the requirements and control the project.
• Depending on your requirements, it might take quite some time to develop and create this functionality.

#3 Use Ascendix Property Listings Website Solution

Not all brokers are ready to invest significant budgets and their time to get the property listings functionality.

While Ascendix offers professional services and can definitely create any custom solutions, we kept hearing from the market that there should be another way to tackle this challenge.

We decided to change this and created a property listings portal solution that can be configured as a stand-alone site or as an embedded component in your existing website within a short time frame and for a very reasonable price.

What is more, the listings portal will be integrated with your CRM and you can manage content right from your CRM.

Property Listing Portal by MarketSpace

Now that you have a better idea of how a microsite can propel your marketing efforts and cut through the noise here are a few ideas on how or where to share these sites:

• LinkedIn Profiles and Groups
• Twitter with appropriate hashtags associated
• Facebook groups
• Google+ Circles
• Commercial Real Estate specific groups that are targeted or local in nature
• Press Releases
• Marketing Emails
• Email Signatures
• Hyperlinks using existing marketing solutions or automation tools

What is your experience with microsites? Do brokers really need them? Leave your replies in the comment section below.