T3 Advisors out of Boston (and now Silicon Valley) is a firm that specializes in representing the real estate requirements of technology companies. They’re also a really innovative crew when it comes to the use of technology, social media and the internet to grow and support their business.

As a ‘tenant rep’ or ‘buy-side’ brokerage firm without real estate listings, there’s an inherent challenge in promoting your real estate expertise and brand. One of the many things T3 is doing is using the Real Estate Pro app for Linkedin to promote their real estate updates and past successes. Its a great use of the app on one of the most important and measurable professional networking environments.

We welcome T3 as a new customer and partner and we’re very excited that our technology is playing a part in their overall marketing efforts.

World Business Chicago, the economic development department for the city, unveiled a new app called Site Selector this week. The site mashes up real estate listings with other city specific data to help businesses navigate the beginning stages of their location search. We’re always very excited to get involved in innovative projects like these and feel fortunate that we connected early on with their team. Please go a check out the site and tell your city’s economic development department to have a look and get inspired.

You can read more articles about it in our news section.

Today we announced a new partnership with ABCN and are really excited about the value it will add to our platform. The press release appears below but I also want to explain what it all really means for our users.

Choice: ABCN has a global network of members. Their members offer flexible office space solutions for entrepreneurs, small teams, and small businesses. They have such a large member base, chances are there’s a location in your market.

Flexibility: They also offer part time offices where you can rent space based on limited use (this is often referred to as a virtual office). This is great for the business that may have a distributed team that only needs to meet a few times per month, etc.

Service: When you contact ABCN through Rofo they can present you with a variety of solutions from their members. A much better experience than contacting each office one by one.

Here’s the full release:

ABCN and ROFO Partnership Will Boost Services to Mobile Clients

The Global Business Center Network and Leading Real Estate Technology Company
Establish New Relationship, Maximizing Value to Customers

September 2011 (Irvine, CA): Alliance Business Centers Network and Rofo are joining forces in hopes that their combined resources and strengths will improve how each company services its target customers. The announced partnership between the two companies will bring a range of office space, virtual office and technology solutions to small business entrepreneurs and mobile professionals worldwide.

“We are delighted at this ability to work so closely with the team at Rofo to bring significant benefits to Alliance Network members and to our clients,” remarked Frank Cottle, Chairman of ABCN and Alliance Virtual Offices. “We are also actively planning a number of other projects with Rofo and look forward to these future opportunities to better service the market.”

Through the new relationship with Rofo, Alliance will continue its expansion into new markets and improve its ability to serve its current membership. The partnership will position Alliance members to gain additional exposure for their business centers and related service offerings on Rofo’s award-winning platform which includes, Real Estate Pro, the company’s one-of-kind application for Linkedin. For the thousands of businesses and entrepreneurs using Rofo to solve their office space location needs, the partnership with Alliance means more choices, access to a dynamic global network and flexible virtual and serviced office space solutions.

“We’re honored to be working with Alliance in creating unique value-added solutions for our customer base and visitors,” stated Alan Bernier, CEO of Rofo. “Finding the right location for one’s business is a critical and often long-lasting decision. During a challenging business climate when reliable solutions are needed most, Alliance’s global network of office space solutions will provide for greater flexibility and choice for Rofo customers. We are very optimistic about our current projects together and look forward to finding new ways we can create value in the future.”

About Alliance Business Centers Network
Alliance Business Centers Network is a global leading provider of executive suites, fully serviced offices and meeting rooms. Also, through Alliance Virtual Offices, it offers a range of virtual office services to small businesses, entrepreneurs and mobile professionals. The worldwide business center network is represented with more than 600 locations in over 40 countries.

About Rofo
Founded in 2007 and based in San Francisco, CA, Rofo is a leading real estate technology company. Its flagship product, Rofo, is a real estate and office space search engine, (www.rofo.com). The privately-held company displays listings from local landlords, regional and national brokerage firms, such as Cushman & Wakefield, and institutional landlords such as Hines. With its application, Real Estate Pro, the company is the first and only real estate app on LinkedIn and it launched the first-ever U.S. commercial real estate augmented reality app for iPhone and Android devices. To learn more about Rofo, visit www.rofo.com.

