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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Related: How to Best Advertise Your Residential Rental Listing to Get More Tenant Leads
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: