The Importance of Marketing and Branding Your Syndication Firm in the Commercial Real Estate Industry

In the commercial real estate (CRE) industry, where transactions often involve substantial investments and long-term commitments, marketing and branding are not just important—they are essential. Given the high stakes and significant investments involved in CRE syndications, establishing a strong brand and implementing effective marketing strategies for your syndication firm is crucial for attracting investors, gaining trust, and standing out in a competitive market. The CRE market is highly competitive and constantly evolving, with numerous players competing for the attention of investors. Reputation and reliability are key in this industry if a firm wants to scale, outcompete, and execute on a high level. The thing about reputation is that it takes forever to build up, but can be lost in a snap of a finger. Marketing is crucial in highlighting a company’s expertise, showcasing its property portfolio, and engaging with various stakeholders, brokers, investors, and other CRE professionals. 

At JT Acquisitions, we recently outsourced our marketing to Chicago based marketing start-up Link Creative (LC). The founder of Link Creative (Lorenzo Costa) and his skilled team has been working with us to create content for our Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. LC plays a key role in building our brand and reputation in the CRE industry. That said, before jumping into this post I want to define what marketing and branding are and why people easily confuse the two.

Marketing, as it relates to companies and not products, is a term used to describe the methods, tools, and tactics a business uses to communicate a company’s brand/identity. Branding on the other hand is a term used to reflect the idea or perception of a company. With that in mind, in this post we will talk about our experience marketing and working with Link Creative, using marketing to curate your brand, and how branding helps to attract investors and generate deal flow.

Note – The definitions of the technical terms in any of our posts can be found in the glossary section of our website.

Our Experience Marketing and Branding

Our marketing and branding strategy from when we first started to now has changed immensely. When we first created our social media profiles and created content, we did not focus on filming content but more so creating static educational content. As you’ll see on our Instagram, most of our posts are a combination of text, images, and music. On LinkedIn we were putting out less content and it primarily consisted of creating posts for our weekly blog posts. What working with Link Creative has done is streamline our marketing process and help to narrow down how we want our brand to be perceived. Additionally, they’ve taken the stress out of creating marketing content. Thanks to LC, we’ve rolled out professionally created videos that were shot a filmed at a studio. The impact of these videos were seen right away as the first reel we published on Instagram was viewed over 5,000 times and has over 150 likes. That reel, and with every piece of content going forward, was also published on LinkedIn (30+ likes) and Facebook. 

Marketing via posting professional videos allows us to build our reputation by showcasing our knowledge, experiences, and story. More so, the videos help to shape and mold our brand image because the viewers are able to put a face to our company so to speak and see how our team is able to articulate various CRE topics. At the end of the day, anyone can create a static post using platforms like Canva, but it’s the personalized touch via the videos that people love to see. 

We just began to roll our our marketing strategy and as such we haven’t put out enough content to see if our efforts has impacted our business monetarily, but the signs are promising. With our strategy we hope to be able to educate, inspire others, gain new investors, establish a strong reputation in the CRE industry, and establish stronger deal flow. 

Curating Your Brand

When seeking to establish your company’s brand and perception, you need to be intentional with every detail from knowing what kind of content (i.e., the look, feel, and marketing medium) to publish to tracking engagement. A strong brand conveys trustworthiness and reliability, which are crucial in the syndication business where investors are entrusting operators/syndicators with substantial amounts of capital. Effective branding projects a professional and polished image, helping to differentiate your firm from less reputable competitors and reassure potential investors. You have to put yourself in the viewer’s shoes and ask yourself if you were that person, can you trust your company enough to invest? When it comes to publishing content for a syndication business, the viewer must be able to understand your strategy, the value your company can provide to them, and how you are different from other operators. At JT Acquisitions, the way we provide value to our investors is threefold. We are a vertically integrated firm (i.e., we have an in-house property management team), provide strong returns through a differentiated strategy (i.e., focusing on Section 8 investing in a particular market), and have low investment requirements for our investors. While these aren’t the only ways our company stands out, they drive our investors’ financial success, which is what we want our brand to be perceived with, investor success. 

Using Marketing for Deal Flow and Attracting Investors

Marketing can be leveraged to increase deal flow and attract investors for syndicators. What should not be confused is that marketing isn’t much of a value-add when starting out and you don’t have a track record, curated relationships, and knowledge. This is similar to if a start-up marketed a physical product that they haven’t even created or worked out the mechanics. The marketing dollars in that case would be better spent on the actual product, not looking flashy. 

At JT Acquisitions, we knew to outsource marketing only once we had established relationships with brokers in our target market and had a good base of investors. The idea behind our timing was that the organic growth of our professional and investor relationships combined with the AUM growth we’ve experienced lately would allow us to make a strong push on the social media outlets we utilize. While we’ve still yet to roll out our marketing strategy to it’s full effect, within a span of 2 weeks we’ve already had multiple new potential investors reach out to us and brokers follow our pages. This is all to say that marketing can increase deal flow and attract investors, but only when the timing is right and the foundation of your syndication business has been created.

Conclusion

In the commercial real estate industry, the importance of marketing and branding your syndication firm cannot be overstated. These elements are the foundation upon which your firm’s reputation, growth, and success are built. In an industry where large financial investments are involved, trust is paramount. More so, visibility is key to attracting a broad and diverse pool of investors and effective marketing strategies ensure that your firm reaches potential investors who may not have been aware of your company. Lastly, the commercial real estate market is highly competitive, with numerous firms vying for the same pool of investors. Strong branding sets your firm apart, highlighting what makes you unique.

If you have any questions regarding the terms and concepts in this post or previous ones, please reach out to either me (tedi.nati@jtacquisitions.com) or someone on our team so we can help explain further. If you’re interested in investing with us at JT Acquisitions, you can contact us via our contact form, by emailing a member of our team, messaging us on LinkedIn, or signing up for our investor portal to set up a meeting.

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I have writing it. Best of luck!