If you’re going to fill your rental vacancies fast — and with quality tenants — you have to invest in online marketing and advertising. But with so many possible tactics to advertise your property, how do you determine which methods are worth the investment?
How do you know if your rental property marketing efforts are even paying off? This lack of insight is a common challenge for property managers.
Going Beyond the Rental Ad: How to Effectively Advertise a Rental Property
What used to work years ago may not be effective anymore — and new marketing channels are opening up all the time. Let’s take a look at how you can go beyond a tired rental ad to more effectively advertise your rental property.
Popular Rental Property Marketing Channels
First, you need to make sure that your rental property shows up where your target audience is looking. Consider taking advantage of these highly-popular advertising channels.
Related: 6 Tips to Improve Rental Property Listings on Zillow
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Online Listings Aggregators. The lifeblood of the rental marketing world. You’ll want to post and syndicate a descriptive and well-written listing for your rental property across the most popular online listings sites, such as Zillow, Trulia, and Apartments.com. You can post your listings for free, and then on some sites, such as Zillow, you can also run paid advertising to gain extra exposure.
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Social Media – Social media offers multiple marketing options, such as joining local groups and posting comments, running native ads (on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, for example), or posting your online listing on Facebook Marketplace.
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Referrals. Good old-fashioned word of mouth is still one of the most influential marketing tactics in your arsenal. Online reviews are the modern incarnation, so be sure to request them from happy tenants and keep your Google, Facebook and/or Yelp ratings high. While reviews are most relevant for new owner clients, a sterling online reputation will only help in your search for the next perfect tenant. Potential tenants will read anything they find online before signing a lease, so make sure whatever they find is positive. You can also consider launching a referral program, where you give tenants a one-time discount in exchange for referring a new tenant.
Marketing Ideas for Apartments and Other Properties: Get More from Online Listings
Since your online listing is your most important marketing tool, make sure your listings are working for you. Here are some tips to make sure your rental property stands out in the crowd.
Take amazing photos
Your audience is highly visual, and they notice everything. Make sure photos are well-lit, taken from angles that are appealing, and that you’re showing the best features of your property, inside and out.Stage the space accordingly: clean up clutter, make beds, close closet doors, watch for reflections in mirrors, and try to limit current tenants’ personal mementos (such as photos). Also, make sure your photos are technically sound (that they’re not blurry and that the resolution is high).
Write descriptive, enticing blurbs
Why just say, “big eat-in kitchen with lots of windows” when you can say, “spacious kitchen with abundant natural light offers the perfect place for your loved ones to gather around the table”?
Make it easy for your tenant leads to imagine themselves enjoying daily life in your rental property. Of course, you need to always stay truthful!
Also use the listing as a way to work in some tenant screening language, such as “pet-friendly” or “smoke-free.”
Use virtual tours
Since COVID-19, 71% of property managers report that their use of virtual showings has increased. While 360-degree prerecorded virtual tours have traditionally been a great option, you can now offer a truly interactive experience with a live virtual tour.
A live virtual tour lets your prospective tenants direct the walkthrough just as they would in person, choosing what they see and asking questions in real time. When you use a tenant lead management software such as Tenant Turner, instead of just setting up a Zoom meeting, you can also integrate and easily track your virtual showings.
Make your online listing error-free
Ensure that your leasing experience is flawless from the very first impression. To err is human, so use technology to avoid typos, bad addresses and other potentially embarrassing mistakes.
Tenant lead software lets you syndicate your listing across multiple advertising channels without having to manually re-enter data over and over again, reducing the possibility of more errors.
Protect your listings from hackers.
Once you’ve perfected your online listing, the last thing you want is some hacker to hijack it and turn it into a scam. Tenant Turner lets you automatically add watermarks to your listings, reducing your risk of getting hijacked.
Related: How to Best Advertise Your Residential Rental Listing to Get More Tenant Leads
Top Marketing Strategies for Renting Apartments: Use Technology
So now you know where to advertise, and how to make your ad stand out from the rest. But that alone won’t ensure that you’ll get the best ROI from these rental property marketing ideas. How will you know which advertising channels actually find quality tenants? You need to be able to track your listings and view performance data in one place.
It’s time to move beyond basic rental advertising tactics and get strategic. Tenant Turner scheduling software will help you find — and convert — the best tenant leads.
With Tenant Turner, you can:
- Use data to market smarter. Aggregate all of your advertising data in one place, so you can easily compare channels and determine which ones truly get quality renters.
- Get to market faster. Use automation to quickly syndicate your listings. Tenant Turner integrates with Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Zumper, Apartments.com, Homes.com, and more — plus your own website — so you can write your online listing once and get it out everywhere, fast. This not only saves time, it also reduces the risk of errors.
- Answer tenant leads immediately. Once you’ve got a good prospective tenant on the line, don’t leave them hanging — or worse, let a competitor answer them first. Use Tenant Turner to set up instant automated responses for all lead inquiries, saving you time and keeping your tenant leads happy.
- Pre-screen with ease. Now that your advertising is delivering a steady stream of potential tenants, make your tenant screening process more efficient and more effective. Tenant Turner enables consistent pre-screening questionnaires. You can also add custom questions to maintain compliance with any local or state regulations.
- Get out of the way. Today’s prospective tenants are tech-savvy and ready to drive their own experience. With Tenant Turner’s showing scheduler, your leads can book their own showings, get automated confirmations via text message, and even set up a contactless self-showing with a secure electronic lockbox that uses ID verification for your protection. You’ll get automated updates, notifications and reminders along the way, so you’ll always know the status of every tenant lead.
Finding great tenants and filling vacancies quickly doesn’t have to be overwhelming or confusing.
The key is using technology to make sure that your rental property marketing is effective and delivers real ROI.Learn how Tenant Turner will help you make the most of your advertising budget.