Rofo was selected by the city of San Francisco as a partner to help promote the up and coming Central Market neighborhood. This neighborhood has received a lot of press attention recently with high profile tenants like Twitter, Burning Man, and most recently Zendesk signing significant leases as part of a broader initiative to improvement the district.

The city approached Rofo about collaborating to help promote additional business relocation to Central Market. We were naturally excited to participate as a civic partner. We had also recently launched a customizable listings widget to power any website. The city was able to cut and paste a line of code and easily add available properties to their new neighborhood website.

The city then approached local landlords and brokers with vacant office spaces, warehouse spaces and retail spaces and who were interested in further promotion and exposure of their buildings. The effort seems to be paying off with nearly a dozen inquiries within 30 days of the launch.

We look forward to rolling out and announcing some similar programs with other cities and economic development groups in the weeks ahead.

The countdown to 200,000 listings added to Rofo is officially on. Not really sure what we’ll do when we hit the milestone and we welcome any ideas. As for now, the plan is to pull a Jeter: hug it out for a moment and then get back to work.

We’re particularly proud of this mark because these listings are home grown and naturally fed. We have great partners, customers and users who have decided that Rofo is where they want their listings. Building the number one platform for businesses on the move is our way of saying thanks (as well as the tens of thousands of qualified tenant tours).

Listing 195,260 was added by our new friends Mack Cali – a 167,000 square foot headquarters building in Greenbelt, MD. Welcome to Rofo and we’ll do our best to promote it!

We’re coming up on a year since Rofo launched Real Estate Pro for the LinkedIn platform. We’ve seen tremendous use and adoption of an app that, at the time of launch, was completely new and different. Many sources told us, and I quote, “brokers and agents aren’t engaged with their listings online and they’re not on LinkedIn.”

Fortunately, we’re seeing something quite different – brokers engaged with their data and real estate professionals recognizing the importance of LinkedIn in the development of their business. I’m connected to a few brokers on LinkedIn and, throughout the week, I’ll see listing updates and deal announcements generated through the app. Its an easy way to generate updates and to stay top of mind with your trusted connections.

We’ve made some significant changes and improvements to Real Estate Pro – our real estate app for LinkedIn. With 8 months of great product feedback, thousands of new users each month, and a very engaged professional audience we’re excited to announce and highlight some key new features/improvements.

Making it even easier to add real estate listings

Everything is now self-contained within the app. No longer do you need to leave LinkedIn to add, edit or delete your listings. Simply click on ‘Add Listing’ and input the basic information about the listing you are marketing. Hit ‘next’, upload a photo, and then click ‘feature on profile page’. Now your listing will appear on your profile page and, more importantly, your professional network will see your update and stay informed of your professional activity. In a profession that relies so heavily on networking and referrals the benefits are immediate and tangible.

Add an image

Feature on profile page

The process is similar for building your resume of completed deals/transactions

Select ‘Add a deal’ and input the highlights of your completed work and your expertise.

Data feeds

We now also offer various xml and excel feed formats for brokerage firms who want to simplify the data input for their professionals. Our feeds support any listing type. We also now support a ‘transaction feed’ for brokerage firms to promote and announce completed sale and lease transactions.

International listings – we’re almost there!

We’ve seen a tremendous amount of international demand given LinkedIn’s worldwide members – now in excess of 100 million with incredible international growth. We’re working hard on an updated version of the app to support real estate professionals outside of the US. We hope to announce international support in the second quarter along with some early international partners so stay tuned…

Many thanks again to our early partners like Cushman & Wakefield, CBC Worldwide, Regus and Hines and the thousands of real estate professionals who have had an important voice in improving our app.

We’d love to get your feedback too. The app is FREE to use, takes 2 seconds to install, and is found here on LinkedIn.

Marketing your available commercial real estate listings online is a great way to reach potential tenants. As posting property online becomes more commonplace, we find that landlords and brokers are looking for ways to improve their interaction with these potential tenants. Below are some tips we think will help you convert online prospects into paying tenants.

