Commercial Real Estate Marketing

Marketing that drives
leasing velocity,
NOI, and asset value.

Strategic marketing leadership for developers, owners, and operators of commercial real estate. From ground-up positioning through stabilization. Fifteen years specialized. Founder-led. Aligned to ownership strategy from day one.

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Growth. Engineered.
LH Strategic Advisory  ·  Phoenix-based  ·  National Reach
lhstrategicadvisory.com  ·  leslie@lhstrategicadvisory.com  ·  Founder-Led  ·  Senior-Only
Strategic Experience Across Complex Assets
$1B+
CRE Portfolios
Led & Positioned
$20M+
Annual Media
Budget Leadership
$950K+
Annual Sponsorship
Revenue Created
20+
Years
Of Experience
The Thesis

From distressed turnarounds to
ground-up district positioning.

Twenty years in marketing. Fifteen leading brand and positioning strategy across commercial real estate: mixed-use, retail, residential, office, and destination assets, partnering with national ownership groups and category-defining brands.

Partial Client & Ownership Experience
Related RED SKB Pacific Retail Christopher Homes Seneca AEG Live Nation BBDO General Mills Dodge AZ Coyotes
Where Projects Fall Short

Strategy, leasing, and marketing
built in isolation.

When marketing runs separately from leasing, and positioning is treated as an afterthought, assets never fully realize their potential. Here's what that looks like, and what it costs.

Where Projects Fall Short

The symptoms.

  • No clear market position before leasing or outreach begins
  • Brand, leasing, and demand generation developed in silos
  • Marketing activity without a defined revenue strategy
  • Digital channels launched without a system to sustain them
  • Storytelling treated as secondary rather than strategic

What It Costs

Assets that never fully realize their potential.

  • Slower leasing velocity and extended stabilization timelines
  • Weaker differentiation in competitive markets
  • Missed revenue across partnerships and programming
  • Inefficient spend with limited measurable return
  • Performance gaps that compound over time
The Approach

"Marketing is most powerful when it's built around one thing: alignment. Between brand and business. Between strategy and execution. Between what you say and what people experience."

Leslie Himley, Founder
Where We Create Value

The development lifecycle,
accountable through every phase.

Strategic marketing doesn't start when leasing begins. It starts when the asset is conceived. LHSA enters where value is defined and stays accountable from positioning through long-term performance.

1 Phase One

Vision & Positioning

Brand, narrative, market differentiation. Establishing the strategic foundation before a single lease is drafted.

2 Phase Two

Development & Construction

Leasing strategy and storytelling. Early narrative and prospect engagement while the asset is still being built.

3 Phase Three

Lease-Up

Accelerated absorption via positioning. Tenant acquisition, demand generation, and differentiation in competitive markets.

4 Phase Four

Activation

Programming, partnerships, and experience. Turning a property into a destination, and foot traffic into revenue.

5 Phase Five

Stabilization

Long-term visitation and tenant success. Retention, optimization, and performance gains that compound over years.

We don't market properties. We grow portfolios.

Placemaking is Strategy

The details prospects remember
are the details we plan for.

Signage, wayfinding, environmental graphics, programming, and seasonal activation. These aren't decoration, they're differentiation. The difference between a property that performs and one that compounds.

Scope of Engagement

What gets built
when I step in.

Every engagement is shaped around the asset and ownership objectives. These are the core workstreams that show up across nearly every CRE engagement.

i.

Brand & Positioning Strategy

The strategic foundation. Market differentiation, narrative architecture, and the positioning that informs every downstream decision.

ii.

Ground-Up Development Marketing

Pre-leasing narrative, investor storytelling, and demand generation for assets still under construction. Building interest before the doors open.

iii.

Asset Repositioning

Revitalizing underperforming or distressed properties. Diagnosis, narrative rebuild, and a measurable path to recovery.

iv.

Leasing & Go-to-Market Alignment

Bridging the gap between leasing and marketing. Unified messaging, shared KPIs, and strategic coordination that accelerates absorption.

v.

Placemaking & Activation Strategy

Programming, experiential design, and environmental storytelling. The operational layer that turns properties into destinations.

vi.

Partnerships & Sponsorship Revenue

Untapped revenue most assets leave on the table. Partnership strategy, sponsorship architecture, and revenue-generating programming.

vii.

Marketing Team & Agency Structure

Auditing what you have, designing what you need. Team structure, agency accountability, and operational rigor.

viii.

Digital Ecosystem & Performance

Web, CRM, analytics, paid media, and the systems that sustain demand generation past launch.

Programming as Revenue Strategy

Activation isn't about events.
It's about NOI.

Every programming decision connects to tenant performance, sponsorship revenue, and long-term asset value. Built intentionally, not opportunistically.

Proven Results

The numbers behind
the portfolios.

Outcomes across stabilized assets, turnarounds, and ground-up developments. Numbers from actual engagements, not aggregate industry averages.

+320%

Foot traffic lift

On a mixed-use destination asset, year-over-year after strategic repositioning and programming launch.

