An effective marketing strategy can make or break a business. The rental industry is not an exception. Everything began with the good old-fashioned “For rent” signs and more and more advanced marketing techniques are being adopted.
When properly used, marketing can turn a below-average product into an appealing option that brings a lot of money.
If you need a marketing strategy for your own rental business or looking for new ways to get your message out there, take a look at these techniques.
1. Create Presence on Listing Sites
For every area, there are a number of listing sites that tenants use to find property for rent. For example, if you search Google for CITY + TYPE OF ACCOMMODATION + RENTALS, you’ll discover that the first page is occupied by major listing sites.
For example, here are the results for “Boston Apartment Rentals.”
Here, we can see Zillow, Apartments.com, Realtor.com, and even Craigslist. Remember: when renters start to look for accommodation, they see almost the same results.
This means that you should create your own listings on these sites and increase visibility for your property.
To make your ads great, follow these tips:
- Providing high-quality pictures is a must.
- Write a catchy, descriptive headline (“$1200/1BR Gorgeous Unit in New Building, up-and-coming Neighborhood”)
- Make it easy-to-read by dividing the text into short paragraphs.
- Be honest about the property.
2. Create a Referral Program
Your current tenants may know people who are looking for a property to lease, why not encourage them to share this information with you (for a reward, of course)? For example, you can offer them a one-time rent reduction for each new client they refer who signs a lease contract.
To make the program as attractive as possible, offer generous incentives. Make sure that every tenant knows about the program.
3. Set Yourself and Your Agency for Social
There’s no need to tell you how popular social media are and how many people are using them every day. To get more clients, create business accounts on all well-known platforms and add social sharing buttons like ShareThis to property pages on your website.
It’s possible that many renters are looking to share the pictures of a property they liked with their friends and family, so this provides an additional advantage to your business.
Here are useful tips for social media:
- Be active: post photos of property, comment, reply to comments under your posts, and respond to messages promptly
- Share some tips and useful information to diversify the feed
- Promote your referral program
- Post images of the local community along with the ads
- Go live and show apartment with a video
4. Ensure that Your Website Has Responsive Design
According to StatCounter, mobile traffic currently accounts for 51.56 percent of all global Internet traffic. For you as an owner of a rental business, this means that creating a mobile-friendly website is a must.
5. Create a Video Tour
It is a great tool to enhance your listing because you’re giving the viewers the idea of what to expect from the property. A rental video walkthrough can be captured using your phone or special tools like Zillow Rental Manager App (available for Android and iOS).
The benefits of creating such tours are great. Not only they enhance the exposure of your property, but also save you time and improve search engine rankings.
Tips for shooting:
- Begin with the front of the unit
- Open all doors before you start recording
- Focus on the most impressive elements
- Pause when you’ve done with recording one room and resume when in the next
6. Emphasize the Neighborhood in Your Listings
Selling the neighborhood in addition to the property is a common technique among realtors these days. While promoting a property, point out all the advantages of the neighborhood.
“For example, you can include information about restaurants, schools, transport system, healthcare facilities, bars, clubs, art studios, and other facilities that can interest the potential renters,” says Simon Petersen, a marketer from A-writer.com.
Make sure that the neighborhood is special in their eyes. Then, they’ll begin imagining themselves living there.
7. Create a Newsletter
Email marketing is one of the best-performing marketing strategies. According to Campaign Monitor, it has the highest ROI of $38 for every $1 spent (you can calculate your own ROI using Email Marketing ROI Calculator tool). It outperforms such widely used methods as social media and paid online advertising, so you should definitely include it in your marketing strategy.
Collect emails of people who registered at your website and social media followers and send them the stuff they’re looking for:
- New houses on the market
- News
- Information about the referral program
- Notifications about an upcoming open property
About the Author: Nancy Spektor has sharpened her pencil at “The Daily”, a newspaper for the University of Washington. After graduating, she decided to combine her business degree with her passion for written communication at college-paper.org. Nancy writes about marketing strategies, content management and other topics she finds interesting. If she’s not composing on her laptop or notebook, you can find her playing with her dog, Bok Choy.
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