If I Were To Build A Commercial Real Estate Tech Website, This Is What I Would Build…
Michael Beckerman
Trust me, I am not looking to building another website. I have several already (The News Funnel, CRE // Tech, The Content Funnel, Real Estate Tech News) and they keep me pretty busy. Plus, my personal passion is centered around content and connectivity in the real estate tech space. BUT, if I were going to build something for the commercial sector, it would look like this from the residential sector…
It would be a lead gen site for brokers to source quality deals and opportunities.
I know my friends at ProspectNow and CapitalBrain are doing something similar and they are building good businesses. But what about on the leasing side of the business??? My friend Andrew Bermudez, CEO and Co-Founder of Digsy, wrote about this very topic on Duke Long’s blog…
I am fortunate to have a lot of friends in the brokerage community from my years of representing many of them in the PR space. And one of the things that most of them struggle with is lead gen. It’s the one part of the business that really hasn’t changed much. I remember hearing stories of the legendary Edward S. Gordon and how much emphasis he placed on his brokers on making cold calls. I hear many junior brokers are still made to commit to lead gen to help their teams source deals. So in a sense, very little has changed. It seems to still be about networking, cold calling, canvassing, etc…
And yet, it has probably never been easier to use the web to generate leads. Leading with content, listings and social, I would imagine it would be a hugely effective tactic to develop qualified leads on an ongoing basis. I am sure I will get some emails that someone is already doing this. But even if that’s the case, my broker friends have been telling me for a while that they simply don’t work.
So, if I were to build a website, I would do exactly as Zillow has with StreetEasy’s Premier Broker program, but for commercial. I would build a killer search engine, fill it with content and connectivity, and sell leads to brokers.
Would that work? Would brokers pay for it? Is anyone doing something like this?
Would love love to hear others perspectives….
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