For the past 12 months or so there has been a lot of discussion by the New England Commercial Property Exchange (NECPE) board about improving our search return rates when the public is online searching for various commercial properties. There are an increasing number of companies competing for those clicks that display their sites higher up the results ladder. Also referred to as Search Engine Optimization and/or Search Engine Marketing (SEO/SEM), it is important that we do all we can to keep up with the competition. We have assembled a marketing committee to review the issue and develop a plan to help boost the visibility of our various NECPE listings. I would like to thank Lisa Reehl for chairing the committee and Scott Forte, John Jackman, Greg Perry, Star Johnson, and Allison Ropes for all of your help in this endeavor. 

The marketing committee has determined that organically growing our clicks online is the best way to boost our visibility and presence. With this in mind, we made an important change working with Catylist on the coding of the links in our system. You may not have noticed, but the way that NECPE listings’ web addresses are displayed has changed to be more recognizable in the online landscape making those clicks count for more than they have previously. The committee has also assembled an outline of best practices marketing commercial listings that our members can follow to ensure that the way they are promoting their properties within NECPE, on social media platforms, and on websites or blogs is the best way they can help improve everyone’s search result return. These best practices can be viewed under documents on the NECPE website. 

In addition to utilizing our own personal social media accounts to promote our properties, it is equally as important for our organization to have a social medial presence online as well. The NECPE board has budgeted for and approved the hiring of a third-party consultant to help create, organize, and maintain an active social media platform for NECPE. The committee and board have agreed on the following social media platforms for NECPE:  Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. After requesting proposals from various marketing companies, Danielle Lehoux has been selected as the right fit to help us achieve our goal. Among her talents as a marketing consultant, Danielle also has a background in the commercial real estate industry. Danielle, along with the marketing committee, will be looking to our membership for content to help populate our accounts with useful information relating to the commercial real estate industry. Market statistics, published articles, press releases on various deals, and industry happenings are all helpful information. We would ask that our membership provide any newsworthy articles to Lisa Reehl (lreehl@kw.com) so that it will be reviewed, published, and promoted across our various accounts. 

This is an important endeavor that we must all work on together. The rising costs of other databases is a concern for many and by following these simple steps we can help improve the searchability of NECPE without any additional charges to our membership. This will allow us to better compete with the other platforms. Should you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Please consider following, liking, sharing, and tagging: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-england-commercial-property-exchange/

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/New-England-Commercial-Property-Exchange-345860156430/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NECPE2

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newenglandcpe/.

Douglas Martin is the 2019 president of NHCIBOR, Bedford, N.H.