Situation
The Downtown Council of KC serves as the primary advocacy organization for Downtown Kansas City. It’s a private, nonprofit membership organization representing Kansas City’s best businesses, property owners, nonprofit organizations, and anyone invested in Downtown’s success. The employees at Downtown KC have a big job. Their work and partnerships ensure Downtown Kansas City is a clean, safe, and vibrant place to work, shop, live, and do business. To get their messages in front of an audience that would influence the success of their city, they searched for the right strategy and tools.
They found that traditional advertising wasn’t plausible with their small but mighty team, and hiring an agency was far too expensive for their budget. Along with price, they realized their use case for digital advertising was unique. If they went with a typical marketing agency, they would lack the control to target specific audiences, adjust content regularly, and effectively communicate their message with a niche audience.
The local CBRE brokerage firm, working to revitalize downtown KC, introduced them to their primary leasing enablement tool – RealtyAds. The foundational purpose of RealtyAds is to help commercial real estate find, advance, and close more deals. Still, it was quickly realized that organizations like Downtown KC would benefit significantly from the tool’s advanced targeting capabilities.
Strategy
Downtown KC launched its first digital strategy with RealtyAds in 2021, focusing on attracting new businesses to their downtown mix-use district. They highlighted the environment, downtown amenities, and the fact that it was a hub for millennials. The overall goal was to attract businesses that wanted to expand or relocate. With that goal in mind, they strategically targeted decision-makers at firms on the coast looking for affordability and businesses in smaller Midwestern cities to reach growing companies ready to expand their space in a bigger city. This strategy aligned well with the brokerage teams they worked with, so they coordinated to get specific properties in front of decision-makers the brokers were chasing.
With RealtyAds proprietary targeting, Downtown KC was able to reach various audiences that influenced the success of their specific initiatives. They leveraged every single targeting function offered by RealtyAds. To name a few, individual and company targeting, geofencing certain cities, competition targeting reaching end users in suburban buildings, and coworking targeting to reach businesses that were outgrowing or tired of their shared space. Tommy Wilson, Director of Business Recruitment & Research at the Downtown Council of KC, specifically works to help advance the Kansas City economy by attracting and retaining entrepreneurs with LaunchKC. To help reach entrepreneurs and startups, he leveraged RealtyAds funding targeting to get in front of those growing businesses that could influence the economy of KC.
Lastly, the Downtown KC team leveraged RealtyAds to effectively enable the leasing teams they work with. Through communicating reporting metrics like broker reach, tenant reach, heightened engagement, and benchmarking, their brokers were equipped with the data to advance active prospects and find new potential prospects effectively. A specific example of how RealtyAds helps Downtown KC is through RITA Prospecting. This function ensures that spend is effectively used to gain the most return on investment. First and foremost, the top priority of the platform is to reach the selected audience. Still, in the background, RealtyAds AI is monitoring online behaviors to help find new prospects that would be an ideal fit for their specific initiative or goal.
We didn’t do any digital advertising prior to finding RealtyAds because of the cost. If I weren’t leveraging RealtyAds for our digital strategy, I’d have to find a marketing agency to handle our online presence, and the cost would be too high for our budget. RealtyAds makes it effortless to get our message in front of the right audiences in downtown Kansas City for an unbeatable price point.”
Director of Business Recruitment & Research Downtown Council of Kansas City/p>
Why RealtyAds
Traditional digital advertising and marketing agencies do not compare to the results you’ll see with RealtyAds. As the Downtown Council of KC found, RealtyAds AI will save clients time and money by activating and optimizing a digital strategy on the top customer acquisition platforms with the click of a button. There is no need to hire an expensive agency or spend hours, even days, adjusting your advertisement to reach the right audience. RealtyAds is constantly allocating spend to the most effective channels for your strategy to ensure you generate the greatest return on your investment.
RealtyAds proprietary data enables teams to reach the specific decision-makers, which will ultimately affect the success of their strategy. With more than 40 integrations, making over a million API calls per day, clients get to leverage accurate data that helps brands and properties more effectively reach brokers, tenants in the market, active prospects, business owners, community members, and more. Combining RealtyAds proprietary data with its proprietary targeting functions helps clients compete successfully.
The Downtown Council of Kansas City has a unique competitive advantage as the first CBD organization to leverage RealtyAds to reach their target audience for each specific initiative. Other CBD organizations should follow in their footsteps to stay competitive, attract businesses, engage community members, and boost the economy.
