Technology
Functional Fliers
By Rich Rosfelder |
Despite
recent technological innovations, property fliers continue to be an integral
part of commercial real estate marketing programs. “Flier preparation is how I
become really knowledgeable about the property,” says Hugh J. Wade, CCIM, of
Spire Commercial in Anchorage, Alaska, who uses this process to tailor his
promotional efforts to highlight each property’s strengths.
But
with so many ways to create and distribute fliers, it can be difficult to find
the right balance between cost-effectiveness and professionalism. Commercial Investment Real Estate asked CCIMs
to share their tips for producing fliers on a budget.
“We
start in Microsoft Access, which has the add-on to create a formatted PDF document.
We then usually amend the data package with aerials, maps, photos, and broker
information in Adobe InDesign and convert it to a final PDF for storage and
linking.”
Ryan M. Zabrowski, CCIM, SIOR,
Investors Realty, Omaha, Neb.
“We
struggled to find the right program until we recently discovered the answer was
in front of us all the time in Microsoft Word. It offers many suitable
templates that we have adopted as our standard format.”
John Simone Jr., CCIM, Simone
Realty, Lawrenceville, N.J.
“Our
fliers are typically created within Microsoft Publisher or Microsoft Word. We
then save these files as PDFs so they can be distributed and, more importantly,
opened by anyone. In addition, we have started using oversize postcards to
promote our listings. They’re created in Adobe Photoshop to ensure graphic
quality. Our fliers are also on LoopNet and CoStar.”
Robert J. Dikman, CCIM, ALC, SIOR,
The Dikman Co., Tampa, Fla.
“I
use CCIMREDEX. Our company contracts with a third-party marketing professional,
and it makes her job much easier when I email her my CCIMREDEX flier. All she
has to do is adapt what I’ve already created to the company template. We use a
service named Emma as the primary delivery source.”
Ashley Bishop, CCIM, Southeast
Venture, Nashville, Tenn.
Rich Rosfelder is
associate editor of Commercial Investment
Real Estate.
CCIMs share more property flier tips in CIRE magazine’s May/June 2012 Technology
Solutions column, “Flier Right.”