Why You Need a Real Estate Amenities Map

Marketing Best Practices

Why You Need a Real Estate Amenities Map

An interactive real estate map is one of the secret ingredients to help engage your prospects and provide an impression of the area’s potential that can ultimately add value to your commercial real estate.

Showcasing key points of interest such as corporate neighbors, restaurants, hotels, transportation, around the target property will help prospects evaluate a neighborhood and proximity to surrounding establishments.

Here are 6 reasons why interactive real estate maps should be an integral part of your commercial real estate marketing material:

1. Increases Familiarity

Viewing a commercial property on a map with its surrounding points of interest helps prospects get more familiar with the area.

Seeing familiar establishments in an unknown area creates comfort and helps visitors quickly categorize the information to make conclusions about the socio-economic and cultural characteristics of the location.

2. Increases Engagement

Do you know that the average bounce rate of a property listing page is 55%?

That means for every 100 visitors that land on your property website, approximately 55 of them leave right away.

There are a lots of reasons why visitors might leave your page (here are 5 mistakes that can kill your property listings) but an informative and attractive map that highlights local amenities maps can help fight this.

A static website that has dry content and no interactive components will never create a memorable experience for a visitor. In fact, studies by Forrester Research suggest that 40% of visitors will never return to a website after having a negative experience.

An interactive amenities map can drastically increase user engagement for your listing. It is a perfect combination of design and functionality to help make your property website much more “sticky” and keep visitors engaged.

3. Quick Access to Key Information

We all know this is true: location is a key decision driver for any potential tenant or investor evaluating commercial real estate.

So why not provide access to this information?

The beauty of a map is that it can provide relevant information and allows you to quickly highlight specific establishments that would resonate well with the end user you are targeting (office tenant, retail tenant, etc.).

4. Visually Displays Key Advantages

Maps can be a powerful visual asset to stress the benefits of your property and create a memorable experience. They can help tell a story and impress your prospects without you having to spell everything out in writing.

Think about it: would you rather read about how great a location is or see it for yourself?

The points on an amenities map help visually represent the key benefits (nearby restaurants, retailers, hotels, transportation, etc.) of your property’s location.

It can also provide relevant information and allows you to highlight specific establishments that would resonate well with the end user you are targeting (office tenant, retail tenant, etc.).

5. Reinforces Social Proof

The ultimate testimonial of your property’s location is the surrounding other businesses and corporations in the area.

People are wired to learn and follow the actions of others, and this also holds true in commercial real estate.

Including “corporate neighbors” on a real estate map gives more credibility to your property and helps enhance the prestige of working alongside important companies.

6. Insight Into Competitive Landscape

For retailers, maps are critical to evaluate the competitive landscape of a specific location and are a key part of the decision making process in site selection.

An interactive map can give retailers a visual assessment of the level of market saturation as well as complimentary businesses (surrounding retailers) in the area very quickly.

How to Create a Real Estate Amenities Map?

There are a lot of options to choose from if you want to create a neighborhood amenities map for your listing or property website.

You can boil it down to two approaches: static vs. interactive maps

1. Static Maps

local amenities map

If you want to create a static map, it can be as easy as copying a screenshot from an online map provider, like Google Maps, and then dropping in your points of interest.

Another popular approach is to work with an aerial photo and overlay local amenities and logos directly on top of the aerial.

Finally, you could also consider a professionally illustrated map that has been created by a graphic designer.  This usually provides the most professional look and feel.

All three of these options can be effective to help provide visual impact for your listing.

2. Interactive Maps

interactive real estate map

Although static maps can be effective, interactive real estate maps are much more powerful. The benefit of working with an interactive real estate map is that they are much more engaging for your prospects and you can easily update your map on the fly without having to call up a designer or open an InDesign file for every change.

There are plenty of commercial real estate mapping software options available. No matter what approach you take, what’s most important to include is the key information of the amenity (name, address, logo, etc.) and organize by type of establishment. Depending on the property type, some commercial real estate amenities to consider for your local map:

  • Corporate neighbors
  • Transportation
  • Entertainment
  • Food/Restaurants
  • Hotels
  • Schools or Universities
  • Shopping Centers
  • Supermarkets

Amenities Map Example

To see a good example of a live SharpLaunch interactive map for a commercial property, you can take a look at 100 Northern Avenue @ Fan Pier. It serves as an important visual presentation for the leasing team (CBRE New England) to help convey the vibrance and activity of the property’s surroundings within Boston’s Fan Pier neighborhood.

Build Your Own Map

Make your property listings stand out with interactive amenity maps and engage more customers.

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