LookingForSpace.com officially launched its commercial real estate marketing and promotion service today.  We intend to become a nexus of tenant & agent interaction by displaying the intellectual capital of our agent members, and letting them use their own content to attract new business from tenant readers.

Our beta market, if you’re looking for office space, or interested in the commercial real estate market, is Manhattan.  Our listings will cover New York City office space rental (both direct leases and subleases), commercial condominium sales, and building sales, and retail store space for rent and purchase.  As we expand out of the central business district, we will add warehouse and flex space to the commercial inventory.

We launch our new enterprise at an interesting crossroad – the intersection of print and digital promotion.  The real estate industry has long benefited from the success of classified newspaper advertising and direct mail campaigns featuring promotional flyers.  And, while there is still a place for “tree based” marketing, it is clearly in the decline, and we face the ascent of the Age of Digital Real Estate.

Digital Real Estate Brokers will take advantage of our services to promote themselves in front of prospective customers who are looking for space or who are interested in learning about certain niche’s in the commercial real estate marketplace.

We offer them the opportunity to effectively and inexpensively post professional, search engine optimized online listings, with as many good photos of a site, or any collateral material that they are willing to provide.  (And they can use our professional photographers too.)

Our model incorporates small subscription payments to insert a search engine optimized listing into our database.  The concept is that as soon as we develop some traction on the Internet, a small subscription payment will result in a large marketing advantage for the posting member.  And, the listings are available for anyone to view for free.  Your prospective new clients will find you if you’re visible on the Internet.  LookingForSpace.com makes you visible – and each agent listing space in our database also gets their own web biography page – which includes photos, full contact information and their “curriculum vitae”.

The CV page is linked to all of an agents listings on the site – but that’s not all.  As digital marketers, we all need to learn blogging best practices and promote ourselves through blogs.  LookingForSpace.com is also a subscription supported blog for all of its members.  In today’s climate, smart digital marketers are blogging.  If their content is current and inviting, readers will be attracted to it, and the links to the authors listings and CV.  A good blog entry is “candy” that will position the author as an expert in their field.  A good blog entry will teach the reader something they don’t know – and it is a pheromone to pull tenants towards an agent and their offering.

As a departure from the traditional classified outlets, we offer a section titled “Requirements”.  Here, tenants can post their commercial real estate wants/needs in an anonymous fashion.  Our readers can respond with solutions, and the posting party decides whether or not to reply.

This allows a tenant to evaluate a broker’s “wares” before engaging in a conversation.  It provides the broker with the opportunity to put their best intellectual foot forward in proposing a solution to the tenant’s problem.

So, here on June 1 we launch our new website with much anticipation of serving the community of real estate brokers, tenants and landlords in a new way.  Communication is greatly streamlined and facilitated by our service.  We want it to be efficient and inexpensive, and we invite you to share any comments or thoughts you may have about what has been outlined here.