Over the past few years, few non-AI sectors have seen as much activity, news, and competition as real estate. Demographic shifts, building costs, fluctuating interest rates, the growth of private investment into housing, and other factors have drawn media attention and contributed to increased competition.
At a time when so many more eyes are on the sector day to day, real estate businesses must take a savvy approach to leveraging this attention to build credibility with customers, partners, investors, and other key audiences.
Be an Expert, Not a Cheerleader
Before focusing on the right PR tactics to raise their industry profile, it’s important to understand the most common missteps firms make.
One of the best ways to ensure your company is not included in media coverage is to tout your own success. Press releases celebrating great deals have their place and certain outstanding transactions may merit specific coverage due to their size, complexity or other unique aspects. Real estate firms that can publicly share strong financial results can also garner feature coverage.
However, higher quality coverage that enhances reputation regardless of financial results will be centered on market insights and thoughtful analysis that can be helpful to your key audiences.
This is especially critical when it comes to top tier media, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and The New York Times. These outlets focus on macro industry, business, and economic issues more than one company’s latest success. Even when they are writing about major news from a public company, it is put in the context of the broader impact it has.
Your news must be a timely hook for a reporter to address bigger issues. If you can talk about what your success or news tells us about what is happening outside your business, the trends and market dynamics that many are navigating, you can secure great coverage and position yourself as a market leader.
Steps to Enhance Coverage
There are a number of strategies that can be employed to facilitate this quality coverage and build credibility through media visibility:
- Read trade and business publications to learn what news angles are being covered. Then think about what isn’t included in the stories. Reinforcing others’ opinions may get you some ink, but bringing reporters a different point of view is what will make you stand out in a crowded market. Proactively sharing expert commentary with media can help secure inclusion in these trend stories when they run.
- Connect the sector to the larger world. You need to think beyond real estate to maximize your PR opportunity. Sales being down in the Southeast is interesting but showing how that sales drop was driven by inflation or tariffs, and then how you see this dynamic playing out over the next six to twelve months is more compelling.
- Make your insights timely by citing data from economic reporting such as Case-Shiller and Existing Home Sales. A reference or two to public data can establish you as a quotable expert.
- Secure opportunities to participate in panels at key industry events like Global Alts and ICSC. The conference world has radically changed over the past decade, but they still have media value. Comments made during panels and keynotes are regularly picked up by attending media and cited in reporting long after the event has concluded.
- Publish proprietary research. Citing external data (as mentioned above) can be great, but offering original data that you are sole owner of takes this to the next level. Media outreach publicizing this data can be wrapped with direct engagement, social media promotion and other activity creating touch points with investors, partners and customers.
Positive company news is a great starting point, but talking your book only gets you so far. While some companies are hesitant to share their expertise for fear of being copied by peers, being out in the market with useful information doesn’t erode your competitive edge – it IS your competitive edge, as long as it is part of a defined and sustainable strategy.