40 to 85%

Office occupancy

A $320M office asset turned from distressed to stabilized through brand repositioning and leasing alignment.

+71.6%

Database growth

Seven-month result across a $300M Pacific Retail portfolio. Demand infrastructure built to scale.

−58%

Marketing spend reduced

High Street, Phoenix. Smarter allocation, not smaller ambition. 15–30% sales lift alongside the reduction.

+36%

Sales lift

Pacific Retail portfolio. Year-over-year tenant performance improvement driven by coordinated brand and programming strategy.

$30M

Capital improvements supported

Strategic marketing that justified ownership investment in asset repositioning and placemaking upgrades.

Leslie Himley, Founder and Fractional CMO at LH Strategic Advisory
Founder & Fractional CMO

Leslie Himley.
Twenty years. Fifteen in CRE.

Strategic advisor to developers, owners, and operators navigating complex real estate environments. Fifteen years specialized in commercial real estate: mixed-use, retail, residential, office, and destination assets. Trusted partner to ownership groups and executive teams across $1B+ in portfolios.

Every engagement is led personally. No junior handoffs. No agency handshake. The work gets done by the person you hire.

"She doesn't operate like a marketing lead. She aligns ownership, leasing, and execution in a way that directly impacts asset performance. That's rare."

Charles Ferguson  ·  Senior Vice President, Scanlan Kemper Bard
Recognition

ICSC MAXI Awards (Gold & Silver). American Advertising ADDYs (Branded Content 2x, Cinematography, Editing). American Graphic Design Awards.

Philanthropy

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Woman of the Year Runner-Up. Board and advisory service across Arizona community organizations.

Questions We Hear Often

What most founders ask
before the first call.

Plain answers to the questions developers, owners, and operators usually want resolved before engaging.

Both. Ground-up development marketing looks different than marketing a stabilized asset. So does a distressed turnaround. The common thread is strategic leadership: aligning brand, leasing, and experience to a measurable business outcome. The right approach depends on the asset, the phase, and the ownership's goals.
Most of the portfolios I've led have been mixed-use: retail, residential, office, hospitality, and destination programming coexisting on one asset. Each component needs its own positioning and marketing approach, but they have to reinforce each other, not compete. That alignment is usually where the biggest performance gains live.
Three primary models. Fractional CMO (ongoing retainer, embedded leadership). Strategic Retainer (ongoing counsel on positioning, planning, and key decisions, lighter involvement than Fractional CMO). Project-Based (defined scope for repositioning, launch, or a specific initiative). Most engagements begin with a strategic assessment in the first 30 days, which then informs the structure that fits best.
As the integrator, not a replacement. Most CRE marketing teams have good people and capable agencies. What they often lack is senior leadership aligning the work to business outcomes and holding it accountable. My role is to provide that layer, not rebuild what's working.
Yes. Phoenix-based, national reach. Travel is built into retainer engagements for quarterly on-site presence and major milestones. Day-to-day leadership runs through standing video calls, shared dashboards, and rapid response in your team's preferred tools. Remote executive leadership in CRE has been normalized by the industry for years.
A structured strategic assessment. Audit of existing team, budget, brand, vendor relationships, digital ecosystem, and leasing alignment. Output is a clear picture of where the asset is, where it should be, and the specific workstreams that will get it there. From there, the engagement takes its long-term shape.
Reports to the founder, CEO, COO, or ownership principal. Occasionally asset manager if the engagement is asset-specific. The reporting relationship matters because the work requires executive-level authority: to align leasing, to redirect agencies, to drive capital investment decisions. A fractional CMO reporting into a marketing coordinator can't do any of that.
From The Edit

Further reading on
CRE marketing strategy.

Analysis and perspective from twenty years of leading brand, positioning, and go-to-market for complex real estate assets.

Diagnostic

What I'd Look at First: A CMO-Level Marketing Audit for CRE Organizations

The specific workstreams I inspect in the first thirty days, and the questions that expose where value is being left on the table.

 Frameworks

The Most Overlooked Growth Tool in CRE Marketing: Building a Strategic Growth System

Why most CRE marketing fails to compound, and the system that turns scattered activity into sustained performance.

 Mixed-Use

Leasing Marketing vs Consumer Marketing: Why Mixed-Use Developments Need Both

The structural tension in mixed-use portfolios, and how to resolve it without undermining either audience.

 Methodology

How We Build Brands That Perform

The LHSA methodology for translating business strategy into brand architecture that moves leasing, visitation, and revenue.
Visit The Edit →
Take It With You

The LHSA CRE overview
to share with your team.

A concise two-page overview: the approach, the development lifecycle, the engagement models, and the results. Something to bring to your leadership, your partners, or your own second read.

Download the Overview PDF  ·  2 pages  ·  No email required
Let's Talk

Let's align your asset
for performance.

A 30-minute call to talk through the portfolio, the phase, and what senior marketing leadership could unlock. No pitch. No pressure.

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