Marketing is time-consuming, and it can be expensive. One of the best ways for commercial real estate companies to save both time and money is to utilize templates for their marketing materials. These templates will also benefit your company in other ways.

Templates and branding

Do you know the brand associated with the golden arches? Or, the soft drink company with the red and white logo? Of course, you do. McDonalds and Coca-Cola are two of the most recognized brands in the world. While your commercial real estate firm may not aspire to worldwide notoriety, you likely want your company to be a known brand in your region. Templates can be a big part of your company’s branding strategy.

Let’s say you send out a few postcards. One may have your logo. Another may just include your name. And, another may have no identifier at all. If you send these three postcards to a customer in a direct mail campaign, you will likely confuse them. However, if you use the same template when creating your cards, your customers will know they’ve received a communication from you.

While naysayers attest that templates can quell creativity, the opposite is true. A good template lends itself to adjustments while retaining your brand integrity. A small shift in layout or pictures will not detract from your brand.

Templates create a professional image for your company

Commercial real estate is a visual business. You should put as much thought into how you present your company’s image as you might in presenting a new property. Creating a template with a professional image and easy-to-read, professional-looking fonts will attract more clients to your business than slapping together some cell phone photos and hastily chosen words into a non-tailored Word document.

Templates help to align your sales and marketing efforts

For some businesses, the marketing and sales teams are one. But, in many companies, they’re separate, and each is using their version of the company’s branding. This creates confusion for customers and prospects when your sales team sends out a follow-up email with wrong colors and a skewed logo. Having a template that is accessible to the marketing and sales teams reinforces a company standard and ensure you’ll make a professional appearance every time.

Templates save you time

Think of how much time it takes to create new pieces of marketing collateral from scratch. Now think about how easy it would be to create email, brochures, and offering memorandums using a template. With a template, you do not need to “reinvent the wheel.”  CRE firms of all sizes can save hours each week using a template to create marketing materials.

If you already realize you need a template for your marketing materials, then good for you. If your team lacks the creativity or the budget to develop a template on its own, don’t fret. There are options to be had. A professional real estate marketing firm can help you develop unique designs specifically tailored to your business that will professional and won’t break the bank.