Commercial Real Estate Marketing: Paid, Earned and Owned Media

Marketing a business in commercial real estate is not the same as marketing to a broad consumer audience. The buyers are a defined group: owners, operators, developers, property managers and the firms that advise them. Sales cycles run long, deals are relationship-driven, and the right contact is often one specific decision-maker inside a large organization. For the vendors and service providers who sell into CRE, from contractors and HVAC firms to proptech companies and insurance brokers, marketing works best when it reaches that narrow audience directly.

Most CRE marketing strategies pull from three types of media: paid, earned and owned. The three work best in combination, so the real question is how each fits into your business.

How Do You Market to Commercial Real Estate Companies?

Commercial real estate marketing differs from consumer marketing in one main way: the audience is small and specific. Your total addressable market might be a few thousand companies, and within each only a handful of people influence or make purchasing decisions. A facilities director, a property manager, and a development lead all work inside the same firm but care about completely different things.

So your job is to get the right message to the right roles, in the asset classes and regions you actually serve. Every channel works better when it's aimed at the right people, and that idea runs through the rest of this guide.

3 Types of Marketing Media

Think of paid, earned and owned media as three ways to communicate with an audience. No single type is best on its own. Paid media buys attention, owned media is the presence you control, and earned media is what others say about you. The next sections break down each with its trade-offs and where it fits in CRE.

What is Paid Media?

Paid media is content your business pays another platform to display. If you know traditional advertising, you already understand it. A trade magazine ad, a billboard, and direct mail are all paid media, and CRE still uses every one of them. Another example: CRE vendors often sponsor Bisnow events and industry conferences to reach owners and developers in person

In digital channels, paid media is the advertising that runs on websites, search engines and social platforms. On Google, it is the sponsored results at the top of a search. On LinkedIn, the platform most CRE sellers rely on, it is the promoted content in a user's feed. Digital paid media often runs on a pay-per-click model, where you pay the platform each time someone clicks your ad. Others charge by impressions served.

Pros and cons of paid media

Paid media puts your brand in front of a relevant audience quickly, and it lets you target by intent. A company that makes office glass partitions can bid on searches like "smart glass for office" and reach buyers who are already looking for the product.

The costs add up fast. Ad platforms like Google Ads and LinkedIn Campaign Manager have detailed targeting and bidding options that reward research and punish guesswork. Strong campaigns start with the right keywords and audience definitions, which is why many CRE businesses either train someone internally or bring in a specialist. For more on running paid campaigns to a CRE audience, see our guide to LinkedIn ads for CRE businesses and the basics of paid online advertising.

Examples of paid media

• Banner and display ads on websites

• Sponsored positions in Google search results

• Social media advertising, including LinkedIn

• Ad reads in podcasts and videos

• Retargeting ads that follow users as they browse

What is Owned Media?

Owned media is any channel your business controls. Your website is the clearest example. You decide what appears on it and how it guides a visitor toward becoming a customer. Most owned media works toward some mix of three goals: attracting an audience, informing it and converting it.

Owned media reaches past your site. A post from your company's LinkedIn account is an extension of your brand, even though it lives on a platform you do not own. Marketers sometimes call social posts shared media, a fourth category, because you reach the audience on the platform's terms while the platform owns the relationship. Together, your owned channels make up your brand's online presence.

A physical version of owned media is a storefront. A blank building with no signage does little for a business. A clear sign and a window display of products gives a passerby a reason to remember the brand. The business controls every part of that presentation, which is what makes it owned.

Pros and cons of owned media

Owned media is inexpensive and sometimes free. Publishing a blog post or a social update costs little, and a steady presence brings organic traffic that supports conversions over time.

Owned media depends on people finding it. A prospect might see your content, but nothing guarantees they will, and reaching people who do not already know your brand is hard. You are also competing with other businesses publishing their own content, including your competitors.

Two channels that improve your odds are search and email: see our guide to SEO for CRE and the benefits of email marketing for brand awareness in CRE. Social media is another, covered in how to generate B2B leads on social media.

Examples of owned media

• Your website and its content

• Blog posts

• Email marketing

• Social media posts (shared with the platform)

• Your company's YouTube channel (shared with YouTube)

What is Earned Media? 

Earned media is the one type you do not produce yourself. It is what other people say about your brand: word of mouth in the digital space. It includes reviews, mentions, shares and links from other reputable websites back to yours.

Earned media is hard to get and worth the effort. According to Nielsen's 2021 Trust in Advertising Study, 88% of people trust recommendations from those they know more than any other channel, and 64% of marketing executives consider word of mouth the most effective form of marketing. A non-sponsored writeup from a credible source, such as an industry publication naming your firm a top choice among office developers, is earned media. Your track record earned it.

Pros and cons of earned media

Earned media carries the trust that word of mouth has always had, and it can spread quickly across social platforms. When it comes without a direct cost, it's some of the most efficient marketing you can get.

It also comes with no guarantees. If people do not know your brand, they cannot recommend it or review it, and what they say will not always be positive. Earned media can carry a cost too, since many businesses hire PR firms or specialists to help generate it, which raises a fair question about whether coverage you paid to pursue is still earned.

Building a recognizable brand makes earned media more likely: see how we think about brand awareness in CRE.

Examples of earned media

• Mentions and tags on social media

• Reviews, especially from high-profile clients or industry influencers

• Reposts and shares of content you created

• Organic search rankings tied to your SEO

Building a Commercial Real Estate Marketing Strategy

The strongest commercial real estate marketing uses all three media types, in whatever balance fits your situation. A newer business may have little earned media because few people know it yet. A business with a small budget may lean on owned media while it builds. A business new to digital channels may add paid media gradually as it learns what converts. Over time, a complete strategy draws on all three.

Every one of these channels depends on reaching the right people, and in CRE the right people are specific: a vice president of acquisitions at a multifamily operator, a facilities director at a healthcare system, a development lead in a particular region. Targeting that precisely takes accurate, CRE-specific contact data.

That is where Biscred fits. Biscred is a prospecting platform built for commercial real estate, with companies and contacts you can filter by industry, asset class, region, seniority and functional area. Whether you are setting LinkedIn ad audiences, building an email list or planning direct outreach, it gives your marketing a defined audience to work from. Schedule a demo to see how it works.