1. Call Them Back!
   The most important first step is to pick up the phone, call the prospect, and encourage them to come and tour your vacancy. Do this as quickly as possible. We have some clients that tout their ability to call each prospect within 5 minutes of receiving the inquiry. Many landlords just email a marketing flyer to the prospect and wait for them to either call back or come by for a tour. There are a lot of space options out there for businesses to choose from, and just emailing a prospect is not enough. The best time to qualify a prospect, if you can’t call them immediately, is either 8-9am or 4-5pm. For additional tips on this topic, check out The Lead Response Management Study.
2. Follow Up with an Email
   If you are unable to connect with a prospect over the phone, email them. For many businesses searching for space, email is the preferred form of communication. A suggested process would be to try a prospect 3 times over the course of 3 work days, if you fail to connect.
3. Email Marketing
   For the prospects you cannot reach over the course of those 3 days, we suggest adding them to your email marketing campaigns. Sending flyers and property updates monthly to prospects that have previously expressed interest in your spaces, is a great way to stay in contact with the prospect.
4. Don’t Negotiate Over the Phone
   Businesses that are searching for available properties online, are often looking to move within a short time frame. We commonly see prospects trying to negotiate lease terms over the phone or by email before touring. It is very important to get a tour set up and meet the prospect before negotiating on price, lease length or tenant improvements.
5. Online Listing Content
   We find that online property listings with detailed information receive higher quality leads. When you provide more information about your available listings, your potential customers are more educated and can determine if the space might be a good fit. The most important details to provide are: price, available square footage, interior build out details, and pictures. If you can provide floor plans and video, you are really differentiating yourself from other available spaces online.

Earlier this month, we wrote a blog post on Things to Consider When Marketing Your Property Online. In this post, we talked briefly about using Paid Search Marketing to attract businesses searching for office space online to your listings. We understand that paid search marketing is no easy task to take on and have provided a few additional tips below to help you get started.

What is Paid Search Marketing?

Paid search marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click). This unique form of search engine advertising gets your site in the top search results for the keyword terms you target.
 
How does it work?

The search engines display ads in response to search queries. When a user searches for keywords you’ve selected for your ads (ex. San Francisco Office Space), your ad can appear above and next to the organic search results. You pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on your ad; this is why paid ads are referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) advertising.

The position of a keyword-targeted ad on the search results page is calculated by the click thru rate of the ad, the ad’s display URL, the relevance of the keyword and the ad to the search query, along with other factors. The top three ad positions get the highest percentage of clicks.
 
Where You Should Focus Your Paid Search Efforts?

Start with Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter (which includes Bing and Yahoo! Search).

Choosing Keywords

Traditionally marketers bid on one or two term keywords (ex. office space), while searchers type in three or more keywords per search. Three word plus terms are generally the cheapest per click with higher conversion rates (depending on the keyword and the quality of the landing page).

• Add long tail keywords to your account, the phrases individually are unlikely to account for a great deal of searches, but as a whole can provide significant traffic (ex. office for rent in San Jose).
• Here are some additional ways to generate keywords: create lists, keeping your website theme in mind. Research competitor websites and organic listings. Include a search box in your website to find out what customers are searching for.

Writing and Testing Ad Copy
 
It is better not to create ads on a blank canvas, instead consider opening your web browser and enter the search term. This will give you an idea of what creative’s are already being used for a search term.

• Don’t be all things to all people! It is better to create focused, concise and unique propositions in your ads than generic claims.
• Your ad is a window to your site. The message in your ad needs to be consistent with the language on your website.

Paid search marketing is a great way to reach business looking for commercial real estate online. Many well known industry players, such as Regus, or larger landlords such as Irvine Company effectively use paid search to reach potential clients online. We provided a brief overview of paid search marketing above, however there is a lot more involved. As a beginner, we suggest partnering with someone who can help you reach this online audience.

As always we invite your feedback and questions.

Below is a press release from San Francisco’s newly appointed mayor. It’s sounds like a bold initiative with real implications for commercial real estate building owners and managers. But is it? There must be something more to this than just entering your energy use into an online tool.

