AI Has Saved Time But Muddied Traffic Data For CRE Marketing Execs

Public relations executives who promote buildings and transactions to investors, potential buyers and the media say artificial intelligence has rewired their jobs over the past few years — compressing workflows from weeks to days. But it has also complicated how they track effective strategies. 

Marketing processes have been upended as AI adoption becomes mainstream and more commercial real estate companies dip their toes into the new tech, panelists said at Bisnow’s CRE Property Marketing & Brand Strategy Cocktail, held July 16 at Warwick Allerton Chicago.

“We have two full-time marketing people, and since the AI integration has really taken shape, it's like they're on steroids,” Madison Rose Senior Vice President Adam Pines said. 

Pines said AI tools have elevated the expectations and standards for marketing output, with faster turnaround times for building renderings and associated materials. The cost of new renderings has also dropped as Madison Rose has brought the process in-house.

Kaysha Hanock, director of digital media at 1905 New Media, said the new tech has enabled the firm to produce more quality content regularly for its clients. She said she used to spend days putting together performance data in spreadsheets, which AI now handles, freeing up time to build out marketing strategy baked in the same data.

“In terms of the actual marketing process, it’s changed everything for us,” Hanock said. 

Still, Hanock said some of the performance data can get clouded because many large language models don’t actually link out to companies’ websites. If a potential investor or buyer learns about a brand from an LLM, but then searches that brand on Google, the search engine will incorrectly flag it as an organic visitor. 

Hanock said she thinks there is a lot more traffic coming to companies’ websites from AI-generated leads than shows up in the data. 

Taylor Johnson Public Relations President Emily Johnson said it's important to work in a closed-loop environment when developing sensitive materials, particularly breaking-news announcements, to avoid having messaging leak before a client is ready to go public. She also cautioned against using AI to generate answers for the media. 

“Once you're in a free platform or a public platform, then that news is public,” Johnson said. 

When looking to market a specific building, the most attractive pitch includes positioning for the group you’re looking to target, Becknell Industrial Chief Marketing Officer Paige Steers said. Tenants are focused on the operational portion of an asset, while investors are thinking on a portfolio level. 

Steers said investors are drawn to confidence that a partner can execute a proposal and mitigate risk. 

“When you look at a property, you really have to understand it for both sides,” Steers said. 

Cushman & Wakefield Property Marketing Team Marketing Director Sheila Acar said the same client-specific approach applies on the brokerage side.

Working closely with brokers gives her visibility into lease expirations and upcoming vacancies years in advance — time she uses to get ahead of the story. When one client committed $20M to an amenity floor, her team began promoting the investment before the building ever broke ground.

Hanock said she couldn’t predict what the state of these tools and web traffic patterns would look like in five years but that the best way to future-proof marketing strategies is to be unafraid of trying new things. 

“Keep looking forward and not be against change,” she said. “What worked yesterday is not going to work tomorrow.”