Rofo leases space at one of the few LEED Gold certified office buildings, 100 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. Everything about the building feels normal from a tenants perspective. Typical nice looking lobby, good security, and fast reliable elevators. Nothing is “in your face” about saving the planet. Occasionally the property manager will highlight a recycling initiative and its nice reminder that the landlord took some extra steps to pitch in.

The big question and concern about greening a space or a building is the upfront cost. Is the landlord going to take a financial hit and push rents up? And by doing so are you pushing tenants out. The city has been apparently ‘battling’ to keep Twitter in San Francisco and offering concessions/incentives (I know nothing about that real estate deal but I’ve been involved in commercial real estate leases as a broker where cities compete for a headquarters deal and can honestly say its not about the tax breaks. Its about the real estate.)

So cities have a big challenge and competing interests. Personally, as a tenant, I like the green building initiatives. But I also like keeping the rent competitive.

Would love to hear to your thoughts on this as a broker, tenant or building owner.

MAYOR LEE SIGNS LANDMARK LEGISLATION TO GREEN EXISTING COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
New City Code Improves Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings, Protects the Environment and Creates Green Jobs

San Francisco, CA—Mayor Edwin M. Lee today signed landmark green building legislation that will improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy costs, and create green jobs. Passed last week by the Board of Supervisors, the Existing Commercial Building Energy Performance Ordinance will require owners of existing non-residential buildings to determine how much energy each building consumes, and to make that information public on an annual basis. The new city code will also require commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet to conduct energy efficiency audits every five years in order to help the building owners and managers optimize building efficiency and utility savings.

“San Francisco needs to increase the energy and resource efficiency of existing buildings if we are going to meet our aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets,” said Mayor Lee. “This new green building code will educate building owners about what they need to do to save energy and money, and boost our local green economy.”

“San Francisco continues to provide visionary leadership to protect our environment,” said Board of Supervisors President David Chiu. “Making our commercial buildings more energy efficient shows we can work together creatively to make real progress.”

Energy is one of the biggest expenses of building ownership, and will be an even greater financial burden for owners in the future as energy prices escalate. Buildings, which account for about 70 percent of the electricity consumed in the U.S., could be made up to 50 percent more energy efficient with currently available products and services.

Under the new law, Chapter 20 of the San Francisco Environment Code, building owners will be required to benchmark the energy use of their buildings using a free online tool provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the results of which will be filed annually with the city. The code also requires building owners to conduct energy audits, starting with commercial properties larger than 50,000 square feet starting in October 2011, and then phase in so that by 2013, the rules would apply to all commercial properties 10,000 square feet or larger.

The Ordinance codifies the recommendations of the Existing Commercial Building Task Force, which then-Mayor Gavin Newsom convened to identify ways the city could work in concert with the private sector to improve the energy and resource efficiency of existing commercial buildings in San Francisco. The Task Force, similar to the one that developed recommendations for new construction, was comprised of 18 members of San Francisco’s building ownership, developer, financial, architectural, engineering, and construction communities, who the Mayor selected for their knowledge of the building industry and commitment to San Francisco’s long-term sustainability.

“San Francisco currently offers energy efficiency audits for businesses through our Energy Watch program, and we have learned that up to 70 percent of business that have an audit will take action and conduct a retrofit,” said Melanie Nutter, Director of San Francisco Environment. “We expect this Ordinance will deliver similar returns with existing buildings, which could lead to a 50 percent reduction in commercial building energy use within 20 years.”

Today’s signing ceremony was held at the San Francisco offices of Adobe, located in a 1905 building on the national historic registry that has been upgraded to LEED Platinum, the highest level of environmental performance recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council. The building employs extensive energy efficiency technologies, securing an Energy Star rating of 98.

“Adobe is committed to being a responsible corporate citizen in the communities where its employees live and work,” said Randall H. Knox, III, Senior Director of Global Workplace Solutions at Adobe. “Our company takes a hands-on approach to resource conservation and sustainability, achieving Energy Star ratings and US Green Building Council LEED certifications at many of our locations. It’s our hope that this new City of San Francisco law will inspire building owners to be more informed about energy consumption and take action.”